POLITICS

The Great American Smear is back. In 2000, the victim was Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain, and the vector for transmission was telephone lines and leaflets left on windshields in church parking lots. This year, the victim is Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama, and the vector is e-mail messages that appear to have originated in evangelical networks. As always, the smears play to the ugly underside of American politics: prejudice and hatred.

The 2000 rumor was that the white McCain had fathered a dark-skinned child out of wedlock. In the end, it did not matter that he and his wife had adopted the child from Bangladesh. The then-front-runner lost the South Carolina Republican primary to George W. Bush, whose campaign has always denied any involvement in the “push polling” that propagated the smear. It worked partly because the mainstream media didn’t report what was happening until after the election. But mainly it worked because of the persistence of the prejudices that prompted the South’s old anti-miscegenation laws.

So it’s worth considering the persistence of the Internet rumors that Obama, well known to Chicagoans as a Christian, is actually a stealth Muslim, a “Manchurian candidate” who would take the presidential oath with his hand on the Koran.

The rumors first surfaced during Obama’s run for Senate but took off in a viral e-mail campaign in 2006. One e-mail called Obama “The Enemy Within.” GOP strategist Ed Rogers also pointedly mentioned Obama’s middle name, Hussein. In January, the Obama campaign was forced to denounce Fox News for repeating a false Insight magazine report that he had spent fours years in an Indonesian madrasa, an Islamic school. Though CNN sent out a reporter who found that the school Obama had attended had nothing in common with the Pakistani incubators for jihadists, and though his campaign has set the record straight repeatedly, last week the Washington Post ran a front-page story about Obama’s “Muslim ties.”

That the rumors are false and vile is self-evident. That they persist in the face of the facts speaks to the power of the underlying calumny — that Muslim Americans in positions of power in the United States represent a fifth column, an internal security threat of the sort believed to have been posed by Japanese Americans during World War II.

It also speaks to the post-9/11 revival of the ancient Christian loathing of Muslims that predated by centuries the 1529 Ottoman Siege of Vienna. Today, Muslim peoples are frequently stereotyped as mobs or hordes who are particularly prone to violence and generally supportive of terrorism. And an ugly undertone of the immigration debate has been the insinuation that efforts to restrict illegal immigration should focus on keeping out the “bad” Muslims who have overrun Europe, not the “good” Mexicans who only want to work here.

It’s true that many American voters probably aren’t ready for a Muslim president, as they once weren’t ready to elect a Catholic to the highest office. But there are now believed to be more than 2 million Muslim Americans in the United States, and one of them is a member of Congress. Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) won election without hiding his religion and did, in fact, swear the oath of office on the Koran. This tolerance of religious diversity is a founding American principle, and one that we hope will continue to distinguish the United States from theocracies such as Iran and Saudi Arabia.

Presidential candidates of both parties have a duty to denounce not only the smear against Obama but the bigotry that underlies it.

WAYCROSS, GA. — Driving away from Savannah and into the swampy heart of southeast Georgia, Old South charm fades to decomposing autos forming bunkers in front of nearly every house along U.S. 82. An automobile driver battles for lane rights against semis stacked with pine logs roaring toward the pulp mill. The AM car radio options are country-and-western gospel (“Walkin’ On With Jesus”) or traditional gospel.

The two-lane roadbed across the flat Georgia lowland is a levee separating swamp and pine forest on one side from swamp and pine forest on the other.

A hundred miles from Savannah, beyond the First Free Will Baptist Church and a National Guard armory marquee advertising Ladies and Midget wrestling, U.S. 82 threads a strip of fast-food stands and convenience stores into Waycross, Pop. 20,000, proclaimed locally as “the Largest City in the Largest County in the Largest State east of the Mississippi.”

Waycross, Ware County, Ga., is part of the playing field in the South’s Super Tuesday presidential primary, but Waycross voters have been distant observers. The candidates have campaigned from one New South city to the next, from Charlotte, N.C., to Nashville, Tenn., to Atlanta, but not to Waycross. Waycross voters were not necessarily uninterested in the contest, but in the weeks before the primary, they had more immediate concerns–an election for mayor, racial incidents in the local schools and a campaign to attract jobs.

The South is no longer a political monolith. It is also not as monolithic culturally as outsiders assume. In many aspects, the problems of Waycross may be closer to those of Rock Springs, Wyo., than Atlanta.

Candidates may bypass Waycross, but Waycross is used to being bypassed, first by the interstate highways that siphoned off Florida-bound tourist traffic, and then by the New South economic miracle that brought shiny office towers and research parks to the cities. Even the modern technology that has touched Waycross has been a mixed blessing. Waycross, founded as a railroad town in 1875 where the Savannah, Florida and Western Railroad intersected with the Brunswick and Florida Railroad, has one of the east’s largest rail switching yards. But with deregulation and computerization, employment has declined to about a third of its one-time peak of 3,000.

So Waycross remains an isolated, economically depressed trade center where population and retail sales have remained flat for 20 years. The median household income is half the national level. The population is aging and residents despair that the best young people go off to school and never return.

Waycross’ sin is being rural in an age of urbanization. When Chamber of Commerce Manager Saralyn Stafford talks of southeast Georgia to outsiders, she draws empty looks. “They all know about Atlanta. They think Georgia ends when you get to Macon,” Stafford said.

A woman in charge–particularly one under 30–is something new. Stafford, weary of hearing “we’ve never done that before,” is out to get a stagnant Waycross moving.

In the past, businesses lived off the railroads and little was done to attract new industry. There was no coordinated leadership. No one knocked on doors of the state economic development people in Atlanta and demanded attention.

“We are building relationships now–from ground zero,” Stafford said. “We haven’t always had that. We’ve had a good ol’ boy network.”

Waycross is beginning to get attention, but pulling the community together is not easy. Businesses have moved from downtown to the Hatcher Point shopping center out U.S. 1 on the way to Okefenokee Swamp Park. City center brick buildings are dingy. Shoppers complain about traffic, complicated by the railroad grade crossings in the middle of town, about poor service and the lack of a downtown department store and good restaurants.

Complicating the political fabric is an ethnic gulf between Waycross and surrounding Ware County. Blacks account for about half the city population but only a fraction of the rural. Most counties in the region have one high school but Waycross and Ware County maintain separate schools, with occasional racial tension between them. Stafford has begun a political education campaign among businesses and school consolidation is high on the agenda. But one old-timer chuckled at talk of consolidation and drawled, “Oh, that subject comes up every once in a while.”

All in all, Waycross is not an ugly or unpleasant town, unless a visitor comes with unrealistic expectations about the elegant charm of the antebellum South or the extent of the economic vitality of the New South. The older downtown buildings may be dingy, but are still solid and could be refurbished at modest expense. The center of town is anchored by government offices and a federal courthouse. If additional business leaves, however, the downtown may become moribund and the outskirts even more tacky and cluttered.

Waycross has pleasant residential areas with tree-lined streets and handsome homes with spacious lawns. A modern three-bedroom house can be had for $50,000. There is a community college, a vocational-technical school and several small industries. The Okefenokee Swamp is an unexploited attraction of great potential. Deer hunting and bass fishing are excellent. While many want to see Waycross boom, others like it as it is.

Of racial troubles, one young black professional said, “It’s no better or worse than any of the other counties around.” And a respondent to a consumer survey said, “I don’t know of any improvements needed. I came here in 1909 and I could write a book about Waycross. It’s the best place in the world to live.”

Waycross probably is not on the threshold of economic boom–or bust. But new energy and leadership and a modest investment of funds could make downtown Waycross an attractive place to work, shop, entertain and enjoy cultural events. Stafford does not have excessive expectations. “We just want our people to stay here,” she said. “We have good lives.”

That, in fact, is the modest goal to which hundreds of bypassed American communities aspire.

Reporting from Las Vegas — He was known as Tony back then, a young boy so persuasive and self-assured that he helped persuade his family to ditch Catholicism for the Mormon Church, and he marched in a union picket line with his dad, a casino bartender, to demand better wages.

Marco Rubio’s life might have turned out very differently had he stayed in this working-class neighborhood off the Las Vegas Strip, where service workers like his father and mother, a hotel maid, dreamed of a better life while providing the labor to power the gambling industry’s economic engine.

But the Rubios returned to Miami after six short but formative years in Nevada. Rather than coming of age in the small “L” libertarianism of the West, where most Latinos skewed toward the Democratic Party, Tony began high school amid South Florida’s conservative Cuban American exile community. And that’s where Marco Rubio, early tea party favorite and Republican presidential hopeful, was forged.

All that Rubio left behind in Las Vegas points to a world view once considered, but ultimately rejected, a time he tried on new political and cultural ideas he later would shed.

His childhood enthusiasm for the powerful Las Vegas unions has been replaced by a pro-business economic sensibility. He abandoned the Mormon faith in favor of a mash-up of his wife’s evangelical Christianity and his own Catholic roots. He has publicly criticized the gambling industry.

As he drove his weathered Prius recently through the residential streets Rubio roamed as a kid, Mo Denis, Rubio’s cousin and the former Democratic leader of the state Senate, reflected on how Rubio had changed and how his time in Nevada influenced the kind of politician he became.

“We’ve talked about it on occasion,” said Denis, who still lives in the Nevada neighborhood where Rubio arrived in 1979 as an 8-year-old and lived until he was 14. “His time here was part of who he is.”

Denis said Rubio’s years in the diverse neighborhood of working-class white and Latino families exposed him to lifestyles and socioeconomic conditions he wouldn’t have seen in the more insular and politically conservative Miami. That may have helped broaden and temper his views on some topics.

“I don’t know that he’s rejected it,” Denis said of Rubio’s experience in Las Vegas. “He’s incorporated it, added to it. … As a president, I think that would be helpful to him — that experience he had here — because he really does have that insight. Whether he chooses to [act on it], that’s up to him.”

As Rubio’s campaign builds momentum following a strong debate performance last month, the candidate returned to the Silver State on Thursday to highlight his time there and stump for votes. Supporters are positioning Rubio as a more compassionate, optimistic alternative to Donald Trump and others who have dominated the field.

On Saturday, Rubio tried to reconnect with Nevada’s Latino voters at St. Christopher Catholic School in North Las Vegas, which he briefly attended as a child. (He begged his parents to enroll him in the Catholic school, but then quit after finding it too strict.)

Rubio likes to joke that he has more relatives in Vegas than in Miami, but he remains a relative unknown in the city.

“Most people still have no idea he spent time here as a kid,” said longtime Nevada political guru Jon Ralston. “Whether that creates any special nexus for him in Nevada remains to be seen.”

Some of his current positions risk alienating the same Nevada voters he’ll need for the state’s early Republican nominating caucus and, if he becomes the party’s nominee, the general election.

His past criticism of gambling, in particular, appears out of step with conservative casino moguls, such as billionaire GOP donor Sheldon Adelson, and the army of unionized Strip workers who turn out working-class voters. Nearly 400,000 Las Vegas residents are employed by casinos and related tourism.

“I have a long history of opposing expansion of gambling,” Rubio said this year on the presidential campaign trail. He fought against the gambling industry’s reach into Florida when he was the state’s House speaker. As a U.S. senator, he told the Miami news media that casinos “bring their problems” and “are not the solution to everything.”

Such positions might come back to haunt Rubio as he tries to mobilize support in Nevada.

“It’s no secret some of these candidates have taken a hard line on the industry,” said Geoffrey Freeman, chief executive of the American Gaming Assn. “It sure would take a lot of chutzpah to go to Nevada to raise money and not take a lot of time to learn about the industry — or even malign it.”

So far, however, Rubio’s views do not appear to have damaged his relationship with the high-rolling executives who loom large in Republican politics. In recent months, nevertheless, he has fine-tuned his criticism of the industry.

Rubio continues to be a favorite of Adelson’s. The billionaire is more interested in Rubio’s positions on national security issues and support for Israel, according to those familiar with Adelson’s thinking.

And Rubio is aligned with Adelson’s campaign against efforts to legalize online gambling. The two are said to talk regularly as Adelson, who bankrolled Newt Gingrich’s 2012 campaign, assesses the current field.

When Rubio first stepped off the plane in Las Vegas in 1979, his family was a minority among a growing Mexican American minority. Their branch of the family did not flee Fidel Castro’s Cuban government; they came to the U.S. before Castro’s revolution, for a better life. As Miami’s crime rose and opportunity withered, they headed west.

The Rubios stayed with relatives before buying a modest two-bedroom cinder-block home in the College Park neighborhood, an older tract of houses with mid-century angles.

Rubio became interested in politics at an early age. He backed Sen. Edward M. Kennedy’s 1980 campaign for president, but his Cuban grandfather instilled in him conservative values; during Ronald Reagan’s presidency, young Rubio embraced the Republican Party.

Even so, he threw himself into the Culinary Union’s landmark 1984 labor strike in Las Vegas. He made protest signs and joined the picket at Sam’s Town, where his dad worked. The work stoppage, remembered as the longest in Las Vegas labor history, left both sides bruised.

Rubio’s support for the strike was so strong he lashed out at his father — calling him a “scab” — when the man eventually crossed the picket line to go back to work, Rubio wrote in his autobiography, “American Son.”

As a senator, Rubio has come down squarely against organized labor. He voted against extending unemployment benefits as the economy showed signs of improving in 2014 and helped filibuster legislation aimed at preventing employment discrimination against gay workers.

Michelle Denis, another cousin, recalls Rubio as a boy who enjoyed acting together in skits and singing the Osmond Brothers’ pop hit “Sweet and Innocent” at family parties. He was always the director in charge. She said it was hardly surprising that he changed after leaving Nevada.

“It’s totally two different lives, here to Miami,” Denis said, now working as a caterer at MGM Grand Hotel and Casino. “I do believe he believes in what he’s saying. He has strong beliefs.”

His faith has shifted, as well. Rubio joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Las Vegas, where the church has a strong undercurrent, and tried to get his father to quit casino bartending as “sinful” because of LDS teachings against alcohol.

But after a few years, he drifted away “to be Catholic again,” he writes, and as an adult, also attends his wife’s Christian church. His campaign is now courting the well-organized Mormon political community.

In his book, Rubio, now 44, called it a “charmed” childhood. He played quarterback on a Pop Warner football team for Caesar’s Gladiators and swam in the family’s above-ground backyard pool, which was a hand-me-down from relatives.

“Las Vegas is not often the first place that comes to mind for people looking to raise their children in a wholesome environment,” he wrote. “Yet in many respects, it would prove to be the family-friendly community my parents hoped it would be.”

At C.C. Ronnow Elementary School, Tony — the family still calls Rubio by his middle name — stood out as an energetic, if overly chatty youngster.

“He could certainly talk — he would talk so much he’d get in trouble,” said Bryan Thiriot, a childhood friend who now lives in Utah. Almost once a week, their fourth-grade teacher would punish the talkative Rubio by seating him beside her and requiring that he copy definitions from the dictionary. “That’s why he has such a deep vocabulary,” Thiriot said.

In Sin City, it remains to be seen whether candidate Marco Rubio will be welcomed as a native son. Despite the election of Republican Brian Sandoval as Nevada’s first Latino governor, the Latino electorate is overwhelmingly Democratic.

Back in the old neighborhood, Yesenia Castaneda, a mother of three, is the new owner of the former Rubio home, and she is exactly the kind of voter Rubio is hoping to sway. A Mexican immigrant, she’s a stay-at-home mom and is open to the Republican Party.

But she said she isn’t sure who will get her vote. She also likes Hillary Rodham Clinton.

[email protected]

Twitter: @LisaMascaro

NEW YORK — A tax on tea once sparked rebellion. This time, it’s just causing headaches.

Importers of the prized leaves have watched costs climb, orders stall and margins shrink under the weight of President Trump’s tariffs. Now, even after Trump has given them a reprieve, tea traders say it won’t immediately undo the damage.

“It took a while to work its way through the system, these tariffs, and it will take a while for it to work its way out of the system,” says Bruce Richardson, a celebrated tea master, tea historian and purveyor of teas at his shop, Elmwood Inn Fine Teas, in Danville, Ky. “That tariffed tea is still working its way out of our warehouses.”

While some bigger firms are behind the biggest supermarket brands, the premium tea market is largely the work of smaller businesses — family farms, specialty importers and a web of little tea shops, tea rooms and tea cafes across the U.S. Amid an onslaught of tariffs, they have become showcases for the levies’ effects.

On their shelves, selection has narrowed, with some teas missing because they’re no longer viable products to stock with the steep levies. In their warehouses, managers are consumed with uncertainty and operational headaches, including calculating what a blend really costs, with ingredients from multiple countries on a roller coaster of tariffs. And in backrooms where the wafting scent of fresh tea permeates, owners have been forced to put off job postings, raises, advertising and other investments so they can have cash available to pay duties when their containers arrive at U.S. ports.

“If I were to add up all the money I’ve spent on tariffs that weren’t there a year ago, it could equal a new employee,” says Hartley Johnson, who owns the Mark T. Wendell Tea Co. in Acton, Mass.

Johnson’s prices used to stay static for a year or longer. He ate the tariff costs before being forced to respond. His most popular tea, a smoky Taiwanese one called Hu-Kwa, has steadily risen from $26 to $46 a pound.

He knows some customers are reconsidering.

“Where is that tipping point?” Johnson asks. “I’m kind of finding that tipping point is happening now.”

That tipping point already came for one tea company in the City of Commerce.

International Tea Importers, already under financial strain from climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic, said that tariffs were the final blow, creating an untenable cash flow crunch and forcing its closure after 35 years in business.

“We just became over-leveraged financing — not just the inventory, but also the tariffs,” says the company’s chief executive, Brendan Shah.

Despite the other financial challenges, if not for the tariffs, Shah says, it may have survived.

“Unpredictable tariff policies,” he wrote to customers in announcing the company’s closure, “have created the final, insurmountable barrier.”

Though Trump backed off some tariffs on agricultural products last week, many in the tea trade are wary of celebrating too soon and caution tea drinkers shouldn’t either. Much of next year’s supply has already been imported and tariffed, and the full impact of those duties may not have fully spilled downhill.

Meantime, other tariff-driven price hikes persist. All sorts of other products tea businesses import, such as teapots and infusers, remain subject to levies, and costs for some American-made items, like tins for packaging, have spiked because they rely on foreign materials.

“The canisters, the bamboo boxes, the matcha whisks, everything that we import, everything that we sell has been affected by tariffs,” says Gilbert Tsang, owner of MEM Tea Imports in Wakefield, Mass.

Though globally tea reigns supreme, imbibed more than anything but water, it has long been overshadowed by coffee in the U.S. Still, tea is entwined in American history from the very beginning, even before colonists angry with tariffs dumped tons of it in Boston Harbor.

Boston may run on Dunkin’ today, but it was born on tea.

The 1773 revolt that became known as the Boston Tea Party rose out of the British Parliament’s implementation of tea tariffs on colonists, who rejected taxation without representation in government. After an independent United States was born, one of the new government’s first major acts, the Tariff Act of 1789, ironically set in law import taxes on a range of products including tea. In time, though, trade policy came to include carve-outs for many products Americans rely on but don’t produce.

For more than 150 years, most tea has passed through U.S. ports with little to no duties.

That began to change in Trump’s first term with his hard-line approach to China. But nothing compared to what came with his return to the White House.

In July, the most recent month for which the U.S. International Trade Commission has tallied tariff numbers, tea was taxed at an average rate of over 12%, a huge increase from a year earlier when it was just under one-tenth of a percent. In that single month, American businesses and consumers paid more than $6 million in tea import taxes, amassing in just 31 days more tariffs than any previous full year on record.

“All over again, taxation without representation,” says Richardson, an advisor to the Boston Tea Party Ships & Museum. “Our wants and needs and our voices are not being represented because Congress is avoiding the issue by simply allowing the president to act like George III.”

All told, tea importers paid about $19.6 million in tariffs in the first seven months of 2025, nearly seven times as much as the same period last year.

It’s all been confounding to those steeped in the world of tea, on which the U.S. depends on foreign countries for nearly all of the billions of pounds Americans brew each year. Though a number of small tea farms exist in the U.S., they can’t fill Americans’ cups for more than a few hours of the year.

Said Angela McDonald, president of the United States League of Tea Growers: “We don’t have an industry and we can’t produce one overnight.”

Sedensky writes for the Associated Press.

CHICAGO — Chicago has entered what many consider a new uneasy phase of a Trump administration immigration crackdown that has already led to thousands of arrests.

While a U.S. Border Patrol commander known for leading intense and controversial surges moved on to North Carolina, federal agents are still arresting immigrants across the nation’s third-largest city and suburbs.

A growing number of lawsuits stemming from the crackdown are winding through the courts. Authorities are investigating agents’ actions, including a fatal shooting. Activists say they are not letting their guard down in case things ramp up again, while many residents in the Democratic stronghold remain anxious.

“I feel a sense of paranoia over when they might be back,” said Santani Silva, an employee at a vintage store in the predominantly Mexican American neighborhood of Pilsen. “People are still afraid.”

Intensity slows, but arrests continue

For more than two months, the Chicago area was the focus of an aggressive operation led by Gregory Bovino, a Border Patrol commander behind similar efforts in Los Angeles and soon Louisiana.

Armed and masked agents used unmarked SUVs and helicopters throughout the city of 2.7 million and its suburbs to target suspected criminals and immigration violators. Arrests often led to intense standoffs with bystanders, from wealthy neighborhoods to working-class suburbs.

While the intensity has died down in the week since Bovino left, reports of arrests still pop up. Activists tracking immigration agents said they confirmed 142 daily sightings at the height of the operation last month. The number is now roughly six a day.

“It’s not over,” said Brandon Lee with the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights. “I don’t think it will be over.”

Suburb under siege

Bearing the brunt of the operation has been Broadview, a Chicago suburb of roughly 8,000 people that has housed a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement processing center for years.

Protests outside the facility have grown increasingly tense as federal agents used chemical agents that area neighbors felt. Broadview police also launched three criminal investigations into federal agents’ tactics.

Community leaders took the unusual step of declaring a civil emergency last week and moving public meetings online.

Broadview Mayor Katrina Thompson said the community has faced bomb threats, death threats and violent protests because of the crackdown.

“I will not allow threats of violence or intimidation to disrupt the essential functions of our government,” Thompson said.

Questionable arrests and detentions

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has touted more than 3,000 arrests, but the agency has provided details on only a few cases in which immigrants without legal permission to live in the country also had a criminal history.

The Trump administration posts photos on social media of supposed violent criminals apprehended in immigration operations, but the federal government’s own data paint a different picture.

Of 614 immigrants arrested and detained in recent months around Chicago, only 16, less than 3%, had criminal records representing a “high public safety risk,” according to federal government data submitted to the court as part of a 2022 consent decree about ICE arrests. Those records included domestic battery and drunk driving.

A judge in the cases said hundreds of immigrant detainees qualify to be released on bond, though an appeals court has paused their release. Attorneys say many more cases will follow as they get details from the government about arrests.

“None of this has quite added up,” said Ed Yohnka with the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois, which has been involved in several lawsuits. “What was this all about? What did this serve? What did any of this do?”

Investigations and lawsuits

The number of lawsuits triggered by the crackdown is growing, including on agents’ use of force and conditions at the Broadview center. In recent days, clergy members filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration, alleging they were being blocked from ministering inside a facility.

Federal prosecutors have also repeatedly dropped charges against protesters and other bystanders, including dismissing charges against a woman who was shot several times by a Border Patrol agent last month.

Meanwhile, federal agents are also under investigation in connection with the death of a suburban man fatally shot by ICE agents during a traffic stop. Mexico’s president has called for a thorough investigation, while ICE has said it did not use excessive force.

An autopsy report, obtained by the Associated Press last week, showed Silverio Villegas González died from a gunshot fired at “close range” to his neck. The death was declared a homicide.

In October, the body of the 38-year-old father who spent two decades in the U.S. was buried in the western Mexico state of Michoacan.

A chilling effect

Many of the once bustling business corridors in the Chicago area’s largely immigrant communities that had quieted down were seeing a buzz again with some street vendors slowly returning to their usual posts.

Andrea Melendez, the owner of Pink Flores Bakery and Cafe, said she has seen an increase in sales after struggling for months.

“As a new business, I was a bit scared when we saw sales drop,” she said. “But this week I’m feeling a bit more hope that things may get better.”

Eleanor Lara, 52, has spent months avoiding unnecessary trips outside her Chicago home, fearful that an encounter with immigration agents could have dire consequences.

Even as a U.S. citizen, she is afraid and carries her birth certificate. She is married to a Venezuelan man whose legal status is in limbo.

“We’re still sticking home,” she said.

Tareen and Fernando write for the Associated Press.

MINNEAPOLIS — Since it was created in 2018, the federal government’s cybersecurity agency has helped warn state and local election officials about potential threats from foreign governments, showed officials how to protect polling places from attacks and gamed out how to respond to the unexpected, such as an election day bomb threat or sudden disinformation campaign.

The agency was largely absent from that space for elections this month in several states, a potential preview for the 2026 midterms. Shifting priorities of the Trump administration, staffing reductions and budget cuts have many election officials concerned about how engaged the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency will be next year, when control of Congress will be at stake in those elections.

Some officials say they have begun scrambling to fill the anticipated gaps.

“We do not have a sense of whether we can rely on CISA for these services as we approach a big election year in 2026,” said Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon, a Democrat who until recently led the bipartisan National Assn. of Secretaries of State.

The association’s leaders sent a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem in February asking her to preserve the cybersecurity agency’s core election functions. Noem, whose department oversees the agency, replied the following month that it was reviewing its “funding, products, services, and positions” related to election security and that its services would remain available to election officials.

Simon said secretaries of state are still waiting to hear about the agency’s plans.

“I regret to say that months later, the letter remains very timely and relevant,” he said.

An agency in transition

CISA, as the agency is known, was formed under the first Trump administration to help safeguard the nation’s critical infrastructure, including dams, power plants and election systems. It has been undergoing a major transformation since President Trump’s second term began in January.

Public records suggest that roughly 1,000 CISA employees have lost their jobs in recent years. The Republican administration in March cut $10 million from two cybersecurity initiatives, including one dedicated to helping state and local election officials.

That was a few weeks after CISA announced it was conducting a review of its election-related work, and more than a dozen staffers who have worked on elections were placed on administrative leave. The FBI also disbanded a task force on foreign influence operations, including those that target U.S. elections.

CISA is still without an official director. Trump’s nomination of Sean Plankey, a cybersecurity expert in the first Trump administration, has stalled in the Senate.

CISA officials did not answer questions seeking specifics about the agency’s role in the recently completed elections, its plans for the 2026 election cycle or staffing levels. They said the agency remains ready to help protect election infrastructure.

“Under the leadership of President Trump and Secretary Noem, CISA is laser-focused on securing America’s critical infrastructure and strengthening cyber resilience across the government and industry,” said Marci McCarthy, CISA’s director of public affairs.

She said CISA would announce its future organizational plans “at the appropriate time.”

Christine Serrano Glassner, CISA’s chief external affairs officer, said the agency’s experts are ready to provide election guidance if asked.

“In the event of disruptions or threats to critical infrastructure, whether Election Day-related or not, CISA swiftly coordinates with the Office of Emergency Management and the appropriate federal, state and local authorities,” she said in a statement.

States left on their own

California’s top election security agencies said CISA has played a “critical role” since 2018 but provided little, if any, help for the state’s Nov. 4 special election, when voters approved a redrawn congressional redistricting map.

“Over the past year, CISA’s capacity to support elections has been significantly diminished,” the California secretary of state’s office said in a statement to the Associated Press. “The agency has experienced major reductions in staffing, funding, and mission focus — including the elimination of personnel dedicated specifically to election security and foreign influence mitigation.

“This shift has left election officials nationwide without the critical federal partnership they have relied on for several election cycles,” the statement said.

CISA alerted California officials in September that it would no longer participate in a task force that brought together federal, state and local agencies to support county election offices. California election officials and the governor’s Office of Emergency Services did what they could to fill the gaps and plan for various security scenarios.

In Orange County, Registrar of Voters Bob Page said in an email that the state offices and other county departments “stepped up” to support his office “to fill the void left by CISA’s absence.”

Neighboring Los Angeles County had a different experience. The registrar’s office, which oversees elections, said it continues to get a range of cybersecurity services from CISA, including threat intelligence, network monitoring and security testing of its equipment, although local jurisdictions now have to cover the costs of some services that had been federally funded.

Some other states that held elections this month also said they did not have coordination with CISA.

Mississippi’s secretary of state, who heads the national association that sent the letter to Noem, did not directly respond to a request for comment, but his office confirmed that CISA was not involved in the state’s recent elections.

In Pennsylvania, which held a nationally watched retention election for three state Supreme Court justices this month, the Department of State said it is also relied more on its own partners to ensure the elections were secure.

In an email, the department said it was “relying much less on CISA than it had in recent years.” Instead, it has begun collaborating with the state police, the state’s own homeland security department, local cybersecurity experts and other agencies.

Looking for alternatives

Simon, the former head of the secretary of state’s association, said state and local election officials need answers about CISA’s plans because officials will have to seek alternatives if the services it had been providing will not be available next year.

In some cases, such as classified intelligence briefings, there are no alternatives to the federal government, he said. But there might be ways to get other services, such as testing of election equipment to see if it can be penetrated from outside.

In past election years, CISA also would conduct tabletop exercises with local agencies and election offices to game out various scenarios that might affecting voting or ballot counting, and how they would react. Simon said that is something CISA was very good at.

“We are starting to assume that some of those services are not going to be available to us, and we are looking elsewhere to fill that void,” Simon said.

Karnowski and Smyth write for the Associated Press. Smyth reported from Columbus, Ohio.

SAN FRANCISCO — In a remarkable rise, a San Francisco real estate broker left a checkered past in Hawaii and established herself as an important Democratic fund-raiser with access to some of the country’s most powerful politicians.

Just 18 months after she finished federal probation for income tax evasion, Chong Lo joined a small group of contributors at the White House for a coffee with the president and vice president in 1995.

A month later, President Clinton praised her during a fund-raising luncheon at a Nob Hill hotel. At that moment, the U.S. attorney’s office was preparing to prosecute her for mortgage fraud and the state was on the verge of revoking her broker’s license.

To cap her political ascent, she was elected a delegate to the 1996 Democratic National Convention, although she was not a registered Democrat and had never voted.

Before she was arrested last July on 14 counts of bank fraud, mail fraud and conspiracy, Lo boasted to friends that she had met with Clinton 30 times and visited the White House on seven occasions. Sources said the walls of her office and home were lined with photos of her with the president, vice president and first lady, as well as Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), California’s U.S. senators, San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown and Republican Gov. Pete Wilson.

Now Lo is a political pariah, and her fund-raising activities have become part of a widening national probe of improper campaign practices and illegal contributions. The FBI is investigating whether any of the campaign money she and others raised through a Bay Area nonprofit group called the Lotus Fund may have come from foreign sources.

With her trial on the mortgage fraud charges scheduled this fall, Lo and her attorney, Tony Serra, refused to discuss her case with reporters. She has pleaded not guilty, and Serra has complained publicly that she had been jailed without bail for two months for unspecified political reasons.

Her story has become a paradigm of modern American politics–of how aggressive fund-raising is rewarded with access to power and encouraged by campaign operatives who appear more interested in collecting contributions than questioning the source. To the Democrats, the emerging political involvement of the Asian community offered a new source of money and votes.

Lo portrayed herself as a community leader and a fund-raiser on a grand scale. Documents show that she and the Lotus Fund pledged to raise more than $500,000 for the Democratic National Committee, but it was unclear how much was collected. She personally contributed $24,000 to various candidates and the DNC, but much of that is being returned because it has been tainted by the fund-raising scandal.

If party officials had dug into Lo’s past, they might have discovered that she once was known as Ester Chung Shung Lo Chu and left Hawaii under a cloud. Records also show that she used at least two Social Security numbers.

The party “did not have a policy of checking everyone out,” said a Democratic official who spoke on condition of anonymity. “There was an attempt to bring in the Asian community, to get that segment of the population active. So they were more inclined not to check.”

Said one of Lo’s political allies: “Nobody knew who she was, but they took her money.”

‘A Tremendous Charmer’

Chong Shung Lo is a locomotive of a woman with a penchant for fine jewelry and clothes. Small of stature, she talks fast, walks fast and eats fast, according to those who know her. Working 16- to 18-hour days, this divorced mother of two kept up a frenetic pace as real estate broker and property manager, traveling the city in her champagne-colored Mercedes. At one point, her home was in elegant St. Francis Wood.

Friends describe her as a charming, if impulsive, woman who speaks her mind. “In life,” she has said, “you have to take risks. I am willing to take risks.”

She was born in the Sichuan province of China, most likely in 1942, although documents show various birth dates. Raised in Shanghai, she has told friends she came from a distinguished family that once included Confucian scholars, an ambassador to Germany and a Qing Dynasty official.

As a youngster, she lived in Hong Kong, Australia and Canada before becoming a naturalized U.S. citizen, sources said. In 1970, as Ester Chu, she was licensed as a nurse in Hawaii but moved into real estate. Her Ester Chu Realty Inc. had offices in Honolulu and Hong Kong, documents show.

“She was a tremendous charmer,” said Robert Taylor, a Honolulu businessman who worked in her office part time and parted company with her over a property dispute. “A great salesperson. It’s just that she misled some people.”

Her troubles centered on her role as managing partner in two condominium projects in Honolulu and on the Big Island of Hawaii. By 1984, the local real estate market had turned sour and both partnerships were in bankruptcy.

That year the Hawaiian Real Estate Commission filed a complaint against her and Ester Chu Realty for allegedly making misrepresentations to clients, exaggerating sales figures on faltering projects, failing to return renters’ security deposits and putting clients’ money in her personal account.

During the three years it took the commission to revoke her license, Chu explored business opportunities in China. In 1985, she told acquaintances, she developed a hotel in a joint venture with the Chinese government.

The Internal Revenue Service began investigating her. In 1988, the government charged her with reporting a $39,750 income loss in 1981 when she had actually made more than $290,000.

After moving to Las Vegas, she pleaded guilty to one count of tax evasion, was sentenced to five years’ probation, fined $5,000 and barred from working in real estate without her probation officer’s permission. It is unclear whether such permission was granted.

Lawsuits and an FBI Probe

As Chong Lo, she established herself as a real estate broker in California. But she fell into trouble again.

A tenant of a San Francisco apartment Lo managed charged in a lawsuit that she demanded he vacate the premises. When he refused, the lawsuit said, a man later threatened to kill him and threw a padlock, breaking two of the tenant’s teeth. The case was settled for an undisclosed amount, according to the plaintiff’s attorney. Lo’s attorney confirmed the settlement but declined to comment further.

In another suit, charging Lo and others with misrepresentation and breach of contract, a couple from Pacifica, Calif., said they lost their home because of a complicated loan deal that required them to deed the house to an associate of Lo. In a response, Lo said she had little to do with the transaction. The lawsuit, filed in 1990, remains unresolved.

By 1991, the FBI was investigating allegations that Lo, as chief financial officer for Able-Tao Financial Inc., was involved in an elaborate mortgage fraud scheme. The scheme allegedly included falsifying pay stubs and W-2 forms of borrowers who would not otherwise qualify for loans. To verify nonexistent jobs or salaries, banks were allegedly given the number of a phone in the same building as the Able-Tao offices, according to records and interviews.

That October, FBI agents, armed with a search warrant, raided Lo’s office, removing boxes of loan files and other papers.

While the investigation went on, Chong Lo plunged into the world of politics.

‘She Knew Everybody in Town’

Lo has told acquaintances that she was nonpartisan but admired Clinton because he successfully overcame his humble beginnings. She saw the president for the first time at his January 1993 inauguration, she told them.

Meanwhile, Lo joined the Lotus Fund, which was formed the previous year to unite Asian American and Pacific Islander communities behind candidates and issues.

It included such prominent people as Ginger Lew, who was named deputy administrator of the Small Business Administration under Clinton, and Michael J. Yamaguchi, who was appointed U.S. attorney in San Francisco by Clinton. It was Yamaguchi who would sign the bank fraud indictment of Lo last June but later would recuse himself.

While Lo worked her way up to the chairmanship of the Lotus Fund, she made political contributions, including $1,750 to state Treasurer Kathleen Brown’s bid to unseat Gov. Wilson in 1994. Lo contributed $400 to Wilson as well. But records show that most of her donations went to Democrats–$500 to U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, $1,350 to Sen. Barbara Boxer and $9,500 to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

“She definitely was able to get her foot in the door. She knew everybody in town,” said Bill Ong Hing, visiting law professor at UC Davis, who has known Lo for five years and whose sister, Grace, is a Lotus Fund founder.

Hing, who attended a fund-raiser featuring Vice President Al Gore last year at Lo’s invitation, said she relished her connections. “She fell into the category of Asians who liked to say that they had contact with important people, and the way for her to have greater contact was to give more money,” he said. “I felt badly for her that people dropped her.”

One DNC document said Lo made a commitment to raise $150,000 for the party in 1995 alone.

On the invitation to a September 1995 luncheon at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco honoring Clinton and Gore, she is listed as a member of “The National Finance Board of Directors”–an honorific title indicating that she had pledged to raise at least $50,000 for the event, according to a Democratic source.

Clinton publicly thanked Lo, along with Feinstein’s husband, financier Richard Blum; winemaker Ernest Gallo, developer Walter Shorenstein, and Esprit clothing founder Susie Tompkins.

Lo had clearance for at least six White House visits, Washington sources confirm. These included the coffee with Clinton and Gore, as well as several dinners and receptions.

Back home, her legal problems mounted and she emerged as a ubiquitous presence in Bay Area Democratic circles.

The state Department of Real Estate revoked her broker’s license in 1995 for failing to keep adequate records and placing client funds in a non-trust account. A month later, she was granted a restricted license, but officials recently began reviewing it to find whether she failed to disclose her prior felony conviction.

When DNC staff and volunteers needed places to stay, she put them up in her home and an apartment above her business office, which also doubled as Lotus Fund headquarters. Sources said she also supplied visiting Democrats with fresh towels and sheets and use of a friend’s car.

At a party caucus in February 1996, Lo organized supporters to help elect her as a delegate to the Democratic National Convention from the 12th Congressional District. However, records show that she was registered outside the district as a member of the American Independent Party, making her ineligible to be a Democratic delegate.

Former Assemblywoman Jackie Speier (D-Burlingame), who chaired the session, remembered meeting Lo. “I recall the woman specifically because she made a point of showing me a picture of herself taken with President Clinton to establish her credentials.”

There was no attempt to check the party affiliations of those who attended or ran as delegates. “You just take everyone at their word,” Speier said.

Fund Vowed to Raise $400,000 for DNC

Lo soon began organizing an event that propelled her into the public spotlight months before the Washington fund-raising scandal erupted. The nonprofit Lotus Fund, which could legally make political contributions under its state charter, promised to raise at least $400,000 for the DNC.

The group promised that those contributing $12,500 or more to its event would fly to Washington a few days later to meet and be photographed with Clinton.

A May 30, 1996, letter from the DNC’s Northern California finance director, Michael Marubio, appears to confirm that the White House visit was in the works.

However, the Lotus Fund learned that Clinton would appear July 23 at an official DNC fund-raiser in San Francisco. So the group decided to hold its own event that evening at the same hotel, making it convenient for the president to stop by.

There is disagreement among DNC officials about whether the White House committed itself to a Clinton appearance at the Lotus Fund event.

But any possibility of a presidential visit apparently was dashed two weeks before the event when the San Francisco Chronicle reported that a Lotus Fund vice president was facing illegal weapons possession charges.

A few days after the news report, DNC fund-raiser Mark Thomann told Lo and other Lotus Fund leaders that the president would not be appearing at their event. To placate them, he provided 100 free tickets to the party event and said a small group of them could be photographed with Clinton.

The Lotus Fund planned to carry on with its own fund-raiser until Lo was arrested on suspicion of mortgage fraud July 19 and kept in jail until September as a flight risk.

Meanwhile, the San Francisco office of the FBI examined whether the Lotus Fund had committed mail fraud by falsely promising contributors an appearance by the president, FBI spokesman George Grotz said.

However, investigators found that the group’s leaders had good reason to believe Clinton would attend. One important piece of evidence, sources said, was a secretly recorded tape of Thomann apologizing to the group. The mail fraud probe then was dropped.

An FBI task force has continued to look into the origins of political campaign contributions raised by Lo and the Lotus Fund, sources said, to determine whether they were properly reported and whether any came from foreign interests.

Days after Lo’s arrest, the San Francisco Examiner reported that Chong Lo appeared to be Ester Chu, a former Hawaii resident with a tax evasion conviction.

By matching fingerprints and photos, federal authorities now have established that Chu and Lo are the same person, sources said.

Lo has told acquaintances that she never tried to hide her identity: that Chu was her married name, dropped after her divorce, and that among Chinese friends she has always been known as Chong (or Chung) Lo.

Some say she was guarded about her past. Richard Mar, a mortgage loan representative who knew Ester Chu in Hawaii, said he ran into her again in San Francisco several years later. “She told me not to mention Ester, ‘because my name is Chong Lo and I don’t want people to know. . . .’ ”

Lo, who was freed on $100,000 bond, has told acquaintances that she feels bitterness toward the DNC but remains an admirer of Clinton.

She could not attend the national convention in August because she was in jail. But Lo requested court permission to leave the state to attend the Clinton inauguration in January.

A copy of her invitation and a detailed itinerary were submitted–and permission was granted. Lo told acquaintances she got a good seat for the swearing-in and attended an inaugural ball.

Times staff writer Dan Morain and researcher Janet Lundblad contributed to this story.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Delegate Was No Democrat

Chong Lo, a San Francisco real estate broker with a history of legal problems, was elected a delegate to the Democratic National Convention at a party caucus last year. However, records show that she was not a registered Democrat, as party rules require, and had never voted. This document certifies her election as a Bill Clinton delegate, but she could not attend the convention because she was in jail.

MIAMI — Democratic presidential nominee Bill Clinton appealed to his fellow Southerners’ sense of pride Tuesday, telling an assembly of the region’s state legislators that GOP entreaties to “traditional values” placed President Bush in the White House but produced little benefit to their states.

“We never got anywhere, anywhere, anywhere in our part of the country by being sucker-punched (with) appeals to our traditional values,” Clinton said in a speech to the Southern Legislative Conference meeting in Miami.

“Let us vote on our traditional values,” he said. “Let us live our traditional values. Let us lift up our whole country by starting in the South and saying, ‘Give us a new direction for our country.’ ”

Clinton’s remarks were intended to pry the region’s voters away from the GOP and to recapture the ballots of conservative Southerners. That strategy has been the linchpin of Clinton’s campaign because Democrats have won neither the region nor the White House since 1976–when Georgia Gov. Jimmy Carter did so. Like Carter, who beat President Gerald R. Ford, Clinton is the governor of a Southern state: Arkansas.

Although Clinton seemed to play up his audience’s Southern pride, his comments also hinted at the sense of inferiority frequently directed at the region.

He acknowledged that education gaps, racial discord and economic production have held back advancement in states located below the Mason-Dixon line, but suggested the region has dealt with those problems with more candor and openness than other parts of the country.

“Don’t you think the South has come a long way in the last few years?” Clinton said, citing foreign investments, lessened racial tensions and improved student academic achievement. “It’s something I think most of us are pretty proud of. I know our region still has a higher percentage of poor folks than other regions of the country, but we’ve made a lot of progress.”

Appearing before the bipartisan organization of lawmakers and their staffs, Clinton rarely mentioned Bush by name. But he criticized the record of his Administration and his party–which has controlled the White House for the last 12 years–saying the GOP had failed to improve health care in the South and across the nation.

“You ask the people you represent not to throw their vote away on the kind of rhetoric the people have gotten those of us in the South to be a sucker for for decades,” he told the legislators. “Let’s show them there is a New South and we’re a lot smarter than they think we are, and that whoever gets our votes this time will have to respond to our hopes for our children.”

Clinton also discussed his health care proposals, including a so-called “play-or-pay” plan that aims to insure every American. Firms would either have to “play” by providing health insurance to their employees, or pay into a federal fund that would cover those without insurance.

His plan would also require insurance-company reforms and cuts in unnecessary paperwork that boost medical costs without improving benefits.

“Otherwise, you’re going to have more and more and these (insurance firms) dividing up the health insurance markets to where the very ideal thing (they) can do is to insure a group of 15- to 25-year-old women, who spend two hours a day in the gym, don’t smoke, don’t drink, don’t eat hamburgers, (and are) going to live forever. It’s their only way to save money.”

Clinton also attacked Bush’s proposal to give vouchers to the poor and tax breaks to the middle class to help buy health insurance. “The (President’s) benefits are completely consumed by cost increases in a year,” Clinton contended.

Health and Human Services Secretary Louis W. Sullivan also spoke to the group, defending Bush’s health care proposal. Sullivan, who preceded Clinton to the podium, gave the Democrat an opportunity to criticize White House policy without heaping abuse on the Cabinet’s only black.

“He’s a good fellow,” Clinton said of Sullivan. “He’s just got a heavy load to carry.”

Clinton elicited his only standing ovation when he described how Bush would try to link him to the Democrats’ past during the Republican Convention next week.

“You know as well as I do what’s about to happen,” he said, grinning broadly. “The other side is going to go down there to Houston and tell you (vice presidential nominee) Al Gore and I may have been born in Arkansas and Tennessee, but we’re just a bunch of crazy, wild-eyed liberals. They’re going to tell you that (Democrats) took us to New York City in a safe . . . and incubated us there for 20 years. We got their crazy ideas, came home and hid them for 20 years waiting for the opportunity to spring them on the rest of the country.”

As the audience roared with laughter and applause, Clinton continued mocking his opponents’ strategy:

“They’re going to say every speech I gave on the Fourth of July in northeast Arkansas was a deliberate attempt to conceal my radical impulses. And we just can’t wait to get into power in Washington, where we can take your guns away and trample family values and raise taxes on every poor, working person in America.

“I can hear them now.”

The Democratic campaign also swept through New England on Tuesday as Gore toured a leading computer firm in Cambridge, Mass., saying that high technology will create jobs and keep America competitive into the 21st Century.

“It translates into real jobs for real people,” Gore said, surrounded by colorful supercomputers capable of making computations at unprecedented speeds. “It sounds a little high-tech. And it is high-tech. . . . But in the competition we now face in the world marketplace, we’ve got to be willing to move ahead and create the jobs of the future.”

Gore delivered his remarks during a visit to Thinking Machines Corp., a nine-year-old firm that makes the most powerful computers in use today.

Times staff writer Edwin Chen contributed to this story.

Today we discuss Texas, overreaction and the voluminous field of candidates for California governor.

Is there anyone who is not running for governor?

I’m not. And neither are my two cats. At least they weren’t as of this morning, when we discussed the race before breakfast.

That leaves us somewhat short of the 135 candidates who ran in California’s 2003 recall gubernatorial election. But not by much.

I count nearly a dozen serious candidates, with possibly more to come. Why so many?

Opportunity.

This is the most wide-open race for California governor in decades. By comparison, you’d have to go back to at least 1998, when Lt. Gov. Gray Davis surged past a pair of moneybag candidates, Al Checchi and Rep. Jane Harman, in the Democratic primary, then stomped Republican Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren in November to win the general election.

Now, as then, there is no one who even remotely resembles a prohibitive front-runner.

Polling in the governor’s race has shown former Democratic Rep. Katie Porter and Chad Bianco, Riverside County’s Republican sheriff, narrowly leading the field. But with support for both in the middling 13%-to-21% range, we’re not talking about a pair of world-beaters.

Like nature, political ambition abhors a vacuum.

Speaking of moneybags…

Tom Steyer!

Yes.

After making a bundle as a hedge fund manager, the San Francisco billionaire and environmental activist has been panting after public office for years. Running for president didn’t work out in 2020, even after Steyer spent more than $345 million on his effort. (That’s close to what the Dodgers spent on their 2025 payroll.)

So now Steyer is running for governor, a move he appeared to telegraph by airing nearly $13 million in self-promotional ads that, oh yes, supported passage of Proposition 50, the Democratic gerrymander initiative.

What are his chances?

Longtime readers of this column — both of you! — will know I make no predictions.

But California voters have never looked favorably upon rich candidates trying to make the leap from political civilian to the governorship or U.S. Senate. In fact, over the last 50-plus years, a gilded gallery of the well-to-do have tried and spectacularly failed.

Perhaps Steyer will display the policy chops or the razzle and dazzle they all lacked. But his launch video certainly didn’t shatter any molds. Rather, it presented a stereotypical grab bag of redwood trees, potshots at Sacramento, multicultural images of hard-working-everyday-folk, a promise to fight, a pledge to build more housing and, of course, a dash of profanity because, gosh darn it, nothing says “unbridled authenticity” like a political candidate swearing!

Maybe his fellow billionaire, Rick Caruso, will show more creativity and imagination if he gets into the governor’s race.

At least Democrats have been showing signs of life.

Indeed. Dare I say, the party’s mood swing from near-suicidal to euphoric has been quite something.

Winning gubernatorial elections in New Jersey and Virginia — not by a little, but a lot — and prevailing in down-ballot contests in Pennsylvania and Georgia had a remarkably transformative effect. (Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral victory in sky-blue New York City was no big surprise once the democratic socialist prevailed in the primary.)

Literally overnight, Democrats seized the momentum heading into the 2026 midterm election, while Republicans have begun scrambling to reposition their party and recraft its messaging.

All that being said, even before their buoyant off-year performance those widespread reports of Democrats’ demise were greatly … well, we’ll leave that Mark Twain chestnut alone. As analyst Charlie Cook points out, 2024 was a deeply disappointing year for the party. But it wasn’t a disaster.

Democrats gained two House seats. There was no net change in any of the 11 gubernatorial races and legislative contests across 44 states ended in something close to a wash. The party lost four Senate seats — and control of the chamber — but three of those losses came in the red states of Montana, Ohio and West Virginia.

“This is not to argue that Democrats had a great night in November 2024, but it certainly wasn’t a massacre or a party-wide repudiation,” Cook wrote in a recent posting. “If voters had intended to take it out on the party as a whole, the results would have looked quite different.”

Rather than a wholesale takedown of Democrats, the result seemed very much a rejection of President Biden and, by extension, his hasty replacement on the ballot, Vice President Kamala Harris.

What does that mean going forth?

If you’re asking whether Democrats will win control of the House or Senate…

Yes?!?

…I haven’t a clue.

Democrats need to gain three seats to take control of the House and both history and Trump’s sagging approval ratings — especially as pertains to the economy — augur well for their chances. The president’s party has lost House seats in 20 of the last 22 midterm elections and, according to Inside Elections, the fewest number of seats that flipped was four.

That’s why I thought Proposition 50, which sets out to all but decapitate California Republicans in Congress, was a bad and unnecessary move, effectively disenfranchising millions of non-Democratic voters.

An appeals court last week tossed out a Republican gerrymander in Texas, putting Democrats in an even stronger position, though the legal wrangling is far from over. The Supreme Court temporarily blocked the decision, pending review. And still to come is a high court ruling that could gut the Voting Rights Act and yield Republicans a dozen or more House seats nationwide.

So the fight for control is far from decided.

As for the Senate, Republicans stand a much better chance of keeping control, given how the seats contested in 2026 are located on largely favorable GOP terrain.

But until the votes are counted, nobody knows what will happen. That’s the thing about elections: they help keep wiseacres like me honest.

SACRAMENTO — On a recent day at Sacramento native Lecho Lopez’s comic shop in the city, his 5-year-old nephew read his first word aloud: “bad.” It was from a graphic novel.

There was irony in that being his first word, because Lopez credits comic books with many positive things in his life. That is why he supports repealing a city ordinance dating to 1949 that bars the distribution of many comic books to kids and teens. It is not enforced today.

“It’s a silly law,” said Lopez, who has a red-and-black tattoo of the Superman logo on his forearm, in an interview at his store, JLA Comics. “A lot of good things come out of comic books.”

A City Council committee unanimously voted last week to advance the repeal and designate the third week of September as “Sacramento Comic Book Week.” It now heads to the full council for a vote. The ban prohibits distributing comic books prominently featuring an account of crime that show images of illegal acts such as arson, murder or rape to anyone under 18.

In the mid-20th century, as comic books were on the rise, fears spread over their effect on children, with some arguing they could lead to illiteracy or inspire violent crime. The industry decided to regulate itself, and local governments — from Los Angeles County to Lafayette, La. — adopted bans to shield certain comics from young people. While some cities like Sacramento still have those laws on the books, they are rarely if ever enforced.

Now, proponents of repealing the Sacramento law say it is necessary to reflect the value of comics and help protect against a modern wave of book bans.

Local artist pushes for repeal

Comic book author Eben Burgoon, who started a petition to overturn Sacramento’s ban, said that comics “have this really valuable ability to speak truth to power.”

“These antiquated laws kind of set up this jeopardy where bad actors could work hard to make this medium imperiled,” he said at a hearing Tuesday held by the City Council’s Law and Legislation Committee.

Sacramento is a great place to devote a week to celebrating comics, Burgoon said. The city has a “wonderful” comic book community, he said, and hosts CrockerCon, a comics showcase at a local art museum, every year.

Sam Helmick, president of the American Library Assn., said “there is no good reason” to have a ban such as Sacramento’s on the books, saying it “flies in the face of modern 1st Amendment norms.”

The history behind comic book bans

The movement to censor comics decades ago was not an aberration in U.S. history, said Jeff Trexler, interim director of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, which fights to protect the free speech rights of people who read or make comics.

New York, for example, created a commission in the 1920s dedicated to reviewing films to determine whether they should be licensed for public viewing, based on whether they were “obscene” or “sacrilegious” and could “corrupt morals” or “incite crime,” according to the state archives.

“Every time there’s a new medium or a new way of distributing a medium, there is an outrage and an attempt to suppress it,” Trexler said.

The California Supreme Court ruled in 1959 that a Los Angeles County policy banning the sale of “crime” comic books to minors was unconstitutional because it was too broad. Sacramento’s ban probably doesn’t pass muster for the same reason, Trexler said.

There is not a lot of recent research on whether there is a link between comic books and violent behavior, said Christopher Ferguson, a professor of psychology at Stetson University in Florida. But, he said, similar research into television and video games has not shown a link to “clinically relevant changes in youth aggression or violent behavior.”

Comic-book lovers tout their benefits

Leafing through comics like EC Comics’ “Epitaphs from the Abyss” and DC’s and Marvel’s collaboration “Batman/Deadpool,” Lopez showed an Associated Press reporter images of characters smashing the windshield of a car, smacking someone across the face and attacking Batman using bows and arrows — the kinds of scenes that might be regulated if Sacramento’s ban were enforced.

But comics with plot lines that include violence can contain positive messages, said Benjamin Morse, a media studies lecturer at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

“Spider-Man is a very mature concept,” said Morse, who became an “X-Men” fan as a kid and worked at Marvel for 10 years. “It’s a kid who’s lost his parents, his uncle dies to violence, and he vows to basically be responsible.”

Lopez’s mother bought him his first comic book, “Ultimate Spider-Man #1,” when he was about 9 years old, he said. But it was “Kingdom Come,” a comic featuring DC’s Justice League, that changed his life at a young age, with its “hyperrealistic” art that looked like nothing he had ever seen before, he said.

He said his interest in comic books helped him avoid getting involved with gangs growing up. They also improved his reading skills as someone with dyslexia.

“The only thing that I was really able to read that helped me absorb the information was comic books, because you had a visual aid to help you explain what was going on in the book,” Lopez said.

And a comic book can offer so much more, Burgoon said at last week’s hearing.

“It makes imaginative thinkers,” he said. “It does not make widespread delinquency. It does not make societal harm.”

Austin writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — If Democrats win control of the Senate and White House in November, many progressives want to get rid of a long-standing Senate rule — the legislative filibuster — to ensure that their agenda in a Joe Biden presidency isn’t foiled by Republicans’ obstructions.

That would allow legislation to pass with 50 votes instead of the 60 required in recent decades for any significant initiatives. Whether to abolish or scale back the filibuster is one of the most consequential decisions Democrats would make, affecting the prospects for bills on healthcare, climate change, guns, immigration and more.

Proponents say the filibuster has been grossly misused, undermining the Senate’s effectiveness, and they believe Republicans would use it to block anything Biden tried to achieve. But critics in both parties warn that ending the filibuster would damage the Senate as an institution, and allow the majority to steamroll the other party.

What is the filibuster, and why does it matter?

The filibuster is a political blockade by a united minority to prevent a Senate vote on a bill. In recent decades, when the minority party won’t relent in its opposition, the majority must hold a so-called cloture vote — requiring a supermajority of 60 votes — to break the blockade and permit the Senate to act on the pending legislation.

Ideally for the minority party, if the majority can’t muster 60 votes, either it must compromise with the minority or its legislation dies.

Why do progressive Democrats want to get rid of the filibuster now?

If Democrats win a majority, they will almost certainly have fewer than 60 votes. Presumably Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) — if he wins reelection — would become the minority leader and instruct Republicans to filibuster any progressive legislation that comes before the Senate, much like he did as minority leader in President Obama’s first six years.

“We don’t think Mitch McConnell should be allowed to weaponize partisan obstruction … to prevent any opportunity to make the changes that the American people want,” said Eli Zupnick, spokesman for Fix Our Senate, a coalition of progressive groups advocating to eliminate the filibuster.

Among their Senate allies is Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.). “I’m holding conversations with [senators] saying, ‘Are we going to have a functioning legislative body or not?’” he said.

Will Senate Democrats actually end the filibuster?

That’s unclear. But an increasing number of Democrats have become supportive.

Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) wants to keep the filibuster, but acknowledged that moderates like him could change their minds if Republicans use it to block a Democratic majority’s legislation.

“I didn’t come here just to watch somebody stonewall,” he said. “If it’s like the economy is going to hell and we’re not doing anything to help, that’s not healthy.”

Given the hesitance of those like Tester, few expect Democrats — if they’re the majority — to have enough votes to change the rules when the new Senate convenes in January. More likely, momentum would build if Republicans repeatedly filibuster.

Democratic leaders, including Sens. Richard J. Durbin of Illinois and Patty Murray of Washington, have voiced more support in recent days. Murray said in a statement that she’d prefer bipartisanship, but “I also know we’ve got a long list of challenges that grow more urgent by the day. And I’m not interested in watching Sen. McConnell or Senate Republicans keep us from acting if we have the chance.”

The top Democrat in the Senate, Sen. Charles E. Schumer of New York, has not ruled out the idea, nor has Biden. In the first presidential debate Tuesday, Biden sidestepped the issue: “Whatever position I take on that, that’ll become the issue.”

While Biden, a longtime senator before he was vice president, is considered an institutionalist who favors Senate tradition and bipartisanship, he also doesn’t want his agenda to be dead on arrival in the Senate.

Democrats’ anti-filibuster momentum already may be building, given their outrage at Senate Republicans’ power play to confirm a successor to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg — Amy Coney Barrett — even as voting has begun for the next president. Senate Republicans in 2016 blocked President Obama’s nominee after Justice Antonin Scalia died nine months before the election.

“If the Senate Republicans confirm Judge Barrett, Democrats must move to end the filibuster and expand the Court in the next Congress,” Sen. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) said.

Why keep the filibuster?

Proponents, including Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), say eliminating it would only deepen the polarization in Washington. The 60-vote requirement is supposed to encourage the majority to reach consensus with the minority on bills, though that’s increasingly rare.

The filibuster “really does require some level of bipartisanship. It requires some negotiation,” Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) said in 2018. “The majority can’t just run over the minority, and in the long run, legislation is better if it’s formed that way.”

Richard Arenberg, a former Senate Democratic aide who co-wrote “Defending the Filibuster: Soul of the Senate” in 2012, warned that without the filibuster, legislation could be enacted and then undone again as control of Congress and the White House changed hands.

“The legislative filibuster may be the single most important thing preserving the Senate’s constitutional role as a check on majority tyranny,” Sen. John Thune of South Dakota, a Republican leader, said recently.

What might Democrats do?

They could completely eliminate the filibuster. But options that stop short of that are viewed as more likely.

Merkley has proposed requiring a more active filibuster. Senators would have to be in the chamber to lodge their opposition or have to keep talking, alone or in tandem with allies. Either method would likely reduce the number of filibusters.

Absent the filibuster, could Democrats pass Medicare for All and the Green New Deal?

That’s unlikely, at least in the short term. Democrats would still need 51 votes, and neither program is thought to have that much support even if the party has additional members in next year’s Senate.

How did the filibuster come to be?

The Constitution says the Senate makes its own rules. In 1805, shortly after then-Vice President Aaron Burr killed Alexander Hamilton, he persuaded the Senate to get rid of its rule for cutting off debate. But according to Sarah A. Binder, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, that opened the door to the filibuster in the mid-1800s — with opposing senators talking nonstop to prevent a vote on bills.

In 1917, the Senate acted to curb the practice. The result was a precursor of the filibuster rule as it exists today: The Senate could end debate by a vote of two-third of all senators. The threshold was later reduced to three-fifths, or 60 votes.

For a half-century after 1917, filibusters were few; the Senate cast votes to end them no more than seven times in each two-year Congress, according to congressional statistics. Over time, however, they gradually increased and then spiked as politics became more polarized in recent decades.

The Senate over the last two years has set a new record: 258 votes to end filibusters. Yet even that doesn’t convey the impact of the obstructionist tactic: If the majority leader knows 41 senators would support a filibuster, he typically has shelved a bill because of the difficulty of corralling 60 votes.

Hasn’t the filibuster been scaled back already?

Yes. Amid Republicans’ obstruction of Obama’s appointees, in 2013 Democrats got rid of the filibuster for executive branch nominees and all judges except Supreme Court justices. Just four years later, Republicans got rid of the filibuster for Supreme Court justices, to confirm President Trump’s first nominee, Neil M. Gorsuch, 54-45.

Obama said the filibuster is a relic of Jim Crow times. True?

In his eulogy of civil rights icon Rep. John Lewis in July, Obama urged the Senate to eliminate the filibuster — calling it “another Jim Crow relic” — so the Senate could pass a new voting rights bill. While Obama overstated the connection — the filibuster has been used against many policies and nominees — history does show a link.

Southern Democrats for decades used the filibuster — or just the threat of one — to oppose Civil Rights-era bills, including anti-lynching legislation going back to the 1920s. In the mid-50s, Vice President Richard M. Nixon — acting as the president of the Senate — led an unsuccessful effort to repeal the filibuster to allow passage of a voting rights bill, according to Adam Jentleson, a former aide to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and author of the forthcoming book “Kill Switch: The Rise of the Modern Senate and the Crippling of American Democracy.” Perhaps the most famous filibuster was Sen. Strom Thurmond’s 24-hour, 18-minute talkathon against a Civil Rights bill in 1957.

SACRAMENTO — Lawmakers on Friday gave final approval to a plan to cut the state’s giant prisons budget, passing a hard-fought measure that would reduce the inmate population by thousands but stop far short of solving the overcrowding crisis.

It would also leave California’s budget with $200 million in red ink. Administration officials said Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger intends to sign the measure nonetheless.

But as the lawmaking calendar drew to a close, the only other major legislation heading toward the governor was in danger of a veto. The measure, hailed by environmentalists as one of the most important in the country, would substantially boost the amount of energy that utilities must derive from solar, wind, geothermal and other renewable resources.

Lawmakers sidelined plans to ease construction of a stadium in the Los Angeles area that could bring NFL football back to town. Ambitious proposals to ban potentially toxic chemicals in baby bottles, cut down on plastic grocery bag use and require more pets to be sterilized were scuttled.

The prisons measure, SBX3 18 by Sen. Denise Moreno Ducheny (D-San Diego), would reduce supervision of low-level offenders on parole so they could not be sent back for violating the terms of their release. It would allow some offenders to earn shorter terms by completing rehabilitation programs.

Legislative officials estimated that under the measure, the prison population would fall by 20,000 to 25,000 over two years.

But the bill no longer contains provisions passed by the Senate that would have moved thousands of inmates to home detention and created a commission with the power to change state sentencing laws. Sen. Gloria Romero (D-Los Angeles), called the final bill “prison lite,” although she voted for it, and declared: “What’s not in the bill is a resolution and solution to this prison crisis.”

The vote was the culmination of weeks of controversy and dispute over how to safely cut the population of the state’s overcrowded prisons to ease budgetary pressure and satisfy a federal court order to reduce the number of inmates.

The Senate, despite fierce opposition from law enforcement, had approved a broader package of cuts earlier in the summer to reduce the number of inmates by 37,000 over two years, nearly the amount federal judges have demanded.

That package would have cut $525 million from the $1.2 billion in prison cuts they authorized in July’s budget deal. The governor planned to make up the difference with administrative actions.

The package sent to the governor’s desk Friday evening, however, is estimated to be more than $200 million short. It is not clear how that money will be made up. As the hours ticked by Friday, action in the Capitol was mostly dominated by bickering, scheming, and disappointment.

Top lawmakers shuttled between closed-door meetings with one another and powerful interest groups. There was so much activity in the governor’s courtyard smoking tent, where Schwarzenegger and his staff conduct negotiations and fine cigars are passed around, that legislative staff in offices above raised a sign reading, “Bitte nicht Rauchen” (German for “Please do not smoke”).

By late night, Democratic leaders abandoned efforts to push another major bill through before the clock ran out: a big water bond and policy package that had support from some long-dueling industry and environmental groups, though not enough lawmakers.

The Senate did manage to pass the energy bill, which would raise to 33% the amount of energy the utilities must get from renewable sources. Final approval by the Assembly of some minor amendments was expected.

However, a high-ranking administration official said late Friday that the governor planned to veto the bill, AB 64 by Paul Krekorian (D-Burbank), and a companion measure, SB 14 by Sen. Joe Simitian (D-Palo Alto), unless Democrats redrafted the proposals to discard provisions limiting the amount of energy that can come from outside California. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the bills were not yet on the governor’s desk.

Lawmakers throughout the day also expressed frustration with what has been one of the more unproductive years in Sacramento. Disgruntled GOP lawmakers began withholding their votes on nearly every measure that came up, to show their anger at Senate leader Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento) over what they said were broken promises

Among them, GOP staffers said, was a chance for Republicans to kill a state program popular with taxpayers that allows state authorities to fill out their tax forms. The tax preparation firm Intuit, which sells TurboTax, has been trying to abolish the program for years.

Meanwhile, facing stiff resistance from environmentalists, Steinberg opted to put the brakes on the stadium bill, ABX3 81 by Isadore Hall (D-Compton), which would have waived environmental laws that proponents say stand in the way of a 75,000-seat stadium proposed by billionaire Ed Roski.

Steinberg said he wants to try, in coming weeks, to mediate an agreement that addresses the environmental impact of the stadium plan.

“Because I see the obvious merit in the proposed stadium development in the City of Industry — the creation of up to 18,000 jobs, the economic development for the area, and the tax revenue for the local and state governments — I am willing to . . . commence negotiations,” Steinberg wrote to his colleagues.

If negotiations fail, Steinberg said, he would allow the bill, which passed the Assembly on Thursday, to be heard in a special legislative session before the end of this month.

Several bills that failed to win enough votes were put off until next year. One was SB 250, by Sen. Dean Florez (D-Shafter), which would have required many dogs and cats to be sterilized unless the owners obtained an unaltered animal license.

Another measure would have banned the chemical BPA (bisphenol A) from feeding products designed for children younger than 3. “It’s a shame that we have failed to protect our most vulnerable citizens,” said Sen. Fran Pavley (D-Agoura Hills), author of SB 797.

The Senate was struggling Friday over a proposal by Schwarzenegger to create a 4.8% surcharge on all new or renewed commercial and residential fire insurance policies to raise funds for emergency and fire protection services. Democrats championing the bill, AB 196 by the Assembly Budget Committee, cited ongoing wildfires. But Republicans were balking, saying another tax would hurt the economy and taxpayers.

The water package that legislative leaders scrambled unsuccessfully to pass late Friday included nearly $12 billion in bonds and the implementation of five policy proposals addressing a broad range of issues. Examples: urban water conservation, water rights and creation of a council to oversee projects in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta.

Assembly Speaker Karen Bass (D-Los Angeles) said legislative leaders hope to revive the package in a special session before the end of the year.

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Times staff writer Bettina Boxall contributed to this report.

SACRAMENTO — Deals to add up to 17,000 slot machines at four Southern California tribal casinos passed the Legislature on Thursday, setting the stage for giant casinos with twice as many slots as the biggest in Las Vegas.

Within minutes, union leaders raised the possibility of mounting a repeal campaign.

The Assembly passed compacts that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger struck last year with four wealthy tribes, along with a side agreement addressing child support, gambling addiction, workers’ compensation, accounting and arbitration issues.

Under the deals, which Schwarzenegger has signed, the state will get between 15% and 25% of the revenue from the additional machines, possibly bringing in half a billion dollars a year.

Organized labor had unsuccessfully sought to include requirements that tribes not punish or harass workers for trying to organize. Unions had also sought language allowing a union to bargain for workers if more than 50% of employees signed authorization cards.

Jack Gribbon, California political director for Unite Here, a union that organizes casino and hotel workers, said he and other union leaders are considering asking voters to undo the agreements. To qualify a repeal measure for next February’s presidential primary ballot would probably require gathering 400,000 signatures in 90 days, he said.

“The discussions are very serious,” Gribbon said.

Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez (D-Los Angeles), a former labor organizer, said unions placed an “undue burden” on him with the provisions they sought.

“I did not negotiate the compacts,” he said. “The governor negotiated the compacts.”

Tribes given the right to expand are the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians, which owns casinos in Palm Springs and Rancho Mirage; the Pechanga Band of Luiseno Indians in Temecula; the Sycuan Band of the Kumeyaay Nation in San Diego County; and the Morongo Band of Mission Indians in Cabazon.

A compact between the governor and the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians of San Bernardino County did not pass the Legislature. Nunez’s office said that was because the tribe refused to sign the side agreement insisted upon by the speaker.

The Assembly also gave final approval Thursday to a compact allowing the Yurok tribe of Northern California to install 99 slot machines. The tribe is among the state’s largest, and one of the poorest.

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Reporting from Washington — More than 300 years ago, Edward Teach, better known as Blackbeard, whose whiskered visage virtually defines the image of the 18th century pirate, ran his flagship aground near Beaufort, N.C.

On Monday, the Supreme Court agreed to hear an appeal involving that ship to resolve a question of alleged 21st century piracy: Can the state of North Carolina be sued for taking someone’s copyrighted work?

At issue in the case, brought by a videographer who has filmed the wreckage of the Queen Anne’s Revenge since it was discovered in 1996, is a broad question of whether authors, musicians, video producers and others may sue a state agency and collect damages if the government makes use of their works without permission.

The high court has created a broad “sovereign immunity” shield that protects states from many types of lawsuits. In this case, the Recording Industry Assn. and experts in copyright law are urging the justices to shrink that shield, at least in copyright cases.

Recent rulings have left “states free to infringe copyrights with impunity, with nothing to deter them from that bad behavior,” the recording industry said in its brief supporting the appeal.

“Digital piracy of sound recordings and musical works, including by states, can be quick and easy to accomplish.”

The case began with the discovery of the wreckage of Blackbeard’s flagship, which sank in November 1718 and was found by a private research group in 1996.

A model of Queen Anne’s Revenge, flagship of the 18th century pirate Blackbeard, at the North Carolina Maritime Museum in Beaufort, N.C.

(David Zucchino / Los Angeles Times)

The discoverers hired Frederick Allen and his Nautilus Productions to film the wreckage and the salvage operation. His videos were copyrighted, but in 2013, North Carolina’s Department of Natural and Cultural Resources began posting the videos online.

Allen and the state entered into a settlement that paid Nautilus $15,000, but according to the videographer, the state violated the agreement by converting his works into “public record” materials that were free to all.

Allen sued the state for copyright infringement and won before a federal judge.

But the 4th Circuit Court based in Virginia ruled last year that the state and its officials were immune from such claims.

In 1990, Congress passed a law to protect copyrights from infringement by state agencies, but a few years later, the Supreme Court handed down a series of rulings that gave states “sovereign immunity” from being sued for damages in federal courts. One of those decisions, Florida Prepaid vs. College Savings Bank in 1999, threw out patent and copyright claims against a Florida agency.

The 4th Circuit cited that decision in blocking the videographer’s suit over Blackbeard’s ship.

His lawyers argued in their appeal that the Constitution gave Congress the power to protect the work of “authors and inventors.” The decision by Congress to enact a federal law allowing the suit to go ahead should override a state’s claim of immunity, they said.

The Supreme Court announced Monday it had voted to hear the case of Allen vs. Cooper in the term that begins in the fall.

More stories from David G. Savage »

HALIFAX, Canada — Several U.S. senators said Saturday that Secretary of State Marco Rubio told them that the Trump administration’s plan for ending the Russia-Ukraine war that it is pressing Kyiv to accept is a Russian “wish list” and not the actual plan.

A State Department spokesperson denied their account, calling it “blatantly false.”

The 28-point peace plan was crafted by the Trump administration and the Kremlin without Ukraine’s involvement. It acquiesces to many Russian demands that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has rejected on dozens of occasions, including giving up large pieces of territory. Trump says he wants Ukraine to accept the plan by late next week.

At a security conference in Canada, independent Sen. Angus King of Maine, Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire and Republican Sen. Mike Rounds of South Dakota said they spoke to Rubio after he reached out to some of them while on his way to Geneva for talks on the plan.

King said Rubio told them the plan “was not the administration’s plan” but a “wish list of the Russians.”

“This administration was not responsible for this release in its current form,” Rounds said. “They want to utilize it as a starting point.”

Rounds said that “it looked more like it was written in Russian to begin with.”

Rubio, who serves as both national security advisor and secretary of State, was expected to attend a meeting in Geneva on Sunday to discuss Washington’s proposal as part of a U.S. delegation, according to an American official who was not authorized to publicly discuss the U.S. participants before the meeting and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Tommy Pigott, a State Department spokesperson, denied the senators’ claim.

“As Secretary Rubio and the entire Administration has consistently maintained, this plan was authored by the United States, with input from both the Russians and Ukrainians,” Pigott wrote on X.

The senators earlier Saturday said the plan would only reward Moscow for its aggression and send a message to other leaders who have threatened their neighbors.

The senators’ opposition to the plan follows criticism from other U.S. lawmakers, including some Republicans, none of whom have the power to block it.

“It rewards aggression. This is pure and simple. There’s no ethical, legal, moral, political justification for Russia claiming eastern Ukraine,” King said during a panel discussion at the Halifax International Security Forum in Canada.

Russian President Vladimir Putin welcomed the proposal late Friday, saying that it “could form the basis of a final peace settlement” if the U.S. can get Ukraine and its European allies to agree.

Zelensky, in an address, did not reject the plan outright, but insisted on fair treatment while pledging to “work calmly” with Washington and other partners in what he called “truly one of the most difficult moments in our history.”

In its 17th year, about 300 people gather annually at the Halifax International Security Forum held at Halifax’s Westin hotel. The forum attracts military officials, U.S. senators, diplomats and scholars, but this year the Trump administration suspended participation of U.S. defense officials in events by think tanks, including the Halifax event.

A large number of U.S. senators made the trip this year in part because of strained relations between Canada and the United States. Trump has alienated America’s neighbor with his trade war and claims that Canada should become the 51st U.S. state. Many Canadians now refuse to travel to the U.S., and border states like Shaheen’s are seeing a dramatic drop in tourism.

“There’s real concern about that strain. That’s one reason why there’s such a big delegation is here,” the New Hampshire Democrat said. “I will continue to object to what the president is doing in terms about tariffs and his comments because they are not only detrimental to Canada and our relationship, but I think they are detrimental globally. They show a lack of respect of sovereign nations.”

Gillies writes for the Associated Press.