conservative

Charlie Kirk was one of the most high-profile conservative activists and media personalities in the US and a trusted ally of President Donald Trump.

Kirk, 31, who the president said died after a shooting at a Utah college on Wednesday, was known for holding open-air debates on campuses across the country.

In 2012, at the age of 18, he co-founded Turning Point USA (TPUSA), a student organisation that aims to spread conservative ideals at liberal-leaning US colleges.

His social media and eponymous daily podcast often shared clips of him debating with students about issues such as transgender identity, climate change, faith and family values.

The son of an architect who grew up in the well-to-do Chicago suburb of Prospect Heights, Kirk attended a community college near Chicago before dropping out to devote himself to political activism. He applied unsuccessfully for West Point, the elite US military academy.

Kirk often referred tongue-in-cheek to his lack of a college degree when engaging in debates with students and academics on esoteric topics such as post-modernism.

His role in TPUSA took off after President Barack Obama was re-elected in 2012.

Kirk toured the country speaking at Republican events, many popular with members of the ultra-conservative Tea Party movement. TPUSA now has chapters in more than 850 colleges.

An avid public speaker, Kirk addressed the Oxford Union earlier this year, and wrote a 2020 best-seller The Maga Doctrine.

TPUSA played a key role in the get-out-the-vote effort for Trump and other Republican candidates in last year’s election. The millennial was widely credited with helping to register tens of thousands of new voters and flipping Arizona for Trump.

Kirk attended Trump’s inauguration in January in Washington DC, and has been a regular visitor at the White House during both Trump terms in office.

The president and his aides valued Kirk’s political antenna for the grassroots of the Make America Great Again movement.

He’s spoken at Republican conventions and last year Donald Trump repaid the favour by giving a big speech at a Turning Point conference in Arizona.

Earlier this year, he travelled with Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr, to Greenland, as the then-incoming president was arguing that the US should own the Arctic territory.

Kirk’s evangelical Christian religion and family – he married a former Miss Arizona, with whom he had two children – were front and centre in his politics, and he was seen as both the future of conservative activism and a highly polarising figure.

Perhaps the biggest tribute to his contribution to Republican politics came from Trump himself in a clip played at the beginning of Kirk’s podcast.

The president says: “I want to thank Charlie, he’s an incredible guy, his spirit, his love of this country, he’s done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organisations ever created.”

Kirk discussed numerous political and social at his events and on his podcasts – gun control is one of them.

Paramount has named Kenneth R. Weinstein, former head of a conservative-leaning Washington think tank, to be ombudsman for CBS News, fulfilling a condition of winning the Trump administration’s approval for an $8-billion merger.

The company announced Monday “that complaints from consumers, employees and others” about CBS News stories will go to Weinstein, who will help determine if remedial action is necessary.

Weinstein, who served as president and chief executive of the Hudson Institute, will report to Jeff Shell, who is president of Paramount under new owner and CEO David Ellison.

Weinstein will address complaints about news coverage in consultation with Shell, CBS President and CEO George Cheeks and CBS News Executive Editor Tom Cibrowski.

Paramount buyer Skydance Media agreed to appoint an ombudsman in order to get regulatory clearance for its acquisition of the media company, which closed in August.

The Federal Communications Commission said Skydance agreed to commit to “viewpoint diversity, nondiscrimination and enhanced localism” in its news coverage when the agency announced its approval of the deal.

“Americans no longer trust the legacy national news media to report fully, accurately, and fairly. It is time for a change,” FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said in a statement at the time of the approval. “That is why I welcome Skydance’s commitment to make significant changes at the once storied CBS broadcast network.”

Under Skydance’s ownership, CBS News has already shown a willingness to respond to Trump White House beefs with its coverage. On Friday the division announced a new policy for its Washington public affairs program “Face the Nation,” which will no longer edit taped interviews.

The policy shift came after U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem complained that her Aug. 31 “Face the Nation” interview, which was trimmed for time, deleted harsh allegations against Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland man wrongly deported to his native El Salvador. He was returned to the U.S., where he faces deportation efforts.

In addition to his work at the Hudson Institute, where he still holds a chair, Weinstein served on multiple advisory boards including the United States Agency for Global Media when it was known as the Broadcasting Board of Governors. The agency, currently headed on an interim basis by Kari Lake, oversees the funding for government-run media outlets such as Voice of America.

Weinstein also holds a doctorate in government from Harvard University and has taught political theory at Georgetown University and Claremont McKenna College.

“I’ve known [Weinstein] for many years and have respect for his integrity, sound judgment and thoughtful approach to complex issues,” Shell said in a statement. “Ken brings not only a wealth of experience in media and beyond but also a calm measured perspective that makes him exceptionally well-suited to serve as our Ombudsman.”

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Reuters

SNP slam Reform policies

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — James Dobson, a child psychologist who founded the conservative ministry Focus on the Family and was a politically influential campaigner against abortion and LGBTQ+ rights, died on Thursday. He was 89.

Born in 1936 in Shreveport, La., Dobson launched a radio show counseling Christians on how to be good parents and in 1977 started Focus on the Family.

He became a force in the 1980s for pushing conservative Christian ideals in mainstream American politics alongside fundamentalist giants like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson. At its peak, Focus on the Family had more than 1,000 employees and gave Dobson a platform to weigh in on legislation and serve as an advisor to five presidents.

His death was confirmed by the Dr. James Dobson Family Institute. He is survived by his wife of 64 years, Shirley, as well as their two children, a daughter-in-law and two grandchildren.

‘Mount Rushmore’ of conservatives

Dobson interviewed President Reagan in the Oval Office in 1985, and Falwell called him a rising star in 1989. Decades later, he was among the evangelical leaders tapped to advise President Trump in 2016.

In 2022, he praised Trump for appointing conservative U.S. Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v. Wade, the landmark decision that allowed states to ban abortion.

“Whether you like Donald Trump or not, whether you supported or voted for him or not, if you are supportive of this Dobbs decision that struck down Roe v. Wade, you have to mention in the same breath the man who made it possible,” he said in a ministry broadcast.

Dobson belongs on the “Mount Rushmore” of Christian conservatives, said Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, another group Dobson founded. He promoted ideas from “a biblical standpoint” that pushed back against progressive parenting of the 1960s, Perkins said.

Weighing Dobson’s legacy

John Fea, an American History professor at Messiah College in Pennsylvania, has been critical of Dobson’s politics and ideas but recounts how his own father was a better parent after becoming an evangelical Christian and listening to Dobson’s radio program. Fea’s dad was a tough Marine who spanked his kids when he was mad at them. Dobson advocated spanking to enforce discipline but said it shouldn’t be done in anger.

“Even as a self-identified evangelical Christian that I am, I have no use in my own life for Dobson’s politics or his child-rearing,” he said. “But as a historian what do you do with these stories? About a dad who becomes a better dad?”

Possible presidential run

After developing a following of millions, Dobson considered running for president in the 2000 election, following in the footsteps of former television minister Pat Robertson’s surprise success in 1988.

“He had a big audience. He was not afraid to speak out,” said Ralph Reed, a Christian conservative political organizer and lobbyist who founded the Faith and Freedom Coalition. “If Jim had decided to run, he would have been a major force.”

Despite their close association later in life, Reed’s enduring memory is of Dobson’s voice as his sole companion while traveling through rural America as a younger political organizer.

“I’d be out there somewhere, and I could go to the AM dial and there was never a time, day or night when I couldn’t find that guy,” Reed said. “There will probably never be another one like him.”

A political juggernaut for decades

Dobson helped create a constellation of Family Policy Councils in around 40 states that work in tandem with his organization to push a socially conservative agenda and lobby lawmakers, said Peter Wolfgang, executive director of one such group in Connecticut.

“If there is one man above all whom I would credit with being the builder — not just the thinker — who gave us the institutions that created the space for President Trump to help us turn the tide in the culture war, it would be Dr. James Dobson,” Wolfgang wrote in a column last month.

James Bopp, a lawyer who has represented Focus on the Family, said Dobson was able to rally public support like few other social conservatives.

Records compiled by the watchdog group Open Secrets show that Focus on the Family and Family Research Council have combined to spend more than $4 million on political ads and close to $2 million lobbying Congress since the late 1990s.

Opposition to abortion and LGBTQ+ rights

Dobson left Focus on the Family in 2010 and founded the institute that bears his name. He continued with the Family Talk radio show, which is nationally syndicated and is carried by 1,500 radio outlets with more than half a million listeners weekly, according to the institute.

His radio program featured guests talking about the importance of embracing religion and rejecting homosexuality, promoting the idea that people could change their sexuality.

“The homosexual community will tell us that transformations never occur. That you cannot change,” he said in a 2021 video posted on his institute’s site that promoted “success stories” of people who “no longer struggle with homosexuality” after attending a ministry. He said there is typically a “pain and agitation” associated with homosexuality.

Conversion therapy is the scientifically discredited practice of using therapy to “convert” LGBTQ+ people to heterosexuality or traditional gender expectations.

The practice has been banned in 23 states and the District of Columbia, according to the Movement Advancement Project, an LGBTQ+ rights think tank.

The U.S. Supreme Court agreed in March to hear a Colorado case about whether state and local governments can enforce laws banning conversion therapy for LGBTQ+ children.

Ted Bundy interview

An anti-pornography crusader, Dobson recorded a video interview with serial killer Ted Bundy the day before his 1989 execution. Bundy told Dobson that exposure to pornography helped fuel his sexual urges to a point that he looked for satisfaction by mutilating, killing and raping women.

Months after the execution, Bundy’s attorney James Coleman downplayed the Dobson exchange.

“I think that was a little bit of Ted telling the minister what he wanted to hear and Ted offering an explanation that would exonerate him personally,” Coleman said in an interview with the AP. “I had heard that before and I told Ted I never accepted it.”

Catalini and Meyer write for the Associated Press. Catalini reported from Trenton, N.J., and Meyer from Nashville. AP writers Tom Beaumont in Des Moines, Iowa; Tiffany Stanley in Washington; Geoff Mulvihill in Cherry Hill, N.J.; and Susan Haigh in Hartford, Conn., contributed to this report.

US president’s nomination comes after firing of agency head raised concerns about integrity of US government statistics.

United States President Donald Trump has tapped an economist from a conservative think tank to lead a key statistics agency after firing its previous head over her role in the release of weak employment figures.

Trump said on Monday that he had nominated EJ Antoni, the chief economist at the Heritage Foundation, to lead the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

“Our Economy is booming, and E.J. will ensure that the Numbers released are HONEST and ACCURATE. I know E.J. Antoni will do an incredible job in this new role. Congratulations E.J.!” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.

Trump’s nomination of Antoni, who requires confirmation by the US Senate, comes after his firing of Erika McEntarfer earlier this month raised concerns about US government statistics remaining credible and free of political influence.

Trump justified McEntarfer’s dismissal by claiming, without evidence, that the latest jobs report, which showed sharply slower jobs growth for May and June than previously estimated, had been “rigged” to make him look bad.

At the Heritage Foundation, Antoni, who had called for McEntarfer’s removal shortly before she was fired, has consistently showered Trump with praise.

After Trump’s announcement of a trade deal with Japan last month, Antoni described the agreement as “darn close” to perfect and the US president and his Treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, as “artistic masters”.

Last week, Antoni said in a social media post that there were “better ways to collect, process, and disseminate” economic data, and that the next head of the BLS would need to deliver “accurate data in a timely manner” to rebuild trust in the agency.

Antoni and the Heritage Foundation did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Antoni’s nomination swiftly drew criticism from economists, who raised concerns about his qualifications and partisan leanings.

Jason Furman, an economist at Harvard Kennedy School who served as an adviser to former US President Barack Obama, called Antoni “completely unqualified”.

“He is an extreme partisan and does not have any relevant expertise. He would be a break from decades of nonpartisan technocrats,” Furman said in a post on X.

Erica Groshen, who led the BLS under Obama, voiced similar concerns.

“So far, what worries me is that the nominee and his work are not well known in the business, academic or public service communities,” Groshen told Al Jazeera.

MIAMI — When Republican Sen. Bernie Moreno visits Colombia this week as part of a three-nation tour of Latin America, it will be something of a homecoming.

The Ohio senator, who defeated an incumbent last year with the help of Donald Trump’s endorsement and the highest political ad spending in U.S. Senate race history, was born in Bogota and has brothers who are heavyweights in politics and business there.

Moreno has emerged as an interlocutor for conservatives in Latin America seeking to connect with the Trump administration.

In an interview with the Associated Press ahead of the trip, he expressed deep concern about Colombia’s direction under left-wing President Gustavo Petro and suggested that U.S. sanctions, higher tariffs or other retaliatory action might be needed to steer it straight.

The recent criminal conviction of former President Alvaro Uribe, a conservative icon, was an attempt to “silence” the man who saved Colombia from guerrilla violence, Moreno said. Meanwhile, record cocaine production has left the United States less secure — and Colombia vulnerable to being decertified by the White House for failing to cooperate in the war on drugs.

“The purpose of the trip is to understand all the dynamics before any decision is made,” said Moreno, who will meet with both Petro and Uribe, as well as business leaders and local officials. “But there’s nothing that’s taken off the table at this point and there’s nothing that’s directly being contemplated.”

Elected with Trump’s support

Moreno, a luxury car dealer from Cleveland, defeated incumbent Democrat Sherrod Brown last year and became Ohio’s senior senator on practically his first day in office after his close friend JD Vance resigned the Senate to become vice president.

In Congress, Moreno has mimicked Trump’s rhetoric to attack top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer as a “miserable old man out of a Dickens novel,” called on the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates and threatened to subpoena California officials over their response to anti-ICE protests in Los Angeles.

On Latin America, he’s been similarly outspoken, slamming Petro on social media as a “socialist dictator” and accusing Mexico of being on the path to becoming a “narco state.”

Such comments barely register in blue-collar Ohio, but they’ve garnered attention in Latin America. That despite the fact Moreno hasn’t lived in the region for decades, speaks Spanish with a U.S. accent and doesn’t sit on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

“He’s somebody to watch,” said Michael Shifter, the former president of the Inter-American Dialogue in Washington. “He’s one of the most loyal Trump supporters in the senate and given his background in Latin America he could be influential on policy.”

Moreno, 58, starts his first congressional delegation to Latin America on Monday for two days of meetings in Mexico City with officials including President Claudia Sheinbaum. He’ll be accompanied by Terrance Cole, the head of the Drug Enforcement Administration, who is making his first overseas trip since being confirmed by the Senate last month to head the premier federal narcotics agency.

Seeking cooperation with Mexico on fentanyl

Moreno, in the pre-trip interview, said that Sheinbaum has done more to combat the flow of fentanyl into the U.S. than her predecessor and mentor Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who he described as a “total disaster.” But he said more cooperation is needed, and he’d like to see Mexico allow the DEA to participate in judicial wiretaps like it has for decades in Colombia and allow it to bring back a plane used in bilateral investigations that López Obrador grounded.

“The corruption becomes so pervasive, that if it’s left unchecked, it’s kind of like treating cancer,” said Moreno. “Mexico has to just come to the realization that it does not have the resources to completely wipe out the drug cartels. And it’s only going to be by asking the U.S. for help that we can actually accomplish that.”

Plans to tour the Panama Canal

From Mexico, Moreno heads to Panama, where he’ll tour the Panama Canal with Trump’s new ambassador to the country, Kevin Marino Cabrera.

In March, a Hong Kong-based conglomerate struck a deal that would’ve handed control of two ports on either end of the U.S.-built canal to American investment firm BlackRock Inc. The deal was heralded by Trump, who had threatened to take back the canal to curb Chinese influence.

However, the deal has since drawn scrutiny from antitrust authorities in Beijing and last month the seller said it was seeking to add a strategic partner from mainland China — reportedly state-owned shipping company Cosco — to the deal.

“Cosco you might as well say is the actual communist party,” said Moreno. “There’s no scenario in which Cosco can be part of the Panamanian ports.”

‘We want Colombia to be strong’

On the final leg of the tour in Colombia, Moreno will be joined by another Colombian American senator: Ruben Gallego, Democrat of Arizona. In contrast to Moreno, who was born into privilege and counts among his siblings a former ambassador to the U.S., Gallego and his three sisters were raised by an immigrant single mother on a secretary’s paycheck.

Despite their different upbringings, the two have made common cause in seeking to uphold the tradition of bilateral U.S. support for Colombia, for decades Washington’s staunchest ally in the region. It’s a task made harder by deepening polarization in both countries.

The recent sentencing of Uribe to 12 years of house arrest in a long-running witness tampering case has jolted the nation’s politics with nine months to go before decisive presidential elections. The former president is barred from running but remains a powerful leader, and Moreno said his absence from the campaign trail could alter the playing field.

He also worries that surging cocaine production could once again lead to a “narcotization” of a bilateral relationship that should be about trade, investment and mutual prosperity.

“We want Colombia to be strong, we want Colombia to be healthy, we want Colombia to be prosperous and secure, and I think the people of Colombia want the exact same thing,” he added. “So, the question is, how do we get there?”

Goodman and Smyth write for the Associated Press. Smyth reported from Columbus, Ohio.

Every recreational golfer of my generation has at least two things in common: We grew up revering Tiger Woods, and we know “Happy Gilmore,” the 1996 Adam Sandler golf comedy, like the back of our hands. Which millennial, while lining up a putt on the green, hasn’t told himself at some point to just “tap it in — give it a little tappy, a tap tap taparoo”? Who among us, before hitting a challenging tee shot, hasn’t at some point first closed his eyes and attempted to escape to his very own “happy place”? And above all, which of us hasn’t spent hours upon hours at the local driving range trying to master the craft that is protagonist Happy Gilmore’s signature running golf swing?

For all of us picking up the game once described by sports journalist John Feinstein as “a good walk spoiled,” Sandler’s character was a never-ending font of laughs and inspiration. Like so many others of my generation, then, I was very excited to watch “Happy Gilmore 2,” just released on Netflix on July 25. The sequel, 29 years in the making, didn’t have a script as instantly quotable as the original, nor was it as memorable. (Which film sequel, besides “The Godfather Part II” or “The Empire Strikes Back,” ever has been?) But “Happy Gilmore 2” still surpassed expectations: It was at times a bit silly, but it was still rollicking fun, replete with nostalgic flashbacks and a bevy of pro golfer cameos.

But it’s also more than that. It would be a mistake to dismiss the two movies as purely frivolous fare — good just for a few laughs. Rather, Sandler, long known for leading a private, low-key lifestyle that eschews the Hollywood limelight, has a specific message for Happy’s myriad fans: Family always comes first.

In the original film, Happy, a hockey fanatic whose weak skating skills inhibited his pro hockey aspirations, reluctantly takes up golf for one reason: to earn enough money to save his beloved grandmother’s home from a bank foreclosure and return her there from a hostile nursing home. Throughout the film, Happy emphasizes this as his sole motivation for biting his lips and suffering through what he calls “golf sissy crap.” Happy doesn’t particularly care about the game of golf. He’s just doing it for Grandma.

In the sequel, Happy, now considerably older and a father of five, has retired from golf and developed a bad drinking habit. A single father, he is struggling to make ends meet and provide for his daughter Vienna. Early in the film, Vienna’s dance instructor recommends that Happy enroll her in an advanced four-year ballet school in Paris, which would cost $75,000 annually. Happy senses that Vienna’s dream to dance ballet is similar to his old dream of playing hockey. With the encouragement of John Daly (one of many real-life pro golfers cast as themselves), he dusts off his old golf clubs and gives it a go again. Spoiler alert, without giving away too many of the specifics: The film has a happy ending for Happy’s family.

Clearly, this is not just about golf and laughs.

Sandler, a onetime registered and politically active Republican, is conveying to his audience a traditional conservative message: A life well lived is not a solipsistic one that exalts the self, but an altruistic one that places the interests of others above all else. These “others” are usually those closest to us — family members, older and younger generations alike, to whom we have obligations. You might notice that in both films, Happy plays golf only for others — not for himself.

Happy, who once fought to save the house his grandfather built, now finds himself trying to do right by the next generation. It is these relationships — with those who came before us and those who come after us — that give our lives meaning and purpose. And in “Happy Gilmore 2,” Sandler drives home that message in the most personal way possible: He casts his real-life wife and his two daughters — one as the aspiring ballerina.

The foul-mouthed, trash-talking rebel of golf, Happy Gilmore, is onto something important. Perhaps more of Sandler’s Hollywood colleagues ought to listen. They might learn something.

Josh Hammer’s latest book is “Israel and Civilization: The Fate of the Jewish Nation and the Destiny of the West.” This article was produced in collaboration with Creators Syndicate. @josh_hammer

David Ellison’s Skydance Media pledged to abandon all diversity, equity and inclusion programs at Paramount Global in an attempt to win government approval for its $8-billion merger.

Paramount already had scaled back diversity programs earlier this year. In a Tuesday letter to Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr, Skydance said it would go further to cancel diversity efforts.

“Paramount no longer will maintain an Office of Global Inclusion and will not have any teams or individual roles focused on DEI,” Stephanie Kyoko McKinnon, Skydance general counsel, wrote in the three-page letter to Carr. The appointee of President Trump, in one of his first moves as chair, dismantled the agency’s diversity programs and called on companies to do the same.

Kyoko McKinnon said Paramount will remove “references to DEI in its public messaging, including on its websites and social media,” along with culling DEI language in “internal messaging and training materials.”

Last week, Ellison met with Carr to press his case that Skydance and its backer RedBird Capital Partners would be strong stewards of Paramount, which includes CBS, Comedy Central, MTV, BET and the Melrose Avenue movie studio, Paramount Pictures. Skydance needs Carr’s approval for the merger and the transfer of the CBS television station licenses to the Ellison family.

Skydance separately tackled persistent complaints by conservatives about alleged news bias at “60 Minutes” and other programs.

Ellison’s firm pledged to “promote transparency and increased accountability” at CBS News. The company said it would install an ombudsman, reporting to the president of Paramount, “to receive and evaluate any complaints of bias or other concerns involving CBS” for at least two years.

Trump’s ire over edits of a “60 Minutes” Kamala Harris interview last fall nearly derailed Skydance’s takeover of Paramount. Carr opened an inquiry into alleged news distortion after Trump sued CBS in federal court in Texas.

Earlier this month, Paramount reached a $16-million settlement with Trump to resolve the dispute that caused deep divisions within Paramount and prompted high-level CBS departures. Trump boasted Tuesday on Truth Social that he anticipates receiving an additional $20 million worth of advertising and PSA time from the new owners.

During his July 15 meeting with Carr, Ellison underscored “Skydance’s commitment to unbiased journalism and its embrace of diverse viewpoints, principles that will ensure CBS’s editorial decision-making reflects the varied ideological perspectives of American viewers,” according to an FCC filing.

Skydance’s Kyoko McKinnon added: “We further reaffirm that, after consummation of the proposed transaction, New Paramount’s new management will ensure that the company’s array of news and entertainment programming embodies a diversity of viewpoints across the political and ideological spectrum, consistent with the varying perspectives of the viewing audience.”

Ellison recently met with prominent journalist Bari Weiss, reportedly to discuss Skydance acquiring her center-right online publication, the Free Press, as an alternative to traditional news sites. She started the outlet, which is often critical of DEI, after quitting her job as a New York Times opinion writer, citing intolerance of her and her more conservative viewpoints.

Also last week, late-night host Stephen Colbert learned his CBS talk show would be canceled in May. CBS has said Colbert’s cancellation, which will take place in May, was “strictly financial” and not related to the merger approval. Still, conservatives and liberals have widely questioned whether Colbert’s frequent criticisms of Trump played into the decision.

Skydance has said it didn’t have a role in the Colbert decision.

Skydance isn’t the only company under pressure to ditch diversity programs to win FCC approval for a deal.

Two months ago, telecommunications giant Verizon pledged to drop diversity efforts to gain Carr’s blessing for the company’s $20-billion takeover of Frontier Communications.

Carr separately launched probes into Walt Disney Co. and Comcast Corp.’s workplace diversity efforts.

After George Floyd’s 2020 murder in Minneapolis, Paramount and other Hollywood companies vowed to hire more people of color. Such moves were cheered by many, including those cognizant of Hollywood’s troubled history with diversity.

Paramount encouraged executives to make diverse hires and promotions, and progress toward the corporate goals was one of many factors considered when calculating bonuses. That program was dismantled last year.

For years, CBS struggled to shake its prime-time sitcom formula to build shows around white men, a la “King of Queens,” “Everybody Loves Raymond” and “Two and a Half Men.”

The network broke the pattern in 2018 with “The Neighborhood,” starring Cedric the Entertainer, and procedural drama “FBI,” starring Zeeko Zaki.

CBS also championed mentorship programs for writers and directors to build a more diverse pipeline of creators. That initiative dated to 2004.

FCC Chairman Brendan Carr has made a priority of abolishing DEI programs.

(Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Skydance promised not to set numerical goals related to race, ethnicity or gender of job applicants.

“The company is committed to ensuring that its storytelling reflects the many audiences and communities it serves in a manner that complies with non-discrimination requirements and other applicable laws,” Kyoko McKinnon wrote.

“I am very encouraged by today’s announcements,” said Daniel Suhr, president of the conservative Center for American Rights, which filed an FCC complaint about “60 Minutes” and suggested a CBS News ombudsman. “These are important steps towards better broadcasting that serves all consumers.”

The opening scene unfolds onto a bird’s-eye view of a sedan making its way down a stretch of unmarked highway, as Woody Harrelson’s unmistakable drawl is heard off-camera. “You ever wonder if this industry of ours is just chasing its own tail?” he asks.

Matthew McConaughey, in his equally distinctive cadence, shoots back, “No, I don’t wonder. Restrictions, regulations, nickel and diming productions, political lectures,” before the camera pans in for a close-up of the actors.

The sequence pays homage to the gritty, atmospheric crime drama “True Detective.” Indeed, it was directed by Nic Pizzolatto, the show’s creator.

Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey have played major roles in the effort to increase Texas film incentives.

(Lester Cohen / WireImage)

In January, this four-minute video, “True to Texas,” was released as part of an unusual campaign by a coalition of A-list actors — Dennis Quaid, Renée Zellweger and Billy Bob Thornton make appearances — independent creatives and Lone Star Republicans to appeal to the Texas State Legislature.

The goal: to help bring increased film incentives to a state not known for its wholesale embrace of Hollywood or government subsidies — particularly for something like the arts.

Despite considerable push back among conservative lawmakers, the effort paid off. Last month Gov. Greg Abbott allowed the passage of an unprecedented bill boosting tax incentives for film production in the state to $300 million every two years — guaranteeing that funding for 10 years. The law goes into effect Sept. 1.

The aggressive bid to nab a slice of Hollywood furthers the ongoing rivalry between California and Texas. Several major Golden State-based companies including Tesla and Hewlett-Packard have relocated to the Lone Star State, lured by lower taxes and its business-friendly environment. It also comes as California is struggling to keep movie and TV production, having recently doubled its own tax incentive ceiling to compete with film subsidies in three dozen other states and abroad.

The new bill puts Texas in a position to become a major player among the growing list of global and regional filming hubs in an industry that has become increasingly unmoored from its historic Hollywood hometown.

“Texas now has a program that is going to be competitive,” said Fred Poston, the executive director of the Texas Media Production Alliance. “When you really take a close look at it, you realize this is a big deal. We have this new level of funding to start building more industry around it.”

The Texas bill is not only bigger and better, but found itself an unlikely champion in Republican Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick.

Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick wants to make his state the world’s film capital.

(Eric Gay / Associated Press)

“We are not trying to make Texas the next Hollywood — we don’t like Hollywood. We want to export Texas values,” said Patrick in a campaign update. A staunch conservative who has relentlessly opposed legalized marijuana, gambling and abortion, Patrick has vowed “to make Texas the Film Capital of the World.”

The bill, which supports the Texas Moving Image Industry Incentive Fund (TMIIF) program, offers tiered grants up to 25% for projects spending $1.5 million in the state. Faith-based films and those that shoot in historic sites or employ a percentage of crew who are Texas-based military veterans can push grants up to 31%.

The governor’s office, through the film commission, has broad discretion over which projects receive funds and awards can be denied at any stage in the review process for material that portrays Texas negatively or contains “inappropriate” content.

Conservative backlash

Still, even with the bill’s Texas-style protectionist wrangling, its passage was far from assured.

Weeks before the Senate vote, there was hand-wringing among conservative lawmakers and others who opposed the bill on economic, moral and even biblical grounds. Critics took swipes at profanity-laced scripts and what they saw as inaccurate portrayals of the state’s oilmen on TV. Some viewed the grants as akin to taxpayer theft. Many shuddered at the thought that the bill would usher in the unholy influence of a debauched Hollywood on Texas.

“The Bible warns us of the consequences of the government wrongfully taking money from some and handing it out to others,” said the Texans for Fiscal Responsibility in one of several papers it published decrying the bill.

Republican State Rep. Brian Harrison called the bill “an abomination. And shame on everybody who voted for it.”

Harrison launched his own “Don’t Hollywood My Texas” crusade.

One of his followers, the Freedom Bard, a self-proclaimed “patriotic” lyricist, recorded an earworm of a protest anthem denouncing the bill with such lyrics as: “Keep your failed policies and your liberal BS.”

“This is big government liberal redistributive socialism,” Harrison told The Times, “The governor and lieutenant governor of the supposedly Republican-controlled state of Texas chose to keep property taxes billions of dollars higher so that you can subsidize a rich liberal Hollywood movie industry — how embarrassing.”

He plans to introduce legislation at a special hearing later this month to repeal the law.

The ‘Third Coast’

Despite the hostility toward Hollywood, Texas was once known as the film industry’s “Third Coast.”

Many of the westerns of the 1920s and ‘30s were filmed in the state.

Texas’ sweeping backdrops and larger-than-life characters have inspired some of the most celebrated movies and television shows, including the 1956 epic “Giant,” the 1974 slasher classic “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” the 1990 sleeper hit “Slacker” and the acclaimed small-town TV series “Friday Night Lights.”

The 1956 classic “Giant,” starring James Dean, was primarily shot in Texas.

(Warner Bros. / TCM)

The state’s cultural soil has nurtured a fertile creative community with filmmakers like Robert Rodriguez (“El Mariachi”), Wes Anderson (“Bottle Rocket”) and Richard Linklater (“Boyhood”).

By the early 2000s, however, neighboring states began chipping away.

“Texas had been highly competitive, we had all of these ingredients,” said Rebecca Campbell, CEO of the Austin Film Society. “Then all of a sudden, Texas stories were getting shot in New Mexico and Louisiana.”

In 2007, the state established its first program for film incentives, earmarking $20 million. Although the program expanded in later years, it became chronically underfunded, prompting the producers of “Fear the Walking Dead” in 2021 to relocate to Georgia after filming four seasons around Austin.

Linklater had to rework his 2024 romantic crime thriller “Hit Man” starring Glen Powell, originally set in Houston, when filming relocated to New Orleans because of a lack of available incentive funds.

Director Richard Linklater on the set of “Hit Man,” with Adria Arjona and Glen Powell.

(Brian Roedel / Netflix)

“We’re completely surrounded by states that have very active film incentive programs,” Linklater told the podcast “Friends on Film.” “They really support this industry, and you have to do that to compete.”

But a perceptible cultural and economic shift in the Texas landscape began to slowly take shape during the pandemic, when a wave of actors and filmmakers relocated to the state.

Filmmaker Nate Strayer, formerly of Los Angeles, moved to Austin in 2021 and later founded production company Stray Vista Studios.

“We started to realize that we could have an industry here where our stories aren’t being pulled away to other states,” said Strayer, whose company produced the “True to Texas” video.

Noah Hawley has made Austin, Texas, his base of operations.

(Justin Cook / For The Times)

Until the pandemic shut down Hollywood, “Fargo” series creator Noah Hawley flew every other week from his home in Texas to Los Angeles for meetings with his production company when he wasn’t shooting. When the pandemic ended, Hawley found he no longer needed to be based in Hollywood.

Last year he moved his company, 26 Keys, to Austin.

“My wife and I wanted to be a bigger part of our community in Texas,” he said. “What Austin provides for me is more of a local, handmade place.”

The ‘Sheridan effect’

The other wave to hit Texas’ film industry was Taylor Sheridan.

Taylor Sheridan films an episode of “Landman.”

(Emerson Miller / Paramount+)

The “Yellowstone” creator, who grew up in Fort Worth, began filming many of his hit television shows — including “1883” and “Landman” — across the state.

The productions brought in hundreds of millions of dollars to local businesses and a stream of tourists in what many began calling “the Sheridan Effect.”

Production of “1883” alone led to 13,325 booked hotel nights in Fort Worth, according to the city’s film commission.

Beyond the economic boom, Sheridan showed that Texas could tell its own stories and help seed larger ambitions.

In February 2023, Lt. Gov. Patrick had dinner with Sheridan.

Shortly afterward, Patrick described Sheridan as the “best screenwriter of our time and one of the best storytellers ever to make movies” and said, “My goal is for Taylor to move all of his TV and movie production to Texas.”

Soon, Sheridan had a multiplier effect.

The Wonder Project, the faith-based, family-oriented production company behind Amazon‘s “House of David,” was established by filmmaker Jon Erwin (“Jesus Revolution”) and former YouTube executive Kelly Merryman Hoogstraten in 2023 with more than $75 million from such investors as Jason Blum, Lionsgate and Leonard Leo, the wealthy conservative lawyer and Federalist Society co-chairman.

Two years ago, Hill Country Studios, a $267-million film and television studio, broke ground in San Marcos. The plans include 12 soundstages spanning 310,000 square feet, two back lots, a virtual production stage and 15 acres of outdoor production space.

Zachary Levi, the star of “Shazam!” and “Chuck,” is raising $40 million to develop his Wyldwood Studios in Bastrop east of Austin. Plans call for two 20,000-square-foot soundstages, along with a hotel, restaurants and homes.

Zachary Levi is planning to create a new kind of studio system in Texas.

(Chris Pizzello / Invision / AP)

“I really felt this … calling on my life to go and build what is essentially a new version in the lineage of United Artists,” he said. “That allows the artist to really take the power back, take their destiny back.”

But for all the activity, there was no getting around the math. If Texas did not pour resources into a substantial rebate program, it would continue to lose out.

The challenge was to convince the conservative Legislature that an incentive program was not simply a Hollywood handout.

Thus began a campaign in spring 2023 with Texas voices advocating for a strong film industry.

That May, “Good for Texas,” the video precursor to “True to Texas,” showcased Lone Star-born actors such as McConaughey, Quaid, Owen Wilson, Powell and others in support of increased incentives.

Filmmaker Chase Musslewhite, a sixth-generation Houstonian who was one of the video’s producers, said she was motivated to get involved when she lost funding for her first feature after her financier opted to shoot in Louisiana.

She joined forces with Grant Wood, a Midland native, who had studied film and ran a Dallas start-up, to launch the Media for Texas advocacy group.

“We wanted to help get the film community aligned and put forth one bill with one idea to make it as easy as possible for the Legislature to push for it,” Musslewhite said.

The Texas Film Commission painted a rosy picture, saying that for every dollar invested in the incentives, Texas received $4 of new money into the economy.

A pivotal moment arrived in late summer 2024. Media for Texas co-hosted a private screening of the film “Reagan,” starring Dennis Quaid, with Patrick at Austin’s Bullock Texas State History Museum. A number of state legislators attended.

Patrick took to the podium and announced his aim to “make Texas the media capital of the world,” Musslewhite recalled.

That was the push people needed, Musslewhite said.

Last October, Patrick convened a special hearing of the Senate Finance Committee, where a new bill for a robust film incentive was front and center.

Patrick marshaled McConaughey, Harrelson, Quaid and Sheridan to support him. Joining the effort was billionaire Ross Perot Jr.

Dennis Quaid, second from left, standing next to Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, looking up, at the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo in March, is one of the many prominent Texas-born Hollywood actors and filmmakers to rally around film incentives.

(Cassie Stricker / Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo)

During the hearing, a denim-clad Quaid voiced his support. “I, for one, feel that the world is beginning to turn right side up again and common sense prevails, and I’d like to see that reflected in our films and entertainment.”

When Sheridan spoke, he expressed regret that his 2016 film “Hell or High Water,” a story of two bank-robbing brothers trying to save their Texas family ranch, had to shoot in New Mexico because of its subsidies.

“No one will be here without the incentives,” the filmmaker said.

During the last stretch before the vote, McConaughey, in a cowboy hat, made a final overture to legislators in March.

“If we pass this bill, we are immediately at the bargaining table for shooting more films and TV and commercials in our state,” he said. “That is money that’s going to local Texas restaurants, hotels, coffee shops, dry cleaners, street rentals, home rentals ― even Woody’s barber,” in a nod to Harrelson, who was also in attendance.

The high-profile campaign worked. Two months later, the bill passed in the Senate with a 23-8 vote, and by June it had become law.

A slippery slope?

Nonetheless, concerns remain about the program.

For one, the bill, which emphasizes a positive portrayal of the state, does not specifically address whether a film or show that has themes such as abortion, gun control or LGBTQ+ characters will receive funding.

In 2010, then-Gov. Rick Perry’s administration yanked funding for the Robert Rodriguez film “Machete” over concerns that the movie portrayed Texas negatively.

Funding for Robert Rodriguez’s film “Machete” was denied over concerns it portrayed Texas negatively.

(Ryan Green / Netflix)

George Huang, professor of screenwriting at UCLA School of Theater, Film, and Television, cautioned this could be “a very slippery slope.”

“I understand that with incentives you don’t want to appear to fund controversial subjects,” he said. “But where do you draw the line on censorship? Who in the governor’s office is the arbiter of good taste?”

Many inside the Texas film community stress that these are still early days and believe the film office will ultimately take a case-by-case approach.

“I think that those fears are misplaced, because the opportunity for what Texas can provide to the country and to the world outweighs the risk,” Musslewhite said.

For now,the Texas film community is elated.

“Texans kind of warmed up to the idea that if an industry were to grow in Texas, it doesn’t have to look exactly like it looks in some of these other places,” Strayer said. “I think they came to realize that you can kind of write your own rules.”

And what’s more Texan than writing your own rules?

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court term that ended Friday will not be remembered for blockbuster rulings like those recent years that struck down the right to abortion and college affirmative action.

The justices scaled back their docket this year and spent much of their energy focused on deciding fast-track appeals from President Trump. His administration’s lawyers complained too many judges were standing in the way of Trump’s agenda.

On Friday, the court’s conservatives agreed to rein in district judges, a procedural victory for Trump.

What’s been missing so far, however, is a clear ruling on whether the president has abided by the law or overstepped his authority under the U.S. Constitution.

On the final two days of the term, the court’s conservative majority provided big wins for Republican-leaning states, religious parents and Trump.

The justices gave states more authority to prohibit medical treatments for transgender teens, to deny Medicaid funds to Planned Parenthood clinics and to enforce age-verification laws for online porn sites.

Each came with the familiar 6-3 split, with the Republican appointees siding with the GOP-led states, while the Democratic appointees dissented.

These rulings, while significant, were something short of nationwide landmark decisions — celebrated victories for the Republican half of the nation but having no direct or immediate effect on Democratic-led states.

California lawmakers are not likely to pass measures to restrict gender-affirming care or to prohibit women on Medicaid from obtaining birth control, pregnancy testing or medical screenings at a Planned Parenthood clinic.

The new decisions echoed the Dobbs ruling three years ago that struck down Roe vs. Wade and the constitutional right to abortion.

As the conservative justices noted, the decision in Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health did not outlaw abortion nationwide. However, it did allow conservative states to do so. Since then, 17 Republican-led states in the South and Midwest have adopted new laws to prohibit most or all abortions.

On this front, the court’s decisions reflect a “federalism,” or states-rights style of conservatism, that was dominant in decades past under President Reagan and two of the court’s conservative leaders, Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Justice Sandra Day O’Connor.

Both were Arizona Republicans (and in O’Connor’s case, a former state legislator) who came to the court with that view that Washington holds too much power and wields too much control over states and local governments.

With the nation sharply divided along partisan lines, today’s conservative court could be praised or defended for freeing states to make different choices on the “culture wars.”

The other big winner so far this year has been Trump and his broad claims of executive power.

Since returning to the White House in January, Trump has asserted he has total authority to run federal agencies, cut their spending and fire most of their employees, all without the approval of Congress, which created and funded the agencies.

He has also claimed the authority to impose tariffs of any amount on any country and also change his mind a few days later.

He has dispatched National Guard troops and Marines to Los Angeles against the wishes of the governor and the mayor.

He has asserted he can punish universities and law firms.

He has claimed he can revise by executive order the 14th Amendment and its birthright citizenship clause.

So far, the Supreme Court has not ruled squarely on Trump’s broad assertions of power. But the justices have granted a series of emergency appeals from Trump’s lawyers and set aside lower court orders that blocked his initiatives from taking effect.

The theme has been that judges are out of line, not the president.

Friday’s ruling limiting nationwide injunctions set out that view in a 26-page opinion. The conservatives agreed that some judges have overstepped their authority by ruling broadly based on a single lawsuit.

The justices have yet to rule on whether the president has overstepped his power.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett summed up the dispute in a revealing comment responding to a dissent from Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. “Justice Jackson decries an imperial Executive while embracing an imperial Judiciary,” she wrote.

Missing from all this is the earlier strain of conservatism that opposed concentrated power in Washington — and in this instance, in one person.

Last year offered a hint of what was to come. A year ago, the court ended its term by declaring the president is immune from being prosecuted for his official acts while in the White House.

That decision, in Trump vs. United States, shielded the former and soon-to-be president from the criminal law.

The Constitution does not mention any such immunity for ex-presidents charged with crimes, but Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said a shield of immunity was necessary to “enable the the President to carry out his constitutional duties without undue caution.”

Since returning to the White House, Trump has not been accused of exercising “undue caution.”

Instead, he appears to have viewed the court’s opinion as confirming his unchecked power as the nation’s chief executive. Trump advisors say that because the president was elected, he has a mandate and the authority to put his priorities and policies into effect.

But the Supreme Court’s conservatives did not take that view when President Biden took office promising to take action on climate change and to reduce the burden of student loan debt.

In both areas, the Roberts court ruled that the Biden administration had exceeded its authority under the laws passed by Congress.

Away from Washington, the most significant decision from this term may be Friday’s ruling empowering parents.

The six justices on the right ruled parents have a right to remove their children from certain public school classes that offend their religious beliefs. They objected to new storybooks and lessons for young children with LGBTQ+ themes.

In recent years, the court, led by Roberts, has championed the “free exercise” of religion that is protected by the 1st Amendment. In a series of decisions, the court has exempted Catholic schools and charities from laws or regulations on, for example, providing contraceptives to employees.

Friday’s ruling in a Maryland case extended that religious liberty right into the schools and ruled for Muslim and Catholic parents who objected to new LGBTQ+-themed storybooks.

At first, the school board said parents could have their young children “opt out” of those classes. But when too many parents took the offer, the school board rescinded it.

The clash between progressive educators and conservative parents reached the court when the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty appealed on behalf of the parents.

Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. said the parents believed the books and stories offended their religious beliefs, and he ordered school authorities to “to notify them in advance whenever one of the books in question is to be used … and allow them to have their children excused from that instruction.”

This decision may have a broader impact than any from this term because it empowers parents nationwide. But it too has limits. It does not require the schools to change their curriculum and their lessons or remove any books from the shelves.

The conservatives fell one vote short in a case that could have brought about a far-reaching change in American schools. Split 4 to 4, the justices could not rule to uphold the nation’s first publicly funded, church-run charter school.

In the past, Roberts had voted to allow students to use state tuition grants in religious schools, but he appeared uncertain about using tax money to operate a church-run school.

But that question is almost certain to return to the court. Barrett stepped aside from the Oklahoma case heard in April because friends and former colleagues at the Notre Dame Law School had filed the appeal. But in a future case, she could participate and cast a deciding vote.

A $499 gold phone built entirely in the United States and a mobile plan boasting telehealth services have been announced by the Trump Organization as part of an effort to entice the US president’s supporters away from major telecom providers and wireless services.

The mobile service is the latest example of the president’s family striking business deals off of the Trump name.

The eponymous Trump Mobile was announced in a Monday statement issued by the Trump Organization, which is led by President Donald Trump’s son Eric.

Dubbed the 47 Plan, the service will cost consumers $47.45 a month and will offer “5G service through all three major cellular carriers” – T-Mobile, Verizon and AT&T. According to the statement, it will offer telemedicine, unlimited texting plans with 100 counties, and roadside assistance.

Some key details about the venture, including those about the family’s partner in the business and the financial terms of their licensing deal, were not immediately disclosed.

The “T1 Phone” is advertised as “proudly designed and built in the United States” and listed with a release date in August, although a tech writer from The Verge questioned the viability of building a phone in the US so quickly.

Speaking on Fox Business, Eric Trump said Trump Mobile would have call centres in St Louis, Missouri.

The Trump family, long known for its real estate empire, luxury hotels, and golf resorts, has in recent years ventured into newer arenas including digital media and cryptocurrency.

President Trump has said he put his business interests in a trust managed by his children to avoid conflicts of interest, but income from such business ventures will eventually enrich Trump, who sits atop the series of Trump family firms. In the president’s financial disclosure released on Friday, he reported more than $600m in income from licensing deals, crypto projects, golf clubs and other ventures – though that figure appeared to be only through the end of 2024, before his inauguration.

Targeting Apple?

The Trump Mobile announcement coincides with increased tension between the Trump administration and Apple in particular. The White House explicitly called for 25 percent tariffs on Apple products unless they are made in the US.

“It’s pointed at Apple, that’s a really big downward price pressure on what Apple’s trying to do,” Brian Mulberry, client portfolio manager at Zacks Investment Management, told the Reuters news agency.

Despite a recent pledge to spend $500bn in the US on manufacturing, research and development – comparable to pledges the Cupertino, California-based tech giant made in the past – the company recently doubled down on moving key parts of its production from China to India.

“There’s been kind of an opening for this type of device, if you will, simply because not just Apple, but Samsung devices to a certain extent as well, have really gotten so expensive in the moment in time and we haven’t really seen that big of a measurable increase in utility,” Mulberry said.

The Trump Organization, which is the main holding entity for most of the US president’s business ventures, said ahead of Trump’s inauguration that control of the company would be handed to his children, replicating the arrangement from his first term, though concerns about potential conflicts of interest remain.

“No one who has been paying attention could miss that President Trump considers the presidency a vehicle to grow his family’s wealth. Maybe this example will help more come to see this undeniable truth,” Lawrence Lessig, a professor at Harvard Law School, told Reuters.

Will it land?

While the Trump Organization is privately held, Trump-related stocks have not performed well on the news of the new smartphone and service plan. ​​Trump Media & Technology Group Corp, which is traded under the ticker DJT, is down 1.59 percent for the day as of 11am ET (15:00 GMT). The stock has already been on the downturn. It has tumbled more than 10 percent in the last five trading days.

“I don’t see much impact from Trump Mobile across the industry, as half of its addressable market is negated by political parties, and then from there, this industry already has a lot of stickiness to current providers,” David Wagner, head of equities at Aptus Capital Advisors, told Reuters.

Major wireless carriers have been having a mixed day on Wall Street. Verizon is down by about 0.1 percent from yesterday’s close. AT&T is up 0.2 percent from the market close yesterday. T-Mobile is up 0.5 percent. The new phone announcement has not underpinned Apple in the markets. Apple’s stock is up 0.7 percent from the market close yesterday.

When U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla was forcibly removed from a news conference held by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, it was almost as if Donald Trump’s most well-worn talking point came to life:

A bad hombre tried to go after a white American.

All Padilla did was identify himself and try to question Noem about the immigration raids across Southern California that have led to protests and terror. Instead, federal agents pushed the senator into a hallway, forced him to the ground and handcuffed him before he was released. He and Noem talked privately afterward, yet she claimed to reporters that Padilla “lung[ed]” at her despite them being far apart and video showing no evidence to back up her laughable assertion.

(The claim was in keeping with Noem’s pronouncements this week. On Tuesday, she accused Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum of encouraging violent protests in L.A. when the president actually called for calm.)

The manhandling of Padilla on Thursday and his subsequent depiction by conservatives as a modern-day Pancho Villa isn’t surprising one bit. Trashing people of Mexican heritage has been one of Trump’s most successful electoral planks — don’t forget that he kicked off his 2016 presidential campaigns by proclaiming Mexican immigrants to be “rapists” and drug smugglers — because he knows it works. You could be a newcomer from Jalisco, you could be someone whose ancestors put down roots before the Mayflower, it doesn’t matter: For centuries, the default stance in this country is to look at anyone with family ties to our neighbor to the south with skepticism, if not outright hate.

It was the driving force behind the Mexican-American War and subsequent robbing of land from the Mexicans who decided to stay in the conquered territory. It was the basis for the legal segregation of Mexicans across the American Southwest in the first half of the 20th century and continues to fuel stereotypes of oversexed women and criminal men that still live on mainstream and social media.

These anti-Mexican sentiments are why California voters passed a slew of xenophobic local and state measures in the 1980s and 1990s when the state’s demographics began to dramatically change. Conservative politicians and pundits alike claimed Mexico was trying to reclaim the American Southwest and called the conspiracy the “Reconquista,” after the centuries-long push by Spaniards to take back the Iberian Peninsula from the Moors during the Middle Ages.

A man holds a Mexican flag at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Los Angeles on June 8, 2025.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

The echoes of that era continue to reverberate in MAGAland. It’s why Trump went on social media to describe L.A. as a city besieged by a “Migrant Invasion” when people began to rally against all the immigration raids that kicked off last week and led to his draconian deployment of the National Guard and Marines to L.A. as if we were Fallouja in the Iraq war. It’s what led the White House’s Instagram account Wednesday to share the image of a stern-looking Uncle Sam putting up a poster stating “Help your country … and yourself” above the slogan “Report All Foreign Invaders” and a telephone number for Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

It’s what led U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli to post a photo on his official social media account of SEIU California President David Huerta roughed up and in handcuffs after he was arrested for allegedly blocking the path of ICE agents trying to serve a search warrant on a factory in the Garment District. It’s why Texas Gov. Greg Abbott called in the National Guard before planned protests in San Antonio, one of the cradles of Latino political power in the United States and the home of the Alamo. It’s why there are reports that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth wants to rename a naval ship honoring Chicano legend Cesar Chavez and has announced that the only U.S. military base named after a Latino, Ft. Cavazos in Texas, will drop its name.

And it’s what’s driving all the rabid responses to activists waving the Mexican flag. Vice President JD Vance described protesters as “insurrectionists carrying foreign flags” on social media. White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller — Trump’s longtime anti-immigrant Iago — described L.A. as “occupied territory.” The president slimed protesters as “animals” and “foreign enemies.” In an address to Army soldiers prescreened for looks and loyalty at Ft. Bragg in North Carolina this week, he vowed, “The only flag that will wave triumphant over the city of Los Angeles is the American flag.”

The undue obsession with a piece of red, green and white cloth betrays this deep-rooted fear by Americans that we Mexicans are fundamentally invaders.

And to some, that idea sure seems to be true. Latinos are now the largest minority group in the U.S., a plurality in California and nearly a majority in L.A. and L.A. County — and Mexicans make up the largest segment of all those populations by far.

The truth of this demographic Reconquista, as I’ve been writing for a quarter of a century, is far more mundane.

Lupe Padilla, mother of then-Los Angeles City Councilman and current U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla, wipes a tear away as they watch a video presentation of his career during his last City Council meeting in 2006.

(Gary Friedman / Los Angeles Times)

The so-called invading force of my generation assimilated to the point where our kids are named Brandon and Ashley in all sorts of spellings. The young adults and teenagers on the street wrapping themselves in the Mexican flag right now are chanting against ICE in English and blasting “They Not Like Us.” More than a few of the National Guard troops, police officers and Homeland Security officers those young Latino activists were heckling have Latino surnames on their uniforms, when they show any identification at all. Hell, enough Mexican Americans voted for Trump that they arguably swung the election to him.

Mexicans assimilate into the United States, a fact too many Americans will never believe no matter how many American flags we may wave. The best personification of this reality is Sen. Padilla.

This son of Mexican immigrants grew up in working class Pacoima and went to MIT before returning home to help found a political machine that gave a voice to Latinos in the San Fernando Valley that they never had. He was the first Latino president of the L.A. City Council, served in both chambers of the state Legislature and also as California’s secretary of state before becoming California’s first Latino U.S. senator.

When I met Padilla for lunch last year at my wife’s store in Santa Ana — in Calle Cuatro, the city’s historic Latino district, where now we can see the National Guard down the street blocking off a part of it — he struck me as the goody- two-shoes those who have worked with him have always portrayed him to be. In fact, that was always a progressive critique of him: He was too nice to properly stand up to the Trump administration.

That’s what makes Padilla’s ejection especially outrageous. He’s California’s senior California U.S. senator, someone with enough of a security clearance to be was in the same federal building where Noem was holding her press conference because he had a previous meeting with US Northern Command’s General Gregory Guillot. Tall, brown and deep-voiced, Padilla is immediately recognizable on Capitol Hill as one of a handful of Latino U.S. senators. He fought Noem’s nomination to became Homeland Security chief, so it makes no sense that she didn’t immediately recognize him.

Then again, Noem probably thought Padilla was just another Mexican.

Not anymore. If anything, conservatives should be more afraid of Mexicans now than ever. Because if a nice Mexican such as Alex Padilla could be fed up with hate against us enough to get tossed around by the feds in the name of preserving democracy, anyone can.

May we all be bad hombres now.

June 2 (UPI) — Karol Nawrocki, a populist conservative backed by U.S. President Donald Trump, has won Poland’s presidential runoff election, according to official results released Monday.

Eyes across the country, Europe and even North America were watching the race in Poland, where the presidency is a somewhat symbolic position — especially compared to the prime minister and their executive powers — but one that does come with veto authority.

The election of Nawrocki also suggests a political shift in the deeply divided nation.

Warsaw Mayor Rafal Kazimierz Trzaskowski — of Prime Minister Donald Tusk‘s Civic Platform party — had narrowly beaten Nawrocki, a conservative historian who ran as an independent, in the first round of voting on May 18, but failed to gain a majority of the votes to win the presidency outright.

In Sunday’s runoff, the roles were reversed, and it was Nawrocki who secured the narrow victory. According to official results, Nawrocki, 42, won 50.89% of the vote. Trzaskowski, 53, received 49.11%.

Of the 20.8 million cast votes — representing 71.6% of Poland’s population — nearly 37,000 votes separated the two candidates.

Nawrocki was backed by the nationalist opposition Law and Justice party.

This is a developing story.

WASHINGTON — As Republicans gather this week in Houston, we hear much talk of conservatives and conservatism. Is George Bush a true conservative? Will conservatives support the President, or stay home? Is the movement intellectually exhausted? Who will emerge to lead conservatives in 1996?

But these discussions all overlook one significant point: The Republicans are not really a conservative party. Indeed, we might say of American conservatism, as Mohandas K. Gandhi said of Western civilization–”It would be a good idea.”

True conservatism is a philosophy committed to conserving– conserving families, communities and nation in the face of change. Committed to preserving fundamental values, such as accountability, civic duty and the rule of law. And committed to a strong government to realize these ends. What passes for conservatism in America today bears only a passing resemblance to this true conservatism. It worships at the twin altars of free enterprise and weak government–two decidedly unconservative notions.

Real conservatism values security and stability over the unfettered free market. In Germany, for example, it was the conservative Otto von Bismark–not socialists–who developed social insurance and built the world’s first welfare state. Today conservatives throughout the world–but not here–endorse government-provided national health care, because they recognize public needs are not always met by the private sector. And they see a role for government in encouraging national economic development.

A true conservative movement would not ignore the decay of our great cities, or see the disorder of the Los Angeles riots only as a political opportunity. Nor would they pay homage to “free trade” while the nation’s manufacturing base withered. Nor would a conservative President veto pro-family legislation requiring companies to provide leave to new mothers, in deference to business prerogatives.

Traditional conservatives champion community and nation over the individual. They esteem public service, and promote civic obligation. They reject the “invisible hand” argument, that everyone’s pursuit of individual self-interest will magically yield the best public outcome, believing instead in deliberately cultivating virtue. Authentic conservatives do not assail 55 m.p.h. speed limits and seat-belt laws as encroaching totalitarianism.

Finally, a genuine conservatism values the future over the present. It is a movement of elites to be sure, but of elites who feel that their privilege entails special obligations. The old word for this was “stewardship”–the obligation to care for the nation’s human and natural resources, and to look out for future generations’ interests.

Such conservatives would not open up public lands for private commercial exploitation, or undermine environmental regulations for short-term economic growth. They would not cut funding for childrens’ vaccinations, knowing that the cost of treating illness is far greater. And a conservative political party would never preside over a quadrupling of the national debt.

In America, then, what we call conservatism is really classical liberalism: a love of the market, and hatred of government. Adam Smith, after all, was a liberal, not a conservative. As the economist Gunnar Myrdal once noted: “America is conservative . . . but the principles conserved are liberal.”

American conservatives have often celebrated the country’s historically “exceptional” character: the acceptance of capitalism and the absence of any significant socialist movement. Curiously, though, they often miss their half of the story: the absence of a real Tory conservatism. What Louis Hartz called America’s “liberal consensus” excluded both of the great communitarian traditions–ain’t nobody here but us liberals.

True conservatism’s weakness as a political tradition in America is thus an old story. When values confront the market here, the market usually wins. In recent years, though, conservative social values seem to have been eclipsed. Many of today’s conservatives are really libertarians–proponents of a radical individualism that has little in common with conservatism. Consider some very non-conservative messages that conservatives have delivered in the past two weeks.

Conservative GOP leaders called on the President to propose massive new tax cuts as the centerpiece for a possible second term. Fiscal responsibility, apparently, is no longer part of conservative doctrine–if it gets in the way of a nice capital gains tax cut.

The Wall Street Journal assailed Maryland for introducing a new 75-hour community-service requirement for high school students. What about teaching values in school? Or putting nation before self?

When it comes to good conservative values, today’s conservatives talk the talk, but they don’t walk the walk. Look at Dan Quayle, the elected official who supposedly most speaks to real conservatives. Every day, the vice president is out there talking about traditional values, and slaying liberal dragons like Murphy Brown. His agenda: tax dollars for parochial schools, banning abortion, allowing school prayer. This is the 1980 Moral Majority program. Yet, after 12 years in power, the Republican Party has delivered nothing to social conservatives–the closest thing we have in this country to authentic conservatives. Republicans’ business allies, on the other hand, have reaped tremendous gains in such areas as taxation, regulation and labor relations. There are many social-issue conservatives in the GOP, but when it comes to governing, they are clearly the junior partners.

These social issues are trotted out every four years, but it’s just a ritual, like hanging Christmas lights on the front porch. The rest of the time, they sit in the Republican basement. For them, it’s simply a matter of electoral opportunism–a way to attract working-class voters whose economic interests drew them to the Democrats. Now Barry M. Goldwater, the grand old man of American conservatism, has called on the party to abandon its anti-abortion commitment. The political calculus has changed, and so must the platform. Individual liberty is the important point now. It would appear that the ban on abortion was only in there to win votes in the first place–if it doesn’t do that, what’s the point?

The future seems to lie with the libertarians. We should expect more Republicans like Gov. Pete Wilson, who prides himself on savaging the social safety net. Personal freedom is the message: free to have an abortion, also free to go hungry.

However, this does not bode well for conservatives’ long-term electoral fortunes. Economic liberalism is a weak political force in countries with conservative and social-democratic alternatives. Historically, lower-class voters have been mobilized by appeals to class solidarity on the one hand, or religion and nationalism on the other. Liberalism is the credo of the upper middle class.

The historical failure of American elites to embrace authentic conservatism is a loss for the nation. Even liberals–in the American sense–should regret this void. In fact, they should be most concerned. Conservatives would resist the relentless privatization of our social and economic life, and help rein in the nation’s free-market excesses. If real conservatives had been in charge in the 1980s, we might have been spared the orgy of speculation, takeover and deregulation that so weakened our economy.

The free market, after all, is a powerful force for change. It creates and destroys communities, sunders families and undermines traditional values. People desire protection from it for sound conservative reasons–they want security and stability. A genuine conservatism would provide a kind of social ballast for a nation constantly buffeted by change.

America is too liberal for its own good. Our brand of conservatism is too American for its own good. Maybe it’s time to let conservatives be conservatives.

One fateful October decision to trim two convoluted sentences from a “60 Minutes” interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris has snowballed into a full-blown corporate crisis for CBS’ parent company, Paramount Global, and its controlling shareholder, Shari Redstone.

President Trump’s $20-billion lawsuit — claiming “60 Minutes” producers deceptively manipulated the Harris interview to make her look smarter — has festered, clouding the future of Paramount and the company’s hoped-for $8-billion sale to David Ellison’s Skydance Media.

The dispute over the edits has sparked massive unrest within the company, prompted high-level departures and triggered a Federal Communications Commission examination of alleged news bias. The FCC’s review of the Skydance deal has become bogged down, according to people familiar with the matter who weren’t authorized to comment.

The agency, chaired by a Trump appointee, must approve the transfer of CBS television station licenses to the Ellison family for the deal to advance.

A lawsuit resolution, through court-ordered mediation, remains out of reach. And last week, three Democratic U.S. senators raised the stakes by suggesting, in a letter to Redstone, that a Trump settlement could be considered an illegal payoff.

Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) warned in their letter that any payment to Trump to gain favorable treatment by the FCC could violate federal anti-bribery laws. Paramount’s dealings with Trump “raises serious concerns of corruption and improper conduct,” the senators wrote.

“Under the federal bribery statute, it is illegal to corruptly give anything of value to public officials to influence an official act,” the senators said.

President Trump during a signing ceremony in the Oval Office of the White House.

(Drew Angerer / Getty Images)

Redstone is desperate for the Paramount-Skydance deal to go through.

Her family’s holding company is cratering under a mountain of debt. Paramount’s sale to the Ellison family would provide the clan $2.4 billion for their preferred shares — proceeds that would allow the Redstones to pay their nearly $600 million in debt — and remain billionaires.

Paramount, Skydance and a spokesperson for Redstone declined to comment.

While recusing herself from granular and final decision-making, Redstone has made it clear that she wants Paramount to settle with Trump, rather than wage an ongoing beef with the sitting president, according to people familiar with the matter but not authorized to discuss internal deliberations.

Figuring a way out of the dispute has divided the company, according to insiders.

For CBS News professionals, apologizing to Trump over routine edits of a lengthy interview is a red line. Tensions have spilled into public view.

Redstone has been cast as the villain. The Drudge Report, created by journalist Matt Drudge, who got his start at CBS in Los Angeles, last month published a photo of 71-year-old heiress, identifying her in all caps as “The woman who destroyed CBS News.”

Two top CBS News executives have resigned. Both refused to apologize to Trump as part of any settlement, the knowledgeable sources said.

Most CBS journalists and 1st Amendment experts see Trump’s lawsuit a shakedown, one seemingly designed to exploit Paramount’s vulnerability because it needs the government’s approval for the Skydance deal.

“Settling such a case for anything of substance would thus compromise 1st Amendment principles today and the broad notion of freedom of the press in the future,” prominent press freedom lawyer Floyd Abrams said.

Paramount has stressed that it sees the Trump lawsuit and the FCC review of the Skydance deal as separate. “We will abide by the legal process to defend our case,” a Paramount spokesperson said.

But “60 Minutes” correspondent Scott Pelley connected the two for viewers during an extraordinary April broadcast, in which he rebuked Paramount management on air at the end of the program. That, according to sources, angered some of Paramount’s leaders.

While “60 Minutes” has received additional corporate oversight, some insiders pointed to Pelley’s acknowledgment that “none of our stories have been blocked.”

All the high-level scrutiny has put Paramount and Redstone in a box, and the Skydance deal looks less certain than it did months ago.

“Who’s going to sign that settlement, knowing that you could be accused of paying a bribe?” asked one person close to Paramount.

Paramount Global’s path to peril began long before the infamous “60 Minutes” edits. The company was diminished by management turmoil and years of cost-cutting, which would eventually force Redstone to find a buyer for one of Hollywood’s most storied studios.

Should New York-based Paramount, which also owns Comedy Central, MTV, Nickelodeon and the famed Melrose Avenue movie studio, fail to complete its sale to Skydance by its October deadline, the deal could collapse.

Paramount then would owe $400 million to Skydance as a breakup fee, putting the company in further dire financial straits. Skydance and its investor RedBird Capital Partners have agreed, once they take over, to inject $1.5 billion into Paramount, helping it pay down some debt.

Redstone would also be on the hook to repay her financiers. Two years ago, a Chicago banker rescued the Redstone family investment firm, National Amusements Inc., with a $125-million equity investment.

The family’s finances were strained after Paramount cut its dividend to shareholders that spring during the Hollywood writers’ strike. The family’s dire financial situation was a leading impetus for Paramount’s sale.

If the deal fell through, Redstone would also have to repay a $186-million loan from tech mogul Larry Ellison. The billionaire Oracle co-founder and father of David Ellison extended the loan so National Amusements could make a looming debt payment.

National Amusements holds 77% of Paramount’s controlling shares, giving the Redstone family enormous sway over Paramount management.

Paramount Chairwoman Shari Redstone in 2023 in New York.

(Evan Agostini / Invision / Associated Press)

Critics privately note Redstone’s role in setting up the company for the current drama. It took nearly a year for Redstone and Paramount’s special board committee to negotiate a deal with Skydance. The independent directors spent months searching for an alternate buyer, adding to the delays that now haunt both sides.

Had the parties reached agreement sooner, the companies could have asked the FCC for approval earlier last year during the less hostile Biden administration.

Instead, weeks were spent haggling over various demands, including having Skydance indemnify Redstone and her family against shareholder lawsuits. In the end, the Ellisons also agreed to help Redstone pay for her New York apartment and private jet after the deal closes, according to the knowledgeable people.

Paramount petitioned the FCC for review in September.

By that time, political environment was caustic for mainstream media companies. Conservatives were upset over ABC News’ handling of the Sept. 10 debate between Trump and Harris after ABC anchors fact-checked Trump in real time, including pushing back on his false claim that Haitian immigrants in Ohio were eating pets.

Trump reportedly backed out of a “60 Minutes” appearance — long a traditional stop for presidential candidates — because CBS intended to fact-check his remarks. Conservatives viewed such formats as a double standard and as an example of how news bias has seeped into major networks’ coverage of Republicans.

“This was an issue we were already sensitive to and focused on,” said Daniel Suhr, president of the conservative Center for American Rights legal group, which filed an FCC complaint against Walt Disney Co.’s ABC after the debate.

At CBS, another firestorm had engulfed the newsroom.

Redstone, who had previously urged news executives to bring more balance to CBS’ coverage, was livid after managers scolded “CBS Mornings” co-host Tony Dokoupil for his sharp questioning of author Ta-Nehisi Coates about Israel during an interview segment. Coates’ book, “The Message,” compared Israel’s treatment of Palestinians to the Jim Crow South in the U.S.

Redstone, who is Jewish and has focused her philanthropy on battling antisemitism in the wake of Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, publicly rebuked CBS News managers for their treatment of Dokoupil.

The controversial exchange in the Harris “60 Minutes” interview also happened to concern Israel.

“60 Minutes” correspondent Bill Whitaker suggested to Harris that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, was not listening to the Biden administration.

Harris gave a long-winded three-sentence response.

CBS broadcast the convoluted first sentence on its Sunday public affairs show, “Face the Nation,” on Oct. 6. The following night — the anniversary of the Hamas attacks — “60 Minutes” aired only her most forceful and succinct third sentence: “We are not going to stop pursuing what is necessary for the United States to be clear about where we stand on the need for this war to end.”

Conservatives zeroed in.

“CBS created this mess for itself. … The conservative ecosystem was outraged when they saw the two different clips because it vindicated everything,” Suhr said. “Folks had always believed the media was selectively manipulating interviews like that.”

Journalists routinely cut extraneous words to provide clear and compact soundbites for audiences. CBS released a statement saying that it had not doctored the interview. Rather, news producers said they trimmed Harris’ response to cover more ground during the broadcast.

Internally, CBS debated whether to release the full transcript to quell the furor — but it stopped short at first. Some people close to the company have been particularly critical of CBS for not immediately releasing the unedited video.

Trump sued in late October for $10 billion. After he returned to the White House, he doubled his demand to $20 billion.

One of Trump-appointed FCC Chairman Brendan Carr’s first moves was to revive a separate news distortion complaint against “60 Minutes,” which Suhr had filed shortly after the broadcast. The matter had been dismissed by the previous Biden-appointed chair.

CBS and the FCC released the Harris footage in February.

By that time, the controversy had consumed the company.

Last month, Bill Owens, the executive producer of “60 Minutes” stepped down, citing a loss of editorial independence.

“60 Minutes” continued with Trump-critical stories — to the chagrin of people who want the Skydance deal to close.

Less than two weeks after CBS Chief Executive George Cheeks pledged support for his team, Wendy McMahon, the head of CBS News, was forced to go.

“It’s become clear that the company and I do not agree on the path forward,” McMahon told her staff in a note last week.

Insiders note other McMahon decisions, including the introduction of a new “CBS Evening News” format, which has led to plummeting ratings, as factors in her fall. McMahon could not be reached for comment.

Redstone and others hope the mediation with Trump’s attorneys will produce a truce.

But several questions remain: What will it take for Paramount to appease the president? And could the company’s leaders be prosecuted if they pay the president a multimillion-dollar settlement?

In “normal times,” officials might be alarmed by a president’s demand for a big check, said Michael C. Dorf, a Cornell Law School professor.

“These are not normal times, however, so the president will likely be able to get away with soliciting a bribe from Paramount, just as he is getting away with extortion of law firms and universities,” Dorf said.

Staff writer Stephen Battaglio contributed to this report.

PAINTSVILLE, Ky. — Janet Lynn Stumbo leaned on her cane and surveyed the two dozen or so voters who had convened in a small Appalachian town to meet with the chair of the Kentucky Democratic Party.

A former Kentucky Supreme Court justice, the 70-year-old Stumbo said the event was “the biggest Democratic gathering I have ever seen in Johnson County,” an enclave where Republican Donald Trump got 85% of the presidential vote in November.

Paintsville, the county seat, was the latest stop on the state party’s “Rural Listening Tour,” a periodic effort to visit overwhelmingly white, culturally conservative towns of the kind where Democrats once competed and Republicans now dominate nationally.

Democrats’ path back to power may start in places like Paintsville, one small meeting at a time, because it may be difficult for the party to regain control of Congress or the White House without faring better among rural and small-town voters across the country.

The party recently lost U.S. senators from states with significant rural populations: Montana, Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia. Also, Democratic-led states are losing population to Sun Belt states led by Republicans, with some projections suggesting changes after the 2030 census could cost Democrats 12 electoral college votes.

“The gut check is we’d stopped having these conversations” in white rural America, said Colmon Elridge, the Kentucky Democratic chair. “Folks didn’t give up on the Democratic Party. We stopped doing the things that we knew we needed to do.”

It’s not that Democrats must carry most white rural precincts to win more elections. It’s more a matter of consistently chipping away at Republican margins in the way Trump narrowed Democrats’ usual advantages among Black and Latino men in 2024, and not unlike what Kentucky’s Democratic governor, Andy Beshear, did in two statewide victories.

Nationally, Trump won 60% of small-town and rural voters when he lost reelection in 2020 — and 63% in his 2024 victory, according to AP VoteCast data. That’s a far cry from a generation ago, when Democrat Bill Clinton won pluralities in Johnson County on his way to capturing Kentucky’s electoral votes in the 1992 and 1996 White House races.

“We have to be intentional about how we build something sustainable,” Elridge said. “It’s not like we haven’t won here before.”

Combating the ‘caricature’ of Democrats

For two hours in downtown Paintsville, Elridge listened as Stumbo and others took umbrage at conservatives’ policy agenda, expressed frustration over President Trump’s standing in eastern Kentucky and said they were determined to sell their neighbors an alternative. Many brought their personal experiences to bear.

The event was part town hall, part catharsis, part pep talk. In some ways, the complaints in Paintsville mirrored how Democrats nationally are angry, often for very different reasons.

Sandra Music, a retired teacher who called herself “a new Democrat,” converted because of Trump. She bemoaned conservatives’ success in advancing private school tuition voucher programs and said they were threatening a public education system “meant to ensure we educate everybody.”

Music criticized Republicans for making a “caricature” of Democrats. “They want to pull out keywords: ‘abortion,’ ‘transgender,’ ‘boys in girls’ sports’” and distract from the rest of the Republican agenda, she said.

Stumbo, the former justice, lamented what she called the rightward lurch of the state and federal courts. “We are going to suffer irreparable damage,” she said, “if we don’t stop these conservative idiots.”

Michael Halfhill, who works in healthcare information technology, was incredulous that the billionaire president has taken hold of voters in Appalachia, historically one of the country’s poorest regions.

“It’s not left versus right. It’s rich versus poor,” he said, shaking his head at working-class white voters — Johnson County is 97.5% white — “voting against themselves.”

Ned Pillersdorf, who is married to Stumbo, went after Republicans for their proposed federal tax and spending plans, especially potential cuts to Medicaid. He said Paintsville still has a rural hospital, which is among the largest employers in the region, in no small part because Kentucky is among the GOP-leaning states where a Democratic governor expanded Medicaid under the 2010 Affordable Care Act.

Elridge, the first Black chair of a major party in Kentucky, mentioned Trump’s attacks on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and related civil rights laws and regulations.

“This is where Trump and MAGA excel — if somebody who looks like me is your enemy, then you don’t care if the guy in the White House is peeing on your leg and telling you it’s rain,” he said, referring to Trump’s “Make American Great Again” movement.

Republican response

By definition, a “listening tour” is not meant to produce concrete action. Elridge and Nicholas Hazelett, the Johnson County Democratic chair who is a college student and a Paintsville City Council member, acknowledged that the small crowd was Democrat-friendly. Despite a few recent converts, no one was there waiting to be convinced.

Across the street, antiques shop owner Michelle Hackworth said she did not even know Democrats were holding a meeting. Calling herself a “hard-core Republican,” she smiled when asked if she would consider attending.

“They wouldn’t convince me of anything,” she said.

Bill Mike Runyon, a self-described conservative Republican who is Paintsville’s mayor and loves Trump, went immediately to social and cultural commentary when asked in an interview to explain Johnson County politics.

Democrats, he said, “have to get away from the far-left radical — look at the transgender message.” Further, Runyon said, “everything got kind of racial. It’s not like that here in Paintsville and in Johnson County, but I can see it as a country. … It’s making people more racist against one another.”

Asked specifically who he was talking about, he alluded to progressive U.S. Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Latina from New York City, and Jasmine Crockett, a Black woman from Texas.

“It’s the ones you always see on TV,” the mayor said.

Governor’s bipartisan appeal

Beshear seems to be the one Democrat who commands wide respect in and around Paintsville.

Democrats hailed the 47-year-old governor for supporting abortion and LGBTQ+ rights while still attracting support beyond the Democratic strongholds of Louisville, Lexington and Frankfort. Beshear did not win Johnson County but got 37% of the vote in his 2023 reelection. He carried several nearby counties.

Many Republicans, including the mayor, complimented Beshear for his handling of floods and other disasters in the region.

“He’s been here,” Runyon said. “I absolutely can get to him if I need him.”

In 2024, Beshear landed on the list of potential vice presidential running mates for Democratic nominee Kamala Harris. He also remains Senate Democrats’ top pick for a 2026 campaign for the seat coming open with Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell’s retirement.

Beshear, whose father once lost to McConnell after having won two governor’s races, has said he will not run for Senate. But he has stepped up his cable TV interviews and launched his own podcast, fueling speculation that his next campaign will be for the 2028 presidential nomination.

“Andy is not like those national Democrats,” Runyon said. Harking back to the 1990s, he added, “Bill Clinton wasn’t like these Democrats today.”

Hackworth, the shop owner, noted that she voted against the younger Beshear twice. But over the course of an extended interview, she, too, commended the governor’s disaster management. She also questioned some moves by Trump, including the idea of getting Washington completely out of the disaster aid business.

She blamed Trump’s predecessor, former President Biden, for a “tough time at my store,” but acknowledged that federal aid had helped many businesses and households stay afloat through the COVID-19 pandemic emergency.

Hackworth said she was not familiar with details of Medicaid expansion, but she identified the nearby hospital as among the area’s largest employers. The others, she said, are the public school system and Walmart, which a day earlier had announced it was increasing prices because of Trump’s tariffs.

While supporting Trump’s “America first” agenda, Hackworth said widespread tariffs would upset many consumers. “You can walk through my store and see where the new stuff is made,” she said. “I try to buy American, but so much of it is China, China, China.”

Asked again whether any of that should give Democrats an opening in places like Paintsville, she said, “Well, there’s always an opening if you show up.”

Barrow writes for the Associated Press.

Donald Trump had just been elected president when I first visited the sprawling Wyoming ranch of conservative billionaire Phil Anschutz in late 2016.

But my tour guides didn’t let President Trump’s well-known disdain for wind power stop them from sharing their story: With Anschutz’s fortune behind them, and huge profits ahead, they were preparing to build America’s largest wind farm. America’s future was renewable.

When I visited again in 2022, their story was the same: Wind turbines, all the way.

Not anymore.

After Trump returned to office this year and began weaponizing federal departments against clean energy, wind in particular, with a vengeance unlike anything seen during his first term, Anschutz’s Power Co. of Wyoming updated its website. The company now planned to build a gas-fueled power plant as large as 3,200 megawatts, it said in February. That would be the country’s second-largest gas plant, after a facility in Florida.

Anschutz’s 3,550-megawatt wind farm remained under construction, as did a long-distance power line capable of transmitting the electricity to California. But the way the company described its mission had changed.

Until at least Feb. 11, the website’s home page, as documented by the Internet Archive, was titled, “Putting wind to work for Carbon County.” It said the wind farm’s benefits would include “a reliable, competitively priced supply of renewable electricity” that would “help America reduce greenhouse-gas emissions.”

Now the page says nothing about heat-trapping emissions or renewable electricity, and little about wind. Instead, it’s littered with Trump-esque language about “American-made energy” and “electricity that our nation needs.”

There’s still a separate section of the site describing the wind project and its benefits. But atop the home page, a banner that previously featured two pictures — one of wind turbines, one of the U.S. flag and the Wyoming state flag fluttering in the wind — has been updated. In place of the flag picture, there’s a gas plant.

Why might an energy company owned by a Republican mega-donor feel the need to make such a pivot?

Phil Anschutz, left, watches the Lakers play the Minnesota Timberwolves in 2011.

(Gary Friedman / Los Angeles Times)

Simply put, Trump despises wind turbines, an obsession that dates to the early 2010s, when he tried and failed to block an offshore wind farm he believed would ruin the view from his Scottish golf resort. In January, he issued an executive order blocking construction of Lava Ridge, an Idaho wind project approved by the Biden administration. Trump’s appointees have paused federal permitting for all wind farms, which experts say is most likely illegal.

In their most brazen attack yet, last month Trump’s appointees ordered the Norwegian company Equinor to stop construction of Empire Wind, an ocean wind farm off the coast of Long Island that will help power New York City. The company had already invested $2.7 billion in the project. Until the Trump administration lifted the stop-work order this week, Equinor executives said they were days away from canceling Empire Wind entirely.

Given those events, it’s possible Anschutz’s pivot toward gas is a “strategic play” to avoid incurring Trump’s wrath, said Leah Stokes, an associate professor of climate and energy policy at UC Santa Barbara.

“Trump has been attacking wind so much,” she said.

Anschutz spokesperson Kara Choquette gave me a different explanation for the company’s gas-plant plan — one that had nothing to do with Trump. She cited “unprecedented demand growth,” alluding to the rapid adoption of artificial intelligence technology that’s driving a data-center boom — and a corresponding need for electricity.

“Market demand has always been the driver for our projects,” Choquette said via email.

In a filing with Wyoming regulators, the Anschutz Corp. expressed interest in selling power to “hyperscale data centers” that could be built on its Wyoming ranch. That power could come from the wind farm, the gas plant or a 1,000-megawatt solar farm that Anschutz is also interested in constructing.

A mix of wind and gas, Choquette told me, “will provide firm, reliable power at a meaningful scale and size.”

PacifiCorp’s Ekola Flats wind farm outside Medicine Bow, Wyo., seen in 2022, has 63 turbines, most of them rated at 4.3 megawatts.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

But Stokes, who helped craft portions of President Biden’s climate law, the Inflation Reduction Act, wonders if the gas plant proposal is largely performative. A surge in gas-plant construction, fueled by AI demand, has led to long delays for gas turbines. The research firm Wood Mackenzie reported this month that some energy developers are finding the earliest they can bring new gas plants online is 2030. Turbine costs have also hit all-time highs.

Meanwhile, solar and batteries made up nearly 84% of new power capacity built in the U.S. last year.

“You’ve got to build batteries and solar, because that’s the only thing you can build fast,” Stokes said.

Thus far, Anschutz’s company hasn’t applied for a gas-plant permit from Wyoming officials. But the Denver-based billionaire won’t lack for resources if and when he decides to move forward. He owns the Coachella music festival, the Los Angeles Kings and L.A.’s Crypto.com Arena, among other lucrative assets. He’s already spent at least $400 million over more than 15 years permitting and beginning to build the wind farm and 732-mile power line.

The wind farm and power line could help wean California off fossil fuels, supplying bountiful clean energy during the evening and nighttime hours, when solar panels stop generating and batteries aren’t always sufficient.

But if Anschutz does indeed build the nation’s second-largest gas plant, the air pollution could be significant.

Gas is usually cleaner than coal. But gas combustion still results in harmful pollutants, including nitrogen oxides, which the American Lung Assn. says can cause asthma attacks and reduced lung function. Gas also fuels the worsening heat waves, wildfires and storms of the climate crisis, especially when it leaks from pipelines and power plants in the form of methane, an especially powerful heat-trapping pollutant.

Anschutz’s company says on its website that the gas plant will be “hydrogen-capable and carbon-capture-ready” — meaning the facility will be capable of eventually switching from gas to clean-burning hydrogen, and ready to add installations that capture heat-trapping carbon dioxide before it escapes into the atmosphere.

The city of Glendale’s gas-fired Grayson power plant, seen in 2023, sits near the banks of the Los Angeles River.

(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)

In theory, those are nice ideas. In practice, both technologies mostly don’t exist yet in commercial, reliable form. Hence the “capable” and the “ready.” A 3,200-megawatt gas plant would be a big polluter.

“There are water issues. There are wildlife issues,” said Rob Joyce, director of the Sierra Club’s Wyoming chapter. “Even if it is on private land on their ranch, it’s something we should be concerned about.”

Shutting down all gas plants isn’t realistic, at least not yet; even California still depends on gas for one-third of its electricity. But scientists say building new gas plants, especially in richer nations like the U.S., is incompatible with a safe future for human civilization. Not to mention financially questionable, when solar and wind are cheaper.

Here’s hoping Anschutz doesn’t actually build a giant gas plant.

Perhaps just as importantly, here’s hoping America’s most wealthiest and most powerful people and institutions stop caving to Trump’s diktats. Universities, Fortune 500 companies, marquee law firms, billionaires — do they really think if they just give Trump a splash of what he wants, he won’t ask for more? And then he’ll leave office peacefully, and democracy will be fine? And we’ll maintain a livable climate and functioning economy?

I can’t know for sure if Anschutz’s gas-plant proposal is designed to appease Trump.

But Power Co. of Wyoming has definitely undergone a rebranding since he took office.

On its profile page on social media platform X — where it’s long posted under the username “welovewind” — the company used to describe itself as a supplier of “diverse, high-capacity, reliable, ‘Made in Wyoming’ wind power to help meet region’s [renewable portfolio standard, greenhouse gas] and economic growth goals.”

Sometime between late January and early March, though, the description changed. Now it reads: “High-capacity, reliable, clean, ‘Made in Wyoming’ electric power to help meet diverse market demands and goals.”

ONE MORE THING

On this week’s Boiling Point podcast, I talk with Sadie Babits, a climate editor at NPR and author of the excellent new book, “Hot Takes: Every Journalist’s Guide to Covering Climate Change.” We talk about how reporters can do a better job tackling one of the biggest stories of modern times — and how news consumers can help them.

You can listen to my conversation with Sadie on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or YouTube.

This is the latest edition of Boiling Point, a newsletter about climate change and the environment in the American West. Sign up here to get it in your inbox. And listen to our “Boiling Point” podcast here.

For more climate and environment news, follow @Sammy_Roth on X and @sammyroth.bsky.social on Bluesky.

Correction: Last week’s newsletter used the wrong name for a nuclear plant in Washington state. It’s Columbia Generating Station, not Centralia. Centralia is a coal plant.

WASHINGTON — President Trump implored House Republicans at the Capitol to drop their fights over his big tax-cut bill and get it done, using encouraging words but also the hardened language of politics over the multitrillion-dollar package that is at risk of collapsing before planned votes this week.

During the more than hourlong session Tuesday, Trump warned Republicans to not touch Medicaid with cuts, and he told New York lawmakers to end their fight for a bigger local tax deduction, reversing his own campaign promise. The president, heading into the meeting, called himself a “cheerleader” for the Republican Party and praised Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.). But he also criticized at least one of the GOP holdouts as a “grandstander” and warned that anyone who doesn’t support the bill would be a “fool.”

“We have unbelievable unity,” Trump said as he exited. “I think we’re going to get everything we want.”

The president arrived at a pivotal moment. Negotiations are slogging along and it’s not at all clear the package, with its sweeping tax breaks and cuts to Medicaid, food stamps and green energy programs, has the support needed from the House’s slim Republican majority. Lawmakers are also being asked to add some $350 billion to Trump’s border security, deportation and defense agenda.

Inside, he spoke privately in what one lawmaker called the president’s “weaving” style, and took questions.

The president also made it clear he’s losing patience with the various holdout factions of the House Republicans, according to a senior White House official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the private meeting.

But Trump disputed that notion as well as reports that he used an expletive in warning against cutting Medicaid. Instead, he said afterward, “That was a meeting of love.” He received several standing ovations, Republicans said.

Yet it was not at all clear that Trump, who was brought in to seal the deal, changed minds.

“We’re still a long ways away,” said Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.), the chair of the House Freedom Caucus.

Conservatives are insisting on quicker, steeper cuts to federal programs to offset the costs of the trillions of dollars in lost tax revenue. At the same time, a core group of lawmakers from New York and other high-tax states wants bigger tax breaks for their voters back home. Worries about piling onto the nation’s $36-trillion debt are stark.

With House Democrats lined up against the package, calling it a giveaway to the wealthy at the expense of safety net programs, GOP leaders have almost no votes to spare. A key committee hearing is set for the middle of the night Tuesday in hopes of a House floor vote by Wednesday afternoon.

“They literally are trying to take healthcare away from millions of Americans at this very moment in the dead of night,” said House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York.

Trump has been pushing hard for Republicans to unite behind the bill, the president’s signature domestic policy initiative in Congress.

Asked about one of the conservative Republicans, Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, Trump lashed out.

“I think he is a grandstander, frankly,” the president continued. “I think he should be voted out of office.”

But Massie, a renegade who wears a clock lapel pin that tallies the nation’s debt load, said afterward he’s still a no vote.

Also unmoved was Rep. Mike Lawler, one of the New York Republicans leading the fight for a bigger state and local tax deduction, known as SALT: “As it stands right now, I do not support the bill. Period.”

The sprawling 1,116-page package carries Trump’s title, the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” as well as his campaign promises to extend the tax breaks approved during his first term while adding new ones, including no taxes on tips, automobile loan interest and Social Security.

Yet, the price tag is rising and lawmakers are wary of the votes ahead, particularly as the economy teeters with uncertainty.

The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a nonpartisan fiscal watchdog group, estimates that the House bill is shaping up to add roughly $3.3 trillion to the debt over the next decade.

Republicans criticizing the measure argued that the bill’s new spending and tax cuts are front-loaded, while the measures to offset the cost are back-loaded.

In particular, the conservative Republicans are looking to speed up the new work requirements that Republicans want to enact for able-bodied participants in Medicaid. They had been proposed to start Jan. 1, 2029, but Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) said on CNBC that work requirements for some Medicaid beneficiaries would begin in early 2027.

At least 7.6 million fewer people are expected to have health insurance under the initial Medicaid changes, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said last week.

Republican holdouts are also looking to more quickly halt green energy tax breaks, which had been approved as part of the Biden-era Inflation Reduction Act, and are now being used for renewable energy projects across the nation.

But for every change Johnson considers to appease the hard-right conservatives, he risks losing support from more traditional and centrist Republicans. Many have signed letters protesting deep cuts to Medicaid and food assistance programs and the rolling back of clean energy tax credits.

At its core, the sprawling legislative package permanently extends the existing income tax cuts and bolsters the standard deduction, increasing it to $32,000 for joint filers, and the child tax credit to $2,500.

The New Yorkers are fighting for a larger state and local tax deduction beyond the bill’s proposal. As it stands, the bill would triple what’s currently a $10,000 cap on the state and local tax deduction, increasing it to $30,000 for joint filers with incomes up to $400,000 a year. They have proposed a deduction of $62,000 for single filers and $124,000 for joint filers.

Trump, who had campaigned on fully reinstating the unlimited SALT deduction, now appears to be satisfied with the proposed compromise, arguing it only benefits “all the Democratic” states.

If the bill passes the House this week, it would move to the Senate, where Republicans are also eyeing changes.

Mascaro, Freking, Askarinam and Cappelletti write for the Associated Press. AP writers Darlene Superville and Seung Min Kim contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — Republicans advanced their massive tax cut and border security package out of a key House committee during a rare Sunday night vote as conservatives who blocked the measure two days earlier reversed course after gaining commitments on the package’s spending cuts.

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) met with Republican lawmakers shortly before the meeting, telling reporters that the changes agreed to were “just some minor modifications. Not a huge thing.”

Democrats on the panel pressed for more details about the changes that Republicans had agreed to in the private negotiations. But Rep. Jodey Arrington (R-Texas), the chairman of the House Budget Committee, said he could not do so.

“Deliberations continue at this very moment,” Arrington said. “They will continue on into the week, and I suspect right up until the time we put this big, beautiful bill on the floor of the House.”

The first time Republicans tried advancing the bill out of the Budget Committee, hard-right Republicans joined with Democrats in voting against sending the measure to the full House. Five Republicans voted no, one on procedural grounds, the other four voicing concerns about the bill’s effect on federal budget deficits.

On Sunday evening, the four voicing concerns about the deficit voted present, and the measure passed by a vote of 17 to 16.

Johnson is looking to put the bill on the House floor before the end of the week.

“This is the vehicle through which we will deliver on the mandate that the American people gave us in the last election,” he said on “Fox News Sunday” in advance of the vote.

The Republicans who criticized the measure noted that the bill’s new spending and tax cuts are front-loaded in the bill, while the measures to offset the cost are back-loaded. For example, they are looking to speed up the new work requirements that Republicans want to enact for Medicaid recipients. Those requirements would not kick in until 2029 under the current bill.

“We are writing checks we cannot cash, and our children are going to pay the price,” said Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), a member of the committee. “Something needs to change, or you’re not going to get my support.”

Johnson said the start date for the work requirements was designed to give states time to “retool their systems” and to “make sure that all the new laws and all the new safeguards that we’re placing can actually be enforced.”

Roy was joined in voting no by Reps. Ralph Norman of South Carolina, Josh Brecheen of Oklahoma and Rep. Andrew Clyde of Georgia. Rep. Lloyd Smucker of Pennsylvania switched his vote to no in a procedural step so it could be reconsidered later.

The vote against advancing the bill had come after President Trump urged Republicans in a social media post to unite behind it.

At its core, the sprawling package permanently extends the existing income tax cuts that were approved during Trump’s first term, in 2017, and adds temporary new ones that the president campaigned on in 2024, including no taxes on tips, overtime pay and auto loan interest payments. The measure also proposes big spending increases for border security and defense.

The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a nonpartisan fiscal watchdog group, estimates that the House bill is shaping up to add roughly $3.3 trillion to the debt over the next decade.

Democrats are overwhelmingly opposed to the measure, which Republicans have labeled “The One, Big, Beautiful Bill Act.” Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) called it “one big, beautiful betrayal” in Friday’s hearing.

“This spending bill is terrible, and I think the American people know that,” Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.) said on CNN’s “State of the Union’’ on Sunday. “There is nothing wrong with us bringing the government in balance. But there is a problem when that balance comes on the back of working men and women. And that’s what is happening here.”

Johnson is not just having to address the concerns of those in his conference who raised concerns about the deficit. He’s also facing pressure from centrists who will be warily eyeing the proposed changes to Medicaid, food assistance programs and the rolling back of clean energy tax credits. Republican lawmakers from New York and elsewhere are also demanding a much large state and local tax deduction.

As it stands, the bill proposes tripling what’s currently a $10,000 cap on the state and local tax deduction, increasing it to $30,000 for joint filers with incomes up to $400,000 a year.

Rep. Nick LaLota, one of the New York GOP lawmakers leading the effort to lift the cap, said they have proposed a deduction of $62,000 for single filers and $124,000 for joint filers.

If the bill passes the House this week, it would move to the Senate, where Republicans are seeking additional changes that could make final passage in the House more difficult.

Johnson said: “The package that we send over there will be one that was very carefully negotiated and delicately balanced, and we hope that they don’t make many modifications to it because that will ensure its passage quickly.”

Freking and Mascaro write for the Associated Press.