POLITICS

WASHINGTON — President Trump dismissed all remaining members of the bipartisan U.S. Elections Assistance Commission this week, his latest move to assert control over national elections in the final months before midterm voting.

The White House defended the move as justified by a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision handing the president greater authority to reshape independent government agencies, including by replacing appointed leaders.

Democrats and some independent elections experts blasted it as politically motivated, counter to the interests of voters and foolhardy with the November election so close.

“Purging commissioners just months before the midterm elections and further gutting support for our state and local elections officials is a blatant part of his plan to politicize our elections and enable more unlawful and dangerous election interference,” said Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), the top Democrat on the Senate Rules Committee, which oversees federal elections.

Padilla alleged the dismissals are an attempt by Trump “to dismantle yet another independent guardrail of our democracy designed to keep elections fair and secure.”

A White House official framed the dismissals in starkly different terms, saying the departing commissioners were “not totally aligned with the important task of securing America’s elections and ensuring every legal vote is counted.” It did not say when the president planned to appoint new commissioners.

The four-member commission was created by Congress in 2002 as part of the Help America Vote Act to help states improve their voting systems and voter access. By law, no more than two commissioners may belong to the same political party.

Historically, it has provided voluntary guidance and best practices for voting systems, and served as a sort of clearinghouse for election performance around the country — so that states and localities can learn from each other.

Since 2018, the panel has also disbursed more than $1 billion in election security grants, according to a report by the Bipartisan Policy Center. Those grants are then used to protect IT systems from foreign and domestic cyberattacks, update voting systems, ensure the accuracy of voter rolls and protect the integrity of ballots after they are cast.

Without leadership, the panel cannot take any official action until new members are nominated and confirmed by the Senate.

Benjamin W. Hovland, one of the Democratic commissioners removed by Trump, told NBC News that taking away a key federal agency designed to help state and local election administrators will have a negative effect on already strained elections officials.

“When you’re asking more and more of people without giving them the necessary resources, you know, mistakes happen,” he said.

California Secretary of State Shirley Weber, in a statement to The Times, said Trump was “injecting unnecessary chaos, confusion and instability into the very systems that Americans rely on to make their voices heard,” but that California “will not be intimidated or deterred” from maintaining elections “in which everyone can fairly and securely participate.”

Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office said on X that “Newsom’s election protection efforts become more important by the day” — a reference to his recent push for state legislation that would make it a felony in California for anyone to seize ballots before a vote has been certified.

Newsom had said Thursday that Trump’s efforts to seize control over elections represented a “five-alarm fire” that must be confronted.

“We will lose this country unless we are vigilant about what’s going on in terms of election security,” he said.

Trump’s dismantling of the commission comes as he wages a much broader campaign to rewrite voting rules. He has sought to place new restrictions on mail ballots, to enhance voter ID and proof of citizenship requirements for voters, to subject state voter rolls to federal oversight and purges, and to assert federal control over how and whether the U.S. Postal Service delivers mail ballots.

Much of that agenda, pushed through executive orders and other administrative actions, has been stymied by the courts, while stalling out in Congress, where it lacks support.

Whether Trump’s move to dismantle and reconstitute the commission will prove an effective path to instituting his election agenda — or will face its own court challenges — remains unclear, experts said.

Rick Hasen, an election law expert and director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project at UCLA Law, wrote that Trump could try to illegally direct the commission to “do his bidding” by amending the federal voter registration form to require proof of citizenship.

“If he tries anything like this, it will be high profile and very important litigation that will end up at the Supreme Court on the emergency docket over the summer,” Hasen wrote.

Michael Waldman, president and chief executive of the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law, said in a statement that Trump’s terminations were “deeply concerning” in light of his “relentless efforts to try to interfere in elections.”

But he also said that the “guardrails” Congress put on the commission remain intact, require it to be made up of a bipartisan group and preclude Trump from directing it to enforce his voting agenda.

Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) said Trump’s firing of the commissioners was part of a broader effort by the president to “sow distrust in our voting system so he can contest the results if they are not to his liking.”

Kim Alexander, president of the California Voter Foundation, said the very name of the commission makes it clear that it was “designed to assist states and localities, not dictate what states and localities must do” with elections. She said California has “the most robust standards” for elections in the country, which won’t change with the removal of the commissioners.

Still, she said word of the firings rocketed around a conference of county elections officials in San Diego on Thursday — with some wondering whether the dismissals would threaten federal funding for election administration moving forward, and others lamenting the loss of the current commissioners’ deep experience.

Dean Logan, head of the L.A. County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk’s office, said in a statement to The Times that “any sudden change to the support structure for elections in the middle of an election cycle is concerning,” but that California “has a strong local and state foundation for election administration and voting systems support, and that will minimize any potential disruption caused by this action.”

In recent months, Trump has leveraged federal agencies to overhaul the nation’s voting rules in ways no previous president has attempted. He has repeatedly pressured Republican lawmakers to pass a federal law that would require voters to provide proof of citizenship when they register, show identification when casting a ballot and force states to send voter data to the Department of Homeland Security.

Republican leaders have said the proposed SAVE America Act does not have enough votes to pass in the Senate. The GOP resistance has angered Trump, who on Friday said he was refusing to sign a bipartisan housing bill in protest.

The housing bill, which Trump called a “yawn” this month, would become law at midnight Friday without Trump’s signature.

WASHINGTON — President Trump will let the bipartisan housing bill approved by Congress become law without his signature, saying Friday that he was refusing to put his name on it because of the little progress made in passing a strict voter ID bill that he has been pushing.

“I will not sign the Housing Bill, which has been fully approved by Congress and sent to the White House, in PROTEST over the fact that the United States Senate is not capable of passing THE SAVE AMERICA ACT,” Trump posted on social media.

Trump had 10 days until the Friday deadline to sign the bill, issue a veto, or allow the measure to take effect without his signature. He has chosen to let the measure become law without his express approval, undercutting his administration’s claims that he considers it a priority to combat inflation.

Trump’s rejection of the bipartisan housing legislation exacerbates tensions with his own party in a midterm election year and cuts short their efforts to address a key voter concern about rising costs. His post comes more than a week after he canceled plans to sign the bipartisan legislation, announcing he was using it as leverage in his push for a strict voter ID bill.

The 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act aims to lower the cost of housing and spur more home construction. It’s the broadest federal effort in decades to address America’s housing affordability problems, as state and local regulations have made it difficult to build in many of the communities that are also sources of job growth and economic opportunity. White House economists estimated earlier this year a national shortage of 10 million homes and the bill could help to close a portion of that gap.

But Trump called the bill “a yawn” and “so unimportant” compared to legislation that would require proof of citizenship for all voters.

He surprised Republican lawmakers on June 24, when, shortly before a planned signing ceremony at the Capitol, he announced he would not approve the bill until lawmakers first passed the voting legislation.

That bill, the SAVE America Act, doesn’t have enough Republican support to pass.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said after submitting the housing bill to the White House that he told Trump he should get the “fattest black marker you have, and sign your name really big on that.”

“I hope he does sign it,” Johnson told reporters at the time. “If he doesn’t, it’s still law. We’ll still celebrate it.”

He said he also understood Trump was trying to make a point that the elections bill is the top priority. “And I think he’s making it very effectively,” Johnson said.

Still, Trump’s decision not to sign the bill gave Democrats an opening to criticize him on the issue of affordability.

“His priorities couldn’t be clearer: higher cost for families and more power for himself,” Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said on X.

The housing bill passed the Senate on an 85-5 vote and the House approved it with an 358-32 vote.

That legislation seeks to cut federal housing rules, slim-down environmental reviews, make it faster to build homes and limit the ability of corporations to buy single-family homes.

The bill does not address all of the causes of the country’s housing woes, including a shortage of construction workers, climbing insurance costs and wages that have not risen fast enough for renters and buyers.

But the bill has drawn support from the real estate industry and housing advocates.

The U.S. housing market has been a driver of recent affordability challenges as skyrocketing prices have kept aspiring buyers out of the market. The National Association of Realtors said Thursday that the median sales price increased 1.8% in June from a year earlier to $440,600, an all-time high on data going back to 1999.

Price and Boak write for the Associated Press. AP reporter Kevin Freking contributed to this report.

We have seen several scenes of relatives of victims of the earthquakes telling soldiers they are not helping, or even forcing them and police officers to return or destroy the goods and money they were caught looting in the ruins. Rather than the return of freedom of speech with Maduro’s capture, what we have witnessed in La Guaira is the crisp, absolute ire of someone who already lost everything, someone who is living the ultimate experience of struggling to find the body of a loved one to bury them in a cemetery instead of smelling them decompose under the rubble of a building.  

But we hadn’t seen something like this: a woman who lost a daughter and a home walking through a security detail and screaming in the face of Nicolás Maduro Guerra, a local lawmaker and son of the imprisoned dictator.

PROVO, Utah — Lawyers for the man accused of killing conservative activist Charlie Kirk planned to call a final witness Friday as they try to raise doubts about the prosecution’s case before it can go to trial.

A Utah judge is deciding whether prosecutors have enough evidence to put Tyler Robinson on trial on a charge of aggravated murder. Kirk, 31, was killed as he spoke to a crowd of thousands at Utah Valley University on Sept. 10.

One of Robinson’s attorneys, Michael Burt, tried to inject uncertainty into the case Thursday by challenging the reliability of ballistics tests on a bullet fragment recovered from Kirk’s body.

Authorities sought to tie the fragment to the suspected murder weapon, but the results were inconclusive.

“Saying anything but inconclusive was inappropriate,” said Samantha Karner with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

Earlier in the week, Robinson’s team questioned the reliability of DNA evidence that investigators said linked Robinson to the scene. Experts say the science behind DNA testing is sound.

Robinson has not entered a plea. He turned himself in a day after the fatal shooting of Kirk, a close ally of President Trump credited with helping galvanize young voters for the Republican in the 2024 election.

At the request of Kirk’s family, State District Judge Tony Graf said he would allow to be shown inside the courtroom an altered version of campus surveillance video that prosecutors said shows Robinson crawling out to a rooftop “sniper’s perch” before shooting Kirk.

The unaltered video was previously shown. The altered version includes footage that zooms in on a figure that prosecutors said was Robinson and red marks that were added to the video.

The weeklong preliminary hearing ends Friday, but a decision won’t come until after Sept. 1, when Graf scheduled oral arguments in the matter.

Prosecutors on Thursday aired portions of a recorded interview with Robinson’s roommate, Lance Twiggs. The day after Kirk was shot in the neck, Robinson allegedly told Twiggs “he wishes he hadn’t done it,” a recording played in court revealed.

Later that same day — and only about an hour before turning himself in — Robinson posted “it was me at UVU yesterday,” in a chat room on the Discord social media platform, according to investigators and messages shown by prosecutors.

Defense attorneys unsuccessfully fought the public release of the statements from Twiggs and the chat room messages. They argued prosecutors would characterize the material as a confession, undermining Robinson’s right to a fair trial.

Prosecutors contend the shooting endangered others at Kirk’s campus event — an aggravating circumstance that could make the crime punishable by death under Utah law. Robinson also faces possible sentence enhancements based on claims by prosecutors that he targeted Kirk because of his political views.

Twiggs said in the April interview with prosecutors and investigators that Robinson sometimes talked about politics, including Trump. But Twiggs said he never heard Robinson talk about Kirk before the shooting. The defendant also did not talk much about gender issues or LGBTQ rights, Twiggs said.

The weeklong preliminary hearing has attracted intense media coverage and spectators who have angled for one of the 14 seats in the courtroom that are reserved for the public.

People have lined up early — sometimes sleeping there overnight — in hopes of getting in.

Schoenbaum and Brown write for the Associated Press. Brown reported from Billings, Montana.

Fox News declined to broadcast an ad Sunday about the violence that law-enforcement members faced as they tried to stop the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, according to the creators of the political commercial.

“We couldn’t have fathomed in our wildest imaginations that even a Fox News would reject an ad that simply condemns the insurrection, and condemns people who support the insurrection,” said Ben Meiselas, one of the co-founders of MeidasTouch, the liberal Political Action Committee that created the 60-second ad. “What Fox has really become is a fascist echo chamber gatekeeper for their base.”

Broadcast and cable networks have discretion in refusing to air ads by political campaigns and advocacy groups. A Fox News spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment on Saturday.

Meiselas and his two brothers, Brett and Jordan, said they placed the ad buy as they have in the past, but were informed over the phone on Friday that the cable network would not air the ad and were not given a reason. Fox News has never before refused to air one of their ads without offering suggestions for edits, they said.

The commercial features law-enforcement officers testifying in Congress and speaking to the media about their experiences during the insurrection, including getting sprayed with bear mace, engaging in hand-to-hand combat and being called “traitors.”

“It’s been very difficult seeing elected officials and other individuals whitewash the events of that day or downplay what happened,” DC Metropolitan Police Officer Michael Fanone says in a clip from a CNN interview as images of House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and other GOP elected officials are shown on screen.

The ad ends with block letters that say” “The GOP Betrayed America. We Will Never Forget.”

The ad has gone viral on social media, racking up more than 1 million views on Twitter.

Fox News is the target of multibillion-dollar defamation lawsuits by voting system and software makers over its coverage of the integrity of the 2020 presidential election. Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic accused Fox News of irresponsibly broadcasting falsehoods that their technology and equipment were used to rig the election. The fraud claims are among the factors that led to the insurrection as lawmakers were voting to certify the election results.

Fanone, who suffered a heart attack after rioters beat him with a flagpole and repeatedly stunned with him with his Taser gun on Jan. 6, is among the law-enforcement members who have been vocal critics of Republican lawmakers who blocked the creation of a commission to study what happened that day.

The House of Representatives approved a plan to create a bipartisan commission to investigate the insurrection on a 252-175 vote; but in the Senate, it received 54 votes in late May, six shy of the number required to bring the proposal up for debate.

A spokeswoman for President Biden on Thursday ruled out creating a presidential commission to study the matter, aligning the White House with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in the belief that such an inquiry needed to be instigated by Congress.

MeidasTouch booked nearly $185,000 of air time to play the ad on Fox News between June 6 and 15, starting with Chris Wallace’s Sunday show and continuing for seven days on “Fox and Friends” as well as two spots on daytime programs and one more on Wallace’s show next weekend.

Brett Meiselas noted that many shows on the network routinely talk about “cancel culture.”

“The fact they want to cancel and censor the voices of law enforcement who bravely guarded the Capitol. It’s the height of hypocrisy, and it’s un-American,” he said.

MeidasTouch is a liberal political action committee formed in 2020 by the three brothers, who have notable ties to Hollywood. Their father is a prominent attorney who represents musicians including Lady Gaga.

Ben Meiselas is a lawyer whose clients include former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick. Brett Meiselas was an editor on Ellen DeGeneres’ talk show. Jordan Meiselas, a former marketer, is now working full time on the PAC.

The PAC made anti-Trump videos during the 2020 presidential race and supported Democrats during the special Georgia Senate races earlier this year. The PAC did not receive as much attention as anti-Trump groups such as the Lincoln Project; it spent about $4.2 million last year.

President Trump has ousted members of a bipartisan federal election commission that resisted his efforts to require would-be voters to document their U.S. citizenship before registering.

The White House on Friday confirmed the executive action against members of the Election Assistance Commission, which distributes federal grants to states, oversees the testing of voting systems and maintains the national voter registration forms.

It’s the latest move in the Republican president’s effort to expand White House influence over how U.S. elections are conducted and comes after a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling that gave the president new personnel authority to fire members of independent agency boards.

“The President, and head of the Executive Branch, reserves the right to remove individuals that may not be totally aligned with the important task of securing America’s elections and ensuring every legal vote is counted. The Slaughter decision gives the President precedence to do so,” said a White House statement to AP.

The president removed the commission’s two Democratic members, Thomas Hicks and Benjamin Hovland. The panel’s Republican member, Christy McCormick resigned. Former Republican commissioner Donald Palmer already had left his post voluntarily earlier this year.

The changes were first reported by VoteBeat, a news outlet that covers elections and voting across the U.S.

While the White House statement did not offer a specific reason for Trump’s action, the commission has previously declined to change the national voter registration form to require documentation of an applicant’s U.S. citizenship, as Trump’s urged in a sweeping March 2025 executive order on U.S. elections. A federal judge blocked the order, ruling it exceeds the president’s authority since the U.S. Constitution grants authority over elections management and oversight to Congress and the states. The administration has indicated it will appeal.

It was not clear whether Trump planned to nominate new members immediately or leave the positions vacant — a move that, months ahead of midterm elections, could prevent the agency from distributing new grants to state or local elections offices and, at the least, complicate its role in overseeing testing and certification of voting systems around the country.

“The Administration from the start has been working across all agencies and local partners to safeguard elections from fraud and abuse, and investing in a strong infrastructure to sustain that mission especially in the midterm elections,” the White House said.

Congress created the four-member commission as part of the Help America Vote Act, a bipartisan law signed by Republican President George W. Bush in 2002. The act requires the commission to include two Democrats and two Republicans, nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate. Hicks and McCormick were appointed by President Barack Obama. Trump appointed Hovland during his first presidency.

According to VoteBeat, Hicks and Hovland were notified of their removal by an email signed by Morgan DeWitt Snow, the deputy director of presidential personnel in the Executive Office of the President.

Barrow writes for the Associated Press.

Over two weeks have passed after the June 24 Venezuelan earthquakes. The main concerns at the moment are coping with the human and material costs of the disaster, while laying down the work ahead for what looks to be a slow path to recovery. Meanwhile, a recent news report that is curiously connected to the seismic event itself caught attention. 

A video recorded by renowned Venezuelan geologist Franck Audemard, along with staff from Funvisis (the Venezuelan Foundation for Seismological Research), denounced that a high-precision GPS monitoring device, used to track movements along the Boconó Fault, was missing from its location at “La Chicharronera”, by the Morón-Barquisimeto highway (part of the Cimarrón-Andresote Highway), inside a piece of land owned by the former Major League Baseball player Melvin Mora.

“In the year 2013, we installed equipment in the rock that we have behind us”, says Audemard in the video. “This equipment is a global positioning device, which was sown in a giant rock to follow the movement of the Boconó Fault, which was responsible for the first of the two earthquakes of June 24th, 2026… The equipment that was registering on that rock has disappeared, it’s no longer in the location where it was.” 

“Therefore, we are making this public call to the person who put it into safety to be kind enough to return at least the sensor from such equipment… The data being registered there is vital to what’s currently happening in the central, center-west part of the country.”

Funvisis issued its first report about the quakes several hours after its Colombian and US counterparts did.

Audemard publicly asked whoever has this equipment or sensor to deliver it to any public office or entity nearby. He and the Funvisis staff were visiting the area of one of the two quakes’ epicenters in Veroes municipality, Yaracuy state. In the small town of Palmarejo, a 300-meter crack opened up. There was serious material damage but no loss of life. Unfortunately, there were at least 15 people dead at the neighboring Juan José Mora municipality (Morón) in Carabobo state. 

Audemard didn’t explain, though, the mystery of when Funvisis realized that one of its most important monitoring stations ceased to transmit data, assuming it’s true that it stopped because someone stole the equipment. It’s like they are using this story to justify the lack of response from the Venezuelan seismological agency Funvisis, which issued its first report about the June 24th quakes several hours after its Colombian (SGC) and North-American (USGS) counterparts did. 

In recent days, Audemard spoke to several media outlets about what caused the earthquakes. Worth recommending is this long interview with Colombian private TV channel Caracol, in which he explains how the Boconó Fault accumulated enough energy to provoke a 7-7.5 earthquake based on a study he helped with in 2017. He has written articles on the Boconó Fault as well.

At first glance, this news report could be considered as not that relevant in the large scale of things with all what’s happening around us. But it cannot be dismissed either, as it reflects some of the criticisms regarding the management of seismic monitoring in Venezuela by Funvisis, the entity in charge since 1972, and its state of declining operability at the time of the recent quakes.

1% of former capacity

An article published on the Spanish website of Deutsche Welle (DW) on June 26 offers a picture of how the country found itself at such a moment by interviewing two local experts on the matter. One of them was Raúl Estévez, the founder of the Geophysics Laboratory at the University of Los Andes (ULA) and the Seismological Network of the Venezuelan Andes.

Estevez told DW that “the occurrence of these earthquakes wasn’t totally unexpected”, adding that specialists noticed for some time “a seismic breach” in Western Venezuela. “We expected the next big quake to happen there and with a magnitude of seven or more… We knew that.”

“We used to have between 250 and 300 seismological stations all across the country. In Mérida alone, we had around 25. Funvisis only has 3 to 5 functioning stations.”

As for Funvisis and the situation of the national seismic monitoring system, Estévez said that “politics went above everything else and neglected all the institutions that did seismology”.

A week after the DW piece was published, Estévez and three of his ULA colleagues held a forum in Mérida state titled “The Earth Shakes: analysis and challenges after the June 24th earthquake.”

Estevez said that the operativity of Funvisis is minimal: “We used to have between 250 and 300 seismological stations all across the country. In Mérida alone, we had around 25. Funvisis only has 3 to 5 functioning stations. The infrastructure is gone because we didn’t get resources.”

Chavista official Francisco Garcés became one of the most visible public faces of the official disaster response.

He also pointed to the lack of enough specialized personnel during the forum event in Merida and in his interview with DW. “The next generation of seismologists had to leave the country, not because they wanted to but because simply there were not enough resources to survive”.

Related to this, Estévez told DW that because of our lack of capacity we are more dependent on foreign institutions like the United States Geological Service (USGS). “…as a good part of the monitoring is from stations outside of Venezuela, any seismic activity information can only be inferred.”

“Mistakes are paid dearly”

Another callback is that many Venezuelans were able to know about the quakes right before they happened through their phones thanks to Google’s Android Earthquake Alert System.

Going back to DW’s article, the other local expert consulted didn’t directly address any issues regarding Funvisis. Which is somewhat curious as that person was its former head Francisco Garcés, who held the position between 2009 and 2010. 

Instead, he mostly focused on how singular the June 24th quakes were: “It isn’t normal to suffer two consecutive earthquakes of this magnitude. This is extraordinary in any part of the world”. Yet, he acknowledged the lessons to be learned from this disaster: “Mistakes are paid dearly.”

The June 24 doublet  was not an ordinary seismic event, but there must be serious reflection on the State’s failures when it comes to monitoring and reporting.

Garcés has become one of the most visible public faces of the official response to the disaster by giving multiple media interviews explaining in detail the causes and impact of the earthquakes.

Now, he was given a double new role by Delcy Rodríguez: first up, as the Chairman of the new Presidential Commission for the Evaluation of Housing Habitability and General Infrastructure, which will be in charge of reviewing houses and other kinds of structures like roads and bridges. The other role is of Transportation Minister, a position he already occupied between 2010 and 2011.

Garcés has already met with the national civil engineering guild (Colegio de Ingenieros de Venezuela) to unify the technical criteria to be used for the ongoing round of inspections. He has also explained the traffic light-style methodology to identify the state of any given infrastructure. 

It’s true that what happened on June 24th was not an ordinary seismic event. But as the nation begins to pull itself back on its feet, there has to be serious reflection on the failures in properly monitoring and reporting these kinds of natural disasters. I agree with what Mr. Audemard just told State TV channel VTV about having a “seismic culture”, but that has to come along with proper preparation by the authorities who should be in charge of helping us when it’s needed.

Reporting from Washington — The White House insisted Monday that President Obama has made no final decisions about his post-presidential plans, after Columbia University’s president reportedly told new students that the university would welcome back its “most famous alumnus” in two years.

Columbia said in a statement late Tuesday that the remark wasn’t intended to reveal what Obama will do after he leaves office but rather a more general reference to plans being shaped by Obama’s post-presidential foundation. The organization has previously said that it looked forward to a “long-term association” with the school.

Yet the Obama-to-Columbia talk is not new. The New York Post reported in April that Obama was “rumored to be in talks” to teach at its law school after he leaves office on Jan. 20, 2017. Obama transferred to Columbia in 1981 after first enrolling at Occidental College.

But while much has been speculated, little is known about what Obama really has in mind and how he might split time between any of four possible destinations: Washington, where his youngest daughter, Sasha, will still be in high school when his term ends; Chicago, where he rose to political prominence; his native Hawaii; or New York.

“The president has long talked about his respect for Columbia University and his desire to continue working with them,” White House spokesperson Jennifer Friedman said. “However, at this point, no decisions have been finalized about his post-presidency plans.”

Obama mused about life after the White House in May when he visited with David Letterman just before the host retired from the “Late Show.” Perhaps, Obama said, the two could reunite to play dominoes.

“I plan to teach law at Columbia,” Letterman countered, prompting Obama to say: “I’d be interested in sitting in on that class.”

For more White House coverage, follow @mikememoli

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Following is independent counsel Lawrence Walsh’ statement on the presidential pardon of former Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger and others charged in the Iran-Contra scandal:

President Bush’s pardon of Caspar Weinberger and other Iran-Contra defendants undermines the principle that no man is above the law. It demonstrates that powerful people with powerful allies can commit serious crimes in high office–deliberately abusing the public trust–without consequence.

Weinberger, who faced four felony charges, deserved to be tried by a jury of citizens. Although it is the President’s prerogative to grant pardons, it is every American’s right that the criminal justice system be administered fairly, regardless of a person’s rank and connections.

The Iran-Contra cover-up, which has continued for more than six years, has now been completed with the pardon of Caspar Weinberger. We will make a full report on our findings to Congress and the public describing the details and extent of this cover-up.

Weinberger’s early and deliberate decision to conceal and withhold extensive contemporaneous notes of the Iran-Contra matter radically altered the official investigations and possibly forestalled timely impeachment proceedings against President Reagan and other officials. Weinberger’s notes contain evidence of a conspiracy among the highest-ranking Reagan Administration officials to lie to Congress and the American public. Because the notes were withheld from investigators for years, many of the leads were impossible to follow, key witnesses had purportedly forgotten what was said and done, and statutes of limitation had expired.

Weinberger’s concealment of notes is part of a disturbing pattern of deception and obstruction that permeated the highest levels of the Reagan and Bush administrations. This office was informed only within the past two weeks, on December 11, 1992, that President Bush had failed to produce to investigators his own highly relevant contemporaneous notes, despite repeated requests for such documents. The production of these notes is still ongoing and will lead to appropriate action.

In light of President Bush’s own misconduct, we are gravely concerned about his decision to pardon others who lied to Congress and obstructed official investigations.

A new rule proposed by the White House Office of Management and Budget would fundamentally overhaul the way federal grants are awarded and overseen — a sweeping change that one scientific society said “would all but end the use of scientific merit in the selection of grants and programs across the government.”

Proposed in late May, the rule would give political appointees unprecedented control over federal grants for research, education and infrastructure, and specifies that government funds can only be spent on projects “aligned with administration policies and priorities,” according to a copy of the proposed rule.

The rule would also restrict research topics, limit U.S. scientists’ ability to collaborate with colleagues in other countries and make it easier for the government to suspend or cancel grants at any time.

The changes are intended to improve “transparency, accountability, and oversight for Federal awards” while “ensuring that American tax dollars are not wasted or misused,” according to the White House office.

But critics say that if the rule is implemented, the final sign-off for grants will no longer be in the hands of subject-matter experts within individual agencies, but in those of political appointees.

“This touches all parts of American life,” said Dr. Eric Rafla-Yuan, a psychiatrist who practices at the Veterans Administration and San Diego County’s psychiatric hospital.

“Control of how all of the federal grants and programs are funded will fall under a small group of highly partisan individuals who would have very few limits on how they spend these billions of taxpayer dollars,” said Rafla-Yuan, who also chairs the Committee to Protect Public Mental Health advocacy group. “This touches everyone’s life, even if they don’t realize it.”

OMB published the proposed rule May 29, opening a 45-day comment period that closes July 13.

Opposition to the proposed rule has mobilized multiple sectors of society. Professional groups representing cancer researchers, civil engineers, county governments, medical schools, housing agencies, city and municipal governments, nonprofits and others have publicly expressed concerns about potential consequences.

By midday Thursday, the Federal Register logged nearly 100,000 comments about the proposal, many of them expressing concern.

“I understand the need for oversight, fiscal responsibility, and accountability. That is not the issue,” wrote Jack Feldman, a neuroscientist who holds the David Geffen School of Medicine Chair in Neuroscience at UCLA. “The issue is whether scientific research is to be judged by scientific merit, or whether it can be approved, denied, or terminated according to broad political criteria that may change from one administration to the next.”

Crucially, the rule converts policies governing federal grants from “guidance” into binding regulations that all agencies would be required to follow. It would give political appointees power to override federal agencies’ merit-based reviews and mandate that a political appointee review decisions to ensure that all awards “demonstrably advance the President’s policy priorities.”

The elevation of political appointees in what were previously merit-based decisions has alarmed many scientists.

“The proposed rule changes would all but end the use of scientific merit in the selection of grants and programs across the government,” read a statement from the Planetary Society, a nonprofit dedicated to space research.

Researchers and science groups have also expressed concern about a section of the rule prohibiting the promotion of “theories of disparate-impact liability” — a legal concept that refers to policies that appear neutral but cause disproportionate harm to certain groups.

The section’s vague language and many loopholes could have a chilling effect on any research that studies the effects of a disease, policy or public health intervention on any specific group of people, Rafla-Yuan said.

As an example, he said, “if there’s a specific age range that is at higher risk for suicide, and we want to figure out, well, what’s going on with people that are aged 14 to 19 … we can’t do that under the wording in this rule.”

New restrictions on collaborations with scientists in other countries would hinder opportunities for U.S. researchers and limit innovation, said Joanne Padrón Carney, chief government relations officer for the American Assn. for the Advancement of Science.

“Science is a global enterprise. Especially in biomedical and public health fields, diseases don’t care about borders or government policies,” she said.

California’s congressional delegation sent a letter Wednesday asking OMB to rescind the proposal, outlining concerns about its impact on scientific innovation, U.S. competitiveness and the fiscal stability of local governments, many of which rely on federal grants for local services.

The proposed rule grants the federal government broad powers to suspend or cancel grants for any reason, introducing “unprecedented unpredictability into local governance,” the lawmakers wrote, “leaving vital infrastructure projects unfinished and abandoning vulnerable populations who rely on these services.”

Republican Sen. Susan Collins has also asked the White House to withdraw certain parts of the letter and extend the public comment period, saying the proposed rule as written would “harm small and rural communities, undermine scientific and biomedical research, and conflict with Congress’ control over the federal funding process.”

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — A South Florida airport officially changed its name Thursday to the President Donald J. Trump International Airport.

Signs for the Palm Beach International Airport have been removed as new signage goes up.

“Because an entire airport transformation doesn’t happen overnight, you’ll notice a combination of both our classic look and our new brand elements coexisting while traveling through the terminal over the next several weeks,” airport officials said in a Facebook post.

“Trump Force One,” a Boeing 757 owned by the Trump Organization, was the first plane to arrive at the airport under its new name, shortly after 5 a.m. The president’s son, Eric Trump, was one of the passengers. The Trump family regularly uses the West Palm Beach airport when they visit President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in nearby Palm Beach. A stretch of road from the airport to Trump’s estate was renamed Donald J. Trump Boulevard earlier this year.

“There is no person who has done more for Florida and our country, and no one more deserving of this incredible honor,” Eric Trump posted on X. “As a son, and someone who flies out of this airport nearly every day, I will forever be proud to see the initials ‘DJT’ on my boarding pass.”

Although the name change took effect Thursday, the three-letter airport code will change from PBI to DJT on Aug. 18.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed legislation earlier this year that made the name change possible. Changing the airport’s name is expected to cost as much as $5.5 million for new signs, branding and other updates.

Keegan Collett, who was departing the airport Thursday morning on his way to Cincinnati, said he was surprised to see the new name. He said he doesn’t think Trump deserves to have an airport named after him but isn’t necessarily bothered by it.

“At the end of the day, it’s just the name of an airport,” Collett said. “There’s bigger things. I feel like it’s just more of a distraction. Why even worry about it?”

In Dandridge, Tenn., Thursday morning, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, U.S. Sens. Marsha Blackburn and Bill Hagerty and Rep. Tim Burchett attended a ceremony to rename the I-40 Bridge in East Tennessee to the Donald J. Trump Bridge.

Bessent said ahead of the ceremony that “no one is more deserving” of the honor than Trump.

Trump received 82% of the vote in Jefferson County, where Dandridge is located, in the 2024 election.

SOUTH HAVEN, Mich. — U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens is spending the closing weeks of Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary making a simple case: she’s the candidate who wins.

Stevens flipped a Republican-held House seat in suburban Detroit in 2018 and hasn’t lost since, including surviving a bruising primary against a fellow Democratic incumbent after redistricting in 2022. She says it’s what sets her apart from her opponent in the Aug. 4 primary, progressive Abdul El-Sayed.

“It is not a hypothetical that I beat Republicans,” Stevens told The Associated Press after a campaign stop in West Michigan this week. “I win tough races. I have had Republicans throw everything at me and still managed to win.”

Holding Michigan’s Senate seat is essential to any Democratic path back to the Senate majority this fall. That imperative only grew this week after Democrats’ nominee in Maine, Graham Platner, said he planned to drop out after he was accused of sexual assault, threatening another seat the party had hoped to keep competitive. While no Republican has won a U.S. Senate seat in Michigan since 1994, former U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers came within 20,000 votes of doing so in 2024.

That calculation has led Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer and influential Michigan Democrats, including former Sen. Debbie Stabenow, to rally behind Stevens, arguing she gives Democrats their strongest chance in November against Rogers, who is running again.

But if electability is the party establishment’s top priority, it’s an open question whether Democratic primary voters agree.

“Democratic leadership should think more in terms of what we want to accomplish, and less about, ‘We’ve got to make it appeal to everybody,’” said Dave Burdick, 71, of Douglas, Michigan. He’s backing El-Sayed, who has surged by arguing that Democrats don’t have to run to the middle to win.

El-Sayed has built his campaign around bold policy proposals, rejecting corporate PAC money and casting himself as an alternative to the status quo of the Democratic Party.

“People don’t want a moderate. They want somebody who’s going to come in and effect change,” Burdick added.

Stevens makes the case for retail politics

On a summer afternoon in South Haven, a community along Lake Michigan, Stevens walks into a pet supply store with the ease of a seasoned campaigner. Within minutes, she’s chatting with the owner about the area, greeting reporters by first name and striking up conversations with customers. She slips easily between small talk and campaign mode, asking about customers’ lives before mentioning legislation she’s championed and asking for their vote.

“I thought she was great fun,” said owner Roxanne Leder. “She was energetic and had a positive outlook.”

It’s the kind of campaigning Stevens’ allies say has defined her political career. They acknowledge she lacks the viral progressive moments that have fueled El-Sayed’s rise, but say she’s at her best in small rooms, union halls and local businesses — which they say is where elections are won.

Stevens has leaned into that contrast herself.

“Unlike my opponent, I’m not running at the first mic or camera I see,” Stevens said during a debate Tuesday. “We do not need a celebrity senator. We need a workhorse.”

It’s also a style familiar to Michigan Democrats. From former Gov. Jennifer Granholm to current-Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, successful statewide candidates have often paired an upbeat, personable campaign style with a pragmatic message centered on economic issues.

But unlike Granholm or Whitmer, Stevens has yet to generate the kind of broad grassroots enthusiasm that defined their statewide campaigns. El-Sayed, meanwhile, has packed rallies with progressive supporters and high-profile endorsers.

Stevens has leaned more heavily on tens of millions of dollars in outside spending, which could become one of Stevens’ biggest liabilities in the primary. Outside groups have spent more than $30 million to boost her candidacy, dwarfing the spending behind El-Sayed. The largest spender, United Democracy Project, the super PAC affiliated with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, has spent more than $13 million on Stevens’ behalf and reserved another $7 million before the primary.

For Burdick, the 71-year-old El-Sayed supporter, that spending is disqualifying. He said he would not vote for Stevens in the general election because of her support from AIPAC.

Leder, by contrast, said she expects to vote for Stevens in August because she’s far more familiar with the congresswoman than with El-Sayed. She said she still plans to do more research before making a final decision.

“I’m just a Democrat,” said Leder. “Please, please no Mike Rogers.”

Michigan has a populist streak

El-Sayed is running on Medicare for All, campaign finance reform, abolishing the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency and ending all U.S. weapons sales to Israel. He’s also a Muslim who has never held elected office.

To many Democratic leaders in Washington, that makes him a risky nominee in a battleground state often viewed as moderate and centered on manufacturing.

But Michigan has repeatedly rewarded candidates who cast themselves as outsiders challenging the political establishment. In 2016, Sen. Bernie Sanders defeated Hillary Clinton in the state’s Democratic presidential primary by running against party leaders. Donald Trump later built his own anti-establishment coalition, carrying Michigan in 2016 and again in 2024.

Burdick, a self-described “old white guy living in rural Michigan” who is a democratic socialist, said Trump and Sanders resonated with voters because they were upset.

“Well, you know what? They’re still mad,” he said. “They portray people like Abdul as unrealistic, but I think it’s unrealistic to think that we can continue the way that we’re heading.”

A two-person race changes the calculus

On Sunday, state Sen. Mallory McMorrow suspended her campaign. It prompted establishment Democrats to jump off the sidelines and back Stevens, including Democratic group EMILY’s List and Attorney General Dana Nessel.

“Haley is wicked smart, has won multiple highly competitive races, and she connects with people on a level so sincere and genuine that everyone who meets her feels truly seen and heard,” Nessel said in a statement.

El-Sayed has also built support among labor groups that have played an influential role in Democratic politics, including an endorsement from the United Auto Workers.

Fems for Dems, an influential Democratic grassroots group in the state, is not endorsing in the primary. But its founder, Lori Goldman, told AP in an interview that she planned to vote for El-Sayed.

“I personally am not going to have business as usual when I go to the ballot box. I want to vote for people, candidates that are going to go there and fight on our behalf,” she said.

Goldman, who founded the group 10 years ago in the politically important Oakland County, acknowledges the changing dynamics of Democratic primaries.

“Who would the natural choice be 10 years ago? Haley Stevens, right? Because we just followed the party line,” she said.

“People are breaking away from the party line. People want change.”

Cappelletti writes for the Associated Press.

MADISON, Wis. — Over the last month, Democratic socialists have notched victories in the liberal strongholds of New York City, Washington, D.C., and Denver.

Now Francesca Hong, a single mother who has worked as a dishwasher and line cook, is trying to do the same with her campaign for governor in Wisconsin, a swing state known for razor-thin election margins where winning over moderate, independent voters is crucial.

Hong’s candidacy has turned the Democratic primary on Aug. 11 into the latest test of just how far left voters are willing to go in the November midterms.

“We do this in Wisconsin, we’re going to change politics across the country,” the 37-year-old Hong said as she headed into the final month of campaigning. “People who are frustrated and have a lot more to lose — and I’m one of those people — are ready to coalesce around someone they can believe in.”

John Ravdabaugh, an undecided independent voter, came away impressed after hearing Hong speak at the retirement home where he lives. Even though the democratic socialist label concerns him, Ravdabaugh said he would consider voting for Hong.

“Every system reaches a point where change is necessary,” he said.

Whoever wins the primary will advance to almost certainly face Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, one of the most conservative members of the House, who has President Trump’s endorsement. Tiffany has only token opposition in the primary.

The governor’s race is integral to Democrats’ hopes of earning full control of Wisconsin state government for the first time since 2010, and it will send a signal about where the country’s politics are headed by shaping a key political battleground that helps decide presidential campaigns.

Trump-backed Republican derides Democratic rivals as ‘crazy’

Tiffany has focused much of his criticism on Hong and former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, another Democratic candidate for governor.

“This November, the choice is common sense or crazy,” Tiffany posted on social media in June. Tiffany included screenshots of a Barnes post where he voiced support for cutting prison populations by half and Hong’s posts where she advocates for defunding and abolishing the police.

As a candidate, Hong has not backed away from her calls to defund and abolish the police. Hong also supports increasing taxes on the wealthy and creating a state-owned bank to help pay for free health care and free child care, a $20 minimum wage, and a moratorium on data center construction.

Hong dismisses concerns that she’s too liberal to win over key independent voters in a state Trump carried twice and narrowly lost a third time.

“I worry that’s a miscalculation of where voters are at in our state, that we’re underestimating what people want,” Hong said in an interview.

There’s a history of socialism in Milwaukee

Last month, democratic socialist Janeese Lewis George won the Democratic primary for mayor of Washington, setting herself up to clinch the office in November.

Then three congressional candidates backed by New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, another democratic socialist, defeated establishment-backed politicians.

And just last week, democratic socialist Melat Kiros beat U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette in the Colorado primary, a stunning victory for the 29-year-old, first-time candidate against an incumbent who took office before she was born.

But those victories have been in either congressional or mayoral races in large urban centers, a far different landscape than Wisconsin.

In 1910, during socialism’s heyday in the United States, Milwaukee sent the first socialist to Congress and was the first major American city to elect a socialist mayor. Milwaukee elected two more socialist mayors before 1960.

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, perhaps the best known democratic socialist, won all but one county in Wisconsin in the 2016 Democratic primary. In 2023, two state lawmakers from Milwaukee revived the socialist caucus in the Legislature, which had been dormant since 1935.

Hong, the first Asian American elected to the state Assembly in 2020, is one of four members of that caucus.

Barnes, 39, served four years in the state Assembly before his four years as lieutenant governor under Democratic Gov. Tony Evers. In 2022, Barnes came within 27,000 votes of ousting Republican U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson.

“I’ve been around longer than anybody fighting these fights,” said Barnes, who grew up in Milwaukee and is vying to become Wisconsin’s first Black governor.

He played down the idea that democratic socialists are surging.

“People aren’t looking for labels, necessarily,” he said. “People are looking for bold solutions.”

Longtime Democratic strategist Joe Zepecki, who is not working for any of the Democrats running this year, said Barnes has an advantage as the most well-known candidate in the race.

“I have believed from the day since Mandela Barnes got into the race, he’s the favorite,” Zepecki said. “It is his race to lose.”

Hong rival leans into electability argument

Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez, a former nurse and health care executive who is also running for the Democratic nomination, said she’ll have broader appeal in November. She cites her experience in the private sector and her flipping of a state Assembly seat in a conservative Milwaukee suburb, and she emphasizes her ideas for lowering costs for working people.

“I’m not worried about other candidates in this race,” Rodriguez said in an interview. “What I’m worried about is making my argument to Wisconsinites about why I’m the best person to lead the state, how I am going to fight for them.”

She launched a $1 million television ad campaign this week that features her in nursing scrubs talking about taking on Tiffany and lowering health care costs.

Other Democratic candidates are state Sen. Kelda Roys, who has the endorsement of the statewide teachers union, and Joel Brennan, a former top aide to Evers.

Missy Hughes, the state’s former economic development director, dropped out of the race in June and endorsed Rodriguez. David Crowley, the top elected official in Milwaukee County, dropped out this week and also backed Rodriguez.

Mainstream Democrats worry about winning in November

More moderate Democrats worry that nominating Hong could hurt them in the general election, especially in Wisconsin where independent voters are key in statewide races that are often decided by tiny margins.

Neera Tanden, who leads the Center for American Progress, said “it’s especially important in the age of Trump” to select viable candidates.

“In Wisconsin, whoever wins the general election will be the person overseeing elections in 2028 and whether people are seated in 2029.”

Evers won his two races for governor by just over 1 percentage point in 2018 and just over 3 points in 2022. Trump won Wisconsin by less than a point in 2024, and lost by less than a point in 2020.

Dave Smith, 72, a retired doctor from Madison who heard Hong speak Tuesday, said the democratic socialist label will be tough for voters of his generation to accept.

“The platform, much of that resonates well,” said Smith, who is undecided whom he will vote for in the Democratic primary. “My vote will likely go to who is the most electable in the fall.”

Bauer writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Nicholas Riccardi in Denver contributed to this report.

SCARBOROUGH, Maine — The Maine Democratic Party has voted to hold a convention now that Democrat Graham Platner has announced he’ll drop out of the state’s U.S. Senate race after a former girlfriend accused him of sexual assault.

Platner, who denies the allegation, faced considerable pressure from his own party to quit the race. The first-time candidate also was accused of trying to influence how his replacement is selected — a claim he also denied. He announced his decision to leave the race Wednesday.

His exit leaves a crucial U.S. Senate race unsettled just months before the November midterm elections. The Maine Democratic Party, which by law is responsible for naming a replacement, announced it’ll move forward with holding a nominating convention to choose a new nominee. Meanwhile, potential contenders have already begun teasing their interest.

Here’s what we know about the Maine Senate race and what could be next:

The clock was ticking

According to Maine law, there’s a narrow provision for replacing general election candidates. Platner needed to step aside voluntarily by 5 p.m. July 13 before other contenders could have been considered.

Once he formally withdraws, the law then says the Maine Democratic Party can choose a replacement, which must be done by July 27.

The state Democratic Party held an emergency meeting Wednesday, where more than 100 state committee members signed off on holding a nominating convention in the event of a vacancy.

“There is an unprecedented amount of energy and enthusiasm among Maine Democrats, driven in part by many of the dedicated volunteers and supporters who were inspired by Graham Platner’s campaign,” Maine Democratic leaders said in a joint statement.

It’s incredibly rare for a general election candidate to bow out of a race, in Maine or elsewhere.

Platner campaign denies trying to influence the process

A key question surrounding how Platner is replaced has come down to just how much leverage the oyster farmer and Marine veteran has in this situation.

Maine Democratic Party’s executive director, Devon Murphy-Anderson had previously released a statement accusing Platner’s campaign of repeatedly trying to “put their thumb on the scale” in determining the next Democratic nominee.

Platner’s team responded with a statement saying “at no point has the campaign tried to ‘put its finger on the scale’” but said they were trying to understand the process. Thousands of Maine residents voted and volunteered for Platner, a progressive who outlasted establishment-backed Gov. Janet Mills, which the campaign believes should count in the decision.

The sparring between Platner’s campaign and the party continued Wednesday. Murphy-Anderson said in a statement that Platner’s campaign “remains focused on distracting from the job of defeating Susan Collins in November with false accusations against us” and the party “remains hyper focused on developing a representative, transparent and inclusive process to select a new nominee when he chooses to withdraw from the race.”

Platner’s campaign sent a survey with a 48-hour deadline to supporters on Wednesday that asked recipients two questions: what message they have for the Maine Democratic Party, and what message they have for Platner.

Separately Wednesday, President Trump was asked if Democrats should be allowed to replace Platner on the Maine Senate ballot.

“So he won the primary. It’s very hard for them. So, you question whether you believe the woman. A lot of people say big falsehoods,” Trump said.

Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One as he returned from a NATO summit in Turkey, the president added of Platner: “He’s in a bind. But, should they be able to do it? Well I guess he’s gonna lose. I’d imagine he’s going to lose.”

List of possible replacements continues to grow

One possible contender, Nirav Shah, former director of Maine’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention, has said he was “evaluating” whether to join the race. Shah said he’s been in contact with the Maine Democratic Party about ensuring that a possible replacement process is based on “openness, transparency and robustness.”

Troy Jackson, Maine’s former state Senate president, announced Wednesday he was officially entering the race. Jackson unsuccessfully ran to be the Democratic nominee for governor earlier this year with the backing of Platner and Our Revolution, the political organization started by Sen. Bernie Sanders. Jackson had filed paperwork with the Federal Election Commission on Tuesday to launch a Senate exploratory committee.

Jordan Wood, a former U.S. Senate candidate who then switched to run for Maine’s 2nd District and lost, posted Tuesday that he was “continuing conversations” with voters about joining the race.

Other names circulating include Shenna Bellows, the current Maine secretary of state; Dan Kleban, founder of Maine Beer Co.; and Hannah Pingree, now Maine’s Democratic nominee for governor.

One name that definitely won’t be on the ballot? Actor Patrick Dempsey. The “Grey’s Anatomy” star and Maine native wrote an editorial Wednesday saying despite being asked, he’s not interested.

Voters say they are disillusioned

Platner’s campaigned galvanized hundreds of volunteers around the state. This week, they’ve been expressing disappointment about the behavior Platner is accused of and pondering the right course of action.

Many called for him to drop out.

Paul Attardo, 64, of Scarborough, said he couldn’t continue supporting Platner after the allegation, though he still has a sign promoting the candidate at the end of his driveway. He called the accusation “disappointing” as well as “indisputably sincere,” and said the party needs to get to work finding a replacement.

The scenario reminded Attardo of the hasty replacement of Joe Biden during the 2024 election campaign.

“We rally behind somebody, and not unlike the Biden administration, when everybody rallied behind Joe Biden, at the eleventh hour that failed,” he said. “I sort of feel we’re in a similar boat.”

Kruesi and Whittle write for the Associated Press. Kruesi reported from Providence, R.I. AP writer Will Weissert contributed to this report from Washington.

President Trump’s administration is threatening to withhold some federal funding from states that don’t make changes to voting practices and is warning state election officials that they face arrest if they don’t remove noncitizens from voter rolls.

Letters to states and grant application details are the latest in a line of actions by Trump’s administration to shape details of running elections that have long been the job of states.

Courts have largely rejected the administration’s previous efforts, which reflect untrue claims about widespread voting fraud and come less than four months ahead of crucial midterm elections where Democrats seek to take control of one or both chambers of Congress and check Trump’s power.

“The overall point is that Trump is trying to use whatever levers of power and persuasive power that he might have to try to interfere with how states and localities are going to conduct the 2026 election,” said Rick Hasen, a UCLA law professor and the director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project. “Some of this is aimed at changing how the rules are conducted. Some of it appears to be aimed at undermining voter confidence in the integrity of the election process.”

Justice Department warns election officials of prosecution

In letters sent Tuesday, to election officials for all 50 states and the District of Columbia — often secretaries of state — the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division said they and other election administrators could face criminal charges if they knowingly allow nonvoters to vote or remain on voting rolls.

It also called on the states to tell the federal government within five days how they intend to comply with the law.

Derek Muller, a law professor at the University of Notre Dame who specializes in election law, said it’s not clear the 50-state letter means anything except to restate some parts of the law, with a request to follow up, “which I’m sure many states will ignore.”

The letter also warns that anyone who knowingly and willfully gives false information in registering to vote or voting would face criminal prosecution.

Antiterrorism grants include election requirements

A Federal Emergency Management Agency antiterrorism grant announcement in June includes a list of election-related requirements, saying that 20% of grants for states and urban areas would be withheld until they comply.

The program includes more than $1 billion for states and local and tribal governments for a variety of programs aimed at preventing terror at crowded places, online, with border security — and around elections. FEMA expects to award 56 grants.

“Recipients can ensure that their efforts contribute to a secure, transparent, and resilient electoral process, thereby reinforcing public trust and the integrity of democratic institutions,” the grant announcement says, noting that securing election infrastructure is a national security priority.

The list of items for states includes verifying the citizenship of all registered voters and election workers.

Places that use electronic voting systems that use bar codes or QR codes to count votes would have to submit plans to switch to hand-marked paper ballots. Every jurisdiction would have to show it audits results.

UCLA’s Hasen said it could be difficult even for states that want to comply. It’s too close to the midterm election to make some of the changes, he said, and some would require state legislatures to pass new laws.

The White House on Wednesday referred questions to FEMA, which did not immediately respond to an interview request.

Response from states appears to be partisan

Some states are pushing back, while others are defending the latest actions.

They seem to be breaking along party lines.

Oregon’s secretary of state, Democrat Tobias Read, accused the Justice Department of “knocking on our door again with more threats and no evidence to back up their fever dreams about non-existent voter fraud.”

Oregon elections are secure, accurate, and fair, he said, adding that he isn’t “intimidated by political threats or manufactured controversy.”

The Michigan secretary of state’s office, headed by Democrat Jocelyn Benson, said it has discussed its work repeatedly with the Justice Department and in public statements, congressional hearings and court testimony — information that it said “is either in the DOJ’s possession or easy reach.”

“We will be happy to provide it again to help address any confusion,” the office said in a statement.

In a statement, Ohio Republican Secretary of State Frank LaRose defended the Justice Department’s missive to states, saying it’s reminding them of their legal obligation regarding election integrity. A lot of states aren’t taking it seriously, he said without giving examples or citing evidence. He said Ohio has worked with the federal government to ensure that its voter rolls are accurate and that only U.S. citizens vote.

Georgia’s secretary of state’s office says the state has already taken many of the actions required in the FEMA grant, including a citizenship audit of voter rolls.

Several of Trump’s election actions have faced resistance

Trump has repeatedly and wrongly asserted that fraud cost him reelection in 2020, and his administration has put forth a series of policies and actions aimed at how elections are run.

In recent days, courts have rejected the Justice Department’s effort to collect the names and contact information for every election worker in Georgia in the 2020 election and others trying to force New Hampshire and Pennsylvania to turn over detailed information about registered voters. With those rulings, the federal government has lost similar cases more than 10 times around its requests for details from 30 states and the District of Columbia.

Last week, a group of Democratic governors asked the U.S. Postal Service to withdraw its proposed rule seeking to implement an order from Trump to create a list of eligible voters — and potentially limit who can receive a ballot in the mail. A court previously put the order on hold, saying it was unconstitutional.

Also last week, the Supreme Court rebuked Trump and ruled that states can count mailed ballots that arrive after Election Day.

Mulvihill and Levy write for the Associated Press. AP writers Gabriela Aoun Angueira, Bill Barrow, Kate Brumback and Josh Kelety contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — The Dodgers are scheduled to visit the White House on July 23 to celebrate their latest World Series title.

“President Trump is excited to welcome the Los Angeles Dodgers BACK to the White House to celebrate their World Series championship!,” White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers said in a statement to The Times.

The date falls on a scheduled off day in the middle of a nine-game East Coast road trip for the Dodgers. The team will play three games in Philadelphia against the Phillies July 20-22 before ending the trip with a three-game series against the New York Mets July 24 to 26.

The visit continues a tradition from the Dodgers’ two previous World Series championships. They were hosted by President Biden in 2021 and President Trump in April 2025.

After the Dodgers claimed their second consecutive World Series title with a dramatic Game 7 victory over the Toronto Blue Jays, a visit to the White House was planned, but it wasn’t until Thursday that a date was officially booked and confirmed.

Questions swirled around whether players would decline the visit this year after it did not happen during a scheduled visit to Washington in April.

Kiké Hernández said in 2018 he was unsure he would have gone had the Dodgers won the World Series the previous year. Mookie Betts said he was undecided and needed to talk it over with his family when last year’s visit was announced. After winning his first World Series with the Boston Red Sox in 2018, Betts skipped their trip to the White House the following year during Trump’s first term.

Both players, along with every returning member of the 2024 team who was with the team during its road trip, participated in the visit. The only notable absence was first baseman Freddie Freeman, who remained in Los Angeles to nurse an ankle injury.

Manager Dave Roberts, who indicated in comments to The Times in 2019 he might not go to the White House if Trump was president, also participated in last year’s ceremony.

Asked at the Dodgers’ fan festival in January about the possibility of returning to the White House, Roberts told The Times’ Bill Shaikin: “For me, I stand by: I’m a baseball manager. That’s my job.”

“I was raised — by a man who served our country for 30 years — to respect the highest office in our country,” Roberts said. “For me, it doesn’t matter who is in the office, I’m going to go to the White House. I’ve never tried to be political. … For me, I am going to continue to try to do what tradition says and not try to make political statements, because I am not a politician.”

Clayton Kershaw, who retired after last season but was on Team USA for this year’s World Baseball Classic, told The Times in the spring that he was aware Dodgers fans are split over whether the team should visit the White House again this year, but he said he is looking forward to it.

“I went when President Biden was in office. I’m going to go when President Trump is in office,” Kershaw said. “To me, it’s just about getting to go to the White House. You don’t get that opportunity every day, so I’m excited to go.”

Times deputy sports editor Ed Guzman contributed to this report.

CLINTON, Iowa — When the history of the 2000 presidential campaign is written, Al Gore’s visit to this little Mississippi River town may be just a footnote–or, just perhaps, a turning point. As midnight neared, it was here, with confetti flying, a fast blues number blaring, their hands high overhead, that the vice president and his wife, Tipper, danced on an outdoor stage as though they were at a well-fueled fraternity party.

He looked like he could not have been happier.

“Any smooches, we go up points,” a senior advisor joked about the closely watched polls.

Four days after securing the Democratic presidential nomination and three days after beginning a boat and bus trip down the Mississippi, Al Gore, the man so often derided as a campaign robot, has come to life.

To be sure, happier poll reports since the convention have contributed to the sunny demeanor. The latest surveys show either a dead heat or a single-digit lead for either Gore or GOP nominee George W. Bush.

But senior aides also point to Gore’s choice of a vice presidential running mate, Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, as a factor, because it helped him emerge from the shadow that is typical for a vice president.

“It was a confidence builder,” said a senior aide. “Now he has a No. 2, which makes him No. 1.”

Equally important is that the Democrats have long been planning for the post-convention stretch to election day, so they are now armed with a plan of attack and a message that they believe will lead to victory.

On Sunday, Gore displayed the strategy by melding a brief criticism of Republican health-care policies with his stump speech in a way that allowed his staff to argue that he is focusing on issues and specific solutions.

Taken together, the events Saturday night and Sunday reinforced the twin images the Gore campaign is seeking to project–a likable human being and a competent leader. He is the man who would dance onstage to celebrate his wife’s 52nd birthday and 12 hours later delve into policy differences with his rival, Bush.

The strategy is a showcase for Gore’s strength as a policy wonk while seeking to take advantage of Bush’s perceived weaknesses.

Within the Gore camp, aides say this turn is a reflection of the political calendar.

“In the spring, people are getting a general impression of the candidates,” said a senior political aide. “In the fall campaign, people start thinking about what’s at stake in the election.”

So Gore plans to talk about issues–namely, the economy, health care, education and the environment–that appeal to both the Democratic core and the swing voters peeled away from the Democrats by Ronald Reagan in 1980, the aide said.

“The more we get specific, the less the other guy looks specific,” he said.

As Gore headed downriver by boat Friday and Saturday, on a bus tour Sunday, and back on the boat today, he has focused on a core message: Keep the economy strong and use it to help all the people, not just the powerful.

On Sunday, in Muscatine, Iowa, Gore attacked Bush’s proposals to allow some private investment of Social Security funds. “What exactly is your plan on privatizing Social Security?” Gore rhetorically asked his rival. “Do you want to know the facts?” he asked the crowd. “Yes,” came the reply.

“Am I giving you too many specifics?” he added. “No!” his audience, on a sun-drenched courthouse lawn, called back.

Today and the rest of the week, his topic is likely to be tax cuts. Next week he plans to highlight success stories of the past eight years, to make the point that during the Clinton administration, the life of the country has taken great strides.

On Saturday night, before the spirited dance, Gore offered that theme and painted it in a frame of hope, even as he said of the nation, “We got problems, we’ve got problems aplenty,” and pleaded for the citizenry to abandon its distaste for politics and join him:

“You use the word politician out there and you see what goes across people’s minds. What do they say? Well, I won’t go into it,” he said, gaining a knowing laugh from an audience that waited as long as five hours to see the vice president, who was running nearly two hours late.

Gore continued:

“After everything that we’ve been through since the assassinations of President Kennedy and Dr. King and Bobby Kennedy and Watergate, the Vietnam War, and all the stuff between then and now, it’s hard . . . to allow yourself to really believe that somebody who’s standing up here in front of you, pledging to work his heart out for you and make this country a better place to the best of his ability, really means it.

“Well, that’s what I’m asking you to do. To push past the fear of disappointment, being let down, disillusioned,” he said.

At times, and largely out of public view, Gore has presented a relaxed, even playful picture of himself since he left Los Angeles and the Democratic National Convention around midnight Thursday.

Encountering an NBC correspondent taping a stand-up, the vice president donned the sound engineer’s headphones and took hold of the boom microphone, while the taping continued uninterrupted.

As the party motored past an open railroad bridge, he seized a megaphone and shouted at the tender’s quarters at mid-span: “You got cable?”

The Mississippi offered Gore easy access to four crucial swing states: Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois and Missouri, his destination today. But more, the campaign is using it as a way to connect with the heartland.

“The river is such a major part of the American psyche and fabric,” one senior aide said.

What could be more evocative of good times than a sunny summer day on a riverboat? the vice president said in one encounter.

This weekend, there was no pretense of vacation, save for a few private moments for Al and Tipper Gore, who were accompanied part of the way by their eldest daughter, Karenna Gore Schiff and her husband, Drew, and part of the way by Lieberman and his wife, Hadassah.

To be sure, there was a staged aura to the trip–the boat, decorated with a banner shouting the slogan “Setting Course for America’s Future,” formed a picturesque backdrop for Gore’s shore-side visits. The voyage yielded inviting vistas of Wisconsin’s hills, the bluffs of Minnesota and campsites along the Iowa shore.

Crowds in La Crosse, Wis., a city of 60,000 where Gore and Lieberman began the trip, and those farther down the route were enthusiastic, spent hours awaiting the candidates, and repeatedly interrupted them with rowdy cheers.

But for all the chants of “Go Al, Go!” each day, for all the red, white and blue fervor pumped up by a high-volume recording of Bruce Springsteen’s “Glory Days,” there were those as yet unconvinced.

Bob Hare came to see Gore in La Crosse, along with his wife, Sue, and their grandchildren.

“I told my wife he’s got a lot of good things, but how will it all get funded?” said Hare, an independent who voted Republican in 1996. As for Bush, he said: “I haven’t heard much of what he really plans on doing. I don’t know what his program is.”

In Dubuque, Iowa, John Seller, who owns a trucking company and voted twice for Reagan and then voted Democratic in the next three presidential elections, said he was moved by Gore’s speech last week at the Democratic convention.

“For the first time [Gore] came out and presented himself as the No. 1,” Seller said. At the same time, he said he saw Bush as “a bit hollow–I feel he has skated a bit on his father’s coattails.”

Throughout his trip, Gore plunged into his campaigning with fresh abandon, reaching over two and three people to shake hands deep in the crowd.

“I’m just getting warmed up,” the candidate said after his midnight dance with Tipper.

SAN RAFAEL, Calif. — Jared Huffman was unstinting and unbowed as he raised an arm heavenward. Not for fear of a thunderbolt hurtling through the blue sky and, punitively, creasing his skull. Rather, he was illustrating a point.

“I believe in a lot of things,” he said over a tuna melt at a small Marin County cafe. “I just don’t believe in magic and a sky god that looks like an old bearded man sitting just beyond the clouds.”

Huffman is the rare American — one of only about 10% or so — who flatly state they do not believe in God, or any higher power for that matter. What makes him rarer still is his place in Congress. Huffman, who represents a sprawling slice of Northern California, reaching from the Bay Area to the Oregon border, is one of just four members (out of more than 500) who are openly agnostic or religiously unaffiliated.

He is, by far, the most outspoken.

Huffman, who publicly revealed his nonreligious status in 2017, helped form the Congressional Freethought Caucus, which consists of about three dozen members of various religious stripe, each dedicated to the proposition that church and state should be distinct. He’s written a book, due out next month, raising an alarm and summoning Americans to fight the rising tide of Christian nationalism roiling our divided land.

An overwhelming favorite to win an eighth congressional term in November, Huffman, a Democrat, calls himself a humanist and described it this way:

“To me, it means good without God. It means you don’t need the inducement or fear of an afterlife to have a moral framework and to know your place in the universe. You’re sort of at peace with the reality that, as far as we know, this is it. You get one time around.

Rep. Jared Huffman, right, greets Marin County Executive Derek Johnson during the opening of a housing community in Point Reyes Station, Calif., on Wednesday.

(Godofredo A. Vasquez / For The Times)

“There are people of faith who sometimes think, well, that must be sad, that must be incomplete,” Huffman went on. “I find it’s just the opposite. It makes this world and our opportunity to be part of it more sacred.”

Growing up in the Mormon faith

Huffman, 62, grew up in a religious household in Independence, Mo. His family practiced an offshoot of the Mormon faith; as a youth, Huffman served in the priesthood.

He began to question the church and its teachings when his father died of lung cancer at age 56. Huffman was 19 and enrolled at UC Santa Barbara on a full-ride volleyball scholarship. (A lean 6-foot-3, Huffman was a three-time NCAA All-American and is a member of the school’s athletic hall of fame.)

“I think in hindsight ignorant faith kept me from coming to terms with the fact that he was dying, and it made it way more traumatic than it should have been,” Huffman said of his father’s passing. “I didn’t really own up to the reality of what was happening, because I was this person of faith who thought rotten things would never happen to me and my father.”

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Shaken, Huffman spent years in a period of reflection and deep study — of various religions, spirituality, the Bible, which he can cite chapter and verse — before landing in his place of humanism and nonconformity.

After earning a law degree at Boston College, Huffman moved to the Bay Area and served as a senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council, the environmental group. His political career began in 1994 with his election to the Marin Municipal Water District. Huffman served for 12 years, until his election to the state Assembly. He won his congressional seat in 2012.

Huffman’s secularism never came up, he said, until his arrival in Washington, where religiosity, God-fearing and worship of a higher power are taken as articles of faith.

“All of a sudden, religion is all around you and everyone wants to know your religion,” Huffman said. “I knew that I was a nonbeliever. I knew that I was a humanist. But that was a very private thing and I had kind of intended to keep it that way.”

Losing his religion

Two things changed.

First, Huffman’s mother died at age 87. She was fervently religious, Huffman said, and “I didn’t really want to break her heart and tell her how deep my nonbelief actually was.” (In his book, Huffman recounts an awkward scene where he takes the congressional oath of office for the first time on a hastily borrowed Bible, to please his proud mom.)

The second factor was the ascent of Trump, riding a wave of ardent evangelical support.

Huffman was put off by the hypocrisy of such a blasphemous president surrounding himself with extremists using the language and symbols of religious faith to enact what he perceived, and perceives, as a distinctly antidemocratic, un-American agenda.

“I was always uncomfortable with the way I saw religion encroaching into government in Washington,” Huffman said. “My previous concerns were heightened by an order of magnitude because of what he did.”

Ignoring the counsel of family, friends and political advisors who, to a person, warned against it, Huffman revealed his religious disbelief in a series of statements and interviews in November 2017. At the time, the only member of Congress to ever publicly come out as an atheist was Rep. Pete Stark, who announced his sentiments in 2007; though the Fremont Democrat was reelected twice, he was eventually defeated by a Democratic rival who turned his lack of faith against him.

That rival was Eric Swalwell; make of it what you will.

Huffman braced for political blowback. There was none, though he’s gotten death threats and plenty of admonishments he’s bound for Hell.

(Meantime, the congressional ranks of the religiously unaffiliated have grown to include Democratic Reps. Yassamin Ansari of Arizona and Emily Randall of Washington and Republican Rep. Abraham Hamadeh of Arizona.)

In the first election after his announcement, Huffman was returned to Washington with 77% of the vote. He’s won reelection three times since, with never less than 72% support. “It turns out [constituents] don’t much care what my religion is if I’m doing good work,” Huffman said, “and that’s pretty great in my opinion.”

He underscored the sentiment with a hearty bite of his tuna melt.

The book Huffman has coming out next month — with chapters that include “Breaking Faith,” “Christian Privilege” and “Christian Zionism” — is a work that explains his personal evolution and expresses a dire fear the country is headed, if unchecked, toward a system of authoritarian theocracy.

He describes the Christian nationalism that informed the attempted coup on Jan. 6, 2021, and explains the biblical prophecies behind the messianic support among some Trumpian true-believers.

“The book is not so much about humanism,” Huffman said. “It is about the fight to protect our secular democracy, which, I think, is the bedrock of America as we know it.”

The dedication reads, “For everyone who refuses to bow.”

What else you should be reading

The must-read: 14 propositions that could remake California taxes, housing, healthcare and elections
The deep dive: Even without birthright citizenship, Supreme Court co-signs much of Trump’s immigration agenda
The L.A. Times Special: The right and left need to control the radicals in their own parties

Until next time,
mzb
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As a student years ago, I dove deep into the history of the Red-hunting McCarthy era and became familiar with the actor who emerged second only to Wisconsin Sen. Joe McCarthy as the villain of that insidious time: his shameless, conniving young lawyer, Roy Cohn. Never would I have imagined that a future president would count Cohn as a mentor and role model.

Then came Donald Trump.

Now, in Cohn-inflected McCarthyesque style, President Trump is channeling his tutor yet again, baselessly labeling his political enemies — all Democrats — as communists as he looks ahead to the fall’s midterm elections. Once more Trump shows that his catchphrase “Make America great again” means regressing, this time to Trump’s formative 1950s and the McCarthy era that sadly helped define it.

In recent speeches, including on the Fourth of July, Trump’s utterances of “communist” or “communism” reached double digits each time. (As that implies, the president didn’t set aside his divisive rhetoric even for the nation’s 250th birthday.)

“Our warriors did not fight communism on battlefields across the world only to have that menace rear its ugly head right back here in America,” Trump said late on the Fourth on the National Mall.

Trump couples his commie-baiting with a dash of his trademark xenophobia. “There is now a resurgence of the communist menace in our land, including by newcomers to our country who embrace ideas totally opposed to our way of life and our great success,” he said at Mount Rushmore a day earlier. (He’s got it backward, of course: Immigrants come here for the American way of life and promise of success.)

Here’s the irony: Trump’s actions in his second term make him look more like the commie. He’s projecting again.

Now that Trump is exploiting a few victories lately by left-wing democratic socialists in Democratic primaries to paint the entire party as communists, it’s time to review the record — his record.

A hallmark of communism is government ownership of companies and control of the economy, at the expense of private property and free markets. In just over a year, Trump has used billions of taxpayers’ dollars to buy shares for the government in a growing list of private companies — U.S. Steel, Intel, Westinghouse and more — citing national security. The companies don’t always welcome their new stakeholder; at a minimum, they rightly fear it for the demands the government could make about prices and production.

“It’s what Putin did,” the estranged Republicans at the Lincoln Project posted online Monday. “Trump is the closest we’ve ever come to communism.”

“What began as a populist revolt against so-called elites has become a program of state ownership, price fixing and top-down industrial control,” free-market economist Veronique de Rugy wrote in The Times last October of Trump’s actions. “The power to ‘partner’ with business is the power to control it.”

Comrade Trump’s first big government grab, and a model for those to come, was in June last year, when he wrested a permanent “golden share” in U.S. Steel in return for approving its sale to Japan’s Nippon Steel. The company’s charter was revised to give the U.S. president extraordinary veto power over nearly a dozen corporate activities, including closing or relocating plants, supply-chain decisions, even pricing.

“We have a golden share, which I control,” Trump told reporters at the time, in words I never thought I’d hear from a president of the party once associated with free markets.

Just last week, Trump boasted to CNBC how he’d extracted a 10% stake in beleaguered chip giant Intel last August, after first demanding that its chief executive resign. “Intel came in. They had a problem. I said, ‘I can solve your problem, but I want 10% of the company.’ … Somebody said that’s not very American. I said, ‘No, I think it is very American, actually.’ And I’ve done that with other deals.”

And so he has.

The Pentagon is now the largest stockholder in struggling MP Materials, a large rare-earth mine in California, and guarantees a 10-year price floor for its output that stunned competitors. The administration has since taken shares in other rare-earth companies. The Commerce Department took an option for an 8% stake in Westinghouse, to spur construction of nuclear reactors, and has the right to 20% if the government decides the company should go public. The government takes a 15% cut of Nvidia’s and Advanced Micro Devices’ AI chip sales to China.

As much as anything he does, Trump’s direct intervention in private enterprise invites the question “What if Biden/Harris/Obama did that?” The answer, of course: Trump and Republicans would cry “Communist!”

Trump’s actions are the sort Americans generally have only seen during economic emergencies or major wars, and then rarely. I covered the frenzied and ultimately successful response to the near-collapse of the global financial system and the U.S. auto, insurance and housing industries. Behind the scenes in the Obama White House (and George W. Bush’s at the outset) was constant, angst-filled debate about any actions smacking of government takeovers and a determination that interventions be temporary, unlike Trump’s schemes. (For all the still-lingering unpopularity of the banking bailout, the Treasury — the taxpayers — got all the money back and then some, and exited the business.)

Trump’s economic big-footing isn’t the only way in which he resembles the commies Americans know best, and whom he so admires: Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, Kim Jung Un. There are also the images of himself everywhere, monuments planned, drearily long and self-adulating speeches and interference in the nation’s cultural, educational and legal spheres and — worst of all — in elections.

At Rushmore, Trump closed with a demand that Congress pass his so-called SAVE America Act to restrict voting. “We do that and we’re not going to lose an election for 100 years,” he said, speaking of course about Republicans.

One-party rule through central government election finagling? Now that’s a communist.

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With the 2026-27 season premiere of “60 Minutes” just two months away, CBS News leadership is getting closer to deciding who will fill the recent departures of longtime correspondents Scott Pelley, Sharon Alfonsi, Cecilia Vega and Anderson Cooper.

Seth Doane, a longtime correspondent based in Italy who is often seen on “CBS Sunday Morning,” is under consideration, along with chief investigative correspondent Jim Axelrod, who currently has a lead role in the “Eye On America” series featured on the “CBS Evening News with Tony Dokoupil.”

Trevor Phillips, a British journalist and former politician who recently joined CBS News as senior global affairs correspondent, is expected to have a role on the program, according to people briefed on the plan. Phillips had a long career in the U.K., producing and writing documentaries and most recently hosted the Sky News program “Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips.”

Phillips received a knighthood in 2022 for his service to equality and human rights for the U.K. But he also generated controversy over his career for comments about the British Muslim community, which led to a yearlong suspension from the Labor Party in 2020.

A CBS News representative declined comment beyond saying the division is looking at a number of internal and external candidates.

Dokoupil is expected to deliver four “60 Minutes” pieces a season. Major Garrett, the network’s chief Washington correspondent, will also have a contributor role.

Matt Gutman, hired from ABC News last year as national correspondent, is under strong consideration. He is being put in front of test audiences, according to several people at the network.

Holly Williams, a foreign correspondent working out of Istanbul for CBS News since 2012, and Mariana van Zeller, a journalist for National Geographic Channel, are both said to remain in contention.

The newcomers will join Bill Whitaker, Lesley Stahl, Jon Wertheim and Norah O’Donnell, who are all returning as correspondents. O’Donnell will also continue in her role as senior correspondent for the network, occasionally anchoring specials.

The rebuild of the talent lineup comes after the upheaval at the program that has occurred since Bari Weiss joined CBS News as editor in chief in October.

Pelley was fired last month after confronting management about the May 28 dismissal of his colleagues Alfonsi and Vega along with the program’s executive producer Tanya Simon and her second-in-command Draggan Mihailovich.

In February, Cooper decided not to sign a new deal as a “60 Minutes” contributor, as the CNN anchor cited a desire to spend more time with his family. But Cooper has reportedly told colleagues that he does not want to work for Weiss.

The internal disruption at “60 Minutes” followed a highly successful season. In its 57th season, “60 Minutes” was the most watched news program on television with an average of 9.1 million viewers a week, according to Nielsen data. The program bucked the overall decline in traditional TV viewing by growing 9% over the previous season.

After the dismissal of his “60 Minutes” colleagues, Pelley accused Weiss of trying to “murder” the program and claimed she was putting “her thumb on the scale” for more favorable coverage of the Trump administration. He was fired with cause after confronting management at a June 1 meeting.

Weiss came to CBS when parent company Paramount acquired her digital website The Free Press, known for its criticism of progressive policies and its strong support of Israel.

Weiss was hired by Paramount Chief Executive David Ellison with a mandate to move the news division to the political center. The pronouncement has created the perception that CBS News is looking to placate the Trump administration as Paramount sought regulatory approval for its $111-billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, which will also give the company ownership of CNN.

The noise surrounding Weiss has hurt CBS News despite strong reporting that is often far from being pro-MAGA. This past weekend’s “CBS Sunday Morning” featured a segment from national security correspondent David Martin about the Department of Defense interfering with the editorial independence of Stars & Stripes, the military newspaper.

Trump complained vehemently about his last interview with O’Donnell on “60 Minutes,” — conducted the day after a gunman tried to enter the White House Correspondents Assn. dinner in Washington on April 25.

CHEYENNE, Wyo. — She refused to ban books, many of them about racism and the experiences of LGBTQ+ people. And for that, Suzette Baker was fired as a library director in a rural county in central Texas.

“I’m kind of persona non grata around here,” said Baker, who had headed the Kingsland, Texas, library system until she refused to take down a prominent display of several books people had sought to ban over the years.

Now, Baker is fighting back. She and two other librarians who were similarly fired have filed workplace discrimination claims with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. And as culture war battles to keep certain books from children and teens put public and school libraries increasingly under pressure, their goal is redemption and, where possible, eventual reinstatement.

So far, it’s a wait-and-see whether the claims will succeed — and set new precedent — in the struggle between teachers and librarians around the country who oppose book bans and conservative activists who say some books are inappropriate for young minds.

The fight has involved a record number of book-banning efforts, some libraries cutting ties with the American Library Assn. — which opposes book bans — and even attempts to prosecute librarians for allowing children to access books some consider too graphic.

At least one terminated librarian has gained a measure of success.

Brooky Parks, who was fired for defending programs on anti-racism and LGBTQ+ stories she organized for teens at the Erie Community Library north of Denver, won a $250,000 settlement in September. Reached through the Colorado Civil Rights Division, the settlement requires her former employer to give librarians more say in decisions involving library programs.

Parks’ settlement with the High Plains Library District capped a stressful eight-month period without work, when community donations helped her avoid losing her home. And it will probably resolve Parks’ claim with the EEOC, said attorney Iris Halpern, who represents Parks and the other two librarians.

“I just wasn’t going to back down from it. It was just the right thing to do,” said Parks, now a librarian at the University of Denver.

After her firing in 2022, Baker filed an EEOC claim against her employer, the Llano County Library System in Kingsland. And in September 2023, Terri Lesley filed a claim over her firing last summer as executive director of the Campbell County Public Library System in Gillette, Wyo.

Halpern, with the Denver firm Rathod Mohamedbhai, compared the wrongful-termination claims to civil rights-era legal battles.

“It is honestly sad that we’ve gotten to this point. But history is a constant struggle, and we have to learn from our past,” she said.

The 1964 Civil Rights Act established the EEOC to enforce laws against workplace discrimination. One legal expert thinks the librarians might be able to prevail on the grounds that, under those laws, employees may not be discriminated against for associating with certain classes of people.

“With any case, the devil can be in the details in terms of how the facts come out and what they can present. But these are definitely actionable claims,” said Rutgers University law professor David Lopez, a former EEOC general counsel.

An EEOC investigation can take more than a year. After that, the EEOC may attempt to reach a settlement with the employer out of court, sue on the employee’s behalf or issue a letter saying the employee has grounds to sue on their own.

The librarians haven’t yet received an EEOC response and none is expected before the end of next year.

“I would love to be optimistic,” Baker said. “I know there are a lot of people in this community who are just absolutely behind the library being open and free and equal for all. And there’s a lot of people who aren’t. So it’s a hard, hard situation.”

EEOC spokesperson Victor Chen declined to comment on specific filings, saying, “We can’t even confirm or deny we have these complaints.”

The county attorney offices and other representatives of the government officials who fired Parks, Baker and Lesley did not return phone and email messages seeking comment, or declined to comment.

At her Texas library, Baker displayed several books that have been targeted in recent book bans and a sign that read: “We put the ‘lit’ in literature” — a reference to a Tennessee pastor’s recent burning of books.

Baker was fired after refusing to take down the display and signs — considered the last straw after she resisted book banning in her library.

In March, a federal judge ordered 17 books returned to Kingsland library shelves while a citizen lawsuit against book banning proceeded. The works ranged from children’s books to award-winning nonfiction, including “They Called Themselves the K.K.K: The Birth of an American Terrorist Group,” by Susan Campbell Bartoletti; and “It’s Perfectly Normal: Changing Bodies, Growing Up, Sex, and Sexual Health,” by Robie Harris.

“Content-based restrictions on speech are presumptively unconstitutional and subject to strict scrutiny,” Texas U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman wrote in his March 30 ruling. He cited a 2015 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that barred communities from banning signs because of what they say.

The Llano County Commissioners Court decided against closing the county’s three libraries in response to the ruling. Closing the libraries would have echoed the history across the U.S. of closing swimming pools rather than desegregating them, Halpern said.

Like Baker, Lesley had trouble finding work after being fired from the library system she directed in Gillette, Wyo. Her dismissal followed two years of turmoil over challenges to the books available and library programs.

Some of the same county officials who opposed a transgender magician’s plans to perform at the library went on to join local residents in seeking to ban books, according to Lesley’s EEOC filing.

Baker and Lesley both were fired after local officials appointed new library board members willing to be more aggressive about pulling books.

“Our county commissioners appointed board members who were sympathetic to the people who wanted to remove the books. And it was a long dance to try to get it there. And in the end they had to fire me, I think, in order to be able to meet their goal,” Lesley said.

The Campbell County Commission skirted a deputy county attorney’s recommendation not to appoint past applicants for the board without reinterviewing them along with new candidates, according to Lesley’s EEOC claim.

“I saw this as a well-executed attack on the library by a group of citizens and elected officials. It was an attack on the LGBTQ+ community as well,” she said. “And it was an attack on the books.”

In 2023, California regulators levied more than $100,000 in fines against the private operator of a federal immigration facility, kicking off a three-year battle over whether detainees who do work at the facilities should be considered employees.

The question went beyond semantics: If considered employees, the detainees would be subject to state worker protection laws.

A legal settlement announced this week now affirms that private immigrant detention facilities are subject to California’s workplace safety and health requirements.

“Every worker deserves a safe and healthy workplace and should be able to report workplace hazards without fear of retaliation,” said Denisse Gómez, spokesperson for the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health or Cal/OSHA.

“Individuals who perform work in these facilities are entitled to workplace safety protections, and this settlement reinforces Cal/OSHA’s commitment to enforcing those protections and safeguarding vulnerable workers,” she added.

Under the settlement between California and the GEO Group, a Florida-based private prison company, the company recently withdrew its legal challenges and agreed to pay more than $100,000 in the fines.

The GEO Group did not respond to requests for comment.

Back in 2023, Cal/OSHA issued $104,510 in fines against the GEO Group. The agency had found six violations of state code by the company after detainees complained about a lack of protective equipment and proper training while cleaning the facility for $1 per day.

Detainees alleged they routinely wiped black mold off shower walls at the facility, saw black dust spew from air vents and used cleaning solutions that lacked instructions during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The biggest fine levied against the GEO Group was for failure to establish and maintain “effective written procedures to reduce employee risk of exposure to aerosol transmissible disease.”

Advocates viewed Cal/OSHA’S recognition of the detainees as workers as a victory that could pave the way for future labor rights fights at other detention centers in the state.

But the GEO Group appealed, arguing that detainees participating in ICE’s voluntary work program make their own schedules and aren’t employees, so hazard exposure couldn’t be “as a result of assigned duties,” as California law states. Plus, the company argued, there wasn’t enough evidence that detainees were exposed to any hazard.

Early last year, the state’s Occupational Safety and Health Appeals Board rejected the GEO Group’s argument and found that detainees should be considered “affected employees.”

The GEO Group sued, but three days before a California Superior Court hearing in May, the company and Cal/OSHA reached the settlement.

Along with paying the fines, the GEO Group agreed to draft plans for avoiding aerosol transmissions at 12 secure and reentry facilities in California, including five detention centers that hold immigrants.

“GEO ensures detainees are afforded the necessary tools, equipment, and personal protective equipment … to safely and effectively perform any necessary tasks,” the settlement states.

Gómez said the settlement also leaves intact the appeals board’s ruling that civil immigration detainees who participate in work programs can participate in proceedings anonymously, “acknowledging the potential for retaliation when individuals raise workplace safety concerns.”

But the question of whether detainees are employees and deserve certain protections isn’t entirely resolved — at least not for the federal government.

Last month, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement released new standards for detention facilities across the country. The revised guidelines “emphasize that detainee volunteers participating in the voluntary work program are not considered facility and/or government employees” and thus not entitled to labor regulations.

Attorney Mariel Villarreal said the timing of the new detention standards made her question whether the GEO Group had asked ICE to specify in its standards that detainees are not workers in response to its battle with Cal/OSHA.

“To me, it’s a reaction to this very settlement,” she said. Villarreal works for the California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice, which filed the original complaint on behalf of detainees who said they worked in unsafe conditions.

Villarreal pointed to a Washington Post report that GEO Group executives privately asked ICE to specify that detainees are not employees of the facilities where they work. Two top Trump administration officials, border czar Tom Homan and acting ICE director David Venturella, previously worked for the GEO Group.

New versions of ICE detention standards take effect as contracts are established or modified, so this year’s rules won’t immediately apply to every facility.

An ICE spokesperson did not comment about the settlement. The spokesperson, who did not provide their name in an emailed statement Wednesday, said the agency has begun transitioning detention facilities to meet the 2026 standards, “building on its longstanding commitment to safe, secure, and professional detention operations.”

“ICE has consistently implemented many of these best practices independently, reinforcing its role as the leader in detention operations,” the spokesperson added.

The GEO Group and other immigrant detention center operators have faced other legal battles over workers’ rights, including lawsuits in Washington, Colorado and California over the $1-per-day payment.

Villarreal said she’s confident that the Cal/OSHA settlement would continue to hold even if California facilities incorporated the new standards. But she said she believes the statements are an attempt by the GEO Group to “sidestep responsibility” and avoid the possibility of being fined under similar circumstances in other states.

“These statements in the new standards are a way for them to try and preserve profits as much as possible,” she said. “GEO and ICE are so intertwined at this point that they have the same motives.”