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WASHINGTON — President Trump will deliver his annual State of the Union address Tuesday night at a moment of unusual upheaval, confronting a cascade of crises that have left Washington unsettled and his own political standing diminished early in his second term.

When lawmakers gather to hear the president’s agenda for the year ahead, the scene is expected to reflect an undeterred president under increasing political strain.

The president is facing a partial government shutdown triggered by his administration’s aggressive deportation campaign, rising tensions over the United States’ involvement in foreign conflicts and growing domestic dissent that is fracturing the president’s political alliances and aggravating his rivals.

Adding to the turbulent atmosphere is the economic unease in an election year. The president, who a year ago promised to bring down prices for consumers, insisted Monday that America has “the greatest economy we’ve ever had” even though public polling shows economic pressures are worrying a majority of Americans.

Trump said he plans to talk about the country’s economic successes in his speech, saying “it is going to be a long speech because we have so much to talk about.”

Republicans have recently pushed Trump to focus on the push to lower costs, a message they see as crucial to help them keep control of Congress. What remains to be seen is how much of Trump’s economic message will be colored by a Supreme Court decision last week that struck down his use of tariffs, a key portion of his economic agenda. In recent days, the president has remained defiant on the issue, lashing out at the justices for delivering a legal setback on his tariffs, and looking to impose new global tariffs in a different way.

Trump said Monday he does not need to seek congressional approval to impose new levies, even though the nation’s highest court ruled his tariffs cannot stand without the approval of Congress.

“As president, I do not have to go back to Congress to get approval of Tariffs,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “It has already been gotten, in many forms, a long time ago!”

Trump’s rebuke underscores the president’s increasingly combative posture toward both the judiciary and Congress, at a time when he is heavily relying on his executive authority to advance sweeping policies on immigration, trade and national security.

His willingness to wield executive authority has been seen in the last year as the president led U.S. forces to capture former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, threatened to seize Greenland, considered an attack on Iran and eyed an armed conflict with drug cartels in Mexico.

At home, Trump has said he thinks the federal government should assert control over state elections as he continues to push false claims of a stolen 2020 election.

Whether that will happen remains to be seen as Republican leaders, and other conservative lawmakers, voice opposition to some of the president’s legislative pitches.

In recent months, Congress has tried to reassert its authority over the executive branch — in some cases led by small Republican defections by lawmakers who have grown concerned about the president’s involvement in foreign wars and his economic policies.

One of the most notable rebukes to Trump’s authority occurred late last year, when a bipartisan group of lawmakers secured legislation that forced the Trump administration to release investigative files related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

While Trump maintains the release of those files cleared him of wrongdoing, the findings have so far ensnared key figures in Trump’s political orbit and reinforced a sense of scandal that continues to loom over his administration. Anger over the administration’s handling of the Epstein case has led to bipartisan backlash, even prompting some conservatives to call for U.S. Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi to resign.

Another sign of the polarized moment Trump will face Tuesday night will be led by Democrats.

About a dozen Democrats in the Senate and House of Representatives plan to boycott the president’s speech and participate in what they have dubbed the “People’s State of the Union.”

“I will not be attending the State of the Union,” U.S. Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) said in a social media video over the weekend. “We cannot treat this as normal. This is not business as usual. I will not give him the audience he craves for the lies that he tells.”

In recent years, lawmakers who wished to disavow the president’s address would typically stand and shout in protest, disrupt the remarks or coordinate outfits to signal their opposition.

In 2020, for example, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) stood behind Trump at the podium as he delivered his remarks and then shredded a copy of his script. She later called it a “manifesto of mistruths.”

This year, even the president’s allies appear to be on notice.

While it is a long-standing custom for the Supreme Court justices to attend the president’s annual address, Trump told reporters on Friday that the six justices who voted against his tariffs policy were “barely” invited to the event.

“Three of them are invited,” he said.

Trump’s State of the Union remarks will be dissected to see how he intends to advance his agenda and to deal with a divided Congress that remains at a standstill over how to fund the Department of Homeland Security.

The partial government shutdown was triggered by partisan tensions over Trump’s aggressive immigration crackdown in Minneapolis, where two U.S. citizens were shot and killed by federal agents.

At a White House event Monday, Trump lamented that public polling shows waning support for federal immigration agents.

“It just amazes me that there is not more support out there,” Trump said. “We actually have a silent support, I think it is silent.”

WASHINGTON  — The Supreme Court agreed Monday to decide on shielding energy producers from dozens of lawsuits seeking to hold them liable for costs of global climate change.

In the past decade, dozens of cities, counties and states, including California, have joined state-based lawsuits that seek billions of dollars in damages, and they have won preliminary victories in state courts.

But the Trump administration and the energy producers urged the Supreme Court to throw out all of these suits on the grounds they conflict with federal law.

“Boulder Colorado cannot make energy policy for the entire country,” lawyers for Suncor Energy and Exxon Mobil said in their appeal. They urged the court to rule that “state law cannot impose the costs of global climate change on a subset of the world’s energy producers chosen by a single municipality.”

The justices will hear the case of Suncor Energy vs. Boulder County, but arguments will not be held until October.

The Biden administration had said the justices should stand aside while the lawsuits move forward in state courts, but the Trump administration filed a brief in September urging the court to intervene now.

They said the case has “vast nationwide significance,” and it should not be left to be decided state by state.

Lawyers for Boulder had urged the court against taking up the issue at an early stage of the litigation. “This is not the right time or the right case for deciding” whether municipalities can sue over the damage they have suffered.

But after weighing the issue for weeks, the court announced it will be hear the claims of the oil and gas industries.

Feb. 23 (UPI) — A Hong Kong court has rejected the appeals of 12 pro-democracy lawmakers and activists seeking to overturn their convictions in connection with a 2020 unofficial election primary that Beijing-aligned officials said was intended to undermine the city’s existing political system.

The dozen people are members of the so-called Hong Kong 47, who were sentenced in November 2024 to between 51 and 120 months in what is still the largest case so far brought under the city’s draconian National Security Law.

Eleven of the activists were convicted during the trial, while one pleaded guilty.

The court on Monday rejected their appeals. For some, they have already served their sentences and been released from prison.

Lawrence Lau Wai-chung, a barrister and democracy activist, had been acquitted in the case, but the government had appealed the decision. The court on Monday upheld that decision.

The defendants were charged with conspiracy to commit subversion under the National Security Law that Beijing imposed on Hong Kong in connection with their unofficial primary.

Held in July 2020 amid the fraying of democratic norms in Hong Kong, the activists used the primary to coordinate candidates and win a pro-democracy majority in the city’s legislature, which prosecutors said they planned to use to veto budget bills to force the resignation of Hong Kong’s chief executive.

The primary was held following protests that erupted in Hong Kong in 2019 against extradition that grew into a broader pro-democracy movement following allegations of excessive force used by police against the protesters.

In response to the protests, China imposed a new national security law on Hong Kong in July 2020, and police arrested dozens of pro-democracy figures on Jan. 6, 2021, with 47 charged with conspiracy to commit subversion in late February of that year.

The government accused them of seeking to use the legislature, under the guise of democracy, to threaten Hong Kong’s political system.

Their convictions were widely condemned by democratic nations, including Britain, Canada and the United States. Washington vowed to impose visa restrictions on officials responsible for their sentencing.

NEW YORK — JPMorgan Chase acknowledged for the first time that it closed the bank accounts of Donald Trump and several of his businesses in the aftermath of the Jan. 6, 2021, attacks on the U.S. Capitol, the latest development in a legal saga between the president and the nation’s biggest bank over the issue known as “debanking.”

The acknowledgment came in a court filing submitted this week in Trump’s lawsuit against the bank and its leader, Jamie Dimon. The president sued for $5 billion, alleging that his accounts were closed for political reasons, disrupting his business operations.

“In February 2021, JPMorgan informed Plaintiffs that certain accounts maintained with JPMorgan’s CB and PB would be closed,” JPMorgan’s former chief administrative officer Dan Wilkening wrote in the court filing. The “PB” and “CB” stands for JPMorgan’s private bank and commercial bank.

Until now, JPMorgan has never admitted it closed the president’s accounts in writing after Jan. 6. The bank would only speak hypothetically about when the bank closes accounts and its reasons for closing accounts, citing bank privacy laws.

A spokeswoman for the bank declined to comment beyond what the bank said in its legal filings.

Trump originally sued JPMorgan in Florida state court, where the president’s primary residence is now located. The filings this week are part of an effort by JPMorgan Chase to have the case moved from state to federal court and to have the jurisdiction of the case moved to New York, which is where the bank accounts were located and where Trump kept much of his business operations until recently.

Trump originally accused the bank of trade libel and violating state and federal unfair and deceptive trade practices.

In the original lawsuit, Trump said he tried to raise the issue personally with Dimon after the bank sent him notices that JPMorgan would close his accounts, and that Dimon assured Trump he would figure out what was happening. The lawsuit alleges Dimon failed to follow up with Trump.

Further, Trump’s lawyers allege that JPMorgan placed the president and his companies on a reputational “blacklist” that both JPMorgan and other banks use to keep clients from opening accounts with them in the future. The blacklist has yet to be defined by the president’s lawyers.

“If and when Plaintiffs explain what they mean by this ‘blacklist,’ JPMorgan will respond accordingly,” the bank’s lawyers said in a filing.

JPMorgan has previously said that although it regrets that Trump felt the need to sue the bank, the lawsuit has no merit.

The issue of debanking is at the center of the case. Debanking occurs when a bank closes the accounts of a customer or refuses to do business with a customer in the form of loans or other services. Once a relatively obscure issue in finance, debanking has become a politically charged issue in recent years, with conservative politicians arguing that banks have discriminated against them and their affiliated interests.

“In a devastating concession that proves President Trump’s entire claim, JPMorgan Chase admitted to unlawfully and intentionally de-banking President Trump, his family, and his businesses, causing overwhelming financial harm,” the president’s lawyers said in a statement. “President Trump is standing up for all those wrongly debanked by JPMorgan Chase and its cohorts, and will see this case to a just and proper conclusion.”

Debanking first became a national issue when conservatives accused the Obama administration of pressuring banks to stop extending services to gun stores and payday lenders under “Operation Choke Point.”

Trump and other conservative figures have alleged that banks cut them off from their accounts under the umbrella term of “reputational risk” after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. Trump was impeached on a charge of inciting insurrection on Jan. 6, though not convicted in the Senate; and he was criminally indicted for his role in the riot and his attempt to overturn his 2020 election defeat, but that case was dismissed after he won the 2024 election.

Since Trump came back into office, the president’s banking regulators have moved to stop any banks from using “reputational risk” as a reason for denying service to customers.

This is not the first lawsuit Trump has filed against a big bank alleging that he was debanked. The Trump Organization sued credit card giant Capital One in March 2025 for similar reasons and allegations. The case is ongoing.

Sweet writes for the Associated Press.

NEW ORLEANS — A U.S. appeals court has cleared the way for a Louisiana law requiring poster-sized displays of the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms to take effect.

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals voted 12 to 6 to lift a block that a lower court first placed on the law in 2024. In the opinion released Friday, the court said it was too early to make a judgment call on the constitutionality of the law.

That’s partly because it’s not yet clear how prominently schools may display the religious text, whether teachers will refer to the Ten Commandments during classes or if other texts like the Mayflower Compact or the Declaration of Independence will also be displayed, the majority opinion said.

Without those sorts of details, the panel decided that it did not have enough information to weigh any 1st Amendment issues that might arise from the law. In other words, there aren’t enough facts available to “permit judicial judgment rather than speculation,” the majority wrote in the opinion.

In a concurring opinion, Circuit Judge James Ho, an appointee of President Trump, wrote that the law “is not just constitutional — it affirms our nation’s highest and most noble traditions.”

The six judges who voted against the decision wrote a series of dissents, with some arguing that the law exposes children to government-endorsed religion in a place they are required to be, presenting a clear constitutional burden.

Circuit Judge James L. Dennis, an appointee of President Clinton, wrote that the law “is precisely the kind of establishment the Framers anticipated and sought to prevent.”

The ruling is the result of the court’s choice to rehear the case with all judges present after three of them ruled in June that the Louisiana law was unconstitutional. The reversal comes from one of the nation’s most conservative appeals courts, and one that’s known for propelling Republican policies to a similarly conservative U.S. Supreme Court.

Republican Gov. Jeff Landry celebrated the ruling Friday, declaring, “Common sense is making a comeback!”

The ACLU of Louisiana, one of several groups representing plaintiffs, pledged to explore all legal pathways to continue fighting the law.

Arkansas has a similar law that has been challenged in federal court. And a Texas law took effect on Sept. 1, marking the widest reaching attempt in the nation to hang the Ten Commandments in public schools.

Some Texas school districts were barred from posting them after federal judges issued injunctions in two cases challenging the law, but they have already gone up in many classrooms across the state as districts paid to have the posters printed themselves or accepted donations.

The laws are among pushes by Republicans, including Trump, to incorporate religion into public school classrooms. Critics say doing so violates the separation of church and state, while backers say the Ten Commandments are historical and part of the foundation of U.S. law.

Joseph Davis, an attorney representing Louisiana in the case, applauded the court for upholding the nation’s “time-honored tradition of recognizing faith in the public square.”

Families from a variety of religious backgrounds, including Christianity, Judaism and Hinduism, have challenged the laws, as have clergy members and nonreligious families.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation, another group involved in the challenge, called the ruling “extremely disappointing” and said the law will force families “into a game of constitutional whack-a-mole” where they will have to separately challenge each school district’s displays.

Louisiana Atty. Gen. Liz Murrill said after the ruling that she had sent schools several correct examples of the required poster.

In 1980, the Supreme Court ruled that a similar Kentucky law violated the Establishment Clause of the U.S. Constitution, which says Congress can “make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” The court found that the law had no secular purpose but served a plainly religious purpose.

And in 2005, the Supreme Court held that such displays in a pair of Kentucky courthouses violated the Constitution. At the same time, the court upheld a Ten Commandments marker on the grounds of the Texas state Capitol in Austin.

Schoenbaum and Boone write for the Associated Press.

At a luncheon this week for L.A. County politicos, Supervisor Kathryn Barger pitched what she framed as a commonsense reform.

Legislators in Sacramento, she argued, need to change a 2019 law that extended the statute of limitations for sex abuse lawsuits, opening the floodgates for decades-old claims that have cost the county nearly $5 billion and counting in payouts.

“I want them in Sacramento to fix it,” she said. “I have to believe that we are the tip of the iceberg.”

The controversial law, Assembly Bill 218, has led to thousands of claims over abuse that took place in schools, juvenile halls and foster homes. Supporters say it continues to give survivors a chance at justice, while Barger and other officials warn the cost of the litigation is driving local governments to the brink of bankruptcy.

Rolling back AB 218, critics argue, is the single most obvious thing state lawmakers can do this legislative session.

The push has gained momentum amid concerns of fraud in the first of two payouts approved last year by L.A. County officials. At $4 billion, it was the largest sex abuse settlement in U.S. history, with the money set aside for more than 11,000 victims.

The Times reported last fall on allegations of fabricated claims filed by plaintiffs within the settlement, which prompted L.A. County Dist. Atty. Nathan Hochman to open an investigation. Hochman told the supervisors this week that his office is reviewing “thousands of claims” for fraudulent submissions and predicted savings in the “hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars.”

Speaking at the event Wednesday, Barger suggested capping attorneys fees — acknowledging that some high-powered attorneys in the room were involved in the county’s litigation.

Out of the $4-billion payout, she said, “about $1.5 billion will go to attorney fees — present company included.”

Barger referenced a former state Assembly speaker known for bare-knuckle tactics, which she said were needed now in the Capitol.

“If Willie Brown were up there, I’m sure he’d lock everyone in a room and slap some sense into them at this point,” she said.

Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas has asked California legislators to consider changes to AB 218. Critics say sexual abuse lawsuits are driving local governments to the brink of bankruptcy, while supporters say it is one of the few ways for victims of abuse to get justice. Rivas spoke in Ventura County on Nov. 18, 2025.

(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)

This session, Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas has assigned a group of legislators to look at what changes might be made to the law.

A spokesman for Rivas, Nick Miller, said the goal is to provide “meaningful access to justice for all survivors” without forcing service cuts in schools and governments.

“There is a group of members discussing possible solutions that strike the right balance on this critical issue,” Miller said.

It’s a tightrope walk that no legislator has mastered.

Sen. Benjamin Allen (D-Santa Monica), who tried last year to increase the burden of proof for these cases, was branded a protector of predators.

Sen. John Laird (D-Santa Cruz) got further with a pared-down bill only to watch it blow up last session over concerns he was trampling on victims’ rights.

“I worked hard to strike the middle ground,” Laird said. “It just was too hard.”

Organized labor, a powerful voice in Sacramento, could sway the equation. County unions said they were told repeatedly at the bargaining table last year that they couldn’t get raises because of the massive sex abuse settlements, potentially setting them on a collision course with victim advocates.

Lorena Gonzalez, who wrote AB 218 in 2019 before leaving the Legislature to head up the California Federation of Labor Unions, said lobbying firms had been urging unions recently to take the lead on convincing the Assembly to change the law. The union leaders have yet to take a stance, she said.

“Although there’s some desire to especially fix what happened in L.A., there wasn’t an overwhelming desire to roll it back,” she said.

While serving in the state Legislature, Lorena Gonzalez authored AB 218, a state law that extended the statute of limitations for lawsuits over sexual abuse in government facilities. Gonzalez, now with the California Labor Federation, spoke at Balletto Vineyards in Santa Rosa, Calif., on April 26, 2024.

(Jeff Chiu / Associated Press)

A Times investigation last fall found nine clients of Downtown L.A. Law Group, a law firm that represents thousands of plaintiffs in the county’s largest settlement, who claimed that recruiters had paid them to sue. Some clients said they were told to make up stories of abuse that became the crux of their lawsuit.

The firm, also known as DTLA, has denied paying any client to sue. Andrew Morrow, the main attorney on the cases for DTLA, argued in a Feb. 13 court filing that the recent subpoena by the State Bar seeking their court records as part of an investigation into the firm amounted to an “ill-advised fishing expedition.” The firm argued that allowing the State Bar to review its filings violates clients’ privacy.

“No one disputes that these allegations are troubling and, if true, serious,” Morrow wrote. “However, untested allegations printed in a local newspaper — no matter how compelling — do not override the privacy rights” of victims.

Assemblymember Dawn Addis (D-Morro Bay), a longtime advocate for sex abuse survivors who vehemently opposed the last attempt at changing AB 218, said that “there’s all kinds of discussions about potential solutions” for fraud underway in the Legislature.

But limiting victims’ ability to sue, as some have called on lawmakers to do, is a clear no-go, she said.

“Silencing victims is not the way to get out fraud,” she said.

Like many legislators, she pinned some of the blame for the alleged fraud on poor vetting by lawyers for L.A. County. The county has said the cost of taking depositions for more than 11,000 cases would be “astronomical,” and that no records exist for many of the older cases, leaving them defenseless.

In a statement to The Times, a spokesperson for the L.A. County counsel’s office said the Legislature created AB 218 “without a single safeguard against fraud.”

“That is their failure to own,” the statement said. “This is the system the Legislature built, and they need to fix it.”

The county maintains it is not trying to squash victims’ rights, but rather keep vital services — pools, parks, health clinics — open.

“I am tired of whenever a government official stands up and says, ‘Hey, there needs to be some reform here,’ that we’re accused of victim blaming, pedophile protecting,” says Joseph Nicchitta, the county’s acting chief executive.

After agreeing to the $4-billion payout in April, county officials opted into a second $828-million settlement in October covering an additional 400 cases. Since then, more than 5,000 cases have been filed that are not part of either settlement and still need to be resolved.

“Let me tell you what will not work for L.A. County,” Nicchitta said. “The nibbles around the edges — ‘Make the procedure a little tighter, we’ll require a couple more documents.’”

He said he believes the Legislature needs to weigh the need to pay survivors against the obligation to keep the social safety net intact. One solution, Nicchitta said, could involve a victims compensation fund that would eliminate the need for someone to hire an attorney in order to submit a claim and receive money.

“Acknowledge the harm, provide real competition, [and] do it fast,” he said. “You don’t need a lawyer.”

John Manly, a lawyer who has represented sex abuse survivors for more than 20 years, sits at his law office in Irvine on Dec. 29, 2023.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

After getting flooded with sex abuse claims related to juvenile facilities following a similar change in the statute of limitations, Maryland capped sex abuse cases against government entities last year at $400,000 and limited attorneys’ fees to 25% for cases resolved in court.

For many California trial attorneys, ideas such as these are nonstarters.

“The reason they’re proposing a victims’ fund is they continue to know that those people don’t have any political power,” said John Manly, a veteran sex abuse attorney who is part of the second L.A. County settlement. “The only power they have is to hire a lawyer and get justice.

“We’re going to fight,” he said.