congress

Esther Kim Varet has gotten a lot of questions recently from “depressed” liberals wondering whom they should vote for in November to represent them in the redrawn 40th Congressional District, which covers a large swath of inland Orange County and portions of San Bernardino and Riverside counties.

The Democratic art gallery owner placed third in last month’s closely watched primary for the seat, behind Republican incumbent Reps. Ken Calvert of Corona and Young Kim of Anaheim Hills. Calvert and Kim were pushed into the same district by last year’s Proposition 50 and will be the only two candidates facing off for the seat in November.

Kim Varet said her supporters have “obviously put a lot of thought into” which of the incumbents to support, but they have had a hard time swallowing the idea of voting for either. So she tells them why, “if we’re playing a kind of longer game,” they should vote for Kim.

She says Calvert is favored to win, so supporting Kim will “force both sides to spend more on this race” and reduce Republican spending on other races where Democrats still have a shot at beating a GOP incumbent. She says Calvert is “much more senior” than Kim, so ousting him would be “more significant.” And Calvert, as chair of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, has funded Trump’s war in Iran and would be “morally the better target.”

In last month’s primary, Kim Varet and other Democratic candidates collectively won 42.9% of the district vote, compared with Calvert’s 34.9% and Kim’s 20.6%. If enough of those Democratic voters coalesced behind Kim, they could end Calvert’s 33-year run in Congress.

Whether they will, however, is unclear. Such “orphaned” voters — those left without a candidate of their party in a general election — are historically just as likely to abstain from voting or to vote based on far less strategic considerations. Californians created that dilemma more than a decade ago when they approved the top-two primary system that puts all candidates on the same ballot and only allows the top-two finishers to advance to the general election, regardless of their party affiliation.

Paul Mitchell, a Democratic redistricting expert who devised California’s new congressional map under Proposition 50, said the backers of California’s primary system sold it years ago as a moderating force, where those orphaned voters would be encouraged to select the least partisan general election candidate.

But in reality, Mitchell said, “it doesn’t work that way.”

Voter decisions

Mitchell said intraparty matchups in the past have shown 35% of orphaned voters or more simply abstain from voting in that race.

A recent analysis Mitchell conducted of races, including for seats in the state Legislature, showed such undervoting among orphaned voters in every intraparty race for a state Senate seat in 2024 — one clear example being the competitive and costly battle between two Democrats, Laura Richardson and Michelle Chambers, in South Los Angeles.

Many others vote based on “tertiary things,” he said, such as a candidate’s race or gender, or whether they seem local or a Washington insider.

“Traditionally, it isn’t so much about somebody being more moderate,” he said, in part because voters can’t always discern moderation among candidates of an opposing party. “Republicans might be able to tell the difference between a moderate Republican and a conservative Republican, but Democrats can’t tell the difference.”

Incumbency can also be a drag on a candidate if orphaned voters dislike their track record, even if their opponent is even further from those voters politically. As one example, Mitchell pointed to rural, more conservative parts of the state going for Kevin de León over Sen. Dianne Feinstein when he challenged her in 2018, despite his running to her left.

“You’re like, how in the hell did these rural counties vote for Kevin de León? And it was because there were a lot of Republicans who, if they were going to vote in the U.S. Senate race, just wanted to vote against Feinstein,” Mitchell said.

Katelyn Stauffer, an associate politics professor at University of Georgia who has studied voter behavior in top-two races in California, said people “like to make decisions that are easy,” and “for most people, the ultimate cue is, does this person share my party?”

When party doesn’t differentiate candidates, voters tend to rely on other “simple cues or heuristics,” Stauffer said.

For example, based on her research, she said, women regardless of party and Democrats regardless of gender are more likely to vote for a woman in such scenarios.

Candidate messaging

Candidates could consider moderating their message to attract orphaned voters, though that can be perilous.

In a statement to The Times, Calvert accused Kim of trying to woo orphaned voters with a more bipartisan message, as evidence she is untrustworthy.

“Young Kim has bragged to some voters that she’s a moderate who censured President Trump. She’s then claimed to others that she [is] a 100% Trump Republican. It’s obvious Young Kim will say anything to try and hold on to her job, which is why voters from every party just can’t trust her,” Calvert said.

He said he has “been a consistent conservative in Congress for many years and that’s not going to change.” He also claimed to be “one of the most effective members of Congress,” saying he has secured funding to reduce traffic congestion, fight fires and improve water infrastructure in his district — things “voters from all parties want.”

Chris Pack, a spokesman for Kim, denied that Kim is changing her tune depending on her audience, and dismissed Calvert’s claims of serving his constituents well, calling him a “do-nothing dinosaur” who has failed to improve his constituents’ lives for decades.

“The truth is he’s had more than enough time to deliver for the people of California, and he hasn’t,” Pack said.

Similar intraparty battles are playing out in other congressional races between Democrats.

In the 4th Congressional District, which stretches through the Napa and Sacramento valleys, Republican voters could help decide between incumbent Rep. Mike Thompson (D-St. Helena) and his challenger from the left, venture capitalist Eric Jones.

Thompson — who has been in Congress since 1999 and sits on the powerful Ways and Means Committee — won 41% of the vote in the primary, while Jones won 22.2%. A slate of six Republican candidates collectively won 36.1%.

Jones, who backs progressive measures to expand Medicare and cut working-class taxes, said he hopes voters of all stripes look beyond political labels and see that he is the only candidate in the race who will take on big utilities, healthcare lobbyists and other big-business interests who fund Thompson’s campaigns.

“I want voters to realize that there’s a real choice in front of them,” he said.

Thompson said he is focused on doing his job, introducing himself to voters in the new parts of his district, reconfigured under Proposition 50, and “figuring out how I can work with them” to address their concerns. He said there is “a lot of commonality” among voters of all parties who want “good roads, clean air, water, strong [agriculture], safe communities,” and that he’s been endorsed by local Republicans and Democrats alike.

Thompson also rejected Jones’ criticism of his fundraising, saying he has “done a lot of good work that’s not necessarily in the interests” of those who have contributed to his campaign. He also said fundraising is necessary in a race against a wealthy opponent like Jones, who donated millions of dollars to his own campaign.

In the 7th Congressional District, Republican voters will help decide between incumbent Rep. Doris Matsui (D-Sacramento) — who has been in Congress since replacing her late husband there in 2005 — and her challenger from the left, progressive Sacramento City Councilmember Mai Vang.

Vang won 31.2% of the primary vote. Matsui won 29.1%. Two Republican candidates together won 37%.

In a statement to The Times, Matsui said November’s general election “will be a significantly different race because there will be many more voters that didn’t vote in the primary,” and that she will “work harder to court voters by meeting them where they are and informing them how I’ve delivered on my promises,” including on healthcare, public safety and jobs.

Vang did not respond to a request for comment but has previously accused Matsui of not delivering on her promises for decades.

“After 20 years, families are living paycheck to paycheck, people of my generation are no closer to owning a home, and you still can’t afford a doctor visit,” Vang said last month.

Party involvement

Political parties have traditionally shunned meddling in races where they lack a candidate of their own, experts said. They sometimes endorse in races where two members of their own party are facing off against each other, but not always.

Nick Poche, a Republican National Committee spokesperson, said his organization is largely focused on three races in which Republicans are either looking to hold or win seats from Democrats: the 13th Congressional District, where Republican Kevin Lincoln is challenging Rep. Adam Gray (D-Merced); the 22nd Congressional District, where Rep. David Valadao (R-Hanford) is trying to fend off Democrat Randy Villegas; and the 48th Congressional District, where Republican Jim Desmond is facing off against Democrat Marni von Wilpert for the seat of retiring Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Bonsall).

He called the Democrats in those races “radical socialists and emblematic of California’s far-left failures,” and said his party would be campaigning against them. But he declined to speak to the Calvert-Kim race, or the races in which two Democrats are facing off.

The California Republican Party did not respond to a request for comment.

Rusty Hicks, chair of the California Democratic Party, said his party is focused on “fulfilling the promise of Proposition 50” to flip five seats to help his party win control of the House, and is also focused on three competitive races: those for Valadao’s and Issa’s seats, and one in the 6th Congressional District, where Democrat Richard Pan is taking on Republican-turned-independent Rep. Kevin Kiley of Rocklin.

Hicks said the party will not endorse Calvert or Kim, whom he called “two rotten choices,” but has endorsed incumbents Matsui and Thompson in their races against fellow Democrats because they have “been leading” on issues of affordability and access to healthcare and “are best positioned to be reelected.”

Jones scoffed at his party endorsing his opponent. “Are we really excited that the Democratic machine keeps trying to choose our electeds for us?” he said.

Aug. 2 (UPI) — Sen. Bernie Moreno on Sunday said his former son-in-law, Rep. Max Miller, should not be serving in the U.S. House of Representatives amid mounting allegations of domestic abuse made by Miller’s ex-wife.

Moreno, R-Ohio, broke his silence on the subject of Miller, R-Ohio., in a statement issued on social media in which he said his daughter Emily’s former husband “should not serve in the House of Representatives.

“I believe Max Miller needs to seek professional help to end the clear pattern of abuse he has left in his wake,” Moreno wrote. “I believe he should not be free to continue endangering others until he does.”

Miller, the Republican incumbent from a district in northeastern Ohio and a staunch ally of President Donald Trump, has been locked in a bitter custody battle with Emily Moreno over their 2-year-old daughter following the finalization of their divorce last year.

During their legal fight, Emily Moreno, a conservative policy adviser, has accused Miller of incidents of domestic violence such as scalding her with hot water and hitting and threatening her while they were married.

While those claims were previously known, they came back into the foreground last month when new court filings and police reports released by Mother Jones magazine detailed new information that their daughter had suffered a broken collarbone.

Miller has denied all of Emily Moreno’s allegations and on Sunday again pleaded his innocence and reiterated he would not withdraw as a GOP congressional candidate in the upcoming midterm election.

In a video posted on X, he blamed the “left-wing media” for his predicament and called his ex-wife a woman with “mental health challenges” while linking to a cache of documents he claimed refute all of her charges.

However, his former father-in-law — another vocal supporter of President Trump — nonetheless ended his strategy of avoiding comment on the situation, instead calling Miller unfit to hold office.

“As he has admitted privately, Max Miller needs serious psychological help,” Bernie Moreno said. “He is a danger to my daughter, and I hold my breath every minute he has custody of my granddaughter.”

The GOP senator asserted that “If there are any basic standards of character required to hold elected office, Max Miller fails them. He should not serve in the House of Representatives.

“I believe Max Miller needs to seek professional help to end the clear pattern of abuse he has left in his wake. I believe he should not be free to continue endangering others until he does.”

His remarks came after some Democratic House members called on the Ethics Committee to investigate Miller over what they called “deeply disturbing” reports of “domestic violence and child abuse.”

The deadline for Ohio Republicans to replace Miller on the November general election ballot is Wednesday, and his troubles are leading some Democratic strategists to view his seat as a possible political opportunity.

Caracas, July 28, 2026 (venezuelanalysis.com) – Venezuelan Acting President Delcy Rodríguez hosted a US Congress delegation in Caracas on Friday. 

The team of US politicians was led by Florida Republican Representative Brian Mast, a military veteran who also served voluntarily in the Israeli armed forces. It also included Florida Republican representatives Randy Fine and Kat Cammack alongside Illinois Democratic representative Jonathan Jackson. 

According to Venezuelan state media, the high-level meeting saw the two sides “assess progress in bilateral relations and the joint agenda in strategic areas.”

“Both sides reviewed bilateral cooperation schemes geared toward fighting transnational organized crime and border security,” the official report said.

For his part, Fine wrote on social media that he was “honored” to take part in the first congressional delegation to Venezuela in a decade. He added that the US’ January 3 kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro “set Venezuela on a trajectory to be a key ally” of the US. 

Fine, like Mast, is a major advocate of Israeli interests in the US legislature and has the backing of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). He has publicly called for starving and dropping nuclear bombs on the Gaza Strip. 

Also participating in the summit were US Chargé d’Affaires in Venezuela John Barrett, Venezuelan Foreign Minister Félix Plasencia, and Vice Minister for Europe and North America Oliver Blanco.

Blanco, who comes from the ranks of the opposition Democratic Action (AD) party, has been the main government liaison with US officials in the country. He was recently appointed First Vice Minister of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in order to “strengthen Venezuela’s foreign policy and peace diplomacy around the world.”

In addition, the US Congress members held talks with National Assembly President Jorge Rodríguez, who described the meeting as “fruitful” and said discussions focused on “the legislative agenda and international investment.” Rodríguez added that Venezuela took the opportunity to “thank the United States for its support” following the June 24 twin earthquakes.

The US lawmakers held subsequent meetings with officials from Venezuela’s Ministry of Defense and the National Anti-Drug Superintendency (Sunad), according to reports.

Following the January 3 US military strikes and Maduro kidnapping, the Rodríguez-led acting government fast-tracked a diplomatic rapprochement with Washington following seven years of severed ties. Both administrations have opened their respective embassies.

Venezuela’s acting president has hosted a number of US officials in Caracas in recent months, including Energy Secretary Chris Wright, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, and CIA Director John Ratcliffe.

Last March, Rodríguez had already received a delegation from the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee as part of the ongoing “peace dialogue” between Washington and Caracas.

At that time, the presidential press office said the Senate delegation had traveled to Caracas for a “technical and political” visit intended to continue the bilateral “roadmap” focused on “direct communication to manage historical differences and strengthen energy cooperation in light of global challenges.”

Venezuela and Peru Move Toward Restoring Relations

Caracas’ foreign policy shift has likewise seen authorities mend ties with regional US allies that had sought to isolate the Caribbean nation.

On Friday, the governments of Venezuela and Peru announced the start of a gradual process to fully restore diplomatic relations, which were severed in 2024 after the Peruvian government refused to recognize Venezuela’s official electoral results that saw Maduro secure a third term in office.

“In a first stage, both countries have agreed to reactivate consular relations as an initial step toward the full restoration of bilateral ties,” the foreign ministries of Venezuela and Peru said in a joint statement.

The immediate objective is to guarantee protection and consular services for Venezuelan and Peruvian citizens residing in each country. The diplomatic rapprochement comes days before a change of government in Peru, where conservative leader Keiko Fujimori is set to replace interim President José María Balcázar after a narrow and disputed electoral triumph.

Edited by Ricardo Vaz in Caracas.

CHICAGO — After leaders of the Southeastern Conference spent last week warning of a Plan B to potentially “break away” from the NCAA, Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti tried to steer away from that conversation and toward a Congressional solution on Tuesday.

But if Congress can’t pass the Protect College Sports Act in the coming weeks? Well, the conference is already talking contingency plans, Petitti said.

“Breakaway is a word that creates a lot of emotion,” Pettiti said during his annual Big Ten media day address on Tuesday. “Is there another path where if you can’t solve it in the bill and if you can’t solve it with your colleagues, is there some path where you have to have conference-based rules? That’s not necessarily breaking away. It doesn’t mean you’re not going to play anybody else. But is there a path to have rules that we can at least operate from the conference?

“We absolutely have to do everything we can to prepare for every one of those things.”

The future of college football continues to hang in the balance as Congress works to get the two power conferences on board with a bill that has not received their full support. Petitti said on Tuesday morning that he’d yet to see the new language of the Protect College Sports Act, which added revisions to appease the SEC and Big Ten, but expected to see it later Tuesday.

The commissioner said he didn’t expect the bill to be “perfect for us in every one one of those places,” but he expected concessions to be included in the newest version, including potential provisions around a super league, pre-enrollment inducements for high school prospects and a carve-out for up to $20 million in additional cap space to retain players.

Whether those concessions will be enough to get the two power conferences on board remains to be seen. Time is running out for a bill to be passed before Congress takes a lengthy recess, significantly delaying any meaningful reform in college athletics.

“If Congress is going to be involved in deciding who can be in what conference and when you can move and how you move and how you schedule based on certain things happening, we just need to get that right,” Petitti said. “And so we want to make sure that the productive conversations we’ve had the last couple of weeks on that section specifically are reflected in the drafting of the bill.”

Petitti said that the Big Ten would’ve preferred “a much skinnier bill” than the current version, but “that is not the reality right now.”

“Is there more good here than not, right?” Petitti said. “That’s the way to look at it.”

Passing that bill is the primary focus for now. It’s why Petitti has been to Washington 21 times, he said, during his tenure as commissioner. But other uncertainty still looms over the sport.

The Big Ten is still also pushing for a 24-team College Football Playoff, but Petitti said that the conference’s stance has evolved since he first started pushing the idea a year ago.

“We’ve made adjustments in our league,” Petitti said. “We were focused on automatic qualifiers. We’re not focused on that anymore. We’re looking at the committee picking the field of 24. We feel that ultimately will still unlock the power of scheduling that we want.”

Tech scion David Ellison for months projected confidence that his blockbuster Hollywood merger was on a glide path to completion.

His media company Paramount Skydance’s pitch early this year was that its proposed $111-billion acquisition of rival Warner Bros. Discovery could easily clear regulatory hurdles — unlike Netflix’s competing bid.

Ellison has heavyweights in his corner: his billionaire father Larry Ellison, co-founder of software giant Oracle, is bankrolling the deal, and President Trump is eager for the Ellison family to own CNN and other Warner assets, including HBO and the Burbank film and TV studios behind “Batman,” Harry Potter, Wile E. Coyote, and “The Pitt.”

“We could technically close [the deal] tomorrow,” Ellison told business new channel CNBC during a March interview. “There is nothing in this transaction that trips anything that would create cause for concern.”

But Paramount made a dramatic retreat Friday after two weeks of legal setbacks. The firm had been aiming to close the deal by September but agreed to table its takeover — perhaps until next spring — to allow a fiercer than expected challenge from California Atty. General Rob Bonta and 11 other Democrat state attorneys general to advance to trial before an Oakland-based federal judge.

The state prosecutors allege Paramount’s proposed merger with Warner Bros. violates a century-old antitrust law by giving the combined company too much heft in theatrical movie distribution and cable television.

The delay could saddle Paramount, the smallest of the major media companies, with substantial legal fees and hundreds of millions of dollars in added deal costs. In February, Paramount offered Warner investors a sweetener, so-called “ticking fees,” to win the auction.

Those fees, which begin accruing in October, will cost Paramount an extra $7 million a day — until the purchase is finalized. And if Paramount fails to close the merger, it would owe Warner Bros. Discovery a $7-billion breakup fee.

“Anyone who thinks they know how this deal ends should think again,” Forrester Research analyst Mike Proulx said in a statement. “This deal may still close or it may not. … The path to either outcome just got longer, messier, and likely more expensive.”

Paramount now must strengthen its case for a high-stakes trial while fortifying Paramount’s existing businesses and holding together a coalition of financiers, which includes the royal families of Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi and Qatar which jointly agreed to contribute $24 billion for equity stakes in the combined company.

Paramount reversed course after U.S. District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín dealt the company a blow on Monday when she temporarily blocked Paramount from finalizing the acquisition until mid-August. Looming was a key Aug. 3 hearing for the judge to determine whether the moratorium should be extended.

Paramount was concerned the judge would block the deal for the foreseeable future.

“They saw the writing on the wall,” Bonta said in an interview.

Columbia Law School business professor Eric Talley added: “This doesn’t constitute Paramount Skydance coming out and waving a big white flag — but it is a small white flag of surrender.”

Paramount, in a statement, said heading straight to trial would prove advantageous.

“This is the fastest and clearest way to prove that this transaction is good for competition, good for consumers, and good for creators,” Paramount said. “We look forward to proving our case at trial.”

Last week, the Writers Guild of America separately filed a lawsuit seeking to stop the merger, alleging that writers would encounter less work and lower pay should Paramount buy Warner Bros.

Now the merger won’t close until after a resolution in the litigation or by June 1, 2027, whichever date comes first.

“This is what we’ve been asking for from the start,” Bonta said. “We just wanted the court to have sufficient time to review our case without the threat of the companies merging.”

Ellison, through a Paramount spokesperson, declined an interview request.

The delay brings a different set of challenges, Talley said, including pushing the date of the takeover until after November’s pivotal mid-term elections when control of Congress might change hands.

“That itself could be disruptive,” Talley said. “Suppose we get a flip of the House of Representatives or the Senate, then we may see testimony in Congress.”

Prominent Democrats, including Sens. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Adam Schiff (D-Burbank) have expressed alarm over the potential consolidation, which would shrink the number of legacy film studios and bring CNN in addition to CBS News under Ellison control.

Attempts to get Ellison to testify in Congress have fallen short. The Paramount chief declined an invitation to appear before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights in February, as well as a subsequent request from Booker to appear during an April spotlight hearing.

“To what extent was the rush to get the deal done related to the midterms, and what press coverage was going to look like in the upcoming election season?” Talley asked. “CNN is not a huge money-making asset but it is a prominent asset of Warner Brothers Discovery.”

On Friday night, Trump extolled his friendship with the Ellison family during the White House Correspondents Assn. dinner while also criticizing prominent CNN anchors.

David Ellison is “going to make, I think, fantastic changes and keep some of the great stuff going,” Trump said.

CBS News has been roiled since shortly after the Ellisons acquired Paramount in August, and installed Bari Weiss as editor in chief of CBS News. She has overseen a series of controversial moves, including shaking up the evening news and sacking several “60 Minutes” correspondents.

Paramount scored one victory: the European Commission gave its blessing for the merger to go forward in the European countries it represents. The company now has gained clearances from more than 60 jurisdictions, including from the U.S. Justice Department, which found the merger would likely boost competition — not harm it.

Now, Paramount’s biggest obstacle is winning the case against Bonta and the other state attorneys general.

The states plan to request a trial in 2027, after the two sides conduct months of discovery to prepare their cases.

“We want to take depositions of employees. We want to take depositions of customers and competitors in these marketplaces that are impacted [and] we want documents,” Bonta said.

“We want to depose their experts and probe and test their experts’ opinions,” he said. “That all takes time.”

Bonta and the other state attorneys sidestepped the political landscape in making their lawsuit arguments.

“This is just a straight-up meat-and-potatoes antitrust case,” Bonta said. “The main point here is that antitrust enforcement is important because monopolies that lessen competition hurt everyday people.

“Once we have a trial, we’re going to win,” Bonta said. “So we think and we hope there will never be a merger.”

The White House has formally registered its opposition to a move by Congress to block work on the nuclear-powered Trump class battleship unless the U.S. Navy provides assurances that key weapon systems are “sufficiently mature.” The House Armed Services Committee has already demanded a report from the Secretary of the Navy outlining the steps the service is taking to ensure the battleship program won’t exacerbate existing construction delays on aircraft carriers and submarines.

Earlier this week, the White House’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) issued a Statement of Administration Policy regarding the latest draft of the annual defense policy bill, or National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), for Fiscal Year 2027 that is now making its way through the House of Representatives. The document offers support for and opposition to various sections of the proposed legislation, which is also known as H.R. 8800.

“The Administration appreciates that H.R. 8800 would provide authorization of the 18 ships requested in the Budget. These ships are a direct commitment to restoring America’s maritime dominance and maritime industrial base,” OMB’s statement, which was published on July 21, declares. “In addition, the Administration appreciates the bill’s support of the Battleship program by fully authorizing the $1 billion in advance procurement necessary to accelerate the delivery to the Fleet.”

“However, the Administration opposes the bill’s excessive reporting requirements in section 131 regarding the Administration’s priority Battleship program,” it continues. “The Administration strongly opposes any reporting requirements that delay the Battleship program without supporting national security requirements.”

On July 21, USNI News also reported that OMB was pressing members of Congress to include funding to start work on the first Trump class battleship in a proposed temporary spending bill, or Continuing Resolution. A temporary funding package could be needed if legislators cannot pass a more formal budget by September 30, when the current fiscal year ends.

When it comes to Section 131 of H.R. 8800, the provision is brief, but pointed. At the time of writing, it reads, in full:

“The Secretary of the Navy may not enter into a contract or other agreement that includes a scope of work for the construction of the lead ship of the Battleship program until the date on which the Secretary certifies to the congressional defense committees that the weapon systems planned for inclusion in such lead ship are at a sufficiently mature technology readiness level.”

The section does not name any particular weapon systems or define what level of technological readiness would be deemed sufficient. To date, the Navy has described the planned Trump class battleship as a 35,000-ton-displacement warship with a diverse array of weapons. The ship is set to be able to fire nuclear and conventional missiles, including hypersonic types, from several very large Vertical Launch System (VLS) arrays. It will also have an electromagnetic railgun, a pair of traditional 5-inch naval guns, various laser directed energy weapons, and additional weapon systems for close-in defense.

TWZ previously reported on this provision, which has been in the proposed legislation since at least May. As we wrote in the past:

“In terms of technological maturity, the railgun presents particular questions. Between 2005 and 2021, the Navy had an active railgun program. Despite promising developments, plans for an at-sea test were repeatedly pushed back before the entire effort was shelved. Major technical hurdles were cited as a key factor in that decision. The railgun itself was effectively placed in storage at White Sands Missile Range (WSMR) in New Mexico.“

“However, it emerged earlier this year that the Navy had conducted a new round of testing of the railgun at WSMR in February 2025. Whether the Navy has any plans to pick up where it left off with this prototype design, which was developed by BAE Systems, or pursue a new one remains unclear. General Atomics, which previously supported U.S. Army railgun efforts, has publicly expressed interest in being involved in arming the Trump class.”

“While the Navy has been very active in developing and fielding laser directed energy weapons, this is another area where the service has faced continued challenges in expanding their operational use. The plans for the Trump class specifically call for a 300-kilowatt-class laser, which is far more powerful than any of the designs the Navy has integrated on its warships to date. The service currently has eight Arleigh Burke class destroyers with the Optical Dazzling Interdictor, Navy (ODIN), as well as another one of those warships with the High Energy Laser with Integrated Optical-dazzler and Surveillance (HELIOS). HELIOS is a 60-kilowatt-class design, though there has been talk about scaling up its power rating to 150 kilowatts. ODIN’s power rating does not appear to be officially confirmed, but it is understood to be significantly lower than that of HELIOS. You can read more about all of this here.”

“The Intermediate Range Conventional Prompt Strike (IRCPS) hypersonic missile, another key component of the future Trump class arsenal, is also still in development. The first test launch from a warship, the stealth destroyer USS Zumwalt, is expected to come next year. IRCPS is the Navy half of a joint program with the U.S. Army, which is working to field a land-based version of the same missile. The Army refers to its complete weapon system as the Dark Eagle. The Army had suffered significant setbacks in the past with the Dark Eagle, but the service had blamed those issues on the launcher rather than the missile.”

For its part, OMB’s July 21 statement does not respond to any particular concerns that might be raised by Section 131, either.

Section 131 represents just one small portion of the questions, concerns, and criticism that members of Congress have leveled at the Trump class battleship program. The first one of these ships, currently set to be named the USS Defiant, has an estimated price tag of $17 billion. This would make the vessel more expensive than each of the next three Ford class aircraft carriers. The future USS Defiant is also not currently expected to enter service until 2036. The Navy has already outlined plans to order 14 more of these battleships between Fiscal Years 2029 and 2055, as well.

With this in mind, as noted, the House Armed Services Committee has separately asked for a report from the Secretary of the Navy, to be delivered no later than March 1, 2027, on the potential industrial impacts. A particular issue is the strain that work on the Trump class could have on America’s limited nuclear shipbuilding enterprise. Currently, there are only two U.S. shipyards qualified to build nuclear-powered vessels and only one supplier of naval reactors. Currently, the only nuclear-powered ships in the Navy are aircraft carriers and submarines. The service has not operated a nuclear-powered surface combatant in decades, and it has been even longer since one was built in the United States.

TWZ has repeatedly raised questions about the basic industrial capacity to support the battleship program since it was first rolled out to the public in December 2025. It is worth noting here that third, fourth, and fifth Ford class carriers now under construction – the future USS Enterprise (CVN-80), USS Doris Miller (CVN-81), and USS William J. Clinton (CVN-82) – have all suffered delays. Concerns are also regularly voiced about potential setbacks in the construction of new Virginia class and Columbia class submarines. Navy officials have been saying for years now that there is little, if any, margin left in the Columbia class delivery timeline, which is a critical matter of national security. It is essential for those boats to be delivered on a tight schedule to ensure there is no gap in the ability of the leg of America’s nuclear triad to meet operational requirements.

The battleship effort is of particular significance to President Donald Trump and has been presented as a signature program for his administration. At the same time, the schedule that has been laid out so far means that major decisions about how to proceed in acquiring these ships, if at all, will run into the next administration. Any delays will only push that timeline further to the right at a time when there are already major competing priorities for defense spending. Some members of Congress have openly questioned whether the battleship effort is the best use of available resources already.

The annual NDAA is still far from being finalized. The House’s version will need to be reconciled with the one being advanced in the Senate before the bill can be put to a vote, let alone sent to Trump’s desk to be signed into law (or vetoed). This is a process typically marked by lengthy negotiations, and Section 131, as well as other provisions, could change in the future or be removed entirely.

Whether or not a larger political fight around the Trump class battleship emerges remains to be seen. However, OMB has now made clear publicly that the administration is against the inclusion of the guardrails around the program that the current version of H.R. 8800 proposes to establish.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

The US says it has spent more than $37.5 billion on the Iran war so far, and the Secretary of Defense is requesting an additional $67 billion more. One analyst tells Al Jazeera’s ‘This is America’ that Congress may face political trouble voting against it.

California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta and other Democratic attorneys general are suing the Trump administration over imposing what they contend are “unlawful” conditions on federal grants intended to help states prepare and respond to disasters.

The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Rhode Island on Thursday, argues that the Department of Homeland Security and Federal Emergency Management Agency have been using their control over billions of dollars in federal grants to operate what the attorneys general see as an aggressive “campaign of coercion” to adopt the Trump administration’s preferred voting and immigration policies, according to the complaint.

“Congress never gave DHS or FEMA authority to rewrite state election law, require cooperation with federal immigration agents, or terminate federal funding streams at any time and for any reason,” the lawsuit stated. The legal action was filed by a coalition of 24 attorneys general and Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear and Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, both Democrats.

A spokesperson for the White House did not respond to a request for comment.

At the crux of their legal complaint are two federal programs: the Homeland Security Grant Program, which was established by Congress as a response to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, and the Emergency Management Performance Grant Program, which helps states pay for emergency management staff who plan for and respond to natural disasters and mass casualty events, as well as software programs used by state emergency operations centers.

For the homeland security grant, the Trump administration has attached “radical” new terms based on Trump’s preferred policies, the states contend.

These terms include verifying the citizenship of all individuals in state voter databases, transitioning their voting systems to equipment that reads hand-marked paper ballots and conducting post-election audits “according to nonexistent guidelines to be set by the Secretary of Homeland Security,” according to the complaint.

And the Department of Homeland Security and FEMA have threatened to make states “promise to devote their scarce resources to the federal government’s own task of civil immigration enforcement” in order to receive both the homeland security and the emergency management grants, according to the complaint.

At a news conference Thursday, Bonta laid out the stakes.

“These grants help communities prepare for emergencies before disaster strikes,” he said. “They support emergency management personnel, strengthen disaster response capabilities, improve coordination among first responders, and help protect our residents when they need government the most.”

The Trump administration restrictions would mean “our communities would have fewer resources to prepare for wildfires, earthquakes, floods, terrorist threats, and other emergencies,” Bonta stated.

“Time after time, courts have told Trump’s corrupt administration that it can’t coerce California into doing its bidding by threatening to withhold public safety funding,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a statement. “Yet, they’re coming back for more. This time they’re demanding states rewrite their own election laws to access money that pays for public safety readiness and response, and that Congress already approved. We simply won’t allow it.”

WASHINGTON — The House on Wednesday passed a defense policy bill that incorporates President Trump’s request for a historic $1.15 trillion in spending for national security and would designate the Department of Defense as the Department of War.

It also would provide for a pay raise next year ranging from 5% to 7% for service members, depending upon their rank.

The National Defense Authorization Act is generally one of the more bipartisan bills that Congress takes up on an annual basis. That’s not the case this year. The vote was 216-212.

Democrats took issue with steep spending increases for the Pentagon as Republicans attempted to cut numerous non-defense programs through other bills. They also opposed some of the conservative social policy riders that were included.

For example, the bill includes a prohibition on gender-related medical care under the military health program known as TRICARE. It also eases hurdles for service members to carry a privately owned firearm on base, following Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s lead on the issue.

Republican leaders’ decision to attach Trump’s elections overhaul bill to the defense bill upon its passing also amplified the partisan divide. Speaker Mike Johnson is working to accommodate Republican lawmakers who are angry that the Senate won’t pass the SAVE America Act and are insisting that it be included in must-pass bills until the Senate relents.

House bill tests a normally bipartisan process

Rep. Mike Rogers of Alabama, the Republican chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said he knows there were areas of disagreement, but emphasized that Wednesday’s vote was a step in a long process. He promised to work in a bipartisan manner on a final product that can pass both chambers and be signed into law.

Rogers said the United States needs to reverse decades of underinvestment and neglect in the nation’s armed forces and defense industrial base.

“This bill will do that and much more,” he said. “It will build the ready, capable and lethal fighting force we need to deter China and other adversaries.”

Rep. Adam Smith of Washington, the ranking Democratic lawmaker on the Armed Services Committee, said the defense spending the administration has asked for this year is approaching $1.6 trillion including separate efforts to pay for the war in Iran and boost weapons stockpiles.

“The American people are struggling to pay their bills and we’re going to put $1.6 trillion into the defense budget. It’s not a reasonable thing to ask,” Smith said.

Smith also expressed concern about the war with Iran and that in supporting the defense bill, lawmakers are “de facto supporting this war with no end in sight.”

“We are in an incredibly, incredibly dangerous time,” Smith said. “I want to maintain the bipartisan nature of this bill. I do. And I know that the chairman does. But if we’re going to do this, we’re going to need some Republicans to stand up to the president of the United States and say, ‘No. No, we’re not going to get you $1.6 trillion. No, we’re not just going to give you a blank check for a war that is totally out of control.‘”

White House backs parts of the legislation

The spending increases authorized in the bill would not take effect until Congress follows up with a separate defense appropriations bill. The Senate has not yet approved its version of the defense measure. It’s possible a final product won’t be ready until after the midterm elections.

The White House applauded the spending levels authorized in the House bill and the Department of War designation that it says recognizes the “willingness to fight and win wars on behalf of our nation.”

The president issued an executive order last year renaming the Defense Department, but it’s up to Congress to make the change official. The Congressional Budget Office has projected that the renaming could cost taxpayers as much as $125 million.

The White House’s statement also said that the administration has a number of concerns with certain provisions in the bill and would work with Congress before a final bill is presented to the president. Among those concerns was a section of the bill it said would limit or undermine the president’s ability to name military installations and property.

In 2023, during a national reckoning on issues of race in America, seven Army bases’ names were changed because they honored Confederate leaders. Last year, those bases reverted to their original names, but with different namesakes who share Confederate surnames. The Army found other service members with the same last names to honor.

Freking writes for the Associated Press.

More than 16 congressional Democrats accused the Federal Communications Commission this week of running a license-review process “tainted by animus and ideology,” demanding the agency back off its early scrutiny of Disney stations, including Los Angeles’ KABC-TV and San Francisco’s KGO-TV — while alleging the FCC has politicized its power.

The lawmakers signed letters to FCC Secretary Marlene H. Dortch to register their dismay and question the legitimacy of the FCC’s review protocol.

The letter campaign is a response to FCC Chairman Brendan Carr’s decision in April to order an early review of Disney’s licenses for the eight ABC television stations that it owns. The review is entering its home stretch; public comments are due to the FCC by July 29.

Calling a station’s licenses for an early review is rare, and it’s been four decades since the FCC revoked a TV station license.

Carr’s move requiring Disney to submit to an early review came after President Trump and First Lady Melania Trump expressed outrage over a joke by ABC late-night host Jimmy Kimmel that referenced the first lady.

“This early renewal process is merely a smokescreen to pursue President Trump’s vindictive agenda to silence minority voices and punish companies that decline to do his bidding,” according to the letter signed by Reps. Laura Friedman (D-Glendale), Kevin Mullin (D-South San Francisco), Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), Ro Khanna (D-Fremont), Ted Lieu (D-Torrance) and others.

The FCC maintains the ABC station review sprung from concerns about Disney’s internal diversity, equity and inclusion programs, but the lawmakers said there was no evidence that Disney’s personnel policies violate any laws.

Instead, they said, Trump has made it clear that he sees TV license renewals as a means to squeeze media outlets whose coverage he dislikes.

The FCC separately has taken aim at ABC’s daytime discussion show, “The View,” which delves deeply into politics.

Disney has pushed back against the early evaluation of its TV station licenses, which were originally up for review between 2028 and 2031. The Burbank giant filed its renewal applications “under protest.”

“The Commission had not demanded early renewal in over five decades,” Disney’s WABC-TV station, based in New York, wrote in a May filing with the commission. “And it has never before demanded simultaneous license renewal applications from a group of stations commonly owned with a network as it has here. The order has no legitimate purpose.”

California congressional Democrats have strongly condemned Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr’s decision to mandate early, unprecedented license renewals for eight Disney-owned ABC stations, including KABC-TV in Los Angeles.

(Google street view)

The FCC maintains that Disney is the one politicizing the station review.

“Contrary to Disney’s claim that the FCC called in their broadcast licenses for early renewal for no reason, the record shows something very different,” Carr said in a May statement. “Broadcast licensees have a unique obligation to operate in the public interest. The FCC will follow the facts and law wherever they may lead.”

In the tussle over whether “The View” qualifies for an exemption to the so-called equal time rules for politicians, an FCC spokesperson said in a statement: “ABC should focus on complying with its public interest obligations, rather than misleading the public about them.”

The lawmakers, in the two letters, did not wade into the controversy over “The View.”

Instead, they stressed the importance of the two stations — KABC and KGO — to their local communities.

“KABC is an important local television station that millions of our constituents rely on for daily news, traffic, emergency weather alerts, and programming that serves our local community,” according to the letter spearheaded by Friedman, whose district includes Disney’s headquarters.

“Any refusal to renew this license would be strongly against the public interest,” the group wrote.

Congresswoman Laura Friedman is leading a letter campaign by Democrats in Congress to defend Disney’s KABC-TV.

(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)

A second letter highlighted the importance of Disney’s San Francisco station, which serves nine counties in that region.

“For over 75 years, KGO has been operating in the public interest in our region, offering reliable journalism, indispensable emergency information, and steadfast community engagement that our constituents and viewers rely on,” according to the letter headed by Mullin.

The station also serves as a broadcast partner to the San Francisco Chinese New Year Parade, the city’s Pride parade, the Oakland Black Joy parade and the Bay to Breakers race. It also raises awareness for organizations including Lighthouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired and Bay Area Autism Collective, the lawmakers said.

“KGO’s operations reflects the television station’s deep investment and commitment to viewers in the Bay Area,” the lawmakers wrote. “KGO is a community partner. … We urge the FCC to reconsider its unlawful censorship campaign against ABC and all other political opponents of President Trump.”

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration urged Congress on Tuesday to approve roughly $70 billion in emergency defense funding to sustain U.S. military capabilities amid its escalating war against Iran, warning that without it the Pentagon could face “critical shortfalls” disrupting its readiness.

The request comes as the United States and Iran have traded strikes for 10 consecutive days in a renewed conflict, deepening concerns in Washington over an expanding war that could inflame the global economy and trap the president in a quagmire.

The collapse of a ceasefire agreement and the sudden resumption of war have raised alarms within the Pentagon over its ability to protect U.S. forces and assets in the Middle East over a prolonged conflict, with defensive munitions in dangerously short supply, two Defense Department officials told The Times.

Yet the administration is facing bipartisan skepticism from lawmakers over the continuation of a war unpopular with a vast majority of Americans, over which they have had little oversight, and that in recent days has led to deaths of U.S. soldiers.

Those tensions became clear as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testified before the Senate Appropriations Committee to make their case for the tens of billions of dollars and offer their first in-depth public remarks about the war since May.

Hegseth told senators the United States is at a “moment where we cannot afford inaction,” while Caine argued the funding request is coming to Congress “while time is still on our side.”

“It is critical that we stay ahead of our adversaries and we must have the funds before we are out of time,” Caine said.

Hegseth said the war is now expected to cost Americans $37.5 billion, up from a $29-billion estimate from early May. The war, initially projected by President Trump to last four to five weeks, is now entering its fifth month.

With no end in sight, senators from both parties signaled frustrations with the administration’s plans.

Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), the top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, said Democrats will not support more funding for the war.

“This administration’s refusal to explain what it is doing, or how this war is protecting Americans, its refusal to seek authorization from Congress, and its expectations that Americans will just pay for it all without any explanation or transparency is disrespectful,” she said.

Republican lawmakers also confronted Hegseth and Caine on several fronts.

Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) told the Pentagon leaders that lawmakers “need some proper answers and some straight talk” about the administration’s plans to ensure Iran does not choke traffic through the Strait of Hormuz.

Asked whether Iran would impose tolls on merchant vessels passing through the vital waterway, Caine said it was a “hypothetical” scenario — a response Kennedy rejected.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) also put pressure on Hegseth, as she asked him whether the administration was still taking the position that it needed no authorization from Congress to continue hostilities against Iran.

“Senator, I know there’s a long-standing legal debate on this particular topic, but we certainly at the department share the position with the White House that we have all the necessary authorities at this moment,” Hegseth said.

Murkowski’s remarks come just weeks after Republicans joined Democrats in both the House and Senate in voting to reassert Congress’ constitutional role over the war, underscoring the simmering tensions over Trump’s decision to sideline Congress in the matter.

Hours before the hearing, Trump downplayed concerns over the war’s effect on the midterm elections and further threats in the war, as Houthis, the Iran-backed militia in Yemen, declared a maritime blockade Monday on Saudi Arabia.

“So far, it hasn’t happened. It might happen but we take care of things, if something like that happens,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.

Trump maintained that Iranian leaders are “desperately” trying to reach a deal to end the war but said he has no interest in meeting with them until he is convinced the talks will be “meaningful.”

“If we left right now, it would take Iran 20 to 25 years to rebuild. We are not finished at all,” Trump said. “We are not leaving right now.”

A protester interrupts Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth as he testifies at Tuesday’s hearing.

(Jacquelyn Martin / Associated Press)

Asked if he thought Iran was trying to have an effect on the midterm elections by threatening the Strait of Hormuz, Trump said, “probably.”

“It won’t have any impact on me,” he said. “The election, I can’t think about that having to do with this.”

An agreement reached in June between the United States and Iran proposed an end to a U.S. naval blockade of Iranian ports and to U.S. sanctions on Iranian oil exports in exchange for Tehran allowing unfettered commercial shipping traffic through the Strait of Hormuz. But the agreement fell apart, with Iran firing on commercial vessels and pursuing a toll system for transit that had not existed before the war started.

The deal was supposed to set up a structure for more detailed negotiations on Iran’s nuclear program, a prime target of the U.S. campaign launched in February in partnership with Israel.

Much of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure was degraded in a U.S. strike conducted last year that targeted three major facilities. But the fissile material required to build nuclear weapons remains in the country, under the watch of U.S. satellite surveillance. Iran has vowed to continue pursuing civilian nuclear work.

“How about these people? They’re in this because of nuclear weapons, and they’re trying to possibly reconstitute a site? We’ll hit that site. Any site where they’re even thinking about nuclear — we’ll be hitting it very, very powerfully,” Trump said.

As the war expands, there’s been heightened concern about the infrastructure that civilians in neighboring countries rely on for water and power.

Iranian officials said U.S. strikes hit the Bunji desalination plant on Iran’s southeastern coast, leaving 20 villages — where some 10,000 people reside — without water, according to reports from Iran’s semi-official news agency Tasnim.

Meanwhile, the Kuwaiti government said its power plants and desalination plants were struck by Iran on Monday — the fourth consecutive day of attacks on a key source of drinking water for the small desert nation.

The attacks spurred the Kuwaiti government over the weekend to launch an ad campaign calling on residents to reduce their water and power usage, especially during peak hours between 11 a.m. and 5 p.m.

A concerted campaign targeting desalination plants would be devastating both for Iran and the Persian Gulf nations it has peppered with drones and missiles since the start of the war.

Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, the Emirates and Saudi Arabia are among the world’s eight most water-stressed countries. Israel ranks 9th, while Iran is 14th, according to the Washington, D.C.-based Water Resources Institute.

All of them suffer from “absolute water scarcity,” according to metrics used by the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture organization.

Times staff writer Nabih Bulos in Beirut contributed to this report.

It pains me to say that most of us are missing the point when it comes to President Trump’s rambling election fraud speech. Which is exactly what he wants.

Within minutes of its airing Thursday night, the internet and pundits were abuzz debating whether voting machines were secure and whether the federal government has a right, or even a duty, to oversee voter rolls (it has neither). Long posts were written condemning voter identification efforts, and more posts written attacking those condemnations.

This, friends, is exactly what the speech was meant to accomplish — myopic bickering.

To be specific, myopic bickering about the past, as a dark future creeps ever closer — like, say, Nov. 3.

The question we should be asking now isn’t whether there is massive fraud in U.S. elections — even the conservative Heritage Foundation has documented only 71 cases of such fraud in California in more than 25 years.

The question is will we allow Trump to sow just enough doubt in the minds of average Americans that what comes next seems inevitable and even necessary?

Trump falsely claimed that he was revealing “an election system so broken and so vulnerable that no one can possibly defend it.”

“This cannot be allowed to continue,” he said.

Those are ominous words, ones we should take seriously.

“This is a very sad thing to be able to say about the president of the United States, but I think it’s quite clear,” said Mindy Romero, director of the Center for Inclusive Democracy, a nonpartisan research facility. “This is about a certain set of political goals, and using this misinformation to achieve those political goals.”

Trump knows that the midterms present a threat to his power and he, and those around him, have been working for years to create a strategy to invalidate our election results just in case they don’t fall in his direction. Whether the overall outcome favors Democrats or Republicans in the midterms, the wins and losses are going to be close, giving him the chance to attack Democratic wins.

On Jan. 6, 2021, Trump learned from the unlikely teacher Mike Pence the difficult lesson that plans work only when people are in place to implement them. As vice president, Pence, you may recall, refused to stop the election certification process that legally, rightfully, fairly allowed Joe Biden to take office.

Since then, Trump has purged dissenters from top roles, instead putting in flat-out sycophants, election deniers and conspiracy theorists — more than one of whom has been associated with the racist Great Replacement theory that Democrats are secretly helping Black and brown people to illegally cross the border in exchange for these folks illegally voting for Democrats, thereby replacing the “true” America of conservative white people.

So the apparatchiks are in place, Soviet-style. There will be no Penceian savior on the inside this time around.

More than one election expert I have spoken to in recent months fear that because there is no one left on the inside to object, we could see post-election turmoil like this: Republicans lose one or both houses of Congress. Trump calls fraud. The Department of Justice or outside lawyers, or both, sue to overturn results. Congress, the Republican one still in place, refuses to seat newly elected Democrats until the court cases are resolved.

A constitutional crisis is at hand. Democrats say they were elected. Republicans won’t let them serve. No one is clear who is in Congress and who isn’t. In effect, the body is frozen and it’s legitimacy undermined. Into that vacuum, Trump pushes his already great power even further.

As movie-terrible as that sounds, that internal structure is in place and this scenario is far less impossible or even improbable than we could hope.

“What we’re talking about is just misinformation and what could be used as a justification for potentially interfering with seating of elected officials,” Romero said. “Particularly Congress.”

Now, with the internal stuff squared away, Trump’s focus is neutralizing outside dissent. That’s you and me, and that’s what this speech was about. Sowing doubt, tossing seeds of chaos into the soil to see what grows. Letting us know it’s coming, so we as Americans have time to bicker, argue, and tear away at our trust in elections so that by the time we vote, we expect the worst to happen.

“Unfortunately, there are some members of the public that are going to believe what they’re being told and when they hear election results, question it,” said Chad Dunn, legal director of the UCLA Voting Rights Project. “This kind of communication misleads Americans and does a disservice to our democracy.”

Dunn told me he’s “as worried as I’ve been in my life” about the next election.

Trump’s far right is wasting no time on this effort. After Trump’s speech, the Department of Homeland Security sent out a letter to California and three other states claiming California has more than 190,000 non-citizens registered to vote, and demanding the state “confirm their intentions to collaborate with DHS in order to ensure free, fair, and honest elections.”

This is a misleading, erroneous count and does not include the obvious fact that there is no evidence that undocumented people actually voted in any California election in any noticeable numbers.

But it creates that chaos and doubt. California isn’t going to share its voter rolls willingly with the federal government because elections — according to the Constitution — are state affairs. And there is no evidence that the federal government has a better way of vetting citizenship than California does. So it becomes one more point of bickering.

But what Dunn, Romero and other honest elections experts want Americans to know is that our elections are free and fair and all is not lost. Far from it.

The answer to the propaganda and lies is to remain aware of it, remain above it. Spread truth and refute falsehoods.

Dunn said that Americans should demand that any voter fraud be taken to the courts — where it belongs, and where we can determine the validity of the evidence.

“If you’re concerned about this, if you’re inclined to believe the president, demand proof, demand resolution in court at trial with the the showing of evidence,” he said. “And reserve judgment until you see that.”

Romero has her own advice — never underestimate the power of the vote.

“Show up and to participate,” she said. “Regardless of how [you’re] going to vote — Democrat, Republican, otherwise — just to show up and participate.”

Because in the end, we only lose democracy if we willingly let it go.

WASHINGTON — When Markwayne Mullin took over as Homeland Security secretary from fired Kristi Noem, he pledged to get the department responsible for carrying out the Trump administration’s mass deportations policy out of the headlines.

But just months into Mullin’s time in office, the department is squarely in the center of controversy again after three people were killed in encounters with Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers in the span of less than a week.

The events are the first major test for Mullin, who promised a steady hand for a department roiled by his predecessor’s conduct and the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.

As he navigates the uptick in violence, he is being forced into a balancing act that has him juggling pressures from a White House eager to carry out mass deportations and his former colleagues in Congress seeking answers — all while attempting to ease tensions in American cities over the deaths.

“When he took his position, Secretary Mullin said that his goal was to get the department off the front page of the news,” Democratic Rep. Seth Magaziner said on the House floor Tuesday. Then, waving a newspaper, he said: “Well, you’re back on the goddamn front page now.”

Mullin’s approach is a marked change from his predecessor, Kristi Noem

Mullin, a former senator from Oklahoma, was a surprise pick to run the sprawling department after Noem was fired in the wake of two deadly shootings of American protesters at the hands of federal immigration officers in Minneapolis earlier this year.

As the secretary in charge of carrying out the administration’s mass deportations vision, Noem pushed an aggressive style of immigration enforcement where she was front and center, including most famously, a visit to a Salvadoran detention center. She was quick to speak publicly on controversial events, weighing in on both Minneapolis shootings with statements accusing the killed protesters of being agitators.

President Trump, who made mass deportations a central promise of his second administration, ultimately soured on Noem over a $200 million ad campaign and her handling of the Minneapolis operation.

Mullin promised a different approach, while still pledging to deliver on the president’s priorities. His first trip as secretary was not to promote immigration enforcement but to observe hurricane recovery efforts in North Carolina. Noem frequently went out on immigration raids with her officers — Mullin has not.

Since he became secretary and in the aftermath of the Minneapolis violence, the administration has also moved away from high-profile and unpopular immigration operations in American cities to a quieter approach to enforcement that has largely shifted media attention away from the crackdown. Under Mullin, Immigration and Customs Enforcement is also retreating from a plan to use warehouses to detain migrants.

But immigration arrests continue under Mullin and often with little fanfare: ICE arrested 10,000 people over a five-day period in late June, averaging out to about to 2,000 arrests per day. And legal pathways to immigration have also faced new restrictions.

Trump, during Mullin’s tenure, has hailed the secretary as “so incredible,” and “amazing,” lauding him for giving up his Senate seat to run DHS.

For months, it appeared as though Mullin’s change in approach was taking hold. While advocates and civil rights activists accused the department of mistreating immigrants under his leadership, Mullin’s less confrontational approach seemed to keep the department out of the spotlight.

But the events of the past week have posed a new challenge for Mullin as he walks a tightrope between his softer approach and the president’s demands.

“Trying to deal with competing policy objectives is a challenge for any Cabinet secretary, but Mullin has this worse than most,” said Tom Warrick, a former counterterrorism official at Homeland Security who’s now at the Atlantic Council.

“In the case of Homeland Security, the White House wants both to meet their immigration quotas at the same time that they keep public trust, and how you do that — even with the funding that Mullin has — is a really difficult challenge.”

ICE officers in Houston and Maine shot and killed individuals in their cars during immigration operations. In Florida, a man fleeing ICE officers was killed in a car crash.

Mullin has not spoken publicly about the deaths while the department’s public affairs office has released only brief statements following each.

Behind the scenes, Mullin, who frequently talks about how he shares his cellphone number with members of Congress and encourages them to call him directly, has talked with lawmakers and shared information, including talking with both senators from Maine.

And after the second shooting death in Maine, as criticism surged from both protesters and Mullin’s former colleagues in Congress, ICE was ordered to suspend most vehicle stops.

Trump heaps pressure on Mullin over vehicle stop order

That decision infuriated Trump’s supporters.

Conservative influencer Nick Sorter called it a “TOTAL CAPITULATION to the left,” in a post on X. Conservative activist Mike Davis accused Mullin of heeding the advice of Maine Sen. Susan Collins, who said she’d suggested the vehicle stop pause to the secretary.

A day later, Trump appeared to contradict the guidance to ICE, saying in a social media post “we must be strong, tough and smart and we CANNOT give up one of ICE’s most important and effective Crime Fighting tools, THE TRAFFIC STOP!”

Mullin then reposted Trump’s words, adding that people in the country would be “arrested and deported wherever they are.” He later said on X that he and the president are “on the same page.”

It was not immediately clear whether vehicle stops were back on.

But it showed the friction between Mullin’s attempts to maintain calm and the president’s demands that illegal immigrants, which the administration has in many instances portrayed as criminals, be arrested in large numbers.

Democrats have slammed the new secretary, saying that they see little change at the department.

“Secretary Mullin, if he wants to, and if he has the backing of the White House, he has the ability to get ICE under control and make them follow the law,” said Rep. Joaquin Castro, a Democrat from Texas. “So either he has no interest in doing that, or the White House is not backing him up, or the agents are simply out of control.”

Republican lawmakers have come to Mullin’s defense.

“I think the Secretary has lived up to what he’s wanted to do to try to change the atmosphere over there,” said Rep. Andrew Garbarino of New York, who as chair of the congressional Homeland Security Committee has requested a bipartisan briefing on ICE’s use of force policies from DHS.

“I don’t think anybody is celebrating that ICE is back in the headlines,” Garbarino said.

Santana writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Lisa Mascaro contributed to this report.

A Democratic candidate for Congress and her husband were arrested after a fight at their home, authorities said.

Stephanie Studebaker and her husband, Sam, were booked on domestic violence charges, police said. Studebaker, 45, a veterinarian and first-time political candidate, is running against Republican Rep. Michael R. Turner for the Dayton-area seat.

Studebaker’s campaign has suspended all activities “for the time being” due to personal issues, her website said.

WASHINGTON — Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett told lawmakers Tuesday that a sharp increase in threats targeting her and other justices is increasingly encroaching on their personal and family lives.

During a rare appearance by justices before Congress, Barrett said she had to wear a bulletproof vest home a few years ago, something she struggled to explain to her 12-year-old son.

“I didn’t expect that performing this service would put me in the position of explaining to my children what a bulletproof vest was, why I had to wear one,” she said.

She and Justice Elena Kagan testified before a House appropriations panel in support of a request to increase security funding for members of the nation’s highest court.

Judges around the country have seen a rise in threats of violence and intimidation. Barrett’s home was also targeted by a swatting call to police in May.

The hearing comes two weeks after the conservative-majority court finished handing down a series of major opinions, including a decision that increased President Trump’s power over federal regulatory agencies and another that rejected his wide-ranging tariffs, sparking harsh personal criticism.

It’s the first time justices have testified before Congress since 2019, and the two justices are facing wide-ranging questions about the court’s work.

Security is central to the Supreme Court’s budget request

The Supreme Court requested a total of $228 million for next fiscal year, a roughly 10% increase over the year before. About $18 million of that is for maintaining the building and grounds.

Much of the requested increase, $14.6 million, would go to expanding personal protection for justices, with six more agents for each.

An additional $2 million would fund an off-site residential security post aimed at making emergency responses faster, as well as increasing the number of Supreme Court police officers.

The U.S. Marshals Service, responsible for protecting judges, reported 564 threats in the government fiscal year that ended in September, an increase from the year before.

That total includes threats to the hundreds of federal judges around the country, though the nine-member Supreme Court has not been immune.

In May, Barrett’s security detail worked with police to quickly deal with the swatting incident, a fake 911 call designed to provoke a police response. Last year, her sister was the victim of a bomb threat in Charleston, S.C., police said. No bomb was found.

In 2022, shortly after the leak of a draft opinion overturning the Roe vs. Wade abortion decision, a would-be assassin was arrested near the home of Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh with weapons and zip ties. Threats to the Supreme Court increased after that leak and have continued to grow, Kagan said.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. has condemned the threats to all U.S. judges, saying during a speech in March that criticism of judicial opinions is understandable, but personally directed hostility is “dangerous, and it’s got to stop.”

Whitehurst writes for the Associated Press.

The largest single piece of federal housing legislation to come out of Congress in at least a generation is is now law.

It happened in the middle of night early Saturday, without fanfare — or even President Trump’s signature — and it might be a while before many Californians notice its effects.

That’s because the bill, though politically monumental — both chambers approved it overwhelmingly — doesn’t do one big thing. Instead, it does a lot of little things. Individually, none of the bill’s 56 regulatory tweaks, pilot programs and low-cost loans and grants are likely to move the needle on the nation’s housing affordability woes, nor on California’s specifically.

Supporters hope that collectively, they just might.

Even the law’s path to enactment had an under-the-radar quality to it. The White House abruptly canceled a planned signing ceremony late last month, with Trump vowing not to sign the bill until Congress first passed his restrictive national voter ID proposal. That bill has stalled out in the Senate.

Still, Trump did not veto the housing package, so it automatically became law Saturday just after midnight, as per the Constitution.

For all that, supporters say this is still a big deal: a major, bipartisan piece of legislation aimed at boosting housing construction from a hyperpartisan legislative body that doesn’t typically touch the topic.

“We don’t often gather to celebrate federal housing legislation,” Stephen Russell, president of the San Diego Housing Federation, said at a news conference Thursday. “I think the last time Congress passed anything of this magnitude, many of you were not even alive. … It is almost a once-in-a-lifetime event.”

That’s thanks in part to a growing caucus of lawmakers aligned with the “Yes In My Backyard” movement that helped push the bill into law. Many hail from California, a state that has had more experience than most contending with wildly unaffordable housing. But the cause of making housing more affordable, and attributing high housing costs to a lack of sufficient supply, has become a national and bipartisan concern. Case in point: The bill originated as a joint proposal by Sens. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), an ardent conservative, and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), among the most liberal members of the Senate.

While the constituent parts of the bill are relatively narrow and none is specifically focused on California, experts highlight a few provisions that could leave a notable imprint on the state.

Build now (or else)

For high-cost cities that don’t build much housing, as in much of urban California, the federal bill includes a novel carrot and stick.

This portion of the bill would change the Community Development Block Grant, one of the largest sources of federal funding for affordable housing and local economic development. Pricey cities — defined through a variety of data benchmarks like median prices and vacancy rates — with a track record of under-building that continue to see below-average housing construction will have their grant funds cut by 10%. The savings will go to their municipal counterparts that build at a faster clip.

That’s likely to have “real implications for cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco that have traditionally lagged behind” in adding housing supply, said David Garcia, the deputy director of policy at UC Berkeley’s Terner Center for Housing Innovation.

The city of Los Angeles received $48.4 million in its last award from the block grant program in 2024, according to U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development data. San Francisco received $18.9 million.

Those numbers aren’t enough to make or break the budget of either city.

“I think this will be a small nudge,” said Laura Foote, executive director of YIMBY Action, in an email. “Which taken across the country could still have a good impact! Little nudges add up.”

More dramatic than the number of dollars involved may be the precedent the policy sets. Even in California, where the state government has aggressively incentivized cities to plan for more housing development and penalized those that don’t, lawmakers have never punished municipalities for failing to actually grow — an outcome that may not always be under a city government’s control.

Such an idea would have been “inconceivable in previous congresses,” Garcia said.

Despite that, the provision hasn’t engendered much public opposition from local government groups yet. In an online summary, Michael Wallace, a lobbyist with the National League of Cities, applauded the overall housing bill as an example of the federal government “choosing partnership with local governments over preemptions.” He singled out other provisions of the bill that provide expanded flexibility for Community Development Block Grant spending, new incentive programs for adding supply, and new supports for local urban planning.

Chassis change

Manufactured housing units are often colloquially referred to as mobile homes, but they don’t tend to move around much. Built on assembly lines and shipped to where they’re needed, these naturally affordable houses — the likes of which lawmakers across California and the United States claim we need in droves — are often placed upon permanent foundations where a fewer than 1 in 10 ever move again.

Even so, the federal building code applied to manufactured housing includes a costly, vestigial reference to its mobile origins: a permanent chassis.

A giant steel frame with removable axles and wheels, the chassis ostensibly exists to make it easier to pick up and move a manufactured house by truck. In practice, it serves as a 10- to 12-inch-thick floor beneath the floor. Because it cannot be removed upon delivery, it just serves as “dead space and wasted money,” said Jess Maxcy, president of the California Manufactured Housing Institute, the industry’s trade group. Aside from adding thousands of dollars in added costs per unit, it also makes it harder for manufactured units to be stacked into double story homes or multifamily apartment buildings.

The federal housing bill removes the permanent chassis requirement, something that manufacturers and some housing policy experts have been pushing for since the mid-1980s.

“That relatively minor change will expand access to one of the most affordable forms of home ownership available,” Rep. Scott Peters (D-San Diego) said at the Thursday news conference.
Maxcy said he doesn’t expect the end of the chassis requirement to trigger an overnight building boom in the manufactured home industry. But especially in California, where, due to the high price of land, new single-family homes are more likely to be built stacked on small lots, the regulatory change “provides more opportunities and helps us reduce the price.”

Recovering after disaster

In the months after a natural disaster, long after emergency federal dollars have come and gone, Congress has provided communities with long-term rebuilding grants through the Community Development Block Grant—Disaster Recovery program. Over the last three decades, the program has spent more than $100 billion on the long-term work of recovery, like home construction, infrastructure repair and rental and relocation assistance. That money tends to be reserved for low-income people and communities “who are not going to bounce back without the funds,” said Marion McFadden, who used to run the program under the Biden administration and now works at the disaster preparation and recovery consulting company IEM.

Unfortunately for California, the program only kind of exists. Since the mid-1990s, it’s been stood up and funded on an ad hoc basis, one appropriation bill at a time. That presents a challenge for communities planning in the middle of post-disaster planning. It also means the rules that govern the program — when the money goes out, to whom, under what conditions and for what purposes — are redrafted with each political administration. That’s had the effect of slowing things down considerably. No program funding has gone to Los Angeles in the wake of the 2025 fire storms, according to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Congress has yet to appropriate any.

The new housing bill would officially write the program into law for at least three years.

“It creates the ability for HUD to have money on hand before a disaster and then make a decision within 15 days about whether they’re going to provide funding,” McFadden said.

What the housing bill doesn’t do: provide fresh funding. Disaster-prone communities will need to wait for Congress to take that up later.

A ‘bottleneck’ removed

For the last two decades, public housing authorities in Los Angeles and the Bay Area have been turning to the federal Rental Assistance Demonstration program to help repair and upgrade their aging stock of increasingly dilapidated public housing. The program works by switching up funding sources in a way that gives locals more flexibility to borrow money and attract private investment dollars.

Until the new law took effect this weekend, the federal government was only authorized to permit 455,000 of these conversions. The law raises the cap by an additional 100,000.

“This has been a bottleneck in California for years and that bottleneck just got removed,” said Russell with the San Diego Housing Federation.
Not all affordable housing advocates are cheering the development. The National Low Income Housing Coalition has consistently opposed expansion of the program on the grounds that the change in funding source could weaken existing tenant protections. It’s unclear whether and to what extent that might be true. A study from last year found no evidence that conversions under the program lead to more evictions.

Wall Street out of suburbia

If you’ve heard only one thing about this housing bill, it’s that it bans “large institutional investors” from buying up more single family homes.

Caveats apply in the final version of the law. The bill defines “large” as any of a number of business structures with control over more than 350 single-family homes. It doesn’t apply retrospectively, so current investors with portfolios brimming with houses need not divest. Exemptions exist for new construction, renovations and senior housing. In California specifically, where corporations and other major investors do not play a significant role in the housing market, the effect is likely to be muted.

The measure “takes a hyper-salient issue for lots of people across the country and does a pretty modest intervention to address it,” said Chad Maisel, a fellow at the liberal-leaning Center for American Progress and a former housing policy advisor to President Biden.

Even so, the provision has plenty of bipartisan appeal. Earlier this year, Trump called for an even stricter crackdown on so-called corporate landlords. Gov. Gavin Newsom followed suit the same week.

The anti-investor language was considerably watered down from earlier this year, when a related provision threatened to undermine “build-to-rent” projects: well-financed subdevelopments of single-family homes reserved for renters. That prompted a revolt by many developers and YIMBY activists who had otherwise enthusiastically supported the bill, who argued that such communities are one of the fastest growing sources of the U.S. housing stock and provide some of the few opportunities for renters to live in suburban-style, family-sized housing.

After the build-to-rent provision was left on the cutting room floor of Congress, state Sen. Aisha Wahab, a Fremont Democrat who is now running for Congress, introduced a bill that picked it back up again. SB 880 would have banned the bundled sale of multiple single-family homes, striking at the heart of the build-to-rent business model. That bill died in the Assembly Judiciary committee in late June.

Christopher writes for CalMatters.

WASHINGTON  — The Supreme Court’s conservative justices say they decide cases based on the words and original history of the Constitution — and not on their personal or political views.

Following the lead set by the late Justice Antonin Scalia, they say they see history and “originalism” as a guiding principle to prevent judges from changing the Constitution to adjust to new and changing times.

This text-and-history approach is said to contrast with an evolving or “living Constitution” favored by progressives and liberal activists.

But this year saw a flip of sorts on birthright citizenship.

The foremost conservatives agreed with President Trump that the surge of illegal immigration called for reconsidering the promise of citizenship at birth set out in the 14th Amendment of 1868.

“The number of illegal immigrants in this country exploded” in recent years, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. wrote in dissent. The rule of citizenship at birth provides “a powerful incentive to enter or remain in this country illegally,” he added.

“The Constitution is an enduring document,” wrote Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, but its rules and meaning must adjust to “modern situations that were unknown or unanticipated by the Constitution’s Framers.”

In a concurring opinion, he said that “significant illegal immigration into the United States is a new circumstance that was largely unknown as of 1868.”

There were no federal immigration laws in the mid-19th century, but it was an era when a surge of Irish immigrants had settled on the East Coast and large numbers of Chinese immigrants came to California.

Under the law, their children were deemed to be citizens at birth.

Among the conservative originalists, only Justice Amy Coney Barrett signed the majority opinion that was written by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and joined by the three liberals.

The opening words of the 14th Amendment of 1868 say: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens of the United States.”

In 1898, the Supreme Court upheld the rule of citizenship at birth in the case of Wong Kim Ark, who was born in San Francisco to Chinese parents.

In an executive order, Trump proposed to end birthright citizenship for the newborns whose parents were in the country illegally or temporarily.

Writing for the court, the chief justice said the words of the 14th Amendment were clear and were clearly understood at the time. He dismissed the “dramatically revisionist view” that has been cited recently.

Kavanaugh voted with the majority to block Trump’s order from taking effect. He did so because Congress had adopted birthright citizenship in a 1952 law.

“Consistent with the 14th Amendment, Congress could … enact new legislation establishing exceptions to birthright citizenship,” he wrote.

Justices Clarence Thomas and Alito wrote long dissents arguing that the framers of the 14th Amendment did not or would not have favored birthright citizenship.

They pointed to recent scholarship by law professors that raised questions about the accepted understanding of the 14th Amendment and the citizenship rule.

Thomas said citizenship of the child should turn on whether the parents were “domiciled” in this country. Black people who were enslaved were undoubtedly domiciled here, but the same is not true of temporary visitors.

Justice Neil M. Gorsuch agreed in part with Thomas and questioned whether the newborns of temporary visitors should be deemed as citizens at birth.

Many court commentators were surprised by the close 5-4 divide on the constitutional issue.

“Given how clear the language was, I expected it to be 7 to 2,” said Melissa Murray, a New York University law professor. “I really gasped when I saw it was 5-4. This is not settled. We’re not done with this debate.”

Sarah Isgur, a podcaster and SCOTUSblog analyst, said that “originalism is getting more and more muddled. Either the history matters or it doesn’t.”

However, she agreed with Kavanaugh’s approach of leaving it to Congress to reconsider the issue.

Not all originalists are conservative.

Yale Law Professor Akhil Amar, a constitutional historian, argued that the history of birthright citizenship is clear and not subject to revisionist thinking. He said the Reconstruction Congress adopted this principle of citizenship at birth and stated their intent in clear words in the 14th Amendment.

“When a baby is born on American soil and an American flag flies above, that baby is a birthright citizen, as the Reconstruction Republicans across the land understood,” he wrote in February. This rule “has virtually nothing to do with the baby’s parents.”

Last week, he was mostly cheered by the court’s ruling.

“It’s a triumph, but it should have been 9-0,” Amar said on a review of the court term sponsored by SCOTUSblog. “Shame on the dissenters. They didn’t even the address the statute” and its wording.

But the majority led by Roberts “clearly affirmed the plain meaning of the constitutional text and its history. And that’s a win,” he said.

History has a recurring role at the Supreme Court.

Isgur noted the court will hear arguments in the fall on whether the 2nd Amendment of 1791 gives gun owners a right to have “assault weapons” like AR-15 rifles.

She said the court will decide then between history and changed circumstances.

At issue is whether these modern rapid-fire rifles fit within the history of the gun rights protected by the 2nd Amendment or instead represent a new and dangerous threat to public safety that was unknown in 1791.

Scalia’s opinion upholding gun rights in 2008 is often cited as a model of originalism, but it too emerged from a court divided 5-4.

The 2nd Amendment says, “A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bears Arms, shall not be infringed.”

For decades, the Supreme Court had all but ignored the 2nd Amendment, viewing it as a somewhat outdated provision involving militias, akin to the 3rd Amendment. It forbids having soldiers “quartered in any house … in time of peace.”

Four liberal dissenters in 2008 said the court should stand by that understanding of history.

Justice John Paul Stevens said the 2nd Amendment was added to the Constitution to protect state militias from federal interference. Moreover, the reference to “bear arms” suggests it was about militias, he said.

But Scalia’s opinion stands as the landmark precedent, and he said the dissenters had the history all wrong.

The right to have guns for self-defense arose in England and came to the American colonies. “By the time of the founding, the right to have arms had become fundamental for English subjects,” he wrote.

The 2nd Amendment did not establish a new right, he said. Rather, it “codified a pre-existing right [of] having and using arms for self-preservation and [defense],” he wrote.

“There seems to us no doubt, on the basis of both text and history,” Scalia wrote, “that the 2nd Amendment conferred an individual right to keep and bear arms.”

President Trump has ousted members of a bipartisan federal election commission that resisted his efforts to require would-be voters to document their U.S. citizenship before registering.

The White House on Friday confirmed the executive action against members of the Election Assistance Commission, which distributes federal grants to states, oversees the testing of voting systems and maintains the national voter registration forms.

It’s the latest move in the Republican president’s effort to expand White House influence over how U.S. elections are conducted and comes after a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling that gave the president new personnel authority to fire members of independent agency boards.

“The President, and head of the Executive Branch, reserves the right to remove individuals that may not be totally aligned with the important task of securing America’s elections and ensuring every legal vote is counted. The Slaughter decision gives the President precedence to do so,” said a White House statement to AP.

The president removed the commission’s two Democratic members, Thomas Hicks and Benjamin Hovland. The panel’s Republican member, Christy McCormick resigned. Former Republican commissioner Donald Palmer already had left his post voluntarily earlier this year.

The changes were first reported by VoteBeat, a news outlet that covers elections and voting across the U.S.

While the White House statement did not offer a specific reason for Trump’s action, the commission has previously declined to change the national voter registration form to require documentation of an applicant’s U.S. citizenship, as Trump’s urged in a sweeping March 2025 executive order on U.S. elections. A federal judge blocked the order, ruling it exceeds the president’s authority since the U.S. Constitution grants authority over elections management and oversight to Congress and the states. The administration has indicated it will appeal.

It was not clear whether Trump planned to nominate new members immediately or leave the positions vacant — a move that, months ahead of midterm elections, could prevent the agency from distributing new grants to state or local elections offices and, at the least, complicate its role in overseeing testing and certification of voting systems around the country.

“The Administration from the start has been working across all agencies and local partners to safeguard elections from fraud and abuse, and investing in a strong infrastructure to sustain that mission especially in the midterm elections,” the White House said.

Congress created the four-member commission as part of the Help America Vote Act, a bipartisan law signed by Republican President George W. Bush in 2002. The act requires the commission to include two Democrats and two Republicans, nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate. Hicks and McCormick were appointed by President Barack Obama. Trump appointed Hovland during his first presidency.

According to VoteBeat, Hicks and Hovland were notified of their removal by an email signed by Morgan DeWitt Snow, the deputy director of presidential personnel in the Executive Office of the President.

Barrow writes for the Associated Press.

SAN RAFAEL, Calif. — Jared Huffman was unstinting and unbowed as he raised an arm heavenward. Not for fear of a thunderbolt hurtling through the blue sky and, punitively, creasing his skull. Rather, he was illustrating a point.

“I believe in a lot of things,” he said over a tuna melt at a small Marin County cafe. “I just don’t believe in magic and a sky god that looks like an old bearded man sitting just beyond the clouds.”

Huffman is the rare American — one of only about 10% or so — who flatly state they do not believe in God, or any higher power for that matter. What makes him rarer still is his place in Congress. Huffman, who represents a sprawling slice of Northern California, reaching from the Bay Area to the Oregon border, is one of just four members (out of more than 500) who are openly agnostic or religiously unaffiliated.

He is, by far, the most outspoken.

Huffman, who publicly revealed his nonreligious status in 2017, helped form the Congressional Freethought Caucus, which consists of about three dozen members of various religious stripe, each dedicated to the proposition that church and state should be distinct. He’s written a book, due out next month, raising an alarm and summoning Americans to fight the rising tide of Christian nationalism roiling our divided land.

An overwhelming favorite to win an eighth congressional term in November, Huffman, a Democrat, calls himself a humanist and described it this way:

“To me, it means good without God. It means you don’t need the inducement or fear of an afterlife to have a moral framework and to know your place in the universe. You’re sort of at peace with the reality that, as far as we know, this is it. You get one time around.

Rep. Jared Huffman, right, greets Marin County Executive Derek Johnson during the opening of a housing community in Point Reyes Station, Calif., on Wednesday.

(Godofredo A. Vasquez / For The Times)

“There are people of faith who sometimes think, well, that must be sad, that must be incomplete,” Huffman went on. “I find it’s just the opposite. It makes this world and our opportunity to be part of it more sacred.”

Growing up in the Mormon faith

Huffman, 62, grew up in a religious household in Independence, Mo. His family practiced an offshoot of the Mormon faith; as a youth, Huffman served in the priesthood.

He began to question the church and its teachings when his father died of lung cancer at age 56. Huffman was 19 and enrolled at UC Santa Barbara on a full-ride volleyball scholarship. (A lean 6-foot-3, Huffman was a three-time NCAA All-American and is a member of the school’s athletic hall of fame.)

“I think in hindsight ignorant faith kept me from coming to terms with the fact that he was dying, and it made it way more traumatic than it should have been,” Huffman said of his father’s passing. “I didn’t really own up to the reality of what was happening, because I was this person of faith who thought rotten things would never happen to me and my father.”

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Shaken, Huffman spent years in a period of reflection and deep study — of various religions, spirituality, the Bible, which he can cite chapter and verse — before landing in his place of humanism and nonconformity.

After earning a law degree at Boston College, Huffman moved to the Bay Area and served as a senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council, the environmental group. His political career began in 1994 with his election to the Marin Municipal Water District. Huffman served for 12 years, until his election to the state Assembly. He won his congressional seat in 2012.

Huffman’s secularism never came up, he said, until his arrival in Washington, where religiosity, God-fearing and worship of a higher power are taken as articles of faith.

“All of a sudden, religion is all around you and everyone wants to know your religion,” Huffman said. “I knew that I was a nonbeliever. I knew that I was a humanist. But that was a very private thing and I had kind of intended to keep it that way.”

Losing his religion

Two things changed.

First, Huffman’s mother died at age 87. She was fervently religious, Huffman said, and “I didn’t really want to break her heart and tell her how deep my nonbelief actually was.” (In his book, Huffman recounts an awkward scene where he takes the congressional oath of office for the first time on a hastily borrowed Bible, to please his proud mom.)

The second factor was the ascent of Trump, riding a wave of ardent evangelical support.

Huffman was put off by the hypocrisy of such a blasphemous president surrounding himself with extremists using the language and symbols of religious faith to enact what he perceived, and perceives, as a distinctly antidemocratic, un-American agenda.

“I was always uncomfortable with the way I saw religion encroaching into government in Washington,” Huffman said. “My previous concerns were heightened by an order of magnitude because of what he did.”

Ignoring the counsel of family, friends and political advisors who, to a person, warned against it, Huffman revealed his religious disbelief in a series of statements and interviews in November 2017. At the time, the only member of Congress to ever publicly come out as an atheist was Rep. Pete Stark, who announced his sentiments in 2007; though the Fremont Democrat was reelected twice, he was eventually defeated by a Democratic rival who turned his lack of faith against him.

That rival was Eric Swalwell; make of it what you will.

Huffman braced for political blowback. There was none, though he’s gotten death threats and plenty of admonishments he’s bound for Hell.

(Meantime, the congressional ranks of the religiously unaffiliated have grown to include Democratic Reps. Yassamin Ansari of Arizona and Emily Randall of Washington and Republican Rep. Abraham Hamadeh of Arizona.)

In the first election after his announcement, Huffman was returned to Washington with 77% of the vote. He’s won reelection three times since, with never less than 72% support. “It turns out [constituents] don’t much care what my religion is if I’m doing good work,” Huffman said, “and that’s pretty great in my opinion.”

He underscored the sentiment with a hearty bite of his tuna melt.

The book Huffman has coming out next month — with chapters that include “Breaking Faith,” “Christian Privilege” and “Christian Zionism” — is a work that explains his personal evolution and expresses a dire fear the country is headed, if unchecked, toward a system of authoritarian theocracy.

He describes the Christian nationalism that informed the attempted coup on Jan. 6, 2021, and explains the biblical prophecies behind the messianic support among some Trumpian true-believers.

“The book is not so much about humanism,” Huffman said. “It is about the fight to protect our secular democracy, which, I think, is the bedrock of America as we know it.”

The dedication reads, “For everyone who refuses to bow.”

What else you should be reading

The must-read: 14 propositions that could remake California taxes, housing, healthcare and elections
The deep dive: Even without birthright citizenship, Supreme Court co-signs much of Trump’s immigration agenda
The L.A. Times Special: The right and left need to control the radicals in their own parties

Until next time,
mzb
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WASHINGTON — Over the past year and a half, the Trump administration has turned repeatedly to the Supreme Court for clearance on its sweeping immigration enforcement plans. While the administration lost its bid this week to do away with birthright citizenship by executive order, its strategy has, in large part, been a success.

In a White House news release listing 60 actions the administration has taken as part of its America First agenda to restrict immigration, the first four actions were decisions by the Supreme Court.

After the court ruled in June that President Trump can, without judicial review, end temporary legal protections for hundreds of thousands of immigrants, his administration celebrated the ruling as a “major victory for American sovereignty.”

The list of accomplishments also noted that the high court had granted immigration officers greater leeway to remove green card holders who are accused but not convicted of crimes; allowed the administration to limit how many people can apply for asylum; and gave it the green light to continue deporting immigrants to third-party countries where they have no connection.

The decisions raise significant consequences for immigrants who have made their lives in the U.S., and stand to reshape public views over the country’s historic position as a place of refuge. The administration has not only tried to restrict illegal immigration, it has also targeted people residing in the country legally and stepped up efforts to drive them out.

The court’s term that ended last week is the most robust judicial affirmation of executive power over immigration in the court’s history, said Muzaffar Chishti, a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank. Chishti said the rulings signify that future presidents could continue to change immigration policies at their discretion.

“The biggest impact is that we have now fully understood the power of the presidency, especially in immigration matters,” Chishti said. “Where there is any discretion left to the president or the executive, this Supreme Court has widened the limits of that authority.”

One of Trump’s earliest wins since returning to the White House came last September, when the Supreme Court affirmed that immigration agents can stop anyone they suspect of being in the country illegally on the basis of their perceived race and ethnicity, job or the language they speak.

Afterward, federal officials launched enforcement operations in Chicago, North Carolina and Minneapolis, using increasingly aggressive tactics until two U.S. citizens were shot and killed by immigration agents in January and the administration shifted course.

The Supreme Court’s rulings have landed with particular force in South Florida, which is home to the largest share of Venezuelan immigrants in the country.

The end of Temporary Protected Status — a program intended to protect people in the event of a natural disaster — heightened concerns about deportation to a country that is reeling after twin earthquakes from June 24. More than 100 Venezuelans deported from the U.S. hours before the disaster are among those missing.

Some Florida Republicans called on the administration to renew the legal protections for Venezuelans in the U.S.

“Congress specifically included earthquakes in the TPS statute for moments exactly like this,” said Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar (R-Fla.). “I urge the Administration to redesignate TPS for Venezuelans already in the United States because sending them back after this catastrophe is simply not the right thing to do.”

The White House did not respond to a request seeking comment on whether Trump would authorize humanitarian relief for Venezuelan immigrants.

Immigrants from El Salvador are now holding their breath for an upcoming decision on their TPS designation, which is set to expire Sept. 9.

About 1.3 million people from 17 countries were enrolled in the program when Trump took office last year. The administration has already terminated TPS for many of them, and the Supreme Court’s decision last week, which concerned Haitians and Syrians, clears the way for federal officials to continue.

“The implication of this is that at least most of the claims that have been litigated to challenge this administration’s illegal war on TPS are now foreclosed,” said Ahilan Arulanantham, co-director of the Center for Immigration Law and Policy at UCLA, who presented arguments for the Syria case.

The concern among advocates took on greater urgency after The New York Times and other outlets reported on Thursdaythat immigration officials, seeking to reach a goal of 2,000 arrests per day, had detained more than 10,000 people in less than a week.

Arnulfo De La Cruz, who leads a California union representing thousands of home care workers with temporary protected status, said he is alarmed by the Supreme Court’s many immigration rulings.

“We’re getting into really dangerous territory with, in some ways, the Supreme Court almost legislating the priorities of the administration,” said De La Cruz, who is president of SEIU California and SEIU Local 2015. “That’s the responsibility of Congress.”

In a blow to a centerpiece of the administration’s immigration agenda, the divided Supreme Court upheld birthright citizenship — that, with few exceptions, a person born in U.S. soil is citizen.

Stephen Yale-Loehr, a retired Cornell University immigration law professor, called the ruling one setback among Trump’s largely successful restructuring of how the U.S. treats immigrants. He pointed to a tracker led by a Stanford University law professor that lists more than 700 immigration policy actions by the Trump administration so far.

“Despite this seemingly historic loss, the Trump administration is winning its war on immigrants,” Yale-Loehr said.

And now some Republicans, including Trump, are saying Congress should lead the attack on birthright citizenship.

“You can’t have the kinds of immigration programs other countries have when you can just have a baby here, and now that child is an American citizen,” said Stephen Miller, a Trump aide who is behind much of his immigration agenda.

But Chishti, of the Migration Policy Institute, said in reality, “Congress can’t do anything — it was left powerless by the Supreme Court.”

Other conservatives called on the administration to lean on the considerable authority it already has.

Dale Wilcox, executive director of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a hard-line restrictionist group, said the birthright decision “makes it all the more urgent to step up enforcement to the maximum possible extent.”

Democrats, meanwhile, cheered the win while acknowledging that their fight against the administration’s immigration policies continues.

“We cannot rest,” said Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.). “Because this is certainly not the end of Trump’s attacks on our Constitution, our democracy, and the notion of what it means to be American.”

More immigration-related cases are among those in the Supreme Court’s docket starting in October and could offer further expansions of executive power.

One case concerns more than 50,000 petitions filed in federal courts in hopes of obtaining the release of detained immigrants. Those petitions ballooned after the administration began limiting the ability of many immigrants to seek release through bond hearings in immigration court.

The administration is expected to put up a fierce defense.

July 4 (UPI) — On this date in history:

In 1776, the Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence, proclaiming U.S. independence from Britain.

In 1826, in one of history’s notable coincidences, former U.S. Presidents John Adams and Thomas Jefferson both died, 50 years to the day after the Declaration of Independence was adopted.

In 1863, Union troops defeated Confederate forces in a battle at Vicksburg, Miss.

In 1895, the poem “America the Beautiful,” by Wellesley College Professor Katherine Lee Bates, was published. The poem with music by Samuel A. Ward was published as a song in 1910.

In 1910, American boxer Jack Johnson took on former undefeated heavyweight champion James J. Jeffries, beating him in 15 rounds, to stake his claim as the as the greatest heavyweight in the world.

File Photo by Library of Congress/UPI

In 1939, Lou Gehrig gave his “luckiest man on the face of the Earth” speech in announcing his retirement from the New York Yankees. Gehrig had been diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a debilitating motor neuron disease. United Press writer Jack Cuddy wasn’t impressed with the Yankees’ “Lou Gehrig Appreciation Day,” saying doctors made up his ailment to explain his unexpected retirement.

In 1976, Israeli commandos raided the airport at Entebbe, Uganda, rescuing 103 hostages held by Arab militants.

In 1986, more than 250 sailing ships and the United States’ biggest fireworks display honored the Statue of Liberty in its 100th birthday year.

In 1995, the British Parliament reconfirmed John Majors as prime minister.

In 1997, NASA’s Pathfinder reached Mars to become the first U.S. spacecraft to land on the planet in more than two decades. Pathfinder returned more than 16,000 images and some 8.5 million measurements back to Earth before its final transmission on September, 27, 1997.

File Photo courtesy of NASA

In 2006, North Korea test-launched seven ballistic missiles in what it called “routine military exercises,” causing a firestorm of anger among its neighbors and the United States.

In 2010, U.S. Army Gen. David Petraeus took command of the Afghan war, acknowledging the “tough fight” ahead for NATO forces while pledging “We are in this to win.”

In 2013, the Statue of Liberty reopened to the public nine months after it was closed because of damage caused by Hurricane Sandy.

In 2018, Hong Kong’s high court ruled unanimously that same-sex couples are entitled to spousal visas like married heterosexual couples.

In 2022, seven people died and dozens others were injured in a mass shooting during an Independence Day parade in Highland Park, Ill., near Chicago. Far-right activist Robert Crimo III, then 22, was charged with murder for the shooting.

A participant of the March Fourth rally to ban assault weapons holds a sign for Eduardo Uvaldo, a victim of the Highland Park shooting, outside the Senate office buildings at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on July 13, 2022. File Photo by Bonnie Cash/UPI

WASHINGTON  — Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. led a fractured Supreme Court this year that both expanded a president’s power to run the government and dealt major defeats to President Trump.

In Trump’s second year back in the White House, Roberts and the court punctured his claim to have power with no limits.

The justices struck down his worldwide tariffs, ruling these import taxes are a matter for Congress, not the president.

They also threw out his executive order that would end the principle of birthright citizenship. The Constitution wrote this promise into law, Roberts said, and the president may not change it.

The court also ruled in December that the president did not have the power to put National Guard troops on the streets of Chicago.

The three decisions came over fierce dissents from conservative Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. and with Neil M. Gorsuch in two of them.

The three liberal justices dissented angrily when the court ruled the administration may end Temporary Protected Status for Haitians and Syrians.

They did the same when the court ruled the president may replace the top appointees of semi-independent agencies.

But they joined Roberts in a 5-4 ruling that affirmed the independence of the Federal Reserve and blocked Trump’s move to fire Fed Governor Lisa Cook.

Trump has won on most immigration fronts because Roberts and the conservatives believe Congress put the enforcement power in the hands of the administration. They point to the law authorizing temporary protection which says there shall be “no judicial review” of the decision to end the protection.

Roberts is a solid conservative who also tries to keep the court on a middle course. It’s an approach that rarely wins plaudits from the right and almost never from the left.

This year the chief justice prevailed with different coalitions.

This week, the court ruled by a 5-4 vote against the Republican National Committee and upheld state laws that allow for counting late-arriving mail ballots. Justice Amy Coney Barrett joined with Roberts and Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

Barrett also joined the chief justice in the rulings on tariffs and birthright citizenship.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. speaks to the Georgetown Law School graduating class in 2025.

(Manuel Balce Ceneta / Associated Press)

This week, the court also limited the power of police to use cellphone data to look for crime suspects. This too came on a 5-4 vote when Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh joined Roberts and the three liberals.

Harvard law professor Richard Lazarus, who has been a friend of Roberts’ since their time in law school, said the chief justice “is clearly working very hard” to put together majorities.

“It is not easy to formally preside over a court in which five of its members (Justices Thomas, Alito and Gorsuch on the right and Justices Sotomayor and Jackson on the left) deride the kind of efforts at moderation that is the chief’s preferred signature and harshly condemn him when he strays from their own views.”

Washington attorney Roman Martinez, a former clerk for Roberts, said the court is “clearly right of center” but the decision on tariffs was the most important of the year.

“It is a huge deal for the court to say ‘no’ to the president on his major policy initiative,” he said.

Stanford law professor Michael McConnell agreed. “It’s hard to claim the court is in Trump’s pocket when he lost the major cases,” he said.

Trump responded to the tariff defeat by calling the justices in the majority a “disgrace to our nation” and “disloyal to the Constitution.”

They “sicken me,” he said of Justices Barrett and Gorsuch, his two appointees who joined Roberts in the 6-3 majority.

Trump went to the court in April to hear his top attorney defend his executive order on birthright citizenship. He left after an hour of mostly skeptical questions.

On the term’s last day, Roberts issued a clear and eloquent 26-page opinion setting out America’s history of according citizenship to children who were born in this country, without regard to their parents.

This view came from England “and crossed the Atlantic with the colonists — and was adopted with little fanfare after the Revolution,” he wrote. “Nothing is better settled,” Justice Joseph Story wrote in 1830.

But it was unsettled by the fight over slavery.

“In the odious decision of Dred Scott v. Sandford, this Court imposed the Southern States’ beliefs onto the Nation” and decreed Blacks could not become citizens, Roberts wrote.

Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass were among the many who condemned the court’s decision, he said.

“It took more than a decade — and the addition of names such as Antietam, Gettysburg, and Chancellorsville to our national canon — but Douglass’s vision of ‘our common humanity’ would be fulfilled,” he wrote.

The Reconstruction Congress wrote this rule into the 14th Amendment and said “All persons born” here are citizens by birth.

The principle of birthright citizenship had been upheld by the Supreme Court in 1898, the chief justice wrote, and it had gone unchallenged until Trump returned to the White House last year.

But Thomas filed a 91-page dissent arguing that immigrants must be “domiciled” here before their children may become citizens.

Alito filed a separate 39-page opinion branding the Roberts opinion a “serious mistake.”

On that note, the court adjourned for its summer recess.