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WASHINGTON — President Trump outlined an ambitious effort Friday to develop, produce and distribute a fully-approved COVID-19 vaccine by the end of the year, a timeline that even those in charge of the project acknowledge is highly unlikely.
Trump said the $10-billion program would have a goal of producing 300 million doses to administer to Americans by January.
Officials said the initiative would seek to streamline and coordinate the work of government agencies, private industry and the military. A former pharmaceutical executive and an Army four-star general will head the effort, which the White House called Operation Warp Speed.
“We’re looking to get it by the end of the year if we can,” Trump said in the Rose Garden. “Tremendous strides are being made.”
But Trump also hedged on the importance of the effort, declaring that America is already on the rebound from the coronavirus outbreak, which has killed about 87,000 Americans and cratered the economy.
“I want to make one thing clear — vaccine or no vaccine, we’re back,” he said. He repeated a claim he’s made since the first U.S. coronavirus cases were reported three months ago, that the virus will eventually “go away” on its own.
“I don’t want people to think this is all dependent on a vaccine,” he said.
Public health officials worry about bringing a potential vaccine to market without several rounds of clinical trials to ensure that it is safe and effective.
The National Institutes of Health says one or two possible vaccine candidates could be ready for large-scale testing by July, with several others likely to follow. Elsewhere around the world, about a dozen vaccine candidates are teed up for small-scale testing or safety studies.
The tests are necessary to determine proper dosages and to avoid negative side effects. The process usually takes several years, but some of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies are working with governments around the globe in an effort to speed up the search.
Dr. Amesh Adalja, an infectious diseases physician at Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, said setting a deadline for a vaccine is “dangerous because you’re going to give people a false sense of hope and security.”
But he said it’s possible scientists can accelerate the usual timeline given changes in laboratory practices, including the use of “vaccine platform technologies” that allow researchers to test various candidates without developing each one from scratch, and the decision to prepare factories for mass production before officials know for certain that a particular vaccine will work.
“All of that’s going to shave time off, but everything has to go perfectly,” he said.
Dr. Jere W. McBride, an infectious diseases specialist at the Sealy Institute for Vaccine Sciences at the University of Texas, noted that no vaccine has been “developed that fast before.”
“Everything has to work and in science that’s often not the case,” he added. “Is it possible? Certainly.”
Officials involved in the new initiative echoed the president’s optimism.
Moncef Slaoui, who was chairman of vaccines at British pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline until 2017, will lead the effort. He said early clinical trials have been encouraging.
“These data make me feel even more confident that we will be able to deliver a few hundred million doses of vaccine by the end of 2020,” Slaoui said. “And we will do the best we can.”
Gen. Gustave Perna, the commanding general of the Army’s Materiel Command, will serve as chief operational officer. He called the project “a herculean task,” but expressed confidence in its success.
“Winning matters and we will deliver by the end of this year a vaccine at scale,” said Defense Secretary Mark Esper.
Part of the effort involves using the military to boost production capacity before the vaccine is ready in order to expedite distribution when one is determined safe and reliable.
Dr. Stephen Hahn, the commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, said Tuesday at a Senate hearing that his agency would evaluate about 10 vaccine candidates in early studies, and then select three to five to progress into larger studies in humans.
Dr. Rick Bright, the ousted former head of the government agency charged with developing vaccines, has cast doubt on the administration’s rush to find a vaccine.
“My concern is if we rush too quickly, and consider cutting out critical steps, we may not have a full assessment of the safety of that vaccine,” Bright told a House committee on Thursday. “So it’s still going to take some time.”
Trump’s comments in the Rose Garden were at times drowned out by loud horns from truckers parked near the White House who were protesting reduced shipping rates. Trump dismissed the din as a “sign of love” for him.
Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus response coordinator, and Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government’s top immunologist, stood behind Trump but did not speak. Both wore face masks, although Trump did not.
WASHINGTON — Time was — not that long ago — that after a mass shooting, gun rights advocates would nod to the possibility of compromise before waiting for memories to fade and opposing any new legislation to regulate firearms.
This time, they skipped the preliminaries and jumped directly to opposition.
The speed of that negative reaction provides the latest example of how, on one issue after another, the gap between blue America and red America has widened so much that even the idea of national agreement appears far-fetched. Many political figures no longer bother pretending to look for it.
A survey last year by the Pew Research Center, for example, showed that by 87% to 12%, Americans supported “preventing people with mental illnesses from purchasing guns.” By 81% to 18% they backed “making private gun sales and sales at gun shows subject to background checks.” And by a smaller but still healthy 64% to 36% they favored “banning high-capacity ammunition magazines that hold more than 10 rounds.”
The gunman in Uvalde appears to have carried seven 30-round magazines, authorities in Texas have said.
So why, in the face of such large majorities, does Congress repeatedly do nothing?
One powerful factor is the belief among many Americans that nothing lawmakers do will help the problem.
Asked in that same Pew survey if mass shootings would decline if guns were harder to obtain, about half of Americans said they would go down, but 42% said it would make no difference. Other surveys have found much the same feeling among a large swath of Americans.
The argument about futility is one that opponents of change quickly turn to after a catastrophe. It’s a powerful rhetorical weapon against action.
Esmeralda Bravo, 63, holds a photo of her granddaughter, Nevaeh, one of the Robb Elementary School shooting victims, during a prayer vigil in Uvalde, Texas, on Wednesday.
(Jae C. Hong / Associated Press)
“It wouldn’t prevent these shootings,” Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) said on CNN on Wednesday when asked about banning the sort of semiautomatic weapons used by the killer in Uvalde and by a gunman who killed 10 at a Buffalo, N.Y., supermarket 10 days earlier. “The truth of the matter is these people are going to commit these horrifying crimes — whether they have to use another weapon to do it, they’re going to figure out a way to do it.”
Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott made a similar claim at his news conference on Wednesday: “People who think that, ‘well, maybe we can just implement tougher gun laws, it’s gonna solve it’ — Chicago and L.A. and New York disprove that thesis.”
The facts powerfully suggest that’s not true.
Go back roughly 15 years: In 2005, California had almost the same rate of deaths from guns as Florida or Texas. California had 9.5 firearms deaths per 100,000 people that year, Florida had 10 and Texas 11, according to data from the National Center for Health Statistics.
California’s rate of gun deaths has declined by 10% since 2005, even as the national rate has climbed in recent years. And Texas and Florida? Their rates of gun deaths have climbed 28% and 37% respectively. California now has one of the 10 lowest rates of gun deaths in the nation. Texas and Florida are headed in the wrong direction.
Obviously, factors beyond a state’s laws can affect the rate of firearms deaths. The national health statistics take into account differences in the age distribution of state populations, but they don’t control for every factor that might affect gun deaths.
Equally clearly, no law stops all shootings.
California’s strict laws didn’t stop the shooting at a Taiwanese church in Laguna Woods earlier this month, and there’s no question that Chicago suffers from a large number of gun-related homicides despite strict gun control laws in Illinois. A large percentage of the guns used in those crimes come across the border from neighboring states with loose gun laws, research has shown.
The overall pattern is clear, nonetheless, and it reinforces the lesson from other countries, including Canada, Britain and Australia, which have tightened gun laws after horrific mass shootings: The states with America’s lowest rates of gun-related deaths all have strict gun laws; in states that allow easy availability of guns, more people die from them.
Fear of futility isn’t the only barrier to passage of national gun legislation.
Hardcore opponents of gun regulation have become more entrenched in their positions over the last decade.
Mostly conservative and Republican and especially prevalent in rural parts of the U.S., staunch opponents of any new legislation restricting firearms generally don’t see gun violence as a major problem but do see the weapons as a major part of their identity. In the Pew survey last year, just 18% of Republicans rated gun violence as one of the top problems facing the country, compared with 73% of Democrats. Other surveys have found much the same.
Strong opponents of gun control turn out in large numbers in Republican primaries, and they make any vote in favor of new restrictions politically toxic for Republican officeholders. In American politics today, where most congressional districts are gerrymandered to be safe for one party and only a few states swing back and forth politically, primaries matter far more to most lawmakers than do general elections.
Even in general elections, gun issues aren’t the top priority for most voters. Background checks and similar measures have wide support, but not necessarily urgent support.
Finally, in an era defined by “negative partisanship” — suspicion and fear of the other side — it’s easy to convince voters that a modest gun control proposal is just an opening wedge designed to lead to something more dramatic.
That leads to a common pattern when gun measures appear on ballots: They do less well than polling would suggest.
Then, as now, polls showed strong support for requiring background checks for sales that currently evade them. But support for the legislation was sharply lower than support for the general idea, Pew found.
Almost 8 in 10 Republican gun owners favored background checks in general, they found, but when asked about the specific bill, only slightly more than 4 in 10 wanted it to pass. When asked why they backed the general idea but opposed the specific one, most of those polled cited concerns that the bill would set up a “slippery slope” to more regulation or contained provisions that would go further than advertised.
Faced with that sort of skepticism from voters, Republican senators who had flirted with supporting the bill mostly walked away, and it failed.
Then-Vice President Joe Biden led the unsuccessful effort to pass that bill. Nearly a decade later, the political factors impeding action have only grown more powerful.
Texas school shooting
The recent string of devastating shootings has renewed calls for tighter gun restrictions. But as Kevin Rector reported, a loosening of gun laws is almost certainly coming instead, largely because of an expected decision from the Supreme Court, which is likely to strike down a broad law in New York that doesn’t allow individuals to carry guns in public without first demonstrating a “special need” for self-defense.
For all the impassioned speeches and angry tweets, for all the memes and viral videos of gun control proponents quaking with rage, most of the energy and political intensity has been on the side of those who favor greater gun laxity, Mark Barabak wrote.
Biden marked the second anniversary of George Floyd’s murder by a Minneapolis police officer by signing an executive order aimed at reforming policing at the federal level. As Eli Stokols reported, Wednesday’s order falls short of what Biden had hoped to achieve through legislation. It directs all federal agencies to revise their use-of-force policies, creates a national registry of officers fired for misconduct and provides grants to incentivize state and local police departments to strengthen restrictions on chokeholds and no-knock warrants.
Sluggish response and questionable decisions by the Food and Drug Administration worsened the nation’s infant formula shortage, agency officials told lawmakers at a congressional hearing. “You’re right to be concerned, and the public should be concerned,” said FDA Commissioner Robert Califf. The agency’s response “was too slow and there were decisions that were suboptimal along the way,” Anumita Kaur reported.
Only a couple of months ago, U.S. and European officials said a renewal of the Iran nuclear deal was “imminent.” But with little progress since then, and a shifting global geopolitical scene, the top U.S. envoy for the Iran negotiations testified Wednesday that prospects for reviving the Iran deal are “at best, tenuous,” Tracy Wilkinson reported. “We do not have a deal,” the Biden administration’s special envoy for Iran, Robert Malley, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Cuba will not attend next month’s Summit of the Americas, a major conference to take place in Los Angeles, after the U.S. refused to extend a proper invitation, the country’s president, Miguel Díaz-Canel, announced Wednesday. As Wilkinson reported, the decision throws the summit, which is crucial to the U.S.’ ability to demonstrate its influence in the Western Hemisphere, into further disarray.
The latest from California
GOP Rep. Young Kim would seem to have a relatively easy path to reelection in November — the national mood favors her party, she has a lot of money and the newly drawn boundaries for her Orange County district give her more Republican constituents. But Kim is suddenly campaigning with a sense of urgency, Melanie Mason and Seema Mehta report. She’s unleashed $1.3 million in advertising, and outside allies are coming to her aid with more spending. Most of it is aimed at fending off Greg Raths, an underfunded GOP opponent who has been a staple on the political scene in Mission Viejo, the district’s largest city.
Gov. Gavin Newsom and top legislative Democrats pledged Wednesday to expedite gun legislation. Among the bills are measures that would require school officials to investigate credible threats of a mass shooting, allow private citizens to sue firearm manufacturers and distributors, and enact more than a dozen other policies intended to reduce gun violence in California, Taryn Luna and Hannah Wiley reported. “We’re going to control the controllable, the things we have control of,” Newsom said during an event at the state Capitol. “California leads this national conversation. When California moves, other states move in the same direction.”
The Los Angeles mayor’s race has seemingly devolved in recent days into a rhetorical brawl between two of the city’s richest men, Benjamin Oreskes wrote. Hollywood mogul Jeffrey Katzenberg, who supports Rep. Karen Bass, says Rick Caruso’s history of supporting Republican candidates and being registered as a Republican a decade ago disqualifies him from being mayor. That came after Variety published an interview with Caruso in which he attacked the former Walt Disney Studios chairman for “lying” about him in ads by a pro-Bass independent expenditure committee predominantly funded by Katzenberg.
The growing corruption scandal in Anaheim has cost the city’s mayor his job, endangered the city’s planned $320-million sale of Angel Stadium to the team and provided a rare, unvarnished look at how business is done behind closed doors in the city of 350,000. Read our full coverage of the FBI probe into how the city does business.
The Los Angeles City Council will consider an ordinance that would prevent the LAPD from using crowd control weapons against peaceful protesters and journalists.
Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martínez, who represents District 13, is pushing for regulations that would prohibit the Los Angeles Police Department from using “kinetic energy projectiles” or “chemical agents” unless officers are threatened with physical violence.
The Public Safety Committee unanimously approved the proposal and forwarded a vote with all council members on Wednesday. The items would be considered by the council in November or December, said Nick Barnes-Batista, a communications director for District 13.
The ordinance would also require officers to give clear, audible warnings about safe exit routes during “kettling,” when crowds are pushed into designated areas by police.
After the first iteration of the “No Kings” protest over the summer that saw multiple journalists shot by nonlethal rounds, tear-gassed and detained, news organizations sued the city and Police Department, arguing officers had engaged in “continuing abuse” of members of the media.
U.S. District Judge Hernan D. Vera granted a temporary restraining order that restricted LAPD officers from using rubber projectiles, chemical irritants and flash bangs against journalists.
Under the court order, officers are allowed to use those weapons “only when the officer reasonably believes that a suspect is violently resisting arrest or poses an immediate threat of violence or physical harm.”
LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell called the definition of journalist “ambiguous” in a news release Monday, raising concerns that the preliminary injunction could prevent the LAPD from addressing “people intent on unlawful and violent behavior.”
“The risk of harm to everyone involved increases substantially,” McDonnell wrote. “LAPD must declare an unlawful assembly, and issue dispersal orders, to ensure the safety of the public and restore order.”
The L.A. Press Club, plaintiffs in the lawsuit that led to the injunction, has alleged journalists were detained and assaulted by officers during an immigration protest in August. The Press Club is also involved in a similar lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
“This case is about LAPD, but if necessary, we are ready to take similar action to address misconduct toward journalists by other agencies,” the organization wrote in a news release from June.
Vera ruled in September that “any duly authorized representative of any news service, online news service, newspaper, or radio or television station or network” would be classified as a journalist and therefore protected under the court’s orders. Journalists who are impeding or physically interfering with law enforcement are not subject to the protections.
Any ordinance passed by the City Council would apply to the LAPD but not other agencies that could be responding to protests that turn chaotic, such as the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department or California Highway Patrol, thereby complicating operational procedure.
Barnes-Batista, the District 13 spokesman, said the City Council would need to discuss how to craft the rules.
“There are definitely unanswered questions about [how] the city wouldn’t want the city to be liable for other agencies not following policy,” he said. “So that will have to be worked out.”
Last month, the City Council, led by Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez, voted unanimously to deny a request by the city attorney, Hydee Feldstein Soto, to push for Vera’s injunction to be lifted.
“Journalism is under attack in this country — from the Trump Administration’s revocation of press access to the Pentagon to corporate consolidation of local newsrooms,” Hernandez said. “The answer cannot be for Los Angeles to join that assault by undermining court-ordered protections for journalists.”
A Virginia transportation security officer is accusing the U.S. Department of Homeland Security of sex discrimination over a policy that bars transgender officers from performing security screening pat-downs, according to a federal lawsuit.
The Transportation Security Administration, which operates under DHS, enacted the policy in February to comply with President Trump’s executive order declaring two unchangeable sexes: male and female.
According to internal documents explaining the policy change that the Associated Press obtained from four independent sources, including one current and two former TSA workers, “transgender officers will no longer engage in pat-down duties, which are conducted based on both the traveler’s and officer’s biological sex. In addition, transgender officers will no longer serve as a TSA-required witness when a traveler elects to have a pat-down conducted in a private screening area.”
Until February, TSA assigned work consistent with officers’ gender identity under a 2021 management directive. The agency told the AP it rescinded that directive to comply with Trump’s Jan. 20 executive order.
Although transgender officers “shall continue to be eligible to perform all other security screening functions consistent with their certifications,” and must attend all required training, they will not be allowed to demonstrate how to conduct pat-downs as part of their training or while training others, according to the internal documents.
A transgender officer at Dulles International Airport, Danielle Mittereder, alleges in her lawsuit filed Friday that the new policy — which also bars her from using TSA facility restrooms that align with her gender identity — violates civil rights law.
“Solely because she is transgender, TSA now prohibits Plaintiff from conducting core functions of her job, impedes her advancement to higher-level positions and specialized certifications, excludes her from TSA-controlled facilities, and subjects her identity to unwanted and undue scrutiny each workday,” the complaint says.
Mittereder declined to speak with the AP but her lawyer, Jonathan Puth, called TSA’s policy “terribly demeaning and 100% illegal.”
TSA spokesperson Russell Read declined to comment, citing pending litigation. But he said the new policy directs that “Male Transportation Security Officers will conduct pat-down procedures on male passengers and female Transportation Security Officers will conduct pat-down procedures on female passengers, based on operational needs.”
The legal battle comes amid mounting reports of workplace discrimination against transgender federal employees during Trump’s second administration. It is also happening at a time when TSA’s ranks are already stretched thin due to the ongoing government shutdown that has left thousands of agents working without pay.
Other transgender officers describe similar challenges to Mittereder.
Kai Regan worked for six years at Harry Reid International Airport in Las Vegas, but retired in July in large part because of the new policy. Regan, who is not involved in the Virginia case, transitioned from female to male in 2021 and said he had conducted pat-downs on men without issue until the policy change.
“It made me feel inadequate at my job, not because I can’t physically do it but because they put that on me,” said the 61-year-old, who worried that he would soon be fired for his gender identity, so he retired earlier than planned rather than “waiting for the bomb to drop.”
Skye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward — a legal organization that has repeatedly challenged the second Trump administration in court — called TSA’s policy “arbitrary and discriminatory,” adding: “There’s no evidence or data we’re aware of to suggest that a person can’t perform their duties satisfactorily as a TSA agent based on their gender identity.”
DHS pushed back on assertions by some legal experts that its policy is discriminatory.
“Does the AP want female travelers to be subjected to pat-downs by male TSA officers?” Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin asked in a written response to questions by the AP. “What a useless and fundamentally dangerous idea, to prioritize mental delusion over the comfort and safety of American travelers.”
Airport security expert and University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign professor Sheldon H. Jacobson, whose research contributed to the design of TSA PreCheck, said that the practice of matching the officer’s sex to the passenger’s is aimed at minimizing passenger discomfort during screening. Travelers can generally request another officer if they prefer, he added.
Deciding where transgender officers fit into this practice “creates a little bit of uncertainty,” Jacobson said. But because transgender officers likely make up a small percent of TSA’s workforce, he said the new policy is unlikely to cause major delays.
“It could be a bit of an inconvenience, but it would not inhibit the operation of the airport security checkpoint,” Jacobson said.
TSA’s policy for passengers is that they be screened based on physical appearance as judged by an officer, according to internal documents. If a passenger corrects an officer’s assumption, “the traveler should be patted down based on his/her declared sex.” For passengers who tell an officer “that they are neither a male nor female,” the policy says officers must advise “that pat-down screening must be conducted by an officer of the same sex,” and to contact a supervisor if concerns persist.
The documents also say that transgender officers “will not be adversely affected” in pay, promotions or awards, and that TSA “is committed to providing a work environment free from unlawful discrimination and retaliation.”
But the lawsuit argues otherwise, saying the policy impedes Mittereder’s career prospects because “all paths toward advancement require that she be able to perform pat-downs and train others to do so,” Puth said.
According to the lawsuit, Mittereder started in her role in June 2024 and never received complaints related to her job performance, including pat-down responsibilities. Supervisors awarded her the highest-available performance rating and “have praised her professionalism, skills, knowledge, and rapport with fellow officers and the public,” the lawsuit said.
“This is somebody who is really dedicated to her job and wants to make a career at TSA,” Puth said. “And while her gender identity was never an issue for her in the past, all of a sudden it’s something that has to be confronted every single day.”
Being unable to perform her full job duties has caused Mittereder to suffer fear, anxiety and depression, as well as embarrassment and humiliation by forcing her to disclose her gender identity to co-workers, the complaint says. It adds that the ban places additional burden on already-outnumbered female officers who have to pick up Mittereder’s pat-down duties.
American Federation of Government Employees National President Everett Kelley urged TSA leadership to reconsider the policy “for the good of its workforce and the flying public.”
“This policy does nothing to improve airport security,” Kelley said, “and in fact could lead to delays in the screening of airline passengers since it means there will be fewer officers available to perform pat-down searches.”
Savage writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Rio Yamat in Las Vegas contributed to this report.
MINNEAPOLIS — Attorneys in the case of a man charged with killing a top Minnesota Democratic lawmaker and her husband said Wednesday that prosecutors have turned over a massive amount of evidence to the defense, and that his lawyers need more time to review it.
Federal prosecutor Harry Jacobs told the court that investigators have provided substantially all of the evidence they have collected against Vance Boelter. He has pleaded not guilty to murder in the killing of former Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, and to attempted murder in the shootings of state Sen. John Hoffman and his wife. Some evidence, such as lab reports, continues to come in.
Federal defender Manny Atwal said at the status conference that the evidence includes more than130,000 pages of PDF documents, more than 800 hours of audio and video recordings, and more than 2,000 photographs from what authorities have called the largest hunt for a suspect in Minnesota history.
Atwal said her team has spent close to 110 hours just downloading the material — not reviewing it — and that they’re still evaluating the evidence, a process she said has gone slowly due to the federal government shutdown.
“That’s not unusual for a complex case but it is lot of information for us to review,” Atwal told Magistrate Judge Dulce Foster.
Jacobs said he didn’t have a timeline for when the Department of Justice would decide whether to seek the death penalty against Boelter. The decision will be up to U.S. Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi.
Foster scheduled the next status conference for Feb. 12 and asked prosecutors to keep the defense and court updated in the meantime about their death penalty decision. She did not set a trial date.
Hortman and her husband, Mark, and Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, were shot by a man who came to their suburban homes in the early hours of June 14, disguised as a police officer and driving a fake squad car.
Boelter, 58, was captured near his home in rural Green Isle late the next day. He faces federal and state charges including murder and attempted murder in what prosecutors have called a political assassination.
Boelter, who was wearing orange and yellow jail clothing, said nothing during the nine-minute hearing.
Minnesota abolished capital punishment in 1911 and has never had a federal death penalty case. But the Trump administration is pushing for greater use of capital punishment.
Boelter’s attorney has not commented on the substance of the allegations. His motivations remain murky and statements he has made to some media haven’t been fully clear. Friends have described him as a politically conservative evangelical Christian, and occasional preacher and missionary.
Boelter claimed to the conservative outlet Blaze News in August that he never intended to shoot anyone that night but that his plans went horribly wrong.
He told Blaze in a series of hundreds of texts via his jail’s messaging system that he went to the Hoffmans’ home to make citizen’s arrests over what he called his two-year undercover investigation into 400 deaths from the COVID-19 vaccine that he believed were being covered up by the state.
But he told Blaze he opened fire when the Hoffmans and their adult daughter tried to push him out the door and spoiled his plan. He did not explain why he went on to allegedly shoot the Hortmans and their golden retriever, Gilbert, who had to be euthanized.
Hennepin County Atty. Mary Moriarty said when she announced Boelter’s indictment on state charges in August that she gave no credence to the claims Boelter had made from jail.
In other recent developments, a Sibley County judge last month granted Boelter’s wife a divorce.
Gov. Gavin Newsom’s former chief of staff was arrested Wednesday on federal charges that allege she siphoned $225,000 out of a dormant state campaign account and wrote off $1 million for luxury handbags and private jet travel as business expenses on her tax returns.
According to the 23-count indictment, unsealed Wednesday morning, political consultant Dana Williamson and her employees Greg Campbell and Sean McCluskie billed the dormant campaign account for bogus consulting services through shell companies they controlled starting in the spring of 2022.
Many of those payments went to McCluskie’s wife, federal authorities allege.
The indictment does not name the California politician whose campaign fund the trio allegedly drained.
Williamson left her job at the statehouse last December.
“Today’s charges are the result of three years of relentless investigative work, in partnership with IRS Criminal Investigation and the U.S. Attorney’s Office,” said FBI Sacramento Special Agent in Charge Sid Patel. “The FBI will remain vigilant in its efforts to uncover fraud and corruption, ensuring our government systems are held to the highest standards.”
Williamson is scheduled to make an initial court appearance Wednesday afternoon in Sacramento.
WOLF POINT, Mont. — On the open plains of the Fort Peck Reservation, Robert Magnan leaned out the window of his truck, set a rifle against the door frame and then “pop!” — a bison tumbled dead in its tracks.
Magnan and a co-worker shot two more bison, also known as buffalo, and quickly field dressed the animals before carting them off for processing into ground beef and cuts of meat for distribution to members of the Fort Peck Assiniboine and Sioux Tribes in northern Montana.
As lawmakers in Washington, D.C., plod toward resolving the record government shutdown that interrupted food aid for tens of millions of people, tribal leaders on rural reservations across the Great Plains have been culling their cherished bison herds to help fill the gap.
About one-third of Fort Peck’s tribal members on the reservation depend on monthly benefit checks, Chairman Floyd Azure said. That’s almost triple the rate for the U.S. as a whole. They’ve received only partial payments in November after President Trump’s administration choked off funds to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program during the shutdown.
Fort Peck officials say they anticipated such a moment years ago, when they were bolstering their herd with animals from Yellowstone National Park over objections from cattle ranchers worried about animal disease.
“We were bringing it up with the tribal council: What would happen if the government went bankrupt? How would we feed the people?” said Magnan, the longtime steward of Fort Peck’s bison herds. “It shows we still need buffalo.”
Treaty obligations
In October, the tribal government authorized killing 30 bison — about 12,000 pounds of meat. Half had been shot by Tuesday. A pending deal to end the shutdown comes too late for the rest, Magnan said. With Montana among the states that dispersed only partial SNAP payments, Fort Peck will keep handing out buffalo meat for the time being.
Tribes including the Blackfeet, the Lower Brule Sioux, the Cheyenne River Sioux and the Crow have done the same in response to Washington’s dysfunction: feeding thousands of people with bison from herds restored over recent decades after the animals were hunted to near extinction in the 1800s.
Food and nutrition assistance programs are part of the federal government’s trust and treaty responsibilities — its legal and moral obligations to fund tribes’ health and well-being in exchange for land and resources the U.S. took from tribes.
“It’s the obligation they incurred when they took our lands, when they stole our lands, when they cheated us out of our lands,” said Mark Macarro, president of the National Congress of American Indians. “It lacks humanity to do this with SNAP, with food.”
Fort Peck tribal members Miki Astogo and Dillon Jackson-Fisher, who are unemployed, said they borrowed food from Jackson-Fisher’s mother in recent weeks after SNAP payments didn’t come through. On Sunday they got a partial payment — about $196 instead of the usual $298 per month — Agosto said.
It won’t last, they said, so the couple walked 4 miles into town to pick up a box of food from the tribes that included 2 pounds of bison.
“Our vehicle’s in the shop, but we have to put food on the table before we pay for the car, you know?” Jackson-Fisher said.
Moose in Maine, deer in Oklahoma
Native American communities elsewhere in the U.S. also are tapping into natural resources to make up for lost federal aid. Members of the Mi’kmaq Nation in Maine stocked a food bank with trout from their hatchery and locally hunted moose meat. In southeastern Oklahoma, the Comanche Nation is accepting deer meat for food banks. And in the southwestern part of the state, the Choctaw Nation set up three meat processing facilities.
Another program that provides food to eligible Native American households, the Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations, has continued through the shutdown.
Mi’kmaq is among the tribes that don’t have the program, though the tribe is eligible. The Mi’kmaq also get funding for food pantries through the federal Emergency Food Assistance Program, but that money, too, was tied up by the shutdown, tribal Chief Sheila McCormack said.
Roughly 80% of Mi’kmaq tribal members in Aroostook County are SNAP recipients, said Kandi Sock, the tribe’s community services director.
“We have reached out for some extra donations; our farm came through with that, but it will not last long,” Sock said.
The demise of bison, onset of starvation
Buffalo played a central role for Plains tribes for centuries, providing meat for food and hides for clothing and shelter.
That came to an abrupt end when white “hide hunters” arrived in 1879 in the Upper Missouri River basin around Fort Peck, which had some of the last vestiges of herds that once numbered millions of animals, Assiniboine historian Dennis Smith said. By 1883 the animals were virtually exterminated, according to Smith, a retired University of Nebraska-Omaha history professor.
With no way to feed themselves and the government denying them food, the buffalo’s demise heralded a time of starvation for the Assiniboine, he said. Many other Plains tribes also suffered hardship.
Hundreds of miles to the west of Fort Peck, the Blackfeet Nation killed 18 buffalo from its herd and held a special elk harvest to distribute meat to tribal members. The tribe already gave out buffalo meat periodically to elders, the sick and for ceremonies and social functions. But it’s never killed so many of the 700 animals at once.
“We can’t do that many all the time. We don’t want to deplete the resource,” said Ervin Carlson, who runs the Blackfeet buffalo program.
In South Dakota, the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe has distributed meat from about 20 of its buffalo. The tribe worked to build its capacity to feed people since experiencing shortages during the COVID-19 pandemic. It now has a meat processing plant that can handle 25 to 30 animals a week, said Jayme Murray with the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe Buffalo Authority Corp. Tribes from Minnesota to Montana have asked to use the plant, but they’ve had to turn some down, Murray said.
A former ‘food desert’ leans on its own herds
The Lower Brule Sioux Tribe in central South Dakota recently got its first full-fledged grocery store, ending its decades-long status as a “food desert” where people had to drive 100 miles round trip for groceries. The interruption to SNAP benefits stoked panic, tribal treasurer and secretary Marty Jandreau said.
Benefits for November were reduced to 65% of the usual amount.
But the Lower Brule have buffalo, cattle and elk in abundance across more than 9 square miles. On Sunday, the tribe gave away more than 400 pounds of meat to more than 100 tribal members, council members said.
“It makes me feel very proud that we have things we can give back,” tribal council member Marlo Langdeau said.
Brown and Brewer write for the Associated Press. Brewer reported from Oklahoma City, and Schafer, who reports for ICT, from Lower Brule, S.D.
PORTLAND, Maine — The Democratic primary to take on Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine was shaken up Wednesday by the decision of one candidate to drop out and join a different race with similarly high stakes.
In a move that could have implications for the closely divided U.S. House as well as the Senate, Jordan Wood, a onetime chief of staff to former Rep. Katie Porter, withdrew from the Senate race to instead seek the congressional seat representing Maine’s 2nd District, where incumbent Democratic Rep. Jared Golden recently announced he will not seek another term.
That leaves Gov. Janet Mills, a party mainstay, and Graham Platner, an oyster farmer who has gained attention for his progressive views and provocative online posts, as the top Democratic challengers to Collins.
Wood’s announcement sets up a potential Democratic congressional primary in the key 2nd District with former Secretary of State Matt Dunlap. The leading Republican candidate for the House seat is former Gov. Paul LePage.
“After many conversations with my family and voters in Maine’s 2nd Congressional District, I’ve decided to step up and to be the fighter for the district where I was born and raised,” Wood said in a statement Wednesday.
Maine’s upcoming 2nd District and Senate races are both highly competitive and could help shape the balance of power in Congress. Collins is the sole Republican senator in New England, and toppling her has long been a goal of the Democratic Party. Republicans, meanwhile, have prioritized winning back the 2nd District, where President Trump is popular.
Dunlap announced his bid for the 2nd District weeks before Golden’s announcement that he is vacating. Dunlap said in a statement Wednesday that Wood entering the race “doesn’t change our campaign or our commitment” and that he’s “in this to fight for the people of Maine.”
LePage served as governor from 2011 to 2019. He announced his bid for Congress months ago. Brent Littlefield, a LePage spokesperson, said in a statement that Wood is too liberal for the 2nd District.
“Mainers will pick a job creator, Paul LePage, who will grow the economy and push back on high prices,” Littlefield said.
Two other one-time Democratic candidates for the Senate seat, brewery owner Dan Kleban and former Air Force civilian contractor Daira Smith-Rodriguez, recently dropped out and endorsed Mills. A handful of other Democratic hopefuls remain, though only Mills and Platner are campaigning aggressively.
NEW YORK — John F. Kennedy’s grandson Jack Schlossberg is running for the U.S. House next year, announcing Tuesday that he’s seeking a congressional seat in New York City that will be vacated by longtime Democratic Rep. Jerry Nadler.
Schlossberg, 32, is a sardonic social media personality with a large following and storied political roots. In a video, he said the district covering a core chunk of Manhattan “should have a representative who can harness the creativity, energy and drive of this district and translate that into political power in Washington.”
Nadler, who is serving his 17th term in Congress, announced in September that he will not run for reelection next year after decades in office, suggesting to The New York Times that a younger Democratic lawmaker in his seat “can maybe do better, can maybe help us more.”
Several possible successors have emerged for the solidly Democratic district, including Micah Lasher, a former aide to Nadler and current New York state lawmaker with deep experience in government. The district stretches from Union Square to the top of Central Park, including the wealthy Upper East Side and Upper West Side neighborhoods.
In his campaign video, Schlossberg took aim at President Trump and Republican governance in Washington, saying “It’s a crisis at every level.”
“We deserve better, and we can do better, and it starts with the Democratic Party winning back control of the House of Representatives,” he said.
Schlossberg has cultivated his online presence with frequent posts weighing in on national political issues, including taking aim at his cousin Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Trump administration’s health and human services secretary who’s been a vocal vaccine skeptic.
Last month, Schlossberg posted on Instagram an image of a Halloween costume for “MAHA Man,” in reference to Kennedy’s Make America Healthy Again message and described it as including such things as measles.
WASHINGTON — The House is scheduled to be back in session Wednesday with a vote expected in the evening on a spending package that, if approved and signed by President Trump, will end the longest government shutdown in U.S. history.
The legislation, which the Senate passed Monday night, is expected to narrowly pass the House, where Republicans hold a slim majority. House Democrats are largely anticipated to oppose the deal, which does not include a core demand: an extension to Affordable Care Act healthcare tax credits that are set to expire at the end of the year.
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said he believes the deal is poised to pass by the end of the day.
“We believe the long national nightmare will be over tonight,” Johnson told reporters in Washington. “It was completely and utterly foolish and pointless.”
House Democrats were scheduled to meet ahead of the floor vote to discuss their vote. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said Tuesday night that there is a “strong expectation” that Democrats will be “strongly opposed” to the shutdown deal when it comes to final vote.
If the tax credits lapse, premiums will more than double on average for more than 20 million Americans who use the healthcare marketplace, according to independent analysts at the research firm KFF.
The spending bill, if approved, will fund the government through Jan. 30 and reinstate federal workers who were laid off during the shutdown. It will also guarantee back pay for federal employees who were furloughed or who were working without pay during the budget impasse.
Passage of the bill would mark a crucial moment on the 43rd day of the shutdown, which left thousands of federal workers without pay, millions of Americans uncertain on whether they would receive food assistance and travelers facing delays at airports across the country.
A vote is expected to begin after 4 p.m. EST — after Johnson swears in Adelita Grijalva (D-Ariz.), who was elected seven weeks ago. Once sworn in, Grijalva is set to become the final vote needed to force a floor vote on a petition demanding the Trump administration release files connected to Jeffrey Epstein.
The swearing-in ceremony will soon lay the groundwork for a House vote that Trump has long tried to avoid. It would come as the Epstein saga was reignited on Wednesday morning when Democrats on the House Oversight Committee released new emails in which the late sex trafficker said Trump “knew about the girls” that he was victimizing.
The emails are part of a trove of documents from Epstein’s estate released to the committee.
He’s loud, he’s obnoxious and, in a very short time, he’s broken unprecedented ground with his smash-face, turn-it-to-11 approach to the vice presidency. Unlike most White House understudies, who effectively disappear like a protected witness, Vance has become the highest-profile, most pugnacious politician in America who is not named Donald J. Trump.
It’s quite the contrast with his predecessor.
Kamala Harris made her own kind of history, as the first woman, first Black person and first Asian American to serve as vice president. As such, she entered office bearing great — and vastly unrealistic — expectations about her prominence and the public role she would play in the Biden administration. When Harris acted the way that vice presidents normally do — subservient, self-effacing, careful never to poach the spotlight from the chief executive — it was seen as a failing.
Why is that? Because that’s how President Trump wants it.
“Rule No.1 about the vice presidency is that vice presidents are only as active as their presidents want them to be,” said Jody Baumgartner, an East Carolina University expert on the office. “They themselves are irrelevant.”
Consider Trump’s first vice president, Mike Pence, who had the presence and pizzazz of day-old mashed potatoes.
“He was not a very powerful vice president, but that’s because Donald Trump didn’t want him to be,” said Christopher Devine, a University of Dayton professor who’s published four books on the vice presidency. “He wanted him to have very little influence and to be more of a background figure, to kind of reassure quietly the conservatives of the party that Trump was on the right track. With JD Vance, I think he wants him to be a very active, visible figure.”
There were other circumstances that kept Harris under wraps, particularly in the early part of Biden’s presidency.
One was the COVID-19 lockdown. “It meant she wasn’t traveling. She wasn’t doing public events,” said Joel K. Goldstein, another author and expert on the vice presidency. “A lot of stuff was being done virtually and so that tended to be constraining.”
The Democrats’ narrow control of the Senate also required Harris to stick close to Washington so she could cast a number of tie-breaking votes. (Under the Constitution, the vice president provides the deciding vote when the Senate is equally divided. Harris set a record in the third year of her vice presidency for casting the most tie-breakers in history.)
The personality of their bosses also explains why Harris and Vance approached the vice presidency in different ways.
Biden had spent nearly half a century in Washington, as a senator and vice president under Barack Obama. He was, foremost, a creature of the legislative process and saw Harris, who’d served nearly two decades in elected office, as a (junior) partner in governing.
Ohio’s senator had served barely 18 months in his one and only political position when Trump chose Vance as his running mate. He’d “really made his mark as a media and cultural figure,” Devine noted, with Vance’s memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy,” regarded as a kind of Rosetta Stone for the anger and resentment that fueled the MAGA movement.
Trump “wanted someone who was going to be aggressive in advancing the MAGA narrative,” Devine said, “being very present in media, including in some newer media spaces, on podcasts, social media. Vance was someone who could hammer home Trump’s message every day.”
The contrast continued once Harris and Vance took office.
Trump has treated Vance as a sort of heat-seeking rhetorical missile, turning him loose against his critics and acting as though the presidential campaign never ended.
Vance seems gladly submissive. Harris, who was her own boss for nearly two decades, had a hard time adjusting as Biden’s No. 2.
“Vance is very effective at playing the role of backup singer who gets to have a solo from time to time,” said Jamal Simmons, who spent a year as Harris’ vice presidential communications chief. “I don’t think Kamala Harris was ever as comfortable in the role as Vance has proven himself to be.”
Will Vance’s pugilistic approach pay off in 2028? It’s way too soon to say. Turning the conventions of the vice presidency to a shambles, the way Trump did with the presidency, has delighted many in the Republican base. But polls show Vance, like Trump, is deeply unpopular with a great number of voters.
As for Harris, all she can do is look on from her exile in Brentwood, pondering what might have been.
Donald Trump “spent hours at my house” and “knew about the girls,” Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced financier accused of orchestrating sex trafficking of young girls, wrote in private emails House Democrats released Wednesday.
“Of course he knew about the girls,” Epstein said of Trump in an email to author and journalist Michael Wolff in early 2019, when Trump was nearing the end of his first term as President.
After months of political bickering over the well-connected sex offender’s documents, dubbed “the Epstein files,” Democrats on the House Oversight Committee publicly released some of Epstein’s emails to Wolff and Epstein’s longtime associate Ghislaine Maxwell, who was convicted of sex trafficking after Epstein’s death.
The emails are just a small part of a collection of 23,000 documents Epstein’s estate released to the committee and are sure to revive questions about what the president knew about Epstein’s sexual misconduct with girls and young women.
Trump has denied knowing anything about Epstein’s crimes and no investigation has tied Trump to them.
“The more Donald Trump tries to cover up the Epstein files, the more we uncover,” California Democrat Robert Garcia (D-Long Beach) said in a statement as he released the documents.
“These latest emails and correspondence raise glaring questions about what else the White House is hiding and the nature of the relationship between Epstein and the President,” Garcia added. “The Department of Justice must fully release the Epstein files to the public immediately. The Oversight Committee will continue pushing for answers and will not stop until we get justice for the victims.”
Epstein, 66, died by suicide in a New York jail in August 2019, weeks after he was arrested and federally charged with sex trafficking and conspiracy to commit sex trafficking of minors. A watchdog report released last year found that negligence, misconduct and other failures at the jail contributed to his death.
More than a decade earlier, Epstein evaded federal criminal charges when he struck a plea deal in a south Florida case related to accusations that he molested dozens of girls.
As part of the agreement, Epstein pleaded guilty to state charges, including soliciting prostitution. He registered as a sex offender and served 13 months in jail but was allowed to leave six days a week to work at his office.
Valerie Valentine bought a triplex in South Los Angeles two weeks ago, and already she wonders whether she made a terrible investment.
Bills are immediately adding up for the small-time landlord, from $1,000 to get the water turned on to $6,000 in annual property taxes. She worries that the amount she collects in rent will not be enough to cover her expenses.
With the city on the verge of making the first major change to its rent stabilization ordinance since 1985, potentially capping annual rent increases at 3%, landlords such as Valentine fear that Los Angeles will become a hostile environment for them.
“It’s draconian,” said Valentine, who also owns a four-unit building in the Inland Empire. “Lowering the amount we can raise rent is a slap in the face. They are favoring one side of the aisle more than the other.”
On the other side, renters, who far outnumber landlords in the city, have turned out in force to City Council hearings to support the proposed 3% cap for units built before 1978, which house 42% of the city’s residents.
The current cap for rent-stabilized units is between 3% and 8%, depending on inflation, going up to 10% if landlords pay for utilities.
One tenant, Cindy Moran, 31, has lived in a rent-stabilized one-bedroom apartment in Exposition Park with her parents since she was born. They are now fighting eviction, she said, with their landlord stating that he wants to move into the property.
Moran believes he is trying to turn the site into 120 units of affordable housing. She fears they will not be able to find another apartment as affordable as the $700 a month they pay.
“I meet people every day who pay $2,000 for a one bedroom. They can’t afford a 10% increase,” Moran said. “We need to think about the most vulnerable right now.”
The proposed update to the city’s rent stabilization ordinance, which has been on the books since 1979, would be a massive shift in favor of tenants. It comes as many parts of the country are struggling with a housing affordability crisis, and after democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani won the New York City mayor’s election on a pledge to “freeze the rent.”
Most Angelenos are renters, and more than half are rent-burdened, meaning they spend more than 30% of their income on rent, according to the Los Angeles Housing Department. One in 10 Angelenos pays 90% of their income toward rent, the department said in a report this year.
Last week, the City Council’s Housing and Homelessness Committee passed the 3% proposal, written by Councilmember Nithya Raman, in a 3-2 vote. It goes before the full council Wednesday.
Under Raman’s proposal, the annual rent increase would max out at 3%, or 60% of the consumer price index, whichever is lower.
If there’s one thing everyone in LA can agree on, it’s that the rent is too high.
While we’ve updated some policies, the City of Los Angeles has not updated the actual formula that caps rent increases since the Rent Stabilization Ordinance was created over 40 years ago. pic.twitter.com/q5FvyzcGiz
The new floor on annual rent increases, now at 3%, would be 0%. That means that in years where there is no inflation, landlords would not be able to raise the rent at all.
“There is a need to reform it,” said Shane Phillips, housing initiative manager at UCLA’s Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies, who wrote a 2019 report calling for reforms to the rent stabilization ordinance. He believes the cap should be around 5%, tied directly to inflation.
“I think this swings the pendulum too far in the other direction,” he said.
On top of making it harder for small landlords to turn a profit, some fear that Raman’s proposal would chill development in a city that desperately needs more housing.
Los Angeles City Councilmember Nithya Raman wrote the proposed rent cap that was passed by the Housing and Homelessness Committee in a 3-2 vote. It goes before the full council Wednesday.
(Carlin Stiehl / Los Angeles Times)
In L.A., a new building constructed on the site of one that was rent-stabilized is subject to the rent stabilization ordinance, unless 20% of the new units are affordable for lower-income households.
A lower cap on rent increases may cause developers to forgo building on those lots, said Zachary Pitts, the Los Angeles director of YIMBY Action, which advocates for more affordable housing.
“Such unintended consequences could undermine the City’s housing goals at a time when increasing supply is critical to affordability and homelessness prevention,” he said in a statement.
Raman said she “will work to ensure new production is not impacted by these changes.”
“Only increased supply can help reduce costs for everyone in this city,” she said in a statement.
The current cap on rent increases has helped Jenny Colon stay in her rent-stabilized apartment, a two-bedroom in North Hills, for more than 30 years. She was paying $981 a month but is moving out because of a dispute with her landlord. Her new apartment, outside the city, costs $1,600 a month.
“A low percentage of rent increase every year does really create a very steady and safe housing situation,” said Colon, who supports Raman’s proposal.
But some say that lowering the allowable rent increase could have a downside for tenants, as falling revenues could lead landlords to spend less on maintaining their buildings.
“Certain small mom and pop owners just won’t have that kind of money,” said Paul Jesman, a real estate agent and landlord. “They’re going to push this roof replacement to next year because they don’t have the money for it.”
Landlords also may be more motivated to evict long-term tenants who fall behind on payments, so they can charge market rates to new tenants, said Phillips of UCLA.
City law allows landlords to charge market rates to a new tenant, though the cap on increases kicks in for the tenant after that.
The city’s Housing Department had recommended a floor of 2% and a ceiling of 5%, both tied to the consumer price index. City Councilmember Bob Blumenfield put forward a motion to the Housing and Homelessness Committee that aligned with that recommendation, but he was the only vote in favor of it.
A majority of California cities with rent-stabilized apartments set a ceiling of between 3% and 5%, the Housing Department said.
Raman argued that the department’s recommendations did not go far enough to deal with rents that have “skyrocketed.”
“I think what is before us is an opportunity to adjust costs for renters, that to me is long overdue,” she said.
WASHINGTON — For more than a year, detainees at a California immigrant detention center said, they were summoned from their dorms to a lieutenant’s office late at night. Hours frequently passed, they said, before they were sent back to their dorms.
What they allege happened in the office became the subject of federal complaints, which accuse Lt. Quin, then an administrative manager, of harassing, threatening and coercing immigrants into sexual acts at the Golden State Annex in McFarland. A person with that nameworked in a higher-ranking post, as chief of security, at the Alexandria Staging Facility in Louisiana until August — the same month The Times sent questions to the company that operates the facilities.
The Department of Homeland Security said it could not substantiate the allegations. According to an attorney for one of the detainees, the California Attorney General’s office opened an investigation into the matter.
Immigrant advocates point to the case as one of many allegations of abuse in U.S. immigration facilities, within a system which they say fails to properly investigate.
In three complaints reviewed by The Times that were filed under the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA), to a watchdog agency and with DHS, detainees accused Quin of sexual assault, harassment and other misconduct. The complainants initially knew the lieutenant only as “Lt. Quinn,” and he is referred to as such in the federal complaints, though the correct spelling is “Quin.”
The complaints also allege other facility staff knew about and facilitated abuse, perpetuating a culture of impunity.
The Golden State Annex, a U.S. Immigration & Customs Enforcement detention facility, in McFarland last year.
The California and Louisiana facilities are both operated by the Florida-based private prison giant, the GEO Group.
A Dec. 10, 2024, post on Instagram Threads appears to allude to issues Quin faced in California. The post pictures him standing in front of a GEO Group flag and states: “Permit me to reintroduce myself … You will respect my authority. They tried to hinder me, but God intervened.”
Asked about the accusations, Tricia McLaughlin, the assistant Homeland Security public affairs secretary, said in a statement that allegations of misconduct by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement employees or contractors are treated seriously and investigated thoroughly.
“These complaints were filed in 2024 — well before current DHS leadership and the necessary reforms they implemented,” McLaughlin wrote. “The investigation into this matter has concluded, and ICE — through its own investigation reviewed by [the DHS office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties] — could not substantiate any complaint of sexual assault or rape.”
The GEO Group did not respond to requests for comment.
Advocates for the detainees say they are undeterred and will continue to seek justice for people they say have been wronged.
Advocates also say the potential for abuse at detention facilities will grow as the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown brings such facilities to record population levels. The population of detained immigrants surpassed a high of 61,000 in August, according to TRAC, a nonpartisan research organization.
The allegations against Quin by a 28-year-old detainee are detailed in his FTCA complaint, a precursor to a lawsuit, filed in January with DHS. The complaint seeks $10 million for physical and emotional damages.
The Times generally does not identify alleged victims of sexual abuse and is referring to him by his middle initial, E.
McLaughlin’s response did not address the FTCA complaint that details E’s sexual assault allegations.
Reached by phone, Quin told The Times, “I don’t speak with the media,” and referred a reporter to the Golden State Annex. After being read the allegations against him and asked to respond, he hung up.
E alleged abuse in interviews with The Times, and in a recorded interview with an attorney, which formed the basis for the FTCA complaint.
In the complaint, he said that beginning in May 2023, Quin would call him into a room, where no cameras or staff were present, to say he had been given a citation or that guards had complained about him.
One day, the complaint alleges, Quin rubbed his own genitals over his pants and began making sexual comments. E told Quin he felt uncomfortable and wanted to go back to his dorm. But Quin smirked, dragged his chair closer and grabbed E in the crotch, the complaint says.
After E pushed Quin away and threatened to defend himself physically, the complaint alleges, Quin made his own threat: to call a “code black” — an emergency — that would summon guards and leave E facing charges of assaulting a federal officer.
Instead, E said, Quin called for an escort to take him back to his dorm.
After that, the late-night summons — sometimes at midnight or 2 a.m. — increased, E said in his complaint. Each time, Quin continued to rub his genitals over his clothes, according to the complaint.
The complaint alleges Quin repeatedly offered to help with E’s immigration case in exchange for sexual favors. Then Quin found out E is bisexual and E alleged Quin threatened to tell his family during a visit. Afraid of his family finding out about his sexuality, E said in the complaint, he finally acquiesced to letting Quin touch his genitals and perform oral sex on him.
“I just, I ended up doing it,” E said in a recorded interview with his attorney.
Afterward, the complaint says, Quin told E that he would make sure to help him, and that no one would find out.
The complaint alleges that Quin brought E contraband gifts, including a phone, and, around Christmas, a water bottle full of alcohol.
“I feel dirty,” E said in the recorded interview. “I feel ashamed of myself, you know? I feel like my dignity was just nowhere.”
E said in his complaint that a staff member told him in December 2023 that a guard had reported Quin to the warden after noticing E had been out of his dorm for a long time; the guard had reviewed security cameras showing Quin giving E the bottle of alcohol.
E said the staffer told him that Quin was temporarily suspended from interacting with detainees, and the late-night summons stopped for a while.
Lee Ann Felder-Heim, staff attorney with the Asian Law Caucus, which filed a complaint with the federal government alleging mistreatment of detainees at the Golden State Annex in McFarland.
(Maria del Rio / For The Times)
A second, earlier complaint alleging mistreatment at the McFarland facility was filed on E’s behalf in August 2024 by the Asian Law Caucus with the DHS Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties (CRCL).
That complaint alleges that other GEO Group staff targeted him with sexually harassing and degrading comments. It does not address E’s sexual assault allegations, because E said he was initially too afraid to talk about them.
Once, when E was lying on his stomach in his cell, a guard commented loudly to other staff that he was waiting for a visit from Quin; the guard made a motion of putting her finger through a hole, insinuating that E sought to engage in sexual intercourse, the complaint states.
The broader issue isn’t one person, “but rather a system of impunity and abuse,” said Lee Ann Felder-Heim, a staff attorney at the Asian Law Caucus. “The reports make it clear that other staff were aware of what was going on and actually were assisting in making it happen.”
In addition to detailing E’s own experiences, the complaint also details abuse and harassment of five other detainees. One detainee is transgender, a fact that would play a role in how federal officials investigated the complaint.
In February and March, CRCL sent Felder-Heim letters saying it had closed the investigation into the alleged sexual abuse and harassment, citing, as justification, Trump’s First-Day executive order concerning “gender ideology extremism.” The order prohibits using federal funds to “promote gender ideology,” so Felder-Heim said it appears the investigation was shut down because one of the complainants is transgender.
She called the investigation process flawed and “wholly inadequate.”
E filed a third complaint with another oversight body, the Office of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman. To his knowledge, no investigation was initiated.
In March, the Trump administration shut down three internal oversight bodies: CRCL, OIDO and the Citizenship and Immigration Services (CIS) Ombudsman. Civil rights groups sued the following month, prompting the agency to resurrect the offices.
But staffing at the offices was decimated, according to sworn court declarations by DHS officials. CRCL has gone from having 147 positions to 22; OIDO from about 118 to about 10; and the CIS Ombudsman from 46 to about 10.
“All legally required functions of CRCL continue to be performed, but in an efficient and cost-effective manner and without hindering the Department’s mission of securing the homeland,” said McLaughlin, the DHS spokeswoman.
Michelle Brané, who was the immigrant detention ombudsman under the Biden administration, said the civil rights office generally had first dibs on complaints about sexual assault. She recalled the complaint about Quin but said her office didn’t investigate it because the civil rights office already was.
Brané said the decrease in oversight amid increased detention will inevitably exacerbate issues such as allegations of sexual assault. Worse conditions also make it harder to hire quality staff, she said.
Around the same time that E was held at Golden State Annex, a gay couple from Colombia reported in April 2024 to the OIDO that Quin had sexually harassed them.
D.T., 26, and C.B., 25, were separated upon arrival at Golden State Annex. D.T. began to experience severe anxiety attacks, they said in the Asian Law Caucus complaint and in an interview with The Times. The couple asked to be placed in the same dormitory.
Before granting their request, Quin asked what they would give him in return, the couple recounted in the complaint. Afterward, the complaint alleges, he frequently invited them to his office, saying they owed him.
“We never accepted going to his office, because we knew what it was for,” C.B. told the Times.
In their complaint, they allege that Quin asked D.T. if he wanted to have sex and told C.B., “You belong to me.”
The couple became aware that Quin had also harassed other detainees and gave preferential treatment to those who they believed accepted his requests for sexual favors, according to the complaint; one detainee told them that he had grabbed Quin’s hand and placed it on his penis to avoid being taken to solitary confinement for starting a fight.
D.T. said in an interview with The Times that he believes “below him are many people who never said anything.”
In a Dec. 2, 2024, internal facility grievance from Golden State Annex reviewed by The Times, another detainee alleges that Quin retaliated against him for speaking out against misconduct.
In the grievance and in an interview with The Times, the detainee said he spoke up after, on several occasions, watching another man walk to Quin’s office late at night and come back to the dorm hours later. He also said in the grievance that Quin brought in marijuana, cellphones and other contraband.
Another witness, Gustavo Flores, 33, said Quin recognized him as a former Golden State Annex detainee when he was briefly transferred to the Alexandria facility, just before his deportation to El Salvador in May.
Quin pulled Flores aside and offered to uncuff him and get him lunch in exchange for cleaning the lobby; after he finished, Quin brought him into his office, where he peppered Flores with questions about Golden State Annex, Flores said.
Flores said he asked about certain staffers and detainees. He told Flores people wanted to sue him, calling them “crybabies.”
“He’s telling me everything, like, ‘Oh yeah, I know what goes on over there,’” Flores said.
When E tried to end the sexual encounters, his complaint says, Quin threatened to have him sent to a detention facility in Texas or have his deportation expedited.
In October 2024, E was transferred to the Mesa Verde ICE Processing Center in Bakersfield.
Heliodoro Moreno, E’s attorney, said the California Attorney General’s Office confirmed to him in February that it was investigating. An investigator interviewed E in April and again in May, he said, and the investigation remains open.
California Department of Justice spokesperson Nina Sheridan declined to comment on a potential investigation. But in a statement she said the office remains vigilant of “ongoing, troubling conditions” at detention facilities throughout California.
“We are especially concerned that conditions at these facilities are only set to worsen as the Trump Administration continues to ramp up its inhumane campaign of mass deportation,” she wrote.
E, who had a pending claim for a special status known as withholding of removal, dropped his case in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. Moreno said his client wished to no longer be detained.
“It’s very unfortunate that he’s in these circumstances,” Moreno said. His client was forced to forgo his appellate rights and leave “without really getting a conclusion to receiving justice for what happened to him.”
BELÉM, Brazil — The expansive halls of the Amazon’s newly built climate summit hub echoed with the hum of air conditioners and the footsteps of delegates from around the world — scientists, diplomats, Indigenous leaders and energy executives, all converging for two frenetic weeks of negotiations.
Then Gov. Gavin Newsom rounded the corner, flanked by staff and security. They moved in tandem through the corridors on Tuesday as media swarmed and cellphone cameras rose into the air.
“Hero!” one woman shouted. “Stay safe — we need you,” another attendee said. Others didn’t hide their confusion at who the man with slicked-back graying hair causing such a commotion was.
“I’m here because I don’t want the United States of America to be a footnote at this conference,” Newsom said when he reached a packed news conference on his first day at the United Nations climate policy summit known as COP30.
In less than a year, the United States has shifted from rallying nations on combating climate change to rejecting the science altogether under President Trump, whose brash governing style spawned in part from his reality-show roots.
Newsom has engineered his own evolution when coping with Trump — moving from sharp but reasoned criticism to name-calling and theatrical attacks on the president and his Republican allies. Newsom’s approach adds fire to America’s political spectacle — part governance, part made-for-TV drama. But on climate, it’s not all performance.
California’s carbon market and zero-emission mandates have given the state outsize influence at summits such as COP30, where its policies are seen as both durable and exportable. The state has invested billions in renewables, battery storage and electrifying buildings and vehicles and has cut greenhouse gas emissions by 21% since 2000 — even as its economy grew 81%.
“Absolutely,” he said when asked whether the state is in effect standing in for the United States at climate talks. “And I think the world sees us in that light, as a stable partner, a historic partner … in the absence of American leadership. And not just absence of leadership, the doubling down of stupid in terms of global leadership on clean energy.”
Newsom has honed a combative presence online — trading barbs with Trump and leaning into satire, especially on social media, tactics that mirror the president’s. Critics have argued that it’s contributing to a lowering of the bar when it comes to political discourse, but Newsom said he doesn’t see it that way.
“I’m trying to call that out,” Newsom said, adding that in a normal political climate, leaders should model civility and respect. “But right now, we have an invasive species — in the vernacular of climate — by the name of Donald Trump, and we got to call that out.”
At home, Newsom recently scored a political win with Proposition 50, the ballot measure he championed to counter Trump’s effort to redraw congressional maps in Republican-led states. On his way to Brazil, he celebrated the victory with a swing through Houston, where a rally featuring Texas Democrats looked more like a presidential campaign stop than a policy event — one of several moments in recent months that have invited speculation about a White House run that he insists he hasn’t launched.
Those questions followed him to Brazil. It was the first topic posed from a cluster of Brazilian journalists in Sao Paulo, Brazil’s largest city and financial hub, where Newsom had flown to speak Monday with climate investors in what he conceded sounded more like a campaign speech.
“I think it has to,” said Newson, his talking points scribbled on yellow index cards still in his pocket from an earlier meeting. “I think people have to understand what’s going on, because otherwise you’re wasting everyone’s time.”
In a low-lit luxury hotel adorned with Brazilian artwork and deep-seated chairs, Newsom showcased the well-practiced pivot of a politician avoiding questions about his future. His most direct answer about his presidential prospects came in a recent interview with “CBS News Sunday Morning,” on which Newsom was asked whether he would give serious thought after the 2026 midterm elections to a White House bid. Newsom responded: “Yeah, I’d be lying otherwise.”
He laughed when asked by The Times how often he has fielded questions about his plans in 2028 in recent days, and quickly deflected.
“It’s not about me,” he said before fishing a malaria pill out of his suit pocket and chasing it with borrowed coffee from a nearby carafe. “It’s about this moment and people’s anxiety and concern about this moment.”
Ann Carlson, a UCLA environmental law professor, said Newsom’s appearance in Brazil is symbolically important as the federal government targets Californa’s decades-old authority to enforce its own environmental standards.
“California has continued to signal that it will play a leadership role,” she said.
The Trump administration confirmed to The Times that no high-level federal representative will attend COP30.
“President Trump will not jeopardize our country’s economic and national security to pursue vague climate goals that are killing other countries,” White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers said.
For his own part, Trump told world leaders at the United Nations in September that climate change is a “hoax” and “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world.”
Since Trump returned to office for a second term, he’s canceled funding for major clean energy projects such as California’s hydrogen hub and moved to revoke the state’s long-held authority to set stricter vehicle emissions standards than those of the federal government. He’s also withdrawn from the Paris climate agreement, a seminal treaty signed a decade ago in which world leaders established the goal of limiting global warming to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels and preferably below 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit). That move is seen as pivotal in preventing the worst effects of climate change.
Leaders from Chile and Colombia called Trump a liar for rejecting climate science, while Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva broadly warned that extremist forces are fabricating fake news and “condemning future generations to life on a planet altered forever by global warming.”
Terry Tamminen, former California Environmental Protection Agency secretary under Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, contended that with the Trump administration’s absence, Newsom’s attendance at COP30 thrusts even more spotlight on the governor.
“If the governor of Delaware goes, it may not matter,” Tamminen said. “But if our governor goes, it does. It sends a message to the world that we’re still in this.”
The U.S. Climate Alliance, a bipartisan coalition of state leaders, said three governors from the United States attended COP30-related events in Brazil: Newsom, Wisconsin’s Tony Evers and New Mexico’s Michelle Lujan Grisham.
Despite the warm reception Newsom has received in Belém, environmentalists in California have recently questioned his commitment.
In September, Newsom signed a package of bills that extended the state’s signature cap-and-trade program through 2045. That program, rebranded as cap-and-invest, limits greenhouse gas emissions and raises billions of dollars for the state’s climate priorities. But, at the same time, he also gave final approval to a bill that will allow oil and gas companies to drill as many as 2,000 new wells per year through 2036 in Kern County. Environmentalists called that backsliding; Newsom called it realism, given the impending refinery closures in the state that threaten to drive up gas prices.
“It’s not an ideological exercise,” he said. “It’s a very pragmatic one.”
Leah Stokes, a UC Santa Barbara political scientist, called his record “pretty complex.”
“In many ways, he is one of the leaders,” she said. “But some of the decisions that he’s made, especially recently, don’t move us in as good a direction on climate.”
Newsom is expected to return to the climate summit Wednesday before traveling deeper into the Amazon, where he plans to visit reforestation projects. The governor said he wanted to see firsthand the region often referred to as “the lungs of the world.”
“It’s not just to admire the absorption of carbon from the rainforest,” Newsom said. “But to absorb a deeper spiritual connection to this issue that connects all of us. … I think that really matters in a world that can use a little more of that.”
As the USS Gerald Ford aircraft carrier sails to the Caribbean, the U.S. military continues striking drug-carrying boats off the Venezuelan coast and the Trump administration debates what to do about Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro, one thing seems certain: Venezuela and the western hemisphere would all be better off if Maduro packed his bags and spent his remaining years in exile.
This is certainly what Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado is working toward. This year’s Nobel Prize laureate has spent much of her time recently in the U.S. lobbying policymakers to squeeze Maduro into vacating power. Constantly at risk of detention in her own country, Machado is granting interviews and dialing into conferences to advocate for regime change. Her talking points are clearly tailored for the Trump administration: Maduro is the head of a drug cartel that is poisoning Americans; his dictatorship rests on weak pillars; and the forces of democracy inside Venezuela are fully prepared to seize the mantle once Maduro is gone. “We are ready to take over government,” Machado told Bloomberg News in an October interview.
But as the old saying goes, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. While there’s no disputing that Maduro is a despot and a fraud who steals elections, U.S. policymakers can’t simply take what Machado is saying for granted. Washington learned this the hard way in the lead-up to the war in Iraq, when an opposition leader named Ahmed Chalabi sold U.S. policymakers a bill of goods about how painless rebuilding a post-Saddam Hussein Iraq would be. We all know how the story turned out — the United States stumbled into an occupation that sucked up U.S. resources, unleashed unpredicted regional consequences and proved more difficult than its proponents originally claimed.
To be fair, Machado is no Chalabi. The latter was a fraudster; the former is the head of an opposition movement whose candidate, Edmundo González Urrutia, won two-thirds of the vote during the 2024 Venezuelan presidential election (Maduro claimed victory anyway and forced González into exile). But just because her motives are good doesn’t mean we shouldn’t question her assertions.
Would regime change in Caracas produce the Western-style democracy Machado and her supporters anticipate? None of us can rule it out. But the Trump administration can’t bank on this as the outcome of a post-Maduro future. Other scenarios are just as likely, if not more so — and some of them could lead to greater violence for Venezuelans and more problems for U.S. policy in Latin America.
The big problem with regime change is you can never be entirely sure what will happen after the incumbent leader is removed. Such operations are by their very nature dangerous and destabilizing; political orders are deliberately shattered, the haves become have-nots, and constituencies used to holding the reins of power suddenly find themselves as outsiders. When Hussein was deposed in Iraq, the military officers, Ba’ath Party loyalists and regime-tied sycophants who ruled the roost for nearly a quarter-century were forced to make do with an entirely new situation. The Sunni-dominated structure was overturned, and members of the Shia majority, previously oppressed, were now eagerly taking their place at the top of the system. This, combined with the U.S. decision to bar anyone associated with the old regime from serving in state positions, fed the ingredients for a large-scale insurgency that challenged the new government, precipitated a civil war and killed tens of thousands of Iraqis.
Regime change can also create total absences of authority, as it did in Libya after the 2011 U.S.-NATO intervention there. Much like Maduro today, Moammar Kadafi was a reviled figure whose demise was supposed to pave the way for a democratic utopia in North Africa. The reality was anything but. Instead, Kadafi’s removal sparked conflict between Libya’s major tribal alliances, competing governments and the proliferation of terrorist groups in a country just south of the European Union. Fifteen years later, Libya remains a basket case of militias, warlords and weak institutions.
Unlike Iraq and Libya, Venezuela has experience in democratic governance. It held relatively free and fair elections in the past and doesn’t suffer from the types of sectarian rifts associated with states in the Middle East.
Still, this is cold comfort for those expecting a democratic transition. Indeed, for such a transition to be successful, the Venezuelan army would have to be on board with it, either by sitting on the sidelines as Maduro’s regime collapses, actively arresting Maduro and his top associates, or agreeing to switch its support to the new authorities. But again, this is a tall order, particularly for an army whose leadership is a core facet of the Maduro regime’s survival, has grown used to making obscene amounts of money from illegal activity under the table and whose members are implicated in human rights abuses. The very same elites who profited handsomely from the old system would have to cooperate with the new one. This doesn’t appear likely, especially if their piece of the pie will shrink the moment Maduro leaves.
Finally, while regime change might sound like a good remedy to the problem that is Venezuela, it might just compound the difficulties over time. Although Maduro’s regime’s remit is already limited, its complete dissolution could usher in a free-for-all between elements of the former government, drug trafficking organizations and established armed groups like the Colombian National Liberation Army, which have long treated Venezuela as a base of operations. Any post-Maduro government would have difficulty managing all of this at the same time it attempts to restructure the Venezuelan economy and rebuild its institutions. The Trump administration would then be facing the prospect of Venezuela serving as an even bigger source of drugs and migration, the very outcome the White House is working to prevent.
In the end, María Corina Machado could prove to be right. But she is selling a best-case assumption. The U.S. shouldn’t buy it. Democracy after Maduro is possible but is hardly the only possible result — and it’s certainly not the most likely.
Daniel R. DePetris is a fellow at Defense Priorities.
A young Cleveland attorney who worked his way through law school as a clerk with the Ohio Lottery and went on to become the agency’s legal counsel is the leading choice for the job of running California’s lottery, a state official involved in the selection process indicated Tuesday.
M. Mark Michalko, 31, is favored for the job of California lottery director, according to state Lottery Commissioner Laverta Montgomery, who interviewed candidates for the position.
The appointment will be made by Gov. George Deukmejian, but Montgomery said, “I think the governor and I are agreed on the top candidate.” Montgomery’s comments came after a Lottery Commission meeting in Compton, where she is city manager.
Asked the identity of the candidate, Montgomery hesitated, then replied, “I think Mr. Michalko is a very good candidate.”
Later she said:
“I just felt that he was knowledgeable and that he would present a very good image. . . . He knows the (legal) pitfalls.”
Asked about Michalko’s relative youth, Montgomery replied:
“But it’s a young industry. . . . We can’t go by age.”
Deukemjian said in Sacramento on Tuesday that he expects to make an announcement regarding the appointment of a director “around the end of the week.” However, he did not name the candidate, and a press aide later refused to confirm that Michalko is the top choice.
“I can’t confirm,” said assistant press secretary Kevin Brett. “Our policy is. . . we do not discuss appointments until the appointment is made.”
Michalko, who is considered an expert in computerized “on-line” lottery gaming, began his career with the Ohio Lottery Commission in 1977 as a 23-year-old graduate of Cleveland’s John Carroll University, according to the commission’s public information director, Anne Bloomberg. He worked as a legal aide researching contracts and other legal matters while attending Cleveland Marshall School of Law.
He became the commission’s chief counsel shortly after graduating from law school in 1980.
Michalko turns 31 years old today.
He is a native of Garfield Heights, Ohio, and his wife, Kim, is an official with a downtown Cleveland department store.
During the last year, Michalko has been devising a new specifications form for gaming manufacturers vying for Ohio’s multimillion-dollar lottery contract.
The specifications form, according to Bloomberg, has become a model for lotteries around the nation and “is unique in that it finally puts lotteries in the driver’s seat as opposed to vendors.”
Bloomberg said Michalko’s work with the form and his knowledge of on-line gaming systems were among the reasons he gained the attention of California lottery officials.
According to Bloomberg, Michalko’s salary is in the $25,000 to $30,000 range, less than half the salary to be paid California’s lottery chief. Some out-of-state lottery officials considered the California salary too low to apply for the director’s job.
Deukmejian was angered and embarrassed in March, when his first choice as lottery director, Thomas O’Heir, assistant director of the Massachusetts lottery, turned down the job at the last minute because the $73,780 annual salary was inadequate.
Deukmejian then appointed Commission Chairman Howard E. Varner as interim director, and the search for an executive officer was renewed.
The state lottery initiative, approved by voters last November, called for appointment of five commissioners and a lottery director within 30 days and sale of tickets by March 21. The commissioners were not appointed until six weeks after the deadline, however, and ticket sales are not expected until September.
The Lottery Commission, meeting with only three members Tuesday, took several steps toward beginning California’s first lottery game. With Commissioner John Price in Europe and Varner serving as interim chairman, the commission unanimously voted to:
– Approve the final draft of a “request for proposals for instant game tickets”–a document to be used by suppliers of instant “scratch-off” lottery tickets to submit bids to the commission by May 17.
The commission is expected to award the contract, which could be worth almost $50 million, in early June. Some estimate that as many as 1.9 billion tickets will be needed for the first year of the lottery, including tickets given away as prizes, as well as those that go unsold.
– Approve application forms and procedures for lottery ticket retailers. Prospective retailers will be charged a $30 application fee, plus $20 for each retail location. The commission estimates that about 20,000 retail outlets will be needed for instant game tickets.
– Approve a draft of bid specifications for advertising firms seeking to promote the lottery.
The advertising contract could total $15 million during the first year of sales. The commission approved a staff recommendation that 1.5% of gross lottery sales–estimated at $1 billion the first year–be earmarked for advertising and promotions.
The lottery initiative calls for about 3.5% of gross sales to go toward “advertising, promotion, public relations, incentives and other aspects of communications” for at least the first year of the lottery.
It has been widely speculated that this clause in the initiative could mean a $35-million bonanza to an advertising firm. Varner maintained after the meeting, however, that more than half of the 3.5% could legally go toward incentives, public relations and other non-advertising uses.
– Approve a minor change of language in the advertising bid specifications in order to stress requirements that prospective contractors submit plans to subcontract with small businesses or firms run by minorities or women.
Times staff writer Richard C. Paddock in Sacramento contributed to this story.
Speaking of the 2,500 American “detainees,” President Bush said, “Anything that compels individuals to do something against their will would, of course, concern me.” I have to laugh and then cry. It never seems to bother Bush when he wants to compel several million women to be “detained” by a fetus.
If we had a sane planetary population policy, we would not need to be in the Persian Gulf. What we are watching is the start of the real wars, not for politics or ideology, but for real things–food and energy, natural resources and living space. We are fighting like bums over a bottle of wine, but today we are billions armed with chemical and nuclear weapons.
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court’s justices, citing the right to bear arms in the 2nd Amendment, sounded ready Wednesday to strike down laws in New York and California that deny most gun owners permits to carry concealed guns in public.
Most of the justices said people who live in “high-crime areas” and fear for their safety should be allowed to carry a gun for self-defense. And they said this applies equally to people who live in cities as well as in rural areas.
“Think about people who work late at night in Manhattan,” said Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. “It might be somebody who cleans offices. It might be a doorman at an apartment. It might be a nurse or an orderly [or] somebody who washes dishes” who is “scared to death” to head home. “How is it consistent with the core right to self-defense” to deny that person the right to have a gun with them? he asked.
In defense of New York’s law, state Solicitor General Barbara Underwood argued for limiting the number of guns in densely populated areas. Too many guns in too many hands would increase the danger of gun violence, she said.
But Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh disputed that view and said people there may have a greater need to protect themselves with a gun.
“How many muggings take place in the forest?” Roberts asked her.
Kavanaugh said the 2nd Amendment protects a right to have a gun for self-defense, which suggests the decision to be armed should rest with the gun owner, not a state or local licensing official.
“Why isn’t it good enough to say I live in a violent area and I want to be able to defend myself?” he asked.
During their comments and questions, the court’s six conservative justices made clear they are highly skeptical of laws that authorize state or local officials to deny gun permits to law-abiding residents.
Only the court’s three liberal justices spoke in defense of these laws and said there has been a long history of regulating guns in public.
Still, a gun rights ruling in the New York case could be limited. The justices, both conservative and liberal, said cities and local governments would not be prevented from enforcing bans on guns in “sensitive places,” and that could include subways, football stadiums and university campuses.
“Can’t we just say Times Square on New Year’s Eve is a sensitive place?” said Justice Amy Coney Barrett.
Washington attorney Paul Clement, who was representing the gun owners, avoided a clear answer on where guns could be excluded, but he agreed the city would retain that authority to restrict guns in certain places.
At issue on Wednesday in the case of New York State Rifle & Pistol Assn. vs. Bruen were the laws in New York as well as similar measures in California and six other states that limit who may obtain a license to carry a concealed handgun in public.
Typically gun owners are required to show they have a “special need” or “good cause” to be armed, not simply a general fear for their safety. In New York City and Los Angeles, these permits are rarely granted.
UCLA law professor Adam Winkler, who has written widely on the 2nd Amendment, said the outcome could force local officials to shift their focus to declaring certain places off-limits to guns.
“New York may be forced to allow more people to carry but can still broadly define sensitive places to make it hard practically to carry in New York City,” he said.
The ruling will also have a direct effect in California as well. “If New York’s law is struck down, the precedent will lead to overturning California’s carry laws too,” he said.
Gun control advocates heard little to cheer from the argument.
“We are on high alert about the dangerous consequences of a potential ruling in favor of gun extremists,” said Hannah Shearer, litigation director for the Giffords Law Center. “But the court still has an opportunity to reject the unprecedented and historically inaccurate view that the 2nd Amendment precludes meaningful gun safety regulations in public.”
But Eric Tirschwell, executive director of Everytown Law, pointed to the justices’ comments about restricting guns in sensitive places.
“Even the court’s most conservative justices have hesitations about granting the gun lobby its ultimate goal in this case — the unrestricted right to carry guns in all public places,” he said.
The case heard Wednesday and the likely outcome highlight the change in the makeup of the court.
In the last decade, the justices had turned down several challenges to the gun-permitting laws, including in California. But with the arrival of Justices Kavanaugh and Barrett, the court appears to have a new majority to bolster individual rights under the 2nd Amendment.
The case began when Robert Nash and Brandon Koch, who live near Albany, N.Y., applied for general concealed-carry permits but were turned down by a county judge because they did not “face any special or unique danger.” They were, however, licensed to carry guns for hunting or target shooting.
They sued along with the New York State Rifle & Pistol Assn., alleging the restrictions violated their rights under the 2nd Amendment to bear arms for self-defense.
Reporting from Washington — President Trump is expected to move quickly to nominate a replacement for retiring Justice Anthony M. Kennedy’s soon-to-be-vacant Supreme Court seat, and two leading candidates are veteran Washington, D.C., appellate Judge Brett Kavanaugh and Judge Amy Coney Barrett, a former Notre Dame law professor and recent Trump appointee to the 7th Circuit in Chicago.
They emerged from a list of more than two dozen potential nominees put together by the conservative Federalist Society and Heritage Foundation.
The list was Trump’s idea and it has proven effective, said Leonard Leo, a Federalist Society official who is advising the White House. It told Republican voters that he was serious about appointing only reliable conservatives to the high court, he said.
Unlike in decades past, when presidents and their top lawyers scrambled to find a qualified nominee when a vacancy suddenly arose, the Federalist Society list is the result of careful screening. A team of lawyers read and analyzed everything written or said by the candidates.
Their unofficial motto is “No more Souters,” a reference to now-retired Justice David H. Souter, who was nominated by President George H.W. Bush in 1990. Souter was a little-known judge from New Hampshire, but the White House team assured Republicans he was a conservative.
They were wrong. Souter was careful and cautious as a judge and devoted to precedent. But his leanings were moderate to liberal. In 1992, Souter along with Justices Anthony M. Kennedy and Sandra Day O’Connor joined to uphold the right to abortion announced two decades earlier in Roe vs. Wade.
Conservatives are determined never to make the same mistake again.
Kavanaugh, 53, grew up in Washington and is the favorite of many conservative lawyers here. He went to Yale Law School and clerked at the Supreme Court for Kennedy alongside Neil M. Gorsuch, who joined the court last year as Trump’s first appointment. Kavanaugh was a top deputy to independent counsel Kenneth Starr in the long investigation of President Clinton, and he drafted the Starr Report that led to Clinton’s impeachment. He also joined the legal team that represented George W. Bush in the fight over the recount in the 2000 presidential election.
Kavanaugh worked in the White House counsel’s office for Bush and later served as his staff secretary.
In 2003, Bush nominated him to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, but Democrats initially blocked his confirmation. Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) called him a “very bright legal foot soldier” who has been in the middle of every partisan legal battle. But Kavanaugh finally won confirmation in 2006.
Since then, Kavanaugh has written hundreds of opinions, and he is known for always staking out a conservative position.
“He is much more conservative in his approach to law than Justice Kennedy,” said Justin Walker, a University of Louisville law professor who clerked for Kavanaugh at the appeals court and Kennedy at the Supreme Court. “There is no guesswork with Judge Kavanaugh. He is extremely predictable.”
Walker cited, as an example, Kavanaugh’s support for the right to own a semiautomatic rifle under the 2nd Amendment. In 2008, the Supreme Court struck down a District of Columbia ordinance that prohibited residents from having a handgun at home. The same plaintiff later claimed the right to possess a semiautomatic weapon, but lost by a 2-1 vote in the D.C. Circuit, Walker noted. Kavanaugh wrote a lengthy dissent arguing that the 2nd Amendment included the right to have such a weapon.
The Supreme Court, however, has rejected appeals raising that issue, which has the effect of upholding laws and ordinances that banned such assault weapons.
Last fall, Kavanaugh was involved in a quick-moving dispute over whether a migrant teenager in Texas could be released from immigration custody to obtain an abortion. A federal judge cleared the way, but Kavanaugh wrote a 2-1 decision siding with Trump administration lawyers and blocking the abortion for up to 10 more days. The full appeals court intervened and overturned his ruling. In dissent, he faulted his more liberal colleagues as wrongly creating a “new right for unlawful immigrant minors in U.S. government detention to obtain abortion on demand.”
Like many judges, he has avoided any direct comments in his legal opinions about Roe vs. Wade, the landmark abortion ruling that will loom large over upcoming confirmation hearings.
In contrast to Kavanaugh, Barrett, 46, is a newcomer with a sparse record as a judge. She is a product of the University of Notre Dame and South Bend, Ind. She went law school at Notre Dame and spent a few years in Washington as a law clerk for D.C. Circuit Judge Laurence Silberman and Justice Antonin Scalia. She returned in 2002 to teach law at Notre Dame.
Barrett was narrowly confirmed by the Senate in November, and now commutes a few days a week from South Bend to downtown Chicago.
She has, however, written and spoken frequently about the importance of her Catholic faith and in her belief that life begins at conception. In a 2003 scholarly article, she suggested Roe vs. Wade was an “erroneous decision.”
During her Senate hearing, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said she had read Barrett’s writings, adding that the “dogma lives loudly within you, and that’s a concern.”
That comment triggered a sharp backlash from Barrett’s defenders and others, who said the nominee was being criticized for her faith.
But if Barrett is the nominee, Democrats and liberal activists are certain to focus on her views about abortion and the role they might play if the court is asked to overturn Roe.
