POLITICS

VISALIA, Calif. — Just when it seemed things couldn’t get any more tumultuous for Judge Howard R. Broadman, things did.

The Tulare County Superior Court judge already was the center of a national furor over his order that a child abuser submit to surgical implantation of a birth control device as a condition of probation. Broadman also had been named in a lawsuit claiming that he bilked a former legal client out of her home and land. And he had been the subject of both ridicule and praise for “creative” sentencing techniques, such as ordering a thief to wear a T-shirt proclaiming his guilt.

Indeed, controversies involving Broadman seemed to be on overload here in Visalia, a conservative farming town of 75,000 in the heart of the San Joaquin Valley. But last month, an ex-mental patient turned up the heat even further.

Ray Bodine was sitting in the spectator section of Broadman’s courtroom during a divorce case when he spotted a woman wearing red shoes. Bodine recognized the shoes as a signal from the Mother of God that he should go ahead with his plan to kill Broadman as part of his war on contraception. Bodine slipped a revolver from his briefcase, aimed at the middle of the judge’s forehead and fired. . . .

Howard Richard Broadman is a trim, dapper man who stands about 5 feet, 7 inches tall. His carefully groomed black beard is tipped with white at the chin and his dark eyes glance sharply about his courtroom from beneath bushy brows.

He was known as an energetic and aggressive divorce lawyer in Visalia when then-Gov. George Deukmejian appointed him to the Municipal Court in 1986. He was elevated to the Tulare County Superior Court in 1988.

His rulings have been the focus of almost constant controversy, and some critics question his fitness for the bench. The continuing furor over his birth control order and the related near-miss by an assassin’s bullet led Broadman to disqualify himself from further involvement in that case this month.

Broadman is viewed as both impetuous and likable, sometimes by the same person. He is called a “wild card” and a “loose cannon” as well as “innovative” and “courageous.”

His words from the bench are sometimes brusque and impatient.

“He doesn’t suffer fools well,” observed Joseph Altschule, who practices law in Visalia.

Altschule says he likes Broadman and considers him intelligent and sincere, but he routinely asks that the judge be disqualified from hearing his cases.

“He is tremendously stubborn and he has an ego as big as all outdoors,” Altschule said of Broadman. “And when you bring that mix to the bench you have some problems. . . . Howard’s attempt to be creative gets him in trouble, and in some ways he’s his own worst enemy.”

A prosecutor who asked not to be identified said of Broadman:

“He’s viewed as an unpredictable wild card. . . . You can go into court and you can’t know whether the defendant is going to walk out the door five minutes later or whether he’s going to get the absolute maximum (sentence).”

But Broadman has supporters in the legal profession.

Richard Cochran, president of the Tulare County Bar Assn., said that most of the directors of that organization agreed with Broadman’s controversial birth control order.

“I think the majority felt that he did something that was creative and innovative,” said Cochran. “A lot of the judges in the courthouse (give) the usual and conventional sentences. My feeling about his (sentences) is that he is courageous.”

Letters to the local newspaper, the Visalia Times-Delta, indicate that there is widespread community support for Broadman’s birth control decision.

Broadman first gained national attention as the result of a December, 1989, case in which he offered probation to a thief on the condition that the man agree to wear a T-shirt proclaiming his guilt. Russell Hackler, 30, had stolen two six packs of beer, but was on parole for robbery and faced the possibility of four years in prison as a repeat offender.

The front of the T-shirt read, “MY RECORD AND TWO SIX PACKS EQUAL FOUR YEARS.” The back said, “I AM ON FELONY PROBATION FOR THEFT.”

“I was kind of dumbfounded,” recalled Deputy Public Defender Berry Robinson, who represented Hackler. “I turned to my client and said, ‘You’d be real stupid to turn this down.’ ”

Some praised the sentence as creative, but eight months later Hackler was again before Broadman, charged with violating probation due to an arrest for burglary. A witness said Hackler bought beer with coins stolen in the burglary–he remembered him because the defendant was wearing his infamous T-shirt at the time.

Broadman sentenced Hackler to four years in prison.

In some other “creative” judicial actions, Broadman:

* Allowed a child molester to serve time at home on the condition that he post a sign outside his house reading, “Do not enter, I am under house arrest.”

* Required an alcoholic to stand in court and swallow Antabuse, a medication that causes violent nausea if alcohol is ingested.

* Ordered a husband and wife in a divorce case to take turns living in the family home so that the children would not have to shuttle back and forth.

* Ordered a young female drug addict convicted of narcotics possession not to get pregnant as a condition of probation. But when she was a half hour late to a subsequent hearing because she had taken her children to school, Broadman sent her to prison.

Such rulings have generated publicity, but last December the judge received media attention of another kind when a former divorce-case client sued him for allegedly bilking her out of her house and land.

Darleen Woods charged in a $1.5-million lawsuit filed Dec. 10 that Broadman–who represented her in a long and complicated divorce action in the early to mid 1980s–had improperly foreclosed on her property to satisfy a $58,000 legal bill. Woods maintains that she was left penniless when Broadman sold the real estate for $330,000 last summer and kept all the proceeds for himself.

Woods’ suit charges that Broadman pressured her into putting her property up for collateral against the legal bill and that he “laundered” the foreclosure proceedings by signing the lien over to his mother so his own name would not be involved.

Woods, 58, says she is broke, unskilled and living with a daughter and son-in-law. Broadman declined to be interviewed by The Times for this article, but he disputed Woods’ claims last December in the Visalia Times-Delta.

“I’m an ethical man,” he was quoted as saying in the Dec. 20 article. “I don’t swindle people.”

Oliver Wanger, a Fresno attorney representing Broadman, says the judge received the lien on Woods’ property through a normal business transaction and legally sold the lien to his mother, Margaret Drew of Gore, Okla.

“It wasn’t done to hide anything,” said Wanger. “It was a private transfer that is in no way against the law.”

Broadman’s mother reportedly paid her son $40,000 for the property in 1987. Drew foreclosed on the real estate in 1988 for the price of the debt which had by then reached about $58,000, with interest.

But Drew could not sell the property because the title was clouded and Broadman bought it back from his mother last year for $58,000, according to the Times-Delta. Broadman told the newspaper that he spent several months and $100,000 clearing the title. Records show that he sold the real estate for $330,000 last August.

If it did indeed cost Broadman $100,000 to clear the title, simple arithmetic indicates he collected his debt and made $200,000 or so on the foreclosure of Woods’ former home and land.

Even so, says Broadman’s attorney, the transaction was perfectly legal and Woods’ suit is without merit.

Less than a month after Woods’ suit was filed, the Broadman spotlight shifted away from that controversy to one which caused a national uproar.

On Jan. 2, Darlene Johnson, 27-year-old mother of four and nearly eight months pregnant, stood before Broadman to be sentenced for severely beating two of her daughters, ages 5 and 6.

Broadman asked the woman if she would be willing, as a condition of probation, to use a new long-term birth control device called Norplant, which is implanted under the arm. Other conditions of probation included a year in the county jail with credit for time served, and mandatory counseling and parenting classes. The prosecution was seeking a state prison sentence.

Johnson agreed to the terms of probation, but changed her mind about the birth control device after leaving the courtroom, maintaining that she agreed to it only because she was afraid of being sent to prison. A hearing to reconsider the Norplant order was set for Jan. 10.

By that time Broadman’s order was the subject of a national controversy over the morality and constitutionality of a judge requiring a woman to use a birth control device. Critics–pointing out that Johnson is a poor black woman and Broadman a well-to-do white man–also saw elements of class, race and sex discrimination.

In his argument on behalf of Johnson, attorney Charles Rothbaum compared Broadman’s Norplant order to an old science fiction film “in which these aliens came down to Earth and implanted these devices in the back of persons’ necks and used that to control their activity.”

But Broadman upheld his order in a prepared decision.

Johnson “has been convicted of brutally beating her children,” he said. “It is in the defendant’s best interest and certainly in any unconceived child’s interest that she not have any more children until she is mentally and emotionally prepared to do so.”

Rothbaum, joined by the American Civil Liberties Union, is appealing the decision. In the meantime, Johnson is serving the county jail portion of her probation. Her fifth child was born in February.

A short, friendly woman, Johnson is afraid she will have to choose between prison and Norplant when she gets out of jail in June.

She has never been married, but says she plans to do so and says she does not believe in using birth control.

“If God blesses me to have more (children),” she said, “I’ll have more.”

Harry Raymond Bodine agrees with that point of view. Vehemently.

Bodine is in Tulare County Jail facing 15 years to life in prison on a charge of attempting to murder a public official. A hearing to determine his mental competency to stand trial is scheduled for May 17, according to his attorney, Michael Cross. Bodine, 45, is a muscular 5-feet, 11-inches tall and weighs 200 pounds. A small blue cross dangles over his red county jail T-shirt as he smiles pleasantly and talks about his life and beliefs.

Bodine is a second generation orchard grower in Tulare County. He was president of his high school class, attended Catholic seminaries, received a degree in philosophy, decided against the priesthood, married, was convicted of misdemeanor sexual molestation of his 10-year-old stepdaughter, divorced and was sent to the state mental hospital in Napa for seven months in 1987 after threatening to kill his wife’s new husband.

Bodine has been arrested at demonstrations protesting abortion clinics, but his goals were broader than other abortion opponents.

“I was helping,” he said, “with the idea that sooner or later I would convert them to a more dramatic civil war.”

Bodine believes he is on a holy mission to stamp out contraception and is guided by the Mother of God.

After hearing about Broadman’s ruling in the Johnson case, Bodine says he decided to kill the judge and began target practice with a revolver down by the river.

He was so nervous on the day that the Mother of God gave him the go-ahead sign to kill Broadman that he drank some Pepto-Bismol to quiet his stomach. The woman with red shoes was, for some reason, the signal that Our Lady chose.

When Bodine’s revolver went off in the courtroom, attorney Philip Bianco was representing a woman in a divorce case.

“My client went under the desk, holding onto her husband for the first time in three months,” said Bianco.

Bodine says he looked at the bench, saw that it was empty and thought he had killed the judge. There was no bailiff in the room, so Bodine placed his gun on a table and sat down to wait for someone to come arrest him for murder.

But Broadman was not dead. He was crouching behind the bench, wondering if he had been shot and checking himself for blood. There was none. The bullet missed Broadman’s head by inches and tore through the wall behind him.

In the meantime, bailiffs arrived, shoved the compliant Bodine to the floor and began handcuffing him.

Broadman, when he realized how close to death he had come, flew into a rage and–still wearing his black judicial robe–rushed at Bodine.

Bianco and two other men tried to hold Broadman back, but the judge lunged forward, sprawling across the bodies of the bailiffs and Bodine on the courtroom floor.

“All three of us couldn’t hold the guy,” said Bianco. “He was completely white. His heart was going as fast as it could go. He was like a bird dog that had just run a quarter of a mile.”

Prevented from getting at Bodine physically, Broadman subsequently filed a civil suit against his assailant, seeking to take away the man’s 29 acres of orchards as punishment for the shooting. That action caused still another controversy, this time over the propriety of a Superior Court judge suing a mentally ill person.

Bodine says he will not defend himself against Broadman’s suit.

“The Scriptures say if a man sues you for your jacket,” he explained, “give him your shirt, as well.”

Bodine says he might, however, be willing to punch it out with Broadman over the property if he were to meet him on the street.

Times staff writer Mark Stein contributed to this story

MINNEAPOLIS — Federal prosecutors served six grand jury subpoenas Tuesday to Minnesota officials as part of an investigation into whether they obstructed or impeded federal law enforcement during a sweeping immigration operation in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, a person familiar with the matter said.

The subpoenas, which seek records, were sent to the offices of Gov. Tim Walz, Atty. Gen. Keith Ellison, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, St. Paul Mayor Kaohly Her and officials in Ramsey and Hennepin counties, the person said.

The person was not authorized to publicly discuss an ongoing investigation and spoke to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity.

An investigation is underway into whether Minnesota officials obstructed federal immigration enforcement through public statements they made, two people familiar with the matter said Friday. They said then it was focused on the potential violation of a conspiracy statute.

Mayor says subpoenas are to stoke fear

Walz and Frey, both Democrats, have called the probe a bullying tactic meant to quell political opposition. Frey’s office was ordered to produce a long list of records to a grand jury on Feb. 3, including “cooperation or lack of cooperation with federal law enforcement” and “any records tending to show a refusal to come to the aid of immigration officials.”

“We shouldn’t have to live in a country where people fear that federal law enforcement will be used to play politics or crack down on local voices they disagree with,” Frey said.

Her, a Hmong immigrant and a Democrat, said she’s “unfazed by these tactics” and will stand up for her community.

The subpoenas came as the Trump administration urged a judge to reject efforts by Minnesota and its largest cities to stop the immigration enforcement surge that has roiled Minneapolis and St. Paul for weeks.

The Justice Department called the lawsuit, filed soon after the fatal shooting of Renee Good by an immigration officer, “legally frivolous.” Lawyers argued that the Department of Homeland Security is acting within its legal powers to enforce immigration laws.

Operation Metro Surge has made the state safer with the arrests of more than 3,000 people who were in the country illegally, the government said Monday in a court filing.

“Put simply, Minnesota wants a veto over federal law enforcement,” Justice Department attorneys wrote.

Ellison said the government is violating free speech and other constitutional rights with its unprecedented sweeps. He described the armed officers as poorly trained and said the “invasion” must cease.

The lawsuit filed Jan. 12 seeks an order to halt or limit the enforcement action. More filings are expected, and it’s not known when U.S. District Judge Katherine Menendez will make a decision.

Hard to track arrests

Ilan Wurman, who teaches constitutional law at University of Minnesota Law School, doubts the state’s arguments will be successful.

“There’s no question that federal law is supreme over state law, that immigration enforcement is within the power of the federal government, and the president, within statutory bounds, can allocate more federal enforcement resources to states who’ve been less cooperative in that enforcement space than other states have been,” Wurman told the Associated Press.

Julia Decker, policy director at the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota, expressed frustration that advocates have no way of knowing whether the government’s arrest numbers and descriptions of the people in custody are accurate. U.S. citizens have been dragged from their homes and vehicles during the Minnesota surge.

“These are real people we’re talking about, that we potentially have no idea what is happening to them,” Decker said.

Police say ICE is targeting off-duty officers

In a separate lawsuit, Menendez said Friday that federal officers can’t detain or tear gas peaceful protesters who aren’t obstructing authorities.

Good, 37, was killed on Jan. 7 as she was moving her vehicle, which had been blocking a Minneapolis street where Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers were operating. Trump administration officials say the officer, Jonathan Ross, shot her in self-defense, although videos of the encounter show the Honda Pilot slowly turning away from him.

Since then, the public has repeatedly confronted officers, blowing whistles and yelling insults at ICE and U.S. Border Patrol. They, in turn, have used tear gas and chemical irritants against protesters. Bystanders have recorded video of officers using a battering ram to get into a house as well as smashing vehicle windows and dragging people out of cars.

Police in the region, meanwhile, said off-duty law enforcement officers have been racially profiled by federal officers and stopped without cause. Brooklyn Park Police Chief Mark Bruley said he has received complaints from residents who are U.S. citizens, including his own officers.

“Every one of these individuals is a person of color who has had this happening,” Bruley said during a news conference.

President Trump last week threatened to invoke an 1807 law and send troops to Minnesota, though he has backed off, at least in his public remarks.

Karnowski and Richer write for the Associated Press. Richer reported from Washington. AP reporters Ed White in Detroit and Sarah Raza in Minneapolis contributed to this report.

On Tuesday afternoon, hundreds of protesters walked out of school and off the job to march in downtown Los Angeles nd decry President Trump’s actions during his first year back in office.

The “Free America Walkout” at Los Angeles City Hall was among dozens of rallies taking place across Southern California and the nation. The event was coordinated by the Women’s March and intended to demonstrate opposition to violent Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids, the increased presence of military personnel in cities, Trump’s harmful immigration policies toward families and escalating attacks on transgender rights.

Hundreds of protesters marched along Colorado Boulevard in Pasadena. Among the slogans on their signs: “Democracy doesn’t fear protest, dictators do” and “We choose freedom over fascism.” Meanwhile, similar marches took place in Burbank, Long Beach and Santa Monica. Scores of students at Garfield and Roosevelt high schools in East L.A. ditched class to join the downtown rally.

“I just don’t know if he’s [Trump] actually done anything that is positive,” downtown protester Mario Noguera told ABC7 News. “Everything’s been about depleting everything: resources, rights. I just don’t feel like we’re getting anywhere.”

The walkout took place on the anniversary of Trump’s inauguration, an event he commemorated with a nearly two-hour news conference in which he called his first year in office “an amazing period of time” where his administration accomplished more than any other in history.

“We have a book that I’m not going to read to you, but these are the accomplishments of what we’ve produced, page after page after page of individual things,” Trump said, holding up a thick stack of papers. “I could sit here, read it for a week, and we wouldn’t be finished.”

Among the list of accomplishments he touted were his tariffs, his immigration crackdown, the economy and his actions in Gaza and Venezuela.

The Free America Walkout began at 2 p.m. in cities across the U.S. and was designed to differ from mass weekend actions such as the No Kings protests by deliberately taking place during the workday.

Organizers said that whereas protests demonstrate collective anger, walkouts demonstrate collective power.

“A walkout interrupts business as usual,” organizers stated. “It makes visible how much our labor, participation, and cooperation are taken for granted — and what happens when we withdraw them together.”

In downtown L.A., protesters condemned the effects of ICE raids locally as well as in Minneapolis, where a federal agent recently shot and killed Renee Nicole Good, a wife and mother.

This month, thousands of demonstrators took to the streets of Los Angeles as part of the “ICE Out for Good” weekend of action, a national protest movement in response to Good’s killing.

Roxanne Hoge, chair of the Republican Party of Los Angeles County, criticized the stream of local anti-Trump protests Tuesday.

“Their boring, predictable tantrums are now part of the L.A. landscape, much like the dilapidated RVs and dangerous encampments that their policies result in,” Hoge told the Los Angeles Daily News. “We are interested in good governance and public safety, and wish our Democrat friends would join us in advocating for both.”

WASHINGTON — A ballooning Immigration and Customs Enforcement budget. Hiring bonuses of $50,000. Swelling ranks of ICE officers, to 22,000, in an expanding national force bigger than most police departments in America.

President Trump promised the largest mass deportation operation in U.S. history, but achieving his goal wouldn’t have been possible without funding from the big tax and spending cuts bill passed by Republicans in Congress, and it’s fueling unprecedented immigration enforcement actions in cities such as Minneapolis and beyond.

The GOP’s big bill is “supercharging ICE,” one budget expert said, in ways that Americans may not fully realize — and that have only just begun.

“I just don’t think people have a sense of the scale,” said Bobby Kogan, senior director of federal budget policy at the Center for American Progress and a former advisor to the Biden administration’s Office of Management and Budget.

“We’re looking at ICE in a way we’ve never seen before,” he said.

Trump’s big bill creates massive law enforcement force

As the Republican president marks the first year of his second term, the immigration enforcement and removal operation that has been a cornerstone of his domestic and foreign policy agenda is rapidly transforming into something else — a national law enforcement presence with billions upon billions of dollars in new spending from U.S. taxpayers.

The shooting death of Renee Good in Minneapolis showed the alarming reach of the new federalized force, sparking unrelenting protests against the military-styled officers seen going door to door to find and detain immigrants. Amid the outpouring of opposition, Trump revived threats to invoke the Insurrection Act to quell the demonstrations and the Army has 1,500 soldiers ready to deploy.

But Trump’s own public approval rating on immigration, one of his signature issues, has slipped since he took office, according to an AP-NORC poll.

“Public sentiment is everything,” Rep. Nydia M. Velázquez (D-N.Y.) said at a news conference at the Capitol with lawmakers supporting legislation to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.

Americans, she said, are upset at what they are seeing. “They didn’t sign on for this,” she said.

Border crossings down, but Americans confront new ICE enforcements

To be sure, illegal crossings into the U.S. at the Mexico border have fallen to historic lows under Trump, a remarkable shift from just a few years ago when President Biden’s Democratic administration allowed millions of people to temporarily enter the U.S. as they adjudicated their claims to stay.

Yet as enforcement moves away from the border, the newly hired army of immigration officers swarming city streets with aggressive tactics — in Los Angeles, Chicago and elsewhere — is something not normally seen in the United States.

Armed and masked law enforcement officers are being witnessed smashing car windows, yanking people from vehicles and chasing and wrestling others to the ground and hauling them away — images playing out in endless loops on TVs and other screens.

And it’s not just ICE. A long list of supporting agencies, including federal, state and local police and sheriff’s offices, are entering into contract partnerships with Homeland Security to conduct immigration enforcement operations in communities around the nation.

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has warned Democrats that this is “no time to be playing games” by stirring up the opposition to immigration enforcement officers in Minneapolis and other places.

“They need to get out of the way and allow federal law enforcement to do its duty,” Johnson said at the Capitol.

Noem has said the immigration enforcement officers are acting lawfully. The department insists it is targeting criminals in the actions, what officials call the worst of the worst immigrants.

However, reports show that noncriminals and U.S. citizens are also being forcibly detained by immigration officers. The Supreme Court last year lifted a ban on using race alone in the immigration stops.

Trump last month called Somali immigrants “garbage,” comments that echoed his past objections to immigrants from certain countries.

The Trump administration has set a goal of 100,000 detentions a day, about three times what’s typical, with 1 million deportations a year.

Money from the big bill flows with few restraints

With Republican control of Congress, the impeachment of Noem or any other Trump official is not a viable political option for Democrats, who would not appear to have the vote tally even among their own ranks.

In fact, even if Congress wanted to curtail Trump’s immigration operations — by threatening to shut down the government, for example — it would be difficult to stop the spending.

What Trump called the “Big, Beautiful Bill” is essentially on autopilot through 2029, the year he’s scheduled to finish his term and leave office.

The legislation essentially doubled annual Homeland Security funding, adding $170 billion to be used over four years. Of that, ICE, which typically receives about $10 billion a year, was provided $30 billion for operations and $45 billion for detention facilities.

“The first thing that comes to mind is spending on this level is typically done on the military,” said Kathleen Bush-Joseph, a policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute. “Trump is militarizing immigration enforcement.”

Ahead, Congress will consider a routine annual funding package for Homeland Security unveiled Tuesday, or risk a partial shutdown Jan. 30. A growing group of Democratic senators and the Congressional Progressive Caucus have had enough. They say they won’t support additional funds without significant changes.

Lawmakers are considering various restrictions on ICE operations, including limiting arrests around hospitals, courthouses, churches and other sensitive locations and ensuring that officers display proper identification and refrain from wearing masks.

“I think ICE needs to be totally torn down,” Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) said on CNN over the weekend.

“People want immigration enforcement that goes after criminals,” he said. And not what he called this “goon squad.”

Big spending underway, but Trump falls short of goals

Meanwhile, Homeland Security has begun tapping the new money at its disposal. The department informed Congress it has obligated roughly $58 billion — most of that, some $37 billion, for border wall construction, according to a person familiar with the private assessment but unauthorized to discuss it.

The Department of Homeland Security said its massive recruitment campaign blew past its 10,000-person target to bring in 12,000 new hires, more than doubling the force to 22,000 officers, in a matter of months.

“The good news is that thanks to the Big Beautiful Bill that President Trump signed, we have an additional 12,000 ICE officers and agents on the ground across the country,” Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a December statement.

The department also announced it had arrested and deported about 600,000 people. It also said 1.9 million other people had “voluntarily self-deported” since January 2025, when Trump took office.

Mascaro writes for the Associated Press.

SACRAMENTO — California Gov. Gavin Newsom sharply criticized world leaders while attending the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, this week, faulting them for their “complicity” and failure to confront President Trump’s aggressive posture on issues such as Greenland and trade.

Speaking to reporters there, Newsom urged European and other global leaders to “stand tall and firm” and to “have a backbone,” bemoaning that too many have been “rolling over” in the face of Trump’s actions and rhetoric.

“It’s just pathetic,” Newsom told reporters.

He quipped that he “should’ve brought a bunch of kneepads for all the world leaders,” a retort Newsom has become fond of leveling against those he feels are supine in their duties. He admonished the suggestion that Europeans could continue to approach diplomacy with Trump as they have previous presidents. Newsom called Trump a “T-Rex.”

“You mate with him, or he devours you, one or the other,” Newsom said.

His comments came as the forum grappled with heightened geopolitical tensions, particularly debates over Trump’s controversial push involving Greenland — a flashpoint that has drawn warnings from European leaders and underscored wider concerns about the erosion of traditional alliances and global norms.

On Tuesday, stocks slumped on Wall Street after Trump threatened to hit eight European countries with new tariffs over his attempts to assert American control over Greenland.

Trump is scheduled to speak Wednesday at the World Economic Forum, where he is expected to try to convince Americans he can make housing more affordable. However, many onlookers will be watching what Trump has to say about his desire to acquire Greenland.

The annual event opened Monday and is a four-day gathering of world leaders with the stated mission of engaging in “forward-looking discussions to address global issues and set priorities.”

Trump’s attendance comes after his administration opted to skip the annual United Nations climate policy summit in Belém, Brazil, in November, with Newsom instead attending as a proxy for the United States.

While in Switzerland, Newsom announced Tuesday that California surpassed 2.5 million cumulative new zero-emission vehicle sales since 2010. The state had set a goal of putting 1.5 million zero-emission vehicles on the road by 2025, with that target eclipsed despite setbacks in clean energy brought on by the Trump administration.

“California didn’t reach 2.5 million zero-emission vehicles by accident — we invested in this future when others said it was impossible,” Newsom said in a statement.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

The state Republican party on Tuesday filed an emergency application asking the U.S. Supreme Court to issue an injunction to stop the congressional districts California voters approved last year from going into effect.

Arguing that the districts created by Proposition 50 violate federal law because the race of voters was considered when they were configured, the filing urges the court to act by Feb. 9 because of ensuing deadlines for candidates to file to run for office.

“Our emergency application asks the Supreme Court to put the brakes on Prop. 50 now, before the Democrats try to run out the clock and force candidates and voters to live with unconstitutional congressional districts,” state GOP chairwoman Corrin Rankin said in a statement. “Californians deserve fair districts and clean elections, not a backroom redraw that picks winners and losers based on race.”

A spokesperson for Gov. Gavin Newsom, who led the rare middecade redistricting effort and is one of the respondents in the lawsuit, did not immediately respond to a request for coverage.

The redrawing of congressional districts typically occurs once a decade, after the U.S. Census, to account for population shifts. In California, the boundaries are drawn by a voter-approved independent commission to stop partisan gerrymandering and incumbent protection.

After President Trump urged leaders in Texas and other GOP-led states to redraw their delegation’s districts to boost the number of Republican elected to Congress in the November mid-term election, Newsom and other Democratic leaders responded by crafting a plan to increase the number of their party’s members in the California delegation to the U.S. House of Representatives. Republicans currently have a razor-thin majority, and the party that controls Congress after the November election will determine whether Trump is able to continue enacting his agenda during his final two years in office.

California voters handily passed Proposition 50, one of the most expensive ballot measure campaign in state history. The state GOP and others immediately challenged the new districts, but earlier this month, two members of a three-judge federal panel rejected their claim that the district boundaries were drawn to illegally favor Latino voters.

WASHINGTON — President Trump took command of a White House press briefing on Tuesday to tell reporters directly why he believes his first year back in office has been a success — though his showcase at times included false claims and a lack of clarity on his foreign policy agenda.

“I don’t like to do this, to be honest with you, but I do it because we got to get the word out,” Trump told reporters during a nearly two-hour appearance in which he took roughly 20 questions from reporters.

In his remarks, the president repeated claims that the 2020 election was “rigged,” reiterated his annoyance at not being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for ending “eight wars,” and dismissed concerns about the economy as he claimed the country is “doing so well” because of his tariffs.

Trump called Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado a “good woman” for giving him her 2025 Nobel Peace Prize, calling his political foes “sick people,” and said Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass was “incompetent” for how she handled last year’s wildfire recovery efforts.

The president alleged that under Bass’ leadership, the city’s delay in issuing local building permits will take “years” when it should have taken “two or three days.”

“You had the incompetent mayor of Los Angeles who decided to go to Africa during the fire,” he said. “The place went crazy. Well, they still haven’t gotten their permits.”

At one point, Trump was asked about California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat who is widely expected to be eyeing a run for president in 2028, and who is in Davos, Switzerland, this week to talk about the California economy at the World Economic Forum.

“I don’t know that he is going to be the nominee,” Trump told reporters. “I just hate how California is being run. We actually have people leaving, it’s never happened before, but I hate the way it’s being run. He and I had a very good relationship, really close to the word exceptional, but now we seem not to.”

Trump kicked off the press briefing by sifting through dozens of mug shots of undocumented immigrants whom his administration has arrested and targeted for deportation. He boasted that many of the individuals were “murderers, they’re drug lords, drug dealers” in keeping with his campaign promise that he would be targeting the “worst of the worst.” But since he retook office, his administration has also cracked down on legal immigration, and at times, detained U.S. citizens.

As he talked about immigration, Trump lamented the fatal shooting of 37-year-old Renee Good by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent in Minneapolis — but partly because the president said her parents, particularly her father, were “tremendous Trump fans.”

“A lot of people, they say, ‘Oh, he loves you,’” Trump said. “I hope he still feel the same way.”

While Trump tried to focus on the success of his domestic policies, much of his appearance was dominated by his stance on foreign policy. The president, who was scheduled to leave for Davos on Tuesday evening, has repeatedly threatened to acquire Greenland and impose tariffs on European countries that send troops to help Denmark defend its Arctic territory.

Asked how far he would be willing to go to acquire Greenland, Trump said: “You’ll find out.” He was later asked if he was willing to risk breaking up the North Atlantic Treaty Organization for the territory, to which the president responded: “I think that we will work something out where NATO’s going to be very happy and where we’re going to be very happy.”

Trump was also asked about Greenlanders who have said they do not want to be part of the United States and have expressed dismay about Trump’s desires to seize the island.

“I haven’t spoken to them,” Trump said. “When I speak to them, I’m sure they’ll be thrilled.”

At the press briefing, the president insisted that “Norway controls the Nobel Prize,” an assertion he made over the weekend in a text message sent to Norway’s prime minister, Jonas Gahr Store. In the text message, Trump wrote that he no longer felt an “obligation to think purely of Peace” when it comes to acquiring Greenland because he didn’t win the Nobel Peace Prize.

Norway has repeatedly said the award is given by the independent Nobel Committee, not the government, Store said in a statement.

Trump told reporters to not “let anyone tell you that Norway doesn’t control the shots.”

“I should’ve gotten the Nobel Prize,” Trump said.

Machado, last year’s Nobel Peace laureate, gave Trump her award during a White House visit last week. Trump appeared to have taken kindly to the gesture, telling reporters that he has “such respect for María, doing what she did.

“She said, ‘I don’t deserve the Nobel Prize. He does,’” Trump said. “How nice, right? Good woman.”

The president said he wanted to discuss the wide range of topics personally with reporters because he felt that he was not getting enough credit for the job he had done in the last year.

“A lot of people are listening to the fake news a little bit. I think we’ve done a much better job than we have been able to promote,” Trump said. “We have taken a mess and made it really good. It’s going to get even better.”

Times staff writer Gavin Quinton in Washington contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — An unconstrained U.S. president has sided with Russia in its war of conquest in Europe, seized Venezuela’s dictator from his bed in an attempt to take control of that country’s oil, threatened military strikes against America’s closest neighbors and sent tariffs soaring on its friends.

Donald Trump has gotten away with it all — but his threats to annex Greenland, risking destruction of the Western alliance in its current form, may prove a breaking point in a global order that has benefited the United States for over 75 years.

Canada’s prime minister said Tuesday that the Trump administration’s boorish behavior marks a “rupture,” not merely a transition, in the international system, away from a world where the United States could be relied upon as a force for good. American cardinals in the Catholic Church warned over the weekend that U.S. foreign policy had gone “morally adrift.” France’s president said that Europe now represents a rare refuge where predictability, loyalty, and rule of law still trump the “brutality” of “bullies.”

Trump’s effort to coax allies to his will on Greenland through another round of tariff hikes prompted panic in U.S. markets. The Dow Jones industrial average plunged nearly 900 points, the Standard & Poor’s 500 dropped 2%, and the NASDAQ fell over 500 points. U.S. 30-year Treasury yields spiked. The price of gold hit an all-time high.

“The transatlantic alliance is over,” Kirill Dmitriev, a top confidant to Russian President Vladimir Putin, celebrated on social media.

Trump was set to leave for Davos, Switzerland, on Tuesday night for a summit of foreign leaders suddenly fixated on the fate of Greenland, the world’s largest island, which has been under Danish rule since the 18th century.

Top government officials in Denmark and Greenland have warned that any U.S. attempt to annex the territory by force would amount to an act of war and mark the end of the NATO alliance, comments echoed by other leaders across Europe. But Trump has only escalated his threats in recent days, warning of his ambitions over the holiday weekend, “there can be no going back.”

In a news conference at the White House on Tuesday, Trump acknowledged the existential risk posed to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in his bid to take over Danish territory.

Whether his Greenland effort could break up the alliance is a “very interesting” question, Trump told a reporter, adding: “I think something is going to happen that’s going to be very good for everybody.”

“I think we will work something out,” he added. “NATO is going to be very happy and we are going to be very happy.”

Trump dismissed that Greenlanders don’t want to be part of the United States.

“When I speak to them they will be thrilled,” Trump said.

President Trump speaks during a press briefing Tuesday at the White House.

(Kevin Dietsch / Getty Images)

In his own news conference earlier Tuesday, Greenland’s prime minister, Jens-Frederik Nielsen, warned the island population to prepare for the unlikely possibility of a U.S. invasion. “A military conflict cannot be ruled out,” he said.

Any acquisition of U.S. land, by agreement or by force, has to be approved by Congress, where bipartisan skepticism began firming up this week.

Several prominent Republican lawmakers have criticized Trump’s threats to seize the island, and to punish European countries that defend Denmark’s Arctic territory. But no substantive steps have been taken thus far to preemptively block the president’s actions.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Rep. Don Bacon (R-Nebraska) have both joined Democrats in their respective chambers to introduce legislation that would prevent Trump from using Defense Department funds to seize the territory of a NATO country or territory, such as Greenland. But no other GOP lawmakers had joined their cause as of Tuesday.

In an interview with the Omaha World-Herald last week, Bacon went as far as to say that if Trump were to follow through with his threats to acquire Greenland, it would be “the end of his presidency.”

“And [Trump] needs to know: The off-ramp is realizing Republicans aren’t going to tolerate this and he’s going to have to back off,” Bacon told the Nebraska newspaper. “He hates being told no, but in this case, I think Republicans need to be firm.”

Republican lawmakers, while critical of Trump’s tactics in recent days, have stopped short of committing to congressional action to stop Trump’s purported plans in Greenland.

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) said that imposing tariffs on allies for sending troops to Greenland is “bad for America, bad for American businesses and bad for America’s allies” — but in an interview with CNBC on Tuesday he said he was “not going to go to impeachment” on the matter.

Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said last week that an attempt to seize the Arctic territory would “shatter the trust of allies” and be “disastrous” for Trump’s legacy.

An address Tuesday by House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) to the British Parliament showed the fine line Republicans are toeing when it comes to appeasing Trump and allies abroad, as he told them that he was there to help “calm the waters” between the United States and Europe.

“We have always been able to work through our differences calmly as friends,” Johnson said. “We will continue to do that. I want to assure you this morning that that is still the case.”

In his speech to the Davos economic forum, Mark Carney, Canada’s prime minister, described Trump’s bid for Greenland as a stark example of the global order collapsing in real time.

“We knew the story of the international rules-based order was partially false, that the strongest would exempt themselves when convenient, that trade rules were enforced asymmetrically,” Carney said. “This fiction was useful. An American hegemony, in particular, helped provide public goods, open sea lanes, a stable financial system, collective security.

“We know the old order is not coming back,” Carney added. “We shouldn’t mourn it. Nostalgia is not a strategy.”

As the official celebrations of the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence culminate on July 4, a well-financed, privately funded initiative will kick off to try to connect hundreds of millions of Americans with efforts to solve local problems.

The “Be The People” campaign aspires to change the perception that the U.S. is hopelessly divided and that individuals have little power to overcome problems like poverty, addiction, violence and stalled economic mobility. It also wants to move people take action to solve those problems.

Brian Hooks, chairman and CEO of the nonprofit network Stand Together, said the 250th anniversary is a unique moment “to show people that they matter, that they have a part to play, and that the future is unwritten, but it depends on each one of us stepping up to play our part.”

Funded by a mix of 50 philanthropic foundations and individual donors, Be The People builds on research that indicates many people want to contribute to their communities but don’t know how. The initiative is targeting more than $200 million for its first year’s budget.

Founding members include nonprofits GivingTuesday, Goodwill Industries, Habitat for Humanity and More Perfect, businesses such as Ron Howard’s Imagine Entertainment and the National Basketball Assn., and funders like the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

Hooks said this is a 10-year commitment toward trying to achieve what would be a profound shift in behavior and culture. He referenced a 2024 Pew Research Center survey that found most Americans in 2023 and 2024 did not believe that the U.S. could solve its most important problems, saying it was a “red alert” for the country.

Hooks said the initiative envisions actions far beyond volunteering or service that people could do in their free time. He pointed to a role for businesses and schools and said the initiative would launch a major data collection effort to track whether people are actually more engaged and whether problems are actually getting solved.

Stand Together, which was founded by the billionaire Charles Koch, works across a broad range of issues and communities in the U.S. and has carved out a role for itself as a convener that can bring coalitions together across ideological lines.

“Be The People,” will not incorporate as a new nonprofit, but act more like a banner for groups to organize under and use to connect to resources. As an example, at the Atlanta Hawks game on Monday, Martin Luther King III and his wife, Arndrea Waters King, linked a program they launched last year, Realize the Dream, which aims to increase acts of service, to the new campaign.

“Our vision is that ‘Be The People’ helps lift up what is already happening in communities across the country and reminds people that service and shared responsibility are defining parts of the American story,” the Kings said in a written statement.

Asha Curran, the CEO of the nonprofit GivingTuesday, said small actions can build on each other like exercising a muscle.

“Our experience with GivingTuesday is that when people volunteer together, when people work together on something to do with positive social impact, they find it harder and harder to demonize each other,” said Curran.

The initiative comes against a backdrop of deep polarization, economic inequality and the degradation of democratic norms and institutions in the U.S.

Hahrie Han, a political scientist at Johns Hopkins University, has studied civic engagement and said people need more opportunities to authentically participate as problem solvers when connecting with local organizations.

“They’re more likely to be invited into things where people are asked to let professional staff do most of the problem solving and they show up and give their time or their money,” she said.

The result is that people feel less committed and don’t see their participation as helping to achieve their interests or goals.

A growing number of private foundations have started funding issues related to the health of U.S. democracy, said Kristin Goss, a professor who directs the Center for the Study of Philanthropy and Voluntarism at Duke University. While foundations cannot participate in elections, Goss said they can influence policy or public opinion in other ways.

“Funders are getting more concerned about of the health of American democracy, the future of the democratic experiment and pluralism and inclusion,” Goss said.

Another group of funders, including the Freedom Together Foundation, launched a project last year to recognize people and groups who stand up for their communities, which they called a “civic bravery” award. In a November report, they issued a similar call for funders to invest in helping individuals organize together in response to a rise in authoritarianism.

Hooks and the other leaders of “Be The People” have also convened major communications teams to help tell these stories, which they think are lost in the current information ecosystem.

“What we’re doing is we’re helping to lift up the story of Americans that is unfolding at the local level, but is not breaking through,” Hooks said. “So we’re holding up a mirror and a microphone to Americans to reveal to each other who we truly are.”

Beaty writes for the Associated Press.

LONDON — A startled British government on Tuesday defended its decision to hand sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, after President Trump attacked the plan, which his administration previously supported.

Trump said that relinquishing the remote Indian Ocean archipelago, home to a strategically important American naval and bomber base, was an act of stupidity that shows why he needs to take over Greenland.

“Shockingly, our ‘brilliant’ NATO Ally, the United Kingdom, is currently planning to give away the Island of Diego Garcia, the site of a vital U.S. Military Base, to Mauritius, and to do so FOR NO REASON WHATSOEVER,” he said in a post on his social media website. “There is no doubt that China and Russia have noticed this act of total weakness.”

“The UK giving away extremely important land is an act of GREAT STUPIDITY, and is another in a very long line of National Security reasons why Greenland has to be acquired,” Trump said.

The blast from Trump was a rebuff to efforts by Prime Minister Keir Starmer to calm tensions over Greenland and patch up a frayed transatlantic relationship. Starmer on Monday called Trump’s statements about taking over Greenland “completely wrong” but called for the rift to be “resolved through calm discussion.”

The British government said Tuesday that despite the president’s post, it believes the U.S. still supports the Chagos deal.

Cabinet minister Pat McFadden said that a flurry of social media posts from Trump “criticizing a number of world leaders” showed the president “is frustrated right now” as European allies push back on his desire for Greenland.

“I don’t really believe this is about Chagos. I think it’s about Greenland,” McFadden said.

Remote but strategic

The United Kingdom and Mauritius signed a deal in May to give Mauritius sovereignty over the Chagos Islands after two centuries under British control, though the U.K. will pay Mauritius at least $160 million a year to lease back the island of Diego Garcia, where the U.S. base is located, for at least 99 years.

The U.S. government welcomed the agreement at the time, saying it “secures the long-term, stable, and effective operation of the joint U.S.-U.K. military facility at Diego Garcia.”

In recent years, the United Nations and its top court have urged Britain to return the islands to Mauritius, and the British government says it’s acting to protect the security of the base from international legal challenge.

A government spokesperson said that “the U.K. will never compromise on our national security,” and “this deal secures the operations of the joint U.S.-U.K. base on Diego Garcia for generations, with robust provisions for keeping its unique capabilities intact and our adversaries out.”

But the deal has met strong opposition from British opposition parties, which say that giving up the islands puts them at risk of interference by China and Russia.

Islanders who were displaced to make way for the U.S. base on Diego Garcia say they weren’t consulted and worry the deal will make it harder for them to go home.

Strong opposition

Legislation to approve the agreement has been passed by the House of Commons but faced strong opposition in Parliament’s upper chamber, the House of Lords, which approved it, while also passing a “motion of regret” lamenting the legislation. It’s due back in the lower house Tuesday for further debate.

Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch criticized Starmer’s Labor Party government over the agreement.

Badenoch said in an X post that Trump is right and that Starmer’s “plan to give away the Chagos Islands is a terrible policy that weakens UK security and hands away our sovereign territory. And to top it off, makes us and our NATO allies weaker in the face of our enemies.”

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage, an ally of the president, said: “Thank goodness Trump has vetoed the surrender of the Chagos islands.”

The U.S. has described the Diego Garcia base, which is home to about 2,500 mostly American personnel, as “an all but indispensable platform” for security operations in the Middle East, South Asia and East Africa.

The Chagos Islands have been under British control since 1814, when they were ceded by France. Britain split the islands away from Mauritius, a former British colony, in 1965, and evicted as many as 2,000 people from the islands so the U.S. military could build the Diego Garcia base.

An estimated 10,000 displaced Chagossians and their descendants now live primarily in Britain, Mauritius and the Seychelles. Some have fought unsuccessfully in U.K. courts for many years for the right to go home.

The U.K.-Mauritius deal calls for a resettlement fund to be created for displaced islanders to help them move back to the islands — apart from Diego Garcia.

Lawless writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON  — Do licensed gun owners have a right to carry a loaded weapon into stores, restaurants and other private places that are open to the public?

California and Hawaii are among five states with new laws that forbid carrying firearms onto private property without the consent of an owner or manager. But the Trump administration joined gun-rights advocates on Tuesday in urging the Supreme Court to strike down these laws as unconstitutional under the 2nd Amendment.

Such a law “effectively nullifies licenses to carry arms in public,” Trump’s lawyers said.

If you “stop at a gasoline station, you are committing a crime,” Deputy Solicitor Gen. Sarah Harris told the court.

An attorney representing Hawaii said the issue is one of property rights, not gun rights.

“An invitation to shop is not an invitation to bring your Glock,” Washington attorney Neal Katyal told the court. “There is no constitutional right to enter property that includes a right to bring firearms.”

The justices sounded split along the usual ideological lines, with the court’s conservatives signaling they are likely to strike down the new laws in five Democratic-led states.

“You are relegating the 2nd Amendment to second-class status,” Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. told Katyal.

He said the court had ruled law-abiding persons have a right to carry a firearm for self-defense when they leave home. That would include going to stores or businesses that are open to the public.

“If the owners don’t like guns, why don’t they just put up a sign?” Alito said.

Both sides agreed that business owners are generally free to allow or prohibit guns on their property. However, state officials said, the laws are important because business owners rarely post signs that either welcome or forbid the carrying of guns.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said the 2nd Amendment should have the same standing as the 1st Amendment.

He said it was understood based on the 1st Amendment that a political candidate may walk up to a house and knock on the door or drop off a pamphlet. He questioned why the court should uphold a law that limits gun owners from entering places that are open to the public.

Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil M. Gorsuch and Brett M. Kavanaugh said they too believed the “right to keep and bear arms” included the right to carry weapons, including into stores.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson said property rights should prevail over gun rights.

“Is there a right to go on private property with a gun?” Sotomayor asked repeatedly. She said the court had never upheld such a broad right.

But with the possible exception of Justice Amy Coney Barrett, none of the conservatives agreed.

Four years ago, the court ruled law-abiding gun owners had a right to carry a concealed weapon for self-defense when they left home. They also said then that guns may be prohibited in “sensitive places” but they did not decide what that meant.

In the wake of that decision, California, Hawaii, New York, New Jersey and Maryland adopted new laws that restricted carrying guns in public places, including parks and beaches.

The laws also said gun owners may not take a gun into a privately owned business without the “express authorization” of an owner or manager. California’s law went a step further and said the owner must post a clear sign allowing guns.

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the laws from Hawaii and California, except for the required posting of a sign in California.

Three Hawaii residents with concealed carry permits appealed to the Supreme Court and won the backing of the Trump administration.

NEWARK, N.J. — Mikie Sherrill, the four-term congresswoman and former Navy helicopter pilot who cast her November election in New Jersey as a victory over President Trump’s vision for the country, was inaugurated Tuesday as the state’s 57th governor.

Sherrill, 54, is just the second woman to lead the state of nearly 9.5 million people and is the first person from a major political party to be elected to a third straight term in more than six decades, succeeding two-term Democrat Phil Murphy.

She swept to victory over her Trump-endorsed GOP rival in part by pinning blame for high costs on the president’s tariffs and promising that her first action once in office would be to order a freeze on skyrocketing utility rates.

Sherrill spoke about New Jersey’s role in the Revolutionary War and quoted from the Declaration of Independence’s grievances against the king, drawing a comparison to Trump.

“We see a president illegally usurping power,” she said. “He has unconstitutionally enacted a tariff regime to make billions for himself and his family, while everyone else sees costs go higher and higher. Here, we demand people in public service actually serve the public.”

During her speech she also signed two executive orders, one declaring a freeze on utility rates, which have been rising sharply, and another aimed at establishing new sources of electricity production incident solar and nuclear.

Sherrill took the oath of office on a copy of the Constitution owned by the state’s first governor in Newark, the state’s largest city whose voters made up a key component of her winning coalition.

It is a departure from previous inaugurations, which have included military artillery salutes along the Delaware River outside the statehouse in Trenton. Tuesday’s ceremony included a similar gun salute and a military helicopter flyover.

She is being sworn in as her former congressional colleague Abigail Spanberger comes into office in as Virginia’s governor after a similar double-digit victory over her Republican opponent and as the midterm elections start to come into sharper focus. Democrats are hopeful the president will be a drag on GOP candidates in key races across the country.

Sherrill takes over from Murphy, a former Obama administration ambassador and Wall Street finance executive, who delivered on a number of progressive promises over eight years, including raising taxes on income over $1 million, boosting the minimum wage, expanding early childhood education and fully funding the state workers’ pension, which was underfunded for years before he took over.

Murphy said Friday in his final news conference that he has been in regular touch with Sherrill about the transition. He summed up his two terms as governor as having lived up to promises he made on the campaign trail.

“We were who we said would be,” Murphy said. “We didn’t campaign on my thesis and pull a fast one.”

He is also passing along a state budget that has swelled over the years, raising the prospect of potential shortfalls if state revenues dip as well as an unfunded promise to continue a property tax relief program begun in the governor’s second term.

Sherrill will have a Democrat-led Legislature to work with, one of more than a dozen where the party controls the legislature and governorship.

The first woman to be governor of New Jersey is Christine Todd Whitman, a two-term Republican who went on to serve as George W. Bush’s Environmental Protection Agency administrator.

New Jersey’s governorship has often switched back and forth between the parties. The last time the same party prevailed in a third straight gubernatorial election was in 1961.

Catalini writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — A stunning military intervention in Venezuela. Telling the New York Giants which coach to hire. Threats against Iran, Denmark, Greenland and Colombia. Posing with someone else’s Nobel Peace Prize. Dangling the potential of deploying U.S. troops in Minneapolis. Flipping off a critic. Announcing an aggressive round of tariffs. Threatening political enemies.

For President Trump, this blizzard was just the first half of January.

If a president’s most valuable currency is time, Trump operates as if he has an almost limitless supply, ever willing to share no matter the day, the hour or the circumstance.

He’s rewritten the role of the presidency in a divided country, commanding constant attention with little regard for consequences. For all his talk about strength, his approach leans more toward virality than virility with social media as his primary accelerant.

“The president exists loudly,” said Sen. John Kennedy, R-La. “The president will play with fire. I haven’t seen him yet play with live hand grenades, but I’ve seen him come damn close. That’s just the way he is, and it’s not going to change.”

At least Trump thanks you in the process.

During his second term, the Republican president has signed off of his social media post with the catchphrase “thank you for your attention to this matter” 242 times, according to data compiled by Roll Call Factbase. For good measure, he often uses all capital letters and a few exclamation points.

Trump’s decades of seeking attention

He has spent decades seeking attention, first in the New York tabloids and later as a reality television star. Attention, positive or negative, is its own reward. In the attention economy, Trump is what Wall Street might call a market maker.

The gambits often have a tenuous relationship with truth and sometimes involve misogyny or racism. They can step on the administration’s other priorities and don’t always bend political realities in Trump’s favor (see affordability concerns and the Epstein files ).

But they’re hard to ignore.

“He’s saying hello to you in the morning, and he says good night to you at the end of the day,” Republican strategist Ron Bonjean said. “You’re never not going to hear from him.”

In his second term, he observed even fewer constraints on where to assert his presence, with a fondness for sports. During September alone, Trump attended three major sporting events around New York City. His visit to the U.S. Open final forced long security lines and delayed the start of the match. The crowd — dominated by New York’s elite — booed him, but that didn’t matter. He was still on the stadium’s big screen and all over social media.

That’s where some of the biggest changes during Trump’s second term have unfolded.

During his first administration, many Silicon Valley leaders were cold — or outright hostile — to Trump. He was banned from platforms including Twitter and Facebook after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

The leaders of those companies are now openly allied with Trump or at least friendly with him. Twitter is now named X and owned by Elon Musk, who led the Department of Government Efficiency during the first months of the second term and has returned to the president’s orbit after a brief falling-out. Musk and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg were among the technology executives who attended Trump’s inauguration last year.

AI quickly produces memes and videos

Trump, who’s not known to use a computer, this time has his own social media platform, where his team relies on fresh artificial intelligence technology to quickly produce memes and videos that keep the president at the forefront of the online conversation. Those posts often veer into crude territory, such as one in October that showed him wearing a crown, flying a plane, dumping excrement on his opponents.

“The social media we’re talking about in Trump’s second term is not the social media of Trump’s first term,” said Nolan Higdon, a lecturer at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where he focuses on critical media literacy.

For now, there are few brakes on Trump’s impulses.

House Speaker Mike Johnson brushed off the excrement post as “satire.” Vice President JD Vance, a devout Catholic, has defended Trump’s posts, including one depicting him as the pope. In an interview with Vanity Fair, White House chief of staff Susie Wiles described Trump, who doesn’t drink, as possessing an “alcoholic’s personality,” meaning he “operates (with) a view that there’s nothing he can’t do.”

Indeed, his approach has been remarkably successful in achieving the disruption he seeks to impose in the U.S. and abroad. He uses social media as a weapon, warning of aid that will be cut off to states that resist him. His posts regarding Greenland and Denmark sparked a genuine diplomatic crisis and raised questions about the long-term sustainability of NATO.

The two nagging exceptions revolve around Epstein and affordability.

After telling his supporters to “not waste Time and Energy on Jeffrey Epstein,” he eventually gave in to congressional pressure and signed a bill that earned overwhelming support on Capitol Hill calling for the files to be made public. The Justice Department has already missed deadlines for the release, and Democrats including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Gov. JB Pritzker of Illinois have said the flurry of news this month has amounted to a distraction from the Epstein issue.

Trump has similarly struggled to convince the public that he understands and is responding to their concerns about high prices. After calling affordability challenges a “Democratic hoax,” he has tried to take action, including delivering a prime-time address last month. But that speech and more recent efforts, including the mortgage rate push, were quickly drowned by the deluge of more jarring news.

Indeed, a Michigan visit last week to talk about affordability may ultimately be best remembered for images of Trump delivering an obscene gesture at someone who was yelling at him from afar.

Trump’s central challenge

That underscores Trump’s central challenge heading into an election year that will test his grip on power. While his hard-line approach may delight supporters, it does less to convince a broader swath of Americans that he’s an effective president.

Approval of Trump’s handling of most issues is low, but health care stands out as a particular weakness for him. Only about 3 in 10 U.S. adults approved of the way he was handling health care, according to a December AP-NORC poll. That was slightly lower than his overall approval. He’s also slipped on immigration since the start of his second term, when this stood out as a relative strength. According to a January AP-NORC poll, about 4 in 10 U.S. adults approve of his performance on immigration, down from about half of Americans toward the beginning of his first term.

Meanwhile, Democrats are taking stronger steps toward winning American attention spans. California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a potential 2028 presidential candidate, hosts a podcast and taunts Trump by mocking him on social media.

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is perhaps the most successful Democrat to translate a digital media machine into political success. Over the course of about a year, the 34-year-old went from a relatively unknown state lawmaker to the leader of the nation’s largest city by introducing himself to voters with videos that showed him in unscripted environments, like the course of the New York City marathon.

“They’re learning not to impose an old framework on a new paradigm,” said Basil Smikle, a former executive director of the New York State Democratic Party and a professor at Columbia University.

The long-term question is whether Trump has fundamentally changed the presidency. Ari Fleischer, the White House press secretary under then-President George W. Bush, said Trump “is the definition of unique” and predicted that the next president — regardless of party — will communicate differently.

“Whoever succeeds him,” Fleischer said, “the velocity of the presidency will slow down.”

Sloan writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux contributed to this report.

Reporting from Phoenix — Retired astronaut Mark Kelly, who rocketed to the national spotlight when his wife, Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, was shot in a failed assassination attempt, announced Tuesday he’s running to finish John McCain’s last term in the U.S. Senate.

Kelly, 54, is a top Democratic recruit to take on Republican Martha McSally in one of the most closely contested Senate races of the 2020 election.

McSally is a former Republican congresswoman who was appointed to McCain’s seat last year after she narrowly lost to Democrat Kyrsten Sinema. McSally leaned heavily on her record as the first woman to fly a combat mission as a fighter pilot, but she was hurt by her embrace of President Trump.

If Kelly is nominated, the race would pit a Navy veteran and astronaut against a trailblazing Air Force pilot in the contest to replace McCain, a legendary Navy flyer who was famously shot down and held captive.

Democrats are eagerly watching the Arizona contest, having already defeated McSally in a Senate race just a few months ago.

Kelly and Giffords have for years pushed Congress to enact gun control measures, with little success. They shifted their focus to state legislatures in recent years, helping to strengthen background checks and domestic violence protections, among other modest protections.

Giffords was severely wounded in a mass shooting on Jan. 8, 2011, at a meet-and-greet event outside a grocery store in Tucson that left six dead and 13 injured. Shooter Jared Loughner was sentenced to life in prison.

Republican Gov. Doug Ducey appointed McSally to the vacant Senate seat after his first appointee, former Sen. Jon Kyl, resigned after only a few months in office. The seat is a top target for Democrats because McSally just lost a Senate race in November and Democrats posted a strong showing in the November election, winning three statewide contests and picking up legislative and congressional seats.

The 2020 election will decide who finishes the last two years of McCain’s term. The winner would have to run again for a full six-year term in 2022.

U.S. Rep. Ruben Gallego of Phoenix is also considering a Senate run, which would likely set up a tough fight for the Democratic nomination.

Former Arizona Atty. Gen. Grant Woods, a lifelong Republican who became a Democrat and a fierce critic of Trump, announced last week that he wouldn’t run, saying he didn’t want to fight in a contested Democratic primary.

During his first term, President Trump was both praised and condemned for being wildly unpredictable, pushing boundaries and disregarding long-standing norms in Washington.

During the 2024 presidential campaign, then-Vice President Kamala Harris — Trump’s opponent — spoke directly to his volatile leadership style in her final pitch to voters, saying their choice would determine “whether we have a country rooted in freedom for every American or ruled by chaos and division.”

Of course, Americans returned Trump to the White House. And in the year since, they have watched Trump once again take stunning and unprecedented action — sometimes in line with his campaign promises, other times in direct conflict with them.

Deploying immigration forces, troops

Residents and protesters clash with federal agents in Chicago on Oct. 14.

(Joshua Lott / Washington Post via Getty Images)

During his campaign, Trump promised to launch the “largest deportation operation in American history.” The rollout has been tense as masked agents with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, U.S. Customs and Border Protection and other agencies have swarmed into American cities and detained large numbers of people — including many with no criminal convictions and some who are U.S. citizens.

The agents’ use of aggressive tactics and deadly force, including in the recent fatal shooting of Renee Nicole Good by an ICE agent in Minnesota, has sparked protests and concern among local leaders and members of Congress.

Trump has responded to some protests by ordering National Guard troops into cities, including Los Angeles. He also sent U.S. Marines into L.A. Those deployments were challenged in court, and — after a loss in the Supreme Court — Trump ended them. However, he has since threatened to send troops into Minnesota by invoking the Insurrection Act.

Threatening to take Greenland

Vice President JD Vance arrives in Pituffik, Greenland, in March.

(Jim Watson / Pool / Getty Images)

Trump has repeatedly threatened to seize Greenland from Denmark, a NATO ally, and the White House has declined to rule out military force.

Despite an existing agreement allowing the U.S. to maintain a strong military presence there, Trump has said full U.S. control of Greenland is necessary for regional security and to prevent Russia or China from taking control. “Anything less than that is unacceptable,” he said.

A U.S. seizure of the island would mark a stunning abandonment of NATO, which has linked the security of the U.S. and Europe for more than 75 years. European leaders have staunchly opposed any such move and called on the Trump administration to back off. Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen has said a U.S. takeover of Greenland would end the NATO alliance.

Demolishing the East Wing

Architect Shalom Baranes shows a site plan for a new $400-million White House ballroom during a meeting this month of the National Capital Planning Commission.

(Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images)

In October, Trump surprised historic preservationists and other political leaders by demolishing the East Wing of the White House, which was built in 1902 under President Theodore Roosevelt and rebuilt in the 1940s under President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Trump argued the historic building — which housed the first lady’s offices for half a century — needed to be cleared to make way for a $300-million ballroom for state dinners and other large events, which in the past have been hosted in tents on the White House lawn. Some defended the choice, saying a larger hosting space was long overdue.

Still, the demolition of the iconic site riled many, not least because Trump carried it out without adhering to established processes for altering historic federal buildings — including by failing to submit his ballroom plans to the National Capital Planning Commission, which oversees renovations and additions to federal buildings in Washington.

Deposing Maduro of Venezuela

President Trump and CIA Director John Ratcliffe monitor U.S. military operations in Venezuela, from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club on Jan. 3.

(Molly Riley / White House via Getty Images)

On Jan. 3, Trump announced that U.S. special forces had captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife during an overnight military operation involving more than 150 U.S. aircraft entering Venezuelan airspace. Venezuelan authorities said 100 people were killed, including Venezuelan and Cuban security forces, and denounced the operation as a violation of Venezuela’s sovereignty.

Trump administration officials said the operation was to bring Maduro to justice on drug, weapons and conspiracy charges, to which Maduro has pleaded not guilty. Several foreign allies and adversaries, and many Democratic leaders in Congress, denounced the operation as a violation of international law that would embolden Russia and China to act with similar regional aggression.

Trump cited the legal case against Maduro but also Venezuela’s vast oil reserves, which he said would be tapped to uplift Venezuelans, repay debts to American oil companies and fund U.S. oversight of the country. Some critics were surprised Trump was so forthright about his interest in Venezuela’s oil.

Pardoning Jan. 6 rioters

Ben Pollock awaits the possible release of his children outside of the DC Central Detention Facility on Jan. 20, the day President Trump was sworn in for his second term.

(Bryan Woolston / Getty Images)

One of Trump’s first actions in office was to pardon or commute the sentences of those involved in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, in which his supporters beat U.S. Capitol police officers in an attempt to stop Congress from certifying President Biden’s 2020 election.

Trump had telegraphed that he might pardon some of those charged in the assault, after downplaying the attack and calling them “hostages.” However, he surprised many when he pardoned or commuted the sentences of everyone involved — more than 1,500 people, including those charged and convicted of the most violent attacks on officers.

Among those freed by Trump was David Dempsey, a Van Nuys man who had been described by federal prosecutors as “one of the most violent rioters.” Dempsey had been sentenced to 20 years in prison after pleading guilty to assaulting a law enforcement officer with a dangerous weapon and breaching the seat of Congress.

Berating Zelensky of Ukraine

President Trump and Vice President JD Vance meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office on Feb. 28. Vance said Zelensky was being “disrespectful” and had failed to thank Trump for his support, even though Zelensky had thanked him.

(Andrew Harnik / Getty Images)

In February, Trump and Vice President JD Vance raised diplomatic eyebrows around the globe when they publicly berated Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky in an unprecedented exchange in the Oval Office, accusing the U.S. ally of being ungrateful for American help in combating Russian attacks.

Vance said Zelensky was being “disrespectful” and had failed to thank Trump for his support, even though Zelensky had thanked him.

Then, after Zelensky said Ukraine would require security guarantees as part of any deal to end the war, and that a ceasefire was untenable because Russia would use it to regroup, Trump laid into him, saying, “The problem is, I’ve empowered you to be a tough guy. And I don’t think you’d be a tough guy without the United States.”

He said Zelensky would make a deal with Russia or the U.S. would “be out,” which he said wouldn’t be “pretty” for Ukraine. “You don’t have the cards,” Trump said, before accusing Zelensky of “gambling with World War III.”

Investigating political opponents

Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi departs after testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee in October.

(Alex Wong / Getty Images)

One after another, Trump’s political opponents have been targeted with investigations led by political appointees in the Justice Department, often despite career prosecutors raising concerns.

Several have been pursued by Bill Pulte, the Trump-appointed director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, for allegedly committing fraud when securing home mortgages years ago, including by claiming multiple homes as their primary residence. Mortgage allegations have been made against Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Dublin), New York Atty. Gen. Letitia James and Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook.

In addition, former FBI Director James Comey was charged with allegedly lying to Congress and obstruction. And just this month, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said the Justice Department had threatened the central bank with a criminal indictment over Powell’s testimony about Fed building renovations — which he said was a pretext for the administration to undermine the Fed’s independence in setting interest rates.

Trump has defended the investigations as legitimate efforts to hold powerful people accountable for alleged crimes. However, many experts have argued the cases smack of political persecution. Charges against James and Comey were tossed.

Instigating tariff wars

President Trump displays a list of tariffs he announced at a White House event in April.

(Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Trump has repeatedly destabilized global markets by instituting, lifting and reimposing sweeping tariffs on foreign nations. On April 2, Trump held a “Liberation Day” event at the White House where he announced “reciprocal tariffs” against nations around the world — which he said were in response to the U.S. for decades being “looted, pillaged, raped and plundered by nations near and far, both friend and foe alike.”

Trump help up a poster board with new tariff rates, including a 67% tariff on China and a 39% tariff on the European Union. He said the latter, a close U.S. ally, is seen as “friendly,” but “they rip us off.”

Experts immediately questioned the methodology Trump used for calculating the figures, said the tariffs were not reciprocal and raised concerns they would destabilize markets and increase costs for American consumers — which they did.

The tariffs have also raised billions of dollars for the U.S. Treasury, but harmed some of the poorest nations in the world and sparked tensions with the nation’s largest trading partners, including China, Canada and Mexico.

Bombing Iran’s nuclear sites

President Trump addresses the nation in June following the announcement that the U.S. had bombed nuclear sites in Iran.

(Carlos Barria / AFP via Getty Images)

In June, the U.S. joined Israel in attacking Iran, sending American stealth bombers to drop “bunker-buster” bombs on three sites associated with Tehran’s nuclear program. The attack followed Israeli strikes to destroy Iran’s air defenses and offensive missile capabilities.

In an address to the nation, Trump said Iran’s key nuclear facilities were “completely and fully obliterated.” Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian condemned the attacks, saying the bombings “showed that the United States is the primary instigator of the Zionist regime’s hostile actions.”

Many worried the attack would be the precursor to a larger conflict, but Tehran’s response was muted.

Waffling on the Epstein files

Donald Trump in shown in 2000 at Mar-a-Lago with his then-girlfriend and future wife, Melania Knauss, Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell.

(Davidoff Studios Photography / Getty Images)

During his campaign, Trump promised to release the Epstein files — a trove of records from investigations into disgraced billionaire and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, a one-time friend of Trump’s who died in federal prison in 2019. Many Americans, including Trump’s supporters, have long demanded the records, in part to assess whether other powerful men were complicit or involved in the abuse.

However, after taking office, Trump — who has long denied any wrongdoing — worked to prevent the release, pressuring members of Congress not to back a bill mandating it. Not until Congress appeared poised to pass the bill anyway did Trump relent, reverse course and sign the measure into law.

The Justice Department released a massive but extensively redacted trove of records in response to the new law in December. They contained references to Trump being involved in or aware of Epstein’s sexual abuse, which the White House called untrue.

Declaring end to birthright citizenship

Trump has signed a wave of executive orders radically altering U.S. policy and the federal government. One that stands out is his order purporting to end birthright citizenship for the U.S.-born children of many immigrants — which is guaranteed by the 14th Amendment of 1868, which states, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens of the United States and the state wherein they reside.”

The Trump administration has argued that language applies to freed slaves, not the children of immigrants in the country temporarily or illegally. California, other states and private groups challenged the order in court, and federal judges have put it on hold.

Last month, the Supreme Court said it would hear arguments on Trump’s order — teeing up a major test of Trump’s power.

On July 2, 2024, a mamón tree fell on Delcy Rodríguez. The accident caused injuries to her right arm, which she frequently wore bandages on. That day, Rodríguez was in Cumanacoa, in eastern Venezuela, overseeing the damage caused by Hurricane Beryl, a gust of wind brought down the enormous tree on top of her and some of her equipment.

The accident was announced by Nicolás Maduro at a public event, in the midst of the campaign for the presidential elections of July 28 of that year. With a discordant sense of humor that has aged poorly, he said: “Delcy, while working in Cumanacoa, was hit by a missile. But she recovers from everything.”

And the statement seems true. Because a year and a half later, we see her—quite recovered—being sworn in as acting president of Venezuela after, indeed, American bombs fell on Caracas to remove Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores.

Delcy Eloína Rodríguez Gómez, the woman who occupies the presidential seat in Miraflores with the unexpected backing of the United States, is one of the figures with the greatest accumulation of power within the Venezuelan ruling party and a key operator of the state’s political, repressive, and economic apparatus.

Delcy Rodríguez has been presented as a moderate, a technocrat, a “different” chavista because of her studies in France and England and her fluent English. The first is not true. This is confirmed by American columnist Eva Golinger, who spent several years in Venezuela alongside Hugo Chávez, and by former Turkish diplomat Imdat Oner, who served in Caracas and recalls a meeting with ambassadors in 2015 when Rodríguez was foreign minister: “She arrived two hours late and started yelling at the US and European diplomats. She is a radical chavista, in terms of ideology,” he told La Hora de Venezuela.

What Delcy Rodríguez is, observers and analysts agree, is pragmatic. In fact, her greatest rise within the chavista power structure has occurred since she began to pull the strings of the economic agenda. Over the years, she has become more than just the vice president: she is a central operator of the system, the figure to whom is called upon when it is necessary to confront, execute, close ranks, and secure economic lifelines.

Delcy Eloína Rodríguez Gómez was born in Caracas on May 18, 1969. Her political biography cannot be understood without a later date: July 25, 1976, when her father, Jorge Antonio Rodríguez, died in police custody after being arrested for his involvement in the kidnapping of American businessman William Niehous. The death—attributed to torture and mistreatment—became a breaking point for the family and, over time, a key element of the chavista narrative about the 1958-1998 governments. For Delcy and her brother Jorge, that history of victimization served as both a wound and a compass: politics as reparation, as justice, as revenge. In fact, she once uttered on television: “The Bolivarian Revolution, the arrival of our Commander, was our personal revenge.”

In a government where trust is managed as a scarce resource, Delcy has remained for a fundamental reason: she serves to hold the edifice together when it creaks.

Furthermore, Delcy is not just Delcy. She is part of a duo that, for years, has operated as the backbone of the revolutionary government: alongside her brother Jorge Rodríguez, president of the National Assembly, they have both been described as “political twins” of chavismo. They share origins, narratives, and ambitions.

This family alliance explains their strength. In a government where trust is managed as a scarce resource, Delcy has remained for a fundamental reason: she serves to hold the edifice together when it creaks.

That’s why, when the economy hit its lowest point and needed a boost, Rodríguez became the only high-ranking official attending business meetings, while a vast network of private initiatives was being built under her wing. Investigative journalism platforms like Armando.info have uncovered the now-acting president’s connections to a “business entourage” with ramifications in the construction, tourism, real estate, food import, and packaging sectors.

Domestically, government officials describe her as a reserved, quiet, and low-profile figure with a small but highly loyal circle of allies—allies who now stand by her in what could be the greatest paradox of her life: denouncing the American capture of Nicolás Maduro in her speeches, while in practice allowing the Trump administration to exert control over political decision-making and resuming oil sales agreements with the US.

However, the hand Delcy Rodríguez is currently wielding lacks, by far, the legal certainty, reliability, and constitutional guarantees that oil executives demand. She and her inner circle are burdened by a long history of human rights violations, economic hardship, over 800 political prisoners still incarcerated, and internal disputes.

A pillar of the dictatorship

Rodríguez served as Minister of the Presidency (2006), Minister of Communication and Information (2013-2014), Minister of Foreign Affairs (2014-2017), President of the National Constituent Assembly (2017-2018), and, since June 2018, Executive Vice President. However, one of the turning points in her career was her presidency of the National Constituent Assembly, a body created without a prior referendum and not recognized by the international community.

From her position as president of the National Constituent Assembly (ANC), she spearheaded a process that effectively nullified the National Assembly elected in 2015, concentrating legislative, judicial, and political oversight functions in a body dominated exclusively by chavismo. Under her leadership, legal instruments widely criticized by human rights organizations were approved.

This was also the period when Delcy Rodríguez held the pro tempore presidency of Mercosur, and when Venezuela ceased to be a member of the organization for violating the Accession Protocol.

In this context, the then Foreign Minister was involved in an unforgettable incident: In December 2016, she was denied entry to the organization’s meeting held in Buenos Aires, but she made headlines by appearing with her arm in a sling, allegedly due to injuries she suffered when she was prevented from entering the meeting. “I was beaten by a police officer (…) the offenses and physical abuse that can occur within Mercosur against a nation and its foreign minister are shameful,” Rodríguez stated at the time.

Investigations indicate that, days before the ‘Delcygate’ trip, Delcy Rodríguez facilitated the sale of 104 Venezuelan gold bars valued at more than $60 million to Spanish businesspeople.

Delcy Rodríguez’s record on human rights ranges from her participation in the creation of a repressive legal framework to her role as one of the main perpetrators of one of the most intense waves of repression during the chavista era. During her tenure in the National Constituent Assembly, regulatory frameworks and decisions were promoted and consolidated that facilitated the repression and criminalization of dissent.

Among them are the Constitutional Law Against Hatred (2017), systematically used to criminally prosecute opposition members, journalists, activists, and citizens for expressions on social media, with sentences of up to 20 years in prison. She provided critical support for permanent states of emergency, which suspended constitutional guarantees and allowed for arrests without a warrant. Delcy Rodríguez also helped to legitimize civil-military control of public order, consolidating the use of military courts and intelligence agencies against civilians.

As Executive Vice President of the Republic, she had direct authority over Ministries and security agencies. Between 2018 and April 2021, under her chain of command, the Bolivarian National Intelligence Service (SEBIN) was documented as responsible for arbitrary detentions, torture, enforced disappearances, and mass surveillance.

The UN Human Rights Council’s Fact-Finding Mission concluded in 2020 that there were “reasonable grounds to believe” that Rodríguez knew or should have known about crimes committed by the State and failed to act to prevent them, despite her position of authority. These conclusions were reiterated and expanded in subsequent resolutions that kept the international investigation into Venezuela active.

Corruption, gold, and international schemes

Beyond her role in the chain of command of human rights violations, Delcy Rodríguez has been linked to transnational corruption schemes involving gold, foreign businesspeople, and opaque financial circuits.

On January 20, 2020, Rodríguez (sanctioned by the European Union from 2018) entered Spain despite the existing travel ban and met with then-Minister José Luis Ábalos (currently in jail), triggering the scandal known as Delcygate. Investigations indicate that, days before the trip, she facilitated the sale of 104 Venezuelan gold bars valued at more than $60 million to Spanish businesspeople. The Civil Guard found communications between Rodríguez and businessman Víctor de Aldama that directly link the vice president to this transaction.

This case is part of a broader pattern of illegal extraction and international money laundering of Venezuelan gold through shell companies, a scheme that reinforces corruption and the evasion of financial controls. In the political and media sphere, the Delcygate scandal has also been linked to other controversies in Spain, such as the state bailout of the airline Plus Ultra, which has ties to figures associated with Chavismo, although there is no direct legal evidence implicating Rodríguez.

It is impossible to forget that Venezuela’s current interim president spearheaded a scandalous pact with dangerous gang members in 2017.

Another key figure is Jorge Giménez. This Venezuelan businessman and president of the Venezuelan Football Federation (FVF), is the subject of an investigation by Armando.info, which exposes him as an operative for the chavista regime and a trusted associate of Rodríguez. He is implicated in opaque contracts linked to the CLAP program and PDVSA, with debts and irregular agreements exceeding $1.2 billion. Furthermore, he appears in chats related to the Spanish case as a direct interlocutor of his “boss,” solidifying the connection between Venezuelan political power and international corruption networks.

The Associated Press recently published a report revealing that the DEA has been investigating Rodríguez for years. “Rodriguez has been on the radar of the US Drug Enforcement Administration for years, and in 2022 she was even labeled a ‘priority target,’ a designation the DEA reserves for suspects believed to have a ‘significant impact’ on drug trafficking, according to records obtained by the AP and more than half a dozen current and former US law enforcement officials,” the publication states.

Although the same publication clarifies that the United States has never accused Rodríguez of any crime and notes that she “is not among the more than a dozen Venezuelan officials—from Maduro’s inner circle—accused of drug trafficking along with the ousted president,” it is impossible to forget that Venezuela’s current interim president spearheaded a scandalous pact with dangerous gang members in 2017.

That year, while dozens of students protesting against the repression of Nicolás Maduro’s government were being killed in the streets of the country’s main cities, Rodríguez, then president of the National Assembly, led the task of negotiating with criminal groups to keep them calm and prevent them from rising up against the government.

The battle over a new tax on California’s billionaires is set to heat up in the coming months as citizens spar over whether the state should squeeze its ultra-rich to better serve its ordinary residents.

The proposed billionaire tax that triggered the tempest is still far from being approved by voters or even making the ballot, but the idea has already sparked backlash from vocal tech moguls — some of whom have already shifted their bases outside the state.

Under the Billionaire Tax Act, Californians worth more than $1 billion would pay a one-time 5% tax on their total wealth. The Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West, the union behind the act, said the measure would raise much-needed money for healthcare, education and food assistance programs.

Other unions have piled on billionaires, targeting the rich in Los Angeles.

A group of Los Angeles labor unions said Wednesday that it is proposing a ballot measure to raise taxes on companies whose chief executive officers earn 50 times more than their median-paid employees.

Here is how this fight could continue to play out in the Golden State:

Who would be affected?

The California billionaire tax would apply to about 200 California billionaires who reside in the state as of Jan. 1. Roughly 90% of funds would go to healthcare and the rest to public K-14 education and state food assistance.

The tax, due in 2027, would exclude real estate, pensions and retirement accounts, according to an analysis from the Legislative Analyst’s Office, a nonpartisan government agency. Billionaires could spread out the tax payment over five years, but would have to pay more.

Which billionaires are already distancing themselves from California?

Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin

Google is still headquartered in California, but December filings to the California Secretary of State show other companies tied to Page and Brin recently converted out of the state.

One filing, for example, shows that one of the companies they managed, now named T-Rex Holdings, moved from Palo Alto to Reno last month.

Business Insider and the New York Times earlier reported on these filings. Google didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Palantir co-founder Peter Thiel

Thiel Capital, based in Los Angeles, announced in December it opened an office in Miami. The firm didn’t respond to a request for comment. Thiel recently contributed $3 million to the political action committee of the California Business Roundtable, which is opposing the ballot measure, records provided to the Secretary of State’s Office show.

Oracle co-founder and Chief Technology Officer Larry Ellison

Years before the wealth tax proposal, Ellison began pulling back from California, but he’s continued to distance himself farther from the state since the proposal emerged.

Last year, Ellison sold his San Francisco mansion for $45 million. The home on 2850 Broadway was sold off-market in mid-December, according to Redfin.

Oracle declined to comment.

DoorDash co-founder and Chief Technology Officer Andy Fang

Fang, who was born and raised in California, said on X that he loves the state but is thinking about moving.

“Stupid wealth tax proposals like this make it irresponsible for me not to plan leaving the state,” he said.

DoorDash didn’t respond to a request for comment.

What would it still take to become law?

To qualify for the ballot, proponents of the proposal, led by the healthcare union, must gather nearly 875,000 registered voter signatures and submit them to county elections officials by June 24.

If it makes it on the November ballot, the proposal would be the focus of intense scrutiny and debate as both sides have already lined up big war chests to bombard voters with their positions. A majority of voters would need to approve the ballot measure.

Lawyers for billionaires have also signaled the battle won’t be over even if the ballot measure passes.

“Our clients are prepared to mount a vigorous constitutional challenge if this measure advances,” wrote Alex Spiro, an attorney who has represented billionaires such as Elon Musk in a December letter to California Gov. Gavin Newsom.

What are the initiative’s chances?

It’s unclear if the ballot measure has a good chance of passing in November. Newsom opposes the tax, and his support has proved important for ballot measures.

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. The following year, he opposed legislation to tax assets exceeding $50 million. The bill was shelved before the Legislature could vote on it. A bill that would impose an annual tax on California residents whose net worth surpassed $30 million also failed in 2020.

However, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Fremont) have backed the wealth tax proposal, and Californians have passed temporary tax measures before. In 2012, they approved Proposition 30 to increase sales tax and personal income tax for residents with an annual income of more than $250,000.

Could it solve California’s problems?

The Legislative Analyst’s Office said in a December letter that the state would probably collect tens of billions of dollars from the wealth tax, but it could also lose other tax revenue.

“The exact amount the state would collect is very hard to predict for many reasons. For example, it is hard to know what actions billionaires would take to reduce the amount of tax they pay. Also, much of the wealth is based on stock prices, which are always changing,” the letter said.

California economist Kevin Klowden said the tax could create future budget problems for the state. “The catch is that this is a one-off fix for what is a systemic problem,” he said.

Supporters of the proposal said the measure would raise about $100 billion and pushed back against the idea that billionaires would flee.

“We see a lot of cheap talk from billionaires,” said UC Berkeley law professor Brian Galle, who helped write the proposal. “Some people do actually leave and change their behavior, but the vast bulk of wealthy people don’t, because it doesn’t make sense.”

Still, the pushback has been escalating.

Palo Alto-based venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya estimates that the lost revenues from the billionaires who have already left the state would lead to more losses in tax revenues than gained by the new tax.

“By starting this ill-conceived attempt at an asset tax, the California budget deficit will explode,” he posted on X. “And we still don’t know if the tax will even make the ballot.”

The union backing the initiative says “the billionaire exodus narrative” is “wildly overstated.”

“Right now, it appears the overwhelming majority of billionaires have chosen to stay in California past the Jan. 1 deadline,” said Suzanne Jimenez, chief of staff at SEIU-United Healthcare Workers West. “Only a very small percentage left before the deadline, despite weeks of Chicken Little talking points claiming a modest tax would trigger a mass departure.”

Times staff writer Seema Mehta contributed to this report.

From the studios of New York City, late-night television has long presented itself as more than entertainment. It has been a place where satire meets accountability. After January 3rd, the day US forces bombed Caracas and captured Nicolás Maduro, for the first time that familiar spotlight turned suddenly towards Venezuela.

Much of the humor that followed focused, understandably, on the actions of the United States. For American comedians, criticizing their own government, and how it deploys public money and military power, is not only natural, it is necessary. But these days, that aspiration of accountability has become hard to watch for Venezuelans who have been turned into a backdrop for these jokes.

On Late Night, Seth Meyers joked about Donald Trump sharing a post that listed him as president of Venezuela, adding that “not many people can say they were the worst president in the history of two countries.” While a joke like that might land with the US audience, for Venezuelans it collapses two profoundly unequal realities into a punchline: equating the failures of a democratic system with life under an authoritarian regime marked by torture, political imprisonment, and forced exile. Similar tones appeared elsewhere, including when Jimmy Kimmel casually placed Trump and Maduro in the same category of “dictators”. Of course, the joke was never meant for Venezuelans. It was written for Americans. But in a media ecosystem where clips travel instantly across borders, the message is dangerous to Americans, Venezuelans and the whole internet.

Watching the reactions that followed the capture of Maduro has been difficult. For many people, especially those who grew up in countries with free media, functioning institutions, real alternation of power, and where dissent does not lead to imprisonment or torture, these guarantees feel not only universal, but almost invisible. They are so deeply embedded that they are taken for granted. 

Over time, this invisibility becomes a form of privilege. The privilege of expressing political opinions without fear. The privilege of knowing your loved ones will return home for dinner. The privilege of discussing marxist theory and the perils of capitalism over expensive wine without having lived under regimes like those in Cuba, North Korea, Iran or, in this case, Venezuela. The privilege of not being able to imagine what life under such conditions looks like, because it feels, and is, so remote.

Three decades after Rwanda, amplified by social media, we now have a global civil society passionately defending international law. This advocacy matters.

This privilege shapes how international law is defended: as an abstract principle, rather than a fragile protection that often fails those who need it most.

Nice principles, bad timing

In recent days, international law has returned forcefully to the center of public debate. We are told it was violated. Foreign Affairs magazine warns of “a world without rules.” Social media debates argue that Venezuelans should have solved their problems internally, or that the United States should have respected international law. The European Union and UN bodies have issued statements expressing that they are “deeply shocked” and “strongly condemn” recent events. Political leaders have raised alarms about the dangers posed to the international system. Outrage has been swift and loud.

But what we, Venezuelans, find jarring is not the concern itself, but its timing.

For years, Venezuelans exhausted every institutional mechanism available to seek change: elections, negotiations, protests. Along the way, we documented abuses, appealed to international bodies, fled the country, and buried our dead. In response, the multilateral system produced reports, procedural delays, symbolic gestures—and, more often than not, only silence. Sanctions imposed by some states were loudly criticized and falsely blamed for empty shelves and shortages that were the result of years of mismanagement, corruption, and repression.

Meanwhile, Maduro’s regime systematically withdrew from scrutiny, obstructing or disengaging from international and regional mechanisms where it might have faced even limited accountability. 

Today’s alarm stands in stark contrast to yesterday’s indifference.

Venezuela’s case, however, is not the first. In 1994, despite clear warnings, between 500,000 and 800,000 people were murdered in Rwanda while the international community debated mandates and political costs. “Never again” became a defining phrase of international law to ask for forgiveness after the genocide. And it has been forgiveness that has marked international law’s recent history. From Bosnia to Darfur, from Syria to Myanmar, atrocities have unfolded while international law remained intact on paper. 

Recent history has shown that the UN remains profoundly ill-equipped to address situations in which the state itself becomes the main perpetrator of violence against its own population.

Three decades after Rwanda, amplified by social media, we now have a global civil society passionately defending international law. This advocacy matters. But recognizing it as a privilege is fundamental. In the case of Venezuela, much of this defense comes from the comfort of countries where having political opinions carries no personal risk, where dissent does not lead to prison, torture, or death. In this case it becomes easier to defend legal principles than to confront the human cost of their repeated failure.

The problem, then, is not that international law matters too much, but that it does selectively. When the United Nations was created, along with its Charter and the foundations of modern international law, its central purpose was to prevent the repetition of the horrors of World War II. This meant privileging diplomacy and peaceful dispute resolution over the use of force between states. Without a question through that lens, US military action in Caracas contradicts the very foundations of the system, and that is a very legitimate concern.

But what critics fail to acknowledge is that the UN was designed primarily to manage conflicts between states. Not as a way to govern those relationships, but a way to channel and address challenges in a world in a state of anarchy. Recent history has shown that it remains profoundly ill-equipped to address situations in which the state itself becomes the main perpetrator of violence against its own population. In such cases, sovereignty ceases to be a shield for people and becomes a shield for power.

Because it has become too often a system that protects sovereignty over people, stability over justice. As such, it has become an instrument that authoritarian regimes learn to weaponize, while its costs are borne by the most vulnerable.

The space opened by bombs

In Venezuela, people do not live in fear of foreign bombs from the US. They live in fear of empty shelves, intelligence services, arbitrary detention, torture, and death. Any discussion that elevates abstract legal violations while sidelining this reality risks becoming not principled, but condescending.

The same is true of narratives that reduce everything to cynical explanations about US interests, as if Venezuelans were naïve about power or unaware of geopolitics. We are not confusing interests with ideals. What many of us recognize is that a long-frozen status quo, one that normalized repression and indefinite stagnation, has been disrupted. That disruption does not guarantee democracy. But it opens a space that did not exist before, and gives us hope.

The key challenge moving forward is not whether Venezuelans should patiently wait for the international community to act according to international law while continuing to document abuses. It is whether defenders of the system are willing to acknowledge its limits and to stop confusing inaction with virtue.

International law is worth defending. But defending it without reckoning with its persistent failures in countries like Venezuela simply showcases a position of privilege—one that Venezuelans, or Iranians, can no longer afford.

Elie Wiesel warned in his address to the US Congress that indifference is never neutral. It always benefits the oppressor, never the victim. Those who defend international law still have an opportunity to prove that they truly care about the people it was meant to protect. A couple of big actions that go further than strongly condemning or being shocked is to push for the immediate and unconditional release of all political prisoners, enforce asset freezes against the regime and its enablers, and stop treating accountability as optional. And they could do so consistently—in Venezuela, in Iran, and wherever international law is invoked loudly, but applied timidly.

MINNEAPOLIS — The mayor of Minneapolis said Sunday that sending active-duty soldiers into Minnesota to help with an immigration crackdown is a ridiculous and unconstitutional idea as he urged protesters to remain peaceful so the president won’t see a need to send in the U.S. military.

Daily protests have been ongoing throughout January since the Department of Homeland Security ramped up immigration enforcement in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul by bringing in more than 2,000 federal officers.

In a diverse neighborhood where Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers have been frequently seen, U.S. postal workers marched through on Sunday, chanting: “Protect our routes. Get ICE out.”

The Pentagon has ordered about 1,500 active-duty soldiers based in Alaska who specialize in operating in arctic conditions to be ready in case of a possible deployment to Minnesota, two Defense officials said Sunday.

The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive military plans, said two infantry battalions of the Army’s 11th Airborne Division have been given prepare-to-deploy orders.

One Pentagon official said the troops are standing by to deploy to Minnesota should President Trump invoke the Insurrection Act, as he has threatened.

The rarely used 19th century law would allow him to send military troops into Minnesota, where protesters have been confronting federal immigration agents for weeks. He has since backed off the threat, at least for now.

“It’s ridiculous, but we will not be intimidated by the actions of this federal government,” Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday. “It is not fair, it’s not just, and it’s completely unconstitutional.”

Thousands of Minneapolis citizens are exercising their 1st Amendment rights and the protests have been overwhelmingly peaceful, Frey said.

“We are not going to take the bait. We will not counter Donald Trump’s chaos with our own brand of chaos here,” Frey said.

Gov. Tim Walz has mobilized the Minnesota National Guard, although no units have been deployed to the streets.

Peter Noble joined dozens of other U.S. Postal Service workers Sunday on their only day off from their mail routes to march against the immigration crackdown. They passed by the place where an immigration officer shot and killed Renee Nicole Good, a U.S. citizen and mother of three, during a Jan. 7 confrontation.

“I’ve seen them driving recklessly around the streets while I am on my route, putting lives in danger,” Noble said.

Letter carrier Susan Becker said she came out to march on the coldest day since the crackdown started because it’s important to keep telling the federal government she thinks what it is doing is wrong. She said people on her route have reported ICE breaking into apartment buildings and tackling people in the parking lots of shopping centers.

“These people are by and large citizens and immigrants. But they’re citizens, and they deserve to be here; they’ve earned their place and they are good people,” Becker said.

A Republican U.S. House member from Minnesota called for Walz to tone down his comments about fighting the federal government and help the federal law enforcement efforts.

Many of the ICE officers in Minnesota are neighbors just doing the jobs they were sent to do, House Majority Whip Tom Emmer told WCCO-AM in Minneapolis.

“These are not mean-spirited people. But right now, they feel like they’re under attack. They don’t know where the next attack is going to come from and who it is. So people need to keep in mind this starts at the top,” Emmer said.

Across social media, videos have been posted of federal officers spraying protesters with pepper spray, knocking down doors and forcibly taking people into custody. On Friday, a federal judge ruled that immigration officers can’t detain or tear-gas peaceful protesters who aren’t obstructing authorities, including when they’re observing the officers during the Minnesota crackdown.

Brook writes for the Associated Press. AP writers Konstantin Toropin in Washington, Steve Karnowski in Minneapolis, Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations and Jeffrey Collins in Columbia, S.C., contributed to this report.

MINNEAPOLIS — Rows of businesses stood shuttered inside a sprawling complex of Somali businesses on a recent afternoon.

Karmel Mall in south Minneapolis contains more than 100 small businesses in suites offering clothing and food, insurance and accounting services, and much more.

One day last week, the noisy hallways inside lay quiet, save for occasional chatter between neighboring vendors. The smell of fried food still wafted from the bakeries, the central heating hummed, and the sound of Quran recitation flowed quietly from some shops.

But many sellers sat alone in their clothing stores, waiting for the occasional customer to walk by. Everyone is afraid of federal immigration agents, business owners said. Sellers and customers, citizens and noncitizens. Some don’t bother opening shop because they aren’t expecting any customers.

“It’s been like this for three weeks now,” said Abdi Wahid, who works at his mother’s convenience store in the mall. “Everywhere it’s all been closed up, all the stores.”

Karmel Mall is an economic hub for the area’s Somali population, the largest in the United States. It also features housing, a mosque and Quran classes, serving as a robust community center for the area.

The economic impact of the Trump administration’s so-called Operation Metro Surge stretches beyond the Somali community: Many immigrants are on edge, afraid to go to work or leave their homes amid the immigration crackdown.

President Trump has made the Somali community a special target of his deportation rhetoric after a recent government fraud case in Minnesota included some Somali defendants. Since December, Trump has repeatedly insulted members of the community, calling them “garbage” and saying “they contribute nothing.”

Wahid said early afternoons at the family business once meant 15 to 20 customers. These days, it’s tough to get one.

Wahid is a citizen, but he said the fear extends beyond undocumented immigrants. Citizens are also scared of coming in, especially after the ICE officer killing of Renee Nicole Good and the ICE raid at Roosevelt High School in south Minneapolis.

“I think that caused a lot of people to not even want to come,” he said, because they could be targeted “just because of their race.”

Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement that law enforcement uses “reasonable suspicion” under the 4th Amendment to make arrests.

“A person’s immigration status makes them a target for enforcement, not their skin color, race or ethnicity,” she said.

Upstairs, Bashir Garad runs Safari Travel & Accounting Services. Not only has the crackdown in Minneapolis meant he’s lost almost all his customers, but his clients are canceling upcoming trips because they’re worried they won’t be let back into the country.

“They see a lot of unlawful things going on in the city,” he said. “They look at something bad, and then they think some bad things may happen to them.” The majority of his clients are East African, and nearly all are U.S. citizens. They still hesitate to travel.

“The government is not doing the right thing,” Garad said. “If there’s a criminal, there’s a criminal. Regardless, there are ways to find the criminal, but to marginalize the community’s name, and a whole people, that is unlawful.”

Ibrahim Dahiye, who sells electronics, said winter always used to be slow, “but now it’s totally different. No one comes here. All the stores are closed, few are open.”

Since the crackdown began, Dahiye said his business is down $20,000 monthly, and he’s now pooling funds to make rent.

He said he’s lost most of his customers. His employees are too scared to come to work. He tapped his jacket pocket, saying he keeps his passport on him at all times.

“I don’t know what we can do,” Dahiye said. “We believe in Allah, but we can’t do anything.”

Raza writes for the Associated Press.

The “60 Minutes” story on the El Salvador prison that led to a rocky start for CBS News Editor in Chief Bari Weiss made it to air Sunday.

The segment, “Inside CECOT,” detailed the Trump administration’s treatment of hundreds of Venezuelan migrants who were deported to an El Salvador prison known for its harsh conditions. The story was scheduled to run Dec. 21 but was pulled the day before air by Weiss who believed it needed additional reporting, including a more robust response from the White House.

Sharyn Alfonsi, the “60 Minutes” correspondent who worked for months on the piece, protested the move by Weiss, calling it politically motivated in an email she sent to colleagues.

The appointment of Weiss, made in October by Paramount Chief Executive David Ellison, is seen by many CBS News insiders as a move to placate the Trump administration. The company wants a smooth regulatory path as it pursues the acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery. Pulling a “60 Minutes” segment critical of the administration after it had already been promoted only intensified that perception.

CBS News maintained that the story would eventually run.

“CBS News leadership has always been committed to airing the 60 MINUTES CECOT piece as soon as it was ready,” the network said in a statement. “Tonight, viewers get to see it, along with other important stories, all of which speak to CBS News’ independence and the power of our storytelling.”

Weiss insisted Alfonsi’s story needed more reporting and remarks from a talking head from the White House. The version of the segment that aired Sunday has three and a half minutes of additional information but no new interviews.

The White House did provide statements, which were read by Alfonsi at the top and end of the segment. Data on the number of criminals apprehended by ICE was added to the story.

The program also revealed that one of the prisoners who described the abuse inside CECOT to Alfonsi had a swastika and three sixes tattoos on his body, which are associated with the Aryan Brotherhood, a gang of white supremacists.

The administration has used tattoos as a means to determine if an undocumented migrant is a gang member. The interview subject denied that he belonged to a gang and said he had no knowledge of what the tattoos represented.

The decision to pull the CECOT piece became a major media industry story. Weiss initially played down its importance saying it was a “slow news week.” But it was widely believed inside the news division that Weiss’ move was a major snafu that reflected her lack of experience as a TV news executive and awareness of the fishbowl nature of an industry where every action is scrutinized.

People close to Weiss say she since acknowledged she was not familiar with the process where the contents of a news program are distributed for promotional purposes and on-screen TV listings ahead of airtime. Weiss has also told colleagues she should have been involved earlier in the screening and vetting process for Alfonsi’s story. She did not see it until the Thursday before the Dec. 21 “60 Minutes” air date.

Trump has long criticized “60 Minutes,” often accusing the program of treating him unfairly. He extracted a $16 million settlement from CBS News after he sued over an interview with his opponent in the 2024 presidential race, Kamala Harris.

Trump claimed the program was deceptively edited to help Harris’ election efforts. While CBS News would have likely prevailed in court, the company made the payment to clear the way for Paramount’s merger with Skydance Media.

Weiss joined CBS News after Paramount acquired her digital news site the Free Press, which gained a following with its sharp critiques of leftist policies. Her first major move at the network was to provide a prime-time town hall for Erika Kirk, the widow of slain right-wing activist Charile Kirk.

Weiss has also overseen the so-far inauspicious revamp of “CBS Evening News” with its new anchor Tony Dokoupil. The early days of the program had technical glitches and was criticized for coverage that was too friendly to the Trump administration. One longtime senior producer, Javier Guzman, was fired after repeatedly expressing his disagreements with the direction of the program.

The program has had a number of embarrassing moments including President Trump telling Dokoupil that he would not have gotten the anchor job if Harris had won the 2024 presidential race.

SACRAMENTO — People often ask me how things have changed at the state Capitol since I began covering news there many decades ago. My latest short answer: Look at the new California Senate leader.

In fact, look at the entire Senate. Actually, the other legislative house, too, the Assembly.

There was only one female legislator when I arrived very young and green in 1961. She was an Assembly member, Democrat Pauline Davis from mountainous Plumas County in the northeast. You can thank her persistence for highway rest stops.

There wasn’t one Latino in the entire 120-member Legislature. The first two in modern times were elected the next year.

Today, the new Senate president pro tem — Democrat Monique Limón of Goleta in Santa Barbara County — is the upper house’s first Latina leader and the first mother who is leader of the Senate. And there are more female senators than males, 21 to 19.

The Assembly’s getting there, too. Women hold 38 of the lower house’s 80 seats. In all, 49% of all legislators are women — 59 of them.

A woman wasn’t elected to the Senate until 1976 when conservative Democrat Rose Ann Vuich, a farm owner, won a seat from Dinuba in the San Joaquin Valley. Vuich made it clear she was “not a part of the women’s liberation movement.” But whenever a male colleague rose to address the “gentlemen of the Senate,” she reminded them of her presence by ringing a small bell.

Even by 1980, only 9% of California legislators were women. The first Latina senator — Democrat Hilda Solis, now a Los Angeles County supervisor — wasn’t elected until 1994. Now, there are 13 Latina senators, including three Republicans.

The first female Senate president pro tem, Toni Atkins of San Diego, was elected leader in 2018. She’s also the only person to have been chosen as both Assembly speaker and Senate pro tem.

There have been three female Assembly speakers, including current L.A. Mayor Karen Bass. The first was Republican Doris Allen of Orange County in 1995, a puppet of departing Democratic Speaker Willie Brown. She was quickly recalled by her constituents.

Six of the last 10 speakers have been Latinos. But before Limón, there was only one Latino Senate leader: Democrat Kevin de León of Los Angeles.

OK, all this history may be interesting. But so what? What difference has it made to California citizens?

“A couple of areas have been the most profound,” says veteran Sen. Tom Umberg (D-Santa Ana), who served in the Assembly in the 1990s and was elected to the Senate in 2018.

“Healthcare and child care. When I first came, I don’t remember child care being a big-deal issue. I certainly don’t remember access to healthcare being an issue. The presence of women has highlighted those things.”

I asked the new Senate leader. Women have provided the Legislature with more “diversity of experiences,” Limón answers. And child care has been made more than just a women’s issue, she adds. “It’s an economic issue. It enables workers to go to their jobs.”

But Latinos? How has their vast increase at the Capitol helped California Latinos?

Not much, complains Mike Madrid, a GOP strategist who has written a book on Latino politics.

“It’s been more about representation than results,” Madrid says. “Representation is not enough. The metrics are worse now than they were years ago: poverty rates, home ownership, 50% of Latino children on Medi-Cal.”

Madrid says Latino politicians have been too focused on immigration issues and not nearly enough on what their constituents really care about: economic opportunity and living costs.

What needs to be done for Latinos? ”Housing, housing, housing,” Madrid says. “Why aren’t Latinos leading this fight?”

Madrid notes that recent reforms of the much-abused California Environmental Quality Act, which has stymied housing development, were pushed by Gov. Gavin Newsom and white legislators.

Limón says she and Democrats are currently focused on a proposed $10-billion housing bond they’re trying to place on the June primary election ballot. It would help finance housing construction for low-income people. But apparently not the middle class.

Limón, 46, the daughter of Mexican immigrants, has a much calmer personality than many of her rough-hewn male predecessors.

She’s “kind, generous and sweet,” Sen. Angelique Ashby (D-Sacramento) told the Sacramento Bee.

But her demeanor masks an inner toughness. You don’t rise to Senate leadership — second only to the governor in raw power — by being a gentle wimp.

At her recent oath-taking ceremony in the Senate chamber, Sen. Caroline Menjivar (D-Panorama City) called Limón in Spanish a “badass.”

Limón appointed Ashby the Senate majority leader, the second in command. Menjivar was named Democratic Caucus chair, a post Limón previously held.

A liberal progressive, Limón was the Democrats’ overwhelming choice for the top job, Umberg says, because “she seems to be fair, a critical quality in a pro tem. She has intestinal fortitude and will stand up to institutional interests. She cares about the [legislative] institution and is pragmatic.”

Longtime Sen. John Laird (D-Santa Cruz) says, “She’s easy to get along with, but she’s outcome-oriented.”

No male bothered to run for Senate leader, Laird says, because the men mostly felt the selection of a woman was inevitable since they now hold the house majority. Limón beat out two other women: Ashby and Sen. Lena Gonzalez (D-Long Beach).

Limón named Laird chairman of the crucial Budget Committee. But she appointed women as chairs of the five deep-diving budget subcommittees.

Other major committees will be headed by a gender mix. For example, women were named chairs of Appropriations, Education, Environmental Quality, Governmental Organization and Health. Men will lead such key panels as Energy, Housing, Insurance, Judiciary (Umberg), Public Safety and Revenue and Taxation.

We won’t know for months how any of this will turn out substantively. But it’s the continuation of a big shift toward more female power in California’s Capitol.

What else you should be reading

The must-read: In San Francisco, Newsom rails against proposed billionaire tax, vows to protect homeless Californians
CA vs. Trump: Trump administration’s demands for California’s voter rolls, including Social Security numbers, rejected by federal judge
In-Or-Out: California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta opts against running for governor. Again

Until next week,
George Skelton

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