POLITICS

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration has halted all asylum decisions and paused issuing visas for people traveling on Afghan passports, days after a shooting in the nation’s capital that left one National Guard member dead and another in critical condition.

Investigators continued Saturday to seek a motive in the shooting, in which the suspect, Rahmanullah Lakanwal, faces charges including first-degree murder.

Lakanwal is a 29-year-old Afghan national who worked with the CIA during the Afghanistan war. He applied for asylum during the Biden administration, which was granted this year under President Trump, according to #AfghanEvac, a group that assists with resettlement of Afghans who helped U.S. forces in their country.

The Trump administration has seized on the shooting Wednesday several blocks from the White House to intensify efforts to rein in legal immigration, promising to pause entry from some poor countries and review Afghans and other legal migrants already in the country. That is in addition to other measures, some of which were previously set in motion.

Army Spc. Sarah Beckstrom, 20, died after Wednesday’s shooting, and Air Force Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe, 24, remains hospitalized in critical condition. They were deployed with the West Virginia National Guard as part of Trump’s mission in Washington, D.C., which he says aims to combat crime. The president also has deployed or tried to deploy National Guard members to other Democratic-run cities to assist with his mass deportation efforts but has faced court challenges.

U.S. Atty. Jeanine Pirro’s office said the charges against Lakanwal also include two counts of assault with intent to kill while armed. In an interview on Fox News, she said there were “many charges to come.”

Asylum decisions halted

Trump called the shooting a “terrorist attack” and criticized the Biden administration for enabling entry by Afghans who worked with U.S. forces.

The director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, Joseph Edlow, said Friday in a post on the social platform X that asylum decisions would be paused “until we can ensure that every alien is vetted and screened to the maximum degree possible.”

Experts say the U.S. has rigorous vetting systems for asylum seekers. Asylum claims made from inside the country through USCIS have long faced backlogs. Critics say the slowdown has been exacerbated during the Trump administration.

Also Friday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said his department was pausing “visa issuance for ALL individuals traveling on Afghan passports.”

Shawn VanDiver, president of San Diego-based #AfghanEvac, which has coordinated with the U.S. government on its Afghan resettlement efforts, said in response: “They are using a single violent individual as cover for a policy they have long planned, turning their own intelligence failures into an excuse to punish an entire community and the veterans who served alongside them.”

The suspect

Lakanwal lived in Bellingham, Wash., about 80 miles north of Seattle, with his wife and five children, former landlord Kristina Widman said.

Neighbor Mohammad Sherzad said Lakanwal was polite and quiet and spoke little English.

Sherzad said he attended the same mosque as Lakanwal and heard from other members that he was struggling to find work. He said Lakanwal “disappeared” about two weeks ago.

Lakanwal worked briefly this summer as an independent contractor for Amazon Flex, which lets people use their own cars to deliver packages, according to a company spokesperson.

Investigators are executing warrants in Washington state and other parts of the country.

Lakanwal entered the U.S. in 2021 through Operation Allies Welcome, a Biden administration program that resettled Afghans after the U.S. withdrawal, officials said. Lakanwal applied for asylum during that administration, but his asylum was approved this year under the Trump administration, #AfghanEvac said in a statement.

Lakanwal served in a CIA-backed Afghan army unit, known as one of the specialized Zero Units, in the southern province of Kandahar, according to a resident of the eastern province of Khost who identified himself as Lakanwal’s cousin and spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.

The man said Lakanwal started out working for the unit as a security guard in 2012 and was later promoted to a team leader and a GPS specialist.

Binkley and Finley write for the Associated Press. AP journalists Sarah Brumfield, Siddiqullah Alizai, Elena Becatoros, Randy Herschaft, Cedar Attanasio and Hallie Golden contributed to this report.

It began as a typical political foray: Prominent defense attorney Jack McMahon, the Republican candidate for district attorney in Philadelphia, called the incumbent Lynn Abraham “racially insensitive.” A familiar campaign claim, yet it uncommonly irked those in the D.A.’s office who knew McMahon from his eight-year tenure as an assistant D.A. After reading his comments in the local newspapers, two prosecutors stepped forward to say they recalled seeing a not-terribly-sensitive training videotape McMahon made back in 1987 for the D.A.’s office. One prosecutor, in fact, had the tape in hand. He had found it in his desk drawer.

Abraham, surrounded by her top deputies, settled before a VCR. The donnybrook that erupted soon after has yet to subside. Politics, legalisms, morals, ethics and barefaced hypocrisy all share center stage; which truly define this melee remains an open question.

First, the genesis. Here are excerpts from McMahon’s one-hour videotaped lesson on jury selection:

“You do not want smart people. I wish we could ask everyone’s IQ. If you could know their IQ, you could pick a great jury all the time. You don’t want smart people because smart people will analyze the hell out of your case. . . . They take those words ‘reasonable doubt’ and they actually try to think about them.

“You don’t want social workers. That’s obvious. They got intelligence, sensitivity, all this stuff. You don’t want them. . . . Teachers, you don’t like. Teachers are bad, especially young teachers. Like teachers who teach in the grade-school level.

“In selecting blacks, you don’t want the real educated ones. This goes across the board. All races. You don’t want smart people. If you’re going to take blacks, you want older black men and women, particularly men. Older black men are very good.

“Blacks from the South, excellent. . . . If they are from South Carolina and places like that, I tell you, I don’t think you can ever lose a jury with blacks from South Carolina. They are dynamite. They are on the cops’ side.

“My experience, young black women are very bad. There’s an antagonism. I guess maybe they’re downtrodden in two respects. They are women and they’re black . . . so they somehow want to take it out on somebody, and you don’t want it to be you.

“Let’s face it, the blacks from the low-income areas are less likely to convict. I understand it. There’s a resentment for law enforcement. There’s a resentment for authority. And as a result, you don’t want those people on your jury.

“It may appear as if you’re being racist, but you’re just being realistic. You’re just trying to win the case. The other side is doing the same thing. . . . The only way you’re going to do your best is to get jurors that are unfair, and more likely to convict than anybody else in that room.

“The case law says the object of getting a jury . . . is to get a competent, fair and impartial jury. Well, that’s ridiculous. You’re not trying to get that. Both sides are trying to get the jury most likely to do whatever they want them to do. . . . . You are there to win. . . . If you think that it’s some noble thing, some esoteric game, you’re wrong and you’ll lose.”

Advice to novices indeed. When McMahon’s videotape reached its end, Abraham and her deputies huddled. They had just seen something obviously repugnant and arguably illegal; the U.S. Supreme Court in 1986 ruled you can’t take race into consideration in selecting jurors. They had also, of course, just seen something that appeared to put a political opponent in an awfully bad light. “All of us,” Abraham would later say, “to a man and to a woman, concluded that it was absolutely necessary, essential and right that this tape be revealed.”

With a cover letter saying “We have determined that disclosure to you is the ethically appropriate course,” Abraham’s office sent the videotape to defense attorneys who represented the 36 people McMahon had successfully prosecuted for murder between 1982 and 1990. Eyes widened with delight in a lot of Philadelphia lawyers’ offices that day. Here were grounds for seeking new trials for convicted clients, and not just in cases McMahon himself had prosecuted. Any young prosecutor who had seen McMahon’s tape was fair game. A cop killer, a barroom shooter, a mobster goon–all had second chances now.

Declared one defense attorney: “That tape is the most disgraceful thing I’ve ever seen. . . . My client deserves a new trial. My client’s been sitting in jail for a decade and a half and never got a fair trial.”

Opined another: “This may have opened a Pandora’s box of hundreds, maybe thousands of tainted convictions. . . . There’s no telling how many attorneys in that office saw that tape.”

The impact even reached into a murder trial then underway, where McMahon was toiling as defense attorney. His client worried what the jurors were thinking about that week’s headlines. McMahon didn’t know. The judge declared a mistrial.

Then came the unexpected turn in this tale. Despite some clucking from law professors–”inappropriate . . . crosses the line . . .troubling”– McMahon didn’t really draw much heat. Local politicos, even black leaders, held their tongues. So did state Supreme Court Justice Ronald D. Castille, who had been D.A. when McMahon made the tape. Suddenly, it was Abraham on the defensive. A backlash had set in.

All sorts of people declared themselves stunned by her release of the videotape. A crass move, they suggested, a new low in politics. For political gain, she had let 36 convicted murderers walk. What’s more, she had trafficked in hypocrisy, not being known herself for much racial sensitivity. Low-down dirty stuff, declared one black city councilman.

Soon McMahon was happily doing the television talk-show route, showing up on everything from “Geraldo” to “Good Morning America.” People were approaching him on Philadelphia streets, shaking his hand, saying: “We’re with you.” Regret and retreat were the furthest thing from his mind.

“It’s done today, it’s going to be done tomorrow, and I don’t apologize for it,” McMahon declared about his jury-selection advice. “I only said what any good jury consultant would charge hundreds of thousands of dollars to tell you: Some people, black or white, help your case, other people hurt it. That’s not being racist–that’s being realistic. Every lawyer in the world uses these techniques.”

For awhile, Abraham tried to counter.

“The sentiments and practices discussed on that videotape are repugnant to me, and they are in direct contradiction to my beliefs and to the policies of this office,” she offered. She was “ethically, morally and legally compelled to make it public” once she learned of its existence. McMahon was a “rogue assistant district attorney.” At a press conference Abraham flatly declared: “I am morally right. I am legally right. I am ethically right.”

Despite the election-year context, some truly believed that this former judge was speaking in earnest. Yet in the end it didn’t much matter. One likely reason: People sensed truth in McMahon’s claims. Whatever Abraham’s motives, the D.A. basically had declared herself shocked–shocked!–at repugnant but fairly common practices.

Three Philadelphia judges, speaking on condition of anonymity in recent days, have told local reporters that McMahon’s techniques are routinely employed by both the D.A.’s office and defense attorneys. One defense lawyer and former prosecutor, on the record, has advised: “I’m not saying everyone does it, but it’s part of real life in the real courthouse.” Philadelphia’s mayor, Edward G. Rendell, a former two-term D.A., has been quoted as saying: “If you look at the totality of what he’s talking about, I think it is a veteran prosecutor lecturing young prosecutors about jury selection.”

Thus, this particular extravaganza rolls on, heading toward a November election, perceived and described in multiple ways. This much, at least, can be fairly said: What finally is extraordinary about McMahon’s remarks is not their content, but their wide and unabashed public circulation.

“It’s flabbergasting,” pointed out jury consultant Paul Tieger, “that this guy put this on a videotape.”

Northwestern University has agreed to pay $75 million to the U.S. government in a deal with the Trump administration to end a series of investigations and restore hundreds of millions of dollars in federal research funding.

President Trump’s administration had cut off $790 million in grants in a standoff that contributed to university layoffs and the resignation in September of Northwestern President Michael Schill. The administration said the school had not done enough to fight antisemitism.

Under the agreement announced Friday night, Northwestern will make the payment to the U.S. Treasury over the next three years. Among other commitments it also requires the university to revoke the so-called Deering Meadow agreement, which it signed in April 2024 in exchange for pro-Palestinian protesters ending their tent encampment on campus.

During negotiations with the Trump administration, interim university President Henry Bienen said Northwestern refused to cede control over hiring, admissions or its curriculum. “I would not have signed this agreement without provisions ensuring that is the case,” he said.

The agreement also calls for Northwestern to continue compliance with federal anti-discrimination laws, develop training materials to “socialize international students” with the norms of a campus dedicated to open debate, and uphold a commitment to Title IX by “providing safe and fair opportunities for women, including single-sex housing for any woman, defined on the basis of sex, who requests such accommodations and all-female sports, locker rooms, and showering facilities.”

Education Secretary Linda McMahon said the deal cements policy changes that will protect people on campus from harassment and discrimination.

“The reforms reflect bold leadership at Northwestern and they are a road map for institutional leaders around the country that will help rebuild public trust in our colleges and universities,” McMahon said.

Trump has leveraged government control of federal research money to push for ideological changes at elite colleges he claims are overrun by “woke” ideology.

The fine agreed to by Northwestern is the second-largest behind Columbia, which agreed in July to pay the government $200 million to resolve a series of investigations and restore its funding. Brown and Cornell also reached agreements with the government to restore funding after antisemitism investigations.

Harvard, the administration’s primary target, remains in negotiations with the federal government over its demands for changes to campus policies and governance. The Ivy League school sued over the administration’s cuts to its grant money and won a court victory in September when a federal judge ordered the government to restore federal funding, saying the Trump administration “used antisemitism as a smokescreen.”

This fall, the White House tried a different approach on higher education, offering preferential treatment for federal funds to several institutions in exchange for adopting policies in line with Trump’s agenda. The administration received a wave of initial rejections from some universities’ leadership, including USC’s, citing concerns that Trump’s higher education compact would suffocate academic freedom.

Reporting from Sacramento — Gov. Jerry Brown is still haunted by one thing he did as a young governor 40 years ago. And he hopes to finally undo it on election day.

In 1976, pressured from the left, he signed a bill that made California prison time more fixed and less dependent on the discretion of parole boards.

Flexible sentencing, based on a board’s assessment of a felon’s likelihood of going straight once released, “was criticized because it treated people differently,” Brown told me last week.

“Nobody thought, ‘Well, wait a minute! People are different.’”

The rap by liberals on parole boards was that black and Latino prisoners were being kept behind bars longer than white people who had committed the same crimes.

So the boards lost much of their power to release prisoners based on good behavior or to keep them locked up if they still seemed dangerous. Release times were pretty much set in stone by sentencing judges.

“What I didn’t think of,” Brown says, is that with fixed sentences “there would be no incentive. You’d be released no matter what you did. Some people need a powerful incentive.”

Incentives, he says, “to buck gangs — they can slit your throat — to avoid narcotics, to not break the rules and take programs that will help you turn your dysfunctional life around.

“The idea of just putting someone in a box and waiting for time to elapse is not smart.”

Brown has been talking this way for years. He finally got around to doing something last winter. He latched onto someone else’s juvenile justice ballot initiative and inserted his criminal sentencing overhaul. The state Supreme Court ruled that was OK.

Brown’s idea became Proposition 57.

The proposal is laden with the wonky words such as “determinate” and “indeterminate.” In everyday language, they mean fixed and flexible.

Proposition 57 would return sentencing part-way back to the old days.

“It worked a hell of a lot better then,” the governor says. “Better than what the Legislature created. It’s not a place of deep reflection.”

His proposal would affect only prisoners convicted of “nonviolent” crimes, Brown says.

Nonsense, say opponents, largely prosecutors. They argue that many felons who would be eligible for early release actually committed violent offenses.

Under the measure, a prisoner could apply for parole after he had served the full sentence for his nonviolent primary offense. But he wouldn’t need to have served time for any add-on sentencing “enhancements,” such as for using a gun or being a “three-strikes” repeater.

Opponents argue that prisoners would be eligible for early parole even if they had been convicted, for example, of raping an unconscious woman, participating in a drive-by shooting or taking a hostage.

“It literally unwinds three strikes,” says San Luis Obispo County Dist. Atty. Dan Dow, Central Coast chairman of the opposition campaign.

“It’s the worst thing to happen to public safety in California in 40 years.”

Updates from Sacramento »

The prosecutor adds: “There aren’t any nonviolent inmates in prison today. You can only go to prison if you’ve committed a very serious crime.”

Brown’s earlier “realignment” program required counties to jail lower-level felons rather than send them to state prison.

Because of a federal court order to reduce overcrowding in lockups, there are roughly 50,000 fewer inmates in state institutions today than when Brown returned as governor in 2011. Prosecutors say prisons are holding only the worst of the worst.

“This is the governor at his worst,” says Merced County Dist. Atty. Larry Morse, state co-chairman of the opposition campaign. “I’m a Democrat. I’ve supported him more than I’ve disagreed. But this is the hubris of being a second-term governor.”

Actually, it’s Brown’s fourth term.

Morse says he and other prosecutors are particularly incensed that the governor didn’t invite them into the planning for Proposition 57.

“He conceived this in the governor’s office without any collaboration with district attorneys, sheriffs or police chiefs,” Morse says. “It’s a seriously flawed product.”

Brown counters that the measure “allows flexibility. The case for it is irrefutable to anyone with an open mind.”

Under Proposition 57, prisoners would get credit for good behavior, rehabilitation and education achievements.

Much less controversial is a provision that would require judges, rather than prosecutors, to decide whether a juvenile should be tried as a minor or an adult.

Practically all the campaign money is on Brown’s side. He has a political kitty stashed with millions. The opposition has practically zilch.

This is not the kind of ballot measure that excites moneyed interests. It doesn’t affect the bottom lines of corporations or labor, so there’s no motivation to bankroll the opposition campaign. In fact, the opposite is true. No outfit involved politically in Sacramento wants to cross the governor.

Polls show Proposition 57 heavily favored by voters. And Brown retains a high job approval rating.

The proposition’s central question is: Should a felon’s sentence only reflect the evil he committed on a particular day? Or should he be given an opportunity for partial redemption by trying to turn his life around over several years of incarceration?

People usually act better when there are rewards for being good and punishment for misbehaving — that’s the concept of heaven and hell.

Opponents have good points. Brown should have conferred with more experts in planning. And he should have better defined “nonviolent.”

But the broad goal of motivating bad guys to become good guys is worth a “yes” vote.

[email protected]

Follow @LATimesSkelton on Twitter

ALSO

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Good morning, and welcome to L.A. on the Record — our City Hall newsletter. It’s David Zahniser, with an assist from Noah Goldberg, giving you the latest on city and county government.

L.A. City Hall is not known for making things simple for real estate developers — especially those seeking approval of large, complicated projects.

Yet earlier this year, Westwood resident Zach Sokoloff navigated the city’s bureaucratic obstacle course, winning City Council approval of a $1-billion plan to redevelop Television City, the historic studio property on Beverly Boulevard.

Now, Sokoloff is hoping to make what some might view as a baffling career change, jumping from Hackman Capital Partners, where he is senior vice president for asset management, to a job as L.A.’s next elected city controller.

For that to happen, Sokoloff would need to defeat City Controller Kenneth Mejia, who is running for another four-year term in June. That’s a tall order, given Mejia’s social media savvy, his status as an incumbent and his deft use of graphics highlighting the minutiae of city government — sometimes featuring hat-wearing corgis.

In 2022, Mejia secured more votes than any other candidate in city history, as he and his team like to point out. Former state Sen. Isadore Hall, who is also running against Mejia, has his own track record of winning elections.

Sokoloff, by contrast, has never run for public office. He’s spent the past seven years at Hackman, which proposed the 25-acre Television City project and owns other studio properties.

A onetime grade school algebra teacher, Sokoloff promised to emphasize “leadership through listening” if he is elected, shining a light on areas where the city is struggling and working collaboratively to find solutions.

Sokoloff gave some credit to Mejia for seeking to make city government more transparent and understandable. But he argued that such efforts are only a starting point.

Mejia’s audits, he said, “just aren’t moving the needle.”

“He’s shown a preference for lobbing criticism after the fact, rather than getting involved early on to shape the outcome,” Sokoloff said in an interview.

Mejia spokesperson Jane Nguyen pushed back, saying Mejia has championed an array of policy changes, including the creation of a chief financial officer position and a move to “multi-year budgeting.”

In an email, Nguyen said public officials have been responding to Mejia’s audits by working to improve oversight of rents for affordable housing, purchases of military equipment by the Los Angeles Police Department and housing placements by the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority.

“Despite our small audit staff, this work is ‘moving the needle’ and making a difference in city policies and departments while improving the quality of life of Angelenos,” she said.

Nguyen said her boss has listened to thousands of constituents at community events and at his town hall meetings.

“All politicians ‘listen,’” she said. “The difference between Kenneth Mejia and our opponents is who we listen to. Our Office listens to the people of Los Angeles.”

If Mejia secures a majority of the vote in June, he will avoid a November 2026 runoff. Forcing Mejia into a round two will be a tough task for Hall and Sokoloff, said political science professor Fernando Guerra, who runs the Center for the Study of Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount University.

Because city controller is a relatively low-profile position and Mejia is an incumbent, voters will likely stick with him unless there’s serious “negative publicity,” Guerra said.

“While he’s quirky, there’s nothing there that’s in any way scandalous,” Guerra added.

Sokoloff is launching his campaign at an opportune time. Television City is the subject of several lawsuits, which have been filed not just by neighborhood groups but also The Grove, the shopping mall developed by businessman and former mayoral candidate Rick Caruso. Those plaintiffs have asked a judge to overturn the council’s approval of the project, saying the city failed to comply with CEQA, the state’s environmental law.

Shelley Wagers, who lives nearby and has been fighting the project, said she was surprised by Sokoloff’s decision to run for citywide office. Asked whether he is in fact good at listening, she replied: “Not in my experience, no.”

Sokoloff defended his company’s handling of the TVC project, pointing to the unanimous votes cast by the planning commission and the council.

“We built a broad and diverse coalition of supporters,” he said. “Ultimately, the results of the [city’s] entitlement process speak for themselves.”

Sokoloff has already picked up one key endorsement: Laura Chick, who was perhaps the most confrontational city controller in recent history. Chick, who served in citywide office from 2001 to 2009, took on officials at the city’s harbor, its airport agency, the city attorney’s office and many others.

Chick, who now lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, said L.A. needs a controller who will find strategies to make the city more efficient and effective.

“[Sokoloff] understands that L.A. needs an active problem solver as its chief auditor,” she said.

State of play

— CREATING A RECORD: Mayor Karen Bass, Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez and an assortment of elected officials, clergy and community activists went to a four-hour hearing this week that focused on the impact — and alleged abuses — of Trump’s immigration crackdown. “We want to establish a record, because when the political winds change, we want to hold those accountable,” Bass said.

— THANKSGIVING TEXTS: Caruso, the real estate developer now weighing a second run for mayor, offered his own message on the immigration raids this week, sending a text message blast asking for donations to help families whose lives have been upended by crackdown.

“As we get ready to sit down with family tomorrow, I’m thinking about the families across our city whose Thanksgiving will look a little different,” Caruso wrote on Wednesday. “Many are afraid to return to work after the recent workplace raids, leaving families short on food, rent, and basic necessities.”

— CONCEPT OF A PLAN: Mayoral candidate Austin Beutner said he supports “the concept” of hiking L.A.’s sales tax by a half-cent to pay for additional firefighters and fire stations. Beutner offered his take a few days after the firefighters union confirmed it is preparing ballot language for the tax, which would raise $9.8 billion by 2050. The union wants voters to take up the measure in November 2026.

— FIRE FUNDING: Even without the tax, Fire Chief Jaime Moore is asking for more than $1 billion for his department’s next annual budget, a 15% hike over the current year. Moore said the additional funds are needed to ensure the city is prepared for emergencies like the Palisades fire.

— DIALING 9-1-1: Sticking with the firefighting theme, Beutner posted an interactive graphic on his website showing how much paramedic response times have increased in most zip codes in the city. Beutner said firefighters are being asked to respond to too many non-emergency calls.

— DELAYED RESPONSE: Residents in neighborhoods near the Port of Los Angeles were not told to shelter in place until nearly six hours after a massive hazardous materials fire broke out aboard a cargo ship in the harbor. The handling of the alert, which urged residents to go inside immediately and shut their doors and windows, follows deep concerns about the region’s alert system and how it worked during the Eaton fire in January.

— KATZ OUT THE BAG: The five-member board that oversees the Department of Water and Power has lost its third commissioner in as many months. Richard Katz, a former state lawmaker and a Bass appointee, had his final meeting on Nov. 18. In his resignation letter, he said he’s stepping aside to focus on two upcoming surgeries.

— LACKING A QUORUM: Because the DWP board needs three members to hold a meeting, it won’t be able to conduct any business until the council confirms the mayor’s newest appointee: Benny Tran, who is slated to replace Mia Lehrer. Tran is a principal with Baobab Global Consulting, according to his nomination paperwork.

— IN HOT WATER: A high-ranking DWP employee has been accused of making staffers run personal errands for her on city time, including purchasing tickets to a Snoop Dogg concert, according to a filing lodged by the Los Angeles City Ethics Commission’s director of enforcement. The employee’s lawyer said the claims were the product of a disgruntled subordinate.

— MONEY TROUBLES: L.A. County’s Department of Homeless Services and Housing faces a $230-million financial gap in the upcoming budget year, setting the stage for cuts to key services. Officials are looking at scaling back an array of programs, including services to help homeless residents find apartments.

— BOLSTERING THE BUDGET: The council’s new Budget and Finance Advisory Committee, a five-member citizen panel looking at ways to strengthen the city’s finances, held its first meeting this week, selecting former City Controller Ron Galperin as its chairman. The committee plans to look at the city’s investment strategies, real estate portfolio, legal obligations and overall approach to annual budgets.

QUICK HITS

• Where is Inside Safe? The mayor’s signature program to combat homelessness did not launch new operations this week.
• On the docket next week: The Charter Reform Commission is set to hold an outdoor town hall Saturday at Echo Park Lake. The event, which runs from 10 a.m. to 1:30 p.m., will take place on the northeast lawn at Echo Park and Park avenues.

Stay in touch

That’s it for this week! Send your questions, comments and gossip to [email protected]. Did a friend forward you this email? Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Saturday morning.

Reporting from Washington — A Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee says it is “unacceptable” that the Obama administration is refusing to provide Congress with the secret legal opinions cited to justify killing American citizens during counterterrorism operations.

Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat who has pushed against the notion of classified legal opinions, expressed his concerns in a letter to Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. on Wednesday.

Previously, Wyden has complained about the refusal of the Justice Department to make public secret interpretations of domestic-surveillance law. On Wednesday, the senator said he wanted to know just how much authority President Obama claims when it comes to the matter of killing American terrorism suspects, but that his request, made last April, to see the classified legal opinions exploring that topic has been rebuffed.

“How much evidence does the president need to decide that a particular American is part of a terrorist group?” Wyden wrote. “Does the president have to provide individual Americans with an opportunity to surrender before using lethal force against them? Is the president’s authority to kill Americans based on authorization from Congress or his own authority as commander-in-chief? Can the president order intelligence agencies to kill an American who is inside the United States?”

Sen. Patrick J. Leahy, (D-Vt.), chairman of the Judiciary Committee, also has asked for copies of any classified legal opinions dealing with killing American citizens — but has not been provided any, his office said. At a Nov. 8, 2011, congressional hearing, Holder told Leahy that he could not “address whether or not there is an opinion in this area.”

For the executive branch to claim that intelligence agencies have the authority to knowingly kill American citizens while refusing to provide Congress with the legal opinions explaining its reasoning “represents an indefensible assertion of executive prerogative, and I expected better from the Obama Administration,” Wyden wrote to Holder.

A Justice Department official said the department is reviewing Wyden’s letter and will respond later.

“It would be entirely lawful for the United States to target high-level leaders of enemy forces, regardless of their nationality, who are plotting to kill Americans both under the authority provided by Congress in its use of military force in the armed conflict with Al Qaeda, the Taliban and associated forces as well as established international law that recognizes our right of self-defense,” the official said.

Last month, officials said Holder would be making a speech in the coming weeks laying out the legal justification for lethal strikes against Americans, such as the September CIA drone strike in Yemen that killed Anwar Awlaki, a U.S.-born citizen accused by U.S. officials of helping plan terrorist attacks against American targets. Wyden said he welcomed that.

U.S. officials have said that the CIA goes through extra legal steps when targeting a U.S. citizen as part of its drone strike program.

In early 2010, then-Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair told the House Intelligence Committee that the intelligence community “take[s] direct action against terrorists” and added that “if we think that direct action will involve killing an American, we get specific permission to do that.”

Wyden said he is not suggesting “that the president has no authority to act in this area. If American citizens choose to take up arms against the United States during times of war, there can undoubtedly be some circumstances under which the president has the authority to use lethal force against those Americans. For example, there is no question that President Lincoln had the authority to order Union troops to take military action against Confederate forces during the Civil War.”

However, he said, the question becomes thornier when the U.S. is at war around the world with terrorists who don’t wear uniforms. “And it is critically important for the public’s elected representatives to ensure that these questions are asked and answered in a manner consistent with American laws and American values,” Wyden wrote.

Members of Congress need to understand how or whether the executive branch has attempted to answer these questions so that they can decide for themselves whether this authority has been properly defined, Wyden wrote.

“Americans have a particular right to understand how the U.S. government interprets the statement in the Bill of Rights that no American shall ‘be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law,’” Wyden wrote. “The federal government’s official views about the president’s authority to kill specific Americans who have not necessarily been convicted of a crime are not a matter to be settled in secret by a small number of government lawyers.”

A Washington Post-ABC News poll released Wednesday found that 83% of respondents said they approve of the use of drone strikes against terrorist suspects overseas. Sixty-five percent in the poll, conducted by telephone Feb. 1-4, said that American citizens suspected of terrorism are legitimate targets. Democrats approved of the drone strikes on American citizens by a 58%-33% margin, and liberals approved of them, 55%-35%, according to the Post’s blog, the Plum Line.

[email protected]

[For the record, 9:41 a.m., Feb. 10: An earlier version of this post incorrectly reported that Anwar Awlaki, a U.S. citizen killed by a CIA drone strike last year in Yemen, was born in Yemen. He was born in New Mexico.]

SACRAMENTO — Bill Simon Jr., a wealthy banker and political newcomer, formally launched his bid for governor Friday with repeated attacks on incumbent Gray Davis and a promise to infuse Sacramento with the sensibilities of the business world.

Simon conceded that he was attempting a “big jump” in his first try for office. “I don’t believe that career politicians have a monopoly on leadership,” he said.

“Nor,” he went on, “do I believe the government has a monopoly on the answers.”

Simon, the son and namesake of a former U.S. Treasury secretary, said that if elected governor, he would seek to bring “private solutions” to problems such as traffic congestion, failing schools and management of the state’s water and energy supplies.

“I’m going to offer a different path, a path of smaller government,” Simon said. “Of individual and private sector solutions, rather than big bureaucratic plans. And local government whenever possible.”

But he was vague when pressed for details, sticking to generalities and sweeping criticisms of Democrat Davis. He also took a rare shot at his two rivals for the Republican nomination, California Secretary of State Bill Jones and former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan.

Simon described Jones as “an insider, someone who’s been in politics his whole life.” He questioned whether Riordan had sufficient “fire in the belly” and suggested that Republicans were “looking for a candidate that can make them feel proud of their party, not someone who will try to muddle the differences between the parties.”

Riordan has antagonized some conservative Republicans with his support for abortion rights and gun control and his 20-year history of contributions to Democratic candidates and causes.

Simon, 50, announced his candidacy in the ballroom of a downtown Sacramento hotel, accompanied by his wife, Cindy, and surrounded on a packed dais by more than two dozen friends, supporters and family members.

In launching his candidacy, Simon became the latest in a long line of wealthy newcomers who have tried to make the leap into elective political office in California.

Most have failed: In just the past few campaigns, Al Checchi spent $40 million in a failed bid for governor, Darrell Issa spent more than $12 million in an unsuccessful run for the U.S. Senate (he now serves in the House) and Mike Huffington spent $30 million in a losing campaign for the Senate.

Simon has refused to say how much of his personal fortune he plans to invest in his candidacy, though he has insisted that he will not be “Mr. Megabucks” trying to buy the governor’s office.

Simon, born in New Jersey, moved to California in 1990 to open a Los Angeles office of the family firm, William E. Simon & Sons. The private investment company controls assets of more than $3 billion, including the family-oriented cable network Pax TV.

Citing his business background, Simon said, “I’ve learned to see opportunities and anticipate problems–qualities that I believe that our current governor clearly lacks.

”. . . In the early ‘90s, when many people were writing the obituary for California, we began to invest in California . . . [creating] literally thousands of jobs,” he said.

A resident of Pacific Palisades, Simon has also been active on the board of several local charities, including Covenant House, Catholic Charities and Childrens Hospital. He cited his charitable works as a model he would pursue as governor, “embodying the philosophy that it’s better to teach a person to fish than to give them a fish.”

Simon’s only government experience was a stint from 1985 to 1988 as a federal prosecutor in New York City. On Friday, he repeatedly invoked the name of his former boss: then-U.S. Atty. Rudolph Giuliani, who has given his high-profile endorsement to the campaign.

Ironically, Simon was urged into the governor’s race by Riordan, a friend and fellow parishioner at St. Monica’s Catholic Church in Santa Monica. Later, Riordan decided to run himself.

Twice in recent weeks, the Riordan campaign sent emissaries in hopes of persuading Simon to run for some other office. The freshly declared candidate laughed off a reporter’s suggestion that he had been “double-crossed” by Riordan, in effect disavowing the sentiment.

But Simon pointedly refused, when asked, to rule out attack advertising against the former mayor and GOP front-runner.

“We haven’t gotten to that point,” Simon said. “We’re early in the campaign. Right now I want to wage a campaign based on ideas.”

Jones has formally announced his candidacy; Riordan plans to do so Tuesday in Los Angeles. Davis, for his part, quietly filed papers Friday in Sacramento announcing his intention to seek a second term.

The governor’s plans have been no secret: Even before taking office, he started collecting money for his reelection, setting a four-year fund-raising goal of $50 million. As of Sept. 30, Davis had nearly $31 million in the bank.

WASHINGTON — In the waning days of his presidency, Bill Clinton promised to use his clemency powers to help low-level drug offenders languishing in prison. When Carlos Vignali walked out of prison on Jan. 20 and returned home to his family in Los Angeles, he appeared to fit the broad outlines of that profile.

But the 30-year-old Vignali, who had served six years of a 15-year sentence for federal narcotics violations, fit another profile entirely. No small-time offender, he was the central player in a cocaine ring that stretched from California to Minnesota. Far from disadvantaged, he owned a $240,000 condominium in Encino and made his way as the son of affluent Los Angeles entrepreneur Horacio Vignali. The doting father became a large-scale political donor in the years after his son’s arrest, donating more than $160,000 to state and federal officeholders–including Govs. Pete Wilson and Gray Davis–as he pressed for his son’s freedom.

The grateful father called the sudden commutation of his son’s sentence by Clinton “a Hail Mary and a miracle.”

The improbability that such a criminal would be granted presidential clemency, as well as the younger Vignali’s claim that he alone steered a pardon application that caught the president’s attention and won his approval, has sparked disbelief and outrage from nearly everyone involved in his case.

“It’s not plausible; it makes no sense at all,” said Margaret Love, the pardon attorney who oversaw all Justice Department reviews of presidential clemency applications from 1990 to 1997. “Somebody had to help him. There is no way that case could have possibly succeeded in the Department of Justice.”

Because it is a hard-edged criminal case, Vignali’s commutation adds another dimension to the wave of eleventh-hour Clinton clemencies and raises new questions about the influence of political donors and officials on different stages of the process.

As criminal justice authorities in Minnesota learned of Vignali’s sudden freedom, they reacted with the same indignation that has greeted several other beneficiaries of the 140 pardons and 36 commutations Clinton granted in his last hours as president.

The Vignali case also illustrates the secrecy that enshrouds the clemency process.

A federal prosecutor who had urged Justice Department superiors to reject clemency for Vignali demanded an official explanation–only to be denied information from his own department. The judge who sentenced Vignali is openly aghast at the decision, which was made without his knowledge. And they all–from defense attorneys to street detectives to former pardon attorney Love–scoffed that Vignali could have walked free without the intervention of politically connected helpers.

Key details of the case remain a mystery. Did political officials and other authoritative figures appeal for Vignali’s freedom to the president or high-ranking Justice Department officials? What action, if any, did the Justice Department recommend to the White House?

Vignali could not be reached for comment. But his father strongly denied that he or anyone else in the family asked politicians to press their case with Clinton.

“I didn’t write him a letter, I didn’t do anything,” Horacio Vignali said. “But I thank God, and I thank the president every day.”

For now, the Vignali case is a curious tale of how an inmate buried deep in the federal penal system won presidential help while others in more desperate straits remained behind.

“Go figure,” said an exasperated Craig Cascarano, the lawyer for one of Vignali’s 30 co-defendants, many of them poor and black. “How is it that Carlos Vignali is out eating a nice dinner while my client is still in prison eating bologna sandwiches?”

Clinton Concerned About Drug Sentences

Clinton and his White House staff have not fully explained why he granted certain clemencies, including the highly controversial pardon of fugitive commodities broker Marc Rich.

But in recent months, the president had expressed concern about mandatory federal sentences imposed on some small-time drug offenders.

“The sentences in many cases are too long for nonviolent offenders,” Clinton said in a November interview with Rolling Stone magazine. “. . . I think this whole thing needs to be reexamined.”

His comments prompted a flurry of last-minute clemency requests to the White House, said the former president’s spokesman, Jake Siewert, particularly since Clinton believed that Justice was not moving fast enough in making clemency recommendations to the White House.

“Most of the drug cases involved people with a sentence that the prosecutor or the sentencing judge felt was excessive,” Siewert said, “but were necessitated by mandatory-minimum guidelines.

“So in most of the drug cases, either a prosecutor or a sentencing judge or some advocate identified people who were relatively minor players or who had gotten a disproportionate sentence.”

Siewert, asked about cases such as Vignali’s, said he did not remember any specific cases but added: “We tried to make a judgment on the merits.”

Although Vignali family members themselves may not have tried to influence the process directly, others weighed in early on. After Carlos was convicted, and during the legal appeals process, Minnesota authorities were deluged with phone calls and letters from California political figures inquiring about the case and urging leniency, they said.

“There was a lot of influence, oh yes,” said Andrew Dunne, the assistant U.S. attorney who prosecuted Vignali in Minnesota. “We would receive periodic calls from state representatives in California calling on behalf of Carlos after the sentencing.

Dunne, who said he interpreted some of the more persistent calls as “perhaps improper influence,” said he could not remember whether the California politicians were based in Sacramento or Washington. But “they wanted to know: Is there anything that could be done to help reduce the sentence?”

Horacio Vignali said he did not know who made such calls and had “no idea why they did that.”

In a two-year investigation, state and federal law enforcement authorities used wiretaps and raids to break a drug ring that transported more than 800 pounds of cocaine from California to Minnesota, where it was converted to crack for sale on the street.

Detectives learned that Vignali, a rapper wannabe who called himself “C-Low,” played a central role in the enterprise. He provided the money to buy the cocaine in Los Angeles, where it was then shipped to Minnesota by mail.

Tony Adams, one of the police detectives who worked on the case, said Vignali “was making big money” from the ring. “Let me put it like this,” he said, citing wiretaps: “This kid went to Las Vegas and would lose $200,000 at Caesar’s Palace and it was no big deal.

“He had a condo in Encino worth over $240,000. And yet his tax records showed he was only making $30,000 at his dad’s auto body shop.”

Most of the defendants pleaded guilty and received prison sentences, but Vignali and two Minneapolis men went on trial.

The senior Vignali sat through the entire trial and at one point, according to Cascarano, testified as a character witness on his son’s behalf. In his statement, the lawyer said, Vignali alluded to his wealth by saying that he had spent $9 million on a palatial Southern California home that once belonged to actor Sylvester Stallone.

A jury convicted Carlos Vignali in 1994 on three counts: conspiring to manufacture, possess and distribute cocaine; aiding and abetting the use of a facility in interstate commerce with the intent to distribute cocaine; and aiding and abetting the use of communication facilities for the commission of felonies.

He drew a 15-year prison sentence and wound up as an inmate in the Federal Correctional Institution in Safford, Ariz.

Todd Hopson, one of the men tried with Vignali, was sentenced to more than 23 years, said his lawyer, Cascarano. The lawyer described Hopson as “an uneducated black kid with a noticeable stutter” and a middle-level figure whose role in the Minneapolis drug ring “was nothing compared to Vignali.”

But under mandatory federal guidelines, Hopson’s conviction required a stiffer sentence because he had been involved in converting the cocaine into rocks of crack, Cascarano said.

A Big Jump in Contributions

Political contribution records indicate that Horacio Vignali also apparently owned interests in used car lots and auto body shops in Los Angeles and Malibu. And, according to Cascarano and to media reports dating from the mid-1990s, Vignali also grew wealthy on commercial real estate interests that included a prime tract across from the Los Angeles Convention Center.

But when contacted by The Times, the father said only, “I run a taco stand and a parking lot.”

Through 1994, the year his son was convicted, Horacio Vignali made a few small federal and state campaign contributions, usually less than $1,000, according to a Times analysis of campaign finance records. But in October 1994, just before the start of his son’s seven-week trial, Vignali stepped up his contributions, donating $53,000 to state officeholders.

By last year, he had become a large-scale contributor. Vignali has given at least $47,000 to Gov. Gray Davis. He gave $32,000 to former Gov. Pete Wilson during his last term. He made two $5,000 donations to a political action committee operated by Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-Los Angeles). And last August, while the Democrats were holding their national convention in Los Angeles, he contributed $10,000 to the Democratic National Committee.

Asked about his donations, the senior Vignali said only, “I’m a Democrat.”

As he was becoming a major contributor, the senior Vignali also hired more attorneys to appeal his son’s conviction. But by 1996, he had exhausted the appeals process.

He then turned to Danny Davis, the Los Angeles lawyer who had helped represent the young man at trial, with another request: to pursue a presidential commutation for his son.

Davis declined, telling the father his chances were “like a snowball in Hades.” Davis criticized the political nature of the clemency process but suggested that the family was smart enough to realize that Clinton could be contacted through political channels.

Still, Davis said Carlos Vignali deserves credit for successfully handling his own application for clemency.

It is unclear when Carlos Vignali filed his application, but by February 1999, it would have seemed quite dead.

That was when Dunne received an inquiry from the Justice Department asking for a recommendation on the Vignali pardon application. Dunne and his boss, then-U.S. Atty. Todd Jones, wrote a scathing letter sharply opposing any break for Vignali.

They pointed out how deeply Vignali was involved in the drug ring and how he had never acknowledged responsibility or shown any remorse.

After sending the letter, Dunne said, “I never thought this had a chance of happening. As far as we were concerned, this was a dead issue.”

Jones also remembered being vehemently against a commutation. “I can’t tell you how strongly we registered our objection,” he said.

Love, the former pardon attorney, said that, without approval from prosecutors, any such clemency request usually is denied.

Told of Vignali’s freedom, she said: “What you’re telling me is absolutely mind-boggling.”

Vignali’s trial judge, U.S. District Judge David Doty, said he was not contacted by the Justice Department. Had he been, he said, he would have joined the prosecution in arguing against special treatment for Vignali.

Doty said Vignali never acknowledged his crime after his conviction nor showed any remorse.

“He was non-repentant,” the judge said. “Even after I sentenced him, he claimed he had been railroaded.”

However, Doty did write Clinton on behalf of drug defendants in two other cases, both involving disadvantaged individuals who had been subjected to harsh sentences for minor drug offenses.

Clinton commuted the sentences on his last day in office.

Doty said that those were worthwhile commutations–noting that both defendants were sorrowful and had completed most of their prison time.

The pardon attorney’s office refused to release any information about Vignali’s commutation to The Times.

Horacio Vignali said he learned that his son was out on Jan. 20, the day Clinton left the White House and George W. Bush became president. “My son called the house and he said, ‘They’re turning me loose! They’re turning me loose! I’m a free man! I’m a free man!’ ”

The father insisted that his son put together the pardon request with minimal help from Los Angeles attorney Don Re. (Re did not return phone calls for comment.)

Ron Meshbesher, a Minneapolis defense attorney who also represented the son during his trial, said that several days after the commutation the Vignalis called him at his office.

The son came on the line “all excited,” Meshbesher recalled. The stunned lawyer asked: “How’d you get out?” Vignali told him that the “word around prison was that it was the right time to approach the president.” The son insisted he had written the application himself.

In an interview with The Times, Horacio Vignali insisted that Clinton’s commutation was not payback for his Democratic Party contributions. He said that he met Clinton only once, in 1994, around the time of his son’s conviction. Vignali said he shook the president’s hand in a rope line at a fund-raiser.

Although he insisted that he had not orchestrated his son’s freedom, the senior Vignali conceded that others may have helped.

“I guess some people wrote on his behalf,” he said. “I have no idea who they are. I just don’t know.”

*

Times researcher John Beckham in Chicago contributed to this report.

For tens of millions of Americans on Saturday, a great tension broke.

A tension that had tightened in the chest and temples through four years of watching their nation, in their view, become meaner and more hateful, unable to see plain truths and human decency. A nation spinning down rabbit holes of conspiracy theories, praising white supremacists as “fine people,” putting children in cages.

President-elect Joe Biden’s victory brought tears of not just joy, but relief — a hissing purge of all that anxiety that had not relented, through so many tweets and outrages and, ultimately, to the possibility that for the first time in American history, a president might refuse to step down.

That prospect still hung in the air Saturday but felt vastly deflated — like many saw President Trump himself — as his attorneys made their unsubstantiated allegations of voter fraud, inexplicably, in front of a landscaping shop on the industrial edge of Philadelphia.

People raise bottles of champagne as they celebrate near the White House in Washington, DC on Saturday.

(Kent Nishimura/Los Angeles Times)

Spontaneous celebration erupted around the nation, even amid its worst pandemic in a century. Revelers, for the most part wearing masks, danced and chanted “You’re fired!” Horns honked, flags flew, pots banged, champagne flowed with abandon, from the Bronx to Puerto Rico, Atlanta to Minneapolis, Seattle to South Pasadena.

In Manhattan, thousands poured into the streets, the noise of jubilation thundering through skyscraper canyons.

“We finally have a country back where it’s safe for the children again!” Greg Shlotthauer shouted in Times Square. “A country where we are not ashamed of the man in the White House!”

In Brooklyn, a rabbi’s son blew a shofar ram’s horn from his window. On Los Feliz Boulevard in Los Angeles, a bagpiper played on a street corner as someone else rang a cowbell, and a cardboard sign that read “It’s Over” was pinned to a tree.

In Washington, where protestors were tear-gassed just months ago so Trump could pose with a Bible in front of a church, the mood was festive. Crowds danced. A man sang “Sweet Caroline” in front of the boarded-up Department of Veterans Affairs.

People gathered on the grass at McPherson Square, a few blocks from the White House, to wait for Biden’s acceptance speech. They brought signs that read “Stop tweeting and start packing” and “Grab him by the BALLOTS.”

In Philadelphia, outside the convention center where election workers were finishing the ballot count, celebrants danced to Led Zeppelin’s “Black Dog” and the Village People’s “YMCA,” — which had been a favorite Trump campaign song.

People react to the election news near Independence Hall in Philadelphia on Saturday morning.

(Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times)

“Philadelphia saved the world,” said Andrew Phillips, a 49-year-old property manager carrying an “Elections Have Consequences” sign. “We haven’t been this relevant since the 1780s.”

But in a country no less divided than it was before the election, the counterweight to all that exhilaration was anger, resignation and, in the streets, defiance — fueled by the president’s refusal to concede even as his favorite Fox News called the election for Biden and did not run with his baseless fraud claims.

In Philadelphia, dozens of police officers on bike patrol kept revelers apart from Trump supporters, who were demanding to stop the vote counting.

Jim Eberhardt, a 63-year-old school bus driver, drove to Philadelphia from his home in Rockland County, N.Y., to show his opposition to what he says is vote fraud taking place inside the convention center, based on the false claims by Trump.

The president, who has complained that mail ballots were being tallied after election day, on Saturday pledged to continue his fight to overturn the election.

“I felt it was the least I could do to come down,” said Eberhardt, his Trump flag hoisted on his shoulder. “I think the election’s been stolen, obviously.”

Similar scenes played out across the country.

“This isn’t over,” said Lisa Kathryn, at the Michigan state Capitol, still holding her red Trump 2020 sign.

A Trump supporter shouts down counter-protesters during a demonstration Saturday over ballot counting outside the Michigan State Capitol in Lansing.

(John Moore / Getty Images)

“Democrats think they’re going to steal an election? This country will not head into socialism,” Kathryn said, mirroring Republicans’ false claims that the moderate Biden is a radical.

Kathryn, who voted for Trump in 2016 and again this election, said she came to show her support for the president and spend an afternoon with like-minded voters. Dozens of Trump supporters packed in front of the Capitol building, some outfitted in camouflage and openly carrying firearms.

“This is our country,” yelled a man with a megaphone and a Glock 9mm holstered on his right hip. “Freedom!” shouted a woman walking past and offering him a high-five.

Kathryn grinned. “We all love this country just like any other American,” she said. “We are here to speak our minds and stand by President Trump.”

For much of the country, this fervid support made for a bittersweet catharsis, the exhilaration dampened by knowing at least 70 million Americans have doubled down on the Trumpist view of the world, and still mourning all that occurred on his watch.

The author and commentator Van Jones put that emotion in searing terms when he learned of the victory on CNN.

“It’s easier to be a parent this morning. It’s easier to be a dad. It’s easier to tell your kids character matters. It matters. Telling the truth matters. Being a good person matters.”

He choked up, trying to hold back sobs, talking of Muslims who no longer “have a president that doesn’t want you here,” of undocumented immigrants who don’t have to worry about being separated from their children.

“This is a vindication for a lot of people who have really suffered. You know, ‘I can’t breathe.’ You know that wasn’t just George Floyd. That was a lot of people that felt they couldn’t breathe,” Jones said. “Every day you’re waking up and you’re getting these tweets and … you’re going to the store and people who have been afraid to show their racism are getting nastier and nastier to you. And you’re worried about your kids and you’re worried about your sister, and can she just go to Walmart and get back into her car without someone saying something to her?

“And you spent so much of your life energy just trying to hold it together.”

Many Biden supporters felt the racism Trump unleashed in America could never be put back in a bottle.

“There’s a Black woman at the second highest position in the country,” Adriana Holt of Decatur, Ga., said of Vice President-elect Kamala Harris. “That’s wild. And to know that I had a part in this.”

(Jenny Jarvie/Los Angeles Times)

In Decatur, Ga., Adriana Holt’s elation was weighed down by that reality. But it wasn’t going to stop the party. The 28-year-old Black social media manager and her sister, Alexandria, a sports service representative, piled into a Nissan Juke, switched on “My President” by Young Jeezy and headed into Atlanta.

All over the Old Fourth Ward neighborhood, which had been home to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., cars honked horns and blasted the anthem “F— Donald Trump” out of their windows.

Some walked the streets with raised fists. Others smoked cigars or popped open champagne bottles.

“Now there’s light at the end of the tunnel,” Alexandria Holt said as the sisters snapped photos in front of a mural of George Floyd. Adriana nodded.

“Today, I almost feel the first sigh of relief since the day Trump got elected,” she said.

When she woke up four years ago to learn that Trump had been elected president, she felt that America had told her that, as a Black person, a woman, a survivor of sexual assault, she didn’t matter.

“There’s no going back to how it was,” Adriana Holt said. “You know, Trump just made it OK to be racist. So, it’s like the people I knew beforehand, now I know: I can’t be your friend anymore. This is permanent.”

Still, she could feel change. She was born just a month before Georgia voted for its last Democratic president, Bill Clinton, and now her home state was tilting blue for the first time she could remember.

“There’s a Black woman at the second highest position in the country,” she said. “That’s wild. And to know that I had a part in this.”

Flashbacks to four years ago still tormented some of the most vulnerable.

Hernan Hernandez-Vela, 31, began to weep as he talked about the racism that many people have endured since Trump took office.

The Las Vegas resident recalled the time someone ran him off the road while he was in the car with his young son. He talked about parents whose children were told to “go back to Mexico.”

“The last four years, our community has been criminalized,” said Hernandez-Vela, who works for La Pulga de Las Vegas, a community organization that helps Latinos. “We just want our kids to feel safe on the playground, to feel safe at school.”

His organization heard from Latinos who weren’t paid for work and were threatened with ICE when they spoke up.

When he was a child, Hernandez-Vela would read about Martin Luther King and the racial issues that divided the country. He felt like King brought it to light and laws were changed.

“But Trump came and brought all that back. He single-handedly targeted the Hispanic community,” he said. For Hernandez-Vela, whose parents were immigrants from Mexico, Biden’s win meant everything.

“We feel like we’re human again,” he said. “With Biden winning, we feel like we finally have a voice. We have somebody in office who cares about our community, who cares about our families.

“He shows that racism isn’t right, that hatred isn’t right,” he said.

Janet Pulido, 19, in small-town Siler City, N.C., remembered watching classmates come to school wearing Trump gear to celebrate.

“Everybody’s racism came out,” she said. For Pulido, it hit hard. Her family immigrated from Veracruz, Mexico, in 1999, and some still lacked legal status.

On Saturday, when she went to Walmart, a sense of joy washed over her as she noted that the Trump hats and shirts she normally saw on customers were conspicuously absent.

“As the day goes on, it’s starting to hit me more,” she said. “Come Jan. 20, he’s gone. That’s it. The nightmare’s over.”

The stakes of this election were the starkest for those on the margins.

In Austin, Texas, Marco Jaramillo said Biden’s election meant the end of living under the cloud of deportation. His legal status in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program was under threat as Trump fought to end the Obama-era program.

“It means a lot of hope, because Biden has already said he’s going to make it permanent,” he said.

Jaramillo, 32, was brought from Mexico to the U.S. as a child by his parents and runs a local cleaning business.

He said he spent the past four years “living in fear of deportation.”

He joined Saturday’s crowd in celebrating with handmade signs that said, “Love over hate” and “We are all Dreamers” in Spanish.

Friend and fellow DACA recipient Raul Armenta said he was tired of spending years listening to the president demonize Mexican immigrants

“We’re not criminals,” Armenta said. “I feel content now that they can’t make us leave.”

In a spontaneous crowd outside the Palacio del Sol in Las Vegas, Mayra Aguirre, 38, felt “mega feliz,” she said — super happy — because it felt like democracy was rescued.

The last four years had felt like a weight, she said. “I felt like the country was broken, like I was drowning,” Mayra said. She felt the racism in the community. Over the past three days, she hasn’t slept. And when she did, it was only for two hours.

“Today, when I heard the news, I felt like I could breathe,” she said. “I feel like the country is coming together again … we’re going back to the country we were before Trump got into the White House.”

Her family grouped together and sang a spin on a song by the Miami group Los 3 de la Habana. The original version went “voy a votar por Donald Trump.” (“I’m going to vote for Donald Trump.”)

They sang a new version: “Que alegre soy, voy a botar a Donald Trump — fuera de La Casa Blanca.” (“I’m so happy, I’m going to kick out Donald Trump out of the White House.”)

In other cities, the tug-of-war between celebrants and Trump supporters was more fraught.

In Austin, several hundred Trump supporters waving flags and signs reading “Stop the Steal” and “Fraud” chanted and shouted at a smaller crowd of Biden supporters across the street. More than a dozen bicycle police pedaled between the two sides, intervening when Trump supporters crossed the street.

At least one Trump supporter was carrying an AR-15 rifle slung across his chest. A pickup truck slowed as it passed the Trump crowd and the driver shouted, “The nonsense is over!”

A bicycle food delivery worker pedaled in his wake, calmly adding, “It’s over, guys.”

Trump supporter Elizabeth Brumbaugh, 62, disagreed. “It’s not over!” she shouted, holding her Trump 2020 sign aloft “Count the legal votes, not the illegal!”

“You lost — take it like a man!” Natalie Roberts, 43, shouted at the occupants of a pickup truck with a Trump sign in the back, who grew livid. Roberts, a single mother who runs an Austin social media marketing company, voted for Biden but hadn’t joined a protest until she saw the pro-Trump crowd Saturday.

Christian Rico, 20, a student at Concordia University, took turns with a friend chanting through a bullhorn at Trump supporters: “You guys lost!”

A Biden supporter began blasting Queen’s “We Are the Champions.” And on it went.

People celebrate in Orlando, Saturday, after Democrat Joe Biden defeated President Donald Trump to become 46th president of the United States.

(Melissa Gomez/Los Angeles Times)

As an event in downtown Orlando came to a close, 61-year-old retiree Don Luellen happily held a homemade “Biden Harris 2020” sign but worried about the future.

“Trump has done nothing but divide our country for the last four years,” he said. He fears the president won’t stop.

“My greatest fear is that even though Biden is president, that Trump will not be quiet and will keep on drumming up hatred and division,” he said. “I’m scared to death of them and militias.”

“But I’m hoping that when Biden starts to get into the presidency, that a lot of people that feel that way will start to calm down.”

The Trump administration is promising an even tougher anti-immigration agenda after an Afghan national was charged this week in the shooting of two National Guard members, with new restrictions targeting the tens of thousands of Afghans resettled in the U.S. and those seeking to come, many of whom served alongside American soldiers in the two-decade war.

But those still waiting to come were already facing stricter measures as part of President Trump’s sweeping crackdown on legal and illegal migration that began when he started his second term in January. And the Afghan immigrants living in the U.S. and now in the administration’s crosshairs were among the most extensively vetted, often undergoing years of security screening, experts and advocates say.

In its latest move, the Trump administration announced Friday that it will pause issuing visas for anyone traveling on an Afghan passport.

The suspected shooter, who worked with the CIA during the Afghanistan war, “was vetted both before he landed, probably once he landed, once he applied for asylum,” said Andrew Selee, president of the Migration Policy Institute. “But more importantly, he was almost certainly vetted extensively and much more by the CIA.”

Haris Tarin, a former U.S. official who worked on the Biden-era program that resettled Afghans, predicted that “as the investigation unfolds, you will see that this is not a failure of screening. This is a failure of us not being able to integrate — not just foreign intelligence and military personnel — but our own veterans, over the past 25 years.”

The program, Operations Allies Welcome, initially brought about 76,000 Afghans to the United States, many of whom had worked alongside American troops and diplomats as interpreters and translators. The initiative was in place for around a year before shifting to a longer-term program called Operation Enduring Welcome. Almost 200,000 Afghans have been resettled in the U.S. under the programs.

Among those brought to the U.S. under the program was the suspected shooter, 29-year-old Rahmanullah Lakanwal, who now faces a first-degree murder charge in the death of 20-year-old Army Spc. Sarah Beckstrom. The other National Guard member who was shot, 24-year-old Air Force Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe, remains in critical condition.

Those resettlements are now on hold. The State Department has temporarily stopped issuing visas for all people traveling on Afghan passports, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced late Friday on X.

Anti-immigrant rhetoric

Trump and his allies have seized on the shooting to criticize gaps in the U.S. vetting process and the speed of admissions, even though some Republicans spent the months and years after the 2021 withdrawal criticizing the Biden administration for not moving fast enough to approve some applications from Afghan allies.

CIA Director John Ratcliffe said Lakanwal “should have never been allowed to come here.” Trump called lax migration policies “the single greatest national security threat facing our nation,” and Vice President JD Vance said Biden’s policy was “opening the floodgate to unvetted Afghan refugees.”

That rhetoric quickly turned into policy announcements, with Trump saying he would “permanently pause all migration” from a list of nearly 20 countries, “terminate all of the millions of Biden illegal admissions,” and “remove anyone who is not a net asset to the United States.” Many of these changes had already been set in motion through a series of executive orders over the last 10 months, including most recently in June.

“They are highlighting practices that were already going into place,” said Andrea Flores, a lawyer who was an immigration policy advisor in the Obama and Biden administrations.

Lakanwal applied for asylum during the Biden administration, but his request was approved in April of this year — under the Trump administration — after undergoing a thorough vetting, according to #AfghanEvac, a group that helps resettle Afghans who assisted the U.S. during the war.

Flores said the system has worked across administrations: “You may hear people say, ‘Well, he was granted asylum under Trump. This is Trump’s problem.’ That’s not how our immigration system works. It relies on the same bedding. No asylum laws have really been changed by Congress.”

Afghans in the U.S. fearful for their status

Trump and other U.S. officials have used the attack to demand a reexamination of everyone who came to the U.S. from Afghanistan, a country he called “a hellhole on Earth” on Thursday.

“These policies were already creating widespread disruption and fear among lawfully admitted families. What’s new and deeply troubling is the attempt to retroactively tie all of this to one act of violence in a way that casts suspicion on entire nationalities, including Afghan allies who risked their lives to protect our troops,” Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, president and CEO of Global Refuge, said in a statement Friday.

This has left the nearly 200,000 Afghans living across the U.S. in deep fear and shame over actions attributed to one person. Those in the U.S. are now worrying about their legal status being revoked, while others in the immigration pipeline here and abroad are waiting in limbo.

Nesar, a 22-year-old Afghan who arrived in the U.S. weeks after the fall of Kabul, said he had just begun to assimilate into life in the U.S. when the attack happened Wednesday. He agreed to speak to the Associated Press on condition that only his first name be used for fear of reprisals or targeting by immigration officials.

“Life was finally getting easier for me. I’ve learned to speak English. I found a better job,” he said. “But after this happened two days ago, I honestly went to the grocery store this morning, and I was feeling so uncomfortable among all of those people. I was like, maybe they’re now looking at me the same way as the shooter.”

Two days before the shooting, Nesar and his father, who worked for the Afghan president during the war, had received an interview date of Dec. 13 for their green card application, a moment he said they had been working toward for four years. He says it is now unclear if their application will move forward or whether their interview will take place.

Another Afghan national, who also spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity out of fear of reprisal, said that after fearing for his life under Taliban rule, he felt a sense of peace and hope when he finally received a special immigrant visa to come to the U.S. two years ago.

He said he thought he could use his experience working as a defense attorney in Afghanistan to contribute to American society. But now, he said, he and other Afghans will once again face scrutiny because of the actions of an “extremist who, despite benefiting from the safety and livelihood provided by this country, ungratefully attacked two American soldiers.”

“It seems that whenever a terrorist commits a crime, its shadow falls upon me simply because I am from Afghanistan,” he added.

Cappelletti and Amiri write for the Associated Press. AP writer Renata Brito contributed to this report.

California voters, it appears, have tired of peace and freedom–well, of Peace & Freedom, anyway–forcing the one and only Jan B. Tucker to take his leftist politics elsewhere.

Tucker, a Toluca Lake-based private eye and activist for every leftist cause under the sun, was the last hope for the state’s Peace & Freedom Party, which formed in California amid the political upheaval of 1968.

His campaign for state treasurer last year, “Tucker for Treasurer: Politics as Unusual,” represented the best chance for Peace & Freedom to maintain its spot on the state ballot. Tucker had run for governor and president on the Peace & Freedom ticket in previous years, and has a politician’s gift for self-promotion.

But Tucker’s third-party candidacy–which espoused such unorthodox fiscal views as using the power of the state stock portfolio to help break the glass ceiling for women and minorities–failed to ignite the liberal crowd.

He gathered less than 2% of the vote, the amount required for a party to stay on the ballot, and Secretary of State Bill Jones has since announced that Peace & Freedom has gone the way of Nehru jackets and the Age of Aquarius.

Peace & Freedom loyalists could get back on the ballot by increasing the number of voters registered to the party. There is little indication that is going to happen. But Tucker–who is active in the local chapters of the National Organization for Women, the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People, a local newspaper guild and an animal-rights organization–isn’t about to give up the fight just yet. He plans to do what any crafty politician would do under the circumstances: adapt.

Tucker is going to team up with another minor party on the left, the Green Party, which, not coincidentally, has been gaining in popularity at the same time Peace & Freedom has been losing it. He believes the leadership of his new party is more grounded in reality.

“The Greens don’t have the ideological baggage and weirdo reputation that the Peace & Freedom Party has,” Tucker said. “It’s hard to be taken seriously when the party leaders stand up at conventions and say, ‘We are the new Bolsheviks.’ I tried to take some new recruits there, and they said, ‘This is “Alice in Wonderland.” ’ “

His next candidacy, he said, will be for U.S. Senate. In the meantime, Tucker says he will urge that his new party try to deal with what he sees as its biggest weakness: lack of minority representation.

“It’s a marriage whose time has come,” he said of his conversion to Green. “I’d like to help the Greens to diversify their ranks, because they need it. Their heart’s in the right place.”

*

NO REST: As if Rep. James Rogan (R-Glendale) didn’t have enough liberals angry at him. Now he is being accused of getting in the way of world peace.

Rogan, fresh off his controversial role as prosecutor in President Clinton’s Senate impeachment trial, was awarded straight Fs on the latest political report card of California Peace Action, a group that fights the proliferation of nuclear weapons and arms sales to recognized dictatorships. The Peace Action claims to be the state’s largest “peace” organization, with a statewide membership of 33,000.

“While Rep. Rogan’s role in the impeachment process has received a great deal of attention, we don’t want people to overlook his terrible record on nuclear weapons, human rights and wasteful military spending,” said Danielle Babineau, the group’s southern California political director. “You can’t do worse than an F.”

*

EAR TO THE RAIL: When City Council candidates went door to door recently trying to qualify for the April 13 ballot, residents asked about one issue more than any other.

Should the San Fernando Valley break away from Los Angeles and form its own city?

“That was the most consistent question that people asked me about,” said David R. Guzman Sr., one of four candidates challenging Councilman Hal Bernson in the northwest Valley’s 12th District.

Guzman said most residents doubted that the Valley would be better off after a breakaway from Los Angeles, a skepticism he and many other candidates share.

“They are afraid of it because they fear it may add to the red tape and cost the Valley more,” said Guzman, who isn’t convinced secession is a good idea.

Secession has divided candidates vying for four Valley seats on the City Council, an informal survey found. Most said the issue of Valley cityhood will be a major point of discussion in their campaigns.

Bernson supported a study of cityhood, but has declined to take a position on secession, citing his service on the county commission that is examining the financial issues involved, said Ali Sar, a spokesman.

Among other 12th District candidates, newsletter publisher Marilyn Stout said she does not believe secession is the answer, while attorney Charles Rubel said the Valley would be better off as a separate city.

“I’m definitely for it, if it’s feasible,” Rubel said, adding he believes it will bring government closer to Valley residents.

Stout said she would prefer to see charter reform bring city residents together.

“It [cityhood] would worsen the quality of life throughout the city,” Stout said.

In the race for the 2nd District seat in the East Valley, Councilman Joel Wachs was one of the first to sign a petition calling for a study of cityhood, but has said he wants to see the study results before taking a position on secession.

Second District challenger Kathy Anthony, who runs a Sunland tailoring business, said the Valley has been shortchanged by the rest of Los Angeles.

“Unfortunately, I don’t feel we have an option” but to secede, Anthony said. “We have to do something to get attention and dollars back to the Valley.”

John Spishak, another 2nd District candidate, also believes secession will improve the quality of life for Valley residents.

“I’m definitely for it,” he said. “People are so tired of what they are not getting from City Hall.”

In the 7th Council District, covering the northeast Valley, front-runner candidates Corinne Sanchez and Alex Padilla have not yet taken positions on secession, but Ollie McCaulley supports it. Barbara Perkins is not sure it’s a good idea.

“It’s long overdue,” McCaulley said. “The San Fernando Valley should be its own city. We are such a large part of the tax base, but we’re not getting the services in return.”

McCaulley said 90% of the voters he spoke with asked him about his stand on secession, but unlike Guzman’s experience, the vast majority were in favor, he said.

Perkins resigned as a board member of Valley VOTE because she believed the group was promoting Valley cityhood, not just a study of the issue.

“I don’t see any indication that we’re going to be better off if we [secede],” Perkins said. “I support going ahead with the study, but I can’t be supportive of secession at this time.”

*

ANOTHER BREAKUP: In filing for divorce from state Sen. Richard Alarcon, Corina Alarcon enlisted the help of an attorney who knows what it is like to oppose a powerful spouse.

She has retained attorney Manley Freid, who has represented a who’s-who of spouses breaking from powerful people, including one of Mayor Richard Riordan’s former wives.

Freid said he has also represented Tom Arnold against Roseanne Barr, Loni Anderson against Burt Reynolds and Lee Iacocca’s former wife in her divorce from the ex-Chrysler chairman.

Corina Alarcon said she has received a lot of backing from community leaders, including a vigil last week attended by about 30 supporters who are upset at Richard Alarcon’s decision to separate from his wife right after he was elected to the Senate.

*

DEMOCRATS’ DARTBOARD

Rep. James Rogan of Glendale has become a key target for Democrats. A3

Newport Beach businessman Dale Dykema is a highly sought-after guest when potential Republican presidential candidates visit California.

He recently attended an intimate dinner with former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, a cocktail party headlined by Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and a half-hour tete-a-tete with New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.

In the last quarter of a century, Dykema, 85, has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to GOP candidates, party organizations and political action committees. He has yet to make up his mind on whom to back — and more importantly, whom to raise money for — in the 2016 presidential campaign.

“There are just so many candidates in the race. I’m completely on the fence,” said Dykema, founder of TD Service Financial Corp., a company that provides foreclosure services for the mortgage industry. In 2012, he said, he settled quickly on former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, but for the upcoming election he may wait until after the first couple of primaries before deciding.

The size of the field — well over a dozen likely candidates — coupled with the lack of a clear favorite mean many Republican donors in California share Dykema’s reluctance to commit.

“Normally, there’s a candidate that the entire establishment is behind and there’s this huge fundraising juggernaut for one person,” said Jon Fleischman, a state GOP official from Anaheim Hills and publisher of an influential conservative blog. “This year, no one has the brass ring already in hand. We’re seeing a lot more listening and a lot less giving early.”

On the Democratic side, state donors are already uniting behind former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, the party’s overwhelming favorite. She raised millions for her nascent campaign at events hosted earlier this month by entertainment and business leaders.

As Republican donors weigh their choices, they’re grilling the 2016 candidates on a range of issues, including immigration, religious freedom and net neutrality. They’re doing so in homes in Bel-Air, boardrooms in the Silicon Valley, parties in Orange County and GOP functions all over the state — a nod to California’s primacy in what is known in political circles as the “invisible primary.”

California probably doesn’t matter in the nominating fight. Its June 7, 2016, presidential primary is almost certainly too late to affect the GOP’s process. The state is also too Democratic to put it in play in next year’s general election. But California is the biggest source of campaign cash in the nation.

In the 2012 election, presidential candidates directly raised more than $112 million from California’s deep-pocketed donors. That’s almost the combined total raised in the next two most-generous states, Texas and New York, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. These figures do not include the millions donated to party committees and outside groups such as “super PACs” that are not controlled by a candidate.

Not surprisingly, given California’s tilt toward Democrats, President Obama was the biggest beneficiary then, raising $62.8 million here for his reelection bid, according to the center. But GOP candidates also filled their campaign coffers here — Romney collected $41.3 million, and the rest of the Republican field raised nearly $8 million.

Romney’s extensive fundraising network in California, which he cultivated over nearly a decade, became available to others when he decided in January not to run again.

“We’re talking a lot about it, but no one’s committing to anyone right now,” said Bret de St. Jeor, a Modesto businessman and Romney fundraiser in 2012. “It’s just flat-out too early…. Let’s hear a little bit more. Let’s hear the opening statements from the other candidates before we start jumping on somebody’s bandwagon.”

Donors “love the courting process,” said Shawn Steel, a Republican National Committee member from Surfside in Orange County. “Most of the serious candidates are coming to California repeatedly, and their mission is to establish a rapport as early as possible … and to try to meet as many folks as possible.”

Steel, who is undecided, recently co-hosted a meet-and-greet and intimate dinner for Walker at the tony Pacific Club in Newport Beach. He noted that the field includes multiple candidates who appeal to the same GOP faction, whether it’s establishment voters, social conservatives or tea party groups.

Many potential candidates, he added, have connections to California, or have the opportunity to grow support.

Former Hewlett-Packard Chief Executive Carly Fiorina retains backers from her unsuccessful run against Sen. Barbara Boxer in 2010, Steel said. Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry developed ties to the state during his unsuccessful 2012 presidential bid, in part because one of his top strategists is a longtime and well-respected California GOP fundraiser.

Walker is a familiar face in California’s donor community, as he is across the nation, because of his fierce fight against unions in Wisconsin. Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul has spent considerable time wooing the libertarian streak that runs through Silicon Valley. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio has blown away audiences with his oratory, Steel said. And Bush’s family has long-standing alliances in the state.

Jeb Bush’s brother, former President George W. Bush, was a prodigious fundraiser here, performing a “cash-ectomy on the California donor community” whenever he visited, Fleischman said. “It was staggering.”

Those relationships haven’t sealed the deal for Jeb Bush here, but they do provide an edge for the yet-undeclared candidate that was visible during a recent, lucrative fundraising swing through the state.

“I really wanted to see him run before his brother ran,” said venture capitalist William H. Draper III, who went to Yale with their father, President George H.W. Bush, and served as his finance chair in his unsuccessful 1980 presidential run.

Draper, a former president of the Export-Import Bank of the United States, co-hosted an East Palo Alto fundraiser for Jeb Bush’s committee.

Susan McCaw, a major fundraiser for George W. Bush who served as his ambassador to Austria, said she was impressed by Jeb Bush’s record as governor of Florida and his support for education and immigration reform. She and her husband held a fundraiser for his political action committee at their Bel-Air home.

“I think he has the best chance of beating Hillary in the general,” she said.

Electability was the one quality nearly every donor — committed or not — mentioned as a priority.

John Jordan, a tech entrepreneur and vintner who has spent millions on Republican causes, plans to make a decision over the summer. He is hosting a dinner for Walker at his Healdsburg vineyard and expects to huddle with Paul soon. His sole focus, he said, is backing the candidate who could win the White House in 2016 by attracting the various factions of GOP voters as well as less ideologically driven general-election voters.

“In a pretty cold-blooded way,” Jordan said, “it has got to be someone that can unite the base, that they will like enough to turn out for … but at the same time isn’t someone that’s obnoxious.”

[email protected]

Twitter: @LATSeema

KABUL, AFGHANISTAN — Barack Obama met with U.S. troops and received a military briefing on conditions in Afghanistan on Saturday during the opening leg of an overseas trip designed to showcase his appeal in foreign capitals and reassure American voters that he would make a reliable commander in chief.

Obama’s trip is scheduled to include a visit to Iraq, and his foreign policy judgment got an unexpected boost from that country’s leader, Nouri Maliki, who praised the Democratic presidential candidate’s plan for withdrawing U.S. troops over a 16-month period.

In an interview with the German magazine Der Spiegel, Maliki embraced Obama’s plan, saying: “That, we think, would be the right time frame for a withdrawal, with the possibility of slight changes.”

Maliki said he was not making an endorsement in the presidential race.

The presumed Republican nominee, John McCain, has said that conditions in Iraq could worsen if troops were removed at the pace his rival has advised.

Obama’s high-profile trip caps a week on the campaign trail during which he focused on national security and U.S. commitments abroad — areas that are considered special strengths of McCain.

Seizing on Maliki’s favorable comments, the Obama campaign put out a statement from his senior foreign policy advisor, Susan Rice: “Sen. Obama welcomes Prime Minister Maliki’s support for a 16-month timeline for the redeployment of U.S. combat brigades. This presents an important opportunity to transition to Iraqi responsibility, while restoring our military and increasing our commitment to finish the fight in Afghanistan.”

In a speech last week, Obama said that troops should be drawn down in Iraq and two additional combat brigades deployed in Afghanistan, a war he said the U.S. couldn’t afford to lose.

His visit to Afghanistan comes at a time of sharply deteriorating security across the country. Suicide bombings are an everyday occurrence, and the number of foreign troops killed last month was the highest since the start of the war.

The presumptive Democratic nominee and senator from Illinois is part of an official congressional delegation that includes Sens. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) and Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.). The lawmakers made a brief visit to Jalalabad airfield in eastern Afghanistan, greeting American troops from their respective home states.

At Bagram Air Base outside Kabul, Obama and the others met with senior military officials and got a briefing from the commander of American forces in eastern Afghanistan, Maj. Gen. Jeffrey J. Schloesser. The decision to have the delegation meet with Schloesser probably reflected growing U.S. concern over infiltration of fighters from tribal lands on the Pakistani side of the frontier, which borders Afghanistan’s eastern provinces.

Although Afghanistan’s south is the traditional heartland of the insurgency, the eastern front, where U.S. forces are concentrated, has heated up dramatically in recent weeks. American troops suffered their worst single-incident loss in three years last Sunday, when about 200 insurgents staged a well-organized assault on a remote base near the Pakistani border manned by U.S. and Afghan troops; nine Americans were killed and 15 wounded.

On Saturday, a NATO soldier was killed in an explosion in southern Afghanistan, in the Panjwayi district of Kandahar province. The soldier’s nationality was not released, but nearly all Western troops in that area are Canadian.

On the eve of his trip, Obama told reporters he wanted to make a firsthand evaluation of the Afghan and Iraqi war zones.

“Well, I’m looking forward to seeing what the situation on the ground is,” he said Thursday. “I want to, obviously, talk to the commanders and get a sense — both in Afghanistan and in Baghdad — of, you know, what . . . their biggest concerns are. And I want to thank our troops for the heroic work that they’ve been doing.”

In the Afghan capital, where constant power disruptions limit people’s access to radio and television news reports, many residents were not aware of Obama’s arrival. He is to meet with President Hamid Karzai today.

Obama caused a stir this month with remarks about the struggles of the Karzai government.

“I think the Karzai government has not gotten out of the bunker and helped to organize Afghanistan and [the] government, the judiciary, police forces, in ways that would give people confidence,” Obama told CNN.

Yet there is considerable enthusiasm here at the prospect of a change in the American administration. Many Afghans, while grateful for the U.S.-led invasion more than six years ago that drove the Taliban from power, are disappointed that the country still faces violence and poverty.

Obama “has good ideas about Afghanistan, and I hope he becomes the U.S. president,” said university student Hafeez Mohammad Sultani, 23. “He is young and full of energy.”

Others, however, were more skeptical.

“Bush couldn’t provide security in Afghanistan, so that will be difficult for Obama too,” said telecommunications worker Shams ul-Rahman, 38. “This is a very big challenge for America — maybe there will be some changes in the way Obama is thinking about Afghanistan.”

Obama’s companions on the trip are considered possible administration appointees should he win the presidency. Reed is a senior member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and Hagel is a Vietnam veteran who, like Obama, has opposed the Iraq war.

Recent polls show that most Americans see McCain, who was a prisoner of war in Vietnam, as the more seasoned of the two candidates when it comes to foreign policy.

To close the gap, Obama has been trying to shore up his credentials. In speeches and opinion pieces, Obama has argued that invading Iraq was a mistake, that Iraqi officials also favor a timetable for U.S. troop withdrawal, and that Afghanistan is the real front in the war on terrorism.

In that respect, Maliki’s remarks gave Obama a boost and left McCain in an awkward spot.

The Arizona senator has said that U.S. troops should leave Iraq when the Maliki government and U.S. commanders on the ground deem the country secure. But McCain has dismissed Obama’s 16-month timeline as politically motivated and said it was an invitation for more chaos in Iraq.

McCain’s senior foreign policy advisor, Randy Scheunemann, said in a statement Saturday: “The difference between John McCain and Barack Obama is that Barack Obama advocates an unconditional withdrawal that ignores the facts on the ground and the advice of our top military commanders. John McCain believes withdrawal must be based on conditions on the ground.

“Prime Minister Maliki has repeatedly affirmed the same view and did so again today. Timing is not as important as whether we leave with victory and honor, which is of no apparent concern to Barack Obama.

“The fundamental truth remains that Sen. McCain was right about the [U.S. troop] surge and Sen. Obama was wrong. We would not be in the position to discuss a responsible withdrawal today if Sen. Obama’s views had prevailed.”

The Republican candidate also has ridiculed Obama for making pronouncements on Iraq and Afghanistan in advance of his visit.

In a radio address Saturday, McCain said: “My opponent . . . announced his strategy for Afghanistan and Iraq before departing on a fact-finding mission that will include visits to both those countries. Apparently, he’s confident enough that he won’t find any facts that might change his opinion or alter his strategy. Remarkable.”

Obama is scheduled to visit the Middle East and Europe in what will probably become a media spectacle, with television news anchors covering each stop as though Obama were a head of state.

Images of adoring crowds greeting Obama in Germany and elsewhere feed into a campaign strategy to demonstrate that as president he would improve the United States’ beleaguered reputation in Europe.

Before landing in Afghanistan, the delegation stopped in Kuwait.

Obama relaxed there with U.S. troops, taking to the basketball court for a game of H-O-R-S-E.

—

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Times staff writer Nicholas reported from Washington and special correspondent Faiez from Kabul. Times staff writers Laura King in Istanbul, Turkey, Michael Muskal in Los Angeles and Nicholas Riccardi in New York contributed to this report.

—

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

What Maliki said

Here is a part of Iraqi leader Nouri Maliki’s interview with the German magazine Der Spiegel, in which he supported Barack Obama’s timeline for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq:

Would you hazard a prediction as to when most of the U.S. troops will finally leave Iraq?

As soon as possible, as far as we’re concerned. U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama talks about 16 months. That, we think, would be the right time frame for a withdrawal, with the possibility of slight changes.

Is this an endorsement for the U.S. presidential election in November? Does Obama, who has no military background, ultimately have a better understanding of Iraq than war hero John McCain?

Those who operate on the premise of short time periods in Iraq today are being more realistic. Artificially prolonging the tenure of U.S. troops in Iraq would cause problems. Of course, this is by no means an election endorsement. Who they choose as their president is the Americans’ business. But it’s the business of Iraqis to say what they want. And that’s where the people and the government are in general agreement: The tenure of the coalition troops in Iraq should be limited.

Source: Der Spiegel

For over an hour Tuesday night, Presidential Trump vied with pugnacious Trump.

The White House had promised a conciliatory and uplifting State of the Union address, which stood to reason. It’s one thing to inveigh against the mess Trump said he inherited a year ago and another to laud the job he claims to have done cleaning it up.

FULL COVERAGE: State of the Union »

Gone, then, was the wreckage, the ruin and the dystopian “American carnage” he deplored in the glowering speech at his inauguration. Instead, Trump offered a vision of hopefulness and light — for a time, anyway.

“This is our new American moment,” he said loftily in the early moments of his address. “There has never been a better time to start living the American dream.”

But those grace notes were soon overshadowed by an increasingly harsh tone, as though the president couldn’t or didn’t care to contain his more ad-libbed and aggressive self.

He needled Democrats over the partial dismantling of the Affordable Care Act, one of his predecessor’s proudest achievements. He resurrected the controversy over the national anthem and the dissent of kneeling black athletes.

When he spoke of immigration, perhaps the touchiest issue facing a gridlocked Congress, he placed it in a dark frame, with talk of gang violence, of alien intruders stealing jobs and a suggestion of unending “chain” migrants — aunts, uncles, cousins and other family members — leaching taxpayer dollars.

In his closest approximation to an olive branch, Trump said he would support a proposal offering a path to citizenship for 1.8 million children — so-called Dreamers — who were brought to America illegally by their parents. But only, he said, if Democrats would agree to a border wall and other changes in legal immigration they consider anathema.

The result was groans and hisses and boos from that side of the House chamber.

The annual speech to Congress is one of Washington’s most carefully choreographed set pieces, and for portions of it Trump hewed closely to a familiar script

He assayed the state of the union, pronouncing it “strong.” He outlined an ambitious agenda — which lawmakers will mostly ignore — crowed about his achievements, made a feint in the direction of bipartisanship and saluted a large number of invited guests who served as props representing different bullet points (immigration, a strong military, the opioid addiction crisis) of his speech.

It was all terribly conventional, but only to a point.

There were many long sections that could just have easily been delivered at one of Trump’s roisterous “Make America Great Again” campaign rallies, down to the moment when the ranks of Republican lawmakers broke into a lusty chant of “USA! USA!” as the president, chin out, approvingly took in the scene.

The contrast to the last time Trump stood in the well of the House was striking.

Eleven months ago, he delivered a more subdued performance, earning plaudits and generating widespread talk of a presidential turning point or, in that most overused expression, a pivot toward a more staid and conformist style of governance.

Then, days later, Trump was back to tweeting about a “bad (or sick)” President Obama bugging Trump Tower, a figment that roused his political base but instantly banished any Democratic goodwill or notions of presidential normalcy.

Trump has shattered political convention in so many ways that it is difficult to enumerate them all. One of the most significant is this: Although the economy is perking smartly along and Americans tell pollsters they feel better about their financial well-being than they have in years, the president has gotten very little credit.

Indeed, his approval rating stands at a historical low for a chief executive this early in his term, severing the long-standing correlation between economic good times and voter satisfaction.

His speech Tuesday night, with its prime-time prominence and audience reaching in the tens of millions, offered a chance to address that problem. “Over the last year, we have made incredible progress and achieved extraordinary success,” Trump said, reeling off a number of favorable economic statistics.

But much of the address seemed aimed at a far narrower audience.

To a greater degree than any recent president, Trump has used his time in office to appease the relatively narrow slice of the electorate — older, whiter, alienated, aggrieved — that placed him in power, opting not to reach out, bend and seek to broaden that coalition.

His uncompromising performance Tuesday night perfectly encapsulated that approach. Supporters found much to like and detractors plenty to reinforce their contempt.

It is too much to expect any single speech, much less one as politically freighted as the State of the Union, to instantly bridge such a yawning gap. If anything, though, Trump’s provocative remarks seemed likely to push warring Democrats and Republicans even further apart.

[email protected]

@markzbarabak

President Trump’s budget landed with a thud this week on Capitol Hill, where even conservative Republicans pronounced it “dead on arrival” and quailed at its proposed sharp cuts to social welfare programs such as food stamps, Meals on Wheels and Medicaid.

Yet some conservatives found plenty to like in the document. Consider the reaction of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a Washington think tank heavily funded by hedge fund billionaire Pete Peterson.

“The President deserves credit for setting a fiscal goal and working to meet it,” the CRFB said in its gloss on the budget. Trump “should be commended for putting forward a number of specific and significant spending cuts to help address the debt.”

But one aspect of the budget plan really stuck in CRFB’s craw: It leaves Social Security and Medicare alone. “The President should focus on controlling the rising costs of Social Security and Medicare, two of the nation’s largest and fastest growing programs, which the budget almost completely ignores.”

Followers of CRFB’s history will recognize that caveat as classic Pete Peterson. As we reported in 2012, the 90-year-old billionaire has been on a long crusade to cut Social Security and Medicare benefits. In a 1994 essay in the New York Review of Books, for example, he laid out his view that the only way to eliminate the federal deficit was by “reforming the entire system of entitlements — the fastest-growing part of the federal budget.” Where have we heard that line before?

In the piece, Peterson called Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid a “vast and largely unearned windfall we now give to the more affluent half of all American households.” By “more affluent half,” he meant all households then earning $32,000 or more. That figure would be about $53,520 in today’s dollars, close to the median income in the U.S. (In other words, after accounting for inflation, the standard of living of the median household hasn’t noticeably progressed in 23 years.)

The CRFB describes itself as “an independent source of objective policy analysis,” but in reality it’s joined to Peterson by the pocketbook. From 2012 through March 2016, the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, the billionaire’s chief pipeline of grants to nonprofits, contributed $8 million to the organization. Peterson sits on its board.

That board is replete with members of what the late muckraking journalist Jack Newfield called “the permanent government” — former members of Congress, agency heads, lobbyists, well-heeled academics, etc., etc. Their board service is unpaid. CRFB President Maya MacGuineas, a frequent speaker and editorialist on the deficit, collected about $394,000 in compensation in 2015, the latest year reported.

The CRFB’s viewpoint on Social Security typically echoes Peterson’s. Its emphasis on bringing the program into fiscal balance leans heavily on benefit cuts. Last December it praised a Social Security “permanent save” offered by conservative Rep. Sam Johnson, R-Texas, that achieved its goal entirely through benefit cuts, without a dime of new revenues such as higher payroll taxes on the wealthy.

The CRFB tends to fret about proposals to raise the payroll tax, even though removing the cap on earned income subject to the tax (currently $127,200) would deliver the single biggest improvement to Social Security’s fiscal condition of any proposal on the table. “Solvency can’t be achieved simply by making the rich pay the same as everyone else or means-testing their benefits,” the committee lectured reformers last month.

In general, the committee approaches budget matters almost entirely through the blinkers of deficit reduction, giving very little attention to the street-level consequences of budget and spending policies. That mind set bubbles through its commentary on the Trump budget, many elements of which it labels “sensible and thoughtful reforms… worthy of consideration.”

The committee doesn’t specify which policies it’s referring to. It observes that the program cuts in the budget “fall disproportionately on programs that benefit children, low-income individuals, and promote investment,” but places that caveat in the context of the “almost inevitable consequence of virtually ignoring the rapid growth of Social Security and Medicare.” The committee does acknowledge, implicitly, that the budget’s $72-billion cut in disability benefits is a Social Security cut — it specifies that it’s Social Security’s Old-Age and Survivors’ Insurance program that remains “largely untouched.”

The CRFB, to its credit, doesn’t give the Trump budget a free pass on its well-documented mathematical mendacity. Like other commentators, it labels the budget’s projection of annual growth exceeding 3% in the economy “rosy,” “extremely optimistic,” even “phony.” Responsible economic analysts place the likely annual growth rate closer to 1.8% to 1.9%.

The committee concludes, “tough choices, not wishful thinking, are needed to fix the debt.” As is typical of the analyses of this billionaire’s pet think tanks, the question it leaves unanswered is “tough for whom?” The inescapable implication is: tough on the beneficiaries of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. If those choices are made, the board members and officers of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget will do just fine.

Keep up to date with Michael Hiltzik. Follow @hiltzikm on Twitter, see his Facebook page, or email [email protected].

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WASHINGTON – In the moments after the Supreme Court’s landmark healthcare ruling, Capitol Hill was unnervingly quiet as legislators took time to absorb the ruling. The silence did not last long.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) headed to the Senate floor to mark the milestone.

“Passing the Affordable Care Act was the greatest single step in generations toward ensuring access to affordable, quality healthcare for every person in America, regardless of where they live, how much money they make,” Reid said. “I’m happy and I’m pleased the Supreme Court put the rule of law ahead of partisanship.”

House Speaker John A. Boehner(R-Ohio) – and tea party groups — vowed to press forward on efforts to repeal the law.

“Today’s ruling underscores the urgency of repealing this harmful law in its entirety,” Boehner said. “Republicans stand ready to work with a president who will listen to the people and will not repeat the mistakes that gave our country Obamacare.”

Republicans and their allies in this battle said the court ruling underscores the urgency of electing more conservatives to Congress to repeal the law.

“We are focused on taking control of the Senate, reinforcing our 2010 gains in the House, and defeating President Obama,” said Amy Kremer, chairman of Tea Party Express. “These key objectives will open the door for a wave of new conservatives in Washington who are committed to repealing Obamacare.”

Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R-Minn.), the chairwoman of the Tea Party Caucus in the House, said: “Today’s Supreme Court decision raises the stakes for the coming months.”

House lawmakers from both parties had been meeting – separately – on Thursday morning behind closed doors before the decision became public. Boehner was expected to be reiterating to members not to “spike the ball” in the event of a favorable ruling. Both parties said they expect the fight to continue both in Congress and on the campaign trail.

“Our struggle isn’t over,’’ said Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-Petaluma), expecting congressional Republicans to continue to try to dismantle the law “piece by piece.’’

As the court’s decision became known – and initial television reports gave confusing accounts of the outcome — one congressman, Rep. Brian Bilbray (R-San Diego), was the among the first out with a statement: “In the wake of the Supreme Court declaring the ‘individual mandate’ portion of the Affordable Care Act unconstitutional, it is questionable as to whether the rest of the bill can stand,” he said.

Fifteen minutes later his office sent out an “updated” release: “Simply put, we cannot afford the president’s health care plan.”

Some Democrats, though, just savored the moment.

“We’re just ecstatic,’’ Rep. Linda Sanchez (D-Lakewood) said. She was in a committee meeting, checking her iPad for word on the court ruling.

Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), the minority leader – who had long predicted a 6-3 decision from the court – took her moment.

“This decision is a victory for the American people,” Pelosi said. “In passing health reform, we made history for our nation and progress for the American people.” Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Burbank) was also in a committee meeting when he got conflicting messages about the ruling.

“I rushed back to the office to watch the coverage with staff,’’ he said. “Along the way, I could hear hoots and hollers from various congressional offices as the staff of different members reacted with elation or upset. Needless-to-say, we were on the elated side.”

He said was pleased by the ruling but said he also was pleased for another reason: “The court was at risk of becoming yet another partisan institution if it threw out decades of precedent. The chief justice chose a different legacy, and this was not only the correct legal decision, it was also enormously important to maintaining the independence and reputation of the court.”

Rep. Paul Broun (R-Ga.) called it a “sad day for liberty.’’

“The court’s misguided decision is an attack on freedom, an insult to our Constitution, and it will ultimately destroy the best healthcare system in the world,’’ he said. “Chief Justice Roberts once said that the Supreme Court’s job is to apply the law – ‘to call balls and strikes, not to pitch or bat.’ He couldn’t have been more right in saying so, and he couldn’t have been more wrong by choosing to circumvent the Constitution this morning. Even worse, I fear that the high court has opened Pandora’s box by blatantly disregarding the law, and there will no longer be any real limits to what the federal government will be able to force the American people to do.’’

Twitter.com/LisaMascaroinDC

Twitter.com/RichardSimon11

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla.  — President Trump said Friday that he will be pardoning former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez, who in 2024 was convicted for cocaine trafficking and weapons charges and sentenced to 45 years in U.S. prison.

Trump, explaining his decision on social media, wrote that “according to many people that I greatly respect,” Hernandez was “treated very harshly and unfairly.”

The pardoning of a convicted drug trafficker comes as the Trump administration is carrying out deadly military strikes in the Caribbean that it describes as an anti-narcotics effort.

A jury in U.S. federal court in New York last year found that Hernandez had conspired with drug traffickers and used his military and national police force to enable tons of cocaine to make it unhindered into the United States. In handing down the 45-year sentence, the judge in the case had called Hernandez a “two-faced politician hungry for power” who protected a select group of traffickers.

Trial witnesses included traffickers who admitted responsibility for dozens of murders and said Hernandez was an enthusiastic protector of some of the world’s most powerful cocaine dealers, including notorious Mexican drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, who is serving a life prison term in the U.S.

Hernandez, who had served two terms as the leader of the Central American nation of about 10 million people, had been appealing his conviction and serving time at the U.S. Penitentiary, Hazelton, in West Virginia.

Shortly after Trump’s pardon announcement, Hernández’s wife and children gathered on the steps of their home in Tegucigalpa and kneeled in prayer, grateful that Hernández would return to their family after almost four years apart.

It was the same home that Honduran authorities hauled him out of in 2022 just months after leaving office. He was extradited to the United States to stand trial.

García said they had just been able to speak with Hernández and tell him the news.

“He still didn’t know of this news, and believe me, when we shared it his voice broke with emotion,” she said.

García thanked Trump, saying that the president had corrected an injustice, maintaining that Hernández’s prosecution was a coordinated plot by drug traffickers and the “radical left” to seek revenge against the former president.

She said they had not been told exactly when Hernández would return, but said that “we hope … in the coming days.”

A lawyer for Hernandez, Renato C. Stabile, expressed gratitude for Trump’s actions. “A great injustice has been righted, and we are so hopeful for the future partnership of the United States and Honduras,” Stabile said.

U.S. prosecutors had said that Hernandez worked with drug traffickers dating back to 2004, taking millions of dollars in bribes as he rose from rural congressman to president of the National Congress and then to the country’s highest office.

Hernandez acknowledged in trial testimony that drug money was paid to virtually all political parties in Honduras, but he denied accepting bribes himself. Hernandez had insisted during his trial that he was being persecuted by politicians and drug traffickers.

Trump’s post Friday was part of a broader message backing Nasry “Tito” Asfura for Honduras’ presidency, with Trump saying the U.S. would be supportive of the country only if he wins. If Asfura loses the election Sunday, Trump threatened in his post, “the United States will not be throwing good money after bad, because a wrong Leader can only bring catastrophic results to a country, no matter which country it is.”

Asfura, 67, is making his second run for president for the conservative National Party. He was mayor of Tegucigalpa and has pledged to solve Honduras’ infrastructure needs. He has previously been accused of embezzling public funds, allegations that he denies.

In addition to Asfura, there are two other likely contenders for Honduras’ presidency: Rixi Moncada, who served as the finance secretary and later defense secretary before running for president for the incumbent democratic socialist Libre party; and Salvador Nasralla, a former television personality who is making his fourth bid for the presidency, this time as the candidate for the Liberal Party.

Trump has framed Honduras’ election as a trial for democracy, suggesting in a separate Truth Social post that if Asfura loses, the country could go the way of Venezuela and fall under the influence of that country’s leader, Nicolás Maduro.

Trump has sought to apply pressure on Maduro, ordering a series of strikes against boats the U.S. suspects of carrying drugs, building up the U.S. military presence in the Caribbean with warships including the Navy’s most advanced aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford.

The U.S. president has not ruled out taking military action or covert action by the CIA against Venezuela, though he has also floated that he was open to speaking with Maduro.

Outgoing Honduran President Xiomara Castro has governed as a leftist, but she has maintained a pragmatic and even cooperative position in dealing with the Republican U.S. administration. She has received visits from Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and U.S. Army Gen. Laura Richardson, when she was head of U.S. Southern Command. Trump has even backed off his threats to end Honduras’ extradition treaty and military cooperation with the U.S.

Under Castro, Honduras has also received its citizens deported from the U.S. and acted as a bridge for deported Venezuelans who were then picked up by Venezuela in Honduras.

Argentine President Javier Milei, a staunch ally of Trump, also gave his support to Asfura in this weekend’s election.

“I fully support Tito Asfura, who is the candidate who best represents the opposition to the leftist tyrants who have destroyed Honduras,” Milei said Friday on his X account.

Boak and Sherman write for the Associated Press and reported from West Palm Beach and Tegucigalpa, respectively. AP writer Mike Sisak in Lancaster, Pa., contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Capitol Police on Tuesday announced that the agency was opening regional field offices in California and Florida to investigate threats to members of Congress in the wake of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

Threats against members of Congress have increased in recent years. As of Tuesday, total threats so far in 2021 were double what they were at this point a year ago, according to Capitol Police.

Home to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield) and other prominent members of Congress, California gives the law enforcement agency a Western base to investigate claims of threats made against members. The state is also home to the nation’s largest congressional delegation.

Yogananda Pittman, the department’s acting chief, told lawmakers in March that the vast majority of the increased threats were from people who didn’t live near Washington..

The field offices will be in the Tampa and San Francisco areas, according to Capitol Police.

“At this time, Florida and California are where the majority of our potential threats are,” a department spokesperson said in a statement. “The field offices will be the first for the Department. A regional approach to investigating and prosecuting threats against Members is important, so we will be working closely with the U.S. Attorney’s Offices in those locations.”

The new field offices are among the changes made since the attack six months ago in which Capitol Police were quickly overwhelmed by thousands of pro-Trump supporters, hundreds of whom were able to break into the Capitol building, forcing members to temporarily halt certification of the 2020 election results and flee for safety. Capitol Police leaders told congressional committees investigating the incident that they had no information that the crowd would become violent.

Five people died in the melee or the days after. Two officers died by suicide, and more than 140 were injured — some permanently. More than 500 people have been charged for participating in the attack.

Other changes, spurred in part by congressional investigations and reports by the department’s internal watchdog, include increased training for officers alongside the National Guard, improved intelligence-gathering efforts and protocols for reporting sensitive information, and new equipment and technology for officers.

The police agency rarely provides information to the public on how it operates, citing security concerns and member safety. For example, unlike other government agencies, the internal watchdog’s reports are not publicly available.

A spokesperson did not answer questions Tuesday about how many staff would be hired or what the cost to taxpayers would be.

The spokesperson said other regional offices were expected.

Very few members of Congress are accompanied by security outside of the Capitol building, and it is unclear if the new offices will primarily investigate threats against members or also will help when security is needed in the state. The Capitol Police have jurisdiction to investigate all threats made against a member of Congress.

Re “Film and Election Politics Cross in ‘Fahrenheit 9/11,’ ” June 11: Unconcerned about public reaction to Michael Moore’s admittedly biased movie “Fahrenheit 9/11,” Bush campaign spokesman Scott Stanzel is quoted as saying, “Voters know fact from fiction coming from Hollywood.” The question is, come November, will they know fact from fiction coming from Washington?

Rick Mittleman

Palm Desert