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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.
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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.
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.
CONCORD, N.H. — A New Hampshire Episcopal bishop is attracting national attention after warning his clergy to finalize their wills and get their affairs in order to prepare for a “new era of martyrdom,” invoking the nonviolent resistance of the civil rights era.
Bishop Rob Hirschfeld of the Episcopal Church of New Hampshire made his comments this month at a vigil honoring Renee Nicole Good, who was fatally shot on Jan. 7 behind the wheel of her vehicle by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer.
The Trump administration has defended the ICE officer’s actions, saying he fired in self-defense while standing near the front of Good’s vehicle as it began to move forward. That explanation has been panned by Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and others based on videos of the confrontation, which show the officer shot Good several times.
Hirschfeld’s speech cited several historical clergy members who had risked their lives to protect others, including New Hampshire seminary student Jonathan Daniels, who was shot and killed by a sheriff’s deputy in Alabama while shielding a young Black civil rights activist in 1965.
“I have told the clergy of the Episcopal diocese of New Hampshire that we may be entering into that same witness,” Hirschfeld said. “And I’ve asked them to get their affairs in order, to make sure they have their wills written, because it may be that now is no longer the time for statements, but for us with our bodies, to stand between the powers of this world and the most vulnerable.”
Hirschfeld said people of Christian faith should not fear death.
“Those of us who are ready to build a new world, we also have to be prepared,” he said. “If we truly want to live without fear, we cannot fear even death itself, my friends.”
Other religious leaders, including the Most Rev. Sean W. Rowe, the presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, have also called on Christians to protect the vulnerable amid the rise in aggressive and sometimes violent immigration enforcement actions under the Trump administration.
“We keep resisting, advocating, bearing witness and repairing the breach,” Rowe said during a prayer last week. “We keep sheltering and caring for those among us who are immigrants and refugees because they are beloved by God, and without them, we cannot fully be the church.”
In Minnesota, the Right Rev. Craig Loya urged people not to meet “hatred with hatred” but instead focus on love in “a world obviously not fine.”
“We are going to make like our ancient ancestors, and turn the world upside down by mobilizing for love,” he said. “We are going to disrupt with Jesus’ hope. We are going to agitate with Jesus’ love.”
MINNEAPOLIS — The U.S. Department of Justice said Sunday that it is investigating a group of protesters in Minnesota who disrupted services at a church where a local official with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement apparently serves as a pastor.
A livestreamed video posted on the Facebook page of Black Lives Matter Minnesota, one of the protest’s organizers, shows a group of people interrupting services at the Cities Church in St. Paul by chanting, “ICE out” and “Justice for Renee Good.” The 37-year-old mother of three was fatally shot by an ICE agent in Minneapolis this month amid a surge in federal immigration enforcement activities.
The protesters allege that one of the church’s pastors, David Easterwood, leads the local ICE field office overseeing the operations that they say have involved violent tactics and illegal arrests.
U.S. Assistant Atty. Gen. Harmeet Dhillon said the Justice Department is investigating federal civil rights violations “by these people desecrating a house of worship and interfering with Christian worshipers.”
“A house of worship is not a public forum for your protest! It is a space protected from exactly such acts by federal criminal and civil laws!” she said on social media.
Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi also weighed in on social media, saying that any violations of federal law would be prosecuted.
Nekima Levy Armstrong, who participated in the protest and leads the local grassroots civil rights organization Racial Justice Network, dismissed the potential federal investigation as a sham and a distraction from federal agents’ actions in Minneapolis and St. Paul.
“When you think about the federal government unleashing barbaric ICE agents upon our community and all the harm that they have caused, to have someone serving as a pastor who oversees these ICE agents, is almost unfathomable to me,” said Armstrong, who noted that she is an ordained reverend.
“If people are more concerned about someone coming to a church on a Sunday and disrupting business as usual than they are about the atrocities that we are experiencing in our community, then they need to check their theology and they need to check their hearts.”
The website of St. Paul-based Cities Church lists David Easterwood as a pastor, and his personal information appears to match that of a man by that name identified in court filings as the acting director of the ICE St. Paul field office. Easterwood appeared alongside Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem at a Minneapolis news conference in October.
Cities Church did not respond to a phone call or emailed request for comment Sunday evening, and Easterwood’s personal contact information could not immediately be located.
In a Jan. 5 court filing, Easterwood defended ICE’s tactics in Minnesota such as swapping license plates and spraying protesters with chemical irritants. He wrote that federal agents were experiencing increased threats and aggression and that crowd control devices like flash-bang grenades were important to protect against violent attacks. He testified that he was unaware of agents “knowingly targeting or retaliating against peaceful protesters or legal observers with less lethal munitions and/or crowd control devices.”
ICE said in a statement: “Agitators aren’t just targeting our officers. Now they’re targeting churches, too. They’re going from hotel to hotel, church to church, hunting for federal law enforcement who are risking their lives to protect Americans.”
Black Lives Matter Minnesota co-founder Monique Cullars-Doty said that the federal prosecution was misguided.
“If you got a head — a leader in a church — that is leading and orchestrating ICE raids, my God, what has the world come to?” Cullars-Doty said. “We can’t sit back idly and watch people go and be led astray.”
Churches have also been the target of federal immigration raids in the last year. Soon after the start of President Trump’s second term, Homeland Security issued a directive rescinding a Biden-era policy that had protected areas including churches and schools from immigration raids.
NEW YORK — What sounds like President Trump narrating a new Fannie Mae ad actually is an AI-cloned voice reading text, according to a disclaimer in the video.
The voice in the ad, created with permission from the Trump administration, promises an “all new Fannie Mae” and calls the institution the “protector of the American dream.” The ad comes as the administration is making a push to try to show voters it is responding to their concerns about affordability, including in the housing market.
Trump plans to talk about housing at his appearance this week at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, a gathering of world leaders and corporate executives.
This isn’t the first time a member of the Trump family has used AI to replicate their voice, First Lady Melania Trump recently employed AI technology firm Eleven Labs to help voice the audio version of her memoir. It’s not known who cloned President Trump’s voice for the Fannie Mae ad.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
Last month, Trump pledged in a prime-time address that he would roll out “some of the most aggressive housing reform plans in American history.”
“For generations, home ownership meant security, independence and stability,” Trump’s digitized voice says in the one-minute ad aired Sunday. “But today, that dream feels out of reach for too many Americans, not because they stopped working hard, but because the system stopped working for them.”
Fannie Mae and its counterpart Freddie Mac, which have been under government control since the Great Recession, buy mortgages that meet their risk criteria from banks, which helps provide liquidity for the housing market. The two firms guarantee roughly half of the $13-trillion U.S. home loan market and are a bedrock of the U.S. economy.
The ad says Fannie Mae will work with the banking industry to approve more would-be homebuyers for mortgages.
Trump, Bill Pulte, who leads the Federal Housing Finance Agency, and others have said they want to sell shares of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac on a major stock exchange, but no concrete plans have been set.
Trump and Pulte have also floated extending the 30-year mortgage to 50 years in order to lower monthly payments. Trump appeared to back off the proposal after critics said a longer-term loan would reduce people’s ability to create housing equity and increase their own wealth.
Trump also said on social media this month that he was directing the federal government to buy $200 billion in mortgage bonds, a move he said would help reduce mortgage rates at a time when Americans are anxious about home prices. Trump said Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have $200 billion in cash that will be used to make the purchase.
Also this month, Trump said he wants to block large institutional investors from buying houses, saying that a ban would make it easier for younger families to buy their first homes.
Trump’s permission for the use of AI is notable given that he has complained about aides in the Biden administration using autopen to apply the former president’s signature to laws, pardons or executive orders. An autopen is a mechanical device that is used to replicate a person’s authentic signature.
A report issued by House Republicans does not include any concrete evidence that an autopen was used to sign President Biden’s name without his knowledge.
WASHINGTON — President Clinton signaled Tuesday that he might be able to reach agreement with the new Republican congressional majority on school prayer.
“I’ll be glad to discuss it with them,” the President said at a press conference at an economic conference in Jakarta, Indonesia. “I want to see what the details (of a school prayer proposal) are. I certainly wouldn’t rule it out. It depends on what it says.”
In Washington, White House Chief of Staff Leon E. Panetta indicated further agreement with GOP leaders, saying that trade and congressional reform are two issues that the two sides can agree on.
Emerging from the first post-election meeting between an Administration official and the new Republican leadership, Panetta rejected proposed Republican tax cuts, however, saying that they would swell the federal deficit and weaken what has been a strengthening economy.
“I have always supported voluntary prayer in the schools,” Clinton said in Jakarta. “I have always thought that the question was when does voluntary prayer really become coercive to people who have different religious views from those who are in the majority in any particular classroom. . . .
“Obviously, I want to reserve judgment, I want to see the specifics. . . . And again, I would say this ought to be something that unites the American people, not something that divides us. . . . The American people do not want us to be partisan, but they do want us to proceed in a way that is consistent with their values and that communicates those values to our children.”
Panetta made an hourlong “courtesy call” on Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), who is expected to be Speaker of the House in the next Congress, and Sen. Bob Dole (R-Kan.), who is expected to be Senate majority leader, at Dole’s Capitol Hill offices.
After the session, Panetta said that if the Republicans are serious about balancing the federal budget in five years, their proposed tax cuts and increased defense spending would require cutting a trillion dollars from the federal government at the same time.
“Whatever the outcome of the election, we all have a responsibility of helping to move this country forward,” Panetta said. “We have to be very straight with the American people.”
Neither Dole nor Gingrich commented after the meeting.
Earlier, Alice Rivlin, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, told reporters at a breakfast meeting that the proposed Republican tax cuts, if enacted, would swell inflation, ignite interest rates and “probably throw the economy into recession.”
The likely new chairman of the House Budget Committee, Rep. John R. Kasich (R-Ohio), accused her of “alarmist and inflammatory” rhetoric.
Panetta called the congressional vote scheduled for later this month on a new world trade agreement “the first test of the relationship” between the Democratic Administration and the new Republican majority in Congress–although that majority will not be seated until January.
Gingrich and other GOP leaders have generally indicated that they will support the trade agreement in the lame-duck session. But Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.), the likely new chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, signaled his intention to delay consideration of the pact.
In a letter to the President, Helms threatened to make trouble later on foreign policy matters unless Clinton agrees to put off the trade vote until next year.
Helms’ letter said: “I can assure that it will have an exceedingly positive effect on my making certain that the Administration positions on all foreign policy matters during the 104th Congress will be considered fully and fairly.”
Panetta said that there are other reforms that the Clinton Administration and the Republican leadership agree on, including lobbying reform, campaign finance reform, welfare reform, health care reform and the line-item veto. Referring obliquely to the Helms threat, he added that foreign affairs is an area where it is “extremely important” that Congress and the White House work together.
He also said that he praised Gingrich for his promise to cut House committee staffs by one-third and noted that the Clinton Administration had cut the White House staff by 25% and the executive branch by some 270,000 jobs.
But on economic policy, Panetta declared: “As the President has made clear . . . the important thing is that (tax cuts) are paid for, and that they not increase the deficit. . . .
“That is a very fundamental discipline that we have put in place in the budget process here on Capitol Hill and throughout the government,” he said, and if tax cuts are not matched with spending cuts, “you are simply increasing taxes on our kids for the future.”
In their “contract with America,” House Republicans have promised what they call a middle-class tax cut, including a repeal of the so-called “marriage tax,” a tax credit to families making up to $200,000 per year for each child they have, and broader eligibility for individual retirement accounts.
Other Republicans, including the probable new chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, Bill Archer (R-Tex.), have proposed cutting capital gains taxes.
“Whatever we do is going to be paid for by spending cuts,” Archer said in an interview on “The McNeil/Lehrer NewsHour.” He suggested that $50 billion could be saved over five years in welfare reform alone. “This is tough, but the American people are prepared for us to be tough.”
* POLITICAL VETERANS: Majority in new Congress have past political experience. A20
‘Contract with America’: The full text of the Republican “contract with America” is available on the TimesLink on-line service. Also available are biographies of Newt Gingrich and up-and-coming GOP leaders. Sign on and click “Special Reports” in the Nation & World section.
ATLANTA — Against a backdrop of political division and upheaval, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s daughter said Monday’s holiday honoring her father’s legacy comes as “somewhat of a saving grace” this year.
“I say that because it inserts a sense of sanity and morality into our very troubling climate right now,” the Rev. Bernice King said in an interview with the Associated Press. “With everything going on, the one thing that I think Dr. King reminds people of is hope and the ability to challenge injustice and inhumanity.”
The holiday comes a day before President Trump will mark the first anniversary of his second term in office Tuesday. The “three evils” — poverty, racism and militarism — that the civil rights leader identified in a 1967 speech as threats to a democratic society “are very present and manifesting through a lot of what’s happening” under Trump’s leadership, Bernice King said.
King, chief executive officer of the King Center in Atlanta, cited Trump administration efforts to roll back diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives; directives to scrub key parts of history from government websites and remove “improper ideology” from Smithsonian museums; and aggressive immigration enforcement operations in multiple cities that have turned violent and resulted in the separation of families.
“Everything President Trump does is in the best interest of the American people,” White House spokesperson Davis Ingle said in an email. “That includes rolling back harmful DEI agendas, deporting dangerous criminal illegal aliens from American communities, or ensuring we are being honest about our country’s great history.”
Maya Wiley, president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, one of the nation’s oldest and largest civil rights coalitions, said that Martin Luther King’s words “ring more true today.”
“We’re at a period in our history where we literally have a regime actively working to erase the civil rights movement,” she said. “This has been an administration dismantling intentionally and with ideological fervor every advancement we have made since the Civil War.”
Wiley also recalled that King warned that “the prospect of war abroad was undermining to the beloved community globally and it was taking away from the ability for us to take care of all our people.” Trump’s administration has engaged in deadly military strikes on alleged drug-smuggling boats and captured Venezuela’s president in an invasion this month. It also bombed nuclear sites in Iran last year.
Bernice King said she’s not sure what her father would make of the United States today, nearly six decades after his assassination.
“He’s not here. It’s a different world,” she said. “But what I can say is his teachings transcend time and he taught us, I think, the way to address injustice through his nonviolent philosophy and methodology.”
Nonviolence should be embraced not just by those who are protesting and fighting against what they believe are injustices, but should also be adopted by immigration agents and other law enforcement officers, she said. To that end, she added, the King Center developed a curriculum that it now plans to redevelop to help officers see that they can carry out their duties while also respecting people’s humanity.
Even amid the “troubling climate” in the country right now, Bernice King said there is no question that “we have made so much progress as a nation.” The civil rights movement that her father and mother, Coretta Scott King, helped lead brought more people into mainstream politics who have sensitivity and compassion, she said. Despite efforts to scrap DEI initiatives and the deportation of people from around the world, “the inevitability is we’re so far into our diversity you can’t put that back in a box,” she said.
To honor her father’s legacy this year, she urged people to look inward.
“I think we spend a lot of time looking at everybody else and what everybody else is not doing or doing, and we’re looking out the window at all the problems of the world and talking about how bad they are, and we don’t spend a lot of time on ourselves personally,” she said.
She endorsed participation in service projects to observe the holiday because they foster connection, sensitize people to the struggles of others and help us to understand one another better. But she said people should also look at what they can do in the year to come to further her father’s teachings.
“I think we have the opportunity to use this as a measuring point from year to year in terms of what we’re doing to move our society in a more just, humane, equitable and peaceful way,” she said.
Brumback writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Matt Brown in Washington contributed to this report.
WASHINGTON — Exercising for the first time the line-item veto authority that presidents have sought for more than a century, President Clinton on Monday struck three provisions from the sweeping tax and spending measures that he signed last week.
The historic action, which gave the president long-coveted control over Congress’ constitutionally enshrined power of the purse, provoked angry responses from some Republicans, but could save taxpayers $600 million over five years.
“The actions I take today will save the American people hundreds of millions of dollars . . . and send a signal that the Washington rules have changed for good,” Clinton said at an Oval Office ceremony. “From now on, presidents will be able to say ‘no’ to wasteful spending or tax loopholes, even as they say ‘yes’ to vital legislation. Special interests will not be able to play the old game of slipping a provision into a massive bill in the hope no one will notice.”
The Republican-led Congress passed the line-item veto authority–which for the first time allows a president to strike down a single legislative provision rather than an entire bill–early last year as a presidential weapon against wasteful spending, but it did not take effect until January. In June, the Supreme Court rejected a challenge to the veto on a technicality; another court challenge to the new executive authority is virtually certain.
Clinton deleted the following provisions from the two measures:
* A one-year tax haven for the easily portable profits that financial-services firms–like investment companies and brokerage houses–make in their foreign subsidiaries. Clinton argued that the provision was too broad and could allow the companies to inappropriately shelter dividend and interest income.
* A special-interest tax break allowing individuals to defer taxes on profits they make from selling food processing plants to farmers cooperatives, organizations owned by farmers. The president charged that although he wants to support efforts by small farmers to profit from the processing of their crops, the provision was drafted too broadly and could inordinately benefit large agribusinesses.
* An element in the spending measure that would have allowed one state, New York, to continue to tax health care providers to cover a portion of its costs for the Medicaid health insurance program for low-income, elderly and disabled Americans. The president struck this provision because it gave a break to one state while it immediately disadvantaged several others and had the potential to disadvantage all the other states.
Some Republican members of Congress assailed Clinton for vetoing provisions of the two measures that made up the so-called balanced-budget agreement, which was painstakingly negotiated between the White House and Congress over several months.
“Disappointment and surprise are the usual side effects of having been blindsided, and today’s line-item veto announcement is no exception,” said Christina Martin, spokeswoman for House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.).
But as longtime supporters of the line-item veto, other congressional Republicans chose muted responses to the first exercise of the authority.
“Everyone knows that I fought for years to give the line-item veto authority to the president of the United States,” Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) said in a statement. “I’m a firm supporter of the process, and as part of that process, Congress now has a period of time to review the president’s cancellations and make the decision on whether to move to disapprove them.”
Despite the grumbling, White House officials said they do not expect Congress to actually vote to override the president’s first use of the line-item veto.
“Many Republicans have, along with the president, championed the line-item veto,” said Gene Sperling, who heads the president’s National Economic Council. “It would seem to make little sense for them to want to stake themselves out as opponents of the line-item veto.”
Some congressional supporters of the veto expressed concern that the president first aimed his veto pen at tax and entitlement spending measures in the carefully cobbled together tax and spending legislation rather than at the traditionally pork-laden appropriations bills scheduled to reach his desk this autumn.
“In his rush for expediency, I fear the president has risked the future of this important budget-cutting tool,” complained Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a big supporter of the line-item veto.
Supporters of the targeted veto believe that there is a stronger case for its use on spending items. Until 1974, when Congress stripped presidents of the power to “impound” money, presidents regularly refused to spend money that had been appropriated by Congress. Because there is no similar precedent for the excising of specific tax provisions, some supporters and experts believe that such an exercise of the new veto authority may be more vulnerable to court challenges.
Clinton and his advisors defended his decision to act now, although there was been some internal disagreement about whether to wait for the appropriations bills.
“I expect the most glaring examples to come up in the appropriations process,” Clinton told reporters. However, Clinton said he hopes his use of the veto now will discourage lawmakers from putting costly special-interest provisions into the spending bills in the first place.
It is just this deterrent effect that legal scholars argue makes the line-item veto provision ripe for constitutional challenge.
“By touting its efficacy as a deterrent, the president is underscoring the way it distorts the constitutional process,” said Laurence H. Tribe, a constitutional law professor at Harvard University.
Tribe is one of many legal and political scholars who believe that the line-item veto authority is unconstitutional and will likely be overturned by the Supreme Court as early as next summer. Several members of Congress have already challenged the new executive tool. In April, a federal district court judge found in their favor, ruling that the measure offset the balance of powers established in the Constitution. But the Supreme Court in June rejected the case on appeal, saying that the plaintiffs–six members of Congress–lacked standing.
But at least one of the parties aggrieved by Clinton’s vetoes is sure to sue and would have standing, experts predicted.
“In a society as litigious as ours, the idea that none of the aggrieved parties wanted to sue would be almost unimaginable,” Tribe said.
Clinton, a former teacher of constitutional law, argues that the line-item authority can withstand the constitutional challenge.
“As long as the legislature has the right to override the executive. . . . I do not believe it is an unconstitutional delegation of the legislature’s authority to the president,” he said.
Congress can override each of the president’s line-item vetoes with a two-thirds majority vote.
Clinton also noted that in 43 states, governors have some form of line-item veto authority. “It has been upheld in state after state [and] the provisions of most state constitutions are similar to the provisions of the federal Constitution in the general allocation of executive authority and legislative authority,” Clinton said.
The first president to ask Congress for line-item veto authority was Ulysses S. Grant in 1873. Other presidents who were big supporters of the power included Rutherford B. Hayes, Grover Cleveland, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Gerald R. Ford and Ronald Reagan.
In recent decades, congressional Republicans, who were in the minority in the House for 40 years, were fervent advocates of the line-item veto authority.
“They were all anxious to have it to provide a Republican president with that kind of power against a Democratic Congress,” said Charles Jones, a political scientist from the University of Wisconsin. “It’s ironic that here a Democratic president gets to use it against a Republican Congress.”
(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)
A Stroke of the Pen
Wielding power sought by presidents for generations, President Clinton on Monday exercised the line-item veto:
VETOED ITEMS
* Medicaid spending provision benefiting New York state. SAVINGS: $200 million
* A special-interest tax break allowing individuals to defer taxes on profits they make from selling food processing plants to farmers cooperatives. SAVINGS: $98 million
* Deferral for financial services companies on taxes incurred by overseas subsidiaries. SAVINGS: $317 million
****
HOW IT WORKS
The law allows the president to veto new spending and some tax cuts, principally those aimed at fewer than 100 beneficiaries. Congress has 30 days to overturn the vetoes by a two-thirds majority vote in each house.
****
WHAT’S NEXT
* A court challenge is considered likely.
* More line-item vetoes are possible as appropriation bills begin arriving on Clinton’s desk.
“The actions . . . send a signal that the Washington rules have changed for good.”
With Bill Clinton scheduled to occupy the White House in January, the two Democrats newly elected to Congress from San Diego County said Wednesday they will press for federal dollars to replace the thousands of defense jobs that have been lost in the area with civilian jobs.
San Diego City Councilman Bob Filner and Port Commissioner Lynn Schenk, both Democrats, were still basking in their Election Day victories, but they had already plotted out a similar agenda for their first 100 days in Washington.
“Simply put, it’s jobs,” Filner said. “San Diego needs jobs. Lynn and I have good connections in the party, and we hope to use them to bring jobs and business investment to San Diego.”
Schenk is the first woman elected to Congress from San Diego County.
The election of Filner and Schenk means the county’s congressional delegation will now be made up of two Democrats and three Republicans. The Republicans, all incumbents, were returned to Washington on Tuesday.
GOP Rep. Duncan Hunter got a wake-up call of sorts from the voters in the 52nd District. The seven-term congressman beat his Democratic challenger Janet M. Gastil by 10 percentage points, 52% to 42%. But in his last two elections Hunter trounced his opponents by winning 73% and 74% of the vote in 1990 and 1988, respectively.
Gastil ran an aggressive campaign against Hunter, constantly hammering him with television and radio ads that criticized him for the 407 overdrafts totaling $129,225 that he wrote on his U.S. House bank account.
Schenk, who won in the 49th District, and Filner, who won in the 50th District, said they would work to make sure that San Diego is not left out of Clinton’s $50-billion reinvestment plan for America’s cities.
San Diego’s defense and aerospace industries have been hard-hit, both by the recession and the downsizing of the military. About 7,000 jobs have been lost in these industries over the past three years.
“The defense industry is very important to San Diego,” Schenk said. “We cannot allow the President and Congress to wipe out the industry here and not replace it with meaningful jobs in the civilian sector. . . . San Diego is an area where we can look to environmental technology as a future job-producing base.”
“Economic conversion to get the defense industry to move to domestic production is a top priority,” Filner said. “But the No. 1 priority for me will be to get our shipbuilding industry moving. I believe that if we can get Nassco (National Steel & Shipbuilding Co.) moving in the double-hull tanker market, we can turn the economy around in San Diego.”
The Nassco shipyard, which is in Filner’s district, is the only privately owned shipyard left on the West Coast. The company relies almost exclusively on Navy repair and shipbuilding contracts, but Nassco executives said they hope to capture some of the double-hull market.
A new federal law requires U.S. oil tankers to be converted to double hulls beginning next year.
Filner’s margin of victory was almost 2 to 1, 57% to 29%, over his Republican challenger, Tony Valencia. That is larger than the 16% registration edge that Democrats have in the district.
Schenk’s victory was not as certain. She won in a district where Republicans have a 4% registration edge, 43% to 39%. Schenk trailed during the early returns but rebounded and won the race by 10 percentage points over GOP challenger Judy Jarvis.
Hunter was unavailable for comment Wednesday. Campaign officials said he had decided to travel throughout the district to thank voters who returned him to office.
A bitter Gastil said she had not ruled out another challenge to the ultra-conservative Hunter in 1994. The former La Mesa school board member and orchard owner was still smarting from what she said were Hunter’s “sleazy campaign tactics.”
Gastil complained that Hunter misled voters when he alleged in his campaign literature that she supported a 10-cent-a-gallon gasoline tax and that she favored eliminating the military. Hunter’s ads also labeled her as a liberal who would eliminate jobs.
“He sent out a mailer saying that I wanted to eliminate the military,” Gastil said. “That was the first time it hit me like a ton of bricks that the man was telling outright lies. . . . I saw in the final days of the campaign a man desperately lying to save his job.”
“It’s too early to have definitive plans, but offhand, I would say that I will definitely challenge him again in 1994,” she added.
Democratic lawmakers and candidates for office around the country increasingly are returning to the phrase, popularized during the first Trump administration, as they react to this administration’s forceful immigration enforcement tactics.
The fatal shooting of 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent this month in Minneapolis sparked immediate outrage among Democratic officials, who proposed a variety of oversight demands — including abolishing the agency — to rein in tactics they view as hostile and sometimes illegal.
Resurrecting the slogan is perhaps the riskiest approach. Republicans pounced on the opportunity to paint Democrats, especially those in vulnerable seats, as extremists.
An anti-ICE activist in an inflatable costume stands next to a person with a sign during a protest near Legacy Emanuel Hospital on Jan. 10 in Portland, Ore. The demonstration follows the Jan. 7 fatal shooting of Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis as well as the shooting of two individuals in Portland on Jan. 8 by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents.
(Mathieu Lewis-Rolland / Getty Images)
“If their response is to dust off ‘defund ICE,’ we’re happy to take that fight any day of the week,” said Christian Martinez, a spokesperson for the National Republican Congressional Committee. The group has published dozens of press statements in recent weeks accusing Democrats of wanting to abolish ICE — even those who haven’t made direct statements using the phrase.
Rep. Ken Calvert (R-Corona) amplified that message Wednesday, writing on social media that “When Democrats say they want to abolish or defund ICE, what they are really saying is they want to go back to the open borders policies of the Biden administration. The American people soundly rejected that idea in the 2024 election.”
The next day, Rep. Shri Thanedar (D-Mich.) introduced the “Abolish ICE Act,” stating that Good’s killing “proved that ICE is out of control and beyond reform.” The bill would rescind the agency’s “unobligated” funding and redirect other assets to its parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security.
Many Democrats calling for an outright elimination of ICE come from the party’s progressive wing. Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) said in a television interview the agency should be abolished because actions taken by its agents are “racist” and “rogue.” Jack Schlossberg, who is running for a House seat in New York, said that “if Trump’s ICE is shooting and kidnapping people, then abolish it.”
Other prominent progressives have stopped short of saying the agency should be dismantled.
A pair of protesters set up signs memorializing people who have been arrested by ICE, or have died in the process, at a rally in front of the Federal Building in Los Angeles on Friday.
(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)
Sen. Alex Padilla, (D-Calif.) who last year was forcefully handcuffed and removed from a news conference hosted by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, joined a protest in Washington to demand justice for Good, saying “It’s time to get ICE and CBP out,” referring to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
“This is a moment where all of us have to be forceful to ensure that we are pushing back on what is an agency right now that is out of control,” Rep. Robert Garcia, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, said on social media. “We have to be loud and clear that ICE is not welcome in our communities.”
Rep. Ken Calvert (R-Corona) said Democrats seeking to abolish ICE “want to go back to the open borders policies of the Biden administration.”
(Jose Luis Magana / Associated Press)
Others have eyed negotiations over the yearly Homeland Security budget as a leverage point to incorporate their demands, such as requiring federal agents to remove their masks and to turn on their body-worn cameras when on duty, as well as calling for agents who commit crimes on the job to be prosecuted. Seventy House Democrats, including at least 13 from California, backed a measure to impeach Noem.
Rep. Mike Levin (D-San Diego), who serves on the House Committee on Appropriations, said his focus is not on eliminating the agency, which he believes has an “important responsibility” but has been led astray by Noem.
He said Noem should be held to account for her actions through congressional oversight hearings, not impeachment — at least not while Republicans would be in control of the proceedings, since he believes House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) would make a “mockery” of them.
“I am going to use the appropriations process,” Levin said, adding that he would “continue to focus on the guardrails, regardless of the rhetoric.”
Chuck Rocha, a Democratic political strategist, said Republicans seized on the abolitionist rhetoric as a scare tactic to distract from the rising cost of living, which remains another top voter concern.
“They hope to distract [voters] by saying, ‘Sure, we’re going to get better on the economy — but these Democrats are still crazy,’” he said.
Dozens of Angelenos and D.C.-area organizers, along with local activists, rally in front of the Federal Building in downtown Los Angeles on Friday. Democrats have for years struggled to put forward a unified vision on immigration — one of the top issues that won President Trump a return to the White House.
(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)
Democrats have for years struggled to put forward a unified vision on immigration — one of the top issues that won President Trump a return to the White House. Any deal to increase guardrails on Homeland Security faces an uphill battle in the Republican-controlled Congress, leaving many proposals years away from the possibility of fruition. Even if Democrats manage to block the yearly funding bill, the agency still has tens of billions of dollars from Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
Still, the roving raids, violent clashes with protesters and detentions and deaths of U.S. citizens and immigrants alike increased the urgency many lawmakers feel to do something.
Two centrist groups released memos last week written by former Homeland Security officials under the Biden administration urging Democrats to avoid the polarizing language and instead channel their outrage into specific reforms.
“Every call to abolish ICE risks squandering one of the clearest opportunities in years to secure meaningful reform of immigration enforcement — while handing Republicans exactly the fight they want,” wrote the authors of one memo, from the Washington-based think tank Third Way.
“Advocating for abolishing ICE is tantamount to advocating for stopping enforcement of all of our immigration laws in the interior of the United States — a policy position that is both wrong on the merits and at odds with the American public on the issue,” wrote Blas Nuñez-Neto, a senior policy fellow at the new think tank the Searchlight Institute who previously was assistant Homeland Security secretary.
Roughly 46% of Americans said they support the idea of abolishing ICE, while 43% are opposed, according to a YouGov/Economist poll released last week.
Sarah Pierce, a former policy analyst at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services who co-wrote the Third Way memo, said future polls might show less support for abolishing the agency, particularly if the question is framed as a choice among options including reforms such as banning agents from wearing masks or requiring use of body cameras.
“There’s no doubt there will be further tragedies and with each, the effort to take an extreme position like abolishing ICE increases,” she said.
Laura Hernandez, executive director of Freedom for Immigrants, a California-based organization that advocates for the closure of detention centers, said the increase in lawmakers calling to abolish ICE is long overdue.
“We need lawmakers to use their power to stop militarized raids, to close detention centers and we need them to shut down ICE and CBP,” she said. “This violence that people are seeing on television is not new, it’s literally built into the DNA of DHS.”
Rep. Shri Thanedar (D-Mich.) introduced the “Abolish ICE Act.”
(Paul Sancya / Associated Press)
Cinthya Martinez, a UC Santa Cruz professor who has studied the movement to abolish ICE, noted that it stems from the movement to abolish prisons. The abolition part, she said, is watered down by mainstream politicians even as some liken immigration agents to modern-day slave patrols.
Martinez said the goal is about more than simply getting rid of one agency or redirecting its duties to another. She pointed out that alongside ICE agents have been Border Patrol, FBI and ATF agents.
“A lot of folks forget that prison abolition is to completely abolish carceral systems. It comes from a Black tradition that says prison is a continuation of slavery,” she said.
But Peter Markowitz, a law professor and co-director of the Immigration Justice Clinic at the Cardozo School of Law, said the movement to abolish ICE around 2018 among mainstream politicians was always about having effective and humane immigration enforcement, not about having none.
“But it fizzled because it didn’t have an answer to the policy question that follows: If not ICE, then what?” he said. “I hope we’re in a different position today.”
Last week union activists, hoisting giant cutouts of money bags and a cigar-smoking boss, announced a proposal to raise Los Angeles city taxes on companies with “overpaid” chief executives.
They rallied in front of a symbol of the uber rich: the futuristic, steel-covered Tesla Diner owned by Elon Musk, the world’s richest man.
Meanwhile, a “billionaire tax” proposal prompted some of the wealthiest Californians to consider fleeing the state, amid arguments that they would take their tax revenue — and the companies they run — with them, hurting the ordinary residents the proposal is designed to help.
More than 200 billionaires reside in California, more than any other state, according to a group of law and economics professors at UC Berkeley, UC Davis and the University of Missouri who helped draft the statewide billionaire tax proposal, which proponents are hoping to place on the November ballot.
And they are getting richer. The collective wealth of the state’s billionaires surged from $300 billion in 2011 to $2.2 trillion in October 2025, according to a December report by those professors. In Los Angeles, where the median sale price of $1 million puts home ownership out of reach for many residents, prominent billionaires include David Geffen, Steven Spielberg and Magic Johnson.
One conspicuous billionaire is especially unpopular in California: President Trump, who, despite campaigning on bringing down the cost of living, recently called the word “affordability” a “con job” as he redecorated the White House in gold.
“In a deep blue state like California that has voted against Donald Trump by such large numbers in the last three elections, voters are even more predisposed to be suspicious of billionaires, because he’s now the person with whom they associate the status,” said Dan Schnur, a politics professor at USC, UC Berkeley and Pepperdine.
The state and local tax-the-billionaires proposals, he said, are “about retribution,” much like last year’s Proposition 50, which temporarily redraws the state’s congressional districts to favor Democrats as a counterweight to Trump’s efforts to increase Republican seats in Texas.
To get the statewide billionaire tax proposal on the November ballot, supporters need to collect nearly 875,000 signatures by June 24.
The measure would impose a one-time tax of up to 5% on taxpayers and trusts with assets, such as businesses, art and intellectual property, valued at more than $1 billion. It would apply to billionaires who were residents of the state on Jan. 1, with the option of spreading the tax payment over five years.
Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West, its main backer, said it will raise $100 billion. Most of those funds would be used for healthcare programs, with the remaining 10% going to food assistance and education programs, the union said.
Suzanne Jimenez, the union’s chief of staff, said Friday that “catastrophic” federal funding cuts stemming from Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act will force hospitals to close, eliminate healthcare jobs and cause insurance premiums to spike, leaving senior citizens and veterans with limited access to services.
The California Budget & Policy Center estimates that as many as 3.4 million Californians could lose Medi-Cal coverage and rural hospitals could close unless a new funding source is found.
Jimenez called the proposal “a modest tax” that “affects few people.”
But Gov. Gavin Newsom vowed to stop the billionaire tax, arguing that California can’t isolate itself from the other 49 states.
“We’re in a competitive environment. People have this simple luxury, particularly people of that status, they already have two or three homes outside the state,” Newsom said at the New York Times’ DealBook Summit last month. “It’s a simple issue. You’ve got to be pragmatic about it.”
The billionaire tax would temporarily increase revenues by tens of billions spread over several years, but if billionaires move away, the state could lose “hundreds of millions of dollars or more per year,” according to the nonpartisan California Legislative Analyst’s Office.
Some of California’s wealthiest say they are indeed heading for the exits.
Andy Fang, the billionaire co-founder of DoorDash, wrote on social media: “I love California. Born and raised there. But stupid wealth tax proposals like this make it irresponsible for me not to plan leaving the state.”
Peter Thiel, the billionaire co-founder of PayPal and Palantir, announced in December that his investment firm opened a new Miami office. He donated $3 million that month to a political action committee connected to the California Business Roundtable, which is fighting the measure.
State records show that Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin have been cutting ties to California and moving business interests out of state.
Rick Caruso, the billionaire real estate developer who self-funded his losing 2022 L.A. mayoral campaign to the tune of more than $100 million, said in a statement that “the proposed 5% asset tax is a very bad policy. It will deliver nothing it promises and instead hurt California with lost jobs and hundreds of millions a year in lost revenue from existing income taxes.”
Ending months of speculation, Caruso announced Friday he will not challenge Mayor Karen Bass again, nor will he run for governor in a race that includes billionaire hedge fund founder Tom Steyer.
In Los Angeles, supporters of the “Overpaid CEO Tax” announced outside the Tesla Diner that they must collect 140,000 signatures in the next 120 days to get the measure on the November ballot. The measure would raise taxes on companies whose CEOs make at least 50 times more than their median-paid employee. It would apply only to companies with 1,000 or more employees.
The Fair Games Coalition, a collection of labor groups including the Los Angeles teachers union, is sponsoring the measure, which would allocate 70% of the revenue to housing for working families, 20% to street and sidewalk repairs and 5% to after-school programs and access to fresh food.
Business groups have denounced it, saying it would drive companies out of the city.
“Luxury for a few, while those who cook, who clean, who build, who teach, who write — the people who make the city prosperous — are stretched to the breaking point,” Kurt Petersen, co-president of the airport and hotel workers union Unite Here Local 11, said at Musk’s diner, describing it as an avatar for an unjust L.A. economy.
A similar effort to increase taxes on companies with disproportionately paid CEOs is underway in San Francisco, where voters already approved a levy on such businesses in 2020.
On Friday, Doug Herman, a spokesperson for Bass’ reelection campaign, said she has “not taken a position” on the state or city wealth tax proposals. But at her campaign launch last month, Bass framed the mayoral race as “a choice between working people and the billionaire class who treat public office as their next vanity project.”
Jeremy Padawer, a toy industry executive and animated TV producer who lost his home in the Palisades fire, said the mayor’s framing of the race as a battle against billionaires feels contrived, especially given the intense criticism of her handling of the fire.
Power is as relevant as money, and Bass is “the most powerful person in the room,” said Padawer, who organized the “They Let Us Burn” rally on the one-year anniversary of the fire.
“I know a lot of billionaires,” Padawer said. “And I think that billionaires have a propensity to do a lot of good, but they also have the propensity to do a lot of bad.”
Times staff writer Queenie Wong contributed to this report.
Or there’s a wee bit of tension between fans of the L.A. Dodgers and San Francisco Giants.
Reid, the former Senate majority leader and most powerful and important lawmaker ever to emerge from Nevada, went for long periods without speaking to Ralston, the state’s most prominent and highly regarded political journalist. Beyond that, Reid tried several times to get Ralston fired, finally succeeding when he was unceremoniously dumped by the TV stations that for years broadcast Ralston’s statewide public affairs program.
And yet when it came time to etch his name in history, Reid summoned Ralston and asked him to write his biography.
“He said, ‘Jon, you and I have something in common. We’re both survivors,’ ” Ralston recounted last week, laughing at the memory of their 2021 conversation.
“Which I thought was quite ironic, since he had tried to make sure I didn’t survive in my job several times. But he said, ‘You’re the only one who can do this book right. … I know I’m not going to like everything you write, but I want you to do the book.’ ”
The moment speaks to the quintessence of Reid, a flinty product of Nevada’s hardpan desert, who was famously unflinching and unsentimental in his pursuit and application of political power.
Reid, who died a little over four years ago, was a paradoxical mix of pugilism and self-effacement: cunning, ruthless and, at times, surprisingly tender-hearted. Beneath the bland exterior of a country parson, all soft-spoken solemnity, beat the heart of a bare-fisted brawler.
In short, he was an irresistible subject for a longtime student of politics like Ralston, whose book, “The Game Changer,” comes out Tuesday.
“I think there was a mutual respect there,” Ralson said of his parry-and-thrust relationship with Reid, who left the Senate in 2017 after more than 30 years on Capitol Hill. “Not to sound like an egoist, but he knew that I chronicled him in a way that nobody else did and recognized things about him that no one else did.”
Ralston took up the subject with no constraints.
Reid, who died about six months after asking Ralston to pen his biography, sat for two dozen interviews. He encouraged family, friends and former staffers to cooperate with Ralston. He granted unlimited access to his voluminous records — 12 million digital files and 100 boxes archived at the University of Nevada, Reno — including personal correspondence and internal emails. (Those include the senator and his chief of staff gleefully celebrating Ralston’s professional setbacks.)
(Full disclosure: Your friendly columnist read the book in galley form and provided a favorable blurb that appears on the back cover.)
The biography recounts standard Reid lore.
The hardscrabble upbringing in Searchlight, Nev., a pinpoint about an hour’s drive south of Las Vegas. His hitchhiking, 40-mile commute to attend high school in Henderson. His years as an amateur boxer — and scuffle with his future father in law — and work as a Capitol police officer while attending law school in Washington, D.C. The car-bomb attempt on Reid’s life, connected to his work on the Nevada Gaming Commission.
And, of course, his oft-stumbling climb through the ranks of Nevada politics, which included a failed bid for Las Vegas mayor, a U.S. Senate contest he lost by fewer than 700 votes and another Reid won by fewer than 500.
Ralston, of course, was well-versed in that history, having written much of it. (Today, he serves as chief executive of the Nevada Independent, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news and opinion website he founded in 2017.)
Even as the world’s foremost Reid-ologist, as Ralston jokingly calls himself, there were things that surprised him.
He was unaware of the length and depth of an FBI probe, conducted in the late 1970s and early 1980s, into Reid over purported mob ties and other alleged improprieties. “He was never indicted or charged or anything,” Ralston said, “but they clearly were after him.”
And he had no idea of Reid’s prolific penmanship.
“Hundreds, maybe thousands of [notes and letters] … to friends, to colleagues in the Senate, to journalists and others,” Ralston said. “That really is something that’s not known about Harry Reid, how he established personal connections with people, which helped him become the effective leader that he was in the U.S. Senate.”
Even after decades of covering Reid, and years devoted to researching his biography, Ralston won’t presume to say he knows exactly what made him tick — though he suggested Reid’s impoverished, trauma-filled childhood had a lasting impact.
“He was an incredibly driven person,” Ralson said, “who went right up the line and, some would say over it, in trying to achieve what he thought was best for himself, for his party, for his country, for his friends, for his family.”
Along with that determination, Reid had an industrial-strength capacity to relinquish hard feelings, forget old animosities and move on. So, too, does Ralston. Their clashes were “just business,” Ralston said, and nothing he took personally.
The result is an improbable collaboration that produced an insightful examination and worthy coda to a remarkable career.
Former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan revealed Thursday that he secretly underwent 44 days of radiation treatments for prostate cancer while serving out his second term in City Hall. He said he is now free of all signs of disease.
Riordan seemed to suggest that, after months of conspicuously weighing whether to run for governor of California, he had resolved to do so. Asked in a brief interview, he said he was making his ordeal public now “because I’m running for office and I think the voters have a right to know about it.”
Riordan said he plans to make a final decision on a bid next month.
The cancer was discovered in October during a routine examination, Riordan and his doctors said. His radiation treatments stretched from late February until May 1. Riordan left office on June 30.
Cancer specialists say that men with the type and degree of cancer that afflicted Riordan have a high rate of long-term survival, if promptly treated.
He has a “clean bill of health,” said Dr. Derek Raghavan of USC, who coordinated Riordan’s cancer care. “His prognosis is excellent.”
In his opinion, Raghavan said, the 71-year-old Riordan would be fully capable of serving as governor for two terms.
Opponents of his presumed statehouse bid have already sought to make an issue of his age, and Riordan acknowledged that detractors are likely to try to use his health history to suggest he isn’t up to running a state with the world’s fifth-largest economy. He is 13 years older than Gov. Gray Davis, the probable Democratic candidate. If elected governor in November 2002, Riordan would be 76 at the end of the first term and, if reelected, 80 at the close of a second.
By disclosing his successful bout with the disease, which is the second most common cancer in men, Riordan evidently sought to allay concerns about his health weeks before he announces his plans.
Riordan and his doctors consented to separate interviews Thursday that were arranged by his gubernatorial exploratory committee. He said he had informed a dozen or more associates and supporters in recent days about the affliction and treatment.
His bout with cancer is certain to heighten talk of whether he has the endurance to be governor of the nation’s most populous state.
Even without formally entering the governor’s contest, Riordan, a Republican, has absorbed age-related barbs from Davis supporters. In a recent press missive, Garry South, the governor’s chief campaign strategist, noted that no incumbent has been denied a second term in California in 60 years.
“Of course, the only potential candidate around who remembers that last one is Dick Riordan,” South jibed.
The announcement of Riordan’s recent cancer adds to the national debate over how much personal information, particularly regarding illness, officials should disclose. New York City Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani’s withdrawal from the U.S. Senate race last year because of prostate cancer is among the cases that stirred discussions of a candidate’s right to privacy and the voters’ right to know.
Riordan said he wanted to announce that he had cancer right away, but his oncologist advised against it because the ensuing hubbub would distract him from his duties and treatments.
“I felt he would be able to do his job better if he kept it private,” said Raghavan, chief of oncology at the Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center.
Political experts and ethics experts said Riordan’s handling of the problem appeared to strike a reasonable balance between public and private interests, though the unwritten rules that guide disclosures vary widely.
“It’s very tricky,” said Gale Kaufman, a Democratic strategist who worked for former New Jersey Sen. Bill Bradley’s presidential campaign, which was hampered in midstream by revelations of the Democrat’s heart arrhythmia.
She suggested there was one standard when Riordan was leaving City Hall and another now that he may run for governor. “During the last six months as mayor he may have felt it was nobody’s business,” Kaufman said. “But now it’s a different situation. As a candidate, or at least a prospective candidate, he opens himself up to a whole other level of scrutiny.”
A similar standard was voiced by George Annas, a law professor at Boston University and a specialist in medical ethics. Candidates have a responsibility to inform the public of any affliction that might affect their job performance, he said.
But officeholders have no obligation to disclose medical problems unless they significantly impair functioning, he said. And just having cancer, he added, probably would not qualify as requiring disclosure.
Moreover, a political culture that demands detailed medical information from officials could be self-defeating, he said, if it ultimately deters them from seeking treatment for serious illnesses lest they be exposed.
“We’re all better off if our public officials get treated,” said Annas, who lauded Riordan for keeping the problem to himself.
Riordan’s cancer was detected by a blood test taken as part of a physical exam last October, said his personal physician of more than a decade, Santa Monica internist Charles R. McElroy.
A subsequent biopsy of the prostate gland confirmed the cancer, known as adenocarcinoma. Further tests, including CT and bone scans, provided no evidence that the tumor had spread elsewhere in the body, McElroy said. He added that the tumor was confined to the inner prostate and had not penetrated the outer capsule of the walnut-sized gland.
The physicians would not specify the tumor’s so-called grade, which describes its aggressiveness.
The primary treatment consisted of external radiation aimed at the prostate five days a week for 44 days, in February, March and April. The treatment ended on May 1–the mayor’s birthday. He also took the drug Proscar, which is thought to reduce prostate swelling.
Riordan underwent the radiation treatments, which lasted less than half an hour, at an undisclosed hospital in the Valley before going to work, he said.
Remarkably, he and his doctors said he developed no side effects from the regimen, which can cause fatigue, impotence, diarrhea and other problems.
“I didn’t feel any effect whatsoever,” Riordan said. “I did as much exercise” as usual, he said, “and worked just as hard.”
The former mayor and his oncologist said the decision to treat the disease with radiation, rather than a more disruptive surgical procedure, was based exclusively on the medical prognosis and not on any desire to keep the treatments secret. Only his security detail and a close aide were aware of it, Riordan said.
Body scans and other tests performed after the treatments ended and as recently as a month ago have found no evidence of cancer anywhere in his body, his doctors said. Riordan is not undergoing any treatment for prostate problems and is taking no medication other than an anti-cholesterol drug.
“I think his illness is in complete remission and his prognosis is super,” Raghavan said. He has a good chance of being cured, Raghavan added, a term justified only if the disease vanishes for some years.
According to American Cancer Society statistics, Riordan’s outlook is good. Of those men whose prostate cancer is detected early and eradicated, 100% survive at least five years unless they die of something else. And 72% of all prostate cancer patients, regardless of at what stage the disease was found, are still alive 10 years after diagnosis.
Dr. Timothy Wilson, director of urology at the City of Hope National Medical Center in Duarte, estimated that a man diagnosed and treated as Riordan was would have an 80% to 85% chance of having no recurrence of the disease.
Because prostate tumors grow slowly, short-term survival rates are generally good, added Wilson, who was not involved in Riordan’s care. “You’ve got to follow men for 10 or 15 years to see if they’re going to die of the disease,” he said.
Prostate cancer, the second leading malignancy among men after skin cancer, strikes 198,000 men annually. It is also the second most deadly cancer, after lung cancer, killing 31,500 men annually. More than 80% of men with prostate cancer are over 65.
Riordan said he didn’t think voters would even consider the cancer and will instead reflect on his record as mayor and whether he has the energy to be governor.
“I’m probably more likely to get killed crossing the street or having a tree fall on me than from something like this,” he said.
MINNEAPOLIS — Hundreds of counterprotesters drowned out a far-right activist’s attempt to hold a small rally Saturday in support of the Trump administration’s massive immigration crackdown in Minneapolis, as the governor’s office announced that National Guard troops were mobilized and ready to assist law enforcement though not yet deployed to city streets.
There have been protests every day since the U.S. 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.
Conservative influencer Jake Lang, who was among the Jan. 6 rioters pardoned by President Trump, organized an anti-Islam, anti-Somali and pro-ICE demonstration, saying on social media beforehand that he intended to “burn a Quran” on the steps of City Hall. It was not clear whether he carried out that plan.
Only a small number of people showed up for Lang’s demonstration, while hundreds of counterprotesters converged at the site, yelling over his attempts to speak and chasing the pro-ICE group away. They forced at least one person to take off a shirt they deemed objectionable.
Lang appeared to be injured as he left the scene, with bruises and scrapes on his head.
Lang was previously charged with assaulting an officer with a baseball bat, civil disorder and other crimes, serving four years in jail while awaiting trial, until Trump pardoned him last Jan. 20 along with other Jan. 6 defendants and convicts. Lang recently announced he is running for U.S. Senate in Florida.
In Minneapolis, snowballs and water balloons were also thrown before an armored police van and heavily equipped city police arrived.
“We’re out here to show Nazis and ICE and DHS and MAGA you are not welcome in Minneapolis,” protester Luke Rimington said. “Stay out of our city, stay out of our state. Go home.”
National Guard ‘staged and ready’
The state National Guard said in a statement that it had been “mobilized” by Democratic Gov. Tim Walz to support the Minnesota State Patrol “to assist in providing traffic support to protect life, preserve property, and support the rights of all Minnesotans to assemble peacefully.”
Maj. Andrea Tsuchiya, a spokesperson for the Guard, said it was “staged and ready” but yet to be deployed.
The announcement came more than a week after Walz, a frequent critic and target of Trump, told the Guard to be ready to support law enforcement in the state.
During the daily protests, demonstrators have railed against masked immigration officers pulling people from homes and cars and using other aggressive tactics. The operation in the liberal Twin Cities has claimed at least one life: Renee Nicole Good, a U.S. citizen and mother of three, who was shot by an ICE officer during a Jan. 7 confrontation.
On Friday a federal judge ruled that immigration officers cannot detain or tear-gas peaceful protesters who are not obstructing authorities, including while observing officers during the Minnesota crackdown.
Living in fear
During a news conference Saturday, a man who fled civil war in Liberia as a child said he has been afraid to leave his Minneapolis home since being released from an immigration detention center following his arrest last weekend.
Video of federal officers breaking down Garrison Gibson’s front door with a battering ram Jan. 11 become another rallying point for protesters who oppose the crackdown.
Gibson, 38, was ordered to be deported, apparently because of a 2008 drug conviction that was later dismissed. He has remained in the country legally under what’s known as an order of supervision. After his recent arrest, a judge ruled that federal officials did not give him enough notice that his supervision status had been revoked.
Then Gibson was taken back into custody for several hours Friday when he made a routine check-in with immigration officials. Gibson’s cousin Abena Abraham said Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials told her that White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller ordered the second arrest.
The White House denied the account of the rearrest and that Miller had anything to do with it.
Gibson was flown to a Texas immigration detention facility but returned home following the judge’s ruling. His family used a dumbbell to keep their damaged front door closed amid subfreezing temperatures before spending $700 to fix it.
“I don’t leave the house,” Gibson said at a news conference.
DHS said an “activist judge” was again trying to stop the deportation of “criminal illegal aliens.”
“We will continue to fight for the arrest, detention, and removal of aliens who have no right to be in this country,” Assistant Homeland Security Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said.
Gibson said he has done everything he was supposed to do: “If I was a violent person, I would not have been out these past 17 years, checking in.”
Brook writes for the Associated Press. AP writers Steve Karnowski in Minneapolis, Josh Boak in West Palm Beach, Fla., and Jeffrey Collins in Columbia, S.C., contributed to this report.
Sorry to keep you waiting; complicated business; complicated.
(APPLAUSE)
Thank you very much.
(APPLAUSE)
TRUMP: I’ve just received a call from Secretary Clinton.
(APPLAUSE)
She congratulated us — it’s about us — on our victory, and I congratulated her and her family on a very, very hard-fought campaign. I mean, she — she fought very hard.
(APPLAUSE)
Hillary has worked very long and very hard over a long period of time, and we owe her a major debt of gratitude for her service to our country.
(APPLAUSE)
I mean that very sincerely.
(APPLAUSE)
Now it’s time for America to bind the wounds of division; have to get together. To all Republicans and Democrats and independents across this nation, I say it is time for us to come together as one united people.
(APPLAUSE)
It’s time. I pledge to every citizen of our land that I will be president for all Americans, and this is so important to me.
(APPLAUSE)
For those who have chosen not to support me in the past, of which there were a few people…
(LAUGHTER)
… I’m reaching out to you for your guidance and your help so that we can work together and unify our great country.
(APPLAUSE)
As I’ve said from the beginning, ours was not a campaign, but rather an incredible and great movement made up of millions of hard- working men and women who love their country and want a better, brighter future for themselves and for their families.
(APPLAUSE)
It’s a movement comprised of Americans from all races, religions, backgrounds and beliefs who want and expect our government to serve the people, and serve the people it will.
(APPLAUSE)
Working together, we will begin the urgent task of rebuilding our nation and renewing the American Dream. I’ve spent my entire life and business looking at the untapped potential in projects and in people all over the world. That is now what I want to do for our country.
(APPLAUSE)
Tremendous potential. I’ve gotten to know our country so well — tremendous potential. It’s going to be a beautiful thing. Every single American will have the opportunity to realize his or her fullest potential. The forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no longer.
(APPLAUSE)
We are going to fix our inner cities and rebuild our highways, bridges, tunnels, airports, schools, hospitals. We’re going to rebuild our infrastructure, which will become, by the way, second to none. And we will put millions of our people to work as we rebuild it.
We will also finally take care of our great veterans.
(APPLAUSE)
They’ve been so loyal, and I’ve gotten to know so many over this 18-month journey. The time I’ve spent with them during this campaign has been among my greatest honors. Our veterans are incredible people. We will embark upon a project of national growth and renewal. I will harness the creative talents of our people and we will call upon the best and brightest to leverage their tremendous talent for the benefit of all. It’s going to happen.
(APPLAUSE)
We have a great economic plan. We will double our growth and have the strongest economy anywhere in the world. At the same time, we will get along with all other nations willing to get along with us. We will be.
(APPLAUSE)
We’ll have great relationships. We expect to have great, great relationships. No dream is too big, no challenge is too great.
TRUMP: Nothing we want for our future is beyond our reach.
America will no longer settle for anything less than the best.
We must reclaim our country’s destiny and dream big and bold and daring. We have to do that. We’re going to dream of things for our country and beautiful things and successful things once again.
I want to tell the world community that while we will always put America’s interests first, we will deal fairly with everyone, with everyone — all people and all other nations. We will seek common ground, not hostility; partnership, not conflict.
And now I’d like to take this moment to thank some of the people who really helped me with this what they are calling tonight very, very historic victory.
First, I want to thank my parents, who I know are looking down on me right now.
(APPLAUSE)
Great people. I’ve learned so much from them. They were wonderful in every regard. I had truly great parents.
I also want to thank my sisters, Maryanne and Elizabeth, who are here with us tonight. And, where are they? They’re here someplace. They’re very shy, actually. And my brother Robert — my great friend. Where is Robert? Where is Robert?
(APPLAUSE)
My brother Robert. And they should all be on this stage, but that’s OK. They’re great. And also my late brother, Fred. Great guy. Fantastic guy.
(APPLAUSE)
Fantastic family. I was very lucky. Great brothers, sisters; great, unbelievable parents.
To Melania and Don…
(APPLAUSE) … and Ivanka…
(APPLAUSE)
… and Eric and Tiffany and Baron, I love you and I thank you, and especially for putting up with all of those hours. This was tough.
This was tough. This political stuff is nasty and it’s tough. So I want to thank my family very much. Really fantastic. Thank you all. Thank you all.
And Lara (ph), unbelievable job, unbelievable.
Vanessa, thank you. Thank you very much.
What a great group. You’ve all given me such incredible support and I will tell you that we have a large group of people. You know, they kept saying we have a small staff. Not so small. Look at all the people that we have. Look at all of these people.
And Kellyanne and Chris and Rudy and Steve and David. We have got — we have got tremendously talented people up here. And I want to tell you, it’s been — it’s been very, very special. I want to give a very special thanks to our former mayor, Rudy Giuliani.
(APPLAUSE)
Unbelievable. Unbelievable. He traveled with us and he went through meetings. That Rudy never changes. Where’s Rudy? Where is he? Rudy.
Governor Chris Christie, folks, was unbelievable.
(APPLAUSE)
Thank you, Chris.
The first man, first senator, first major, major politician, and let me tell you, he is highly respected in Washington because he’s as smart as you get: Senator Jeff Sessions. Where is Jeff?
(APPLAUSE)
Great man.
Another great man, very tough competitor. He was not easy. He was not easy. Who is that? Is that the mayor that showed up?
(LAUGHTER)
(Saul Loeb / AFP/ Getty Images )
Is that Rudy? Oh, Rudy got up here.
Another great man who has been really a friend to me. But I’ll tell you, I got to know him as a competitor because he was one of the folks that was negotiating to go against those Democrats: Dr. Ben Carson. Where is Ben?
(APPLAUSE)
Where is Ben?
TRUMP: And by the way, Mike Huckabee is here someplace, and he is fantastic. Mike and his family, Sarah — thank you very much.
General Mike Flynn. Where is Mike?
(APPLAUSE)
And General Kellogg. We have over 200 generals and admirals that have endorsed our campaign. And they’re special people and it’s really an honor. We have 22 congressional Medal of Honor recipients. We have just tremendous people.
A very special person who believed me and, you know, I’d read reports that I wasn’t getting along with him. I never had a bad second with him. He’s an unbelievable star. He is…
(CROSSTALK)
TRUMP: That’s right. How did you possibly guess? So let me tell you about Reince, and I’ve said this. I said, Reince — and I know it, I know. Look at all those people over there. I know it. Reince is a superstar. But I said, “They can’t call you a superstar, Reince, unless we win,” because you can’t be called a superstar — like Secretariat — if Secretariat came in second, Secretariat would not have that big, beautiful bronze bust at the track at Belmont.
But I’ll tell you, Reince is really a star. And he is the hardest-working guy. And in a certain way, I did this — Reince, come up here. Where is Reince? Get over here, Reince.
(APPLAUSE)
Boy oh boy oh boy. It’s about time you did this, Reince. My God.
(APPLAUSE)
Say a few words. No, come on, say something.
RNC CHAIRMAN REINCE PRIEBUS: Ladies and gentlemen, the next president of the United States, Donald Trump.
(APPLAUSE)
Thank you. It’s been an honor. God bless. Thank God.
Our partnership with the RNC was so important to the success and what we’ve done.
So I also have to say I’ve gotten to know some incredible people — the Secret Service people.
(APPLAUSE)
They’re tough and they’re smart and they’re sharp, and I don’t want to mess around with them, I can tell you. And when I want to go and wave to a big group of people and they rip me down and put me back down on the seat. But they are fantastic people, so I want to thank the Secret Service.
(APPLAUSE)
And law enforcement in New York City. They’re here tonight.
(APPLAUSE)
These are spectacular people, sometimes under-appreciated unfortunately, but we appreciate them. We know what they go through.
So, it’s been what they call a historic event, but to be really historic, we have to do a great job. And I promise you that I will not let you down. We will do a great job. We will do a great job.
(APPLAUSE)
I look very much forward to being your president, and hopefully at the end of two years or three years or four years, or maybe even eight years…
(APPLAUSE)
… you will say, so many of you worked so hard for us, but you will say that — you will say that that was something that you really were very proud to do and I can…
(CROSSTALK)
TRUMP: Thank you very much.
And I can only say that while the campaign is over, our work on this movement is now really just beginning.
(APPLAUSE)
We’re going to get to work immediately for the American people. And we’re going to be doing a job that hopefully you will be so proud of your president. You’ll be so proud. Again, it’s my honor. It was an amazing evening. It’s been an amazing two-year period. And I love this country.
SACRAMENTO — Reacting with anger and despair, welfare recipients and advocacy groups predicted Monday that Gov. Pete Wilson’s proposed initiative to cut aid payments to families with children would only serve to increase hunger and homelessness among California’s poor.
With housing costs already taking most of each month’s welfare payment, the groups said, even the 10% cut proposed for all recipients would force more families onto the streets. The proposal also calls for an additional 15% cut for the able-bodied after six months.
“I wouldn’t be able to live anywhere. We’re barely living on what we get now,” said Sendre James, a disabled Vietnam veteran who supports his son and two foster children in Los Angeles on $535 a month. James has been unable to receive any aid for the foster children.
Monica Valease Hamilton, a Los Angeles mother of three who has been living on welfare since a son was born three years ago with heart problems, said that if payments are reduced many families will cut back on food to try to keep their homes. Hungry children, she warned, often resort to desperate acts.
“If you’ve got a child whose mother can’t feed him, that child’s going to be stealing somebody’s purse because that child’s got to eat. The whole situation is just frightening. I pray to God it’s not my child who has to resort to stealing,” she said.
Advocacy groups said Wilson’s proposals seemed to be based on his belief in the old myths that welfare recipients are basically lazy, able-bodied adults who have chosen existence on the public dole as a lifetime occupation. Casey McKeever, directing attorney for the Western Center on Law & Poverty, said the state’s own statistics dispute those contentions, showing that most recipients have one or two children and stay on welfare less than two years.
“(Wilson) seems to blame poverty on welfare, and I think the reality is that welfare is the reflection of poverty,” he said.
Lenny Goldberg, executive director of the California Tax Reform Assn., said Wilson’s attack on welfare recipients has served to mask what he considers the real cause of many of government’s fiscal woes–namely, tax loopholes that have been granted large corporations and the wealthy.
Because of the way government is structured, he said, special interests can be granted a tax loophole through a simple majority vote of the Legislature, but tax reformers who want to close those loopholes need a two-thirds vote.
“It seems that from a fiscal standpoint, (Wilson) is trying to lay the burden of balancing the state budget on the backs of the very poor, and that’s not really where it belongs,” Goldberg said.
Hamilton, who acknowledged that the welfare system needs reform, said Wilson seems to be accepting a stereotypical view of poor people rather than trying to understand their plight.
“Poverty is 10 degrees below hell,” said Hamilton, who supports her family on a $788 monthly welfare payment. “If he’s been there, he can relate. But if he hasn’t been there, how can he dictate? He wants to sit up there and cut my check again, and I’m not even surviving on what I’ve got.”
Callie Hutchison, executive director of the California Homeless and Housing Coalition, criticized the governor’s proposal to limit the amount of welfare new residents can receive, noting that there is no “concrete evidence” that large numbers of people were moving to California because of the welfare benefits.
“People come for jobs and the much-touted California lifestyle,” she said. “They are attracted by their dreams for a better life, not how to live better in poverty.”
MINNEAPOLIS — Work starts around sunrise for many federal officers carrying out the immigration crackdown in and around the Twin Cities, with hundreds of people in tactical gear emerging from a bland office building near the main airport.
Within minutes, hulking SUVs, pickup trucks and minivans begin leaving, forming the unmarked convoys that quickly have become feared and common sights in the streets of Minneapolis, St. Paul and their suburbs.
Protesters also arrive early, braving the cold to stand across the street from the fenced-in federal compound, which houses an immigration court and government offices. “Go home!” they shout as convoys roar past. “ICE out!”
Things often turn uglier after nightfall, when the convoys return and the protesters sometimes grow angrier, shaking fences and occasionally smacking passing cars. Eventually the federal officers march toward them, firing tear gas and flash grenades before hauling away at least a few people.
“We’re not going anywhere!” a woman shouted on a recent morning. “We’re here until you leave.”
This is the daily rhythm of Operation Metro Surge, the Trump administration’s latest and biggest crackdown yet, with more than 2,000 officers taking part. The surge has pitted city and state officials against the federal government, sparked daily clashes between activists and immigration officers in the deeply liberal cities, and left a mother of three dead.
The crackdown is barely noticeable in some areas, particularly in whiter, wealthier neighborhoods and suburbs, where convoys and tear gas are rare. And even in neighborhoods where masked immigration officers are common, they often move with ghost-like quickness, making arrests and disappearing before protesters can gather in force.
Still, the surge can be felt across broad swaths of the Twin Cities area, which is home to more than 3 million people.
“We don’t use the word ‘invasion’ lightly,” Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, a Democrat, told reporters this week, noting that his police force has just 600 officers. “What we are seeing is thousands — plural, thousands — of federal agents coming into our city.”
Those agents have an outsize presence in a small city.
It can take hours to drive across Los Angeles or Chicago, both targets of Trump administration crackdowns. It can take 15 minutes to cross Minneapolis.
So as worry ripples through the region, children are skipping school or learning remotely, families are avoiding religious services, and many businesses, especially in immigrant neighborhoods, have closed temporarily.
Drive down Lake Street, an immigrant hub since the days when newcomers came to Minneapolis from Norway and Sweden, and the sidewalks seem crowded only with activists standing watch, ready to blow warning whistles at the first sign of a convoy.
At La Michoacana Purepecha, where customers can order ice cream, chocolate-covered bananas and pork rinds, the door is locked and staff lets in people one at a time. Nearby, at Taqueria Los Ocampo, a sign in English and Spanish says the restaurant is temporarily closed because of “current conditions.”
A dozen blocks away at the Karmel Mall, where the city’s large Somali community goes for everything from food and coffee to tax preparation, signs on the doors warn, “No ICE enter without court order.”
The shadow of George Floyd
It’s been nearly six years since George Floyd was murdered by a Minneapolis police officer, but the scars from that killing remain raw.
Floyd was killed just blocks from where an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer shot and killed Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old American citizen, during a Jan. 7 confrontation after she stopped to help neighbors during an enforcement operation. Federal officials say the officer fired in self-defense after Good “weaponized” her vehicle. City and state officials dismiss those explanations and point to bystander videos of the confrontation, which show the officer shot her through her driver’s side window.
For Twin Cities residents, the crackdown can feel overwhelming.
“Enough is enough,” said Johan Baumeister, who came to the scene of Good’s death soon after the shooting to lay flowers.
He said he didn’t want to see the violent protests that shook Minneapolis after Floyd’s death, causing billions of dollars in damage. But this city has a long history of activism and protests, and he had no doubt there would be more.
“I think they’ll see Minneapolis show our rage again,” he predicted.
He was right. In the days since there have been repeated confrontations between activists and immigration officers. Most amounted to little more than shouted insults and taunting, with destruction mostly limited to broken windows, graffiti and some badly damaged federal vehicles.
But angry clashes flare regularly across the Twin Cities. Some protesters clearly want to provoke the federal officers, throwing snowballs at them or screaming obscenities through bullhorns from just a couple of feet away. The serious force, though, comes from immigration officers, who have broken car windows, pepper-sprayed protesters and warned observers not to follow them through the streets. Immigrants and citizens have been yanked from cars and homes and detained, sometimes for days. And most clashes end in tear gas.
Drivers in Minneapolis or St. Paul stumble across intersections blocked by men in body armor and gas masks, with helicopters clattering overhead and the air filled with the shriek of protesters’ whistles.
Shovel your neighbor’s walk
In a state that prides itself on decency, there’s something particularly Minnesotan about the protests.
Soon after Good was shot, Gov. Tim Walz, a Democrat and regular Trump target, repeatedly said he was angry but also urged people to find ways to help their communities.
“It might be shoveling your neighbor’s walk,” he said. “It might mean being at a food bank. It might be pausing to talk to someone you haven’t talked to before.”
He and other leaders pleaded with protesters to remain peaceful, warning that the White House was looking for a chance to crack down harder. And when protests become clashes, residents often spill from their homes, handing out bottled water so people can flush tear gas from their eyes.
Residents stand watch at schools to warn immigrant parents if convoys approach while they’re picking up their children. People take care packages to those too afraid to go out,and arrange rides for them to work and doctor visits.
On Thursday in the basement of a Lutheran church in St. Paul, the group Open Market MN assembled food packs for more than a hundred families staying home. Colin Anderson, the group’s outreach director, said the group has had a surge in requests.
Sometimes people don’t even understand what has happened to them.
Like Christian Molina from suburban Coon Rapids, who was driving through a Minneapolis neighborhood on a recent day, taking his car to a mechanic, when immigration officers began following him. He wonders if it’s because he looks Latino.
They turned on their siren, but Molina kept driving, unsure who they were.
Eventually the officers sped up, hit his rear bumper and both cars stopped. Two officers emerged and asked Molina for his papers. He refused, saying he’d wait for the police. Crowds began to gather, and a clash soon broke out, ending with tear gas.
So the officers left. They left behind an angry, worried man who suddenly owned a sedan with a mangled rear fender.
Long after the officers were gone, he had one final question.
“Who’s going to pay for my car?”
Sullivan writes for the Associated Press. AP writers Rebecca Santana and Giovanna Dell’Orto in Minneapolis and Hallie Golden in Seattle contributed to this report.
RICHMOND, Va. — Amid a cold drizzle, Democrat Abigail Spanberger was sworn into office Saturday at the state Capitol as Virginia’s first female governor after centuries of men holding the state’s top office.
The inauguration of Spanberger, who defeated Republican Winsome Earle-Sears to succeed GOP Gov. Glenn Youngkin, marks a new chapter in Virginia as Democrats pull the levers of power in state government while Republican President Trump sits in the White House in neighboring Washington.
“The history and the gravity of this moment are not lost on me,” Spanberger said in her address. “I maintain an abiding sense of gratitude to those who work, generation after generation, to ensure women could be among those casting ballots, but who could only dream of a day like today.”
Spanberger ran on a vow to protect Virginia’s economy amid uncertainty wrought by the aggressive tactics of the Trump administration. On the trail she spoke of the White House gutting the civil service, the rising costs of goods and changes affecting the state’s already fragile healthcare system.
In a thinly veiled dig at the president, Spanberger said it was time for Virginians to fix what was broken.
“I know many of you are worried about the recklessness coming out of Washington,” she said. “You are worried about policies that are hurting our communities, cutting healthcare access, imperiling rural hospitals and driving up costs.”
Two other Democrats also were sworn in. Ghazala F. Hashmi, the first Muslim woman to serve in statewide office in the U.S., is Virginia’s new lieutenant governor. Hashmi placed her hand on a Quran as she was sworn in. Jay Jones is Virginia’s first Black attorney general. He was sworn into his post, notably, in the former capital of the Confederacy.
After the ceremony Hashmi and Jones stood behind Spanberger as she signed her first 10 executive orders, including one rescinding a Youngkin directive from last year instructing state law enforcement and corrections officers to assist with federal immigration enforcement.
“Local law enforcement should not be required to divert their limited resources to enforce federal civil immigration laws,” she said.
Spanberger’s inauguration as the state’s 75th governor is a historic first: Only men have held the post since Virginia first became a commonwealth in 1776. And no woman served as a colonial governor prior to that, long before women even had the right to vote.
She will be referred to with traditional formality: “Madam Governor” or, as some officials phrase it, “Her Excellency.”
According to “A Guide to Virginia Protocol and Traditions,” males in the official party wear morning coats and women wear dark suits for the inauguration, and many, including the new governor’s husband, kept to that tradition Saturday.
But as the first woman to serve as governor, Spanberger wore all white, a possible tribute to the women’s suffrage movement. She wore a gold pin on her long, white coat that said: “One country. One destiny.”
Prominent Democrats attended the ceremony, such as New Jersey Gov.-Elect Mikie Sherrill and Maryland Gov. Wes Moore. U.S. Sens. Elissa Slotkin of Michigan and Adam Schiff of California were seated in the crowd.
On his 95th birthday, former Virginia Gov. Douglas Wilder also sat behind Spanberger and watched her inauguration.
“On these steps, Virginia inaugurated our 66th governor and our nation’s first elected African American governor,” Spanberger said in her speech. “Gov. L. Douglas Wilder changed what so many of our fellow citizens believed was even possible.”
Democrats in the statehouse have vowed to work with Spanberger to push through their agenda, which includes redrawing the state’s congressional district map ahead of the midterm elections.
The state Democrats picked up 13 seats in the House of Delegates a year after the party’s stunning losses nationwide in the 2024 presidential election.
Good morning, and welcome to L.A. on the Record — our City Hall newsletter. It’s David Zahniser, with an assist from Noah Goldberg, giving you the latest on city and county government.
Ever since the Jan. 7 wildfire incinerated much of Pacific Palisades, residents have pressed city leaders to do more to speed the recovery.
Fire victims have pushed Mayor Karen Bass to weigh in on mortgage relief. They have asked city leaders for help with their insurers. And they have sought clearer answers about the city’s timeline for putting utility lines underground.
Now, Palisades residents are on the verge of a major victory — wide-ranging relief from the permit fees charged by the Department of Building and Safety and several other agencies during the rebuilding process.
On Friday, the city’s top budget official issued a reworked proposal, recommending that the City Council waive the fees for every type of building destroyed in the fire.
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In his nine-page report, City Administrative Officer Matt Szabo recommended fee relief for single-family homes, duplexes, condominium complexes, townhouses, apartment buildings and commercial businesses.
That is a departure from the approach Szabo and other city officials initially favored. In October the council’s powerful Budget and Finance Committee sought to limit the relief to two types of buildings — single-family homes and duplexes — after expressing fears about the hit to the city budget if the program were more expansive.
Dozens of Palisades residents showed up at City Hall last month to denounce that narrower approach. Among them was Roseanne Landay, whose two-bedroom condominium was destroyed in the fire.
Landay said she didn’t understand why council members were treating residents of her building differently from other Palisades homeowners.
“We pay taxes. We vote. And these are our homes,” she said at the time. “We lost everything, just like our neighbors who happened to be lucky enough to live in a different structure, a different building.”
The boisterous protests helped spur the council to take another look. On Tuesday the budget committee is set to take up Szabo’s revised plan. From there it would head to the full council for a vote.
Szabo’s change in strategy was immediately welcomed by Councilmember Traci Park, whose district includes the Palisades.
“If we are going to rebuild and recover, it needs to be holistic, and that includes all of the properties,” she said in an interview.
The push to waive building permit fees in the Palisades has become a thorny political issue for Bass, who first announced the idea during her State of the City address last spring. Some in the Palisades said Bass did too little to shepherd the fee relief through the council’s approval process, allowing it to drift for much of the year.
Asked about Szabo’s propsoal, Bass said she would keep working to help Palisades residents “rebuild and return home.”
“I look forward to signing the ordinance into law to waive these fees and provide this much-needed relief that survivors deserve,” she said in a statement.
In April, days after her State of the City speech, Bass issued an emergency order temporarily suspending the payment of permit fees by wildfire victims until the council enacted a law making the fee relief permanent.
Weeks later, Landay and the group she founded, Pali Condo Captains, pressed Bass to expand her order to include townhouses, condominiums and other multiunit buildings. Bass did so in May.
The council’s ad hoc committee on wildfire recovery, which is chaired by Park, endorsed Bass’ proposal in June. But things got bogged down from there.
In October, council members on the budget committee voiced alarm about the potential loss to the city budget caused by forfeiting the permit fees, which cover the cost of city staff time. Councilmember Bob Blumenfield drew a link between the plan for fee relief and reduced services in other parts of the city.
During one hearing, Szabo warned that the cost of waiving the permit fees could reach as high as $278 million, which could wreak havoc with the city budget.
Palisades residents blasted that estimate as overinflated, pointing out that it assumed that every fire victim who lost a property in the Palisades would rebuild at 150% of the structure’s original size.
By December, it was clear that many had decided against rebuilding and planned to sell their properties instead — rendering them ineligible for the relief program. Under the proposal, fee waivers would not be provided to buyers of burned-out properties.
Szabo, in the report released Friday, said he reworked the numbers after reviewing the assumptions underlying the original cost figures presented to the council. Based on the revised numbers he now expects the cost of waiving the fees to reach about $90 million.
That estimate assumes the city will cover property owners who rebuild at 110% of the size of their original buildings. Property owners who build larger than 110% would have to pay a portion of the additional fees, Szabo said.
Landay, the Palisades condo advocate, said she’s happy to see a more inclusive relief plan and hopes the council will support it. From the beginning she argued that condo owners, many of whom are elderly, are among the community’s most economically vulnerable members.
At the same time, Landay wished she and her neighbors hadn’t had to spend so much time pressuring the city to act.
“I would much rather have spent this past year healing and recovering and rebuilding, instead of having to battle various government offices for assistance,” she said.
State of play
— CARUSO OUT: In a Friday evening news dump on social media, billionaire real estate developer Rick Caruso announced he will not run for mayor or governor. “Though my name will not be on a ballot, my work continues,” he said.
— HERE COMES THE TAXMAN: L.A. labor unions began gathering signatures this week for a ballot measure to raise taxes on companies whose top executives make at least 50 times more than their median employee. “It’s high time the rich paid more taxes,” said Kurt Petersen, co-president of Unite Here Local 11, which represents hotel employees.
— WHERE WILL THE MONEY GO? Under the tax proposal, 70% of the proceeds — about $350 million per year — would go toward the development of housing for working families. Business groups denounced the proposal, saying it would drive companies out of the city.
— TAXES, PART TWO: Bass publicly threw her support behind a half-cent sales tax hike planned for the November ballot that would raise money for the fire department. The firefighters union recently began collecting signatures to get the measure on the ballot.
— MOVING ON: Meanwhile, L.A.’s new fire chief said in an interview that he won’t try to find out who was responsible for watering down the LAFD’s after-action report on the Palisades fire. Jaime Moore made those remarks one week after he publicly confirmed that the after-action report was rewritten to shield top brass from scrutiny.
— PLENTY OF POTHOLES: Since Christmas Eve, L.A. street crews repaired more than 3,800 potholes as they respond to a deluge of road repair complaints. The pothole problem comes amid a rainy season that has dumped more than 14 inches of precipitation on downtown L.A. between October and last week — roughly 99% of what the city typically sees by the end of March.
— WORDS GET IN THE WAY: The long-running legal battle between the city of Los Angeles and the L.A. Alliance for Human Rights over homeless services has devolved into a fight over definitions of specific words, The Times reports.
— BACKING BASS: Los Angeles County Supervisor Janice Hahn and City Councilmember Tim McOsker spoke at a fundraiser for the mayor’s reelection campaign in San Pedro on Thursday. Bass is seeking a second four-year term in the June 2 primary election.
— POSITIONING PARK: Park, who is running for reelection in her Westside district, has raised more than $1 million for her campaign, spokesperson Michael Trujillo said this week. About half the donations came from within Park’s district, which includes coastal neighborhoods stretching from LAX to Pacific Palisades, according to her team.
On Monday, while speaking at the Los Angeles Current Affairs Forum, Park made clear that she would rather concentrate on her council duties.
“It’s really more of a nuisance, having to focus on the campaign,” she said. “I have a lot of very, very serious, heavy work that we are in the midst of.”
QUICK HITS
Where is Inside Safe? The mayor’s signature homelessness program went to the area around Venice Boulevard and New Hampshire Avenue in the Pico Union neighborhood, which is represented by Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez.
That’s it for this week! Send your questions, comments and gossip to LAontheRecord@latimes.com. Did a friend forward you this email? Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Saturday morning.
President Bush said that he did not live “in a bubble” and that he was well aware of what was going on outside the White House, rejecting critics’ claims that he was out of touch with public opinion.
“I don’t feel in a bubble,” Bush said in an interview on “NBC Nightly News.”
“I feel like I’m getting really good advice from very capable people, and that people from all walks of life have informed me and informed those who advise me. And I feel very comfortable that I’m very aware of what’s going on,” Bush said. “Every morning, I look at the newspaper.”
The plastics industry is not happy with California. And it’s looking to friends in Congress to put the Golden State in its place.
California has not figured out how to reduce single-use plastic. But its efforts to do so have created a headache for the fossil fuel industry and plastic manufacturers. The two businesses are linked since most plastic is derived from oil or natural gas.
In December, a Republican congressman from Texas introduced a bill designed to preempt states — in particular, California — from imposing their own truth-in-labeling or recycling laws. The bill, called the Packaging and Claims Knowledge Act, calls for a national standard for environmental claims on packaging that companies would voluntarily adhere to.
“California’s policies have slowed American commerce long enough,” Rep. Randy Weber (R-Texas) said in a post on the social media platform X announcing the bill. “Not anymore.”
The legislation was written for American consumers, Weber said in a press release. Its purpose is to reduce a patchwork of state recycling and composting laws that only confuse people, he said, and make it hard for them to know which products are recyclable, compostable or destined for the landfill.
But it’s clear that California’s laws — such as Senate Bill 343, which requires that packaging meet certain recycling milestones in order to carry the chasing arrows recycling label — are the ones he and the industry have in mind.
“Packaging and labeling standards in the United States are increasingly influenced by state-level regulations, particularly those adopted in California,” Weber said in a statement. “Because of the size of California’s market, standards set by the state can have national implications for manufacturers, supply chains and consumers, even when companies operate primarily outside of California.”
It’s a departure from Weber’s usual stance on states’ rights, which he has supported in the past on topics such as marriage laws, abortion, border security and voting.
“We need to remember that the 13 Colonies and the 13 states created the federal government,” he said on Fox News in 2024, in an interview about the border. “The federal government did not create the states. … All rights go to the people in the state, the states and the people respectively.”
During the 2023-2024 campaign cycle, the oil and gas industry was Weber’s largest contributor, with more than $130,000 from companies such as Philips 66, the American Chemistry Council, Koch Inc. and Valero, according to OpenSecrets.org.
Weber did not respond to a request for comment. The bill has been referred to the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
Plastic and packaging companies and trade organizations such as Ameripen, Keurig, Dr Pepper, the Biodegradable Plastics Industry and the Plastics Industry Assn. have come out in support of the bill.
Other companies and trade groups that manufacture plastics that are banned in California — such as Dart, which produces polystyrene, and plastic bag manufacturers such as Amcor — support the bill. So do some who could potentially lose their recycling label because they’re not meeting California’s requirements. They include the Carton Council, which represents companies that make milk and other beverage containers.
“Plastic packaging is essential to modern life … yet companies and consumers are currently navigating a complex landscape of rules around recyclable, compostable, and reusable packaging claims,” Matt Seaholm, chief executive of the Plastics Industry Assn., said in a statement. The bill “would establish a clear national framework under the FTC, reducing uncertainty and supporting businesses operating across state lines.”
The law, if enacted, would require the Federal Trade Commission to work with third-party certifiers to determine the recyclability, compostability or reusability of a product or packaging material, and make the designation consistent across the country.
The law applies to all kinds of packaging, not just plastic.
Lauren Zuber, a spokeswoman for Ameripen — a packaging trade association — said in an email that the law doesn’t necessarily target California, but the Golden State has “created problematic labeling requirements” that “threaten to curtail recycling instead of encouraging it by confusing consumers.”
Ameripen helped draft the legislation.
Advocates focused on reducing waste say the bill is a free pass for the plastic industry to continue pushing plastic into the marketplace without considering where it ends up. They say the bill would gut consumer trust and make it harder for people to know whether the products they are dealing with are truly recyclable, compostable or reusable.
“California’s truth-in-advertising laws exist for a simple reason: People should be able to trust what companies tell them,” said Nick Lapis, director of advocacy for Californians Against Waste. “It’s not surprising that manufacturers of unrecyclable plastic want to weaken those rules, but it’s pretty astonishing that some members of Congress think their constituents want to be misled.”
If the bill were adopted, it would “punish the companies that have done the right thing by investing in real solutions.”
“At the end of the day, a product isn’t recyclable if it doesn’t get recycled, and it isn’t compostable if it doesn’t get composted. Deception is never in the public interest,” he said.
On Friday, California’s Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta announced settlements totaling $3.35 million with three major plastic bag producers for violating state law regarding deceptive marketing of non-recyclable bags. The settlement follows a similar one in October with five other plastic bag manufacturers.
Plastic debris and waste is a growing problem in California and across the world. Plastic bags clog streams and injure and kill marine mammals and wildlife. Plastic breaks down into microplastics, which have been found in just about every human tissue sampled, including from the brain, testicles and heart. They’ve also been discovered in air, sludge, dirt, dust and drinking water.
President Trump this week pardoned a San Diego-area woman whose sentence he commuted during his first term but who shortly wound up back in prison for a different scheme.
In 2016 a federal jury convicted Adriana Camberos and her then-husband, Joseph Shayota, on conspiracy charges in connection with an elaborate scheme to sell millions of bottles of counterfeit 5-Hour Energy shots in the United States. She was sentenced to 26 months in prison and served barely more than half of that time when Trump commuted her sentence in 2021.
But her freedom proved fleeting. In 2024, Camberos and her brother, Andres, were convicted in a separate case that involved lying to manufacturers to purchase wholesale groceries and additional items at big discounts after pledging that they were meant for sale in Mexico or to prisoners or rehabilitation facilities. The siblings then instead sold the products at higher prices to U.S. distributors, prosecutors said.
To avoid detection, prosecutors said, Camberos and her brother committed bank and mail fraud. Prosecutors said the pair made millions in illegal profits, funding a lavish lifestyle that included a Lamborghini Huracan, multiple homes in the San Diego area and a beachside condominium in Coronado.
The decision to pardon Camberos came amid a flurry of such actions from Trump in recent days, including for the father of a large donor to his super PAC and the former governor of Puerto Rico, who pleaded guilty last August to a campaign finance violation in a federal case that authorities say also involved a former FBI agent and a Venezuelan banker.
The president has issued a number of clemencies during the first year of his second term, many for defendants in criminal cases once touted by federal prosecutors. The moves come amid a continuing Trump administration effort to erode public integrity guardrails — including the firing of the Justice Department’s pardon attorney.
Among those granted relief of their prison sentences are defendants with connections to the president or to people in his orbit.
Administration officials have not offered a public explanation for Trump’s decision to pardon Camberos. But a White House official, speaking on background, said the administration felt it was correcting an earlier wrong by pardoning Camberos, arguing that she and her brother were unfairly targeted and subject to a political prosecution under the administration of former President Biden. The official alleged the Biden administration targeted the Camberos family in response to the earlier conviction and that the conduct was a typical part of the Camberos’ wholesale grocery business.
Ahead of her first conviction, authorities said Camberos and her then-husband operated a company called Baja Exporting, which contracted with the distributors of 5-Hour Energy to sell the product in Mexico. However, the company then altered the goods’ Spanish-language packaging and labeling and instead distributed them in the U.S. at well below the company’s normal retail price, prosecutors alleged.
That relabeling effort involved 350,000 bottles sold from late 2009 through 2011 at 15% below normal retail prices, according to authorities. The couple then took things a step further, joining with other defendants in Southern California and Michigan to manufacture a bogus concoction bottled and labeled to mimic the authentic product, according to court records. The scheme transformed the following year into one that produced and marketed several million bottles of counterfeit drink that was mixed under unsanitary conditions by day laborers, prosecutors said.
Six other defendants pleaded guilty to similar charges in connection with the scheme.
It wasn’t clear whether any consumers were harmed. The Food and Drug Administration, which regulates 5-Hour Energy as a dietary supplement, has investigated at least eight deaths and a dozen life-threatening reactions involving energy shots before and during the time period of the counterfeiting.
The recent wave of clemencies joins previous Trump pardons of former Democratic Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich and former Republican Connecticut Gov. John Rowland, whose promising political career was upended by a corruption scandal and two federal prison stints.
Trump also pardoned former U.S. Rep. Michael Grimm, a New York Republican who resigned from Congress after a tax fraud conviction and made headlines for threatening to throw a reporter off a Capitol balcony over a question he didn’t like. Reality TV stars Todd and Julie Chrisley, who had been convicted of cheating banks and evading taxes, also received pardons from Trump.
Times staff writer Ana Ceballos and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
