POLITICS

WASHINGTON — The NAACP is calling on Black athletes and fans to boycott the athletic programs of public universities in states that are taking steps that the nation’s oldest civil rights group says are restricting Black voting rights.

Launched on Tuesday, the “Out of Bounds” campaign urges prospective Black athletes, their families, alumni and fans to “withhold athletic and financial support” from major public universities in states that “have moved to limit, weaken or erase Black voting representation.”

If Black athletes participate in the boycott, it could deplete rosters for powerhouse football and basketball programs across the Southeastern Conference and Atlantic Coast Conference.

The NAACP is among groups responding to a wave of gerrymandering in the aftermath of a Supreme Court ruling that winnowed a key provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

The boycott comes as civil rights activists have mobilized across the South to protest redistricting plans by Republican state legislatures that eliminate majority-Black congressional districts after the high court’s ruling. Activists have looked for pressure points to dissuade GOP-led states from redistricting maps, including calls for mass protests and economic boycotts.

“Across the South, Black athletes have helped build some of the most profitable college athletic programs in America,” said NAACP President Derrick Johnson. Johnson noted that the programs “generate hundreds of millions of dollars in annual revenue, national television value, alumni donations, merchandising sales, ticket sales, and brand equity — much of it powered by Black football and basketball talent.”

The NAACP’s campaign calls out Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas and South Carolina as states to boycott, arguing that the athletic programs of those states’ flagship universities are especially reliant on Black athletic talent and should protect Black political interests.

“Black athletes should not be asked to generate wealth, prestige, and power for state institutions while those same states strip political power from Black communities,” said Johnson.

Black lawmakers themselves are also putting pressure on athletic leagues to take action against Republican-led states that may redistrict longtime Black members of Congress.

The Congressional Black Caucus on Monday sent a letter to the commissioners of the SEC and ACC athletic conferences, as well as NCAA President Charlie Baker, that its members will oppose the SCORE Act, a bill to standardize athletes’ contracting rights across the country, unless conference leaders oppose GOP-led redistricting efforts in states that include major conference members.

“The Congressional Black Caucus believes institutions that profit from Black talent and Black communities have a responsibility to stand with those communities when their fundamental rights are under attack,” the CBC said in a Monday statement. “Silence in the face of injustice is not neutrality — it is complicity.”

Brown writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — The U.S. government will permanently drop tax claims against President Trump, according to a settlement document that is part of a deal to resolve Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service over the leak of his tax returns.

As part of the settlement agreement, the U.S. is “forever barred and precluded” from examining or prosecuting Trump, his sons and the Trump organization’s current tax issues, according to a one-page document posted to the Justice Department’s website on Tuesday.

The settlement, which marks an extraordinary use of executive power, goes beyond resolving litigation and effectively helps shield the president from further examination of his finances and legal conduct.

The move comes after the Trump administration announced Monday the creation of a nearly $1.8 billion fund to compensate allies of the Republican president who believe they have been unjustly investigated and prosecuted, an arrangement that Democrats and government watchdogs derided as “corrupt” and unconstitutional.

The “Anti-Weaponization Fund” of $1.776 billion will allow people who believe they were targeted for prosecution for political purposes, including by the Biden administration Justice Department, to apply for payouts, creating what acting Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche called “a lawful process for victims of lawfare and weaponization to be heard and seek redress.”

Blanche, who was grilled by lawmakers on Capitol Hill on Tuesday, would not rule out the possibility that people who carried out violence during the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol will be considered for payouts from the new fund.

Democratic lawmakers and ethics watchdogs slammed the creation of the fund, saying it was corrupt, opaque and had the potential to become a “slush fund” for the president and his allies.

Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said Democrats intend to “fight every element of this self-dealing settlement.”

“Not only is this another heinously corrupt act by the most corrupt administration in history, it’s clearly a violation of the law that prohibits interference by executive branch officials in IRS audits.”

The fund was announced after Trump, his sons Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., and the Trump Organization agreed to drop their lawsuit against the IRS and the Treasury Department. The lawsuit alleged that a leak of confidential tax records caused them reputational and financial harm and negatively affected their public standing, among other allegations.

According to a separate settlement agreement posted to the Justice Department website Monday, Trump will receive a formal apology from the U.S. government but “will not receive any monetary payment or damages of any kind,” from the settlement.

Trump told reporters at the White House on Monday that the fund is dedicated to “reimbursing people who were horribly treated.”

Hussein writes for the Associated Press.

Former Biden Cabinet member Xavier Becerra remains the top Democrat in the California governor’s race despite being targeted by a barrage of negative political ads and enduring sharp attacks from his rival candidates during recent debates, according to a new poll released Tuesday by the state Democratic Party.

Billionaire Tom Steyer, a Democrat who is shattering self-funding records for statewide office, has been flooding the television airwaves, internet and social media with ads ripping Becerra’s long record in public office, as well as for accepting campaign donations from oil giant Chevron. But, thus far, that has not been enough for Steyer to overtake Becerra.

The survey found that 21% of likely voters backed Becerra, who also served in Congress and as California’s attorney general, while 15% backed Steyer. Among the other top Democrats: Former Orange County congresswoman Katie Porter received 7%; San José Mayor Matt Mahan came in at 4%; and state Supt. of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond and former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa registered at 1%.

Becerra on Tuesday said he believes he has climbed in the polls because voters are now paying attention to the race.

“They’re really looking closely at who’s out there, and I think I’ve been one of the beneficiaries of folks looking for a place that they can feel comfortable, where they can trust,” Becerra told reporters after a campaign event in South Los Angeles. “I think more and more as people look at the candidates, they’re going to start to crystallize behind somebody who won’t need training wheels, as I say, when they get into the governor’s office and can hit the ground running, day one.”

He said he thinks Steyer’s attacks aren’t working because Californians are skeptical of the billionaire.

“He’s spending like no one before, and he’s hitting like no one before, and so far, it hasn’t made a difference,” Becerra said. “We continue to surge, even after weeks of his barrage of lies and attacks…. California voters are not anxious to have someone who wants to buy the office.”

Leading all candidates in the race was Republican Steve Hilton, a former Fox News host, who was supported by 22% of likely voters. His top GOP challenger, Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, was backed by 10%, the poll showed.

While Hilton and Becerra right now appear to be the likeliest candidates to finish in the top two in California’s June 2 primary, which is required to advance to the November general election, there still remains plenty of time for political fortunes and voter support to rise or fall. Ballots were mailed to the state’s 23.1 million registered voters and early voting sites opened earlier this month, but most Californians have not sent them in thus far.

For Becerra, the strong poll results indicate an astounding turnaround for a campaign that appeared all but dead just weeks ago. In early April, the California Democratic Party tracking poll showed Becerra with support from just 4% of likely voters. That changed after then-Northern California Rep. Eric Swalwell, who had been the front-running Democrat in the race, withdrew from the campaign and resigned from Congress after he was accused of sexual assault and misconduct.

The California Democratic Party launched a series of tracking polls in March after leaders and allies grew increasingly concerned that Republicans would win the top two spots in the primary, shutting the party out of the November general election. This prospect, while statistically possible given the crowded field of candidates running for governor, has grown increasingly less likely as California voters finally focused on the contest to lead the nation’s most populous state and the world’s fourth-largest economy.

Under California’s top-two primary system, only the candidates who finish in first and second place in the primary advance to the general election, regardless of their political party or affiliation.

The poll of 1,200 likely voters took place between May 14 and 16 and has a margin of error of 2.83% in either direction.

ALLEN, Texas — President Trump on Tuesday endorsed Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, supercharging his effort to oust incumbent Sen. John Cornyn in a Republican primary runoff.

“Ken is a true MAGA Warrior who has ALWAYS delivered for Texas, and will continue to do so in the United States Senate,” Trump wrote on social media.

When news of the endorsement broke, Paxton supporters began cheering and dancing to “YMCA,” a Trump campaign anthem, at an event in Allen, Texas, where the attorney general was scheduled to speak.

Paxton and Cornyn qualified for the May 26 runoff after a March 3 primary, while Rep. Wesley Hunt finished third and did not advance.

Although the four-term Cornyn has backed Trump’s agenda in Washington, Paxton pitched himself as a political warrior for the Make America Great Again movement. Trump’s endorsement puts him at odds with his party’s establishment, which is convinced that Cornyn is the better candidate for November’s general election. The Democrats nominated Texas State Rep. James Talarico as their candidate for Senate.

In response to Trump’s endorsement, Talarico said in a statement that “it doesn’t matter who wins this runoff. We already know who we’re running against: the billionaire mega-donors and their corrupt political system.”

Cornyn’s campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment. On Monday, the senator said he believed that Trump had decided not to weigh in with an endorsement.

“I think the president doesn’t want to disappoint some of his own political base, and some of the Paxton people have been talking to him and encouraged him to support him, I think that was a bridge too far for the president so he’s just opted to say out of the race,” he said.

Cornyn also argued that Paxton is a liability in a general election, where Democrats hope to flip the seat blue, and “Ken Paxton would hand it to them on a silver platter.”

Trump, in his social media post, said Cornyn was “a good man” but “he was not supportive of me when times were tough.” He complained that “John was very late in backing me in what turned out to be a Historic Run for the Republican Nomination.”

The runoff between Cornyn and Paxton had been shaping up as a bitter and expensive battle for the future of the Republican Party, and one that was diverting resources from other competitive races elsewhere in the country.

Trump frustrated some Republicans by declining to endorse earlier in the race. On the Friday before the March 3 primary, he said that he had “pretty much” decided whom to support — but declined to say who — when asked by reporters on a visit to Corpus Christi.

On the day after the primary, Trump promised to make an endorsement and said he would expect the candidate without his support to drop out. Paxton had said that he would not leave the race.

Trump has had an at-times cool relationship with Cornyn, notably after the senator suggested in 2023 that Trump could not win the presidency again in 2024 and that his “time has passed him by.”

Cornyn also was an early critic of Trump’s plan for a border wall between the U.S. and Mexico — a project he now supports.

A former state attorney general and state Supreme Court judge, Cornyn was first elected to statewide office 36 years ago. His understated style and judge’s temperament contrast with the fiery rhetoric of Trump and his Make America Great Again movement.

Cornyn has had support from Senate Republican leadership, including South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, who warned that “it is a strong possibility we cannot hold Texas if John Cornyn is not our nominee.”

Some Republican leaders have worried the party will need to spend much more money to defend the seat if Paxton is the nominee — money they could be spending on Senate races in more competitive states. Paxton was acquitted in a 2023 impeachment trial on corruption charges. He also reached a deal in 2024 to end a long-running securities fraud case.

Trump stoked the competition on Feb. 27 in Corpus Christi, noting there’s “a little bit of a race,” while acknowledging their attendance.

“We have a great attorney general, Ken Paxton. Where’s Ken? Hi, Ken,” Trump said. He continued, “And we have a great senator, John Cornyn. Hi, John.”

“It’s going to be an interesting one, right? They’re both great people,” he added.

Trump mentioned the third candidate, Hunt, after running through the long list of Texas lawmakers present.

“Another friend of mine who is doing very well, Wesley Hunt,” he said. “Wesley Hunt, what a good job.”

Beaumont, Bedayn and LaFleur write for the Associated Press. Beaumont reported from Des Moines, Iowa, and Bedayn reported from Austin, Texas.

WASHINGTON — Acting Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche on Tuesday wouldn’t rule out the possibility that people who carried out violence during the Jan. 6, 2021 riot at the U.S. Capitol will be considered for payouts from a new $1.776 billion fund to pay individuals who believe they were targeted politically.

Pressed during a Congressional hearing over whether those who assaulted police officers would be eligible for compensation from the “Anti-Weaponization Fund,” Blanche responded that all people can apply if “they believe they were a victim of weaponization.” The acting attorney general also refused to say whether he would direct those responsible for deciding who receives payments — a commission whose members he is tasked with appointing — to restrict funds to those convicted of violence.

“What I will commit to is making sure that the commissioners are effectively doing their jobs, and that includes setting guidelines as you’re describing,” Blanche told Sen. Jeff Merkley, an Oregon Democrat. The decisions on payouts will be made a five-member commission appointed by the attorney general.

Appearing before Congress for the first time since taking the reins of the Justice Department last month, Blanche was peppered with questions about the fund announced on Monday to compensate those who believe they were mistreated by prior administrations’ Justice Department. Blanche said the fund was “unusual” but not unprecedented, adding that those who benefit will not be limited to Republicans or to people who were investigated or prosecuted by the Biden administration. At one point, Blanche said President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter — who faced gun and tax prosecutions under his father’s administration — could also apply.

Blanche defends $1.8 billion fund

Tuesday’s hearing was meant to address the Trump administration’s budget request for the Justice Department but quickly delved into other controversies that have escalated concerns about the erosion of the law enforcement agency’s tradition of independence from the White House. Blanche defended the creation of the fund without any acknowledgment that the Trump administration has pursued investigations of Trump’s political opponents, sparking criticism that the department is being weaponized in precisely the same way they allege it was under Biden’s administration to prosecute Trump.

In the weeks since assuming control of the Justice Department after Pam Bondi’s firing, Blanche has moved aggressively to advance the president’s priorities — pushing forward cases against Trump’s political foes, cracking down on leaks to media outlets and establishing the new fund to resolve Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service over the leak of his tax returns.

Democrats described it as an illegal abuse of power designed to line the pockets of Trump supporters with taxpayer dollars. Sen. Chris Van Hollen, the top Democrat on the Senate appropriations subcommittee holding the hearing, blasted the move as a “pure theft of public funds.”

“Rewarding individuals who committed crimes is obscene,” the Maryland Democrat said. “Every American can see through this illegal, corrupt, self-dealing scheme.”

The fund is in keeping with Trump’s long-running claims that the Justice Department during the Biden administration was weaponized against him, even though then-President Biden himself was investigated during that time and his son was prosecuted. Merrick Garland, who served as attorney general during the Biden administration, has repeatedly denied allegations of politicization and has said his decisions followed facts, the evidence and the law.

Trump administration has been rewriting the history of Jan. 6

The mere possibility that violent rioters at the Capitol could be considered for payouts is consistent with a Trump administration pattern of rewriting the dark history of Jan. 6, a trend that began when the president pardoned and commuted the prison sentences of the participants in the melee and that continued with the Justice Department firing some prosecutors who put them behind bars.

Under questioning from Merkley, Blanche said that he “will definitely encourage the commission” responsible for deciding on the payouts to “take everything into account.” But when asked whether he believes those convicted of violence should be entitled to compensation, Blanche said: “My feelings don’t matter.”

When Merkley suggested that Trump was using the Justice Department to target his political enemies, Blanche replied that this was precisely the sort of “disgusting” behavior of the Biden administration that the fund was meant to address.

“That is completely inappropriate and wrong,’ Merkley said. “There is no comparison to the absolute fair minded pursuit of justice under the previous administration, and this administration’s pursuit of an enemies list.”

Questions over the meaning of ‘weaponization’

In announcing the fund Monday, the Trump administration did not name specific individuals who might stand to benefit from it. The money itself would come from the federal judgment fund, which pays out court judgments and compromise settlements of lawsuits against the government.

Blanche told lawmakers that the Justice Department is committed to “full transparency” in providing public information about beneficiaries of the new fund.

“It’s not limited to Republicans. It’s not limited to Democrats. It’s not limited to January 6th defendants. It’s limited only by the term weaponization,” Blanche said, though the administration has not said how it will define “weaponization.”

Meanwhile, there were signs of discomfort about the fund even among some Republican members of Congress. Senate Majority Leader John Thune told reporters that he’s “not a big fan,” adding that he isn’t sure how the administration intends to use it, but doesn’t “see a purpose for that.”

Thune’s comments come after Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy, who lost reelection in a GOP primary on Saturday, called it a “slush fund.”

“We are a nation of laws,” Cassidy said. “You can’t just make up things.”

Richer and Tucker write for the Associated Press. AP reporter Mary Clare Jalonick in Washington contributed to this report.

Voters on Tuesday approved Proposition 64, making California the most populous state in the nation to legalize the recreational use of marijuana.

The approval of the ballot measure creates the largest market for marijuana products in the U.S. It comes six years after California voters narrowly rejected a similar measure. Activists said passage would be an important moment in a fight for marijuana legalization across the U.S.

“We are very excited that citizens of California voted to end the failed policy of marijuana prohibition,” said Nate Bradley, executive director of the California Cannabis Industry Assn. “Proposition 64 will allow California to take its rightful place as the center of cannabis innovation, research and development.”

Discouraged law enforcement officials said they will closely monitor implementation of the ballot measure.

“We are, of course, disappointed that the self-serving moneyed interests behind this marijuana business plan prevailed at the cost of public health, safety, and the wellbeing of our communities,” said Chief Ken Corney, president of the California Police Chiefs Assn.

Live updates from the day after the 2016 election »

“We will take a thorough look at the flaws in Proposition 64 that will negatively impact public health and safety, such as the initiative’s substandard advertising restrictions and lack of prosecutorial tools for driving under the influence of marijuana, and begin to develop legislative solutions,” Corney added.

Proposition 64 would allow Californians who are 21 and older to possess, transport, buy and use up to an ounce of cannabis for recreational purposes and allow individuals to grow as many as six plants. The measure would also allow retail sales of marijuana and impose a 15% tax.

Although the measure’s passage would immediately allow adults to possess and grow marijuana, there may not be places to legally purchase it for some time.

The measure only allows non-medical marijuana to be sold by state licensed businesses, and it gives the state until Jan. 1, 2018, to begin issuing sales licenses for recreational retailers.

With financial support from former Facebook President Sean Parker and New York hedge fund billionaire George Soros, the campaign was able to raise close to $16 million, about 10 times the money brought in by the opposition.

“It’s disappointing that big marijuana and their millions of out-of-state dollars were able to influence the outcome of these elections,” said former Rep. Patrick Kennedy, an advisor to the opposition group SAM Action. “We will continue to hold this industry accountable, and raise the serious public health and safety issues that will certainly come in the wake of legalization.”

However, Lynne Lyman, of the pro-legalization Drug Policy Alliance, said the ballot measure in California is the “gold standard” for other states should legalize pot.

California voters reject measure to repeal death penalty, approve plan to expedite it »

“The new law focuses on undoing the most egregious harms of marijuana prohibition, which have disproportionately impacted communities of color,” she said, adding it will be “protecting youth by preventing access to marijuana

Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom was a leading voice for the campaign, arguing that the national “war on drugs” has failed while disproportionately hurting minority residents and wasting law enforcement resources.

California had led the way 20 years ago by legalizing medical marijuana use in the state.

“I think it’s the beginning of the end of the war on marijuana United States,” Newsom said in an interview Tuesday night. “I think it will have repercussions internationally, particularly in Mexico and Latin America. And there are a million people who tomorrow can begin the process of clearing their records.”

Proposition 64 was opposed by most major law enforcement groups, including the California Assn. of Highway Patrolmen, the Peace Officers Research Assn. of California and the California Police Chiefs Assn.

Opponents cited problems including teen drug abuse and impaired driving experienced where recreational use was previously legalized: Colorado, Alaska, Oregon and Washington.

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Before Proposition 64, simple possession of marijuana was already decriminalized

In his first run for Congress two years ago, Justin Fareed, a relative newcomer to politics, relied mostly on his own money. He didn’t make it past the primary.

This year, the 28-year-old Republican, a former UCLA Bruins running back, has significantly more money to work with — $1 million.

Most of it — 80% — came from people living outside his Santa Barbara district. And nearly $200,000 has come from donors with ties to two of the state’s largest nursing home operators.

The businessmen, Lawrence Feigen and Shlomo Rechnitz, of L.A.’s Westside, have given the maximum allowed contributions, as have members of their families and their friends and employees.

Operators of skilled nursing facilities have a big stake in congressional decisions on healthcare funding and policy. Those businesses depend on funding from Medicaid and Medicare — and, in California, Medi-Cal – and they are under constant scrutiny by government regulators and inspectors.

Fareed himself is in the medical business; he is vice president of his family’s company, ProBand Sports Industries, which makes devices to treat tennis elbow and other repetitive stress injuries. In his candidate statement on the ballot, he also describes himself as a “third-generation cattle rancher” who understands “the burdensome taxes and regulations coming out of Washington, and the implications it has on small businesses and the agricultural community along the Central Coast.”

The congressional race in Santa Barbara, where Democratic Rep. Lois Capps is retiring, pits Fareed against Democratic Santa Barbara County Supervisor Salud Carbajal, who has raised $1.8 million. The field of five others includes Santa Barbara Mayor Helene Schneider, also a Democrat, and Republican Assemblyman K.H. “Katcho” Achadjian. The top two finishers in June will face off in November.

Feigen’s company SnF Management owns more than 35 long-term nursing facilities in California and Arizona under the name Windsor Healthcare.

Rechnitz owns more than 70 facilities and has been described as the state’s largest nursing home operator. In recent years, state and federal authorities have investigated his companies on charges including elder abuse and involuntary manslaughter.

Feigen and at least 30 of his employees, business associates, friends and family members have together contributed at least $108,000 to Fareed’s congressional campaign. Rechnitz, employees of his businesses and their family members have given at least $74,000.

Federal law caps direct donations to candidates at $2,700 for the primary and $2,700 for the general election.

Feigen donated the maximum amount to Fareed’s campaign. Rechnitz contributed $2,700. Three Feigen family members listed as students in finance disclosures each donated $2,700.

In addition, Feigen, his family’s trust and his company donated $25,000 to New Generation, a pro-Fareed political action committee that has since disbanded. Ramat Medical, where Rechnitz is chief financial officer, donated $10,000. Feigen and his wife also donated $10,000 to another PAC set up to support Fareed.

When asked about his donations, Feigen said he and his family “like people who are honest” and not part of the political establishment. He said he knew Fareed through business connections in the medical sector. Rechnitz, through a representative, declined to speak about his contributions to Fareed’s campaign beyond an emailed statement.

“Mr. Rechnitz is a major, non-denominational, non-partisan donor who last year alone contributed to more than 1,100 institutions,” Rechnitz’s spokesperson Stefan Friedman said in the statement.

At the recent opening of his campaign’s Santa Barbara headquarters, Fareed described Feigen as “a supporter like all of our other supporters for the campaign.”

Fundraising success

Fareed, a onetime Capitol Hill aide to a Kentucky congressman, ran for the Santa Barbara congressional seat in 2014, coming up a few hundred votes short of making it past the top-two primary to challenge Capps, the incumbent. That year, he raised about $190,000 and loaned his campaign $197,000.

Voter registration in the district, which stretches across San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara and Ventura counties, is almost evenly split between Democrats and Republicans. President Obama won the district by 11 points in 2012, and tea party favorite Chris Mitchum, son of the late actor Robert Mitchum, came close to ousting Capps in 2014.

Around 56% of Fareed contributors this year live outside the district, and they contributed $875,000 of his $1.08 million in donations.

About 77% of the $1.5 million that Fareed’s opponent Carbajal has raised from individual donors comes from inside the Central Coast district.

At least 90 of Fareed’s 490 donors live in West Los Angeles, in the Hancock Park, Fairfax and Mid-Wilshire neighborhoods. Supporters in the 90036 ZIP Code contributed a combined $235,000 to the candidate — nearly 25% of the money Fareed brought in since the campaign began.

Many of those Westside donors have ties to the medical industry, according to donation records filed with the FEC.

Feigen is the co-founder of privately owned SnF Management, which manages a chain of nursing facilities. He is also the chief executive of a medical device company that sells orthotic insoles, according to his company website and LinkedIn page.

Rechnitz’s facilities brought in $62 million in profits in 2013, according to a Sacramento Bee report, citing state figures.

In August, California Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris filed involuntary manslaughter charges against one of Rechnitz’s nursing homes, and two of its employees were also charged with dependent adult abuse. Charges against one defendant were dismissed at a hearing last month after she agreed to testify in this case. The charges against the head of nursing and the nursing home remain, and the case is pending. At another Rechnitz-owned facility in Orange County, two former employees were charged with three counts each of elder abuse and failure to report abuse. Their trial is scheduled for July.

For the Record

5:50 p.m., June 2: An earlier version of this article said charges of dependent adult abuse against one defendant were dismissed at a hearing this month. The hearing was in May.

In addition, three Rechnitz-owned facilities repeatedly failed inspections and were eventually decertified by the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, an agency spokesman said. Regulatory violations at facilities owned by Rechnitz have led to hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines. Rechnitz’s spokesman declined to comment on those cases but said the executive brought “59 nursing homes out of insolvency and currently provides life-saving care to thousands of Californians.”

‘A good guy’

West Hollywood resident Viktor Kogan and his wife each gave $2,700 to Fareed’s campaign in late October.

Asked recently about the contributions, Kogan said he could not recall donating to Fareed, adding that he had never heard of the candidate.

When shown a copy of a federal record noting his contribution, Kogan, 75, said his daughter, Ksenya Kogan, arranged the donation. She also contributed, and listed one of Feigen’s companies, SnF Management, as her employer.

Ksenya Kogan, an attorney, declined to comment about the donations except to say she had met Fareed through friends.

In nearby Hancock Park, Freda Stock gave a total of $5,400 to Fareed, but said she didn’t know anything about the candidate or his campaign. Stock said Feigen has done business with her husband and has been a family friend for “many, many years.”

Fareed’s campaign also has received donations from outside the state, including a $2,700 contribution from Chaim Feigen, a recent graduate of New York University who works for SnF Management and is registered to vote at Lawrence Feigen’s Los Angeles home. Asked about his contribution, he declined to comment.

Other donors interviewed by The Times said they had given money to Fareed’s campaign based on the advice of friends or business associates.

One of those is Denise Wilson, an executive at Ramat Medical, the West Los Angeles medical supply company where Rechnitz is chief executive. Wilson, who gave $2,700, said a group of people that she works with introduced her to Fareed’s campaign.

“They said that he was a good guy,” she said. “I couldn’t give you a definitive answer of his issues or what he stands for. They just said that he was a good, up-and-coming person to support our industry.”

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Lawrence Feigen’s brother, Alan, who also works at Ramat Medical and gave $2,700, said he did not know Fareed personally. He said that a client, whom he declined to identify, had asked Ramat Medical employees to support the candidate.

Among other donors, Ken Zelden, a vice president at Harris Office Products in Van Nuys, said he gave Fareed’s campaign $2,700 because he’d “been told he is a good guy.” “I’m looking forward to meeting him,” he said.

At a recent campaign event in Santa Barbara, Fareed said donors from the healthcare industry comprise “a very prominent base of support that we are developing all over the place.”

He added that his campaign has been holding meet-and-greets and fundraisers around Southern California.

“When you are working to develop an organization, an infrastructure for a campaign and one as significant as this one, it takes a huge geographical area that’s incredibly diverse,” he said.

Times staff writers Victoria Kim, Sarah D. Wire and Maloy Moore contributed to this report.

javier.panzar@latimes.com

@jpanzar

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Updates on California politics

UPDATES:

June 3, 8:40 p.m.: This article was updated to reflect two additional donations.

4:28.p.m.: This article was updated to include San Luis Obispo County in the description of the 24th Congressional District’s boundaries.

This article was originally published June 2 at 12:56 p.m.

Billionaire Tom Steyer, a leading Democratic candidate for California governor, as of Monday has donated a record-shattering $192.4 million of his personal wealth to his campaign in the lead-up to the June 2 primary.

The cash infusion dwarfs the money raised by all his Democratic and Republican challengers combined, and has fueled a torrent of political ads and a campaign infrastructure that’s kept him near the top of the opinion polls.

But Californians have dismissed rich candidates in the past, especially those who use their own fortunes to appeal to a largely middle- and working-class electorate struggling with day-to-day expenses in the notoriously costly state.

Steyer hopes to avoid the fate of former EBay CEO Meg Whitman, former Hewlett-Packard chief Carly Fiorina, banking and oil heir Michael Huffington and former Northwest Airlines co-chairman Al Checchi, none of whom were able to turn their riches into successful gubernatorial or senate campaigns in California over the last three decades.

Darry Sragow, a veteran Democratic strategist who managed Checchi’s unsuccessful 1998 bid for governor that set a self-funding record, said voters have long been skeptical of the motivation of rich people who run for office.

“Their basic reaction is, this person is incredibly successful, has made obscene amounts of money, could do anything they want to do in the world. Why would they want to run for office? Why would they want to represent me? What’s in it for them?” Sragow said. “And voters just go, ‘You’re just doing this for sport.’ … because they’re bored and they have big egos and they want something to do. That is the fundamental challenge for a self-funding candidate.”

Sragow said Steyer could benefit from his sustained involvement and financial support of climate change policy and other Democratic priorities, in addition to his immense spending in a race that lacks a clear front-runner less than three weeks before the primary.

Steyer said his and his wife’s decades-long work and funding of progressive causes sets him apart from previous wealthy self-funding candidates.

“I’m completely different from those people,” Steyer said in an interview on Friday. “I’ve been working full time on behalf of Californians for 14 years, and I was involved before that. You know, those people … never did anything but the private sector.”

He pointed to his and wife Kat Taylor’s work on ballot measures that took on the tobacco and oil industries, protected environmental laws and taxed out-of-state corporations to fund schools. They also backed successful efforts providing free breakfast and lunch for every California schoolchild, registering 1.2 million voters in the state, and supporting the state’s largest provider of services for immigrants, Steyer said.

“We didn’t just fall off the turnip truck. We didn’t just decide in our boardroom [that] we’re smarter than everybody else, they should listen to us.,” Steyer said. “We have been working within this system as private citizens for really a long time, and that’s the truth.”

Steyer said his background is completely different from the people who thought they would bring a business accounting method to state government, a belief he called “super juvenile.”

The hedge-fund founder turned environmental warrior has spent nearly $1 billion on his political pursuits. In addition to the $192.4 million Steyer has spent to date on his gubernatorial bid, he spent nearly $342 million on his unsuccessful 2020 presidential bid, $325 million on national Democratic candidates and causes, $67.4 million on state efforts and nearly $13.5 million backing a successful California gerrymandering ballot measure last year that was widely viewed as a precursor to his gubernatorial bid, according to state and federal fundraising disclosures and Open Secrets, a nonpartisan group that tracks electoral finances.

Californians watching television cannot escape his ads during local newscasts, sitcoms and niche programming such as the Puppy Bowl (the Animal Planet show that airs on Super Bowl Sunday).

Voters are being inundated with glossy multi-page mailers touting Steyer’s environmental record, his work taking on corporations and President Trump, and his campaign promises to build 1 million new affordable homes in four years, cut electric bills by 25% and enact single-payer healthcare.

Recently placing second in Real Clear Politics’ average of recent polls, Steyer is now third behind Republican Steve Hilton, a former conservative commentator and political strategist, and Democrat Xavier Becerra, a longtime elected official who most recently served as President Biden’s Health and Human Services secretary.

Steyer’s Democratic rivals argue that he is trying to buy the election with money his hedge fund made investing in fossil fuels, private prisons currently housing ICE detainees and other industries that are anathema to liberal voters. Only after making money from those ventures did he come out and oppose them, his challengers say.

Steyer “is a billionaire who got rich off polluters and ICE prisons and is now using that money to fund this election,” former Orange County Rep. Katie Porter said during an April debate.

Steyer responded that corporations such as Chevron and PG&E are spending heavily to defeat him because he is the sole candidate who would not be beholden to them.

“‘I’m the only person in this race that the corporate special interests are spending money against, and they’re spending tens of millions of dollars. And the reason that’s true is because I said I will only put the interest of working Californians first,” he told reporters last month in Sacramento. “They’re worried that I mean it, and I do.”

Steyer said the idea that the money funding his campaign is from controversial investments is “absurd.”

“That is such a bunch of bull, that that’s where my money comes from,” he said in the interview. “My money came from long-term investing over 27 years. It did not come from a couple of investments out of thousands that were there for a very short time and were, in terms of the actual money, irrelevant.”

Additionally, endorsements by influential left-leaning organizations — including actor/climate change activist Jane Fonda’s political action committee, the California Nurses Assn. and the Natural Resources Defense Council’s Action Fund — could assure voters who may be skeptical of his past.

He has donated millions to environmental groups and individuals who have endorsed him. Their goals align with Steyer’s long-term commitment to environmental causes. But he was accused of trying to use his money to win endorsements in Iowa and South Carolina during his 2020 presidential bid. He has also recently come under fire that social media influencers who were touting his gubernatorial candidacy did not disclose that Steyer was paying them.

In the 2010 governor’s race, Whitman spent $144 million of her wealth on an unsuccessful campaign, which set a record for statewide campaign spending in the nation until Democrat J.B. Pritzker broke it in 2018 by donating roughly $171.5 million of his fortune to his successful bid to be elected governor of Illinois.

Adjusted for inflation, Whitman’s spending would be nearly $220 million today. But she spent the money in a lengthy primary and general election, while Steyer is still weeks away from the primary and will almost certainly contribute more money before the June 2 primary and if he advances to the November election. Steyer declined to say how much he plans to spend on his bid.

Steyer’s outsized spending in a state that is home to many of the nation’s most expensive media markets could break the unsuccessful streak of wealthy Californians trying to win the state’s top offices, according to political experts.

“Steyer is outspending his opponents by far more than any other self-funded candidate in California,” said Dan Schnur, a longtime politics professor at USC, UC Berkeley and Pepperdine University. “It’s not a question of his message but rather the magnitude of his spending.”

However, Schnur added that the unsettled nature of the race reflects Democratic voters’ “built-in” resistance to supporting a billionaire who became wealthy because of investments that contradict their morals.

Veteran GOP strategist Rob Stutzman, a top adviser to Whitman during her 2010 campaign, said he didn’t think voters’ primary concern would be Steyer’s self-funding, but the money could make a difference.

“It’s not just that Steyer has self-funded to this amazing number,” Stutzman said. “There’s really nobody [else] that’s even spending enough money, arguably, to be successful.”

Steyer’s net worth is estimated at $2.4 billion by Forbes.

In 1986, Steyer founded Farallon Capital, once one of the largest hedge funds in the world. He sold his stake in it in 2012, saying he didn’t want to be associated with investments that did not align with his values.

“There’s a reason I walked away from that business and walked away from a ton of money, because I felt like that is not the life I want,” Steyer told San Francisco voters in March.

Though Steyer has repeatedly expressed regret about Farallon’s investments, his Democratic rivals argue that this is a convenient stance while Steyer benefits from the largess that Farallon created for him. He is using his money to not only tout his record and build a robust campaign operation, but to slash at competitors who present a threat to his candidacy.

Steyer has unleashed a blistering attack ad campaign against Becerra, who was once mired in the single digits and surged in the polls after former Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Dublin) dropped out of the race in April after being accused of sexual misconduct and assault.

Ads on television and social media accuse Becerra of being inconsistent about his position on single-payer healthcare and about what he knew about a federal corruption scandal that ensnared a former top campaign strategist for stealing funds from a dormant Becerra campaign account.

Steyer recently sent voters a mailer that castigates Becerra for taking campaign contributions from oil, tobacco and utility companies, and his handling of unaccompanied migrant children when he was HHS secretary.

“Xavier Becerra was supposed to keep immigrant kids safe, but thousands were lost, trafficked, or exploited,” the mailer says. “Becerra failed to protect children and they paid the price. What price will California pay when he fails us?”

On April 27 on the social media platform X, Steyer also called on Becerra to return a $39,200 contribution from Chevron.

Becerra responded with an ad that highlighted California’s natural beauty, from the coastline to the desert to the redwoods, as a respite from the deluge of Steyer ads.

“Take a break from all those Tom Steyer ads. Enjoy,” reads the introduction to the ad.

When Swalwell was still in the race, and topping the field of Democratic candidates, Steyer questioned the then-congressman’s eligibility to run for governor because of residency concerns, as well as his attendance record in Congress. Steyer ran ads saying that Swalwell skipped more than two-thirds of congressional votes while in office.

Rich politicians have won prominent elected offices, including financial executive Jon Corzine, who spent more than $100 million of his money on campaigns for New Jersey senator and governor. In California, self-funders have won lower offices, including Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis, who dropped out of the 2026 gubernatorial race and is now running for state treasurer; Richard Riordan in his 1993 Los Angeles mayoral bid; and Rep. Gil Cisneros, Rep. Sara Jacobs and former Rep. Jane Harman in their congressional races.

Steyer has never been elected to public office. The two times he has jumped into a race, there was a familiar pattern.

In last year’s state campaign about redrawing California’s congressional districts to counter Trump’s efforts to do so in GOP-led states, Steyer spent significantly in support of the effort led by Gov. Gavin Newsom. However, he did not donate to the official campaign backing Proposition 50. Instead, he spent his money featuring himself in ads that were widely viewed as a way to raise his visibility among voters before a gubernatorial bid.

In 2019, Steyer spent $8.5 million airing nearly 19,000 ads calling for Trump’s impeachment, according to the Wesleyan Media Project. That was on top of several million dollars he spent on ads that featured himself, leading Trump to call him “unhinged” and a “wacko” in 2017.

That year, when asked by The Times whether his financial support for Trump’s impeachment was laying the groundwork for a future political bid, Steyer demurred.

“One of the things that is now true in American politics — it is reflected in that question — is there is no sense that people might try and do something for its own purpose,” he said. “Throughout American history, people have chosen to do the right thing ’cause they felt like it was important.”

A year and a half later, Steyer launched his presidential campaign. Facing similar questions about the source of his wealth and poor showings in early Democratic primaries, he dropped out in February of 2020.

Times staff writer Nicole Nixon in Sacramento contributed to this report.

If anyone needs the axiom “Tell me who you’re with, and I’ll tell you who you are” whispered to them every morning as a reminder to do better, it’s Spencer Pratt.

Can someone do that ASAP, por favor?

Instead of holding events around Los Angeles to convince skeptics that his mayoral campaign is for everyone, the former reality television bad boy has bunkered himself inside an echo chamber of sycophants, friendly podcasters and milquetoast media outlets.

Instead of offering an on-ramp to join his pissed-off posse, he calls Mayor Karen Bass “Basura” — trash — and her supporters “Bassholes,” insults that his followers share and like on social media by the thousands.

Instead of enlisting surrogates to push an uplifting vision for L.A.’s future, Pratt elevates those who speak of the city as a West Coast Chernobyl.

He’s running on a message of righteous fury as a survivor of the Palisades fire, in an era when many Angelenos feel pessimistic about what’s next. In recent months, he’s raised funds at a faster pace than Bass and City Councilmember Nithya Raman and delivered a decent debate performance, while holding strong in the polls with two weeks left before the June 2 primary.

Now that Pratt has shown his electoral quest isn’t a farce, it’s time he shows all Angelenos that they can rely on a Republican entertainer with no political experience to head a largely progressive, multicultural metropolis.

Instead, he continues to double down on his doomsday message, exciting the type of people who have been whining that L.A. is a “Lost Cause” since the days of the Watts riots.

They’re the ones depicting Pratt in AI-generated videos as a superhero — Batman, Luke Skywalker and a gladiator, among others — battling Bass, cast as a clown, Darth Vader, the Joker or as herself handing out needles to half-crazed homeless people.

They hound anyone who points out that L.A. is nowhere near as apocalyptic as they make it out to be, when homicides are at their lowest since the 1960s, burglaries are down 30% from last year and unsheltered homelessness has dropped two years in a row. They follow Pratt’s example and call unhoused people with drug problems “zombies” and “bums” while depicting the L.A. of the past as a problem-free playground out of “The Wonderful World of Disney” that derailed once Democrats took over.

Not all of Pratt’s supporters are this obnoxious. But he repeatedly platforms the worst of them and shows no signs of stopping. That nihilism might sell books and gain followers — but it’s no way to prove to Angelenos he’s serious about fixing anything other than his reputation.

Mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt, left, poses with a supporter during a campaign event in Sherman Oaks.

(Etienne Laurent / For The Times)

Anyone who truly loves the city complains about it even on its best days. They realize L.A. can never be perfect, and that’s what makes it so wonderful. When people try to better their part of paradise, everyone benefits.

But Pratt needs to realize that Angelenos don’t want the city to be torn down, as dissatisfied as they may be. Criticizing the status quo is necessary — but waging a campaign of humiliation, a la Donald Trump, isn’t how to heal L.A. It won’t get large swaths of the city on your side, and it can’t spark the true change City Hall so desperately needs.

Instead, we get people like former Times contributor Meghan Daum — who now calls herself the “official Liberal Elite for Pratt” — gushing in the Atlantic about how her man is the “factory-reset option” to Make L.A. Great Again.

Resetting to when, Meghan? The 2000s of the Great Recession? The 1990s of anti-immigrant policies, the Northridge earthquake and the riots? The 1980s and its out-of-control gangs? The white flight of the 1960s? The 1950s of legal segregation and hideous smog?

Or just to the days when the problems that have long racked L.A. didn’t lap up to the denizens of Prattland — until they did?

These are the people who stayed largely silent as Trump unleashed ICE goons across Los Angeles last summer. They said nothing about housing affordability and violent crime in the years when those issues primarily afflicted South L.A. and the Eastside. They didn’t have a fit about homelessness until encampments spread beyond Skid Row.

Pratt’s loudest fans fundamentally loathe modern-day L.A., and that should chill all other Angelenos. These haters would be his primary constituents and populate his brain trust if he does beat Bass — and if he lets them take over, heaven help the City of Angels.

I’m not discounting Pratt’s chances of winning — he’s too savvy a media pro to fully flop. I knew Bass and Raman would misjudge the anger of Angelenos, fail to capitalize on that rage and find themselves on the defensive against Pratt’s populist push. I also figured he would eschew politeness for the demonizing that has tainted past L.A. elections, from Yorty’s mayoral campaigns of the 1960s to the San Fernando Valley secession movement a generation ago to the continued charges of communism thrown at the democratic socialist wing of the City Council.

I don’t blame Pratt for jumping into the race after his life was upended. And I sure don’t underestimate L.A.’s middle-class malaise, long a reactionary force in city politics with a winning track record that spans decades. But I can’t trust the guy and his crew for just now beginning to say they care about reforming L.A., when all he has fought for is his dark idea of the city.

And if you think L.A. needs a complete makeover, then you probably never really loved it in the first place.

On a recent podcast with Adam Carolla — who has long railed against L.A.’s liberal, multicultural ways and is planning to move to Nevada after his children graduate high school — Pratt huffed that he will “be done with trying to live” in the city if he doesn’t become mayor.

“I’ll go find somewhere that my kids will not have to see naked zombies,” he said, in a comment that was cheered on and seconded by his online army.

Do Angelenos really want to entrust their city to someone who might pick up his ball and quit on a place he professes to love, if he doesn’t get his way?

The plot has thickened. After having him removed from the Industry and National Production Ministry, sacking his trophy wife from government and keeping him in unpublicized captivity for three months, the Rodriguez administration completed a spectacular U-turn on Alex Saab. Madurismo’s shady financier and fixer is once again in US custody, two years after Maduro and the Rodríguez siblings celebrated his return through a prisoner swap brokered with the Biden administration.

Alex Saab became the centerpiece of a years-long propaganda campaign: billboards across the country hailed Venezuela’s heroic diplomat, leftwing influencers denounced the arrest of the man supposedly helping the nation overcome the siege of US sanctions, and embassies circulated the #FreeAlexSaab dossier among allied activists and journalists. 

The long-awaited extradition of Saab is evidently not the result of the Rodríguez siblings suddenly discovering he is a Colombian criminal, as the official Saime statement describes him, but rather part of Delcy’s cooperation with Washington DC whose agents were reportedly involved in his arrest in Caracas. New York prosecutors have recovered a key witness in the US vs Maduro et al case, whose next hearing is in six weeks, and will now use a close associate of both the DEA and the presidential couple against Nicolás and Cilia.

We’ll see what happens with Alex Saab’s new stint in the US. Developments might come sooner from the other Saab: Tarek William.

A new scapegoat?

Carmen Navas passed away on Sunday, a day after the conversation about Alex Saab and Delcy’s quagmire resurfaced. We’ve covered Navas and Victor Hugo Quero Navas, her 15-month search for information about an arrested son who dissolved into the cauldron of violence and injustice that emerged from the horrid events of 2024. Navas perished ten days after the State finally admitted her son had been dead for long. The pro-democracy movement is in shock. International media and foreign politicians are also reacting to the tragedy as well. There’s ample willingness to keep highlighting the responsibility of Venezuelan officials, so don’t expect pressure over the Quero case and other desaparecidos to wane anytime soon.

Enter Delcy Rodríguez, whose role in the Quero story is far less inconspicuous than official statements suggest. The Prisons Ministry admitted Quero was dead only because Delcy gave the green light. The Ombudsman’s Office agreed to take Carmen Navas’ testimony because Delcy deemed it acceptable. Now that the 82-year-old mother has finally succumbed to this blatant episode of administrative evil, the ball is in Delcy’s court. Not just to manage another wave of widespread indignation, but to go further in the narrative that the Rodríguez siblings can make chavismo move on from the so-called excesos e ineficiencias of their predecessors.

Jorge Rodriguez has introduced the regime’s idea of a clean break with the past, the mantra of the most ambitious transitional justice projects of the late 20^th century. With that damning “get over it, forgive us, and come home” line, Jorge hoped the public could forget the last 26 years without nothing in return, not human rights trials, not a power-alternation agreement with political rivals.

Prosecutor Tarek reportedly vowed to make prisoner Tareck suffer during the scandal investigations: “You’re dead. The country hates you today, but I will make sure the whole universe hates you too.”

Unable or unwilling to go anywhere near that, the regime’s best bet would be to go against the most disposable elements of the coalition: those who combine public contempt with overt involvement in repression, and who now appear to be losing influence while their human rights dossiers grow thicker by the day.

Under the current circumstances, former Prosecutor General Tarek William Saab looks like an ideal scapegoat. Parallel developments are not helping him. 

El Aissami’s strange return

April marked the beginning of the trial of 63 individuals targeted in the 2023–2024 crackdown against Tareck El Aissami’s political clan. 

Without the January 3 events, the PDVSA-crypto case would be business as usual, perhaps a hefty sentence after a few remote hearings, perhaps no trial at all. But in 2026 Venezuela, hearings involving El Aissami, his US-sanctioned frontman Samark López, and PSUV figures like Hugbel Roa have become opportunities to expose the torture they endured and explain why they believe chavismo turned against them three years ago. 

Last week, TalCual obtained a court statement from former lawmaker Hugbel Roa. He claimed Tarek William Saab had him arrested in retaliation for a parliamentary inquiry into the dealings of Saab’s brother in Anzoátegui, reportedly a major PDVSA contractor in the region. Roa also accused Saab of judicial meddling to shield his brother, and said police assaulted both him and his wife at the behest of Tarek William Saab and prosecutor Farik Mora, who allegedly tried to force him into recording a confession about a fabricated coup conspiracy involving Leopoldo López. 

In a separate hearing on May 8, former vice president and oil czar Tarek El Aissami tried to implicate an entire chain of command responsible for the torture and cruel treatment he suffered, including spending eight months in a windowless room with a powerful floodlight turned on 24/7. El Aissami accused former DGCIM chiefs Iván Hernández Dala and Alejandro Marcano Tabata, along with prosecutors including Tarek William Saab and Farik Mora. He also claimed Saab buried corruption cases involving members of his inner circle, and personally threatened to link El Aissami to the killing of Venezuelan rapper Canserbero—a cold case Saab miraculously solved when Maduro needed an electoral boost ahead of the 2024 election.

Saab saw this coming and will use every card he holds. It’s hard to think of anyone with more sensitive information on the regime and their leaders than Tarek William Saab.

Prosecutor Tarek reportedly vowed to make prisoner Tareck suffer during the scandal investigations: “You’re dead. The country hates you today, but I will make sure the whole universe hates you too.” 

Saab’s behavior has also been a recurrent theme in the anti-chavista camp recently. Joel Garcia, a prominent lawyer for political prisoners, claimed he had direct knowledge of Saab filming dissidents being tortured and sending the footage to Nicolás Maduro. Former presidential candidate Freddy Superlano claimed the only reading material available in the infamous El Rodeo I prison consisted of Saab’s poetry books. La Gran Aldea also recounted a night in which Superlano and fellow political prisoners Biagio Pillieri and Perkins Rocha—the latter still under house arrest—were simultaneously taken to the Chief Prosecutor’s Office, where a deranged Saab personally pressured them to reveal the whereabouts of María Corina Machado and the vote tallies from the July 2024 election. 

Our last Political Risk Report was clear on this matter. If Delcy Rodríguez moves to charge Tarek William Saab, “it will signal something far deeper than a single prosecution: a purge serious enough to make everyone wonder whether this is a first step toward removing a far more dangerous piece from the Jenga tower. But it will not be easy.”

Saab saw this coming and will use every card he holds. It’s hard to think of anyone with more sensitive information on the regime and their leaders than Tarek William Saab. 

Roa’s court statement said Saab retains influence through his old influence among clerks and prosecutors. He even expressed having faith in Larry Devoe, Saab’s successor and an old ally of Delcy Rodriguez. Maybe the first move will come from him, as a first big demonstration that the Ministerio Público is his to govern, and to imprint Delcy’s own brand of justice.Saab’s case is shaping up to be a defining test of Delcy’s willingness—and ability—to push forward the transformation of the regime, confront the old guard, make a few sexy headlines abroad, and neutralize the potential spoilers of her rule. If she decides to go ahead, few cases better illustrate the Prosecutor’s Office’s connivance and negligence under Saab’s eight-year tenure than the Quero case. The legal record, and the trail left by Carmen Navas’ search, could hardly be more convenient.

MINNEAPOLIS — A Minnesota prosecutor on Monday announced charges against an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer in the nonfatal shooting of a Venezuelan man during the Trump administration’s crackdown in the state.

The officer, Christian Castro, is charged with four counts of second-degree assault and one count of falsely reporting a crime in the Jan. 14 shooting of Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis, Hennepin County Atty. Mary Moriarty said at a news conference. A warrant was issued for his arrest.

“Mr. Castro is an ICE agent, but his federal badge does not make him immune from state charges for his criminal conduct in Minnesota,” Moriarty said, adding that Sosa-Celis never posed a threat. “There is no such thing as absolute immunity for federal officers who commit crimes in this state or any other.”

A federal officer shot Sosa-Celis in the thigh after he and another officer chased a different man to the apartment duplex where the man and Sosa-Celis lived. Moriarty said both Sosa-Celis and the other man were legally in the U.S.

Federal authorities initially accused Sosa-Celis and Alfredo Alejandro Aljorna of beating an officer with a broom handle and a snow shovel during the incident. But a federal judge later dismissed the charges, and federal officials opened an investigation into whether two immigration officers lied under oath about what happened.

Minneapolis last month released video of the incident captured from a distance by a city-owned security camera.

Department of Homeland Security and Justice Department officials didn’t immediately respond to emails seeking comment. Homeland Security previously said that lying under oath is a “serious federal offense” and that making false statements could result in an officer being fired or prosecuted.

The administration sent thousands of officers to the Minneapolis and St. Paul area as part of President Trump’s national deportation campaign. Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, called Operation Metro Surge its largest immigration enforcement operation ever and deemed it a success.

But tensions mounted during the weekslong campaign, and the shooting deaths of U.S. citizens Renee Good and Alex Pretti by federal officers provoked mass unrest and questions about officers’ conduct.

Hennepin County, which includes Minneapolis, has been conducting investigations into multiple incidents and filed charges last month against an ICE agent for alleged actions while on duty.

Minnesota leaders and the Trump administration have since clashed over which has the authority to investigate and prosecute officers for conduct while on duty. The Trump administration has suggested that Minnesota officials don’t have jurisdiction.

State officials have said they don’t trust the federal government to investigate itself or hold officers accountable.

“There’s no modern precedent for what happened to the people here in Minnesota,” Moriarty said Monday. “So it requires a lot of us to dig in and look at ways to hold people accountable that we probably never thought we would be looking at in our careers.”

Hennepin County continues to investigate Good’s and Pretti’s killings and sued the administration in March over access to evidence in the two cases, as well as in the case involving Sosa-Celis. Although Moriarty hasn’t charged anyone in either killing, she has said she’s confident her office’s investigations will bring transparency, even if not criminal prosecution.

Fingerhut and Sullivan write for the Associated Press. Fingerhut reported from Des Moines, Iowa.

NUUK, Greeland — Greenland’s Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen said Monday that he had a respectful and positive meeting with President Trump’s special envoy to the Arctic territory, but that he made it clear that the Greenlandic people continue to insist on self-determination.

Greenland is a semiautonomous territory of NATO ally Denmark, and Trump in the past has frequently insisted that the U.S. should take control of the island for security reasons, which has raised sovereignty concerns and pushback from Greenlandic and Danish leaders.

“The Greenlandic people are not for sale. Greenlandic self-determination is not something that can be negotiated,” Nielsen was quoted by Danish TV 2 as saying after meeting on the island with the envoy, Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry.

Nielsen also reiterated that the Greenlandic people “seek good cooperation” with the U.S., and said his “courtesy meeting” with Landry took place with “mutual respect and in a positive atmosphere.”

Landry reportedly said upon his arrival in Greenland on Sunday that Trump had told him to “go over there and make as many friends as we can get,” public Danish broadcaster DR reported.

Greenland’s Foreign Minister Múte B. Egede told reporters Monday that a working group involving the U.S., Greenland, and Denmark continues to try to find a solution to the repeated U.S. demands for control over Greenland. Trump has suggested that Russia or China may be on the verge of seizing Greenland, a notion that regional experts have dismissed.

“We haven’t been the ones creating obstacles to cooperation between the United States and Greenland,” said the Greenlandic foreign minister, who also participated in the meeting with Landry and his delegation in the Greenlandic capital of Nuuk.

“So if we are to continue down this positive and constructive path, we must await the working group’s report,” he said, according to TV 2, adding that the work in the group appears “more promising” than before.

U.S. Ambassador to Denmark Ken Howery, who is also part of the American delegation in Greenland, is expected to inaugurate the U.S. Consulate’s new offices in Nuuk, and both he and Landry are to attend a business fair on Tuesday and Wednesday, local media reported.

WASHINGTON — President Trump on Monday moved to withdraw his $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service over the leak of his tax returns after reports that his administration was poised to create a fund to compensate some of his allies.

The disclosure was made in a filing in federal court in Florida, where the lawsuit was filed last year.

ABC News first reported last week that Trump was prepared to drop his lawsuit as part of a deal that would create a $1.7 billion fund to pay allies of the president who believe they were wrongly investigated and prosecuted.

The court filing did not mention terms of any potential deal.

News that the Trump administration was contemplating a fund to pay Trump allies drew an immediate backlash from Democrats, including Rep. Jamie Raskin, who called the idea “unconstitutional.”

“This, of course, is a political grievance fund that Donald Trump can use to pay off his friends,” Raskin, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, said in an interview Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.”

“If these people have a valid cause of action, they should bring it to the court like every other American does, and use the system of due process, and proving things by clear and convincing evidence, or a preponderance of evidence, go and prove it. But the idea that Donald Trump can just pass it out like a pardon is absurd,” he added.

It was not immediately clear who precisely will stand to benefit from the fund but its creation reflects Trump’s long-running claims that the Biden administration Justice Department was weaponized against him.

He has cited as proof the since-dismissed criminal charges he faced between his first and second terms of conspiring to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election he lost and of retaining classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. Several aides of his were also prosecuted, as were hundreds of Trump supporters who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Merrick Garland, who served as attorney general during the Biden administration, has repeatedly denied allegations of politicization and has said his decisions followed facts, the evidence and the law. His Justice Department also investigated Biden for his handling of classified information and brought separate tax and gun prosecutions against Biden’s son Hunter.

Nonetheless, Trump’s current Justice Department has actively pursued the president’s retribution campaign and grievances, bringing criminal charges against some of his perceived adversaries and initiating a wide-ranging investigation that aims to establish a years-long conspiracy between law enforcement and intelligence officials to destroy Trump’s political prospects and keep him power.

No charges have been brought in that investigation and it is not clear that any ever will be.

Trump filed a lawsuit earlier this year in a Florida federal court, alleging that a previous leak of his and the Trump Organization’s confidential tax records caused “reputational and financial harm, public embarrassment, unfairly tarnished their business reputations, portrayed them in a false light, and negatively affected President Trump, and the other Plaintiffs’ public standing.”

The president’s sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, are also named plaintiffs in the suit.

Hussein, Tucker and Richer write for the Associated Press.

SACRAMENTO —  The Democrats’ mantra this election year — especially among wannabe governors — is that the richest Californians should “pay their fair share.” But by any objective measurement, they already do.

I’m referring to state taxes, not federal. It’s a valid argument that the most prosperous Americans should kick in more to the federal government, particularly after President Trump and the Republican Congress lowered taxes for the wealthy, who already had a pretty good deal.

But it’s a different story in California, where state government lives off the well-heeled. Yet, never-satisfied liberal Democrats and public employee unions constantly cry for more.

In fact, an unexpected surge of $16.8 billion in state tax revenue, mostly due to the stock market boom and capital gains earnings, is bailing out Gov. Gavin Newsom and allowing him to claim a balanced budget as he prepares to depart Sacramento and run for president in 2028.

The state Franchise Tax Board recently reported which income groups pony up the most taxes. The more money you earn, the steeper your income tax burden. Of course, that’s the way it should be. But California pushes its progressive tax system to the extreme.

We’ve got by far the highest state income tax rate in the nation at 13.3%.

In 2024, the latest year for which there’s complete data, the top 1% of California taxpayers accounted for 40% of the total state income tax revenue, the FTB reported. But they earned just 24% of the taxable income. To be in the top 1%, your annual earnings had to be at least $973,000.

The top 0.1% kicked in 21% of the tax, while earning 12% of the income. To be in that megarich class, you needed annual earnings of at least $4.7 million.

By contrast, middle-class families with incomes between $73,000 and $139,000 paid 9% of the state’s income tax take.

This doesn’t mean we should weep for the rich and demand more from the struggling lower middle class.

But the problem with Sacramento living off the wealthiest taxpayers is that they’re unreliable. Their fortunes flourish in boom times and fall when the economy busts. When the stock market sneezes, California state government catches pneumonia.

If the state treasury is overflowing, Democratic lawmakers tend to spend freely, expanding programs and creating new ones. Then when the cache inevitably shrinks in bad times, the policymakers’ usual response is to essentially turn their eyes.

Rather than sharply whack spending and raise taxes, they gimmick up the budget with borrowing, deferred spending and crossed fingers. And they dig the hole deeper.

For decades, under Democratic and Republican governors, we’ve sorely needed to update our archaic tax system to make it less volatile and more dependable.

A reform that makes lots of sense is to extend the sales tax to services primarily used by businesses. They could deduct the cost on their federal tax returns. And California state and local governments would steadily collect several billion dollars annually. Some income and sales tax rates could even be lowered.

California also has the nation’s highest state sales tax rate at 7.25%. Combining state and local sales tax rates, we have the seventh-highest at 8.99%.

Taxing deductible business services makes sense to many politicians — but only privately. They’re too weak-kneed to seriously consider it in public. There’d be winners and losers and high political risks.

When Xavier Becerra, the current Democratic front-runner in the June 2 gubernatorial primary, entered the race a year ago, I asked him about extending the sales tax to services, as all other states do. He wanted nothing to do with it.

“We need to stabilize our tax system in California with a more steady source of revenue,” he told me. “But I’m not a fan of the sales tax to begin with. It lands on working families.”

He was not interested in exploring a possible tax on services that didn’t hit working families.

Becerra, a former California attorney general and U.S. health secretary, added: “Before we start exploring new taxes, we should explore existing budget spending. We have to scrub the budget.”

In revising his new budget proposal last week, Newsom proposed $5.1 billion in modest tax hikes on businesses — even as unanticipated revenue was surging. He asked the Legislature for a limit on corporate tax credits and a tax on digital software.

He also proposed to trim $3.7 billion from Medi-Cal healthcare for the poor.

Newsom proposed spending $349.9 billion in the next fiscal year and asserted that budgets would be balanced for 18 months. But after that, he and practically everyone else in Sacramento foresee deficit spending without extensive fiscal restructuring.

But you don’t hear a peep about that from leading Democratic candidates running to replace Newsom. Most are talking about imposing significantly higher business taxes to pay for new or expanded programs.

Billionaire hedge fund founder Tom Steyer wants to close “the corporate tax loophole.” What he’s talking about is gutting Proposition 13’s property tax breaks for commercial holdings. He’d make it easier to reassess when partners sell their portions of a property — a commonly called “split roll” that would treat commercial property differently than residential.

That was tried in 2020 and rejected by voters.

Steyer also supports the billionaire tax that’s expected to be on the November ballot. It would impose a one-time 5% tax on the net worth of California’s 200-plus billionaires.

To their credit, no other gubernatorial candidate supports this misguided proposal. Practically all the $100-billion windfall would flow solely into healthcare while causing fed-up super wealthy to flee the state.

Former Orange County Rep. Katie Porter would raise taxes on the most profitable corporations to pay for free child care and college tuition. They’re both good causes but of questionable fiscal feasibility right now.

Rather than pushing rich investors and job creators out of state, we should be encouraging them to stick it out in California and continue to pay their fair share.

What else you should be reading

The must-read: Who won and who lost in Thursday night’s California gubernatorial debate? Our columnists weigh in
TikTok dough: The Steyer campaign pays influencers. Their posts don’t always make that clear
The L.A. Times Special: Steyer campaign staffer linked to video of rival Katie Porter berating staff

Until next week,
George Skelton

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The Hollywood sign is ablaze as Spencer Pratt, the reality TV star now running for mayor of Los Angeles, suits up as Batman, enters City Hall and leads the people to overthrow a cabal of corrupt, out-of-touch progressives intent on destroying the city.

Then he is Luke Skywalker. Dressed in a Jedi robe, he swoops through the city on an Imperial speeder bike, as California Gov. Gavin Newsom (Emperor Palpatine) rebukes incumbent Mayor Karen Bass (Darth Vader) for not burning the city down to the ground in her first term.

“Make sure you finish the job in your second,” Newsom tells Bass with a tilt of the head and a smirk.

“The only thing that can stop us is someone telling the truth,” Bass replies. “As long as they don’t have any hope, the city’s ours.”

Pratt’s fan-generated AI election campaign videos have been praised and mocked, but heavily shared. And some see them as a harbinger of how artificial intelligence could reshape political messaging across the country.

His supporters are far from the first to create AI-generated ads. But political experts say it’s remarkable the degree to which they have used new technology to churn out a stream of outlandish, hyper-cinematic memes, creating buzz around his campaign and his message.

Some warn, however, that as the technology becomes more sophisticated, it will become harder for many people to distinguish between AI and real videos.

“When you’re creating content that is not based in reality, and then platforms are amplifying it in order to attract more eyeballs, you are putting a burden on the public for figuring out what is real and what is factual, and what is fake and misleading,” said Mark Jablonowski, the chief executive of DSPolitical, a progressive advertising firm.

Pratt’s campaign did not create the viral AI videos depicting him as a superhero taking on a cast of California Democratic villains. But he has shared the ads crafted by AI filmmaker Charlie Curran, founder of L.A.’s Menace Studio.

Supercharged and Hollywood inspired, the videos represent a brazen new era of fan-generated AI in political campaign advertising. Deploying generative AI tools to clone human voices and images, they bolster a hyperbolic and ultra-conspiratorial political narrative that depicts L.A. under Democratic rule as a hellscape in which Newsom and Bass deliberately conspire to harm the people.

Bass has condemned the ads, describing them as “very scary” and “absolutely 150% fiction.”

“His social media is now taking on a violent turn,” Bass told CNN, citing the Batman ad that depicts Angelenos pelting her with tomatoes.

Some political experts dismiss such fears of AI campaign ads as overblown. Most AI videos shared by political campaigns and their fans, they note, are more comedic than deliberately misleading.

“Spencer Pratt is using AI the way it should be used, which is to sharpen reality,” said Matt Klink, an L.A.-based Republican political consultant. “His whole shtick is that Los Angeles is broken, the insiders have failed, and the political class wants to explain away what voters are seeing with their own eyes.”

“Obviously, you don’t run an AI ad where you have someone saying something that they didn’t say, and you should disclose that they’re generated by AI,” Klink noted. But when it comes to ads that depict Pratt as Batman or Luke Skywalker, he said, “if you don’t know that they’re AI generated, you’re pretty clueless to begin with.”

For as long as political candidates and their supporters have experimented with new technology — from the pamphlets of the 1600s to the memes of the 21st century — they have faced complaints that they mislead the public.

As large language models ushered in a new era of AI, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) warned in 2024 that “a deluge of deception, disinformation and deepfakes are about to descend on the American public.”

The term “deepfake” was first coined in 2017 by a Reddit user who used open-source face-swapping technology to splice celebrity faces onto porn performers’ bodies. Within months, it entered the mainstream lexicon as a way to describe any AI-generated synthetic media that realistically clones a person’s image or voice.

Blumenthal cited a “chilling example.” In January 2024, Republicans placed robo calls using an AI “deepfake” voice mimicking President Biden to New Hampshire residents to discourage Democrats from voting in the presidential primaries.

New Hampshire authorities said the message violated the state’s voter suppression laws. A month later, the Federal Communications Commission outlawed robocalls that use voices generated by AI. The company that sent the messages agreed to pay a $1-million fine.

But others kept pushing the boundaries of AI — mostly as overt parody or satire, an arena that offers greater 1st Amendment protection.

In July 2024, an AI content creator created a mock campaign ad of Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris with a computer-generated voiceover to make it seem she was describing herself as the ultimate “diversity hire” and “deep state puppet.” The post was titled ‘Kamala Harris Campaign Ad PARODY.’

Newsom slammed the post, saying on X, “Manipulating a voice in an ‘ad’ like this one should be illegal.” Two months later, he signed into law a series of bills that clamped down on AI in politics.

But a federal judge blocked one of the new laws that regulated election-related content that is “materially deceptive,” saying it probably violated the 1st Amendment.

No comprehensive federal rules govern the use of AI content in political ads or messaging. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, 29 states have passed laws restricting the use of deepfakes in political campaigns: Some states, such as Texas and Minnesota, prohibit the use of deepfakes  a certain number of days before an election; the other 27 states require a media disclosure if content contains a deepfake.

Some political advertising experts call for more federal regulation. The state-by-state patchwork of regulations, they argue, makes it very difficult for social media platforms to be compliant.

“At the end of the day, we really need to see platforms being more responsible with the content that they’re sharing,” Jablonowski said. “We need to have clear guidelines and a level playing field across the country, so we’re not in a position where what’s OK in one state is not OK in another.”

Pratt’s embrace of AI is part of a larger 2026 political trend.

In January, Texas Atty. Gen. Ken Paxton released an ad depicting two of his opponents for a Senate seat — Republican Sen. John Cornyn and Democratic Rep. Jasmine Crockett — waltzing and swinging. A few months later, the National Republican Senatorial Committee shared a video that used a manipulated image of James Talarico, the Democratic nominee for the Texas Senate seat, mouthing his own tweets.

But Pratt has been particularly successful in using fan-based AI to help garner attention, pulling in a number of content creators to craft AI videos for his campaign.

One posted a video parody of the 2004 Downfall film, portraying Bass as Hitler. Another created an animated video, geared to a Latino audience, showing Angelenos lining the streets to cheer as Pratt wheels a garbage can piled with trash and the incumbent mayor. The slogan “SPENCER, SACA LA BASSURA” [Spencer, take out the trash] flashes atop the screen.

A recent survey from the American Assn. of Political Consultants shows that AI adoption is growing rapidly among political consultants — and Republicans are more likely to use it than Democrats.

But political observers in L.A. note that leading Democrats in the mayoral race are unlikely to follow Pratt in using AI. Bass, they note, is a more cautious political figure than Pratt, a brash online influencer who relished playing the role of villain on MTV’s “The Hills.”

While Pratt’s user-generated AI ads have inspired giddy delight from out-of-state Republicans — conservative radio host Buck Sexton praised the Batman video for ushering in “a new era of online persuasion” — it’s still not clear if they will convince Angelenos to vote for him.

Certainly, the ads have helped Pratt gain recognition. They have also given voice to a groundswell of frustration with L.A.’s Democratic establishment and created space for more pressing debate on the future direction of the city.

But there is little evidence that the AI ads, in themselves, are persuading new voters.

So far, none of the AI ads that Pratt has shared have received as many views on his X account as a non-AI ad his campaign produced that has racked up more than 14 million views.

In it, Pratt stands outside Bass’ city-owned Hancock Park mansion and Nithya Raman’s home in leafy Silver Lake, then pans to an Airstream on the charred ruins of his own home, which burnt down during the Palisades fire.

“They don’t have to live in the mess they’ve created,” Pratt says as he walks down an L.A. street littered with homeless tents.

Meghan Daum, a former Los Angeles Times columnist who has endorsed Pratt and dubs herself a self-appointed “liberal elite whisperer for Pratt,” said she thought Pratt’s Airstream ad was more effective than the AI superhero ads. She voiced concern his sharing of AI videos could actively undermine his campaign.

“They will be repellent to the undecided voters Pratt needs to catch, most of whom will think they’re coming directly from the campaign,” she said on X. “Get smarter, guys.”

Using AI, she told The Times, could turn off voters in a town where so many film workers have lost jobs to AI. She also worried about the legality of ads — such as one video purporting to be a Bass campaign ad — that put words in the mouth of computer-generated politicians.

But Daum noted that others told her this was the aesthetic of the new world and a way of getting people who have not voted in the past excited about something.

“That may be true,” she said.

So far, there is little evidence that AI in U.S. political campaigns has affected elections.

“There’s a lot more fear about the effects of AI in politics than evidence of the effects of AI in politics,” said Brendan Nyhan, a political scientist at Dartmouth College who co-authored a recent report on AI and persuasion.

During the 2024 election, Nyhan noted, AI was frequently used to create “obviously false” images of attention-grabbing, funny or raging content. “It seems to be more of a mechanism for reaching your base,” he said, “rather than persuading voters who haven’t made up their mind or might stay home.”

Ultimately, Pratt’s personal story of loss — and more specific complaints about L.A.’s systemic failures in preparedness and emergency response during the 2025 firestorms and spending on unsuccessful programs to house the homeless — may resonate more than simplistic AI stories of evil Democrats hellbent on razing their city.

Some L.A. political observers admit they were surprised by Pratt’s performance in a May 6 televised debate with Bass and Raman.

”Spencer Pratt was kind of a laughingstock when he first announced that he was going to run, and he has dramatically exceeded expectations,” said Klink, the GOP strategist. “I think that he surprised people in his ability to come up with solutions. … That’s what’s going to convince people to vote, not the Batman or Star Wars ad.”

As millions of people click on Pratt videos — in some cases more than the 3.8 million people living in L.A. — Klick said there was one question Pratt needs to be asking: “Do views of his ads translate into votes?”

San José Mayor Matt Mahan’s run for California governor has been defined from the start by his donor list.

Mahan entered the race late and with little statewide name recognition, but catapulted into contention thanks to massive funding from billionaire tech titans, venture capitalists, cryptocurrency investors and other Silicon Valley elites. In a state with more than 23 million voters and hugely expensive media markets, the money signaled Mahan would be a contender.

It also spurred accusations from his more liberal Democratic competitors and powerful labor leaders that Mahan is beholden to Big Tech, including forces aligned with President Trump.

California Labor Federation President Lorena Gonzalez Fletcher recently described Mahan as “funded by Trump’s big tech billionaires,” while fellow Democratic candidate Tom Steyer — a billionaire running against corporate interests — called him “MAGA Matt Mahan.”

That framing has persisted, despite Mahan being a centrist Democrat who has publicly criticized Trump.

On Thursday, Mahan released a four-page “Plan to Hold Big Tech Accountable and Ensure AI Works for All Californians.” The proposal called for AI and data centers to pay for their power and water needs, fund workforce stability initiatives and ensure human oversight of AI tools in critical sectors such as healthcare. It also called for the state to use AI to become more efficient, to bar cellphones in schools and to require parental consent for kids 15 and under joining social media.

In an interview with The Times, Mahan, 43, said AI is “one of the most significant trends in society” and needs to be addressed.

He also rejected the notion that he would do Big Tech’s bidding, and the idea that his support from tech leaders is entirely or even largely premised on his plans for their industry.

“I’ve spoken very little about tech with any of my donors,” he said.

Mahan said his fundraising has instead been “centered on how we get California on a better path in terms of building housing, improving the quality of our public schools, solving our biggest problems,” which “just resonates with people in the tech industry.”

A ‘digital native’

Mahan, the son of a teacher and a mailman, grew up in the farming community of Watsonville but commuted to San José to attend high school at Bellarmine College Prep on scholarship as a low-income student. He went on to Harvard University, where he was student body president and classmates with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, spent a year in Bolivia building irrigation systems, and then taught for two years in Alum Rock as part of the Teach for America program.

He then joined Causes, an early Facebook application that allowed nonprofits to build grassroots support online, and rose to become chief executive. In 2014, he co-founded Brigade, a nonpartisan platform where voters could advocate for issues, which was acquired in 2019. He won a San José City Council seat in 2020, and was elected mayor in 2022.

An early mayoral profile described Mahan as painting a whiteboard behind his desk to “write on the wall as I did in my tech days.” Another noted he used ChatGPT to write speeches. A third recounted how he’d used AI to make city buses run faster.

Mahan said he learned as a startup leader and a classroom teacher that metrics matter — that “when we take our precious tax dollars and invest them in public services, we should measure our performance.”

He said he has always believed government should take the best tech has to offer while being vigilant about the risks it poses, which maybe comes naturally to him as a millennial who remembers “the world before the internet” but is also something of a “digital native.”

Donors explain

Between Jan. 1 and April 18, Mahan’s campaign raised nearly $13.5 million, according to state campaign finance filings. During the same period, an independent expenditure backing Mahan called Back to Basics raised about $22.7 million, while another launched by the group Deliver for California raised nearly $3.3 million.

The donors are a who’s who of tech leaders, venture capitalists and other leaders in the gig, gaming, digital media and AI defense fields.

Sergey Brin, the co-founder of Google, gave the maximum individual contribution of $39,200 to Mahan directly, and $1 million to the Deliver for California committee. Reed Hastings, the co-founder and chairman of Netflix, gave the maximum contribution to Mahan, plus $1 million to the Back to Basics committee.

Some donors, such as LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, who gave the maximum to Mahan, are well-known supporters of progressive causes. Others, such as Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale and crypto founder David Marcus, who maxed out to Mahan, are also Trump backers.

Brin, a friend of Gov. Gavin Newsom since the Democrat was mayor of San Francisco, has been moving rightward recently. He has donated to the Republican National Committee and in March was appointed to the White House tech advisory council. He’s also a major donor to the nonprofit opposing the ballot measure for a new tax on California billionaires — which Mahan also is against.

Brin, Lonsdale and Marcus did not respond to a request for comment. Hastings and Hoffman declined to comment.

Several other tech donors did speak with The Times — and universally described their support for Mahan as less to do with his tech policies, and more to do with issues important to all Californians.

Jamie Siminoff, who sold his home security startup Ring to Amazon for $1 billion and gave the maximum donation to Mahan, said he thinks L.A., where he lives, is the “greatest city in the world” and California is the “best state in the world.” But he sees Mahan as someone who could make improvements by bringing the state toward the political middle on public safety, housing and homelessness.

“He’s just like a nice, pragmatic, sort of centrist person, from what I can see, [who] wants to make California better, and I’m 100% behind that.”

Siminoff said it doesn’t hurt that Mahan speaks the same language as many tech leaders, who are mostly just “pragmatic inventors and entrepreneurs” who want California’s leader to be “principled in thinking about fixing things.”

Ruchi Sanghvi, the first female engineer at Facebook and a former Dropbox executive who state records show donated $25,000 to Mahan, said she has known Mahan since he was leading Causes but fell out of touch. When he entered the governor’s race, and she “got all these emails from people that I respect” saying they were supporting him, she asked for a meeting.

At that meeting, she said, Mahan “really dug in on some of the core issues that I care about,” including housing, homelessness and education.

The San Francisco resident, political independent and mother of three said the idea that tech leaders are backing Mahan because they believe he will scratch their back in business is wrong. Referring to his tech plan’s restrictions on social media for youth, she said, “I don’t think of that as scratching my back.”

Instead, “what really resonates with me and my peers is that, yes, he is pragmatic,” Sanghvi said. “He cares about measurable outcomes, which I think is very critical.”

Marc Merrill, co-founder, co-chairman and chief product officer of L.A.-based video game developer and e-sports company Riot Games, gave the maximum to Mahan, as did his wife, Ashley, founder of the sleepwear brand Lunya. In a statement to The Times, Merrill said he and his wife are lifelong Californians who love the state and support Mahan because of his record “addressing California’s most pressing challenges with practical, results-oriented solutions” in San José.

Merrill said Mahan brought down violent crime, reduced homelessness with “data-driven programs that address root causes rather than just managing the problem,” and “fostered an environment where businesses are choosing to invest and grow in the city.”

Tech vs. labor?

Gonzalez Fletcher said tech leaders have long “been very clear about their desire to support candidates who won’t regulate AI, to support candidates who will go after organized labor” — and their support for Mahan is no different.

She pointed as an example to a March event attended by Mahan and hosted by one of his most vocal backers: Garry Tan, a venture capitalist and chief executive of Y Combinator, a startup incubator in San Francisco.

At the event — which was part of Tan’s launch of a new statewide group called Garry’s List, which he has described as a “Rotary Club for radical centrism” — Chris Larsen, the co-founder of the cryptocurrency network Ripple, railed against the influence of unions in California politics and the “weak” response from business leaders, according to video.

“We’ve got to fight on par with the unions when they’re proposing stupid, job-killing ideas like the San Francisco CEO tax,” Larsen said. He noted that several other candidates for governor, including former Orange County Rep. Katie Porter, whom he’d donated to, had backed the measure to tax companies that pay their chief executive 100 times more than their average employee.

Neither Tan nor Larsen responded to a request for comment.

Gonzalez Fletcher, a former state legislator, said the argument that California Democrats have caused the state’s biggest problems by bowing to unions is false, and that what is more true is that “ruling class” Democrats such as Newsom “acquiesce to business interests” driving the state’s affordability and homelessness crises.

She said employers get away with underpaying workers and big landlords are allowed to take advantage of renters. She said Airbnb, as a tech example, has gone unchecked despite causing “a lot of the removal of housing stock.”

She said one reason she opposes Mahan is that he “suffers from the same love affair with Big Tech” as Newsom.

Steyer — who has funded his own campaign to the tune of nearly $200 million — has repeatedly struck a similar note.

Earlier this month, his campaign wrote that “Mahan continues to fail working Californians by catering to tech billionaires and wealthy special interest groups.” In February, it wrote that although Mahan had the support of “powerful special interests hellbent on keeping California a playground for the rich,” Steyer had the backing of “bus drivers, cafeteria workers, and custodians.”

Airbnb declined to comment but in the past has denied claims its platform substantially contributes to housing affordability issues, and has donated to housing initiatives. Airbnb co-founder Nathan Blecharczyk, a Mahan donor, did not respond to a request for comment.

Mahan said he values unions, in part because he grew up in a union household and benefited from the high-quality healthcare that provided, included when he was hospitalized for a collapsed lung as a teenager.

He said he has also worked with tech employers who “are inventing the future, quite literally,” and “creating a lot of jobs and opportunity.”

Mahan said the idea the two are inherently at odds is false, because “business needs labor, and labor needs business,” and the real question is “how to balance everyone’s needs.”

“If we don’t have a strong enough regulatory environment, and business has too much power, workers can be exploited, the environment can be exploited and we can see really negative social outcomes,” he said. “But the flip side is also true. If labor in our politics has too much power, you can also see distortions, you can see investment flow elsewhere, you can see less housing get built.”

Mahan said that “neither side has a monopoly on the truth,” and that government has to “bring people together and strike the right balance.”

He also defended Airbnb, which in San José pays taxes just like hotels, he said.

“We don’t see Airbnb as an antagonistic thing. We don’t let them take over the market, we regulate them, we charge them, and we use their tax revenue to provide services to people.”

He said the state’s housing crisis is due to over-regulation slowing new building to the point where it cannot keep up with job growth — which he called “fundamentally unsustainable and unfair” to low-income folks pushed out of job centers as a result.

The answer is building more homes, more quickly, he said, including by reducing building fees and streamlining permitting processes — which he said he has done in San José and would replicate statewide as governor.

“I am, first and foremost, focused on making government deliver results that make a real difference in people’s lives,” he said. “That’s my North Star.”

Notwithstanding the California Republican party’s well-intentioned anointment of Sen. Pete Wilson as its gubernatorial nominee, it is no secret that he continues to have an uncomfortable relationship with the conservative wing that dominates it.

As we move closer toward the general election, conservatives across the state, and particularly in vote-rich Orange County, are now asking the question, “What would a Gov. Wilson offer to conservatives?” Some have already answered that question, and for them, the answer is: not much.

This could spell disaster in November, especially if the slickly packaged former mayor of San Francisco, Dianne Feinstein, wins the Democratic Party nomination over liberal Establishment candidate Atty. Gen. John K. Van de Kamp.

Last March, the California Republican Assembly, the largest volunteer, grass-roots Republican organization in the state, adopted a vote of no-confidence in the senator. Pro-life and pro-family organizations–an integral part of winning Republican coalitions–are openly hostile to his candidacy. The conservative Young Americans for Freedom has already gone on record against him. In a futile but symbolic gesture, YAF even put up one of its own, Jeff Greene, to challenge the senator in the June primary.

So far, these are but chinks in the formidable Wilson campaign armor. Though most state conservative leaders are publicly backing Wilson, many are clearly wondering what happened to the Reagan Revolution in California. How is it that the one-time, anti-Reagan moderate mayor from San Diego might now become head of the party in the very state that produced “The Gipper”? (This frustration explains, in part, the enthusiasm among conservatives for the “renegade” primary campaign of “charter” Reaganite Bay Buchanan for state treasurer against the incumbent, Tom Hayes, who was appointed by Gov. George Deukmejian.)

Conservative Republicans have always been suspicious of the “progressive” mayor of San Diego. To begin with, they have never quite forgiven then-Mayor Wilson for campaigning for President Ford against favorite son Ronald Reagan in the 1976 New Hampshire presidential primary. These suspicions contributed to Wilson coming in a poor fourth in the Republican primary for governor two years later. By 1982 he learned a lesson. He then campaigned in the U.S. Senate Republican primary against several Ronald Reagan conservatives, including Rep. Barry Goldwater Jr. and Robert K. Dornan. While Goldwater was preoccupied with trading off his father’s name and latecomer Dornan was in search of campaign funds, Wilson preemptively blitzed the airwaves with commercials tightly wrapping himself around support for President Reagan. Fellow candidate and “first daughter” Maureen Reagan was particularly galled. So were others. But it worked, and Wilson won what was clearly the make-or-break election of his statewide political future.

Once in the Senate, Pete Wilson went on to very smartly, and sincerely, carry the banner of many issues important to conservatives. From his berth on the Senate Armed Services Committee he defended the Reagan military buildup, railed against the Soviet threat and became an ardent spokesman for the Strategic Defense Initiative. He helped protect California’s defense industry, the Long Beach Naval Shipyard and even got Mayor Feinstein to support home-porting the nuclear-powered battleship Missouri in liberal San Francisco. Wilson strongly backed the freedom fighters in Nicaragua and Afghanistan and was up front in his defense of Oliver L. North.

Occasionally, but never reliably, Wilson has voted with conservatives on key social and family-oriented issues. For these things and more, Wilson avoided a primary challenge from the right and deservedly received virtually unqualified conservative support for his 1988 reelection.

The problem now facing gubernatorial candidate Pete Wilson is that those defense and foreign policy issues so essential to his overall appeal to conservatives are no longer available to balance out his generally moderate-to-liberal campaign positions on many social, domestic and environmental issues. Unfortunately, the messages from his campaign and the press seem only to highlight the pro-abortion, pro-homosexual, anti-prayer in school, anti-growth, higher transportation taxes, costly mass transit, and other big-government elements of his platform (including the creation of another costly government Cabinet department to deal with the environment).

As a result, his yeoman efforts on behalf of the speedy-trial initiative seem pale. To many conservatives, the Pete Wilson of 1990 sounds a lot like the Pete Wilson of 1978.

Unlike Sen. Wilson’s 1982 race against Jerry Brown or his 1988 reelection against Leo T. McCarthy, this year every conservative vote will matter–a lot. So, too, will the crossover votes of conservative Democrats who today keep many Republicans in office. We cannot afford to have any one of them sit at home or cast a protest vote for a third-party candidate.

What is of added danger to Wilson is that conservative Democrats are being told that Feinstein is a candidate they can finally support. Who’s kidding whom? A conservative Democrat mayor from San Francisco is about as believable as Dana Rohrabacher being appointed head of the National Endowment for the Arts. Yet the liberal Southern California media persist in mislabeling the Lady from Babylon by the Bay largely because of her “traitorous” support for the death penalty. Look for a finely tuned “come home” message from the Feinstein campaign to conservative Democrats in November.

When the media are not calling her a conservative, they frequently remark that on substantive issues there is little difference between Feinstein and Wilson. Strike another blow to a proven Republican campaign axiom: Fail to differentiate yourself from your Democrat opponent and you lose.

Wilson’s recent campaign commercials do not help. He emphasizes his environmental record, support for mass transit and the need to control those nasty developers. At best it seems an ill-timed ad for the primary season. At worst it emphasizes management, not leadership, and is not conservative on either count. Better he should first shore up his traditional Republican credentials.

The senator should probably not count on the evils of a Democratic-controlled reapportionment process to give him an added loyalty boost, either. Voters have shown either an inability to understand the issue or often view it in partisan terms. But if a state commission on reapportionment is created by the voters on June 5, the argument that a Republican governor is needed to keep the Democrat Legislature honest will be moot.

Finally, the precedent exists for an electorally significant percentage of the conservative vote to be cast in protest for a third-party candidate. That occurred in the Zschau-Cranston race. Despite a strong Republican Party sales effort aimed at ensuring conservative backing for the former moderate Rep. Ed Zschau, including four trips to California by President Reagan (two in Orange County alone), the word went out to the fall-on-your-sword conservatives to cast a protest vote for the pro-life American Independent Party candidate Ed Vallen. Vallen received nearly double the normal statewide and Orange County AIP vote that year (1.5%). Zschau lost to Alan Cranston by only 1.4%. While there are important differences between the seasoned Wilson with proven statewide electability and newcomer Zschau, the point is that a small electoral shift could prove fatal to him in a close race.

Despite what some political pollsters and self-appointed media opinion makers would have us believe, the successful Reagan electoral coalition has not dispersed. Nor have their beliefs in traditional family values, small government, low taxes, free enterprise and equal opportunity for that chance at the American dream taken a back seat to child care, global warming and acid rain.

Pete Wilson, known for waging smart, well-financed campaigns, has some reassuring to do on the right. To win in November, he has to count on every conservative vote in Orange County–and it is not clear yet that he is going to get them.

WASHINGTON — A proposal to fund $1 billion in security additions for the White House campus and President Trump’s new ballroom fails to meet procedural rules, according to the Senate parliamentarian, dealing a blow to Republican plans to include it as part of a bill to fund immigration enforcement agencies for the next three years.

The parliamentarian’s ruling, described late Saturday by Senate Democrats, said that funding for a project as large and complex as Trump’s massive East Wing renovation is too broad to be included in the narrow GOP budget bill, which cannot be filibustered and needs only a simple majority to pass.

It’s unclear whether Republicans will be able to immediately salvage any part of the billion-dollar Secret Service proposal, which would fund security for Trump’s ballroom along with other parts of the White House, including a new visitor screening center, additional training for agents and extra reinforcements for large events. Republicans said Saturday night that they are revising the legislation based on the parliamentarian’s advice.

Ryan Wrasse, a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.), wrote in a post on X that “none of this is abnormal” during the complicated budget process that Republicans are using to try to pass the immigration enforcement and White House security money on a partisan basis.

“Redraft. Refine. Resubmit,” Wrasse said in the post.

Democrats say they’re ‘ready to stop them again’

Democrats have seized on the security request, accusing Republicans of dedicating federal resources to the ballroom project instead of focusing on helping Americans with rising costs. Republicans have insisted that private donations will be used to build the ballroom and that the federal dollars are focused just on much-needed security enhancements.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) took credit for the ruling after Democrats argued to the parliamentarian that the security money doesn’t belong in the bill.

“Republicans tried to make taxpayers foot the bill for Trump’s billion-dollar ballroom,” Schumer said Saturday evening. “Senate Democrats fought back — and blew up their first attempt.”

Schumer added that Democrats “will be ready to stop them again” as Republicans say they will revise the bill.

The ruling from the Senate parliamentarian is advisory, but such rulings are rarely if ever ignored when lawmakers put together legislation that can pass with a simple majority. Most bills are subject to a filibuster and thus need 60 votes for passage — meaning Republicans must find some Democratic support in the 53-47 Senate.

Part of immigration bill

Republicans are looking to approve a roughly $72-billion package to fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection until the end of Trump’s term after Democrats have blocked the money for months.

As part of that package, Republicans included $1 billion for White House security enhancements, part of it connected to Trump’s ballroom. The Secret Service had requested the money after a man was charged with trying to assassinate Trump at the White House Correspondents’ Assn. dinner last month.

The overall budget package is providing another boost of funding for Trump’s immigration and deportation agenda, fueling operations through September 2029. It comes on top of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol funds Congress provided last year in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that Trump signed into law.

The parliamentarian kept most of the immigration portion of the legislation intact, though some minor provisions were blocked, including Customs and Border Patrol funds to hire, train and pay Border Patrol agents. Republicans said those were only technical fixes.

Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley, the top Democrat on the Senate Budget Committee, said Saturday evening that “Democrats are prepared to challenge any change to this bill.”

Americans shouldn’t spend “a single dime” on Trump’s “Louis XIV-style ballroom and throw tens of billions more at two lawless agencies,” Merkley said.

Jalonick and Freking write for the Associated Press. AP writer Lisa Mascaro contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — Thousands of people streamed onto the National Mall for a daylong prayer rally Sunday headlined by President Trump and billed as a “rededication of our country as One Nation under God.”

Against the backdrop of the Washington Monument, worship music blared from a stage that made clear the event’s Christian focus. Arched stained-glass windows, set underneath grand columns resembling a federal building, depicted the nation’s founders alongside a white cross.

The nation’s tradition of separating church and state, however, was not on display. Most speakers celebrated Christianity’s ties to American history, a blending of ideas that critics decried before the gathering as Christian nationalism.

Trump read a passage of Scripture in a video shown at the rally. Filmed in the Oval Office, it was the same footage used during a marathon Bible-reading event last month. The verses from 2 Chronicles are often cited by those who claim America was founded as a Christian nation.

“If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways,” Trump read, “then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.”

Other leading Republicans, including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), were also on the schedule for the event, part of the celebrations marking the nation’s 250th anniversary.

Only one name on the Rededicate 250 program was not Christian. Most were among Trump’s longtime evangelical supporters, including Paula White-Cain of the White House Faith Office and evangelist Franklin Graham of Samaritan’s Purse.

“We are deeply concerned that what is really being rededicated is a nation to a very narrow and ideological part of the Christian faith that betrays our nation’s fundamental commitment to religious freedom,” said the Rev. Adam Russell Taylor, a Baptist minister who leads the progressive Christian organization Sojourners.

The conservative Christian lineup featured guests who often assert that the United States was founded as a Christian nation, a narrative disputed by many historians and other religious traditions and inconsistent with American legal precedent.

Rabbi Jonah Dov Pesner, director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, noted the religious diversity of early America, including Jews, Muslims and Indigenous people. “I want to shine a light on America’s history as a nation that welcomes, celebrates and protects people of all faiths and those of no faith,” Pesner said.

‘It’s all about Jesus’

Many in the crowd wore Trump hats and patriotic colors, joining the festivities under a sweltering sun.

“It’s all about Jesus,” said Denny Smith, 72, of Rhode Island, who rented a motorized scooter to traverse the National Mall.

Retha Bond, a 58-year-old from southern Illinois, said she was here to hear Trump speak nearby on Jan. 6, 2021. She said she did not join the protesters who rioted later that day at the Capitol, attacking police officers while attempting to overturn the presidential election result, but she has remained a steadfast Trump supporter.

“I’m not saying Trump is the savior,” Bond said. But she said that “this is one of the most important things that could be going on in the world, for us to rededicate our nation back to God.”

At least one event speaker mentioned the slain conservative activist Charlie Kirk. Kirk’s activism has been a powerful example for Alessandra Seawright, 15, of Santa Fe, N.M., who came to Rededicate 250 with her mother.

“I think we just need more of this in our country, and we just need to share the word of the Lord,” she said. “We love going to events like this.”

They also attended Kirk’s memorial service in Arizona, which mixed Christian worship and political messages. Events like these, Seawright said, help her feel less alone in her conservative Christian beliefs.

Prayer event spurs protest

Hegseth, who has infused Christian language and worship with his role leading the Pentagon — drawing criticism — asked the gathering in a video to pray to “our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.” Referencing George Washington’s faith, he said, “Let us pray without ceasing. Let us pray for our nation on bended knee.”

Orthodox Jewish Rabbi Meir Soloveichik was the only non-Christian religious leader listed on the program. To applause, he told the crowd, “Antisemitism is utterly un-American” — a seeming reference to debates dividing the right.

Soloveichik serves on the Trump administration’s Religious Liberty Commission along with White-Cain, Graham and Cardinal Timothy Dolan and Bishop Robert Barron, Catholic clerics also featured on the program.

The event was organized by Freedom 250, a public-private partnership backed by the White House. Congressional Democrats have questioned the nonprofit’s structure and finances, which they see as a Trump-controlled end run around a separate commission charted by Congress a decade ago to prepare semiquincentennial events.

Progressive groups staged counter-programming. Among them were the Freedom From Religion Foundation, which advocates a strict separation of church and state, and the Christian organization Faithful America. The two groups displayed a large balloon near the mall of a Trump-like golden calf, a biblical reference to idolatry.

On Thursday evening, the Interfaith Alliance projected protest slogans onto an exterior wall of the National Gallery of Art. “Democracy not theocracy,” said one. Another said: “The separation of church and state is good for both.”

Stanley writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Peter Smith in Pittsburgh contributed to this report.

TECATE, Mexico — White sage burning, Norma Meza Calles gathers guests at a Mexican wellness resort into a semicircle facing Kuuchamaa Mountain and asks everyone to close their eyes and feel its presence.

“This is sacred to us like a church for you all. The mountain is our healer, our psychologist,” said Meza Calles, a Kumeyaay Nation tribal leader who explains that in its creation story a shaman transformed into the mountain. “Here is where we gather strength to live in this difficult world.”

Then she calls for a moment of reflection. But the silence is pierced by the crushing of rock. U.S. federal contractors have been blasting and bulldozing Kuuchamaa, which straddles the U.S.-Mexico frontier, to make way for new sections of border wall.

Indigenous leaders say that in the Trump administration’s rush to build border wall segments, contractors are desecrating Native American sacred places and cultural sites at an unprecedented pace, more than 170 years after the international boundary split the territories of dozens of tribes.

Blasts on sacred mountain

Wall construction has ramped up along the 1,954-mile border even as illegal crossings have plummeted to historic lows. Much of it began this year after the U.S. Department of Homeland Security waived cultural and environmental laws.

In California, explosions on Kuuchamaa, also known as Tecate Peak, send rocks hurtling down its Mexico side.

“We feel that in our DNA,” said Emily Burgueno, a California member of the Kumeyaay Nation, noting that “body” and “land” are the same word in the Kumeyaay language. Some tribal leaders met with Homeland Security officials to urge them to protect Kuuchamaa and are looking into legal action.

“No one ever consented or supported the use of dynamite on the mountain,” Burgueno said.

The nation consists of more than a dozen tribes in California and Mexico’s Baja California. The Kumeyaay have been working to block construction of the border wall since Trump’s first term.

In Arizona, Homeland Security contractors last month carved through a massive, 1,000-year-old fish-shaped geoglyph called Las Playas Intaglio. The rare drawing, etched into the desert floor much like Peru’s Nazca Lines, was created on a lava field in what is now the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge.

Construction crews work April 24 on a new border wall segment near the end of a previously built section on Kuuchamaa Mountain, seen from Tecate, Mexico.

(Gregory Bull / Associated Press)

The Tohono O’odham Nation said it had pointed out the site on its ancestral land for contractors to avoid.

“This was a devastating and entirely avoidable loss,” Tohono O’odham Chairman Verlon Jose said in an April 30 statement. “There is nothing more important than our history, which is what makes us who we are as O’odham. The site was also an irreplaceable piece of the United States’ history, one none of us can ever get back.”

U.S. Customs and Border Protection said in a statement that a contractor “inadvertently disturbed” the site west of Ajo, Ariz., on April 23, but it vowed to protect the remaining portion. CBP Commissioner Rodney Scott is talking to tribal leaders to determine next steps.

Members of the Inter-Tribal Assn. of Arizona, which represents 21 tribes, traveled to Washington last month to lobby against a 20-foot secondary wall being built along that section of the border, as well as a primary 30-foot bollard wall planned on Tohono O’odham tribal lands.

They met with Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, a Cherokee Nation member, who listened but made clear his intent is to build more border wall as fast as possible, the Tohono O’odham Nation said in a statement.

Hundreds of miles under contract

The Trump administration says the barriers are necessary to keep people and drugs from entering the U.S. illegally. It wants walls to cover at least 1,400 miles of the border.

Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act last year devoted more than $46 billion to the effort.

CBP has awarded contracts or begun construction on over 600 miles of new border wall, with companion surveillance technology. A double wall is planned or under construction along an additional 370 miles.

In Arizona, where the Patagonia Mountains descend to the border, heavy machinery crawls along freshly graded roads to extend a double wall that could block a wildlife corridor for endangered ocelots and jaguars. Jaguars have long coexisted with the Tohono O’odham, who consider the species “spiritual guardians,” Austin Nunez, a tribal leader, said in a 2025 lawsuit that unsuccessfully challenged the Homeland Security waivers.

In Sunland Park, on New Mexico’s border with Mexico, crews this year set off blasts on Mt. Cristo Rey, a pilgrimage site topped with a limestone crucifix.

CBP is seeking to seize a strip of the mountain owned by the Roman Catholic Church for wall construction. The Diocese of Las Cruces asked a judge this month to deny the land transfer as an affront to religious liberties and the “faithful who seek to commune with God on Mount Cristo Rey.”

In western Texas, the federal government in February notified ranchers on the Rio Grande east of Big Bend National Park of its interest in their land that contains canyonland pictographs and petroglyphs, said Raymond Skiles, a retired Big Bend National Park ranger.

“There are pictographs, paintings of shaman figures and various things that we don’t know how to interpret,” said Skiles, describing the drawings on his family’s ranchlands.

After community backlash, CBP’s online planning map showed the 30-foot-wall plans were scrapped for surveillance technology, patrols and some vehicle barriers. A segment in the national park and neighboring Big Bend Ranch State Park would rely on technology alone.

CBP says it recognizes the importance of natural and cultural resources and is working to minimize the construction’s impact, including leaving drainage gates open in wildlife corridors for animal passage. Illegal border crossings have littered, polluted and trampled sensitive habitat, the agency says.

CBP also says 535 miles of remote, rugged border terrain will solely rely on detection technology.

Many tribes would prefer that to walls.

Norma Meza Calles, a Kumeyaay Nation leader, leads a guided tour of traditional Kumeyaay uses for local plants at a wellness center in Tecate, Mexico.

(Gregory Bull / Associated Press)

Desecrating Native American sites is a felony

Tribes along the border “are all experiencing the same tragic desecration of our cultural and sacred sites,” said Burgueno, chair of the Kumeyaay Diegueño Land Conservancy, a nonprofit organization in California that works to protect Kumeyaay lands. “This is a great example of the federal government not following federal laws.”

Desecrating a sacred Native American site on U.S. federal or tribal land is a felony, punishable by imprisonment and fines. In 1992, the National Park Service listed Kuuchamaa Mountain in the National Register of Historic Places, giving it limited protection. It noted that “discarding or disturbing the mountain’s natural state would be sacrilegious.”

Rising 3,885 feet above sea level, Kuuchamaa has also captivated non-Native people.

Sarah Livia Brightwood Szekely said her father, Edmond Szekely, felt the mountain’s healing energy when he arrived in Tecate, Mexico, as a Hungarian Jewish refugee during World War II, and started the renowned wellness resort, Rancho La Puerta, which she now runs.

“There are all of these people that have a deep relationship with the mountain,” she said.

Meza Calles leads walks at Rancho La Puerta to teach guests about Kuuchamaa.

Traditionally, young men would spend 40 days at its base in a coming-of-age ceremony before becoming warriors or shamans, she said. Today’s rituals are shorter. People suffering from a death, debt, divorce or other difficulty seek Kuuchamaa’s healing, she said.

“It’s sad they are ruining the mountain,” she said. “We’ll see how far they go. Destiny is destiny. But the fight is not over.”

Watson and Lee write for the Associated Press and reported from Tecate and Santa Fe, N.M., respectively.

President Trump succeeded in his effort to defeat Sen. Bill Cassidy in Louisiana’s Republican primary, a signal of the enduring strength of the president’s hold on his party despite an unpopular war and soaring gas prices.

Cassidy was one of seven Republican senators in 2021 who voted to convict Trump on the impeachment charge of inciting an insurrection on Jan. 6 that year. He placed last in a three-way race Saturday against U.S. Rep. Julia Letlow, who was endorsed by Trump, and state Treasurer John Fleming.

“His disloyalty to the man who got him elected is now a part of legend, and it’s nice to see that his political career is OVER!” Trump said of Cassidy on social media late Saturday.

With 92.3% of ballots tallied, Letlow had 44.8% of the vote and Fleming had 28.3%. Cassidy trailed with 24.7%.

Letlow and Fleming will advance to a runoff next month. Whoever wins that contest is virtually assured victory in November in deep-red Louisiana. In his last reelection in 2020, just months before his vote to convict Trump, Cassidy won 59% of the vote.

In a primary season where Trump is crusading to vanquish members of his party with whom he’s been at odds, the Louisiana race comes just days before the president tries to oust another Republican foe, Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky. But Trump has opted so far to stay out of a hard-fought Texas GOP runoff later this month between incumbent Sen. John Cornyn, a traditional conservative, and state Atty. Gen. Ken Paxton, who is more politically aligned with the president’s MAGA movement.

Massie, who faces a primary that has become the most expensive of its kind, said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week” that’s he’s confident he will prevail Tuesday despite a string of social media insults from the president and fundraising by Trump allies such as billionaires Miriam Adelson and Paul Singer.

“I think it’s going to help my fundraising,” Massie said. “People don’t like this.”

With state polls showing Massie with a slight lead, the congressman said, “that’s why the president is losing sleep and tweeting about me.”

Trump’s success in defeating Cassidy left the Louisiana senator defiant: “Let me just set the record straight. Our country is not about one individual, it is about the welfare of all Americans and it is about our Constitution.”

“If someone doesn’t understand that and attempts to control others through using the levers of power, they’re about serving themselves, they’re not about serving us,” he added.

Trump has attacked Cassidy for his 2021 vote and his opposition to some aspects of his agenda, particularly vaccine and other health policies pushed by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. During Kennedy’s Senate confirmation hearings last year, Cassidy, who is a doctor, expressed deep skepticism about the nominee’s anti-vaccine views, but ultimately voted to confirm him.

Trump recently blamed Cassidy for thwarting the nomination of wellness influencer Casey Means as surgeon general. Means is a longtime ally of Kennedy’s, and Cassidy had also questioned her stance on vaccinations.

On Saturday morning, Trump continued his attacks, calling Cassidy a “a disloyal disaster” on social media. He later congratulated Letlow on her first-place finish.

In his concession speech, Cassidy said: “I find that people of character and integrity don’t spend their time attacking people on the internet.”

Despite the president’s opposition to his candidacy, Cassidy had run ads featuring images of Trump, praising top White House issues that the senator had supported including the president’s massive tax package enacted last year, while casting Letlow as insufficiently conservative.

The outcome also notches a high-profile win for Kennedy’s political operation, which supported Letlow and opposed Cassidy in the race. The two men have repeatedly clashed over nominations and the department’s changes to vaccine policy. With certainty of his departure when his term ends in January, Cassidy could make the health secretary’s job even more difficult as he finishes out his term with an eye to his legacy and priorities.

Cassidy’s departure will also leave a leadership vacuum for the GOP atop the Senate Health Committee next year. The panel oversees health agencies and confirmations for key leadership positions at the agencies, and Cassidy brought his medical expertise to the role. He has built a reputation as a healthcare policy wonk willing to work across the aisle.

Only two other Republican senators who broke with Trump in his 2021 impeachment trial, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, remain in the Senate. Collins, who represents a state Trump lost in 2024, has largely avoided the president’s wrath while she fights for her political life in one of the most competitive races of the midterms. Murkowski won reelection in 2022.

“You can disagree with President Trump, but if you try to destroy him you’re going to lose because this is the party of Donald Trump,” South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

“There’s no room in this party to destroy his agenda or to destroy him or his family as a Republican,” Graham said. “It’s just a reality.”

Cohrs Zhang writes for Bloomberg. Bloomberg writers Tony Czuczka and Se Young Lee contributed to this report.

Alex Saab was once presented by the Venezuelan state as a symbol of national sovereignty. Today, the same state refers to him simply as “the Colombian citizen Alex Naim Saab Morán.”

That contradiction is not a side detail in the Saab saga. It is the story.

For years, chavismo invested extraordinary political and symbolic capital into transforming Saab from a relatively obscure businessman into something much larger: diplomat, political prisoner, sanctions-era patriot, and eventually minister of commerce. When he was detained in Cape Verde in 2020 on U.S. money laundering charges, the Maduro government reacted as though a senior state official had been kidnapped by a hostile empire. State media launched nonstop campaigns demanding his release. Venezuelan diplomats lobbied internationally on his behalf. Officials presented copies of his Venezuelan passport in foreign courts. Delcy Rodríguez herself described him as an innocent Venezuelan diplomat persecuted by Washington.

The regime did not merely defend Saab. It fused his fate with the idea of Venezuelan sovereignty itself.

And yet today, after reports that Saab was quietly detained inside Venezuela for months before being surrendered to the United States, the same state apparatus appears eager to emphasize something entirely different: his Colombian nationality.

The legal logic is obvious enough. Venezuelan law generally prohibits the extradition of Venezuelan nationals. Saab’s status as a naturalized citizen may have provided the government with the legal flexibility needed to facilitate his transfer while preserving a veneer of constitutional procedure.

But politically, the reversal is extraordinary.

Until recently, Saab was not treated as a foreign intermediary operating on behalf of Venezuela. He was treated as Venezuela. Attacks on Saab were framed as attacks on the republic itself. His return from Cape Verde during the Biden-era prisoner exchange was celebrated as a geopolitical victory. In January, Delcy Rodríguez publicly thanked him for his “dedication and commitment to the homeland” while announcing he would assume “new responsibilities.”

Only months later, he became deportable.

The Saab affair exposes how late chavismo governed through mutable political realities rather than stable institutional principles.

What changed was not merely the regime’s opinion of Saab. The operative meaning of Saab himself changed according to political necessity. He was successively businessman, envoy, diplomat, patriot, minister, revolutionary symbol, and now effectively a legally manageable Colombian citizen. The categories surrounding him  (citizenship, sovereignty, legality, loyalty) were treated less as fixed institutional realities than as flexible political instruments.

This is what gives the entire saga its distinctly Orwellian quality.

The issue is not simply propaganda. All political systems engage in propaganda. The issue is the degree to which political reality itself became fluid. Yesterday’s indispensable patriot becomes today’s silent liability. Yesterday’s sovereign diplomat becomes today’s extraditable foreign national. The contradiction is not resolved so much as administratively absorbed.

For Venezuelans, this dynamic has become painfully familiar. Years of institutional improvisation, overlapping authorities, constitutional contortions, and contradictory official narratives have gradually normalized incoherence as a governing method. People learn not to ask whether political narratives are internally consistent, but whether they remain operationally useful.

The Saab saga condenses that evolution into a single character arc.

And yet this is not merely a story about narrative manipulation. It is also a story about how chavismo itself changed under the pressure of sanctions, isolation, and survival.

During the years of maximum international pressure, Saab’s networks reportedly became central to the regime’s economic adaptation. Food imports, opaque oil transactions, offshore procurement systems, sanctions workarounds, and parallel financial structures increasingly blurred the distinction between state policy and survival improvisation. Saab occupied a hybrid role inside that world: part businessman, part diplomat, part financial operator, part sovereign representative.

That ambiguity was not accidental. It reflected the logic of a state learning to survive siege conditions.

But survival systems often produce figures who become simultaneously indispensable and dangerous. The very people who help preserve a regime during periods of extreme pressure can later become liabilities once strategic priorities shift. As Venezuela moved from total isolation toward tentative normalization, figures associated with the sanctions-era architecture increasingly carried diplomatic, financial, and political costs.

The fall of Tareck El Aissami and the PDVSA crypto scandal had already hinted at this transition. Entire internal networks once tied to the regime’s survival mechanisms suddenly became objects of public investigation and selective purge. Saab’s extradition pushes that logic much further. Unlike the internal anti-corruption campaigns of previous years, this was not simply the revolution disciplining itself. It was the state externally relinquishing one of its own.

And perhaps that is why the Saab affair feels so psychologically significant inside chavismo itself.

For years, the movement functioned through implicit assumptions about loyalty and protection. Certain figures appeared untouchable because they embodied too much of the system’s operational history and symbolic legitimacy. Saab seemed to belong to that category. His sudden transformation from protected patriot to expendable liability suggests that the category itself may be disappearing.

That does not necessarily mean the regime is collapsing. Authoritarian systems can survive long after ideological coherence erodes. But it does suggest a deeper transformation underway: the gradual evolution of chavismo from revolutionary movement into survival-oriented governing apparatus.

Revolutionary systems rely on myths that are supposed to remain stable over time. Survival systems prioritize flexibility instead.

The Saab affair reveals what happens when that flexibility extends not only to policy, but to reality itself.