Congress

California joined 21 other states and the District of Columbia Monday in a lawsuit that seeks to prevent the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau from being defunded and closed by the Trump administration.

The legal action filed in U.S. District Court in Eugene, Ore. accuses Acting Director Russell Vought of trying to illegally withhold funds from the agency by unlawfully interpreting its funding statute. Also named as defendants are the agency itself and the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors.

“For California, the CFPB has been an invaluable enforcement partner, working hand-in-hand with our office to protect pocketbooks and stop unfair business practices. But once again, the Trump administration is trying to weaken and ultimately dismantle the CFPB,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta said, in a press conference to announce the 41-page legal action.

The agency did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Established by Congress in 2010 after the subprime mortgage abuses that gave rise to the financial crisis, the agency is funded by the Federal Reserve as a method of insulating it from political pressure.

The Dodd-Frank Act statute requires the agency’s director to petition for a reasonable amount of funding to carry out the CFPB’s duties from the “combined earnings” of the Federal Reserve System.

Prior to this year that was interpreted to mean the Federal Reserve’s gross revenue. But an opinion from the Department of Justice claims that should be interpreted to mean the Federal Reserve’s profits, of which it has none since it has been operating at a loss since 2022. The lawsuit alleges the interpretation is bogus.

“Defendant Russell T. Vought has worked tirelessly to terminate the CFPB’s operations by any means necessary — denying Plaintiffs access to CFPB resources to which they are statutorily entitled. In this action, Plaintiffs challenge Defendant Vought’s most recent effort to do so,” the federal lawsuit states.

The complaint alleges the agency will run out of cash by next month if the policy is not reversed. Bonta said he and other attorney generals have not decided whether they will seek a restraining order or temporary injunction to change the new funding policy.

Prior to the second Trump administraition, the CPFB boasted of returning nearly $21 billion to consumers nationwide through enforcement actions, including against Wells Fargo in San Francisco over a scandal involving the creation of accounts never sought by customers.

Other big cases have been brought against student loan servicer Navient for mishandling payments and other issues, as well as Toyota Motor Credit for charging higher interest rates to Black and Asian customers.

However, this year the agency has dropped notable cases. It terminated early a consent order reached with Citibank over allegations it discriminated against customers with Armenian surnames in Los Angeles County.

It also dropped a lawsuit against Zelle that accused Wells Fargo, JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America and other banks of rushing the payments app into service, leading to $870 million in fraud-related losses by users. The app denied the allegations.

Monday’s lawsuit also notes that the agency is critical for states to carry out their own consumer protection mission and its closure would deprive them of their statutorily guaranteed access to a database run by the CFPB that tracks millions of consumer complaints, as well as to other data.

Vought was a chief architect of Project 2025, a Heritage Foundation blueprint to reduce the size and power of the federal bureaucracy during a second Trump admistration. In February, he ordered the agency to stop nearly all its work and has been seeking to drastically downsize it since.

The lawsuit filed Monday is the latest legal effort to keep the agency in business.

A lawsuit filed in February by National Treasury Employees Union and consumer groups accuses the Trump administration and Vought of attempting to unconstitutionally abolish the agency, created by an act of Congress.

“It is deflating, and it is unfortunate that Congress is not defending the power of the purse,” said Colorado Attorney General Philip Weiser, during Monday’s press conference.

“At other times, Congress vigilantly safeguarded its authority, but because of political polarization and fear of criticizing this President, the Congress is not doing it,” he said.

WASHINGTON — Attorneys for President Trump urged a federal judge on Friday to rule that Trump is entitled to presidential immunity from civil claims that he instigated a mob’s attack on the U.S. Capitol to stop Congress from certifying the results of the 2020 election.

U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta didn’t rule from the bench after hearing arguments from Trump attorneys and lawyers for Democratic members of Congress who sued the Republican president and allies over the Jan. 6. 2021, attack.

Trump spoke to a crowd of his supporters at the “Stop the Steal” rally near the White House before the mob’s attack disrupted the joint session of Congress for certifying Democratic President Joe Biden’s electoral victory.

Trump’s attorneys argue that his conduct leading up to Jan. 6 and on the day of the riot is protected by presidential immunity because he was acting in his official capacity.

“The entire point of immunity is to give the president clarity to speak in the moment as the commander-in-chief,” Trump attorney Joshua Halpern told the judge.

The lawmakers’ lawyers argue Trump can’t prove he was acting entirely in his official capacity rather than as an office-seeking private individual. And the U.S. Supreme Court has held that office-seeking conduct falls outside the scope of presidential immunity, they contend.

“President Trump has the burden of proof here,” said plaintiffs’ attorney Joseph Sellers. “We submit that he hasn’t come anywhere close to satisfying that burden.”

At the end of Friday’s hearing, Mehta said the arguments gave him “a lot to think about” and he would rule “as soon as we can.”

Rep. Bennie Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat who chaired the House Homeland Security Committee, sued Trump, his personal attorney Rudolph Giuliani and members of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers extremist groups over the Jan. 6 riot. Other Democratic members of Congress later joined the litigation.

The civil claims survived Trump’s sweeping act of clemency on the first day of his second term, when he pardoned, commuted prison sentences and ordered the dismissal of all 1,500-plus criminal cases stemming from the Capitol siege. Over 100 police officers were injured while defending the Capitol from rioters.

Halpern said immunity enables the president to act “boldly and fearlessly.”

“Immunity exists to protect the president’s prerogatives,” he said.

Plaintiffs’ lawyers argue that the context and circumstances of the president’s remarks on Jan. 6 — not just the content of his words — are key to establishing whether he is immune from liability.

“You have to look at what happened leading up to January 6th,” Sellers said.

Kunzelman writes for the Associated Press.

Dec. 17 (UPI) — Chairman Brendan Carr said the Federal Communications Commission isn’t independent from the Trump administration in testimony Wednesday before Congress, during which the word “independent” was removed from the agency’s mission statement online.

Carr’s comment came as members on the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee questioned him on who the FCC answers to in the wake of a controversy that led to the brief suspension of Jimmy Kimmel‘s late-night talk show on ABC.

The Walt Disney Co. suspended Jimmy Kimmel Live! from Sept. 17 through Sept. 22 in response to comments he made about the assassination of right-wing activist and Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk.

The controversy stemmed from Kimmel suggesting the alleged gunman who killed Kirk was a pro-Trump Republican.

The Make America Great Again “gang [is] desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it,” he said in his monologue.

There was some discussion in the early days after the shooting as to the alleged shooter’s political leanings — he came from a largely right-wing family but had made some more left-leaning comments in recent months.

Just before the suspension, Carr described Kimmel’s comments as “truly sick” and threatened action against the network. At the time, Nester Media Group, which owns multiple ABC affiliates, was awaiting approval from the FCC for its planned merger with Tegna, prompting some to view Kimmel’s suspension as political.

“We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Carr said at the time. “These companies can find ways to take action on Kimmel, or there is going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”

Carr denied that Kimmel’s suspension had anything to do with government censorship and instead blamed it on ratings.

Democrats on the committee questioned Wednesday if Carr was truly acting independently or if he was beholden to Trump’s politics, The Hill reported.

Sen. Ben Ray Lujan, D-N.M., asked, “Yes or no, is the FCC an independent agency?

“On your website, it just simply says, man, the FCC is independent. This isn’t a trick question.”

“Congress did not include for-cause removal in the Communications Act,” Carr said. “So, formally speaking, the FCC is not independent.”

During testimony, the FCC’s website was updated to change the wording of its mission statement, eliminating the word “independent.” When asked about the removal, an FCC spokesperson cited the change in the administration 11 months ago.

“With the change in administration earlier this year, the FCC’s website and materials required updating. That work continues to ensure that they reflect the positions of the agency’s new leadership,” the spokesperson said in a statement to CNBC.

Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., accused Carr of being the chairman of the “Federal Censorship Committee,” saying he made “mafia threats” toward station owners in the wake of Kimmel’s comments about Kirk.

“And these broadcasters, they feel that censorship,” Markey said.

Carr said the broadcasters involved issued statements saying they made their decisions to suspend Kimmel independently of what he said about Kimmel.

“If broadcasters understand, perhaps for the first time in years, that they’re going to be held accountable to the public interest, to the broadcast hoax rule, to the news distortion policy, I think that’s a good thing,” Carr said, according to ABC News.

WASHINGTON — The Senate gave final passage Wednesday to an annual military policy bill that will authorize $901 billion in defense programs while pressuring Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to provide lawmakers with video of strikes on alleged drug boats in international waters near Venezuela.

The annual National Defense Authorization Act, which raises troop pay by 3.8%, gained bipartisan backing as it moved through Congress. It passed the Senate on a 77-20 vote before lawmakers planned to leave Washington for a holiday break. Two Republicans — Sens. Rand Paul and Mike Lee — and 18 Democrats voted against the bill.

The White House has indicated that it is in line with President Trump’s national security priorities. However, the legislation, which ran more than 3,000 pages, revealed some points of friction between Congress and the Pentagon as the Trump administration reorients its focus away from security in Europe and toward Central and South America.

The bill pushes back on recent moves by the Pentagon. It demands more information on boat strikes in the Caribbean, requires that the U.S. maintain its troop levels in Europe and sends some military aid to Ukraine.

But overall, the bill represents a compromise between the parties. It implements many of Trump’s executive orders and proposals on eliminating diversity and inclusion efforts in the military and grants emergency military powers at the U.S. border with Mexico. It also enhances congressional oversight of the Department of Defense, repeals several years-old war authorizations and seeks to overhaul how the Pentagon purchases weapons as the U.S. tries to outpace China in developing the next generation of military technology.

“We’re about to pass, and the president will enthusiastically sign, the most sweeping upgrades to DOD’s business practices in 60 years,” said Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), the chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Still, the sprawling bill faced objections from both Democratic and Republican leadership on the Senate Commerce Committee. That’s because the legislation allows military aircraft to obtain a waiver to operate without broadcasting their precise location, as an Army helicopter had done before a midair collision with an airliner in Washington, D.C., in January that killed 67 people.

“The special carve-out was exactly what caused the January 29 crash that claimed 67 lives,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), the chair of the Senate Commerce Committee, said at a news conference this week.

Cruz said he was seeking a vote on bipartisan legislation in the next month that would require military aircraft to use a precise location sharing tool and improve coordination between commercial and military aircraft in busy areas.

Boat strike videos

Republicans and Democrats agreed to language in the defense bill that threatened to withhold a quarter of Hegseth’s travel budget until he provided unedited video of the strikes, as well as the orders authorizing them, to the House and Senate Committees on Armed Services.

Hegseth was on Capitol Hill on Tuesday ahead of the bill’s passage to brief lawmakers on the U.S. military campaign in international waters near Venezuela. The briefing elicited contrasting responses from many lawmakers, with Republicans largely backing the campaign and Democrats expressing concern about it and saying they had not received enough information.

The committees are investigating a Sept. 2 strike — the first of the campaign — that killed two people who had survived an initial attack on their boat. The Navy admiral who ordered the “double-tap” strike, Adm. Frank “Mitch” Bradley, also appeared before the committees shortly before the vote Wednesday in a classified briefing that also included video of the strike in question.

Several Republican senators emerged from the meeting backing Hegseth and his decision not to release the video publicly, but other GOP lawmakers stayed silent on their opinion of the strike.

Democrats are calling for part of the video to be released publicly and for every member of Congress to have access to the full footage.

“The American people absolutely need to see this video,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.). “I think they would be shocked.”

Congressional oversight

Lawmakers have been caught by surprise by the Trump administration several times in the last year, including by a move to pause intelligence sharing with Ukraine and a decision to reduce U.S. troop presence in NATO countries in eastern Europe. The defense legislation requires that Congress be kept in the loop on decisions like those going forward, as well as when top military brass are removed.

The Pentagon is also required, under the legislation, to keep at least 76,000 troops and major equipment stationed in Europe unless NATO allies are consulted and there is a determination that such a withdrawal is in U.S. interests. Roughly 80,000 to 100,000 U.S. troops are usually present on European soil. A similar requirement keeps the number of U.S. troops stationed in South Korea at 28,500.

Lawmakers are also pushing back on some Pentagon decisions by authorizing $400 million for each of the next two years to manufacture weapons to be sent to Ukraine.

Cuts to diversity and climate initiatives

Trump and Hegseth have made it a priority to purge the military of material and programs that address diversity, anti-racism or gender issues, and the defense bill codifies many of those changes. It would repeal diversity, equity and inclusion offices and trainings, including the position of chief diversity officer. Those cuts would save the Pentagon about $40 million, according to the Republican-controlled House Armed Services Committee.

The U.S. military has long found that climate change is a threat to how it provides national security because weather-related disasters can destroy military bases and equipment. But the bill makes $1.6 billion in cuts by eliminating climate change-related programs at the Pentagon.

Repeal of war authorizations and Syria sanctions

Congress is writing a closing chapter to the war in Iraq by repealing the authorization for the 2003 invasion. Now that Iraq is a strategic partner of the U.S., lawmakers in support of the provision say the repeal is crucial to prevent future abuses. The bill also repeals the 1991 authorization that sanctioned the U.S.-led Gulf War.

The rare, bipartisan moves to repeal the legal justifications for the conflicts signal a potential appetite among lawmakers to reclaim some of Congress’ war powers.

Groves writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — A Minneapolis jury’s conviction of former Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin in the murder of George Floyd has reignited debate about what policing should look like in the United States.

In the weeks following Floyd’s death and the ensuing outrage that caused millions of Americans to pour into the streets to protest in the midst of a pandemic, Congress promised fundamental change to policing.

There was legislation to standardize training across the country, to keep problem officers from moving between departments without their records following them, to ban the use of chokeholds and no-knock warrants.

But Congress failed to reach an agreement that could pass both the House and Senate and attention moved to other things.

Negotiations for a bipartisan deal on police reform continue informally on Capitol Hill, and the lead House sponsor, Rep. Karen Bass (D-Los Angeles), said on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday that she is hopeful because those involved are “very sincere, and it’s a bipartisan group.”

Bass is working with Sens. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and Tim Scott (R-S.C.). She told reporters on Capitol Hill on Tuesday that she is optimistic they will reach an agreement and get a bill to President Biden’s desk in the coming months.

“I believe that we want to make something happen,” Bass said.

Last month the House passed Bass’ George Floyd Justice in Policing Act by a 220-212 vote, with no Republican support and two Democrats voting no.

The legislation, which would ban chokeholds, end “qualified immunity” for law enforcement officers and create national standards for policing in a bid to bolster accountability, passed the House last summer but was not considered by the Republican-controlled Senate.

Democrats in turn blocked consideration of a Republican policing reform bill proposed by Scott last summer, saying though it was similar to their proposal in some ways, it did not go far enough because it did not modify so-called qualified immunity for police officers, which has made it harder for victims of brutality to file civil lawsuits over excessive force, or make it easier to prosecute police officers for criminal behavior.

Even now that Democrats control the Senate, hurdles remain for passing policing reform out of the Senate, where most legislation faces a 60-vote threshold, Bass said.

“It’s one thing to pass legislation in the House; it’s a super hurdle to get it passed in the Senate,” Bass said in the CNN interview. “But we are working.”

When Indiana adopted new U.S. House districts four years ago, Republican legislative leaders lauded them as “fair maps” that reflected the state’s communities.

But when Gov. Mike Braun recently tried to redraw the lines to help his fellow Republicans gain more power, he implored lawmakers to “vote for fair maps.”

What changed? The definition of “fair.”

As states undertake mid-decade redistricting instigated by President Trump, Republicans and Democrats are using a tit-for-tat definition of fairness to justify districts that split communities in an attempt to send politically lopsided delegations to Congress. It is fair, they argue, because other states have done the same. And it is necessary, they say, to maintain a partisan balance in the House of Representatives that resembles the national political divide.

This new vision for drawing congressional maps is creating a winner-take-all scenario that treats the House, traditionally a more diverse patchwork of politicians, like the Senate, where members reflect a state’s majority party. The result could be reduced power for minority communities, less attention to certain issues and fewer distinct voices heard in Washington.

Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky fears that unconstrained gerrymandering would put the United States on a perilous path, if Democrats in states such as Texas and Republicans in states like California feel shut out of electoral politics. “I think that it’s going to lead to more civil tension and possibly more violence in our country,” he said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

Although Indiana state senators rejected a new map backed by Trump and Braun that could have helped Republicans win all nine of the state’s congressional seats, districts have already been redrawn in Texas, California, Missouri, North Carolina and Ohio. Other states could consider changes before the 2026 midterms that will determine control of Congress.

“It’s a fundamental undermining of a key democratic condition,” said Wayne Fields, a retired English professor from Washington University in St. Louis who is an expert on political rhetoric.

“The House is supposed to represent the people,” Fields added. “We gain an awful lot by having particular parts of the population heard.”

Under the Constitution, the Senate has two members from each state. The House has 435 seats divided among states based on population, with each state guaranteed at least one representative. In the current Congress, California has the most at 52, followed by Texas with 38. The District of Columbia and U.S. territories such as Puerto Rico have no voting representation in either chamber of Congress.

Because senators are elected statewide, they are almost always political pairs of one party or another. Pennsylvania and Wisconsin are the only states with a Democrat and Republican in the Senate. Maine and Vermont each have one independent — who caucuses with Democrats — and one senator affiliated with a political party.

By contrast, most states elect a mixture of Democrats and Republicans to the House. That is because House districts, with an average of 761,000 residents, based on the 2020 census, are more likely to reflect the varying partisan preferences of urban or rural voters, as well as different racial, ethnic and economic groups.

This year’s redistricting is diminishing those locally unique districts.

In California, voters in several rural counties that backed Trump were separated from similar rural areas and attached to a reshaped congressional district containing liberal coastal communities. In Missouri, Democratic-leaning voters in Kansas City were split from one main congressional district into three, with each revised district stretching deep into rural Republican areas.

Some residents complained their voices are getting drowned out.

Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom has defended California’s gerrymandering effort — approved by voters last month — as necessary to fight what he calls a power grab launched by Trump. Republican Gov. Mike Kehoe of Missouri has defended his state’s redistricting — approved by GOP lawmakers and signed into law by him — as a means of countering Democratic states and amplifying the voices of those aligned with the state’s majority.

All’s ‘fair’ in redistricting?

Indiana’s delegation in the U.S. House consists of seven Republicans and two Democrats — one representing Indianapolis and the other a suburban Chicago district in the state’s northwestern corner.

Dueling definitions of fairness were on display at the Indiana Capitol as lawmakers considered a Trump-backed redistricting plan that would have split Indianapolis among four Republican-leaning districts and merged the Chicago suburbs with rural Republican areas. Opponents walked the halls in protest, carrying signs such as “I stand for fair maps!”

Ethan Hatcher, a talk radio host who said he votes for Republicans and libertarians, denounced the redistricting plan as “a blatant power grab” that “compromises the principles of our Founding Fathers” by fracturing Democratic strongholds to dilute the voices of urban voters.

“It’s a calculated assault on fair representation,” Hatcher told a state Senate committee.

But others asserted it would be fair for Indiana Republicans to hold all of those House seats, because Trump won the “solidly Republican state” by nearly three-fifths of the vote.

“Our current 7-2 congressional delegation doesn’t fully capture that strength,” resident Tracy Kissel said at a committee hearing. “We can create fairer, more competitive districts that align with how Hoosiers vote.”

When senators defeated a map designed to deliver a 9-0 congressional delegation for Republicans, Braun bemoaned that they had missed an “opportunity to protect Hoosiers with fair maps.”

Disrupting an equilibrium

By some national measurements, the U.S. House already is politically fair. The 220-215 majority that Republicans won over Democrats in the 2024 elections almost perfectly aligns with the share of the vote the two parties received in districts across the country, according to an Associated Press analysis. It was made possible, however, in part by a gerrymander of North Carolina districts in the GOP’s favor prior to the 2024 election.

But that overall balance belies an imbalance that exists in many states. Even before this year’s redistricting, the number of states with congressional districts tilted toward one party or another was higher than at any point in at least a decade, the AP analysis found.

The partisan divisions have contributed to a “cutthroat political environment” that “drives the parties to extreme measures,” said Kent Syler, a political science professor at Middle Tennessee State University. He noted that Republicans hold 88% of congressional seats in Tennessee, and Democrats have an equivalent in Maryland.

“Fairer redistricting would give people more of a feeling that they have a voice,” Syler said.

Rebekah Caruthers, who leads the Fair Elections Center, a nonprofit voting rights group, said there should be compact districts that allow communities of interest to elect the representatives of their choice, regardless of how that affects the national political balance. Gerrymandering districts to be dominated by a single party results in “an unfair disenfranchisement” of some voters, she said.

“Ultimately, this isn’t going to be good for democracy,” Caruthers said. “We need some type of détente.”

Lieb writes for the Associated Press.

Republican nominee George Bush won an overwhelming victory over Democrat Michael S. Dukakis in Tuesday’s presidential election despite a late surge of support for the Massachusetts governor among previously undecided voters and wayward Democrats.

Late returns showed Bush winning a solid majority of the popular vote nationwide and chalking up substantially more than the 270 electoral votes needed for victory. The Vice President swept the South, won all the Border states but West Virginia, took the Rocky Mountain West and gathered in the lion’s share of the electoral votes in the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic states.

“The people have spoken,” Bush told a cheering victory celebration in Houston, then immediately sounded a chord of unity. “A campaign is a disagreement and disagreements divide. But an election is a decision and decisions clear the way for harmony and peace,” Bush said, “and I mean to be the President of all the people.”

For his part, Dukakis–in a concession statement delivered earlier to loyal supporters in Boston’s World Trade Center–set the generous-spirited post-election tone, saying of Bush: “He will be our President and we will work with him.”

All told, according to late returns reported by the Associated Press, Bush had won 37 states to 10 for Dukakis, including the District of Columbia. Among the four undecided states late Tuesday night, Bush maintained narrow leads in California, Alaska and Illinois while Dukakis remained ahead in Washington state.

Thanks Reagan

Bush, recognizing the enormous political advantages of campaigning as the designated heir of one of the most popular chief executives of modern times, thanked President Reagan “for going the extra mile on the hustings” for the GOP ticket.

Bush also made a point of praising his controversial running mate, Sen. Dan Quayle of Indiana, for showing what Bush called “great strength under fire” during the campaign.

Despite the divisiveness of the bitter campaign, Bush said he was sure the country would unite in the aftermath of the election. “I know that we’ll come together as we always have, 200 years of harmony in the oldest, greatest democracy in man’s time on earth,” Bush said.

Will Do ‘Level Best’

In particular, the President-elect pledged to “do my level best to reach out and work constructively with the United States Congress.”

That may well be among the most serious challenges facing the President-elect. Despite Bush’s sweeping victory, Democrats apparently added to their already substantial domination of both the Senate and the House–assuring continuation of a pattern of divided government that has generally paralleled the GOP domination of the White House during the last 30 years.

In the Senate, where Democrats already outnumbered Republicans by 54 to 46, they gained seats in Connecticut, Virginia and Nebraska while losing seats in Mississippi and Montana, according to actual votes and television network projections. They seemed likely to increase their number in the Senate to 55.

Democrats ousted Republican Sens. Lowell P. Weicker Jr. in Connecticut and David K. Karnes in Nebraska, and former Gov. Charles S. Robb of Virginia took the seat being vacated by retiring Republican Paul S. Trible Jr.

Republicans defeated Democratic Sen. John Melcher of Montana, and in Mississippi, Rep. Trent Lott

won the seat now occupied by retiring Democratic Sen. John C. Stennis.

Sen. Lloyd Bentsen of Texas, the Democratic vice presidential nominee, retained his Senate seat thanks to a Texas law that allowed him to seek reelection there even as he ran on the national ticket.

With all but a few incumbents in both parties coasting to easy victories, the Democrats appeared certain to retain their comfortable majority in the House. NBC News projected that the Democrats will outnumber Republicans by 259 to 176 in the House next year, compared to the present lineup of 255 to 177 with three vacancies.

The most stunning congressional upset was the defeat of Rep. Fernand J. St Germain (D-R.I.), chairman of the House Banking Committee, at the hands of a Republican political novice, Ronald K. Machtley.

If the presidential balloting produced an overwhelming electoral victory for Bush, Dukakis nonetheless ran stronger than any Democratic presidential candidate in this decade. He appeared to have carried New York, Rhode Island, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Oregon and Washington, as well as the District of Columbia and his native Massachusetts.

He also mounted powerful challenges in such heavily populated states as Pennsylvania, Illinois and California.

Concession Statement

Still, with both CBS and ABC projecting Bush as the winner as early as 6:17 p.m. PST, Dukakis made his concession statement in Boston at 8:20 p.m. PST–just 20 minutes after the California polls closed.

About 30 minutes later Bush, who had run a slashingly negative campaign against the man he labeled “a liberal out of the mainstream,” told a cheering crowd in Houston that in defeat Dukakis had been “most gracious . . . and genuinely friendly in the great tradition of American politics.”

Bush, 64, is the first sitting vice president to win the Oval Office since Martin Van Buren in 1836. And his election to succeed President Reagan means that, for the first time since the Democratic era of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman 40 years ago, the same party will control the White House for more than two consecutive terms.

Overall, the presidential balloting appeared to reflect the fact that voters feel fairly satisfied with the way things are going in the country–as confirmed by Los Angeles Times/ Cable News Network exit polls. Most voters interviewed in that survey said they wanted to stay the course charted by the Reagan Administration in domestic and foreign policy.

Reaganesque Note

The vice president, who had patiently plotted his run for the presidency ever since losing the GOP presidential nomination to Reagan in 1980, repeatedly promised voters he would continue those policies and sounded a Reaganesque note in victory Tuesday night, saying: “Now we will move again, for an America that is strong, and resolute in the world, strong and big-hearted at home.”

Reagan himself, who retained an extraordinary approval rating in the 55%-60% range as his second term drew to a close, pulled out all stops in campaigning for the election of his vice president.

Exit polls indicated that even though Quayle continued to have unusually high unfavorable ratings among voters, he was not a significant factor in Tuesday’s vote. The selection of Quayle, which had stunned and even dismayed some of Bush’s aides, was criticized repeatedly by Dukakis in speeches and in television commercials during the campaign. And Bush strategists were so concerned that Quayle would be a drag on the ticket that they limited his campaign schedule to smaller cities and towns outside the national limelight.

Late Dukakis Surge

Exit polls indicated a surge of Dukakis support over the weekend, especially among Democrats who had voted for Reagan in 1980 and 1984 and among voters who made up their minds only in the last few days. Dukakis, attempting to squeeze the last drop of help from that trend, used satellite links to beam last-minute television appeals into states where the polls were still open Tuesday night.

But in the end the shift fell considerably short for Dukakis as Bush drew heavy support among men, non-union voters and white voters–especially Southern whites and “born-again” Christian whites, according to the surveys of voters as they left polling places. Early poll figures even showed Bush winning about one-eighth of the black vote, which is more support than Reagan won among blacks.

The Times survey of voters indicated that Dukakis–for all his problems during the campaign–did as well or better than Walter F. Mondale did four years ago when it came to holding the core of the nation’s Democrats, but in today’s political arithmetic that alone is not enough to carry the White House. Among the independents who hold the balance of power, Bush outscored his Democratic rival.

Aggressive Campaign

Bush surged into the lead in his heated campaign with Dukakis by bouncing back from a 17-point deficit in the polls in mid-July with an aggressive, hard-hitting campaign in which he portrayed himself as the new leader of the Reagan revolution and Dukakis as a free-spending liberal who opposed such traditional values as the Pledge of Allegiance and favored such soft-on-crime measures as prison furloughs for convicted murderers.

The effectiveness of the Republican tactics was enhanced by the fact that Dukakis let valuable time slip away after his own nomination in July, was slow to meet the Bush attacks and failed until the final weeks of the campaign to develop a compelling message of his own.

It was apparently too late by the time Dukakis began to respond aggressively to Bush’s attacks and to drive home a populist message that the governor was “on your side.” The vice president, Dukakis declared in the closing days of the campaign, was partial to upper-income voters and his support for a reduction in the capital gains tax from 20% to 15% showed concern not for the average citizen but for the wealthy.

Negative Perceptions

Bush strategists, by contrast, began at the Republican convention last August to press a well-coordinated effort to drive up voters’ negative perceptions of Dukakis, who polls showed was fairly well liked but not very well known by the voters. That the Bush strategy succeeded to an extraordinary degree is indicated by exit polls Tuesday that showed Dukakis with an extraordinarily high unfavorable rating of 46% compared to 47% favorable.

The same polls showed Bush with a relatively high unfavorable rating of 39% himself, compared to a favorable rating of 55%.

Voting experts indicated that fewer than 100 million voters, or a little more than half the voting-age public, were turning out to vote Tuesday. They blamed the low turnout on the negative nature of the campaign, which included harsh attacks by Bush and counterattacks by Dukakis, as well as on a lack of enthusiasm for either candidate.

Moreover, the country is enjoying peace and relative prosperity and there were no overriding issues of the kind that can stimulate a high voter turnout.

Both Exhausted

Both candidates were exhausted as they campaigned right up to the end. Bush, returning to his official residence at a Houston hotel, said he was nervous but felt good about the election and Dukakis declared he felt “terrific” but was glad to be back in Boston.

ABC exit polls showed Bush scored heavily among the following groups: Veterans, people with children, people earning more than $40,000 a year, those with college degrees or some college education, Protestants, residents of farm areas and small towns, and voters who were self-employed or earned salaries instead of working for hourly wages.

Among Dukakis voters, almost 60% said they were voting against Bush rather than for the Democratic nominee. Although the vice president highlighted environmental issues and repeatedly accused Dukakis of failing to clean up the pollution of Boston Harbor, voters who gave high priority to environmental issues apparently favored the governor.

Strong GOP Support

While Bush was falling short of Reagan’s 1980 and 1984 landslides, polls indicated he was drawing about 92% of the vote among those who consider themselves Republicans. He was carrying independents by a margin of 54% to 44% for Dukakis, whereas Reagan won 61% of the independent vote in 1984.

Bush, like Reagan, cut into the Democratic ranks, but the vice president was getting only 17% of that vote, compared to the 24% Reagan got in 1984.

Bush voters said they were looking for strong leadership, experience, a strong national defense and a strong economy. They also favored Bush’s stance opposing legalized abortions and his stand on curbing illegal drugs.

The vice president was relaxed and in good spirits as he and his wife, Barbara, along with 22 members of their family and dozens of friends and advisers, awaited the election’s final outcome at the Houstonian Hotel.

At Bush’s side was former Treasury Secretary James A. Baker III, his longtime confidant and director of his almost flawlessly managed election campaign. Baker is widely expected to be named secretary of state in the Bush Administration, although Bush repeatedly refused to discuss potential Cabinet appointments during the campaign.

Quayle Decision

Baker has made it clear he had no part in the selection of Quayle as Bush’s running mate, the one major decision that Republican strategists considered a negative for the Bush campaign. Baker has said Bush informed him of the selection after he had already told others.

The 41-year-old, boyish-looking Quayle went home to Huntington, Ind., to vote and shake hands with supporters along the town’s main street before settling down to wait for the final outcome in Washington.

“I’m looking forward to being the next vice president of the United States,” he told reporters.

Looks Exhausted

Dukakis, accompanied by his wife, Kitty, and three children, cast his ballot at a housing project in his hometown of Brookline, Mass. He look exhausted and made no statement to about 200 shouting supporters before returning home.

For 50 hours without a break, he had sped by plane across the country, stumping in 11 cities in nine key battleground states in his last-ditch effort to turn things around.

Bentsen, who polls showed was the most popular figure on either ticket, spent Election Day in Austin. Although he was unable to help carry his state for Dukakis, Bentsen is expected to remain a powerful voice in Washington, however. He will retain his chairmanship of the Senate Finance Committee and Democratic sources say his performance on the campaign trail is likely to enhance his influence in party affairs.

Rallied Faithful

Dukakis’ finest hour in the campaign came at the Democratic convention in July, when he rallied the party faithful with a stirring speech that promised a more honest and caring government and attacked Bush for his role in the Iran-Contra affair and other scandals and tied him to Reagan Administration slashes in social programs.

But the Massachusetts governor never came close to stirring such excitement again, even though in the closing days of his campaign he drew large, enthusiastic crowds as he crisscrossed the country in a desperate final effort.

Shortly after the Democratic convention, polls showed Dukakis briefly with a 17-point lead over Bush. But that lead quickly disappeared as the governor appeared to coast in the opening weeks of his campaign, spending at least two days a week at the Statehouse in Boston while Bush was campaigning vigorously and painting his opponent as a liberal far removed from the American mainstream.

Democratic strategists criticized Dukakis for failing to respond early to Bush’s attacks and for assembling a campaign team that included relatively few people experienced in running a presidential campaign.

DORAL, Fla. — A U.S. Navy admiral who oversees military operations in Latin America handed off command responsibilities Friday as scrutiny increases over the Trump administration’s deadly strikes on alleged drug boats in the region.

Adm. Alvin Holsey has retired one year into a posting that typically lasts three to four years and transferred leadership duties to his top military deputy, Air Force Lt. Gen. Evan Pettus, during a ceremony at U.S. Southern Command headquarters near Miami.

In farewell remarks, Holsey did not mention the military operations or the reasons for his early retirement. But he urged his successor to uphold longstanding partnerships in the region by standing firmly behind the shared values of democracy and support for the rule of law.

“To be a trusted partner, we must be credible, present and engaged,” Holsey said.

Holsey’s shock retirement was announced by the Pentagon in October, over a month into the Trump administration’s strikes on suspected drug boats in the Caribbean Sea and the eastern Pacific Ocean that have killed at least 87 people. With the campaign facing growing scrutiny by Congress, Holsey briefed key lawmakers earlier this week.

Long-term replacement for Holsey hasn’t yet been named

The ceremony Friday was more subdued than past retirements, held outdoors amid a small crowd of mostly Southern Command staff and without Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, because President Trump has yet to nominate Holsey’s replacement.

Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, made no mention of the military operations in Latin America as he thanked Holsey for his 37 years of service. Caine referred to Holsey as a “stoic” leader and “quiet professional” who always leads with his heart and head.

“It’s never been about you, it’s been about people, it’s been about others,” Caine said. “You’ve never said ‘I’ in all the conversations we’ve had. You’ve always said ‘we.’ … The impact you’ve had will last for a long time.”

Holsey is departing as Congress is scrutinizing the boat attacks, including one that killed two survivors clinging to the wreckage of an initial strike. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Hegseth and other top officials have given classified briefings on Capitol Hill this week.

Holsey also spoke this week to key lawmakers overseeing the U.S. military by classified video call. Sen. Jack Reed, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said afterward that Holsey answered senators’ questions but that “there are still many questions to be answered.” Reed later added that Holsey did not give a reason for his retirement other than saying it was a personal decision.

Boat strike scrutiny increases

Experts in the rules of warfare, human rights groups and even some of Trump’s allies in Congress have questioned the legality of the attacks on those accused of ferrying drugs. For decades, they were arrested at sea by the Coast Guard and brought to the U.S. for criminal prosecution.

The 22 known strikes against alleged drug-smuggling vessels are being supported by a giant flotilla of U.S. warships, attack helicopters, thousands of troops and even the nation’s most advanced aircraft carrier.

Trump’s Republican administration has defended its aggressive tactics, designating several drug cartels in Latin America as foreign terrorist organizations and declaring that the U.S. is in armed conflict with those criminal organizations, relying on a legal argument that gained traction after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The campaign has ramped up pressure on Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, who has been charged with narcoterrorism in the U.S. In a sharp escalation Wednesday, U.S. forces seized a sanctioned oil tanker that the Trump administration has accused of smuggling illicit crude. Sale of that oil on global energy markets is critical to Maduro’s grip on power.

Maduro has insisted the real purpose of the U.S. military operations is to force him from office.

Holsey’s departure is the latest in a long line of sudden retirements and firings that have befallen the military’s top ranks since Hegseth took charge of the Pentagon.

A native of rural Fort Valley, Ga., whose father and several uncles served in Vietnam, Holsey relinquished his command to Pettus to a soulful rendition of “Midnight Train to Georgia.”

Pettus, a fighter jet pilot with combat experience in Afghanistan and Iraq, had been serving as Holsey’s top deputy since late 2024. However, it’s unclear how long the Arkansas native will remain in the job. Whomever Trump nominates must be confirmed by the Senate.

Goodman writes for the Associated Press.

California and a coalition of other states are suing the Trump administration over a policy charging employers $100,000 for each new H-1B visa they request for foreign employees to work in the U.S. — calling it a threat not only to major industry but also to public education and healthcare services.

“As the world’s fourth largest economy, California knows that when skilled talent from around the world joins our workforce, it drives our state forward,” said California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta, who announced the litigation Friday.

President Trump imposed the fee through a Sept. 19 proclamation, in which he said the H-1B visa program — designed to provide U.S. employers with skilled workers in science, technology, engineering, math and other advanced fields — has been “deliberately exploited to replace, rather than supplement, American workers with lower-paid, lower-skilled labor.”

Trump said the program also created a “national security threat by discouraging Americans from pursuing careers in science and technology, risking American leadership in these fields.”

Bonta said such claims are baseless, and that the imposition of such fees is unlawful because it runs counter to the intent of Congress in creating the program and exceeds the president’s authority. He said Congress has included significant safeguards to prevent abuses, and that the new fee structure undermines the program’s purpose.

“President Trump’s illegal $100,000 H-1B visa fee creates unnecessary — and illegal — financial burdens on California public employers and other providers of vital services, exacerbating labor shortages in key sectors,” Bonta said in a statement. “The Trump Administration thinks it can raise costs on a whim, but the law says otherwise.”

Taylor Rogers, a White House spokeswoman, said Friday that the fee was “a necessary, initial, incremental step towards necessary reforms” that were lawful and in line with the president’s promise to “put American workers first.”

Attorneys for the administration previously defended the fee in response to a separate lawsuit brought by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Assn. of American Universities, arguing earlier this month that the president has “extraordinarily broad discretion to suspend the entry of aliens whenever he finds their admission ‘detrimental to the interests of the United States,’” or to adopt “reasonable rules, regulations, and orders” related to their entry.

“The Supreme Court has repeatedly confirmed that this authority is ‘sweeping,’ subject only to the requirement that the President identify a class of aliens and articulate a facially legitimate reason for their exclusion,” the administration’s attorneys wrote.

They alleged that the H-1B program has been “ruthlessly and shamelessly exploited by bad actors,” and wrote that the plaintiffs were asking the court “to disregard the President’s inherent authority to restrict the entry of aliens into the country and override his judgment,” which they said it cannot legally do.

Trump’s announcement of the new fee alarmed many existing visa holders and badly rattled industries that are heavily reliant on such visas, including tech companies trying to compete for the world’s best talent in the global race to ramp up their AI capabilities. Thousands of companies in California have applied for H-1B visas this year, and tens of thousands have been granted to them.

Trump’s adoption of the fees is seen as part of his much broader effort to restrict immigration into the U.S. in nearly all its forms. However, he is far from alone in criticizing the H-1B program as a problematic pipeline.

Critics of the program have for years documented examples of employers using it to replace American workers with cheaper foreign workers, as Trump has suggested, and questioned whether the country truly has a shortage of certain types of workers — including tech workers.

There have also been allegations of employers, who control the visas, abusing workers and using the threat of deportation to deter complaints — among the reasons some on the political left have also been critical of the program.

“Not only is this program disastrous for American workers, it can be very harmful to guest workers as well, who are often locked into lower-paying jobs and can have their visas taken away from them by their corporate bosses if they complain about dangerous, unfair or illegal working conditions,” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) wrote in a Fox News opinion column in January.

In the Chamber of Commerce case, attorneys for the administration wrote that companies in the U.S. “have at times laid off thousands of American workers while simultaneously hiring thousands of H-1B workers,” sometimes even forcing the American workers “to train their H-1B replacements” before they leave.

They have done so, the attorneys wrote, even as unemployment among recent U.S. college graduates in STEM fields has increased.

“Employing H-1B workers in entry-level positions at discounted rates undercuts American worker wages and opportunities, and is antithetical to the purpose of the H-1B program, which is ‘to fill jobs for which highly skilled and educated American workers are unavailable,’” the administration’s attorneys wrote.

By contrast, the states’ lawsuit stresses the shortfalls in the American workforce in key industries, and defends the program by citing its existing limits. The legal action notes that employers must certify to the government that their hiring of visa workers will not negatively affect American wages or working conditions. Congress also has set a cap on the number of visa holders that any individual employer may hire.

Bonta’s office said educators account for the third-largest occupation group in the program, with nearly 30,000 educators with H-1B visas helping thousands of institutions fill a national teacher shortage that saw nearly three-quarters of U.S. school districts report difficulty filling positions in the 2024-2025 school year.

Schools, universities and colleges — largely public or nonprofit — cannot afford to pay $100,000 per visa, Bonta’s office said.

In addition, some 17,000 healthcare workers with H-1B visas — half of them physicians and surgeons — are helping to backfill a massive shortfall in trained medical staff in the U.S., including by working as doctors and nurses in low-income and rural neighborhoods, Bonta’s office said.

“In California, access to specialists and primary care providers in rural areas is already extremely limited and is projected to worsen as physicians retire and these communities struggle to attract new doctors,” it said. “As a result of the fee, these institutions will be forced to operate with inadequate staffing or divert funding away from other important programs to cover expenses.”

Bonta’s office said that prior to the imposition of the new fee, employers could expect to pay between $960 and $7,595 in “regulatory and statutory fees” per H-1B visa, based on the actual cost to the government of processing the request and document, as intended by Congress.

The Trump administration, Bonta’s office said, issued the new fee without going through legally required processes for collecting outside input first, and “without considering the full range of impacts — especially on the provision of the critical services by government and nonprofit entities.”

The arguments echo findings by a judge in a separate case years ago, after Trump tried to restrict many such visas in his first term. A judge in that case — brought by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Assn. of Manufacturers and others — found that Congress, not the president, had the authority to change the terms of the visas, and that the Trump administration had not evaluated the potential impacts of such a change before implementing it, as required by law.

The case became moot after President Biden decided not to renew the restrictions in 2021, a move which tech companies considered a win.

Joining in the lawsuit — California’s 49th against the Trump administration in the last year alone — are Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, North Carolina, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington and Wisconsin.

WASHINGTON — Republican critics of affirmative action hailed Monday’s Supreme Court decision as a mandate for even more sweeping action by Congress and vowed to press home their attack on federal programs of racial preference.

Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole called the ruling–that preferential treatment based on race is almost always unconstitutional–”one more reason for the federal government to get out of the race-preference business” and summoned fellow lawmakers “to follow the court’s lead and put the federal government’s own house in order.”

Dole, once a supporter of affirmative action, has called for hearings on the subject in the Senate, and has said he may sponsor legislation to rewrite many of the programs. He was joined in his praise of the court ruling by fellow presidential contender Sen. Phil Gramm (R-Tex.), who said Monday’s decision “greatly strengthens the prospects” that he would seek to amend all funding bills passing through Congress this year to bar the use of federal dollars for “quotas and set-asides.”

The court’s dramatic ruling, meantime, thrust President Clinton and other Democrats into a new bind both legally and politically. Administration officials acknowledged it has disrupted a review of the federal government’s 180-odd affirmative action programs now under way. Clinton had sought the review to help deflect criticism both from the GOP and conservative forces within his own party.

Legally, Clinton now can hope to save parts of affirmative action only if he can come up with new rationales that are defensible under the narrow terms outlined by the Supreme Court on Monday. The court said affirmative action programs can be upheld as a means to correct specific, provable cases of discrimination, but not to correct suspected discrimination by a society over time.

That, in turn, underscores Clinton’s political challenge in dealing with the charged issues of race and gender. The President must either acquiesce in cutbacks to affirmative action programs, thereby risking alienation of minority voters who are crucial to his party’s base, or actively defend the programs and risk offending large numbers of white voters.

“This has really intensified the question of which programs should live and which should die,” said one Senate Democratic aide. “And that really raises the heat on what Clinton has been doing.”

The White House has said it expects to complete its review of affirmative action by the end of this month. Before the court announced the rulings, officials familiar with the review have predicted that it would essentially affirm most principles of federal affirmative action, while calling for changes in the procurement “set aside” programs that have attracted so much criticism.

Administration aides were in general agreement that the decision now would considerably delay the results of the review, which were to be released in a major thematic speech.

“If we’re not back to square one, we’ve at least moved back some distance,” said one Administration official.

But with the White House still contemplating its next move on the issue, House Republicans are set to redraft completely the controversial programs that were launched in the early 1960s to compensate women and minorities for past discrimination in higher education and the job market.

Rep. Charles T. Canady (R-Fla.), a one-time Democrat who now chairs the House Judiciary Committee’s constitution subcommittee, is set later this month to unveil legislation that would forbid the federal government to use gender or race preferences in any federal program, and dismantle many of the programs that have come to be central to affirmative action.

The House bill would effectively repeal one of the central features of 160 government programs that use racial and gender preferences in hiring and promoting federal workers, granting federal contracts and awarding benefits under federal programs. It would call a virtual halt to federal programs that “set aside” slots and pools of funding for businesses owned by minorities and women, and would require substantial changes in other programs.

On Monday, Canady said the court’s decision “gives impetus” to Republicans’ political efforts to roll back many such programs, by making clear the court’s intent to “return to a focus on individual rights” over groups’ rights.

But the complex ruling, he added, also makes it vital for Congress to weigh in quickly with its own views on affirmative action. “You’ll now see all kinds of challenges and litigation moving through district appeals courts, all the way to Supreme Court,” Canady said.

But Democratic proponents of affirmative action on Monday said that the court’s ruling had increased pressure on the White House to act, and to do so quickly, before Congressional Republicans seize the initiative.

“It is perhaps even more important that the President take time to delineate a vision and a course of action . . . as only the President can do,” said Rep. Kweisi Mfume, (D-Md.) former chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus.

Mfume, focusing on one of the majority opinion’s few comments that could be construed as justifying existing programs, lauded the court for acknowledging that “race discrimination is real and government has a role in eradicating it.”

“For those Republicans who have some notion that they ought to do away with all set-asides in the government because there’s no need for them, the court is saying, that is not correct, there is still,” he said.

Mfume’s positive tone was echoed by Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles), who said she was “somewhat disappointed . . . but certainly not discouraged” by the stringent standards called for by Monday’s Supreme Court ruling.

“We may have to do a lot more work and it’s going to be a little confused,” said Waters. But she asserted the new standards applied by the Supreme Court would by no means spell an end to existing affirmative action programs at the federal level.

“This ruling suggests that the strict scrutiny standards would have to be met, and that there is overwhelming and compelling reasons out there to meet them. It doesn’t take a Harvard scholar to do that. The group certainly has been discriminated against.”

The author of major affirmative action laws in California, Waters stated that with a simple technical change, California statutes allowing set-asides for women- and minority-owned contractors would be able to meet the standards set out by the Supreme Court Monday.

Times staff writer Janet Hook contributed to this story.

The US has rolled back a series of restrictive economic sanctions put in place during the rule of Bashar al-Assad.

The United States House of Representatives has voted forward a bill that would end the restrictive Caesar Act sanctions on Syria, originally imposed during the rule of former leader Bashar al-Assad.

The bid to repeal the sanctions was passed on Wednesday as part of a larger defence spending package, known as the National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA.

“With this NDAA, as many know, we are repealing sanctions on Syria that were placed there because of Bashar al-Assad and the torture of his people,” Representative Brian Mast of Florida said. “We’re giving Syria a chance to chart a post-Assad future.”

Mast had previously been opposed to dropping the sanctions. In his statement on the House floor on Wednesday, he warned that, under the bill, the White House could “reimpose sanctions if the president views it necessary”.

The bill now heads to the Senate and is expected to be voted on before the end of the year.

If passed, the NDAA would repeal the 2019 Caesar Act, which sanctioned the Syrian government for war crimes during the country’s 13-year-long civil war.

It would also require the White House to issue frequent reports confirming that Syria’s new government is combating Islamist fighters and upholding the rights of religious and ethnic minorities.

Human rights advocates have welcomed the easing of heavy sanctions that the US and other Western countries imposed on Syria during the war.

They argue that lifting those economic restrictions will aid Syria’s path towards economic recovery after years of devastation.

The Caesar Act was signed into law during President Donald Trump’s first term.

But in December 2024, shortly before Trump returned to office for a second term, rebel forces toppled al-Assad’s government, sending the former leader fleeing to Russia.

Trump has since removed many sanctions on Syria and met with President Ahmed al-Sharaa, who led the push that ousted al-Assad.

But some sanctions can only be removed by Congress, a step that Trump has encouraged lawmakers to take.

This month, Syrians celebrated the one-year anniversary of al-Assad’s overthrow with fireworks, prayer and public displays of pride. But the country continues to face challenges as it recovers from the destruction and damage wrought by the war.

Syrian officials have urged the repeal of remaining sanctions, saying that it is necessary to give the country a fighting chance at economic stability and improvement.

Syrian central bank Governor Abdulkader Husrieh called US sanctions relief a “miracle” in an interview with the news service Reuters last week.

The United Nations Security Council also voted to remove sanctions on al-Sharaa and Interior Minister Anas Khattab, who were previously on a list of individuals linked to ISIL (ISIS) and al-Qaeda.

In February 2023, Jaime Green, the superintendent of a tiny school district in the mountains of Northern California, flew to Washington, D.C., with an urgent appeal.

The Secure Rural Schools Act, a long-standing financial aid program for schools like his in forested counties, was about to lapse, putting thousands of districts at risk of losing significant chunks of their budgets. The law had originated 25 years ago as a temporary fix for rural counties that were losing tax revenue from reduced timber harvesting on public lands.

Green, whose Trinity Alps Unified School District serves about 650 students in the struggling logging town of Weaverville, bounded through Capitol Hill with a small group of Northern California educators, pleading with anyone who would listen: Please renew the program.

They were assured, over and over, that it had bipartisan support, wasn’t much money in the grand scheme of things, and almost certainly would be renewed.

But because Congress could not agree on how to fund the program, it took nearly three years — and a lapse in funding — for the Secure Rural Schools Act to be revived, at least temporarily.

On Tuesday, the U.S. House overwhelmingly voted to extend the program through 2027 and to provide retroactive payments to districts that lost funding while it was lapsed.

The vote was 399 to 5, with all nay votes cast by Republicans. The bill, approved unanimously by the Senate in June, now awaits President Trump’s signature.

“We’ve got Republicans and Democrats holding hands, passing this freaking bill, finally,” Green said. “We stayed positive. The option to quit was, what, layofffs and kids not getting educated? We kept telling them the same story, and they kept listening.”

Green, who until that 2023 trip had never traveled east of Texas, wound up flying to Washington 14 times. He was in the House audience Tuesday as the bill was passed.

In an interview Tuesday, Republican Rep. Doug LaMalfa, who represents a vast swath of Northern California and helped lead the push for reauthorization, said Congress never should have let the program lapse in the first place.

The Secure Rural Schools Act, he said, was a victim of a Congress in which “it’s still an eternal fight over anything fiscal.” It is “annoying,” LaMalfa said, “how hard it is to get basic things done around here.”

Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), greets Supts. Jaime Green, of Weaverville, and Anmarie Swanstrom, of Hayfork, on Capitol Hill in February 2023.

(Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times)

“I’m not proud of the situation taking this long and putting these folks in this much stress,” he said of rural communities that rely upon the funding. “I’m not going to break my arm patting myself on the back.”

Despite broad bipartisan support, the Secure Rural Schools Act, run by the U.S. Forest Service, expired in the fall of 2023, with final payouts made in 2024. That year, the program distributed more than $232 million to more than 700 counties across the United States and Puerto Rico, with nearly $34 million going to California.

In 2024, reauthorization stalled in the House. This year, it was included in a House draft of the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act but was ultimately dropped from the final package.

While public school budgets are largely supported by local property taxes, districts surrounded by untaxed federal forest land have depended upon modest payments from the U.S. Forest Service to stay afloat.

Historically, that money mostly came from logging. Under a 1908 law, counties with national forests — primarily in the rural West — received 25% of what the federal government made from timber sales off that land. The money was split between schools, roads and other critical services.

But by the early 1990s, the once-thriving logging industry had cratered. So did the school funding.

In 2000, Congress enacted what was supposed to be a short-term, six-year solution: the Secure Rural Schools & Community Self-Determination Act, with funding based on a complex formula involving historical timber revenues and other factors.

Congress never made the program permanent, instead reauthorizing versions of it by tucking it into other bills. Once, it was included in a bill to shore up the nation’s helium supply. Another time, it was funded in part by a tax on roll-your-own-cigarette machines.

The program extension passed Tuesday was a standalone bill.

“For rural school districts, it’s critically important, and it means stability from a financial perspective,” said Yuri Calderon, executive director of the Sacramento-based Small School Districts’ Assn.

Calderon said he had heard from numerous school districts across the state that had been dipping into reserve funds to avoid layoffs and cutbacks since the Secure Rural Schools Act expired.

Calderon said the program wasn’t “a handout; it’s basically a mitigation payment” from the federal government, which owns and manages about 45% of California’s land.

Rep. Jared Huffman (D-San Rafael) meets with a group of superintendents from rural Northern California in February 2023.

(Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times)

On Dec. 3, LaMalfa and Democratic Rep. Joe Neguse of Colorado, alongside Idaho Republican Sen. Mike Crapo and Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, spearheaded a letter with signatures from more than 80 bipartisan members of Congress urging House leadership to renew the program by the end of the year.

The letter said the lapse in funding already had led to “school closures, delayed road and bridge maintenance, and reduced public safety services.”

In Trinity County, where Green’s district is located, the federal government owns more than 75% of the land, limiting the tax base and the ability to pass local bonds for things like campus maintenance.

As the Secure Rural Schools Act has been tweaked over the years, funding has seesawed. In 2004, Green’s district in Weaverville, population 3,200, received $1.3 million through the program.

The last payment was about $600,000, roughly 4% of the district’s budget, said Sheree Beans, the district’s chief budget official.

Beans said Monday that, had the program not been renewed, the district likely would have had to lay off seven or eight staff members.

“I don’t want to lay off anyone in my small town,” Beans said. “I see them at the post office. It affects kids. It affects their education.”

In October — during the 43-day federal government shutdown — Beans took three Trinity County students who are members of Future Farmers of America to Capitol Hill to meet with House Speaker Mike Johnson’s staff about the program.

After years of back and forth, Green could not go on that trip. He did not feel well. His doctor told him he needed to stop traveling so much.

Before hopping on a flight to Washington this weekend, the 59-year-old superintendent penned a letter to his staff. After three decades in the district, he was retiring, effective Monday.

Green wrote that he has a rare genetic condition called neurofibromatosis type 2, which has caused tumors to grow on his spinal cord. He will soon undergo surgeries to have them removed.

“My body has let me go as far as I can,” he wrote.

In Green’s letter, he wrote that, if the Secure Rural Schools Act was extended, “financially we will be alright for years to come.”

On Monday night, the district’s Board of Trustees named Beans interim superintendent. She attended the meeting, then drove more than three hours to the airport in Sacramento. She got on a red-eye flight and made it to Washington in time for the Secure Rural Schools vote on the House floor.

When Green decided a few weeks ago to step down, he did not know the reauthorization vote would coincide with his first day of retirement.

But, he said, he never doubted the program would eventually be revived. Coming right before Christmas, he said, “the timing is beautiful.”