POLITICS

SACRAMENTO–A housing advocacy group, casting embattled state Sen. Ronald S. Calderon (D-Montebello) as a symbol of the influence special interests have on lawmakers, called for tighter bans on lobbyist gifts at a Thursday rally at the Capitol.

Around 50 members of the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE) convened at the Capitol’s south steps, many clad in matching yellow T-shirts. Members focused on Calderon’s notable accumulation of gifts, which they said indicated close ties to industries–sometimes, they charged, at the expense of his constituents.

Peggy Mears, an organizer from the Inland Empire, said her group had no specific knowledge of wrongdoing or cause for the FBI raid on his offices Tuesday.

“We’re not here to say the charges against him are false or true,” Mears said. “What we’re saying is that there’s an epidemic in the elected officialdom of accepting gifts. And we want this to stop.”

Calderon’s office did not immediately respond to a call for comment.

Mears called for a ban on all gifts from lobbyists and lobbyists’ employers. Lobbyists currently cannot give more than $10 per month to an elected official. But Mears said those limits can be skirted by giving through employers or nonprofit foundations. She also criticized lawmakers like Calderon for holding out-of-state fundraisers.

“The constituents of this state pay you enough money. You can buy your own gifts,” said Abdullah Muhammad, who lives in Calderon’s district. “You don’t need Christmas year-round. You don’t need your birthday year-round.”

The group has clashed with Calderon before, particularly in their advocacy for the Homeowner’s Bill of Rights, a foreclosure protection measure. ACCE members said the Senate banking committee, of which Calderon is a member, often posed an obstacle.

Calderon voted for the bill and lauded its passage last summer.

“Although we got the Homeowner’s Bill of Rights passed, it was a hard-fought battle,” Mears said. “We had to fight lobbyists. We were like David and they were Goliath.”

ALSO:

FBI’s Ron Calderon probe has lawmakers feeling somber

Calderon ties to water district may be part of FBI investigation

FBI search targeted Calderon’s office, not Latino caucus, officials say

melanie.mason@latimes.com

@melmason

Not since 2010 has California felt itself politically so out of step with the times. That year the state resisted the nationwide wave of anti-incumbent, anti-regulation and anti-big government voting to elect Jerry Brown as governor, ease the passage of big-money state budgets and turn away a challenge to its pioneering greenhouse gas regulations.

This election day, California voters tightened gun control, extended taxes on the rich, hiked cigarette taxes, legalized marijuana, boosted multilingual education — and of course provided Hillary Clinton with all of her winning margin of 2 million popular votes, and then some, in her losing campaign for president.

No wonder the election has inspired talk of California’s seceding from the United States. The nascent campaign, organized under the banner of the Yes California Independence Campaign and heralded by the Twitter hashtag #Calexit, has been energized by remarks by Brown, and others, that a Trump election would necessitate “building a wall around California” to preserve its forward-looking policies against a reactionary federal regime. And why not, the argument goes. After all, with a gross domestic product of $2.5 trillion, the state’s economy ranks sixth in the world, sandwiched between Britain and France.

Secession talk is more valuable as a pointer to all the ways that California and federal policies are likely to come into conflict during the next few years than as a formula for practical politics.

“It’s impossible to look at the Trump campaign and not see a direct threat to the civil liberties and dignity of California citizens,” says Tom Steyer, the progressive billionaire who in recent years has focused his energy on combating climate change via his organization NextGen Climate.

To dispense with the prospect of California’s seceding from the union: On the gonna-happen scale, it’s a Not. “We’d either have to win the ensuing civil war or have Congress kiss us goodbye,” says Joel D. Aberbach, director of the Center for American Politics and Public Policy at UCLA. “There isn’t a procedure for seceding” in the Constitution. The very notion of the U.S. as a divisible entity was settled by the Civil War.

A constitutional amendment is the longest of long shots. It must be approved by a two-thirds majority in each house of Congress and ratified by three-fourths of the states (38 of the 50).

But the conflicts between state and federal policy will be serious. Here’s a look at what may be some of the most important.

Climate change: California has been among the national leaders in reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and as recently as September strengthened its policies with a law mandating the reduction of climatologically harmful emissions to 40% below 1990 levels by 2030. Its auto emission rules traditionally have set a benchmark for the auto industry and federal regulators.

During his campaign, Trump dismissed climate change as a Chinese hoax and pledged to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, which already has been ratified by 113 of the 197 signatory countries. The U.S. ratified the agreement by presidential order on Sept. 3.

“The single biggest achievement of the Obama administration in energy and climate was to get those countries to agree,” Steyer said. “It was an example of the best kind of American leadership — moral, technical, financial.”

Since the election, Trump has backed off his assertions about climate change and his promise to withdraw from the Paris pact. If he makes good on his threat, however, American leadership on climate change will pass to the states. Brown has pledged to keep California in the forefront of that movement, and earlier this month sent a state delegation to a U.N. climate change conference in Marrakech, Morocco.

That just continues the sort of state-level leadership that has emerged in recent years. “Over the past decade, Congress has not passed a single bill that takes direct aim at climate change,” former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg observed in a recent speech. “Yet at the same time, the U.S. has led the world in reducing emissions.”

Trump could stifle federal funding for crucial research on climate change. One of his science advisors says he plans to eliminate NASA spending on earth science, calling it “politically correct environmental monitoring” and refocusing the agency exclusively on space research. That mirrors congressional Republicans’ approach to NASA, whose role in climate monitoring they disdain even though it has made crucial contributions to understanding of global warming.

Immigration: Trump campaigned on a pledge to cut off federal funding to “sanctuary cities” as part of his crackdown on illegal immigration. His chief of staff-designate, Reince Priebus, reiterated the policy in an interview after the election.

These are cities whose police departments aren’t required to check the immigration status of people they stop or arrest or to notify U.S. immigration officials of the status of undocumented persons they release from custody. The roster of sanctuary cities includes Los Angeles, San Francisco, Sacramento and Oakland; an estimated 1 million of the nation’s 11 million immigrants without legal status, many of whom Trump has threatened to deport, live in L.A. County.

Leaders of those cities have pledged to keep protecting immigrants and fight Trump’s proposed cuts in federal funding cuts, which would require congressional action. The stakes are high: Los Angeles receives about $500 million a year in federal funding for such municipal services as port security and homeless shelters. But there are practical as well as moral reasons for cities to steer clear of immigration enforcement. Complicity with immigration agents shatters trust in police in immigrant-rich communities, complicating street-level patrolling. And with undocumented immigrants part of the fabric of diverse communities, rigorous enforcement can have bad economic consequences.

Trump’s anti-immigrant stance has spurred calls to action to protect potential deportees. The Los Angeles Unified School District says it will rebuff any federal request for students’ immigration status. Cal State University Chancellor Timothy P. White, whose system includes as many as 10,000 students without legal documentation, has said that campus police won’t honor federal requests for deportation holds. Last week University of California President Janet Napolitano stated that UC campus police departments would not involve themselves in investigations of the immigration status of individuals on campus and ruled out “joint efforts” on immigration with federal, state, or local law enforcement agencies. She said the university aimed to “vigorously protect the privacy and civil rights of the undocumented members of the UC community.”

An estimated one in three of the 742,000 “Dreamers” — young people who were brought to this country by their parents without documentation and granted protection from deportation under the Obama administration’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA — lives in California. Trump has pledged to shut down the program.

Healthcare: Few states gave the Affordable Care Act, which Trump and congressional Republicans pledge to repeal, support as full-throated as California. The state has enrolled about 1.4 million people in Obamacare health plans via its statewide individual insurance exchange, Covered California, and added about 3 million low-income residents to Medicaid rolls via the law’s Medicaid expansion, the cost of which has been 100% paid by the federal government.

It’s doubtful that this record could be maintained if Trump and congressional Republicans repeal the ACA. Repeal would eliminate the federal tax credits that reduce premiums on Covered California plans and other costs for about 90% of enrollees. That would drive many of them off coverage. The state would surely be unable to make up those subsidies. California would also suffer from the loss of the ACA’s consumer protection elements, including a ban on exclusions for preexisting conditions and on annual or lifetime benefit limits. A study published last June by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation forecast that without the ACA, the ranks of the uninsured in California would soar by 2021 to 7.5 million, compared with only 3.4 million if the ACA remains in place.

Among the dangers in the GOP plans is uncertainty. The party has promised to “replace” the ACA with something that works better, yet has never coalesced around an alternative in more than six years of trying. But doubts that Covered California and other ACA marketplaces will eventually stabilize could drive more big insurers out of the market and force prices higher.

The prospects of disastrous tampering with healthcare were heightened Monday with Trump’s nomination of Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.) as secretary of Health and Human Services. Price, an orthopedic surgeon, is a sworn enemy of the Affordable Care Act. He’s the author of an alternative law that could throw older and sicker patients out of the insurance pool and make insurance all but unaffordable for women of child-bearing age. The Price plan would repeal Obamacare and replace it with something resembling the pre-2010 individual insurance market, when overpriced, low-benefit plans were the norm for anyone except young, healthy males.

Republican proposals to convert Medicaid to a block-granted program—almost certainly a prelude to cutting the federal share of its budget—could pose a particular problem for House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Bakersfield. In his district, which largely spans Kern and Tulare counties, roughly half of all residents are enrolled in Medi-Cal, the state’s Medicaid program. Efforts to trim the program would have a direct effect on them.

Gun control and marijuana: Voters on election day flouted federal policy in both areas. Proposition 63 mandates background checks for ammunition sales and outlaws high-capacity ammo magazines. Proposition 64 legalizes marijuana.

Trump established himself as an ally of the National Rifle Assn. during the campaign, but White House policy may not be the biggest problem for the state’s firearms policy: the courts would be. In rulings in 2008 and 2010, the Supreme Court extended the reach of the 2nd Amendment’s protection of the right to bear arms. Within a day of the election, the NRA was talking about challenging Proposition 63 and related state laws before the courts.

Trump hasn’t expressed strong objections to the legalization of marijuana, but as the biggest state to legalize pot, California could find itself in the crosshairs of revived anti-marijuana enforcement by his administration. Obama’s Justice Department took an indulgent approach to the wave of state legalizations of the drug, declaring in 2013 that although it was still illegal under federal law, its prosecutors would focus chiefly on preventing sales to minors and to keeping profits out of the hands of criminal gangs.

But Trump’s attorney general-designate, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), stated in April that “marijuana is not the kind of thing that ought to be legalized, it ought not to be minimized, that it’s in fact a very real danger.” One anti-pot activist described him to the Washington Post as “by far the single most outspoken opponent of marijuana legalization in the U.S. Senate.” How he plans to enforce federal law in a legalization state as big as California is still a mystery.

Keep up to date with Michael Hiltzik. Follow @hiltzikm on Twitter, see his Facebook page, or email michael.hiltzik@latimes.com.

Return to Michael Hiltzik’s blog.

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

Mayor Karen Bass is planning to give her second State of the City address of the year on Monday, with a digital twist from years past.

Traditionally the speech is given — in person — before City Council members and other machers at City Hall or another location. This year’s speech will be delivered by video.

Of course, Bass already did one State of the City speech this year, holding forth on the Olympics, the World Cup and Palisades fire rebuilding in a February address at Exposition Park.

The video State of the City will probably be more about the city budget, which also will be released Monday. The city is facing a budget gap of a few hundred million, according to Matt Szabo, the city administrative officer.

“Mayor Bass will update L.A. on the State of our City through a video that anyone can watch, anytime, anywhere,” said Paige Sterling, a spokesperson for Bass. “From Day One through today, Mayor Bass’ focus is changing the direction of L.A. by reversing long-standing [and long ignored] trends on homelessness, housing, public safety and infrastructure.”

Parisian payback

The city controller released information this week that showed how much L.A. paid for flights to Paris for L.A.’s delegation to the 2024 Summer Olympics.

One purchase stuck out: $22,000 for a first-class ticket for Bass to fly to Paris and back. It was purchased March 6, the same day Bass boarded the flight to the City of Light, according to the city, which released the information in response to a public records act request.

One reason for the high cost was the last-minute purchase, the mayor’s office said, which it said was the consequence of a packed mayoral schedule that makes advance planning difficult.

Secondly, the city was transferring over its travel booking platform to a company called Concur, and the only flights available for the mayor to purchase to arrive in Paris in time on the platform were first-class seats.

The mayor then reimbursed the city for $12,270, with half coming from her personal bank account, while the other half came from her Karen Bass For Mayor 2022 account, according to checks. That left the city on the hook for $10,000.

“Mayor Bass voluntarily paid for the majority of the ticket herself. City rules didn’t require her to, but she did it anyways. This was the only flight that would get her there on time, and this was the only ticket available,” said Kolby Lee, a spokesperson for the mayor.

Bass and a council delegation, including Councilmember Katy Yaroslavsky, were in Paris that March to “see behind the curtain” about how a city prepares to host the Games, Bass said at the time.

Yaroslavsky’s round trip cost the city $1,600.

Raman out of council leadership

Sometimes the drama at City Hall comes in the fine print. Last Friday, the City Council released its agenda for its April 14 meeting. Casual observers would be forgiven for missing a small change on the first page.

Under Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson’s name, and under the name of President Pro Tempore Bob Blumenfield, there was a third name: Assistant President Pro Tempore John S. Lee.

That makes Lee No. 3 in council leadership, appointed to the position by Harris-Dawson. For all intents and purposes, the largely ceremonial position means he gets to sit on the dais and preside over council if Harris-Dawson and Blumenfield can’t make it.

But on the fourth floor of City Hall, where council offices are, the move had staffers chattering.

Lee replaces Councilmember Nithya Raman, who threw her hat in the ring to run for mayor against Bass — an ally of Harris-Dawson.

Bass had previously thrown her weight behind Raman during the council member’s tough 2024 reelection campaign.

Some thought Harris-Dawson was punishing Raman for her surprise bid against Bass, but Raman said that wasn’t the case.

“When I first announced my candidacy for Mayor, I told the Council President that I would step back from all of my appointed roles. One change has now been made. I remain focused on serving my district and the City of Los Angeles,” Raman said in a statement.

Harris-Dawson didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

There’s a long tradition of council members stepping down from leadership positions or getting the ax when they run for higher office.

In 2021, then Councilmember Joe Buscaino was voted out as president pro tempore after making disparaging remarks about numerous council members (including Raman) while he was running for mayor.

In 2011, then-Councilmember Eric Garcetti stepped down from his role as council president during his run for mayor.

Spotlight on Soto

Los Angeles City Atty. Hydee Feldstein Soto, who is seeking reelection in the June 2 primary, is taking heat from challenger Marissa Roy for her appearance last weekend at the Hope Fest LA rally at the L.A. Coliseum.

The event was put on by Hope California, which is led by evangelical pastor Ché Ahn, a supporter of President Trump and a write-in candidate for California governor. Ahn spoke at a Stop the Steal rally in Washington, D.C., the day before the Jan. 6, 2021, storming of the Capitol, and has repeated the unfounded claim that Joe Biden stole the election from Trump. (“I don’t have facts. I don’t have proof. That’s just my own personal opinion,” Ahn, who also opposes abortion, told The Times.)

Feldstein Soto is pro-choice and anti-Trump, and the speakers immediately preceding her expressed anti-gay and anti-trans views.

Roy said the positions expressed at the rally were wildly out of step with those of Los Angeles voters, and criticized the city attorney’s appearance at the rally as “disturbing.”

“Los Angeles is overdue for a City Attorney who fights for the people,” Roy said in a statement.

At the rally, Feldstein Soto spoke about the scourge of human sex trafficking, including of children along the Figueroa corridor in Los Angeles. She had been invited to the event by a human trafficking survivor to speak about their shared commitment to the issue, spokesperson Naomi Goldman said.

“The primary purpose of the City Attorney’s attendance was to shine a light on the exploitation of women and girls, and to stand in solidarity with those affected. She stayed at the event briefly to deliver her remarks and then departed,” Goldman said.

State of play

— THE KIDS ARE ALRIGHT: A strike that would have shut down schools for nearly 400,000 students was averted at the eleventh hour early Tuesday after the Los Angeles Unified School District reached a tentative agreement with the union that represents workers including custodians, bus drivers and cafeteria workers. Mayor Bass stepped into negotiations at the last minute to help avert a disruptive work stoppage.

— LA USD$: The price of the union deal will be nearly $1.2 billion in annual contract costs, and questions remain about whether the district can afford it.

— ONE AND DONE?: Mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt went on the Joe Rogan Experience this week and told the podcaster that Angelenos are fed up with their leadership. He explained the rules of the city’s June 2 primary to Rogan, saying that there would be no runoff — as most analysts expect — if a candidate wins 51% of the vote. “I think I become mayor June 2 and it won’t even go to November,” Pratt said.

— COUNTY BUDGET: The county unveiled its nearly $50-billion budget plan Monday, proposing $2.7 million invested to beef up the team of people investigating fraud within a deluge of recent sex abuse lawsuits, suggesting a broadening probe at the district attorney’s office. The supervisors must now review, then vote on the budget.

— HAHN AND OFF: L.A. County Supervisor Janice Hahn was booed by her neighbors in San Pedro at a Tuesday night town hall meeting after she spoke in support of a proposed substance abuse rehabilitation center in the South Shores neighborhood. “There will be a difference of opinion on this project, but let’s not tear each other apart,” Hahn urged residents, who picketed last weekend at the site of the proposed project.

— E-HIKE: A Los Angeles City Council panel is pushing to ban electric bikes from most city recreational trails, saying the machines pose a threat to hikers and equestrians. The council’s Arts, Parks, Libraries, and Community Enrichment Committee voted 3 to 0 in favor of the measure, which now goes to the council’s Transportation Committee before potentially advancing to the full City Council, which would have to approve the ban before it takes effect.

QUICK HITS

• Where is Inside Safe? The mayor’s signature program moved more than 25 people off the street and inside in Koreatown this week.
• On the docket next week: The mayor will release her budget on Monday, along with her second State of the City. She is planning to hold a news conference on the budget Monday.

Stay in touch

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

The first stop on Sabine Phillips’ three-hour inspection of her neighborhood was at Fountain Avenue and St. Andrew’s Place, where detached pieces of a sofa had been plopped onto the sidewalk as if this were an outdoor living room.

Phillips slid off her yellow Huffy cruiser, grabbed a pen, and entered the finding into her spiral notebook.

“This stretch is a common dumping ground,” she told me, eyes hidden behind sunglasses under a floppy sun hat.

Her part-time assistant, Keith Johnson, was wearing a “Trash Club Hollyood” T-shirt. He squeezed the handle of his garbage-grabbing tool to snare cookie and chip wrappers that floated near some empty Pacifico beer bottles and a Big Gulp container the size of a drum. When they report neighborhood problems to the city, Johnson said, “sometimes they’re helpful and many times they’re not, so we end up doing things on our own.”

Sabine Phillips, 66, and Keith Johnson, 71, right, ride their bikes documenting debris left on sidewalks of their East Hollywood neighborhood on April 15.

(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

Much of the discarded furniture and other goods left on the streets ends up being used to build homeless encampments, Phillips said. That often leads to more trash, fires, drug activity and other nuisances that threaten public safety and set residents on edge.

Phillips doesn’t just take notes. She reports her findings into the city’s MyLA311 system on Wednesdays, so city crews can make pickups on Thursdays and Fridays. And they usually do respond, Phillips said. But the cycle immediately repeats, and she has typically reported 50 or more additional items, week after week, month after month.

In a quarter of a century of writing about the many plundered patches of paradise, I’ve been repeatedly impressed by those who step up and make a difference out of some combination of pride, frustration and the spirit of volunteerism. But I also understand the rage of taxpayers who wonder why Los Angeles City Hall is so incapable of managing the basics.

In the race for leadership of the city, even Mayor Karen Bass and Councilmember Nithya Raman say things have got to change, which isn’t necessarily the best commentary on their stewardship.

“Unfortunately, it’s become fairly universal across all 99 neighborhoods in this city that L.A. government isn’t working,” mayoral candidate Adam Miller said at a recent West L.A. appearance I dropped in on, and he added that he’d use his business and nonprofit experience to tackle homelessness, housing and public safety challenges, among other issues. “We pay some of the highest taxes in the country, where people feel like we’re not getting our money’s worth anymore.”

Last week, after my column about the substantial inventory of blight around City Hall — including a graffiti-scarred fountain that’s been out of operation for most of the last 60 years (no lie) — I heard from readers with their own problems.

Richard Vasquez wrote to say the Plaza de Mexico in Lincoln Heights is still a cemetery of missing statues. Richard Zaldivar wrote to say the nearby AIDS memorial was vandalized and multiple calls for help fell on deaf ears. Estela Lopez of the downtown industrial improvement district, where trash is routinely dumped illegally, wrote to say a county report warned that typhus levels downtown had reached an all-time high.

Sabine Phillips documents abandoned furniture and debris found on sidewalks of her neighborhood on Wednesday in East Hollywood.

(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

I also heard from Stefanie Keenan, who had a clever idea a few years ago, born of exasperation with City Hall. She hired her own housekeeper — that would be Phillips — to help patrol and clean the neighborhood they both live in, and Phillips’ work was featured by NBCLA and substacker Sam Quinones.

“It’s not getting done otherwise, and our neighborhood would have burned down,” Keenan told me.

Keenan, who has been tending to her streets for several years, has been paying Phillips $100 for Wednesday scouting forays and another $100 to fill four or five huge bags on Saturday trash patrol. Keenan, a photographer, told me she has spent tens of thousands of dollars out of her own pocket.

But Keenan doesn’t have unlimited funds, and this was Phillips’ last week on the job. Lord knows what the neighborhood will look like without her on patrol. As she pedaled along her regular route Wednesday, Phillips found several more sofas, among other things.

A freezer. A refrigerator. Rugs. Chairs. Stools. Dressers. Drawers. Bed frames. Mattresses. Box springs. A printer. Electronics. Televisions.

And heaps of trash, some of which blocked sidewalks and some of which spilled off curbs and into streets.

On Lexington Avenue she stopped to make the following entry in her log:

“3 toilets.”

Nothing surprised her, and nothing slowed her down. At a house where a construction worker dumped lumber onto the sidewalk, Phillips strode up and asked what the thought would happen to the scrap pile. He said he had no idea; she made an entry in her log.

Phillips takes a break from documenting addresses of abandoned furniture and debris.

(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

I tried to recruit Phillips to run for mayor, but the native of Germany wasn’t interested. She did say, however, that she was “the first female bouncer in Berlin,” and that was “at a Hells Angel discotheque.”

The Berlin bouncer kept moving, and scribbling. She filled three pages in her notebook with more than 60 notations, including sidewalk graffiti.

“I’ve seen some weird stuff,” Phillips said. “Twice I found safes outside, just on the side of the curb.”

The studio-adjacent neighborhood she patrols has an eclectic mix of upscale houses and block-long stretches of apartment buildings, with people moving in and out and leaving possessions on the curb as they come and go.

That’s not the city’s fault. But the city could do a better job of educating residents on how to arrange for pickups, and a better job of cracking down when they don’t. I reached out to the office of Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martinez, but we hadn’t yet connected when I hit my deadline.

At the Lexington Avenue pocket park, Phillips told me she had never seen kids on the grounds.

“I will show you why I would never have kids playing here,” she said, pointing into the sandbox. “There is glass … needles, and … you will see human waste there in the corner.”

A blue tarp covered a makeshift home next to the sandbox. Someone slept on a bench. The slide had a gang tag painted onto it, and two people hovered under the slide on the edge of the sandbox. Phillips said she has seen homeless people use the water fountain to bathe, and a 15-year-old from a nearby high school died in 2022 after buying drugs here.

Jenny Carpio and her dog, Sky, walk past debris along a sidewalk in East Hollywood.

(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

While Phillips and Johnson were in the park, a city rec and parks employee pulled up. He said he was there to check the condition of the park, which was slated for a new playground that would cost about $300,000. He said a body had been found in the park not long ago. He guessed about 30% to 50% of the city’s parks have similar iproblems.

I’m reminded of Kurt Vonnegut’s refrain in “Slaughterhouse-Five.”

So it goes.

The insanity of investing in a new playground when a dozen festering issues make the park unsafe should be crystal clear to one and all. Surely there’s more to the plan, one would hope — something substantive and sustainable. But that’s a risky bet.

It might be better to admit defeat for now, close the park, and do something else with that $300,000.

Use it to put Phillips, and a team trained and supervised by her, on a fleet of yellow Huffys.

I guarantee it would be money well spent.

steve.lopez@latimes.com

When the heads of three Los Angeles Unified School District unions stood side by side at City Hall to announce their new contracts after nearly going on strike hours earlier, one of them looked out of place.

Max Arias was decked out in a purple letterman’s cardigan emblazoned with “99,” for Service Employees International Union Local 99. United Teachers Los Angeles President Cecily Myart-Cruz wore a tie-dyed T-shirt that read “Solidarity LA.”

And then there was Maria Nichols, who looked like the school principal she once was.

Shiny black shoes. Black slacks. Light makeup. Tight smile. The only flash of color was her green V-neck union T-shirt, the logo peeking out of a black blazer.

Arias and Myart-Cruz gave impassioned speeches hailing the last-minute deals, which still need to be approved by union members and the school board. Nichols, who leads the Associated Administrators of Los Angeles/Teamsters Local 2010, started with a joke about her mere year and 10 months as a union leader.

“I’m the new kid on the block,” the 60-year-old said. “But we made a commitment. It’s not about equality, it’s about equity. … We are all better today for our collective work.”

AALA’s tentative contract calls for raises of more than 11% for the LAUSD’s 3,000 principals, assistant principals and middle managers — a lower percentage increase than SEIU’s 24% and UTLA’s 14%. But the contract also secured a 40-hour week with flex time off for extra hours, addressing long-standing complaints about grueling schedules.

On top of all that, Nichols has led her members into a new era.

“For a long time, principals have been perceived” as a class apart from other school employees, Arias said at the City Hall news conference Tuesday.

Not only are they many workers’ bosses, but with median salaries of $160,139 for elementary schools and $174,628 for higher grades, they make a lot more money. When UTLA went on strike in 2019, AALA stayed on the job.

This time, AALA and the other two unions vowed to all go on strike together if any one of them failed to get a contract.

“So them coming in,” Arias continued, “really shows our members that it is important to start figuring out how we work in solidarity.”

Nichols “called us and said, ‘I know that you guys have already been rolling, but I want to join in,’” Myart-Cruz added. “Having the leadership to be able to articulate that message to her administrators is a great thing. Solidarity is a great thing, but we now have unity.”

“I may be the new kid on the block,” Nichols told me afterward with a grin, “but I’ve been fighting for better schools for 42 years.”

We met a few days later at AALA’s Echo Park office.

“Excuse the mess,” Nichols cracked as we walked to her corner suite. She now wore a bright red pantsuit, union pins on her lapel. Hundreds of signs reading “Enough is Enough” leaned upside down against desks and cabinets. Chips, water and other snacks were piled inside collapsible carts.

“This was all going to be used for the strike,” she said. “You know what they say — expect the best but prepare for the worst.”

AALA /Teamsters 2010 President Maria Nichols hugs UTLA President Cecily Myart-Cruz during a news conference announcing a tentative agreement between LAUSD and the unions representing teachers, principals and workers at City Hall in Los Angeles on April 14, 2026. Above them is SEIU Local 99 President Max Arias.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

A breakfast of blueberries and yogurt sat untouched as Nichols recounted her life story. She moved to Los Angeles at age 5 from her native Peru to join parents who left after a military coup. A star volleyball setter at Fairfax High, she gave up a University of Arizona scholarship her freshman year after breaking her wrist and finding it “too hard to watch the games and not be involved.”

Back home, she joined LAUSD as a bilingual teacher’s assistant while pursuing a degree in physical therapy at Cal State Northridge. Thanks to a succession of bosses she called “angels,” she stayed in public education. She worked in San Fernando Valley elementary schools as an assistant, a teacher and an assistant principal before a decade-long run as principal at Vena Avenue Elementary in Arleta, which was designated a California Distinguished School during her tenure.

That led to a promotion as a regional director for Valley schools, a job she loved despite the difficulties of shrinking budgets and enrollment. Nichols credited then-LAUSD Superintendent Austin Beutner with granting autonomy to principals in the district.

“We were all administrators from the field that had served time in this district and gone up the ranks,” she said. “That disappeared with [current Supt. Alberto] Carvalho. Gone. Gone.”

She pointed to a flow chart on the wall, titled “Ready for the World,” that Carvalho’s team distributed after he arrived in 2022. He brought in his own people instead of empowering existing administrators, she said.

“It’s a great plan,” Nichols said with no sarcasm while reading its goals aloud. “Because that is what we want. But we don’t invest in staff because we have a shortage. … We can’t have joy and wellness if your people are drying on the vine because they’re exhausted.”

Friction between principals and teachers over budgets and educational strategies increased. Frustrated, Nichols attended her first AALA meeting about two years ago.

“There were like 20 people there. And I thought, ‘This is it? This is where we are?’” she recalled.

Some principals urged her to run against the union’s incumbent president. One of them was Kathie Galan-Jaramillo, whom Nichols had hired to lead Sylmar Leadership Academy.

“Our union was very small, and it was very difficult for us to stand for what we believe in,” Galan-Jaramillo said. “But Maria knew all of the things and hurdles that we [administrators] had to do and go through, and the expectations.”

To prepare for negotiating a new contract, Nichols studied the existing one.

“It was so weak. The language was so antiquated,” she remembered thinking, especially when it came to making sure members weren’t being overworked. “And then I looked at UTLA’s contract and I said, ‘Holy crap. No wonder they get everything.’”

At the end of 2024, 85% of AALA members approved a Nichols-backed merger with Teamsters 2010, which represents higher education workers in California, to shore up their resources and try a different, tougher mindset.

“She has what’s lacking among many leaders — she has the judgment and humility to say, ‘I have things to learn and I’m up to it,’” said Teamsters 2010 Secretary-Treasurer Jason Rabinowitz, who sat with Nichols in contract negotiations. “And she’s a learner and quick study. That’s not always easy to do, because labor leaders have ego.”

After contract talks hit an impasse in February, Nichols reached out to Arias and Myart-Cruz to share research and strategy. They sold her on a united front. But initially, not all AALA members embraced the move, with some questioning why the union would still strike after getting a new contract.

“I was getting a lot of push back from members — ‘But if we get a TA [temporary agreement], why would we strike?” Nichols said. “But it wasn’t about the TA anymore. It was about the coalition. It was about sticking together. It was about power and unity. … My folks were not used to that.”

Nichols expects that AALA members will ratify the agreement.

“We’ll be done, and in May, we [Arias and Myart-Cruz] will go out and have some dinner, and, you know, adult beverages,” she said with a loud laugh.

Maria Nichols, head of the LAUSD principals union, AALA/Teamsters 2010, at her AALA office in Echo Park.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

Then comes what she describes as the new alliance’s “heavy lies the crown” moment.

LAUSD plans to bankroll the contracts with money from Sacramento that may or may not come through, even as it plans to cut more than 600 jobs and school enrollment keeps dropping. SEIU’s new contract includes extra hours for members — who include custodians, bus drivers and cafeteria workers — so they can qualify for health benefits, Nichols pointed out.

“They deserve it,” she said, citing her respect for them because her father was a dishwasher and her mother cleaned houses. “But that impact of health benefits, it’s going to be directed at school budgets. OK, great. We got all of these wins, but how is that going to impact our budget at schools? Where’s the money going to come from?”

But these were issues for another day.

The conference room table was now covered in stacks of the same green T-shirt Nichols had worn at City Hall.

“We were going to give them out during the strike,” she said as her staff busied for a flurry of meetings. “But we’ll still give them out. We’ve got a job to do.”

PHOENIX — The top election official in Arizona’s most populous county will get more authority in running elections after a judge sided with his office in a prolonged legal fight with the local board that shares responsibility for overseeing the vote.

The decision could have broad implications in one of the nation’s most prominent battleground states, which will have several high-profile races this fall. Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix, has been roiled by election conspiracy theorists ever since President Trump lost the state to Democrat Joe Biden during his bid for reelection in 2020.

Justin Heap, the Republican recorder in Maricopa County, sued the predominantly Republican county board of supervisors last summer, alleging it had illegally taken control of certain aspects of election administration. Heap claimed the board transferred funding, IT staff and some key functions — including management of ballot drop boxes and establishing early voting sites — away from his office through an agreement negotiated with his predecessor, whom he had recently defeated in a GOP primary.

Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Scott Blaney mostly sided with Heap’s office in his ruling, which was filed Thursday but appeared on the public docket Friday. The board of supervisors “acted unlawfully and exceeded its statutory authority by seizing the Recorder’s personnel, systems and equipment and refusing to return them” to the recorder, he wrote.

Blaney also ruled that the recorder’s office is responsible for overseeing in-person early voting, among other duties, while the board is responsible for other operations, such as selecting election day voting locations, supplying polling locations and hiring poll workers.

“The Board’s assertion of plenary authority over election administration through its general supervisory powers is inconsistent with Arizona law,” the judge wrote.

Board Chairwoman Kate Brophy McGee said the board will consider an appeal.

“I disagree with other portions of the ruling, and I will explore all options with the Board of Supervisors, including an expeditious appeal,” McGee, a Republican, said in a statement. “From day one, the Board of Supervisors has provided Recorder Heap the resources and staffing needed to fulfill his statutory duties. We will continue to do so because voters always come first.”

In a statement, Heap praised the ruling as a “clear and decisive victory for the rule of law and for the voters of Maricopa County.”

“The court confirmed that the Board cannot override state law, use funding as leverage, or take control of election duties assigned to the Recorder,” Heap said. “This ruling restores both the authority and the resources necessary for my office to do its job.”

Heap, a former Republican state lawmaker, was elected in 2024 after unseating incumbent Stephen Richer in the GOP primary and defeating a Democratic candidate in the general election. In the past, Heap has stopped short of repeating false claims that the 2020 and 2022 elections were stolen but has said voters don’t trust the state’s voting system and that it’s poorly run.

False claims of fraud since the 2020 presidential election led to threats of violence against Richer and others in the Maricopa County elections office. Richer blamed Heap for contributing to an atmosphere of distrust and vitriol directed toward the office.

“He catered to the really ugly stuff that the people in that office had to live through,” Richer said of Heap, in an interview last month. “And he allied with people who were very much in the eye of the storm in terms of creating it.”

Once he took office, Heap terminated a previous agreement that was reached between Richer and the board that had revised how election operations were divided between the two offices. Heap filed his lawsuit with the backing of America First Legal, a conservative public interest group founded by Stephen Miller, now deputy chief of staff in the White House.

Kelety writes for the Associated Press.

Reporting from Sacramento — — Two days after he was finally sworn in as California’s lieutenant governor after a grueling partisan battle, Republican Abel Maldonado appeared on national TV with political comedian Stephen Colbert to discuss his signature issue, a primary election designed to reduce the influence of party hardliners in the Legislature.

“Why on Earth would you want to destroy the two-party system?” demanded Colbert, who parodies a right-wing cable news host.

Leaders from both major parties in California, who vehemently oppose the open-primary measure, are asking essentially the same question, only they don’t see it as a laughing matter.

Proposition 14, which appears on the June 8 ballot, would put all candidates for statewide, congressional and legislative offices on the same primary ballot and allow voters to choose from the full list. The top two vote-getters for each office — regardless of party — would face each other in a runoff.

A poll released Wednesday by the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California showed 60% of respondents in favor of the measure, 27% opposed and 13% undecided.

Backers, including Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, say the system would free candidates from the need to court the radical wings of their parties to win nomination to the November ballot. That, in turn, would lead to the election of more moderate lawmakers and more cooperation on tough issues like fixing California’s $19.1–billion budget deficit.

Under the current system, Republicans vote on one ballot in a primary election and Democrats on another. Independents, who now represent a record 20% of the California electorate, are allowed to choose either ballot. But few do, so their influence in a primary is minimal, and candidates for November are generally chosen by hard-core party loyalists.

About a third of California congressional and legislative districts are dominated by a single party, according to a recent report by the nonpartisan Center for Governmental Studies in Los Angeles. Almost all are Democratic strongholds. In some, Democrats have such an advantage that the two top primary vote-getters might both be Democrats.

In those cases, Proposition 14 supporters said, they hope the more moderate candidate could win by appealing to Republicans and independents.

As of Friday, Schwarzenegger and the California Chamber of Commerce had helped raise more than $4.7 million for a Yes on 14 campaign, which has started airing a radio ad that claims the measure would reduce “the influence of the major parties which are now under the control of the special interests.”

In a display of harmony that would seem unthinkable on other issues, leading state Democrats and Republicans announced a joint campaign to defeat the measure. They had raised $200,000 as of Friday.

“Both political parties in California hate this measure,” said Tony Quinn, co-editor of the nonpartisan California Target Book, which tracks state political races. “They like having these little private clubs. But the voters don’t.”

Party leaders say passage of Proposition 14 would invite a slew of unintended consequences, including higher campaign costs and political skullduggery.

“It allows for mischief where Democrats could go and choose the Republican nominee,” said John Burton, chairman of the state Democratic Party.

He said there are Democrats in safe districts who might try to help their party by casting their primary votes for hard-line Republicans who are “so far out” that they could not win a general election.

Under the current system, primary campaigns are less expensive than general elections because candidates have to woo only voters registered in their own party. With an open system, candidates would need to appeal to all voters, sending out a lot more mail and potentially buying expensive air time on radio and TV. The increased costs could drive them deeper into the arms of well-heeled special interests, party leaders say.

Those leaders also take issue with the underlying notion that they are a source of unhealthy division.

“Broad-based political parties are an essential part of our democracy,” said California Republican Party Chairman Ron Nehring. “The alternative is to have voters divided by … region, or ethnicity or religion.”

Burton, whose Democrats control both chambers of the Legislature, scoffed at the notion that he can call the shots for lawmakers.

“If I had power, this wouldn’t even be on the ballot, because I urged the [Senate president] pro tem and the Assembly speaker not to do it,” he said.

In fact, it was the Legislature that put the measure on the ballot after one lone moderate broke last year’s budget stalemate. Maldonado, then a state senator, agreed to vote for tax increases after legislative leaders agreed to put the open-primary measure before voters.

But the Legislature’s leaders don’t want the measure to pass and are now opposing it. The move won Maldonado a friend in Schwarzenegger, however, and the governor nominated him for the vacant lieutenant governor post.

The confirmation process quickly descended into a partisan fight.

“They came at me from all sides, and it was all driven by the party bosses,” Maldonado said of the roughly 150 days he spent in limbo, waiting for confirmation. “But with the open primary initiative, you would only be accountable to the people.”

While politicians debate the measure’s possible effect, many academics wonder if it would have any noticeable effect. Bruce Cain, a professor of political science at UC Berkeley, said he expected the major parties and big donors would adapt quickly and make sure they have only one credible candidate in each primary.

“As a social scientist, I’m glad that California wants to do another experiment; it generates more papers and more studies,” Cain said. “But I share the prevailing skepticism of my profession that any significant change will come about.”

jack.dolan@latimes.com

WASHINGTON — U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement acting director Todd Lyons, a key executor of President Trump’s mass deportations agenda, will resign at the end of May, federal officials announced Thursday.

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin announced Lyons’ departure, calling him a great leader of ICE who helped to make American communities safer. Mullin said Lyons’ last day will be May 31.

“We wish him luck on his next opportunity in the private sector,” Mullin said in a statement. The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to an email from the Associated Press asking why he is resigning.

Lyons, who was named acting director in March 2025, led the agency at the center of President Trump’s plans to reshape immigration to the U.S.

Under his leadership, the agency was granted a massive infusion of cash through Congress, which it used to expand hiring and detention capabilities, and it ramped up arrests to meet demand from the administration.

ICE was also central to a series of high-profile immigration enforcement operations in American cities, including Chicago and Minneapolis, a deployment that ended after backlash erupted over the deaths of two American protesters at the hands of federal immigration officers.

Stephen Miller, the president’s deputy chief of staff and the main architect of his immigration policy, called Lyons a “dedicated leader.”

“His courageous work at ICE has saved countless thousands of American lives and helped deliver safety and tranquility to millions of Americans,” Miller said in a statement.

White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson described Lyons in a post on X as “an American patriot who made our country safer.”

It’s not clear who might replace Lyons. But whoever does will take over an agency flush with cash while still a flashpoint for controversy. ICE is at the center of a battle in Congress, with Democratic lawmakers demanding restraints on immigration officers before agreeing to restore routine funding for DHS.

On Thursday, Lyons, along with two other top immigration officials, appeared before a House subcommittee to argue for his agency’s budget and faced continued scrutiny from lawmakers of ICE’s actions.

Lyons’ departure also comes as DHS is under new leadership after Trump fired former Secretary Kristi Noem, who led the department through the administration’s major immigration policy changes.

Mullin, who took over as secretary last month, is likely to continue to advance the president’s agenda but has struck a softer tone on some of the administration’s most contentious policies.

Public perceptions of ICE during Lyons’ tenure were low. In a February AP-NORC poll, most U.S. adults, including independents, said they have an unfavorable view of the agency.

Lyons faced questions in Congress over the shooting deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti and was asked if he would apologize for the way some Trump administration officials characterized Good as an agitator. He declined to do so.

“I welcome the opportunity to speak to the family in private. But I’m not going to comment on any active investigation,” Lyons said.

Lyons said he had seen video that captured Pretti’s shooting but said he could not comment, citing an active investigation.

Lyons, who joined ICE in 2007 as an immigration enforcement agent in Texas, signed off on a memo, first obtained by the Associated Press, that granted federal immigration officers sweeping powers to forcibly enter homes and make arrests without a judge’s warrant.

Trump’s border advisor Tom Homan described Lyons as serving selflessly and “a highly respected and effective acting Director of ICE.”

Goldenberg and Golden write for the Associated Press. Golden reported from Seattle.

WASHINGTON — Upbeat claims from President Trump over an imminent peace deal to end the war with Iran were met with deep skepticism Friday across the Middle East, where Iranian and Israeli officials questioned the prospects for a lasting agreement that would satisfy all parties.

The outlines of an agreement began to emerge that would provide Iran with a major strategic victory — and a potential financial windfall — allowing the Islamic Republic to leverage its control over the Strait of Hormuz to exact significant concessions from the United States and its ally Israel as Trump presses for a swift end to the conflict.

In a series of social media posts and interviews with reporters, Trump announced that the strait was “fully open,” vowing Tehran would never again attempt to control it. But Iranian officials and state media said that conditions remained on passage through the waterway, including the imposition of tolls and coordination with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Iranian diplomats posted threats that its closure could resume at any time of their choosing, and warned that restrictions would return unless the United States agreed to lift a blockade of its ports. Trump had said Friday that the blockade would remain in place.

“The conditional and limited reopening of a portion of the Strait of Hormuz is solely an Iranian initiative, one that creates responsibility and serves to test the firm commitments of the opposing side,” said a top aide to Iran’s president, dismissing Trump’s statements on the contours of a deal as “baseless.”

“If they renege on their promises,” he added, “they will face dire consequences.”

In an overture to Iran, Trump said Israel would be “prohibited” from conducting additional military strikes in Lebanon, where the Israeli government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu seeks to prevent Hezbollah, an Iranian proxy militia, from rearming, a potential threat to communities in the Israeli north.

But in a speech delivered in Hebrew, Netanyahu would say only that Israel had agreed to a temporary ceasefire, while members of his Cabinet warned that Israel Defense Forces operations in southern Lebanon were not yet finished. A top ally of the prime minister at a right-wing Israeli news outlet warned that Trump was “surrendering” to Iran in the talks.

It was a day of public messaging from a president eager to end a war that has proved historically unpopular with the American public, and has driven a rise in gas prices that could weigh on his party entering this year’s midterm elections.

Yet, Republican allies of the president have begun warning him that an agreement skewed heavily in Tehran’s favor could carry political costs of its own.

Trump was forced to deny an Axios report Friday that his negotiating team had offered to release $20 billion in frozen Iranian assets in exchange for Tehran agreeing to hand over its fissile material, buried under rubble from a U.S. bombing raid last year.

That sum would amount to more than 10 times what President Obama released to Iran under a 2015 nuclear deal, called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, that was the subject of fierce Republican criticism in the decade since.

“I have every confidence that President Trump will not allow Iran to be enriched by tens of billions of dollars for holding the world hostage and creating mayhem in the region,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), a strong supporter of the war. “No JCPOAs on President Trump’s watch.”

Still, Trump said in a round of interviews that a deal could be reached in a matter of days, ending less than two weeks of negotiations.

He claimed that Tehran had agreed to permanently end its enrichment of uranium — a development that, if true, would mark a dramatic reversal for the Islamic Republic from decades developing its nuclear program, and from just 10 days ago, when Iranian diplomats rejected a U.S. proposal of a 20-year pause on domestic enrichment in favor of a five-year moratorium.

He said Iran had agreed never to build nuclear weapons — a pledge Tehran has made repeatedly, including under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, in a religious decree from then-Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and in the 2015 agreement — while continuing nuclear activities viewed by the international community as exceeding civilian needs.

And he repeatedly stated that Iran had agreed to the removal of its enriched uranium from the country, either to the United States or to a third party. Iranian state media stated Friday afternoon that a proposal to remove the country’s highly enriched uranium had been “rejected.”

Iran’s agreement to allow safe passage for commercial vessels through the Strait of Hormuz is linked to a ceasefire in Lebanon that the Israeli Cabinet approved for only a 10-day period. Regardless of whether it holds or is extended, Israeli officials said their military would not retreat from its current positions in southern Lebanon — opening up Israeli forces to potential attack by Hezbollah militants unbound by a truce brokered by the Lebanese government.

The Lebanese people, Hezbollah officials said, have “the right to resist” Israeli occupation of their land. Whether the fighting resumes, the group added, “will be determined based on how developments unfold.”

An Iranian official threw cold water on the prospects of reaching a comprehensive peace deal in the coming days, telling Reuters that a temporary extension of the current ceasefire, set to expire Tuesday, would “create space for more talks on lifting sanctions on Iran and securing compensation for war damages.”

“In exchange, Iran will provide assurances to the international community about the peaceful nature of its nuclear program,” the official said, adding that “any other narrative about the ongoing talks is a misrepresentation of the situation.”

Trump told reporters Friday that the talks will continue through the weekend.

While Trump claimed there aren’t “too many significant differences” remaining, he said the United States would continue the blockade until negotiations are finalized and formalized.

“When the agreement is signed, the blockade ends,” the president told reporters in Phoenix.

Times staff writer Ana Ceballos contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — Lawyers for President Trump are engaged in talks with the IRS to resolve a $10-billion lawsuit the president filed against his own tax collection agency over the leak of his tax information to news outlets between 2018 and 2020.

In a federal court filing Friday, Trump asks a judge to pause the case for 90 days while the two sides work to reach a settlement or resolution.

“This limited pause will neither prejudice the parties nor delay ultimate resolution,” the filing says. “Rather, the extension will promote judicial economy and allow the Parties to explore avenues that could narrow or resolve the issues efficiently.”

Tax and ethics experts say the lawsuit raises a plethora of legal and ethical questions, including the propriety of the leader of the executive branch pursuing scorched-earth litigation against the very government he oversees.

Earlier this year, Trump filed a lawsuit 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 plaintiffs in the suit.

In 2024, former IRS contractor Charles Edward Littlejohn, of Washington — who worked for Booz Allen Hamilton, a defense and national security tech firm — was sentenced to five years in prison after pleading guilty to leaking tax information about President Trump and others to two news outlets between 2018 and 2020.

The outlets were not named in the charging documents, but the description and time frame align with stories about Trump’s tax returns in the New York Times and reporting about wealthy Americans’ taxes in the nonprofit investigative journalism organization ProPublica. The 2020 New York Times report found Trump paid $750 in federal income tax the year he first entered the White House, and no income tax at all some years, thanks to reported colossal losses.

When asked in February how he would handle any potential damages from the case, Trump said, “I think what we’ll do is do something for charity.”

“We could make it a substantial amount,” he said at the time. “Nobody would care because it’s going to go to numerous very good charities.”

Several ethics watchdog groups have filed friend-of-the-court briefs challenging the president’s lawsuit.

The watchdog group Democracy Forward’s February filing states that the case is “extraordinary because the President controls both sides of the litigation, which raises the prospect of collusive litigation tactics,” and “the conflicts of interest make it uncertain whether the Department of Justice will zealously defend the public fisc in the same way that it has against other plaintiffs claiming damages for related events.”

Hussein writes for the Associated Press.

Their backgrounds stand out. And not in a good way.

Two bankruptcies and six law enforcement jobs in three years. An allegation of lying in a police report to justify a felony charge against an innocent woman — an incident that led to a $75,000 settlement and criticism of his integrity. A third job candidate once failed to graduate from a police academy, then lasted only three weeks in his only job as a police officer.

Their common bond: All were hired recently by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement during an unprecedented hiring spree — 12,000 new officers and special agents to double its force — after the agency received a $75-billion windfall from Congress to enact President Trump’s mass deportation campaign.

The president put a premium on swift action, and for ICE that meant rapid-fire recruitment and hiring, which in turn led to new employees with questionable qualifications. Their backgrounds and training have come under scrutiny after numerous high-profile incidents in which ICE agents used excessive force.

“If vetting is not done well and it’s done too quickly, you have higher risk of increased liability to the agency because of bad actions, abuse of power and the lack of ability to properly carry out the mission because people don’t know what they are doing,” said Claire Trickler-McNulty, who served as an ICE official during the Obama, first Trump and Biden administrations.

The agency has said the majority of new hires are police and military veterans. But evidence is mounting that applicants with questionable histories were either not fully vetted before they were brought on or were hired in spite of their past, an investigation by the Associated Press found.

ICE’s acting director, Todd Lyons, said during a congressional hearing in February that he was proud of the hiring campaign, which drew more than 220,000 applications. “This expansion of a well-trained and well-vetted workforce will help further ICE’s ability to execute the president’s and secretary’s bold agenda,” he said.

AP finds legal issues in new ICE hires’ backgrounds

Unlike many local law enforcement agencies, ICE said it shields the identity of employees to protect them from harassment, making a full accounting of the new hires impossible.

The AP focused on more than 40 officers who recently made public their new jobs as ICE officers on LinkedIn pages, using public records to check their backgrounds. All but one were male.

While most of them had conventional qualifications as former correctional officers, security guards, military veterans and police officers, it’s unclear how many should have potentially been disqualified because AP did not have access to their full personnel files. But several had histories of unpaid debts that resulted in legal action, two had filed for bankruptcy and three others had faced lawsuits that alleged misconduct in prior law enforcement jobs, the AP found.

Marshall Jones, an expert on police recruiting at the Florida Institute of Technology, said it’s hard to get a full picture of ICE’s new employee pool without more data. But he said ICE has likely hired some “less than ideal candidates” who meet minimum requirements but would be passed over in a normal hiring cycle.

“If you’re hiring hundreds or thousands of people, even with the best of background processes, there are going to be outliers,” he said. “The question is, are these normal outliers from human beings doing things, or is there a systemic challenge in properly vetting folks if there are issues?”

DHS says ‘vetting is an ongoing process’

The Department of Homeland Security, ICE’s parent agency, did not answer questions about specific hiring decisions. But it acknowledged some applicants received “tentative selection letters” and offers to begin working on a temporary status before they had been subjected to full background checks.

“ICE is committed to ensuring its law enforcement personnel are held to the highest standards and rigorously vets them throughout the hiring process,” the department said. “Vetting is an ongoing process, not a one-time occurrence.”

The process includes reviewing their criminal histories and credit scores and conducting background investigations that include interviewing prior employers and other associates, which can take weeks. But the deluge of hires has strained the agency, which promised signing bonuses of up to $50,000 and advertised that college degrees were not required.

An internal memo, first reported by Reuters in February, told ICE supervisors that if they receive “derogatory information about a newly hired employee’s conduct” they should refer the allegations to an internal affairs unit for investigation. Such information could include the employees’ termination or forced resignations, the memo said.

Two bankruptcies, six jobs before ICE hired him

Among the new hires is Carmine Gurliacci, 46, who resigned as a police officer in Richmond Hill, Ga., to join ICE in Atlanta in December, according to a resignation letter obtained by AP.

He filed for bankruptcy in 2022, saying he had no income and had been unemployed for two years after moving from New York to Georgia, court filings show. He said he was living with a friend and doing chores in exchange for housing, listing tens of thousands of dollars of unpaid loans, bills, child support and other debts. He also had filed for bankruptcy in 2013 in New York, when he listed $95,000 in liabilities, records show.

Serious financial problems are “a pretty big red flag” because they might make employees susceptible to bribes or extortion, which have been problems at ICE, Trickler-McNulty said.

After his 2022 bankruptcy petition was approved, Gurliacci rejoined the work force, hopping to six Georgia law enforcement agencies within three years, each time resigning before moving on, records obtained by AP show.

He left one campus security job in 2023, citing “unforeseen personal issues that render me unable to fulfill my duties,” a resignation letter shows. But he then began working for the Butts County Sheriff’s Office soon after.

He lasted months there before moving to the Chatham County Sheriff’s Office, where he quit after two months on the job, records show. The federal government recently obtained his Chatham County personnel file as part of a background check, two months after he started at ICE.

Reached by phone, Gurliacci told a reporter he would call back. He never did and did not respond to follow-up messages.

Critic says new ICE hire ‘abuses his power’

Another new hire is Andrew Penland, 29, who joined ICE after resigning in December as a sheriff’s deputy in Greenwood County, Kansas.

Penland had spent most of his career as a deputy in Bourbon County, Kansas, but left last year after facing a lawsuit alleging he arrested a woman on false allegations in 2022. The county’s insurer paid $75,000 to settle the case, the agreement shows.

The woman, June Bench, recounted in an interview what happened. One of her neighbors, a county official, claimed Bench had purposely made a wide turn and nearly hit him with her car.

Penland responded to the property. Body camera video shows he urged the neighbor to press charges and told the man Bench would go to jail but he would not have to testify in court because it would get resolved through a plea.

Bench denied the allegation and said it was part of a personal dispute. But Penland arrested her on a felony assault charge, took her to jail and seized her car. Penland wrote in a report that he watched surveillance video showing her neighbor jumping out of the way of her speeding car.

It took a week for Bench to get out of jail and more than a year to defeat the charge, which was dismissed for lack of evidence. When she obtained the video Penland cited as proof, it showed her car appearing to make a routine turn and no near-collision with the neighbor.

Bench said she was outraged to learn Penland had been hired by ICE.

“That’s scary to me. He abuses his power,” she said.

After being reached for comment, Penland deactivated his LinkedIn account and alerted ICE to the inquiry but did not respond to AP.

New hire struggled at police academy

A third new ICE hire, Antonio Barrett, initially failed to graduate from a Colorado law enforcement academy in 2020, one of two students who did not “complete portions of the academy” and received “an incomplete grade,” an email obtained by AP shows.

He finished the program after a community college arranged a special one-day training and test for him, and landed a job at the police department in La Junta, Colo., in July 2020. But he worked only three weeks before resigning and never worked in local policing again.

Previously, Barrett worked as a corrections officer at a Colorado prison.

He was accused in a lawsuit of excessive force for inflicting pain on a handcuffed inmate when he and another colleague forcibly removed the man from a wheelchair in 2017. But state officials argued their actions were not excessive and a court agreed, dismissing the case.

Barrett didn’t respond to a message seeking comment.

Ex-ICE instructor says training is inadequate

ICE has denied removing any training requirements, saying new recruits receive 56 days of training and 28 days of on-the-job training. The agency said that most of the new officers have already completed law enforcement academies.

But former ICE academy instructor Ryan Schwank testified in February that agency leaders cut training on the use of force, firearms safety and the rights of protesters. He said the new recruits include some as young as 18 who lack college degrees and whose primary language is not English.

“We’re not giving them the training to know when they’re being asked to do something that they’re not supposed to do, something illegal or wrong,” he said.

Foley writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — President Trump had something urgent to address while flying back to Washington from his Mar-a-Lago estate on a recent Sunday.

It wasn’t the Iran war, nor the partial government shutdown over Department of Homeland Security funding. He was focused on a monumental issue of a different kind, hoisting artist renderings of the $400-million White House ballroom he’s building, complete with hand-carved “top-of-the-line” Corinthian columns.

“I’m so busy that I don’t have time to do this. I’m fighting wars and other things,” Trump said before extensively detailing plans for “the greatest ballroom anywhere in the world.”

His divided attention has become a Democratic point of attack and a concern for some Republicans who worry he’s not spending enough time on issues that voters care most about ahead of November’s midterm races.

The contrast was on full display Thursday, when, as Trump flew to Las Vegas to discuss tax cuts for Americans earning tips, his administration was pushing ahead with another of his splashy projects: Plans to build a 250-foot Triumphal Arch near the Lincoln Memorial replete with a Lady Liberty-like statue and a pair of golden eagles.

The president’s ability to speak to the concerns of working people has always seemed incongruous with his biography as a billionaire real estate developer. Yet his populist policies and emphasis on the economy during his 2024 campaign helped catapult him back to the White House.

Republican strategist Rick Tyler noted that, when Trump first ran for president in 2016, his wealth was a selling point.

“While other people, like Mitt Romney, played down how rich he was, Trump was giving free helicopter rides at the Iowa State Fair,” Tyler said. “People loved it.”

Still, Trump’s preoccupation with some of the gilded trappings of the presidency, as more Americans worry about bills, has drawn accusations that he’s a modern-day Marie Antoinette.

“ ‘Fighting wars’ and surging gas prices, yet Trump has time to brag about his billionaire backed ballroom,” Sen. Andy Kim (D-N.J.) responded on X to Trump’s Air Force One presentation.

Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a potential 2028 presidential hopeful, has been more direct in comparing Trump to the last queen before the French Revolution, who has come to embody extravagant opulence — even posting an AI-generated image of Trump’s face on her body on social media.

“TRUMP ‘MARIE ANTOINETTE’ SAYS, ‘NO HEALTH CARE FOR YOU PEASANTS, BUT A BALLROOM FOR THE QUEEN!’” Newsom wrote in October 2025, at the start of last fall’s 43-day government shutdown.

White House says Trump’s success benefits all Americans

Asked about opponents invoking Marie Antoinette, White House spokesman Davis Ingle said Trump “is going to go down in history as the most successful and consequential president in our lifetime.”

“His successes on behalf of the American people will be imprinted upon the fabric of America and will be felt by every other White House that comes after him,” Ingle said in a statement.

The president faced similar critiques during his first term. But lately he’s been unabashed about accusations he’s disconnected from Americans’ worries about high costs, which could leave Republicans with an uphill battle to retain control of Congress.

Republicans have been loath to question Trump, though notably there has been little criticism of a federal judge’s ruling that work on the project must stop until it has congressional approval. The GOP-controlled House and Senate also haven’t prioritized legislation to move the ballroom project forward.

“I’m not much into architecture,” Republican Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana said last fall.

About two-thirds of Americans said Trump is “out of touch” with the concerns of most people in the United States today, according to an ABC News/Washington Post/Ipsos poll from February, though the same percentage said the same about the Democratic Party.

Presidents are usually removed from voters, separated by layers of security and surrounded by adoring subordinates. In her book “Why Presidents Fail and How They Can Succeed Again,” Elaine Kamarck argues that presidents get too focused on their own political narratives rather than the public’s concerns. Yet, when it comes to Trump, “All of this stuff is frankly unique to him.”

She pointed to the ballroom as well as Trump’s other White House renovations, soon adding his signature to paper currency and renaming the Kennedy Center after himself.

“It’s a reflection, I think, of his own background as a businessman and somebody who made his fortune selling his name,” said Kamarck, who worked in Bill Clinton’s White House.

While Trump focuses on the ballroom and other Washington projects, some public work projects in other parts of the country have languished.

Joe Meyer, the former mayor of Covington, Ky., spent years pushing for critical improvements to the Brent Spence Bridge connecting his town with Cincinnati, a project listed as a top federal priority dating back to Trump’s first administration.

Federal funds for improvements were approved under President Biden but held up by a Trump-ordered review. Work is finally set to begin later this year, though delays will likely limit design options and slow the project, Meyer said.

“The ballroom is Washington inside-baseball,” Meyer said. “The bridge is just a wreck. It’s frustration that we’ve been dealing with forever.”

A $100 tip and a golden tractor

Trumpeting new tax deductions for tips, Trump staged ordering McDonald’s to the Oval Office — which he has adorned with gold flourishes — and tipped the grandmother making the delivery $100. When she described large medical bills from her husband’s cancer treatments, Trump said she should bring him to an upcoming UFC fight on the White House lawn.

When hundreds of farmers were invited to the White House for an agricultural policy speech, they stood on the South Lawn beside a tractor that had been painted gold. It drizzled, but Trump stayed dry, addressing them from a covered second-floor balcony.

“You don’t mind rain,” the president told the farmers below.

He then flew to Miami for a conference of Saudi investors who, the president noted, were too rich to be impressed by U.S. families scrounging to save up $5,000.

“I know they’re looking like, ‘What the hell is $5,000?’ ” Trump joked. “Their shoes cost them more than $5,000.”

When asked in February, meanwhile, for his message to young people wanting to buy a home, Trump replied: “Save a little longer. Wait a little longer.”

Members of the Cabinet have also fed the perception that Trump’s promised “Golden Age” may not be arriving for everyone. Health Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. advised Americans to buy liver instead of beef.

“If you go and buy a steak, it’s still pretty expensive. But if you buy the cheaper cuts, it’s great meat. And it is very, very affordable. Or liver, or, you know, all these alternatives,” he told podcast host Joe Rogan.

Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said people could still afford meals consisting of “a piece of chicken, a piece of broccoli, corn tortilla and one other thing.”

Texas-based Republican consultant Brendan Steinhauser said he thinks that Trump “can kind of get away with” building a ballroom because voters have come to expect that from him as a brash dealmaker and businessman.

But Steinhauser said he worries that dramatic increases in gas prices and a potentially weakening economy could resonate with voters. Ahead of the midterms, Steinhauser said, Democrats could score points “trying to make it more about Trump and his oligarch friends.”

Price and Weissert write for the Associated Press. AP writers Linley Sanders in Washington and Ali Swenson in New York contributed to this report.

KINSHASA, Congo — Around 15 people deported from the United States landed in Congo’s capital Kinshasa early Friday, one of their lawyers told the Associated Press.

It was the latest example of the Trump administration using agreements with African countries to accelerate migrant removals that have raised questions about respect for the migrants’ rights.

An official at the Congolese migration agency confirmed the arrivals but didn’t provide details.

The deportees are all from Latin America and the Congolese government plans to keep them in the country for a short period, said U.S. attorney Alma David, who represents one of the deportees. She has been speaking with her client since arriving in Kinshasa.

All the deportees are believed to have legal protection from U.S. judges shielding them against being returned to their home countries, David said. The deportees are believed to be staying at a hotel in Kinshasa.

The International Organization for Migration, a United Nations-affiliated agency, will be involved to offer “assisted voluntary return,” David told AP.

“The fact that the focus is on offering them ‘voluntary’ return to their home country when they spent months in immigration detention in the U.S. fighting hard to not have to go home is very alarming,” she said.

An International Organization for Migration spokesperson said the organization was providing humanitarian assistance to the deportees at the request of the Congolese government. It said it may also offer assisted voluntary return, which is “strictly voluntary and based on free, prior and informed consent.”

Congo’s Ministry of Communications said in a statement earlier this month that it will receive some migrants as part of a new deal under the Trump administration’s third-country program.

It described the arrangement as a “temporary” one that reflects Congo’s “commitment to human dignity and international solidarity.” It would come with zero costs to the government with the U.S. covering the needed logistics, it said.

The statement said no automatic transfer of the deportees is planned, adding: “Each situation will be subject to individual review in accordance with the laws of the Republic and national security requirements.”

The U.S. has struck such third-country deportation deals with at least seven other African nations, many of them among countries hit hardest by the Trump administration’s policies restricting trade, aid and migration.

The Trump administration has spent at least $40 million to deport about 300 migrants to countries other than their own, according to a report released recently by the Democratic staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Lawyers and activists have raised questions over the nature of the deals with countries in Africa and elsewhere. Several of the African nations that have signed such deals have notoriously repressive governments and poor human rights records — including Eswatini, South Sudan and Equatorial Guinea.

Kamale and Banchereau write for the Associated Press. Banchereau reported from Dakar, Senegal. AP writer Saleh Mwanamilongo in Bonn, Germany contributed to this report.

PARIS — French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said an 85-year-old French widow of an American military veteran who was in immigration custody in the United States returned home on Friday.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents detained Marie-Thérèse Ross in Alabama on April 1 after she overstayed her 90-day visa, according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

“She returned to France this morning, this is a satisfaction for us,” Barrot told reporters during a visit to the southern city of Montpellier on Friday.

Barrot said he would not comment on the specific case, but said some of ICE methods are “not in line” with French standards and “not acceptable to us.” Barrot referred to “violence that raised our concerns,” without elaborating.

Ross was being held at a federal immigration detention facility in Louisiana.

She was among the thousands of people targeted by the Trump administration’s mass deportation agenda that has detained the spouses of U.S. soldiers and military veterans who previously received greater leniency under scrapped policies.

Ross married Alabama resident William Ross in April last year, Calhoun County marriage records show. Ross died in January, according to an obituary from his family, which says he was a former captain in the U.S. Army.

WASHINGTON — Democrats who once saw retaking the U.S. Senate as a long shot in 2026 have newfound hope thanks to an unpopular president and a California donor machine that has snapped into action.

Californians provided the most out-of-state cash to Democrats in nearly every hotly contested race, and in several cases gave more than in-state donors, according to a Times analysis of campaign finance filings covering the first three months of 2026.

Sen. Jon Ossoff of Georgia, who took in more than $14 million overall, received nearly as much from California backers as from supporters in his home state among donors who contributed at least $200 and whose identities were disclosed.

James Talarico, a Democratic Senate candidate in Texas, has raised a staggering $27 million so far this year, with California donors contributing just under $1.2 million to back his campaign — second only to Texas supporters among those donors whose names were disclosed.

Donors who give less than $200 are not required to be identified in campaign finance reports and made up a significant share of the donors to Ossoff’s and Talarico’s campaigns.

Republicans currently have control of the Senate with 53 of the chamber’s 100 seats. This year 35 seats are at play, including special elections in Florida and Ohio.

GOP still winning a key cash race

While more of the seats up for grabs are in Republican hands, polling showing the potential for tight races in several of them has given Democrats hope that they might be able to shrink or reverse their deficit in November.

Top Democratic candidates have out-raised their GOP rivals in the most competitive Senate races, but Republicans are winning the cash race among big-money committees that can accept checks far larger than the $7,000 cap on donations to candidate committees.

Those Democratic candidates have continued a tradition of relying on donors in the country’s most populous state to bankroll their campaigns.

“California has been a rich gold mine for many a candidate and continues to be that,” said Michael Beckel, director of money in politics reform at Issue One, a bipartisan advocacy group.

Democratic Senate candidates in a few races raised more from California donors than from donors in their home states, according to campaign finance reports filed Wednesday.

Democratic former Rep. Mary Peltola of Alaska, who is challenging incumbent Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan, brought in nearly $900,000 from California donors who had contributed at least $200. Alaska donors contributed just over $520,000 to Peltola in the same time period.

Two of the three leading Democratic hopefuls in Michigan’s open Senate race, Rep. Haley Stevens and physician Abdul El-Sayed, reported taking in more from California donors than from donors in Michigan. California was the second biggest bank of support for the other top Democratic contender, state Sen. Mallory McMorrow.

And in Nebraska, independent Dan Osborn, who is challenging incumbent Republican Sen. Pete Ricketts, took in $80,000 more from disclosed California donors than from Nebraskans.

Dozens of California donors gave to at least five Senate candidates across the country, according to The Times’ analysis of the filing data.

Burbank playwright and screenwriter Winnie Holzman has donated to Democratic candidates in nine key races and said she has been inspired to give to them — and other candidates and political groups — because of concerns about the policies of President Trump’s administration and what she sees as its violation of the law.

“This isn’t just about who is in the Senate,” said Holzman, who wrote the script for the play “Wicked” and co-wrote its movie adaptations. “But if enough Democrats were in the Senate right now, there would be a lot more ability to push back on this.”

The impressive fundraising hauls by Democrats come with a significant caveat.

The two most prominent political committees that support Republican Senate candidates — the party-affiliated National Republican Senatorial Committee and the Senate Leadership Fund super PAC, have both outraised rival Democratic groups by a significant margin this cycle.

For the NRSC, an $11.5-million fundraising advantage since the start of 2025 has translated to a modest $2-million advantage in cash in the bank through the end of February compared with the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

But the Senate Leadership Fund, which can accept unlimited amounts of cash from donors, had $91.6 million more to spend at the end of March than the Democratic rival Senate Majority PAC.

And the pro-Trump super PAC MAGA Inc. had a stunning $312 million in the bank at the end of February.

Money raised by candidate campaign committees does, however, bring some advantages over money raised by other committees. Most significantly, candidates are able to buy advertising at cheaper rates than other political committees.

That is an important distinction in a year when advertising spending in Senate races is expected to top $2.8 billion.

The Senate map

While political analysts expect that Democrats will likely perform well in congressional races — with early signs pointing to a strong possibility that the party regains control of the House — winning control of the Senate would be a much taller order.

“The Senate is going to be won or lost in red states,” said Kyle Kondik, managing editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics.

Even in the best-case scenario for Democrats, to retake control of the chamber they would probably need to win in at least two states such as Iowa, Alaska, Ohio or Texas, all of which went to Trump in the 2024 presidential election by double-digit margins.

With the vast sums likely to be raised — and spent — by both sides, Kondik said that fundraising can reach a point of diminishing returns.

“You’d rather have more than less, obviously, but the actual effect is pretty debatable,” he said.

And history shows that fundraising prowess doesn’t necessarily translate to electoral success in November.

Take the example of Texas Democrat Beto O’Rourke.

In his 2018 challenge of incumbent Republican Ted Cruz, O’Rourke brought in more than $80 million, more than double Cruz’s fundraising haul of $35 million.

But it wasn’t enough to put the then-congressman from El Paso over the top.

O’Rourke lost the race by about 2.5 percentage points.

WASHINGTON — The Senate approved a short-term renewal until April 30 of a controversial surveillance program used by U.S. spy agencies, following a chaotic, post-midnight scramble in the House to keep the authority from expiring.

The measure cleared the Senate by voice vote, without a formal roll call, as Congress raced to meet a Monday deadline. It now heads to President Trump, who had pushed for a clean 18-month extension, for his signature.

GOP leaders in the House rushed lawmakers back into session late Thursday with a series of back-to-back votes that collapsed in dramatic failure, before they quickly pushed ahead the stopgap measure as they race to keep the surveillance program running past Monday’s expiration date.

First they unveiled a new plan that would have extended the program for five years, with revisions. Then they tried to salvage a shorter 18-month renewal that Trump had demanded and Speaker Mike Johnson had previously backed. Some 20 Republicans joined most Democrats in blocking its advance.

Shortly after 2 a.m. they quickly agreed to the 10-day extension, which was agreed to on a voice vote without a formal roll call. It next goes to the Senate, which is gaveling for a rare Friday session, as Congress races to keep the surveillance program running.

“We were very close tonight,” said Johnson after the late-night action.

But Democrats blasted the middle-of-the-night voting as amateur hour. “Are you kidding me? Who the hell is running this place?” said Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., during a fiery floor debate.

At the center of the standoff that has stretched throughout the week is Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which permits the CIA, National Security Agency, FBI and other agencies to collect and analyze vast amounts of overseas communications without a warrant. In doing so, they can incidentally sweep up communications involving Americans who interact with foreign targets.

U.S. officials say the authority is critical to disrupting terrorist plots, cyber intrusions and foreign espionage.

Surveillance program fight is a debate over privacy and security

Its path to passage has teetered all week in a familiar fight, as lawmakers weigh civil liberties concerns against intelligence officials’ warnings about national security risks.

Opponents of the surveillance tool point to past misuses. FBI officials repeatedly violated their own standards when searching intelligence related to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol and racial justice protests in 2020, according to a 2024 court order.

Trump and his allies had lobbied aggressively all week for a clean renewal of the program, without changes.

A group of Republicans traveled to the White House on Tuesday, and on Wednesday CIA Director John Ratcliffe spoke directly with GOP lawmakers. House Majority Leader Steve Scalise said Thursday there had “been negotiations late into the night with the White House and some of our members.”

“I am asking Republicans to UNIFY, and vote together on the test vote to bring a clean Bill to the floor,” Trump wrote on Truth Social this week. “We need to stick together.”

The result of days of negotiations

Thursday’s proceedings came to a standstill as lawmakers retreated behind closed doors and Johnson reached for an agreement to resolve the standoff.

Shortly before midnight GOP leaders announced a new proposal, a five-year extension, with revisions. The changes were designed to win over skeptics of the surveillance program who have demanded greater oversight to protect Americans’ privacy.

Among the changes are new provisions to ensure that only FBI attorneys can authorize queries on U.S. persons, and to require the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to review such cases, said Rep. Austin Scott, R-Ga., during the debate.

But the final product, a 14-page amendment, did not go far enough for some holdouts in either party.

With Johnson controlling a slim majority, he has little room for dissent. As the Republicans fell short on both efforts before the short extension, a handful of Democrats stepped in to try to help them advance the longer extensions, but most Democrats were opposed.

“We just defeated Johnson’s efforts to sneak through a 5-year FISA authorization tonight,” said Democratic Rep, Ro Khanna of California. “Now, they will have to fight in daylight.”

Cappelletti and Mascaro write for the Associated Press.

Reporting from Sacramento — California cities and counties won’t be allowed to tax soda for the next 12 years after Gov. Jerry Brown signed fast-moving legislation Thursday.

The bill, which was first unveiled Saturday evening, prohibits local governments from imposing new taxes on soda until 2031. It comes after a deal was struck between legislators and business and labor interests who agreed to remove an initiative from the Nov. 6 statewide ballot that would have restricted cities and counties from raising any taxes without a supermajority vote of local citizens.

In a signing statement, Brown said soda taxes “combat the dangerous and ill effects of too much sugar in the diets of children.” But he added that mayors across the state called him to support the deal because they were alarmed by the tax initiative.

Brown also reacted strongly to another part of the initiative, which would have restricted the state’s ability to raise certain fees without a two-thirds vote of the Legislature.

“This would be an abomination,” Brown wrote.

Many lawmakers shared Brown’s mixed emotions toward the soda tax ban.

During debate on the legislation, Assembly Bill 1838, legislators said they reluctantly voted to impose the moratorium because the ballot measure, for which signatures were gathered by a political campaign financed by more than $7 million from the beverage industry, would have been worse for state and local government coffers.

Assemblyman Kevin McCarty (D-Sacramento) said he was against both the soda tax ban and how the beverage industry used the threat of an initiative to force the Legislature’s hand, but ultimately supported it.

“I think this is a terrible decision that we’re making,” McCarty said during a state Capitol hearing on the bill Thursday morning.

Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) voted against the deal, but said he understood the choice his colleagues were making.

The beverage “industry is aiming basically a nuclear weapon at governing in California and saying if you don’t do what we want, we’re going to pull the trigger and you are not going to be able to fund basic government services,” Wiener said. “This is a pick-your-poison kind of situation, a Sophie’s choice. What the Legislature is doing is perfectly reasonable.”

Coverage of California politics »

Minutes after Brown signed the soda tax ban, proponents formally withdrew their initiative from the statewide ballot. The deadline to do so was Thursday.

The initiative wouldn’t have banned local soda or other tax increases. But it would have made them much harder to pass. It would have required all local tax hikes to pass by a two-thirds supermajority vote, making it significantly more difficult for cities and counties to raise revenue for a variety of projects.

Currently, any local sales, hotel-room or other tax increase needs a simple majority of local ballots that are cast — provided that the money goes to a city’s day-to-day operating budget. Roughly half of the local tax measures approved by voters since 2012 — raising hundreds of millions of dollars annually — did not receive supermajority approval, according to the state’s nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office.

Public health advocates have been pushing for soda taxes across the United States for years, saying that higher prices would reduce consumption amid growing rates of obesity and diabetes while also generating more revenue for local governments. By contrast, the beverage industry has argued such taxes make it harder for low-income residents to buy groceries and unfairly single out soda as the cause of health problems.

Thirty cities and states attempted to pass soda taxes before Berkeley became the first to succeed in November 2014, charging a penny-per-ounce tax. Since then, three other Bay Area cities — San Francisco, Oakland and Albany — have passed soda taxes. The soda tax ban leaves those measures intact, but prohibits others that would have taken effect this year. Earlier this week, Santa Cruz city officials voted to put a 1.5-cent-per-ounce soda tax on the November ballot, an effort that will be blocked under the new state legislation.

California Legislature nears deal to temporarily ban soda taxes »

Activists were stunned by the quick action on the soda tax ban. Carter Headrick, director of state and local obesity policy initiatives at the American Heart Assn., said using a ballot initiative to leverage lawmakers to prohibit soda taxes in communities across California was “blackmail.”

“I don’t think the [beverage industry] ought to be forcing legislators to be taking away the rights of people to vote,” Headrick said.

Some lawmakers attacked the deal because they supported the initiative. Sen. Jeff Stone (R-Temecula) said that Thursday’s decision subverted the will of Californians who wanted to keep their taxes low.

“This bill tells 1 million people that signed this petition to make it harder to raise their taxes that their voices don’t matter,” Stone said.

The American Beverage Assn., which represents soda companies and other nonalcoholic drink manufacturers, contributed 85% of the initial $8.3 million raised by backers of the ballot measure.

A spokesman for the association said that the legislation would keep grocery prices lower and that the industry was working to find alternatives to reduce sugar consumption.

“We believe the legislation approved today will allow us to work toward these goals,” association spokesman William M. Dermody Jr. said in a statement.

Labor interests added momentum to the eleventh-hour soda tax ban legislation, saying the initiative would be far more damaging to the state.

“A temporary pause on further local soda taxes gives California the opportunity to work on a statewide approach to the public health crisis of diabetes,” Alma Hernandez, executive director of SEIU California, said in a statement.

liam.dillon@latimes.com

Twitter: @dillonliam

UPDATES:

6:30 p.m.: This article was updated with comments from a beverage industry spokesman.

3:55 p.m.: This article was updated with Gov. Jerry Brown approving the soda tax ban and details about the withdrawal of a local tax ballot initiative.

This article was originally published at 12:45 p.m.

The Legislature voted in Boston to overturn Gov. Mitt Romney’s veto and approved a bill designed to propel the state to the forefront of embryonic stem cell research.

The bill immediately became law over Romney’s objections, after both chambers exceeded the two-thirds vote needed to override a veto. The vote was 112-42 in the House and 35-2 in the Senate.

The Republican governor vetoed the bill last week because it allowed the cloning of human embryos for use in stem cell experiments — a practice Romney said amounted to creating life in order to destroy it.

The implosion of Eric Swalwell’s gubernatorial campaign and his once-promising political career has left a great many questions rising from the smoldering wreckage.

Questions about his character, judgment and staggering recklessness.

The question — as misguided as it is inevitable — of why his accusers hadn’t come forward sooner. (My columnizing colleague, Anita Chabria, incisively addressed that one, discussing the nature of suppressed trauma and the believability hurdle that many victims of sexual assault unduly face.)

Then there’s the question of how and why Swalwell’s creepy and allegedly criminal behavior stayed hidden from public view for so long — especially when the impossible-to-miss fixture of cable TV embarked on a high-profile campaign to lead the nation’s most-populous state.

Swalwell, 45 and married, had a widely whispered about reputation for showering inappropriate and unwelcome attention on younger women. Rumors — vague, unsubstantiated — were a source of incessant dirt-dishing among political insiders and also circulated extensively online. (Not, however, the more serious allegations of sexual assault.)

The veil was finally pierced last week when the San Francisco Chronicle published a graphic account of a woman alleging sexual encounters with Swalwell while the Democratic lawmaker was her boss. She said he sexually assaulted her twice when she was too intoxicated to consent.

A few hours later, CNN followed up with a report that three other women had recounted various kinds of sexual misconduct. On Tuesday, yet another alleged victim came forth, saying she was drugged and raped by Swalwell in 2018.

The former congressman has flatly and vigorously denied criminal wrongdoing while acknowledging and apologizing for unspecific “mistakes.”

Those vociferous, flat-out denials had been enough to sway the politicians and union leaders who endorsed Swalwell’s gubernatorial bid, until the weight of evidence made Swalwell’s assertions untenable.

If the allegations are true and Swalwell is, in fact, a liar, lecher and sexual assailant, why wasn’t that widely reported up until now? Was it negligence, or gullibility on the part of the political press corps? The short answer is that a wide gulf exists between rumor and fact and Swalwell lurked in that gray space, living and thriving in the shadows between provability and denial.

It’s not unusual for rumors about financial, sexual or other peccadilloes to attend a campaign. They’re often trafficked by political rivals, which automatically raises suspicion and invites particular skepticism.

Much of the chatter never moves past a relatively small, dishy circle of political gossips because the supposed misdeeds, while titillating, can’t stand up to rigorous scrutiny. Or a legal challenge. That’s the baseline for many news outlets to broadcast or publish a story. Call them what you will — legacy, corporate, mainstream, lamestream — many of the largest, most influential sources of news and information won’t pass along allegations they can’t independently verify and, if necessary, defend in court.

The challenge is verifying all that loose talk.

Politicians don’t wear body cams, or broadcast their lives 24/7. (OK, Beto O’Rourke did livestream from a Texas laundromat during his 2018 Senate bid, holding up a soggy pair of underwear when he addressed the “boxers or briefs” question. But he’s an exception.)

Journalists don’t have subpoena power and can’t force people to tell them what they know. A reporter is only as good as his or her sources, their knowledge, truthfulness and credibility.

Reporting on misdeeds of an intimate nature can be especially difficult and complex. There’s rarely black-and-white documentation, such as a money trail leading to a hotel bedroom. It’s hard to find an eyewitness or reliable third party who can vouch for what took place between people behind closed doors. It takes time and trust to develop sources who can substantiate incidents of sexual misconduct, assault or abuse.

Swalwell apparently did an excellent job deceiving those around him, including some congressional and campaign staffers who’d known him for years and worked closely with the seven-term lawmaker, day in, day out. They were shocked by the statements of his alleged victims; the words “double life” have come up many times.

If Swalwell managed to hoodwink those closest to him, it’s easy to see why journalists had a hard time wrangling the firsthand accounts and other facts they needed to make their findings public.

When it comes to reporting on scandal, there is often the question of timing.

In 2003, The Times was widely criticized for publishing an account of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s misconduct — touching women in a sexual manner without their consent — just days before California’s gubernatorial recall election. Despite the report, which Schwarzenegger did not contest, voters kicked Gray Davis out and replaced him with the Hollywood super-duper star.

In 1992, the Washington Post and Portland Oregonian were widely criticized for their failure to publish accounts of Sen. Bob Packwood’s misconduct — unwanted sexual advances and touching women without their consent — until weeks after he was elected to his fifth term. Packwood resigned in 1995 after the Senate Ethics Commission voted unanimously to expel him.

The allegations against Swalwell were revealed well before the June 2 primary. Not soon enough for those asking how he managed to get away for so long with his predatory behavior. But plenty of time to inform California voters before they weighed in on his candidacy.

Public attention will soon shift. But for Swalwell, the legal and other ramifications are just beginning.

SACRAMENTO — Before it all came crashing down, Eric Swalwell appeared on the cusp of rising to the top of the Democratic field in the California governor’s race.

Swalwell had just announced a statewide tour and aired his first ad. The former prosecutor and Dublin city councilman launched his campaign on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” in November, a comfortable setting for a politician who’d built a national reputation by appearing on cable news shows to attack President Trump.

Influential forces in Sacramento had begun coalescing behind the then-Bay Area congressman, including some consultants and advisors close to Gov. Gavin Newsom. Newsom hasn’t endorsed, but his associates’ involvement lent credibility to Swalwell.

Swalwell’s campaign quickly collapsed with the explosive allegations that he sexually assaulted a former staffer and had acted inappropriately with other women who were just beginning political careers. Swalwell denies the allegations but dropped out of the race for governor and resigned his seat in the House.

The whiplash over Swalwell’s rapid rise and fall has Democratic leaders facing questions about whether they had a blind spot about his alleged behavior.

His onetime allies in Congress are being asked whether they knew about his conduct, which has been described as an open secret on Capitol Hill. Unions who backed Swalwell have fled, and political consultants are returning donations.

Lorena Gonzalez, president of the California Federation of Labor Unions, speaks to Kaiser Permanente nurses and healthcare workers at the Kaiser Permanente Zion Medical Center in San Diego on Jan. 26.

(K.C. Alfred / San Diego Union-Tribune via Getty Images)

California Federation of Labor Unions President Lorena Gonzalez, whose group endorsed Swalwell and three others in the race, said she confronted Swalwell more than a month ago after hearing rumors about womanizing and illicit photos.

“He’s a liar,” Gonzalez said. “He’s just a very skillful politician who did not tell the truth even when asked directly.”

Though he was little known in much of California, Swalwell, 45, was a youthful and fresh face in a field of candidates, many of them veteran politicians, when he entered the contest.

A little more than a week ago, his campaign was on an upward trajectory. His first statewide ad emphasized his hometown roots and concerns faced by Californians, including rising costs at his favorite doughnut shop in his hometown of Dublin. He rolled out new endorsements from state and federal elected officials almost daily.

Former and current advisors close to Newsom were also helping Swalwell’s campaign, multiple sources told The Times. Others associated with the governor are also helping rival candidates.

Other Democrats in the race said the warnings about Swalwell should have been investigated more thoroughly by the powerful California politicians and interest groups that backed him.

Antonio Villaraigosa, the former mayor of Los Angeles, called him a “flash in the pan” — someone who lacked substance.

“People thought just because he was popular on TV that maybe he had been vetted,” Villaraigosa said. “He had not been vetted.”

Gubernatorial candidates Katie Porter and Antonio Villaraigosa share a moment while participating in a candidate forum in Los Angeles on Jan. 10.

(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)

Swalwell’s entrance into the race last fall came at a time when elected officials and leaders of powerful interest groups in Sacramento were unimpressed by the field, particularly after big-name Democrats including former Vice President Kamala Harris, Sen. Alex Padilla and state Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta had passed on running.

Steven Maviglio, a Sacramento-based Democratic consultant, said there was pressure to find the “perfect candidate” for the state’s most powerful office.

“Democrats are looking for a fighter against Trump, and he fit the bill,” Maviglio said. “That was enough for most people.”

As with most members of California’s congressional delegation, Swalwell was an unfamiliar figure to many Californians living outside his Alameda County district, even though he had a lighthearted, robust presence on social media.

He’d never held statewide office when he was elected to Congress after a career that included serving on the Dublin City Council and working as a criminal prosecutor for Alameda County.

But he appeared to be close to former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), who selected him to be an impeachment manager for the case against President Trump in 2021.

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) addresses the crowd at the California Democratic Party State Convention in San Francisco on Feb. 21, 2026.

(Christina House/Los Angeles Times)

At a forum in Washington this week, Rep. Pelosi rejected suggestions that Democrats looked past the accusations.

“None whatsoever,” she said, when asked what allegations she’d heard about.

Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), who previously worked alongside Swalwell on the House Judiciary Committee and endorsed him, said on MS NOW that he felt betrayed and “sickened” by the allegations.

“My paramount feeling is that I’m grateful these women came forward,” Schiff said. “I’m grateful that they did so when they did — it prevented our state from making a potentially terrible mistake.”

Sara Azari, an attorney for Swalwell, said in a statement that he denies all of the allegations of sexual misconduct and assault and will pursue “every legal remedy” against those making the claims.

“These accusations are false, fabricated and deeply offensive — a calculated and transparent political hit job designed to destroy the reputation of a man who has spent twenty years in public service,” Azari said.

Attorney Lisa Bloom reaches toward a photo at a news conference where Lonna Drewes, left, is seen with former Rep. Eric Swalwell, at a news briefing in Beverly Hills on Tuesday. Drewes detailed a 2018 encounter in which she claimed Swalwell drugged and sexually assaulted her after offering professional mentorship.

(Myung J Chun/Los Angeles Times)

On Tuesday, Lonna Drewes accused Swalwell of drugging and raping her in 2018 while she worked as a model, an allegation now being investigated by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.

Azari, in an interview on NewsNation, said of Drewes’ allegation: “Two adults consenting, which is our position is, is not against the law.”

California Democratic Party Chairman Rusty Hicks declined to answer questions this week about whether the scandal hurts the party’s credibility, saying only that the allegations are “clear for voters: [Swalwell] is not a suitable choice.”

In an interview with The Times, Hicks said the party relies on delegates to vet candidates before endorsement votes at the party convention. While no gubernatorial candidate reached the necessary level of support to earn the endorsement at the February gathering, Swalwell had the largest share with 24%.

Gonzalez, of the labor federation, said she called Swalwell in the first week of March after being contacted by several people about his sexually inappropriate behavior.

She described the awkward conversation — and his immediate denials. None of it was true, he said. If there was anything sordid to find in his past, it would have been dug up by Trump and conservatives who went after him when he was helping to try and impeach the president, he said.

At the union group’s endorsement meeting, members grilled Swalwell about several issues, including his claimed residency in Livermore, his involvement with a nonunion film production, and his ability to manage his own finances.

The issue of inappropriate sexual behavior never came up at the endorsement, Gonzalez said.

“We were in a position, like so many, of trying to figure out who this guy was with all these red flags, but being told by a lot of surrogates that they were his choice — whether it’s people in Congress or folks who knew him from home,” Gonzalez said.

Other institutional players also threw in their support. The California Medical Assn. endorsed Swalwell early in February. The group represents more than 50,000 physicians in the state and spends heavily in elections.

“It definitely was a nod that that’s where the establishment should head,” Maviglio said.

California Medical Assn. spokesperson Erin Mellon said the group met with candidates and backed Swalwell “based on the information available to us” at the time.

Behind the scenes, Swalwell was courting attention. He began hanging out at the Grange, a favorite hotel bar in Sacramento for state lawmakers and lobbyists, trying to make connections, according to a source who ran into him there.

Months earlier, he sent a text to a California political consultant with questions about who should help his campaign. He asked about the well-known firm of Bearstar Strategies, according to the text exchange, which was viewed by The Times.

Swalwell texted, “would you recommend having our IE go to them?” to the consultant, a reference to an “independent expenditure,” which is an outside committee that raises money in support of candidates but is barred from coordinating with their campaigns.

Bearstar Strategies ultimately launched an independent committee to support Swalwell, which in recent weeks raised more than $7 million from political action committees for the California Medical Assn., DaVita and other medical industry groups, as well as Uber.

Antonio Villaraigosa, left, shakes hands with Tom Steyer during a gubernatorial candidate forum in Sacramento on April 14, 2026.

(Godofredo A. Vásquez / Associated Press)

Bearstar Strategies, whose members have long advised Newsom, also provides media consultants for a committee running attack advertisements against environmentalist Tom Steyer, another candidate in the race. Swalwell would have benefited from the committee’s spending.

Jim DeBoo, a consultant and Newsom’s former chief of staff, is helping on the anti-Steyer committee, according to multiple sources, which has raised $14 million from real estate agents’ and utility industry groups. DeBoo didn’t respond to a request for comment, and a representative for Bearstar declined a request for an interview.

No one has claimed that any of those consultants or individuals knew about Swalwell’s alleged behavior. Bearstar Strategies said in a statement last week that it had suspended all activity on Swalwell’s independent expenditure.

Jamie Court, president of the nonprofit Consumer Watchdog, said institutional groups backed Swalwell because they thought he could win and they wanted to maintain the status quo in Sacramento.

“They picked the wrong guy,” Court said.

Until recently, President Trump always found a way to fail forward, through a combination of spin, threats, payoffs and bluster.

OK, that’s the simplistic interpretation. The fine print tells a less-glamorous story: a man born on third base who spent decades insisting he’d hit a triple.

Still, it’s hard to argue with success. When Trump entered politics, he redefined the rules of the game. Rivals who tried to outflank him on policy detail, ideological consistency and institutional norms found themselves either vanquished or assimilated by the Borg.

By my lights, only once during Trump’s admittedly chaotic first term did he run into something that his playbook couldn’t at least mitigate or parry: the COVID-19 pandemic. For the final year of his presidency, reality refused to negotiate, and political gravity reasserted itself. It turns out, viruses aren’t susceptible to the Art of The Deal.

But then, miraculously, Trump wriggled through legal jeopardy, bulldozed his way past more conventional Republicans and Democrats, and re-emerged victorious in 2024.

If anything, that comeback reinforced the idea that Trump could survive anything by virtue of his playbook.

By the start of his second term, he’d made impressive headway in co-opting not only individuals but also major institutions within big tech, the media and academia.

Even in foreign affairs, Trump’s sense that any problem could be solved via force, intimidation or money was confirmed when he captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and installed Maduro’s vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, as a sort of puppet leader. Everyone has a price, right?

Unfortunately for Trump, no. Not everyone does.

Lately, the president has encountered a different kind of resistance — adversaries motivated by something bigger and more transcendent than money, power or the avoidance of pain.

In dealing with Iran, for instance, Trump has confronted people operating under a wholly different set of incentives. It’s a regime guided by a mix of ideology, radical religious doctrine and long-term strategic interests that don’t always align with short-term material gain.

(Now perhaps, having punished Trump enough already, Iran will finally come to the negotiating table. But even if that happens, it will have occurred after exacting a steep price — so steep, in fact, that it may already be too late for Trump to plausibly claim a win.)

It turns out, you can’t easily intimidate or pay off a true believer who isn’t afraid to die and believes they have God on their side.

A similar (though obviously not morally equivalent) dynamic is now also on display in the form of Trump’s skirmish with Pope Leo XIV, a man who commands moral authority. He opposes the war in Iran (“Blessed are the peacemakers”) and has demonstrated a stubborn refusal to back down to Trump’s attempts at bullying.

“Woe to those who manipulate religion and the very name of God for their own military, economic and political gain, dragging that which is sacred into darkness and filth,” Leo said during a tour of Africa. It’s a remark that the American pope seemed to implicitly be aiming at the American president.

Here’s what Trump doesn’t understand: There are still pockets of the world where concepts like faith and national identity outweigh tangible incentives. Where sacrifice and suffering are an accepted part of the plan.

When facing these sorts of foes, Trump’s usual operating system starts to look less like a cheat code and more like a category error.

But he can’t see this because Trump is always prone to a sort of cynical projection — of assuming everyone views the world in the same base, carnal, corrupt way he sees it.

Whether it was his incredulity that Denmark wouldn’t sell Greenland, rhetoric that seemed to discount the motivations of those who serve and sacrifice in the military, or his affinity for nakedly transactional gulf states, the pattern is familiar: a tendency to view decisions through a cost-benefit lens that not everyone shares.

To be fair, that lens has often served him well. In arenas where power, money and leverage dominate, Trump’s approach is eerily effective.

But after years of taming secular, “rational” opponents, he is fighting a two-front war against people who see their struggles as moral and spiritual.

They aren’t stronger in a conventional sense. But they are, in a very real sense, less susceptible to Trump’s methods.

For perhaps the first time in his life, Donald Trump finds himself facing adversaries who aren’t just immune to his usual Trumpian playbook but are playing a different game altogether.

Matt K. Lewis is the author of “Filthy Rich Politicians” and “Too Dumb to Fail.”

WASHINGTON — An effort to ramp up U.S. weapons production and build more ships, planes and drones will require a massive upfront investment, President Trump’s budget director told a House committee Wednesday.

The testimony from Russell Vought jump-starts the White House’s push to increase defense spending to nearly $1.5 trillion in the next budget year, up from nearly $1 trillion this year, while cutting health research, heating assistance and scores of other domestic programs by about 10% overall. Such cuts do not cover mandatory spending, which includes such programs as Social Security and Medicare.

The debate over Trump’s proposal underscored the sharp divide that will shape some of the most significant policy debates going into a midterm election that will give voters the ultimate say on the direction of the country.

“For the industrial base to double or triple and build more facilities, not just add shifts, it requires multiyear agreements to purchase into the future,” Vought told lawmakers. “That cost has to be booked in this first year.”

The White House is calling for about $1.1 trillion for defense through the regular appropriations process, which typically requires support from both parties for approval. An additional $350 billion would come through a separate bill that Republicans can accomplish on their own, through party-line majority votes.

Rep. Brendan Boyle of Pennsylvania, the ranking Democratic member of the committee, said he believes in a strong national defense. But he said the idea of increasing defense by more than 40% while cutting programs that people need shows that the Republican administration’s priorities are “out of whack.”

The committee chairman, Rep. Jodey Arrington (R-Texas), predicted the hearing would be more “amped up” than usual, and that proved to be true, beginning with his opening statement focused on criticizing Democrat Joe Biden’s presidency. Arrington said he did not know of any president in his lifetime who “inherited such a complete and utter mess as President Trump did in January of last year.”

Since then, Arrington said, Trump has secured the border, cut taxes and constrained nondefense spending.

It was the beginning of several back-and-forths at the hearing.

“You know how bad this economy is when we hear Joe Biden being invoked, we hear trans people being invoked. I was waiting for Jimmy Carter to be blamed next,” Boyle said in response to Arrington’s opening remarks.

Boyle said consumer confidence is plummeting under Trump and noted a gas station he passed in Philadelphia recently was selling gas at $4.11 a gallon versus less than $3 a gallon some six weeks ago because of Trump’s “war of choice in Iran.”

Rep. Becca Balint (D-Vt.) called the proposed defense spending increase shocking.

“We’ve never in the history of this country seen spending like this, paid for by slashing healthcare, education and housing,” Balint said. “Mr. Vought, yes or no, is $350 billion for the war in Iran lowering costs for Americans?”

“It is certainly not defunding child care. We fully fund child care in this budget,” Vought said, not directly answering the question.

Balint went on to incorporate Trump’s “America first” mantra in her questioning.

She said that $350 billion could pay for an enhanced health insurance tax credit for 10 years and that her constituents are asking how the country can continue to spend money on wars and not find a solution to helping people afford healthcare.

Vought said the president has made clear he was not going to let Iran have nuclear weapons, missiles and a navy that affect U.S. national security.

“He is doing what is necessary to keep us safe, while at the same time trying to pursue diplomacy so that we can get out of wars and lower those costs over time,” Vought said.

Vought said it was unclear how much the administration would seek to fund the war during the current budget year, which ends Sept. 30. That money would be part of an emergency supplemental spending bill and would be on top of the funds the White House is seeking to boost defense spending next year.

“Would it be more than $50 billion?” asked Rep. Veronica Escobar (D-Texas).

“We’re still working on it,” Vought said. “I don’t have a ballpark for you.”

Freking writes for the Associated Press.