congress

WASHINGTON: For a third time, the US House has voted to end the war in Iran, approving a war powers resolution that would halt President Donald Trump’s ability to continue military action without congressional approval.

The roll call late Tuesday, 220-204, was similar to earlier efforts this summer, with a few more Republicans joining all Democrats voting to bring an end to the conflict. None of the resolutions have made it to the president’s desk, where Trump would almost certainly veto the measure.

“Remember when Donald Trump said that this war would last just a few weeks?” said Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Mass., who served as a Marine during the Iraq War and pushed the resolution forward.

He said it’s time for Congress to “actually ask tough questions, as the Constitution directs us to do, rather than be subservient to another warmongering administration.”

Republican Rep. Brian Mast of Florida, the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, questioned which military resources Democrats would want to remove from the region where he said Iran remains a threat.

Mast said Trump is against “forever wars, and that is what he is ending” — the decades of hostilities from Iran.

“They are a continuous ongoing threat to the United States,” Mast said. “Enough is enough.”

Last war powers vote before the midterms

The action is likely the last House vote on the Iran war ahead of the midterm elections, where the conflict overseas is playing a substantial role in the political campaigns. The war that Trump launched Feb. 28 has dragged, with on-again, off-again deadly missile strikes being exchanged and causing havoc in the region for nearly seven months.

Lawmakers are heading home at the end of the week to campaign nearly full-time, with less than 50 days to go before the elections that will determine control of Congress as Democrats try to wrest power from Republicans.

Voters are confronting high prices, particularly for gas at the pumps, as the conflict disrupts the flow of oil resources through the vital Strait of Hormuz.

The Congressional Budget Office said Tuesday that the war has cost more than $38 billion, as of Aug. 1, and is projected to be costing between $2 billion and $3 billion monthly, depending on the intensity of the fighting. The budget office projected inflation will be 0.5 percentage points higher than expected heading into 2027 due to the war.

Trump himself had promised not to involve the U.S. in foreign wars when he won a second term in the White House, and his actions against Iran are weighing on the Republican Party that controls the House and Senate. Most Americans say the war in Iran has not been worth fighting, according to an AP-NORC poll in July.

In the previous House actions, four Republicans voted to halt the war in Iran, but that number rose to seven in Tuesday’s war powers vote, including GOP lawmakers from battleground Iowa, Rep. Zachary Nunn and Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks, and retiring Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina.

They joined GOP Reps. Tom Barrett of Michigan, Warren Davidson of Ohio, Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania and Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky voting in favor of the war powers resolution, with all Democrats.

War powers being put to the test

Congress has tried repeatedly to alter the trajectory of the war against Iran, but efforts to limit the Trump administration’s military action remain a longshot so long as the president is able to fend off or veto the measures.

The House first approved a war powers resolution in June, and followed up with another one in July, all seeking to halt U.S. action in Iran. The Senate on its 10th try also approved a war powers resolution to end the conflict, but GOP senators quickly reversed course the next day after Trump berated them during a closed-door lunch.

While the Constitution gives Congress the authority to declare war, it also gives the president authority as the commander in chief to engage in some military actions. The War Powers Act, created in the aftermath of the Vietnam conflict, sought to put a more specific time limit on the president’s power, requiring congressional approval for sustained military actions after 60 or 90 days.

House Speaker Mike Johnson acknowledged at a press conference Tuesday the need to bring gas prices down.

But the Republican speaker said he believes the Iran conflict is entering a “new phase” as allies step up to help stabilize the region. When that happens, he said, “you’re going to see, as the president said, anytime gas prices will go down again, the cost of groceries will as well.”

Johnson said Trump expects the shift after the election, and the speaker added, “I’d love it to happen today.”

WASHINGTON — Philippine President Corazon Aquino, given a rousing reception, told a joint meeting of Congress today that if she fails to negotiate peace with communist guerrillas threatening her government she will not flinch from “taking up the sword of war.”

“I will not stand by and allow an insurgent leadership to spurn our offer of peace and kill our young soldiers and threaten our new freedom,” Aquino said.

Aquino was greeted in the House chamber by enthusiastic applause and cheers from the members of Congress, many of whom sported yellow flowers in their lapels. Aquino wore her trademark yellow suit, like the ones she wore so often during her campaign for the presidency earlier this year.

Many visitors in the gallery, and several members as well, chanted “Cory, Cory, Cory” for half a minute as she entered the chamber.

Several members later said her speech had been so well received that it could mean more U.S. aid for her nation. Speaker Thomas P. (Tip) O’Neill said it was the best he had ever heard on Capitol Hill.

‘Hit a Home Run’

Senate Republican leader Bob Dole said he told Aquino she had “hit a home run” with Congress, and said she replied: “I hope the bases were loaded.” Impressed senators and House members called her speech “brilliant,” “eloquent,” “magnificent” and “moving.”

She opened her speech with a tribute to her husband, Benigno S. Aquino Jr., a human rights activist whose murder in Manila in 1983 after years of exile in the United States swelled the widespread disenchantment with the government of Ferdinand E. Marcos and eventually led to his downfall.

Her husband’s death “was my country’s resurrection in the courage and faith by which alone they could be free again,” she said. “And so began the revolution that has brought me to democracy’s most famous home, the United States.”

Aquino’s speech underscored her policy of negotiating with the communist New People’s Army guerrilla movement and, if the talks fail, waging a vigorous war against the insurgents.

“I must explore the path of peace to the utmost, for at its end, whatever disappointment I meet there, is the moral basis for laying down the olive branch of peace and taking up the sword of war,” she said.

“Still, should it come to that, I will not waver from the course laid down by your great liberator,” a reference to Abraham Lincoln and his determination to fight the Civil War.

‘Whatever It Takes’

“Like Lincoln, I understand that force may be necessary before mercy,” she said. “Like Lincoln, I don’t relish it, yet I will do whatever it takes to defend the integrity and freedom of my country.”

She said the aim of the negotiations is “to bring the insurgents down from the hills and, by economic progress and justice, show them that for which the best intentioned among them fight.” Persuading the guerrillas to stop fighting will be accomplished by “political initiatives and local reintegration programs.”

She said her predecessor, Marcos, set aside democratic rights to wage a war against “a communist insurgency that numbered less than 500.

“Unhampered by respect for human rights, he went at it with hammer and tongs. By the time he fled, that insurgency had grown to more than 16,000.

“I think there is a lesson here to be learned about trying to stifle a thing with the means by which it grows.”

President Donald Trump pledged Wednesday to send every American adult $5,000 if Republicans retain control of the House and Senate in the midterm elections, an extraordinary gambit to reverse his party’s sagging fortunes in November.

The dubious promise would likely cost more than $1 trillion and require congressional approval, and would further exacerbate the country’s nearly $1.8 trillion annual budget deficit and concerns about inflation.

“If the Republicans win, you win with us and you get $5,000,” Trump said during the GOP’s midterm convention in Dallas. “It will be called the Trump Dividend.”

He likened the payments to a corporation’s distributions to shareholders, citing “our tremendous strength and success economically.”

Within an hour, Vice President JD Vance appeared to try to walk back Trump’s proposal — at least in part — by suggesting the dividend payments would not go to the wealthy. Vance suggested it could be paid for by U.S. tariff revenues, though the suggested payment dwarfs what the U.S. has taken in through the protectionist measures.

The White House did not respond to a message seeking details.

Congress would need to approve or otherwise acquiesce to the payment. The sum would far exceed U.S. tariff revenues even before the Supreme Court tossed much of the president’s tariff program last year.

The national debt last month topped $40 trillion for the first time.

Trump has frequently lamented that, during the modern era, the president’s party almost always loses seats in Congress during the midterms, and he has looked for unorthodox ways to defy the trend, including this week’s convention.

“We’re going to change that,” Trump said. “There’s no reason for it.”

Marc Goldwein, the senior policy director at the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a think tank in Washington, said Trump has no authority send money to Americans without approval from Congress.

Goldwein added that dividends are something that companies pay when there’s a surplus, but the U.S. is running $2 trillion annual deficits and has $40 trillion in debt.

“The idea that we’ve had fiscal success is backwards and bordering on laughable,” he said. “We don’t have surpluses to give away.”

The move was reminiscent of billionaire Elon Musk’s efforts to buy votes in last year’s Wisconsin state Supreme Court race, where he handed out million-dollar checks to voters to try to boost a candidate who ultimately lost.

Trump has discussed the possibility before but has never tied it to his party’s electoral fortunes. Earlier this year, he proposed a $2,000 dividend and said he didn’t think he needed approval from Congress.

Last year, Trump gave members of the military a $1,776 check that he called a “warrior dividend.”

“I will get a bill ready so that we can get the Trump Dividend passed immediately after the November 3rd election,” Republican Sen. Bernie Moreno of Ohio wrote on X late Wednesday. “Because Republicans (and America) will win!”

A $5,000 check would give each American more money than they received in direct government payments from COVID-19 relief measures during Trump’s first term.

Trump’s proposal would be legal because the payment would go to everyone regardless of how they voted, or whether they voted at all, said New Mexico-based attorney John Day.

“This is a campaign promise,” Day said. “It’s not a payment to individuals to try to get them to vote in a particular way.”

Republicans are on defense as they look to defend their narrow House majority against strong headwinds. Trump is unpopular, and Americans overwhelmingly oppose the war in Iran. Even the Senate, which Republicans once were well-positioned to keep, is up for grabs.

Cooper writes for the Associated Press. Associated Press writers Lisa Mascaro and River Zhang contributed.

WASHINGTON — A divided Supreme Court has cleared the way for President Trump to finish building his new White House ballroom with mostly private money and without approval from Congress.

By a 5-4 vote. the justices granted an emergency appeal from Trump and his lawyers on Monday and set aside a judge’s order that would stop the construction.

But Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. dissented, along with the court’s three liberals.

The outcome turned on standing.

The conservative majoritysaid the National Trust for Historic Preservation and its members were not personally injured by the White House ballroom project and therefore, did not have to standing to sue Trump or the National Park Service.

They also said Trump and his appointees had stressed the new ballroom was needed for national security and said the lower courts judges should not have interfered.

The decision in effect gives a green light to Trump’s go-it-alone approach which is in keeping with his history as a hotel builder. He believed the White House needed a grand ballroom that could seat hundreds of dignitaries. And he ordered the East Wing torn down in October to make room of his larger ballroom.

He also said most of the project would be paid for by $400 million in private donations.

But the Constitution gave Congress the power to manage property belonging to the United States. A 1912 law says new buildings “shall not erected…on public grounds within the District of Columbia without express authority of Congress.”

Trump chose to ignore the law and did not seek approval from Congress which is led by Republicans.

The National Trust for Historic Preservation sued in December, contending Trump was a “temporary tenant, not the owner” of the White House.

U.S. District Judge Richard Leon ruled Trump had no authority to build a new ballroom on the White House grounds without the approval of Congress, and he ordered a halt to the above-ground construction.

The D.C. Circuit Court affirmed his decision by a 2-1 vote.
“Congress has not ceded unfettered authority to the Executive Branch to dramatically redesign, reshape, and reconstruct the White House—the People’s House—to fit a particular President’s desires,” wrote Judge Patricia Millett for the appeals court.

Trump’s lawyers sent a fast-track appeal to the Supreme Court on Aug. 14.

The court’s majority allowed Trump to fend off the legal challenge by concluding the historic preservationists could not show they were harmed by a huge new ballroom that may dwarf the historic Executive Mansion.

WASHINGTON — In firing up a trade war with Canada, President Trump turned to a 96-year-old statute so obscure that many trade lawyers didn’t even know it was still on the books.

Trump invoked Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930 on Aug. 24 to slap a 50% tax on $20 billion worth of Canadian imports. The move prompted dollar-for-dollar retaliation from Ottawa and strained already-tense relations between the neighbors and longtime allies.

The president’s Section 338 tariff authority has never been used, let alone tested in court. “This law is literally a blank canvas because it’s never been litigated,’’ said Ryan Majerus, a partner at law firm King & Spalding and a former U.S. trade official.

So it’s unclear whether Trump’s latest Canada tariffs could survive a legal challenge, and some lawyers argue that the Depression-era law has been rendered obsolete by more recent trade laws.

Trump raises Section 338 from the dead

To sanction Canada allegedly for discriminating against U.S. dairy, auto and alcoholic beverage exports this summer, the Trump administration reached back to the Great Depression.

The 1930 tariff legislation is known as the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act after its congressional sponsors. With the U.S. and world economies in collapse, Congress raised tariffs on hundreds of imports in an attempt to protect American farmers and manufacturers.

The tariffs are notorious among economists and historians for shutting down world commerce and making the Great Depression worse. (Trump, who proudly calls himself “Tariff Man,” has a different view, arguing that the Smoot-Hawley levies simply came too late to rescue the American economy.)

In addition to raising tariffs themselves, lawmakers in 1930 gave the president new power to impose them himself: Section 338 authorizes presidential tariffs of up to 50% on imports from countries that have discriminated against U.S. businesses.

Before Trump, no president had actually used the statute.

“Until Trump’s second term, few trade lawyers were aware that Section 338 remained on the books or understood what it did,” legal scholars Peter Harrell and Jennifer Hillman of Georgetown University wrote this month in the libertarian magazine Reason.

Harrell and Hillman cite State Department records to show that the U.S. considered using Section 338 in trade disputes — against Spain in 1932 and against newly communist China in 1949 — but never did. After the Depression, U.S. policy focused more on using negotiations — rather than sanctions — to open foreign markets.

So Section 338 sat moldering in the law books.

Other laws take hold

As the years went by, the United States passed new trade laws. Some of them ceded to the president tariff power, which the Constitution originally granted to Congress. But the new laws also limited the president’s authority to certain circumstances — including dealing with national security threats and foreign currency crises — and required the government to carry out investigations and meet other procedural requirements beforehand.

“There is a very strong argument that [Section 338] was superseded,” said Sara Albrecht, chief executive of the Liberty Justice Center, a libertarian advocacy group that represented businesses that successfully challenged the earlier Trump tariffs with the Supreme Court.

If Congress wanted the president to retain Section 338 power, Albrecht asks, why did lawmakers pass the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, which allowed for national security tariffs? And the Trade Act of 1974, which gives the president power to go after other countries’ unfair trade practices?

Battling over Canada’s dairy market

Legal experts see other weaknesses in the Section 338 tariffs.

Harrell and Hillman, for instance, write in Reason that Section 338 authorizes only tariffs that “offset” the harm that a foreign country’s trade practices do to American companies. But in targeting Canada, they note, the Trump administration made no attempt to calculate the dollar amount of damage arising from discrimination against U.S. farmers, automakers and marketers of alcoholic beverages. And the U.S. went after Canadian imports unconnected to those trouble spots, including hockey sticks and cement.

Harrell and Hillman also say that Canada’s protection of its dairy market does not single out U.S. farmers for discrimination; the rules apply to many other Canadian trading partners as well.

Moreover, the United States agreed to the Canadian system — in which Canada imposes stiff tariffs on dairy imports that exceed a quota — in a North America trade pact Trump himself negotiated with Canada and Mexico in his first term. Harrell and Hillman write that it is “incongruous, to say the least, for the United States to denounce as discriminatory the very terms it agreed to.”

But John Veroneau, former general counsel for the U.S. Trade Representative, said the Section 338 tariffs are straightforward: They are justified when another country discriminates against U.S. imports by taxing them more than it taxes imports from other countries.

And in a “perverse irony,” Veroneau said, Canada did just that when it responded to tariffs Trump imposed on Canadian products last year with its own retaliatory tariffs on U.S. imports. “Courts will rightly feel obliged in the face of any challenge [to decide]: Are the statutory requirements met or are they not met, however ludicrous the broader context might be,” said Veroneau, adjunct professor at the University of Maine School of Law.

Plaintiffs are so far hard to find

Trump’s other tools to impose his protectionist agenda already have floundered in court. The Supreme Court in February threw out his boldest gambit: invoking a 1977 national security law to hit almost every country on Earth last year with double-digit tariffs.

When Trump tried to replace the revenue lost to the Supreme Court defeat with a new set of tariffs, a specialized trade court in New York rejected those too — though the government was allowed to continue collecting the import taxes while the case works its way through the court system.

No one has filed a lawsuit challenging the Section 338 tariffs. The Liberty Justice Center has been looking for businesses willing to sue the government over the levies.

“I haven’t had a lot of response from plaintiffs,” Albrecht said. “Anytime you want to sue the government, it’s a hard proposition.” The Section 338 tariffs on Canada are also far smaller — just 5% of Canadian imports — than Trump’s 2025 worldwide tariffs, meaning that fewer companies have to pay them and can claim to have been injured by them.

There’s also a chance, Albrecht said, that the two countries will resume the talks they broke off Aug. 21 and reach a compromise to end a standoff neither country wants. “I’m hopeful that somebody blinks, that they come to some agreement and it all goes away,” she said.

Where, Robert Garcia must consider, does one begin?

Garcia is a two-term Democratic congressman from Long Beach. He’s the ranking member of the House Oversight Committee, which makes him the top Democrat on the panel charged with patrolling and policing operations of the federal government — a role congressional Republicans have conspicuously abdicated. If, as seems likely, his party wins control of the House in November, Garcia is poised to take over as chairman.

After two years of reckless abandon, the most obvious target for some badly needed congressional oversight is the crooked occupant of the White House. Like a shoreline strewn with seashells or a meadow bursting with mushrooms, President Trump’s brazen corruption and naked self-dealing offer a field that is ripe for the plucking.

So, given the gavel, where to start?

“First we have to ensure that people understand that this president and the administration, what they’re doing, is unprecedented and the most corrupt administration we’ve ever seen,” Garcia said.

To wit: In just his first year back in the Oval Office, Trump reported earning at least $2.2 billion, which is 5,500 times the president’s $400,000 annual salary. (No wonder he gives away his paycheck.) But it’s not just Trump who’s raking it in hand over fist.

“You have Jared Kushner getting billions from the Saudis and other foreign governments,” Garcia said. “You have [Trump’s sons] doing real estate deals across the country, being on boards that are getting contracts from the federal government. You have the selling of pardons. I mean, the list goes on…. It is just like an endless amount of corruption.”

Before he digs in, however, Garcia has to win reelection in November.

A vote, then a reckoning?

His reconfigured congressional district, which straddles Los Angeles and Orange counties, is somewhat less friendly than it used to be. As part of a redrawing under Proposition 50, the 2025 measure California voters passed to boost Democratic membership in the House, the lines were extended south, to take in the Trump-friendly territory of Huntington Beach and Newport Beach. (The remap gave away a chunk of Garcia’s Democratic voters to bolster other districts.)

Still, the odds are strongly in his favor — especially in a midterm election serving as a referendum on the deeply unpopular incumbent.

Though his district leans left even after modification, Garcia said his pursuit of Trump isn’t some ideological bender. The president’s malfeasance is something constituents raise often, he said. “It’s corruption and it is affordability,” Garcia said this week from his district office in Long Beach. “Those are the two issues I hear constantly about. It’s just nonstop.”

Apart from Trump and his family, Garcia has a long list of administration officials he’d like to hold to account, and an even longer list of questions he’d like answered.

Why, for instance, are “JD Vance and Susie Wiles and Kash Patel having secret meetings in the Situation Room about the Epstein files?” Garcia asked, name-checking, respectively, the vice president, White House chief of staff and FBI director. “Why is [White House Deputy Chief of Staff] Stephen Miller out there essentially creating this huge … loss-of-due-process crisis in this country as it relates to what he’s doing with” Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Department of Homeland Security?

Also, Garcia said, he wonders what businesses have gotten in return for their generous giving to this most avaricious of administrations.

“If you are cutting secret deals with the Trumps, if you are helping to set up these these crypto schemes, if you are paying for this ballroom that no one knows about and you are gaining some sort of favor from the presidency,” he said, “we need to understand exactly what’s going on.”

Of course, any attempt to investigate and prosecute wrongdoing is sure to run into stonewalling from an obstructionist White House. The “Justice” Department, which has been thoroughly tainted and co-opted by Trump, won’t be any help either.

For that reason, Garcia said, “not only does there have to be efforts made by the Congress and the House … we also have to partner with our state partners and attorneys general and governors and outside organizations…. I think the state court process is going to also be really important for us.”

Impeachment in abeyance

Impeachment, which has a visceral appeal to certain of those deeply aggrieved by this lawless president, is not a first resort, Garcia said. Nor, he suggested, is it necessarily the second or third resort.

“Trump commits an impeachable offense every week,” Garcia said, exaggerating somewhat. But, as he noted, Trump was impeached twice in his first term and still won reelection in 2024. (Throw in a conviction on 34 felony counts and you can see the futility of trying to shame Trump into submission.)

“I don’t think you ever take anything off the table, and that includes impeachment,” Garcia said. “But that’s not our focus on Day One…. It’s time for [Democrats] to work on actually passing a forward-looking agenda and making sure that we are taking on this family and these dealings that are clearly the most threatening we’ve ever seen. To me, that has to be the immediate priority in front of us.”

Garcia and fellow Democrats are mindful of what’s driving unhappy voters who face a vexing mix of inflation and weak economic growth. Affordability is, for good reason, the central issue this election season.

But accountability matters, too. Indeed, in Trump’s debauched Washington, it’s long overdue.

That’s something else voters should consider in November.

What else you should be reading

The must-read: Supreme Court for now allows Trump to plan new mail ballot rules. California to sue again
The deep dive: Will Trump interfere in the midterms? Democrats and their allies are preparing
The L.A. Times Special: Two good ideas from Republicans dead on arrival in Democratic Legislature

Until next time,
mzb
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ST. CLOUD, Fla. — Florida chef Elijah Button was chopping onions in June when his knife slipped and sliced his middle finger to the bone.

It was his worst kitchen accident to date. But having given up his Affordable Care Act health insurance plan in January because of a $100 monthly premium hike he couldn’t afford, the 21-year-old in St. Cloud didn’t have the money for emergency care.

“Going to the hospital for it wasn’t even an option,” he said, gesturing toward his finger before preparing a pot roast for his aunt and uncle in their suburban home. “My first thought was, ‘how am I going to fix this?’”

After Republicans in Congress let enhanced federal subsidies for Affordable Care Act health plans expire in January, millions of Americans including Button had to decide whether to keep insurance that often doubled or tripled in cost — or risk going without it.

Months later, with no action from lawmakers to replace the lost funds, they’re facing the consequences. Some are dealing with strained budgets and exorbitant medical bills, while others avoid the doctor in fear of the cost.

Florida, whose large population of gig workers, entrepreneurs and small business owners relies heavily on the federal health insurance marketplace, has become one of the nation’s most visible epicenters of that impact.

Figures first reported by The Associated Press showed that about 440,000 Floridians dropped their Affordable Care Act plans this year — more than in any other state. Thousands more who kept coverage are struggling to get by, as prices of necessities like groceries and gasoline remain steep, and health insurers project another year of double-digit premium hikes.

While Florida had the most affected residents, its struggles are reflective of broader nationwide concerns over rising healthcare costs and a lack of meaningful policy to address them.

In the deep-red state where congressional districts were recently redrawn to strongly favor Republicans, the cost of healthcare is a major campaign issue. Republican midterm candidates have been promoting fraud crackdowns to protect federal health programs, while Democrats have been urging voters to help Congress change hands so they can restore subsidies.

Button, who is estranged from his parents, asked his uncle for help with his bloodied finger. With a butterfly bandage, splint and daily cleanings and dressings, it healed. But the scar still gnaws at Button as a symbol of what else could go wrong.

“It just feels like I’m living in a house of cards,” he said.

Florida’s population and politics make it ground zero for ACA fallout

Last fall, debate over the expiring subsidies consumed Congress, resulting in a record 43-day government shutdown as Democrats insisted on extending the COVID-era assistance and most Republicans refused.

Fast forward almost a year and lawmakers rarely reference the topic anymore. The administration says it is addressing affordability with fraud-busting efforts and deals with drug companies, but Congress hasn’t passed any significant legislation to lower health costs.

In part due to its large number of construction, hospitality and small business workers — and also because its Republican-led legislature never expanded the Medicaid safety-net health program — Florida has the largest Affordable Care Act enrollment in the country. At just over 3.8 million enrollees, it represents about a fifth of the nation’s total enrolled population.

Of the roughly 443,000 Floridians who left the marketplace, most are likely going without insurance, according to Cynthia Cox, a vice president at the healthcare research nonprofit KFF. She said that’s because it is typically a “place of last resort” to get coverage.

The data doesn’t tell the stories of those who kept insurance. Tracy Rand, a licensed mental health counselor in Leesburg, Florida, is one of them.

Ever since getting her ovaries removed last year due to benign but painful tumors, she has had severe menopause symptoms that require medication, including an overactive bladder and hot flashes that cause piercing headaches.

She uses clear plastic containers to organize the more than 30 medicines and supplements she takes daily, their bottles crammed into a living-room drawer and a tray on her kitchen counter.

The 51-year-old’s Affordable Care Act plan was going to surge in price this year from $55 a month to $1,100 a month, so she downgraded. Her new plan, with higher deductibles and copays, costs $160 a month.

To make that work in her budget, Rand quit a doctoral program she was working toward, started buying groceries at cheaper stores, gave up once-monthly dinners out with her husband and stopped meeting friends regularly at a paint-your-own pottery studio.

It’s been a difficult adjustment, but a necessary one for her health.

Rand said the prospect of insurers raising rates again fills her with dread.

“I don’t know what else we can get rid of,” she said, covering her face with her hands. “I don’t know if we’re going to have to file bankruptcy.″

Clinics for the uninsured are a saving grace — but they can’t take everyone

In Orlando’s leafy, brick-paved neighborhood of Colonialtown South, Tarsha Watson found her lifeline. A clinic there called Grace Medical Home provides low-income, uninsured Floridians with comprehensive care for a $5 per-visit fee.

Watson, 54, has a master’s degree in business administration, but she hasn’t been able to find work since losing her job two years ago. That means she doesn’t have health insurance. When she explored Affordable Care Act coverage, she was quoted $600 per month, far out of her reach.

At Grace, Watson learned her blood sugar is high and that she needed to lose weight. Now, she walks laps around her backyard pool and does Tai Chi YouTube tutorials to focus on fitness. She said she wishes everyone could have her experience.

“It’s very hard out here,” she said. “It’s not enough.”

At the clinic, patients cycle in and out of a wide hallway lined with appointment rooms as doctors scan supply shelves for complimentary over-the-counter medications. The expansive building has separate areas for dental, mental health, vision and pediatric care.

CEO Stephanie Garris said it’s one of 110 free or charitable clinics in Florida, but that’s not enough to handle demand. To treat more people in response to the Affordable Care Act changes, it recently started hosting a mobile acute care clinic for walk-in patients.

Garris said Grace Medical Home treated about 1,350 people last year. Every year, they take about 350 new patients.

“Would I love to double that, triple that? Of course,” Garris said. “I just think in the reality, with the huge number of uninsured that we have, it’s just not possible.”

Health costs become an issue in midterm campaigns

For U.S. Rep. Darren Soto, a Democrat defending his seat in a sprawling — and now much redder — redrawn district south of Orlando, health costs are a campaign focal point.

He said his district, which is near various theme parks, had the second-largest Affordable Care Act enrollment in the nation, in part because many small tourism businesses can’t offer employees health insurance.

“I just hear it everywhere I go,” he said. His Republican opponent, Navy veteran and former Trump administration official Dan Green, did not answer emailed questions about the subsidies but has emphasized affordability of groceries and property insurance as campaign priorities.

Soto voted with Democrats and some Republicans — including a few from Florida — to save the subsidies last year. The Republican majority declined and suggested other ideas, including funding Americans’ health savings accounts. No law along those lines has passed yet.

Button, a Democrat in Soto’s district, said he is open to different reforms for health costs, but said politicians aren’t acting fast enough.

“They keep trying to make excuse after excuse,” he said. “I don’t have six months to a year to wait for you guys to pass this through the hoops that you need to.”

Swenson and Martin write for the Associated Press.

OMAHA, Neb. — “Do they still like Trump in Nebraska? I think so,” the president said during a recent event in Washington.

Given that the state easily backed Republican Donald Trump three times and hasn’t supported a Democrat for the White House since Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964, the answer may seem obvious.

But in Nebraska’s largest city, it’s an open question and could decide one of the country’s most-watched congressional races. Retiring Rep. Don Bacon ’s open seat pits fellow Republican and Omaha City Councilmember Brinker Harding against Democratic activist Denise Powell.

The district encompasses an increasingly Democratic-leaning Omaha metro area of 1 million-plus and its more conservative suburbs — famous for steaks and the Reuben sandwich’s birthplace, though New York disputes that.

It’s one of just eight districts nationwide that elected Republicans in House races while supporting Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris over Trump two years ago.

Harding and Powell have been making the rounds at parades and festivals where meat raffles offer oversized sausages as prizes. However, those on-the-ground appeals could be drowned out by Trump who, like most things in politics, has moved to shape November’s midterm elections in his own image.

The president is organizing a Republican midterm convention in Dallas next month that will serve as much a two-day rally for him as a boon to party candidates nationwide. Trump is also frequently visiting tightly contested districts, despite his low approval ratings and the unpopular war in Iran.

While Trump centers himself, Democrats are happy to oblige.

When Powell knocks on doors to talk to voters, she asks, “What’s keeping you up at night?” On a sweaty Saturday afternoon, John Rosseter responded without hesitation. “Well, Trump.”

“I want to see the history books written years from now,” said Rosseter, 67, who owns a carpentry business. “They won’t be pretty.”

The ‘Blue Dot’ hasn’t helped Democratic House candidates

Nebraska splits its presidential electoral votes, and the 2nd Congressional District’s delegate has gone to Democrats three out of five times since 2008, making it a “ blue dot ” in an otherwise Republican red state. But a Democrat has won the House seat just once since 1994.

Harding plays up Trump’s primary endorsement, and House Speaker Mike Johnson and Majority Leader Steve Scalise campaigned for him. Harding said he has “the full confidence of, not only the White House, but leadership in the Congress.”

He has also tried to appeal to swing voters and says he knows the district better than does Powell, co-founder of Women Who Run Nebraska, which supports female candidates.

Two possible Democratic 2028 presidential candidates — ex-Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and Rahm Emanuel, an ex-Chicago mayor who was President Barack Obama’s first White House chief of staff — have campaigned with Powell.

She talks about how Medicare cuts have increased anxiety about affordability. Powell also points to Trump and his family’s business dealings as an example of “the choices that they have made while people on the ground are struggling” and she says that resonates with Republicans.

“Even the ones who aren’t necessarily anti-Trump,” Powell said, “understand the need for checks and balances.”

Some Democrats want a ‘Blue Dot Wave’

Jason Brown and his wife, Ruth Huebner-Brown, caused a sensation in 2024 by spray painting about 50 reused lawn signs with blue dots and distributing them around Omaha’s Dundee neighborhood. The couple has since expanded to professionally produce signs promoting a “Blue Dot Wave.”

Brown said the Republican-controlled Congress has capitulated on “every Trump nominee, every Trump policy, all the way down to putting gilding gold on statues.”

Supporters of Harding have countered with red “Brinker Dot” signs.

“We need to make sure that we keep this country on the track to being even better,” Harding said.

Jack Hosking, the 90-year-old retired former head of a title insurance company, organizes a weekly coffee to discuss political and community issues. He estimated that about 70% of attendees are Trump voters and “maybe even more so lately, because of the crap that the New York mayor started,” referring to Zohran Mamdani’s efforts at pushing the Democratic Party to the left.

Both Powell and Harding have addressed Hosking’s group, though, and he predicted that as much as half will support the Democrat.

“She spoke well enough that, my sense is, a lot of them will cross over,” Hosking said, noting that when it came to campaigning, “Brinker’s not doing much.”

The president seen as a base motivator

The Republican National Committee views Trump as a national asset, betting he can prevent complacency in a year without a presidential race, when enthusiasm for the party in power typically wanes.

The committee rebranded its “Young Guns” program for key candidates to “MAGA Majority” in deference to Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement, and many congressional candidates will be at the Dallas convention with Trump.

Others aren’t waiting that long.

Republican Reps. Mike Lawler of New York and Tom Barrett of Michigan, whom Democrats are aiming to unseat, both appeared with Trump during his rallies in their districts. When the president visited Macungie, Pennsylvania, in June, he joined Republican Rep. Ryan Mackenzie, saying, “I’m here for him.”

Trump also traveled to the Wisconsin district of Republican Rep. Derreck Van Orden, as have Cabinet members.

Rep. Juan Ciscomani, facing a reelection fight, appeared with Trump during an April event in Arizona. Two Iowa Republicans in what could be toss-up reelection contests, Reps Zach Nunn and Mariannette Miller-Meeks, both were by Trump’s side when he kicked off his midterm campaign outside Des Moines.

Bacon sometimes defied the White House in his final term. He criticized Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and tried to curb Trump’s ability to impose tariffs and was the only House Republican who opposed renaming the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America.

Mary Jane Truemper, who heads the Nebraska Republican Party, said Powell and the state’s Democrats have moved too far to the left. She called Harding “a steady force” and said the nominee is not as fond of picking high-profile fights the way Bacon sometimes was.

“I think he speaks to the moderate Democrats as well as the Republicans,” said Truemper, who managed Bacon’s reelection campaign in 2018 and also worked for an unsuccessful primary challenger to him.

Even Powell said, “Don Bacon was a good representative of this district, and I think that there are a lot of people drawn to a pragmatic style of leadership in a state like ours.” But that may not be enough this year.

“People are worse off than they were before,” Powell said.

A local race may expose a wider party divide among neighbors

In the Elmwood Park neighborhood, Andy Maxwell, a 58-year-old pediatrician, said he likes to find the middle ground in politics and his community. But he recalled that, after putting up a Biden sign in his yard in 2020, his neighbors erected a Trump one.

“We don’t like all the turmoil part of it,” Maxwell said of politics nationally.

Nearby, 80-year-old Jerard Pearson called Democrats “feckless,” but said of Trump’s base supporters, “I’ve always been curious about this one-third level of crazy out there, a third of the population.” He is also no fan of a neighbor’s large “Harding for Congress” sign.

Truemper said Harding appreciates Trump’s endorsement but Nebraskans like to be wooed “person-to-person, rather than a national entity coming in.”

“Is that going to be the deciding factor?” she asked of Trump. “I don’t know.”

Weissert writes for the Associated Press.

Reporting from Washington — Jared Kushner may finally get a win.

President Trump’s son-in-law has been a drag on the administration for his friendship with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman since the Oct. 2 killing of a U.S.-based dissident Saudi journalist. His family business continues to raise questions of conflicts of interest, he repeatedly has amended financial disclosure reports to remedy omissions, and he endured an embarrassing yearlong delay in obtaining a security clearance. Meanwhile, his chief assignment, a Mideast peace plan, is as elusive as ever.

Lately, however, Kushner has been instrumental in helping his father-in-law secure a rare bipartisan victory: a long-sought overhaul of the criminal justice system.

Both Republicans and Democrats who’ve worked on the bill in Congress credit Kushner as a key architect. He helped convince the two most powerful Republicans in Washington — his father-in-law and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, both of whom embrace the traditionally Republican tough-on-crime stance — to make the criminal justice system less punitive.

The bill cleared a procedural hurdle in the Senate on Monday evening, 82 to 12, a vote margin that belies the arduous effort to overcome initial opposition from conservatives. Final Senate passage is expected later this week and the legislation is expected to easily get through the House and to the White House for Trump’s signature.

Called the First Step Act, the legislation would undo some of the sentencing crackdowns of the 1990s and create programs to reduce prisoner recidivism.

It would allow low- and minimum-risk prisoners to earn time credits for early release to either reentry centers or home confinement; reduce some mandatory minimum sentences, including those imposed by so-called three-strikes laws that automatically result in life imprisonment; and allow reviews of sentences that reflect significant disparities between harsh punishments for crack cocaine use, which disproportionately involve minorities, and lesser penalties for powder cocaine.

Kushner, driven by the experience of his father’s 14-month prison sentence for tax evasion and other crimes, has made prison and sentencing changes a priority since the beginning of the Trump administration. But unlike loftier goals Kushner has embraced, such as peace between Israel and Palestinians, criminal justice reform is likely to be signed by the president.

Kushner helped work on policy details and knew where the political fault lines would be, according to lawmakers. He was on the phone repeatedly with other advocates to discuss strategy and next steps. He personally lobbied senators, including McConnell, who openly was not eager to make time for a Senate vote. And he served as a bridge to conservative media, which could have blown up the effort with even a whiff of opposition.

“There would be some very outspoken right-wing [opponent] and [Kushner] would tell me, ‘I called him this morning. I straightened him out and now he’s going to be OK,’” said Democratic supporter Sen. Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, declining to name the commentator. “I’m thinking, ‘Who would have dreamed that a bill I’m cosponsoring would be OK with this person?’”

Advocates of the criminal justice overhaul tried to pass a similar bill at the end of the Obama administration, only to be stymied by congressional Republicans. They had little hope of getting it through during the Trump administration given the president’s campaign rhetoric on crime, including a call to execute drug dealers, and because of the fierce opposition of his first attorney general, Jeff Sessions.

“This is a president that ran on American ‘carnage,’” said Jessica Jackson, a Mill Valley, Calif., City Council member who started the advocacy group #cut50 with liberal CNN host and commentator Van Jones. “I thought everything was over.”

“I’m a Democrat,” Jackson said, but “Jared is politically brilliant and he’s relentless and he’s also extremely loyal. If he tells you he’s going to do something, he does it.”

Kushner started early. He made his support for criminal justice changes known to the leaders of the bipartisan congressional effort — including Durbin, the Senate’s second-ranking Democrat, and Republican Sen. Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee — within weeks of Trump’s inauguration.

Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), another architect of the plan, knew Kushner was taking the issue seriously when Kushner started dropping “the very precise nomenclature thrown around by criminal justice reform geeks” — for example, citing the relevant U.S. criminal code lines by their numbers.

While Kushner’s initial goal was prison reform, which is an easier sell with conservatives, it quickly became clear that had to be paired with sentencing reform to get the backing of Grassley and Durbin.

Perhaps the biggest obstacle was McConnell’s reluctance to bring up a bill that would unify Democrats and divide Republicans, handing the opposition a potential political cudgel in the 2020 campaign. He told a group of Republican advocates in September that he would bring the bill to the Senate floor only if it was endorsed by Trump and they secured 65 votes — five more than the minimum number needed to overcome procedural roadblocks.

Given the goal, Kushner relentlessly lobbied reluctant Republican senators to get on board, according to sources familiar with the discussions.

He called “everybody — and often,” said Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, the No. 2 Senate Republican, whose late endorsement was part of a groundswell that made clear that enough Republicans would support the legislation. “He was dogged.”

On numerous occasions he lobbied McConnell directly, even trying to figure out the Republican leader’s dinner companions so that he could lobby them before their meal.

Advocates of the First Step Act also rallied high-profile celebrity supporters, such as Kim Kardashian West, which demonstrated to the media-obsessed Trump the positive publicity he could get. Kushner worked with Jones, and eventually got support from celebrities including Alyssa Milano and former Fox News host Eric Bolling.

“Jared Kushner absolutely was one of the main conduits,” Bolling said.

The dam broke this month when Trump tweeted “go for it, Mitch” and several noteworthy conservatives backed the bill, including Sens. Cornyn, Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Ted Cruz of Texas.

Lee, the Republican senator allied with Kushner, said: “One of the things I’ve appreciated about him is he doesn’t cut corners with this. I haven’t seen him abuse the position of trust as the president’s son-in-law. He doesn’t throw that around.”

Everyone in Washington knows Kushner’s trusted place in the Trump orbit; members of Congress return his phone calls and know he speaks for the president, at least as much as anyone can. Yet when Vice President Mike Pence came to a meeting of Senate Republicans to lobby on the bill last month, Kushner was deferential; attendees said he sat in the room but barely said a word.

The bill does have significant critics. Sens. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and John Kennedy (R-La.) argue that it could allow dangerous criminals to get early release, and have proposed a series of amendments that could get votes this week. Still, passage is considered all but certain.

The latest from Washington »

jennifer.haberkorn@latimes.com

@jenhab

Big-city mayors are giving poll workers panic buttons in case election skeptics question their work. County and state officials are gaming out responses to immigration raids near voting centers.

Lawyers for Democratic states and civic groups are pre-writing legal challenges to ballot seizures. And Democratic aides in Washington are preparing members of Congress to push back in the court of public opinion against any baseless claims of voter fraud in competitive districts.

Across California and the nation, civic organizations, voting rights advocates and Democratic leaders are preparing for a raft of potential actions by the Trump administration to interfere in, subvert or deny November’s midterm vote.

President Trump, an election denier for years, has without evidence described the U.S. election system as badly corrupted by fraud and dangerously vulnerable to both domestic and foreign interference.

He has said he would do “anything necessary” to have “honest elections,” and has tried since returning to office to unilaterally rewrite the rules for voting nationwide and wrest control of elections from the states through executive orders and other administrative measures.

Now, he has declined to rule out additional and unprecedented steps to force his will on the November election, including through emergency declarations and military deployments, and in February suggested Republicans should simply take over voting in blue states.

Election experts say there is no evidence of widespread voter fraud in American elections, despite Trump’s allies searching for years.

A worker looks through ballots at a Los Angeles County Ballot Processing Center on Monday, June 8, 2026 in City of Industry, CA. Counting continues on ballots cast for the state’s primary election held June 2.

(Eric Thayer/Los Angeles Times)

Much of the work to resist any Trump interference or power grab is being done quietly to avoid revealing too much of the strategy to the Trump administration or stoking unnecessary fear among voters.

It is designed to match what Trump’s opponents see as his three-part “interference playbook” — to “deceive” voters before the election, “disrupt” the vote itself and “deny” any unfavorable results after, said Justin Vail of Protect Democracy, a prominent litigant against the administration.

“The threats are real,” Vail said, “but the preparation is larger and more coordinated than ever before.”

The scenarios being planned for include the president deploying troops or immigration agents to polling sites to intimidate voters, fomenting unrest as a pretext to declare a national emergency, claiming fraud in the ballot counts of key congressional races or commanding the U.S. Postal Service to intervene in mail ballot delivery.

All told, the efforts amount to an unprecedented exercise to ensure the nation’s elections are safe from its own federal government.

They also reflect a deterioration in trust between states and counties overseeing elections, voting rights and pro-democracy advocates and a federal administration that has denigrated their work and tried to take control of voting away from states.

As public frustration with the economy mounts and Trump’s approval rating sinks, Democrats have become hopeful their party will retake power in Congress. Trump, meanwhile, has suggested that alleged election integrity problems will be the culprit if Republicans lose.

In California, 61% of voters recently identified federal inference in November as a “major concern,” according to a UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies poll co-sponsored by The Times.

“We are taking this threat really seriously,” said Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), who helped form a Senate task force to prepare. “Politically, I’m very optimistic about the midterms. But I’m also deeply concerned with the president’s willingness to interfere with them — and the fact that, unlike even in 2020, where there were at least some people around him to try to constrain what he was doing, all those people are gone.”

President Donald Trump is seen on a screen as his supporters cheer during a rally on the National Mall on January 6, 2021 in Washington, DC. Trump supporters gathered in the nation’s capital today to protest the ratification of President-elect Joe Biden’s Electoral College victory over President Trump in the 2020 election.

(Samuel Corum / Getty Images)

Much of the work is legal preparation among Democratic state attorneys general and lawyers with leading civic organizations. Nothing is being ruled out after Trump’s supporters, at his goading, violently attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, following his 2020 election loss to Joe Biden.

Other preparation is political, as members of Congress, mayors and other elected officials position themselves to use their bully pulpits and legislative powers to punch back. And grassroots campaigns are also unfolding, as community leaders recruit voters to defend their local elections, including online.

“This is an all-hands-on-deck task,” said Skye Perryman, president of the nonpartisan legal organization Democracy Forward. “We’re anticipating scenarios we haven’t seen before in the United States.”

Trump, who has never accepted his 2020 loss to Biden despite scores of reviews and audits confirming the result, has consistently sought to undermine Americans’ trust in elections, telling the nation in a prime-time speech last month that the voting system was “broken” and claiming that the SAVE America Act, a strict Republican-proposed voter ID and citizenship measure, is necessary to fix it.

The White House said it wouldn’t respond to hypothetical questions about the midterm election, but said anyone who breaks voting laws will be held accountable. Lauren Bis, a White House spokesperson, blamed “extreme liberal Democrats” for undermining U.S. confidence in elections by blocking the SAVE America Act, which Trump has failed to push through Congress.

Bis claimed voters support such changes, and said “President Trump is absolutely right: We fix this now, or we lose our country.”

Causes for concern

The fears of interference are driven by Trump’s long record of election denial; his recent insistence that the midterms are vulnerable to both domestic fraud and foreign interference; his success installing loyalists and fellow election deniers in powerful positions throughout his government; and his current administration’s many attempts to usurp control over state voting processes, including through executive orders, lawsuits and legislation.

Trump and his allies have sued to compel blue states to turn over voter rolls; seized ballots in Georgia; tried to limit mail voting via new U.S. Postal Service rules; pushed stricter citizenship and voter ID requirements via executive order and in Congress; diminished independent agencies tasking with helping states secure elections; kicked off a nationwide gerrymandering effort to boost Republican chances in the House; and threatened to imprison Democratic leaders who stand in their way.

Sen. Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) (C) departs after a meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump and Republican senators at the U.S. Capitol on June 24, 2026 in Washington, DC. President Trump is visiting Capitol Hill to attend a closed-door luncheon with the Republican Senate Steering Committee to push his SAVE America Act, which would impose strict voter ID and proof-of-citizenship requirements in federal elections.

(Kevin Dietsch / Getty Images)

Some analysts saw Trump’s speech last month as laying the groundwork for greater intervention in November, and he raised further alarm this month by entertaining a suggestion from conservative radio host and election conspiracy theorist Wayne Allyn Root that the president has “the right to declare a national security emergency” to unilaterally enforce new voting restrictions.

“Stranger things have happened,” Trump responded.

The White House has previously downplayed the likelihood of immigration agents being deployed to polling locations, but Trump has refused to rule it out. Legal experts say such a move would probably be swiftly blocked by courts, as would any unlawful deployment of military troops to polls.

Some voting experts said Trump’s efforts shouldn’t be blown out of proportion, particularly given federal courts’ dim view of them to date.

David Becker, executive director of the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation & Research, noted Trump’s executive orders on elections were blocked, the Justice Department is 0 for 23 in cases demanding state voter rolls, and the primaries have run smoothly with high turnout — showing the president is “having very little effect.”

Kim Alexander, president of the California Voter Foundation, said it is “important that people be aware that there are threats, but to not let those threats be debilitating” or prevent them from voting.

Civic experts are urging regular voters to help debunk misinformation about voting within their communities. Democracy Forward has asked people to take one civic-minded action per day leading up to the election, while Indivisible, a progressive grassroots organization, is training volunteers nationwide to mount public push-back to any interference.

Coordination in Congress

A Senate aide who spoke with The Times on condition of anonymity said members of the Senate task force meet regularly to plan for as many potential forms of interference as possible — and that there is “no bottom” to what they’re considering.

Task force members are studying nuanced local election laws to understand how Congress members should respond to any federal interference in their home states, and working on “coordinated messaging” that all members can use in response to immigration raids or other broad interference, the aide said.

National Guard troops stand in the shade at The Park at LeDroit in Northwest on August 12, 2026 in Washington, DC. U.S. President Donald Trump is claiming credit for Washington’s dramatic crime decline a year after Trump sent thousands of National Guard troops to the nation’s Capitol, but the evidence shows crime was already falling before his federal intervention and the extent to which his policies accelerated that decline remains disputed.

(Andrew Harnik / Getty Images)

They are also reading “line by line” through recent legal decisions limiting National Guard deployments and other federal actions to identify any “loopholes” the administration might exploit.

They are paying particular attention to districts with competitive congressional races and where past problems have arisen. In California, they’ve studied the recent seizure of ballots by Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco and the criticism of slow ballot counting statewide, the aide said.

Schiff said the scenario he is “most concerned” about is one in which the president or his allies “seed” unrest in big cities to “give the president a pretext, Reichstag fire-like, to call out the military or invoke the Insurrection Act or call out ICE or Border Patrol.”

The Reichstag fire erupted in the German parliament four weeks after Adolf Hitler was sworn in as chancellor in 1933, and was used to justify a sweeping crackdown on political opponents and the suspension of civil liberties — ushering in Nazi rule.

Schiff said lawsuits will be a necessary but “very imperfect remedy” in such a scenario, and Democrats will need to develop a more robust response combining “litigation with mobilization” and legislative oversight.

Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration, which has election oversight, is helping to create an election observer program for hotly contested races, and has warned his colleagues that he will call a vote on any election-related emergency Trump declares, so that they must co-sign or resist it.

Separately in the House, staffers have been building their own “road map” for how to deal with a laundry list of “terrible things that bad-faith actors who seek to subvert the election could do,” with a principal focus on any ways they might disrupt the Jan. 3 swearing in of new Congress members, said a House aide involved in the preparations there, who spoke with The Times on the condition of anonymity.

The U.S. Capitol, on July 20, 2026 in Washington, DC.

(Tom Brenner / Getty Images)

House staffers are also looking at how court imposed limits on Trump’s emergency powers might be “exploited, weaponized [or] ignored” by the administration, including the Justice Department.

A Justice Department spokesperson said the department is “working diligently” to fulfill the demands of Trump’s election-related executive order purporting to “strengthen the integrity of our elections,” which courts have blocked, and has “statutory authority to enforce our nation’s election laws, including through requesting state voter rolls,” which courts have also blocked.

Assistant Atty. Gen. Harmeet Dhillon, who heads the department’s civil rights division and has threatened local elections officials with legal consequences if they don’t comply with her voter roll demands, said her division “has a statutory mandate to enforce our federal voting rights laws, and ensuring the voting public’s confidence in the integrity of our elections is a top priority of this administration.”

State and local preparations

California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta said attorneys from his office and similar Democratic ones across the country are “hard at work planning, preparing, strategizing, researching, getting ready for all the different ways the Trump administration can break the law.”

California Attorney General Rob Bonta, right, holds a press conference at the Ronald Reagan State Building in downtown Los Angeles on Thursday, May 14, 2026.

(Christina House/Los Angeles Times)

That includes any attempts to seize ballots, deploy federal law enforcement or the military, or command the U.S. Postal Service to interfere with mail ballots, he said. “The right to vote is the right from which all other rights flow. It’s fundamental. We need to protect it.”

Dean Logan, registrar-recorder and county clerk for Los Angeles County, said he has a responsibility to ensure that “election operations remain secure and uninterrupted” no matter the threat, and is taking steps to do so, though he declined to address potential acts by Trump. Long Beach Mayor Rex Richardson said big cities are also preparing, including to prevent harassment of voters or election workers.

“Cities are where we host vote centers. It’s where the volunteers come from, where people go with their questions,” Richardson said. “We have to pay attention to national rhetoric. We have to be aware of anxiety that might — tensions that may — arise.”

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court is weighing President Trump’s claim that his new White House ballroom is urgently needed to protect him, his staff and guests from attacks by drones, terrorists and snipers.

On Friday, with a lower-court order about to go into effect halting construction on the controversial project, Chief Justice John G. Roberts decided that the court needed more time. He issued a temporary order pausing the case and allowing construction to continue while the justices decide on a pending legal challenge.

Last week, Trump’s lawyers described the East Wing ballroom as an “integrated military complex” that is “vitally required by national security.” They argued that a judge’s order blocking further construction threatened the safety of the president and must be overturned. They also said the project is nearly two-thirds completed.

At issue is whether the president acting on his own may build a huge new ballroom complex that is expected to dwarf the historic Executive Mansion.

It is a confrontation over the boundaries of executive power at a moment when Trump has repeatedly tested the ability of courts, Congress and independent institutions to constrain his agenda.

Trump bulldozed the historic East Wing before the courts had resolved whether the administration had the authority to proceed, leaving opponents to argue the project could become effectively irreversible before judicial review was complete.

The National Trust for Historic Preservation sued in December and argued that the president had overstepped his authority.

U.S. District Judge Richard Leon agreed and ordered a stop to the above-ground construction — that is, on the ballroom. He said the work on the underground bunker may proceed.

The U.S. court of appeals affirmed his order by a 2-1 vote on Aug. 7 but put the decision on hold until Friday. Roberts’ order did not explain the reason for the delay, or how soon the court might rule.

In a fast-track appeal to the Supreme Court, Trump administration lawyers sought to refocus the case as one about national security and the president’s safety.

“Given the current unprecedented levels of danger … every day the President does not have access to the vital security features of the military complex presents unacceptable risk,” Solicitor Gen. D. John Sauer said Wednesday in his final brief to the court.

Construction continues on the White House East Wing ballroom on Aug. 20.

(Andrew Harnik / Getty Images)

The Constitution and federal law say new buildings may not be erected on public property in the District of Columbia “without the express authority of Congress.”

But acting on his own, Trump ordered the East Wing of the White House torn down in October and work began on a new and much larger building to replace it.

He said the new ballroom could provide safe and secure seating for 1,000 dinner guests. He did not ask Congress to weigh in or approve the massive project.

In defense, Trump administration lawyers pointed to an annual appropriation from Congress that funds “the care, maintenance, repair, alteration, refurnishing” and other such improvements at the White House.

They also said private donations would pay most of the $400-million cost of the new ballroom. One estimate placed the cost of the ballroom and the bunker at $600 million, with taxpayers covering half, the Washington Post reported.

The president, his family and White House employees would have secure underground space, Sauer said, while a “totally secure ballroom space” would provide a new level of protection for guests and foreign dignitaries.

Otherwise, they would be seated outside in tents on the lawn, Trump said, which was neither appealing nor safe.

President Trump speaks to the media as the construction of a new helipad on the South Lawn of the White House continues on Aug. 19.

(Alex Wong / Getty Images)

His solicitor general also argued it was too late to stop the project.

“A 250-person crew is working 20 hours a day, seven days a week to keep the project ahead of schedule and under budget,” he wrote on Aug. 13. “Today, the project is 65% complete in its entirety, and moving quickly toward total completion.”

Trump’s signature construction project has fueled accusations from his political opponents that he is abusing his power to build a lavish space for entertaining guests as ordinary Americans struggle with affordability.

In April, Republicans in Congress sought to put federal money behind the project, despite Trump’s earlier insistence that private donors would pay for the ballroom.

The effort never became law, faced with bipartisan opposition to a bill that would tie them to the unpopular project, leaving the administration to proceed with a privately financed effort whose legal authority was already being challenged in court.

The Society for the Rule of Law and a group of former White House lawyers warned the court against accepting Trump’s broad claims of power.

“Under the executive’s view, the President could bulldoze the entire White House and replace it with a new building of his own design, including a skyscraper. No other President has asserted such transformative power,” they wrote in a friend-of-the-court brief.

“The invocation of national security is not a magic incantation that suspends the rule of law,” they added.

The biggest hurdle facing the challengers may be the issue of standing.

The court’s conservatives are often skeptical of lawsuits if it is not clear the plaintiffs have or will suffer a distinct injury that goes beyond their opposition to a government policy.

In this case, the National Trust said its historians and preservationists will be disturbed to walk by the White House grounds if there is a massive new structure that is not in keeping with the historic Executive Mansion.

Construction continues on the East Wing ballroom at the White House on Aug. 10, 2026, in Washington, D.C.

(Andrew Harnik / Getty Images)

“The subjective displeasure of an offended observer does not amount to a concrete injury,” Sauer said.

The D.C. Circuit judges were also split on the threshold issue of standing.

Judges Patricia Millett, an Obama appointee, and Bradley Garcia, a Biden appointee, ruled the suit may proceed because the plaintiffs suffered injuries to their “aesthetic, cultural and historical interests.”

Judge Neomi Rao, a Trump appointee, dissented and said the preservationists walking by the White House would not suffer the kind of concrete injury that gives them standing.

Progressive state Sen. Aisha Wahab will replace former Rep. Eric Swalwell in Congress and finish his current term.

Wahab (D-Hayward) defeated Melissa Hernandez, the president of the Bay Area Rapid Transit Board and the former mayor of Dublin who was seen as the more moderate candidate. The two faced off in a special runoff election on Tuesday, and the Associated Press declared Wahab the winner Thursday afternoon.

The two Democrats will face each other again in the Nov. 3 general election to determine who will represent a slightly redrawn district in the East Bay for a full term beginning in 2027.

Following a Thursday update from Alameda County elections officials, Wahab led with 53.1% of the vote to Hernandez’s 46.9%, according to the secretary of state’s website. The additional ballots widened the slim lead Wahab held on election night.

“This victory belongs to the voters who made clear that our district cannot be bought,” Wahab posted on Facebook Thursday after the race was called. “Through one of the ugliest, most expensive elections we’ve ever seen, we never took the bait or went negative. We stayed focused on the people, and I will fight for this district that raised me. From foster care to Congress, this journey shows the possibility of the American Dream. Today this district made history by electing the first Afghan American to Congress.”

In an email to supporters, Hernandez said the November election “will be in the new district lines, adding 26,000 Dublin voters who didn’t have the chance to vote for me in August. We’re looking forward to winning this on November 3rd with a more favorable district and a much larger electorate. Game on!”

Swalwell, a Dublin Democrat, resigned from the seat and dropped his bid for California governor in April after multiple women accused him of sexual assault and misconduct, which he denies.

Though Wahab was favored to win the seat and finished first in both the regular and special election primaries, the race became more competitive after the pro-Israel group American Israel Public Affairs Committee spent millions of dollars on ads attacking her. Though the war in Gaza was not a central campaign issue, Wahab has criticized Israel’s military actions in Gaza and described it as a genocide. Hernandez has defended Israel’s right to defend itself.

Progressives celebrated Wahab’s victory despite the heavy spending against her.

Joseph Geevarghese, executive director of Our Revolution, a group founded by progressive Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), said her campaign “should be studied by every progressive running for office in America.”

“The lesson from CA-14 is simple: Democrats do not have to surrender to the biggest checkbook in the race,” Geevarghese said. “Big money can buy television ads, mailboxes and endless attacks. It cannot buy the trust built through thousands of conversations between neighbors. That is the model: Unite the movement, organize everywhere, and make billionaire money fight us on our terrain.”

A wonderful Oval Office perk is what Thomas Jefferson dubbed “The President’s Own.” At the president’s beck and call is the United States Marine Band, created by an act of Congress in 1798.

But for an acquisitive current occupant of the White House, the oldest continuously active musical organization hasn’t seemed enough. In his appropriating the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, also created and officially named by Congress, the president obtained the National Symphony Orchestra. Unlike its “President’s Own” sibling, which is supported by the Defense Department annual allotment of some $400 million for military bands, the NSO is administered, funded (between a third and half of its $35-million budget) and lately threatened by what are now the whims of the Kennedy Center.

The NSO appeared at the Hollywood Bowl on Tuesday night, however, with a collective sigh of relief. A week earlier the Kennedy Center Board, without congressional input or legal approval, approved an imminent, two-year closure of the venue for repairs and remodeling, with little word about the homeless or economic future of its artist affiliate. By early August, no new NSO season, which would begin in September, had been announced.

But Tuesday morning, the NSO, in fact, did lay out a full and musically substantial season, the 10th for its music director, Gianandrea Noseda. Not taking a chance on the courts preventing a Kennedy Center closure, the NSO will become next season a peripatetic ensemble performing in various venues in and around D.C., as well undertake a national tour in the spring. Uncertainty remains, but for now all is as well as can be expected.

The NSO, however, offered little of what to expect. I can only find one program next season as unimaginative as Tuesday’s at the Bowl. The orchestra looks forward to several premieres of new works by lively composers and a variety of significant guest conductors, including the venturesome Teddy Abrams (who will lead the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s season-opening gala) and eclectic former NSO music director Leonard Slatkin (who is also the former L.A. Phil principal guest conductor for the Hollywood Bowl). Noseda’s only other bland program will be the one he brings on tour to The Soraya in April.

Hearing the NSO at the Bowl, moreover, is an act of guess work. With the new immersive sound system, orchestra impact becomes a matter of technology, giving individual instruments paranormal prominence and turning full orchestra glory into a sensual sound bath. Still, with its smooth strings, creamy brass, pungent winds and friendly percussion, Noseda’s NSO came across as a gracious orchestra meant to please, and, consequently, a seemingly marvelous anomaly in an otherwise divisive present-day D.C.

But that offered few favors for Leonard Bernstein’s Symphonic Dances from “West Side Story” or Gershwin’s “An American in Paris,” where the Bowl has regularly hosted far more idiomatic, swinging performances. Dvorak’s “New World Symphony” in the second half was, on the other hand, satisfyingly full-bodied. While Noseda sometimes practices likability to a fault, his sense of drama is ever sure, and it is hard to get enough of the lyrical sweetness he conveys. As an encore, Noseda led the overture to Bernstein’s “Candide” with real flair.

But why commonplace “Candide” and “West Side Story,” when Bernstein wrote “Slava! A Political Overture,” for the NSO as tribute in 1977 to its Russian music director, Mstislav Rostropovich? Might not the NSO make a point with “Three Mediations” from “MASS,” Bernstein’s multimedia masterpiece that controversially opened Kennedy Center in 1974. Bernstein also wrote a major late work for the NSO, “Songfest.” Bernstein, himself, conducted the Los Angeles Philharmonic in the West Coast premiere at the Bowl in 1983, which had special significance because his collaborator on “Songfest,” Tom Cothran, who happened to have grown up in Pasadena.

For his part, Noseda has done an exceptional job in championing major Black composers at home and on record. Carlos Simon has been the NSO’s composer in residence for the last five years, and Noseda has revived and recorded an essential album of works by George Walker. In October, Noseda and the NSO will release a recording of two symphonies by William Grant Still, who lived in L.A. Deeply evocative of a post-Dvorak new world, they are beautifully played on the new recording and would have been ideal for the Bowl.

The NSO has given up on the Kennedy Center, but must we? There are many questions that have not been considered. The current plan for infrastructure improvements and slapdash redecorating at the cost of $250 million. In fact, the facility’s playhouse, opera theater and concert hall are due for major renovations. But that requires significant planning, the hiring of a major architecture firm with concert hall experience, a first-rate acoustician and, ideally, four times the allotted budget.

This is clearly a long-term job for Congress and consultants who would do well to study the approach of the Salzburg Festival. It has been planning for several years to rehabilitate its large concert hall (which is of similar vintage to the Kennedy Center), which will require five years and a cost of around $600 million. It is also carefully examining alternate performance sites to be used during construction.

The Kennedy Center is a memorial, and before another new idea is allowed out, let the Kennedy Center board visit Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool for a moment of reflection on how and why to bring the NSO, America’s Own, back home. In the background, the U.S. Marine Band could offer its kin moral support by playing in the background Ives’ mysteriously transcendental “Unanswered Question.”

A federal investigation into former Rep. Eric Swalwell appeared to gain steam this week after agents seized his electronic devices and raided his Washington home over the weekend, even briefly holding the former lawmaker at San Francisco International Airport, a person familiar with the inquiry told The Times.

Swalwell dropped out of the California governor’s race and resigned from Congress in April after allegations that he sexually assaulted a former staffer and acted inappropriately with other young women, which he denied at the time. Before dropping out of the race, polls indicated that Swalwell was the front-runner.

The source said Swalwell was held on Saturday at SFO and released the same day he was detained for search purposes. Federal prosecutors are using civil rights law to pursue a probe of his conduct as a member of Congress. Authorities in New York and Los Angeles County are conducting separate investigations.

His home was searched on Sunday by federal agents, the source added, based on a search warrant in connection with a civil rights investigation concerning the sexual assault allegations.

Swalwell has denied any wrongdoing, but the accusations upended the California governor’s race and shook Capitol Hill, where both parties reckoned with a culture of secrecy and silence around sexual impropriety.

Another accuser, Lonna Drewes, said at a news conference that she was drugged and raped by the one-time politician in 2018 in Beverly Hills. Drewes said she met Swalwell three times as she was growing her fashion software company and toying with the idea of a political career.

On the third occasion, Drewes said she believes that Swalwell drugged her glass of wine. She said they were supposed to go to a political event and stopped by his hotel room to retrieve some paperwork.

She said she found herself incapacitated despite having had only one drink.

“He raped me and he choked me and while he was choking me I lost consciousness and I thought I died,” she said. “I did not consent to any sexual activity.”

Sara Azari, an attorney for Swalwell, denied Drewes’ characterization of the incident at the time. “Two adults consenting, which is our position, is not against the law,” she said.

The former staffer for Swalwell told the San Francisco Chronicle that Swalwell began sending her nude pictures on Snapchat and messages after she was hired by his office in 2019. She was 21 at the time.

In September of that year, she said she had drinks with the congressman, blacked out and woke up naked in Swalwell’s hotel bed, according to the Chronicle.

In 2024, when she no longer worked for Swalwell, she said she attended a charity event honoring the congressman and met him for drinks afterward. She was intoxicated but recalled Swalwell forcing himself upon her, and pushing him away and saying, “No,” according to the Chronicle.

Azari said in April that he denied all allegations of sexual misconduct and assault and would pursue “every legal remedy” against those making the claims.

“These accusations are false, fabricated and deeply offensive — a calculated and transparent political hit job designed to destroy the reputation of a man who has spent twenty years in public service,” Azari said.

Winton reported from Los Angeles, Smith from Sacramento and Wilner from Washington.

WASHINGTON  — The Supreme Court was urged Tuesday to block construction of President Trump’s huge new ballroom until Congress weighs in. A decision, perhaps only temporary, is likely by Friday.

Acting on his own, Trump had the East Wing of the White House torn down in October and ordered work to start on a massive new building that would dwarf the old executive mansion and seat 1,000 guests for dinner.

But a federal judge in Washington ruled that Trump had overstepped his authority, and the U.S. Court of Appeals agreed in a 2-1 ruling on Aug. 7.

Those judges would stop the above-ground construction but put their decision on hold until this Friday. This gave the administration time to appeal to the Supreme Court.

The National Trust for Historic Preservation had sued, arguing that the president has no authority to erect new buildings on government property.

Federal law protects “historic buildings, parks, and places, including perhaps the most revered site in our nation: the White House and President’s Park,” the group told the court Tuesday. It is “more than the President’s residence” and “is owned by American people.”

The historic trust said Trump is moving quickly so as to bypass the law.

“Rather than obtain permission from Congress,” Trump and his appointees “have instead decided to try to outrun judicial review,” it said.

Meanwhile, Trump’s lawyers have taken to describing the ballroom as a national security project.

Last week, Solicitor Gen. D. John Sauer told the justices they should throw out the “extraordinary and unlawful injunction that will halt the ongoing construction of the integrated military complex” because “a totally secure ballroom space … is vitally required by national security.”

He also contended it is too late for judges to intervene.

“Today, the project is 65% complete in its entirety, and moving quickly toward total completion. A concrete-and-steel superstructure stretches five stories deep and 70 feet high, and occupies nearly 50,000 square feet, with construction on and above the second-story level above ground.”

While the plans have changed, the “work has followed a single coherent design,” he wrote. “By now, it has passed the point where major changes to [that] design are feasible.”

U.S. District Judge Richard Leon, a George W. Bush appointee who ruled on the lawsuits, agreed the White House may proceed with the underground work to create a safe and secure location for the president, his family and White House employees.

The solicitor general said a new and secure ballroom is also crucial for social gatherings and foreign dignitaries.

He said that if Leon’s ruling is “allowed to go into effect, the injunction would wrongfully install a single district judge as sole arbiter of what further construction is strictly necessary to protect the safety of the President, his family, staff members, and visitors to the White House, including foreign dignitaries, and presidents and prime ministers of other countries.”

Sauer also argued the lawsuit should be thrown out on the grounds that National Trust for Historic Preservation and its members have no standing to sue because they have not suffered a particular injury.

The D.C. Circuit judges split on that issue. Judges Patricia Millett, an Obama appointee, and Bradley Garcia, a Biden appointee, ruled the plaintiffs had standing to sue. Judge Neomi Rao, a Trump appointee, dissented and said the members of the historic trust did not have standing.