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WASHINGTON — A federal magistrate judge on Friday refused to order the pretrial release of a man charged with planting two pipe bombs outside the headquarters of the Democratic and Republican national parties on the eve of the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Matthew Sharbaugh ruled that Brian J. Cole Jr. must remain jailed before trial. The magistrate concluded there are no conditions of release that can reasonably protect the public from the danger that Cole allegedly poses.
Justice Department prosecutors say Cole confessed to placing pipe bombs outside the Republican National Committee and the Democratic National Committee headquarters only hours before a mob of President Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol. According to prosecutors, Cole said he hoped the explosives would detonate and “hoped there would be news about it.”
“Mercifully, that did not happen,” Sharbaugh wrote. “But if the plan had succeeded, the results,” he said, could have been devastating, “creating a greater sense of terror on the eve of a high-security Congressional proceeding, causing serious property damage in the heart of Washington, D.C., grievously injuring DNC or RNC staff and other innocent bystanders, or worse.”
After his arrest last month, Cole told investigators that he believed someone needed to “speak up” for people who believed the 2020 election, which Democrat Joe Biden won, was stolen and that he wanted to target the country’s political parties because they were “in charge,” according to prosecutors.
If convicted of both charges against him, Cole faces up to 10 years of imprisonment on one charge and up to 20 years of imprisonment on a second charge that also carries a five-year mandatory minimum prison sentence.
Cole’s attorneys asked for him to be released on home detention with GPS monitoring. They said Cole doesn’t have a criminal record, has been diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder, and lives in a stable home that he shared with his parents in Woodbridge, Va.
“Mr. Cole simply does not pose a danger to the community,” defense attorneys wrote. “Whatever risk the government posits is theoretical and backward-looking, belied by the past four years where Mr. Cole lived at home with his family without incident.”
Cole continued to purchase bomb-making components for months after the Jan. 6 riot, according to prosecutors. They said Cole told the FBI that he planted the pipe bombs because “something just snapped.”
“The sudden and abrupt motivation behind Mr. Cole’s alleged actions presents concerns about how quickly the same abrupt and impulsive conduct might recur,” Sharbaugh wrote.
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is facing a new legal complaint from a group of government employees affected by a policy that went into effect Thursday that eliminates coverage for gender-affirming care in federal health insurance programs.
The complaint, filed Thursday on the employees’ behalf by the Human Rights Campaign, is in response to an August announcement from the Office of Personnel Management that it would no longer cover “chemical and surgical modification of an individual’s sex traits through medical interventions” in health insurance programs for federal employees and U.S. Postal Service workers.
The complaint argues that denying coverage of gender-affirming care is sex-based discrimination and asks the personnel office to rescind the policy.
“This policy is not about cost or care — it is about driving transgender people and people with transgender spouses, children, and dependents out of the federal workforce,” Human Rights Campaign Foundation President Kelley Robinson said in a statement.
The complaint, filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, includes testimonies from four current federal workers at the State Department, Health and Human Services and the Postal Service who would be directly affected by the elimination of coverage.
For instance, the Postal Service employee has a daughter whose doctors recommended that she get puberty blockers and potentially hormone replacement therapy for her diagnosed gender dysphoria, which would not be covered under the new policy, according to the complaint.
The complaint notes that the workers are making the claim on behalf of themselves and a “class of similarly situated federal employees.”
The Trump administration has taken other steps to restrict care for transgender Americans, particularly minors. In December, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services released proposals that would block gender-affirming care to minors, including a policy that would bar Medicare and Medicaid dollars to hospitals that provide such care to children.
Senior Trump officials, such as Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., call gender-affirming care “malpractice” for minors. But such restrictions go against recommendations from major medical groups such as the American Medical Assn. and the American Academy of Pediatrics.
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — President Trump has spent much of his two-week vacation in Florida golfing. But when he gets back to the White House, there’s a military golf course that he’s never played that he’s eyeing for a major construction project.
Long a favored getaway for presidents seeking a few hours’ solace from the stress of running the free world, the Courses at Andrews — inside the secure confines of Joint Base Andrews in Maryland, about 15 miles from the White House — are known as the “president’s golf course.” Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Joe Biden have spent time there, and Barack Obama played it more frequently than any president, roughly 110 times in eight years.
Trump has always preferred the golf courses his family owns — spending about one of every four days of his second term at one of them. But he’s now enlisted golf champion Jack Nicklaus as the architect to overhaul the Courses at Andrews.
“It’s amazing that an individual has time to take a couple hours away from the world crises. And they’re people like everybody else,” said Michael Thomas, the former general manager of the course, who has golfed with many of the presidents visiting Andrews over the years.
Andrews, better known as the home of Air Force One, has two 18-hole courses and a 9-hole one. Its facilities have undergone renovations in the past, including in 2018, when Congress approved funding to replace aging presidential aircraft and to build a new hangar and support facilities. That project was close enough to the courses that they had to be altered then, too.
Trump toured the base by helicopter before Thanksgiving with Nicklaus, who has designed top courses the world over. The president called Andrews “a great place, that’s been destroyed over the years, through lack of maintenance.”
Other golfers, though, describe Andrews’ grounds as in good shape, despite some dry patches. Online reviews praise the course’s mature trees, tricky roughs, and ponds and streams that serve as water hazards. The courses are mostly flat, but afford views of the surrounding base.
‘They all like to drive the cart’
The first president to golf at Andrews was Ford in 1974. Thomas began working there a couple years later, and was general manager from 1981 until he retired in 2019.
He said the Secret Service over the years used as many as 28 golf carts — as well as the president’s usual 30-car motorcade — to keep the perimeter secure.
“It’s a Cecil B. DeMille production every time,” said Thomas, who had the opportunity to play rounds with four different presidents, and with Biden when he was vice president.
He said the commanders in chief generally enjoyed their time out on the course in their own unique ways, but “they all like to drive the cart because they never get an opportunity to drive.”
“It’s like getting your driver’s license all over again,” Thomas laughed.
Trump golfs most weekends, and as of Friday, has spent an estimated 93 days of his second term doing so, according to an Associated Press analysis of his schedules.
That tally includes days when Trump was playing courses his family owns in Virginia, around 30 miles from the White House, and near his Florida estate Mar-a-Lago, where he’s spending the winter holidays. It also includes 10 days Trump spent staying at his golf club in Bedminster, N.J., where his schedule allowed time for rounds of golf.
Trump has visited Andrews in the past, but the White House and base have no record of him playing the courses.
Another of Trump’s construction projects
Andrews’ military history dates to the Civil War, when Union troops used a church near Camp Springs, Md., as sleeping quarters. Its golf course opened in 1960.
The White House said the renovation will be the most significant in the history of Andrews. The courses and clubhouse need improvements due to age and wear, it said, and there are discussions about including a multifunctional event center as part of the project.
“President Trump is a champion-level golfer with an extraordinary eye for detail and design,” White House spokesman Davis Ingle said in a statement. “His vision to renovate and beautify Joint Base Andrews’ golf courses will bring much-needed improvements that service members and their families will be able to enjoy for generations to come.”
Plans are in the very early stages, and the cost of — and funding for — the project haven’t been determined, the White House said. Trump has said only that it will require “very little money.”
The Andrews improvements join a bevy of Trump construction projects, including demolishing the White House’s East Wing for a sprawling ballroom now expected to cost $400 million, redoing the bathroom attached to the Lincoln bedroom and replacing the Rose Garden’s lawn with a Mar-a-Lago-like patio area.
Outside the White House, Trump has led building projects at the Kennedy Center and wants to erect a Paris-style arch near the Lincoln Memorial, and has said he wants to rebuild Dulles International Airport in northern Virginia.
On Wednesday, meanwhile, the Trump administration ended a lease agreement with a nonprofit for three public golf courses in Washington — which could allow the president to further shape golfing in the nation’s capital. The White House, however, said that move isn’t related to the plans for Andrews.
Presidential perks of golfing at Andrews
When the president is golfing, Andrews officials block off nine holes at a time so no one plays in front of him, allowing for extra security while also ensuring consistent speed-of-play, Thomas said.
That’s relatively easily done given that the courses aren’t open to the public. They’re usually reserved for active or retired members of the military and their families, as well as some Defense Department-linked federal employees.
Thomas remembers playing a round with the older President Bush, a World Golf Hall of Fame inductee known for fast play, while first lady Barbara Bush walked with Millie, the first couple’s English Springer Spaniel. George W. Bush also played fast, Thomas said, and got additional exercise by frequently riding his mountain bike before golfing.
When he wasn’t golfing at Andrews, Obama tried to recreate at least part of the experience back home. He had a White House golf simulator installed after then-first lady Michelle Obama asked Thomas how they might acquire a model that the president had seen advertised on the Golf Channel. Thomas gave her a contact at the network.
Obama famously cut short a round at Andrews after nine holes in 2011 to hustle back to the White House for what turned out to be a top-secret review of final preparations for a Navy SEAL raid on the compound of Osama bin Laden.
But, while Thomas was golfing with presidents, he said he never witnessed play interrupted by an important call or any major emergency that forced them off the course mid-hole. There also were never any rain-outs.
“If there was rain coming, they’d get the weather forecast before we would,” Thomas said. “They would cancel quick on that.”
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration has ended the lease agreement for three public golf courses in Washington, a move that offers President Trump an additional opportunity to put his stamp on another piece of the nation’s capital.
The National Links Trust, the nonprofit that has operated Washington’s three public courses on federal land for the last five years, said Wednesday that the Department of the Interior had terminated its 50-year lease agreement. The Interior Department said it was terminating the lease because the nonprofit had not implemented required capital improvements and failed to meet the terms of the lease.
While it was unclear what the Trump administration’s plans are for the golf courses, the move gives Trump, whose private company has developed numerous golf courses in the U.S. and abroad, the chance to remake links overlooking the Potomac River and in Rock Creek Park and a site that is part of Black golf history.
Officials for the National Links Trust said in a statement that they were “devastated” by the decision to terminate the lease and defended their management of the courses. They said $8.5 million had gone toward capital improvements at the courses and that rounds played and revenue had more than doubled in their tenure managing the courses. The nonprofit has agreed to keep managing the courses for the time being, but long-term renovations will stop.
“While this termination is a major setback, we remain stubbornly hopeful that a path forward can be found that preserves affordable and accessible public golf in the nation’s capital for generations to come,” the officials added.
The Department of the Interior’s decision comes as Trump rebrands civic spaces in Washington and deploys National Guard members to the streets for public safety. The Kennedy Center added Trump’s name this month after the center’s board of trustees — made up of Trump appointees — voted to change the name of the performing arts space designated by Congress as a memorial to John F. Kennedy. Trump is also in the midst of a construction project to build a ballroom on the White House’s East Wing, and he has put his name on the U.S. Institute of Peace.
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — President Trump and top Iranian officials exchanged dueling threats Friday as widening protests swept across parts of the Islamic Republic, further escalating tensions between the countries after America bombed Iranian nuclear sites in June.
At least seven people have been killed so far in violence surrounding the demonstrations, which were sparked in part by the collapse of Iran’s rial currency but have increasingly seen crowds chanting anti-government slogans.
The protests, now in their sixth day, have become the biggest in Iran since 2022, when the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in police custody triggered nationwide demonstrations. However, the demonstrations have yet to be countrywide and have not been as intense as those surrounding the death of Amini, who was detained over not wearing her hijab, or headscarf, to the liking of authorities.
Trump post sparks quick Iranian response
Trump initially wrote on his Truth Social platform, warning Iran that if it “violently kills peaceful protesters,” the United States “will come to their rescue.”
“We are locked and loaded and ready to go,” Trump wrote, without elaborating.
Shortly after, Ali Larijani, a former parliament speaker who serves as the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, alleged on the social platform X that Israel and the U.S. were stoking the demonstrations. He offered no evidence to support the allegation, which Iranian officials have repeatedly made during years of protests sweeping the country.
“Trump should know that intervention by the U.S. in the domestic problem corresponds to chaos in the entire region and the destruction of the U.S. interests,” Larijani wrote on X, which the Iranian government blocks. “The people of the U.S. should know that Trump began the adventurism. They should take care of their own soldiers.”
Larijani’s remarks likely referenced America’s wide military footprint in the region. Iran in June attacked Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar after the U.S. strikes on three nuclear sites during Israel’s 12-day war on the Islamic Republic. No one was injured though a missile did hit a radome there.
Ali Shamkhani, an adviser to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei who previously was the council’s secretary for years, separately warned that “any interventionist hand that gets too close to the security of Iran will be cut.”
“The people of Iran properly know the experience of ‘being rescued’ by Americans: from Iraq and Afghanistan to Gaza,” he added on X.
Iran’s hard-liner parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf also threatened that all American bases and forces would be “legitimate targets.”
Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei also responded, citing a list of Tehran’s longtime grievances against the U.S., including a CIA-backed coup in 1953, the downing of a passenger jet in 1988 and taking part in the June war.
The Iranian response came as the protests shake what has been a common refrain from officials in the theocracy — that the country broadly backed its government after the war.
Trump’s online message marked a direct sign of support for the demonstrators, something that other American presidents have avoided out of concern that activists would be accused of working with the West. During Iran’s 2009 Green Movement demonstrations, President Barack Obama held back from publicly backing the protests — something he said in 2022 “was a mistake.”
But such White House support still carries a risk.
“Though the grievances that fuel these and past protests are due to the Iranian government’s own policies, they are likely to use President Trump’s statement as proof that the unrest is driven by external actors,” said Naysan Rafati, an analyst at the International Crisis Group.
“But using that as a justification to crack down more violently risks inviting the very U.S. involvement Trump has hinted at,” he added.
Protests continue Friday
Demonstrators took to the streets Friday in Zahedan in Iran’s restive Sistan and Baluchestan province on the border with Pakistan. The burials of several demonstrators killed in the protests also took place, sparking marches.
Online video purported to show mourners chasing off security force members who attended the funeral of 21-year-old Amirhessam Khodayari. He was killed Wednesday in Kouhdasht, over 250 miles southwest of Tehran in Iran’s Lorestan province.
Video also showed Khodayari’s father denying his son served in the all-volunteer Basij force of Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, as authorities claimed. The semiofficial Fars news agency later reported that there were now questions about the government’s claims that he served.
Iran’s civilian government under reformist President Masoud Pezeshkian has been trying to signal it wants to negotiate with protesters. However, Pezeshkian has acknowledged there is not much he can do as Iran’s rial has rapidly depreciated, with $1 now costing some 1.4 million rials. That sparked the initial protests.
The protests, taking root in economic issues, have heard demonstrators chant against Iran’s theocracy as well. Tehran has had little luck in propping up its economy in the months since the June war.
Iran recently said it was no longer enriching uranium at any site in the country, trying to signal to the West that it remains open to potential negotiations over its atomic program to ease sanctions. However, those talks have yet to happen as Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have warned Tehran against reconstituting its atomic program.
The fiery debate about a proposed ballot measure to tax California’s billionaires has sparked some soul-searching across the state.
While the idea of a one-time tax on more than 200 people has a long way to go before getting onto the ballot and would need to be passed by voters in November, the tempest around it captures the zeitgeist of angst and anger at the core of California. Silicon Valley is minting new millionaires while millions of the state’s residents face the loss of healthcare coverage and struggle with inflation.
Supporters of the proposed billionaire tax say it is one of the few ways the state can provide healthcare for its most vulnerable. Opponents warn it would squash the innovation that has made the state rich and prompt an exodus of wealthy entrepreneurs from the state.
The controversial measure is already creating fractures among powerful Democrats who enjoy tremendous sway in California. Progressive icon Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) quickly endorsed the billionaire tax, while Gov. Gavin Newsom denounced it .
The Golden State’s rich residents say they are tired of feeling targeted. Their success has not only created unimaginable wealth but also jobs and better lives for Californians, they say, yet they feel they are being punished.
“California politics forces together some of the richest areas of America with some of the poorest, often separated by just a freeway,” said Thad Kousser, a political science professor at UC San Diego. “The impulse to force those with extreme wealth to share their riches is only natural, but often runs into the reality of our anti-tax traditions as well as modern concerns about stifling entrepreneurship or driving job creation out of the state.”
The state budget in California is already largely dependent on income taxes paid by its highest earners. Because of that, revenues are prone to volatility, hinging on capital gains from investments, bonuses to executives and windfalls from new stock offerings, and are notoriously difficult for the state to predict.
The tax proposal would cost the state’s richest residents about $100 billion if a majority of voters support it on the November ballot.
Supporters say the revenue is needed to backfill the massive federal funding cuts to healthcare that President Trump signed this summer. The California Budget & Policy Center estimates that as many as 3.4 million Californians could lose Medi-Cal coverage, rural hospitals could shutter and other healthcare services would be slashed unless a new funding source is found.
On social media, some wealthy Californians who oppose the wealth tax faced off against Democratic politicians and labor unions.
An increasing number of companies and investors have decided it isn’t worth the hassle to be in the state and are taking their companies and their homes to other states with lower taxes and less regulation.
“I promise you this will be the final straw,” Jessie Powell, co-founder of the Bay Area-based crypto exchange platform Kraken, wrote on X. “Billionaires will take with them all of their spending, hobbies, philanthropy and jobs.”
Proponents of the proposed tax were granted permission to start gathering signatures Dec. 26 by California Secretary of State Shirley Weber.
The proposal would impose a one-time tax of up to 5% on taxpayers and trusts with assets, such as businesses, art and intellectual property, valued at more than $1 billion. There are some exclusions, including property.
They could pay the levy over five years. Ninety percent of the revenue would fund healthcare programs and the remaining 10% would be spent on food assistance and education programs.
To qualify for the November ballot, proponents of the proposal, led by the Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West, must gather the signatures of nearly 875,000 registered voters and submit them to county elections officials by June 24.
The union, which represents more than 120,000 healthcare workers, patients and healthcare consumers, has committed to spending $14 million on the measure so far and plans to start collecting signatures soon, said Suzanne Jimenez, the labor group’s chief of staff.
Without new funding, the state is facing “a collapse of our healthcare system here in California,” she said.
Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Fremont) spoke out in support of the tax.
“It’s a matter of values,” he said on X. “We believe billionaires can pay a modest wealth tax so working-class Californians have the Medicaid.”
The Trump administration did not respond to requests for comment.
The debate has become a lightning rod for national thought leaders looking to target California’s policies or the ultra-rich.
On Tuesday, Sanders endorsed the billionaire tax proposal and said he plans to call for a nationwide version.
“This is a model that should be emulated throughout the country, which is why I will soon be introducing a national wealth tax on billionaires,” Sanders said on X. “We can and should respect innovation, entrepreneurship and risk-taking, but we cannot respect the extraordinary level of greed, arrogance and irresponsibility that is currently being displayed by much of the billionaire class.”
But there isn’t unanimous support for the proposal among Democrats.
Notably, Newsom has consistently opposed state-based wealth taxes. He reiterated his opposition when asked about the proposed billionaires’ tax in early December.
“You can’t isolate yourself from the 49 others,” Newsom said at the New York Times DealBook Summit. “We’re in a competitive environment. People have this simple luxury, particularly people of that status, they already have two or three homes outside the state. It’s a simple issue. You’ve got to be pragmatic about it.”
Newsom has opposed state-based wealth taxes throughout his tenure.
In 2022, he opposed a ballot measure that would have subsidized the electric vehicle market by raising taxes on Californians who earn more than $2 million annually. The measure failed at the ballot box, with strategists on both sides of the issue saying Newsom’s vocal opposition to the effort was a critical factor.
The following year, he opposed legislation by a fellow Democrat to tax assets exceeding $50 million at 1% annually and taxpayers with a net worth greater than $1 billion at 1.5% annually. The bill was shelved before the legislature could vote on it.
The latest effort is also being opposed by a political action committee called “Stop the Squeeze,” which was seeded by a $100,000 donation from venture capitalist and longtime Newsom ally Ron Conway. Conservative taxpayer rights groups such as the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn. and state Republicans are expected to campaign against the proposal.
The chances of the ballot measure passing in November are uncertain, given the potential for enormous spending on the campaign — unlike statewide and other candidate races, there is no limit on the amount of money donors can contribute to support or oppose a ballot measure.
“The backers of this proposed initiative to tax California billionaires would have their work cut out for them,” said Kousser at UC San Diego. “Despite the state’s national reputation as ‘Scandinavia by the Sea,’ there remains a strong anti-tax impulse among voters who often reject tax increases and are loath to kill the state’s golden goose of tech entrepreneurship.”
Additionally, as Newsom eyes a presidential bid in 2028, political experts question how the governor will position himself — opposing raising taxes but also not wanting to be viewed as responsible for large-scale healthcare cuts that would harm the most vulnerable Californians.
“It wouldn’t be surprising if they qualify the initiative. There’s enough money and enough pent-up anger on the left to get this on the ballot,” said Dan Schnur, a political communications professor who teaches at USC, Pepperdine and UC Berkeley.
“What happens once it qualifies is anybody’s guess,” he said.
Lorena Gonzalez, president of the California Federation of Labor Unions, called Newsom’s position “an Achilles heel” that could irk primary voters in places like the Midwest who are focused on economic inequality, inflation, affordability and the growing wealth gap.
“I think it’s going to be really hard for him to take a position that we shouldn’t tax the billionaires,” said Gonzalez, whose labor umbrella group will consider whether to endorse the proposed tax next year.
California billionaires who are residents of the state as of Jan. 1 would be impacted by the ballot measure if it passes . Prominent business leaders announced moves that appeared to be a strategy to avoid the levy at the end of 2025. On Dec. 31, PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel announced that his firm had opened a new office in Miami, the same day venture capitalist David Sacks said he was opening an office in Austin.
Wealth taxes are not unprecedented in the U.S. and versions exist in Switzerland and Spain, said Brian Galle, a taxation expert and law professor at UC Berkeley.
In California, the tax offers an efficient and practical way to pay for healthcare services without disrupting the economy, he said.
“A 1% annual tax on billionaires for five years would have essentially no meaningful impact on their economic behavior,” Galle said. “We’re funding a way of avoiding a real economic disaster with something that has very tiny impact.”
Palo Alto-based venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya disagrees. Billionaires whose wealth is often locked in company stakes and not liquid could go bankrupt, Palihapitiya wrote on X.
The tax, he posted, “will kill entrepreneurship in California.”
As we head into 2026 and Democrats try to figure out how to regain power, their New Year’s resolution should be simple: Manage egos better.
In recent years, they seem to have forgotten the time-tested necessity of placating people. In other words, doing the same basic drudgery the rest of us rely on to get through this chaotic world.
This effort cannot merely be directed toward voters, as important as they are. It must also include elite stakeholders, some of whom might (rightly) be considered kooks, weirdos and otherwise high-maintenance eccentrics.
Lest you think Dems should simply shrug off these folks and say “good riddance,” consider this: Both Trump terms might have been avoided if Democrats had been more willing to nurture the nuts in years gone by.
Let’s start with their treatment of America’s top crank: Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
As journalist Michael Scherer, who profiled RFK Jr. for The Atlantic, told Alex Wagner of “Pod Save America”: Once Kennedy’s own 2024 presidential campaign started to flounder, he and his campaign manager began “to make sort of outreach to Democrats … to see if they can open a conversation with Biden to sort of trade something.”
Unfortunately, “the Democratic response [was] silence.” They wouldn’t meet with him, they wouldn’t talk to him.
Later, as Scherer recounts: “A friend of [Kennedy’s] connects him with Tucker Carlson who connects him with Donald Trump. And that night, just hours later, they’re talking, and Trump at that point wants to make a deal.”
The rest is history.
Now, I know what you’re thinking. “But Kennedy is a nut! Why should Democrats have humored him?”
How about this: Because Trump narrowly won the presidency in 2024 by forming a disparate coalition held together by duct tape, resentment and (possibly) a cursed amulet.
This motley crew included more prominent Dems than just RFK Jr. Remember when Biden basically ghosted Elon Musk for that big 2021 White House electric vehicle summit? Even Kamala Harris — who happily agreed with Biden on just about everything except her own polling numbers — called that a huge mistake.
Then again, Harris committed her own costly slight when she decided against going on Joe Rogan’s podcast.
For an entire decade now, Democrats have consistently alienated allies — with devastating results. I’m talking about the snubs that might have prevented Trump’s first presidential run entirely.
Not just the famous humiliation of Trump at the 2011 White House Correspondents’ Dinner. Here’s the more tragic prequel: Former “Meet the Press” host Chuck Todd told the Bulwark’s Tim Miller that before Trump went full birther, he actually called the Obama White House offering “ideas on how to improve the state dinner.”
That’s right. Donald J. Trump — future leader of the free world — just wanted to talk about better parties. Shrimp trays. Tablecloths. Maybe a chocolate fountain.
Just as the world would have been better had the Washington Senators signed Fidel Castro to a huge baseball contract before he got too interested in politics, America might have been better if Obama had made Trump the White House state dinner czar.
But as Todd put it, “The last thing the Obama White House was going to do was placate a guy like Donald Trump.”
Understandable — until you consider that the alternative to humoring him was, you know … President Trump. Twice.
Look, I totally understand why a U.S. president might think he or she shouldn’t have to stoop to kissing some crank’s ring or placating some gilded, phony billionaire. But let’s be honest: It’s part of the job.
Instead of performing this sort of ego cultivation, Democrats — whether because of snobbery, elite gatekeeping, geriatric aloofness or a disciplined disdain for “time burglars” — have repeatedly alienated potential allies (or at least neutral parties). Then they act shocked when these same people drift into the MAGA solar system like space debris.
If Trump is truly an existential threat — and Democrats say this approximately 87 times a week — then maybe, just maybe, they should Return. A. Phone. Call.
Otherwise, Donald Trump will. Probably at 3 a.m., while eating a Big Mac.
So grovel if you must. Fake interest. Smile like you’re not dying inside. Do the basic humiliations the rest of us perform daily to get hired, get promoted or get a date.
It’s the least you can do. So make it your New Year’s resolution and honor it.
But if you think you’re too good to perform the basic glad-handing and ego-stroking, even for the nuttiest eccentrics, bad things will happen.
Trust me — I’ve seen this movie. And we’re only a year into his second term.
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court, led by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., ended the first year of President Trump’s second term with a record of rulings that gave him much broader power to control the federal government.
In a series of fast-track decisions, the justices granted emergency appeals and set aside rulings from district judges who blocked Trump’s orders from taking effect.
Upon taking office, Trump claimed migrants who were alleged to belong to “foreign terrorist” gangs could be arrested as “enemy aliens” and flown secretly to a prison in El Salvador.
Roberts and the court blocked such secret deportations and said the 5th Amendment entitles immigrants, like citizens, a right to “due process of law.” Many of the arrested men had no criminal records and said they never belonged to a criminal gang. Those who face deportation “are entitled to notice and opportunity to challenge their removal,” the justices said in Trump vs. J.G.G.
They also required the government to “facilitate” the release of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who had been wrongly deported to El Salvador. He is now back in Maryland with his wife, but may face further criminal charges or efforts to deport him.
And last week, Roberts and the court barred Trump from deploying the National Guard in Chicago to enforce the immigration laws.
Trump had claimed he had the power to defy state governors and deploy the Guard troops in Los Angeles, Portland, Ore., Chicago and other Democratic-led states and cities.
The Supreme Court disagreed over dissents from conservative Justices Samuel A. Alito, Clarence Thomas and Neil M. Gorsuch.
For much of the year, however, Roberts and the five other conservatives were in the majority ruling for Trump. In dissent, the three liberal justices said the court should stand aside for now and defer to district judges.
In May, the court agreed that Trump could end the Biden administration’s special temporary protections extended to more than 350,000 Venezuelans as well as an additional 530,000 migrants who arrived legally from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua or Venezuela.
It was easier to explain why the new administration’s policies were cruel and disruptive rather than why they were illegal.
Trump’s lawyers argued that the law gave the president’s top immigration officials the sole power to decide on these temporary protections and that “no judicial review” was authorized.
Nonetheless, a federal judge in San Francisco twice blocked the administration’s repeal of the temporary protected status for Venezuelans, and a federal judge in Boston blocked the repeal of the entry-level parole granted to migrants under Biden.
Since 1887, when Congress created the Interstate Commerce Commission to regulate railroad rates, the government has had semi-independent boards and commissions led by a mix of Republicans and Democrats.
But Roberts and the court’s conservatives believe that because these agencies enforce the law, they come under the president’s “executive power.”
That ruling may come with an exception for the Federal Reserve Board, an independent agency whose nonpartisan stability is valued by business leaders.
Georgetown Law Professor David Cole, the former legal director at the American Civil Liberties Union, said the court has sent mixed signals.
“On the emergency docket, it has ruled consistently for the president, with some notable exceptions,” he said. “I do think it significant that it put a halt to the National Guard deployments and to the Alien Enemies Act deportations, at least for the time being. And I think by this time next year, it’s possible that the court will have overturned two of Trump’s signature initiatives — the birthright citizenship executive order and the tariffs.”
For much of 2025, the court was criticized for handing down temporary unsigned orders with little or no explanation.
That practice arose in 2017 in response to Trump’s use of executive orders to make abrupt, far-reaching changes in the law. In response, Democratic state attorneys and lawyers for progressive groups sued in friendly forums such as Seattle, San Francisco and Boston and won rulings from district judges who put Trump’s policies on hold.
The 2017 “travel ban” announced in Trump’s first week in the White House set the pattern. It suspended the entry of visitors and migrants from Venezuela and seven mostly-Muslim countries on the grounds that those countries had weak vetting procedures.
Judges blocked it from taking effect, and the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals agreed, saying the order discriminated based on nationality.
A year later, the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case and upheld Trump’s order in a 5-4 ruling. Roberts pointed out that Congress in the immigration laws clearly gave this power to the president. If he “finds that the entry of … any class of aliens … would be detrimental,” it says, he may “suspend the entry” of all such migrants for as long as “he shall deem necessary.”
Since then, Roberts and the court’s conservatives have been less willing to stand aside while federal judges hand down nationwide rulings.
Democrats saw the same problem when Biden was president.
In April 2023, a federal judge in west Texas ruled for anti-abortion advocates and decreed that the Food and Drug Administration had wrongly approved abortion pills that can end an early pregnancy. He ordered that they be removed from the market before any appeals could be heard and decided.
The Biden administration filed an emergency appeal. Two weeks later, the Supreme Court set aside the judge’s order, over dissents from Thomas and Alito.
The next year, the court heard arguments and then threw out the entire lawsuit on the grounds that abortion foes did not have standing to sue.
Since Trump returned to the White House, the court’s conservative majority has not deferred to district judges. Instead, it has repeatedly lifted injunctions that blocked Trump’s policies from taking effect.
Although these are not final rulings, they are strong signs that the administration will prevail.
In November, the justices sounded skeptical of Trump’s claim that a 1977 trade law, which did not mention tariffs, gave him the power to set these import taxes on products coming from around the world.
In the spring, the court will hear Trump’s claim that he can change the principle of birthright citizenship set in the 14th Amendment and deny citizenship it to newborns whose parents are here illegally or entered as visitors.
Rulings on both cases will be handed down by late June.
SACRAMENTO — Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office this week described 2025 as “the year that would not end.” But it has, and in its aftermath comes a slew of new laws passed that year that will affect the lives of almost every Californian.
The governor signed nearly 800 bills last year, including legislation that caps the cost of insulin, streamlines California State University admissions and temporarily allows sexual assault claims that are past the statute of limitations. He also approved legislation banning law enforcement officers from wearing masks to hide their identities during operations — a law that’s already being challenged in court by the Trump administration.
Some of the new state laws were passed years ago and are just now taking effect.
“These new laws reflect who we are: a state that protects workers, respects students, puts people before politics, and isn’t afraid to hold powerful interests accountable,” Newsom said in a Tuesday statement.
Most of the laws listed below take effect on New Year’s Day. As in years past, the list mostly reflects the interests of the Democrats who hold a supermajority in both the state Senate and Assembly and hold every statewide office in California, including the governorship.
Here are a few notable laws going into effect:
Health
(Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times)
Fertility treatments: Large employer health plans will be required to cover infertility treatments, including in vitro fertilization, for everyone, regardless of marital status, gender identity or sexual orientation. “California is a proud reproductive freedom state — and that includes increasing access to fertility services that help those who want to start a family,” Newsom said after signing the bill in 2024. The governor later pushed to delay implementation of state Senate Bill 729 until 2026. IVF costs Californians an average of $24,000 out of pocket, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Newsom delivers a major announcement to lower prescription treatment costs at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in October.
(Jonathan Alcorn / For The Times)
Cheaper insulin: Large group health plans must cap the out-of-pocket costs for insulin at $35 for a 30-day supply under SB 40. Roughly 3.5 million adults have diagnosed diabetes in California, according to the American Diabetes Assn. “Many Americans with diabetes have made the difficult decision to ration this lifesaving medication to pay for other necessities, such as groceries or rent,” said Christine Fallabel, the association’s state government affairs director, in a news release. “This legislation will provide much-needed financial relief.” California will also start selling $11 insulin pens through the state’s prescription program, CalRx, on Jan. 1.
Privacy for providers: Healthcare providers and employees affiliated with gender-affirming services can have their residential addresses withheld from certain public record requests. Assembly Bill 82 allows these providers to submit applications for increased privacy to the California secretary of state if they are experiencing harassment or violent threats due to the nature of their work. California already allows those working in reproductive healthcare to apply.
Protection for immigrants: Healthcare officials are prohibited from disclosing a patient’s immigration status or birthplace and from giving immigration authorities access to nonpublic spaces in hospitals and clinics without a search warrant or court order. The protections under SB 81 are among new laws to protect immigrants in California, Newsom said, from the “secret police” of President Trump and Stephen Miller, the White House advisor who has driven the second Trump administration’s surge of immigration enforcement in Democratic-led cities.
Law enforcement and legal rights
(Carlin Stiehl / Los Angeles Times)
Mask ban: Law enforcement officers must visibly display their name or badge number during operations and are also banned from wearing masks that conceal their identities while on duty, with some exceptions. SB 805 and SB 627 were introduced in response to the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration raids in Southern California, which in many cases were conducted by masked agents in unmarked cars. Newsom has said it’s unacceptable for “secret police” to grab people off the streets. The U.S. Department of Justice is suing California over the new laws, arguing both are unconstitutional and could put officers in danger.
Sexual assault reporting: A two-year window is opening to report sexual assault claims — cases that previously would have been barred because of the statute of limitations — against private employers or institutions that engaged in a “cover-up.” The time frame starts Jan. 1 and expires Dec. 31, 2027. AB 250 applies to those who were assaulted after age 18. The state already created an extension for child sexual assault victims in 2020. “AB 250 gives those who’ve been silenced by intimidation, shame, or institutional cover-ups another shot at justice, because survivors deserve to be heard, believed, and supported,” Assembly Majority Leader Cecilia M. Aguiar-Curry (D-Winters) said in October.
Amicable divorce: California couples seeking an amicable dissolution of their marriage will now have an easier, less costly way to go their separate ways. Under SB 1427, which passed in 2024, couples will be allowed to file a joint petition for dissolution of their marriage or legal separation. Until now, filing a joint petition was permitted only in limited circumstances, including when the couple had been married for fewer than five years and where their community property assets were worth less than $25,000. In all other cases, the couple had to navigate a more onerous legal process.
Consumer protections and laws
Buh-bye plastic bags: Plastic bags at grocery store checkout stands are banned under a law that was passed in 2024. Stores can offer recycled paper bags or customers can bring in their own bags. The change under SB 1053 comes almost a decade after California voters passed a statewide ballot measure that banned single-use plastic bags at grocery store checkouts. At many stores, those were replaced with thicker plastic carryout bags that were considered reusable and could be recycled. But in reality, many customers used them just once and tossed them.
Stanley Tang, co-founder and head of DoorDash Labs, during an unveiling event at the company’s headquarters in San Francisco on Sept. 29.
(David Paul Morris / Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Food delivery: Food delivery services including Uber Eats, DoorDash and Postmates will be required to provide a full refund to customers if their order is not delivered, or if the wrong order is delivered. Under AB 578, food delivery services also must provide customer service support, staffed by actual people, to help resolve requests for refunds.
Rental car estimates: Rental car companies will be required to provide customers with a good-faith estimate of the total charges, including taxes and fees, when providing a price quote for a reservation. Under AB 1374, the companies also must disclose whether the vehicles are gas-powered or electric or use another fuel source.
Volume control: Video streaming services under SB 576 will be prohibited from airing advertisements that are louder than the shows or other video content they are providing. Federal law already bans that practice on broadcast stations and cable channels.
Overdraft fees: State-chartered credit unions are prohibited from charging overdraft fees exceeding $14 or the amount set by the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, whichever is lower. SB 1075 was passed and signed into law in 2024.
Business, workers and technology
(Dania Maxwell / Los Angeles Times)
Minimum wage increase: The state minimum wage increases from $16.50 to $16.90 on Jan. 1. Some counties and cities, including Los Angeles, already have higher local minimum wage requirements. Workers paid less than minimum wage can file a wage theft claim with the California labor commissioner’s office. The state’s labor laws apply to workers regardless of immigration status.
New state holiday: Diwali, also known as the “Festival of Lights,” has been added to California’s official list of statewide holidays. This means public schools can close and state employees can elect to take the day off. Diwali typically occurs in late October or early November and is celebrated by members of the Hindu, Sikh and Jain faiths. It symbolizes the victory of light over darkness. AB 268 makes California the third state to recognize the holiday, following Pennsylvania and Connecticut.
Deleting social media: Major social media platforms are required to provide users with a button in the account settings that allows them to delete their account — and make that button accessible on any format used to access the platform, including cellphones, computers and tablets. AB 656, passed in 2025, also requires social media platforms to delete the personal information in a user’s account when they cancel.
Protecting kids from AI: Artificial intelligence companies are required to notify users younger than 18 at least every three hours to take a break and that the chatbot is not human. They are also required to implement “reasonable measures” to prevent companion chatbots from generating sexually explicit content. SB 243 was enacted to prevent the production of suicide or self-harm content and put in protections, such as referring users to a suicide hotline or crisis text line.
AI and public safety: Large artificial intelligence companies will be required to publicly disclose their security protocols and reports of critical safety incidents. SB 53 will require companies to disclose their safety and security protocols and risk evaluations. It mandates reporting of critical incidents — such as cyberattacks or unsafe behavior by autonomous AI systems — to the state’s Office of Emergency Services. Violations of the new law can bring civil penalties of up to $1 million against companies.
Less red tape for restaurants: The approval process for independent restaurants that want to retrofit spaces is being streamlined under AB 671. “For too long, opening a restaurant in California has meant endless hurdles and frustrating delays,” said the bill’s author, Assemblymember Buffy Wicks (D-Oakland), in October. “We’re making it easier for small restaurateurs to turn their ideas into reality.”
Lyft and Uber drivers can unionize: Hundreds of thousands of ride-hail drivers can unionize and bargain collectively while still being classified as independent contractors. Wicks, who co-authored AB 1340 with Assemblymember Marc Berman (D-Menlo Park), previously said this will allow drivers to ”bargain for better pay and protections, and help build a future where the gig economy works for the people behind the wheel.” The law was a compromise between labor groups and Silicon Valley gig economy companies.
More oil: Oil production can ramp up in Central California. SB 237 will allow up to 2,000 new wells annually in Kern County, effective through 2036. The law, which drew ire from environmentalists, is intended to prevent a spike in gas prices amid refinery closures.
Education
Cal State Fullerton in 2023.
(Wesley Lapointe / Los Angeles Times)
Direct admissions: Public high school students who meet the California State University’s minimum eligibility requirements will be automatically admitted and able to enroll at one of 16 CSU campuses. SB 640 is intended to encourage students who are unsure about college to attend. “Being able to get that message that says, ‘Hey, you’re admitted, and you just need to submit some paperwork,’ I think it’s going to be a big boost for a lot of students,” Adrian Huerta, an associate professor and college access scholar at the USC Rossier School of Education, has said.
Gender-neutral bathrooms: All public schools in California will be required to provide at least one all-gender bathroom starting July 1. The legislation expands a decade-old law that requires K-12 schools to allow students to use the bathroom that aligns with their gender identity. SB 760 was passed in 2023. “These measures will help protect vulnerable youth, promote acceptance and create more supportive environments in our schools and communities,” Newsom said in a statement when he signed the bill.
Cellphones in classrooms: Public schools are required to adopt a policy by July 1 to prohibit or limit the use of smartphones by students when they are on campus. AB 3216 leaves it up to local K-12 schools whether students should be banned from using cellphones altogether. But the law requires public schools to restrict phone use in order to “support pupil learning and well-being.”
Immigration raids: Federal immigration agents are barred from nonpublic areas of public schools unless they have a judicial warrant or court order. Under AB 49, school districts also are prohibited from providing information about pupils, their families, teachers and school employees to immigration authorities without a warrant. SB 98 also requires school administrators to notify families and students if federal agents conduct immigration operations on a K-12 or college campus.
Antisemitism: A state Office for Civil Rights will be created to combat antisemitism and other forms of discrimination in California schools.AB 715 was among the most hotly contested education-related measures, spawning from dissatisfaction, largely among a coalition of Jewish groups, with the way ethnic studies have been taught in some California classrooms. On Wednesday, a federal judge in San José rejected a lawsuit filed by the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee on behalf of a group of educators and students, who challenged the law, clearing AB 715 to take effect.
Animals
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
Official snake: The giant garter snake is recognized as the official snake of California. Advocates hope this recognition from SB 765 will raise awareness about the threatened species, which is found in the Central Valley and has experienced large-scale habitat destruction due to urban and agricultural development.
Paws need claws: Declawing a cat in California is now illegal unless the surgery is medically necessary. AB 867 bans the procedure, which entails amputating the first bone in each of a feline’s toes or severing the tendons. Assemblymember Alex Lee (D-San José), the bill’s author, previously called the practice “barbaric” and inhumane.
Housing
(Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times)
Faster construction: Various infrastructure projects are now exempt from the California Environmental Quality Act’s lengthy review process. This reversal from AB 130 and SB 131 has outraged environmentalists, who say it removes crucial protections for the state’s most vulnerable wildlife and communities. Proponents of the legislation argue construction must be faster and cheaper to address the state’s housing crisis.
Renter rights: Landlords must provide working stoves and refrigerators for tenants as part of new lease agreements. AB 628 also requires landlords to replace these items within 30 days if the manufacturers issue a recall. This expands on a previous law requiring buildings with dwelling units to maintain adequate heating and hot water.
The most potent attack ad of Donald Trump’s comeback campaign seemingly ran on a loop during the final weeks before the 2024 election. Assailing rights for transgender people, its punch line indeed delivered a punch: “Kamala Harris is for they/them. President Trump is for you.”
2025: Promise broken. Back in office, the president has shown that the only pronouns he really recognizes are the first-person kind: me, myself and I.
A year into Trump 2.0, those self-regarding pronouns are now firmly affixed as the bywords of his presidency, on matters major and mundane. They might as well be mounted in gold in the Oval Office, in fonts so large as to not get lost amid all the bling he’s installed there. Asked in October just who was to be honored by Trump’s planned Arc de Triomph-like monument near Arlington Cemetery, the president was quick: “Me.”
To an extent that’s shocked even critics long convinced of his sociopathic narcissism, Trump has fashioned a government that’s of Trump, by Trump and for Trump. “I run the country and the world,” he boasted in April. Trump thinks “there’s nothing he can’t do. Nothing, zero, nothing,” his White House chief of staff, Susie Wiles, told Vanity Fair, as reported in twoarticles last month that signaled her own unease with Trump’s ongoing vengeance against his political enemies; his clemency for even the most violent rioters of Jan. 6, 2021; the pain of his erratic tariffs, too-cruel migrant roundups and tragic shutdown of USAID’s humanitarian aid; his stonewalling of the Jeffrey Epstein files that candidate Trump promised to release; and the foibles of his slavish Cabinet.
If Trump strutted as the center of the universe in 2025 — unchecked by advisors like Wiles or by a cowed Republican-controlled Congress, the Supreme Court and corporate chieftains — buckle up for 2026. It marks the 250th birthday of America’s independence, and our self-appointed master of ceremonies is focused on the festivities that he’ll star in not only on July 4th but all year long. One of his first acts as president was to create a White House task force with himself as chair, of course, to plan semiquincentennial events, ignoring an eight-year-old commission created by Congress for that purpose. Coming soon: A (possibly illegal) commemorative $1 coin with Trump’s image from the U.S. Mint.
Never mind that 2026 starts with a big spike in health insurance costs for tens of millions of Americans, including many Trump voters. The president who campaigned on bringing down the costs of living has stood in the way of a legislative remedy to the Dec. 31 expiration of healthcare premium subsidies, repeatedly mouthing his years-old promise that he’ll propose a cheaper alternative within weeks.
But here’s how 2026 will end: with midterm elections in November that loom as a referendum on whether the Trump Republican Party should keep control of Congress. The early betting is that no, it won’t. Especially after another year of Trump grandstanding, and his party’s genuflecting.
In good times, Trump’s garish self-regard might be tolerable to voters, even comical. But these aren’t good times, hardly the “golden age” Trump announced in his inaugural address last January — except for him and the wealthy hangers-on at his seemingly endless round of parties in the White House and at Mar-a-Lago. The Gatsby-themed Halloween party at Trump’s Florida resort was especially rich, pun intended, coming as it did hours before federal food aid for 42 million Americans expired amid a government shutdown he’d done nothing to avert.
Days later, voters gave a shellacking to Republicans in various states’ 2025 off-year elections, which is a good omen for the same result nationwide in 2026. There are other signs. On Tuesday, a new Gallup poll showed three out of four Americans were dissatisfied with “the way things are going in the United States.” Trump’s approval rating was just 36% in Gallup’s poll in early December, his lowest reading of the past year, and nearly equal to his all-time low after the Jan. 6 insurrection. Averages of various polls show Trump with negative ratings on his handling of immigration, the economy, trade and tariffs, and inflation — all issues that helped get him reelected.
But go ahead, Mr. President. Keep talking about how great you are. You’re a legend in your own time and mind.
Trump’s tone-deafness has become the great mystery of U.S. politics, for both parties, especially considering that he slammed President Biden for bragging about the economy’s post-pandemic recovery when Americans weren’t feeling it.
As Americans struggle to buy a home or to afford its upkeep, Trump has gilded the People’s House (see the New York Times’ recent 3-D recreation of the Oval Office for full, nauseating effect) and transformed the bathroom adjoining the Lincoln Bedroom in marble and gold. Having demolished the East Wing to make way for a gargantuan ballroom where Marie Antoinette would be at home, financed by favor-seeking billionaires and corporations, Trump told reporters on Tuesday that it would have to be bigger than he’d first planned because “we’re gonna do the inauguration” there.
What? The man who’s supposed to be leaving office on Jan. 20, 2029, is picking the new location for the next presidential inauguration? Hmmm.
Even before he’s been in office a year, Trump has put his brand on two Washington buildings, including the nation’s 60-year-old cultural center named by law as a memorial to an assassinated president. The Kennedy Center (no, I will not call it by Trump’s name) will have marble armrests; Trump took to social media on the day after Christmas to show off samples. Meanwhile, he’s refurbishing a royal jet from Qatar, a “palace in the sky.”
Trading on his power in unprecedented ways, Trump was a “crypto billionaire” by May, the Wall Street Journal reported, and in August the New Yorker estimated that he’d profited in office by at least $3.4 billion through crypto and licensing deals.
Listening to the usual legacy media suspects, one might think 2025 was an apocalyptic wasteland of sorts — an authoritarian fever dream brought on by the return of Donald J. Trump to the Oval Office. The reality looked very different. This past year was, in many ways, a pretty great and clarifying one. Let’s take stock of what happened when our government remembered whom it serves, as well as what unfinished business remains as we flip the calendar.
First, the obvious: Political sanity was restored to the nation’s capital. After years of leftist elite-driven chaos — wide-open borders, hyper-vindictive lawfare, fecklessness on the world stage and more — the nation has begun to revert back to first principles: national sovereignty, law and order, and strong leadership abroad. Under Trump, the United States has once again acted like a real nation-state that pursues its real interests — not a nongovernmental organization with a nagging guilt complex.
That reorientation has paid huge dividends. On immigration, the Biden-era invasion at the southern border has tapered by more than 90%. On energy, a renewed embrace of domestic production has led to the lowest average national gas prices in nearly five years. Violent crime, thanks to Trump’s law enforcement operations and innovative use of the National Guard, has dramatically fallen: Murders decreased by nearly 20% from 2024, and robbery and burglary also saw double-digit percentage decreases. Abroad, allies and adversaries alike recalibrated to the reality that the White House once again means what it says.
Still, work always remains. Here, then, is my 2026 wish list.
Peace in Eastern Europe
The Russia-Ukraine war has gone on far, far too long. The Trump administration has exerted tremendous diplomatic effort trying to orchestrate a peace deal, which remains elusive. A durable peace — one that halts the senseless slaughter on both sides, respects Ukrainian sovereignty and accommodates legitimate Russian concerns, and avoids a wider great-power conflagration — should be a paramount Trump administration foreign policy goal in 2026. Russia is the invader and Vladimir Putin is the greater obstacle to a lasting peace, but both sides need to make painful — if, frustratingly, also painfully obvious — concessions.
Victory on birthright citizenship
Back home, a consequential legal battle now sits before the U.S. Supreme Court: the Trump administration’s righteous challenge to the erroneous practice of constitutionally “required” birthright citizenship for the U.S.-born children of noncitizens. The notion that the 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868 in the aftermath of the Civil War, was meant to constitutionalize a global human trafficking magnet — granting automatic citizenship to all children born here, including those whose parents entered the country illegally — is indefensible as a matter of plain constitutional text, the congressional history in the House and Senate Judiciary Committees, and basic common sense. Indeed, birthright citizenship has been nothing short of ruinous for the United States. A Trump administration victory would restore Congress’s rightful authority over circumscribing citizenship and remove a longstanding incentive for illegal immigration.
Improved affordability and housing costs
Legal victories mean relatively little if ordinary Americans continue to feel like they are getting squeezed. Improved affordability must be front and center in 2026 — from the federal level down to states and localities. The cost of living is not an economic abstraction; it affects rent, groceries, child care and the difficulty of buying a first home. Housing, in particular, demands attention. Housing policy should reward supply, not suffocate it — cutting red tape and burdensome construction fees, reforming zoning incentives, and curtailing the inflationary spending that puts upward pressure on mortgage rates. A nation where young families cannot afford to put down roots is a nation courting decline — the very antithesis of Trumpian restoration.
Justice for Minnesota fraud scandal
The burgeoning fraud scandal over state and federal funds for child care in Minnesota, including at businesses run by Somali Americans — astonishing in scale — has become a test case for whether the rule of law still applies when politics get uncomfortable. Justice means following the facts wherever they lead: recovering stolen taxpayer dollars and holding wrongdoers and abettors legally accountable without fear or favor. To wit, on the subject of abettors: What did Gov. Tim Walz (D-Minn.), Atty. Gen. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and other prominent Minnesota politicians know, and when did they know it? Moreover, what did Kamala Harris — who picked Walz as her 2024 presidential running mate — know, and when did she know it? The Biden administration and the Walz administration began investigating these fraud allegations years ago, and the American people deserve answers to all these questions.
Tamed Communist China
Finally, no wish list can be complete without confronting the central geopolitical challenge of our age: that of Communist China. Simply put, Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party, who just presided over their largest live-fire military exercises around Taiwan, must be meaningfully deterred in the Indo-Pacific. That means maintaining a combative tariff posture, implementing as much economic decoupling as is feasible and emboldening key regional allies — such as Japan — who share America’s interest in freedom of maritime navigation and diminished Chinese hegemony. Decades from now, Trump’s presidential legacy will be partially defined by how he handled the China challenge. Now is not the time to take the foot off the gas pedal.
This past year showed what is possible when Washington rejects the politics of managed decline and reembraces the best of the American tradition and way of life. Let us hope we will see more — a lot more — of that same success in this new year.
Josh Hammer’s latest book is “Israel and Civilization: The Fate of the Jewish Nation and the Destiny of the West.” This article was produced in collaboration with Creators Syndicate. X: @josh_hammer
Reporting from Lincoln, Calif. — Republican Assemblyman Chuck DeVore was riding high from his party’s recent Senate election victory in Massachusetts when he bounded into the town library here. The meeting of the Lincoln Tea Party Patriots was already buzzing over Scott Brown’s win in one of the bluest of blue states, and DeVore tried to convince them that with his consistent conservative credentials, he could take incumbent Sen. Barbara Boxer.
“A sleeping giant has been awakened,” he said. “Some of you are scared. Some of you are mad as hell. . . . Times are different and we can win!”
If any major candidate should be able to marshal that sentiment in California it is DeVore, a lifetime conservative rumbler whose policy positions dovetail perfectly with the mojo of the nation’s guerrilla movement of the moment. Almost a third of Californians, according to a recent poll, identify with Tea Partiers like those at this gathering about 30 miles northeast of Sacramento; Republicans here and across the nation are salivating over the possibility of defeating their long-time Democratic nemesis, Boxer.
But serious questions remain about whether DeVore, 45, can survive the GOP primary. He has the fiscal and social credentials desired by the conservative party voters most likely to turn out in June. But, despite campaigning for more than a year, his candidacy is something of an apparition. Outside party circles and his home base of Orange County voters generally have no idea who he is, and he ended 2009 with a net $140,000 in the bank.
In a state as big as California, recognition does not come cheap. Primary opponent Carly Fiorina, a multimillionaire, has already lent her campaign $2.5 million, and former U.S. Rep. Tom Campbell, who jumped into the race last month, is much better known to voters because he has been in the public eye for two decades.
DeVore is counting on hard work and persistence to make up for money and name identification. Since announcing his candidacy in November 2008 he has logged more than 50,000 miles by car and air to meet with nearly 40,000 Republican voters at 239 stops up and down the state. (The candidate, an admitted wonk, logs every visit, mile and voter on a spreadsheet when he gets home to Irvine).
“Whatever the polls say four months before the primary, the strength of the volunteers backing us, the lack of any skeletal remains in my closet are going to allow me to prevail in this primary and to ultimately vanquish Barbara Boxer,” DeVore said at the January meeting of the West Valley Republican Women Federated at a diner in San Jose.
He tells voters that politicians in both parties have forgotten their duty, which he believes should be limited to securing citizens’ rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness — “not making up new rights.”
“They make it up as they go along because they don’t have a core philosophy that guides their decisions,” DeVore said. “I have a core. It’s the Constitution, it’s the preamble of the Declaration of Independence. I don’t vary from that.”
The retired National Guardsman, Reagan White House appointee to the Pentagon and longtime legislator relishes political combat. Referring to the Senate hearing in which Boxer rebuked a brigadier general for addressing her as “ma’am” rather than “Senator” — she told him she worked hard to win her seat — DeVore pledged to call her “ma’am” every chance he could during debates.
If she objects, he told the women’s club, he will reply, “Well, then, Senator, you can call me Colonel because I worked a hell of a lot harder for that title!”
While mocking Boxer, he also criticizes his GOP primary opponents. At gatherings across the state, he paints Fiorina as a dilettante whose spotty voting record alone undermines her candidacy, and who has shifted her positions to the right on policies such as the federal economic stimulus package. He faults Campbell, who is campaigning as a fiscal conservative, for supporting temporary tax increases in recent years.
“I would argue it’s important to have some consistency in the people we trust with our vote,” DeVore said in Lincoln.
At each event, DeVore takes question after question, and he doesn’t always tell the voters what they want to hear. In Lincoln, one man said he was tired of congressional Republicans arguing they could accomplish nothing because they are in the minority. He asked DeVore how he would achieve more.
“I’m going to challenge you a bit on this, sir,” DeVore replied, before booming: “The first order of a senator is not to do something. It’s to follow the Constitution!”
DeVore’s supporters believe he is the lone candidate who would stop what they see as a growing threat to the nation’s future: ever-expanding government, deficit spending, debt to China. Their frustration that their leaders have stopped listening to them, and acting in their best interest, is palpable.
“I trusted my government,” said Ruth Crone, a Fair Oaks mother of four who attended the Lincoln Tea Party. The registered Republican said she has grown increasingly disillusioned with both her elected representatives and her party, and she supports DeVore because he understands what’s at stake. “Our individual liberties are imperiled by the financial irresponsibility” of the federal government, she said.
Zeal, however, is no guarantee of momentum.
DeVore sees a path to victory. Once primary voters tune in to the race later this year, he said, they will be turned off by the other candidates’ pasts: Campbell’s support for tax increases and Fiorina’s controversial tenure as chief of Hewlett-Packard. When he wins the primary, DeVore said, he believes the national conservative movement will financially back him much as it did Scott Brown in Massachusetts.
“Once you get past the June primary, the notoriety we’ll generate by defeating the better-known and presumably better-financed Republican — one perceived rightly as the pick of the establishment, the other a moderate who has been in favor of tax increases — I think that’s going to put us on the map,” DeVore said. “Frankly, I need that.”
While analysts predict, and polls thus far confirm, that the other candidates match up better against Boxer in the general election, he argues that Republicans would coalesce behind him because of their interest in defeating her. “That’s going to motivate a lot of people,” he said.
In every step DeVore takes, however, lies confirmation that his situation is dire.
He urges followers to attach bumper stickers to their car, noting that each one is worth $200 in paid ads. Campaign signs and T-shirts are stored in his Sacramento apartment. DeVore knows which car rental firm near the state Capitol offers the cheapest rates should he drop the car off in another city.
DeVore’s campaign staff is tiny and volunteer-driven, a shadow of Fiorina’s assembly of pollsters, media advisors and political consultants. The silver lining: The lack of bureaucracy allows DeVore’s circle to be nimble. As Brown gained steam in Massachusetts, DeVore directed his volunteers to call voters there the weekend before the election on Brown’s behalf; Campbell and Fiorina merely put out statements on election day. On Thursday, DeVore jumped on an opportunity to ambush Fiorina on a popular Southern California radio show, where he accused her of flip-flopping on the issues and tried to goad her into committing to a debate.
DeVore used to drive himself to campaign events, until his staff decided his time would be better spent in other ways, such as phone calls, interviews, Facebooking and chatting with voters on Twitter.
“I don’t know if this is going to be a waste of time at the end of the day in a state of 37 million people, or whether, relative to the large numbers of voters that we’re dealing with, whether this is a good investment of time. But what other choice do I have?” he asked. “I’m not a millionaire, and I’m not a celebrity.”
A state Senate candidate whose picture was erroneously published on primary day with a story about a fraud case asked a judge to order a new election and make the Star Tribune pay for it. John Derus of Minneapolis said in his lawsuit that the use of his photo with the unrelated story about a charity fraud in Philadelphia hurt him in the election. Derus, a Democrat, lost to Linda Higgins by 104 votes out of about 6,300 cast in the Minneapolis district Sept. 10. He wants the newspaper to pay for a new primary, estimated at $20,000.
SACRAMENTO — California State Treasurer Bill Lockyer recently said he was retiring from public office next year, so how does he explain filing papers this week to form a campaign committee for a possible run for lieutenant governor in 2018?
He probably won’t run for lieutenant governor in 2018, but the filing allows him to keep his large political war chest in play to influence elections of other candidates, a spokesman said.
As many other politicians have done, Lockyer is exploiting a much-criticized loophole in the campaign finance law so he can continue to use more than $2.2 million in surplus campaign funds after he leaves office next year.
Normally, an elected official would have to close his campaign committee no later than nine months after the date he leaves office or the term of office ends.
But many politicians form new committees for offices they do not intend to seek so they can continue to have use of the money for years to come. That way they can contribute to candidates and causes using political funds rather than personal funds.
“His decision to retire from elective office stands,” spokesman Tom Dresslar said. “He hasn’t changed his mind. But at this point he doesn’t want to completely foreclose any options in 2018.”
“Besides, to make sure he can continue using the money to support select candidates and causes beyond 2014 he was gonna have to transfer his campaign funds to a new committee eventually. He decided the sooner the better,” Dresslar said.
NEW YORK — By nearly any measure, 2025 has been a rough year for anyone concerned about freedom of the press.
It’s likely to be the deadliest year on record for journalists and media workers. The number of assaults on reporters in the U.S. nearly equals the last three years combined. The president of the United States berates many who ask him questions, calling one woman “piggy.” And the ranks of those doing the job continues to thin.
It’s hard to think of a darker time for journalists. So say many, including Timothy Richardson, a former Washington Post reporter and now program director for journalism and disinformation at PEN America. “It’s safe to say this assault on the press over the past year has probably been the most aggressive that we’ve seen in modern times.”
Tracking killings and assaults against journalists
Worldwide, the 126 media industry people killed in 2025 by early December matched the number of deaths in all of 2024, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, and last year was a record-setter. Israel’s bombing of Gaza accounted for 85 of those deaths, 82 of them Palestinians.
“It’s extremely concerning,” said Jodie Ginsberg, chief executive of the Committee to Protect Journalists. “Unfortunately, it’s not just, of course, about the sheer numbers of journalists and media workers killed, it’s also about the failure to obtain justice or get accountability for those killings.
“What we know from decades of doing this work is that impunity breeds impunity,” she said. “So a failure to tackle journalists’ killings creates an environment where those killings continue.”
The committee estimates there are at least 323 journalists imprisoned worldwide.
None of those killed this year were from the United States. But the work on American soil has still been dangerous. There have been 170 reports of assaults on journalists in the United States this year, 160 of them at the hands of law enforcement, according to the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker. Many of those reports came from coverage of immigration enforcement efforts.
It’s impossible to look past the influence of Trump, who frequently seethes with anger at the press while simultaneously interacting with journalists more than any president in memory — frequently answering their cell phone calls.
“Trump has always attacked the press,” Richardson said. “But during the second term, he’s turned that into government action to restrict and punish and intimidate journalists.”
Journalists learn quickly they have a fight on their hands
The Associated Press learned that quickly, when Trump limited the outlet’s access to cover him after it refused to follow his lead to rename the Gulf of Mexico. It launched a court fight that has remained unresolved. Trump has also extracted settlements from ABC and CBS News in lawsuits over stories that displeased him, and is suing the New York Times and Wall Street Journal.
Long angry about a perceived bias against conservatives on PBS and NPR newscasts, Trump and his allies in Congress successfully cut funding for public broadcasting as a whole. The president has also moved to shut down government-run organizations that beam news to all parts of the world.
“The U.S. is a major investor in media development, in independent media outlets in countries that have little or no independent media, or as a source of information for people in countries where there is no free media,” Ginsberg said. “The evisceration of Radio Free Europe, Radio Free Asia and the Voice of America is another blow to press freedom globally.”
Others in his administration take Trump’s lead, like when his press office chose the day after Thanksgiving to launch a web portal to complain about outlets or journalists being unfair.
“It’s part of this overall strategy that we’re seeing from certain governments, notably the United States, to paint all journalists who don’t simply [repeat] the narrative put out by the government as fake news, as dubious, as dodgy, as criminal,” Ginsberg said.
Trump’s defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, has portrayed journalists as dark figures skulking around Pentagon halls to uncover classified secrets as his rationale for enacting restrictive rules for coverage.
That’s led to the most notable example of journalists fighting back: most mainstream news outlets gave up their credentials to work in the Pentagon rather than agree to these rules, and are still breaking stories while working off-site. The New York Times has sued to overturn the rules. The newspaper also publicly defends itself when attacked by the president, such as when he complained about its coverage of his health.
Despite the more organized effort against the press, the public has taken little notice. The Pew Research Center said that 36% of Americans reported earlier this year hearing a lot about the Trump administration’s relationship with the press, compared to 72% who said that at the same point in his first term.
Pew’s polling shows that trust in news organizations has declined over the last decade, and journalists are likely to elicit little sympathy when their work becomes harder.
“Really, the harm falls on the public with so much of this because the public depends on this independent reporting to understand and scrutinize the decisions that are being made by the most powerful office in the world,” Richardson said.
Some reasons for optimism
The news industry as a whole is more than two decades in to a retrenchment caused largely by a collapse in the advertising market, and every year brings more reports of journalists laid off as a result. One of the year’s most sobering statistics came in a report by the organizations Muck Rack and Rebuild Local News: in 2002, there were 40 journalists for every 100,000 people in the United States; by this year, it was down to a little more than eight.
Asked if they could find reasons for optimism, both Ginsberg and Richardson pointed to the rise of some independent local news organizations, shoots of growth in a barren landscape, such as the Baltimore Banner, Charlottesville Tomorrow in Virginia and Outlier Media in Michigan.
As much as they are derided in Trump’s America, reporters at mainstream media outlets are still working hard and able to set the nation’s agenda with their reporting, noted influential Axios CEO Jim VandeHei in a recent column.
As he told the AP: “Over time, people will hopefully come to their senses and say, ‘Hey, the media like anything else is imperfect but, man, it’s a nice thing to have a free press.’”
WASHINGTON — President Trump is not the first president to want more room at the White House for entertaining, says the longest-serving top aide in the executive residence, offering some backup for the reason Trump has cited for his ballroom construction project.
Gary Walters spent more than two decades as White House chief usher to presidents Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Clinton and George W. Bush — a role that is akin to being the general manager of the residence.
“All the presidents that I had an opportunity to serve always talked about some possibility of an enlarged area” for entertaining, Walters said in an interview with the Associated Press about his recently published memoir.
Trump has been talking about building a White House ballroom for years, even before he entered the political arena. In July, the White House announced a 90,000-square-foot space would be built on the east side of the complex to accommodate 650 seated guests at a then-estimated cost of $200 million. Trump has said it will be paid for with private donations, including from him.
The Republican president later upped the proposed ballroom’s capacity to 999 people and, by October, had demolished the two-story East Wing of the White House to build it there. In December, he updated the price tag to $400 million — double the original estimate.
Images of the East Wing being demolished shocked historians, preservationists and others, but Walters said there is a long history of projects on the campus, ranging from conservatories, greenhouses and stables being torn down to build the West Wing in 1902, to the expansion of the residence with a third floor, to the addition of the East Wing itself during World War II to provide workspace for the first lady, her staff and other White House offices.
“So there’s always been construction going on around the White House,” Walters said.
Other presidents bemoaned the lack of space for entertaining
When Walters was on the job, the capacity of the largest public rooms in the White House was among the first topics he discussed with the incoming president, first lady and their social secretary, he said. The presidents he served all talked about the limited number of people the White House could handle.
When set up for a state dinner, the State Dining Room can hold about 130 people: 13 round tables each with seating for 10, Walters said. The East Room can accommodate about 300 chairs — fewer if space is needed for television cameras.
Trump complains often that both rooms are too small. He also has complained about the use of large tents on the south grounds, the main workaround for big events such as ritzy state dinners for foreign leaders. Walters said the tents had issues.
“When it rained, the water flows downhill and the grass became soggy, no matter what we tried to do,” Walters said. “We dug culverts around the outside of the tent to try and get the water.” Tents damaged the grass, requiring more work to reseed it, he said.
Walters admitted it was a bit jarring to see the East Wing torn down, and said he had fond personal memories of the space. “I met my wife at the White House and she worked in the East Wing, so that was a joy for me,” said Walters, 79.
His wife, Barbara, was a receptionist in the visitors office during the administrations of Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. The couple recently celebrated 48 years of marriage.
Broken bones alter usher’s career trajectory
Walters owes his place in history as the longest-serving White House chief usher to the misfortune of a broken ankle.
He was 23 in early 1970, honorably discharged from the Army and looking for a job that would allow him to finish college at night. The Executive Protective Service, a precursor to the U.S. Secret Service, was hiring and accepted him.
But shortly before the graduation ceremony, Walters broke an ankle playing football. He could not patrol out of uniform, wearing a cast and hobbling around on crutches, so he was given a temporary assignment in the White House Police Control and Appointments Center. He stayed for five years.
“This injury also changed the course of my career,” Walters wrote in his memoir, “White House Memories: 1970-2007: Recollections of the Longest-Serving Chief Usher.” He gained an ”in-depth knowledge of the ways and security systems of the White House that would ultimately greatly benefit me in my future role in the Usher’s Office.”
A few months after being promoted to sergeant in 1975, he learned of an opening in the Usher’s Office. He applied and joined as an assistant in early 1976.
A decade later, he was elevated to chief usher by Reagan, who gave Walters the top job in the residence overseeing maintenance, construction and renovation projects, and food service, along with administrative, financial and personnel functions. He managed a staff of about 90 butlers, housekeepers, cooks, florists, electricians, engineers, plumbers and others.
Walters retired in 2007 after 37 years at the White House, including a record 21 years as chief usher. He served under seven presidents, from Nixon to George W. Bush.
In that time, Walters saw a broad swath of presidential history: the only president who ever resigned, an appointed vice president become the only unelected president, a president be impeached and stay in office, a father and son become president and the Supreme Court decide the most closely contested presidential election in U.S. history.
He’s often asked what he liked most about his work and “without hesitation I say it is getting to know and interact directly with the president, first lady, and other members of their family. It was an honor to get to know them with my own eyes and ears,” Walters wrote.
WASHINGTON — The Department of Justice has expanded its review of documents related to the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein to 5.2 million as it also increases the number of attorneys trying to comply with a law mandating release of the files, according to a person briefed on a letter sent to U.S. attorneys.
The figure is the latest estimate in the expanding review of case files on Epstein and his longtime girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell that has run more than a week past a deadline set in law by Congress.
The Justice Department has more than 400 attorneys working on the review, but does not expect to release more documents until Jan. 20 or 21, according to the person briefed on the letter who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it.
The White House did not dispute the figures laid out in the email, and pointed to a statement from Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general who said the administration’s review was an “all-hands-on-deck approach.”
Blanche said Wednesday that lawyers from the Justice Department in Washington, the FBI, the Southern District of Florida and the Southern District of New York are working “around the clock” to review the files. The additional documents and lawyers related to the case were first reported by the New York Times.
“We’re asking as many lawyers as possible to commit their time to review the documents that remain,” Blanche said. “Required redactions to protect victims take time but they will not stop these materials from being released.”
Still, Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi is facing pressure from Congress after the Justice Department’s rollout of information has lagged behind the Dec. 19 deadline to release the information.
“Should Attorney General Pam Bondi be impeached?” Rep. Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican who helped lead the effort to pass the law mandating the document release, asked on social media this week.
Democrats also are reviewing their legal options as they continue to seize on an issue that has caused cracks in the Republican Party and at times flummoxed President Trump’s administration.
Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said on social media that the latest figures from the Department of Justice “shows Bondi, Blanche, and others at the DOJ have been lying to the American people about the Epstein files since day one” and pointed out that the documents released so far represent a fraction of the total.
Sereen Banna said the partners of Downtown LA Law Group called her “Erin Brockovich” for her work helping hundreds sue over noxious fumes spewing out of a landfill in northern Los Angeles County.
An ambitious paralegal, Banna said she embraced the role she had in empowering residents to take on companies suspected of polluting their neighborhoods.
Her bosses were proud, too, she said. Banna, 28, recalled them saying she would make them all billionaires someday.
But in early 2024, Banna said, she discovered a troubling trend in some of the firm’s most lucrative cases: Clients who claimed they were paid before joining lawsuits.
On Dec. 16, Banna sued Downtown LA Law Group, also known as DTLA, stating the firm failed to address her complaints about “illegal solicitation, as well as deceptive and unethical practices aimed at persuading individuals to become clients through misrepresentations.”
She accused the firm, which she left in the fall of 2024, of amassing plaintiffs through “practices that appeared designed to exploit vulnerable individuals.”
DTLA called the allegations “baseless,” saying they came from a disgruntled former employee.
“Any allegations of fraud, paid referrals, or unethical practices by DTLA Law Group are not only unsubstantiated, but false,” the firm said in a statement. “We intend to fight this in the court of law, where the facts will show that we operate with unwavering integrity, prioritizing client welfare.”
Banna’s lawsuit caps a tumultuous year for DTLA. A partnership between three childhood friends, DTLA has grown from a small firm focused on car crash victims into a civil litigation powerhouse, filing thousands of cases related to the January wildfires and sexual abuse in government facilities. The firm filed nearly a quarter of the cases in the $4-billion sex abuse settlement approved last spring by Los Angeles County — the largest of its kind in U.S. history.
But the meteoric rise has drawn scrutiny.
The Times reported in the fall that nine of the firm’s clients who sued over sex abuse in L.A. County facilities said recruiters paid them to file a lawsuit, including four who said they were told to fabricate claims. The L.A. County district attorney’s office is now conducting a probe into the allegations.
With the investigation pending, questions have lingered about how DTLA managed to amass so many plaintiffs so quickly. The Times spoke to more than 40 of the firm’s clients and 10 former employees, many of whom described aggressive tactics to bring in new clients and reap profits stretching back years.
More than a dozen people represented by DTLA in personal injury cases said they were recruited at a crisis point in their lives with promises of massive payouts and pressured into expensive surgeries that attorneys said would make their case more valuable. The more medical procedures, they were told, the more damages attorneys could claim.
At the end, some clients say, they were left with a fraction of what they were promised.
DTLA said in a statement it exists “to support clients through some of the most difficult moments of their lives.”
“That includes helping them avoid unnecessary financial stress while their cases are pending,” the firm said. “Medical care decisions are made solely by clients and their physicians.”
Sereen Banna, a former DTLA paralegal, sued the firm on Dec. 16, alleging it did not listen to her complaints of unethical solicitation. The firm has denied wrongdoing.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
Banna said in her lawsuit she “repeatedly complained” about how clients were being solicited.
She said in an interview she reported the first paid landfill client she was aware of — a woman who received a $20 gift card — to her bosses in early 2024. In her lawsuit, she alleged “such conduct constitutes unlawful and unethical behavior for attorneys.”
She said her boss told her the alleged payments would be investigated.
“At that point, I was reminded it was above my pay grade,” she said.
‘A really big part of the recruitment process’
Banna said she resigned from DTLA in October 2024, around the time the firm began pursuing a new cohort of clients: human trafficking victims who’d been abused in hotels.
Banna said one of her colleagues, an intake coordinator, told her a man named Kevin Johnson had paid one sex worker $20 to come into the office.
Over the last two years, five ex-workers told The Times, Johnson became an increasingly common sight at the firm as he started shepherding in clients he’d found to sue over sex abuse in the juvenile halls and the Eaton fire. Like most former employees, the ex-workers requested anonymity, fearing professional retaliation.
Johnson, a 54-year-old entertainer who hosts gospel brunches and soul nights in Inglewood according to his social media, did not respond to messages or a letter left at his home. The firm is currently representing him in a lawsuit over a Mid-City car crash.
California law bans a practice known as capping, in which non-attorneys solicit clients to join litigation with a firm. DTLA has denied working with cappers and Johnson did not respond to questions about his recruitment for the firm.
Former employees said Johnson was responsible for bringing in a large number of clients.
“He is a really big part of the recruitment process for Downtown LA,” said Banna, who described how she was called to do intake with sex abuse clients after Johnson brought them into the offices of one of the partners.
Johnson wasn’t a DTLA employee, yet workers say he was a familiar face around the office.
He was close with the partners and chummy with employees, handing out lucky $2 bills to workers last holiday season, three former employees said. Two said that at one point he had his own swipe card, so he could come and go freely.
A digital trail connects Johnson to DTLA’s client list.
The Times found more than a dozen friends of Johnson’s on Facebook who appeared to have a sex abuse lawsuit filed with the county. To do this, The Times cross-referenced a list of county sex abuse plaintiffs represented by DTLA with Johnson’s Facebook friends to see how many shared identifying details.
Larisa Ellis, whom Johnson describes on Facebook as his wife, paid someone who later had a DTLA sex abuse lawsuit $50 at a social services office in November 2024 with the payment caption “Thanks for using our referral service,” according to a Cash app transaction. Ellis did not respond to a message and a letter left at their home.
“DTLA does not pay clients to retain our services or for referrals,” the firm said in a statement.
Austin Beagle and Nevada Barker, former clients of DLTA, said they were paid to sue over alleged sexual abuse in L.A. County by a man named Kevin, whose last name they didn’t know. Beagle and Barker later had their lawsuit dismissed.
(Joe Garcia / For The Times)
Nevada Barker and Austin Beagle, two former DTLA clients, previously told The Times a man named Kevin, whose last name they didn’t know, paid them $100 each in DTLA’s office after they made false claims of sex abuse. Barker identified Johnson through pictures as the man who paid her.
The couple said they were under the impression they were being compensated to be actors in a movie. The firm later asked the court to dismiss their lawsuits.
“He said he worked for a referral service and the lawsuit needed enough participants to go through,” said Beagle. “He didn’t work for the law office.”
‘Tell her I got $ for her’
Several clients told The Times they were offered money by DTLA partner Farid Yaghoubtil if they could find people to sign up for lawsuits with the firm.
“He called it an advancement, ” said LaShelle Allison, 53, a former client who said she referred several car accident victims for Yaghoubtil. “Here’s $250,’ ‘Here’s $650,’ ‘Here’s $500 for rent.”
California is one of the few states where lawyers are allowed to loan clients money.
The State Bar has a general rule that lawyers are not supposed to pay “personal or business expenses.” The bar makes exceptions that include if the client promises in writing to repay the loan, for providing funds to promote “the interests of an indigent person,” and for “advancing costs” to protect a client, with repayment contingent on the outcome of the matter.
DTLA said in a statement that it offers small loans to clients “in limited situations.”
“The firm has offered small, interest-free micro-advances to help with short-term needs like temporary housing or basic expenses, specifically so clients do not feel compelled to turn to third-party lenders,” the firm said. “These advances are entirely voluntary, never tied to medical or legal decisions, and are only recovered if a case is successfully resolved.”
Akeem Smith, 40, had DTLA sue on his behalf at least four times, twice for car crashes, once after he was punched at a night club and again over a shopping cart mishap at Rite Aid.
Smith referred 10 potential clients to Yaghoubtil, nearly all car crash victims, according to text messages between the two men. In return, Smith said, he was told he’d be compensated, though he said he was disappointed to find he was never paid for the clients he referred.
Instead, Smith said he received monthly advances of about $2,000 based on potential settlements the firm was expecting in his cases.
Smith said he would encourage clients to sign up for cases with DTLA but did not pay them. He told some about money Yaghoubtil was offering.
“Tell her I got $ for her,” Yaghoubtil texted Aug. 9, 2022, regarding a woman who Smith said had been in an accident and was considering not moving forward with the firm. “Get her back for me.”
Akeem Smith stands in front of the old DTLA office in East Hollywood.
(Ronaldo Bolanos / Los Angeles Times)
After The Times reached out to DTLA seeking comment on the allegations made by Smith, Yaghoubtil texted Smith asking him to notify the reporter that “everything you told her was a lie” and to remind The Times that he was still a client of the firm, according to a message Smith shared.
The next day, after telling The Times he planned to go into DTLA’s office, Smith falsely accused the reporter via text of harassment and failing to disclose they were a journalist.
In August, Smith made an ill-fated attempt to sue the firm, representing himself in a lawsuit accusing them of keeping too much of his settlement money. He asked for the case to be dismissed a month later.
Smith said he became dependent on the firm for income and, sometimes, shelter. In the summer of 2022, Smith moved into a downtown building where he paid rent to Yaghoubtil’s uncle, according to text messages between the two men. The handwritten lease, rife with misspellings, said he could stay there until he “seatel his case whit Dawntow Law Group.”
Smith said he made monthly trips to pick up checks from DTLA, which was providing him money for his rent, bills, food and car repairs, according to loan statements and text messages between the two men.
Smith said he flitted in and out of homelessness during that time — his first time ever without stable housing.
“When I met you I had my own everything,” Smith texted Yaghoubtil July 18, 2022 “Now I don’t even have clothes.”
Listed in Smith’s phone as “Farid Ferrari,” Yaghoubtil replied, “What happened to the money you got?”
Landlords, landfills and ‘incentives in exchange for signatures’
Downtown LA Law Group, founded in 2016, is run by three longtime friends.
Yaghoubtil, 42, is cousins with founding partner Daniel Azizi, 43. They met Salar Hendizadeh, 44, in elementary school, according to an interview they did with a commercial real estate company.
All attended Beverly Hills High School together, yearbooks show.
Hendizadeh left the firm in October, according to a letter sent to staff this month. The note did not explain why but said Hendizadeh “cannot be conducting any firm related business.” He did not respond to an inquiry from The Times.
Many clients who spoke to The Times said that among the partners, Yaghoubtil in particular vied hard to get their business.
In January 2019, William Brighton, who was in the VA hospital recovering from a car accident, asked a judge for a restraining order against Yaghoubtil, accusing him of making “numerous visits at the hospital to coerce (and bribe) me to retain them as counsel.”
He said Yaghoubtil offered him $1,000 to switch from his current law firm, according to the request for a restraining order. Brighton later asked a judge to dismiss the case.
DTLA did not address questions about the restraining order request.
The firm expanded quickly, outgrowing four different offices before landing this year in a 52,000-square-foot headquarters in the Arts District. They moved beyond their bread-and-butter fare of personal injury, adding departments for mass torts — cases that involves thousands of people suing over the same thing — and housing law.
An empty plot of land where the DTLA partners used to own an apartment building across the street from their East Hollywood office. Multiple tenants sued the partners for living conditions and the building is now demolished.
(Ronaldo Bolanos / Los Angeles Times)
The trio moonlighted as landlords themselves, owning an apartment building across the street from their East Hollywood office. They were sued by several units in 2023 and 2024 over living conditions, including allegations of infestations of rats, vermin and cockroaches that tenants said made their lives “a living hell.” One of the cases settled for $2 million, according to court records.
The partners were charged in October 2024 with a misdemeanor for failing to maintain the building. The case was dismissed and the building is now demolished.
Around 2024, their mass torts business began booming, starting with the landfill lawsuits, in which the firm accused the operators of recklessly allowing nauseating odors.
Heather Stone said she saw representatives of DTLA looking for people for landfill cases outside a Santa Clarita Walmart in 2024, one of two residents who told The Times they saw representatives at the store who appeared to be recruiting clients.
Castaic’s Chiquita Canyon Landfill, which residents say emits noxious odors, is the subject of a flood of lawsuits brought by DTLA.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
Banna said in an interview that she later learned some clients for the landfill cases had been receiving gift cards to sign petitions at box stores in the area and those names later appeared on signed retainers even though clients were adamant they never signed up for a lawsuit. She accused the firm in her lawsuit of “providing gift cards, money gifts, and similar incentives in exchange for signatures.”
The firm said in a statement it would be impossible for someone to believe they were signing a petition when they were signing up for a lawsuit due to the large number of documents required to come on board.
“If someone made that claim, we would certainly discontinue our services at their request,” the firm said.
A former DTLA case manager, who asked to remain anonymous, fearing professional repercussions, said the alleged recruitment effort became clear to him after he was assigned to call people from a list he’d been provided of new Chiquita Canyon clients and found several who believed they had signed up for a petition, not a case.
“A lot of these people were completely unaware of what they were signing up for,” the former case manager said.
Surgeries and promises of ‘lottery money’
Three former case managers, who worked as liaisons between clients and attorneys, described the same modus operandi at DTLA: Sign up personal injury clients, then get them to agree to surgeries.
The more surgeries, they were told, the more profit, as it would make the case more valuable by allowing lawyers to claim higher medical damages.
The case managers said partners pushed surgeries and would give bonuses when clients went under the knife. Doctors — who stood to benefit by being able to bill for the procedures — would have gifts dropped off at the office, the ex-employees said.
The firm said any allegations of unethical practices were the result of “disgruntled former employees … who have ulterior self-serving motives.”
The case managers reported getting $500 checks from the firm when they got a client to agree to a surgery — often with the word “bonus” in the memo. The Times viewed one of these “bonus” checks, which the former employee said was for a client’s skin graft.
If they didn’t convince their clients to get surgeries, the former case managers said they feared losing their job. Yaghoubtil would ask case managers to send him a list of their surgeries at the end of the month, according to messages viewed by The Times.
“Our sx numbers for the month of May were very low,” said Yaghoubtil in a June 3 Teams message to 64 staff members, using an abbreviation for surgery. “Many were unable to produce even a single procedure… this is not acceptable.”
“How can you go an entire month and not have at least one of your cases worked up?” he continued. “It does not go un-noticed and will be letting go of those who are not trying hard enough.”
The firm said in a statement that it doesn’t interfere with a client’s medical care decisions.
“DTLA’s role is to advocate, inform, and support with transparency, compassion, and respect at every stage of the process,” the firm said.
DTLA recently moved into a new office at the former Lucky Brand headquarters in the Arts District of Los Angeles.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Jacqueline McClelland, 60, said she was assured “lottery money” by a DTLA attorney in July 2018 after she slipped in a puddle of oil in a Willowbrook shopping plaza.
The insurer for the plaza called her up and offered her $1 million if she didn’t lawyer up, she said. But she said her DTLA attorney promised they could get her far more — as long as she went to all the doctors they recommended. She turned the insurer down.
Her case settled for $350,000.
It was not even close to enough to pay for the half-million in fees she said she’d racked up, primarily from going to doctors. She said she is still in excruciating back pain from her surgery.
DTLA took 46% of the settlement and sent the rest of the money to a judge to decide how to divvy between her and the 31 doctors, clinics and loan companies she owes, according to a court record filed on behalf of DTLA to determine the distribution. A volunteer at a Watts high school, McClelland has spent a year lawyerless in court fighting for any bit of it she can get.
“Is someone helping you?” asked Judge Gary Tanaka at a Dec. 17 hearing in his Torrance courtroom where she had been appearing with such regularity that the clerk knows her by first name.
“No one. Sorry, your honor, no one has helped me at all,” said McClelland, standing in a court proceeding she said repeatedly she did not understand. “Downtown LA Law just gave me to the wolves.”
“I would agree with that,” said Scott Meehan, an attorney representing one of the doctors fighting her for her settlement money.
DTLA said it could not comment on privileged conversations with McClelland. The firm said in a statement that all medical providers had legitimate liens that entitled them to money from the client’s settlement, including McClelland’s.
Jacqueline McClelland, a former client of DTLA, stands outside Los Angeles Superior Court in Torrance on Dec. 17 ahead of her court hearing.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
The Times found court records for more than 60 DTLA clients who had costs, typically medical bills, that ended up being more than their settlement. In those cases, DTLA couldn’t convince the doctors to reduce fees, and the attorney would hand the remaining money over to let the court decide how to divvy it up among everyone who needed to be paid.
But the lawyers get their cut — in some cases, more than three-quarters of the settlement, according to lawsuits filed on the firm’s behalf to determine who gets the remaining money.
“Our clients only pay for legal fees and costs if they win a lawsuit or get a settlement,” DTLA said in a statement.
After he was beaten by a Santa Monica security guard, David Villatoro, a 33-year-old construction worker, said a DTLA attorney told him he could get half a million easy, probably double that. But only if he went to a litany of doctors’ appointments, including a neck surgery.
It would mean losing his construction job and going on disability. But he claims his attorney said the surgery would make the case more valuable.
“That’s where the big bucks come in,” he recalled the attorney saying.
The big bucks never came.
Instead, months after the case settled, Villatoro got an email telling him not to contact the firm anymore about his case. Attorneys had taken 58% of his settlement money — about $72,000 — and he would have to go to court to fight for a cut of what was left along with the doctors.
He said he still can’t turn his head fully to the right.
“I’m just so confused,” he said. “I was so naive. It was my first time ever, ever, ever getting a lawyer.”
Laura Stephenson, a 57-year-old baker, was told by her DTLA attorney that her slip-and-fall in her Menifee cul-de-sac could net millions. But she would need to do a shoulder surgery.
She hesitated. It would mean too much time away from her bakery and she wasn’t sure she wanted to do it. The attorney convinced her by offering her a loan for $10,000, she said.
More than four years after the fall, she has received no money and can’t fully move her arm. The firm took 77% of her $175,000 settlement, according to a court filing to decide how to distribute the money. The rest went to the court to distribute, and she is still fighting to get a portion.
“I am living this nightmare,” said Stephenson, one of eight people The Times spoke with who said they filed a complaint with the State Bar.
The firm said all medical treatment was voluntary and ethics rules prevent sharing more information about discussions with clients.
“DTLA does not force anyone to receive medical treatment they do not want,” the firm said.
Uber, a common target of DTLA, sued the firm and one of the main surgeons used by clients, Greg Khounganian, last summer for racketeering, alleging the firm had “side agreements” with him to inflate medical bills for unnecessary procedures. Uber’s lawsuit alleged that many patients underwent an unnecessary spinal fusion that takes months to recover from in order to get a larger settlement.
In some cases, Uber alleged, Khounganian inflated the bills by as much as 640%. If the case didn’t settle for much, the lawsuit stated, Khounganian would agree to dramatically reduce their liens.
In an Instagram post, DTLA called the lawsuit a “calculated attempt by a billion-dollar corporation” to suppress legitimate claims. An attorney representing Khounganian said the doctor had a spotless professional record and had never faced any disciplinary action.
“He is assuredly a first-rate and widely respected orthopedic surgeon,” Stephen Larson, an attorney for Khounganian, said in a statement. “Uber’s meritless lawsuit, we believe, is part of its nationwide political and lawfare campaign to suppress liability for accidents caused by Uber’s drivers.”
Khounganian sought to have Uber’s case against him dismissed, with his attorneys calling it in one court filing “a lawsuit designed purely for tabloid effect with no meaningful effort at substance.”
One person, who saw another doctor for a heart valve condition that heightened the risk of complications, could no longer walk for more than 10 minutes after their surgery, Uber alleged in the lawsuit.
DTLA clients said the firm would often insist on sending them to specific L.A. doctors even if they lived in a different county, or, in some cases, a different state.
Christy Strickland, who had a case over a fall that occurred while working for the delivery app Instacart, said the firm insisted L.A. doctors were cheaper than those in Texas. So she said they flew her in from Houston and once gave her gas money to drive, putting her up in a hotel for two weeks to recuperate along with two of her children.
Those travel expenses would total more than $10,000 — including two $482 Uber rides, according to a breakdown. She said she was never told those travel costs would be coming out of her money.
“YOU AND YOUR DOCTOR advised me to get these surgeries and I have told you that I am still in pain even more since the surgery,” she emailed Yaghoubtil in July 2023. “Do you know how it feels to wake up in the morning and your back hurts so bad all you can do is just lay there until it subsides?”
In November, Yaghoubtil, speaking on a podcast episode called “Lawyering With Empathy,” emphasized his focus was never high-dollar verdicts. The well-being of clients, he said, always came before profit.
“We love a client,” he said. “If we have to, we’ll go down fighting with them.”
Times staff writer Christopher Buchanan contributed reporting.
It’s been called an “epidemic” of loneliness and isolation. The “bowling alone” phenomenon.
By any name, it refers to Americans’ growing social disconnection by many measures.
Americans are less likely to join civic groups, unions and churches than in recent generations. They have fewer friends, are less trusting of each other and less likely to hang out in a local bar or coffee shop, recent polling indicates. Given all that, it’s not surprising that many feel lonely or isolated much of the time.
Such trends form the backdrop to this Associated Press report on small groups working to restore community connections.
They include a ministry pursuing “trauma-informed community development” in Pittsburgh; a cooperative helping small farmers and their communities in Kentucky; an “intentional” community of Baltimore neighbors; and organizations seeking to restore neighborhoods and neighborliness in Akron, Ohio.
Loneliness and its health risks
In 2023, then Surgeon General Vivek Murthy reported on an “ epidemic of loneliness and isolation,” similar to his predecessors’ advisories on smoking and obesity.
Isolation and loneliness aren’t identical — isolation is being socially disconnected, loneliness the distress of lacking human connection. One can be alone but not lonely, or lonely in a crowd.
But overall, isolation and loneliness are “risk factors for several major health conditions, including cardiovascular disease, dementia, depression, and premature mortality,” the report said.
Murthy says he’s encouraged by groups working toward social connection through local initiatives ranging from potluck dinners to service projects. His new Together Project, supported by the Knight Foundation, aims to support such efforts.
“What we have to do now is accelerate that movement,” he said.
The pandemic temporarily exacerbated social isolation. There’s been some rebound, but often not back to where it was before.
Scholars and activists have cited various potential causes — and effects — of disconnection. They range from worsening political polarization to destructive economic forces to rat-race schedules to pervasive social media.
Murthy said for many users, social media has become an endless scroll of performance, provocation and unattainably perfect body types.
“What began perhaps as an effort to build community has rapidly transformed into something that I worry is actually now actively contributing to loneliness,” he said.
Bowling alone, more than ever
Harvard’s Robert Putnam, 25 years ago, described the decline in civic engagement in a widely cited 2000 book “Bowling Alone.” It was so named because the decline even affected bowling leagues. The bowling wasn’t the point. It was people spending time together regularly, making friends, finding romantic partners, helping each other in times of need.
Memberships in many organizations — including service, veterans, scouting, fraternal, religious, parental and civic — have continued their long decline into the 21st century, according to a follow-up analysis in “The Upswing,” a 2020 book by Putnam and Shaylyn Romney Garrett.
While some organizations have grown in recent years, the authors argue that member participation often tend to be looser — making a contribution, getting a newsletter — than the more intensive groups of the past, with their regular meetings and activities.
A reaction against institutions
Certainly, some forms of social bonds have earned their mistrust. People have been betrayed by organizations, families and religious groups, which can be harshest on their dissenters.
But disconnection has its own costs.
“There’s been such a drive for personal autonomy, but I think we’ve moved so far past wanting not to have any limits on what we can do, what we can believe, that we’ve become allergic to institutions,” said Daniel Cox, the director of the Survey Center on American Life and a senior fellow in polling and public opinion at the American Enterprise Institute.
“I’m hoping we’re beginning to recognize that unbounded personal autonomy does not make us happier and creates a wealth of social problems,” said Cox, co-author of the 2024 report “ Disconnected: The Growing Class Divide in American Civic Life.”
By the numbers
1. About 16% of adults, including around one-quarter of adults under 30, report feeling lonely or isolated all or most of the time, according to a 2024 survey by the Pew Research Center.
2. Just under half of Americans belonged to a religious congregation in 2023, a low point for Gallup, which has tracking this trend since 1937.
3. About 10% of workers are in a union, down from 20% four decades ago, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports.
4. Around half of Americans regularly spent time in a public space in their community in 2025, such as a coffee shop, bar, restaurant or park. That’s down from around two-thirds in 2019, according to “America’s Cultural Crossroads,” another study by the Survey Center on American Life.
5. About two in 10 U.S. adults have no close friends outside of family, according to the “Disconnected” report. In 1990, only 3% said that, according to Gallup. About one-quarter of adults have at least six close friends, down from nearly half in 1990.
6. About 4 in 10 Americans have at most one person they could depend on to lend them $200, offer a place to stay or help find a job, according to “Disconnected.”
7. About one-quarter of Americans say most people can be trusted — down from about half in 1972, according to the General Social Survey.
Exceptions and a stark class divide
Some argue that Putnam and others are using too limited a measurement — that people are finding new ways of connecting to replace the old ones, whether online or other newer forms of networking.
Still, many numbers depict an overall decline in connection.
This hits hardest on those who are already struggling — who could most use a friend, a job referral or a casserole at the door in hard times.
Those with lower educations, which generally translates to lower incomes, tend to report having fewer close friends, fewer civic gathering places in their communities and fewer people who could help out in a pinch, according to “Disconnected.”
Responses to the crisis
Across the country, small organizations and informal groups of people have worked to build community, whether through formal programs or less structured events like potluck dinners.
Murthy will continue to be visiting such local groups in his “Together Project,” supporting such efforts.
Another group, Weave: The Social Fabric Project at the Aspen Institute, has a searchable database of volunteer opportunities and an online forum for connecting community builders, which it calls “weavers.” It aims to support and train them in community-building skills.
“Where people are trusting less, where people are getting to know each other less, where people are joining groups less, there are people still in every community who have decided that it’s up to them to bring people together,” said its executive director, Frederick J. Riley.
WASHINGTON — Chief Justice John Roberts said Wednesday that the Constitution remains a sturdy pillar for the country, a message that comes after a tumultuous year in the nation’s judicial system with pivotal Supreme Court decisions on the horizon.
Roberts said the nation’s founding documents remain “firm and unshaken,” a reference to a century-old quote from President Coolidge. “True then; true now,” Roberts wrote in his annual letter to the judiciary.
The letter comes after a year in which legal scholars and Democrats raised fears of a possible constitutional crisis as President Trump’s supporters pushed back against rulings that slowed his far-reaching conservative agenda.
Roberts weighed in at one point, issuing a rare rebuke after Trump called for the impeachment of a judge who had ruled against him in a case over the deportation of Venezuelan migrants accused of being gang members.
The chief justice’s Wednesday letter was largely focused on the nation’s history, including an early 19th-century case establishing the principle that Congress shouldn’t remove judges over contentious rulings.
While the Trump administration faced pushback in the lower courts, it has scored a series of some two dozen wins on the Supreme Court’s emergency docket. The court’s conservative majority has allowed Trump to move ahead for now with banning transgender people from the military, clawing back billions of dollars of congressionally approved federal spending, moving aggressively on immigration and firing the Senate-confirmed leaders of independent federal agencies.
The court also handed Trump a few defeats over the last year, including in his push to deploy the National Guard to U.S. cities.
Other pivotal issues are ahead for the high court in 2026, including arguments over Trump’s push to end birthright citizenship and a ruling on whether he can unilaterally impose tariffs on hundreds of countries.
Roberts’ letter contained few references to those issues. It opened with a history of the seminal 1776 pamphlet “Common Sense,” written by Thomas Paine, a “recent immigrant to Britain’s North American colonies,” and closed with Coolidge’s encouragement to “turn for solace” to the Constitution and Declaration of Independence “amid all the welter of partisan politics.”
Zohran Mamdani will become mayor of New York City as the clock ticks over into 2026 — but the celebrations are set to last through New Year’s Day.
The Democrat’s team is planning two separate swearing-in ceremonies Thursday — a small, private one with his family in an old subway station around midnight, followed by a large event in the afternoon that will include a public block party outside City Hall.
As a new mayor’s term begins immediately with the new year, it has been customary for the city’s incoming leaders to hold two events. Departing Mayor Eric Adams held his initial swearing-in at Times Square shortly after the famous ball drop, while Adams’ predecessor Bill de Blasio took his first oath at home in Brooklyn.
For his part, Mamdani will take his initial oath at the former City Hall subway station in Manhattan — one of the city’s original stops on its subterranean transit system, known for its tiled arches and vaulted ceilings.
New York Atty. Gen. Letitia James, a political ally and notable foe of President Trump, will administer the oath of office.
The old City Hall stop was designed as the flagship station of the city’s first subway line, but was decommissioned in 1945. These days, outside of occasional guided historical tours, locals can usually only catch a glimpse of it by staying on the 6 train after its last stop downtown when it turns around to head north.
In a statement, Mamdani’s office said the choice to be sworn in at the station reflected his “commitment to the working people who keep our city running every day.”
“When Old City Hall Station first opened in 1904 — one of New York’s 28 original subway stations — it was a physical monument to a city that dared to be both beautiful and build great things that would transform working peoples’ lives,” Mamdani said.
“That ambition need not be a memory confined only to our past, nor must it be isolated only to the tunnels beneath City Hall: it will be the purpose of the administration fortunate enough to serve New Yorkers from the building above,” he said.
On Thursday afternoon, Mamdani will be sworn in again, this time by U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, one of his political heroes, on the steps of City Hall in a ceremony. It’s scheduled to kick off at 1 p.m. with opening remarks from U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, another political ally and a fellow New Yorker.
Mamdani’s transition formed an inaugural committee that includes actor John Turturro, playwright Cole Escola and writer Colson Whitehead, as well as advocates, small business owners and campaign workers who the incoming mayor’s office says have “provided perspective, guidance, and cultural sensibility” for the ceremony.
The public swearing-in will be accompanied by a block party along a stretch of Broadway leading up to City Hall. Mamdani’s office expects thousands of people to attend and says there will be performances, music and interfaith elements.
Pacific Palisades had been burning for less than two hours when word raced through the ranks of the Los Angeles Fire Department that the agency’s leaders had failed to pre-deploy any extra engines and crews to the area, despite warnings of life-threatening winds.
In the days after the fire broke out, and as thousands of homes and business continued to go up in flames, then-Fire Chief Kristin Crowley said little about the lack of pre-deployment, which was first disclosed by The Times, instead blaming those high winds, along with a shortage of working engines and money, for her agency’s failure to quickly knock down the blaze.
Crowley’s comments did not stand up to scrutiny. To several former LAFD chief officers as well as to people who lost everything in the disaster, her focus on equipment and City Hall finances marked the beginning of an ongoing campaign of secrecy and deflection by the department — all designed to avoid taking full responsibility for what went wrong in the preparations for and response to the Jan. 7 fire, which killed 12 people and leveled much of the Palisades and surrounding areas.
“I don’t think they’ve acknowledged that they’ve made mistakes yet, and that’s really a problem,” said Sue Pascoe, editor of the local publication Circling the News, who lost her home of 30 years. “They’re still trying to cover up … It’s not the regular firefighters. It’s coming from higher up.”
With the first anniversary of the fire a week away, questions about missteps in the firefight remained largely unanswered by the LAFD and Mayor Karen Bass. Among them: Why were crews ordered to leave the still-smoldering scar of an earlier blaze that would reignite into the Palisades inferno? Why did the LAFD alter its after-action report on the fire in a way that appeared intended to shield it from criticism?
The city also has yet to release the mayor’s communications about the after-action report. The Times requested the communications last month, and the report — which was meant to pinpoint failures and enumerate lessons learned, to avoid repeating mistakes — was issued in early October. Nor has the city fulfilled a records request from The Times about the whereabouts of fire engines in the Palisades when the first 911 call came in. It took the first crews about 20 minutes to reach the scene, by which time the fierce winds were driving the flames toward homes.
A Bass spokesperson has said that the mayor did not demand changes to the after-action report, noting that she pushed for its creation and that it was written and edited by the LAFD.
“This administration is only interested in the full truth about what happened before, during, and after the fire,” the spokesperson, Clara Karger, said earlier this month.
The LAFD has stopped granting interviews or answering questions from The Times about the matter, vaguely citing federal court proceedings. David Loy, legal director of the First Amendment Coalition, said that the federal prosecution of a man accused of starting the earlier blaze does not preclude the department from discussing its actions surrounding both fires.
In a December television interview, Fire Chief Jaime Moore acknowledged that some residents don’t trust his agency and said his mandate from Bass was to “help guide and rebuild the Los Angeles Fire Department to the credibility that we’ve always had.”
The Lachman fire
Shortly after midnight on New Year’s Day, a man watched flames spread in the distant hills and called 911.
“Very top of Lachman, is where we are,” he told the dispatcher. “It’s pretty small but it’s still at the very top and it’s growing.”
“Help is on the way,” the dispatcher said.
A few hours later, at 4:46 a.m., the LAFD announced that the blaze, which later became known as the Lachman fire, was fully contained at eight acres.
Top fire commanders soon made plans to finish mopping up the scene and to leave with their equipment, according to text messages obtained by The Times through a state Public Records Act request.
“I imagine it might take all day to get that hose off the hill,” LAFD Chief Deputy Phillip Fligiel said in a group chat. “Make sure that plan is coordinated.”
Firefighters who returned the next day complained to Battalion Chief Mario Garcia that the ground was still smoldering and rocks still felt hot to the touch, according to private text messages from three firefighters to a third party that were reviewed by The Times. But Garcia ordered them to roll up their hoses and leave.
At 1:35 p.m., Garcia texted Fligiel and Chief Deputy Joseph Everett: “All hose and equipment has been picked up.”
Five days after that, on the morning of Jan. 7, an LAFD captain called Fire Station 23 with an urgent message: The Lachman fire had started up again.
LAFD officials were emphatic early on that the Lachman fire was fully extinguished. But both inside and outside the department, many were certain it had rekindled.
“We won’t leave a fire that has any hot spots,” Crowley said at a community meeting in mid-January.
“That fire was dead out,” Everett said at the same meeting, adding that he was out of town but communicating with the incident commander. “If it is determined that was the cause, it would be a phenomenon.”
The department kept under wraps the complaints of the firefighters who were ordered to leave the burn site. The Times disclosed them in a story in late October. In June, LAFD Battalion Chief Nick Ferrari had told a high-ranking fire official who works for a different agency in the L.A. region that LAFD officials knew about the firefighters’ complaints, The Times also reported.
Bass has directed Moore, an LAFD veteran who took charge of the department in November, to commission an “independent” investigation of the Lachman fire mop-up. The after-action report contained only a brief mention of the earlier fire.
No pre-deployment
The afternoon before hazardous weather is expected, LAFD officials are typically briefed by the National Weather Service, using that information to decide where to position firefighters and engines the following morning.
The weather service had been sounding the alarm about critical fire weather for days. “HEADS UP!!!” NWS Los Angeles posted on X the morning of Jan. 6. “A LIFE-THREATENING, DESTRUCTIVE” windstorm was coming.
It hadn’t rained much in months, and wind gusts were expected to reach 80 mph. The so-called burning index — a measure of the wildfire threat — was off the charts. Anything beyond 162 is considered “extreme,” and the figure for that Tuesday was 268.
In the past, the LAFD readied for powerful windstorms by pre-deploying large numbers of engines and crews to the areas most at risk for wildfires and, in some cases, requiring a previous shift of hundreds of firefighters to stay for a second shift — incurring large overtime costs — to ensure there were enough personnel positioned to attack a major blaze.
None of that happened in the Palisades, with its hilly terrain covered in bone-dry brush, even though the weather service had flagged it as one of the regions at “extreme risk.”
Without pre-deployment, just 18 firefighters are typically on duty in the Palisades.
LAFD commanders decided to staff only five of the more than 40 engines available to supplement the regular firefighting force citywide. Because they didn’t hold over the outgoing shift, they staffed the extra engines with firefighters who volunteered for the job — only enough to operate three of the five engines.
On Jan. 6, officials decided to pre-deploy just nine engines to high-risk areas, adding eight more the following morning. None of them were sent to the Palisades.
The Times learned from sources of the decision to forgo a pre-deployment operation in the Palisades. LAFD officials were mum about the inadequate staffing until after The Times obtained internal records from a source in January that described the department’s pre-deployment roll-out.
The officials then defended their actions in interviews. Bass cited the LAFD’s failure to hold over the previous shift of firefighters as a reason she removed Crowley as chief less than two months after the fire.
The after-action report
In March, a working group was formed inside the LAFD to prepare the Palisades fire after-action report. A fire captain who was recommended for the group sought to make sure its members would have the freedom to follow the facts wherever they led, according to internal emails the city released in response to a records request by an unidentified party.
“I am concerned about interference from outside entities that may attempt to influence the direction our report takes,” Capt. Harold Kim wrote to Battalion Chief Kenneth Cook, who was leading the review. “I would like to ensure that the report that we painstakingly generate be published as is, to as reasonable an extent as possible.”
He worried about revisions, saying that once LAFD labor unions and others “are done with many publications, they become unrecognizable to the authors.”
Cook, who had been involved with review teams for more than a decade and written numerous reports, replied: “I can assure you that I have never allowed for any of our documents to be altered in any way by the organization.”
Other emails suggest that Kim ultimately remained in the group.
As the report got closer to completion, LAFD officials, worried about how it would be received, privately formed a second group for “crisis management” — a decision that surfaced through internal emails released through another records request by an unidentified party.
“The primary goal of this workgroup is to collaboratively manage communications for any critical public relations issue that may arise. The immediate and most pressing crisis is the Palisades After Action Report,” LAFD Asst. Chief Kairi Brown wrote in an email to eight others, including interim Fire Chief Ronnie Villanueva.
“With significant interest from media, politicians, and the community, it is crucial that we present a unified response to anticipated questions and concerns,” Brown wrote. “By doing so, we can ensure our messaging is clear and consistent, allowing us to create our own narrative rather than reactive responses.”
Cook emailed a PDF of his report to Villanueva in early August, asking the chief to select a couple of people to provide edits so he could make the changes in his Word document.
The following week, Cook emailed the chief his final draft.
“Thank you for all your hard work,” Villanueva responded. “I’ll let you know how we’re going to move forward.”
Over the next two months, the report went through a series of edits — behind closed doors and without Cook’s involvement. The revised report was released publicly on Oct. 8.
That same day, Cook emailed Villanueva, declining to endorse the public version because of changes that altered his findings and made the report “highly unprofessional and inconsistent with our established standards.”
“Having reviewed the revised version submitted by your office, I must respectfully decline to endorse it in its current form,” Cook wrote in the email obtained by The Times. “The document has undergone substantial modifications and contains significant deletions of information that, in some instances, alter the conclusions originally presented.”
Cook’s version highlighted the failure to recall the outgoing shift and fully pre-deploy as a major mistake, noting that it was an attempt to be “fiscally responsible” that went against the department’s policy and procedures.
The department’s final report stated that the pre-deployment measures for the Palisades and other fire-prone locations went “above and beyond” the LAFD’s standard practice. The Times analyzed seven drafts of the report obtained through a records request and disclosed the significant deletions and revisions.
Cook’s email withdrawing his endorsement of the report was not included in the city’s response to one of the records requests filed by an unknown party in October. Nearly 180 of Cook’s emails were posted on the city’s records portal on Dec. 9, but the one that expressed his concerns about the report was missing. That email was posted on the portal, which allows the public to view documents provided in response to records requests, after The Times asked about it.
The LAFD did not respond to a query about why the email was not released with Cook’s other emails. Karger, the Bass spokesperson, said the link to the document was broken and the city fixed it after learning the email wasn’t posted correctly. The Times has inquired about how and why the link didn’t work.
Former LAFD Asst. Chief Patrick Butler, who worked for the agency for 32 years and now heads the Redondo Beach Fire Department, said the city’s silence on such inquiries is tantamount to deceiving the public.
“When deception is normalized within a public agency,” he said, “it also normalizes operational failure and puts people at risk.”
