POLITICS

WASHINGTON — A federal judge has refused to order the pretrial release of a man charged with placing two pipe bombs near the national headquarters of the Democratic and Republican parties on the eve of a mob’s Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

U.S. District Judge Amir Ali ruled on Thursday that Brian J. Cole Jr. must remain in jail while awaiting trial. Ali upheld a decision by U.S. Magistrate Judge Matthew Sharbaugh, who ruled on Jan. 2 that no conditions of release can reasonably protect the public from the danger that Cole allegedly poses.

Cole, 30, pleaded not guilty to making and planting two pipe bombs outside the Republican National Committee and the Democratic National Committee headquarters in Washington, D.C., on the night of Jan. 5, 2021.

Cole, who lived with his parents in Woodbridge, Virginia, has been diagnosed with autism and obsessive-compulsive disorder. His attorneys say he has no criminal record.

Cole has remained jailed since his Dec. 4 arrest. Authorities said they used phone records and other evidence to identify him as a suspect in a crime that confounded the FBI for over four years.

Prosecutors said Cole confessed to trying to carry out “an extraordinary act of political violence.” Cole told investigators that he was unhappy with how leaders of both political parties responded to “questions” about the 2020 presidential election — and said “something just snapped,” according to prosecutors.

“While the defendant may have reached a psychological breaking point, his crimes were anything but impulsive,” they wrote. “Indeed, the defendant’s pipe bombs — and the fear and terror they instilled in the general public — were the product of weeks of premeditation and planning.”

Defense attorneys asked for Cole to be freed from jail and placed on home detention with electronic monitoring. They say a defense expert concluded that the devices found near the RNC and DNC headquarters were not viable explosive devices.

“In fact, there was no possibility of death, injury or destruction as the devices were harmless,” they wrote.

If convicted of both charges against him, Cole faces up to 10 years of imprisonment on one charge and up to 20 years of imprisonment on a second charge that also carries a five-year mandatory minimum prison sentence.

Kunzelman writes for the Associated Press.

Until January 3, Maduro & Co. managed to construct a form of “normalcy” that was business-friendly enough to attract foreign capital, drawn in by the Special Economic Zones and by the marriage between the bolibourgeoisie and national capital that survived economic collapse in the 2010s. Chevron and other major international companies accepted doing business in Venezuela because Maduro’s illegitimacy did not prevent them from projecting returns in the short, medium, and long term. Maduro could offer this normalcy at the cost of violence and a “gentleman’s agreement”. Still, only the companies that feel sufficiently secure in what remains a high-risk bet under these conditions ultimately enter the country.

Part of this arrangement involved negotiating a degree of sanctions relief with the United States, expressed most clearly through the license granted to Chevron. Now, with Maduro effectively sidelined and Delcy Rodríguez—architect of Maduro’s economic reform—holding power, the US seeks to open and deepen its investments. On January 9, Trump met with executives from major oil companies and urged them to make large-scale investments in Venezuelan projects. Several executives replied that, under current conditions, Venezuela could not be considered a safe destination for their firms. They see no real guarantees of stability or long-term predictability in the existing economic rules of the game, because this normalcy continues to rest on the arbitrariness of the National Executive, the use of violence, and political whims. Today, power may align itself with Washington. Tomorrow, it could attempt an anti-imperialist rupture.

The supposedly “moderate” Delcy is still far from consolidated vis-à-vis anti-imperialist power brokers, such as those embodied by Diosdado Cabello or senior FANB officers. The US openly acknowledges this, signaling that it continues to keep an eye on these actors—hinting at the possibility of a second attack or leaking to the press its intention to have the CIA permanently stationed in Venezuela. Delcy, for her part, appears to be trying to neutralize the most hardline anti-imperialist sectors. She strives to maintain a hostile rhetoric—that Trump and Rubio don’t seem to care about—that does not match her actions.

However, no new law can erase the reality that, at the core of all policy, lies the arbitrary decision-making power of whoever holds authority.

Trump understands the reasons behind the reluctance of large-scale capital, which is indispensable to consolidating Washington’s new role as the steward of Venezuela’s future. He seeks to reassure investors that they are not negotiating with the Venezuelan State, but with the US government itself, and that it is his word (not Delcy’s) that underwrites these agreements. Yet Trump’s own arbitrariness, his erratic and unpredictable governing style, also adds another layer of risk to the level of investment he is demanding from these companies.

The reform of the Organic Hydrocarbons Law signals that the new regime is willing to accept whatever demands are necessary to make investments feel safe and profitable, stabilizing a legal framework meant to introduce a degree of predictability into the new normalcy Delcy is attempting to rebuild. However, no new law can erase the reality that, at the core of all policy, lies the arbitrary decision-making power of whoever holds authority. As a result, the risk never truly disappears: what is law today may cease to be so tomorrow.

What the new economy could look like

Most likely, securing terms acceptable to US capital is requiring Delcy to offer increased profit margins accompanied by special legal guarantees. It will also require a shift in how the subordination of workers to this new national economic agreement is managed. If Delcy’s trend toward rehabilitating the image of the National State includes releasing political prisoners, it may also reflect an acknowledgment that sustaining normalcy through the exploitation and repression of Venezuelan workers is no longer viable.

This possibility surfaced in her January 15 address to the National Assembly, when she proposed creating two sovereign funds financed by the foreign currency generated by the new oil arrangement. One fund would be devoted to “social protection,” aimed at improving workers’ incomes through unspecified mechanisms (salary increases or bonuses?) and strengthening health, education, food provision, and housing. The other would focus on rebuilding infrastructure and public services. This latter proposal aligns closely with Trump’s vision, which presented US capital with an arrangement centered on restoring national infrastructure to support oil operations.

Major international oil companies can extract profits without living in the country, but Venezuelan companies cannot. For them, the transition to democracy must also become a necessity.

If these plans materialize under US supervision, we could anticipate an increase in economic activity. More consumption and a greater supply of US imports, particularly since Trump (and hinted by Rubio on Wednesday) has already conditioned payment for Venezuelan oil on the exclusive purchase of American products in equivalent amounts.

It is difficult to predict how the population would react. After the Guaidó interim presidency failed to oust Maduro, Venezuelans increasingly abandoned aspirations for political change, retreating instead into private life or into their economic activities as workers or small entrepreneurs, seeking some form of long-term personal and family stability, along with sufficient margins of consumption to make life in Venezuela bearable. If the economic scenario were to change radically, would the population accept the continuation of chavismo without demanding guarantees of democratic processes in the medium or long term, so long as a new era of prosperity and consumption is secured?

Challenges for democratic politics

María Corina Machado and the opposition face a stark problem: the transition could unfold without them. A transition negotiated exclusively between the US and the ruling Rodríguez faction risks sidelining essential demands for building a healthy democracy—such as the unconditional release of all political prisoners, transitional justice processes, the dismantling of repressive forces, environmental protection in southern Venezuela, the reconstruction of democratic participation mechanisms, and the achievement of genuinely free and effective elections.

Democratic forces risk seeing citizens accept the abandonment of these demands in exchange for renewed economic prosperity, without recognizing that, in the medium and long term, these very demands are the only ones capable of guaranteeing that economic recovery and social liberalization can endure beyond the whims of the National Executive.

Rather than immediately confronting the National State, democratic demands for freedom, memory, truth, and justice should be brought into the very circuits of consumption that the PSUV has built.

Democratic actors could prevent a transition from moving forward without them by restoring, through the comanditos, a strategy of regular and sustained mobilization around an initial demand that doesn’t represent an existential threat for PSUV. The demand for the release of political prisoners is crucial here. As seen in the exchange between student leaders from the Universidad Central (UCV) and Delcy Rodríguez, this demand unexpectedly opened space for a form of dialogue, however imperfect it was.

For Delcy’s new normalcy to function, it requires forgetting and a citizenry able to consume freely without the guilt that comes from acknowledging that this new enjoyment is built upon the acceptance of impunity. A democratic political strategy must therefore aim to generate discomfort and prevent oblivion.

Following this logic, protests should innovate. Rather than immediately confronting the National State, democratic demands for freedom, memory, truth, and justice should be brought into the very circuits of consumption that the PSUV has built to benefit national capital, the bolibourgeoisie, small business owners, and resigned or apathetic workers. This means unsettling not only the political actors at the helm of this transition process, but also their economic counterparts. Major international oil companies can extract profits without living in the country, but Venezuelan companies cannot. For them, the transition to democracy must also become a necessity.

If not out of fear of the costs of authoritarianism, then their necessity should be driven by the high social price of failing to promote the national democratic reconstruction.

The Los Angeles City Council has again increased what it will pay Gibson Dunn to represent it in a contentious homelessness case, bringing the law firm’s contract to nearly $7.5 million.

In mid-May, the council approved a three-year contract capped at $900,000. The law firm then billed the city $1.8 million for two weeks of legal work, with 15 of its attorneys charging nearly $1,300 per hour.

In a closed-door meeting Wednesday, the council voted 9-4 to approve an increase of about $1.8 million from the current $5.7 million, with Councilmembers John Lee, Tim McOsker, Imelda Padilla and Monica Rodriguez opposed. It was not clear why the additional money was needed.

Rodriguez said that spending resources on outside lawyers instead of complying with the settlement terms in the case is “simply a waste of public funds.”

“In the face of a mounting homelessness crisis, it’s misguided for the City to continue pouring our scarce resources into outside counsel instead of housing the most vulnerable Angelenos,” Rodriguez said in a statement.

The contract “has expanded significantly beyond its original scope,” Lee said in a statement, later adding, “I believe the Council has a duty to demand transparency and closely scrutinize costs.”

The L.A. city attorney’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

The city reached a settlement with the nonprofit LA Alliance in 2022, agreeing to create 12,915 homeless shelter beds or other housing opportunities, while also clearing thousands of encampments.

Since then, the LA Alliance has repeatedly accused the city of failing to comply with the terms of the settlement agreement.

Gibson Dunn was retained by the city a week before a federal judge called a seven-day hearing to determine whether he should take authority over the city’s homelessness programs from Mayor Karen Bass and the City Council. Alliance lawyers said during those proceedings that they wanted Bass and two council members to testify.

The judge later declined to put Los Angeles’ homelessness programs into receivership, even as he concluded that the city failed to adhere to the settlement.

Theane Evangelis, a Gibson Dunn attorney who led the firm’s LA Alliance team, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

City Atty. Hydee Feldstein Soto has praised Gibson Dunn’s work in the LA Alliance case, saying the firm helped the city retain control over its homelessness programs while also keeping Bass and the two council members off the stand.

She commended the firm — which secured a landmark Supreme Court ruling that upheld laws prohibiting homeless people from camping in public spaces — for getting up to speed on the settlement, mastering a complex set of policy matters within a week.

Faced with lingering criticism from council members, Feldstein Soto agreed to help with the cost of the Gibson Dunn contract, committing $1 million from her office’s budget. The council has also tapped $4 million from the city’s “unappropriated balance,” an account for funds that have not yet been allocated.

On Thursday, Matthew D. Umhofer, an attorney who represents LA Alliance, called the Gibson Dunn contract increase “predictable.”

“It’s a taxpayer-funded debacle designed to help city officials avoid being held accountable for their failures on homelessness,” Umhofer said in a statement. “The amount will keep going up as long as the City is more interested in ending oversight than ending homelessness.”

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said Friday that he will nominate former Federal Reserve official Kevin Warsh to be the next chair of the Fed, a pick likely to result in sharp changes to the powerful agency that could bring it closer to the White House and reduce its longtime independence from day-to-day politics.

Warsh would replace current chair Jerome Powell when his term expires in May. Trump chose Powell to lead the Fed in 2017 but this year has relentlessly assailed him for not cutting interest rates quickly enough.

“I have known Kevin for a long period of time, and have no doubt that he will go down as one of the GREAT Fed Chairmen, maybe the best,” Trump posted on his Truth Social site. “On top of everything else, he is ‘central casting,’ and he will never let you down.”

The appointment, which requires Senate confirmation, amounts to a return trip for Warsh, 55, who was a member of the Fed’s board from 2006 to 2011. He was the youngest governor in history when he was appointed at age 35. He is currently a fellow at the right-leaning Hoover Institution and a lecturer at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

In some ways, Warsh is an unlikely choice for the Republican president because he has long been a hawk in Fed parlance, or someone who typically supports higher interest rates to control inflation. Trump has said the Fed’s key rate should be as low as 1%, far below its current level of about 3.6%, a stance few economists endorse.

During his time as governor, Warsh objected to some of the low-interest rate policies that the Fed pursued during and after the 2008-09 Great Recession. He also often expressed concern at that time that inflation would soon accelerate, even though it remained at rock-bottom levels for many years after that recession ended.

But more recently, however, in speeches and opinion columns, Warsh has said he supports lower rates.

Controlling the Fed

Warsh’s appointment would be a major step toward Trump asserting more control over the Fed, one of the few remaining independent federal agencies. While all presidents influence Fed policy through appointments, Trump’s rhetorical attacks on the central bank have raised concerns about its status as an independent institution.

The announcement comes after an extended and unusually public search that underscored the importance of the decision to Trump and the potential impact it could have on the economy. The chair of the Federal Reserve is one of the most powerful economic officials in the world, tasked with combating inflation in the United States while also supporting maximum employment. The Fed is also the nation’s top banking regulator.

The Fed’s rate decisions, over time, influence borrowing costs throughout the economy, including for mortgages, car loans and credit cards.

For now, Warsh would fill a seat on the Fed’s governing board that was temporarily occupied by Stephen Miran, a White House adviser who Trump appointed in September. Once on the board, Trump could then elevate Warsh to the chair position when Powell’s term ends in May.

Trump’s economic policies

Since Trump’s reelection, Warsh has expressed support for the president’s economic policies, despite a history as a more conventional, pro-free trade Republican.

In a January 2025 column in The Wall Street Journal, Warsh wrote that “the Trump administration’s strong deregulatory policies, if implemented, would be disinflationary. Cutbacks in government spending — inspired by the Department of Government Efficiency — would also materially reduce inflationary pressures.” Lower inflation would allow the Fed to deliver the rate cuts the president wants.

Since his first term, Trump has broken with several decades of precedent under which presidents have avoided publicly calling for rate cuts, out of respect for the Fed’s status as an independent agency.

Trump has also sought to exert more control over the Fed. In August he tried to fire Lisa Cook, one of seven governors on the Fed’s board, in an effort to secure a majority of the board. He has appointed three other members, including two in his first term.

Cook, however, sued to keep her job, and the Supreme Court, in a hearing last week, appeared inclined to let her keep her job while her suit is resolved.

Economic research has found that independent central banks have better track records of controlling inflation. Elected officials, like Trump, often demand lower interest rates to juice growth and hiring, which can fuel higher prices.

Trump had said he would appoint a Fed chair who will cut interest rates, which he says will reduce the borrowing costs of the federal government’s huge $38 trillion debt pile. Trump also wants lower rates to boost moribund home sales, which have been held back partly by higher mortgage costs. Yet the Fed doesn’t directly set longer-term interest rates for things like home and car purchases.

Potential challenges and pushback

If confirmed by the Senate, Warsh would face challenges in pushing interest rates much lower. The chair is just one member of the Fed’s 19-person rate-setting committee, with 12 of those officials voting on each rate decision. The committee is already split between those worried about persistent inflation, who’d like to keep rates unchanged, and those who think that recent upticks in unemployment point to a stumbling economy that needs lower interest rates to bolster hiring.

Financial markets could also push back. If the Fed cuts its short-term rate too aggressively and is seen as doing so for political reasons, then Wall Street investors could sell Treasury bonds out of fear that inflation would rise. Such sales would push up longer-term interest rates, including mortgage rates, and backfire on Warsh.

Trump considered appointing Warsh as Fed chair during his first term, though ultimately he went with Powell. Warsh’s father-in-law is Ronald Lauder, heir to the Estee Lauder cosmetics fortune and a longtime donor and confidant of Trump’s.

Who is Warsh?

Prior to serving on the Fed’s board in 2006, Warsh was an economic aide in George W. Bush’s Republican administration and was an investment banker at Morgan Stanley.

Warsh worked closely with then-Chair Ben Bernanke in 2008-09 during the central bank’s efforts to combat the financial crisis and the Great Recession. Bernanke later wrote in his memoirs that Warsh was “one of my closest advisers and confidants” and added that his “political and markets savvy and many contacts on Wall Street would prove invaluable.”

Warsh, however, raised concerns in 2008, as the economy tumbled into a deep recession, that further interest rate cuts by the Fed could spur inflation. Yet even after the Fed cut its rate to nearly zero, inflation stayed low.

And he objected in meetings in 2011 to the Fed’s decision to purchase $600 billion of Treasury bonds, an effort to lower long-term interest rates, though he ultimately voted in favor of the decision at Bernanke’s behest.

In recent months, Warsh has become much more critical of the Fed, calling for “regime change” and assailing Powell for engaging on issues like climate change and diversity, equity and inclusion, which Warsh said are outside the Fed’s mandate.

His more critical approach suggests that if he does ascend to the position of chair, it would amount to a sharp transition at the Fed.

In a July interview on CNBC, Warsh said Fed policy “has been broken for quite a long time.”

“The central bank that sits there today is radically different than the central bank I joined in 2006,” he added. By allowing inflation to surge in 2021-22, the Fed “brought about the greatest mistake in macroeconomic policy in 45 years, that divided the country.”

Rugaber writes for the Associated Press.

In a state that’s home to nearly 40 million people and the fourth largest economy in the world, the race for California governor has been lost in the shadow of President Trump’s combustible return to office and, thus far, the absence of a candidate charismatic enough to break out of the pack.

For the first time in recent history, there is no clear front-runner with less than five months before the June primary election.

“This is the most wide-open governor’s race we’ve seen in California in more than a quarter of a century,” said Dan Schnur, a political communications professor who teaches at USC, Pepperdine and UC Berkeley. “We’ve never seen a multicandidate field with so little clarity and such an absence of anything even resembling a front-runner.

“There’s no precedent in the modern political era for a campaign that’s this crowded,” Schnur said.

Opinion polls bear this out, with more voters saying they are undecided or coalescing behind any of the dozen prominent candidates who have announced bids.

Former Rep. Katie Porter (D-Irvine) led the field with the support of 21% of respondents in a survey of likely voters by the Public Policy Institute of California released in December. Former U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, also a Democrat, and former Fox News commentator Steve Hilton, a Republican, won the support of 14% of poll respondents. Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, also a member of the GOP, won the backing of 10%, while everyone else in the field was in the single digits, though some Democratic candidates who recently entered the race were not included.

Recent gubernatorial campaigns have been dominated by larger-than-life personalities — global superstar Arnold Schwarzenegger, eBay billionaire Meg Whitman and Jerry Brown, the scion of a storied California political family.

Gov. Gavin Newsom, who vaulted into the national spotlight after championing same-sex marriage while he was mayor of San Francisco, has become a national force in Democratic politics and is pondering a 2028 presidential run. Newsom won handily in the 2018 and 2022 races for California governor, and easily defeated a recall attempt during the COVID-19 pandemic. He is barred from running again due to term limits.

Porter cheekily alluded to California’s political power dynamic at a labor forum earlier this month.

“Look, we’ve had celebrity governors. We’ve had governors who are kids of other governors, and we’ve had governors who look hot with slicked back hair and barn jackets. You know what?” Porter said at an SEIU forum in January. “We haven’t had a governor in a skirt. I think it’s just about … time.”

Gubernatorial contests in the state routinely attract national attention. But the 2026 contest has not.

Despite California being at the center of many policies emanating from the Trump administration, notably the detention and deportation of undocumented immigrants, this year’s gubernatorial race has been overshadowed. Deadly wildfires, immigration raids, and an esoteric yet expensive battle about redrawing congressional districts are among the topics that dominated headlines in the state last year.

Additionally, the race was frozen as former Vice President Kamala Harris, Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), state Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta and billionaire real estate developer Rick Caruso weighed entering the contest. All opted against running for governor, leaving the field in flux. San José Mayor Matt Mahan’s entry into the race on Thursday — relatively late to mount a gubernatorial campaign — exemplifies the unsettled nature of the race.

“We’ve made a lot of progress in San José, but getting to the next level requires bold leadership in Sacramento that’s going to take on the status quo,” Mahan said in an interview before he announced his campaign. ”I have not heard anyone in the current field explain how they’re going to help us in San José and other cities across the state end unsheltered homelessness, implement Prop. 36 [a 2024 ballot measure that increased penalties for certain drug and theft crimes], get people into treatment, bring down the cost of housing, the cost of energy.”

A critical question is who donors decide to back in a state that is home to the most expensive media markets in the nation. Candidates have to file fundraising reports on Feb. 2, data that will indicate who is viable.

“I know from first-hand experience that there comes a day when a candidacy is no longer sustainable because of a lack of resources,” said Garry South, a veteran Democratic strategist who has worked on national and state campaigns.

“You have to pay the bills to keep the lights on, let alone having enough cash to communicate with our more than 23 million registered voters,” he added. “They don’t have much time to do it. The primary is just months away.”

The state Democratic and Republican conventions are quickly approaching. A Republican may be able to win the GOP endorsement, but it’s unlikely a Democrat will be able to secure their party’s nod because of the large number of candidates in the race.

Political observers expect some Democratic candidates who have meager financial resources and little name identification among the electorate to be pressured to drop out of the race by party leaders so that the party can consolidate support behind a viable candidate.

But others buck the orthodoxy, arguing that the candidates need to show they have a message that resonates with Californians.

“There’s a lack of excitement,” Democratic strategist Hilda Delgado said. “Right now is really about the core issues that will unify Californians and that’s why it’s important to choose a leader that is going to … give people hope. Because there’s a lot of, I don’t want to say depression, but hopelessness.”

The schism between Democratic environmental ideals and California voters’ anxiety about affordability, notably gas prices, were on full display during an environmental policy forum among some of the state’s top Democratic candidates for governor on Wednesday.

The Democrats questioned the economic impact Californians could face because of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s goal to have the state transition to zero-emission vehicles, a policy that would ban the sale of new gas-powered cars and trucks by 2035. The Trump administration has attempted to negate the policy by canceling federal tax credits for the purchase of such vehicles along with invalidating California’s strict emission standards.

“It’s absolutely true that it’s not affordable today for many people to choose” an electric vehicle, said former Rep. Katie Porter of Irvine. “It’s the fact that, particularly with expiring federal subsidies and the cuts that [President] Trump has made, an electric vehicle often costs $8,000 or $10,000 more. If we want people to choose EVs, we have to close that gap.”

Both Porter and rival Democratic candidate Xavier Becerra, who served as Health and Human Services secretary under former President Biden, said that as governor they would focus on making low-emission vehicles more affordable and practical. Porter said the cost of buying a zero-emission car needs to be comparable with those that run on gas, and Becerra said California needs to have enough charging stations so drivers “don’t have to worry can they get to their destination.”

“We know our future is in clean energy and in making our environment as clean as possible,” Becerra said. “We’ve got to make it affordable for families.”

Porter and Becerra joined two other Democrats in the 2026 California governor’s race — former hedge fund founder turned environmental advocate Tom Steyer and Rep. Eric Swalwell of Dublin — at the Pasadena event hosted by California Environmental Voters, UC Berkeley’s Center for Law, Energy & the Environment, the Climate Center Action Fund and the Natural Resources Defense Council Action Fund. The Democrats largely agreed about issues such as combating climate change, accelerating the transition to clean energy and protecting California’s water resources.

The coalition invited the six candidates with greatest support in recent public opinion polls. Republicans Chad Bianco, the Riverside County sheriff, and Steve Hilton, a former Fox News commentator, did not respond to an invitation to participate in the forum, which was moderated by Sammy Roth, the writer of Climate-Colored Goggles on Substack, and Louise Bedsworth, executive director of the UC Berkeley center.

Newsom, who has acknowledged that he is considering a run for president in 2028, is serving the final year of his second term as governor and is barred from running again.

The state’s high cost of living, including high gas prices, continues to be a political vulnerability for Democrats who support California’s progressive environmental agenda.

In another controversial issue facing the state, most of the Democratic candidates on Wednesday distanced themselves from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta tunnel, a massive and controversial proposal to move water to Southern California and the Central Valley. Though it has seen various iterations, the concept dates back to Gov. Jerry Brown’s first foray as California governor more than four decades ago.

Despite Newsom’s efforts to fast-track the project, it has been stalled by environmental reviews and lawsuits. It hit another legal hurdle this month when a state appeals court rejected the state’s plan to finance the 45-mile tunnel.

Swalwell, Porter and Steyer argued that there are faster and less expensive ways to collect and deliver water to thirsty parts of California.

“We have to move much faster than the Delta tunnel could ever move in terms of solving our water problems,” Steyer said, adding that data and technology could be deployed to more efficiently deliver water to farms.

Swalwell said he does not support the project “as it’s designed now” and proposed covering “400 miles of aqueducts” with solar panels.

During Wednesday’s forum, Becerra also committed a gaffe as he discussed rooftop solar programs for Californians with a word that some consider a slur about Jewish people.

“We need to go after the shysters,” Becerra said. “We know that there are people who go out there to swindle families as they talk about rooftop solar, so we have to make sure that that doesn’t happen so they get the benefit of solar.”

The term is not viewed as derogatory as other antisemitic slurs and was routinely used in past decades, a spokesperson for the Becerra campaign noted after the event.

“Secretary Becerra never knew this word to be offensive and certainly he meant no disrespect to anyone,” said a campaign spokesperson. “He was talking about protecting the hardest-working and lowest-paid Californians who are often taken advantage of by unscrupulous actors.”

MINNEAPOLIS — U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar said Thursday she is running for governor of Minnesota, promising to take on President Trump while unifying a state that has endured a series of challenges even before the federal government’s immigration crackdown.

Klobuchar’s decision gives Democrats a high-profile candidate and proven statewide winner as their party tries to hold on to the office occupied by Gov. Tim Walz. The 2024 Democratic vice presidential nominee, Walz abandoned his campaign for a third term this month amid criticism over mismanagement of taxpayer funding for child-care programs.

“Minnesota, we’ve been through a lot,” Klobuchar said in a video announcement. “These times call for leaders who can stand up and not be rubber stamps of this administration — but who are also willing to find common ground and fix things in our state.”

Klobuchar cited Trump’s immigration crackdown in Minnesota, federal officers killing two Minnesotans, the assassination of a state legislative leader and a school shooting that killed multiple children — all within the last year. She avoided direct mention of ongoing fraud investigations into the child-care programs that Trump has made a political cudgel.

“I believe we must stand up for what’s right and fix what’s wrong,” Klobuchar said.

Klobuchar becomes the fourth sitting senator to announce plans to run for governor in 2026. The other races are in Alabama, Colorado and Tennessee.

Multiple Minnesota Republicans are campaigning in what could become a marquee contest among 36 governorships on the ballot in November. Among them are MyPillow founder and Chief Executive Mike Lindell, a 2020 election denier who is close to Trump; state House Speaker Lisa Demuth; Dr. Scott Jensen, a former state senator who was the party’s 2022 gubernatorial candidate; and state Rep. Kristin Robbins.

Immigration and fraud will be at issue

The Minnesota contest is likely to test Trump and his fellow Republicans’ uncompromising law-and-order approach and mass deportation program against Democrats’ criticisms of his administration’s tactics.

Federal agents have detained children and adults who are U.S. citizens, entered homes without warrants and engaged protesters in violent exchanges. Renee Good was shot three times and killed by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer in early January. On Saturday, federal officers fatally shot intensive care unit nurse Alex Pretti during an encounter.

Many Democrats on Capitol Hill, in turn, have voted against spending bills that fund Trump’s Department of Homeland Security. A standoff over the funding could lead to a partial government shutdown.

Trump and other Republicans also will try to saddle Klobuchar — or any other Democrat — with questions about the federal investigation into Minnesota’s child-care programs and its Somali community. Trump also has made repeated assertions of widespread fraud in state government, and his administration is conducting multiple investigations of state officials, including Walz. The Democrat has maintained that Walz’s administration has investigated, reduced and prosecuted fraud.

Demuth was quick to release a new video and a webpage that illustrate what’s likely to be another main line of her campaign: that Klobuchar cannot be trusted to end the fraud in public programs or curb the growth of government. “Minnesotans only need to look at her record to know that she simply cannot deliver the change that our state needs, and would be nothing more than a third term of Tim Walz,” Demuth said in a statement.

Klobuchar has won across Minnesota

Now in her fourth Senate term, Klobuchar is a former local prosecutor and onetime presidential candidate who positions herself as a moderate and has demonstrated the ability to win across Minnesota.

She won her 2024 reelection bid by nearly 16 percentage points and received 135,000 more votes than Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris. Harris outpaced Trump by fewer than 5 percentage points.

Klobuchar gained attention during Trump’s first term for her questioning of his judicial nominees, including now-Supreme Court Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh. At his acrimonious confirmation hearings, she asked Kavanaugh, who had been accused of sexual assault as a teenager, whether he ever had so much to drink that he didn’t remember what happened. Kavanaugh retorted, “Have you?”

The senator, who had talked publicly of her father’s alcoholism, continued her questioning. Kavanaugh, who was confirmed by a single vote, later apologized to Klobuchar. Kavanaugh has denied that the alleged assault occurred.

After Trump’s first presidency, Klobuchar was among the most outspoken lawmakers during bipartisan congressional inquiries of the insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021, when Trump supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol during certification of Democrat Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election. As Senate Rules Committee chair, she pressed Capitol Police, administration officials and others for details of what authorities knew beforehand and how rioters breached the Capitol.

“It’s our duty to have immediate responses to what happened,” she said after helping write a report focused not on Trump’s role but on better security protocols for the seat of Congress.

2020 presidential bid

Klobuchar sought the presidential nomination in 2020, running as a moderate in the same political lane as Biden. She launched her campaign standing outside in a Minnesota snowstorm to promote her “grit” and Midwestern sensibilities that have anchored her political identity.

As a candidate, Klobuchar faced stories of disgruntled Senate staffers who described her as a difficult boss but also distinguished herself on crowded debate stages as a determined pragmatist. She outlasted several better-funded candidates and ran ahead of Biden in the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary. But Biden, then a former vice president, trounced her and others in the South Carolina primaries, prompting her to drop out and join others in closing ranks behind him.

After Biden’s victory, Klobuchar would have been well positioned for a Cabinet post, perhaps even attorney general. But the Senate’s 50-50 split made it untenable for Biden to create any opening for Republicans to regain control of the chamber.

Klobuchar announced in 2021 that she had been treated for breast cancer and in 2024 announced that she was cancer-free but undergoing another round of radiation.

Barrow and Karnowski write for the Associated Press. Barrow reported from Atlanta. AP writer Maya Sweedler in Washington contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — Senate Democrats reached a deal with the White House late Thursday to prevent a partial government shutdown by moving to temporarily fund the Department of Homeland Security for two weeks, providing more time to negotiate new restrictions for federal immigration agents carrying out President Trump’s deportation campaign.

The deal follows widespread outrage over the fatal shootings of two U.S. citizens — Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti — by federal agents in Minneapolis amid an aggressive immigration crackdown led by the Trump administration.

Under the agreement, funding for the Department of Homeland Security will be extended for two weeks, while the Pentagon, the State Department, as well as the health, education, labor and transportation departments, will be funded through Sept. 30, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s office confirmed to The Times.

While the Senate could approve the deal as early as Thursday night, it is unclear when the House will vote for the package. To avert a government shutdown, both chambers need to approve the deal by midnight EST Friday.

After the agreement was reached, President Trump wrote on Truth Social that he was “working hard with Congress to ensure that we are able to fully fund the Government without delay.”

“Republicans and Democrats in Congress have come together to get the vast majority of the Government funded until September, while at the same time providing an extension to the Department of Homeland Security (including the very important Coast Guard, which we are expanding and rebuilding like never before),” Trump said.

He added: “Hopefully, both Republicans and Democrats will give a very much needed Bipartisan ‘YES’ Vote.”

The move to temporarily fund DHS is meant to give lawmakers more time to negotiate Democratic demands that include a requirement that federal immigration agents use body cameras, stop using masks during operations and a push to tighten rules around arrests and searches without judicial warrants.

The breakthrough comes after Senate Democrats — and seven Senate Republicans — blocked passage of a spending package that included additional funding for DHS through Sept. 30 but not enough guardrails to muster the 60 votes needed to pass the chamber.

“Republicans in Congress cannot allow this violent status quo to continue,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said after the vote. “We’re ready to fund 96% of the federal government today, but the DHS bill still needs a lot of work.”

Speaking on the Senate floor, Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) condemned Democrats for jeopardizing funding for other agencies as they pushed for their demands.

“It would be disastrous to shut down FEMA in the middle of a major winter storm. It’s affecting half the country, and it appears that another storm is along the way,” he said. “A shutdown would mean no paychecks for our troops once again, no money for TSA agents or air traffic controllers.”

The standoff comes after federal ICE agents shot and killed Pretti, an American citizen and nurse who attempted to help a fallen woman during an ICE operation in Minneapolis. Pretti’s death was the second fatal shooting of a U.S. citizen by federal agents in the city in less than two weeks, following the killing of Good earlier this month.

Los Angeles County will halt some payments from its $4-billion sex abuse settlement, leaving many plaintiffs on edge as prosecutors ramp up an investigation into allegations of fraud.

L.A. County agreed last spring to the record payout to settle a flood of lawsuits from people who said they’d been sexually abused by staff in government-run foster homes and juvenile camps. Many attorneys had told their clients they could expect the first tranche of money to start flowing this month.

But the county’s acting chief executive officer, Joseph M. Nicchitta, said Thursday that the county would “pause all payments” for unvetted claims after a request by Dist. Atty. Nathan Hochman. These are claims that have been flagged as requiring a “higher level of scrutiny,” according to a joint report submitted Thursday by attorneys in the settlement.

The district attorney announced he would investigate the historic settlement after reporting by The Times that found some plaintiffs who said they were paid to sue. Investigators have found “a significant number of cases where we believe there is potential fraud,” according to a spokesperson for the prosecutor’s office. The State Bar is spearheading a separate inquiry into fraud allegations.

On Jan. 9, Hochman formally requested the county pause the distribution of funds for at least six months, which he said would give his office “a reasonable opportunity to complete critical investigative steps.”

“Premature disbursement of settlement funds poses a substantial risk of interfering with the investigation by complicating witness cooperation, obscuring financial trails, and impairing my office’s ability to identify and prosecute fraudulent activity,” Hochman wrote in a letter to Andy Baum, the county’s main outside attorney working on the settlement.

Plaintiff lawyers argued the county was required to turn over money by the end of the month.

The county said it came to an agreement Thursday and plans to turn over $400 million on Friday, which would “cover claims that have already been validated,” according to a statement from Nicchitta. That money will go into a fund where it will be distributed when judges are finished vetting and deciding how much each claim is worth.

“No plaintiff was getting paid until the allocation process is completed,” said the county’s top lawyer, Dawyn Harrison. “The County is not overseeing that intensive process.”

The rest of the payments, Nicchitta said, will be on hold until the claims can “be appropriately investigated.”

“The County takes extremely seriously its obligations to provide just compensation to survivors. Preventing fraud is central to that commitment,” he said. “Fraudulent claims of sexual assault harm survivors by diluting compensation for survivors and casting public doubt over settlements as a whole.”

The uncertainty has sparked a sense of despair among those who spent the last few years wading through the darkest memories of their lives in hopes of a life-changing sum.

Andrea Proctor, 45, said the last few years have been like “digging into a scar that was healed.”

“The whole lawsuit just blew air out of me,” said Proctor, who sued in 2022 over alleged abuse at MacLaren Children’s Center, an El Monte shelter where she says she was drugged and sexually abused by staff as a teenager. “I’m just sitting out here empty.”

Proctor said she desperately needs the money to stabilize her life, the first part of which was spent careening from one crisis to the next — an instability she traces partially to the abuse she suffered as a minor.

Since a 2020 law change that extended the statute of limitations to sue over childhood sexual abuse, thousands have come forward with claims of abuse in county-run facilities dating back decades. The county resolved claims it faced last year through two massive payouts — the first settlement for $4 billion, which includes roughly 11,000 plaintiffs, and a second one last October worth $828 million, which includes about 400 victims.

Now, according to court filings made public Tuesday, the county faces an additional 5,500 claims of the same nature, leaving the prospect of a third hefty payout looming on the horizon.

“They’re telling me the ship has sailed,” said Martin Gould, a partner with Gould Grieco & Hensley, who said he wants this next flood of litigation to focus on pushing for arrests of predatory staff members still on the county’s payroll. “I don’t believe that.”

Gould says his firm, based in Chicago, represents about 70 victims in the new litigation. James Harris Law Firm, a small Seattle-based firm that specializes in big personal injury cases, has about 3,000. The Right Trial Lawyers, a firm that lists a Texas office as its headquarters, has about 700, according to an attorney affiliated with the firm.

These lawyers will be pleading their cases in front of a public — and a Board of Supervisors — at a moment when the conversation has shifted from a reckoning over systemic sexual abuse inside county facilities to concerns about the use of taxpayer money.

A series of Times investigations last fall found nine clients represented by Downtown LA Law Group, or DTLA, who said they were paid by recruiters to sue. Four said they were told to make up their claims.

All the lawsuits filed by the firm, which represents roughly a quarter of the plaintiffs in the $4-billion settlement, are now under review by Daniel Buckley, a former presiding judge of the county’s Superior Court.

DTLA has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing and said in a previous statement that it “categorically does not engage in, nor has it ever condoned, the exchange of money for client retention.”

Several DTLA clients said they were unaware of the probes by the State Bar and the district attorney, though they were told this month to expect delays in payments due, in part, to “a higher-than-expected false claim potential.”

The delays have caused extra anguish for some plaintiffs who have taken out loans against their settlement.

Proctor took out loans worth $15,000 from High Rise Financial, an L.A.-based legal funding company, which collects a larger portion of her payout with each passing year. She now owes more than $34,000, according to loan statements.

Proctor said High Rise Financial recently inquired about buying her out of the settlement payment, which the county is expected to pay out over five years. The loan company told her she could get a percentage of her settlement up front in a lump sum, with the company pocketing the rest as profit. For example, she said, she was told if she received a $300,000 payout, she could get $205,000 up front.

“Conversations were held with consumers to assess their interest in a potential financial arrangement related to a possible settlement,” High Rise said in a statement. “No agreements were sent, nor were any transactions entered into.”

Proctor’s friend Krista Hubbard, who also sued over abuse at MacLaren Children’s Center, borrowed $20,000 to help her through a period of homelessness. She now owes nearly $43,000. She said she, too, got the same offer this month from High Rise of getting bought out of her settlement.

Hubbard, who is crashing at the home of her godfather in Arkansas, said she’s considering it.

“How much longer is it going to take?” she said. “Am I going to be able to not be homeless?”

The $828-million settlement, which includes just three law firms, is running into its own roadblock with lawyers belatedly learning that roughly 30 of their clients were also set to receive money from the $4-billion settlement despite rules barring plaintiffs from receiving money from both.

The overlap has led to a dispute over which pot of money should cover payments to those plaintiffs. Those in the $828-million settlement, which has a much smaller pool of plaintiffs, are expected to get much more.

“It reeks,” said Courtney Thom, an attorney with Manly Stewart & Finaldi, who said she believed the county should have flagged long ago that there were identical clients in both settlements.

“It is not for me to fact-check for the county,” she told Judge Lawrence Riff at a court hearing Wednesday. “It is not for me to cross-reference names.”

Some of these plaintiffs had two different sexual abuse claims against the county — for example, one lawsuit alleged abuse in foster care while a second involved juvenile halls. Other clients had identical claims in both groups and mistakenly believed the two firms that represented them were compiling the information into one claim, Thom said.

Baum, the outside attorney defending the county, told Riff he wanted to ensure the clients didn’t “have their hands in two cookie jars.”

California Democrats have assumed leading roles in their party’s counter-offensive to the Trump administration’s massive immigration crackdown — seizing on a growing sense, shared by some Republicans, that the campaign has gotten so out of hand that the political winds have shifted heavily in their favor.

They stalled Department of Homeland Security funding in the Senate and pushed the impeachment of Secretary Kristi Noem in the House. They strategized against a threatened move by President Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act and challenged administration policies and street tactics in federal court. And they have shown up in Minneapolis to express outrage and demanded Department of Justice records following two fatal shootings of U.S. citizens there.

The push comes at an extremely tense moment, as Minneapolis and the nation reel from the fatal weekend shooting of Alex Pretti, and served as an impetus for a spending deal reached late Thursday between Senate Democrats and the White House to avert another partial government shutdown. The compromise would allow lawmakers to fund large parts of the federal government while giving them more time to negotiate new restrictions for immigration agents.

“This is probably one of the few windows on immigration specifically where Democrats find themselves on offense,” said Mike Madrid, a California Republican political consultant. “It is a rare and extraordinary moment.”

Both of the state’s Democratic senators, Adam Schiff and Alex Padilla, came out in staunch opposition to the latest Homeland Security funding measure in Congress, vowing to block it unless the administration scales back its street operations and reins in masked agents who have killed Americans in multiple shootings, clashed with protestors and provoked communities with aggressive tactics.

Under the agreement reached Thursday, the Department of Homeland Security will be funded for two weeks — a period of time that in theory will allow lawmakers to negotiate guardrails for the federal agency. The measure still will need to be approved by the House, though it is not clear when they will hold a vote — meaning a short shutdown still could occur even if the Senate deal is accepted.

Padilla negotiated with the White House to separate the controversial measures in question — to provide $64.4 billion for Homeland Security and $10 billion specifically for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement — from a broader spending package that also funds the Pentagon, the State Department and health, education and transportation agencies.

Senate Democrats vowed to not give more money to federal immigration agencies, including ICE and Customs and Border Protection, unless Republicans agree to require agents to wear body cameras, take off masks during operations and stop making arrests and searching homes without judicial warrants. All Senate Democrats and seven Senate Republicans blocked passage of the broader spending package earlier Thursday.

“Anything short of meaningful, enforceable reforms for Trump’s out-of-control ICE and CBP is a non-starter,” Padilla said in a statement after the earlier vote. “We need real oversight, accountability and enforcement for both the agents on the ground and the leaders giving them their orders. I will not vote for anything less.”

Neither Padilla nor Schiff immediately responded to requests for comment on the deal late Thursday.

Even if Democrats block Homeland Security funding after the two-week deal expires, immigration operations would not stop. That’s because ICE received $75 billion under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act last year — part of an unprecedented $178 billion provided to Homeland Security through the mega-bill.

Trump said Thursday he was working “in a very bipartisan way” to reach a compromise on the funding package. “Hopefully we won’t have a shutdown, we are working on that right now,” he said. “I think we are getting close. I don’t think Democrats want to see it either.”

The administration has eased its tone and admitted mistakes in its immigration enforcement campaign since Pretti’s killing, but hasn’t backed down completely or paused operations in Minneapolis, as critics demanded.

This week Padilla and Schiff joined other Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee in calling on the Justice Department to open a civil rights investigation into the fatal shooting of Renee Nicole Good by immigration agents in Minneapolis. In a letter addressed to Assistant Atty. Gen. for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon, they questioned her office’s decision to forgo an investigation, saying it reflected a trend of “ignoring the enforcement of civil rights laws in favor of carrying out President Trump’s political agenda.”

Dhillon did not respond to a request for comment. Deputy Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche said there is “currently no basis” for such an investigation.

Schiff also has been busy preparing his party for any move by Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act, which would give the president broad authority to deploy military troops into American cities. Trump has threatened to take that move, which would mark a dramatic escalation of his immigration campaign.

A spokesperson confirmed to The Times that Schiff briefed fellow Democrats during a caucus lunch Wednesday on potential strategies for combating such a move.

“President Trump and his allies have been clear and intentional in laying the groundwork to invoke the Insurrection Act without justification and could exploit the very chaos that he has fueled in places like Minneapolis as the pretext to do so,” Schiff said in a statement. “Whether he does so in connection with immigration enforcement or to intimidate voters during the midterm elections, we must not be caught flat-footed if he takes such an extreme step to deploy troops to police our streets.”

Meanwhile, Rep. Robert Garcia of Long Beach, the ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, announced he will serve as one of three Democrats leading an impeachment inquiry into Noem, whom Democrats have blasted for allowing and excusing violence by agents in Minneapolis and other cities.

Garcia called the shootings of Good and Pretti “horrific and shocking,” so much so that even some Republicans are acknowledging the “severity of what happened” — creating an opening for Noem’s impeachment.

“It’s unacceptable what’s happening right now, and Noem is at the top of this agency that’s completely rogue,” he said Thursday. “People are being killed on the streets.”

Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Fremont) went to Minneapolis this week to talk to residents and protesters about the administration’s presence in their city, which he denounced as unconstitutional and violent.

California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta has gone after a slew of Trump immigration policies both in California and across the country — including by backing a lawsuit challenging immigration deployments in the Twin Cities, and joining in a letter to U.S. Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi denouncing the administration’s attempts to “exploit the situation in Minnesota” by demanding local leaders turn over state voter data in exchange for federal agents leaving.

California’s leaders are far from alone in pressing hard for big changes.

Cardinal Joseph Tobin, the head of the Archdiocese of Newark (N.J.) and a top ally of Pope Leo XIV, sharply criticized immigration enforcement this week, calling ICE a “lawless organization” and backing the interruption of funding to the agency. On Thursday the NAACP and other prominent civil rights organizations sent a letter to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) arguing that ICE should be “fully dissolved” and that Homeland Security funding should be blocked until a slate of “immediate and enforceable restrictions” are placed on its operations.

Madrid, the Republican consultant, said California’s leaders have a clear reason to push for policies that protect immigrants, given the state is home to 1 in 4 foreign-born Americans and immigration is “tied into the fabric of California.”

And at a moment when Trump and other administration officials clearly realize “how far out of touch and how damaging” their immigration policies have become politically, he said, California’s leaders have a real opportunity to push their own agenda forward — especially if it includes clear, concrete solutions to end the recent “egregious, extra-constitutional violation of rights” that many Americans find so objectionable.

However, Madrid warned that Democrats wasted a similar opportunity after the unrest around the killing of George Floyd by calling to “defund the police,” which was politically unpopular, and could fall into a similar pitfall if they push for abolishing ICE.

“You’ve got a moment here where you can either fix [ICE], or lean into the political moment and say ‘abolish it,’” he said. “The question becomes, can Democrats run offense? Or will they do what they too often have done with this issue, which is snatch defeat from the jaws of victory?”

Los Angeles police solved more than two thirds of all homicides citywide in 2025, a year that ended with the fewest number of slayings in six decades, according to statistics presented by local authorities on Thursday.

Of the 230 homicides logged in areas patrolled by the LAPD, officials said that 156, or 68%, were considered solved. By the department’s definition, a homicide can be “cleared” through an arrest or other factors, including if the killing was deemed legally justified or the suspect dies. Whether the case results in criminal charges or a conviction is not part of the department’s methodology.

Factoring in the 78 homicides from past years that were solved in 2025, the clearance rate rose to 101%, officials said.

LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell said the department’s success in solving homicides was the result of more data-driven actions against the relatively small number of individuals responsible for an outsize proportion of violent crimes, as well as collaboration with federal law enforcement and other agencies.

McDonnell pointed to an 8% reduction in the number of gunshot victims citywide, a decline he attributed to a significant increase in the number of guns seized by police. In 2025, LAPD officials recovered 8,650 firearms, 1,000 more than the previous year, he said. Gang killings still account for most of the city’s homicides, but are far below where they were in years past, officials said.

The chief said police need to remain diligent since “every life lost was one too many.” The trends for other categories of violent crime were a “mixed bag,” he said, and concerns about property crimes such as burglary and vehicle thefts remain ongoing.

He said that the declining numbers were proof that a depleted department, stretched thin by low recruitment numbers and recent protests and wildfires, was still performing admirably. At the same time, he acknowledged that the decline was likely also the result of other factors that govern the ebb and flow of crime.

Historically, experts have cast a skeptical eye on police-driven explanations for clearance rates, arguing that community attitudes and behaviors, prosecutors’ thresholds for filing homicide charges, and other variables may have more to do with solving homicides more than any particular law enforcement model.

The homicide tally marked the city’s lowest total since 1966, when the city’s population was nearly a third smaller. The downturn mirrors precipitous drops in many other large cities nationwide last year — and has sparked a range of theories about what’s going on.

LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell, right, points to statistics showing an increase in the homicide clearance rate, a measure of how often detectives are marking investigations as closed.

(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

For those who view violent crime as a public health issue, the steep decrease is rooted in powerful social forces that are far beyond the control of law enforcement. Those factors include the return of social services that declined during the pandemic, and fatigue from decades of bloodshed.

Still others say it’s simply a matter of numbers: with lighter caseloads, homicide detectives have more time to thoroughly investigate each new killing.

Sal Labarbera, a former supervisor of detectives in South Bureau homicide, called the citywide solve rates a “beautiful” achievement.

“This is how it’s supposed to be. When murders are down, reinforce the teams and solve the older cases. In the past, when homicides were down, they sometimes took detectives away from homicide investigations,” he said. “It’s especially extraordinary considering the number of sworn officers are decreasing.”

According to statistics maintained by the state Department of Justice, homicide clearance rates statewide have hovered around 60% over the past decade, with a high of 64.6% in 2019 and a low of 54.5% in 2021. In Los Angeles, the percentage of slayings that have been solved rose slightly from 2024, but was down from the 79.9% clearance rate that the department achieved in 2023.

The data presented at a news conference Thursday didn’t offer a breakdown of how last year’s solve rates differed geographically in the department’s 21 patrol areas.

Nicki Minaj, who revealed in 2018 that she was brought to the United States as an “illegal immigrant” from Trinidad and Tobago when she was 5 years old, flashed a Trump gold card Wednesday after an event formally launching the president’s IRA-style savings accounts for children. Her citizenship paperwork, she said on social media, was being finalized.

“Residency? Residency? The cope is coping. … Finalizing that citizenship paperwork as we speak as per MY wonderful, gracious, charming President,” the “Bang Bang” rapper, 43, wrote Wednesday on X, including a photo of the Chucky character flipping his middle finger. “Thanks to the petition. … I wouldn’t have done it without you. Oh CitizenNIKA you are thee moment. Gold Trump card free of charge.”

That post mentioning the card, which delivers citizenship in the United States for those who pay $1 million, may have referred to multiple petitions arguing that the rapper — real name Onika Tanya Maraj-Petty — should be deported to Trinidad and Tobago, where she was born before being raised in Queens, N.Y. A previous post contained a photo of the gold card and the single word “Welp …”

“I came to this country as an illegal immigrant @ 5 years old,” the rapper wrote on Facebook in 2018, posting a photo from the first Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” period of immigration enforcement when migrant children were being separated from their migrant parents at the country’s southern border.

The photo showed children on padded floor mats with silver Mylar thermal blankets, walled in by chain-link fencing. “I can’t imagine the horror of being in a strange place & having my parents stripped away from me at the age of 5. This is so scary to me. Please stop this. Can you try to imagine the terror & panic these kids feel right now?”

In 2020, she said in a Rolling Stone interview that she thought Trump was “funny as hell” on “Celebrity Apprentice” but was bothered by the images of children taken from their parents.

President Trump talks with rapper Nicki Minaj in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday at an event launching the Trump Accounts savings and investment program for children.

(Jose Luis Magana / Associated Press)

“I was one of those immigrant children coming to America to flee poverty,” Minaj told the outlet. “And I couldn’t imagine a little child going through all of that, trying to get to another country because they didn’t have money in their country, or whether you’re fleeing from war … and then being taken away from the one person that makes you feel comfort. That is what really raised my eyebrows.”

At the time, she said she would not “jump on the Donald Trump bandwagon.”

But Minaj has since come around to support the president in his second term, even calling herself his “No. 1 fan” in remarks Wednesday. “And that’s not going to change,” she said.

“The hate or what people have to say, it does not affect me at all. It actually motivates me to support him more, and it’s going to motivate all of us to support him more,” Minaj said. “We’re not going to let them get away with bullying him and the smear campaigns. It’s not going to work, OK? He has a lot of force behind him, and God is protecting him.”

The president introduced her as “the greatest and most successful female rapper in history,” a title that’s accurate going by record sales and overall presence on the Billboard Hot 100. (Of course, Missy Elliott and Ms. Lauryn Hill might want to have a conversation.)

“I didn’t know Nicki, and I’ve been hearing over the years she’s a big Trump supporter, Trump fan,” POTUS continued. “And she took a little heat on occasion because her community isn’t necessarily a Trump fan.”

Trump said Minaj was among those stepping up, along with people including Dell Computers Chief Executive Michael S. Dell, and donating “hundreds of thousands of dollars” of her money to the new accounts. In addition to her generosity, POTUS was definitely a fan of Minaj’s long, painted, pointy pink manicure. He chuckled as he told the audience, “I’m going to let my nails grow, because I love those nails. I’m going to let those nails grow.”

In December, before Christmas, the rapper also appeared onstage with conservative activist Erika Kirk, widow of Charlie Kirk, who was slain in September at Utah Valley University. Minaj took the opportunity at the Phoenix conference of Kirk’s organization, Turning Point USA, to praise Trump and mock California Gov. Gavin Newsom.

Minaj, a Christian, praised Trump at the time for standing up for Christians being persecuted in Nigeria and elsewhere.

“I have the utmost respect and admiration for our president,” Minaj said. “I don’t know if he even knows this but he has given so many people hope that there is a chance to beat the bad guys and to win and to do it with your head held high.”

She also declared onstage that there was “nothing wrong with being a boy.”

“How about that?” she continued. “How powerful is that? How profound is that? Boys will be boys, and there is nothing wrong with that.”

Then Minaj read aloud some of her social media posts mocking Newsom, calling him “Newscum” and “Gavie-poo” and criticizing his advocacy on behalf of “trans kids.”

It’s not as if the “Starships” rapper hid the ball about being harsh when she said in 2023 that she was willing to “be cussing out” certain people at certain times.

“When I hear the word mean, I think about the core of who the person is,” she told Vogue. “I always tell people that the difference between being mean and being a bitch is that bitch passes. Bitch comes and goes. Mean is who you are. I could be the biggest bitch, at the height of my bitch-ness, but if the person I may be cussing out at that time needs something from me, I’m going to give it to them. I have to be able to look in the mirror and be OK with myself.”

Trump accounts for children, a new type of IRA for U.S. citizens who are younger than 18 on Dec. 31 of the year an account is opened, are part of the “Big Beautiful Bill” of tax breaks and spending cuts that was signed into law last summer.

For children born during the second Trump administration, calendar years 2025 through 2028, the accounts will be seeded with $1,000 from the U.S. Treasury when a parent submits a form to the IRS to open the account. Additional pre-tax contributions of up to $5,000 a year are allowed but not required, and a parent is the custodian of the account until the child turns 18. Withdrawals for education, housing or business will be taxed as ordinary income.

Minaj is married to Kenneth Petty — who served four years in prison after being convicted of attempted rape in New York in 1995 — and the couple has one son. Nicknamed “Papa Bear,” the tot was born in 2020, about five years too soon to qualify for that $1,000.

At a recent training session for 300 immigration activists in Los Angeles, the main topic was Minnesota and the changes to federal immigration tactics.

For the last few months, federal law enforcement officers have intensified their efforts to locate and deport immigrants suspected of living in the country illegally. They have used children as bait, gone door-to-door and at times forcibly stormed into people’s homes without judicial warrants.

But it was the fatal shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, two U.S. citizens protesting immigration raids in Minnesota, that sparked a growing backlash of the federal government’s aggressive actions and caused activists to reconsider their own approach when monitoring Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

“One quick note about de-escalation,” Joseline Garcia, the community defense director for City Council District 1, told a crowd at St. Paul’s Commons in Echo Park. “What we would do when it came to de-escalation is we’d tell people their rights, try to get their information and try to reason with the ICE agents and pressure them to leave.”

“Things have changed a ton in the past two months, so that’s not something we’re willing to put you all at risk to do,” she added. “There is risk here and we are always encouraging people to stay safe and please constantly be assessing the risks.”

The immigration crackdown began in Los Angeles last summer but has continued in the region even after the national focus shifted to Chicago and now Minneapolis. The last month has seen a new series of arrests and actions that have left local communities on edge.

While the scope of the sweeps and the number of arrests in Los Angeles appear to be down overall compared with last summer, daily immigration operations are being documented across the city, from street corners in Boyle Heights to downtown L.A.’s Fashion District.

Federal agents carry less-lethal projectile weapons in Los Angeles in June.

(Carlin Stiehl / Los Angeles Times)

A spokesperson from the Department of Homeland Security did not respond to The Times’ requests for comment. In a previous statement the department said Border Patrol agents were continuing to operate in the city to “arrest and remove the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens.”

Earlier this month, renewed fears spread among shoppers in the Fashion District after federal agents conducted an immigration sweep that shut down local commerce to check vendors’ proof of citizenship. Days later a federal agent opened fire at a suspect, who the Department of Homeland Security said rammed agents with his vehicle while attempting to evade arrest, during a targeted operation in South Los Angeles.

Local immigration activists say they have noticed a change in immigration agents’ tactics. The change has forced activists to also adjust their tactics.

“What we’re seeing now are large numbers of officers to grab anywhere from one to five people, not necessarily questioning them, and then moving out as quickly as possible,” said Juan Pablo Orjuela-Parra, a labor justice organizer with the National Day Laborer Organizing Network.

Maribel C., associate director of Órale, a Long Beach-based immigrant advocacy group that was established in 2006, said rapid response volunteers in Long Beach have reported similar tactics by immigration agents.

“In as fast as 30 seconds” a target can be “literally taken off the streets” by federal agents, leaving no time for a rapid response volunteer to relay “know your rights” information or get the detainee’s name, said Maribel, who is not providing her full name to protect her safety.

Immigrant rights advocates say one thing that has not changed is federal officials continue to detain immigrants with no criminal history.

On Jan. 20, exactly one year into the Trump administration’s second term, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said about 70% of people whom the agency has arrested have been convicted or charged with a crime in the United States.

In the first nine months of the administration’s immigration crackdown, from Jan. 1 to Oct. 15, a Times analysis of nationwide ICE arrests found that percentage to be about the same.

In Los Angeles, the same analyses found that of the more than 10,000 Los Angeles residents who were arrested in immigration operations, about 45% were charged with a criminal conviction and an additional 14% had pending charges.

Between June and October of last year, the number of arrests has fluctuated significantly.

The arrests peaked in June with 2,500 people who were apprehended — including those who have pending criminal charges or were charged with immigration violations — but the following month the number fell to slightly more than 2,000. After further drops, a small spike in arrests occurred in September, with more than 1,000 arrested and then dramatically dropped in October with fewer than 500 arrests.

Officials have not released detailed data since then.

“I think what’s happened in Minnesota is terrifying for everyone in the country because those tactics that are being implemented in Minnesota are going to be the same tactics that are going to be implemented elsewhere,” Maribel said.

After a second fatal shooting of a U.S. citizen by federal officers, the Trump administration is moving to scale back its presence in Minneapolis and in the process bumping Border Patrol commander Gregory Bovino out of the state, with border advisor Tom Homan taking his place.

Bovino led and participated in highly visible immigration operations in Los Angeles, Chicago, Charlotte, N.C., and Minneapolis, sparking outrage and mass demonstrations.

At the training event in Echo Park, organizers said the recent events in Minnesota are jarring and forcing them to reconsider the safety of activists who protest or document immigration raids. Those activities will continue, they said, but with a focus on safety.

“Over the past two weeks, we saw that they’re escalating to the point of killing people that are exercising their rights,” Garcia said.

MINNEAPOLIS — The Justice Department has charged a man who squirted apple cider vinegar on Democratic U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar at an event in Minneapolis, according to court papers made public Thursday.

The man arrested for Tuesday’s attack, Anthony Kazmierczak, faces a charge of forcibly assaulting, opposing, impeding and intimidating Omar, according to a complaint filed in federal court.

Authorities determined that the substance was water and apple cider vinegar, according to an affidavit. After Kazmierczak sprayed Omar with the liquid, he appeared to say, “She’s not resigning. You’re splitting Minnesotans apart,” the affidavit says. Authorities also say that Kazmierczak told a close associate several years ago that “somebody should kill” Omar, court documents say.

It was unclear whether Kazmierczak had an attorney who could comment on the allegations. A message was left with the federal defender’s office in Minnesota.

The attack came during a perilous political moment in Minneapolis, where two people have been fatally shot by federal agents during the White House’s aggressive immigration crackdown.

Kazmierczak has a criminal history and has made online posts supportive of President Trump, a Republican.

Omar, a refugee from Somalia, has long been a target of Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric. After she was elected seven years ago, Trump said she should “go back” to her country. He recently described her as “garbage” and said she should be investigated. During a speech in Iowa this week, shortly before Omar was attacked, he said immigrants need to be proud of the United States — “not like Ilhan Omar.”

Omar blamed Trump on Wednesday for threats to her safety.

“Every time the president of the United States has chosen to use hateful rhetoric to talk about me and the community that I represent, my death threats skyrocket,” Omar told reporters.

Trump accused Omar of staging the attack, telling ABC News, “She probably had herself sprayed, knowing her.”

Kazmierczak was convicted of felony auto theft in 1989, has been arrested multiple times for driving under the influence and has had numerous traffic citations, Minnesota court records show. There are also indications he has had significant financial problems, including two bankruptcy filings.

In social media posts, Kazmierczak criticized former President Biden and referred to Democrats as “angry and liars.” Trump “wants the US … stronger and more prosperous,” he wrote. “Stop other countries from stealing from us.”

In another post, Kazmierczak asked, “When will descendants of slaves pay restitution to Union soldiers’ families for freeing them/dying for them, and not sending them back to Africa?”

Threats against members of Congress have increased in recent years, peaking in 2021 after the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol by a mob of Trump supporters before dipping slightly, only to climb again, according to the most recent figures from the U.S. Capitol Police.

Officials said they investigated nearly 15,000 “concerning statements, behaviors, and communications directed against Members of Congress, their families, staff, and the Capitol Complex” in 2025.

Richer and Karnowski write for the Associated Press. Richer reported from Washington.

California once had specialists dedicated to resolving conflict between people and wolves, mountains lions and coyotes. But after funding ran dry in 2024, the state let all but one of them go.

The move came as clashes between us and our wild neighbors are increasing, as climate change and sprawl drive us closer together.

Now, a coalition of wildlife advocates is calling for the state to bring back, expand and fund the coexistence program, at roughly $15 million annually.

Sen. Catherine Blakespear (D-Encinitas) will soon introduce legislation that would create the program, her office confirmed. Nonprofits Defenders of Wildlife and the National Wildlife Federation are co-sponsors.

The money supporters want would be used to pay 50 to 60 staffers to focus on the Herculean task of balancing the needs of people and wildlife, as well as buy equipment like “unwelcome mats” to shock bears or fencing to protect alpacas from hungry lions.

Wildlife agencies acknowledge that education is key for coexistence, said Pamela Flick, California program director for Defenders of Wildlife, at a hearing Tuesday at the state Capitol dedicated to human-wildlife conflict. “But then staff time and resources don’t get allocated by agencies that are already chronically understaffed and underfunded.”

The hearing gave floor time to local law enforcement, representatives of affected regions and academics.

Since the funding expired, “I want to make it clear, the Department [of Fish and Wildlife] recognizes that we have potentially seen a gap in service, and folks have felt that,” Chad Dibble, deputy director of the department’s wildlife and fisheries division, said at the hearing.

Some aspects of the program live on — notably, a system that allows people to report run-ins with wildlife that may prompt the state to take action.

The same year the program fizzled, a mountain lion killed a young man and the state confirmed its first fatal black bear attack on an older woman. (Such attacks are very rare.)

Both tragedies unfolded in rural Northern California, with the fatal lion mauling occurring in El Dorado County.

Assemblymember Heather Hadwick — a Republican who represents El Dorado, as well as Lake Tahoe, which is ground zero for bear problems — called conflicts with predators her district’s biggest issue. “We’re at a tipping point,” she said.

Along with El Dorado, Los Angeles County, at the opposite end of the rural-urban continuum, leads the state for the highest number of reported wildlife “incidents.” These range from just spotting an animal to witnessing property damage.

Debates over how to manage predators can be fierce, but beefing up the state’s ability to respond is uniting groups that are often at odds.

A coalition that includes ranchers, farmers and rural representatives supports bringing back the conflict program, and also wants $31 million to address the state’s expanding population of gray wolves.

Most of that money would go to compensate ranchers for cattle eaten by wolves and for guard dogs, scaring devices or other means to keep them away from livestock.

The wildlife advocates support funding wolf efforts, but believe ranchers should be compensated only if they’ve taken steps to ward off the predators.

Asked his thoughts on it at the hearing, Kirk Wilbur, vice president of government affairs for the California Cattlemen’s Assn., a trade group, called it “a complicated question.”

“Ranchers should be doing something in the realm of nonlethal deterrence, and they are, but we have to be careful to make sure that our nonlethal solutions are not overly prescriptive,” he said.

The elephant in the room: The state’s budget is strained, and many are clamoring for a piece of the pie.

More recent wildlife news

Twenty starving wild horses stranded in deep snow near Mammoth Lakes recently survived an emergency rescue by the Forest Service, I wrote last week. Several died, including one after the rescue, from starvation and exposure. Some, beyond saving, were euthanized.

For some, the Forest Service acted exceptionally, but others questioned the handling of the situation. It’s the latest controversy for these horses. Wildlife advocates have long opposed relocating a large portion of the herd, which the feds say is necessary to protect the landscape.

Beloved bald eagle couple Jackie and Shadow welcomed not one but two eggs in their Big Bear nest in recent days. One arrived on Jan. 23, The Times reported, and, according to the Desert Sun, the second followed three days later.

If you need a pick-me-up, take a gander at a video of an Austrian cow using a long brush to scratch herself. It’s not just adorable; as noted by the Washington Post’s Dino Grandoni, it’s the first documented case of a cow using a tool.

Need even more awww? Read about sea turtle Porkchop’s recovery journey at Long Beach’s aquarium. She had a flipper amputated and a fishing hook removed from her throat, and could return to the wild in a matter of weeks.

Coyote mating season is here and that means you are likely to see more of the animals in your neighborhood, per my colleague Karen Garcia.

A few last things in climate news

More than a year after the Palisades and Eaton wildfires, contamination remains a top concern. A state bill introduced this week aims to enforce science-based guidelines for testing and removing contamination in still-standing homes, schools and nearby soil, my colleagues Noah Haggerty and Tony Briscoe report.

Highway 1 through Big Sur (finally) fully reopened after a three-year closure from landslides. As fellow Times staffer Grace Toohey writes, the iconic route is expected to face more challenges from the effects of climate change: stronger storms, higher seas and more intense wildfires.

Per Inside Climate News’ Blanca Begert, the Bureau of Land Management has revived an effort to open more of California’s public lands to oil extraction. Will it be successful this time?

This is the latest edition of Boiling Point, a newsletter about climate change and the environment in the American West. Sign up here to get it in your inbox. And listen to our Boiling Point podcast here.

For more wildlife and outdoors news, follow Lila Seidman at @lilaseidman.bsky.social on Bluesky and @lila_seidman on X.

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said Thursday he has informed acting Venezuelan President Delcy Rodríguez that he’s going to be opening up all commercial airspace over Venezuela and Americans will soon be able to visit.

Trump said he instructed U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and U.S. military leaders to open up the airspace by the end of the day.

“American citizens will be very shortly able to go to Venezuela, and they’ll be safe there,” the Republican president said.

Venezuela’s government did not immediately comment on Trump’s announcement.

Earlier this week, Trump’s administration notified Congress that it was taking the first steps to possibly reopen the shuttered U.S. Embassy in Venezuela as it explores restoring relations with the South American country following the U.S. military raid that ousted then-President Nicolás Maduro.

In a notice to lawmakers dated Monday and obtained by The Associated Press on Tuesday, the State Department said it was sending in a regular and growing contingent of temporary staffers to conduct “select” diplomatic functions.

“We are writing to notify the committee of the Department of State’s intent to implement a phased approach to potentially resume Embassy Caracas operations,” the department said in separate but identical letters to 10 House and Senate committees.

Diplomatic relations between the two countries collapsed in 2019, and the U.S. State Department warned Americans shouldn’t travel to Venezuela, raising its travel advisory to the highest level.

The State Department on Thursday still listed a travel advisory for Venezuela at its highest level, “Do not travel,” warning that Americans face a high risk of wrongful detention, torture, kidnapping and more.

The State Department did not immediately respond to a message Thursday inquiring about whether it was changing its warning.

In November, as Trump was ramping up pressure on Maduro, he declared that the airspace “above and surrounding” Venezuela should be considered as “closed in its entirety.”

The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration, which has jurisdiction generally over the U.S. and its territories, then told pilots to be cautious flying around the country because of heightened military activity.

After that FAA warning, international airlines began canceling flights to Venezuela because of heightened military activity.

American Airlines, which was the last U.S. airline flying to Venezuela when it suspended flights there in March 2019, announced Thursday that it intends to reinstate nonstop service there from the U.S. in the coming months.

“We have a more than 30-year history connecting Venezolanos to the U.S., and we are ready to renew that incredible relationship,” Nat Pieper, American’s chief commercial officer, said in a statement. “By restarting service to Venezuela, American will offer customers the opportunity to reunite with families and create new business and commerce with the United States.”

American said it would share additional details about the return to service in the coming months as it works with federal authorities on security assessments and necessary permissions.

Price writes for the Associated Press. AP reporters Matthew Lee in Washington and Regina Garcia Cano in Caracas, Venezuela, contributed to this report.

PORTLAND, Maine — U.S. Sen. Susan Collins of Maine said Thursday that immigration officials have ceased their “enhanced operations” in the state, the site of an enforcement surge and more than 200 arrests since last week.

Collins, a Republican, announced the development after saying she had spoken directly with Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem.

“There are currently no ongoing or planned large-scale ICE operations here,” Collins said in a statement, referring to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. “I have been urging Secretary Noem and others in the Administration to get ICE to reconsider its approach to immigration enforcement in the state.”

The announcement came after President Trump seemed to signal a willingness to ease tensions in Minneapolis after a second deadly shooting there by federal immigration agents.

Collins said ICE and Border Patrol officials “will continue their normal operations that have been ongoing here for many years.”

An email seeking comment was sent Thursday to the Department of Homeland Security.

Collins’ announcement comes more than a week after immigration officers began an operation dubbed “Catch of the Day” by ICE. Federal officials said about 50 arrests were made the first day and that roughly 1,400 people were operational targets in the mostly rural state of 1.4 million residents, 4% of whom are foreign-born. ICE said more recently that more than 200 people have been arrested since the operation started.

In Lewiston, one of the cities targeted by ICE, Mayor Carl Sheline called the scale-down welcome news, describing the agency’s operations as “disastrous” for the city and others.

“ICE operations in Maine have failed to improve public safety and have caused lasting damage to our communities. We will continue working to ensure that those who were wrongfully detained by ICE are returned to us,” said Sheline, who leads a city where the charter requires the mayoral position to be nonpartisan.

Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin last week touted that some of the arrests were of people “convicted of horrific crimes including aggravated assault, false imprisonment, and endangering the welfare of a child.” Court records painted a slightly different story: While some had been convicted of felonies, others were detainees with unresolved immigration proceedings or who were arrested but never convicted of a crime.

Collins, a veteran senator, is up for reelection this year. Unlike a handful of Republican senators facing potentially tough campaigns, Collins has not called for Noem to step down or be fired. She’s also avoided criticizing ICE tactics, beyond saying that people who are in the U.S. legally should not be the target of ICE investigations.

Democratic Gov. Janet Mills, who announced her Senate candidacy in October and could face Collins in the general election, has challenged immigration officials to provide judicial warrants, real-time arrest numbers and basic information about who is being detained in Maine. She also called on Collins to act after the House’s GOP majority defeated Democrats’ efforts to curtail ICE funding.

Mills’ office did not immediately respond to an Associated Press email seeking comment on Collins’ announcement.

Meanwhile, first-time Democratic candidate Graham Platner — who is running against Mills in the primary — has criticized both Mills’ and Collins’ handling of ICE and has demanded the agency be dismantled. Platner organized a protest Thursday outside Collins’ office in Portland, Maine, where dozens of supporters held signs and sang along with him.

Platner said he would host a separate protest later outside Collins’ Bangor, Maine, office.

Several prominent Maine Democrats expressed guarded optimism about the ICE drawdown while also criticizing the agency’s actions.

“If these enhanced operations have in fact ceased, that may reduce the visible federal presence in our state,” said U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree, who represents the Portland area. “But I think it is important that people understand what we saw during this operation: individuals who are legally allowed to be in the United States, whether by lawful presence or an authorized period of stay, following the rules, and being detained anyway.

Whittle and Kruesi write for the Associated Press. Kruesi reported from Providence, R.I. AP writer Kathy McCormack in Concord, N.H., contributed to this report.

DENVER — Donald Trump lost his bid for reelection in 2020. But for more than five years, he’s been trying to convince Americans the opposite is true by falsely saying the election was marred by widespread fraud.

Now that he’s president again, Trump is pushing the federal government to back up those bogus claims.

On Wednesday, the FBI served a search warrant at the election headquarters of Fulton County, Georgia, which includes most of Atlanta, seeking ballots from the 2020 election. That follows Trump’s comments earlier this month when he suggested during a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, that charges related to the election were imminent.

“The man has obsessions, as do a fair number of people, but he’s the only one who has the full power of the United States behind him,” said Rick Hasen, a UCLA law professor.

Hasen and many others noted that Trump’s use of the FBI to pursue his obsession with the 2020 election is part of a pattern of the president transforming the federal government into his personal tool of vengeance.

Sen. Jon Ossoff, a Georgia Democrat, compared the search to the Minnesota immigration crackdown that has killed two U.S. citizen protesters, launched by Trump as his latest blow against the state’s governor, who ran against him as Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate in 2024.

“From Minnesota to Georgia, on display to the whole world, is a President spiraling out of control, wielding federal law enforcement as an unaccountable instrument of personal power and revenge,” Ossoff said in a statement.

It also comes as election officials across the country are starting to rev up for the 2026 midterms, where Trump is struggling to help his party maintain its control of Congress. Noting that, in 2020, Trump contemplated using the military to seize voting machines after his loss, some worry he’s laying the groundwork for a similar maneuver in the fall.

“Georgia’s a blueprint,” said Kristin Nabers of the left-leaning group All Voting Is Local. “If they can get away with taking election materials here, what’s to stop them from taking election materials or machines from some other state after they lose?”

Georgia has been at the heart of Trump’s 2020 obsession. He infamously called Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger on Jan. 2, 2021, asking that Raffensperger “find” 11,780 more votes for Trump so he could be declared the winner of the state. Raffensperger refused, noting that repeated reviews confirmed Democrat Joe Biden had narrowly won Georgia.

Those were part of a series of reviews in battleground states, often led by Republicans, that affirmed Biden’s win, including in Michigan, Wisconsin and Nevada. Trump also lost dozens of court cases challenging the election results and his own attorney general at the time said there was no evidence of widespread fraud.

His allies who repeated his lies have been successfully sued for defamation. That includes former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, who settled with two Georgia election workers after a court ruled he owed them $148 million for defaming them after the 2020 election.

Voting machine companies also have brought defamation cases against some conservative-leaning news sites that aired unsubstantiated claims about their equipment being linked to fraud in 2020. Fox News settled one such case by agreeing to pay $787 million after the judge ruled it was “CRYSTAL clear” that none of the allegations were true.

Trump’s campaign to move Georgia into his column also sparked an ill-fated attempt to prosecute him and some of his allies by Fulton County District Atty. Fani Willis, a Democrat. The case collapsed after Willis was removed over conflict-of-interest concerns, and Trump has since sought damages from the office.

On his first day in office, Trump rewarded some of those who helped him try to overturn the 2020 election results by pardoning, commuting or vowing to dismiss the cases of about 1,500 people charged in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. He later signed an executive order trying to set new rules for state election systems and voting procedures, although that has been repeatedly blocked by judges who have ruled that the Constitution gives states, and in some instances Congress, control of elections rather than the president.

As part of his campaign of retribution, Trump also has spoken about wanting to criminally charge lawmakers who sat on the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack, suggesting protective pardons of them from Biden are legally invalid. He’s targeted a former cybersecurity appointee who assured the public in 2020 that the election was secure.

During a year of presidential duties, from dealing with wars in Gaza and Ukraine to shepherding sweeping tax and spending legislation through Congress, Trump has reliably found time to turn the subject to 2020. He has falsely called the election rigged, said Democrats cheated and even installed a White House plaque claiming Biden took office after “the most corrupt election ever.”

David Becker, a former Department of Justice voting rights attorney and executive director of The Center for Election Innovation & Research, said he was skeptical the FBI search in Georgia would lead to any successful prosecutions. Trump has demanded charges against several enemies such as former FBI Director James Comey and New York’s Democratic Atty. Gen., Letitia James, that have stalled in court.

“So much this administration has done is to make claims in social media rather than go to court,” Becker said. “I suspect this is more about poisoning the well for 2026.”

Riccardi writes for the Associated Press.

In his first press conference since taking over federal immigration operations in Minnesota after the killing of two U.S. citizens, border policy advisor Tom Homan said operations in the state would wind down if the agents are allowed into the local jails instead.

“The withdrawal of law enforcement resources here is dependent upon cooperation,” Homan said Thursday. “As we see that cooperation happen, then the redeployment will happen.”

Homan stated that the federal government was not backing down on its aggressive immigration agenda.

“We are not surrendering our mission at all … We are not surrendering the president’s mission of immigration enforcement: let’s make that clear.”

President Trump announced Monday he was sending Homan to Minnesota, sidelining Border Patrol Commander Gregory Bovino who had been leading operations in the state, as public outrage swelled over Border Patrol agents’ shooting of Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive care unit nurse.

Pretti was the second U.S. citizen fatally shot by federal agents in Minneapolis in recent weeks. On Jan. 7, a federal officer shot and killed U.S. citizen Renee Good, a 37-year-old mother of three.

“I’m not here because the federal government has carried out this mission perfectly,” Homan said Thursday. “President Trump wants this fixed, and I’m going to fix it.”

Since Homan arrived in Minnesota, he has met with a range of Democratic officials, including Gov. Tim Walz, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and and Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison.

“Bottom line is you can’t fix problems if you don’t have discussions,” Homan said. “I came here to seek solutions and that’s what we’re going to do.”

Homan said that Ellison had agreed that county jails “may notify ICE of the release dates of criminal public safety risks” so ICE can take them into custody. If local officials agreed to allow ICE access to jails, Homan said, the Trump administration would deploy fewer agents in communities.

“More agents in the jail means less agents in the street,” Homan said. “This is common-sense cooperation that allows us to draw down on the number of people we have here.”

Immigration and Customs Enforcement has long conducted targeted operations of criminals. However, in the first year of Trump’s second term, federal agents began to broaden their focus, conducting sprawling raids that picked up non-English speakers and brown people in parking lots of Home Depots, car washes, or operating vendor cards on the streets.

Positioning himself as a moderate, Homan, a former acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement under Trump, said he had begged for months for de-escalation.

“I don’t want to see anybody die, not the officers, not members of the community and not the targets of our operations,” Homan said.

“I said in March, if the rhetoric didn’t stop, there’s going to be bloodshed, and there has been,” he said. “I wish I wasn’t right. I don’t want to see anybody die — not officers, not members of the community and not the targets of our operations.”

Homan said he had also urged local law enforcement leaders to work with the federal government to keep immigration agents safe.

“The chiefs I’ve talked to are committed to responding to 911 calls when protesters turned violent, agents are in a dangerous situation and there’s assaults,” Homan said. “They have committed to upholding public safety and responding to the needs not to enforce immigration law, but to keep the peace.”

Homan said that people in Minneapolis have threatened and assaulted federal agents. “If you don’t like what ICE is doing, go protest Congress,” he said.

More than 3,000 federal immigration agents have been working in Minnesota under the Trump administration’s aggressive enforcement, Operation Metro Surge.

Homan spoke as an internal memo reviewed by Reuters showed ICE officers operating in the state were directed on Wednesday to avoid engaging with “agitators” and only target “aliens with a criminal history.”

“DO NOT COMMUNICATE OR ENGAGE WITH AGITATORS,” Marcos Charles, a top official in ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations division, instructed officers via email, according to Reuters.

This story will be updated

San José Mayor Matt Mahan announced he is running for California governor Thursday, pitching himself as a pragmatic Democrat who would prioritize state residents’ quality of life over the principled progressivism that has become entrenched in California politics — including on crime, homelessness, housing and affordability.

“I’m jumping in this race because we need a governor who is both a fighter for our values and a fixer of our problems,” said Mahan, one of the state’s most outspoken Democratic critics of departing Gov. Gavin Newsom. “We can fix the biggest problems facing California, and I believe that because we’re making real progress on homelessness, public safety [and] housing supply in San José.”

Mahan claimed policies under his watch have reduced crime and the number of unsheltered residents, helped police solve every city homicide for nearly the last four years, and should be emulated statewide.

“I want to follow through on that work by holding state government accountable for partnering with cities and counties to deliver better outcomes,” he said.

Mahan, the father of two young children whose wife, Silvia, works in education, said last year that it wasn’t the right time for him to run for governor, despite calls for him to do so from moderate forces in state politics and business. But he said he changed his mind after failing to find a candidate among the already crowded Democratic field who he felt he could support — despite meeting with several of them to discuss their plans if elected.

“I have not heard the field embrace the kinds of solutions that I don’t think we need, I know we need, as the mayor of the largest city in Northern California,” Mahan said. In “the current field, it feels like many people are more interested in running either against Trump or in his image. I’m running for the future of California, and I believe that we can fight for our values on the national stage while being accountable for fixing our problems here at home.”

Mahan, a 43-year-old Harvard graduate and tech entrepreneur from Watsonville, was elected to the San José City Council in 2020 and then as mayor of the Bay Area city in a narrow upset in 2022. In 2024, he was reelected in a landslide.

More recently, he has been pushing a concise campaign message — “Back to Basics” — and launched a nonprofit policy organization by the same name to promote his ideas statewide. His former chief of staff, Jim Reed, recently left his office to lead the initiative.

Although he isn’t well-known across the state, influential Californians in politics said he’s nonetheless a candidate who should be taken seriously — including progressives who have not always seen eye to eye with him, such as Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Fremont).

“Matt Mahan is a person of integrity who has made great progress on housing in San José, cost of living, and public safety. He is a terrific Mayor and would be a formidable candidate for Governor,” Khanna said in a statement to The Times.

While in office, Mahan has cut a decidedly moderate path while eschewing some progressive policies that other party leaders have championed in a state where Democratic voters far outnumber Republicans.

He has backed Newsom, a two-term governor and potential Democratic presidential candidate, on some of the governor’s signature initiatives — including Proposition 1, a plan to ramp up and in some instances require people on the street to undergo mental health treatment. He also joined Newsom in opposing a proposed wealth tax on California billionaires, saying it would “backfire” by driving business out of the state — including in Silicon Valley’s tech sector, where many of his constituents work.

However, Mahan has not been shy about criticizing Newsom, either — including for taking a brash, President Trump-like online demeanor in pushing back against Trump and other critics of California, including in the business world, and for not doing more to solve entrenched issues such as crime, drug addiction and homelessness.

He broke with Newsom and other Democratic leaders to back Proposition 36, the 2024 ballot measure that increased penalties for theft and crimes involving fentanyl. After the measure was passed overwhelmingly by voters, he accused Newsom of failing to properly fund its statewide implementation.

Mahan also pushed through a plan in San José to arrest people on the street who repeatedly decline offers of shelter, which some progressives lambasted as inhumane.

San José, California’s third-most populous city after Los Angeles and San Diego, has a growing reputation for being a safe big city — with a recent report by SmartAsset ranking it the safest large city in the U.S. based on several factors including crime rates, traffic fatalities, overdose deaths and median income.

Mahan said income inequality is “a very real issue” and “a threat to our democracy.” But he said the solution is not the proposal being floated to tax 5% of the assets of the state’s billionaires to raise funds for healthcare. He said the proposal would have the opposite effect and diminish state tax revenue by driving wealthy people out of the state, as similar policies have done in European countries that have implemented them, but he did not specify how he would backfill the impending federal healthcare funding cuts that will affect the state’s more vulnerable residents.

He said he has heard directly from business leaders and others in Silicon Valley who are worried about the impact of such a tax, which they believe “strikes right at the heart of Silicon Valley’s economy, which has been an engine of prosperity and economic opportunity for literally millions of people in our state.”

He said California should instead focus on “closing loopholes in the tax code that allow the wealthiest among us to never pay taxes on their capital gains,” and on finding ways to make government more efficient rather than “always going back to the voters and asking them to pay more.”

Mahan said San José has made “measurable progress” on the issues that voters raise with him at the grocery store: “crime, the high cost of living, unsheltered homelessness, untreated addiction.” But the city is limited in what it can do without “state leadership and real accountability in Sacramento and at the county level,” he said.

Mahan has already elicited early support among wealthy venture capitalists and tech industry leaders, who would be able to bankroll a formidable campaign.

In response to a post in early January in which Mahan said the wealth tax would “sink California’s innovation economy,” the angel investor Matt Brezina responded, “Is Matt running for governor yet? Silicon Valley and California, let’s embrace Matt Mahan and his sensible policies. Matt understands how wealth is created, opportunity is created and society is advanced.”

Brezina did not respond to a request for comment, nor did Newsom.

Others would prefer Mahan not run.

Santa Clara County Democratic Central Committee Chair Bill James said Mahan “hasn’t engaged” with his group much, seems to consider “the more centrist and even the more conservative population in the area to be his base,” and frames his policy agenda as that of a “moderate Democrat” when “it’s a little Republican too.”

“Matt may run as a Democrat and feel like he is a Democrat, but his policy positions are more conservative than many Democrats we interact with here in Santa Clara County,” he said.

Assemblymember Alex Lee (D-San José), chair of the Legislative Progressive Caucus, said he also would prefer Mahan focus on San José, especially given the “very big year” ahead as the region hosts several major sporting events.

“Our mayor is right that there needs to be more focus on the city getting ‘back to basics,’ and I don’t know how running for governor and doing a big statewide race really brings the core governance needed for a city,” Lee said. “Everyone and their mom is running for governor right now, and I just think it’s better-suited for us to have his focus here.”

Lee said the Democratic Party is a “very big tent,” but voters should be aware that Mahan has aligned himself with the “most MAGA conservative” voices on certain issues, such as Proposition 36.

“He bucks the Democratic Party,” Lee said.

When Melania Trump showed up on movie screens in 2001, it was a joke.

The former fashion model and her spouse, Donald Trump, then only a real estate mogul, played themselves in the Ben Stiller comedy “Zoolander,” about a dimwitted male supermodel. She silently looked on as her husband gushed at an awards show red carpet: “Without Derek Zoolander, male modeling would not be where it is today.”

The cameo offers a glimpse of the couple, who in 2017 would enter the White House as president and first lady. As they move past the first anniversary of their second stint in Washington, D.C., Melania has largely stayed away from the spotlight.

But this week the first lady is preparing for her close-up. She is center stage as star and executive producer in the documentary “Melania” hitting theaters Friday. Positioned as a companion to her best-selling memoir, “Melania” has been shadowed by controversy since its announcement several months ago. The project marks a comeback attempt by Hollywood filmmaker Brett Ratner, the director of the documentary, who was exiled from Hollywood in 2017 following charges of sexual misconduct by multiple women, including actor Olivia Munn. He continues to deny the accusations.

Amazon MGM Studios paid $40 million to license the project, and sources said it is spending around $35 million for marketing and promotion. Melania is skipping the traditional TV talk show circuit, opting for an appearance on Fox News, which featured an exclusive interview with her on Tuesday — her first since returning to the White House. The following day, she rang the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange.

Trailers for the film have popped up on several networks including CNN, a frequent target of President Trump’s ire, and outdoor advertising has been installed in several major cities, including Los Angeles.

The project, which is slated to stream on Prime Video after a brief theatrical run, arrives as the president confronts sinking approval ratings and the most turbulent phase to date of his second term, which includes controversies over his handling of the economy, international relations, the demolition of the White House’s East Wing for a planned ballroom, and the long-delayed release of the Epstein files.

More pointedly, the lead-up to the official premiere, slated for Thursday at the Kennedy Center in Washington, has collided with an unexpected juggernaut: national outrage over the deadly shootings of two Minneapolis residents by federal officers carrying out his aggressive anti-immigration campaign.

The continuing protests over the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, as well as the backlash after Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem and Deputy White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller labeled them as domestic terrorists, has placed even more uncertainty over how “Melania” will fare with moviegoers.

Industry forecasters were divided on whether the film will be a hit or a bomb. Firms specializing in box office projections estimate the opening weekend will fall within the $5 million range.

“It’s very hard to predict whether people will show up, given the unique nature of the film and the marketplace,” said one veteran box office analyst who asked not to be identified.

On Wednesday, the film was pulled from theaters in South Africa, where it was slated to open on Friday, after the distributor announced it would no longer release the title, citing “recent developments,” according to a New York Times report.

Domestically, “Melania” is competing in a crowded movie weekend against the highly anticipated survival thriller “Send Help” from veteran filmmaker Sam Raimi (“Drag Me to Hell”), the horror film “Iron Lung” from popular YouTuber Markiplier (Mark Edward Fischbach), and “Shelter,” with action star Jason Statham.

President Trump kisses his wife, First Lady Melania Trump, during the presidential inauguration in 2025. The documentary will highlight the lead-up to the event.

(Julia Demaree Nikhinson / Associated Press)

Adding to the uncertainty on the film’s performance, the analyst said, is whether fans of Ratner, whose resume features several blockbusters including the “Rush Hour” trilogy, will show up for a documentary about the first lady. According to press notes, “Melania” follows the first lady in the 20 days leading up to the 2025 presidential inauguration as she orchestrates plans for the event and the family’s move back to the White House. The film’s trailer, released last month, does not offer much more insight.

During both of Trump’s terms in the White House, his wife has been described as mysterious and sphinx-like. Some Washington watchers have praised her for what they call her independence and individualism, while others say her accomplishments fall short of previous first ladies such as Michelle Obama, Hillary Clinton and Nancy Reagan.

Anita B. McBride, director of the First Ladies Initiative at American University, said that the position of first lady has been defined in distinct ways by every woman who has served in that capacity.

She said in an interview that the current first lady has exhibited a confident persona “that has never been defined by expectations. She now has the benefit of experience after operating during her first term in a very hostile environment. She is sure-footed with a staff that supports her, and she has made it clear that she is in control.”

The White House on Saturday hosted a VIP black-tie preview of “Melania,” with a guest list that included Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, former boxer Mike Tyson and Apple CEO Tim Cook, who this week criticized the shootings of Good and Pretti, calling for de-escalation in Minneapolis.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York was among the politicians blasting the event, which took place hours after Pretti was killed.

“Today DHS assassinated a VA nurse in the street, [Atty. Gen.] Bondi is attempting to extort voter files, and half the country is bracing on the eve of a potentially crippling ice storm with FEMA gutted,” she wrote in a post on X. “So what is the President up to? Having a movie night at the White House. He’s unfit.”

In the interview on Fox News a few days later to promote the film, the first lady was asked about the controversy in Minneapolis.

“I’m against the violence, so please if you protest, protest in peace,” she said. “We need to unify in these times.”