POLITICS

If I ever need to humble myself — if my head inflates with grand visions of becoming the next Steve Lopez or Bill Plaschke — I pull up the transcript of the secret recording that upended Los Angeles politics after The Times broke the story exactly four years ago.

It’s like a modern-day version of “Ozymandias,” except far more vulgar, nowhere near as poetic and a better warning against hubris than anything Shelley could have penned.

“The thing for us is to exercise our power,” said then-City Councilmember Gil Cedillo, about halfway through an hourlong conversation he was having with three of the city’s most powerful political figures.

Oh, did they ever — and nowhere near the way they intended.

Nury Martinez and Ron Herrera, the president of the City Council and head of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, respectively, quickly resigned for their roles in the racist, homophobic drivel on the recording. Cedillo — who was finishing out his term — and Councilmember Kevin de León refused to step down, besmirching their well-earned reputations as progressive lions.

The L.A. they sought to create — where Latinos ascend at the expense of the Black community, and anyone who gets in the way is crushed — never came to be. And the recording that exposed their machinations ultimately destroyed the type of ethnic politicking that made the careers of too many self-serving power grabbers, including this quartet.

The transcript of their back-and-forth now reads as prophecy — and we’re far better for it.

Much of the discussion, which happened in October 2021 at the headquarters of the L.A. County Federation of Labor, was devoted to whining that L.A.’s Latino-majority council districts, and some cities elsewhere in the county, were represented by Black leaders instead of Latinos, even as Latino residents far outnumbered Black ones.

“F—, the way I see it, all of the seats are Latino,” said Herrera, who hailed the rise of a “little Latino caucus of our … own” that he felt should reign permanently.

He and the others predicted a future in which vengeful Black politicians would try to sabotage future Latino leaders on their way out of office, creating “poor Latino districts with nothing,” as Martinez put it.

She was referring to redistricting proposals that would chop off assets like the Coliseum and Exposition Park from South L.A.’s District 9 — the most Latino district in the city, represented by a Black council member, Curren Price.

“So they f— a future Latino for CD 9,” De León whined. “That’s how arrogant, just how arrogant it is.”

That’s not what ended up happening.

Los Angeles City Councilmember Kevin de León at a council meeting in December 2022 after a two-month absence following his role in that year’s audio leak scandal.

(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)

District 9 didn’t lose any assets. Black leaders saw the writing on the wall and didn’t run a serious Black candidate to replace the termed-out Price this year. That created space for two Latinos — Estuardo Mazariegos and Jose Ugarte — to make it to the general election. No matter which candidate wins in November, the City Council will have fewer than three Black members for the first time in 63 years.

Both Mazariegos and Ugarte say that the anti-Black scheming of the audio leak villains inspired them to run campaigns focusing on Black and Latino residents as one constituency, reflecting how life is actually lived in South L.A., not how Latinos from elsewhere in the city imagine it to be.

Mazariegos attended the first City Council meeting after The Times dropped the audio leak bombshell in October 2022. He remembers Cedillo peeking at the angry audience and temporarily returning to the council’s back room.

“No community should have to lose power for another to gain it,” said Mazariegos, who would become the first Central American immigrant to serve on the council if he were to win. “Our power grows when we build it together.”

Ugarte, formerly one of Price’s top aides, agreed. He argued that the best way to lead in South L.A. as a Latino council member is “with respect for those who came before us, the humility to listen to those doing the work today, and the understanding that District 9 is strongest when [Black and Latino residents] move forward together.”

Born in Oaxaca, Ugarte would become L.A.’s first Indigenous council member if he wins. That would be a rich coda to the audio leak, considering that Oaxacans received some of the nastiest insults. Martinez described them as “ little short dark people” who were feos — ugly. Cedillo joked that they were “little ones,” while Herrera cracked that they were “indios.”

Who’s laughing now?

The Feos Four also spent time kvetching about Nithya Raman, who was finishing her first year on the council. In 2020, she had upset an incumbent to become the first democratic socialist council member.

At the time of the recording, rivals were trying to diminish Raman’s power by drawing boundaries that would put her district “in the blender and chop [it] up, left and right,” as De León described it.

“She’s not our ally,” Cedillo said. “She’s not going to help us. Her district is not a district we can count on.”

Give credit to Cedillo and his pendejo pals: They were already seeing Raman and other democratic socialists as an emerging force, even while downplaying the DSA’s chances. De León said that Raman’s politics were “about just her as an individual.” Herrera dismissed Hugo Soto-Martínez, then a no-name union organizer aiming to unseat Councilmember Mitch O’Farrell, as a “kid.” Nury Martinez blithely mispronounced Eunisses Hernandez’s name while cackling about the first-time candidate’s challenge to Cedillo.

If Cedillo and De León weren’t so convinced of their own political immortality, they could have helped check the DSA’s rise that has so vexed L.A.’s liberal leaders. Instead, Hernandez beat Cedillo in a shocking upset in 2022, while Soto-Martínez won in the fall. And fellow democratic socialist Ysabel Jurado took out De León in 2024. Those triumphs paved the path for DSA-LA-backed candidate Marissa Roy to make a strong run for city attorney this year. Mazariegos is also endorsed by DSA-LA, which is backing Raman for mayor against incumbent Karen Bass.

Then-Councilmember Gil Cedillo at the Los Angeles City Council meeting on Oct. 11, 2022, two days after the release of explosive audio involving him led to protesters demanding his resignation.

(Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times)

The group should send Cedillo and De León bouquets of red roses as gracias for assisting their ascendancy. All of us owe the foursome a thanks for hastening the demise of the old Latino political machines that birthed them and kept the city stuck in tribalism for too long.

Now, Latino politicians must run on their bona fides for all Angelenos, instead of just their latinidad. Soto-Martínez and Hernandez won reelection outright in the June primary because their constituents appreciated their sewer socialism approach, focusing on quality of life issues instead of ideological revolution. Meanwhile, Chicanosauruses are wheezing with diminished power as they urge Latinos to back Bass. The message doesn’t seem to be landing: A recent Berkeley IGS/Times poll found that 45% of Latino voters favored Raman to Bass’ 21%, with 34% undecided.

Gone are the days when Latino voters blindly believed Latino leaders. Why bother, after Martinez and her crew proved the folly of ethnic politics?

Near the start of the recording, Martinez complained that voters and the media always seemed to forgive Black politicians caught up in scandal, while Latinos didn’t get the same treatment.

“They’re never done,” she complained. “They never close a chapter on us.”

L.A. did close the chapter. Now, the Feos Four’s only legacy is “that colossal wreck” of their conversation, to quote the finale of “Ozymandias,” left to rot forever.

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon says the firing squad execution of Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan will be livestreamed after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the execution would be “public.”

Hegseth, speaking to the conservative TV outlet Real America’s Voice News on Wednesday, said the execution of Hasan will take place at Fort Hood on Dec. 3. Hasan was convicted of killing 13 people and injuring 32 others in a shooting at the military base in 2009.

“We’ll make sure that people are able to watch it, that it’s public,” Hegseth said.

Hegseth spoke to the outlet aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier while visiting the long-deployed crew, who supported the Iran war, before their arrival at their home port in San Diego.

When asked if Hasan had made any final requests or reached out to the Trump administration, Hegseth simply replied: “Don’t care. We’ll see him on December 3rd.”

Officials in the Pentagon clarified Thursday that the execution will be livestreamed and that more details would follow.

Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell had said Monday that President Trump had approved the execution of Hasan.

Trump has previously been critical of public executions in Iran, at times using the possibility of protesters being killed by the Iranian government as a possible rationale for military action. Those warnings preceded his ultimate choice to attack Iran at the end of February over its ballistic missiles and the risk of it developing nuclear weapons.

“We’ve been told that the killing in Iran is stopping,” Trump told reporters on Jan. 14 of this year. “It’s stopping and there’s no plan for executions.”

He repeated that claim on Jan. 20 at a White House press briefing, saying: “We let them know that if that happens, that will be a very bad day for them. And they decided not to do it. They didn’t hang the people.”

Slightly more than a month later in his State of the Union address, Trump said, “We stopped them from hanging a lot of them with the threat of serious violence.”

The White House on Thursday immediately referred questions about the plans for the livestreamed execution to the Pentagon.

However, experts on military law said Hasan could choose to resist execution and file a habeas petition in civilian court, which could significantly delay the execution.

“It frankly might outlast the current administration, and who knows if the next one will have the same penchant for executions,” said Eugene R. Fidell, a visiting lecturer at Yale Law School specializing in military law.

Hasan, an Army psychiatrist who held the rank of major, walked into a medical building where soldiers were waiting in long lines to receive immunizations and medical clearance for deployment. He shouted “Allahu akbar” — Arabic for “God is great!” — and opened fire with a laser-sighted handgun.

During the trial it was revealed that Hasan spent weeks planning the deadly attack, and his preparation included videotaping a sales clerk showing him how to change the magazine on the pistol that he purchased. He would later go to a gun range outside Austin and ask for advice on how to reload with speed and precision from an instructor.

Soldiers later testified that Hasan’s rapid reloading made it all but impossible to stop the shooting. Investigators recovered 146 shell casings inside the building and dozens more outside, where Hasan shot at the backs of soldiers fleeing toward the parking lot.

Hasan said it was an effort to stop them from going to Afghanistan and killing his fellow Muslims. A military judge barred him from presenting that as a defense during his trial. Hasan made almost no effort to defend himself in court, telling jurors when he acted as his own counsel that evidence would show he was the shooter and describing himself as a soldier who had “switched sides.”

Hegseth said the military hasn’t executed a servicemember by firing squad since World War II. The last military execution took place on April 13, 1961, when Army Pvt. John Bennett was executed by hanging.

Toropin writes for the Associated Press.

HARRISBURG, Pa. — When the U.S. Department of Homeland Security publicized the arrest of a Nigerian man for indecent exposure this week, it included a political attack that’s drawing complaints from Democrats and a nonpartisan government watchdog.

The department’s news release alleges that the man worked for a Democratic congressional candidate in a Pennsylvania battleground district, an unusual reference to a high-profile midterm contest.

“It’s unbelievable that Janelle Stelson would employ an illegal alien to work on a congressional campaign, let alone a pervert who exposed himself in public,” Charles Wall, deputy director for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said in the news release.

A police report said the man had fliers for Stelson in his vehicle. Stelson denied that the man was a campaign employee.

The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to questions about how it established the man worked for Stelson. Its news release cited a news report quoting a conservative activist who asserted the connection.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington filed a complaint Thursday with the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, calling the department’s attack on Stelson a blatant violation of the Hatch Act, which prohibits government officials from using their official positions to influence elections.

Donald Sherman, who leads CREW, said he’d never seen anything like the department’s statement, where a law enforcement agency “goes out of its way” to reference a campaign affiliation in a news release that has nothing to do with election-related crimes.

The news release is “consistent with the message that the administration and that the president has sent from the top that ICE is to be involved in elections, regardless of what the law says,” Sherman said.

Stelson, a former local television personality, is running for the second time against Republican Rep. Scott Perry in Pennsylvania’s 10th Congressional District. It’s expected to be one of the races that determines control of the U.S. House in the November midterms.

“If he is an illegal immigrant who committed a crime he should be deported,” Stelson’s campaign said. “We never heard of him prior to the news of his arrest. We are grateful to law enforcement for acting swiftly to arrest him.”

President Trump’s administration is already under scrutiny for using federal resources for political purposes. The Department of Homeland Security has spent millions of taxpayer dollars on advertisements glorifying Trump and promoting his campaign messaging, drawing a pair of lawsuits and bipartisan backlash.

According to a police report obtained by the Associated Press, Chimaobim Adedayo Igbojekwe was arrested by an East Pennsboro Township police officer on Sept. 27 after a report of a suspicious vehicle parked next to a public park on a residential street in the Harrisburg suburb.

The officer wrote that, when Igbojekwe opened the door to talk to the officer, he noticed that Igbojekwe’s “genitals were exposed.”

Igbojekwe told the officer he was “in the neighborhood for work and that he was waiting to hand out [fliers] for Janelle Stelson’s political campaign,” according to the report. Igbojekwe produced a stack of fliers, the officer wrote.

It’s not clear whether the man was working as a paid canvasser for another organization.

Igbojekwe was charged with disorderly conduct and indecent exposure. He pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct, courts records say, and later was arrested by ICE.

Homeland Security said Igbojekwe entered the country legally in 2017 but remained past his “authorized period.” He was granted deferred action in 2021.

Igbojekwe’s public defender did not return a call about the case.

Levy writes for the Associated Press.

Oct. 8, 2026 9:48 AM PT

WASHINGTON — President Trump said Thursday that he will not order a resumption of military strikes on Iran before the Nov. 3 midterm elections in the United States.

Trump, while stumping for Republicans this week, has hinted that he was confident that an endgame to the war could come in the days before or after the election, while also hinting that he remained open to resuming full-scale military operations against Iran.

For weeks, Trump has been threatening that a post-midterm election escalation in the seven-month-old war remains a viable option, despite his initial promises to Americans of a military campaign that would last a matter of weeks.

But Trump in a social media post on Thursday said the U.S. “will not be attacking Iran at any time prior to the Midterm Elections to be held in the United States on November 3rd.”

Trump added that his team has been “having productive discussions with the Islamic Republic of Iran.”

Negotiations had appeared at a standstill since Trump late last month publicly rejected Iran’s proposal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz within seven days if the U.S. met certain conditions.

Iran, however, said last week it had received a U.S. counterproposal. And Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi on Thursday said he expected Tehran would offer a formal reply within days.

Trump’s post comes as the military has dispatched more resources to the region. U.S. officials have said a third aircraft carrier, the USS Theodore Roosevelt, and thousands of troops aboard it and accompanying ships could arrive as early as the end of October.

Trump’s announcement was made the same day the USS Abraham Lincoln was due to arrive to its home port in San Diego after a record-long deployment in support of the Iran war. There have been reports of crew stress and poor mental health, as well as supply shortages, including food and hygiene products.

The USS George Washington, which is usually based in Asia, relieved the Lincoln in August. The other aircraft carrier in the Middle East, the USS George H.W. Bush, has been deployed for about six months, but it pulled into Phuket, Thailand, for a port visit several days ago.

Boak and Madhani write for the Associated Press.

Oct. 8, 2026 11:31 AM PT

PHOENIX — An Arizona congressional candidate says she was knocked unconscious and sexually assaulted this summer when repairing campaign signs overnight.

Bernadette Greene-Placentia told investigators that two men raped her, and she kicked her feet up at one point to try to fight back. She said she felt the weight of one of her attackers on her body, and had bruises on her arms from being held down, a bump on her head and other injuries, according to police reports.

“I knew that I had been knocked out,” Greene-Placentia told the Associated Press on Wednesday.

Greene-Placentia, 52, is a Democrat who is challenging incumbent Republican Rep. Abe Hamadeh for the 8th Congressional District seat representing parts of metro Phoenix that are reliably red. She said she told her husband and campaign staff about the mid-August attack in Sun City days after it happened. The Phoenix New Times first reported on it Wednesday.

Greene-Placentia told the AP she was disgusted that two men took control of her body and she had no say in it. She said she decided to speak out publicly when she realized she was telling voters she would advocate for them when she was not advocating for herself.

“My takeaway is that I have a lot more empathy and understanding of why so many women don’t come forward,” she said. “And, and I’m hoping that I can encourage them.”

Greene-Placentia said she couldn’t recall many details of the Aug. 14 assault, including the exact location or a description of the men, though she said one wore black boots and had small feet. She told investigators one of the men used an expletive to describe her, and she believes he referenced her political party.

The Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office declined to comment on its investigation of the attack.

Greene-Placentia is a former long-haul trucker and later ran a small transportation company, according to her campaign.

In a social media post supporting Democrat Pete Buttigieg’s 2020 run for the presidency, Greene-Placentia called herself a former Republican and a “never Trumper,” and said she voted Libertarian in 2016. Greene-Placentia later became more engaged in Arizona Democratic politics.

She said she often put up and repaired campaign signs overnight because it was cooler than the blistering summer days and there was less traffic.

Arizona Democratic Party treasurer Greg Freeman said he got a call from Greene-Placentia, a friend who ran his 2024 campaign for a county assessor, the morning of Aug. 17. She told him she had been sexually assaulted by two men, Freeman said, and he could tell she wasn’t ready to go to the police or share it publicly.

“Obviously she was processing it on the phone,” Freeman said. “She was just in shock. She was just horrified by what happened.”

Greene-Placentia said she wishes she had called police immediately and gone to the hospital. After the attack, she took multiple showers and washed the clothes she was wearing, police reports state.

The embarrassment and anger made it hard for her to come forward, she said. She reported the attack to police in late August.

Billeaud and Yu write for the Associated Press.

DAKAR, Senegal — In Miami, Daniela Fuentes styled hair for clients and performed in drag at a nightclub called Azúcar. She wore her blond wig in public and dressed as the woman she had known herself to be since adolescence in Cuba.

Now, more than 6,000 miles away in the Central African Republic, she wears men’s clothes, lowers her voice and tries not to draw attention to the breasts she developed after beginning hormone treatment as a teenager. As part of U.S. efforts to deport people to countries other than their own, authorities sent her Aug. 29 to a place where she has no ties and where advocacy groups have reported arbitrary detention, torture, and other rights violations of sexual and gender minorities.

“Everything is difficult here because I have to hide who I am,” said Fuentes, a 32-year-old transgender woman living on a compound she rarely leaves, sharing a room with four Cuban men also deported from the U.S. “I don’t know this place, the people or the language, and I have no idea what will happen to me.”

The Central African Republic — one of the world’s poorest countries, a place with a history of conflict that the U.S. State Department advises American travelers to avoid — is one of at least 12 African nations that signed agreements to accept “third-country” deportations, a policy the U.S. Supreme Court last month allowed to continue, at least temporarily.

In the Central African Republic — where transgender people have little to no legal protections and are marginalized in much of society — Fuentes dons her wig only in the privacy of her bathroom. She described disguising herself as protection, first in U.S. detention and now in a country she first heard of when she was already headed there on a deportation flight.

“My whole life, my whole identity, was taken away from me,” Fuentes said.

Public records say a judge ordered Fuentes to leave the U.S. but offer no other information. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials did not reply to emailed questions.

Tens of thousands of people have been deported to “third countries”

Fuentes’ compound in the capital, Bangui, is an apartment complex where the government houses male deportees.

Fuentes said she can leave but that officials have advised her and others to avoid it — they have no identification, which could lead to issues with the police. It also means they can’t work, she said, and she’s waiting on travel documents that would allow her to leave the country. The International Organization for Migration, an agency associated with the United Nations, has provided food, and the migrants say they’ve crowdsourced for donations to buy groceries.

The U.S. — via agreements often not made public — has deported about 25,000 people to more than two dozen countries that aren’t their own, the vast majority to Mexico, according to a tally by Third Country Deportation Watch, a partnership of Refugees International and Human Rights First. The U.S. has not released numbers or details.

From January 2025 to August 2026, more than 500 were sent to countries in Africa, according to a Human Rights Watch report published Thursday — including at least 12 people who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender and were deported to places that criminalize same-sex relations or public same-sex romantic conduct. Some advocates say the number is likely higher.

“These are not bureaucratic errors or isolated incidents,” said Bridget Crawford, of the group Immigration Equality. “They are the predictable result of policies that purposefully abandon our legal and moral obligation to protect LGBTQ+ immigrants fleeing persecution.”

The U.S. government says the policy is lawful and that receiving governments provide assurances deportees won’t be persecuted or tortured.

Daniela Fuentes says ICE detained her with men before deportation

Fuentes grew up in La Lisa, on Havana’s outskirts, and said she understood from childhood that she was different. She began living as a woman in adolescence and started taking hormones at 18.

She ran a salon from her home, coloring and cutting hair. She said she was harassed because of her gender identity and attacked at least twice, leaving scars on her arm and head. Police also questioned her about operating a private business, she said — though housefront businesses are common in the area.

In 2023, Fuentes sold her home and left amid a deepening economic crisis and a crackdown on dissent — even as Cuba, one of Latin America’s most progressive countries for LGBTQ+ rights, adopted new inclusion laws. Making her way to the U.S., she said, she presented as a man traveling through Central America; she believed it was safer.

After seven months in Mexico, she said, she entered the U.S. through Texas via CBP One, a President Joe Biden-era online appointment system that allowed migrants to live in the country for two years on humanitarian grounds. Then she went to Miami.

There, she began living openly as a woman again. She found work styling hair and performed at Azúcar. Though she lacked permanent legal status, Fuentes said Miami offered something she’d rarely experienced: the freedom to move through daily life as herself.

That ended when officers encountered her outside a motel. Fuentes said they learned she had missed an immigration court hearing in Texas. She said she asked that the case be moved to Florida but received no response.

Fuentes said she was taken into custody and later placed in immigration detention with men. Officials confiscated her wig and gave her a male detainee’s uniform, she said.

Such treatment is in line with a January 2025 executive order directing officials to exclude transgender women from women’s prisons and detention centers.

“When I learned that they were going to put me with men, I almost fainted,” Fuentes said.

Deportees said they boarded a flight without knowing the destination

Fuentes was held at two detention facilities in Florida, then transferred to Texas. When armed officers arrived there, she said, she suspected she was facing deportation, but they didn’t reveal she was being sent to Africa until about five hours into the flight.

Other deportees on the flight told AP they also weren’t told the destination until they were on the plane. Dozens have been sent to the Central African Republic, including an Iranian woman facing persecution in her home country and an Afghan whose brothers worked with the U.S. military.

Fuentes said she does not understand why she was sent to Africa rather than Cuba. She told AP she has no lawyer.

The U.S. does repatriate Cuban citizens, as part of agreements to resume deportation flights in 2023, despite tensions in relations between the countries. Charter flights have arrived in Havana regularly.

Yasmany Moreno, another Cuban deportee in Bangui, said that upon arriving, the group had no visas or documents establishing their legal status in the country. Officials spoke of providing assistance for 90 days, he said, but the deportees didn’t know what would happen afterward or where they would live.

Several told AP their longer-term status remained unclear and that U.S. authorities had taken their identity documents.

A policy officer at the Central African Republic’s Foreign Ministry said the deportees are in “good hands” and are being monitored by the International Organization for Migration. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.

The U.S. this year committed to $85 million in funding to IOM for Central African Republic operations including “assistance to migrants” and “community stabilization.”

IOM says migrants can seek asylum in the country, request assistance to return home or get help traveling to another place they’re authorized to enter. It referred questions about the deportees’ status and individual cases such as Fuentes’ to Central African Republic officials. A government spokesperson didn’t reply to phone calls and text messages seeking comment.

Human Rights Watch’s report says some people deported to third countries face detention, abuse and the prospect of persecution. Eswatini has held deportees in a maximum-security prison without charges. Equatorial Guinea has held them against their will at a hotel owned by the president’s family.

“Several of these African governments are not only complicit in U.S. abuses but have violated the human rights of these deported people themselves,” Michael Garcia Bochenek, of Human Rights Watch, said in a statement.

Fuentes and other deportees say they can’t work, with most days spent at the compound

Fuentes said the Cuban men in her room know she is a woman and look out for her. She rarely feels safe enough to leave. Once, at a supermarket, workers pointed at her breasts and initially refused to sell her fruit, she said. Other people in Bangui have mocked her and pointed at her.

“My personal appearance is awful,” she said. “I look like a different human being.”

Moreno described restrictions on the group’s movements, saying officers accompanied them to the market and on occasional outings but restricted them from going out at night.

Fuentes and Moreno said they have no passports or other identification and cannot work. Most days, Fuentes remains at the compound, looking at her phone and waiting for travel documents.

She said Cuba has agreed to accept her return — a Cuban embassy document shows she is authorized.

But Fuentes said she hopes to seek asylum elsewhere, possibly Canada.

“The harassment and economic hardship that caused me to flee still remain,” she said.

Banchereau writes for the Associated Press. Jean Fernand Koena in Bangui, Central African Republic; Tim Sullivan in Minneapolis; and Cristiana Mesquita in Havana contributed to this report.

Oct. 8, 2026 10:14 AM PT

ATHENS, Greece — U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio flatly refused to comment on a new report alleging that U.S. Ambassador to Greece Kimberly Guilfoyle engaged in improper and possibly illegal conduct before taking up her post.

Rubio told reporters that he would not discuss the allegations contained in a Wall Street Journal story that said Guilfoyle had asked a donor and supporter of President Trump to pay a $100,000 credit card bill just before her confirmation hearing, promising him access to administration officials if he did.

He spoke before leaving Greece, where he delivered a speech calling for European countries to return to what he described as their civilizational roots.

Rubio said he was aware of The Wall Street Journal’s report, which was published late Wednesday, but had no idea if it was true and he would not address it.

“You guys walk around thinking that because some source told you something and you reported it, it’s the gospel. It’s not the gospel. It’s not the gospel for me. That’s not the way we do things,” he said at the foot of his plane as Guilfoyle, who was there to see him depart Greece, looked on.

At a joint news conference with the Greek foreign minister on Wednesday, Rubio said he would not address the allegations while visiting a foreign country, but added, “Suffice it to say our embassy here is doing a great job. Our ambassador has been a strong ambassador here.”

The top two Democrats on the House Foreign Affairs and Senate Foreign Relations committees have called for an investigation into Guilfoyle, but Rubio would not say if he was prepared to open one.

Congressional Democrats already were looking into claims reported last month by the Wall Street Journal that Guilfoyle acted improperly while serving as the top U.S. envoy to Greece.

The Journal reported that Guilfoyle told guests at a reception that the U.S. could undermine the Greek government if it chose to, promoted the business interests of one particular Greek construction and energy company, and allowed its lobbyist into private diplomatic meetings.

Guilfoyle, a former Fox News Channel host and California prosecutor who was once engaged to Trump’s son Donald Jr., has denied any wrongdoing and Rubio has defended her before.

Lee writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — Six years after he was released from a California immigrant detention facility, Wilfredo Gonzalez Mena has to sleep with his back propped up by pillows, nearly in a seated position, to avoid gasping for air.

He blames his lasting medical issues on the 10 months he spent in custody until September 2020 at the Adelanto ICE Processing Center, about 60 miles northeast of Los Angeles, during which guards sprayed him and fellow detainees nearly around the clock with a concentrated disinfectant meant to guard against COVID-19.

Now Gonzalez Mena, who is one of six named plaintiffs in a class-action lawsuit filed in 2023 over the use of the cleaning solution, is expected to get a six-figure payout as part of a proposed settlement in the case, which was given preliminary approval on Sept. 25 by a federal judge in Riverside. The settlement applies to around 2,700 people detained at the Adelanto facility between March 11 and Sept. 30, 2020, who were exposed to the disinfectant called HDQ Neutral.

“When you least expected it, you would feel the mist,” Gonzalez Mena said. “They would spray us like we were animals.”

The Adelanto facility is operated by the GEO Group, a Florida-based private prison corporation that has faced criticism for years over conditions at its immigrant detention facilities. The company has also pushed back against California laws seeking to increase oversight of its facilities and inform the public about health and safety shortcomings.

Under the settlement, GEO Group and Spartan Chemical Co. Inc., the company that manufactures HDQ Neutral, acknowledged that HDQ Neutral — which is classified as a pesticide — can cause symptoms including blistering, chemical burns, vomiting, permanent eye damage, and damage to the respiratory tract, throat and stomach.

Those findings can now be used by class members who weren’t named plaintiffs and may pursue their own lawsuits, the settlement says.

Neither GEO Group nor the Department of Homeland Security responded to requests for comment. After the lawsuit was filed, GEO Group denied its allegations and said cleaning products are used safely and securely, in accordance with the manufacturer’s guidelines and sanitation standards, at all detention centers.

At the time, a GEO Group spokesperson called the allegations “part of a radical politically motivated campaign to attack ICE contractors, abolish ICE and end federal immigration detention.”

The company later swapped HDQ Neutral for a different cleaning product.

Lawyers from the Los Angeles-based civil rights nonprofit Trial Impact Project who are representing the former detainees called the settlement a victory.

Executive Director Sara Haji referenced other pending lawsuits addressing allegations such as medical neglect, retaliation and substandard food and water. Each one is a different lens into the same problem, she said.

“When a company like GEO settles instead of defending itself at trial, and when it admits that the pesticide it sprayed everywhere can cause serious health problems, it should cause us all to sit up and pay attention to what detained people have been telling us about the everyday cruelty of immigration detention,” Haji said.

The lawsuit alleged that GEO Group engaged in a “months-long poisoning” of detainees when its employees sprayed HDQ Neutral inside the facility. Before the pandemic, staffers had used it as a cleaning product. But as COVID-19 spread, they began spraying the concentrated solution across wide areas, “directly into the air and on all types of surfaces,” the lawsuit said.

Detained immigrants quickly began experiencing the effects, the lawsuit claimed, including nosebleeds, headaches and dizziness.

Spartan Chemical warns that inappropriate exposure can cause the types of effects detainees experienced. Long-term exposure has been linked to asthma and, in laboratory studies on animals, reproductive issues and birth defects.

In 2021, the Environmental Protection Agency found that GEO Group had violated federal law by misusing HDQ Neutral. The report found that staff and detainees were instructed to apply the pesticide inside the facility as often as every 30 minutes, without proper ventilation and at a dilution rate of 2 ounces per gallon of water, which is double the amount allowed for disinfectant use.

In September 2021, a federal judge ordered GEO Group to discontinue use of HDQ Neutral at the Adelanto facility, writing that it had been used “with a callous disregard for the safety of Adelanto’s detainees.”

Among the more than 100,000 pages of documents released during discovery for the lawsuit was an email from a nurse at the facility to Wendy Baca, who was acting health services administrator at the Adelanto facility for Wellpath, the company providing its medical care at the time.

The nurse wrote that patients were arriving with headaches, rashes and blisters, “we believe, due to the chemicals being used to spray.”

“Some of the officers have also reported ‘feeling burned’ after touching their skin with the same gloves that were used to handle the chemical. Please look into this so we do not endanger everyone we are trying to protect,” the nurse wrote.

Baca appeared dismissive of the nurse’s concern. She forwarded the email to GEO Group’s chief of security, asking him to look into it.

“Please also remind them not to put metal into light sockets, run with scissors, or anything usually avoided with a little common sense,” she wrote.

Mark Anthony Ferretiz, a former GEO Group cook supervisor who worked at the Adelanto facility for 14 years until March 2025, wrote in a declaration that his team was told to spray the red chemical “like Lysol.”

“I could taste the spray in my mouth when I used it, and it felt heavy in my lungs,” he wrote.

At some point, the facility’s safety manager brought men from HD Supply to talk to the staff about HDQ Neutral. After learning how often the chemical was being sprayed, one of the men told Ferretiz that it was “rat poison” and that “you’re going to kill someone like that,” he said.

Years later, former detainees such as Gonzalez Mena say they’re still living with the fallout. The former long-haul truck driver said his health deteriorated so significantly while he was detained that, afterward, he could no longer pass the required physical assessment because of his vision and breathing issues.

To make ends meet, he has turned to online resale.

“My wife says that after I was released, I didn’t go back to being the same person,” he said. “I’ve had depression and I often dream that I am there, in that place, and I want to get out.”

WASHINGTON — President Trump says his administration will make one-time payments of $90 per person to help more than 20 million Medicare enrollees pay for their Part B premiums. It will cost about $2 billion.

Less than one-third of all Medicare recipients are eligible for the payments, which are expected to be sent out this week. Not eligible are roughly 35 million Medicare Advantage enrollees, millions of people with disabilities who get premium assistance and low-income Medicare recipients.

The election-year promise that the Republican president made over the weekend comes as the Nov. 3 midterms are fast approaching, with the cost of living and healthcare expenses among the top issues for voters.

Some questions and answers about the payouts:

Who will benefit?

Some 20.8 million people in the original Medicare Part B who are living in the United States, not receiving premium assistance from Medicaid or not paying an income-related monthly adjusted amount.

Medicare Advantage enrollees, who make up more than half of the eligible 64.2 million Medicare beneficiaries, will not receive a payment, according to KFF, a healthcare research nonprofit. Nor will 12 million low-income older adults and people with disabilities who get premium assistance.

The Part B program covers expenses such as doctor’s visits, ambulance services and lab tests. Total monthly costs generally start at about $200 and vary with income.

Allison Schuster, a White House spokeswoman, said in a statement that the administration “is enabling Americans to take control of their health by putting money directly back in the hands of Medicare patients.”

When will the payments go out and how will they be disbursed?

According to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services website, eligible beneficiaries will receive one $90 rebate this month, with most getting a direct deposit on or around Friday. Others will receive a paper check from the Treasury Department later in October.

Juliette Cubanski, director of KFF’s program on Medicare policy, said the payment will be automatic.

“As far as a benefit goes, people don’t have to call or sign up — it’s just money they receive directly, but not everybody on Medicare will receive this money.”

A White House fact sheet says people can call (800) MEDICARE ([800] 633-4227) to check their eligibility for the premium rebate. To check on payment status, people should call the Social Security Administration at (800) 772-1213.

What is the source of the money?

Payments will come out of the Medicare Improvement Fund created by Congress in 2008 and intended to make improvements to the Medicare fee-for-service program.

The fund was created to improve program management and conduct oversight of contracts and contractors, according to the Congressional Budget Office, but its purpose has expanded after various legislative changes.

This is not the first time the fund has been used.

President Obama’s administration, along with Congress, redirected $20 billion to expand healthcare coverage through the Affordable Care Act.

But under Trump, it is the first time that the fund has been used to directly pay recipients.

What are critics of the plan saying?

Critics of Trump’s promise characterize the $90 payments as a preelection stunt designed to sway voters rather than address structural problems in healthcare costs and administration.

The top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden, said in a statement that “this is another desperate attempt by a failed president to escape Americans’ revulsion with his failed agenda, amounting to one tank of Trump-inflated gas.”

Trump recently promised $500 rebate checks to an estimated 1 million Obamacare enrollees across 30 states whom the White House alleged were overcharged by the Biden administration for some fees.

Cubanski said the Medicare rebate payments were being doled out when Americans were feeling the bite of higher food, energy and gas prices. Surging healthcare costs are only compounding those pressure, she said.

“This might be helpful for people but it might not go very far.”

Hussein writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — President Trump told a crowd in Texas on Wednesday night that he would not allow Iran to attack San Diego or Los Angeles, a comment that came two days after he made off-the-cuff remarks suggesting the West Coast cities could be struck.

“You want to see a horror show? You want to see problems? Let them hit San Diego, let them hit Los Angeles,” Trump said at a rally. He then assured the crowd: “We are not going to let that happen. We protect our cities. We protect our country.”

The San Antonio crowd cheered the remarks.

Trump’s decision to return to the subject capped two days in which the White House had been on the defensive, and it appeared aimed at tamping down the fallout from remarks he made Monday night that quickly spread online.

Speaking to a crowd in Nebraska, Trump had said: “They can take out a city, let them take out Los Angeles, let them take out San Diego. This is a very small price to pay.”

The comments drew swift condemnation from California leaders, even as the White House communications director, Steven Cheung, insisted the president’s remarks had been taken out of context.

“The media freakout over President Trump’s comments is not rooted in reality,” Cheung wrote Tuesday. “He was clearly stating U.S. cities would have been threatened if a nuclear Iran hadn’t been stopped. America is safer because of the president. Iran has no nuclear, no navy, no air force, and no money.”

But the remarks were enough to rattle many in California and drew backlash from the state’s leaders, including Republican Jim Desmond, a Navy veteran running in a highly competitive U.S. House race.

“I vehemently disagree with President Trump’s comments,” Desmond wrote on social media. “America must stand up to Iran and defend our interests, but the first responsibility of our Commander in Chief is to protect the American people and our homeland.”

Gov. Gavin Newsom on Tuesday opened the state emergency operations center to assess potential threats following Trump’s remarks. San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass also condemned the president for potentially compromising the safety of their cities.

“San Diego is not collateral damage,” Gloria posted on social media. “We are not expendable. And we are never a ‘small price to pay.’ Keep our city out of your reckless war talk.”

Business groups such as the California Chamber of Commerce, the California Teachers Assn. and Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California oppose the proposal.

Gov. Gavin Newsom and Democrat Xavier Becerra and Republican Steve Hilton, who are running to replace Newsom, also have spoken out against it.

Opponents describe the wealth tax as a “flawed experiment” that will harm California’s economy because companies and rich people will flee the state.

“If they leave, it will create a huge hole in our budget, threatening core services like education, healthcare and public safety,” arguments against the proposition say.

Opponents of the measure say the proposal is an ineffective attempt to address the long-term effects of the healthcare cuts and would harm California’s economy and budget.

The state budget in California already is largely dependent on income taxes paid by its highest earners. Because of that, revenues are prone to volatility, hinging on capital gains from investments, bonuses to executives and windfalls from new stock offerings, and are notoriously difficult for the state to predict.

Billionaires such as Palmer Luckey, the co-founder of defense tech startup Anduril Industries, and entrepreneur Mark Cuban have pushed back against the proposal on social media. Some tech executives have been relocating or moving their assets to try to avoid the potential tax. Google co-founder Sergey Brin has been cutting ties to California, relocating to Nevada while funding groups such as Building a Better California that are backing ballot measures that could nullify the billionaire tax.

More than $187 million has been spent opposing the proposition, with the bulk coming from Building a Better California, cryptocurrency company Ripple Labs and its co-founder Chris Larsen, data from the secretary of state show.

Proposition 39 is opposed by leading state Democrats, major civil rights organizations including the American Civil Liberties Union and major labor unions in the state, who say the measure would disenfranchise eligible voters and expose voters to identity theft by forcing them to write personal ID numbers on mail ballot envelopes.

According to campaign finance reports, the ACLU of Northern California has contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to defeating the measure. Quinn Delaney, a major Democratic donor and fundraiser for former President Obama, and Patty Quillin, a major philanthropist and wife of Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings, both have given $1.5 million.

The Service Employees International Union Local 2015, which represents long-term caregivers, provided $1 million, the SEIU California State Council for Working People gave $500,000, and the California Teachers Assn., through its independent expenditure committee, gave another $500,000.

Arnulfo De La Cruz, president of SEIU California and SEIU Local 2015, said in a statement that the group’s members “know our nation is stronger when working people make their voices heard and have their ballots counted,” and that strict voter ID laws “are part of Trump and MAGA extremists’ agenda to rig the election system so they can cling onto their own power and get richer from corporate corruption.”

Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) recently convened a news conference where a slate of Democratic leaders — including state Senate President Pro Tempore Monique Limón (D-Goleta) and Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas (D-Hollister) — called on Californians to vote no on Proposition 39.

The Democrats called the measure a “dirty trick” from “Trump acolytes” akin to historic poll taxes designed to disenfranchise Black voters, and a power grab that would seriously harm millions of eligible voters, especially in Black and Latino communities.

“Proposition 39 is a direct assault on everything California stands for. Our people, our values and our fundamental belief that every eligible voter here in California deserves to have their voice heard and deserves to have their vote counted,” Rivas said.

Los Angeles County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath presented a motion Tuesday calling for “bold action” to better protect victims of domestic violence and stalking, seeking to help them more effectively navigate the county’s restraining order system and obtain court-ordered protection.

Horvath cited recent Los Angeles Times reporting on the challenges victims face when obtaining and enforcing restraining orders as an inspiration for the Board of Supervisors motion, which was co-authored by board chair Hilda Solis. The supervisors are scheduled to consider the measure during the board’s Nov. 10 meeting.

“A recent story from the L.A. Times spoke to the process of domestic violence restraining orders and the work done and not being done across the county to support survivors in need of this critical support,” Horvath said.

The Times’ reporting identified at least 63 women killed in 2024 and 2025 in L.A. County whose cases involved a former partner or close relative arrested or charged with their murder. The deaths accounted for more than 40% of the 156 women killed during that period. At least 10 of those women had filed for restraining orders.

In July 2024, the county Department of Public Health’s Office of Violence Prevention issued a report with more than a dozen recommendations for reducing domestic violence homicides by improving access to restraining orders. Today, most of those recommendations have not yet been implemented.

The office said the delay was the result of insufficient funding and challenges with coordinating between the many agencies responsible for the county’s restraining order system.

If passed, the motion would mandate reports from the county’s chief executive, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, and the departments of Public Health, Mental Health, Consumer and Business Affairs, Public Social Services, and Homeless Services to assess current efforts, improvement plans and additional funding needs.

“We know that domestic violence restraining orders protect survivors and I believe the board must take every step possible to better support and protect our survivors,” she said. “The county,” she added, “must step up and lead in this space.”

The motion calls for allocating millions of dollars annually to fully fund nine county-run self-help legal centers that assist people navigating the restraining order process.

It would also officially identify “Gender-Based Violence and Intimate Partner Violence” as a priority for the Board of Supervisors, and require a presentation from the Sheriff’s Department on how the agency plans to improve its handling of restraining orders.

The Office of Violence Prevention would be required to develop a plan for a “peer navigator model” to guide survivors through the restraining order system.

The Department of Homeless Services and Housing would be asked for an assessment of what additional resources would be necessary to provide emergency beds for all people fleeing intimate partner violence.

SACRAMENTO — A private prison company is challenging a new California law requiring detention centers to provide medical care, privacy and other civil rights to people detained by federal immigration authorities.

GEO Group, a for-profit prison company, filed a complaint in federal court over Senate Bill 942, also called the Civil Detainees’ Bill of Rights Act of 2026. It mandates that immigrant and other detainees are afforded privacy, safety, hygienic living conditions and other rights.

Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the law last week as part of a package of bills to push back on the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement, which the Democratic governor described as “Orwellian.” GEO Group filed its complaint the day after Newsom signed the law.

SB 942 declares that detainees at state, local and privately run facilities have the right to medical, dental and mental health care; physical exercise; clean drinking water and functioning toilets; and other rights. It allows the attorney general to bring civil action against private and public entities that allegedly violate those rights.

GEO Group attorneys argue in the federal complaint that while California elected officials “may disagree with federal immigration policy,” the state “may not impose its preferred immigration-detention standards on federal detention operations, whether those standards would tighten, loosen, supplement, or otherwise alter the federal framework.”

According to its website, the company operates six detention facilities in California, four of which are housing detainees under contracts with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. That includes a shuttered state prison that began holding ICE detainees earlier this year.

GEO Group has had some previous success challenging laws seeking to undermine the private prison industry’s role in federal immigration enforcement. A federal court struck down a 2019 law that attempted to bar any “private detention facility within the state” after the company filed suit.

Representatives for GEO Group did not respond to a request for comment. Spokespeople for Newsom, Atty Gen. Rob Bonta and state Sen. Anna Caballero (D-Salinas), who authored the bill, did not immediately comment on the lawsuit.

WASHINGTON — The Democratic National Committee on Wednesday sued President Trump’s administration for recent television advertisements that promoted his political message while costing taxpayers millions of dollars.

The complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, alleges that the ads are illegal government-sponsored propaganda and accuses Trump of personally directing them. It asks the court to declare the ads illegal and stop the use of federal funds to pay for them.

Trump has faced bipartisan backlash for the ads, which glorify him and echo his campaign pitch as voters cast early ballots with the midterm elections less than a month away.

The spots, which began airing in September, already have cost more than $12 million to run, according to the media tracking firm AdImpact, and a total of $20 million in Homeland Security Department funding has been tapped to pay for them.

Responding Monday to the criticism, Trump defended the ads as “positive promotion for our Great U.S.A.” but said he’d pay for them using his MAGA Inc. super PAC going forward.

But on Tuesday, the fifth ad in the campaign began airing with the notice “paid for by the U.S. Government,” promoting Trump’s military actions in Venezuela earlier this year. The same day, Trump made it clear he hasn’t committed to reimbursing any money that has already been spent, telling reporters “we’ll decide.”

DNC Chair Ken Martin said in a statement that Trump is misusing taxpayer dollars in “a last-ditch attempt to save Republicans in November.”

“Americans deserve better than to have their hard-earned tax dollars used for Trump’s illegal schemes,” he added.

Legal experts have suggested the ads run afoul of a federal statute against congressionally appropriated money being used for “publicity or propaganda,” and potentially other federal laws. The Homeland Security money tapped for the ads comes from a $175 million package Congress gave to the department as part of Trump’s immigration enforcement agenda.

The White House has defended the ads as public service announcements akin to what past administrations have done to promote various policies. Legal experts have said the recent ads differ from many past public service announcements because they aren’t aimed at helping members of the public benefit from specific government programs.

The defendants in the lawsuit — Trump, the White House, DHS and the Office of Management and Budget — didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

Swenson writes for the Associated Press.

ATHENS — U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio called for the nations of the West to return to their civilizational roots and restore the values that drove the rise of Europe and North America to global dominance for centuries.

In Athens to discuss deepening economic, energy and security cooperation with Greece, Rubio delivered a speech later Wednesday near the ruins of the Acropolis, a widely recognizable symbol of the city’s ancient civilization associated with the creation of popular participatory government and the social contract.

Rubio aimed to remind listeners of qualities he says were born in Greece and later defined the West, such as curiosity, courage, ambition, a restless spirit of exploration and a drive to discover the unknown.

“It has become fashionable today to believe that enlightened foreign policy means prioritizing the ‘global community’ over one’s own people. And I think here, too, we have much more to learn from the men of Ancient Greece. They knew that there was nothing selfish or wrong about loyalty to your nation, nor anything selfish or wrong about fighting to defend its interests above all else,” Rubio said.

Rubio urges Europe to uphold its traditional values

“Today, we find ourselves at a crossroads,” he said. “The next decade will write the story of the next century. The course we take will determine whether the West maintains its place at the head of the world, or resigns itself to a future of atrophy, and servitude, and decline. We will either choose to act now or lose the choice to act at all.”

Rubio is seen by many as the gentle face of the Trump administration and has been frequently dispatched to clarify or otherwise address concerns about the president’s frequently undiplomatic statements.

Rubio, along with Vice President JD Vance, is seen as one of the leading contenders to assume Trump’s mantle at the top of the Republican Party, which faces stiff challenges in next month’s congressional midterm elections. Republican Party, which faces stiff challenges in next month’s congressional midterm elections.

The Trump administration has repeatedly accused countries in Europe of backsliding on their traditional values and democratic principles by stifling the free speech of conservatives and falling short on commitments to international partners like the United States.

Many of those countries have rejected the complaints and accused the U.S. under Trump of being guilty of similar behavior and worse with its staunch anti-immigration stance that some believe is racist.

Left-wing groups protest across Greece

Ahead of his visit to Athens, about 1,500 people gathered to protest Rubio’s presence and the war in Iran, chanting “American killers!”

The demonstration was organized by a communist labor union and other left-wing groups and was held ahead of extensive road closures planned in Athens. Organizers said similar protests were held in at least 12 other Greek cities. Police banned public demonstrations Wednesday in central.

Rubio seeks to reassure NATO allies

Rubio is on the second leg of a three-nation tour of NATO allies that has already taken him to Iceland and will end in Portugal on Thursday. The trip is aimed at reassuring U.S. partners that the Trump administration is committed to their success and security despite what has been an often brusque and sometimes rude approach to traditional friends that has stirred unease.

Rubio began emphasizing historical themes on Thursday, when he met Iceland’s foreign minister at the site of the landmark 1986 summit between former President Ronald Reagan and then Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, a meeting that many believe marked the beginning of the end of the Cold War and was a catalyst for the eventual dissolution of the Soviet Union.

It remains unclear what impact Rubio’s visits will have, although on Tuesday in Reykjavik, he sought to reassure Iceland that President Trump’s administration has no designs on the island. Rather, he said the U.S. shares Iceland’s deep concerns about Arctic security as tensions between the U.S. and Russia rise in the High North and elsewhere.

Iceland has been uneasy about Trump’s intentions toward it after he posted a map showing the colors of the U.S. flag sprawling across all of North America and extending to Iceland and Greenland. That wariness has persisted despite an agreement last month to increase the U.S. presence in the neighboring Danish territory of Greenland that appears to have ended Trump’s demands for the U.S. to take full control of the island.

But after Rubio’s talks in Reykjavik, those tensions appeared to be on the wane. Rubio said the United States would not do anything in Iceland without Iceland’s consent.

Visit follows allegations of misconduct by U.S. ambassador

Before delivering his speech in Athens, Rubio declined to comment when he was asked about allegations of misconduct leveled at U.S. Ambassador to Greece Kimberly Guilfoyle.

At a joint news conference with the Greek foreign minister, Rubio said he would not address the matter while visiting a foreign country, but added: “Suffice it to say our embassy here is doing a great job. Our ambassador has been a strong ambassador here.”

The top Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations and House Foreign Affairs committees, Sen. Jeanne Shaheen and Rep. Gregory Meeks, have initiated probes into claims reported last month by the Wall Street Journal that Guilfoyle acted improperly while serving as the top U.S. envoy to Greece.

The Journal reported that Guilfoyle told guests at a reception that the U.S. could undermine the Greek government if it chose to, promoted the business interests of one particular Greek construction and energy company, and allowed its lobbyist into private diplomatic meetings.

Guilfoyle, a former Fox News Channel host and California prosecutor who was once engaged to Trump’s son Donald Jr., has denied any wrongdoing, and Rubio has defended her before.

Lee writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Derek Gatopoulos in Athens contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — Republicans are entering the final month of the midterm campaign increasingly anxious that the $1 billion at their disposal may not be enough to fend off sweeping losses as the party reckons with President Trump’s unpopularity, persistent cost concerns and the fallout from the war in Iran.

The cash advantage, spread out across a half-dozen groups, is driven largely by the Trump-aligned MAGA Inc., which had nearly $416 million in cash on hand at the end of August and began stepping up its spending on critical races in September.

But that money may have come too late, forcing the president’s group to pay much higher rates because of the shrinking availability of air time. Four Republican Senate campaign officials said groups that reserved advertising time last spring paid much lower rates than MAGA Inc. and its affiliated groups.

Instead, by waiting until September, Trump-connected organizations are sometimes paying more than five times what they would have spent if they acted earlier.

A representative of MAGA Inc. familiar with the group’s strategy said its spending has allowed Republicans to keep races more competitive than they would have been otherwise. In some cases, the group has been the only one on the air criticizing Democratic candidates.

The MAGA Inc. representative and the Republican Senate campaign officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal strategy.

The challenge is acute in places like Texas, where Trump will travel on Wednesday for the second time in a week to stump for Republican Ken Paxton’s Senate campaign. The state hasn’t elected a Democratic senator since 1988, yet MAGA Inc. has spent more than $22 million in the past month, according to the ad tracking firm AdImpact.

Another group, Texas PAC, which is aligned with Senate Majority Leader John Thune, has spent more than $83 million on advertising in the past month, an extraordinary amount to protect what’s normally a safe Republican seat.

One of those advertisements, which featured Paxton’s estranged wife saying she’s supporting the full Republican ticket, aired across the United States last weekend during a football game between the Dallas Cowboys and the Houston Texans.

Candidates are charged a lower advertising rate than outside groups, so the late infusion of super PAC cash has come at a steep price.

MAGA Inc., which is running ads primarily on streaming services, has been charged roughly $894 per airing, according to AdImpact, while Texas PAC has been charged roughly $809 for a mix of broadcast and streaming. That compares with about $290 for Democratic nominee James Talarico’s campaign, also on broadcast and streaming.

Those averages mask some of the more glaring disparities. For example, during a football game last month, Texas PAC was charged $450,000 to air a single spot in the Austin market. Talarico’s campaign paid $50,000 for a spot during the same game in the same market, according to AdImpact.

Elections are a referendum on the power of money

The 2026 campaign is shaping up as a referendum on the power of money in American politics. Democrats freely acknowledge their disadvantage, relying instead on anti-Trump sentiment among voters and targeted messaging on issues like corruption. Some Republicans, meanwhile, are open about the challenge of trying to spend their way out of a tough campaign at this late stage.

Neil Newhouse, a longtime Republican pollster, echoed concerns that his party was deploying its cash too late.

“After the votes are counted, I think we’re going to find the most effective advertising in terms of communicating message and moving voters and poll numbers, the most effective time was advertising that happened well before Labor Day, not after it,” he said. “A million dollars of advertising in October is a drop in the bucket.”

Thune’s group began pulling back in North Carolina last week, a sign of the party’s challenge in the Senate race there. The state’s outgoing Sen. Thom Tillis has been increasingly vocal about his party’s vulnerabilities and recently said that, even with a strong cash advantage, “in the last month, you pretty much have to place your bets.”

“If we have endless resources, then we should spend endlessly in every state,” he said. “Absent endless resources, you’ve got to make data-driven decisions about where you can win.”

The midterms mark the first national election since the Supreme Court in June erased limits on how much political parties can spend in coordination with candidates for Congress and president, injecting even more money into a political system already awash in cash.

Money alone doesn’t translate into victory

There’s plenty of evidence that money alone doesn’t translate into victory.

Democrat Kamala Harris entered the final stretch of the 2024 campaign with significantly more money than Trump but went on to lose every critical swing state and the White House. Elon Musk’s $25 million didn’t lift his preferred candidate to a Wisconsin Supreme Court seat last year. And Tom Steyer didn’t advance to the general election in the California governor’s race despite pumping $216 million of his own money into the campaign.

The $1 billion that Republicans have amassed compares with roughly $579 million held by a comparable collection of major Democratic groups.

Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said his party is facing an “obscene” amount of spending that could swamp them in the midterms.

“We’re never going to have as much money as them,” he said in an interview. “I sum up the election in this sentence: Can a massive Republican advantage in money beat a massive Democratic advantage in better candidates and political climate? I bet it can’t.”

In addition to Texas, Democrats have mounted competitive Senate campaigns in states like Ohio, Maine, Iowa and Michigan. A similar dynamic has emerged in governors’ races from Florida and Georgia to Wisconsin, Ohio and Nevada.

Former President Barack Obama is stepping up his involvement in the midterms and will headline a fundraiser for Senate candidates on Wednesday.

In the House, Democrats are growing so confident they can retake the majority that they’re expanding their targets deeper into traditionally Republican districts in Arkansas and Tennessee. But a lack of money could limit their gains.

“We absolutely need to spend enough to get our message out,” said Rep. Suzan DelBene of Washington, who chairs the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. “And district by district, we are.”

Trump turns to his bond with supporters

From his earliest days as an unlikely political figure, Trump has consistently overcome expectations. Facing daunting prospects heading into the final weeks of his last midterm, he’s betting he can again outwit political gravity, relying in large part on the deep bond he’s built with supporters.

He has stepped up his campaign rallies in recent weeks, traveling to deep red territory to galvanize the party faithful. At events like the one this past weekend in Vandalia, Ohio, the crowd was enthusiastic and cheered at the lines that have become Trump staples over the years, particularly when he dips into profanity. The high school gymnasium that held the event was packed, though crowds began emptying out about halfway through the 90-minute rally.

In the closing minutes of a speech Monday in Grand Island, Nebraska, the president revived his plea that supporters who have stood so fervently by him pretend as if he is on the ballot one more time.

“In a true way, I am running,” he said. “We have to keep it going.”

Sloan and Beaumont write for the Associated Press. Beaumont reported from Des Moines, Iowa. AP writers Seung Min Kim in Vandalia, Ohio, and Mary Clare Jalonick in Washington contributed to this report.

My maternal grandmother, Marcela Miranda, was born in Arizona’s copper country in 1914 and lived in the United States until she was about 7.

She was part of a generation whose parents were from the rancho of El Cargadero, Zacatecas, and started families in el Norte while waiting out the Mexican Revolution in the 1910s and the Cristero Revolt in the 1920s. Many returned to their home village when things calmed down.

After growing up in Mexico, my grandmother moved to California with my grandfather and their children in the 1960s. Only the American government considered her a native-born U.S. citizen, while society dismissed her as a Mexican. We grandchildren always considered our Mama Chela a doña — a grand Mexican dame who never wore pants and frequently covered her hair with a veil out of modesty. All she remembered from her early childhood in Arizona were snippets of the nursery rhymes “Did You Ever See a Lassie?” and “The Bear Went Over the Mountain.”

The El Cargadero diaspora, which mostly settled in Anaheim, saw our forebears’ American birth as a stroke of provenance allowing them to legally enter the U.S. and give their progeny a head start that other Mexicans could only dream of. It’s a story I’ve repeatedly told over my decades-long journalism career, and no one has yet challenged my description of my grandmother as an immigrant.

If they did, I’d think they had too much time on their hands, or maybe that they were a wackjob contrarian.

Cue Steve Hilton.

The Republican candidate for California governor is trying to make a scandal out of his Democratic opponent, Xavier Becerra, portraying himself as the son of Mexican immigrants. Twice last week during their CNN debate, Becerra said his parents came to California “with $12.” In previous interviews during his decades in the political spotlight, Becerra has shared that his father, Manuel, was born in Sacramento in 1928 and moved to Mexico as a child during the Great Depression, eventually returning to the land of his birth.

Hilton, who has been endorsed by President Trump, has as much a chance of becoming the Golden State’s next governor as Stephen Miller. But he and his supporters have latched on to Becerra’s statement like it was the borderlands version of stolen valor. Critics combed through Becerra’s family genealogy like Indiana Jones searching for the Holy Grail, then posted their findings online — Becerra’s dad grew up in Tijuana before coming back to California, then married in Guadalajara before returning in the 1950s to Sacramento, where Xavier was born — to claim that Becerra is one giant, pandering fraudster.

“Unlike Xavier Becerra, I am an immigrant,” the British-born son of Hungarian refugees harrumphed on social media. He followed up by declaring that Becerra is “LYING” about his family’s American experience “in order to score identity points.”

What more proof do California voters need that Hilton is laughably out of touch with how we live? Many Mexican Americans, including my cousins and me, consider family members raised in Mexico to be immigrants, even if they were born in the U.S. Growing up down south forever shapes your language, work ethic, appreciation for how hard life can be and so much more. When they return to the U.S., such people often find themselves ostracized as paisa — country — and must learn the mores of American life, just like those born abroad.

To argue that calling them immigrants is technically wrong is like getting angry at people who don’t pronounce Los Feliz the Spanish way. For Becerra’s critics to claim he’s stretching his immigrant roots to appeal to Latino voters is an insult to Latinos. We know a cultural faker when we see one, and the Becerra family story isn’t an anomaly; it’s our lives.

Gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton addresses patrons at Victorio’s Ristorante in North Hollywood in September.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

“It’s a weird gotcha,” said Cal State Fullerton Chicano studies professor Alexandro José Gradilla, whose wife’s grandmother was born in California and raised in Mexico, then bounced between the two countries for the rest of her life. “What’s the dis? Where’s the dunk? It’s so normative, especially of that generation. We cannot have the 2026 definition of immigration, the border and policy apply to a completely different landscape.”

Becerra’s critics subscribe to “this very American bias that an immigrant only moves once to the U.S., the land of opportunity, of hope — all that mythology,” Gradilla continued. During the Ellis Island era, he noted, European immigrants returned to their home countries with their U.S.-born children, and then those children faced many of the same hardships as first-time arrivals when they came back to the U.S. as adults.

“‘We don’t call those people expats or returnees — ‘immigrant’ is the only intelligible label we understand,” the profe concluded. “Until we come up with a better label, Becerra’s dad is an immigrant.”

There are many legitimate reasons to bash Becerra, from his refusal to participate in more debates to his paltry number of public rallies to a platform that sounds like more of what created California’s current woes. His family history isn’t it.

Hilton’s fixation on Becerra’s immigrant bona fides shows how desperate he is to gain some traction, any traction, with Latino voters. He at least has picked up on Latinos’ regard for immigrant success stories. But after bragging about being the candidate of legal immigrants, for Hilton to hold being born here against someone who went back and forth between the U.S. and Mexico is a weak salsa pendejada.

Hilton would have been better off with his conservative base if he had labeled Becerra the son of an anchor baby.

At a press conference with elected officials to oppose Proposition 39, which would mandate voter identification, my colleague Nicole Nixon asked Becerra about Hilton’s attacks on his dad. Becerra finally unlocked the inner cholo so many of us have been waiting to see, instead of the Chicano Ned Flanders he’s been projecting for decades.

“So this is what happens when people who don’t understand immigration start to pontificate,” he responded, summarizing his family story once again and pointing out the discrimination his father faced as someone of Mexican heritage, birthright citizenship be damned.

“Steve Hilton may not know that [Mexican American history] because he’s not from the U.S.,” Becerra said. “Steve Hilton may not know that because even though he’s an immigrant, he hasn’t taken the time to research.”

Wow, the brown Democratic candidate calling the white Republican candidate a dumb immigrant — California politics sure have changed!

But Becerra’s smackdown had a point. Conservatives deeply misunderstand what it is to be Mexican American. We’ve never fit into the American assimilation story and so have created our own narrative, one that people like Hilton refuse to accept at their own peril.

Hilton needs to take a Chicano studies class, where discussions about the fluidity of Mexican identity inevitably come up.

And, wouldn’t you know it, Gradilla planned to bring up that very subject with his students this week — he didn’t even know about Hilton’s attacks against Becerra until I told him.

The profe has had to update his lectures about the forced removal of upward of a million Mexican Americans south of the border during the Great Depression. He relates that history to the present, when many undocumented Latinos are returning to the countries of their birth with their U.S.-born children, either because they’ve been deported or to avoid being arrested and locked up under Trump’s hellfire immigration enforcement regime.

“For Hilton, anyone of Mexican heritage in this country needs to be grateful, you need to be loyal, and you need to be here,” Gradilla said. “Who would ever want to leave the U.S.? Well, some people have to.”

Let’s pretend for a moment you’re a Republican running for governor in the blue, blue state of California.

Your prospect of winning is small. So small, you could peer through a microscope, blink and miss it. How, then do you draw voters to your candidacy and boost your chances?

Actually, let’s not pretend. A very real flesh-and-blood Republican, Steve Hilton, is running for California governor and if your idea for grabbing attention doesn’t involve a make-believe lesbian couple, double entendre and a soft-core porn vibe, you’re very clearly lacking in imagination.

Hilton ran an ad featuring just such elements, garnering coast-to-coast notice, millions of views and ensuring the tagline — “Now lick it” — while not as resonant as, say, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” will forever live in political infamy.

What the spot tries to do, convince folks in this left-leaning redoubt to be venturesome and vote for Hilton, is not the least offensive, though your friendly political columnist, hardly a prude, found the execution a bit, well, icky.

Being a cis white male of a certain age, however, means perhaps we shouldn’t be the one to judge. We’re certainly not the target audience. So we turned to two of the youngish, hippest people we know, Daughters No. 1 & 2, who are both well-accomplished 30-somethings and truly upstanding citizens.

What follows is their spontaneous reaction.

Daughter No. 1: “Stupid, infantilizing.”

Daughter No. 2: “Wtf is this fake woke AI ad? Ew.”

(For the record, Hilton said the ad was not AI generated. He apologized, sort of, to those who took offense.)

We also asked the Fabulous Mrs Z. — who has impeccable judgment, notwithstanding all the years she’s stayed married to your friendly political columnist — for her response. “It’s just so strange and stupid,” she said. “Why would he approve this ad? It makes me question his judgment.”

What do the pros say?

Of course, that’s just four people — one of whom doesn’t even live in California — so it’s not much of a sample.

For more insight, we turned to some political professionals.

And who better to weigh in than Fred Davis, the madcap genius behind another infamous California campaign spot, the so-called Demon Sheep ad he concocted for Carly Fiorina’s 2010 U.S. Senate campaign. The Felliniesque production included lightning bolts, a Roman column and a man covered in sheepskin crawling on all fours and leering with a glowing red eye — the point being that Fiorina’s rival, Tom Campbell, was supposedly a profligate wolf in fiscal-conservative sheep clothing.

Strange, yes, but definitely more memorable than an accountant in green eyeshade laboring over the books.

Anyway, Davis — who’s featured Paris Hilton, bad hair and a giant rat in a crown as part of his out-there oeuvre — loved the new Hilton campaign spot, calling it “super attention-getting, super interesting.” (Which is not the least surprising from a man whose chosen epitaph is, “If you don’t notice it, why bother?”)

“I think it’s a brilliantly done ad,” Davis said, “wonderfully written.” And, he added, “I can’t imagine it gaining him one vote.”

Which was sort of the point, no?

Kevin Spillane also appreciates Hilton’s effort, given his own Sisyphean struggles as a Republican strategist in California.

A screen grab from Steve Hilton’s “Just Try It” ad. Columnist Mark Z. Barabak found execution of the spot a bit, well, icky.

(Steve Hilton for Governor)

“They’re doing something out there and on the edge. I don’t fault them for that,” said Spillane, who supports Hilton and has contributed to his campaign. “It’s a clever concept of trying to get people to do something that they’re not used to doing.”

Which is to say vote for a Republican for statewide office in California.

But Spillane, too, questioned the execution. “I actually was fine with the ad until they got to the ‘lick it’ line,” he said, insisting he is also no prude. “That’s just a little too explicitly sexual.”

Running, not advancing

To his credit, Hilton has been running hard for governor. Much harder than his Democratic rival and the prohibitive front-runner, Xavier Becerra. Hilton has issued an abundance of policy proposals and spoken before pretty much any group or microphone-wielding reporter or podcaster who’ll have him.

None of which has garnered Hilton anywhere near the publicity captured by his racy “Just Try It, California” ad.

Even before the spot aired, Hilton broke new ground during last week’s gubernatorial debate when he noted a former member of the Biden administration had referred to Becerra as a “bitch-ass” — apparently the first time that compound adjective had been used in such a high-falutin’ setting. Hilton shortly followed with a website, “Bitch-Ass” Becerra,” that outlines the alleged failures of the Democrat as President Biden’s Health secretary and during his time as California’s attorney general.

(For the record, Susan Rice, who used the epithet and was accused of creating an “abusive and dehumanizing workplace” as head of Biden’s Domestic Policy Council, responded by stating her support for Becerra’s gubernatorial candidacy.)

It’s hard to see Hilton’s name-calling winning him a great many votes, any more than his risque campaign commercial, but maybe that’s beside the point. Maybe, as my columnizing colleague Gustavo Arellano suggested in his debate review, Hilton is merely auditioning for a return to his old commentator position on Fox News.

Hilton’s edgy attitude and pugnacious put-downs would place him right at home among the network’s collection of trolls, provocateurs and Democrat-bashing gargoyles.

But Hilton should leave the advertising to someone else.

What else you should be reading

Get smart: Meet the Fox News correspondent leading the fight for press freedom at the White House
The deep dive: Trump calls it a war, then a ‘military conflict.’ Why the Iran fighting keeps changing names
The L.A. Times Special: What’s going to happen in the midterm election? Find out here. (Maybe)

Until next time,
mzb
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California Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton dove deep into his housing platform and lobbed a few attacks at his Democratic opponent, Xavier Becerra, during a town hall with Los Angeles news outlets Tuesday.

Hilton also pointed to some disagreements with President Trump, providing daylight between himself and a president who remains deeply unpopular in California, during the event hosted and livestreamed by the Los Angeles Times and LAist.

Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom’s final term ends in early January, providing California voters the opportunity to select a new governor at a time of conflict between the state and the Trump administration over environmental policies, immigration, healthcare and other pressing issues.

Ballots already have started to arrive in California voters’ mailboxes ahead of the Nov. 3 election.

Here are the top takeaways from the discussion with Hilton:

Walking the tightrope on Trump

Republicans running for statewide office already have an uphill battle because of California’s heavily Democratic electorate. It’s an acute challenge this year, campaign experts say, because many Democratic voters are itching to help their party regain control of Congress and neutralize Trump’s agenda.

Trump endorsed Hilton in April, which helped the former Fox News host pull ahead of his GOP rival, Riverside Sheriff Chad Bianco, and secure the second-place spot in the primary election, behind Becerra.

On the campaign trail, Hilton has remained supportive of Trump and said Democratic policies, not the war in Iran, are to blame for high prices.

Pressed to name an instance where he disagrees with the president, Hilton named federal funding cuts for the University of California, threats to withdraw Customs and Border Protection agents from airports in states with sanctuary policies, and the federal government buying stakes in California-based companies.

The Republican said those differences are rooted in his strong support for states’ rights.

“The broader point I want to make, and you can track this back to the commentary and what I’ve written over the years, is I’m a strong believer in decentralizing power,” he said. “I think there’s far too much involvement of the federal government in our affairs in California, and I’m going to be a very strong advocate for bringing those powers back in all sorts of ways.”

Gas prices, taxes and housing permits

Hilton described California’s cost of living as “a nightmare” and a major contributor to residents and businesses moving out of the state.

He laid out an affordability plan, which he refers to as “Califordable,” that he would prioritize if elected governor. His plan includes:

• Ending income taxes for Californians who earn $150,000 or less.
• Slashing oil industry regulations and clean energy mandates for utility companies to achieve $3 gas and lower electric bills.
• Ushering in a new construction boom of single-family homes, including by developing 10 new cities around the state, and capping government fees on newly constructed houses.

He blames the state’s affordability woes on Democrats, who have controlled the state legislative seats and held every elected statewide office since 2009.

“It’s not just that it’s time for some change in California, it’s time for balance. It’s time to try something different after 16 years of doing it the same way,” he said.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton said he does have some policy differences with President Trump during a town hall at the Los Angeles Times Building on Tuesday in El Segundo.

(Ronaldo Bolanos/Los Angeles Times)

Hilton said he would stop enforcing laws requiring communities to meet housing production goals and instead focus on building in undeveloped areas of the state that want new homes.

“We’ve got this attitude that the only place you can build is inside what’s currently developed, and that’s motivated by a desire to stop traffic and sprawl and all these things. But the consequence of that is that you end up finding [it] almost impossible to build anything” because of permitting battles and lawsuits, he said. “My plan is to open that up so that we build outwards, not just upwards, increasing the amount of space we use for housing.”

How he would pay for it all

Hilton said that Newsom and Democratic lawmakers have gotten accustomed to spending big and that he wants to return California’s state budget to its pre-pandemic size.

Earlier this year Newsom signed a budget just shy of $352 billion. His first budget as governor, in 2019, clocked in at nearly $215 billion.

The growth occurred during a time “when around 2 million people on net have moved out of the state,” Hilton said. “So we’re spending twice as much for a big reduction in population and worse results.”

He said he could offset the tax cuts by ending funding for high-speed rail, trimming state agencies by 5% and cracking down on Medicaid fraud. Together, he estimates those cuts would save about $25 billion annually. He has also promised to end state-funded healthcare for undocumented immigrants and to hollow out agencies that regulate the state’s air quality and coastlines.

Another round of attacks on Becerra

While he largely stayed focused on policy, Hilton criticized Becerra’s record as U.S. Health and Human Services secretary and dinged him for skipping the town hall.

“Looking forward to perhaps one day having another chance to sit down with my competitor in this race, Xavier Becerra. We’ve had one debate. He promised that there would be debates, plural. Not to be today. But hopefully we can have that conversation because Californians deserve a conversation about the future of our state,” he said during his opening remarks.

On Monday, Hilton attacked Becerra for having “pulled out” of the debate, though the Democratic candidate never agreed to attend a debate proposed by The Times and LAist. Becerra’s spokesperson said the campaign declined the invitation because of a full campaign schedule.

In the weeks following the June primary election, Becerra made himself scarce on the campaign trail and attended few public events. In August, he told reporters there would be multiple debates. He and Hilton faced off last week in an hourlong debate on CNN but no other debates have been announced.

Offshore wind projects “grotesque,” Hilton says

At a time when the Trump administration has systematically dismantled climate and environmental policies, Hilton took care to cast himself as an environmentalist who is concerned about climate change.

He criticized many of the policies favored by Democrats, however, as a “very one-dimensional way of thinking” and offered a more business-friendly approach to addressing climate change:

• Planting 3 billion trees and restoring wetlands.
• Expanding the use of climate-friendly geothermal energy near places such as the Salton Sea and Sonoma and Modoc counties.
• Expanding oil production in California, which he said reduces the need to import foreign oil on tanker ships that spew carbon emissions.

“So that’s a way of reducing carbon emissions that doesn’t burden working people and small businesses with the highest energy costs in the country. We’ve got to get the balance right,” Hilton said.

Hilton aligns with Trump’s vehement opposition to offshore wind projects, a potential source of abundant renewable energy. This year, the Trump administration announced deals to pay wind project developers billions to abandon U.S. wind leases off the coasts of California, North Carolina, New York and New Jersey.

“I think offshore wind is an absolute abomination. I mean, you look at beautiful Morro Bay or Humboldt up in the northern part of our state,” Hilton said. “The industrialization of our coastline that offshore wind would create, I think, is just grotesque, and I’m dead against it.”

Working across the aisle

When asked how he would work with a Democratic majority in the state Legislature, Hilton said he has experience doing it — as an advisor to former United Kingdom Prime Minister David Cameron, he shared an office with a member of the opposite party.

“We worked together very well. Didn’t agree on everything,” he said. “That would be my attitude. I’m very open. I’m not tribal. I’m not particularly partisan. I’m a pragmatic, problem-solving kind of person, and I’m looking forward to working with the Legislature.”

He said he would press the Legislature to cut spending and “the endless number of bills that they pass every year. … But I want to work together to reduce costs for Californians.”

Hilton also found alignment with Democrats who ran in the gubernatorial primary, including former Orange County Rep. Katie Porter, San José Mayor Matt Mahan and former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.

“Katie Porter in the primary … actually endorsed my tax plan. Matt Mahan and I agree on a lot of things to help” cut costs and speed up housing constriction, he said. “Antonio Villaraigosa, we agreed on a lot of things to do with energy policy. So I think there are Democrats who we’ll be able to work with to get consensus on some of the things that we need to get done.”

Citing lingering concerns about the potential misuse of police license plate readers, the Los Angeles City Council voted Tuesday to delay an agreement that would enable the deployment of hundreds of the controversial devices until officials are satisfied that the technology will be wielded responsibly.

By a 10-4 vote, the council opted to overrule approval of the 10-year, $235-million contract between the Los Angeles Police Department and Axon Enterprise, halting a deal that had previously been signed off on by the Board of Police Commissioners.

Axon is seeking to outfit hundreds of LAPD patrol squads with plate scanners, which track the movements of vehicles around the city. Under the agreement, the company would also replace thousands of body-worn cameras, supply new Tasers, provide cloud video storage, and roll out a program that uses artificial intelligence to assist officers in writing police reports.

In addition, Axon is seeking to launch a pilot program that would attach plate scanners to streetlights around Los Angeles, offering the LAPD a souped-up version of its current systems by using AI to identify vehicles, license plates, pedestrians and objects that appear on streets and sidewalks.

The council’s decision — which was preceded by several fiery comments from members of the public who oppose the use of license plate readers — sends the contract back to the Police Commission for reconsideration.

A commission spokesperson said that the board’s members weren’t immediately available for comment.

Several council members voiced unease about proceeding without a better sense of the LAPD’s internal policy on license plate reader use. Delaying the contract, Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martínez said, would give the public and city leaders more time to review the safeguards and policies written into the LAPD’s proposed memorandum of understanding with Axon.

Councilmember Traci Park, a staunch supporter of plate reader technology, said there is an urgent need to get the devices “up and running.”

Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez shot back that it would be irresponsible to deploy the technology, citing news reports about officers misusing plate readers to stalk romantic partners and track women seeking reproductive health services.

Earlier this year, the LAPD allowed its agreement with one of Axon’s chief competitors, Flock Safety, to lapse over concerns that the Trump administration is using the data it collects to locate immigrants targeted for deportation. Police officials say they no longer have access to the company’s cameras, many of which are owned by homeowners associations and other private groups.

LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell and other department leaders have pushed to expand the use of license plate readers, saying they are a valuable tool for solving crimes, enabling investigators to more easily locate stolen vehicles and fugitives.

Hernandez noted that other police technologies, such as a robot dog used in situations involving barricaded suspects, had quietly moved from a pilot to a full-fledged program without input from the council.

Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson said he still had privacy concerns about license plate readers, while noting that their deployment along the Figueroa corridor had assisted in the rescue of dozens of juvenile sex trafficking victims.

“Now having said that, if I’m honest I don’t know what else the cameras are doing,” he said.

Councilmember Monica Rodriguez said that as the license plate reader technology is adopted by other, non-police agencies such as sanitation and street services, the city needs a universal policy governing its use.

The matter will next be heard by the public safety committee — likely at its Oct. 20 meeting — before being taken up by the full council later that week.

In a presentation to the Police Commission last month, the LAPD’s technology czar, Dean Gialamas, said that the department understood the privacy and civil liberty concerns raised about companies such as Flock. This summer, the department announced it was pausing its relationship with the Atlanta-based firm, but police officials have said they are still hopeful to negotiate a new deal with the company that would include more data-sharing safeguards.

Much like the initial debate over the use of forensic DNA testing, Gialamas said, the answer wasn’t to abandon the technology but to create safeguards to “ensure responsible and trusted use.”

Gialamas told commissioners that Axon had agreed to terms that would give the LAPD complete ownership of the data captured and bar the sharing of data with federal authorities. The proposed deal, he said, would also limit the use of plate readers to criminal investigations, missing persons cases and other “serious public safety matters.” Investigators, for instance, would not be able to conduct searches based solely on protests or other 1st Amendment-protected activities, he said.

Under the proposed contract, investigators would no longer be given “unfettered access” to license plate data and the retention period would be significantly cut down, he said. The department would also be permitted to conduct regular audits to flag officers who use the system frequently or conduct unusual searches.

A report issued last month by the LAPD inspector general’s office found numerous “limitations” in the department’s existing agreements with its three plate reader vendors — Flock, Axon and Motorola — including a lack of clear language about how long data are retained and how they are shared with third parties or other law enforcement agencies.

The inspector general recommended that the department update its current license plate reader contracts to address data security and privacy concerns, conduct regular audits and develop standardized rules for traffic stops based on plate reader hits.

Editorial decisions at ABC News are being influenced by the Federal Communications Commission’s early license review of its TV stations, the network’s legal team told a U.S. District Court judge Tuesday.

The Disney-owned network is seeking a restraining order to stop the FCC’s action, which its attorneys said was unprecedented and an attempt by the Trump White House to chill free speech.

Disney attorney Beth Wilkinson said the FCC’s action is having an impact on ABC News coverage in the weeks leading up to the midterm elections, as the network tries to avoid further action from the agency that regulates over-the-air broadcast TV licenses.

“We are making different editorial decisions,” Wilkinson said during the court hearing in Washington. “We are watching everything that we do because every time we do something — even not broadcasting this presidential speech — brings out the anger in the administration and the retaliation from the agency.”

Wilkinson was referring to President Trump’s frustration over ABC’s decision not to air his July 16 speech about voter fraud. The network chose to run it on its news streaming platform. FCC Chairman Brendan Carr criticized the move and said it would be considered in the license renewal process.

Wilkinson cited Carr’s complaint as an example of how the review is being driven by Trump’s unhappiness over the network’s coverage across its news programs, its late-night show “Jimmy Kimmel Live” and its topical daytime chat show “The View.” The FCC’s action, she said, is the administration “retaliating with their government power against ABC’s right to protected speech.”

Assistant U.S. Atty. Dimitar P. Georgiev argued for the FCC that ABC is trying to avoid the commission’s regulatory process by taking the case to the U.S. District Court. Georgiev said the license renewal was initiated because of a dispute over documents in the commission’s investigation into alleged discriminatory hiring practices at Disney.

Judge Loren L. AliKhan did not issue a ruling. She asked the FCC to provide further documentation on its claim. Disney will have until Oct. 14 to respond.

Trump has frequently threatened to have TV station licenses pulled when he believes he is treated unfairly on news and talk programs. He has also successfully extracted multimillion-dollar settlements from CBS and ABC after suing the networks over news content he said had treated him unfairly.

ABC is the first network to take the FCC to court over the threats.

Wilkinson noted that Carr said during a visit to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Fla., that “broadcasters that are running hoaxes and news distortions, also known as fake news, have a chance now to correct course before their license renewals come up.” 


The licenses for eight ABC-owned TV stations, including KABC in Los Angeles, were originally scheduled for renewal between 2028 and 2031.

Carr has said ABC’s daily talk show “The View” should not be exempt from the FCC’s equal time rule that requires broadcasters to bring on opposing candidates to provide balanced coverage. Wilkinson noted that the program — which was given the exemption in 2002 — has avoided using clips of politicians during its popular “Hot Topics” segment at the top of the program.

Carr also said earlier this year that stations could be subject to discipline if they “don’t operate in the public interest” after criticisms from the White House about coverage of the Iran war.

Carr called for the ABC license review in April, days after Kimmel delivered gags about the White House Correspondents’ Assn. dinner attended by Trump for the first time as president and described First Lady Melania Trump as having a “glow like an expectant widow.”

The satirical remarks drew criticism after a man later breached security at the Washington Hilton event while armed with a shotgun, handgun and several knives. The dinner was cut short and rescheduled.