Bush

The U.S. Navy has disclosed the test of an AeroVironment LOCUST laser counter-drone system, which has been in the news recently, aboard the Nimitz class aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush. As far as TWZ is aware, this looks to be the first time a laser weapon has been fitted to a carrier. Earlier this year, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Daryl Caudle, the Navy’s top officer, said his goal was for directed energy weapons to eventually be the go-to choice for the crews of American warships when facing close-in threats.

The Navy has shared three pictures of the LOCUST system onboard USS George H.W. Bush, seen at the top of this story and below. They were all taken on October 5, 2025, but released today. This coincides with the start of the Navy League’s annual Sea-Air-Space exposition, at which TWZ is in attendance.

The captions to each of the images include the following: “During the live-fire event, [the] LOCUST LWS [laser weapon system] effectively detected, tracked, engaged, and neutralized multiple unmanned aerial vehicles marking a milestone toward fielding operational directed energy capabilities.”

TWZ has reached out to the Navy for more information.

“The successful demonstration of its palletized LOCUST Laser Weapon System (LWS) aboard the USS George H.W. Bush (CVN-77) in October 2025″ was conducted “in collaboration with the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Army Rapid Capabilities and Critical Technologies Office (RCCTO),” according to a press release from AeroVironment.

“During the live-fire event, the Palletized High Energy Laser (P-HEL) system tracked, engaged, and neutralized multiple target drones – marking a major milestone toward fielding operational directed energy capabilities across all domains and platforms,” the release adds. “This achievement validates that the LOCUST LWS is truly platform-agnostic, seamlessly transitioning from fixed-site and land-based mobile platforms, such as the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle (JLTV) and Infantry Squad Vehicle (ISV), to the dynamic and demanding environment of a maneuvering aircraft carrier.”

The central element of LOCUST is a laser directed energy weapon in a turret, which also includes built-in electro-optical and infrared video cameras for target acquisition and tracking. Tertiary sensors, including small-form-factor high-frequency radars and passive radio frequency signal detection systems, can also be used to cue the laser. The JLTV and ISV-based configurations mentioned in AeroVironment’s release both feature small radars.

LOCUST’s power rating is generally understood to be in the 20-kilowatt range at present. When it comes to laser directed energy weapons, this is at the lower end of the power spectrum, fully in line with a system intended to defeat smaller drones. LOCUST has also been demonstrated with a 26-kilowatt power rating, but how much more it could be scaled within the existing form factor is unclear.

As of December 2025, the U.S. Army was known to have taken delivery of palletized LOCUST systems, as well as ones mounted on JLTVs and ISVs. The Army has at least deployed the palletized versions overseas operationally in the past. One of the service’s LOCUST systems was also at the center of a widely criticized and controversial shutdown of airspace around El Paso, Texas, in February of this year, as you can read more about here. The system had been on loan to U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) at the time. Earlier this month, the Pentagon signed an agreement with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) regarding the continued use of anti-drone laser systems along the southern border with Mexico.

The U.S. Marine Corps has also moved to acquire JLTV-based LOCUST systems in the past. In addition to appearing to be the first instance of a laser-directed energy weapon going aboard a carrier, last year’s test aboard USS George H.W. Bush also looks to be the first known instance of the Navy even evaluating LOCUST for use on ships or in any other context.

Navy interest in using LOCUST to defend ships, especially very high-value ones like aircraft carriers, is not surprising. For years now, the service has been very active in pursuing shipboard laser and microwave directed energy weapons with a particular eye toward providing additional layers of counter-drone defense.

Experience gained in recent years from operations in and around the Red Sea, as well as against Iran, has only underscored the critical importance of bolstering the ability of U.S. warships to protect themselves against uncrewed aerial threats. The Navy has also been adding counter-drone systems that use physical interceptors as their effectors to a growing number of ships to help address this reality.

In general, lasers like LOCUST offer the promise of functionally unlimited magazine depth, which could be exceptionally valuable in the counter-drone role when faced with large volumes of incoming threats. The dangers that uncrewed aerial systems pose are only set to increase as artificial intelligence and machine learning-driven capabilities, including automated targeting and fully networked swarming, continue to improve while the barrier to entry steadily drops.

Palletized and containerized systems like the P-HEL version of LOCUST can also be employed with more flexibility on a wide variety of ships, as long as sufficient deck space and available power. The test aboard USS George H.W. Bush involved simply lashing the system to the flight deck. This also means the systems can be installed and/or removed more readily depending on mission requirements. The Navy also has a demand for counter-drone capability on land to protect key facilities and assets abroad and at home, where LOCUST would also be relevant.

LOCUST Laser Weapon System

At the same time, especially when it comes to employing lasers on ships, there are also potential pitfalls. As TWZ has previously written:

“A single laser can only engage one target at once. As the beam gets further away from the source, its power also drops, just as a result of it having to propagate through the atmosphere. This can be further compounded by the weather and other environmental factors like smoke and dust. More power is then needed to produce suitable effects at appreciable distances. Adaptive optics are used to help overcome atmospheric distortion to a degree. Altogether, laser directed energy weapons generally remain relatively short-range systems.”

“In addition, laser directed energy weapons, especially sensitive optics, present inherent reliability challenges for use in real-world military operations. Shipboard use adds rough sea states and saltwater exposure to the equation. There is also the matter of needing to keep everything properly cooled, which creates additional power generation and other demands.”

Over the years, the Navy has faced continued and significant hurdles in attempting to field operational laser weapon systems more broadly across its fleets. U.S. military officials have often sought to temper expectations, while also being open about their frustrations with the lack of greater progress, in recent years.

Still, the Navy, in particular, has persisted in its pursuit of these capabilities, given the benefits mentioned earlier. Lasers are set to be a particularly important component of the full arsenal aboard the future Trump class “battleships.”

“My thesis research at [the] Naval Post Graduate School was on directed energy and nuclear weapons,” Adm. Caudle told TWZ and other outlets at a roundtable back in January. “This is my goal, if it’s in line of sight of a ship, that the first solution that we’re using is directed energy.”

In particular, “point defense needs to shift to directed energy,” the admiral added, emphasizing that “it has an infinite magazine.”

“What that does for me is it improves my loadout optimization, so that my loadout, my payload volume is optimized for offensive weapons,” Caudle added at the time. Furthermore, “as you increase power, the actual ability to actually engage and keep power on target, and the effectiveness of a laser just goes up.”

Laser directed energy weapons with higher power ratings could potentially defend ships against other threats, including certain types of incoming missiles.

Whether or not the Navy decides to acquire and field LOCUST operationally on its ships, the service’s general demand for more counter-drone capabilities across the board does not look set to decrease any time soon.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

What exactly is President Bush trying to achieve on civil rights?

Against the backdrop of the racial controversy that cost Trent Lott (R-Miss.) his job as Senate majority leader, Bush’s own intentions have come under closer scrutiny. But the president has sent such mixed signals that some critics believe he’s playing a double game — moderate on decisions that can be traced directly to him and much more conservative on judicial appointments that will profoundly affect the reach of civil rights law, but only gradually and far away from the White House.

Bush drew praise even from his staunchest critics in the traditional civil rights community for his strong condemnation of Lott’s wink toward segregation. Indeed, while the White House always said publicly that Bush didn’t want Lott to resign, the president’s sharp rebuke during a speech in Philadelphia probably did more to doom the Mississippi senator than anything else that happened since Lott’s remarks at Strom Thurmond’s 100th birthday party Dec. 5.

But since Bush’s speech, the liberal civil rights community has repeatedly insisted that the president’s stirring words in defense of equal opportunity needed to be measured against his actions. Just minutes before Lott stepped down Friday, a coalition of civil rights groups held a news conference in Washington to pound at that message.

Conservatives rightly argue that support for the agenda of the liberal civil rights community isn’t the only measure of commitment to equal opportunity. But it’s reasonable for the civil rights groups to insist that a president’s actions should always be weighed more heavily than his words.

So far, Bush has moved cautiously on the civil rights issues most directly under his control. He has appointed conservatives to most key civil rights positions, and liberals charge that the administration isn’t enforcing the laws as aggressively as Bill Clinton did when he was president.

But Bush’s record hasn’t generated the intense conflict that characterized the liberal response to the enforcement of the civil rights laws under Ronald Reagan, and even Bush’s father. William L. Taylor, chairman of the Citizens’ Commission on Civil Rights, a leading liberal group, says that Bush’s record shows “a policy that is largely inert, not moving forward, and in a few areas is regressing.” Considering the source, that’s mild criticism.

Nor has Bush moved to retrench the key federal programs that promote affirmative action — policies meant to expand opportunities for minorities in hiring and government contracting. For years, conservative thinkers have viewed these programs as unfair to whites and counterproductive — a group entitlement that exacerbates social divisions.

But Bush has made no effort to repeal the executive order requiring federal contractors to establish goals and timetables for hiring women and minorities. Conservatives have long accused that program, which affects fully one-fifth of all workers in America, of encouraging quotas. Nor has the administration retrenched the programs providing minorities preferences in federal contracting. In all, Bush has done little to disturb the “mend it, don’t end it” balance on federal affirmative action programs that Clinton established in 1995.

Likewise, even before Lott, the administration was hesitant about joining a lawsuit opposing racial preferences in admissions at the University of Michigan now heading toward the Supreme Court. After Lott, officials say, it’s even less likely that Bush will use the suit to argue for a sweeping rollback of affirmative action.

Bush has had such a hands-off policy on these issues that conservatives are starting to grumble. “Conservatives are going to be very disappointed if two years from now there hasn’t been any positive movement,” says Roger Clegg, general counsel of the Center for Equal Opportunity, a conservative group.

Clegg probably shouldn’t hold his breath. While Bush has always declared himself against quotas and preferences, he’s never shown any enthusiasm for direct combat on this front. His calculation seems to be that conflict over affirmative action would eclipse efforts to reach minority voters on other issues, such as education and homeownership. “Once you enter this thing,” one Bush political advisor says, “it’s hard to move the ball on anything else.”

But liberal groups take little comfort in Bush’s cautious approach to direct action. Their fear is that Bush is filling the federal courts with conservative judges who will reshape the civil rights laws in ways he wouldn’t risk through executive or legislative initiatives that carry his fingerprints.

It’s not an unreasonable fear. Many of Bush’s judicial nominees have records on civil rights much more conservative than the views Bush has expressed. Civil rights groups argue that Bush appellate court nominees such as Carolyn Kuhl, Jeffrey Sutton and Charles W. Pickering Sr. have displayed a determination to narrow the way civil rights laws are enforced.

All of these nominations will generate fireworks in the new year (especially if Bush fulfills his promise to renominate Pickering, whom the Democratic Senate Judiciary Committee rejected last year largely around accusations of racial insensitivity). But this conflict will really come to a head if Bush receives an opportunity to nominate a Supreme Court justice.

“That’s the big one,” insists Ralph Neas, president of People for the American Way, a liberal advocacy group. “If they get a firm [conservative] Supreme Court majority, it will render the progressive agenda moot for decades. This is the whole ballgame for them. That’s why they are willing to make compromises legislatively or in the executive branch.”

Bush is under no obligation to support Neas’ agenda on civil rights. But voters have a right to demand accountability from elected officials. If Bush wants to roll back affirmative action, it’s hard to explain his executive actions; if he doesn’t, it’s hard to explain his court nominations.

Bush is sending dissonant signals, perhaps intentionally. But in the end, it’s his decisions on the courts that will speak loudest. Words matter, but words fade. When he condemns Lott, Bush is writing in sand. When he picks judges, he is carving in granite.

*

Ronald Brownstein’s column appears every Monday. See current and past Brownstein columns on The Times’ Web site at: www.latimes.com/brownstein.

WASHINGTON — Kevin Dellicker stays away from politics when he reports for duty at the National Guard armory in Harrisburg, Pa. But out of uniform, the captain in the Pennsylvania National Guard does everything he can to persuade the people he served with in Iraq to reelect President Bush.

Shaking some of the same hands as Dellicker is Jonathan Soltz, a former Army captain recently returned from Iraq who spends his days pleading with soldiers to vote for Sen. John F. Kerry of Massachusetts, the Democratic presidential nominee.

In the swing state of Pennsylvania, where both live, the votes of those in the military — including more than 15,000 reservists — who are serving or have served in Iraq or Afghanistan are much in demand.

But which way the people fighting the war will vote in Pennsylvania and elsewhere is anybody’s guess.

Tight restrictions on seeking the votes of active-duty military personnel, along with taboos in the military culture against the open expression of political views, make it tough for candidates to target military voters — and make it tough for pollsters to figure them out.

Historically, military turnout in elections has been low.

With more than 400,000 troops overseas now, many living in difficult and dangerous conditions, it is not clear whether those who want to vote this fall will succeed. A Pentagon initiative meant to make it easier for troops to cast absentee ballots via the Internet and by fax is being criticized as vulnerable to tampering.

All that has left the Bush and Kerry campaigns working the edges of a potential voting bloc that could be significant in a tight election.

“It’s very hard to get a read on how the active-duty personnel are reacting to the war politically, because they are so busy reacting on the ground,” Soltz said. “So what I do — I talk to my friends, tell them to e-mail their friends about Kerry; I talk to people like me who are out of the service now. I’m not going to go give a speech to a group of soldiers. It’s not the thing they want to hear while they’re just trying to keep their lives together.”

Political activity in the military is — like much else — strictly regulated.

Troops are not prohibited from expressing political opinions, but they are not allowed to work for partisan political organizations while in the military. Campaigning is prohibited at military facilities, and the rules for conducting polls among active-duty troops are so cumbersome that pollsters have generally given up.

“As a society, we rely on the apolitical loyalties and professionalism of the military — we entrust them with capabilities that we don’t give anyone else — and in exchange for that we demand total political neutrality from them,” said Peter Feaver, a political science professor at Duke University who studies military voting patterns.

“We seek to avoid creating a partisan voting bloc in the military that is wooed or courted the way that soccer moms are. So for that reason the government doesn’t ask questions itself, and they restrict the access of anyone else to do so.”

More is known about how veterans lean politically: Polls show they tend to vote Republican.

Because of that, it has long been presumed that the active military also leans Republican. A poll by Army Times of its readers in December found that more supported the administration than did not. But the poll did not ask respondents for whom they would vote. Its pollsters acknowledged that its readers tended to be older, career soldiers, rather than enlisted personnel, 35% of whom are black and Latino — groups that among civilians tend to vote Democratic.

This year, both presidential campaigns have infused their efforts with military imagery, and the experience of both Bush and Kerry during the Vietnam War era is under scrutiny.

A parade of retired generals at the Democratic and Republican conventions endorsed one candidate or the other. Kerry opened his speech with a salute. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have regularly visited military bases, and Kerry meets with veterans, reservists and military families. Elizabeth Edwards, the wife of Democratic vice presidential nominee John Edwards, parlays her background as the daughter of a career soldier into regular chats with military families.

“The political appeals to this broad category of people somehow associated with the military [have] not been this overt in decades,” said Carroll Doherty of the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. “But of the leanings of active-duty military, the people in the fight, the candidates are as stumped as the pollsters.”

Both parties are pushing overseas voter registration, including that of military personnel. The Bush campaign is deeply aware that military absentee ballots may have helped swing Florida — and the election — for Bush in 2000. Democrats, meanwhile, are predicting that more of the military vote will go their way this November because long tours of duty and heavy casualties have antagonized a growing number of military families.

“This time around, the Democrats are convinced that the advantage among military voters won’t be nearly as big for the GOP,” said Curtis Gans, director of the Committee for the Study of the American Electorate. “They also think that in a post- 9/11 election, how can the Democrats show that they’re tough on national security? If they can win the military and veterans endorsement race, then that can serve symbolically as proof that they are good on national security.”

Pentagon attempts to improve voter turnout among soldiers overseas have generated considerable controversy.

In February, the Pentagon dropped a $22-million plan to test Internet voting for 100,000 military workers and civilians overseas. After a panel of experts cited security concerns, the agency said it could not ensure the legitimacy of online votes.

Subsequently, the Defense Department said that members of the military would be allowed to vote by faxing or e-mailing their vote, but only after waiving their right to a secret ballot. Under the Pentagon plan, a contractor, Omega Technologies, will accept the ballots on a toll-free line, then send them to appropriate local elections offices.

But under that system, the contractor, the Pentagon and county officials would all know which candidates individual military voters had chosen.

Critics have pointed out that Omega’s chief executive, Patricia Williams, has donated $6,000 in this election cycle to the National Republican Congressional Committee and serves on the committee’s business advisory council. They say such partisanship leaves open the possibility that votes will be tampered with, as does the nonsecret ballot.

Missouri and North Dakota will allow e-mail voting by the military. Twenty other states will permit faxed ballots, also to be handled by Omega.

In Pennsylvania, which has sent more reservists to Afghanistan and Iraq than all but five other states, and which has had more war deaths than any other presidential swing state, the Bush and Kerry campaigns are pulling hard for the military vote.

Dellicker, the guardsman, said the local Bush campaign organization he volunteers for had compiled an extensive e-mail list, primarily through word of mouth, of active-duty troops. The campaign uses the list to send regular updates on campaign events and issues.

“I don’t pester my colleagues at my base, because that would be inappropriate. But if I have colleagues, you’d better believe that I’m going to talk to them about [the election] when out of uniform and in an appropriate setting,” Dellicker said.

Soltz, the Army veteran, said he arranged for Iraq veterans in Pennsylvania to speak in favor of Kerry at veterans halls.

“I talk all the time to these guys. I have friends who aren’t even back from Iraq yet who wish they could get back and tell people what they’ve seen, what they know,” Soltz said. “I know there are people like me working for Bush driving these roads too. The question is, who are soldiers listening to?”

NEW YORK — This is not the run up to the midterm elections that Republicans wanted.

A year and a half after winning the White House by promising to lower costs and end wars, Donald Trump is a wartime president overseeing surging energy costs and an escalating overseas conflict that many in his own party do not like.

He offered little clarity to a nation eager for answers this week during a prime-time address from the White House, his first since the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran more than a month ago, simultaneously suggesting that the war was ending and expanding.

“Thanks to the progress we’ve made, I can say tonight that we are on track to complete all of America’s military objectives shortly, very shortly,” Trump said. “We’re going to hit them extremely hard over the next two to three weeks.”

Trump’s comments come roughly six months before voters across the nation begin to cast ballots in elections that will decide control of Congress and key governorships for Trump’s final two years in office. For now, Republicans, who control all branches of government in Washington, are bracing for a painful political backlash.

“You’re looking at an ugly November,” warned veteran Republican pollster Neil Newhouse. “At a point in time when we need every break possible to hold the House and Senate, our edge is being chipped away.”

Republicans confront evolving political landscape

It’s hard to overstate how dramatically the political landscape has shifted.

At this time last year, many Republican leaders believed there was a path to preserve their narrow House majority and easily hold the Senate. Now they privately concede that the House is all but lost and Democrats have a realistic shot at taking the Senate.

Republicans are also struggling to coalesce around a clear midterm message on Iran.

The Republican National Committee has largely avoided the war in talking points issued to surrogates over the last month. The leaders of the party’s campaign committees responsible for the House and Senate declined interview requests. Many vulnerable Republican candidates sidestep the issue, unwilling to defend or challenge Trump publicly.

The president remains deeply popular with Republican voters, and he has vocal supporters like Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.

“That was the best speech I could’ve hoped for,” he wrote on social media after Trump’s address on Wednesday evening. Graham said Trump “gave the American people a clear and coherent pathway forward.”

Trump made little effort to sell the conflict to Americans before the initial attack. Five weeks later, at least 13 U.S. service members have been killed and hundreds more injured. Thousands more troops have converged on the region, and the Pentagon requested $200 billion in new funding.

The Strait of Hormuz, a key passage for a fifth of the world’s oil, remains closed. The average price for a gallon of gasoline in the U.S. was $4.08 on Thursday, according to AAA, almost a full dollar higher than on President Joe Biden’s last day in office.

On Wednesday, Trump insisted that gas prices would fall quickly once the war concluded but offered no solution for reopening the Strait of Hormuz. Instead, he invited skeptical U.S. allies to do it themselves.

He insisted that the war would be worth it.

“This is a true investment in your grandchildren and your grandchildren’s future,” Trump said. “When it’s all over, the United States will be safer, stronger, more prosperous and greater than it has ever been before.”

Former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Georgia Republican who was once among Trump’s most vocal allies in Congress, lashed out against his Iran policy.

“I wanted so much for President Trump to put America First. That’s what I believed he would do. All I heard from his speech tonight was WAR WAR WAR,” she wrote on social media. “Nothing to lower the cost of living for Americans.”

Time is not on Trump’s side

About 6 in 10 U.S. adults say the U.S. military action in Iran has “gone too far,” according to AP-NORC polling from March. Roughly a third approve of how he’s handling Iran overall.

The possibility of sending U.S. forces into Iran also appears politically unpalatable.

About 6 in 10 adults are “strongly” or “somewhat” opposed to deploying U.S. troops on the ground to fight Iran. That includes about half of Republicans. Only about 1 in 10 favor deploying troops.

At the same time, Trump’s approval ratings have remained consistently weak. About 4 in 10 Americans approve of how he’s handling the presidency, roughly in line with how it’s been throughout his second term.

Republican strategist Ari Fleischer, a senior aide in former President George W. Bush’s administration, acknowledged that Trump has not received the polling bump in this war that Bush got after invading Iraq.

Bush, of course, worked to build public backing for the Iraq War before going in. Immediately after the 2003 invasion, Bush’s popularity soared, as did the stock market.

Public sentiment and the economy soured only after the conflict stretched on. It ultimately spanned more than eight years, spawning a generation of anti-war Republicans — and sowing the seeds of Trump’s “America First” foreign policy.

“My hope is that the Trump experience is the exact opposite of the Bush experience,” Fleischer said.

He said Trump must win the war decisively and quickly to avoid a further backlash, saying there could be a “very significant political upside if things end well, oil comes down and markets rally.”

Fleischer added that Trump’s actions will matter much more than his words.

“Ultimately, he is not going to get judged on his persuasion or his explanations or his assertions, he’s going to get judged on results,” he said.

Peoples writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Linley Sanders in Washington contributed to this report.

In rejecting a key element of a legal challenge to the government’s warrantless wiretapping program, federal appellate judges on Friday demonstrated once again the willingness of U.S. courts to give the Bush administration considerable latitude in handling the war on terror.

The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, by a 3-0 vote, barred an Islamic charity from using a confidential government document to prove that it had been illegally spied upon, agreeing with the administration that disclosure would reveal “state secrets.”

The lawsuit, filed by Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation and two of its attorneys, challenged the National Security Agency’s spying endeavor, the Terrorist Surveillance Program, launched after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The U.N. Security Council has declared that Al-Haramain, which operates in more than 50 countries, belongs to or is associated with Al Qaeda.

The suit was one of 50 legal challenges brought across the country after the program’s existence was revealed in the New York Times.

Other courts have shown similar deference to the Bush administration on the state secrets privilege, which permits the government to bar disclosure in court of information if “there is a reasonable danger” it would affect national security.

But the ruling in this case was particularly striking because it came from a panel of three liberal jurists, all appointed by Democratic presidents.

Moreover, the charity, unlike other plaintiffs, says it has evidence of surveillance — a call log from the National Security Agency that the government inadvertently turned over in another proceeding.

In the ruling, Judge M. Margaret McKeown wrote that the judges accepted “the need to defer to the executive on matters of foreign and national security and surely cannot legitimately find ourselves second-guessing the executive in this arena.”

Erwin Chemerinsky, a liberal constitutional law professor at Duke University law school, said the court showed “how much deference even a liberal panel of judges is willing to give the executive branch in situations like this, and I find that very troubling.”

Doug Kmiec, a conservative constitutional law professor at Pepperdine law school, said “the opinion is consistent with” a ruling by the federal appeals court in Cincinnati earlier this year striking down a challenge to the surveillance filed by the American Civil Liberties Union.

He said the dual rulings indicated that “federal courts recognize that the essential aspects of the Terrorist Surveillance Program both remain secret and are important to preserve as such.”

The court’s ruling was not an absolute victory for the government. McKeown rejected the Justice Department’s argument that “the very subject matter of the litigation is a state secret.”

That finding could prove important in numerous other cases in which the government contends that even considering legal challenges to warrantless wiretapping would endanger national security.

In addition, the 9th Circuit panel sent the case back to a lower court to consider another issue: whether the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which requires approval by a special court for domestic surveillance, preempts the state secrets privilege. McKeown said that issue “remains central to Al-Haramain’s ability to proceed with this lawsuit.”

Georgetown University constitutional law professor David Cole said he thought Friday’s ruling showed partial victories for both sides.

Indeed, lawyers for the government and for the charity said they were happy with the outcome.

“The 9th Circuit upheld the government’s position that release of this information would undermine the government’s intelligence capabilities and compromise national security,” the Justice Department said.

Oakland attorney Jon Eisenberg, who argued for Al-Haramain before the 9th Circuit, said: “The government wants this case dead and gone. It is not. We are alive and kicking.”

Eisenberg expressed optimism that his client would prevail under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, a statute enacted in the aftermath of revelations of illegal spying on civil rights and antiwar activists in the 1960s and ‘70s.

“That provision would be meaningless if the government could evade any such lawsuit merely by evoking the state secrets privilege,” Eisenberg said.

In support of her opinion, McKeown detailed statements by government officials — including President Bush, then-Atty. Gen. Alberto Gonzales and Gen. General Michael V. Hayden, principal deputy director for national intelligence — acknowledging the existence of the Terrorist Surveillance Program and extolling its importance.

“In light of extensive government disclosures about the TSP, the government is hard-pressed to sustain its claim that the very subject matter of this litigation is a state secret,” wrote McKeown, an appointee of President Clinton. “Unlike a truly secret or ‘black box’ program that remains in the shadows of public knowledge, the government has moved affirmatively to engage in public discourse about the TSP.”

Nonetheless, after privately reviewing the secret document, McKeown said she and her colleagues Michael Daly Hawkins, another Clinton appointee, and Harry Pregerson, a Carter appointee, agreed it was protected by the state secrets privilege.

“Detailed statements underscore that disclosure of information concerning the Sealed Document and the means, sources and methods of intelligence gathering in this context of this case would undermine the government’s intelligence capabilities and compromise national security,” she said.

The state secrets privilege was first utilized successfully by the government in a case shortly after the Civil War.

The leading case in the area, U.S. vs. Reynolds, was issued by the Supreme Court in 1953 to block a lawsuit after the crash of a B-29 bomber.

Three widows of crewmen sued and sought the official accident reports. The Air Force said the reports could not be revealed because the bomber was on a secret test mission.

(When the reports were declassified in 2000, they revealed that the aircraft was in poor condition, evidence that might have helped the widows’ suit.)

The Bush administration has evoked the state secrets privilege numerous times in recent years. In most instances, courts have accepted the word of government lawyers, often with a fairly cursory review, according to George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley, who, like Cole, has challenged the privilege in court.

McKeown took pains to say that the 9th Circuit had carefully scrutinized the government’s assertions.

She said the judges had taken “very seriously our obligation to review the documents with a very careful, indeed a skeptical eye, and not to accept at face value the government’s claim or justification of privilege.”

But she said the panel could go no further than what already has been publicly disclosed that “the Sealed Document has something to do with intelligence activities.”

When the court heard the Al-Haramain case in August, it also entertained arguments in a related case, Hepting vs. AT&T; Corp. In that case, lawyers representing millions of AT&T; customers are seeking damages from the telecommunications giant for allegedly sharing their private records with the National Security Agency as part of the surveillance program.

On Friday, the 9th Circuit panel issued a brief order saying that the AT&T; case had been severed from the Al-Haramain matter. A decision is expected in the next several months, although there is no deadline.

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henry.weinstein@latimes.com

PHILADELPHIA — George W. Bush and his campaign have enjoyed remarkable success synchronizing the message from everyone at the Republican National Convention this week.

Except his parents.

After maintaining a low profile all year, former President Bush and former First Lady Barbara Bush have been drawn into a pointed war of words with President Clinton–the man who ousted the elder Bush from the White House in 1992.

The confrontation, which escalated when Barbara Bush criticized Vice President Al Gore on Wednesday, worries many Republicans, who fear it will both distract from the convention’s velvet-glove feel and reinforce questions about whether the younger Bush would be this close to the presidency if his name was Smith.

“It plays into [the Democrats’] hands,” complained one Bush campaign insider about the feud. “It’s what they want: a distraction from a perfect convention.”

Indeed, Democrats have welcomed the controversy. “It reminds everybody . . . that Bush thinks the presidency is an office you can inherit,” said Democratic National Committee Chairman Joe Andrew on Wednesday.

Karl Rove, Bush’s chief strategist, rejected the notion that the Bush family-Clinton tiff was interfering with the convention’s carefully scripted message of moderation and civility. “I think what’s more important . . . is that the vice president is such a weak candidate that he’s forced to rely upon a constant barrage of attacks launched by President Clinton,” Rove said. “I think people see it as inappropriate and it paints a picture of Al Gore as a weak candidate and a weak leader.”

She’s Skeptical Gore Can Restore Respect

Barbara Bush added fuel to the flap when, with her husband Wednesday on ABC-TV’s “Good Morning America,” she first inferred that Clinton had brought disrespect to the presidency, then said she was skeptical Gore could return respect to the office. “It would be very difficult, I think, with some of the things he’s done,” she said.

She did not elaborate.

The multi-generational battle–which before Barbara Bush’s comments had seen Clinton criticize the younger Bush and both the younger and elder Bush criticize Clinton–underscores the unique circumstance of this campaign. Only once before in American history has a president’s son also won the office. And that man, John Quincy Adams, ran 24 years after the term of his father, John Adams, had ended, long enough for the passions of his presidency to cool.

In contrast, the younger Bush is running at a time when the wounds of his father’s defeat are still open, especially among Republican activists who viewed Clinton as morally unfit for the office even before the Monica S. Lewinsky scandal.

But in both public and private, George W. Bush has always emphatically rejected suggestions that he has sought the White House to avenge his father’s defeat. And for most of the campaign, the younger Bush has been extremely sensitive to avoid the impression his presidency would amount to a restoration of his father’s.

Bush, for instance, hasn’t campaigned with his father since the former president referred to him at a New Hampshire rally as “this boy . . . of ours.”

Media Stir Debate on Father’s Influence

That arms-length relationship began to break down last week, when Bush selected Dick Cheney as his running mate. As Defense secretary, Cheney had been an architect of the Persian Gulf War that marked the greatest triumph of the elder Bush’s presidency. And President Bush’s apparent backstage support for Cheney inspired a new wave of media discussion about his influence on his son’s campaign.

Clinton stirred the pot Friday at a Democratic fund-raiser in Rhode Island, where he suggested that Bush was running for president on minimal qualifications. Speaking as if he were Bush, Clinton said derisively, “I mean, how bad could I be? I’ve been governor of Texas; my daddy was president; I own a baseball team.”

Democratic insiders say Clinton may have turned on Bush in response to Bush’s own barbed comments that day on his inaugural campaign swing with Cheney. Bush described his running mate as “a solid man . . . a man who understands what the definition of ‘is’ is.” That was a reference to an often-ridiculed answer from Clinton during his 1998 grand jury testimony in the Lewinsky scandal.

Whatever the cause, Clinton’s comments drew sharp retorts from both the younger and elder Bush. The former president told NBC earlier this week: “I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. I’m going to wait a month. And then, you give a call. . . . And if he continues that, then I’m going to tell the nation what I think about him as a human being and a person.”

Since then, the elder Bush has studiously avoided further comments; he told Fox News on Wednesday that his son “probably wished I kept my mouth shut, but I haven’t heard from him yet.”

Some Bush campaign officials say the former president’s high personal popularity–recent polls found about two-thirds of Americans now have a favorable opinion of him–means there’s little risk in his increased visibility over the last few weeks. In any case, one senior Bush aide said that after this week, the parents will quickly recede into the background again.

Pity the person with a hard act to follow, particularly if it’s his own. George W. Bush is such a person. For three months, he has shone as the take-charge leader of a powerful nation reeling from an unexpected blow. A quiet sense of triumph now pervades Washington’s inner circles.

But here’s the hard-act-to-follow part, and the irony of President Bush’s situation: In declaring a war on terrorism and the states that harbor terrorists, Bush’s policy of rooting out terrorism wherever it thrives plunks his administration smack into the middle of the world’s trouble spots.

Merely to list the breeding grounds for terrorism is to suggest the scope of the challenge: Sudan, Somalia, Colombia, Iraq, Indonesia, the Philippines, Iran, Pakistan, Chechnya and, yes, Saudi Arabia. Here is the underbelly of globalization: countries rendered unstable by the absence of power or its autocratic concentration

The speed with which success has come to the American campaign in Afghanistan exacerbates the problem. Had the conflict there dragged on, people might have forgotten Bush’s pledge to root out terrorism. Today, still fresh in mind, it attracts world attention.

The havens of terrorists are either dysfunctional countries in need of nation-building or autocratic regimes sowing the seeds of despair that sprout fanatics.

Turning these retrograde states into open, self-sustaining communities will require a generosity of spirit and patience for study that Bush’s go-go team has yet to demonstrate.

Worse, the expense of promoting economic growth, public schooling and human rights in failing states will run athwart the Bush administration’s priority to cut taxes. Bringing poor countries into the global economy will require opening our doors to their goods. Yet low-wage commodity exporters seeking American buyers are sure to mobilize calls from Congress for protection against unfair competition.

Complicating these demands is the arena of power from which Bush will have to lead. While fighting the war in Afghanistan, he makes decisions as commander in chief. The George Bush who must fashion a successful foreign policy to eradicate terrorism acts as head of the executive branch of a three-part government designed by the U.S. Constitution to operate through checks and balances.

The Bush people have emphasized that we are in this fight for the long haul. The “long haul” they have in mind may be strictly military, but their words have nurtured hopes of a sustained effort to get at the stubborn causes of poverty and fanaticism.

Nation-building, as candidate Bush well knew, is a messy business where trial and error–the only possible approach–consumes endless months and billions of dollars.

The bright side of the picture is that many of America’s allies have also been singed by terrorism, either from dissidents inside their country or on their borders. Spain has problems with its Basque separatists, Turkey with the Kurds, Russia with Chechnya and China with its Muslim Uighurs calling for an “Eastern Turkey.” Their national self-interest inclines them to cooperate with the United States.

At the end of the Gulf War, the elder George Bush, enjoying similarly high approval ratings, declared victory after routing Saddam Hussein’s army. He then precipitately announced the arrival of a new world order.

Within months, that phrase had become a term of derision and his ratings plummeted.

But if George W. Bush stays the course and builds from the ground up, he could usher in a new world order and secure for himself the greatness that eluded his father.

*

Joyce Appleby is a professor emeritus from UCLA and past president of the American Historical Assn.

Twenty-three years ago, the Oscars were in turmoil. President George W. Bush had just begun an invasion of Iraq after the Sept. 11 attacks, and as the nation’s TV screens filled with the “shock and awe” campaign, many did not know quite how to proceed with Hollywood’s biggest night.

ABC wanted to postpone, presenters begged off, Jack Nicholson urged his fellow actor nominees to boycott (animated feature winner Hayao Miyazaki did), documentary winner Michael Moore attempted to directly shame Bush from the stage (to loud boos) and many of the acceptance speeches acknowledged the war and included pleas for peace.

President Trump’s recent decision to attack Iran is not precisely the same — American troops have thus far not invaded and the Bush administration’s media blitz of rockets lighting up the sky is absent. No one expected the Oscars to be canceled or delayed and there has been no talk of boycotts; whether the war and (if polls are to be believed) its general unpopularity are noted, either by host Conan O’Brien (who has already said he will not be mentioning Trump) or the winners, remains to be seen.

But if recent history is any indication, it could go unmentioned. Which would be something of a political statement in itself: It would be terrible if the false notion that awards shows have become too political had a chilling effect on anyone who wanted to use their platform to speak about something important they care about.

Thus far, film and television awards winners have stayed away from the issues that have prompted widespread public outrage and protests this year — including the often brutal methods of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the ongoing concern over the war in Gaza and the endless revelations of the Epstein files.

Despite complaints from certain quarters, awards shows, particularly the Oscars, rarely have more than one or two truly political moments. But this year, the absence has been notable.

Compared with the Grammy Awards, where Trevor Noah, in his final stint as host, roasted Trump and anti-ICE sentiment reigned in speeches and on pins, this year’s Golden Globes (which aired three weeks before the Grammys) appeared to exist in another world. A few stars wore similar pins and spoke on the red carpet, but aside from a few digs about Epstein and CBS News from host Nikki Glaser, there was no mention of the many issues roiling the nation. (As he was beginning to make late-in-speech remarks about this being an important time to make films, Kleber Mendonça Filho, Brazilian director of the non-English language film winner “The Secret Agent,” ran over time and was played off.)

Has Hollywood lost its spine? Or, having been beset for years by grievances that the Oscars have become “too political” and “too woke,” are filmmakers and actors saving their outrage and passion for social media and bowing to pressure to keep their acceptance speeches grateful and celebratory?

“I know that there are people who find it annoying when actors take opportunities like this to talk about social and political things,” said Jean Smart on the Golden Globes red carpet, adding, when she won for actress in a TV comedy: “There’s just a lot that could be said tonight. I said my rant on the red carpet, so I won’t do it here.”

It was an echo of Jane Fonda’s famous 1972 Oscar speech: “There’s a great deal to say, and I’m not going to say it tonight.” And, perhaps, a response to more recent “shut up and dribble” criticism, as distilled by 2020 Golden Globes host Ricky Gervais, who cautioned the audience: “If you do win an award tonight, don’t use it as a platform to make a political speech. You’re in no position to lecture the public about anything. You know nothing about the real world.”

Indeed, as Oscars ratings have plummeted over the last 20 years, some have suggested that political speechifying is to blame. This is patently absurd. Viewership for just about everything except the Super Bowl has dropped dramatically, and the Oscars ratings do not take into account the millions who watch portions of the show on social media. (We’ll see what happens when the Oscars move to YouTube in 2029.)

And the Oscars have never been particularly political.

Speeches that deviate from the ubiquitous laundry list of thank yous always get more attention, whether they’re political or not, for the simple reason that they’re so dang unusual. But taken as a whole, either by decade or particular telecast, the Oscars is mostly, and consistently, apolitical. As in, almost every minute of a three-hour-plus show, year after year after year.

Unless, of course, you consider thanking God to be political. Which I do not. Nor do I categorize as such any speech that underlines the fact of a historic win (as Halle Berry did in 2002), encourages Hollywood to tell more diverse stories (as Cate Blanchett did in 2014) or reminds audiences in a general way that systemic oppression and war are bad (as Adrian Brody did amid his ramblings in 2025).

Many of the speeches that have been branded as “political” are simply underscoring the themes of the films being honored — in 2009, both Dustin Lance Black and Sean Penn advocated for gay rights when accepting Oscars for “Milk,” which chronicled the life of assassinated gay rights activist Harvey Milk. Likewise, John Irving supporting abortion rights and Planned Parenthood after winning for “The Cider House Rules” in 2000 and John Legend and Common speaking passionately about civil rights, past and present, after winning for “Glory,” a song from the civil rights drama “Selma,” in 2015 was only natural.

Sacheen Littlefeather refuses the lead actor Academy Award on behalf of Marlon Brando in 1973.

(Bettmann Archive)

A purely political speech, to my mind, directly calls out specific leaders, policies or crises, which may or may not have anything to do with the film being awarded. The most famous are, of course, Marlon Brando’s decision to send Sacheen Littlefeather to accept his Oscar for “The Godfather” and protest the treatment of Native Americans, and Vanessa Redgrave’s 1978 denunciation of “Zionist hoodlums” who were demonstrating against her involvement in a pro-Palestinian documentary even as she accepted for supporting actress in “Julia.”

In 1993, while many Oscars attendees wore red ribbons to honor those living with HIV/AIDS and call for government assistance, then-couple Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins took it further, using their time as presenters to ask the U.S. government to allow HIV-positive Haitians being held at Guantanamo Bay to be let into the country. That same year, presenter Richard Gere used the fact that “1 billion people” were watching to send “sanity” to Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping in the hopes that he would allow the people of Tibet to “live free.” (Then-Oscars producer Gil Cates quickly denounced the three presenters; Gere did not return to the Oscars until 2013.)

A year after Moore blasted Bush over Iraq, Errol Morris, winning for “The Fog of War,” briefly compared the war in Iraq to the “rabbit hole” of Vietnam (which was the subject of his film). In 2015, “Boyhood” star Patricia Arquette used most of her supporting actress speech to demand equal wages for women. That same year, “Birdman” director Alejandro G. Iñárritu dedicated his award to his fellow Mexicans, with the hope that they would be treated by Americans “with dignity and respect” so that together, they could build a “great immigrant nation.” (Which frankly plays more purely political now than it did at the time.) A year later, Leonardo DiCaprio spoke about climate change after winning for “The Revenant.”

In 2019, Spike Lee, accepting for adapted screenplay (“BlacKkKlansman”), called on voters in the upcoming election to mobilize and “be on the right side of history” and in 2024, “Zone of Interest” director Jonathan Glazer, accepting for international film, riled many by comparing the dehumanization required for the Holocaust to occur with events in Gaza.

Even now, the most notable examples of political speeches, the ones that are always mentioned, are from the freaking ‘70s. Which certainly obliterates the idea that the Oscars have grown more political and undermines the argument that it is a Big Problem.

Put these relatively few moments next to the endless hours of acceptance speeches that, with varying degrees of emotion, honor the art of movie-making and the legions that support those who are doing it (including God, parents, spouses, children, some random but heaven-sent teacher) and it’s difficult to see much “wokeness.”

The people who gather at the Oscars are storytellers, and many of the stories they tell deal with uncomfortable truths about our collective past, present and future (including best picture front-runners “One Battle After Another” and “Sinners”). Of course nominees and winners have opinions about politics, science, social issues, international conflict and those suffering without recourse or voice — that’s why they make movies. So if a few of them decide to skip thanking their manager or the studio head and say a few words about climate change or whatever current law/policy/presidential action they believe is making lives worse for a lot of people, that’s their choice. They just won an Oscar!

For those uncomfortable watching it, just use the 45 seconds to grab a snack and by the time you’re back, the host will be moaning about how long the show is and the next five winners will inevitably cry and smile; praise their fellow nominees; thank the producers; say something sweet about their cast, crew and mamas; before telling their kids they love them and it’s time to go to bed.

And that’s OK too.