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Israeli forces detained U.S. Democratic congressional candidate Brad Lander on Wednesday as he helped Palestinian farmers harvest olives in the occupied West Bank, releasing him hours later while dozens of other volunteers, including a group of American rabbis, remained in custody.
The incident was the latest in an annual olive harvest that has been marked by violence between Israeli settlers and Palestinian villagers attempting to gather their crops.
The Israeli military said the farmers and volunteers had failed to seek prior approval for the harvest and were detained “due to the security risk posed by conducting an uncoordinated harvest near an Israeli community.” It later added that it viewed “the arrival of dozens of activists as an act intended solely to provoke, which undermines the harvesting process.”
Lander is running in the U.S. elections on Nov. 3 to represent a heavily Democratic New York district in the U.S. House of Representatives.
“The occupation is a crime under international law,” Lander wrote on social media after he was detained. “Harvesting olives isn’t a crime under any law I know.”
“These detentions by the IDF are one more attempt to undermine Palestinians’ right to harvest their olive groves, travel on their roads, and live in their homes,” he added in a post after his release.
This year, Palestinians have been required to coordinate with the Israeli military to access more of their privately owned farmland than in previous years. The anti-settlement group Peace Now said last week that the army had expanded by nearly 30% the area of farmland that Palestinians cannot enter without prior approval, to 34 square miles. The Israeli military declined to comment on the exact figures but said Palestinian farmers must coordinate access to areas under Israeli security control.
The detained volunteers were taken to a police facility. Lander was among them but “released after it became known that he was a congressional candidate,” the Israeli police said in a statement.
Israeli rights group Yesh Din and the Palestinian Farmers’ Union have said the 2026 harvest has been the most violent in recent history, with hundreds of reported thefts, clashes and arson attacks.
Much of the violence has unfolded on land outside Palestinian villages, where Palestinians have historically harvested olives and Israeli settlers have increasingly erected outposts without authorization from Israel’s government.
But there were no clashes before Israeli forces arrived Wednesday, according to Beck Strober, a spokesperson for Protect the Harvest, the advocacy group that organized the volunteers at the grove.
Jill Jacobs, one of a dozen American rabbis detained, condemned the Israeli government restricting the ability of Palestinians to harvest freely.
“The Israeli government is actively advancing the forced displacement of Palestinian communities across the West Bank, using its military to deny Palestinians access to their land and intimidate those who stand alongside them,” Jacobs, chief executive of T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights, said in a statement.
Lander, who was endorsed by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, defeated U.S. Rep. Dan Goldman in a primary for New York’s 10th congressional district. The race was viewed as a referendum on the Democratic party’s support for Israel. Both candidates are Jewish and have criticized Israel, but only Lander called the war in Gaza a genocide.
Lander was not the first U.S. politician detained in the West Bank this year. U.S. Rep. Ro Khanna, a California Democrat, said Israeli forces detained him during a visit in July.
What role will the Latino vote have in the upcoming midterm elections?
In the latest episode of “The De Los Podcast,” hosts and Times editors Fidel Martinez and Suzy Exposito welcome Times columnist Gustavo Arellano to dissect the increasingly important electorate, one that will help decide races locally and at the national level.
Long considered a reliable vote for the Democratic Party, Latinos shifted rightward in 2024.
“The Republican Party has always known — going back to the days of [President Dwight D.] Eisenhower — that there is something there in this demographic as it starts getting bigger,” Arellano said.
Arellano documented the history of Democratic support among California Latinos, highlighting the passage of 1994’s California Proposition 187 — which prohibited undocumented immigrants from using the state’s public services including non-emergency healthcare and education resources — as a turning point.
“It turned a whole generation of Latinos into voting Democrat, but it also showed the Republican Party that anti-immigrant politics work,” he said. “The problem with the Democratic Party in California for basically the next 30 years is all they would do is say, ‘You as a Latino should never vote Republican because they did 187.’”
A Pew Research Center study showed that in the 2024 presidential election, a slight majority of Latinos voted for former Vice President Kamala Harris — but they also voted for President Trump at a much higher rate than they did in 2020.
Trump garnered 48% of the Latino vote compared with Harris’ 51% share and significantly jumped past the 36% clip he received in the 2020 presidential election. The study’s results reveal that the initial 2024 exit polls actually underestimated Latinos’ Trump support, with the Republican candidate tracking at 46% of the Latino vote on election day.
Arellano contributed this shift in voting pattern to a lack of effective messaging from Democrats and widespread material hardships among Latinos.
“[You now have] an entire generation who have grown up and life has been harder for them because they are working-class folks,” he said. “And they’re saying, ‘The Republicans are racist? Well, life hasn’t improved for me as a Democrat, let me just take my chance with the racist.’”
But recent polling shows Latinos might have buyers’ remorse. The community cited increased cost of living, immigration tactics, involvement in wars across the world and a struggling economy as reasons for retreating from Republican leadership. Trump’s approval rating among Latinos dipped to 27% in an early October NBC News study. That same poll found that Democrats have a 24-point lead on whom Latino voters want to see in control of Congress.
“The Republican Party was given this extraordinary gift of the Latino vote, and what did they do? They blew it,” Arellano said.
He spotlighted Texas as a prime of example of how Republicans squandered their grip on Latino voters. The demographic voted heavily in favor of Trump in 2024, even in the long-Democratic borderland region of the state.
“Texas [Republicans] gerrymandered their state because they thought, “We have now this permanent Latino shift to our party, so let’s make these districts even more Latino because they’re going to vote Republican,’” Arellano said. “And now Latinos are running away [from the Republican Party] hard.”
Across the country, Latinos have also soured on the Republican Party due to the public display that Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers have put on in recent years, Arellano noted.
“To see people dragged and beaten … that weighs on you,” he said. “On top of that, the economy sucks, we’re in a stupid war, this president is increasingly saying crazy things … and now this immigration stuff. So [people are wondering] what good is it to be with [Trump] now.”
Top Democrats in Congress have joined a California immigrant and the Nevada State Democratic Party in suing the Trump administration over its unprecedented voter fraud probes in both states and broader efforts to meddle in state-run elections nationwide — alleging they are a “pretext to seize control over elections.”
In addition to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and several national Democratic groups, the plaintiffs include Erick Jose Jimenez, an “active California voter” and naturalized U.S. citizen since 2006 who now “fears that he will be unlawfully targeted for voting and disenfranchised (or worse)” given the Trump administration’s track record of misidentifying naturalized citizens as noncitizens.
Lauren Bis, a White House spokesperson, said in a statement that while “Democrats and the media continue to dismiss concerns about voter fraud, the Trump Administration is taking decisive lawful action to protect our elections,” including by “prosecuting election crimes, strengthening election infrastructure security, and protecting vulnerable voters from fraud and coercion.”
“Anyone who illegally votes in our elections will be held accountable,” Bis said.
A Justice Department spokesperson said “election integrity is a top priority” and that the department’s actions are “grounded in the law and being litigated in open court.” A Homeland Security spokesperson said it is “laser focused on prosecuting and removing aliens who vote and preventing the dilution of the votes of U.S. citizens.”
Officials from both agencies have asserted that California and other states have ineffective policies for ensuring noncitizens do not vote — relying in part on voters attesting to being citizens — and staunchly defended their own processes for identifying noncitizens on state rolls.
Democrats and leading elections experts say isolated voter fraud does occur and should be taken seriously, but that there is no evidence of widespread fraud.
The lawsuit alleges a coordinated effort between Trump and other administration officials — in violation of the 10th Amendment and other federal law — to intimidate state and local elections officials nationwide into removing voters from rolls, denying ballots to legally registered voters and segregating the ballots of others “based on spurious and unreliable claims that they are not citizens.”
It says the president is pushing the above efforts not “in a vacuum,” but in the face of repeated steps by Congress and the courts to block his election agenda.
The lawsuit, backed by prominent Democratic elections attorney Marc Elias, follows another filed in the same court last month by attorneys with the UCLA Voting Rights Project, on behalf of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, or CHIRLA, and a California voter named Pedro Trujillo.
That ongoing lawsuit challenges the Trump administration’s use of unproven federal databases to allege registered California voters are not citizens, which it says risks misidentifying eligible voters and has left naturalized citizens frightened — the same argument made by Jimenez.
Jimenez, who could not be reached for comment, has “eagerly and consistently exercised his right to vote” since becoming a citizen two decades ago, and plans to vote in the Nov. 3 election but fears being misidentified as a noncitizen and targeted, Tuesday’s lawsuit says.
Administration officials have defended the accuracy of their lists, including in the lawsuit the Justice Department filed against California last week. In that case, the Trump administration has asked the court to force California to set aside the ballots of the 20,000 “likely noncitizens” it flagged until their citizenship is confirmed.
First Assistant U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli, the lead federal prosecutor in L.A., has said that list was compiled using public California voter registration records and third-party and law enforcement data, and that federal authorities have “overwhelming evidence” that those voters are ineligible.
However, other administration officials have acknowledged the lists may not be entirely accurate. Acting Deputy Atty. Gen. Trent McCotter said Monday that “there may be some names on there who, it turns out, ultimately are citizens.” A Homeland Security official said in a court filing Monday that “discrepancies” have been found in about 189 of the records.
California Secretary of State Shirley Weber and Dean Logan, head of the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk’s office — both named defendants in the California case — have accused the Trump administration of illegally interfering in state elections and trying to purge voters in the immediate lead up to an election in violation of federal law using inaccurate data.
Logan’s office said Tuesday that a preliminary analysis of a subset of the administration’s list found many were born in the U.S., weren’t registered or had never voted.
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Wednesday turned down an appeal from President Trump and rejected his order to end hormone treatments and other gender-affirming care for transgender inmates in federal prisons.
The justices denied Trump’s appeal without comment, over dissents by Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito.
The order leaves in a place a decision by a senior judge appointed by President Reagan who had blocked Trump’s new prison policy from taking effect.
The decision is a rare win for trans rights at the Supreme Court.
In June, U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth, a Reagan appointee, said he would “not wade into the culture war being waged against transgender individuals” and ruled the Trump administration did not have evidence or good reasons for changing the long-standing policy for these inmates.
He cited the Administrative Procedure Act, which forbids abrupt and “arbitrary” changes in federal regulations.
Lamberth said the Bureau of Prisons’ new regulation would “arbitrarily deprive inmates of medications and other lifestyle accommodations that its own medical staff have deemed to be medically appropriate.” The evidence showed that “gender affirming care is the only effective treatment for gender dysphoria and severe harm flows from the cessation of such care,’’ he wrote.
Last month, the D.C. Circuit upheld his decision on a 2-1 vote, prompting the administration’s appeal to the Supreme Court.
The American Civil Liberties Union, which sued on behalf of three inmates, said the court should not “overturn a three decades-long status quo.” Since 1992, the Bureau of Prisons has “treated people with gender dysphoria with hormone therapy,” their lawyers told the court.
In response to Trump’s order, the “BOP overrode its own medical providers’ clinical judgment and mandated the cessation of treatment for almost 1,000 people in its custody,” they said.
At issue in this latest legal dispute over trans rights was whether the government had evidence to justify a sharp change in its prison regulations.
In the past, the court has often deferred to prison officials on their handling and treatment of inmates.
“If deference to prison administrators means anything, it means that courts cannot second-guess their eminently reasonable choice to treat the mental-health condition of gender dysphoria with psychotherapy rather than physical, sex-rejecting interventions,” Solicitor Gen. D. John Sauer said in his appeal.
COLUMBUS, Ohio — Republican Vivek Ramaswamy ’s team confirmed late Tuesday that it produced a controversial advertisement featuring the estranged mother of Amy Acton, and the campaign said it will spend $4 million to promote it despite facing bipartisan rebuke for dredging up the painful childhood of his Democratic opponent in Ohio’s governor’s race.
The decision exacerbates a deeply personal element in one of the country’s most closely watched and expensive campaigns for state office. Questions about the video will likely shadow Ramaswamy, a biotech billionaire who previously ran for president but has never before held public office, in the final two weeks of the contest. Democrats said he was growing desperate at a moment when more than 676,000 people have already cast ballots in Ohio.
The advertisement features Acton’s birth mother, Donna Arthur, calling her “a liar” and insinuating she has mental health issues. Acton, Ohio’s former public health director, has made no secret of facing homelessness and abuse as a child. Arthur lost custody of her children after their stepfather was indicted for raping Acton.
The video’s origins were initially murky when it started circulating online. It first surfaced in a post by an Ohio political blogger, then spread across social media. It did not include the “paid for” tag that is legally required to air on television so viewers can know who produced and paid for it. D.J. Brynes, who blogs as “The Rooster,” told CNN he got the video from a voter who viewed it as part of a poll and recorded it.
Connie Luck, a spokesperson for Ramaswamy’s campaign, said Acton’s mother was not paid for the one-minute video, which she said will stream online and air on television.
Acton spent Tuesday condemning Ramaswamy for the ad even before his campaign confirmed its provenance.
“I won’t normalize somebody who has said that my childhood is just something I’m complaining about, who today just released an ad using my birth mother, who I was removed from at the age of 12 for severe abuse and neglect, and sexual abuse,” she told Spectrum News, a cable news outlet in Ohio.
She said Ramaswamy made similar personal attacks during his run for the Republican presidential nomination two years ago, calling it “a lifelong pattern.”
Ramaswamy’s campaign initially issued a statement that did not address whether he was responsible for the ad or knew who produced it. In the earlier statement, Luck said Acton “has some serious problems with the truth that the public needs to be aware of.”
Democrats and Republicans condemn the ad
Casey Putsch, a car designer and YouTube provocateur who competed against Ramaswamy for the Republican nomination for governor, said on social media that he would be voting for Acton in the wake of the ad’s release. He called the video “pretty damn low.”
Acton’s campaign released a statement from her brother, Philip Stearns, who said the two were removed from their mother Donna Arthur’s custody as children after their stepfather, Arthur’s husband, was indicted for raping Acton as a child. Acton has not seen Arthur, whose last known address was in Pennsylvania, since they were in a courtroom together in 1978.
Later Tuesday, the Acton campaign released a video featuring Stearns, who recalls his older sister taking “the worst” of the abuse they faced as children in order to protect him and disparages Ramaswamy and his allies for exploiting the situation.
According to police and court documents obtained by the Associated Press, Cledith Arthur was arrested and charged with the rape of his stepdaughter, then 12, in July 1978, after Acton’s biological father reported him to authorities. The abuse allegedly happened from December 1976 to April 1978.
Cledith Arthur pleaded not guilty. He was indicted by a grand jury that September, but failed to show at a court hearing and remained a fugitive until at least 1981. He has since died.
High-profile Republicans who back Ramaswamy — including Donald Trump Jr. and influencer Laura Loomer — elevated the video in online posts.
But others joined Democrats in condemning the ad. Meghan McCain called it “dastardly” and Dan Hauser, a strategist for Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, said he deleted his post sharing the video once he realized “the very serious accusations that caused their issues.”
The Democrat running for U.S. Senate in Ohio, Sherrod Brown, described the spot as “disgusting” and said everyone — including his opponent, Sen. Jon Husted — should be willing to condemn it. Husted’s campaign didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Smyth writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Ali Swenson in New York contributed to this report.
ST. PETERSBURG, Russia — Russia on Wednesday released a retired American teacher who had been imprisoned on charges of fighting as a mercenary in Ukraine, U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff said Wednesday at a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in St. Petersburg.
The release of Stephen Hubbard had been foreshadowed a day earlier in Washington, when President Trump told reporters at the White House that he had talked with Putin “at length” about the issue and had asked him to free the Michigan man.
Hubbard is the second American detainee in just over two months to be freed by Russia, and his exit from custody occurred not only during a visit by Witkoff but also at a time when Trump has taken a series of actions meant to benefit Russia as Washington’s alliance with Ukraine shows signs of fraying.
Hubbard was sentenced after a closed trial in 2024 to nearly seven years in prison. Prosecutors said he had signed a contract with the Ukrainian military after Russia sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022, and that he fought alongside them until being captured two months later. The U.S. government under the Biden administration designated Hubbard as wrongfully detained.
Witkoff, a key Trump administration envoy who has tried without success to steer Russia and Ukraine toward a settlement to end a war that will hit the five-year mark in February, thanked Putin for releasing Hubbard, telling him, “Because of you, he’s going home to his family.” The Russian leader responded that Hubbard was at the St. Petersburg airport, Pulkovo, after the release.
The release occurred at a dynamic moment in relations between the United States, Ukraine and Russia, with the Washington-Kyiv alliance being stretched by tensions over drone support as the Trump administration advances policies that aid Putin.
Trump decided Friday, for instance, to waive sanctions on Russia in a bill that Congress overwhelmingly passed to support Ukraine. Named after late South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, the legislation targeted the flow of financial resources fueling Russia’s war.
That reversal followed Trump’s announcement of a deal to import Russian diesel fuel in a long-shot effort to curb high gas prices ahead of the U.S. midterm elections next month.
Witkoff met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Norway on Tuesday. He was expected to exchange ideas from that meeting, as well as proposals from European and American colleagues, in his talks with Russian leaders in St. Petersburg on Wednesday.
Hubbard is the second American freed by Russia in about the last two months, following the release in August of Marine veteran Robert Gilman, who had been gravely ill and was imprisoned on disputed charges of assaulting a police officer.
Some two dozen Americans remain imprisoned in Russia for various reasons, according to the Foley Foundation, a hostage advocacy organization.
Hubbard had been imprisoned since 2022 on charges that Hostage Aid Worldwide, a hostage advocacy group, has called bogus.
The organization in August posted an open letter to Trump that it said was written by Patricia Hubbard Fox, Hubbard’s sister, in which she offered praise for Trump but also said brother had been subjected to “constant beatings, torture and starvation” while in custody.
“Even so, everything that you’re doing isn’t going to matter to my kidnapped, American Veteran brother, Stephen James Hubbard (soon to be 74) if Putin won’t cave and let him come home and he dies up there in a Nazi prison (crying),” the letter said.
Litvinova and Tucker write for the Associated Press. Tucker reported from Washington.
In the summer of 1957, Walt Disney spotted a monorail in Europe and decided he’d like to have one of his own. Design and construction began in 1958, and the following year, Disneyland had a monorail.
The LAX SkyLink people mover was approved by the L.A. City Council in 2018 and construction began in 2019, with a targeted completion date of 2023. In the latest news of yet another delay, the hoped-for startup has been pushed into next year.
Almost eight years, and the train has not left the station.
It’s the little engine that can’t.
The people mover that doesn’t.
There’s been finger-pointing, litigation and a grand jury probe into how a $1.9-billion choo-choo has become a $3.3-billion boondoggle.
Maybe they should have hired Disney.
“Tell me about it,” said Los Angeles City Councilmember Monica Rodriguez, who noted that Disney imagineer Bob Gurr, who helped design the monorail and other iconic Disneyland attractions, lives in her district.
I’m waiting to hear back from Gurr, who’s in his mid-90s, to see if he’s available to work a little magic and help get the people mover moving.
“I’m down with that,” Rodriguez said. “And we get an E Ticket ride.”
To fully appreciate the madness, a bit of historical context is helpful.
Given the region’s legendary traffic, a well-designed transit system has always made sense in Southern California, and billions of dollars have been invested, with quite a bit to show for voter-approved sales tax increases with Measures R and M and boatloads of federal dollars.
But the ride has been bumpy.
In the 1990s, the Green Line, as it was then known, was supposed to go to the airport.
It stopped two miles short.
The rail line known as the purple, or the D, was sometimes referred to as the Subway to the Sea.
But even if its next phase is ever completed, it would stop about 3.5 miles short of the beach. (You can, however, take the E Line to downtown Santa Monica.)
Meanwhile, as The Times’ Colleen Shalby just reported, construction is beginning this week on the Van Nuys-Pacoima light rail line.
Only five years behind schedule.
And the cost has gone from $1.3 billion originally to almost $4 billion.
Are you catching on to a pattern here?
And these are not rocket launches we’re talking about. A light rail line. A people mover.
We’re in California, which has a Silicon Valley and Silicon Beach and a few remnants of the aerospace industry, but we can’t get Joe Blow from the Hertz rental lot to an airport terminal in less than eight years?
Meanwhile, the Vision Zero plan introduced 11 years ago by then-Mayor Eric Garcetti, with a goal of eliminating traffic deaths with roadway design and safety improvements, has fallen far short. As Damian Kevitt of Streets Are for Everyone told Shalby, for three years running, L.A. has had more traffic fatalities than homicides.
“The rest of the world has seen a decrease in traffic deaths,” Kevitt told me. “There are ways to do this, and we run into roadblocks. … It’s lack of leadership … at every level. … To me, the people mover is almost an indicator of systemic issues across the city.”
L.A. Mayor Karen Bass is the chair of Metro and appoints airport commissioners. So unsurprisingly, Councilmember Nithya Raman, her challenger in the mayoral campaign, is going after her on the people mover debacle and other transportation shortcomings.
Bass says the LAX project began before she took office, and regarding disputes that led to delays, “we pushed for a settlement so there would be a firm finish line.”
That’s weak.
There’s never been a firm finish line.
It’s like every other major public project in L.A. and beyond. They come with no firm starting time and no firm completion date, and the only two guarantees are that the tab will keep growing, and when the job finally is complete, public officials will take bows at the ribbon cutting.
So what happened in the case of the people mover?
The grand jury report goes into great detail about an arrangement in which L.A. World Airports awarded designing, building and operating authority to a private contracting consortium called LINXS, for LAX Integrated Express Solution.
Are you comfortable with that? Can you understand why anyone would be, other than the contractors?
The grand jury found no criminal activity on anyone’s part, but you’ll be shocked to know there was a considerable amount of eyebrow-raising behavior. The contractor has sued the city, blaming it for delays, but the grand jury suggested it was the contractor who caused the delays, essentially holding out for payment of $550 million in settlement claims.
It’s as if city officials, who missed out on having the project done in time for the World Cup matches, were easy marks, desperate to make sure the trains are running at least by the 2028 Olympics.
We could have flying taxis by then, but no airport locomotive. This would not be a good look.
Rodriguez, who initially voted no on the upcoming convention center expansion project, said she was explicit about one concern she had regarding that public-private partnership.
“Whatever contract language was in the people mover contract, make sure it’s not in the convention center project,” she said.
“This is an embarrassment, by all means,” said James Moore, emeritus engineering professor at USC.
Although the people mover — which would finally make it possible for rail passengers to connect to LAX — is only 2.25 miles long, it’s a sophisticated feat of engineering. But, as Moore noted, countless airports around the world have figured out how to get the job done.
“Should it have taken this long? No,” Moore said. But “when anything goes right in Los Angeles, that’s when I’m surprised.”
Paging Bob Gurr, Disney designer extraordinaire.
We need your help, Bob, and you can name your price.
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Is it resentment that Wiener’s years-long maneuvering blocked the ascension of Pelosi’s daughter, Christine, who’d been widely talked about as her mom’s name-brand successor? (Instead, she’s running for Wiener’s seat in 2028, or sooner if he makes it to Congress.)
Is it Pelosi once more leaning into her long-standing role as a champion of women and women in politics, which drew her to support Supervisor Connie Chan?
Perhaps it’s a bit of all three.
Pelosi, for her part, told reporters that “nobody knows Congress better than I do” and she believes, simply enough, that Chan “would be the best member of Congress.”
But maybe there’s something more elemental.
“Pelosi is the daughter of a machine politician,” said Eric Jaye, a strategist who’s spent decades working in and around San Francisco politics. “She moves from Baltimore” — where her father was a congressman and mayor — “and becomes initially a lieutenant in the political machine here and, ultimately, the general of it.
“She’s playing by the classic rules of machine politics,” Jaye said, “which is the machine has the prerogative of choosing the line of succession…. Nancy Pelosi wanted to be able to make that choice.”
Peas in a pod
Chan, a leader of the city’s progressive wing and a favorite of organized labor, was languishing until Pelosi delivered her endorsement in the final stretch of the primary campaign. Her imprimatur sent Chan surging past tech millionaire Saikat Chakrabarti to place second behind Wiener.
With less than two weeks until election day, the November runoff appears too close to call, though many give Wiener the edge.
There is little that substantively divides the two candidates, both liberals in good standing. Wiener is considered the more moderate of the two, graded on San Francisco’s very-left curve.
“Connie Chan and Scott Wiener are going to vote the same way 99.9% of the time,” said Jim Ross, another longtime San Francisco political strategist. Further, he noted, it’s going to be years before either acquires the clout needed to be a significant force on Capitol Hill. “That’s just the reality of how Congress works.”
Which makes Pelosi’s heavy involvement in their fratricidal fight all the more striking.
She’s put her hefty fundraising muscle behind Chan, helping narrow Wiener’s financial advantage. She’s appeared in pro-Chan advertising — striding in her trademark stilettos — and lent her Washington communications director to the campaign.
San Francisco politics have long been personal, nasty and brutish. The city’s close quarters and intraparty rivalries help make it so, and Pelosi’s intervention has further frayed old ties and strained deep-seated alliances.
Susie Tompkins Buell, a San Francisco philanthropist and one of the Democratic Party’s most influential donors, told Politico she couldn’t understand why Pelosi would use her final months in office to torpedo Wiener’s campaign. She’s spoken to other prominent Democrats, Buell said, who felt pressured to endorse Chan because the speaker emerita hit them up.
“All you do is say, ‘Why, why is this happening?’ ” Buell wondered aloud.
It’s been nearly 40 years — going back to when Pelosi was first elected in 1987 — since San Francisco had an open congressional seat. Winning here is tantamount to a lifetime appointment; since 1964, just three people have held the seat Pelosi is vacating.
Both Wiener, who is gay, and Chan, who immigrated to San Francisco from Hong Kong, are bidding to write their own bit of history. Wiener, 56, would be the first out LGBTQ+ person to represent San Francisco in Congress. Chan, 48, would be the first Asian American.
As for Pelosi, her aggressive intervention in the contest won’t even merit “a footnote in her biography,” Jaye said.
WASHINGTON — Xavier Becerra was dubbed a “rising star” before he even entered the halls of Congress.
His June 1992 Democratic primary victory over Los Angeles school board member Leticia Quezada in California’s 30th Congressional District earned the 34-year-old candidate that description in The Times.
When the boyish, affable congressman became the first Latino lawmaker appointed to the powerful House Ways and Means Committee in his second term, national outlets took notice.
Thirty years later, in the final weeks of his gubernatorial race with Republican Steve Hilton, Becerra now finds himself poised to lead the most populous state in the country.
An examination of Becerra’s more than 25 years in Washington shows a politician who was skilled at building important alliances and amassing power on Capitol Hill, but had some stumbles along the way and faced criticism for his performance in his highest profile role.
Becerra built his reputation as a diligent consensus-builder — a workhorse rather than a show horse, to use an analogy favored by political scientists — but also revealed himself to be an ambitious political operator in key moments.
“He’s an affable person who’s not afraid to pull out a knife in politics while smiling,” said Christian Grose, a political science professor at USC.
Becerra’s campaign declined to comment on his time in Washington.
Becerra’s origin story traces back to his youth in Sacramento, and a moment when a high school friend was about to throw out a blank, unused application to Stanford University. The elite university was only 125 miles away, but it might as well have been across the ocean from the working-class world Becerra was raised in. Still, he applied.
He earned a law degree there four years later, and it was at Stanford that he met his wife, Carolyn Reyes, who became a physician.
After living in Boston while Reyes attended Harvard Medical School, Becerra moved to Los Angeles to work for state Sen. Art Torres. Within a few years he was tapped by Henry Lozano, then chief of staff to trailblazing Latino Rep. Edward Roybal, to run for state Assembly in 1990; and then, two years later, to succeed Roybal, who was retiring after 30 years in Congress.
Roybal endorsed Becerra, whose victory in the heavily Latino district that included Central and Eastside Los Angeles communities, was seen as a passing of the torch to the next generation.
Frank Villalobos, the founder and president of Barrio Architects, was among the leaders in East L.A. who encouraged Becerra to run for political office, and he said he was impressed early on by Becerra’s genuine commitment to the community and his ability to unite the area’s sometimes divided political factions.
“I thought if we kept this going, someday he’ll become the governor,” Villalobos said.
Becerra was part of a wave of young Latino lawmakers entering Congress, and his growing power within Democratic ranks helped him escape Roybal’s long shadow. Soon after Becerra’s barrier-breaking appointment to the Ways and Means Committee — which writes tax legislation — Becerra became chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, a position he held from 1997 to 1999.
An early test
He put his growing stature to the test a few years later when he decided to enter the L.A. mayor’s race in 2001.
It didn’t go well.
Former state Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa was also running, and Becerra — who had slept on Villaraigosa’s couch when he first ran for Congress — faced criticism for potentially splitting the Latino vote.
Becerra performed poorly, winning only 6% of the vote in the Democratic primary. His nice-guy reputation took a hit when his campaign was found to have been behind automated phone calls attacking Villaraigosa by a woman who falsely gave the impression that she was county Supervisor Gloria Molina, whose endorsement had been crucial in Becerra’s first run for Congress.
Becerra also faced criticism for his role in contacting White House staffers as part of an effort to push for the release of convicted L.A. cocaine dealer Carlos Vignali, whose father was a political contributor to Becerra. Vignali’s sentence was commuted by President Clinton on his last day in office; Becerra acknowledged calling the White House several times to discuss the possibility of Vignali’s release. Villaraigosa also wrote a letter on Vignali’s behalf.
Becerra told The Times in 2001 that he wasn’t lobbying for Vignali’s release, but merely asking White House officials to review the details of the conviction on behalf of the family.
“If I was going to try to put pressure on, I would have tried to call the president,” Becerra said at the time.
Villaraigosa fared better than Becerra but ultimately lost the 2001 election to City Atty. James Hahn, then rebounded to win the first of two terms as mayor in 2005.
Becerra got the better of Villaraigosa in their rematch this year in the Democratic gubernatorial primary, and won Villaraigosa’s support after.
“We’ve been friends a long time and, yes, we’ve been adversaries as well, but most of the time we’ve been friends,” Villaraigosa told The Times. “He’s got the experience and the wherewithal to lead this state.”
As for Becerra as a house guest during his first run for Congress?
“He makes his bed. He was neat,” said Villaraigosa. “He was pretty inconspicuous.”
Capitol Hill climbing
After his mayoral defeat, Becerra’s focus returned to Washington, where an alliance with another powerful Californian was a boon to his career on Capitol Hill.
Becerra was a close ally of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), serving as assistant to the speaker from 2007 to 2009.
John Lawrence, Pelosi’s former chief of staff, said that Becerra’s standing within the California delegation and particularly among Latino lawmakers was a big part of his appeal.
“Speaker Pelosi had set a goal of elevating minorities and women who had historically been excluded from leadership,” he said.
Their relationship took a hit after Becerra told progressive lawmakers in 2009 that he believed party leadership gave up too easily on including a public option in the Affordable Care Act, which was signed into law the following year.
“I understand I have tire tracks on my back because Xavier threw me under the bus,” Pelosi said during a Democratic Party leadership meeting in 2009, Politico reported.
And Pelosi would later question Becerra’s appointment in 2021 to be secretary of Health and Human Services. She has not endorsed Becerra in the gubernatorial race.
But any bad blood between the two didn’t stop Becerra from continuing to advance within the party ranks.
He became chair of the House Democratic Caucus in 2012, leading weekly meetings of all Democrats in the House and uniting the party’s members.
Former Wisconsin Democratic Rep. Ron Kind said Becerra was an excellent listener and skilled at building consensus.
“He could get in the room with anyone and find common ground,” Kind said.
Becerra joined several high-stakes negotiations, notably a 2013 bipartisan effort to pass comprehensive immigration reform, in the wake of the “Gang of Eight” deal struck in the Senate.
John Yarmuth, a Democratic congressman from Kentucky who was also part of the House negotiation, said Becerra was “an amazing positive force” in the process.
“I think he, more than anyone else, was focused on fixing the problem,” Yarmuth said.
Xavier Becerra bumps elbows with U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) before his Senate committee confirmation hearing for Health and Human Services secretary in 2021.
(Greg Nash / Associated Press)
The group was able to achieve a compromise, but it never saw the light of day.
Then-House Speaker John Boehner, an Ohio Republican, later blamed then-President Obama, whom he accused of “poisoning the well” on an immigration compromise. Yarmuth said Republicans were spooked about potential blowback.
Several potential off-ramps appeared during Becerra’s time in Washington. He was considered by Obama for U.S. trade representative in 2008, but Becerra declined the offer. After flirting with the idea of running for outgoing U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer’s seat, Becerra declined to enter the race, ultimately won by then-California Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris. He was briefly floated as a potential running mate for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election, but that didn’t materialize either.
In late 2016, Becerra found himself at a crossroads.
After more than a decade on the Ways and Means Committee, he faced the possibility of becoming the top Democrat on the committee and had the endorsement of the outgoing top Democrat, Rep. Sander Levin of Michigan.
But Harris’ victory in the 2016 Senate race created a vacancy for state attorney general.
Becerra decided to return home to Sacramento to take the role and spent the next four years as the state’s top law enforcement official, serving as “defender-in-chief” of the state, as USC’s Grose put it, against the Trump administration.
Fraught second act in D.C.
Becerra returned to Washington in 2021 for a second act that would prove to be far more controversial than his first.
Despite having no background in healthcare, Becerra was nominated to be the secretary of Health and Human Services and confirmed, over significant opposition by Republicans.
He took the reins of the healthcare agency as the country was still grappling with the COVID-19 pandemic and struggled to establish a clear role for himself in a response effort that was centered in the White House.
In his first year in office, he was called out by reporters for failing to hold regular press briefings.
And he faced criticism when health officials under his purview offered contradictory information in late 2021 about reduced quarantine requirements for people testing positive for COVID-19.
And Becerra’s chief of staff at Health and Human Services and longtime advisor, Sean McCluskie, pleaded guilty last year to participating in a scheme to use campaign funds from a dormant Becerra state political committee to pay for McCluskie’s frequent travel between Washington and California.
Dana Williamson, a longtime political consultant for Becerra and former chief of staff to Gov. Gavin Newsom, pleaded guilty earlier this year for her role in the scheme. McCluskie and Williamson are scheduled to be sentenced in December. Neither Becerra nor Newsom were accused of wrongdoing.
Democratic operative Xochitl Hinojosa, who served as the spokesperson for the Department of Justice in the Biden administration, earlier this year offered a blunt assessment of Becerra’s performance.
“He was not effective in government, and I think that a lot of people in the Biden administration are talking about this because they realize that he was not an effective HHS secretary,” Hinojosa said on CNN in May.
While other members of the Biden administration have defended Becerra’s performance, his time at the helm highlighted an issue that even allies concede has bedeviled Becerra in the past, his tendency to sometimes recede into the background.
Loretta Sanchez, a former Democratic congresswoman from Orange County who credits Becerra with encouraging her to run for Congress, put it simply.
“Will Xavier be bold?” she said. “I hope he takes those bold moves, because California needs it.”
WASHINGTON — It is a heated debate in the struggling Republican Party: whether to broaden its ideology or follow the advice of Dick Cheney, Rush Limbaugh and others who argue against deviating from core conservative principles.
Now, the GOP has a chance to see whether a moderate can become a model for Republican resurgence, with Florida Gov. Charlie Crist announcing Tuesday that he will run for the U.S. Senate in that politically important state.
Crist, who has bucked the GOP’s conservative wing on voting rights, global warming and other issues, enjoys high approval ratings. But with the governor facing a conservative in the primary, Republican leaders across the country have seized on Florida as a battleground in the larger philosophical war over the party’s future.
Crist won instant endorsements from Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and Texas Sen. John Cornyn, chairman of the GOP Senate campaign committee. The two see him as the best hope for keeping a Senate seat in GOP hands as the party tries to avoid falling below the crucial number of senators needed to block legislation, an outcome that many political analysts see as likely.
Crist’s main primary challenger, former state House Speaker Marco Rubio, went on the attack Tuesday, releasing a video showing the governor with President Obama and criticizing Crist’s support of the Democrats’ “reckless” economic stimulus spending.
“Our primary will offer Republicans a front-row seat to a debate about the future of the Republican Party here in Florida and across the nation,” Rubio said. “My campaign will offer GOP voters a clear alternative to the direction some want to take our party.”
Rubio, 37, is little-known outside of Miami and is given steep odds of taking down Crist.
The Florida announcement comes as GOP infighting has intensified following moderate Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter’s defection to the Democrats and a spate of recent surveys that show only about one-fifth of American voters consider themselves Republicans.
Last year’s elections almost wiped Republicans off the map in the Northeast and Southwest. The party won only a fraction of Latinos and other minorities that once were seen as building blocks of a new, long-lasting majority.
Several GOP leaders — including Virginia Rep. Eric Cantor, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush — late last month announced the formation of the National Council for a New America to open a policy-focused discussion designed to help rebuild the party.
But the group has been ridiculed by leading conservatives, who complained that the rollout touched on economic and national security issues but not on social concerns such as abortion, gay marriage and guns.
Former presidential candidate Mike Huckabee wrote a derisive column on the Fox News website poking fun at the GOP leaders for needing a “listening tour” to understand the American psyche. In it, he accused the council of treating “values voters as if they were embarrassing distant cousins who are allowed to come to the family gatherings a couple of times a year, but aren’t expected to be seen beyond that.”
Tony Perkins, head of the Family Research Council, chided the group for kicking off its campaign “devoid of the values that once caused voters to identify with the party.”
In a television interview over the weekend, former Vice President Cheney said he would “go with Rush Limbaugh” as a true Republican over former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, a moderate who last year endorsed Obama’s candidacy.
Limbaugh, the conservative talk show host, also has been critical of Republicans who do not adhere to core conservatism, saying recently that when Specter left the party he should have taken 2008 presidential nominee John McCain with him.
Complicating the GOP’s challenge in presenting itself as a unified party is the presence of the powerful pro-business Club for Growth, which helped push Specter out of the GOP and has been harshly critical of Crist.
Republican strategists said Tuesday that the party needed to be more concerned about picking candidates who could win than with limiting itself to pure conservatives, particularly with the GOP at risk of losing Senate seats in Ohio, Missouri, Kentucky and New Hampshire.
Already, the Specter defection has put the party’s Senate roster right at the crucial number of 40 — and if Democrat Al Franken is declared the winner of last year’s Minnesota Senate race, then the majority party (with the help of two independents) will have the 60 votes needed to override Republican filibuster attempts.
Grover Norquist, who as head of Americans for Tax Reform is a key leader of the conservative movement, said he had a pragmatic desire to elect “the most Reaganite Republican that can win in any given district or state.” That means, he said, that he supports electing moderates in Maine but not necessarily in Texas — and that in Florida, where Obama won last year, Crist may well be the best candidate.
Cornyn, a conservative, signaled months ago that he would take a pragmatic view on the question of ideological purity versus winning elections. Addressing a conservative conference in February, Cornyn said he would recruit moderate candidates if they matched the politics of their states, and that “a circular firing squad is no solution” to the party’s problems.
The Texas senator described Rubio, a Cuban American, as having a “very bright future,” but added that Crist was the “best candidate in 2010.”
Crist, 52, is expected to present himself as an answer to the Republican Party’s image troubles — a nonideological figure with a can-do, friendly demeanor.
He rose to prominence as a tough-on-crime Florida state lawmaker by supporting chain gangs for prisoners. As attorney general and governor, he aggressively courted Latino and black voters. Early in his term, he pushed a rule to speed the restoration of voting rights for ex-felons — a deeply unpopular move with many Republican politicians.
In February, after Obama’s stimulus plan was rejected by every House Republican and all but three Republican senators, Crist irked conservatives by joining the Democratic president at a campaign-style rally in hard-hit Fort Myers, Fla., to extol the need for the bill.
Tom Slade, a former chairman of the Florida GOP, said popularity always trumps ideology, and he predicted Crist easily would win the Republican nomination.
That, he added, that might be good for the party as a whole.
“There are not enough blue-eyed, white, blond guys and girls who go to church three times on Sunday and once on Wednesday to make up a majority for the Republican Party almost anywhere,” Slade said. “If we don’t broaden the party, there won’t be much of a party left.”
This runoff election for an open seat features two veteran attorneys with extensive experience as public defenders: Justin Allen Clayton and Anna Slotky Reitano.
Clayton is in charge of the Inglewood branch of the public defenders office and has defended three cases with life sentences.
Reitano represented juvenile and adult clients, many of them accused of felonies, before joining the county counsel’s office.
The Los Angeles County Bar Assn. considers both qualified to serve. Here’s more of what you need to know about the candidates.
Justin Allen Clayton, L.A. County deputy public defender
Bar rating: Qualified
Clayton is a Los Angeles native who attended public schools, earned a bachelor’s degree in criminology and passed the bar in 2012. He joined the public defender’s office two years later and since 2023 has served as deputy in charge of the Inglewood branch.
Clayton describes himself as a “working supervisor” who conducts arraignments and represents clients at preliminary and other hearings. He has completed dozens of trials, including three with life sentences, according to his website.
The position involves overseeing and training attorneys, as well as law clerks and summer interns, on misdemeanor and felony case preparation and trial strategy.
Clayton said a priority is improving court efficiency through pretrial preparation and “firm but fair enforcement of deadlines.”
Time as a candidate, he said, has shown him the importance of effective communication within the court system in bridging language and cultural differences. He called that a guiding principle, particularly for clients who lack counsel.
“Sometimes, one additional question, or one additional statement, can make all the difference in resolving an issue,” he said.
Clayton said running a public defender branch office, which brings him in contact with judges, sheriffs, court clerks, interpreters and others, combined with 14 years as a trial attorney, gives him a “comprehensive understanding” of the courtroom.
“That combination of courtroom experience, leadership and daily interaction with the many people who make our justice system work has uniquely prepared me to serve as a Superior Court judge,” he said.
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Anna Slotky Reitano, L.A. County deputy county counsel
Bar rating: Qualified
Reitano spent the early part of her career in criminal defense, contract law and other sectors. In 2014, she joined the L.A. County public defender’s office. A decade there included three years in juvenile court, where she primarily handled felony cases, and five years at the San Fernando Courthouse, where she represented indigent clients facing felony charges.
Reitano focused on mental health diversion and treatment, aiming to support rehabilitation when possible. Having a brother with schizophrenia and witnessing how families navigate the legal system when dealing with mental illness has informed her approach.
“This has given me a deeper understanding of both the challenges individuals and families face and the ways in which the system can fall short in addressing those needs,” she said.
This is not her first bid for office. She lost a campaign for a judgeship in 2022 and two years later assumed her position in the county counsel’s justice and safety division, where she supervises litigation and advises county departments.
Reitano, a former child actor, volunteers with local schools and, according to her website, mentors “future lawyers” through moot court competitions.
Campaigning, Reitano said, has shown her that constituents, no matter how different, uniformly want “a judge who is experienced, prepared, fair and willing to listen.”
“My experience across criminal, juvenile, civil, administrative and government law has uniquely prepared me to serve wherever the court needs me,” she said.
This race for an open seat pits a former U.S. assistant attorney who represented President Obama, the FBI and NASA against a seasoned Los Angeles County public defender who has taken more than 100 trials, some with three-strikes implications, to verdict.
David DeJute, who defended Obama against the so-called birther claims, spent a decade as vice president of litigation at Sony Pictures Entertainment. He now works in litigation at a private firm.
Anthony “A.J.” Bayne’s background includes nearly two decades serving in the Compton Courthouse, where he for a time served as deputy in charge. He’s now handling serious felony cases at the Torrance branch.
DeJute is rated “qualified” to serve by the Los Angeles County Bar Assn. Bayne is rated a notch higher, “well qualified.”
Here’s what you need to know about the candidates.
Anthony “A.J.” Bayne, L.A. County deputy public defender
Bar rating: Well qualified
Bayne’s 31-year legal career includes more than a quarter-century as an L.A. County deputy public defender. He has taken more than 100 jury trials to verdict, including murder, special circumstances and three-strikes cases, some of which carried sentences of death or life in prison.
“Even during the [election] primary period, I continued taking cases to trial rather than continuing them, because my clients should not be prejudiced by unnecessary delay,” he said.
He spent 19 years at the Compton Courthouse, where for a time he served as deputy in charge, supervising misdemeanor trial deputies. He now is stationed in the Torrance branch, where he handles serious felonies.
Bayne is an inventor, with patent-pending applications for artificial intelligence tools that automate legal workflows. One helps with closing arguments; another uses court reporter transcripts to generate cross-examination questions.
Using AI to address the county’s heavy caseload is a priority. He argues the technology could modernize court infrastructure, aiding in case management, scheduling and document processing.
Bayne, who trains in jiujitsu and Krav Maga self-defense, said extensive jury trial experience has prepared him to be an effective judge.
“Wherever I go, people want the same things: a judge who is prepared and fair, who will listen to their side of the case, and who treats them with respect,” he said.
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David DeJute, law professor/attorney
Bar rating: Qualified
The son of a late judge, DeJute has had a 35-year legal career. After graduating from law school, he clerked for a U.S. district judge and then worked at a boutique litigation firm. He spent nearly a decade as vice president of litigation at Sony Pictures Entertainment.
In 2005, he was appointed as an assistant U.S. attorney. Over more than a decade, he worked on 10 trials, including successfully defending President Obama against “birther” lawsuits that challenged his eligibility to hold office. DeJute represented the FBI and NASA in other cases.
He joined Michelman & Robinson in 2017 and is part of the complex litigation group.
An adjunct professor at Pepperdine’s Caruso School of Law, he’s taught ethics, antitrust, copyright and patent law. After last year’s wildfires, he returned as director of the disaster relief clinic, where he instructed students who provided pro bono legal services to victims of the Palisades and Eaton fires.
“I continue to provide free legal help to wildfire survivors who have asked me to stay involved,” he said, though he no longer runs the clinic.
DeJute said he has experienced discrimination as an openly gay man, which drives his desire to ensure that everyone in the justice system is treated with dignity and respect.
“Justice requires more than achieving certain results,” he said. “It requires a fair process untainted by bias.”
This runoff for a vacant seat on the bench features a longtime public defender running against a veteran alternate public defender. Both boast extensive trial experience.
Donna Tryfman, a deputy public defender, serves in the major cases unit, where she handles homicide and other high-profile defendants. She also has extensive experience in juvenile cases.
David Ross is an alternate in the Torrance branch of the public defenders office and also works in Bellflower and Long Beach. He claims to have represented more than 10,000 clients at hearings and in trials.
The Los Angeles County Bar Assn. rates both attorneys as “qualified” for office. Here’s more of what you need to know about the candidates.
Donna Tryfman, L.A. County deputy public defender
Bar rating: Qualified
Tryfman began with the public defender’s office in 1998, logging more than 100 jury trials. Her experience includes supervising Eastlake Juvenile Court, where she ran a branch with 15 lawyers and represented clients in the collaborative drug court. She is stationed in the major cases unit, focusing on capital homicide litigation.
Tryfman has served as a Superior Court judge pro tem, handling traffic and small claims cases. She has proctored teen courts at Dorsey and Hamilton high schools and last year received the peer-bestowed Gideon felony attorney of the year award.
Conversations on the campaign trail have helped her understand what works and what doesn’t in the justice system.
“It has reinforced for me that experience and knowledge of the law matter enormously, but so does how people are treated when they walk into a courtroom,” she said.
Tryfman said the heavy caseload of a public defender has prepared her for the bench’s rigors. She also cited her life experience as the daughter of immigrants, a single mother and a widow who was faced with the decision of whether to discontinue life support for her husband.
“Experiences like that teach you something about responsibility, compassion and judgment that cannot be learned from a law book,” she said.
Outside the office, Tryfman spent five years as president of the California Public Defenders Assn. and chaired the Rent Stabilization Commission for the city of Beverly Hills. She has served as vice chair of the L.A. County Bar Assn.’s Conference of California Bar Assns., where she helps develop state legislative proposals.
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David Ross, L.A. County deputy alternate public defender
Bar rating: Qualified
Ross has more than three decades in the legal field, but it was not his original calling. The Los Angeles native served as a legislative aide to the late U.S. Rep. Floyd Fithian (D-Ind.) on Capitol Hill, then worked as a television journalist and documentary producer in Washington, D.C., Tennessee and Kansas.
“I grew up wanting to be Peter Jennings, not Clarence Darrow,” he told The Times.
Ross passed the bar in 1994, joined the Riverside County public defender’s office the following year and began as a Los Angeles County deputy alternate public defender in 2000. He has litigated 113 jury trials, conducted more than 2,000 preliminary hearings and represented some 10,000 indigent clients. Assigned to the Torrance office since 2018, he also has worked in the Bellflower, Long Beach and Pomona branches, among others.
Ross, who lives in Long Beach, said he has spoken with more than 60 Democratic clubs, unions and other organizations on the campaign trail and frequently has heard a desire for qualified and independent judges who will listen to all sides.
A priority would be ensuring that even if a party loses, they walk out of the courthouse knowing the judge paid attention.
Ross said his mix of legal and life experience and his time as a journalist, in which he “listened to real people, gathered the facts and told objective stories,” provide a unique perspective.
Federal authorities this week teased a “separate batch” of 17,000 potential noncitizen voters in their federal court challenge to California’s handling of alleged voter fraud.
In response, Los Angeles County officials questioned the accuracy of the government’s earlier list of 20,000 alleged noncitizen voters — saying a preliminary review of a subset of those voters found evidence that nearly 40% were born in the U.S.
The claims came in filings shedding new light on the unprecedented Homeland Security inquiry into California’s voter rolls just weeks before the Nov. 3 election.
On Monday, Nicolas Bartell, a Homeland Security official, wrote in a sworn affidavit that — in addition to developing the disputed list of 20,000 “likely noncitizen” voters at the heart of the litigation — his agency has also developed a “separate batch of more than 17,000 voting records potentially tied to noncitizens.”
“Our review is ongoing as USCIS receives records on a rolling basis before the election date,” wrote Bartell, the associate director of the Fraud Detection and National Security Directorate at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
On Tuesday, Monica Flores, a top official in the L.A. County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk’s office, wrote in an affidavit that staff members had reviewed a sample of 200 registrations from the list of 20,000 voters whom the Justice Department alleged last week were “likely noncitizens.” The office found that more than half — 112 — had been canceled or were inactive, meaning no ballot was sent to those voters.
In instances where those voters’ birthplace was “meaningfully reported, 38.9% indicate that they were born in the United States, which is strong evidence of citizenship,” Flores wrote, while 71.2% showed no record of ever voting.
Flores wrote that similarly vetting the citizenship of thousands of additional voters before the election would not only be “administratively impossible and take key personnel away from their critical election duties,” but would also “risk disenfranchising voters who are validly registered.”
Also Tuesday, Rachel Evans, an attorney in the California secretary of state’s office, wrote in an affidavit that the office since August has received and been complying with grand jury subpoenas for the detailed voter records of about 300 people.
Evans’ acknowledgment came a day after federal prosecutors charged 28 people across California with federal election-related crimes, including fraudulent voter registration and making false statements in a naturalization application, and suggests federal prosecutors are pursuing criminal cases against hundreds more.
Taken together, the filings indicate that the legal battle between the Trump administration and California over alleged fraudulent voting is only just gearing up — with no end in sight before Nov. 3 — as is the political sparring over the issue.
First Assistant U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli, the lead federal prosecutor in Los Angeles, posted to X on Tuesday that Flores’ acknowledgment that her office could not possibly vet voters’ citizenship before the election was a “massive concession,” proving the federal government’s case.
Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office said that “any credible allegation of voter fraud should be taken seriously and investigated,” but that federal officials charging just 28 people in a state with 23 million voters showed they have no evidence of widespread fraud.
“Yes, non-citizen voter registration and voting does happen in isolated instances — in California and the rest of the country alike — but it is so rare that the Trump admin is parading around town about .0001% of California voters,” Newsom’s office wrote on X.
The broader case
On Monday, Justice Department lawyers filed a request for an emergency restraining order requiring state election officials to segregate any ballots from the 20,000 voters flagged on the initial Homeland Security list until their citizenship is proved. They argued the state is violating the law — and harming the federal government — by refusing to do so.
State attorneys argued Tuesday that the federal government has no authority over California elections and seeks to violate federal law precluding voter roll purges in the 90 days before an election.
State officials wrote that the Justice Department appeared to have “individualized evidence” of noncitizenship for the 28 people it had charged, and that nothing was preventing it from working through existing “statutory channels” to block those individuals’ ballots. But they argued that it does not have evidence to back its claims against all 20,000 voters whose ballots it is seeking to sequester.
Those contentions — and Bartell’s claim of a second list of 17,000 potential noncitizen voters — only add to an already heated debate about the scope of the inquiry and its legitimacy.
In July, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin alleged in a letter to California Secretary of State Shirley Weber that there “may be as many as 190,832 noncitizens registered to vote in California,” and demanded that the state work with federal authorities to investigate. The state asked that Homeland Security first provide more information, including about its methodology for identifying that figure.
Last week, acting Deputy Atty. Gen. Trent McCotter wrote follow-up letters to Weber and Dean Logan, head of the L.A. County registrar’s office, asserting that 20,000 “likely noncitizens” were on state rolls, and again demanding state cooperation within 48 hours to remove them. Weber balked, arguing that federal law precludes systematic roll purges within 90 days of an election to protect eligible voters.
Weber and other state officials also questioned the drop from 190,000 to 20,000, and the reliability of the federal government’s underlying data and methodology. “What happened to the 170,000? You just got those wrong?” California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta asked.
On Monday, McCotter said the 190,000 figure was “the ceiling,” inclusive of cases that federal authorities had high, medium and low confidence in, while the 20,000 figure was “the floor,” inclusive of only high confidence cases.
Potential flaws in the list have been a major point of contention among California officials, who have pointed to substantial inaccuracies in lists elsewhere, including in Nevada, where a state review found that the 185 voters whose citizenship was questioned by the Trump administration were all citizens.
Now, it appears the federal government’s disputed list of 20,000 voters won’t be the last in California.
How voters were identified
In court filings, federal officials described purchasing California voter registration information before USCIS and Homeland Security Investigations agents worked to identify any voters who are not citizens. They said that they did so in part by comparing the state data with “third party commercial data” sets and law enforcement data sets, and that they further vetted their list by culling dead people.
Essayli pointed to those descriptions to dispel arguments that federal authorities have not provided their methodology for identifying potential noncitizens on voter rolls. He said that the federal process was robust and trustworthy and that federal authorities had compiled “overwhelming evidence of tens of thousands of ineligible voters on the state’s rolls.”
Independent election experts saw it differently.
“They admitted to using some of the same tools amateur election conspiracy theorists use, like unidentified third party software, commercial lists, and public versions of [the state’s] voter roll,” Gowri Ramachandran, an election administration expert at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law. “These amateur data matching efforts don’t get any better merely because the Department of Justice relies on them.”
“If DOJ could prove many more cases, we would have heard about it,” Rick Hasen, director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project at UCLA School of Law, wrote in a blog post. “They’ve been on an aggressive hunt nationally for such fraud. It’s not surprising they’ve found little because it is a small problem.”
Former Los Angeles mayoral candidate Rick Caruso declined once again to endorse either incumbent Mayor Karen Bass or challenger Nithya Raman in the Nov. 3 runoff election, but expressed what he called “extreme concern” about Raman’s plans to remove Police Chief Jim McDonnell.
The billionaire developer lost to Bass in the 2022 election, and was a staunch critic of the mayor for her response to the 2025 Palisades fire. Even so, he appeared with the mayor at his upscale Palisades Village shopping center Tuesday to promote a new program to streamline city utility services.
While declining to endorse Bass, Caruso commended the mayor by saying “she’s done her work, and she’s worked with the team, and I compliment this.”
“In comparison, Councilwoman Raman has made statements that we should all ask for an explanation to,” Caruso said, citing her plans to replace McDonnell. “I do show extreme concern when a candidate is talking about firing a chief of police.”
Raman’s campaign didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
At last week’s televised mayoral debate, Raman said that if elected mayor she would replace McDonnell, saying the LAPD appeared to be protecting federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents during their operations in L.A. Raman didn’t give a clear timeline of when she would act.
Bass has publicly backed the chief she hired two years ago, and warned that the Police Department could be thrown into disarray if he is removed before the 2028 Olympic Games.
Caruso applauded Bass’s support for McDonnell at Tuesday’s event.
“I don’t think we need LAPD being a lab experiment for the DSA,” Caruso said, referring to the Democratic Socialists of America, which has endorsed Raman. “It’s going to take L.A. in the wrong direction, and we should all be concerned about the direction she wants to take LAPD.”
When pressed by reporters about a possible endorsement, Caruso said, “I can’t answer that tonight or today. I’ll let you know.”
Caruso also declined to make an endorsement at a groundbreaking he attended with the mayor last month for the new Palisades Recreation Center, calling both Bass and Raman “tough choices.” Bass also sidestepped questions from The Times at the September event about whether she’d welcome Caruso’s endorsement.
Caruso funneled more than $100 million of his own fortune into his 2022 mayoral campaign, outspending Bass 11 to 1. Bass defeated Caruso by nearly 10 percentage points. Caruso didn’t run for the 2026 race, despite many expecting him to challenge Bass again.
Caruso said Tuesday that he and Bass haven’t always agreed on policy, but came together to help Pacific Palisades in a time of crisis. Caruso has played a prominent role in helping rebuild Pacific Palisades and Altadena following the fires.
The 67-year-old developer is behind popular L.A. malls, including the Grove and the Americana at Brand. He also owns Palisades Village, which first opened in 2018 and closed down after the fires destroyed much of downtown. Palisades Village reopened on Aug. 15, after 19 months and more than $100 million in renovations, Caruso said.
“I know what I’ve seen in the last year and a half, and the help she’s leaned in and given to this community,” Caruso said of Bass. “So, we did get together because it has to transcend politics, and we have to do the right thing.”
Bass and Caruso both acknowledged their longstanding relationship, dating back to Bass’s days in Sacramento, she said. The pair have been in constant communication since the 2022 mayoral race and started directly collaborating immediately after the Palisades fire, she said.
“My love for the city transcends politics, and I’m going to stand behind people that are doing right for the city and doing right for the people of the city that need the help the most,” Caruso said. “That’s why I’m standing here today.”
Caruso joined Bass Tuesday to announce Power Ready LA— an effort that will streamline how the Department of Water and Power delivers utility services to commercial and residential projects.
The effort will result in lower upfront costs for eligible housing and commercial projects, Bass said. It builds on an executive directive the mayor signed in April, which aims to cut delays, introduce tech automation and speed up building permits for residential and commercial development.
The Tulare County elections office in the Central Valley was suddenly getting peppered with questions from baffled voters.
On the afternoon of Oct. 13, residents began calling and showing up in person at the registrar of voters’ office in Visalia, worried they would be accused of committing fraud by trying to vote twice.
That’s because, much to the surprise and chagrin of county elections staff, thousands of voters had accidentally been mailed duplicate ballots for the Nov. 3 midterm election.
In the agricultural city of Tulare, a place surrounded by walnut and almond orchards as far as the eye can see, 7,791 voters received extra ballots because of an error by the private printing vendor, said Michelle Baldwin, the county registrar of voters, who noted that safeguards were in place to keep the extra ballots from being counted.
The county’s longtime ballot printer, Porterville-based ProVote Solutions, “has accepted full responsibility for the mistake,” she said.
ProVote Solutions did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“It is unfortunate that it happened,” Baldwin said. “Of course, we would have preferred this didn’t happen, but it did, and we tried to get right on it and respond within 24 hours.”
It’s the kind of error that, in most election years, probably would be just a minor news story. County elections officials would be trusted with their explanation for the mistake, said David Becker, executive director of the Center for Election Innovation & Research and a former senior trial attorney overseeing voting enforcement for the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division.
But this midterm has been beset by a growing distrust in the integrity of mail-in ballots following President Trump’s attempt to restrict them before the November election — an effort that was blocked last month by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Trump, who remains fixated on his 2020 election loss, has repeatedly alleged — without providing evidence — that voting by mail leads to widespread cheating and fraud. He has focused specifically on California, where every registered voter automatically receives a ballot in the mail. Seven other states do the same.
On Monday, federal officials charged 28 people with election-related crimes in California, including fraudulent voter registration and making false statements in a naturalization application. Among them were several green card holders, some of whom said they had no recollection of registering to vote, as Trump administration officials accuse them of doing.
In this tense political climate, Becker said, even straightforward election mistakes are magnified on social media and become the subject of conspiracy theories, making the job of local elections officials much more difficult.
“Accidents do happen,” Becker said. “Our elections are incredibly decentralized, run by hundreds of thousands of human beings. As a result, we know there is going to be human error, but our elections are not designed to be perfect. That’s impossible. What they are designed to do is be resilient against human error.”
Becker said it is not unheard of for a voter to receive two ballots. Sometimes, a voter will call the local registrar to request a new one because theirs has not arrived by mail — only to have the original eventually show up. And in other states where voters are required to formally request a mail ballot, they may forget they have done so and show up to vote in person.
That’s why, he said, there are well-established checks to protect against double voting. When a voter casts a ballot, they are “marked immediately” in statewide systems that show they’ve done so, he said.
Ballot errors are rare but not unheard of.
On Monday, the Imperial County registrar of voters announced that a “mailing error” caused duplicate ballots to be sent to 160 voters who requested confidential voter status, meaning that, for safety reasons, their identity and contact information are kept off public voting rolls.
“The error occurred as the Registrar of Voters’ Office was updating its procedures to follow changes in California law,” the elections office said in a statement, adding that, on Jan. 1, elected officials and candidates for public office became eligible for confidential voter status, “requiring changes to how their ballots are processed and mailed.”
Tulare County is a mostly rural place that voted for Trump in the last three presidential elections. Portions of the city of Tulare — population 74,000 — are in the redistricted but perennially competitive 22nd Congressional District, where a close race between Rep. David Valadao (R-Hanford) and Democratic challenger Randy Villegas, a political science professor at College of the Sequoias in Visalia, could determine the balance of power in Congress.
Robert Jones, a strategist for the Valadao campaign, told The Times on Tuesday that the campaign had been in close communication with the registrar’s office and was not overly concerned.
“We have a lot of faith in the Tulare County registrar and elections office,” Jones said, “and we would imagine that, with the extra scrutiny, it will be diligent in making sure that only registered voters vote and that they vote only one time.”
Villegas’ campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Mark Martinez, a political science professor at Cal State Bakersfield, said conspiracy theories about the error in Tulare add to what is already a tense political climate in the Central Valley, where a recent surge in Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations has disrupted agricultural communities, sent families scrambling to find detained loved ones, and led to a drop in school attendance.
“People will walk away, stay away or avoid political events especially if you look like me — if you look brown or Latino,” Martinez said.
The duplicate-ballot error in Tulare last week quickly went viral in conservative social media circles, with claims that something nefarious was going on in the middle of a House battleground district. One post on X by right-wing media personality Eric Daugherty said, “Trump is right, this is the MESS mass mail-in voting creates!” and “Stop the cheat!” It was viewed more than 450,000 times on that platform, and screenshots of the post were widely shared on Facebook with additional commentary.
The Republican-leaning city of Tulare has just over 34,500 registered voters, according to the California secretary of state’s office. Not all of them are in Valadao’s district.
About 23% of voters in the city received duplicate ballots.
Countywide, about 3% of the 227,000 registered voters were affected.
Baldwin said that as soon as residents started reporting their duplicate ballots, elections staffers immediately contacted the vendor, which confirmed the evening of Oct. 13 that the batch of nearly 7,800 ballots had been accidentally reprinted and mailed.
The vendor, she said, quickly printed postcards explaining what happened and drove them more than three hours to a postal facility in Sacramento so they would be promptly processed and received by voters by the end of the week.
The mailer, in English and Spanish, instructs those who got two ballots to “securely destroy the duplicate ballot” instead of returning it.
Baldwin said that if anybody submits two ballots, “it will be flagged” by safeguards already in place.
The barcode on each voter’s mail return envelope is connected to his or her voter record, she said. Before a mailed ballot is accepted for counting, elections staff scan the barcode, record that the ballot has been received, compare the envelope signature with the signature on a person’s voter record, and check to see if the person has already voted.
“Your vote stays private,” Tulare County elections staff wrote in a Facebook post explaining safeguards against voting more than once. “After verification, your ballot is separated from the return envelope before counting. The envelope barcode tracks your ballot’s return, not your voting choices.”
In the comments section, one resident was frustrated but circumspect.
“I am livid this happened THIS YEAR OF ALL YEARS!!” the resident wrote. “And also, glad there are protections in place in case any fools try to use both. Good grief!!”
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is deferring an additional $1.2 billion in Medicaid reimbursements to California, citing concerns about potential fraud in a state program that helps older adults and people with disabilities with everyday tasks.
Dr. Mehmet Oz, the administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said federal officials took action after they grew concerned about the rapid expansion of California’s personal care services program in recent years. State officials were notified of the decision Tuesday, he said.
“California has been growing that program 24% in the last three years. That is twice the rate of every other state average in the country,” Oz said. “Impossible for us to understand how that could be so we are taking major action in California.”
Oz did not provide any evidence of fraud but suggested the state was paying people too much taxpayer money to help with services that could be offered for free, like “paying somebody to carry groceries upstairs for your mom.”
“Many of you would carry groceries upstairs for your mom for free, but in California, they will pay you a lot of money for it,” he said.
The move is the latest in a series of efforts by the administration to withhold federal money from California. In May, the administration held back $1.3 billion in Medicaid reimbursements to the state over concerns about “fraudsters” in the state’s hospice and in-home care programs. The actions have been part of a broad effort by the administration to rein in fraud in federal healthcare benefits programs, particularly in Democrat-led states.
Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. But the office has been critical of the administration’s past efforts.
In May, Newsom’s office called the action to withhold funds for in-home care programs a “sick” and politically motivated attack on services that are meant to “keep seniors and people with disabilities OUT of nursing homes.”
Those services usually cover assistants who help people with daily tasks such as bathing, laundry or cooking. They also provide needed care such as injections under the direction of a medical professional. A 2020 report by the California state auditor found that nearly three-quarters of In-home Supportive Services caregivers assist a family member.
Newsom’s office, however, has argued that the program saves taxpayers money, saying IHSS care costs $30,000 a year, while nursing home care costs $137,000 a year.
California’s hospice industry has had problems in the past and authorities have tried to crack down on the issue. A Times investigation in 2020 found that providers were billing Medicare for hospice services and equipment for patients who were not actually dying while the industry boomed.
The Trump administration, led by Vice President JD Vance, has tried to focus attention on the issue of waste, fraud and abuse as a centerpiece policy platform to bring down healthcare costs.
On Tuesday, Trump and Vance announced a $25-million whistleblower program designed to pay out cash to people who tip off the federal government about fraudsters. The program will offer a 1% commission for tips that lead to a successful conviction. Trump said he would be the sole arbitrator of who gets to keep the money.
“I’ll determine whether or not the person is deserving, and I will be very generous believe me. We are not looking to save on that,” Trump said. “I promise you I will be fair.”
Trump said the money will be handed out “expeditiously and fairly.”
“I promise there is nothing in this for me,” he said.
The White House referred comment about the decision to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. The federal agency did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Vice President JD Vance declined Monday to endorse Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for reelection a day after President Trump endorsed the embattled Israeli leader.
“The president has the most influential endorsement in American or international political history,” Vance said during an interview with journalist Mark Halperin.
“I endorse American candidates, and that’s where I’m focused on the midterms,” Vance said, while traveling Monday to campaign for Republican Senate nominee Michael Whatley of North Carolina. “So, I’m not getting involved in Israeli elections.”
Vance has campaigned for a foreign leader — then-Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, last spring before the right-wing leader’s party lost that country’s parliamentary election.
Vance’s deference to Trump on Netanyahu comes at an extraordinarily sensitive time for Jewish Americans and the U.S. alliance with Israel. Concerns about antisemitism have surged across the political spectrum ahead of the midterm elections.
Republicans have been eager to portray Democrats, notably Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed, as hostile toward Jews and Israel, while they deal with their own internal schisms.
Vance has faced skepticism from Jewish Republicans about his commitment to Jewish Americans and the U.S. alliance with Israel.
Last month, Vance spoke privately in Las Vegas to the Republican Jewish Coalition, a leading GOP group committed to advocating for a strong U.S. relationship with Israel and against antisemitism.
Vance left a positive impression on his RJC audience while stopping short of disavowing influential conservative podcast host Tucker Carlson.
Vance has faced general questions about his association with Carlson, a former Fox News host who faced backlash last year for interviewing antisemite Nick Fuentes on his podcast.
In June, Vance sharply criticized members of Israel’s government for opposing Trump’s efforts to resolve the war with Iran.
In July, Vance said elements of the Israeli government had tried to influence American sentiment to derail negotiations.
“There are some people within their system that we know beyond a shadow of a doubt are manipulating and trying to change American public opinion to keep the war going on indefinitely,” Vance said during an appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast.
WASHINGTON — Senate Democrats’ top campaign spending group is wading into Mississippi’s U.S. Senate race for the first time this year, an aggressive move in a deep-red state that signals a party on the offensive as Republicans look to protect a slim majority.
The Senate Majority PAC, aligned with Democratic Senate Leader Chuck Schumer of New York, will spend $1.2 million on a new television advertisement to boost Scott Colom, a district attorney, in his campaign against Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith. The ad, first disclosed to the Associated Press, is set to start Wednesday and run through Election Day.
“Senate Majority PAC has been watching this race closely, and it is clear Colom is running a competitive race that has put Hyde-Smith on her heels,” group spokesperson Lauren French said in a statement.
With just two weeks to go in the race, it’s unclear what impact the ad will have in a matchup that’s been set since Colom won a March primary. Still, it’s a substantial investment in a race that’s seen only about $8 million in total spending, with Colom outspending Hyde-Smith nearly $4.6 million to $3.2 million, according to AdImpact.
Hyde-Smith, first appointed and then elected in 2018, is running for reelection in a state Republicans have long dominated. In the 2024 presidential race, Republican Donald Trump won Mississippi by nearly 23 percentage points over Democrat Kamala Harris, and a Democrat hasn’t won a Senate race in the state since 1982.
However, some Democrats believe Hyde-Smith is vulnerable, and she underperformed Trump by 6 percentage points in 2020, the year he lost his White House reelection bid to Democrat Joe Biden.
The television ad touts Colom’s time as district attorney, while labeling Hyde-Smith a “do-nothing” senator.
“A decade in power, Hyde-Smith hasn’t passed one piece of legislation, but she did vote to kick people off Medicaid,” a narrator says in the ad, which will run on television stations statewide alongside a digital campaign.
Hyde-Smith’s campaign and the National Republican Senatorial Committee did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Colom has raised Democratic hopes in a year when electoral winds are at their backs. Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock was the latest high-profile Democrat to campaign with Colom last week, and Harris, who was Biden’s vice president, is set to rally with Colom on Thursday.
Republicans currently hold a 53-47 majority in the Senate and were expected to face a friendlier map this year with fewer seats to defend. But high costs and gas prices amid an unpopular war in Iran under a Republican president have made Democrats optimistic, with the Senate Majority PAC spending its final weeks investing in conservative territory. It’s already announced spending in Kansas, where megachurch pastor and Democratic nominee Adam Hamilton is trying to unseat Republican Sen. Roger Marshall.
Colom would be his state’s first Black senator since Reconstruction, the 12-year period after the U.S. Civil War when the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments were adopted.
Some Democrats have criticized national groups for not spending more in Southern states like Mississippi.
“I worry, to be very honest, that Democrats are missing a real opportunity to invest in a serious and sustained way in the South,” Warnock said Sunday on NBC’s ”Meet the Press.”
Come Election Day, a Quaker leader will travel from the nation’s capital to her home state of Ohio. A Christian minister and a Jewish rabbi will stand vigil outside a polling place in Arizona. A Buddhist nun will offer support to voters in Wisconsin.
In battleground states across the country, these faith leaders and hundreds of their colleagues will assume the role of poll chaplains for one day. They will deploy to nine states — Arizona, Michigan, Georgia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Virginia and Texas — where contentious races are expected to raise political tensions.
Faiths United in Saving Democracy, a nonpartisan coalition of interfaith and secular partners, is helping to train and certify this volunteer force of clergy members and lay peacekeepers in time for the Nov. 3 elections.
They’ll wear identifying hats and vests, and stay outside the poll centers, with the goal of maintaining a calm, reassuring presence to encourage more voters to exercise their rights without fear or hesitation, said co-founder Barbara Williams-Skinner. As of Oct. 19, they’ve recruited 1,235 poll chaplains and peacekeepers, she said.
A non-partisan effort to take the fear out of voting
While the idea of poll chaplains has been around for several years, Williams-Skinner said “2026 is going to be different” because there is widespread concern that the presence of federal immigration agents could create a chilling effect.
“The fear is real,” she says, worrying that it could deter eligible voters in mixed-immigration-status families and communities of color. Department of Homeland Security officials have consistently said they have no plans to send immigration agents to the polls, although DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin said they could show up for a specific reason, such as arresting someone if they have a warrant.
The coalition has offered training online and in person. Participants get information about immigrant rights, de-escalation techniques and phone numbers to call in tight situations, Williams-Skinner said.
The initiative, strongly rooted in the Black church, has expanded to include diverse faiths as well as non-religious people, she said.
“This is a movement built by unusual coalitions,” she said. “You have white, Mainline Protestants, Quakers, traditional Baptists, Black church leaders, imams, rabbis — all kinds of people who probably would not work together or haven’t worked together in the past.”
While most participating groups are moderate or progressive, Williams-Skinner says it is a strictly nonpartisan initiative.
“We don’t get hung up on who’s moderate or who’s conservative. People just need to be able to vote, unafraid,” she said.
Concerns about voter intimidation motivate chaplains
A Pew survey following the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk in September 2025 showed 85% of Americans, across political lines, believe political violence is on the rise.
Polling places have been targeted by protesters in past elections. In 2022, members of a group claiming to monitor ballot drop boxes in Arizona were ordered to stay at least 250 feet away after voters complained about intimidation. In 2020, following Election Day, a crowd stormed a vote-counting center in Detroit, many incited by online conspiracy theories about election fraud.
As the mob banged on the center’s doors and windows, the Rev. Steve Bland was among several faith leaders who put their bodies between the building and the crowd. Bland, who leads Detroit’s Liberty Temple Baptist Church, is continuing that work as a poll chaplain.
The pastor says de-escalation often involves “using the right words to calm a situation” or giving intimidated voters the moral support and reassurance that they are safe to exercise their civic right. Bland said he did precisely that for an elderly, Black woman during a prior election.
“She left and came back with two of her grandsons who also voted,” he said. “Without that intervention, three people wouldn’t have voted that day.”
The Rev. Bankole Akinbinu, senior pastor of Baptist Grove Church in Raleigh, North Carolina, said training in conflict resolution and de-escalation has given him the confidence to serve as a poll chaplain. A millennial, he has sought to engage younger people by recruiting peacekeepers from college campuses.
His motivation comes from seeing voter suppression attempts in North Carolina and other states.
“I look at our forefathers and the struggle they had to endure to afford us the privilege of voting,” Akinbinu said. “I look at my children and the nation I want to hand them.”
Steven Huefner, deputy director of the Election Law Program at The Ohio State University, says poll chaplains might be able to calm the frayed nerves of a voting public that is constantly exposed to divisive rhetoric and news about political violence. While political violence has increased, he says, it’s not widespread.
“Election workers are well-trained and can run elections quite well,” he said.
Faith leaders have historically played the role of peacekeepers, said Wendy Cadge, professor of sociology at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania and founder of the think tank Chaplaincy Innovation Lab.
And now chaplaincy — beyond traditional worship spaces — is attracting more clergy.
“People are feeling called to chaplaincy because they want to be with people in difficult times,” Cadge said. “They don’t want to worry about what color the carpet is in the church or if their youth programs are attracting enough people. It’s a different kind of work.”
Chaplains find inspiration in theology
Clergy deploying on Election Day say they are heeding a strong, faith-driven calling to serve as poll chaplains.
In Arizona, Rev. Katie Sexton, executive director of Arizona Faith Network, embraces the initiative as a way to reach across the political divide.
“The ballot box is a place where we’re all seen as equal,” she said, adding that it reflects the Christian belief that all humans are created in the image of God. “There is such power in that.”
On Oct. 6, Sexton and several others participated in a training session — one of the last before the midterms — at Temple Chai, a Reform synagogue in Scottsdale.
Rabbi Emily Segal, who leads the congregation, will be a poll chaplain for the first time next month. The work, she says, aligns with what the Torah and Talmud teach about a healthy and just society.
Throughout American history, interfaith coalitions have created powerful change and served as sources of inspiration, Segal said. “Any time we can come together with faith partners around our shared values for societal good is a real source of holiness for our community.”
Bridget Moix, a Quaker leader, will travel to her native Ohio on Election Day.
“In our faith tradition, we think about voting as a sacred act we want to protect,” she said.
For Reirin Gumbel, resident teacher at the Milwaukee Zen Center, it’ll be a third time, come November.
“As Buddhists, the Metta Sutra we chant says every being has the same rights, and that we should have compassion toward all,” she said.
Imam Mohammed Ali Elahi, spiritual leader of the Islamic House of Wisdom in Dearborn Heights, Michigan, is considering becoming a poll chaplain for the first time. In a highly contentious campaign in Elahi’s state, Abdul El-Sayed is the first Muslim Democratic candidate to run for a U.S. Senate seat.
The imam said he is tired of anti-Muslim vitriol that has surfaced ahead of the midterms.
“As interfaith clergy, we stand for principles not personalities,” he said. “The Quran tells us to stand for what’s right — truth, justice, peace, human rights and the dignity of human beings, whoever they may be.”
WASHINGTON — President Trump is hoping that $5,000 checks can juice Republican turnout in November’s midterm elections — but even some of his devoted fans are doubting that government payouts would arrive.
“I mean, I guess it’s good for some people. I really don’t care,” said Jamie Alvarez, who attended Trump’s recent Alaska rally in a red, white and blue outfit. “I don’t feel like your vote should be bought. I feel like you should vote for who you feel is going to do the best job.”
Joseph Eatherton was attending that same rally and said he was “not sure if it’s necessary.” When asked whether Trump could deliver on the promised money, he said, “I don’t know, and I hate being an armchair quarterback.”
The offering of government checks has become a go-to tactic for Trump when he faces a political jam. He’s previously endorsed $2,000 in dividends from tariff revenues and large refunds from spending cuts achieved by the Department of Government Efficiency, neither of which materialized. The latest example could reveal how much voters still trust Trump as they decide control of Congress in the midterm elections on Nov. 3.
Staunch supporters such as Lucy Martinez, the president of a Republican women’s club who attended a recent Trump rally in Texas, said there’s no doubt in their minds.
“I think that I will get the $5,000,” she said. Out of all the presidents, Trump is someone “who kept his promises to his people and all the United States.”
Trump has dished out payments as elections approach
However, many voters are already embittered by his economic leadership. His critics see a president who failed to tame inflation and keep America out of overseas conflicts, and whose agenda has fueled higher prices as the war with Iran appears to be at a stalemate.
“The trust on this is already gone for most people,” said Amy Frederiksen, a former Republican Minnesota Senate majority leader who now runs a public affairs firm.
“I just don’t see the energy around that line,” she added. “Most people know that’s a blatant over-the-top promise like several he’s made in the last couple of years, and they’re not buying it.”
As the midterms approach, Trump has also pledged a $90 payment to 20 million Medicare enrollees and $500 “rebates” for people the administration says were overcharged for their Obamacare plans. He has automatically enrolled every U.S. child in “Trump accounts” to invest in stocks.
The $5,000 payouts would only occur, Trump says, if Republicans keep their majorities in the House and Senate. Trump acknowledges that the cost would exceed $1 trillion, but it’s not clear that the White House is seriously engaging with the proposal’s ramifications, from the increased deficit to the likely boost to inflation.
The White House said the payments are possible because of Trump’s trade deals, investment commitments by foreign countries, government stakes in private companies and deals for oil and minerals.
The administration’s position is that the payments will help people recover from the inflation that began in 2021 under then-President Joe Biden, though Republicans, at the time, attributed that inflation to excessive government checks tied to pandemic relief.
When The Associated Press asked several weeks ago if the administration was modeling the economic impact from the checks, Christopher Phelan, chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, said he would “refrain” from answering.
Roughly half of registered voters say Donald Trump does not keep his promises to Americans, according to an AP-NORC poll from September. About 3 in 10 say Trump tries to keep his promises but is unable to, while only about 2 in 10 say he keeps his promises.
Republican voters are more accommodating. About half say Trump tries to keep his promises but is unable to, and about 4 in 10 say he keeps his promises.
Trump is talking about the payments as a sure thing.
“If the Republicans win, you’ll each have $5,000 in your pocket and economic success for our country like we have never seen before,” he said at a Saturday rally in Kentucky. “And remember, ’cause they like to say, ‘Oh, well, maybe he won’t do that.’ Uh, I always do it.”
Campaign spending tracked by AdImpact suggests that Republicans are not running advertisements either on television or online about the promise. The few advertisements that do exist are from pro-Democratic groups such as Rolling Sea Action Fund that conclude with the voiceover, “Come on, do you really think he’s sending you a check? Yeah, right, we won’t get fooled again.”
At a Friday rally in Georgia, Trump noted that he had previously delivered a $1,776 “Trump dividend” to troops in the military. But those payments came from a congressionally approved housing supplement.
Trump claims the nation could not afford the payments if Democrats hold a chamber in Congress because the nation would be “flat broke.” But he said that one caveat is that the money could only be spent in the U.S., rather than in China, Japan or France. He joked that people should spend the check at his luxury club in Palm Beach, Florida.
“Let’s have lunch at Mar-a-Lago, where for $5,000, you’ll get one hamburger and a small dessert,” he told the crowd in Georgia.
Some in the crowd took Trump at his word that he would fight to get them the money. But they added the caveat that if he didn’t come through, it would not be his fault.
“I could use $5,000,” said Mike Boatman, a 58-year-old from Evansville, Indiana, who travels the country attending the president’s rallies. “I mean, he’s done everything he’s said he’s going to do.”
Boak, Bohrer and Barrow write for the Associated Press. Bohrer reported from Wasilla, Alaska, and Barrow reported from Dalton, Georgia. AP reporters Aaron Kessler and Linley Sanders in Washington and Lekan Oyekanmi in San Antonio, Texas, contributed to this report.
In what may be one of the most comical self-owns in recent politics, the esteemed attorneys of the U.S. Department of Justice announced Monday that despite the extravagant and terrifying misuse of their investigative power under the Trump administration, they have so far been able to identify only 28 people in all of California who may have voted illegally.
“The announcement today by the United States DOJ makes the point that there is no widespread voter fraud,” California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta said after the news conference announcing the results of “Operation Protect the Vote.”
Twenty-eight people out of about 23 million registered voters in the state — and not all of them even tried to vote, according to the feds. That’s about 1 in 820,000 folks allegedly registering or voting illegally, a rate that roughly matches how often people in the United States get struck by lightning in a given year.
So much for Trump’s endless claims that there is a vast, organized conspiracy between Democrats and undocumented people to have them vote in large numbers to steal elections. I’ll point out here that none of those charged Monday have been accused of colluding with one another or with Democratic overlords.
All the power of the government — investigative, technological, legal — has been thrown at finding these mysterious, diabolically clever ballot baddies. And now, thanks to Bill Essayli, first assistant U.S. attorney for the Central District of California, and his colleagues across this great state, we now know that all 28 of them will be held accountable, if the government can prove wrongdoing. And let’s be clear — people who vote illegally should be held accountable.
But wait, there’s more, because this election-stealing plot by immigrants certainly doesn’t stop at the state line. Seamus Hughes of Court Watch, an excellent site that tracks federal litigation, reported Monday that since the start of this administration, 169 people have been charged federally with illegally registering or voting.
That number includes the new California cases, so it means an additional 141 potentially illegal voters have been charged across the U.S. — all told about 1 in 1.25 million registered voters being accused of illegally registering or voting, making this crime slightly less likely than guessing a six-digit pin code on the first try.
There. Is. No. Election. Stealing.
But that’s where the funny part ends, because this attack on California elections is serious and just getting started.
The federal government, you’ve probably read, is suing California, claiming it gave the state a janky thumb drive with 20,000 names of registered voters that it sort of strongly suspects maybe aren’t legal voters. Important note here: The government has been very careful not to claim that these people voted illegally, just that it might be so based on questionable data, which I’ll get to in a minute.
The feds gave the state a silly 48-hour deadline to agree to change constitutional law, dump common sense and sequester these 20,000 ballots, if they were even returned, to double-check they were cast by valid voters.
When California rightfully refused — because elections are run by states, not the federal government — the federal government sued on the thinnest of legal grounds. It basically claimed that voting illegally is illegal, and if California doesn’t do exactly what Trump wants, it could be violating the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution by impeding the feds from enforcing the crime of voter fraud.
First Assistant U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli speaks at a news conference Monday at which officials announced that 28 people in California had been charged with voter fraud.
(David Butow / For The Times)
Which is basically arguing that if the state government fails to stop voter fraud using the flawed methods Trump likes, then the state is somehow stopping federal authorities from prosecuting voter fraud themselves. But didn’t they just enforce it with 28 cases?
Get ready, because “state-facilitated voter fraud,” is a new right-wing thing.
California is “being complicit in non-citizens voting in our elections, and as they were warned last week, not only is it a civil violation, but they could also face criminal consequences,” Essayli said, which if it happened would give Trumped-up charges a whole new meaning.
Essayli said state officials are not being “good faith actors,” but I’ll argue that shoe is on the other foot. The list of 20,000 alleged, suspected, maybe-maybe-not illegal voters was likely drawn from the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) program, created by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, if you can remember that unfortunate relic.
It sought to draw data from more than a dozen government databases that were not only not compatible with such information sharing, but which had been kept separate until now for privacy reasons. Americans in general did not want the government collecting unified, know-all records of every citizen.
Luckily for us, I guess, the SAVE system can’t actually create reliable, unified records. It confuses people, convolutes them, merges records of people with similar names, and in general has been deemed unreliable by data experts.
In September, the good folks at the UCLA Voting Rights Project joined with the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights to sue the federal government over its use of that system to target naturalized citizens for removal from voter rolls. Turns out, the government appears to be targeting immigrants who are now citizens with these voter fraud accusations.
As I wrote about a few weeks ago, naturalized citizens make up about 1 in 10 eligible voters, and nearly a quarter of them live in California. But they also live in swing states such as Michigan, where Democrat Abdul El-Sayed may draw such voters, and in other places such as Georgia and Nevada where races might be decided by only a few votes.
These arrests and lawsuits while voting is already underway in the midterms are a not-subtle form of voter suppression. Imagine being a naturalized citizen in the Central Valley, where ICE is driving rampant fear and where Republican Rep. David Valadao is running against Democrat Randy Villegas in California’s 22nd Congressional District — one of the nation’s most closely contested races.
Would you consider sitting this election out just in case your ballot draws the frightening eye of the federal government? Even knowing that your vote is legal, what if you lived in a mixed-status household? Would it be worth risking voting if it meant a knock at the door from immigration checking on your status, and maybe finding that family member who lacks it?
Why take the risk?
“Basically, what they’re doing now is just completely harassing and intimidating naturalized citizens who are legally eligible to vote through these actions,” said Matt Barreto, co-founder of the Voting Rights Project.
And if the vote isn’t suppressed enough to give Trump the results he wants, these prosecutions and lawsuits feed the beast of conspiracy, giving Trump fodder to claim the results are fake, the election stolen.
And round and round we go, reckoning with Trump’s claims that lightning is striking everyone, everywhere, all at once, because the vote didn’t go his way.
