Column

Who knew that by “America First,” President Trump meant all of the Americas?

In puzzling over that question at least, I’ve got company in Marjorie Taylor Greene, the now-former congresswoman from Georgia and onetime Trump devotee who remains stalwart in his America First movement. Greene tweeted on Saturday, just ahead of Trump’s triumphal news conference about the United States’ decapitation of Venezuela’s government by the military’s middle-of-the-night nabbing of Nicolás Maduro and his wife: “This is what many in MAGA thought they voted to end. Boy were we wrong.”

Wrong indeed. Nearly a year into his second term, Trump has done nothing but exacerbate the domestic problems that Greene identified as America First priorities — bringing down the “increasing cost of living, housing, healthcare” within the 50 states — even as he’s pursued the “never ending military aggression” and foreign adventurism that America Firsters scorn, or at least used to. Another Trump con. Another lie.

Here’s a stunning stat, thanks to Military Times: In 2025, Trump ordered 626 missile strikes worldwide, 71 more than President Biden did in his entire four-year term. Targets, so far, have included Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Somalia, Nigeria, Iran and the waters off Venezuela and Colombia. Lately he’s threatened to hit Iran again if it kills demonstrators who have been marching in Tehran’s streets to protest the country’s woeful economic conditions. (“We are locked and loaded and ready to go,” Trump posted Friday.)

The president doesn’t like “forever wars,” he’s said many times, but he sure loves quick booms and cinematic secret ops. Leave aside, for now, the attacks in the Middle East, Africa and the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific. It’s Trump’s new claim to “run” Venezuela that has signaled the beginning of his mind-boggling bid for U.S. hegemony over the Western Hemisphere. Any such ambition raises the potential for quick actions to become quagmires.

As Stephen Miller, perhaps Trump’s closest and most like-minded (read: unhinged) advisor, described the administration’s worldview on Monday to CNN’s Jake Tapper: “We live in a world, in the real world, Jake, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are iron laws of the world since the beginning of time.”

You know, that old, amoral iron law: “Might makes right.” Music to Vladimir Putin’s and Xi Jinping’s ears as they seek hegemonic expansion of their own, confident that the United States has given up the moral high ground from which to object.

But it was Trump, the branding maven, who gave the White House worldview its name — his own, of course: the Donroe Doctrine. And it was Trump who spelled out what that might mean in practice for the Americas, in a chest-thumping, war-mongering performance on Sunday returning to Washington aboard Air Force One. The wannabe U.S. king turns out to be a wannabe emperor of an entire hemisphere.

“We’re in charge,” Trump said of Venezuela to reporters. “We’re gonna run it. Fix it. We’ll have elections at the right time.” He added, “If they don’t behave, we’ll do a second strike.” He went on, suggestively, ominously: “Colombia is very sick too,” and “Cuba is ready to fall.” Looking northward, he coveted more: “We need Greenland from a national security situation.”

Separately, Trump recently has said that Colombia’s leftist President Gustavo Petro “does have to watch his ass,” and that, given Trump’s unhappiness with the ungenuflecting Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, “Something’s going to have to be done with Mexico.” In their cases as well as Maduro’s, Trump’s ostensible complaints have been that each has been complacent or complicit with drug cartels.

And yet, just last month Trump pardoned the former president of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernández, who was convicted in a U.S. court and given a 45-year sentence for his central role in “one of the largest and most violent drug-trafficking conspiracies in the world.” Hernández helped traffickers ship 400 tons of cocaine into the United States — to “stuff the drugs up the gringos’ noses.” And Trump pardoned him after less than two years in prison.

So it’s implausible that a few weeks later, the U.S. president truly believes in taking a hard line against leaders he suspects of abetting the drug trade. Maybe Trump’s real motivation is something other than drug-running?

In his appearance after the Maduro arrest, Trump used the word “oil” 21 times. On Tuesday, he announced, in a social media post, of course, that he was taking control of the proceeds from up to 50 barrels of Venezuelan oil. (Not that he cares, but that would violate the Constitution, which gives Congress power to appropriate money that comes into the U.S. Treasury.)

Or perhaps, in line with the Monroe Doctrine, our current president has a retro urge to dominate half the world.

Lately his focus has been on Venezuela and South America, but North America is also in his sights. Trump has long said he might target Mexico to hit cartels and that the United States’ other North American neighbor, Canada, should become the 51st state. But it’s a third part of North America — Greenland — that he’s most intent on.

The icy island has fewer than 60,000 people but mineral wealth that’s increasingly accessible given the climate warming that Trump calls a hoax. For him to lay claim isn’t just a problem for the Americas. It’s an existential threat to NATO given that Greenland is an autonomous part of NATO ally Denmark — as Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen warned.

Not in 80 years did anyone imagine that NATO — bound by its tenet that an attack on one member is an attack on all — would be attacked from within, least of all from the United States. In a remarkable statement on Tuesday, U.S. allies rallied around Denmark: “It is for Denmark and Greenland, and them only, to decide on matters concerning Denmark and Greenland.”

Trump’s insistence that controlling Greenland is essential to U.S. national security is nuts. The United States has had military bases there since World War II, and all of NATO sees Greenland as critical to defend against Russian and Chinese encroachment in the Arctic. Still, Trump hasn’t ruled out the use of force to take the island.

He imagines himself to be the emperor of the Americas — all of it. Americas First.

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Jan. 5 (Asia Today) — By 2026, understanding international relations and shaping national core-interest strategies should start from a geoeconomic perspective. Geoeconomics links geopolitics and economics. It describes the use of economic tools as weapons to achieve political and security goals and the study of how those tools work.

The term is not widely used, but the idea has been around for decades. In 1990, strategist Edward Luttwak argued in an essay, “From Geopolitics to Geoeconomics: The Logic of Conflict, the Grammar of Commerce,” that competition among nations was shifting from geopolitical rivalry to geoeconomic rivalry. In other words, economic instruments were becoming as consequential as military ones.

Traditional geopolitics explains international relations mainly through territory and military power. The reality today looks different. Tariffs, supply chains, exchange rates, finance and standards have become powerful tools aimed at rivals.

The start of President Donald Trump’s second term and the intensifying U.S.-China confrontation highlight what the author calls the arrival of the geoeconomic era. The erosion of free trade and de facto globalization, the “America First” approach and broad tariffs, and the cycle of retaliation and sanctions between Washington and Beijing are presented as signals of that shift.

In the past, globalization prioritized efficiency. That made strategies such as “security with America, economy with China” workable for South Korea. The author argues that economic interdependence itself is now a weapon. Globalization is no longer a stable order. Trump’s tariff policy, the author writes, should be understood not only as an economic move to improve the trade balance but as part of a broader security strategy intended to shrink rival industries, rebuild supply chains inside the United States and push China out of key nodes of the global supply chain.

China’s countermeasures, the author adds, reflect similar logic. The U.S.-China confrontation has expanded beyond military tensions into economic conflict. The author says the superpower rivalry will place increasing pressure on allies and neighboring states to choose sides, as each power blends hard and soft approaches. The author describes an emerging world of overlapping sanctions that could reshape international order.

The author argues such pressure is already visible in currency and tariff measures and in battles over standards tied to technological leadership in telecommunications, semiconductors and artificial intelligence. The author also cites energy security, the restructuring of battery and electric-vehicle supply chains and debates over the burden of security costs. Without a geostrategic plan, the author warns, South Korea could face a compound crisis spanning industrial diplomacy and security.

The column cites U.S. State Department criticism of South Korea’s proposed revision of the Information and Communications Network Act, a measure described as aimed at rooting out false and manipulated information. The author says the U.S. raised “serious concerns,” arguing it could harm the business of U.S.-based online platforms and impede freedom of expression. The author writes that the episode shows how Washington may intervene in other countries’ domestic law when it sees national interests at stake, including through potential trade disputes.

The author links that criticism to what is described as controversy involving Coupang, which is listed in the United States. While the author says Coupang deserves criticism over a personal data leak, the column argues that influential politicians in Washington have spoken up on the company’s behalf, while responses in South Korea have largely focused on calls for hearings and political pressure.

The author also points to a U.S. airstrike on Venezuela and the operation to arrest President Nicolás Maduro as an illustration of how economic interests and security strategy can converge. The author argues that while the stated rationale included counternarcotics, remarks cited in the column about “taking back the oil” reveal a geopolitical calculation tied to energy and supply chains.

The column concludes that no national interest can be protected without a tough geoeconomic strategy and that patriotism rooted in anger or emotion cannot substitute for strategy. The author argues that domestic-focused politics risks being pushed aside in a geoeconomic order and urges South Korea to rethink its national survival strategy rather than remain a passive object of great-power competition.

Editor’s note: The views expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of this publication.

Kim Myung-ho is a visiting professor at Konkuk University’s Graduate School of Journalism and Public Relations.

— Reported by Asia Today; translated by UPI

© Asia Today. Unauthorized reproduction or redistribution prohibited.

SACRAMENTO — Congratulations, you survived 2025. What will the new year bring? Joy and prosperity for all, hopefully, but it’s hard to say.

Few in California could have predicted some of the most life-changing events of 2025 — the deadly Los Angeles area wildfires, the Trump administration’s militant, often inhumane immigration crackdown and an obscure congressional redistricting fight that could alter the balance of power in Washington.

With that in mind, California can expect one of 2026’s most consequential stories to be the turmoil in Sacramento over the entrenched state budget deficit — which will be compounded by the massive federal healthcare cuts by the Trump administration.

The good news is that, after a rain-soaked Christmas holiday, California enters the new year with reservoirs brimming, even if its coffers are not. It also just got easier to delete Facebook, X and other social media accounts that consume too much of our lives. And let’s not forget that the Los Angeles Dodgers reign as World Series champions!

Happy New Year! This is Phil Willon, the California Politics editor for the Los Angeles Times, filling in for columnist George Skelton. Along with the state budget crisis, 2026 will bring a wide-open race for governor — and the person the candidates hope to replace, Gov. Gavin Newsom, is flirting with a run for president in 2028 and has just a year left in his final term to deliver on all his promises. So buckle up and visit latimes.com early and often.

An $18-billion problem

The California Legislature returns to work Monday for the 2026 session, and a major financial headache awaits.

The Legislative Analyst’s Office estimates that the state will have an $18 billion budget shortfall in the upcoming fiscal year – $5 billion higher than what the Newsom administration predicted in June.

As Times reporter Katie King reported earlier, state revenue has been improving, but a shortfall is still expected. That’s because mandatory spending requirements under Proposition 98, which sets minimum annual funding for public schools, and Proposition 2, which specifies reserve deposits and debt payments, almost entirely offset any gains, according to the legislative analysis.

And it gets worse. The LAO said that, starting in 2027-28, California’s structural deficits are expected to grow to about $35 billion annually “due to spending growth continuing to outstrip revenue growth.”

The solution? Cut spending and/or increase revenue, the LAO report says.

But cut what, and raise money how? That’s up to Newsom and the Legislature to decide, and their difficult task will begin later this week when the governor releases his proposed budget.

Poking the billionaire

One controversial idea — outside of the legislative process — already is being kicked around.

A November ballot measure proposed by a labor organization, the Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West, would impose a one-time 5% wealth tax on billionaires that could raise $100 billion for healthcare programs. Opponents say it will drive wealthy, taxpaying, job-creating, economy-driving Californians out of the state.

The measure has yet to qualify for the November ballot but will receive ample attention regardless.

Supporters say the revenue is needed to backfill the massive federal funding cuts to healthcare that President Trump signed this summer under what’s known as the “Big Beautiful Bill,” according to a report by The Times’ Seema Mehta and Caroline Petrow-Cohen.

The California Budget & Policy Center estimates that as many as 3.4 million Californians could lose Medi-Cal coverage, more rural hospitals could close and other healthcare services would be slashed unless a new funding source is found.

Federal cuts to healthcare

If California does not backfill those federal cuts by raising taxes, or other creative means, costs for the state will still increase, according to the Legislative Analyst’s Office. That seems counterintuitive, since millions of Californians may lose coverage. But under the “Big Beautiful Bill,” cuts to federal cost sharing and a drop in health provider tax revenue will far outpace any potential cost savings for the state.

Newsom’s possible White House run will ensure that California’s budget shortfall and liberal policies it spends money on will whip up the nation’s caustic partisan divide. Near the top of the list will be California’s decision to extend state-sponsored healthcare coverage to low-income, undocumented immigrants. The expansion has cost the state billions and drawn sharp criticism from Republicans and, last year, Newsom and the Democratic-led Legislature reduced the expansion of state-sponsored healthcare to those immigrants due to the high cost.

On top of that, the monthly premiums for federally subsidized plans available on the Covered California exchange — often referred to as Obamacare — will soar by 97% on average for 2026. That’s due to decisions by the Republican-led Congress and Trump not to extend federal subsidies for that coverage. State officials estimate that roughly 400,000 Californians will drop their coverage under the program because of the higher cost. And California counties are ill prepared to step into the breach, as KFF Health News recently reported.

Needless to say, the healthcare situation will be extremely volatile in 2026, which will make the state’s upcoming high-stakes budget process even more unpredictable.

What else you should be reading

The must-read: Billionaire tax proposal sparks soul-searching for Californians
CA vs. Trump: Trump pulls back National Guard from L.A. and other cities, Newsom claims win
The L.A. Times Special: California rolls out sweeping new laws for 2026, from cellphone limits in schools to a ban on cat declawing

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The most potent attack ad of Donald Trump’s comeback campaign seemingly ran on a loop during the final weeks before the 2024 election. Assailing rights for transgender people, its punch line indeed delivered a punch: “Kamala Harris is for they/them. President Trump is for you.”

2025: Promise broken. Back in office, the president has shown that the only pronouns he really recognizes are the first-person kind: me, myself and I.

A year into Trump 2.0, those self-regarding pronouns are now firmly affixed as the bywords of his presidency, on matters major and mundane. They might as well be mounted in gold in the Oval Office, in fonts so large as to not get lost amid all the bling he’s installed there. Asked in October just who was to be honored by Trump’s planned Arc de Triomph-like monument near Arlington Cemetery, the president was quick: “Me.”

To an extent that’s shocked even critics long convinced of his sociopathic narcissism, Trump has fashioned a government that’s of Trump, by Trump and for Trump. “I run the country and the world,” he boasted in April. Trump thinks “there’s nothing he can’t do. Nothing, zero, nothing,” his White House chief of staff, Susie Wiles, told Vanity Fair, as reported in two articles last month that signaled her own unease with Trump’s ongoing vengeance against his political enemies; his clemency for even the most violent rioters of Jan. 6, 2021; the pain of his erratic tariffs, too-cruel migrant roundups and tragic shutdown of USAID’s humanitarian aid; his stonewalling of the Jeffrey Epstein files that candidate Trump promised to release; and the foibles of his slavish Cabinet.

If Trump strutted as the center of the universe in 2025 — unchecked by advisors like Wiles or by a cowed Republican-controlled Congress, the Supreme Court and corporate chieftains — buckle up for 2026. It marks the 250th birthday of America’s independence, and our self-appointed master of ceremonies is focused on the festivities that he’ll star in not only on July 4th but all year long. One of his first acts as president was to create a White House task force with himself as chair, of course, to plan semiquincentennial events, ignoring an eight-year-old commission created by Congress for that purpose. Coming soon: A (possibly illegal) commemorative $1 coin with Trump’s image from the U.S. Mint.

Never mind that 2026 starts with a big spike in health insurance costs for tens of millions of Americans, including many Trump voters. The president who campaigned on bringing down the costs of living has stood in the way of a legislative remedy to the Dec. 31 expiration of healthcare premium subsidies, repeatedly mouthing his years-old promise that he’ll propose a cheaper alternative within weeks.

But here’s how 2026 will end: with midterm elections in November that loom as a referendum on whether the Trump Republican Party should keep control of Congress. The early betting is that no, it won’t. Especially after another year of Trump grandstanding, and his party’s genuflecting.

In good times, Trump’s garish self-regard might be tolerable to voters, even comical. But these aren’t good times, hardly the “golden age” Trump announced in his inaugural address last January — except for him and the wealthy hangers-on at his seemingly endless round of parties in the White House and at Mar-a-Lago. The Gatsby-themed Halloween party at Trump’s Florida resort was especially rich, pun intended, coming as it did hours before federal food aid for 42 million Americans expired amid a government shutdown he’d done nothing to avert.

Days later, voters gave a shellacking to Republicans in various states’ 2025 off-year elections, which is a good omen for the same result nationwide in 2026. There are other signs. On Tuesday, a new Gallup poll showed three out of four Americans were dissatisfied with “the way things are going in the United States.” Trump’s approval rating was just 36% in Gallup’s poll in early December, his lowest reading of the past year, and nearly equal to his all-time low after the Jan. 6 insurrection. Averages of various polls show Trump with negative ratings on his handling of immigration, the economy, trade and tariffs, and inflation — all issues that helped get him reelected.

But go ahead, Mr. President. Keep talking about how great you are. You’re a legend in your own time and mind.

Trump’s tone-deafness has become the great mystery of U.S. politics, for both parties, especially considering that he slammed President Biden for bragging about the economy’s post-pandemic recovery when Americans weren’t feeling it.

As Americans struggle to buy a home or to afford its upkeep, Trump has gilded the People’s House (see the New York Times’ recent 3-D recreation of the Oval Office for full, nauseating effect) and transformed the bathroom adjoining the Lincoln Bedroom in marble and gold. Having demolished the East Wing to make way for a gargantuan ballroom where Marie Antoinette would be at home, financed by favor-seeking billionaires and corporations, Trump told reporters on Tuesday that it would have to be bigger than he’d first planned because “we’re gonna do the inauguration” there.

What? The man who’s supposed to be leaving office on Jan. 20, 2029, is picking the new location for the next presidential inauguration? Hmmm.

Even before he’s been in office a year, Trump has put his brand on two Washington buildings, including the nation’s 60-year-old cultural center named by law as a memorial to an assassinated president. The Kennedy Center (no, I will not call it by Trump’s name) will have marble armrests; Trump took to social media on the day after Christmas to show off samples. Meanwhile, he’s refurbishing a royal jet from Qatar, a “palace in the sky.”

Trading on his power in unprecedented ways, Trump was a “crypto billionaire” by May, the Wall Street Journal reported, and in August the New Yorker estimated that he’d profited in office by at least $3.4 billion through crypto and licensing deals.

No, Trump is not for you. He’s for he/him.

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It was the last story I wrote before everything changed.

It was Jan. 5, 2025, and I was marveling at the Rams gumption in their short-handed loss to the Seattle Seahawks.

“It was weird,” I wrote. “It was wild.”

I was so witty. I was so wrong.

Two days later, I was fleeing for my life, steering my car down narrow Altadena streets with a fireball at my back and a nightmarish future sprawled across the smoke-filled streets ahead.

Now that was weird and wild.

The year 2025 was more tumultuous than any silly football game and its accompanying overwrought metaphors. It was a year that knocked me flat, tearing me apart from so many things that once anchored me, setting me afloat in a sea of guilt and despair and ultimate uncertainty.

Today, I have a home but no home. My days are filled with the beeps and growls of bulldozers. My nights are draped in the silence of emptiness. What was once one of the coolest secrets in Los Angeles has become a veritable ghost town, the vast empty spaces populated by howling coyotes and scrounging bears.

And I’m one of the lucky ones.

A lot has changed in the 12 months since the Eaton Fire spared my house but destroyed my Altadena neighborhood. I say a daily prayer of thanks that I did not endure the horror of the 19 people who lost their lives and thousands more who lost their homes. I am beyond fortunate to live in what was left behind.

But virtually nothing was left behind. Venerable manicured homes have been replaced by weed-choked vacant lots. Familiar local businesses are now empty parking lots. There is the occasional sighting of new construction, but far more prevalent is “For Sale” signs that have seemingly been there for months.

After living in the limbo of hotels and Airbnbs for two months while my home was remediated, I was blessed to return to four walls and running water, but beset with the guilt of having a front-row seat to the pain of so many who lost everything. I was spared, but nobody in Los Angeles was spared, and it wasn’t until halfway through the year that I noticed a consistent light from the strangest source.

Dodgers two-way star Shohei Ohtani points as he rounds the bases after hitting a solo home run during Game 3 of the World Series.

(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)

Every night, I would watch the Dodgers. At least once every couple of weeks, I would attend a Sparks game with my daughter, MC. Soon, there would be Saturdays with one of our college football teams, then Sundays with the NFL then, the baseball playoffs, leading to the insane Game 7 and morphing into the annual Lakers winter drama.

By the final weeks of December, I realized that one thing has consistently kept my spirits strong, perhaps the same thing that has helped keep our city upright through trials much tougher than mine.

Sports.

The highs, the lows, the dramatics, the desperation, it was all there when nothing was there, it was the feeling that even with everything gone, you still belonged to something.

UCLA women’s basketball players celebrate as confetti falls after they beat USC to win the Big Ten tournament title.

(Michael Conroy/AP)

From Dodgers exhilaration to Laker despair, from USC football frustration to UCLA women’s basketball greatness, sports has been the bright wallpaper on a year of Southland darkness.

It is sports that kept me grounded, kept me steady and somehow kept me believing.

In the worst year of my life, it was sports that saved me.

The path back to normalcy began two weeks after the Eaton fire, when I left my temporary hotel room to attend a press conference for the Dodgers’ latest Japanese import, Roki Sasaki.

“Invincible,” I wrote about the team’s rebuilt roster, a word that was so comforting during such a time when everything in life felt tenuous.

I came back to the hotel after the press conference, wrote my story then, like thousands of others in my situation, packed up and moved to another hotel.

Lakers guard Luka Doncic claps hands with forward LeBron James during a game against the Clippers on March 2.

(Mark J. Terrill / Associated Press)

Soon thereafter I was awakened late one night with the news of the Lakers stunning acquisition of Luka Doncic. I wrote this column from a rental house while preparing to move to yet another new place. My clothes were in a plastic grocery bag. My house was still in shambles. In Doncic, as least, there was hope.

Several days later I attended the Doncic press conference, asked a question, and Doncic asked me to repeat it. Turns out, it wasn’t a language barrier, it was a sound barrier. I was speaking too softly. It was then I noticed that the trauma from the fire had exacerbated my Parkinson’s Disease, which affected my voice, one of the many symptoms which later led me to acknowledging my condition in a difficult mid-summer column.

Yeah, it was a helluva year.

Good news returned in early March when it was announced that the Dodgers had made Dave Roberts the richest manager in baseball, giving him a new four-year, $32.4 million contract. In a bit of dumb luck that hasn’t stopped me from bragging about it since, 10 years ago I was the first one to publicly push for Roberts’ hiring. In such unstable times in our city, Roberts had become the new Tommy Lasorda, and his presence became a needed jolt of smile.

Dodgers manager Dave Roberts salutes fans during the team’s World Series celebration at Dodger Stadium on Nov. 3.

(Carlin Stiehl/For The Times)

In early April, I wrote a column I never thought I’d write — that Bronny James had been transformed from circus to contributor. I also wrote a column that I maybe wish I hadn’t written so soon, that JJ Redick was a Laker success.

By then, writing stories about Laker conflicts was a refreshing respite from dealing with fire hassles. We were back in the house, but were we safe? Did we test enough for toxins? And how can we look our next-door neighbor in the eye when she comes to examine the giant empty scar where her house once stood?

In late May I sadly said goodbye to my second family when I wrote about the end of my 22-year run on ESPN’s popular “Around the Horn” game show. It wasn’t the first time in 2025 that a column brought me to tears, witness the video immediately after the fire. Agreed, I spent the year showing so much emotion for someone who had gotten so lucky. But I’m guessing I wasn’t alone.

Two weeks later I wrote about my new family, the group of boxers I have joined in my fight against Parkinson’s. That was the toughest column I have ever written, as I was acknowledging something I refused to admit for five years. But the fire had seemingly set the disease ablaze, and I could hide it no longer.

The year continued with columns about the soon-to-be-retiring Clayton Kershaw, the greatest Dodger pitcher with the greatest entrance song. Hearing “We Are Young” when he took the mound consistently gave me hope that, through the treacheries of a summer that marked the escalation of those insane ICE raids, we can continue to strive for rebirth.

That’s what sports consistently provided in 2025, the hope that from beneath the rubble, we could all fly again.

I voiced this hope in a Rams preview column that predicted they would go to the Super Bowl. I later wrote a Rams column predicting they would actually win the Super Bowl. I stand by my stories.

All of which led to a series of Dodger playoff columns that hopefully reflected the building energy of a town enthralled. After their Game 7 victory against the Toronto Blue Jays, I was so spent that I hyperventilated for what felt like an hour.

Dodgers pitcher Yoshinobu Yamamoto holds up the MVP trophy after beating the Blue Jays and winning the World Series.

(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times)

“In the end, they not only ran it back, they sprinted it back, they slugged it back, and then, finally, they literally Will-ed it back,” I wrote.

In hindsight those words could have been written not only about a team, but a city, fighting back, staying strong, the results of its struggle mirroring the Dodgers’ consecutive championships, punching through desperation, from struggle to strength.

In 2025, sports showed me that life can get better, life will be better, that if we hang in there long enough we can all hit that Miggy Ro homer, make that Andy Pages catch, stay forever young.

And thus I offer a heartiest and hopeful welcome to 2026.

Bring it on.

SACRAMENTO — Lou Cannon was a good friend and a daunting competitor. And he was a national treasure.

The retired newspaper reporter and Ronald Reagan biographer died Dec. 19 at age 92 in hometown Santa Barbara from complications of a stroke.

I use the words “national treasure” hesitantly because they smack of trite hyperbole. But they truly fit.

That’s because it was Cannon who brought to light through several Reagan books innumerable broad details of the actor-turned-politician’s important and often controversial actions as America’s 40th president and California’s 33rd governor.

Bookshelves are crammed with Reagan tomes. But no author has been so thorough on a sweeping scale as Cannon. That’s because he put in the time and did the hard work of sifting through records and conducting hundreds of interviews, then painstakingly explaining it all in very readable nongovernmentese.

Cannon also covered Reagan up close as a reporter during the early years of his governorship and both his terms as president.

Reagan once asked Cannon why he was embarking on yet another book about him. “I’m going to do it until I get it right,” the writer replied, only half-jokingly, according to Cannon’s son, longtime journalist Carl Cannon.

In all, Lou Cannon authored five books on Reagan‘s tenures as governor and president.

That’s an invaluable contribution to historians and contemporary America’s sense of this oft-misunderstood and underestimated world leader.

But that’s not what mainly prompted me to write this column. I wanted to point out Cannon’s core strength. And that was his dedication to strict nonpartisanship in writing, whether it be straight news stories for the Washington Post, syndicated columns or his Reagan biographies.

I knew Cannon for 60 years, competed against him covering Reagan for at least 20 and we became friends very early based on professional respect. In none of my countless conversations with him did I ever learn whether he leaned right or left. He registered to vote as an “independent,” as do many of us political journalists.

Cannon was the type of journalist that millions of Americans — particularly conservative Republicans and MAGA loyalists — claim is rare today: An unbiased reporter who doesn’t slant stories toward one side or the other, especially left.

Actually, most straight news reporters follow that nonpartisan credo or they leave the business. Columnists? We’re supposed to be opinionated. But for some, their opinions are too often rooted more in predetermined bias than in objective facts. But that has always been true, even in the so-called “good ol’ days.”

Cannon’s sole goal was to report the news accurately with analysis and, if possible, beat his competitors to the punch. He beat us plenty, I hate to admit.

I vividly remember one such beating:

At the 1980 Republican National Convention in Detroit, Cannon scooped everyone for a full news cycle on Reagan selecting former campaign rival George Bush as his vice presidential running mate. Still pounding in my ears are the loud whoops and cheers by Cannon’s colleagues as he walked into the Post working area — next to the Los Angeles Times quarters — after Reagan formally announced Bush’s selection. It was deflating.

News sources readily opened up to Cannon, who was intense but always wore a slight smile.

I asked former Reagan speechwriter and Republican strategist Ken Khachigian what Cannon’s secret was.

“You’d get a fair shot from him,” Khachigian says. “He’d always be straight. He just wanted to get information mostly and find out what was going on.

“He had a way of talking to people that made them comfortable and he’d get a lot out of them. He wasn’t aggressive. He had a soft personality, one of his benefits. He’d put people at ease, a big advantage.”

His son, Carl Cannon, says: “If he’d been in politics, he’d have been a Democrat. But he didn’t go into politics. He went into journalism. He wasn’t partisan. He was a reporter who wanted to know what happened and why.”

Cannon began covering the state Capitol in 1965 for the San Jose Mercury News and became friends with Jud Clark, a young legislative staffer. Clark ultimately co-founded the monthly California Journal and persuaded Cannon to write for it on the side. Cannon did that for many years and when it folded, followed up by writing columns for a successor publication, the Capitol Weekly.

Cannon just loved to report and write and juggled it all in — reporting full time for the Washington Post, authoring books and writing for friends’ small publications in Sacramento.

“He would always want something new. In interviews, he didn’t want the standard stock story,” Clark says.

“Lou was curious about everything,” says Rich Ehisen, his longtime editor at Capitol Weekly. “He liked understanding what was going on and breaking things down. He told the straight story unvarnished. Never shortchanged on facts.”

Cannon was a workaholic, but he also knew how to carve out time for fun.

One summer while we covered Reagan vacationing at his beloved Santa Barbara hilltop ranch, Cannon decided he wanted to drive down to Los Angeles to see a Dodgers’ night game. But it’s risky to abandon your post while bird-dogging the president. Anything could happen. And you’d need to explain to your bosses why you weren’t there but your competitors were.

Cannon’s solution was to also get good seats for the two reporters he considered his main competitors– Steve Weisman of the New York Times and me at the L.A. Times. We’d provide each other some cover if any news broke out around the president, which it didn’t. Cannon even managed to wrangle us free dinners in a large suite overlooking the playing field.

He’ll be missed as a friend and a journalist — but not as an unrelenting competitor.

What else you should be reading

The must-read: How the Trump administration sold out public lands in 2025
The Golden State rules: After a year of insults, raids, arrests and exile, a celebration of the California immigrant
The L.A. Times Special: America tried something new in 2025. It’s not going well

Until next week,
George Skelton

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A year ago, Ross Perot began his campaign with his if-the-volunteers-want-me appearance on “Larry King Live.” This evening, he tops off a round of rallies and a medley of talk shows as Jay Leno’s guest on “The Tonight Show.” Beyond the obvious question–when will he do Letterman?–lies an even bigger one: What does Perot want?

He’s already fulfilled one wish, destroying George Bush. Candidate Clinton must have enjoyed watching Perot torpedo Bush last year. After all, the nonpartisan Perot was much more credible attacking Bush for the deficit or Iraq-gate than any Democrat could have been. Now, it’s President Clinton’s turn. Perot’s Will Rogers-style gibes at Clinton’s attorneys-general follies are drawing blood. More ominously, Perot’s support for a balanced-budget amendment threatens to undercut, if not actually nullify, Clinton’s “investment” agenda.

Specific issues aside, Perot has a broad and true message: Washington is out of sync with the country. Does anyone think that the middle class wanted their new President to fill up his Cabinet with yuppies who have more experience dealing with domestics and chauffeurs than they do with nurses and auto workers? Does anyone think that this Congress will pass meaningful ethics or campaign-finance-reform legislation?

Perot’s sweeping critique of Washington’s “arrogance” poses tough questions to the Beltway culture. One such question comes from business guru Peter Drucker: “If we weren’t doing it now, would we start?” In other words, are the structures of the government, from the schools to welfare to the military, the best we can possibly do? If we can do better, what are the obstacles to real reform? Official Washington could find the answer in a mirror, which is exactly Perot’s point. Perot may seem simplistic, but he plays well in Peoria; especially as Clinton seems to have lost his “reinventing government” zest about the time he went to Pamela Harriman’s Georgetown mansion for cocktails.

Sen. Bob Krueger (D-Tex.) expressed the fundamental problem–that government is incompetent–in crisp Perotian terms: “If the government were a store, nobody would buy here. If it were an airline, nobody would fly it.”

A recent Business Week article described “The Virtual Corporation,” the new phenomenon of “temporary networks of companies that come together quickly to exploit fast-changing opportunities.” Global competition forces change. Virtual corporations “could well be the model for the American business organization in the years ahead.” What about government organization? With the current crew, the prospects of applying these profound lessons to Washington are nil. Perot, with his business background and his blunt desire to “get under the hood” and fix things, has reformist credibility no politician can dream of.

So what does Perot want? The average billionaire lives a life of quiet desperation. With every material need satisfied, he has to find something to do. Some buy tabloid newspapers; others, baseball teams. Perot clearly relishes his “Mr. Smith goes to Washington” role. And what if lightning were to strike? Perot must be haunted by an exit poll from last November which showed that a stunning 36% of the voters would have voted for him if they had thought he could have won. With that share of the vote in a three-way race in 1996, Perot could indeed win.

But Doug Bailey, a veteran Republican who foresaw Perot’s rise last year, isn’t sure that Perot actually wants to be President. “I think he really wants to be the First Kibitzer,” Bailey said in an interview. Perot is likely to keep his presidential options open till the last minute. That means 3 1/2 years of “will he or won’t he?” stories, with accompanying heartburn for both parties. The Republicans would love to march in Perot’s populist parade, but Perot understands that his aura would be smudged if he consorted with either party. Clinton can try to co-opt some of Perot’s juice with White House perk purges and call-in shows, but he lacks Perot’s earthy urgency.

Clinton used the wrong system of quotas when he staffed his Administration without a single one of the 19 million Perot voters. Now, he would be wise to call Perot in to the Oval Office for a humble-pie session. And if Clinton’s troubles continue, don’t be surprised if he reaches under the hood of his own Administration and offers Perot a “policy czar” appointment well before the next election.

SACRAMENTO — I’ve got a wish list for Santa and it’s topped by this urgent request: a remodeled president with at least an ounce of humanity and humility.

Maybe a Ronald Reagan type. I’m not referring here to ideology or policies. Just common decency, someone who acts presidential.

I know, forget it. That’s beyond Santa’s reach. It would require a miracle. And that’s not likely to happen with President Trump, who seems increasingly to be auditioning for the devil’s disciple.

But you’d think as we approach our nation’s 250th birthday, America could be led by a president who at minimum doesn’t publicly trash the newly deceased.

Someone who follows the basic rules of good behavior and respect for others that our mothers taught us.

For Trump, the Golden Rule seems to be only about cheapening the historic Oval Office with tasteless gilded garnishments, turning it into an extension of his Mar-a-Lago resort. That’s what you’d expect from someone who would pave over the lovely Rose Garden.

But I’ve gotten off the point: the despicable way our unhinged president treats people he deems the enemy because they’ve criticized him, as we’ve got a right and often a duty to do in a democratic America.

What our president said about Rob Reiner after the actor-director-producer and his wife Michele were brutally stabbed to death in their Brentwood home, allegedly by their son Nick, should not have shocked us coming from Trump.

After all, this is a guy who once said that the late Sen. John McCain, a Navy pilot shot down over North Vietnam, tortured, maimed and held captive for five years, was “not a war hero … I like people that weren’t captured.”

He also once mocked a disabled New York Times reporter at a campaign rally, saying: “The poor guy, you ought to see this guy.” Then Trump jerked his arms around imitating someone with palsy.

He frequently attacks female reporters for their looks.

Recently, he called all Somali immigrants “garbage. … We don’t want them in our country.” As for Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar, a onetime Somalian refugee, “she’s garbage. Her friends are garbage.”

But even with Trump’s sordid history of insults and insensitivity, what he disrespectfully said about Reiner was stunning. He implied that the Hollywood legend was killed by someone angered by Reiner’s criticism of Trump. Again, everything’s all about him, in this egotistical president’s mind.

Trump said the Reiners died “reportedly due to the anger he caused others through his massive, unyielding and incurable affliction with a mind crippling disease known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME.”

Then the next day, he doubled down, telling reporters that Reiner “was a deranged person. … I thought he was very bad for our country.”

Topping off the holiday season for Trump, he orchestrated the renaming of Washington’s classy John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts after himself. From now on, it’s to be called the Trump Kennedy Center.

What’s next? The Washington National Cathedral?

OK, next on my Santa’s wish list is a governor who spends his last year in office trying to improve California rather than his presidential prospects. Actually, he could do the latter by doing the former: making this state a better place to live and proving his ability to sensibly govern.

Too many of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s projects fall flat, collapse or are a waste of energy and dollars.

One recently announced Newsom venture particularly is questionable. He seems to be using state resources and tax money to expand his overdone war with Trump rather than helping Californians with their everyday lives.

The governor unveiled a new state-run website that tracks what his office calls Trump’s “criminal cronies.” It catalogs major criminal convictions that were followed by Trump pardons — from Jan. 6 rioters to former politicians and business tycoons.

Yeah, well, so what? I suppose some people may be interested in that. But at taxpayers’ expense? Will the information lower gas prices? Make it easier to buy a home? Pay for childcare?

Here’s just one example of a Newsom program that failed miserably:

Early in his administration the governor announced with great fanfare that he was increasing fees on telephone service to pay for upgrading California’s 911 emergency communication system. The state spent $450 million, couldn’t make the new stuff work and abandoned the project, the Sacramento Bee reported after a lengthy investigation. Now they’re apparently going to start all over.

A little hands-on supervision by the governor next time could help.

Also on my wish list: A Legislature that doesn’t hibernate through the winter and wait until late spring before starting to push bills.

They’d need to change legislative rules. But Democrats with their supermajorities could do practically anything they wanted — even work earnestly during the cold months.

Either that or just stay home.

Included in the gift package: Legislation focused more on quality and less on quantity. This year, the Legislature passed 917 bills. My guess is that 100 meaty measures would have sufficed.

There’s one more item on my Santa list that all of America needs: A new casual greeting to replace “How ya doing?”

Nobody really wants to hear how most people are doing and they probably don’t want to candidly say anyway — not in an elevator, on the sidewalk or in a restaurant.

“Bad stomach flu,” I might honestly answer. You really want to hear that while chomping on a hamburger.

So, what do we replace it with?

Maybe simply: “Good morning.” Or “Go Dodgers.”

Or “Go Trump” — far away out of earshot.

What else you should be reading

The must-read: Ronald Reagan biographer, legendary California journalist Lou Cannon dies
The TK: Newsom taps former CDC leaders critical of Trump-era health policies for new initiative
The L.A. Times Special: In a divided America, Rob Reiner was a tenacious liberal who connected with conservatives

Until next week,
George Skelton

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Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, Noam Chomsky and Woody Allen were among the familiar faces in the latest batch of photographs released by Democrats on the House Oversight Committee in connection to the late Jeffrey Epstein. With the Justice Department preparing to make additional files public, the images underscore an uncomfortable truth for us all: The convicted sex offender moved comfortably among some of the most intelligent men in the world. Rhodes scholars, technology leaders and artists.

Also in the release was a photograph of a woman’s lower leg and foot on what appears to be a bed, with a paperback copy of Vladimir Nabokov’s “Lolita” visible in the background. The 1955 novel centers on a middle-aged man’s sexual obsession with a 12-year-old girl. Epstein, a serial sexual abuser, famously nicknamed one of his private planes “The Lolita Express.” And we are to believe that some of the globe’s brightest minds could not put the dots together?

Donald Trump, who once described himself as “a very stable genius,” included.

“I’ve known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy,” Trump told New York magazine in 2002. “He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.”

Later, the two had a public falling out, and Trump has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing. Great. But denial after the fact is only one side of this story. The other is harder to digest: Either the self-proclaimed “very stable genius” spent nearly two decades around Epstein without recognizing what was happening in plain sight — or he recognized it and chose silence. Neither explanation reflects on intelligence as much as it does on character. No wonder Trump’s defenders keep raising the most overused word in American politics today: hoax.

“Once again, House Democrats are selectively releasing cherry-picked photos with random redactions to try and create a false narrative,” said White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson. “Here’s the reality: Democrats like Stacey Plaskett and Hakeem Jeffries were soliciting money and meetings from Epstein after he was a convicted sex offender. The Democrat hoax against President Trump has been repeatedly debunked, and the Trump administration has done more for Epstein’s victims than Democrats ever have by repeatedly calling for transparency, releasing thousands of pages of documents and calling for further investigations into Epstein’s Democrat friends.”

Jackson has a point.

Democrats were cherry-picking which photos to release, even if many of the men pictured were aligned with progressives. That includes the president, who was a Democrat when he and Epstein were running together in New York in the 2000s. Trump didn’t register as a Republican until 2009. Now whether the choice of photos and timing was designed to shield political friends or weaponize against perceived enemies isn’t clear. What is clear is that it doesn’t take a genius to see that none of this is a hoax.

The victims are real. The flight logs are real. The millions that flowed into Epstein’s bank account have wire transfer confirmation numbers that can be traced. What Democrats are doing with the information is politics as usual. And you don’t want politics to dictate who gets justice and who gets vilified.

Whatever the politicians’ intentions, Americans can decide how to react to the disclosures. And what the men around Epstein did with the information they gathered on his jet or his island fits squarely at the heart of the national conversation about masculinity. What kind of men could allow such abuse to continue?

I’m not saying the intelligent men in Epstein’s ecosystem did something criminal, but the lack of whistleblowing before his arrest raises questions about their fortitude for right and wrong. And the Trump White House trying to characterize this conversation as a partisan witch hunt — a hoax — is an ineffective strategy because the pattern with their use of that word is so clear.

We saw what happened on Jan. 6, and Trump tells us the investigation is a hoax. We hear the recording of him pressuring Georgia officials to find votes, and he tells us the investigation is a hoax. Trump campaigned on affordability issues — the cost of bacon, no taxes on tips — but now that he’s in office such talk is a hoax by Democrats. As if we don’t know the price of groceries in real time. Ten years ago, Trump told us he had proof that President Obama wasn’t born in the U.S. We’re still waiting.

In his book, “Art of the Deal,” Trump framed his lies as “truthful hyperbole” but by now we should understand for him hyperbole matters more than truth — and his felony convictions confirm that some of his claims were indeed simply false.

So if there is a hoax, it is the notion that none of the brilliant men whom Epstein kept in his orbit had any idea what was going on.

YouTube: @LZGrandersonShow

SACRAMENTO — It turns out Proposition 50 smacked California Republicans with a double blow heading into the 2026 congressional elections.

First, there was the reshaping of House districts aimed at flipping five Republican-held seats to Democrats.

Now, we learn that the proposition itself juiced up Democratic voter enthusiasm for the elections.

Voter enthusiasm normally results in a higher casting of ballots.

It’s all about the national battle for control of the U.S. House of Representatives — and Congress potentially exercising its constitutional duty to provide some checks and balance against the president. Democrats need a net pickup of only three seats in November’s elections to dethrone Republicans.

President Trump is desperate to keep his GOP toadies in power. So, he has coerced — bullied and threatened — some red-state governors and legislatures into rejiggering Democratic-held House seats to make them more Republican-friendly.

When Texas quickly obliged, Gov. Gavin Newsom retaliated with a California Democratic gerrymander aimed at neutralizing the Lone Star State’s partisan mid-decade redistricting.

California’s counterpunch became Proposition 50, which was approved by a whopping 64.4% of the state’s voters.

Not only did Proposition 50 redraw some GOP-held House seats to tinge them blue, it stirred up excitement about the 2026 elections among Democratic voters.

That’s the view of Mark Baldassare, polling director for the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California. And it makes sense. Umpteen millions of dollars were spent by Newsom and Proposition 50 backers advertising the evils of Trump and the need for Democrats to take over the House.

A PPIC poll released last week showed a significant “enthusiasm gap” between Democratic and Republican voters regarding the House contests.

“One of the outcomes of Proposition 50 is that it focused voters on the midterm elections and made them really excited about voting next year,” Baldassare says.

At least, Democrats are showing excitement. Republicans, not so much.

In the poll, likely voters were asked whether they were more enthusiastic than usual about voting in the congressional elections or less enthusiastic.

Overall, 56% were more enthusiastic and 41% less enthusiastic. But that’s not the real story.

The eye-opener is that among Democrats, an overwhelming 72% were more enthusiastic. And 60% of Republicans were less enthusiastic.

“For Democrats, that’s unusually high,” Baldassare says.

To put this in perspective, I looked back at responses to the same question asked in a PPIC poll exactly two years ago before the 2024 elections. At that time, Democrats were virtually evenly split over their enthusiasm or lack of it concerning the congressional races. In fact, Republicans expressed more enthusiasm.

Still, Democrats gained three congressional seats in California in 2024. So currently they outnumber Republicans in the state’s House delegation by a lopsided 43 to 9.

If Democrats could pick up three seats when their voters weren’t even lukewarm about the election, huge party gains seem likely in California next year. Democratic voters presumably will be buoyed by enthusiasm and the party’s candidates will be boosted by gerrymandering.

“Enthusiasm is contagious,” says Dan Schnur, a former Republican operative who teaches political communication at USC and UC Berkeley. “If the party’s concentric circle of committed activists is enthusiastic, that excitement tends to spread outward to other voters.”

Schnur adds: “Two years ago, Democrats were not motivated about Joe Biden or Kamala Harris. Now they’re definitely motivated about Donald Trump. And in order to win midterm elections, you need to have a motivated base.”

Democratic strategist David Townsend says that “enthusiasm is the whole ballgame. It’s the ultimate barometer of whether my message is working and the other side’s is not working.”

The veteran consultant recalls that Democrats “used to go door to door handing out potholders, potted plants, refrigerator magnets and doughnuts trying to motivate voters.

“But the best turnout motivator Democrats have ever had in California is Donald J. Trump.”

In the poll, 71% of voters disapproved of the way Trump is handling his job; just 29% approved. It was even worse for Congress, with 80% disapproving.

Among Democratic voters alone, disapproval of Trump was practically off the chart at 97%.

But 81% of Republicans approved of the president.

Among voters of all political persuasions who expressed higher than usual enthusiasm about the House elections, 77% said they‘d support the Democratic candidate. Also: 79% said Congress should be controlled by Democrats, 84% disapproved of how Congress is handling its job and 79% disapproved of Trump.

And those enthused about the congressional elections believe that, by far, the most important problem facing the nation is “political extremism [and] threats to democracy.” A Democratic shorthand for Trump.

The unseemly nationwide redistricting battle started by Trump is likely to continue well into the election year as some states wrestle with whether to oblige the power-hungry president and others debate retaliating against him.

Sane politicians on both sides should have negotiated a ceasefire immediately after combat erupted. But there wasn’t enough sanity to even begin talks.

Newsom was wise politically to wade into the brawl — wise for California Democrats and also for himself as a presidential hopeful trying to become a national hero to party activists.

“Eleven months before an election, nothing is guaranteed,” Schnur says. “But these poll numbers suggest that Democrats are going to start the year with a big motivational advantage.”

Trump is the Democrats’ proverbial Santa who keeps on giving.

What else you should be reading

The must-read: Kristi Noem grilled over L.A. Purple Heart Army vet who self-deported
The TK: Newsom expresses unease about his new, candid autobiography: ‘It’s all out there’
The L.A. Times Special: A Times investigation finds fraud and theft are rife at California’s county fairs

Until next week,
George Skelton

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