1 of 2 | Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del. (L), and Sen. Edward “Ted” Kennedy, D-Mass., attend a Senate Judiaciary Committee meeting in 1985. The Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate is giving Biden a Lifetime Achievement Award this fall. File Photo by Tim Clary/UPI | License Photo
July 18 (UPI) — The Edward M. Kennedy Institute will give President Joe Biden a Lifetime Achievement Award at its 10th Anniversary Celebration this fall.
Biden plans to attend the event on Oct. 26 at the Institute’s Columbia Point, Mass., building. The award is to recognize Biden’s “more than four decades in public life, beginning with his election to the United States Senate from Delaware in 1972, to his ascent to leadership positions in the Judiciary and Foreign Relations Committees, to the vice presidency and ultimately to the White House,” a press release said.
The Institute, named for Sen. Edward “Ted” Kennedy, will also give out its Award for Inspired Leadership to former secretary of labor and Boston Mayor Martin J. Walsh and Retired U.S. Navy Adm. Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to serve on the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
“We believe that we can inspire new generations of leaders by highlighting the example of those who came before them like Senator Ted Kennedy,” said Victoria Reggie Kennedy, Kennedy’s widow and the co-founder of the Kennedy Institute. Biden, Walsh and Franchetti “are all such exemplary and inspiring leaders, dedicated to improving the lives of others in our community and throughout our country.”
The Institute’s fall dinner is its annual fundraiser, supporting its mission to foster bipartisan political leadership, provide a forum for civil discourse about critical issues, and educate the public about the Senate’s role in the American system of democratic government.
“President Biden’s life has been one of honorable service to his country, and like the man for whom the Kennedy Institute is named, fought for the interests, and to better the lives, of all Americans from all socio-economic, cultural, and personal backgrounds,” Kennedy Institute Chair Bruce A. Percelay said. “His tenacity and persistence — again, traits that echo those of Senator Ted Kennedy — are constant reminders to our current political leaders of the dedication and hard work required to do the people’s business in Washington.”
NORFOLK, Va. — A Virginia man pleaded guilty Friday in a federal case that accused him of stockpiling the largest number of finished explosives in FBI history and of using then-President Biden’s photo for target practice.
Brad Spafford pleaded guilty in federal court in Norfolk to possession of an unregistered short-barreled rifle and possession of an unregistered destructive device, according to court documents. Each count carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison. His sentencing is scheduled for December.
Federal authorities said they seized about 150 pipe bombs and other homemade devices last fall at Spafford’s home in Isle of Wight County, which is northwest of Norfolk.
The investigation into Spafford began in 2023 when an informant told authorities that Spafford was stockpiling weapons and ammunition, according to court documents. The informant, a friend and member of law enforcement, told authorities that Spafford was using pictures of then-President Biden for target practice and that “he believed political assassinations should be brought back,” prosecutors wrote.
Two weeks after the assassination attempt of then-presidential candidate Donald Trump in 2024, Spafford told the informant, “bro I hope the shooter doesn’t miss Kamala,” according to court documents. Former Vice President Kamala Harris had recently announced she was running for president. On around the same day, Spafford told the informant that he was pursuing a sniper qualification at the local gun range, court records stated.
Numerous law enforcement officers and bomb technicians searched the property in December.
Spafford stored a highly unstable explosive material in a garage freezer next to “Hot Pockets and frozen corn on the cob,” according to court documents. Investigators also said they found explosive devices in an unsecured backpack labeled “#NoLivesMatter.”
Spafford has remained in jail since his arrest in December. U.S. District Judge Arenda L. Wright Allen ruled against his release in January, writing that Spafford has “shown the capacity for extreme danger.” She also noted that Spafford lost three fingers in an accident involving homemade explosives in 2021.
Spafford had initially pleaded not guilty to the charges in January. Defense attorneys had argued at the time that Spafford, who is married and a father of two young daughters, works a steady job as a machinist and has no criminal record.
Defense attorney Jeffrey Swartz said at Spafford’s January detention hearing that investigators had gathered information on him since January 2023, during which Spafford never threatened anyone.
“And what has he done during those two years?” Swartz said. “He purchased a home. He’s raised his children. He’s in a great marriage. He has a fantastic job, and those things all still exist for him.”
Investigators, however, said they had limited knowledge of the homemade bombs until an informant visited Spafford’s home, federal prosecutors wrote in a filing.
“But once the defendant stated on a recorded wire that he had an unstable primary explosive in the freezer in October 2024, the government moved swiftly,” prosecutors wrote.
WASHINGTON — Democrats may not agree on a solution to the country’s broken immigration system — but President Trump’s crackdown in Los Angeles has finally given them a line of attack.
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‘Better terrain’
A flicker of hope has emerged from a brutal polling environment for the party suggesting the public is torn over Trump’s blunt tactics in the immigration raids. The recent set of numbers have been an outlier on an issue that has otherwise been Trump’s strongest since taking office.
“Absolutely, sentiment is shifting,” said G. Cristina Mora, a sociology professor at UC Berkeley. “You’re seeing more dissatisfaction and less agreeance with the president’s strategy on immigration enforcement.”
Polls released over the course of the last month found that, while a plurality of Americans still support Trump’s overall approach to immigration, a majority believe that ICE has gone too far in its deportation efforts. And a new survey from Gallup found record public support for immigration, with public concern over crossings and support for mass deportations down significantly from a year ago.
Top Democratic operatives are testing new talking points, hoping to press their potential advantage.
“The only place in the world that Donald Trump has put boots on the ground and deployed troops is in America,” Rahm Emanuel, a veteran party insider who served under President Obama before becoming mayor of Chicago, said this week. “In L.A., they get troops on the ground. That’s the Trump Doctrine. The only place he’s actually put boots on the ground is in an American city.”
In Washington, efforts to corral Democratic lawmakers behind a unified message on immigration have been futile ever since the party split over the Laken Riley Act, one of the first bills passed this term. The law allows ICE to detain undocumented immigrants that have faced charges, been arrested or convicted of nonviolent crimes such as burglary, theft, larceny, or shoplifting.
But last month, when the shock of Trump’s military deployment to Los Angeles was still fresh, every single Democrat in the Senate joined in a call on the White House to withdraw the troops. The letter had no power or influence, and was paid little attention as the nascent crisis unfolded. But it was a small victory for a party that saw a rare glimpse of political unity amid the chaos.
Now, Democrats are hoping in part that Trump becomes a victim of his own success, with focus pulled from a quiet border that has seen record-low crossings since he resumed office.
In the House, Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-Redlands) is leading an immigration working group, sources said, hoping to foster consensus in the party on how to proceed.
“The issue has gotten a little less hot, because the border is calmed down,” said one senior Democratic congressional aide, granted anonymity to speak candidly. “Now the focus is raids, which is better terrain for us.”
A party split
In May, Ruben Gallego, a Democrat who won a statewide race for his Senate seat in Arizona the same year that Trump handily won the state’s presidential contest, released a vision for immigration policy. His proposal, titled “Securing the Border and Ensuring Economic Prosperity,” received little fanfare. But the plan called for significant border security enhancements as well as an increase in visa and green card opportunities and a pathway to citizenship.
It was a shot at the middle from an ambitious politician scheduled to visit Iowa, a crucial state in the presidential nominating contest, early next month.
Yet it is unclear whether efforts by Gallego, a border state senator, to moderate the party’s messaging on immigration will resonate with its base. Gallego was one of only 12 Democratic senators who voted for the Laken Riley Act.
On the other side of the party, leaders like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, as well as Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee for mayor of New York City, have focused their criticism on Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, with Mamdani calling the agency “fascist” in its tactics.
“Democrats built the deportation machine that Trump has now turbocharged,” said Elliott Young, a history professor at Lewis & Clark College. “The Democrats have an opportunity to stake out a humane and economically sensible position of encouraging immigration and welcoming our future citizens from around the world. The Republicans will always be better at cruelty and xenophobia, so better to leave that to them.”
In her research at UC Berkeley, Mora still sees “very strong support” across party lines for a pathway to citizenship, as well as for the constitutional preservation of birthright citizenship. But she is skeptical of an emerging strategy from a segment of Democrats, like Gallego, to adopt a prevailing Republican narrative of rampant criminal activity among immigrants while still promoting legal protections for the rest.
Having it both ways will be difficult, she said. The Trump administration says that anyone who crossed the border without authorization is a criminal, regardless of their record once they got here.
“The Democratic Party is in this sort of place where, if you look at the Ruben Gallegos and that element, they’re sort of ceding the narrative as they talk about getting rid of the criminals,” Mora said. “Narratives of immigrants and criminality, despite all the data showing otherwise, are so tightly connected.”
“It’s a tricky dance to make,” she added.
An L.A. opportunity
Before Gallego’s visit to Iowa, California Gov. Gavin Newsom visited South Carolina earlier this month, a transparent political stop in another crucial early primary state by a Democratic presidential contender.
For Newsom, the politics of the raids in his home state have been unavoidable from the start. But the governor’s speech in Bennettsville teased a political line of attack that appears to reflect shifting public opinion against ICE tactics.
Linking the raids with Trump’s response to the Los Angeles fires, Newsom noted the president was silent on the six-month anniversary of the devastating event, while that day ordering hundreds of federal troops into MacArthur Park in the heart of the city.
“Kids were taken away and hidden into the buildings, as they paraded around with American flags on horseback in military garb and machine guns — all masked,” Newsom said. “Not one arrest was made.”
“He wanted to make a point,” Newsom added. “Cruelty is the point.”
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SACRAMENTO — If there were more people like George Steffes in politics, the public wouldn’t hold the institution in such low esteem.
There’d be a lot less bull and much more thoughtful debate.
Paralytic polarization would give way to problem solving.
If more Republicans like him were in Washington, there’d be no rationalization for tyrannical ICE raids at schools and workplaces because Congress and the president would have long ago compromised on immigration reform.
The Republican Party would still be modeled after Steffes’ early mentor — pragmatic conservative Ronald Reagan — and not be the misused tool of demagogue Donald Trump.
Steffes, 90, died peacefully in his sleep in a Sacramento hospital July 6. He was admitted two weeks earlier after a painful bathroom fall. The precise cause of death was unknown at this writing, according to his wife, Jamie Khan.
He was the last remaining top advisor of Gov. Reagan who remained in Sacramento after the future president moved on — the last person around the state Capitol with firsthand, close-up knowledge of the GOP icon’s governorship. He was Reagan’s lead legislative lobbyist.
Ordinarily, Steffes would be best known around the Capitol for being a past Reagan honcho. But he’s better known for being a classy guy.
No one in Sacramento for the last 60 years — at least — has been more liked, respected and successful as a lobbyist than Steffes. He’d easily rank in the top 10. No, make that top 5.
If there were more lobbyists like Steffes, the profession wouldn’t be such a pejorative.
He didn’t try to BS governors, legislators, clients or journalists. He was a straight shooter. People trusted him.
He always had a smile, but wasn’t a backslapper.
People instantly liked him — as I did when we first met in a Santa Cruz hotel bar one night in 1966 after a day of traipsing after Reagan running for governor. Steffes was a campaign aide. I was a reporter who found him highly interesting, thoughtful and candid.
But don’t take just my word about the guy.
“He was never part of the nonsense that is characteristic of those of us in politics,” former Democratic Assembly Speaker Willie Brown told me. “I could rely on his word about good public policy. He was knowledgeable. He knew what he was doing.”
Brown, who was elected San Francisco mayor after leaving the Legislature, recalled that Steffes helped him pass a landmark bill “eliminating a law punishing people for being gay. I had to get Republican votes. George talked to them about how it wasn’t a bad vote to cast.”
The 1975 bill, signed by new Gov. Jerry Brown, repealed a century-old law prohibiting “crimes against nature.” The measure eliminated criminal penalties for oral sex and sodomy between consenting adults.
“The biggest thing that stands out to me about Steffes is how different he was from the mean-spirited slashing politics of today,” says Kip Lipper, a chief environmental consultant for several Democratic state Senate leaders. “He was unfailingly considerate, always in good spirits. He didn’t wear his politics on his sleeve like a lot of others.”
Retired journalist Lou Cannon, who has written several Reagan biographies, recalls that after the new Republican governor took office in 1967, he continued to bash Pat Brown, the Democratic incumbent he had trounced the previous year.
“George told him, ‘Governor, that ‘s not worthy of you.’ So Reagan stopped. And he actually became quite fond of Pat Brown. George was never afraid to say to Reagan that he was wrong about something. And Reagan appreciated that.”
If only we had some White House aides with that courage and wisdom today.
Cannon adds: “One of the reasons I liked George is he didn’t bulls— you. If he couldn’t tell you something, he’d tell you he couldn’t tell ya. He was straight. Some people you interview them and you think, ‘Why did I waste my time?’”
Public relations veteran Donna Lucas says, “He set the standard for good lobbying in the Capitol.”
One Steffes rule: “He would never ask a legislator to do anything that wasn’t in their interest as well,” says Jud Clark, a former legislative staffer for Democrats and a close friend and business associate of Steffes.
Before he retired a few years ago, Steffes had a very long A-list of clients, such as American Express, Bechtel, IBM, Exxon and Union Pacific.
He also represented less lucrative clients such as newspapers, including The Times. And he advocated for some interests pro bono, mostly golf associations.
His passion was golf. And he became a golf instructor after retiring from lobbying.
“George was such a cerebral teacher,” says a pupil, Capitol Weekly editor Rich Ehisen. “He didn’t spend a lot of time correcting your elbow bend. He focused on the mental part of the game.”
Steffes once told an interviewer: “Golf offered good lessons for life. If I had a bad stroke, I can’t fix it now. It’s in the past. … Sitting and stewing [about it] saps our mental energy. Focus on what you can do to move forward, win the issue.”
But Steffes did stew about the declining state of politics.
“Politics became too polarized — Republican conservatives, Democratic liberals. The middle ground where he used to operate was disappearing,” his wife, Jamie, told me last week.
Reagan’s GOP that formed Steffes’ philosophy of political pragmatism had already disappeared. In the last election, he voted for Democrat Kamala Harris over Republican nominee Trump.
Steffes was honest even with himself — a human quality possessed by too few in politics.
WASHINGTON — National Guard troops and immigration agents on horseback, clad in green uniforms and tactical gear, trotted into MacArthur Park on Monday, surrounding the iconic square with armored vehicles in a show of force widely denounced as gratuitous. The enforcement operation produced few tangible results that day. But the purpose of the display was unmistakable.
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The Trump administration’s monthlong operation in Los Angeles, which began on June 6 with flash raids at work sites and culminated days later with Trump’s deployment of Marines and the Guard, continues to pay political dividends to a president who had been in search of the perfect foil on his signature issue since retaking office, officials close to the president told The Times.
At first, officials in the West Wing thought the operation might last only a week or two. But Trump’s team now says the ongoing spectacle has proven a resounding political success with few downsides. Thus far, the administration has managed to fend off initial court challenges, maintain arrests at a steady clip, and generate images of a ruthless crackdown in a liberal bastion that delight the president’s supporters.
It may be premature for the president to declare political victory. Anger over the operation has swelled, prompting activism across California. And signs have emerged that the White House may be misreading Trump’s election mandate and the political moment, with new polls showing public sentiment turning nationwide on the president’s increasingly aggressive enforcement tactics.
The city has struggled to cope, hobbled by an unpopular mayor and a nationally divisive governor who have been unable to meaningfully respond to the unprecedented federal effort. But the raids have also provided California’s Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, with an opportunity to fill a leadership vacuum as his party grapples to find its footing in the resistance.
Lawsuits could still change the course of the operation. A crucial hearing set for Thursday in a case that could challenge the constitutionality of the operation itself.
But critics say the pace of litigation has failed to meet the urgency of the moment, just as the president’s aides weigh whether to replicate their L.A. experiment elsewhere throughout the country.
To Trump, a gift that keeps on giving
Trump has succeeded in the most significant legal case thus far, with the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals allowing him to maintain control of the California National Guard. Troops remain on L.A. streets despite protests that the administration cited to justify their deployment in the first place ending weeks ago. And the administration has put the city on the defensive in a suit over the legality of its sanctuary city policy.
One White House official told The Times that the administration’s aggressive, experimental law enforcement tactics in Los Angeles have proven a “grand success,” in part because national media coverage of the ongoing crisis has largely moved on, normalizing what is happening there.
A spokesperson for the White House said the administration’s mission in the city is focused on detaining migrants with violent criminal records, despite reporting by The Times indicating that a majority of individuals arrested in the first weeks of the operation were not convicted criminals.
“President Trump is fulfilling his promise to remove dangerous, criminal illegal aliens from American communities — especially sanctuary cities like L.A. that provide safe harbor to criminal illegals and put American citizens at risk,” said Abigail Jackson, a White House spokesperson.
“One month later it’s clear, President Trump is doing his job to protect American citizens and federal law enforcement,” Jackson added. “But Gavin Newsom and Karen Bass have enabled violent rioters who attacked federal law enforcement, protected violent criminal illegal aliens, and betrayed the trust put in them by the American people.”
Trump’s use of Los Angeles as a testing ground to demonstrate raw presidential power has shown his team just how much a unitary executive can get away with. Masked agents snatching migrants has sent a chill through the city and its economy, but there is no end in sight for the operation, with one Homeland Security official telling The Times it would only intensify going forward.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection have arrested nearly 2,800 people in the L.A. area since the crackdown began.
This week, California Sen. Alex Padilla, a Democrat, introduced a bill with Democratic Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey that would bar immigration officers from wearing masks and require them to display clear identification while on the job.
“They wouldn’t be saying that if they didn’t hate our country,” Trump said Wednesday, responding to the legislation, “and they obviously do.”
Trump could still face setbacks
The 9th Circuit ruling last month, allowing Trump to maintain temporary control over the California National Guard, thwarted momentum for Trump’s opponents hoping for a decisive early victory against the operation in federal court.
But a case brought by the American Civil Liberties Union and joined by the city of Los Angeles, set for arguments in court on Thursday, addresses the core of the raids themselves and could deal a significant policy blow to the Trump administration. The ACLU has found success in another case, over raids conducted earlier this year by Border Patrol in the Central Valley, using similar arguments that claimed its tactics were unconstitutional.
“It is far too early to say that challenge has been thwarted,” said Ahilan Arulanantham, co-director of the Center for Immigration Law and Policy at UCLA School of Law.
But Arulanantham argued that city and state officials have demonstrated a lack of leadership in the pace of their response to an urgent crisis.
“There is much more local leaders could be doing to challenge the unlawful actions the federal government is taking against their residents,” he added. “The state also could have sued but did not — they sued to challenge the guard deployment, but not the ICE raids themselves.”
The raids have generated favorable coverage for the administration on right-wing media, presenting the crackdown as Trump finally bringing the fight over immigration to the heart of liberal America. But it is unclear whether Americans agree with his tactics.
Polls released last month from Economist/YouGov and NPR/PBS News/Marist found that while a plurality of Americans still support Trump’s overall approach to immigration, a majority believes that ICE has gone too far in its deportation efforts.
Newsom, speaking this week in South Carolina, a crucial state in the Democratic presidential primary calendar, suggested he saw the president’s potential overreach as a political opportunity.
“They’re now raiding the farms,” he told a crowd. “Quite literally, federal agents running through the fields.”
The governor told the story of a teenage boy from Oxnard whose parents disappeared in a federal raid, despite having no criminal records, leaving their son helpless and alone.
WASHINGTON — President Biden’s former White House physician is refusing to answer questions as part of the House Republican investigation into Biden’s health in office.
Dr. Kevin O’Connor invoked doctor-client privilege and his rights under the Fifth Amendment during an appearance Wednesday before the House Oversight Committee, his attorneys said.
Republicans are conducting a sweeping investigation into Biden’s actions in office and questioning whether the Democrat’s use of an autopen in office may have been invalid. They have also claimed that some policies carried out by the White House autopen may be invalid if it is proven that Biden was mentally incapacitated for some part of his term.
Biden has strongly denied that he was not in a right state of mind at any point while in office, calling the claims “ridiculous and false.”
David Schertler, one of O’Connor’s lawyers, said in a written statement he prepared for the committee that the doctor would not violate his oath of confidentiality with his patients. He also said the House Oversight committee should hold off on its investigation until Attorney General Pam Bondi concludes an investigation that the Oversight Committee’s chair, Rep. James Comer of Kentucky, said she has launched into the use of the autopen.
“The pending Department of Justice criminal investigation leaves Dr. O’Connor no choice but to invoke his constitutional rights under the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution to any questions posed by the Committee,” Schertler said in the statement.
Comer, in a statement, said O’Connor’s decision not to testify made it “clear there was a conspiracy.”
“The American people demand transparency, but Dr. O’Connor would rather conceal the truth,” Comer said.
In a June subpoena of O’Connor, Comer said that claims of physician-patient privilege under the American Medical Association’s code of ethics “lack merit” because that code is not part of federal law. He said the committee’s subpoena meets the AMA’s own requirement that physicians must share a patient’s medical information if “legally compelled to disclose the information” or “ordered to do so by legally constituted authority.”
Comer has said his committee will release a report of all its findings after the probe is complete. He has issued subpoenas for O’Connor and Anthony Bernal, former chief of staff to former first lady Jill Biden. Last month, Neera Tanden, former director of Biden’s domestic policy counsel, gave voluntary testimony.
Comer has requested testimony from nearly a dozen former senior Biden aides, including former White House chiefs of staff Ron Klain and Jeff Zients; former senior advisers Mike Donilon and Anita Dunn; former deputy chief of staff Bruce Reed, former counselor to the president Steve Ricchetti, former deputy chief of staff Annie Tomasini and a former assistant to the president, Ashley Williams.
President Trump’s White House has waived executive privilege, a right that protects many communications between the president and staff from Congress and the courts, for almost all of those senior staffers. That clears the way for those staffers to discuss their conversations with Biden while he was president.
WASHINGTON — If he wins the presidential election, Joe Biden will find a Middle East quite different from the one at the end of the Obama administration.
Nuclear threats may once again be on the horizon in Iran. Militant groups are on the ascendance in Lebanon and Yemen. And Israelis and Palestinians stand further away from settling their conflict than they have in a long time.
Biden says his first task will be repairing much of what he and his supporters consider to be the damage done by President Trump, who demolished long-standing norms and decades of U.S. policy regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“Joe Biden will benefit just by not being President Trump,” Biden’s top foreign policy advisor Tony Blinken said in a recent interview. “That is the opening opportunity.”
More difficult will be deciding whether to reverse some of Trump’s controversial actions and, if so, which ones.
The Palestinian Authority leadership boycotted administration-led peace talks after Trump recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and moved the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to the disputed holy city.
Palestinians claim the eastern part of the city — which Israel seized during the 1967 Middle East War — as their capital. For decades the U.S. avoided recognizing either side’s claim in Jerusalem pending a final peace agreement.
Biden’s advisors say he will not return the U.S. Embassy to Tel Aviv, but it is likely he would reopen a U.S. Consulate in East Jerusalem that would cater to Palestinians and allow a Palestinian de facto embassy in Washington.
Regaining Palestinian trust will be a major challenge. The Biden team has released careful, measured policies for the decades-old conflict, a clear rebuke to Trump, but disappointing to many progressives.
Unlike Trump, Biden supports the creation of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel.
“There will be a very important statement about the intention to pursue a two-state solution,” said Jeremy Ben-Ami, president of J Street, a pro-Israel advocacy organization in Washington and informal advisor to the campaign. “Those signals will be sent early.”
And Biden said he plans to revive U.S. financial aid to support Palestinians that was cut off by Trump as punishment for what he termed their lack of cooperation.
His hands will be partly tied by Congress. The 2018 Taylor Force Act prohibits U.S. aid from going to some Palestinian entities as long as the Palestinian Authority gives stipends to families of Palestinians killed in attacks on Israelis. It will be easier to resume funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, which supports hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees, and to hospitals in Palestinian-dominated parts of East Jerusalem, all cut off by Trump.
Biden is likely to frown on any Israeli annexation of West Bank land it seized during the 1967 war and that Palestinians have claimed for their state. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s annexation plan was tacitly approved by Trump, but has since been put on hold, partly out of concern about hurting Trump in November and partly because of a pending agreement to normalize diplomatic relations with United Arab Emirates.
How strongly Biden might act to block annexation remains to be seen. He has been careful not to say that U.S. aid to Israel would be conditioned on Israeli behavior.
Much of what Biden could do might be mired in U.S. domestic politics. Any action risks antagonizing either the pro-Israel lobby or the progressive wing of his party.
“I think the best we can hope for from a Biden government is undoing a lot of the damage and doing no more harm, while giving the Palestinians space to get their own house in order,” said Khaled Elgindy, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, a Washington think tank, and director of the Palestine and Israeli-Palestinian affairs program.
Elgindy and others predicted there would be no bold initiatives on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at the beginning of a Biden administration. There will be more-pressing crises, his advisors say, and the environment is not ripe for new negotiations.
Netanyahu got nearly everything he wanted with no concessions from Trump, so he has little incentive now to negotiate.
Palestinians, long skeptical about whether the U.S. could be a neutral broker in peace talks, gave up any hope of that after Trump. Members of the governing Palestinian Authority are biding their time, Elgindy and others said, hoping that a Biden victory at least returns the troubled U.S-Palestinian relationship back to a better footing.
“Have we given up on the U.S.? Yes,” said Diana Buttu, a Palestinian attorney and former legal advisor to the Palestinian Authority headed by President Mahmoud Abbas. At most, she predicted, “we will see that Biden will reach out to Abbas, but won’t do much other than that.”
She said that in addition to failing to condemn the U.S. Embassy relocation, Democratic Party leadership declined to include a reference in its platform to the “ongoing occupation” of Palestinian territories by Israel.
Another of Trump’s surprising breaks from years of U.S. policy came when he recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, a large, fertile plateau that Israel seized from Syria in the 1967 war. It is unclear whether such a move can be easily reversed, and there appears to be little precedent for it. On the other hand, recognition did not lead to any concrete U.S. action and put the United States in conflict with the rest of the international community, which views Israel’s control over Golan as a violation of international law.
On Iran, Biden is expected to chart a dramatically different course, and one that Netanyahu won’t like.
Trump unilaterally withdrew the U.S. from the landmark 2015 Iran nuclear deal, which forced the Islamic Republic to dismantle most of its infrastructure that could be used to produce nuclear weapons, in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions on Tehran and release of its assets frozen in banks all over the world.
Trump — prodded by Netanyahu — contended the deal was flawed because it failed to limit other Iranian activities such as its support for the region’s militant groups, including Hezbollah in Lebanon and Houthi rebels in Yemen. In recent months, the Trump administration has piled on new sanctions and other punishment to increase pressure on Iran in hopes of destroying the deal once and for all.
Biden wants to revive it by first bringing Iran back into compliance, and then reenlisting the United States.
“Assuming the deal is still on life support when he takes office, [Biden] would move toward mutual reentry,” said Colin Kahl, who served as national security advisor to the then-vice president and now consults with the campaign.
Biden said this year that once the deal is revived, he would work with European allies to “strengthen and extend it, while more effectively pushing back against Iran’s other destabilizing activities.”
Israel’s government, which views Iran as an existential threat, has been working to undermine the nuclear agreement since before it was signed.
Another unknown will be the relationship between Biden and Netanyahu.
Trump and Netanyahu had one of the warmest relationships between any U.S. and Israeli leaders. That’s a hard act for Biden to follow, particularly since he’s associated with the Obama administration, which repeatedly and bitterly clashed with Netanyahu.
But Biden has known Netanyahu for decades, including during the years the Israeli leader spent in the United States. According to aides, the pair enjoy an amiable if sometimes prickly friendship.
Covered California, the state’s Affordable Care Act health insurance marketplace, estimates that as many as 660,000 of the roughly 2 million people in the program will either be stripped of coverage or drop out due to increased cost and the onerous new mandates to stay enrolled. Those who do stay could be hit with an average monthly premium increase of up to 66%.
This is Phil Willon, the L.A. Times California politics editor, filling in for columnist George Skelton this week.
To find out more about how the millions of Californians who rely on Covered California for health insurance will be affected by Trump’s megabill, I spoke with Jessica Altman, the organization’s executive director.
We spoke on Thursday, while the Republican-led U.S. House of Representatives was voting to approve the reconciliation legislation. According to estimates by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, the package will lead to 11.8 million more people going without health insurance nationwide over the next decade.
Price increase imminent
Covered California serves as a marketplace exchange for state residents seeking healthcare insurance under the federal Affordable Care Act, widely known as Obamacare, allowing them to select from name-brand insurance providers and choose from a variety of coverage plans.
“A quarter of the people we cover are sole proprietors. That’s everything from mom-and-pop Etsy shops to a consultant, a highly educated tech worker in San Francisco doing contract work. We really have that full spectrum,” Altman said.
Covered California also serves as a health insurance sanctuary for residents whose income rises enough for them to lose eligiblity for Medi-Cal, as Medicaid is known in California, or those who work for companies that don’t provide benefits.
The current cost for basic coverage ranges from $0 a month for individuals earning around $21,000 — just above the income eligibility for Medi-Cal — to 8.5% of the income of people making $75,000 or more, Altman said.
Those subsidies were not renewed in the Trump megabill. In theory, the Republican-led Congress could remedy that before the end of the year but, given that Trump spent most of his first term in office trying to repeal the Affordable Care Act, the odds of that appear slim.
“We have many, many people paying less than $10 a month for their health insurance. We’re going to lose that price for sure,” Altman said. “We also have people, that person making $75,000 a year … they’re going to lose all of their tax credits and potentially pay hundreds more a month.”
And that price increase will start to hit home in four months, when Covered California’s open enrollment signup period begins for 2026.
Thousands of Californians will drop their coverage because they can no longer afford the expense, Altman predicts.
“This is a moment where Americans and Californians are so financially strained: Their rent, their food, their gas, their child care, all of their transportation, all of these things,” Altman said. “They are not in a position today where they feel like any of those costs can rise by 66%.”
Altman said the governor and California Legislature budgeted an additional $190 million for Covered California, which hopefully will help reduce the number of residents who will lose their healthcare coverage. But, she said, it’s nowhere near enough to make up for the federal cuts.
Targeting legal immigrants and ‘Dreamers’
Approximately 112,000 lawful immigrants in California also will be stripped of premium tax credits and cost-sharing support, essentially pushing health coverage out of financial reach, she said. That includes immigrant groups that have been eligible for assistance for years, including those with work and student visas, refugees, asylees and victims of human trafficking.
“They are limiting it so only green card holders and a couple of very nuanced categories of certain Cuban immigrants and certain immigrants from Pacific Island nations can get financial assistance,” Altman said.
Immigrants who grew up in the United States after being brought here illegally as children, a group known as “Dreamers,” will be stripped of their eligibility, Altman said.
Thousands more Californians likely will drop coverage because of new burdensome verification requirements, including increased tax filings, and bureaucratic hurdles that must be overcome to maintain eligibility.
Altman said that impact will be exacerbated by the tens of thousands of Californians expected to lose their medical insurance they secured through Covered California. Medical facilities received higher compensation to care for patients who secured health insurance through Covered California than they do for patients on Medi-Cal. And hospitals and clinics will now take an even greater financial hit for caring for Californians with no health insurance, raising healthcare costs for everyone else.
“We know people will get less healthcare. They will not get their preventive care, they will not get their primary care at the rates that they do when they’re covered,” Altman said. “But when they really need care, they’re going to go get it. They’re going to get it at the emergency room, and our system is going to pay for it anyway.”
WASHINGTON — As Americans mark the Fourth of July holiday this weekend, the Trump administration is planning ahead for the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence next year, a moment of reflection for a nation beset by record-low patriotism and divided by heated culture wars over the country’s identity.
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‘A grand celebration’
Fireworks burst over Washington, D.C., landmarks on July 4, 1976, at the nation’s bicentennial celebration.
(Charles Tasnadi / Associated Press)
White House officials are actively involved in state and local planning for the semiquincentennial after the president, in one of his first acts in office, established “Task Force 250” to organize “a grand celebration worthy of the momentous occasion.”
The administration has launched a website offering its telling of the nation’s founding, and Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” — which he had hoped to pass by this Independence Day — includes a provision allocating $40 million to commission 250 statues for a “National Garden of American Heroes,” to be built at an undetermined location.
Trump has been thinking about the 250th anniversary for years. He invoked the occasion in his first joint session to Congress in 2017, stating it would be “one of the great milestones in the history of the world.” And in 2023, campaigning for a second term, he proposed a “Great American State Fair” to take place around the country throughout the year.
But that milestone year comes amid fierce debate over Trump’s attempts to exert government control over the teaching of American history.
In March, Trump signed an executive order aimed at “restoring truth and sanity to American history,” directing public institutions to limit their presentation of the nation’s history without nuance or criticism. “This is not a return to sanity,” the Organization of American Historians responded at the time. “Rather, it sanitizes to destroy truth.”
On the “America 250” website created by the White House, the account of the nation’s founding is outsourced to Hillsdale College, a far-right institution that was a member of the advisory board for Project 2025.
“A question over this coming year is whether the celebrations around the 250th will be used as yet another cudgel in the culture wars where the goal is to divide rather than unite,” said David Ekbladh, a history professor at Tufts University.
“The view Trump’s ‘Task Force 250’ seems to be laying out is comfortable, but doesn’t give us a full view of that historical moment,” Ekbladh said. “And a full view doesn’t reduce things to a story of tragedy or oppression — although there was plenty of both — but can show us the full set of experiences that were the foundations of a dynamic country.”
Dueling celebrations in a divided nation
In 1976, when the United States marked its 200th birthday, the festivities were prolific. Federal government letterhead was decorated for over a year to mark the anniversary. State-sponsored celebrations were designed to revive a national sense of patriotism that had been challenged by a stagflating economy, lingering trauma from the political convulsions of the late 1960s and the Vietnam War.
A full schedule of events has yet to be made public. But scholars expect echoes of 1976, when government efforts to instill pride in a weary nation met with mixed success.
“In 1976, there were dueling celebrations: official, government-sponsored ones, and ‘people’s’ observances organized by progressive groups,” said Michael Kazin, a history professor at Georgetown University. “I expect something of that kind will occur next year too.”
There are significant differences. This time, the nation will celebrate a constitutional system of checks and balances under historic pressure from a president testing the bounds of executive power.
“Two hundred and fifty years of constitutional democracy is well worth honoring,” said Andrew Rudalevige, a history professor at Bowdoin College, “but this particular anniversary is symbolic in ways that resonate exactly opposite to Trump’s vision of governance and history.”
Most of the Declaration of Independence, Rudalevige noted, is dedicated to laying out “how centralized executive authority leads to tyranny, and must be opposed.” And the document’s promise of inalienable rights and the pursuit of happiness have been a beacon of hope and inspiration to immigrants since the founding.
“So the next year will mark a hugely important tension between the version of American history that Mr. Trump and his allies want taught — and actual American history,” Rudalevige said. “We will have a sort of polarized patriotism.”
Patriotism hits new lows
That polarization has already become evident in recent polling.
A survey published by Gallup this week found that a historically low number of Americans feel patriotic, with 58% of U.S. adults identifying as “extremely” or “very” proud to be an American. That is nine points lower than last year, and the lowest figure registered by Gallup since they began polling on the matter in 2001.
Pride among Republicans has stayed relatively consistent, with 92% registering as patriotic. But it has plummeted among Democrats and independents. And pride decreased across parties by age group, with more Democrats in Gen Z — those born between the mid-1990s and mid-2010s — telling Gallup they have “little” or “no” pride in being an American than saying they are extremely or very proud.
If nothing else, historians said, the anniversary is an opportunity for everyday Americans to reflect on the country they want to live in.
“To be sure, for many people the day is just a day off and maybe a chance to go to a parade and see some fireworks,” said Ekbladh, of Tufts. “But the day can and should be a moment to think about what the country is.”
MINNEAPOLIS — Democratic former Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman was honored for her legislative accomplishments and her humanity during a funeral Saturday where former President Biden and former Vice President Kamala Harris joined more than 1,000 mourners.
Hortman and her husband, Mark, were shot to death in their home two weeks ago by a man posing as a police officer that Minnesota’s chief federal prosecutor has called an assassination. The assailant also shot and seriously wounded a Democratic state senator and his wife at their home.
“Melissa Hortman will be remembered as the most consequential speaker in Minnesota history. I get to remember her as a close friend, a mentor and the most talented legislator I have ever known,” Gov. Tim Walz said in his eulogy. ”For seven years, I have had the privilege of signing her agenda into law. I know millions of Minnesotans get to live their lives better because she and Mark chose public service and politics.”
Neither Biden nor Harris spoke, but they sat in the front row with the governor and his wife, Gwen. Biden also paid his respects Friday as the Hortmans and their golden retriever, Gilbert, lay in state in the Minnesota Capitol Rotunda in St. Paul. Biden also visited the wounded senator, John Hoffman, in a hospital.
Hortman was the first woman and one of fewer than 20 Minnesotans to lie in state at the Capitol. It was the first time a couple have been accorded the honor, and the first for a dog. Gilbert was seriously wounded in the attack and had to be euthanized.
Hortman, who was first elected in 2004, helped pass an expansive agenda of liberal initiatives including free lunches for public school students during a momentous 2023 session as the chamber’s speaker, along with expanded protections for abortion and trans rights. With the House split 67 to 67 between Democrats and Republicans this year, she yielded the gavel to a Republican under a power-sharing deal, took the title speaker emerita and helped break a budget impasse that threatened to shut down state government.
Walz said Hortman saw her mission as “to get as much good done for as many people as possible.” He said her focus on people was what made her so effective.
“She certainly knew how to get her way. No doubt about that,” Walz said. “But she never made anyone feel that they’d gotten rolled at a negotiating table. That wasn’t part of it for her, or a part of who she was. She didn’t need somebody else to lose” for her to win, he said.
The governor said the best way to honor the Hortmans would be by following their example.
“Maybe it is this moment where each of us can examine the way we work together, the way we talk about each other, the way we fight for things we care about,” Walz said. “A moment when each of us can recommit to engaging in politics and life the way Mark and Melissa did — fiercely, enthusiastically, heartily, but without ever losing sight of our common humanity.”
Dozens of state legislators who served with Hortman attended. The Rev. Daniel Griffith, pastor and rector of the Basilica, led the service. Other clergy present included Archbishop Bernard Hebda of the Saint Paul and Minneapolis Archdiocese.
The man accused of killing the Hortmans at their home in the Minneapolis suburb of Brooklyn Park and wounding Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, at their home in nearby Champlin on June 14 made a brief court appearance Friday. He’s due back in court Thursday.
Vance Boelter, 57, of Green Isle, Minn., surrendered near his home the night of June 15 after what authorities called the largest manhunt in Minnesota history.
Boelter has not entered a plea. Prosecutors need to secure a grand jury indictment first. His lawyers have declined to comment on the charges, which could carry the federal death penalty.
Friends have described Boelter as an evangelical Christian with politically conservative views and a supporter of President Trump. Prosecutors have declined to speculate on a motive.
June 26 (UPI) — Republican House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman James Comer on Thursday issued a subpoena to a former Jill Biden aide in his panel’s probe into Joe Biden‘s mental health.
The subpoena targeted Anthony Bernal, a former assistant to the president and senior adviser to the former first lady, calling for him to appear for a deposition on July 16 as part of Comer’s probe into what his press announcement called “the cover-up of President Joe Biden’s mental decline and potentially unauthorized executive actions.”
Comer’s announcement on the subpoena said Bernal was reportedly so close to the former first lady that he was referred to as her “work husband.”
A day earlier, Bernal had notified Comer’s panel that he would not take part in its requested interview. Comer on Thursday said that Bernal previously had confirmed that he would appear “for a voluntary transcribed interview” on Thursday. However, Comer said, the White House Counsel’s office informed Bernal that it was waiving executive privilege for the committee’s investigation. At that, Bernal refused to appear.
In a subpoena cover letter, Comer said, in part, to Bernal that “the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform requested that you — because of your role as a senior aide to former President Joe Biden — appear for a transcribed interview on June 11, 2025, broadly regarding ‘the extent of your influence over the former President and your knowledge of whether the former President was personally discharging the duties of his office.’
“Given your close connection with both former President Biden and former First Lady Jill Biden, the Committee sought to understand if you contributed to an effort to hide former President Biden’s fitness to serve from the American people,” the letter continued. “You have refused the Committee’s request. However, to advance the Committee’s oversight and legislative responsibilities and interests, your testimony is critical. Accordingly, please see the attached subpoena for testimony at a deposition on July 16, 2025.”
Bernal was one of the sources cited in Jake Tapper’s book Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again. That book also has been referenced by Comer in his panel’s investigation into Joe Biden’s mental health.
In May, Comer announced his investigation, citing general concerns about Biden’s age and mental capacity after the president’s troubled performances and missteps on the campaign trail, which eventually resulted in Joe Biden withdrawing from his presidential run.
Comer’s investigation also launched as renewed interest in Biden’s health erupted after the former president announced he had been diagnosed with prostate cancer.
Earlier this month, President Donald Trump ordered an investigation into Joe Biden’s cognitive state, alleging that White House aides covered up his mental decline.
THE HAGUE — President Trump’s gamble in bombing Iran offers significant rewards if it succeeded in destroying Tehran’s nuclear program — and historic risks if it did not. He will get credit for success only if he acknowledges the consequences of failure.
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‘You were a man of strength’
Rep. Greg Casar, a Democrat from Texas, and other lawmakers hold a news conference outside the Capitol on Wednesday.
(Bloomberg)
There are critics of Trump’s decision to order strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities over the weekend. A segment of the president’s base is worried about another military entanglement in the Middle East, and a contingent of Democrats are concerned that he operated outside his constitutional authorities to wage war. But majority support exists on a bipartisan basis across Washington and among U.S. allies in Europe and the Middle East for the president’s military actions, which was on display at the NATO summit in The Hague this week.
“You were a man of strength, but you were also a man of peace,” NATO’s secretary general, Mark Rutte, told the president as they met in the Netherlands, “and the fact that you are now also successful in getting the ceasefire done between Israel and Iran, I really want to commend you for it — I think this is important for the whole world.”
At a cocktail reception in the center of the old city, where haunting Ukrainian music played in the nearby town square, Democratic senators emphasized their hope that Trump’s military strikes prove to be an operational success.
“If we have in fact either taken out Iran’s nuclear program,” said Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, sitting alongside Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware, “or badly set it back, in ways that mean that they’re not going to get a nuclear weapon anytime soon, I think that is a good thing.”
And former President Biden’s secretary of State, Antony J. Blinken, also expressed hope that the strikes succeeded, despite criticizing the resort to military action in the first place. “Now that the military die has been cast,” he wrote in the New York Times, “I can only hope that we inflicted maximum damage.”
For two decades, Republican and Democratic presidents alike have warned of peril to the region and the world if Iran were to obtain nuclear weapons — but also of Tehran’s ability to rest comfortably at the threshold of that weapons capability, in a Goldilocks position that allows them to enjoy the strategic benefits of nuclear statehood without incurring the costs.
For more than a decade, a consensus of national security and intelligence experts in Washington has assessed that Iran made a strategic decision to park itself there, holding that capability like a sword of Damocles over the international community as it fueled militant organizations such as Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis, undermining U.S. interests and regional stability.
Whether or not Tehran was preparing to “break out” toward a warhead, Trump’s military action was an effort to remove that years-old threat and change the strategic paradigm — a move that has won praise from European leaders and Democrats who have grown weary of decades of diplomacy with Iran that barely moved the needle.
A 2015 nuclear agreement between six world powers and Tehran was designed to oversee Iran’s nuclear capabilities. But the deal allowed Iran to maintain its domestic enrichment program, and had provisions under which caps on its enrichment capacity would expire starting this year.
“There is no reason to criticize what America did at the weekend,” German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said this week. “Yes, it is not without risk. But leaving things as they were was not an option either.”
‘That hit ended the war’
Yet the risks of failure are significant.
Trump’s predecessors feared that strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities, regardless of their tactical success, could give Tehran the political justification to withdraw from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and openly pursue nuclear arms, driving its program further underground and out of sight. In the worst-case scenario, enough of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure could remain intact for Tehran to race to a bomb within days or weeks.
“In war-gaming the military option during my time in the Biden administration, we were also concerned that Iran had or would spread its stockpile of uranium already enriched to just short of weapons grade to various secure sites and preserve enough centrifuges to further enrich that stockpile in short order,” Blinken wrote. “In that scenario, the Iranian regime could hide its near weapons-grade material, greenlight weaponization and sprint toward a bomb.”
A preliminary report on the U.S. raid, called Operation Midnight Hammer, from the Defense Intelligence Agency lends credence to those concerns. The low-confidence assessment, largely based on satellite imagery of Iran’s bombed sites at Fordo, Natanz and Isfahan, indicates that its core nuclear capabilities remain intact after the strikes despite the U.S. deployment of exceptionally powerful “bunker-buster” weapons, according to one official familiar with its findings. The Trump administration has acknowledged the authenticity of the assessment, first reported by CNN.
Satellite imagery captured days before the U.S. strike at Fordo also showed a line of trucks at the site, raising concerns that some of its enriched uranium had been removed at the last minute — a fear that Israeli officials have acknowledged to The Times.
The Defense Intelligence Agency is only one of 18 such federal agencies that will examine the operation’s success, and the Israelis will conduct their own review. But the reaction from Trump and his team to the leaked report suggests they view anything but success as a political liability that must be publicly denied.
“That hit ended the war,” Trump told reporters in The Hague, blasting the reporters who broke the story as “idiots” seeking to “demean” the pilots who conducted the mission. “We had a tremendous victory, a tremendous hit.”
“What they’ve done is they’re trying to make this unbelievable victory into something less,” he said.
The president’s resistance to the possibility of failure, or of only partial success, in the military operation could hamper the response to come. Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, on Wednesday described the strikes as a moment that reinforced his government’s determination to pursue “nuclear technologies.”
“The aggression of Israel and the United States will have a positive impact on Iran’s desire to continue developing its nuclear program,” Araghchi said. “It strengthens our will, makes us more determined and persistent.”
Pressed by another reporter on whether the preliminary assessment was correct, Trump replied, “Well, the intelligence was very inconclusive,” indicating he had concluded the operation was a success before the intelligence community had completed its work.
“The intelligence says we don’t know it could have been very severe, that’s what the intelligence says,” he added. “So I guess that’s correct, but I think we can take that we don’t know — it was very significant. It was obliteration.”
‘It was a flawless mission’
It would not be the first time the Trump administration has politicized a U.S. intelligence assessment. But the Israeli government, which sees existential stakes in Iran’s ability to produce nuclear weapons, may be less likely to exaggerate the impacts of the operation, acutely aware of the consequences of a grave intelligence failure for its security.
An initial Israeli assessment tracks with the president’s view that the nuclear program has been in effect destroyed.
“The devastating U.S. strike on Fordo destroyed the site’s critical infrastructure and rendered the enrichment facility inoperable,” the Israel Atomic Energy Commission said in a statement, pushed by the White House on Wednesday. “We assess that the American strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities, combined with Israeli strikes on other elements of Iran’s military nuclear program, has set back Iran’s ability to develop nuclear weapons by many years.”
“This achievement can continue indefinitely,” the statement continued, “if Iran does not get access to nuclear material.”
On Wednesday, an Israeli official told The Times that its initial assessment of the damage would be supplemented by additional intelligence work. “I can’t say it’s a final assessment, because we’re less than a week after,” the official said, “but that’s the indication we have now.”
Still, just like in the United States, multiple organizations within Israel’s national security apparatus are expected to weigh in with assessments. The Mossad, Israel’s main intelligence agency, has yet to complete its review of the operation, an Israeli official said.
A spokesperson for Iran’s Foreign Ministry also said Wednesday that its nuclear installations were “badly damaged” by the U.S. strikes. But it remains unclear whether Iran was able to move fissile material and enrichment equipment to another facility before the strikes occurred — or whether it had previously hidden material in reserve, anticipating the possibility of an attack.
All of those pressing questions, to Trump and his aides, are the chatter of critics.
“It was a flawless mission,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said in The Hague. “Flawless,” Trump replied, nodding in approval.
SACRAMENTO — California really does still have a Legislature, even if you haven’t been reading or hearing much about it. In fact, it’s currently making a ton of weighty decisions.
They’ll affect many millions of Californians — with a gamut of new laws and hefty spending.
Plus congressional wrangling over Trump’s “Big Beautiful” ugly, debt-hiking bill — and the eruption of a Middle East war.
Meanwhile, it’s one of the busiest and most important periods of the year in the state Capitol. This is budget time, when the Legislature and governor decide how to spend our tax dollars.
The Legislature passed a $325-billion so-called budget June 13, beating its constitutional deadline by two days. If it hadn’t, the lawmakers would have forfeited their pay. But although that measure counted legally as a budget, it lacked lots of details that still are being negotiated between legislative leaders and Newsom.
The final agreements will be tucked into a supplementary measure amending the main budget bill. That will be followed by a long line of “trailer bills” containing even more policy specifics — all currently being hammered out, mostly in back rooms.
The target date for conclusion of this Byzantine process is Friday. The annual budget will take effect July 1.
Some budget-related issues are of special interest to me and I’ve written about them previously. So, the rest of this column is what we call in the news trade a “follow” — a report on where those matters stand.
Californians cast more votes for Proposition 36 last year than anything else on the ballot. The measure passed with 68% of the vote, carrying all 58 counties.
Inspired by escalating retail theft, the initiative toughened penalties for certain property and hard-drug crimes, such as peddling deadly fentanyl. But it offered a carrot to drug-addicted serial criminals. Many could be offered treatment rather than jail time.
Proposition 36 needs state money for the treatment, more probation officers to supervise the addicts’ progress and additional law enforcement costs. The measure’s backers estimate a $250-million annual tab.
Newsom, however, was an outspoken opponent of the proposition. He didn’t provide any funding for it in his original budget proposal and stiffed it again last month when revising the spending plan.
But legislative leaders insisted on some funding and agreed on a one-time appropriation of $110 million.
Woefully inadequate, the measure’s backers contend. They’re pushing for more. But some fear Newsom might even veto the $110 million, although this seems doubtful, given the public anger that could generate.
Greg Totten, chief executive of the California District Attorneys Assn., which sponsored the initiative, says more money is especially needed to hire additional probation officers. Treatment without probation won’t work, he insists.
Sen. Catherine Blakespear (D-Encinitas) is trying to change the $110-million allocation mix. There’s nothing earmarked for county sheriffs who now are handling lots more arrests, she says.
“I want to make sure we uphold the voters’ wishes and are getting people into drug treatment,” Blakespear says. “This passed by such a high percentage, it should be a priority for elected officials.”
Sen. Tom Umberg (D-Santa Ana) predicts the Legislature will still be fiddling with the budget until it adjourns in September and vows: “I’ll continue to advocate for adequate funding for 36.” He asserts the budget now being negotiated won’t hold up because of chaos under Trump, who’s constantly threatening to withhold federal money due California.
Newsom and the Democratic-controlled Legislature decided a few years ago to generously offer all low-income undocumented immigrants access to Medi-Cal, California’s version of federal Medicaid for the poor.
But unlike Medi-Cal for legal residents, the federal government doesn’t kick in money for undocumented people. The state foots the entire bill. And it didn’t set aside enough. Predictably, state costs ran several billion dollars over budget.
The Newsom administration claims that more adults enrolled in the program than expected. But, come on! When free healthcare is offered to poor people, you should expect a race to enroll.
To help balance the books, Newsom proposed $100 monthly premiums. The Legislature reduced that to $30. They both agreed to freeze enrollments for adults starting Jan. 1.
The Legislature also wants to freeze Medi-Cal enrollment for even more people who are non-citizens: those with what it considers “unsatisfactory immigration status.” What does that mean? Hopefully it’s being negotiated.
The governor wants to “fast-track” construction of the $20-billion, 45-mile tunnel that would transmit more Northern California water to Southern California. Delta farmers, local residents and coastal salmon interests are adamantly opposed. Fast-track means making it simpler to obtain permits and seize property.
Legislative leaders told the governor absolutely “No”: come back later and run his proposal through the ordinary committee process. Don’t try to fast-track the Legislature.
The administration of former US President, Joe Biden, knowingly allowed Israel’s genocide in Gaza to continue long after it had lost any clear military objective, with senior officials in Washington privately admitting it amounted to “killing and destroying for the sake of killing and destroying”. This damning assessment, along with revelations of political manipulation, diplomatic cover-ups and sabotaged peace efforts, comes from a bombshell investigation aired by Israel’s Channel 13. Details of the investigation have been translated by Drop Site News and shared on X.
The Biden administration allowed Israel unprecedented leeway to carry out its military offensive, despite the enormous death and devastation it inflicted on Gaza. Former Israeli ambassador, Michael Herzog, made a startling admission about Biden’s support: “God did the State of Israel a favour that Biden was the president during this period. We fought [in Gaza] for over a year and the administration never came to us and said, ‘ceasefire now.’ It never did. And that’s not to be taken for granted.” His remarks encapsulated a broader sentiment that the White House gave Benjamin Netanyahu all the political space he needed to execute the military offensive, which has claimed the lives of more than 52,000 Palestinians, mainly women and children.
The investigation, which included interviews with nine current and former US officials, reveals a deeply troubling portrait of US complicity in Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Former national security aide, Ilan Goldenberg, stated that the war amounted to “killing and destroying for the sake of killing and destroying”, with no viable political alternative ever established. Despite the White House’s public messaging about restraining Israel, the internal consensus appeared to be that the administration had no intention of exerting real pressure on the Occupation state.
The Biden administration also shielded Israel from allegations of war crimes, prompting a major backlash from staffers in the State Department. Lawyer Stacy Gilbert, for example, resigned in protest after being excluded from a key report that falsely claimed Israel had not violated US arms laws. Gilbert described the report as “shocking in its mendacity”, pointing out that aid obstruction and settler attacks were well documented, yet ignored. Meanwhile, Washington continued to certify Israeli compliance with US law, ensuring the uninterrupted flow of weapons.
The investigation also revealed that Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, deliberately sabotaged hostage negotiations in order to prevent a ceasefire. US officials confirmed that Netanyahu tanked talks out of fear that a deal would compel him to halt the war.
Despite public backlash, Biden’s private approach remained deferential. Even after reportedly telling Netanyahu he was “full of shit” and hanging up mid-call, Biden ultimately maintained support. After briefly halting a shipment of 2,000-lb bombs due to concerns about their use in densely populated areas of Gaza, Netanyahu publicly accused Washington of broader arms delays. Biden, rather than escalating pressure, resumed the shipment process shortly thereafter.
The Channel 13 exposé further confirms that Biden’s reluctance to push Israel was deeply tied to a failed diplomatic initiative with Saudi Arabia. A landmark normalisation deal was in sight, but it required Israeli recognition of Palestinian statehood. These were flatly rejected by Netanyahu’s far-right coalition. Former US ambassador, Jack Lew, said he found Israel’s refusal “shocking”, while Amos Hochstein expressed disbelief that such a strategic opportunity was squandered. Sources confirmed that Netanyahu deliberately stalled negotiations in hopes that President Trump would return to office and claim the diplomatic win for himself.
These revelations lend significant weight to long-standing accusations that the Biden administration has not only provided diplomatic cover for Israel’s propaganda by repeating lies, but also actively enabled what many view as a campaign of ethnic cleansing. Critics note that Biden himself amplified false Israeli claims, such as the widely discredited allegations of Hamas beheading babies, rhetoric that helped to dehumanise a population in order to carry out genocide.
WASHINGTON — President Trump on Friday called for the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate the 2020 election won by Democrat Joe Biden, repeating his baseless claim that the contest was marred by widespread fraud.
“Biden was grossly incompetent, and the 2020 election was a total FRAUD!” Trump said in a social media post in which he also sought to favorably contrast his immigration enforcement approach with that of the former president. “The evidence is MASSIVE and OVERWHELMING. A Special Prosecutor must be appointed. This cannot be allowed to happen again in the United States of America! Let the work begin!”
Trump’s post, made as his Republican White House is consumed by a hugely substantial foreign policy decision on whether to get directly involved in the Israel-Iran war, is part of an amped-up effort by him to undermine the legitimacy of Biden’s presidency. Earlier this month, Trump directed his administration to investigate Biden’s actions as president, alleging aides masked his predecessor’s “cognitive decline.” Biden has dismissed the investigation as “a mere distraction.”
The post also revives a long-running grievance by Trump that the election was stolen even though courts around the country and a Trump attorney general from his first term found no evidence of fraud that could have affected the outcome. The Department of Homeland Security’s cybersecurity arm pronounced the election “the most secure in American history.”
It was unclear what Trump had in mind when he called for a special prosecutor, but in the event Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi heeds his call, she may face pressure to appoint someone who has already been confirmed by the Senate. A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment Friday.
The Justice Department in recent years has appointed a succession of special counsels — sometimes, though not always, plucked from outside the agency — to lead investigations into politically sensitive matters, including into conduct by Biden and by Trump.
Last year, Trump’s personal lawyers launched an aggressive, and successful, challenge to the appointment of Jack Smith, the special counsel assigned to investigate his efforts to undo the 2020 presidential election and his retention of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla. A Trump-appointed judge agreed, ruling that then-Atty. Gen. Merrick Garland had exceeded his bounds by appointing a prosecutor without Senate approval and confirmation, and dismissed the case.
That legal team included Todd Blanche, who is now deputy attorney general, as well as Emil Bove, who is Blanche’s top deputy but was recently nominated to serve as a judge on a federal appeals court.
WASHINGTON — President Trump honored Juneteenth in each of his first four years as president, even before it became a federal holiday. He even claimed once to have made it “famous.”
But on this year’s Juneteenth holiday on Thursday, the usually talkative president kept silent about a day important to Black Americans for marking the end of slavery in the country he leads again.
No words about it from his lips, on paper or through his social media site.
Asked whether Trump would commemorate Juneteenth in any way, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters: “I’m not tracking his signature on a proclamation today. I know this is a federal holiday. I want to thank all of you for showing up to work. We are certainly here. We’re working 24/7 right now.”
Asked in a follow-up question whether Trump might recognize the occasion another way or on another day, Leavitt said, “I just answered that question for you.”
Trump’s silence was a sharp contrast from his prior acknowledgment of the holiday. Juneteenth celebrates the end of slavery in the United States by commemorating June 19, 1865, when Union soldiers brought the news of freedom to enslaved Black people in Galveston, Texas. Their freedom came more than two years after President Abraham Lincoln liberated slaves in the Confederacy by signing the Emancipation Proclamation during the Civil War.
Trump’s quiet on the issue also deviated from White House guidance that Trump planned to sign a Juneteenth proclamation. Leavitt didn’t explain the change. Trump held no public events Thursday, but he shared statements about Iran, the TikTok app and Fed chairman Jerome Powell on his social media site.
He had more to say about Juneteenth in yearly statements in his first term.
In 2017, Trump invoked the “soulful festivities and emotional rejoicing” that swept through the Galveston crowd when a major general delivered the news that all enslaved people were free.
He told the Galveston story in each of the next three years. “Together, we honor the unbreakable spirit and countless contributions of generations of African Americans to the story of American greatness,” he added in his 2018 statement.
In 2019: “Across our country, the contributions of African Americans continue to enrich every facet of American life.”
In 2020: “June reminds us of both the unimaginable injustice of slavery and the incomparable joy that must have attended emancipation. It is both a remembrance of a blight on our history and a celebration of our Nation’s unsurpassed ability to triumph over darkness.”
In 2020, after suspending his campaign rallies because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Trump chose Tulsa, Okla., as the place to resume his public gatherings, and scheduled a rally for June 19. But the decision met with such fierce criticism that Trump postponed the event by a day.
Black leaders had said it was offensive for Trump to choose June 19 and Tulsa for a campaign event, given the significance of Juneteenth and Tulsa being the place where, in 1921, a white mob looted and burned that city’s Greenwood district, an economically thriving area referred to as Black Wall Street. As many as 300 Black Tulsans were killed, and thousands were temporarily held in internment camps overseen by the National Guard.
In an interview with the Wall Street Journal days before the rally, Trump tried to put a positive spin on the situation by claiming that he had made Juneteenth “famous.” He said he changed the rally date out of respect for two African American friends and supporters.
“I did something good. I made it famous. I made Juneteenth very famous,” Trump said. “It’s actually an important event, it’s an important time. But nobody had heard of it. Very few people have heard of it.”
Generations of Black Americans celebrated Juneteenth long before it became a federal holiday in 2021 with the stroke of former President Joe Biden’s pen.
Later in 2020, Trump sought to woo Black voters with a series of campaign promises, including establishing Juneteenth as a federal holiday.
He lost the election, and that made it possible for Biden to sign the legislation establishing Juneteenth as the newest federal holiday.
Last year, Biden spoke briefly at a holiday concert on the South Lawn that featured performances by Gladys Knight and Patti LaBelle. Former Vice President Kamala Harris danced onstage with gospel singer Kirk Franklin.
Biden was spending this year’s holiday in Galveston, Texas, where he was set to speak at a historic African Methodist Episcopal church.
Superville writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Calvin Woodward contributed to this report.
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is pushing for Congress to pass its signature legislation within the next two weeks, before Independence Day, when lawmakers return home for much of the summer. But their deadline appears to be in jeopardy after a Senate version of the bill released this week prompted blowback from influential Republicans in both chambers.
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Widespread public opposition
Senate Majority Leader John Thune speaks along with Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) on Tuesday in the Capitol.
(Anna Moneymaker / Getty Images)
The proposal, titled the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, is meant to be the legislative vehicle to pass President Trump’s core campaign promises into law. But the overall price tag of the legislation, its cuts to Medicaid and green energy tax credits, and its tax provisions are dividing the Republican caucus.
The GOP infighting comes as new polling shows a sizable majority of Americans disapprove of the bill. A Washington Post/Ipsos poll found that Americans oppose the legislation by 2 to 1, while 64% said they opposed it in a recent KFF Health Tracking Poll.
The House passed its version of the bill last month with a razor-thin majority. But within days, several House Republicans said they regretted their votes over a host of tangential provisions, such as a line that would prohibit states from regulating artificial intelligence over the next decade.
Now, the Senate bill would hike the federal debt limit by $5 trillion — $1 trillion more than the House language — making Trump’s 2017 business tax credits permanent, expanding tax cuts for seniors and slowing the end of green energy tax breaks that had phased out more quickly in the House version.
The Senate language also introduces its own controversial, niche provisions, such as the removal of suppressors — also known as silencers for guns — from regulation under the National Firearms Act.
Gutting Medicaid, raising deficits
The Senate language, drafted by the Senate Finance Committee, also would make even more drastic cuts to Medicaid, capping provider taxes at 3.5% from 6% by 2031 and imposing even more restrictive work requirements. Those provisions risk key votes in the chamber from GOP members who have expressed concern with funding reductions to the program, including Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Shelly Moore Capito of West Virginia and Josh Hawley of Missouri, among others.
After the Finance Committee draft was released, Sens. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Rand Paul of Kentucky, who have advocated for a bill that would reduce annual deficits, said they would not vote for it in its current form. Republicans can only afford to lose three votes in the chamber to pass the bill.
“We’ve got a ways to go on this one,” Johnson said.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, of South Dakota, said he would refer the text to the Appropriations Committee, headed by Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, yet another skeptic of the bill.
“Republicans’ ’One Big Beautiful Bill’ is one huge ugly mess that will come at the cost of working families’ health care,” said Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii). “This bill proposes the biggest cut to Medicaid in history, kicking almost 14 million Americans off their insurance.”
Pushback from both GOP wings
Even if it passes the Senate, reconciliation with House Republicans will be a tall order.
“This bill, as the Senate has produced it, is definitely dead if it were to come over to the House in anything resembling its current form,” said Rep. Chip Roy of Texas, a member of the House Freedom Caucus, which advocates for decreased government spending, in a call with reporters.
But the other end of the House GOP caucus, composed of Republican lawmakers from majority Democratic states, also oppose the Senate bill as is.
Those Republicans successfully advocated to raise the cap in state and local tax deductions, to $40,000 for those making $500,000 or less a year. But the Senate version keeps the SALT provisions as is, extending them at a $10,000 cap.
“That is the deal, and I will not accept a penny less,” said Rep. Mike Lawler of New York. “If the Senate reduces the SALT number, I will vote no, and the bill will fail in the House.”
The White House has intensified its push for passage of the bill next month, warning that failure will have dire consequences. “More than 1.1 million jobs in the manufacturing sector and nearly six million jobs overall will be lost” if Trump’s 2017 tax cuts expire, the administration warned in a statement.
The bill also would provide funding for thousands of more agents at the Department of Homeland Security to perform border enforcement, a top priority for the administration that is currently reaching for unconventional resources — from refugee officers to the armed forces — for assistance in its mass deportation efforts.
“It needs to be passed,” Thune told Fox News this week. “We believe that the president and the House, the Senate, are all going to be on the same page when it’s all said and done, and we’ll get a bill that we could put on his desk that he’ll be happy with, and that the American people will benefit from.”
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SACRAMENTO — Sen. Alex Padilla had heard all he could stand from Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. For good reason. She was sounding like a military dictator and brushing off California voters.
This is how the Trump administration intends to “Make America Great Again”?
The unprecedented act of disrespecting and roughing up a U.S. senator occurred at the Westwood federal building during a Noem news conference Thursday. Padilla, a Democrat, was standing behind reporters when the secretary said federal agents would continue to conduct immigration raids in Los Angeles indefinitely.
“[We’ll] continue to sustain and increase our operations in this city,” Noem said.
“We are not going away,” she emphasized. “We are staying here to liberate the city from the socialist and the burdensome leadership that this governor and this mayor have placed on this country.”
Definitely fighting words.
“Liberate” the city? That’s the sort of language used by dictators — fascist, Communist or any Third World despot.
“Socialist” leadership? A pejorative straight out of the right-wing playbook of political talking points.
Was Noem saying the Trump administration’s real goal is to overthrow Gov. Gavin Newsom and Mayor Karen Bass because of their “burdensome” regimes?
Perhaps the secretary has forgotten what she presumably was taught in civics class.
Noem talks without thinking
But Noem, 53, was governor of South Dakota. And before that she was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives and a state legislator. So she knows about the election process. And we can only conclude that, at her news conference, she was talking without thinking.
Because in America, the “liberators” are the voters. Not immigration agents, Cabinet secretaries or even the president.
California citizens reelected Newsom by a 59% landslide vote in 2022. The Democrat will be termed out of office next year — a policy set by voters, not by some federal administration.
Bass also was elected in 2022 by a margin of nearly 10 percentage points. If Angelenos want to liberate themselves from her, they’ll have the opportunity when she’s up for reelection next year.
Socialist is such a tired characterization of practically any policy the political right doesn’t like. You could tag lots of government spending with socialism — including Social Security and Medicare.
Anyway, Padilla listened to Noem’s dumb comments about liberating citizens from the governor and mayor, and, he said later in TV interviews, “it was just too much.”
He broke in with a shouted question.
OK, he shouldn’t have done that. There’s a protocol at formal news conferences. Only reporters ask questions. Certainly not visiting politicians. And questioners really shouldn’t interrupt the person at the lectern, although it happens.
This wasn’t a Senate committee hearing in which Padilla could ask anything he wanted — when it was his turn. He wasn’t “doing his job” at Noem’s event, as his Democratic colleagues later asserted. He was there as an observer. If he wanted to ask the secretary a question, this wasn’t the time or place.
Wrong but understandable
But his emotional reaction to Noem’s comments was totally understandable.
But he is passionate about the cause of immigrant rights and comprehensive reform that would offer a path to citizenship for undocumented people. It’s what inspired him to enter politics.
He was motivated by Latino activists’ losing fight in 1994 against Proposition 187, which would have denied most public services to immigrants living here illegally if it wasn’t tossed out by a judge.
Padilla, 52, is a proud L.A. native, the son of Mexican immigrants. His dad was a short-order cook, and his mom cleaned affluent people’s houses. He graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a mechanical engineering degree. But he caught the political bug and was elected to the L.A. City Council at age 26.
Later he was elected to the state Senate and as secretary of state. He ultimately became California’s first Latino U.S. senator.
On Thursday, the lawmaker was at the federal building to meet a general. He heard Noem was holding a news conference, asked to attend and was escorted in.
After he was forced to the ground by federal agents who considered him a security threat, Padilla declared repeatedly: “If that’s what they do to a United States senator with a question, imagine what they do to farmworkers, day laborers, cooks and the other nonviolent immigrants they are targeting in California and across the country.”
White House Communications Director Steven Cheung claimed Padilla acted like “a complete lunatic … by rushing toward Secretary Noem.” Noem said he “lunged” at her.
Wrong. A video recording disproved that.
Federal bodyguards contended Padilla didn’t identify himself. More bull. They just didn’t listen.
“Hands off! I am Sen. Alex Padilla,” he’s heard saying and repeating several times on the recording.
A federal agent turned to a Padilla staffer recording the sorry incident and said: “There’s no recording allowed out here, per FBI rights.”
Sorry. If it’s a right not to be recorded piling on a senator trying to exercise his rights, then it should be repealed.
The Trump administration did another stupid thing. Padilla came out a hero.
WASHINGTON — The mission of President Trump’s extraordinary deployment of U.S. Marines and National Guardsmen to Los Angeles depends on whom you ask — and that may be a problem for the White House as it defends its actions in court on Thursday.
The hearing, set before U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer in San Francisco, will set off a rare test over the legality of a military deployment on American soil.
While California has asked for a temporary restraining order against the government, a judicial decree ordering a full withdrawal would be extraordinary, scholars said. But so, too, was the deployment itself, raising the stakes for the judge entering Thursday’s hearing.
Breyer, a veteran of the bench appointed by President Clinton and the younger brother of Stephen Breyer, the former Supreme Court justice, could instead define the parameters of acceptable troop activity in a mission that has been murky from its start over the weekend.
In an interview, California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta told The Times that he was told that Trump’s mission set for both the Marines and the National Guard in Los Angeles “is to protect federal property, functions and personnel.”
“The property part may well be compliant with the Posse Comitatus Act,” Bonta said, referring to a landmark law passed after the Civil War prohibiting the use of U.S. troops to engage in local law enforcement.
“If all the Marines do is protect buildings, that might be compliant,” he added. “But it needs to be made clear that they cannot go out into the community to protect federal functions or personnel, if that means the ‘functions’ of civil immigration enforcement conducted by the ‘personnel,’ ICE. That means they’ll be going to Home Depots, and work sites, and maybe knocking on doors.”
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Vague mission set
Trump told reporters Tuesday that without federal involvement, “Los Angeles would be burning down right now,” suggesting their role was to confront violent rioters throughout the city. But that same day, Air Force Gen. Gregory Guillot told The Times that Marines sent to L.A. County were limited in their authority and without arrest power, deployed only to defend federal property and personnel. The Los Angeles Police Department continues to lead the response to the protests.
Still a third potential mission set emerged within 24 hours, when Immigration and Customs Enforcement posted a photo on Facebook indicating that National Guardsmen were accompanying its agents on the very immigration raids that generated protests in the first place. And White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told The Times that the president’s primary motivation behind the federal show of force was to send a message to protesters — an effort to deter agitators in the crowd from resorting to violence.
Clarifying the true nature and purpose of the deployment — whether to protect federal property, to supplement ICE raids, to quell unrest, or all of the above — will prove critical to the administration’s success on Thursday. Breyer denied California’s request for an emergency restraining order on Tuesday, instead giving both sides 48 hours to prepare their case for the hearing.
“He’s the most well-regarded district judge in the United States,” said Robert Weisberg, a professor at Stanford Law School. “He will be very meticulous in asking all of these questions.”
‘Posse Comitatus’
Unprecedented though Trump’s actions may be, signs of caution or restraint in his decision to refrain from invoking the Insurrection Act could ultimately salvage his mission in court, experts said.
The Insurrection Act is the only tool at a president’s disposal to suspend Posse Comitatus and deploy active-duty Marines on U.S. soil. While Trump and his aides have made a coordinated public effort to reference the L.A. protesters as insurrectionists, he has, so far, stopped short of invoking the act.
The president instead invoked Title 10 of the U.S. Code, which grants him the authority to federalize the National Guard. Even still, California argues that Trump has overstepped the law, which still requires directives to the Guard “be issued through the governors of the States.” And the White House has suggested that Title 10 authority also justifies the Marine deployment.
“We expect an order from the court making clear what’s lawful and what’s unlawful, and part of that is making clear that the deployment of the National Guard by Trump is unlawful,” Bonta said.
“And so he might just strike down that deployment,” he added, “returning the National Guard to the command of its appropriate commander-in-chief, the governor.”
Ahilan Arulanantham, co-director of the Center for Immigration Law and Policy at UCLA School of Law, said that Title 10 “requires a ‘rebellion or danger of rebellion,’ and inability of regular law enforcement authorities to execute the laws.”
“I would be shocked if a court determined that those conditions were met by what is actually happening in L.A. at the moment, as those of us living here know,” Arulanantham added.
Yet, by relying on Title 10 authorities and by refraining from invoking the Insurrection Act, Trump could save himself from a definitive loss in court that would probably be upheld by the Supreme Court, Weisberg said.
“I do think that Trump is trying to take just one step at a time,” Weisberg said, “and that he contemplates the possibility of invoking the Insurrection Act, but it’s premature.”
“There’s always the possibility he’s being rational,” he added.
Another front in California vs. Trump
For Bonta, the case before Breyer is just the latest in a series of legal battles California has brought against the Trump administration — cases that have compelled the White House to lay out evidence, based on truth and facts, before seasoned judges.
Moments before Bonta spoke with The Times, Leavitt told reporters in a briefing that “the majority of the behavior that we have seen taking place in Los Angeles” has been perpetrated by “mobs of violent rioters and agitators.”
“It’s completely untrue and completely unsurprising,” Bonta responded. “It’s what the Trump administration — the press secretary, the secretary of Defense and the secretary of Homeland Security — it’s what they’ve been on a full 24-hour campaign to try to do, to manufacture and construct a reality that’s not actually true.”
The LAPD and L.A. County Sheriff’s Department, Bonta noted, have dealt with worse in the past, not just during major historic events such as the Rodney King riots of 1992 or the George Floyd protests of 2020, but after relatively routine annual events, such as the NBA Finals or the Super Bowl.
“There is absolutely no doubt that the National Guard was unnecessary here,” Bonta said, adding, “They’re using words like insurrection and emergency and rebellion and invasion, because those are the words in the statutes that would trigger what they really want. They want the president to be able to seize more power.”
Dolores Huerta, the labor and civil rights leader who co-founded what eventually became the United Farm Workers union, endorsed Joe Biden for president on Friday.
Huerta, who is based in Bakersfield and is one of the nation’s most prominent Latino activists, offered her support on International Workers Day and as Biden’s campaign seeks to improve support among Latino voters.
He trailed Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, his main rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, among Latinos for much of the primary. Biden’s campaign attributed the gap to a lack of financial resources that made it difficult to reach voters, but the former vice president also faced protests over the Obama administration’s deportation of nearly 3 million immigrants who were in the country illegally.
Huerta on Friday said Biden has been a “staunch advocate for labor” and has prioritized Latinos.
“At a time when the current White House has used fear mongering and racist rhetoric towards Latinos, Joe has made it clear that he will fight to protect and advance our community,” she said in a statement.
Huerta plans to appear at a virtual Todos Con Biden roundtable on Sunday with actor John Leguizamo.
Cristóbal Alex, a senior Biden advisor, said in an email that Huerta is “an icon” and her endorsement “represents the Latino community’s excitement and confidence” in the former vice president.
Huerta founded the National Farmworkers Assn. with labor leader Cesar Chavez in 1962 and is credited with coming up with the rallying cry “Sí se puede” (“Yes we can”). In 2012, President Obama awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
She endorsed California Sen. Kamala Harris’ presidential bid in February 2019 and co-chaired her campaign. During the primary, Huerta criticized Biden’s opposition to decriminalizing unapproved border crossings.
At a July 31 Democratic debate, Biden also found himself at odds with rival candidates who said crossing the border without permission should be a civil violation, not a criminal act. “If you cross the border illegally, you should be able to be sent back. It’s a crime,” Biden said.
“It was a great disappointment to hear Vice President Biden use that kind of language because he’s really speaking just like the Republicans,” Huerta said after the debate.
On Friday, Huerta said in an interview that Biden’s track record of supporting immigration reform bills when he was in the Senate made her optimistic about what he would pursue as president.
“When we look to Joe Biden’s record, he actually voted for immigration reform,” she said. “That’s why we have the hope that he will be with us as we try to get immigration reform again.”
In the weeks since Sanders suspended his campaign, Latino groups — including the Congressional Hispanic Caucus’ BOLD PAC and Voto Latino, a voter registration group founded in 2004 — have started to coalesce around Biden.
María Teresa Kumar, Voto Latino’s president and chief executive, said the group decided to back Biden with its first-ever endorsement after he sent a 22-page document answering questions on his positions on student debt, the environment, immigration, criminal justice reform and the modernization of electoral systems.
The group is now talking to his campaign about how to address the impact of the coronavirus outbreak on the Latino community. “We want him to think boldly, because it’s the time for that leadership to help get our country out of where we are,” Kumar said.
Kumar said Sanders’ success with Latino voters came from his strategy of reaching young voters and discussing not just immigration, but healthcare, student debt and climate change.
“Young people in the Latino community have tremendous leverage in their households,” Kumar said. “The more that we can speak to them, they in turn influence their family members.”
