POLITICS

MINNEAPOLIS — A Minnesota activist who was charged for her role in an anti-immigration enforcement protest at a church released her own video of her arrest after the White House posted a manipulated image online.

The White House on Thursday posted a picture on its X page of civil rights attorney Nekima Levy Armstrong appearing to be crying with her hands behind her back as she is escorted by a person wearing a badge whose image is blurred. The photo was captioned in all caps: “Arrested far-left agitator Nekima Levy Armstrong for orchestrating church riots in Minnesota.”

A photo posted by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s account showed the same image with Levy Armstrong wearing a neutral expression.

Levy Armstrong, who was arrested with at least two others Thursday for an anti-Immigration and Customs Enforcement protest that disrupted a service at a church where an ICE official serves as a pastor, released her own video. Levy Armstrong and Chauntyll Allen, a St. Paul school board member who was also arrested in connection with the protest, were both released Friday, according to a post by Levy Armstrong’s organization, the Racial Justice Network. Their attorneys declined to comment.

The video shot by Levy Armstrong’s husband, Marques Armstrong, shows several federal agents approaching to arrest her.

“I’m asking you to please treat me with dignity and respect,” she said to the agents.

“We have to put you in handcuffs,” one agent said, while another held up a phone and appeared to record a video.

“Why are you recording?” Levy Armstrong asked. “I would ask that you not record.”

“It’s not going to be on Twitter,” the agent filming said. “It’s not going to be on anything like that.”

“We don’t want to create a false narrative,” the agent said.

At no point in the more than seven-minute video — which shows Levy Armstrong being handcuffed and led into a government vehicle — did Levy Armstrong appear to cry. Instead, she talked with agents about her arrest.

“You know that this is a significant abuse of power,” she said. “Because I refuse to be silent in the face of brutality from ICE.”

“I’m not in here to get in a political debate,” the agent filming said.

In an audio message that Levy Armstrong’s spokesperson shared with the Associated Press, Levy Armstrong said the video of her arrest exposes that the Trump administration had used AI to manipulate images of her arrest.

“We are being politically persecuted for speaking out against authoritarianism, fascism and the tyranny of the Trump administration,” said Levy Armstrong, who recorded the message Friday morning during a call with her husband from jail.

The Department of Homeland Security didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Brook and Raza write for the Associated Press. AP reporters Giovanna Dell’Orto in Minneapolis and Tiffany Stanley in Washington contributed to this report.

It’s tax season.

Not just the time when you pay your personal taxes, but also when political groups, labor unions and even elected officials propose new taxes — either for specific programs or to keep the overall budget in the black.

On Tuesday, City Administrative Officer Matt Szabo presented the City Council’s budget committee with several ideas for bringing in more money — some potentially for the June 2 ballot. He offered a half-cent sales tax hike and an increase in the tax on short-term vacation rentals. He proposed a higher tax on parking and a new levy on unlicensed marijuana dispensaries.

Jon Coupal, president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, said Los Angeles needs to rein in its spending before bombarding voters with even more financial requests.

“Is there going to be tax or ballot fatigue? I think there very well could be,” Coupal added.

It’s a “crowded ballot,” Szabo admitted while presenting his options to the committee.

“We probably have to do a study about the number of measures we put on and how voters might respond to multiple measures,” said Melissa Krantz, who works for the city administrative officer, during the meeting.

Polls show Southern California voters may be souring on additional taxes.

Just outside the city of L.A., in Long Beach, a city-commissioned poll showed that 80% of residents said it was not the right time to raise taxes, even for city services.

Despite those hurdles, Szabo said, the city needs to consider new revenue streams for the general fund so that it can balance its budget year after year not only by making cuts.

“Traditional revenue sources that have supported the operating budget are eroding and/or being outpaced by expenditure obligations,” Szabo wrote in his proposal to the council. “The City must consider permanent options, and specifically new taxes, to increase the City’s General Fund Revenue.”

But the potentially council-backed tax proposals are not the only taxes in town.

There’s also the proposal from the firefighters union for a half-cent sales tax that would raise revenue specifically for the fire department. There’s a similar proposal for a sales tax that would fund city parks. Then there’s a countywide sales tax proposal to fund health care.

Separately, voters in November may have to consider an “Overpaid CEO Tax” in Los Angeles that the hotel workers union Unite Here Local 11 is gathering signatures for. Meanwhile, there’s the potential for a statewide, one-time tax on the wealth of California billionaires.

With city voters already likely to consider all these options on their November ballots, Szabo told the council his options could get on the June ballot, giving them a better chance to pass.

The committee quickly disposed of the half-cent increase to the city’s sales tax as an option. The funds from the increase, which would have totaled more than $300 million per year, would have gone directly into the city’s general fund, Szabo said.

But there is limited space for an increased sales tax in the city. The city’s sales tax is currently at 9.75%, lower than some neighboring cities. The maximum percentage the city can grow to is 10.75%, meaning Los Angeles still has 1% it can potentially increase the sales tax.

But the sales tax hike for the overall city budget could have ended up competing with the firefighter union half-cent sales tax increase proposal, which already has support from some councilmembers.

“The thing I hear most in my district is affordability and no new taxes,” said Katy Yaroslavsky, the chair of the Budget and Finance Committee.

Though Yaroslavsky said she liked the idea of new revenue for the general fund, she recommended the city not move forward with the sales tax recommendation.

Yaroslavsky and the committee moved forward with the three other proposals from the city administrative officer, which, together, could bring in more than $200 million per year through 2028. Those proposals will go before the full city council next week.

Szabo also encouraged the committee to study additional taxes on ride shares, meal deliveries, major event tickets and vacant properties — possibly for the November ballot.

The proposals that did move forward Tuesday also face pushback from business groups.

Parking lot owners are opposing the potential ballot measure to increase the parking occupancy tax by 50% — from 10% to 15%. The tax is imposed on anyone who uses a parking lot in the city.

The Los Angeles Parking Association said the measure would hurt consumers and the city’s economy. The group called on the city to collect the current tax from parking lot scofflaws.

The hotel and short-term rental industry, meanwhile, opposed the potential 4% increase in the transient occupancy tax that Szabo put forward.

“This proposal creates a cost spiral. As fees stack up, Los Angeles risks becoming the most expensive option in a competitive market,” wrote Laura Lee Blake, the president and CEO of the Asian American Hotel Owners Association, in a letter to the council.

State of play

— HIGHER HIRES: On Wednesday, the council finally approved the hiring of up to 410 officers after hearing back from the city administrative officer that the money used to fund the positions this year will come from the LAPD’s budget.

The hiring of the officers, which will bring the police force to around 8,555 by the end of the fiscal year, delivers a modest victory to Bass, who promised she would find the money for additional police hires when she signed the budget in June.

— FIRE PR: The Los Angeles Fire Department Foundation paid for a celebrity public relations firm that has represented Reese Witherspoon and Charlize Theron to help LAFD leaders shape their messaging after the Palisades fire. Fire Chief Jaime Moore said he met with the Lede Company, but did not know exactly what work it had done for the department.

— BEUTNER DEATH: The daughter of Los Angeles mayoral candidate Austin Beutner died earlier this month, and authorities have not yet determined the cause. Emily Beutner, 22, died at a hospital on Jan. 6, according to information posted on the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner’s website. “My family has experienced the unimaginable loss of our beloved daughter. We ask for privacy and your prayers at this time,” Beutner said Wednesday in a statement to The Times.

— 25% OFF 405: Metro’s board of directors approved an underground heavy-rail option for the Sepulveda Transit Corridor project on Thursday, with some saying the project could take a quarter of the commuters off the 405 Freeway. The rail corridor would connect the Westside and the San Fernando Valley.

— GOV v. PRES: Gov. Gavin Newsom accused the Trump administration of authoritarianism, saying his appearance at a World Economic Forum event was canceled to suppress his dissent on the global stage. “Is it surprising the Trump administration didn’t like my commentary and wanted to make sure that I was not allowed to speak? No,” said Newsom, who is weighing a 2028 presidential run. “It’s consistent with this administration and their authoritarian tendencies.”

— SEX ABUSE SCANDAL: The State Bar of California is investigating Downtown LA Law Group, which represents thousands of victims in the country’s largest sex abuse settlement. The investigation follows reporting by The Times on allegations that some of the firm’s plaintiffs were paid to sue, including some who said they made up their claims.

QUICK HITS

• Where is Inside Safe? The mayor’s signature program housed more than 30 Angelenos throughout the city this week, visiting Hollywood, South Los Angeles and the San Fernando Valley, according to the Mayor’s Office.
• On the docket next week: The City Council on Tuesday will take up a motion from Councilmember Nithya Raman that could change Measure ULA in an effort to spur housing production.

Stay in touch

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

WASHINGTON — President Trump on Saturday threatened to impose a 100% tariff on goods imported from Canada if America’s northern neighbor went ahead with its China trade deal.

Trump said in a social media post that if Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney “thinks he is going to make Canada a ‘Drop Off Port’ for China to send goods and products into the United States, he is sorely mistaken.”

While Trump has waged a trade war over the last year, Canada this month negotiated a deal to lower tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles in return for lower import taxes on Canadian farm products.

Trump initially had said that agreement was what Carney “should be doing and it’s a good thing for him to sign a trade deal.”

Carney’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Trump’s threat came amid an escalating war of words with Carney as the Republican president’s push to acquire Greenland strained the NATO alliance. Trump had commented while in Davos, Switzerland, this week that “Canada lives because of the United States.” Carney shot back that his nation can be an example that the world does not have to bend toward autocratic tendencies.

Trump later revoked his invitation to Carney to join the president’s “Board of Peace” that he is forming to try to resolve conflicts in the Gaza Strip and elsewhere.

Trump’s threat to take over Greenland — a semiautonomous territory of NATO ally Denmark — has come after he has repeatedly needled Canada over its sovereignty and suggested it also be absorbed the United States as a “51st state.”

He resumed that this week, posting an altered image on social media showing a map of the United States that included Canada, Venezuela, Greenland and Cuba as part of its territory.

In his message Saturday, Trump continued his provocations by calling Canada’s leader “Governor Carney.” Trump had used the same nickname for Carney’s predecessor, Justin Trudeau, and his use of it toward Carney was the latest mark of their soured relationship.

Carney has emerged as a leader of a movement for countries to find ways to link up and counter U.S. foreign policy under Trump. Speaking in Davos before Trump, Carney said, “Middle powers must act together because if you are not at the table, you are on the menu.”

Trump, in his Truth Social post Saturday, also said that “China will eat Canada alive, completely devour it, including the destruction of their businesses, social fabric, and general way of life.”

Carney has not yet reached a deal with Trump to reduce some of the tariffs that he has imposed on key sectors of the Canadian economy. But Canada has been protected by the heaviest impact of Trump’s tariffs by the Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement. That trade agreement, which Trump signed in his first term, is up for a review this year.

In the fall, the Canadian province of Ontario aired an anti-tariff ad in the U.S. that prompted Trump to end trade talks with Canada. The television ad used the words of former President Reagan to criticize U.S. tariffs. Trump pledged to increase tariffs on imports of Canadian goods by an extra 10%. He did not follow through.

As for China, Canada had initially mirrored the United States by putting a 100% tariff on electric vehicles from Beijing and a 25% tariff on steel and aluminum. China had responded by imposing 100% import taxes on Canadian canola oil and meal and 25% on pork and seafood.

But as Trump has pursued pressure tactics, Canada’s foreign policy has been less aligned with the U.S., creating an opening for an improved relationship with China. Carney made the tariff announcement this month during a visit to Beijing.

Carney has said that Canada’s relationship with the U.S. is complex and deeper and that Ottawa and Beijing disagree on issues such as human rights.

Canada is the top export destination for 36 U.S. states. Nearly $2.7 billion worth of goods and services cross the border each day. About 60% of U.S. crude oil imports are from Canada, as are 85% of U.S. electricity imports.

Canada is also the largest foreign supplier of steel, aluminum and uranium to the U.S. and has 34 critical minerals and metals that the Pentagon is eager for and investing in for national security.

Price writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Rob Gillies in Toronto contributed to this report.

MINNEAPOLIS — Federal officers shot another person in Minneapolis amid the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, Gov. Tim Walz said Saturday.

Walz said in a social media post that he had been in contact with the White House after the shooting. He called on President Trump to end the crackdown in his state. The details surrounding the shooting weren’t immediately clear.

“Pull the thousands of violent, untrained officers out of Minnesota. Now,” Walz said in a post on X.

Homeland Security spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin told the Associated Press in a text message that the person who was shot had a firearm with two magazines and that the situation was “evolving.”

After the shooting, bystanders gathered and screamed profanities at federal officers, calling them “cowards” and telling them to go home. One officer responded mockingly as he walked away, telling them: “Boo hoo.” Agents elsewhere shoved a yelling protester into a car.

The shooting came amid widespread daily protests in the Twin Cities since the Jan. 7 shooting of 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good, who was killed when an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer fired into her vehicle.

It also comes a day after thousands of demonstrators protesting the crackdown on immigrants crowded the city’s streets in frigid weather, calling for federal law enforcement to leave.

Brook writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON  — Trump administration lawyers have joined California Republicans in urging the Supreme Court to block California’s new election map on the grounds that one district in the San Joaquin Valley was drawn to favor Latinos.

Two months ago, Trump’s lawyers called on the court to uphold a new Republican-friendly election map in Texas, arguing that it was a partisan gerrymander, not one driven by race.

“Plaintiffs bringing a racial-gerrymander claim have the heavy burden to show that race was the predominant factor motivating” how the map was drawn, Solicitor Gen. D. John Sauer said then.

The Supreme Court agreed by a 6-3 vote and lifted a judges’ order that had blocked the Texas map, which was drawn to win five more House seats for Republicans.

Voting rights advocates had sued, noting Gov. Greg Abbott said the goal was to eliminate four “coalition districts,” which had a combined majority of Black and Latino voters and elected Democrats.

In a brief opinion, the justices said they presume state officials acted in “good faith” in drawing the maps of congressional districts.

“It is indisputable that impetus for the adoption of the Texas map (like the map subsequently adopted in California) was partisan advantage pure and simple,” wrote Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr.

The justices also said it was too late in the election-year calendar for reshuffling the districts again.

Undeterred, Trump’s lawyers now stake out the near opposite view to support the GOP’s attack on the California map, which was upheld by the voters in November.

“California’s recent redistricting is tainted by an unconstitutional racial gerrymander,” Sauer wrote.

He pointed to past comments from Paul Mitchell, the designated map maker, who said he hoped the Latino districts in the Central Valley could be “bolstered in order to make them most effective.”

Trump’s lawyer said District 13 in Merced County has an odd-looking “northern plume” that brings in Democratic voters near Stockton.

“California’s motivation in adopting the Prop. 50 map as a whole was undoubtedly to counteract Texas’s political gerrymander,” Sauer said. “But that overarching political goal is not a license for district-level racial gerrymandering.”

He advised the justices to declare the new California map unconstitutional and require the state to return to the former map.
The political impact of such a ruling is obvious. It would likely cost Democrats five seats in the House of Representatives.

Justice Elena Kagan, who oversees appeals from the West Coast, asked for a response from California by Thursday. That would suggest the justices may act on the GOP’s appeal in the first week of February.

Election law experts have been skeptical of the Republican arguments in the California case.

“I don’t think Republicans are likely to prevail here,” UCLA law professor Rick Hasen wrote on his Election Law Blog.

He said the legal challenge “comes too late,” the proposed remedy is too broad, and it ignores the fact that the California’s voters were focused on partisanship, not race. It’s their intent that counts, he said.

Then, Hasen added, there’s “the optics. It would be a terrible look for the Court … to allow Texas’s Republican gerrymander to go forward but stop California’s, especially if it’s a party line vote. That might be too much even for this Court.”

There is also a key legal difference in how the appeal arrived at the court.

In Texas, a three-judge panel heard the evidence, wrote a 160-page opinion and ruled against the state in a 2-1 decision.

In the California case, by contrast, a three-judge panel heard the evidence and rejected the racial gerrymandering claim in a 2-1 decision.

In December, Kagan dissented in the Texas case and argued the court should be reluctant to overturn the factual findings of the three judges who heard the case.

The two judges in the majority in the California case said they did not see evidence of a racial gerrymander.

“We find that the evidence of any racial motivation driving redistricting is exceptionally weak, while the evidence of partisan motivations is overwhelming,” said U.S. District Judges Josephine Staton and Wesley Hsu.

LONDON — British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has signaled that President Trump should apologize for his false assertion that troops from non-U.S. NATO countries avoided the front line during the Afghanistan war, describing Trump’s remarks as “insulting” and “appalling.”

Trump said that he wasn’t sure NATO would be there to support the United States if and when requested, provoking outrage and distress across the United Kingdom on Friday, regardless of individuals’ political persuasion.

“We’ve never needed them, we have never really asked anything of them,” Trump said of non-U.S. troops in an interview with Fox News in Davos, Switzerland, on Thursday. “You know, they’ll say they sent some troops to Afghanistan, or this or that, and they did, they stayed a little back, a little off the front lines.”

In October 2001, nearly a month after the Sept. 11 attacks, the U.S. led an international coalition in Afghanistan to destroy Al Qaeda, which had used the country as its base, and the group’s Taliban hosts. Alongside the U.S. were troops from dozens of countries, including from NATO, whose mutual-defense mandate had been triggered for the first time after the attacks on New York and Washington.

U.K. sacrifice

In the U.K., the reaction to Trump’s comments was raw.

Starmer paid tribute to the 457 British personnel who died and to those who have been left with profound life-long injuries.

“I will never forget their courage, their bravery and the sacrifice they made for their country,” Starmer said. “I consider President Trump’s remarks to be insulting and frankly appalling and I am not surprised they have caused such hurt to the loved ones of those who were killed or injured and, in fact, across the country.”

Prince Harry weighed in too, saying the “sacrifices” of British soldiers during the war “deserve to be spoken about truthfully and with respect.”

“Thousands of lives were changed forever,” said Harry, who undertook two tours of duty in Afghanistan in the British army. “Mothers and fathers buried sons and daughters. Children were left without a parent. Families are left carrying the cost.”

After 9/11, then-Prime Minister Tony Blair said that the U.K. would “stand shoulder to shoulder” with the U.S. in response to the Al Qaeda attacks. British troops took a key role in many operations during the Afghan war until their withdrawal in 2014, particularly in Helmand province in the south of the country. American troops remained in Afghanistan until their chaotic withdrawal in 2021 when the Taliban returned to power.

More than 150,000 British troops served in Afghanistan in the years after the invasion, the largest contingent after the American one.

Ben Obese-Jecty, a lawmaker who served in Afghanistan as a captain in the Royal Yorkshire Regiment, said that it was “sad to see our nation’s sacrifice, and that of our NATO partners, held so cheaply by the president of the United States.”

Trump and Vietnam

Anger was further fueled by the fact that the comments came from someone who didn’t serve in the Vietnam War at a time when he was eligible.

“It’s hugely ironic that someone who allegedly dodged the draft for the Vietnam War should make such a disgraceful statement,” said Stephen Stewart, author of “The Accidental Soldier,” an account of his time embedded with British troops in Afghanistan.

Trump received a deferment that allowed him to not serve in Vietnam because of bone spurs, but he has been unable to remember in which foot, leading to accusations of draft dodging.

Repeated NATO slights

It wasn’t the first time that Trump downplayed the commitment of NATO countries over the last few days. It has been one of his pivotal lines of attack as he escalated his threats to seize Greenland, a semiautonomous territory belonging to Denmark.

Trump’s allegation that NATO countries won’t be there when requested stands in stark contrast to reality.

The only time Article 5 of NATO’s founding treaty has been used was in response to the 9/11 attacks on the U.S. The article is the key mutual defense clause, obliging all member countries to come to the aid of another member whose sovereignty or territorial integrity might be under threat.

“When America needed us after 9/11 we were there,” former Danish platoon commander Martin Tamm Andersen said.

Denmark has been a stalwart ally of the U.S. in Afghanistan, with 44 Danish soldiers killed there — the highest per capita death toll among coalition forces. Eight more died in Iraq.

The latest controversy surrounding Trump comes at the end of a week when he has faced criticism — and pushback — for his threats to Greenland.

Trump also threatened to slap tariffs on European nations opposed to his ambitions to annex Greenland, which raised questions over the future of NATO. And though Trump backed down after a meeting with NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte in which he said they formed the “framework” for a deal over Arctic security, transatlantic relations have taken a hit.

His latest comments are unlikely to improve relations.

Diane Dernie, whose son Ben Parkinson suffered horrific injuries when a British army Land Rover hit a mine in Afghanistan in 2006, said that Trump’s latest comments were “the ultimate insult” and called on Starmer to stand up to Trump over them.

“Call him out,” she said. “Make a stand for those who fought for this country and for our flag, because it’s just beyond belief.”

Taking her up on that, Starmer said, “what I say to Diane is, if I had misspoken in that way or said those words, I would certainly apologize and I’d apologize to her.”

Pylas writes for the Associated Press. AP journalist Anders Kongshaug contributed to this report from Copenhagen.

This year’s midterm election already was going to be frustrating for many voters in a vast, rural swath of Northern California whose staunchly conservative district has been redrawn to favor Democrats after the passage of Proposition 50 last fall.

Their longtime Republican congressman, Doug LaMalfa, a rice farmer from rural Butte County who had represented the region for 13 years, had vowed to run again in his newly configured district, despite the long odds.

But LaMalfa died during emergency surgery on Jan. 5.

Now, Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom — a vociferous critic of President Trump who is weighing a 2028 presidential run — has chosen the latest day possible under state law for a special election to fill LaMalfa’s seat for the last few months of his term.

In a Jan. 16 proclamation, Newsom set the special election for Aug. 4.

The victor will represent California’s 1st Congressional District with its current boundaries, which stretch from the northern outskirts of Sacramento, through Redding to the Oregon border and to Alturas in the state’s northeast corner.

On June 2, voters will simultaneously cast ballots in the primary for the special election in the current district — and in the statewide primary for the November election for the new districts.

If the winner of the special election primary gets more than 50% of the vote in the primary, he or she will win outright, serving the rest of LaMalfa’s term, which ends Jan. 3, 2027.

“Voters will certainly be confused about the shifting district lines in two elections so close together in time,” Kim Nalder, director of the Project for an Informed Electorate at Sacramento State, said in an email.

She added that the special election is likely to get “fairly low turnout,” with those who do cast ballots being “better informed and more partisan.”

LaMalfa’s death put the razor-thin Republican majority in Congress in further jeopardy, with a margin of just two votes to secure passage of any bill along party lines after the resignation of Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene this month.

In California, several Republican-held seats, including LaMalfa’s, were imperiled in the fall when voters passed Proposition 50, which temporarily redraws the state’s congressional districts to favor Democrats. The proposition was a response to partisan redistricting in Republican states including Texas.

State law required Newsom to announce a special election for the remainder of LaMalfa’s term within 14 days of his death. The election had to be conducted within 140 days — or up to 200 days if consolidated with another election.

The governor’s office said that consolidating the special and state primaries was meant to reduce the risk of voter confusion since there are multiple elections with different boundaries.

But Newsom’s decision to leave LaMalfa’s seat vacant as long as possible has infuriated California Republicans. They say Proposition 50 has already disenfranchised voters in a region that has, for nearly a century, talked seriously about seceding to form their own state called Jefferson.

In a Jan. 16 letter to Newsom, the California Assembly Republican Caucus said the state’s rural residents “already suffer from a severe lack of meaningful representation in both Sacramento and Washington D.C.”

They added: “When a congressional seat representing one of the largest and most rural districts in the state is left vacant, it sends a clear message: OUR VOICES ARE NOT A PRIORITY.”

The lawmakers said the unfilled seat has “real consequences for communities that depend on federal advocacy for wildfire recovery, water access, agriculture, healthcare, and basic infrastructure.”

Nadler, at Sacramento State, said it appears Newsom is “continuing to use every tool at his disposal to enable his party to gain advantages in the House” and that the governor “understands the assignment in this new political era.”

Matt Rexroad, a California Republican political consultant and redistricting expert, said of Newsom’s choice to set the special election for August: “There’s no doubt at all that it’s politically driven.”

“He did Prop. 50 to stick it to President Trump and is attempting to deny House Speaker [Mike] Johnson another Republican vote for the rest of the year,” Rexroad said. “All of this is about Governor Newsom positioning himself to run for president.”

Assemblyman James Gallagher, a Yuba City Republican who is running to complete LaMalfa’s term, has said the governor could have called the special election for June 2, with a primary on March 31. Instead, he wrote in a statement last week, the governor “chose to play national political games” and will deny Northern California voters representation “for at least two months longer than what was needed.”

Gallagher announced his candidacy last week with an endorsement from LaMalfa’s widow, Jill, who wrote that “in the midst of our sadness and navigation of such a profound loss, I find myself very concerned about who may replace Doug as our Representative in Washington, D.C.”

“The kids and I believe this is what Doug would have wanted,” she wrote of Gallagher’s candidacy, adding: “James has our full support.”

In an interview Friday, Gallagher, the former Assembly Republican leader, said he was still reeling from the death of LaMalfa, whom he considered a mentor and close friend.

Gallagher said his motto for this election is: Unite the North State.

Because of Proposition 50, the current, deep-red district will be cleaved into three pieces. The northern half will be joined to a coastal district that will stretch all the way to the Golden Gate Bridge, while the southern half will be chopped into two districts that will draw in voters from the Bay Area and wine country.

“Prop. 50 was a big gut punch for us,” Gallagher said. “A lot of people felt like their representation was getting ripped away from them for political reasons — then you lose the guy who’s been your rock for many years. … It is a very difficult time.”

Gallagher will compete in the special election against Democrat Audrey Denney, an education director who unsuccessfully challenged LaMalfa in 2018 and 2020.

Denney will run in both the special election and in the election for the newly redrawn 1st Congressional District. State Sen. Mike McGuire, a Democrat who represents the state’s northwest coast, is among her competitors vying to represent the new district.

Gallagher told The Times on Friday that he had not decided whether he would run for a full term in a new district, “but I would say I’m considering it.”

A funeral service for LaMalfa is scheduled for Saturday afternoon at the Silver Dollar Fairgrounds in Chico.

LaMalfa’s staff said attendees will include Johnson, numerous members of Congress and Newsom.

PHILADELPHIA — Outraged critics accused President Trump of “whitewashing history” on Friday after the National Park Service removed an exhibit on slavery at Philadelphia’s Independence National Historical Park in response to his executive order “restoring truth and sanity to American history” at the nation’s museums, parks and landmarks.

Empty bolt holes and shadows are all that remains on the brick walls where explanatory panels were displayed at the President’s House Site, where George and Martha Washington lived with the people they owned as property when Philadelphia was the nation’s capital. One woman cried silently at their absence. Someone left a bouquet of flowers. A hand-lettered sign said “Slavery was real.”

Workers on Thursday removed the exhibit, which included biographical details about the nine people enslaved by the Washingtons at the presidential mansion. Just their names — Austin, Paris, Hercules, Christopher Sheels, Richmond, Giles, Oney Judge, Moll and Joe — remain engraved into a cement wall.

Seeking to stop the display’s permanent removal, the city of Philadelphia on Thursday sued Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and acting National Park Service Director Jessica Bowron.

“Let me affirm, for the residents of the city of Philadelphia, that there is a cooperative agreement between the city and the federal government that dates back to 2006,” Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker said during a press conference Friday. “That agreement requires parties to meet and confer if there are to be any changes made to an exhibit.”

Slavery is central to the site’s story, Philadelphia’s lawsuit argues: The people enslaved at the mansion included Oney Judge, who famously ran away and remained free despite Washington’s attempts to return her to bondage.

The panels came down because Trump’s order requires federal agencies to review interpretive materials to “ensure accuracy, honesty, and alignment with shared national values,” an Interior Department statement said. It called the city’s lawsuit frivolous, aimed at “demeaning our brave Founding Fathers who set the brilliant road map for the greatest country in the world.”

The department did not answer questions about what will replace the exhibits that were removed.

Critics condemned the removals as confirmation the Trump administration seeks to erase unflattering aspects of American history.

“Their shameful desecration of this exhibit raises broader, disturbing questions about this administration’s continued abuse of power and commitment to whitewashing history,” said Rep. Dwight Evans, a Democrat whose district includes the city.

“America’s history, as painful as some chapters are, isn’t disparaged by telling the whole truth. Trying to whitewash American history, however, disparages who we are. This is yet another egregious example of revisionist history that will be reviled for generations,” said Philadelphia state Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta.

Taking pride in American independence shouldn’t mean hiding its mistakes, said Ed Stierli, a regional director for the National Parks Conservation Assn. Historic sites should help Americans grapple with our difficult truths and historical contradictions, he said. Removing the exhibit insults the memory of the enslaved people who lived there, reverses years of collaborative work and “sets a dangerous precedent of prioritizing nostalgia over the truth,” Stierli said.

“It shows that the United States is still unwilling to reckon with the horrors of its past and would rather prefer to sanitize the history that it has and try to present a convenient lie,” said Timothy Welbeck, director of the Center for Anti-Racism at Temple University.

As the Trump administration prepares to celebrate the country’s 250th anniversary, it has focused on a more positive telling of the American story and put pressure on federal institutions including the Smithsonian to tell a version of history less focused on race.

The executive order Trump signed in March accused the Biden administration of advancing a “corrosive ideology.”

“At Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania — where our Nation declared that all men are created equal — the prior administration sponsored training by an organization that advocates dismantling ‘Western foundations’ and ‘interrogating institutional racism’ and pressured National Historical Park rangers that their racial identity should dictate how they convey history to visiting Americans because America is purportedly racist,” the order states.

Vejpongsa and Brewer write for the Associated Press. Brewer reported from Norman, Okla. AP writer Dorany Pineda contributed to this report from Los Angeles.

The U.S. Department of Justice has agreed to stop demanding medical records that identify young patients who received gender-affirming care from Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, ending a legal standoff with families who sued to block a subpoena that some feared would be used to criminally prosecute the parents of transgender kids.

The agreement, filed in federal court Thursday, allows the hospital to withhold certain records and redact personal information from others who underwent gender-affirming treatments, which Trump administration officials have compared to child mutilation despite support for such care by the nation’s major medical associations.

Several parents of CHLA patients expressed profound relief Friday, while also acknowledging that other threats to their families remain.

Jesse Thorn, the father of two transgender children who had been patients at Children’s Hospital, said hospital officials have ignored his requests for information as to whether they had already shared his kids’ data with the Trump administration, which had been scary. Hearing they had not, and now won’t, provided “two-fold” relief, he said.

“The escalations have been so relentless in the threats to our family, and one of the things that compounded that was the uncertainty about what the federal government knew about our kids’ medical care and what they were going to do about that,” he said.

Less clear is whether the agreement provides any new protections for doctors and other hospital personnel who provided care at the clinic and have also been targeted by the Trump administration.

The agreement follows similar victories for families seeking to block such disclosures by gender-affirming care clinics elsewhere in the country, including a ruling Thursday for the families of transgender kids who received treatment at Children’s National Hospital in Washington, D.C.

“What’s unique here is this was a class action,” said Alejandra Caraballo, a civil rights attorney and legal instructor at Harvard, who was not involved in the Los Angeles case. “I can’t undersell what a major win that is to protect the records of all these patients.”

Some litigation remains ongoing, with families fearful appeals to higher courts could end with different results. There is also Republican-backed legislation moving through Congress to restrict gender-affirming care for youths.

Another father of a transgender patient at Children’s Hospital, who requested anonymity because he fears for his child’s safety, said he was grateful for the agreement, but doesn’t see it as the end of the road. He fears the Trump administration could renew its subpoena if it wins on appeal in cases elsewhere.

“There’s some comfort, but it doesn’t close the book on it,” he said.

In a statement to The Times, the Justice Department said it “has not withdrawn its subpoena. Rather, it withdrew three requests for patient records based on the subpoenaed entity’s representation that it did not have custody of any such records.”

“This settlement avoids needless litigation based on that fact and further instructs Children’s Hospital Los Angeles to redact patient information in documents responsive to other subpoena requests,” the DOJ statement said. “As Attorney General Bondi has made clear, we will continue to use every legal and law enforcement tool available to protect innocent children from being mutilated under the guise of ‘care.’”

Children’s Hospital did not respond to a request for comment.

“This is a massive victory for every family that refused to be intimidated into backing down,” Khadijah Silver, director of Gender Justice & Health Equity at Lawyers for Good Government, which helped bring the lawsuit, said in a statement Friday. “The government’s attempt to rifle through children’s medical records was unconstitutional from the start. Today’s settlement affirms what we’ve said all along: these families have done nothing wrong, and their children’s privacy deserves protection.”

Until last summer, the Center for Transyouth Health and Development at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles was among the largest and oldest pediatric gender clinics in the United States — and one of few providing puberty blockers, hormones and surgical procedures for trans youth on public insurance.

It was also among the first programs to shutter under coordinated, multi-agency pressure exerted from the White House. Ending treatment for transgender children has been a central policy goal for the Trump administration since the president resumed office last year.

“These threats are no longer theoretical,” Children’s Hospital executives wrote to staff in an internal email announcing the closure of the clinic in June. “[They are] threatening our ability to serve the hundreds of thousands of patients who depend on CHLA for lifesaving care.”

In July, Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi announced the Justice Department was subpoenaing patient records from gender-affirming care providers, specifically stating that medical professionals were a target of a probe into “organizations that mutilated children in the service of a warped ideology.”

California law explicitly protects gender-affirming care, and the state and others led by Democrats have fought back in court, but most providers nationwide have shuttered under the White House push, stirring fear of a de facto ban.

Parents feared the subpoenas could lead to child abuse charges, which the government could then use to strip them of custody of their children. Doctors feared they could be arrested and imprisoned for providing medical care that is broadly backed by the medical establishment and is legal in the states where they performed it.

The Justice Department’s subpoena to Children’s Hospital Los Angeles had initially requested a vast array of personally identifying documents, specially calling for records “sufficient to identify each patient [by name, date of birth, social security number, address, and parent/guardian information] who was prescribed puberty blockers or hormone therapy.”

It also called for records “relating to the clinical indications, diagnoses, or assessments that formed the basis for prescribing puberty blockers or hormone therapy,” and for records “relating to informed consent, patient intake, and parent or guardian authorization for minor patients” to receive gender-affirming care.

According to the new agreement, the Justice Department withdrew its requests for those specific records — which had yet to be produced by the hospital — on Dec. 8, and told Children’s Hospital to redact the personally identifying information of patients in other records it was still demanding.

Thursday’s agreement formalizes that position, and requires the Justice Department to return or destroy any records that provide personally identifying information moving forward.

“The Government will not use this patient identifying information to support any investigation or prosecution,” the agreement states.

According to the attorneys for the families who sued, the settlement protects the records of their clients but also all of the clinic’s other gender-affirming care patients. “To date, they assured us, no identifiable patient information has been received, and now it cannot be,” said Amy Powell, with Lawyers for Good Government.

Cori Racela, executive director for Western Center on Law & Poverty, called it a “crucial affirmation that healthcare decisions belong in exam rooms, not government subpoenas.”

“Youth, families, and medical providers have constitutional rights to privacy and dignity,” she said in a statement. “No one’s private health records should be turned into political ammunition — especially children.”

The agreement was also welcomed by families of transgender kids beyond Southern California.

“This has been hanging over those families specifically in L.A., of course, but for all families,” said Arne Johnson, a Bay Area father of a transgender child who helps run a group of similar families called Rainbow Families Action. “Every time one of these subpoenas goes out, it’s terrifying.”

Johnson said each victory pushing back against the government’s demands for family medical records feels “like somebody is pointing a gun at your kid and a hero comes along and knocks it out of their hand — it’s literally that visceral of a feeling.”

Johnson said he hopes recent court wins will push hospitals to resist canceling care for transgender children.

“Parents are the ones that are fighting back and they’re the ones that are winning, and the hospitals should take their lead,” he said. “Hospitals should be fighting in the same way the parents are, so that their doctors and other providers can be protected.”

Ukrainian, Russian and U.S. envoys met in the United Arab Emirates on Friday, the first known instance that officials from the Trump administration have sat down with both countries as part of Washington’s push for progress to end Moscow’s nearly 4-year-old invasion.

The talks follow a flurry of diplomatic activity in recent days, from Switzerland to the Kremlin, even though serious obstacles remain between both sides.

While Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in Davos, Switzerland, on Thursday that a potential peace deal was “nearly ready,” certain sensitive sticking points — most notably those related to territorial issues — remain unresolved.

Here’s what’s known and not known about the meeting:

What’s different about these talks

They are taking place in the UAE’s capital of Abu Dhabi. Representatives from Russia and Ukraine have already met several times on separate occasions, but this is believed to be the first time U.S. envoys will be there too — a significant step in that President Trump has been pressing for a halt to the war.

The talks are an outgrowth of recent diplomatic activity, even though Russia has kept up its attacks on Ukraine and its energy infrastructure, leaving parts of the country without power amid a bitterly cold winter.

Zelensky met with Trump on Thursday behind closed doors for about an hour at the World Economic Forum in Davos, describing it as a “productive and meaningful” session. Trump said later that it had gone well and that Russia and Ukraine were “making concessions” to try to end the war.

Russian President Vladimir Putin met U.S. envoys Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner in overnight talks at the Kremlin that lasted nearly four hours.

A spokesman for Zelensky said there are “many different formats in these talks — sometimes participants step aside for separate discussions, sometimes everyone meets together, sometimes several groups break off by topic.”

Who is participating

The U.S. has confirmed Witkoff and Kushner are attending. Army Secretary Dan Driscoll also is part of the team, according to a U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive diplomatic process. NATO’s top general, U.S. Air Force Gen. Alexus Grynkewich, also is attending.

The Ukrainian team includes Rustem Umerov, head of Ukraine’s national security and defense council; Andrii Hnatov, chief of the general staff; and Kyrylo Budanov, head of the presidential office.

Putin’s foreign affairs advisor Yuri Ushakov said Russia’s delegation is led by the chief of military intelligence, Adm. Igor Kostyukov. The Kremlin later said the rest of the delegation are from the Defense Ministry as well, but did not elaborate. Putin’s envoy Kirill Dmitriev also is attending.

The talks are scheduled to conclude Saturday.

Questions of territory and security

Little is known about the specific issues to be discussed. Zelensky said the fraught issue of territorial concessions is a likely topic, while the Kremlin offered few details beyond calling the meeting a “working group on security issues.” Separate economic discussions will take place between Witkoff and Dmitriev, Kremlin officials said.

The sides have indicated that a possible peace deal hinges on the apparently still unresolved issue of territory. Speaking in a WhatsApp chat with journalists Friday, Zelensky described the issue of who would control the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine as “key.”

Russia’s bigger army has managed to capture about 20% of Ukraine since hostilities began in 2014 and its full-scale invasion of 2022. But the battlefield gains along the roughly 600-mile front line have been costly for Moscow, and the Russian economy is feeling the consequences of the war and international sanctions.

In his briefing on Putin’s meeting with Witkoff and Kushner, Ushakov stressed that “reaching a long-term settlement can’t be expected without solving the territorial issue,” a reference to Moscow’s demand that Kyiv withdraw its troops from areas in the east that Russia illegally annexed in 2022 but never fully captured.

Peskov also said Friday that Moscow had already made its position clear and that Kyiv must withdraw its troops from the Donbas region.

Ukraine has been pressing for security guarantees from the West to prevent Russia from invading its territory again.

Davies writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Kamila Hrabchuk in Kyiv, Ukraine, contributed to this report.

For more than a year, a Texas oil firm has clashed with California officials over controversial plans to restart offshore oil operations along the Santa Barbara County coast.

Now, California’s feud with Sable Offshore Corp. has spread to the Trump administration.

On Friday, California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta announced that he had filed suit against the federal government, alleging that the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration had usurped jurisdiction of Sable’s oil pipelines in an “unlawful power grab.”

“California has seen first-hand the devastating environmental and public health impacts of coastal oil spills — yet the Trump Administration will stop at nothing to evade state regulation which protects against these very disasters,” Bonta said in a statement Friday. “California will not stand idly by as the President endangers California’s beautiful coastline and our public health to increase profits for his fossil fuel industry friends.”

Signs warn of an oil pipeline owned by Sable Offshore Corp.

(Al Seib/For The Times)

The attorney general’s petition, filed in the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, challenges PHMSA’s attempt to federalize oversight of the onshore pipelines and its recent approval of Sable’s restart plan. Along with the Office of the State Fire Marshal, the agency that had been working to review Sable’s restart plan, the attorney general argues that PHMSA’s decisions violate the Administrative Procedure Act and asked the court to overturn them.

The federal pipeline agency falls under the U.S. Department of Transportation. Officials with the agency did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the new case.

Regulatory oversight of the pipelines has become a major sticking point in the Houston-based company’s plan to revive three drilling rigs in federal waters off Santa Barbara County’s coast.

The pipelines are part of a network that connects the offshore platforms to to an onshore processing plant near Goleta and then further inland. The two lines in question are located entirely onshore. One of them burst in 2015 near Refugio State Beach, causing one of the biggest oil spills in the state’s history.

The former owner shuttered operation after that spill, but Sable announced in 2024 that it planned to restart oil production — a move that has sparked fear and concern among locals, environmental activists and state and local regulators.

The Trump administration didn’t immediately get involved, but it did signal its support for the project last year, as part of its goal to increase U.S.-made oil.

But in December, PHMSA officials reclassified the pipelines as “interstate” pipelines, citing their link to offshore rigs along the Outer Continental Shelf in federal waters.

Soon after that, the federal agency approved the pipelines for a restart, shocking many who had been working for more than a year to ensure Sable’s compliance with state and local laws.

Bonta on Friday called both those findings incorrect and illegal, saying the federal agency had “no right to usurp California regulatory authority … of potentially hazardous pipelines.”

Sable has repeatedly clashed with state and local officials.

Last year, the California Coastal Commission found that Sable had failed to adhere to the state’s Coastal Act despite repeated warnings and fined the company $18 million. In September, the Santa Barbara County district attorney’s office filed criminal charges against the company, accusing it of knowingly violating state environmental laws while working on repairs to oil pipelines that have sat idle since a major spill in 2015.

The company also remains entangled in several ongoing lawsuits, including one brought by the Central Coast Water Board — represented by Bonta’s office — that alleges the company repeatedly failed to follow state laws and regulations intended to protect water resources, repeatedly putting “profits over environmental protections.”

Sable Offshore Corp.’s Las Flores Canyon Plant operates in Goleta.

(Al Seib/For The Times)

The company denies that it has broken any laws and insists that it has followed all necessary regulations.

Bonta’s new lawsuit doesn’t directly address Sable’s restart plans, but focuses on Trump administration actions over the last few weeks, including its “attempt to evade state regulation.” Bonta argues the administration has put the state’s environment and residents at risk.

Bonta also argues that the change in oversight directly contradicts a consent decree reached after the 2015 oil spill, which determined the state fire marshal would review and approve any possible restart of the onshore pipelines.

“PHMSA’s current position represents a significant departure from this agreement and the way in which PHMSA historically viewed the pipelines,” Bonta’s office said in a statement.

A federal judge ruled Friday that President Trump’s administration must keep federal funds flowing to childcare subsidies and other social service programs in five Democratic-controlled states — at least for now.

The ruling Friday from U.S. District Judge Vernon Broderick extends by two weeks a temporary one issued earlier this month that blocked the federal government from holding back the money from California, Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota and New York. The initial temporary restraining order was to expire Friday.

Broderick said Friday that he would decide later whether the money is to remain in place while a challenge to cutting it off works its way through the courts.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services sent the five states notices in early January informing them it would require justifications for spending the money aimed at helping low-income families. It also said it would require more documentation, including the names and Social Security numbers of the beneficiaries of some of the programs.

The programs are intended to help low-income families

The programs affected by the restrictions at the heart of this case are the Child Care and Development Fund, which subsidizes childcare for 1.3 million children from low-income families nationwide; the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program, which provides cash assistance and job training; and the Social Services Block Grant, a smaller fund that provides money for a variety of programs.

The states say that they receive a total of more than $10 billion a year from those programs — and that the programs are essential for low-income and vulnerable families, including paying about half the cost of shelters for homeless families in New York City.

For TANF and the Social Service Block Grant, the request required the states to submit the data, including personal information of recipients beginning in 2022, with a deadline of Jan. 20.

Government lawyers said Friday that the department was working on more guidelines about what exactly was required before the initial restraining order was put in place.

The administration says it took action because of concerns about fraud

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said earlier this month that it was pausing the funding because it had “reason to believe” the states were granting benefits to people in the country illegally. At the time, it didn’t explain why.

But in Friday’s hearing, Mallika Balachandran, a federal government lawyer, said that the concerns were raised by media reports, though she told the judge she did not know which ones. Federal officials have previously cited a video by a right-wing influencer who claimed fraud by Minneapolis day care centers operated by people with Somali backgrounds.

Broderick asked whether the government picked the five states first and then did research into whether there were fraud claims there. Balachandran said she didn’t know that either.

Broderick said he didn’t understand why the government made it harder for the states to access money for the programs before any wrongdoing had been found.

“It just seems like the cart before the horse,” he said.

The states, which all have Democratic governors, say the move was instead intended to damage Trump’s political adversaries.

Around the same time as the actions aimed at the five states, the administration put up hurdles to Minnesota for even more federal dollars. It also began requesting all states to explain how they’re using money in the childcare program.

States call the action ‘unlawful many times over’

In court papers last week, the states say what they describe as a funding freeze does not follow the law.

They say Congress created laws about how the administration can identify noncompliance or fraud by recipients of the money — and that the federal government hasn’t used that process.

They also say it’s improper to freeze funding broadly because of potential fraud and that producing the data the government called for is an “impossible demand on an impossible timeline.”

Jessica Ranucci, a lawyer in New York’s attorney general’s office arguing on behalf of the five states, told the judge that she was told only about a half-hour before the hearing that the government had been developing more information about what states needed to provide. That wasn’t mentioned in the court filings, she said.

The administration says it’s not a freeze

In a court filing this week, the administration objected to the states describing the action as a “funding freeze,” even though the headline on the Department of Health and Human Services announcement was: “HHS Freezes Child Care and Family Assistance Grants in Five States for Fraud Concerns.”

Federal government lawyers said the states could get the money going forward if they provide the requested information and the federal government finds them to be in compliance with anti-fraud measures.

The administration also notes that it has continued to provide funding to the states.

The lawyer for the states said that most of the funding, though, was not accessible until after the restraining order was entered.

This isn’t the only case where the federal government has threatened to cut off funding recently. Trump has said this month that “sanctuary cities” that resist his administration’s immigration policies — and their states — could lose federal funds.

This week, his budget office told other federal departments and agencies to collect information about money several states receive — but said it wasn’t to withhold money.

Mulvihill writes for the Associated Press.

How do you know what you know?

Did you learn it in school, read it in a newspaper? Did you get your information on social media or though chatter with friends?

Even in an age of misinformation and disinformation — which we really need to start clearly calling propaganda — we continue to rely on old ways of knowing. We take it for granted that if we really need to get to the truth, there’s a way to do it, even if it means cracking the pages of one of those ancient conveyors of wisdom, a book.

But we are entering an era in America when knowledge is about to be hard to come by. It would be easy to shrug off this escalation of the war on truth as just more Trump nonsense, but it is much more than that. Authoritarians take power in the short term by fear and maybe force. In the long term, they rely on ignorance — an erasure of knowledge to leave people believing that there was ever anything different than what is.

This is how our kids, future generations, come to be controlled. They simply don’t know what was, and therefore are at a great disadvantage in imagining what could be.

This week, the White House altered a photo of Nekima Levy Armstrong, the civil rights lawyer arrested in Minneapolis for protesting inside a church.

The original photo shows Armstrong in handcuffs being led away by a federal officer with his face blurred out. Armstrong is composed and steady in this image. A veteran of social justice movements and a trained attorney, she appears as one might expect, her expression troubled but calm.

In the photo released by the White House, Armstrong is sobbing, her mouth hanging open in despair. In what is clearly nothing more than overt racism, it appears her skin has been darkened. Her braided hair, neatly styled in the original picture, is disheveled in the Trump image.

On the left, a photograph from the X (formerly Twitter) account of U.S. Secretary Kristi Noem, showing Nekima Levy Armstrong being arrested. On the right, the photo has been altered before being posted to the White House’s X (formerly Twitter) account.

(@Sec_Noem via X/@WhiteHouse via X)

A strong, composed resister is turned into a weeping, weak failure.

“YET AGAIN to the people who feel the need to reflexively defend perpetrators of heinous crimes in our country I share with you this message: Enforcement of the law will continue. The memes will continue. Thank you for your attention to this matter,”

That was the official White House response to inquiries about the photo, posted on social media.

The same week, the Trump administration began ripping down exhibits at the President’s House in Philadelphia that told the story of the nine Black people held in bondage there by George Washington. I’ve been to that exhibit and had planned to take my kids this summer to learn about Joe Richardson, Christopher Sheels, Austin, Hercules, Giles, Moll, Oney Judge, Paris and Richmond.

They are names that barely made it into American history. Many have never heard of them. Now, this administration is attempting to erase them.

How do you know what you know? I learned most of what I knew about these folks from that signage, which is probably in a dump somewhere by now.

The information we once took for granted on government websites such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is gone. Climate change information; LGBTQ+ information; even agricultural information. Gone (though courts have ordered some restored).

The National Law Enforcement Accountability Database, which tracked federal police misconduct, has been shut down.

The Smithsonian is undergoing an ideological review.

And now, our government is telling us it will alter in real time images of dissenters to create its own narrative, demand we believe not our own eyes, our own knowledge, but the narrative they create.

“I’ll end with this, we’re being told one story which is totally different than what’s occurring,” said Cumberland County, Me., Sheriff Kevin Joyce.

He was speaking specifically about an incident in his town in which a corrections officer recruit was detained by ICE this week. In video taken by a bystander, about five agents pull the man from his car as he drives home after work. They then leave the car running in the street as they take him away.

Joyce told reporters the man had a clean background check before being hired, had no criminal record, and was working legally in the country. The sheriff has no idea where the man is being held.

Joyce’s sentiment, that what we are being told isn’t what’s happening, applies to nearly everything we are seeing with our own eyes.

A woman shot through her temple, through the side window of her car? You don’t understand what you are seeing. It was justified, our vice president has told us, without even the need for an investigation.

Goodbye Renee Good. They are attempting in real time to erase her reality and instead morph her into a domestic terrorist committing “heinous” crimes, and maybe even worse.

“You have a small band of very far left people who are doing everything they can … to try to make ICE out to be the ultimate enemy, and engage in this weird, small-scale civil war,” Vice President JD Vance said this week.

Protesting turned into civil war.

Next up, artificial intelligence is getting into the erasure game. Scientists are warning that those who wish to destroy truth will soon unleash AI-run operations in which thousands if not millions of social media posts will offer up whatever alternative reality those in control of it wish. Under the pressure of that avalanche of lies, many will believe.

The message the White House is sending with Armstrong’s photo is that they control the truth, they decide what it is.

Our job is to fight for truth, know it when we see it, and demand it not be erased.

TORONTO — Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney responded to President Trump’s comment that “Canada lives because of the United States” on Thursday by saying Canada thrives because of Canadian values.

Carney said Canada can show the world that the future doesn’t have to be autocratic after returning from Davos where he gave a speech that garnered widespread attention.

In Davos at the World Economic Forum, Carney condemned coercion by great powers on smaller countries without mentioning Trump’s name.

Upon returning home to Canada, Carney responded to Trump directly by referencing Trump’s remarks in Davos.

“Canada lives because of the United States,” Trump said. “Remember that, Mark, the next time you make your statements.”

“Canada doesn’t live because of the United States. Canada thrives because we are Canadian,” Carney responded Thursday.

Carney said Canada and the U.S. have built a remarkable partnership in the areas of economy, security and rich cultural exchange, but said “we are masters in our home, this is our own country, it’s our future, the choice is up to us.”

Trump later revoked his invitation to Carney to join his Board of Peace.

“Dear Prime Minister Carney: Please let this Letter serve to represent that the Board of Peace is withdrawing its invitation to you regarding Canada’s joining, what will be, the most prestigious Board of Leaders ever assembled, at any time,” Trump posted on social media.

Carney left Davos before Trump inaugurated his Board of Peace to lead efforts at maintaining a ceasefire in Israel’s war with Hamas.

Trump has talked about making Canada the 51st state and posted this week an altered image of a map of the U.S. that includes Canada, Greenland, Venezuela and Cuba as part of its territory.

Trump said in Davos that Canada gets many “freebies” from the U.S. and “should be grateful.” He said Carney’s Davos speech showed he “wasn’t so grateful.”

Trump said Canada wants to participate in “Golden Dome” — a multibillion-dollar missile defense system that he says will be operational before his term ends in 2029.

In a speech before a cabinet retreat in Quebec City, Carney said staying true to Canada’s values is key to maintaining its sovereignty.

“We can show that another way is possible, that the arc of history isn’t destined to be warped toward authoritarianism and exclusion; it can still bend toward progress and justice,” Carney said.

Carney said “Canada must be a beacon — an example to a world at sea.”

Carney said in a time of rising populism and ethnic nationalism, Canada can show how diversity is a strength, not a weakness.

“There are billions of people who aspire to what we have built: a pluralistic society that works,” Carney said.

He said Canada delivers shared prosperity and has a democracy that chooses to protect the vulnerable against the powerful.

“It’s a great country for everyone. It is the greatest country in the world to be a regular person. You don’t have to be born rich, or to a landed family. You don’t have to be a certain color or worship a certain god,” he said.

U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick earlier complained about Carney’s speech at the World Economic Forum.

“Give me a break,” Lutnick said on Bloomberg TV. “They have the second-best deal in the world and all I got to do is listen to this guy whine and complain.”

Canada has been shielded from the worst impacts of Trump’s tariffs by the Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement on trade, known as USMCA, but the agreement is up for a mandatory review this year.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a potential Democratic presidential candidate in 2028, told the forum that multiple leaders in the United States sent him transcripts of Carney’s speech.

“I respect what Carney did because he had courage of convictions. He stood up and I think we need to stand up in America and call this out with clarity,” Newsom said.

“We can lose our republic as we know it. Our country can become unrecognizable.”

Newsom said the fact that Carney came back from China with a deal to introduce low-cost, high-quality electric vehicles into Canada, not made from Michigan, but from overseas shows how reckless Trump’s foreign policy is.

“It’s a remarkable thing to break down 80-plus years of alliances,” he said.

Gillies writes for the Associated Press.

PARIS — In a hypothetical nuclear war involving Russia, China and the United States, the island of Greenland would be in the middle of Armageddon.

The strategic importance of the Arctic territory — under the flight paths that nuclear-armed missiles from China and Russia could take on their way to incinerating targets in the United States, and vice versa — is one of the reasons President Trump has cited in his disruptive campaign to wrest control of Greenland from Denmark, alarming Greenlanders and longtime allies in Europe alike.

Trump has argued that U.S. ownership of Greenland is vital for his “Golden Dome” — a multibillion dollar missile defense system that he says will be operational before his term ends in 2029.

“Because of The Golden Dome, and Modern Day Weapons Systems, both Offensive and Defensive, the need to ACQUIRE is especially important,” Trump said in a Truth Social post on Saturday.

That ushered in another roller-coaster week involving the semiautonomous Danish territory, where Trump again pushed for U.S. ownership before seemingly backing off, announcing Wednesday the “framework of a future deal” on Arctic security that’s unlikely to be the final word.

Here’s a closer look at Greenland’s position at a crossroads for nuclear defense.

ICBM flight paths

Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles, or ICBMs, that nuclear adversaries would fire at each other — if it ever came to that — tend to take the shortest direct route, on a ballistic trajectory into space and down again, from their silos or launchers to targets. The shortest flight paths from China or Russia to the United States — and the other way — would take many of them over the Arctic region.

Russian Topol-M missiles fired, for example, from the Tatishchevo silo complex southeast of Moscow would fly high over Greenland, if targeted at the U.S. ICBM force of 400 Minuteman III missiles, housed at the Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota, the Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana and the Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming.

Chinese Dong Feng-31 missiles, if fired from new silo fields that the U.S. Defense Department says have been built in China, also could overfly Greenland should they be targeted at the U.S. Eastern Seaboard.

“If there is a war, much of the action will take place on that piece of ice. Think of it: those missiles would be flying right over the center,” Trump said Wednesday at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

Pituffik Space Base

An array of farseeing early warning radars act as the Pentagon’s eyes against any missile attack. The northernmost of them is in Greenland, at the Pituffik Space Base. Pronounced “bee-doo-FEEK,” it used to be called Thule Air Base, but was renamed in 2023 using the remote location’s Greenlandic name, recognizing the Indigenous community that was forcibly displaced by the U.S. outpost’s construction in 1951.

Its location above the Arctic Circle, and roughly halfway between Washington and Moscow, enables it to peer with its radar over the Arctic region, into Russia and at potential flight paths of U.S.-targeted Chinese missiles.

“That gives the United States more time to think about what to do,” said Pavel Podvig, a Geneva-based analyst who specializes in Russia’s nuclear arsenal. “Greenland is a good location for that.”

The two-sided, solid-state AN/FPS-132 radar is designed to quickly detect and track ballistic missile launches, including from submarines, to help inform the U.S. commander in chief’s response and provide data for interceptors to try and destroy warheads.

The radar beams out for nearly 3,450 miles in a 240-degree arc and, even at its furthest range, can detect objects no larger than a small car, the U.S. Air Force says.

Expert sees holes in Trump’s arguments

Pitching the “Golden Dome” in Davos, Trump said that the U.S. needs ownership of Greenland to defend it.

“You can’t defend it on a lease,” he said.

But defense specialists struggle to comprehend that logic given that the U.S. has operated at Pituffik for decades without owning Greenland.

French nuclear defense specialist Etienne Marcuz points out that Trump has never spoken of also needing to take control of the United Kingdom — even though it, like Greenland, also plays an important role in U.S. missile defense.

An early warning radar operated by the U.K.’s Royal Air Force at Fylingdales, in northern England, serves both the U.K. and U.S governments, scanning for missiles from Russia and elsewhere and northward to the polar region. The unit’s motto is “Vigilamus” — Latin for “We are watching.”

Trump’s envisioned multilayered “Golden Dome” could include space-based sensors to detect missiles. They could reduce the U.S. need for its Greenland-based radar station, said Marcuz, a former nuclear defense worker for France’s Defense Ministry, now with the Foundation for Strategic Research think tank in Paris.

“Trump’s argument that Greenland is vital for the Golden Dome — and therefore that it has to be invaded, well, acquired — is false for several reasons,” Marcuz said.

“One of them is that there is, for example, a radar in the United Kingdom, and to my knowledge there is no question of invading the U.K. And, above all, there are new sensors that are already being tested, in the process of being deployed, which will in fact reduce Greenland’s importance.”

‘Golden Dome’ interceptors

Because of its location, Greenland could be a useful place to station “Golden Dome” interceptors to try to destroy warheads before they reach the continental U.S.

The “highly complex system can only work at its maximum potential and efficiency … if this Land is included in it,” Trump wrote in his post last weekend.

But the U.S. already has access to Greenland under a 1951 defense agreement. Before Trump ratcheted up the heat on the territory and Denmark, its owner, their governments likely would have readily accepted any American military request for an expanded footprint there, experts say. It used to have multiple bases and installations, but later abandoned them, leaving just Pituffik.

“Denmark was the most compliant ally of the United States,” Marcuz said. “Now, it’s very different. I don’t know whether authorization would be granted, but in any case, before, the answer was ‘Yes.’”

Leicester writes for the Associated Press.

MINNEAPOLIS — A vast network of labor unions, progressive organizations and clergy has been urging Minnesotans to stay away from work, school and stores Friday to protest against immigration enforcement in the state.

Minneapolis and St. Paul have seen daily protests since Renee Good was fatally shot by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer on Jan. 7. Federal law enforcement officers have surged in the Twin Cities for weeks and have repeatedly squared off with community members and activists who track their movements.

“We really, really want ICE to leave Minnesota, and they’re not going to leave Minnesota unless there’s a ton of pressure on them,” said Kate Havelin of Indivisible Twin Cities, one of the more than 100 groups that is mobilizing. “They shouldn’t be roaming any streets in our country just the way they are now.”

On Thursday, a prominent civil rights attorney and at least two other people were arrested for their involvement in an anti-immigration enforcement protest that disrupted a Sunday service at a church in St. Paul. They remained in federal custody Friday morning.

Vice President JD Vance meanwhile visited Minneapolis to meet with ICE officials and address reporters. He encouraged protesters to remain peaceful and urged city and state officials to cooperate with federal forces to ease the fraught situation in Minneapolis.

Organizers hope Friday’s mobilization will be the largest coordinated protest action to date, with a march in downtown Minneapolis planned for Friday afternoon. The National Weather Service warned of dangerously cold weather, and early Friday, the temperature in Minneapolis was minus 21 with a wind chill of minus 40.

Havelin compared the presence of immigration enforcement to the winter weather warnings.

“Minnesotans understand that when we’re in a snow emergency … we all have to respond and it makes us do things differently,” she said. “And what’s happening with ICE in our community, in our state, means that we can’t respond as business as usual.”

More than a hundred small businesses in the Twin Cities, largely coffee shops and restaurants, said they would close in solidarity or donate part of their profits, organizers said.

Somali businesses especially have lost sales during the enforcement surge as workers and customers, fearing detention, stay at home.

Some businesses are choosing to close in solidarity with the protesters rather than the “unscheduled interruption” of having agents apprehend staff, said Luis Argueta of Unidos MN, a civil rights group.

Many schools were planning to close Friday, but cited different reasons. The University of Minnesota and the St. Paul public school district said there would be no in-person classes because of the extreme cold. Minneapolis Public Schools were scheduled to be closed “for a teacher record keeping day.”

Clergy planned to join the march as well as hold prayer services and fasting, according to a delegation of representatives of faith traditions including Buddhist, Jewish, Lutheran and Muslim.

Bishop Dwayne Royster, leader of the progressive organization Faith in Action, arrived in Minnesota on Wednesday from Washington, D.C.

“We want ICE out of Minnesota,” he said. “We want them out of all the cities around the country where they’re exercising extreme overreach.”

Royster said at least 50 of his network’s faith-based organizers were joining the protest. About 10 were traveling from Los Angeles while others from the same group planned a solidarity rally in California, said one of the organizers there.

“It was a very harrowing experience,” said the Rev. Jennifer Gutierrez of the large immigration enforcement operation in Los Angeles last year. “We believe God is on the side of migrants.”

Dell’Orto writes for the Associated Press. AP journalists Jack Brook and Sarah Raza in Minneapolis, and Tiffany Stanley in Washington contributed to this report.

NUUK, Greenland — One year ago, days before Donald Trump reclaimed power, the head of Denmark’s People’s Party took a trip to Mar-a-Lago. Morten Messerschmidt thought he and Trump shared a common view on the perils of European integration. Together, he told local media at the time, they could make the West great again.

In Europe, just as in the United States, Messerschmidt thought it was “nationale suverænitet” — national sovereignty — that had over centuries given countries large and small the tools to build their culture, traditions and institutions. Those were the values that conservative movements across the European continent are fighting to protect.

But Messerschmidt now finds himself on the defensive. The far-right politician is suddenly distancing himself from an American president who, off and on over the last year, has made aggressive plays to annex Greenland, targeting Danish borders that have existed for roughly 300 years.

Trump pulled back from military threats against the island this week. “It’s total access — there’s no end,” he said in an interview on Thursday with Fox Business. Asked whether he still intended on acquiring the island, Trump replied, “It’s possible. Anything is possible.”

Despite Trump’s fixation on Greenland since his first term, he declined to meet with Messerschmidt at Mar-a-Lago last January. Instead, the Danish politician found himself discussing the matter with Marla Maples, the president’s ex-wife.

“Portraying me as someone who serves a cause other than Denmark, and who would sympathize with threats to our kingdom, is unhealthy,” Messerschmidt wrote on Facebook this weekend. “It is slander.”

The Danish People’s Party is one of many far-right groups across Europe, which aligned with Trump’s MAGA movement in their fervent opposition to immigration and related issues, suddenly in rebellion against an administration it once thought of as an ideological ally.

The president’s moves are now compelling them to reconcile their alliance with Trump with a core tenet on the political right, that nationalism is largely defined by people and place over historic stretches of time — or as Trump often said on the campaign trail, “without a border, you don’t have a country.”

“Donald Trump has violated a fundamental campaign promise — namely, not to interfere in other countries,” Alice Weidel, co-leader of Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany Party, or AfD, said in Berlin. Her colleague added: “It is clear that Wild West methods must be rejected.”

The rupture could jeopardize the Trump administration’s own stated goals for a future Europe that is more conservative and aligned with the Republican Party — a plan that relied on boosting the very same parties now questioning their ties to the president.

In its national security strategy, published in November, the White House said it would “cultivate resistance to Europe’s current trajectory within European nations,” hoping to restore “Europe’s civilizational self-confidence and Western identity.”

And it is not clear whether the president’s decision to walk back his most aggressive threats is enough to contain the diplomatic damage. “The process of getting to this agreement has clearly damaged trust amongst allies,” Rishi Sunak, former prime minister of the United Kingdom and leader of its Conservative Party, told Bloomberg on Thursday.

Trump’s pressure campaign urging Ukraine to accept borders redrawn by a revanchist Russia had already strained relations between his inner circle and Europe’s far-right movements. But several prominent right-wing leaders say his aggressive posture toward Greenland amounted to a bridge too far.

On Wednesday in Switzerland, addressing growing concerns over the plan, Trump still left threats lingering in the air, warning European leaders that he would “remember” if they blocked a U.S. takeover.

“Friends can disagree in private, and that’s fine — that’s part of life, part of politics,” Nigel Farage, leader of the far-right Reform UK party in Britain, told House Speaker Mike Johnson in London earlier this week. “But to have a U.S. president threatening tariffs unless we agree that he can take over Greenland by some means, without it seeming to even get the consent of the people of Greenland — I mean, this is a very hostile act.”

In France, the head of Marine Le Pen’s far-right party, National Rally, said the United States had presented Europe “with a choice: Accept dependency disguised as partnership or act as sovereign powers capable of defending our interests.”

With overseas territories across the Pacific, Caribbean and Indian oceans, France has the second-largest maritime exclusive economic zone in the world after the United States. If Trump can seize Greenland by force, what is stopping him, or any other great power, from conquering France’s islands?

“When a U.S. president threatens a European territory while using trade pressure, it is not dialogue — it is coercion. And our credibility is at stake,” said the party’s young leader, Jordan Bardella.

“Greenland has become a strategic pivot in a world returning to imperial logic,” he added. “Yielding today would set a dangerous precedent.”

Spring in Southern California has a certain rhythm: Dodgers fans return to Chavez Ravine, the jacarandas start to bloom, and L.A.’s mayor gives a speech — usually a long one — about how the city is doing.

Mayor Karen Bass, running for a second term in the June 2 election, is shaking up that routine, by delivering two different State of the City addresses nearly three months apart.

Bass said the first State of the City address, scheduled for Feb. 2, will serve as a countdown to the 2026 World Cup, which will feature eight matches at Inglewood’s SoFi Stadium later this year. That speech is aimed at unifying the city, honoring its “people, neighborhoods and cultures,” according to an invitation that went out this week.

“It’s a day to really celebrate our city,” Bass said in an interview. “I mean, last year was very, very tough, and now we’re ready to get things together to welcome the world.”

The Feb. 2 address, planned at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, will spell out the city’s efforts to ensure that everyone in L.A., not just the buyers of expensive World Cup tickets, will have a chance to participate in the global soccer event, Bass said.

The second speech, planned for mid-April, will be more of a traditional State of the City address, focusing heavily on the mayor’s spending priorities and the release of her budget on April 20.

L.A. mayors usually deliver the State of the City address during the third week in April, using them to list their accomplishments and highlight new policy initiatives. In recent decades, they have been staged in the ornate City Council chamber, outside Griffith Park Observatory and even at an electric truck factory in Harbor City.

The speech planned by Bass for Feb. 2 falls on the first day that L.A. mayoral candidates are allowed to file paperwork with the City Clerk declaring their intention to run for that office.

Bass, who launched her campaign in December, is expected to face several challengers, including former schools Supt. Austin Beutner, community organizer Rae Huang and reality television star Spencer Pratt.

Beutner and Huang had no comment on the upcoming speeches. But Pratt questioned whether Bass is using the extra city speech to bolster her campaign.

“It’s no surprise that Karen Bass is using her position as the incumbent mayor to promote her re-election,” Pratt said in a statement, “but two state of the city speeches does seem excessive given that each event will cost taxpayers resources which could better serve the community elsewhere.”

Bass pushed back on that idea, saying the extra speech is not connected to her campaign, which already had its public kickoff.

“Every press conference — anything I do right now — could easily be attached to that, and it’s not true,” she said.

In recent weeks, Bass stayed mostly behind the scenes as the city marked the one-year anniversary of the Jan. 7, 2025, Palisades fire, which destroyed thousands of homes and left 12 people dead. Although she did attend some events marking the anniversary, those were not part of her public schedule.

As an incumbent, Bass will always have the advantage of her City Hall bully pulpit, said Fernando Guerra, political science professor at Loyola Marymount University.

“People will say she’s using her position, and the speech, to get more attention and publicity,” he said. “That’s her job, to be out there. She should be talking to the city.”

Back in 1963, Richard Nixon needed to rehabilitate his image after he lost his race for California governor. He went on the “Tonight” show with Jack Paar and played the piano.

Bill Clinton’s appearance on “The Arsenio Hall Show,” where he delivered a rendition of “Heartbreak Hotel” on the saxophone, was considered a breakthrough moment in his successful 1992 campaign for the White House.

Those memorable segments demonstrated how the desk-and-sofa format could be a tool in the politician’s arsenal for shaping public opinion away from the pesky probing of journalists. It became a way to reach viewers who did not regularly watch TV news.

But those days may become a relic of broadcast history as Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr is calling for stronger enforcement of a broadcast regulation rule requiring TV and radio broadcasters to offer equal time to all legally qualified opposing political candidates.

With the new guidance — which legal and media experts said would be hard to enforce and could stifle free speech — the FCC questioned whether late-night and daytime talk shows deserve an exemption from the equal-time rules for broadcast stations using the public airwaves.

It’s the Trump White House’s latest salvo against the network late night talk show hosts, primarily Stephen Colbert, Seth Meyers and Jimmy Kimmel, who pound away at President Trump nightly in their monologues and offer ample airtime to his political opponents. The rule also would affect daytime shows such as ABC’s “The View,” which is under the purview of the Disney-owned network’s news division.

The equal-time rule has been around for decades but rarely has been enforced in recent years. It did come into play during the 2024 presidential campaign when NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” booked Democratic candidate Kamala Harris to appear in a sketch.

NBC filed an equal-time notice with the FCC stating that Harris had appeared on the network for one minute and 30 seconds. Campaign officials for Trump contacted the network and asked for time and they were given two free 60-second messages that appeared near the end of its telecast of a NASCAR playoff race and during post-game coverage of a “Sunday Night Football” telecast.

Experts consider the rule to be antiquated, designed for a time when consumers were limited to a handful of TV channels and a dozen radio stations if they lived in a big city. The emergence of cable, podcasts and streaming audio and video platforms — none of which are subjected to FCC restrictions in terms of content — have greatly diminished traditional broadcast media’s dominance in the marketplace.

“I think it’s very hard to look at trying to regulate over-the-air broadcasters in the same way today as the FCC would have done, you know, 50 years ago,” said Jeffrey McCall, a communications professor at DePauw University. “The rule was put in place in an era of scarcity which we really don’t have anymore.”

Michael Harrison, a media consultant and publisher of the radio trade journal Talkers, said the equal-time rule will unfairly burden radio and TV broadcasters that are struggling to compete against tech companies that largely have unfettered access to consumers and are not subject to FCC rules.

“Carr’s plan would even further handicap federally licensed television and radio platforms that are already facing an existential crisis as they are being eaten alive by unregulated digital media in an increasingly noisy marketplace,” Harrison said. “Carr’s plan is just rhetoric to give the impression that the FCC still has relevance in programming regulation.”

McCall expressed doubts as to whether the equal-time law would stand up if it were challenged in the courts.

“The Supreme Court, under Chief Justice Roberts, has been pretty supportive in providing robust 1st Amendment protections,” McCall said. “I think they would say free speech is free speech. The media landscape has changed so much over the years and we don’t want the government trying to make decisions as to what counts as political speech and what doesn’t and what counts as fairness and what doesn’t.”

No network executive contacted was willing to comment on the record, but privately they say it’s an attempt by Carr to use the government’s regulation of the free public airwaves to keep the president’s critics in line. Trump has frequently called for TV licenses to be pulled when he’s unhappy with a network reporter’s question or a late-night monologue.

They also believe that Carr wants to create a wedge between the broadcast networks and their affiliate stations, which are responsible for providing equal time if a candidate makes a request. Carr has said he wants to examine the network-affiliate relationship and how much influence is exerted by Hollywood and New York on local broadcasters.

Enforcing the rule also would be a major headache for TV stations as all legally qualified candidates on minor party tickets could ask for airtime. Under the rule, if a candidate appears on a TV or radio program, their opponents have seven days to request equal time.

“It can be a headache for sure,” said one TV station executive not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.

At Trump’s behest, Carr has been aggressive in suggesting the use of FCC rules to punish late-night hosts in Trump’s crosshairs. He threatened the TV station licenses of ABC in September after Kimmel made remarks on his program about slain right-wing activist Charlie Kirk that upset conservatives. Two major TV station groups pulled the program and the network suspended Kimmel‘s program for a week.

Trump on Wednesday posted a link to a news story that said the FCC was focused on ABC daytime talk show “The View” and ABC late-night talk show “Jimmy Kimmel Live.”

Carr’s call for greater enforcement of the equal-time rule also could have an effect on conservative-leaning broadcasters. Although right-leaning hosts are largely nonexistent on broadcast network TV, they are the dominant draws on talk radio. Those hosts would also have to abide by the rule as well when they give unfettered platforms to Republican candidates.

“If the FCC pushes this on the television and not radio, they’re going to be opening themselves to all kinds of claims of trying to protect certain messages, but not others,” McCall noted.

Conservative Fox News host Sean Hannity, who does a daily radio program carried on more than 500 stations across the U.S., told The Times in a statement that he is opposed to further government regulation of broadcast content.

“Talk radio is successful because people are smart and understand we are the antidote to corrupt and abusively biased left wing legacy media,” Hannity said in a statement. “We need less government regulation and more freedom. Let the American people decide where to get their information from without any government interference.”

Interestingly, it’s the rise of Trump and his unorthodox approach to campaigning and governing that has made political commentary and humor such a dominant part of late-night TV. His emergence as a presidential candidate after being a major prime-time TV star through NBC’s reality hit “The Apprentice” pushed politics into the center of the national pop culture conversation. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) has been a guest on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” 19 times.

In a fragmented media landscape, politicians have become some of the most broadly recognizable figures on TV and have since become fixtures as late-night guests. For years, the executive producer of Stephen Colbert’s “The Late Show,” was Chris Licht, whose background was in news. He left the job to briefly run CNN.

Trump himself was a beneficiary of the late-night platform. He hosted “Saturday Night Live” twice — even in 2015 when he was already running for the Republican presidential nomination.

Sure, President Trump’s erratic foreign policy has alienated allies, shredded the U.S.-led rules-based global order, nudged Canada closer to China and turned NATO into something resembling your uncle’s Facebook page after someone brings up politics.

Other than that? Everything’s terrific.

Just kidding. It might be even worse than we think.

The problem isn’t just that we’re losing friends, it’s that we’re creating potential enemies. And not just the kind who boo the national anthem at sporting events, but the kind who someday might decide that America is the villain in their personal origin story, right before the montage where ominous music starts playing.

If this sounds abstract or alarmist, it’s worth noting that it has already happened.

Osama bin Laden — who was once, awkwardly, sort of an informal ally against the Soviets — was radicalized largely by the Gulf War and the stationing of American troops in Saudi Arabia.

This is notable because the Gulf War — unlike the subsequent Iraq War — had international approval, a clear mission and an exit strategy. By war standards, it was practically a model U.N. bake sale. And yet it still produced consequences that reshaped America’s future, resulting in 9/11 and a couple of not-so-tidy wars.

There’s another uncomfortable part people tend to forget: the timing. The Gulf War ended in 1991. Sept. 11, 2001, happened 10 years later. The shoe did not drop immediately. It sat there. Quietly. Waiting.

The lesson is not just that military interventions can cause backlash, but that even the ones we conduct “by the book” can still leave people angry years later. Which brings us to the present.

Trump has claimed there is a “framework of a deal” with NATO in regard to Greenland, which — if it holds — is good news because you should never underestimate people who can ski and shoot at the same time.

During a recent visit to Greenland, U.S. lawmakers reportedly encountered “a level of anti-Americanism that stunned and depressed them.” Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) warned this could lead to “retaliatory measures” against the U.S., which probably means boycotts. Or harsh looks. Or maybe more.

Now, if the idea of U.S. troops getting bogged down in the snow outside of Nuuk sounds ridiculous — or if the idea of radicalizing stoic Danes seems too fanciful — keep in mind that Greenland is merely one of the fights we’ve decided to pick.

We could just as easily be creating enemies much closer to home — or even at home.

Some may be natural-born U.S. citizens swept up in a fiery politics of permanent resistance. Others may be Somali Americans in Minnesota whose families are mistreated by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or the relatives of a Cuban immigrant whose death at an El Paso detention facility was ruled a homicide, or a hypothetical Venezuelan kid whose father was killed in the operation to exfiltrate Nicolas Maduro.

These are not people who will submit formal complaints. These are people who will hold grudges.

This doesn’t mean America should curl up into a ball and never do anything again. But it probably means we should pause before assuming that today’s rhetorical flex or tough-guy sound bite magically disappears once the news cycle moves on.

Because if even the best-laid plans (like the Gulf War) evoke backlash, imagine dealing with the fallout from policies that are impulsive, performative and seemingly designed to irritate as many people as possible.

Just put yourself in the other guy’s shoes.

How would Americans react if another country kidnapped a political leader from our capital, or even threatened to invade the United States?

There would be outrage, the emergency return of Lee Greenwood and “freedom fries.” And that would be before things get all “kinetic.”

Now imagine opening social media and seeing a map where someone else’s flag has been pasted onto your territory.

This is not how you win hearts and minds. This is how you manufacture righteous indignation and anger.

In this regard, it doesn’t matter if Trump decides to walk down from his provocative rhetoric; much of the damage is already done.

Rhetoric that treats other nations as roughly equivalent to hotel properties is not free of charge. It sends a message that trust is optional and sovereignty is revocable. Sooner or later, someone is going to decide that the United States is less a partner than a recurring antagonist in their national storyline.

Here in the real world, you don’t have to go looking for trouble — and you sure as heck don’t have to go in search of monsters to destroy.

Some of the most dangerous threats have a way of finding you.

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

Curren Price’s political career appears destined to end before his criminal trial.

Prosecutors first charged the L.A. City Council member in 2023 with embezzlement, perjury and having a conflict of interest in votes on City Council matters in which his wife stood to benefit.

A long-delayed preliminary hearing began this week, where more evidence against Price will be put forth and a judge must decide if prosecutors have enough evidence to proceed. If it moves forward at the current rate, Price’s case is almost certain to drag on after he is forced from office by term limits at the end of 2026.

Price, 75, is unlikely to face prison time even if convicted — and he is expected to retire from public service at the end of the year after decades as an elected official in Sacramento and Los Angeles. Some of his colleagues have questioned whether his alleged impropriety should be addressed by the city’s ethics commission rather than a jury.

But with his preliminary hearing expected to last several more days, more evidence against Price is becoming public — meaning the consequences of the case may echo beyond the courtroom.

There are seven candidates running to replace Price in November, including his deputy chief of staff, Jose Ugarte. The crowd trying to upset Ugarte — Price’s handpicked successor and the current favorite to win — could seize the moment to shake up the primary field. Ugarte has also faced allegations of unethical behavior for failing to disclose income he made through lobbying and consulting work outside of City Hall.

Ugarte — who did not respond to a request to be interviewed for this article — has defended Price’s record as a legislator and denied that the council member committed any crimes. Ugarte recalled joining Price when he had his fingerprints taken for the criminal case.

“I was just heartbroken,” Ugarte said in November on the podcast “What’s Next, Los Angeles?”

“They’re going to find him not guilty and he’s going to be exonerated of everything,” Ugarte added.

Jose Ugarte is running for Los Angeles City Council District 9.

(Jose Ugarte)

The case could also complicate Price’s legacy.

He has survived a tumultuous and scandal-ridden time in City Hall, marked by colleagues getting marched out of office following federal prosecutions, a leaked racist recording and the continued success of young and progressive challengers unseating politicians of his generation. A conviction could see his name forever associated with peers taken down by allegations of graft.

The veteran politician, who served as a member of the Inglewood City Council and in the state Senate and Assembly, has called himself a “progressive, positive, inclusive” leader. He has supported higher wages for low-income workers in the city and has close ties to organized labor.

In an interview this week, Price reiterated that he never intended to do anything wrong and questioned the fairness of a prosecution over what he said was essentially a paperwork error.

“These offenses are built around the intent to do wrong and I had no intent, no knowledge of us doing anything wrong at the time,” he said.

No matter what happens in court, Price believes city residents will remember him for bringing jobs and affordable housing to the district, rather than the corruption charges.

“I’ve got a sophisticated constituency. They certainly know the work we’ve been doing around housing, around economic development… I think I’m going to be judged on how those programs have changed the atmosphere and the temperature in the district,” he said, referencing his work on green space initiatives, boosting wages and the construction of BMO Stadium during his time in office.

Curren Price speaks at a news conference on the L.A. Convention Center expansion along with local union members in Los Angeles in September 2025.

(Carlin Stiehl/Los Angeles Times)

Price, who grew up in South Los Angeles before attending Stanford, faces 12 counts of violating state conflict of interest laws by voting on city matters in which he had a financial interest, perjury and embezzlement.

Prosecutors allege Price repeatedly voted on items before the City Council that benefited agencies and companies that had previously done business with his wife, Del Richardson, and her consulting company, Del Richardson & Associates.

Richardson’s company received hundreds of thousands of dollars in payments from LA Metro, the city housing authority and land developers before Price voted to approve projects, grants and funding for those businesses and agencies, prosecutors allege.

The perjury charges stem from Price’s alleged failure to disclose Richardson’s income on state forms. Prosecutors say he committed embezzlement by claiming Richardson as a dependent on his city-funded healthcare plan despite them not being legally married at the time. The insurance flub cost taxpayers roughly $30,000.

Price’s attorney, Michael Schafler, has maintained Price had no knowledge of the conflict and the payments to Richardson had no effect on his votes. All of the votes cited in the complaint passed by wide margins, meaning Price did not swing any council decisions.

In court this week, Schafler continually tried to paint his client’s alleged crimes as little more than clerical errors.

While cross-examining the top attorney for California’s Fair Political Practices Commission, Schafler pointed to disclosure forms where Price declared he’d received income from a developer in the same exact amount he’s alleged to have failed to disclose in one of the perjury counts.

The count, Schafler argued, related to income from a business that the developer, Thomas Safran, owns.

Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Nathan Hochman dismissed Schafler’s attempts to downplay the charges in an interview earlier this week, noting Price was made acutely aware of the conflicts when The Times published a 2019 investigation into his record of voting on matters related to Richardson.

“His brazen conduct, even after the L.A. Times brings this to public light, is that he keeps doing it. His explanations might be to blame his staff, to blame Del Richardson’s staff, to blame lawyers, to blame basically everyone but himself,” he said. “But when you have these myriad criminal violations, all roads lead to just one person who is responsible.”

Witnesses in the preliminary hearing — which began on Tuesday and is expected to end next week — included former members of Richardson’s company and Price’s City Hall staff.

On Wednesday, longtime Richardson employee Maritsa Garcia and Deputy Dist. Atty. Casey Higgins sparred on the witness stand over what information the consulting firm provided to the councilman’s office about possible conflicts. At one point, Higgins noted that Garcia had an attorney in the room, paid for by Richardson, and suggested her testimony might be “biased.” The attorney, Michael Freedman, declined to speak with a Times reporter.

Mike Bonin, a former city councilman, said he believed Price’s alleged malfeasance should be handled by the city’s Ethics Commission — not criminal prosecutors. One of the votes at issue was about a project in Bonin’s district that sailed through the council, with Price’s vote unimportant to the project’s outcome.

“Unlike every other homeless or affordable housing project in my district, this one had no objection. It went straight through. There was absolutely no controversy,” Bonin said.

Bonin said the criminal case never “passed the smell test” to him, and that it didn’t seem as serious as crimes committed by other city councilmembers like Mitch Englander and Jose Huizar.

Englander pled guilty in 2021 to obstructing a federal investigation into whether he improperly received gifts from developers while in office. Huizar pleaded guilty to conspiracy and tax evasion two years later, after federal prosecutors accused him of taking in millions in bribes and perks in what they described as a pay-to-play scheme.

“I felt like for whatever reason they wanted to find something against Curren,” Bonin said.

An employee from the L.A. City Ethics Commission — which accused Price of a litany of violations in 2024 — testified this week that Price would still have a conflict of interest even in votes that passed by wide margins.

After former Dist. Atty. George Gascón quietly charged Price in 2023, Hochman added two charges against Price last year and has pursued the case aggressively. His prosecutors have also tried to force Richardson, who has attended court every day this week in support of her husband, to testify against him. Richardson was described as a “suspect” in the initial investigation in 2022, according to documents made public last year, but she was never charged with a crime and has denied all wrongdoing.

Laurie Levenson, a former federal prosecutor who now teaches at the Loyola Law School, said Hochman should continue pursuing cases involving political corruption, especially given the recent history at City Hall.

But with Price’s career winding down and the charges not indicating a major financial loss to taxpayers, she questioned if the case has lost value over the years.

“The importance of this case can very much change over time,” she said. “He’s not in the same political space as when [Gascón] first brought the charges, and there might have been a lot of incentive to do it then.”

Hochman confirmed attempts were made to resolve the case through a plea deal, but they were not successful. He declined to elaborate on the potential terms. Schafler also declined to detail those conversations.

Price has no intention of stepping down before his term.

The race to replace Price is likely to be one of the more competitive in June, with numerous well-funded candidates. Estuardo Mazariegos is running to Ugarte’s left and has been endorsed by Controller Kenneth Mejia and the Democratic Socialists of America Los Angeles. Also running is Elmer Roldan, a nonprofit leader who works to keep students from dropping out of schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District. Roldan was endorsed by Mayor Karen Bass on Thursday.

A dedicated group of supporters has flanked Price at nearly every court hearing. In the past, he’s held miniature rallies and prayer circles in the courthouse hallways.

Rose Rios, 80, who is the head of a homeless outreach group in South L.A., said she believes prosecutors are unfairly maligning Price and expressed concern the charges will overshadow his legacy of “building up South-Central.”

Rios said she will never accept a guilty verdict in the case, and neither will many of Price’s constituents.

“I trust him. I trust him with my life. He’s loved through all the district,” she said. “That many people wouldn’t love you if you weren’t doing the right thing.”

SACRAMENTO — Pro-business conservatives and environmentalist liberals joined forces in the Assembly on Monday to engineer the surprise defeat of two forest protection measures that had the backing of Gov. Pete Wilson and a powerful coalition of timber companies and conservation organizations.

Swayed by arguments that the measures could lead to the destruction of ancient forests as well as the loss of hundreds of logging jobs, a bitterly divided Assembly voted against the bills that had been designed to stop overcutting in the state’s 7.1 million acres of privately owned timberlands.

A similar alliance in the Senate failed, however, to stop two other measures in the four-bill package, and they passed easily by separate 22-14 votes.

Buoyed by the Senate action, the bills’ Assembly authors said they would bring the defeated measures up again for another vote, possibly as early as today, but they acknowledged it would be difficult to win passage. Both bills need 41 votes to garner Assembly approval and they drew just 28 and 31 votes Monday.

The legislation, which was the result of a compromise reached after months of negotiations between environmental organizations and timber companies, would ban clear-cutting in ancient and old-growth forests, limit its use in other types of forests, provide protections for forest watersheds and wildlife and place restrictions on timber harvesting that are designed to prevent loggers from cutting more than they can grow.

Although the measures had support from environmental organizations like the National Audubon Society and the Planning and Conservation League, Assembly sponsors blamed a heavy lobbying attack from the Sierra Club for siphoning off key Democratic votes and leading to the unexpected defeat.

“I think the Democratic side bought the Sierra Club argument,” said Assemblyman Byron Sher (D-Palo Alto), a sponsor of the package.

Sher said pro-environment lawmakers were drawn to the Sierra Club argument that last-minute fine-tuning of the legislation had led to changes that would exempt 30,000 acres of old-growth forest owned by Pacific Lumber Co. from some of the new restrictions on harvesting.

While he insisted there was no such exemption in the bills, Sher said it may be necessary to make changes to satisfy Sierra Club objections in order for the measures to pass the Assembly.

But in the Senate, Republicans who had backed the bills after winning assurances from Wilson that there would be no changes insisted they would withdraw their support if the legislation was altered in anyway.

“If it takes an amendment to line up Democratic votes, that amendment will cause me and I’m sure many other Republicans to drop their support,” Sen. Tim Leslie (R-Auburn) said firmly.

Insisting the defeat had been motivated by partisan politics, Assemblyman Chris Chandler (R-Yuba City) predicted the measures would eventually pass without any changes with more support from Republicans.

“I think the issue will come together quite nicely (Tuesday),” he said, adding that he expected at least two more Republicans to vote yes.

Other lawmakers agreed, saying that many Democrats had not voted on the measures, preferring first to wait and see how much Republican support they would garner. Some grumbled privately that even though Wilson was backing the measure, only 10 Republicans had voted for the bills while 18 had voted against them.

On the Assembly floor, however, the debate avoided politics and focused on the issues of jobs and ancient forests.

Conservative Assemblyman Tom McClintock (R-Thousand Oaks) said the new restrictions would put 17,000 families on the North Coast out of work as timber companies were forced to cut back on harvesting and reduce saw mill production.

“Is it possible that even now, this Administration and this Legislature does not understand the enormous damage which they have done to our economy?” McClintock said. “That even now, while the governor postures about his concern for the economy, he is waging unrelenting war against the remaining job base of our state?”

On the Democratic side, Assemblyman Tom Hayden, (D-Santa Monica), objected to the measures on environmental grounds, arguing that while they banned clear-cutting in ancient forests they also allowed a schedule of harvesting that permitted those forests to be decimated in the next two decades.

“It’s a legalized schedule for their destruction,” Hayden said, “with the possibility held out that a few (trees) will be retained like animals in the zoo.”