debate

Washington, DC – A Senate committee hearing this week has once again shone a spotlight on the political divisions over the United States government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Wednesday’s hearing, held by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, continued years of criticism, mainly from Republicans, against immunologist Anthony Fauci, who led the government’s response to the pandemic.

Spearheaded by committee chair Rand Paul, several Republicans rehashed claims that the virus that causes COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2, emerged from an infectious disease lab in Wuhan, China, and did not naturally transfer from animals to humans.

Stephen Morrison, the director of the Global Health Policy Center at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the hearing was a reflection of the deep, enduring partisan divides over the issue.

But he added that the meeting with Fauci did little to shed new light on the pandemic after years of investigation, hearings and political posturing.

“There’s no space for any civil discussion around any of these issues. There’s no desire really,” Morrison told Al Jazeera.

“So, what’s the lasting impact of this? I mean, it continues to impose unconscionable pain and suffering on [Fauci] and his family. It doesn’t advance the debate one inch on the whole question of COVID origins and what was past US policy and what should US policy be going forward.”

Wuhan lab leak theory

Wednesday’s hearing was based largely on a previous 520-page report from 2024, created by the Republican-led Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic.

That report claimed it was likely that SARS-CoV-2 emerged from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a Chinese research facility. Senator Paul has embraced this viewpoint, as has President Donald Trump.

In April of last year, shortly after Trump took office for his second term, the White House launched a webpage purporting to reveal “the true origins of COVID-19”, largely based on the report.

The site highlighted several claims that experts say pave over the nuanced scientific debate about the origins of the virus.

Drawing on the 2024 report, the White House asserts that SARS-CoV-2 “possesses a biological characteristic that is not found in nature” and that “data shows that all COVID-19 cases stem from a single introduction into humans”, setting it apart from previous natural pandemics.

Joel Wertheim, a professor of medicine at the University of California San Diego, told Factcheck.org that both claims were false.

While COVID does contain a characteristic to enter cells that is not found in its closest coronavirus relatives, that quality does exist in other coronaviruses more broadly. As Wertheim put it, “It is most certainly found in nature.”

Meanwhile, a pair of studies released in 2022 found at least two unique paths through which initial human infection occurred, contradicting the White House’s claim that the pandemic arose from a “single introduction into humans”.

The White House webpage also focuses on Fauci, who led the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) until 2022 and served as the chief medical adviser to former US President Joe Biden, Trump’s election rival.

Biden pre-emptively pardoned him in January 2025, fearing the physician might be arrested under the second Trump administration.

Ahead of Wednesday’s hearing, Trump took the opportunity to renew his derision of Fauci, writing on Truth Social that the medical expert’s “ideas were CRAZY”.

Trump also accused Fauci, without evidence, of orchestrating a cover-up for China, where COVID was first documented. The Republican leader was serving his first term as president when the pandemic began.

Ongoing debate

To be sure, there has been criticism from within the international scientific community that the lab leak theory was discounted too swiftly in the early days of the pandemic, as it became seen as political.

Trump and other world leaders had been quick to use anti-China rhetoric when discussing the virus.

There currently remains no conclusive evidence proving either the lab leak theory or that the virus had a natural origin. The vast majority of infectious disease scientists, including Fauci, have said neither possibility can be ruled out.

Still, a preponderance of experts say evidence indicates that the virus was most likely transferred from an animal, likely a bat, to humans, in a process called zoonotic spillover.

A 2024 survey of virologists and other scientists, conducted by the Global Catastrophic Risk Institute (GCRI), found most respondents believed natural transmission was considerably more likely than a lab leak, although most acknowledged it was impossible to definitively dismiss the theory.

Following three years of research, a World Health Organization (WHO) advisory board released a report in 2025 that also concluded “the weight of available evidence … suggests zoonotic spillover”.

Still, WHO director Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus cautioned, “As things stand, all hypotheses must remain on the table, including zoonotic spillover and lab leak.”

Inside Fauci’s diary

Fauci has long argued the scientific evidence indicates that the virus emerged from natural animal transmission, but he has repeatedly rejected the notion that he has outright dismissed the lab leak theory.

In a 2024 letter to the House Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, his lawyers maintained (PDF) it was “completely wrong” to say that Fauci had ever called the possibility a “conspiracy theory”.

Instead, they said Fauci and his allies rejected an array of conspiracy theories that have been tied to the lab leak theory, including the idea that he had “sneaked unnoticed into the CIA headquarters to try to convince CIA officials to debunk the lab leak theory”.

Wednesday’s hearing was preceded by the release of entries from Fauci’s private diary, stored on a government computer drive.

They were obtained through Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr, a vaccine sceptic and Fauci critic, who passed them along to Senator Paul.

In one entry, Fauci described a claim that he “deliberately” worked with the Chinese to create the virus as a “way-out conspiracy theory”.

He and his legal team have also repeatedly rejected Republican claims that he leveraged millions in grant money to compel scientists to change their views about COVID’s origins.

The White House website, for instance, asserts that Fauci “prompted” an early study on COVID origins to downplay the lab leak theory. No evidence has been presented to support those claims, which have also been rejected by the scientists involved.

Did Fauci mislead?

On Wednesday, several Senate Republicans charged that Fauci’s diary entries showed he had intentionally misled the public by downplaying the possibility the virus had emerged from the Wuhan lab.

Fauci’s supporters, however, have said the diary fails to prove any deliberate attempt to mislead. They argue his public and private statements were consistent in the early days of the pandemic, when scientists’ understanding of the virus was shifting daily.

Fauci’s diary entries indicated he met with a group of experts in February 2020, noting “there was not total agreement” on the likelihood the virus had been created via human manipulation. Senator Paul and others said Fauci did not adequately reflect that view in his public statements.

Republicans also seized on a January 26, 2020, entry in which Fauci wrote that initial data suggests “the first infection was in early December and was not connected” to the wet market in Wuhan.

“Now we know the market was not the source but the amplifier,” he wrote.

During the hearing, Senator Paul said the diary revealed that Fauci was “repeatedly saying in public something different than what he believes in private”.

Fauci’s defenders have pointed to a USA Today interview he gave shortly after the diary entry, floating the idea that the market could have been an “amplifier”. Others have argued the diary entries do not contradict the view that the virus was of natural origins.

Public restrictions

Republicans on Wednesday also focused heavily on Fauci’s role in issuing public guidance about how to slow the spread of the COVID virus.

Several states saw schools close and businesses shutter amid social-distancing recommendations.

But those closures became a political lightning rod and featured prominently in the 2020 presidential elections and 2022 midterm races.

Indeed, new studies have cast doubt on the effectiveness of social distancing rules. Others indicate mask mandates may have been less effective than previously presented, although research still generally supports that masks may slow the spread of the disease.

As NIAID director, Fauci had no direct authority to impose public health mandates, which were typically introduced by state and local officials. While he had a role in issuing federal guidance, his work was part of a wider government effort involving other agencies and officials.

Speaking on Wednesday, Gary Peters, the top Democrat on the Senate panel, accused Republicans of “relitigating history” and seeking to “turn one person into a scapegoat for a crisis that hundreds of officials across the Biden and Trump administrations were responsible for handling”.

Still, Fauci’s diary does contain uncomfortable revelations about how he wielded his high-profile position. In one instance, he recounted how he offered then-New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio encouragement to close city schools. He did the same with an aide to California Governor Gavin Newsom.

“I advised De Blasio to go ahead and do it,” he recounted. “I went on to tell him he should close the bars and restaurants in NYC… He said that he would base this on my recommendation.”

Why now?

During the Wednesday hearing, Fauci invoked his constitutional right to remain silent roughly 100 times, drawing significant public scrutiny.

The 85-year-old Fauci, who enjoyed bipartisan support as NIAID director throughout much of his 38 years in the role, decried the hearing as an attempt to entrap him with perjury.

Critics, including several Democrats on the committee, have also questioned the timing of Wednesday’s hearing, which comes just three months before November’s midterm elections.

Republicans are expected to face an uphill battle in maintaining control of the House of Representatives, and they also risk losing their slim control of the Senate in the vote. A defeat in either chamber would serve as a major setback to Trump in his final two years in office.

The party has struggled to find a defining issue to campaign on, amid affordability woes fuelled by the ongoing US-Israeli war with Iran.

The hearing also comes at a time when polls have shown public trust in federal health agencies has plummeted since Trump took office.

For instance, a June poll conducted by the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health and the de Beaumont Foundation’s Public Health Listening Lab suggests that just 50 percent of respondents said they trusted recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

That marks a decline from 77 percent in the spring of 2025.

About 69 percent also felt that federal health agencies’ recommendations were too influenced by their leaders’ public opinions.

But Morrison, the health policy expert, saw the hearing as a personal attack on Fauci, with Senator Paul and Secretary Kennedy pursuing an ideological “vendetta”.

Fauci, he said, has come to represent for some Republicans the “iconic embodiment of everything that they have come to believe is craven and corrupt in the US government response” to COVID.

He warned that their approach, though, could chill any desire for top scientists to wade into government.

“People will say Tony Fauci could have done things a little differently, he made a few mistakes, and he could have admitted those,” Morrison said.

“But the ‘big but’ is certainly none of that warrants what’s happening here.”

SACRAMENTO — Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton is pressuring his Democratic rival, Xavier Becerra, to participate in a series of debates in the weeks leading up the Nov. 3 election to determine California’s next governor.

In a video shared by his campaign Friday, Hilton listed six debate invitations he has received from cable broadcaster CNN and television news stations around the state, beginning in late September.

“I have accepted every single one of these debates,” said Hilton, standing behind a debate-style podium and gesturing at an empty one beside him with Becerra’s name on it . “This guy, Xavier Becerra, has not accepted any of them. That is completely outrageous. We have to have a debate in this governor’s race. So come on, Xavier.”

The video shows Hilton walk out of frame and return with a cardboard cutout of Becerra, which he plunks behind the second podium while urging the candidate to “man up and show up.”

Becerra’s campaign said he will debate Hilton and blasted the Republican for “chasing” publicity.

“Snowflake Steve is melting faster than he can plan another press conference. While he’s there chasing media and doing Donald Trump’s bidding, Xavier Becerra is building a coalition of Californians ready to elect a governor who won’t bring Trump’s chaos to their front door,” Becerra spokesman Jonathan Underland said in a statement to The Times.

Hilton, a British immigrant who once advised a U.K. prime minister, is endorsed by President Donald Trump and finished second in the June open-party primary election with 24.6% of the vote.

Years of hosting a weekly show on Fox News has made Hilton comfortable on camera and the debate stage; he appeared at-ease during a series of debates earlier this year while lobbing attacks at his Democratic opponents and blaming the party for the state’s long list of problems.

Becerra served as secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services during the Biden administration. Before that, he spent four years battling the first Trump administration as California attorney general and more than two decades representing a Los Angeles congressional district.

The longtime Democratic politician became the come-from-behind winner of the primary, finishing with 28.1% of the vote after polling near the middle or bottom of a crowded field for months. His meteoric rise came after another front-runner, former Rep. Eric Swalwell, dropped out after a former staffer and other women accused him of sexual assault and misconduct.

Becerra has kept a relatively low profile since the election with few public appearances.

Hilton has held several campaign events in recent weeks to court independent and Latino voters. As a Trump-endorsed Republican, he faces a steep climb in California, where the president is deeply unpopular and a GOP candidate has not won a statewide election since 2006.

Last week he accused Democratic leaders of “abandoning” residents in Boyle Heights, where flies, rats and the stench of rotting food have lingered weeks after a frozen food warehouse was damaged by fire.

Hilton also recently took out full-page ads in The Los Angeles Times and San Francisco Chronicle to make the case to voters who dislike Trump but are dissatisfied with the status quo in California.

NORTHRIDGE — Of course David Duke did not come dressed in sheets. Of course he did not burn crosses on the Cal State Northridge campus. They’re always more clever than that. He wore a dark suit, a bright red tie and his best winning smile. He quoted Shakespeare and recited many of the same gentle, if disingenuous, arguments for ending affirmative action put forward by proponents of Proposition 209.

It was about “fairness,” Duke said. Preferences were by definition a form of discrimination, and discrimination in any form is deplorable. Public safety demands that merit be the only qualification in hiring police officers and firefighters. The debt of history has been paid; it’s time to move forward.

David Duke, in fact, looked and sounded not at all unlike the patron of Prop. 209, Gov. Pete Wilson–with one notable exception. Duke himself was more than eager to point it out. “Wilson,” he said with contempt, “and most of the so-called Republican establishment are afraid to even use the word ‘white people.’ ” They cloak their arguments in what he called “fine words.” They talk around the heart of the matter.

And that’s when the sheets came on.

*

Duke has been reading my mail, it occurred to me as the debate heated up. He has tapped into my telephone service. As he made his own bent case against affirmative action, I closed my eyes and could hear echoes of the many angry letters and answering machine soliloquies I receive from white men who have found in Prop. 209 a vehicle for their frustration.

“What’s wrong,” they ask bluntly, if often anonymously, “with white people sticking up for white people?”

They speak of being “fed up,” of things simply having gone “too far” in the realm of race relations. Almost invariably, they link Prop. 209 to the O.J. Simpson verdict, as if the jury represented the end game of affirmative action. They wrap in immigration–to them another sign of the decline of the American ideal–and lament the “political correctness” they believe has muzzled them.

Duke came to Northridge decidedly unmuzzled. He brought a warning for “white people.” They were becoming “second-class citizens” in, as he put it, their own country: “You have a right to have your children live in a nation that reflects the values of their forefathers, not become more like Mexico, or Haiti, or Zimbabwe. . . . That is where we are headed, and that is what affirmative action is all about.”

At this bilge, most of the students began to hiss. Duke seemed undaunted. He was not speaking to the students. He was speaking to the television cameras. He was speaking to all those anonymous correspondents and callers out there who believe that “white people” are the ones getting the raw deal in America these days. He was reminding them that this is what Prop. 209 really “is all about.” In his view. In their view.

*

Now, the invitation of Duke was a source of great controversy. Wilson and Ward Connerly, chairman of the Prop. 209 campaign, saw it as a political setup, an attempt to lay a guilt-trip-by-association on those who would support Prop. 209. Their opponents no doubt worked to exploit Duke’s appearance, to make wobblers on the issue ask the question: If Duke is for this thing, then why am I?

It’s possible, however, that as a strategy, Duke’s presence could prove to have been too clever. Surely a portion of Prop. 209 supporters has bought honestly into the argument that affirmative action has outlived its purpose, that it has become unnecessarily divisive. Duke’s appearance could only inflame this constituency: Nobody wants to be accused of keeping company with bigots.

At the same time, Duke, without question, does represent the views of those who would eliminate affirmative action to strike a blow for “white people.” How many of these are there? It can’t be said. These are not people who open their hearts to pollsters. They can, however, vote–and their votes will count the same as everybody else. And, Duke’s appearance also worked to rally and reinforce this part of the Prop. 209 base, to quell any confusion that might be created by those soft, pro-Prop. 209 commercials about Martin Luther King and civil rights and all that.

Still, it wasn’t a total loss for the opposition. Perhaps the strongest argument against the initiative is that it simply is too early to abandon the struggle for civil rights, that now is not the time to start dismantling the few, flimsy ladders America has managed to stretch across the racial divide. The demons of racism might be on the run, but the exorcism is hardly complete. A point David Duke, by his mere presence, made abundantly clear.

July 1 (UPI) — Mexico will launch a national debate on artificial intelligence and social media after the 2026 FIFA World Cup concludes in a move aimed at laying the groundwork for future regulatory framework.

President Claudia Sheinbaum said the process will begin after July 19 and will bring together lawmakers, technology experts, academics, media representatives and parents to discuss the impact of digital platforms and artificial intelligence on different areas of society.

Sheinbaum emphasized that the process will be conducted under the government’s stated premise of not infringing on freedom of expression.

Among the issues to be discussed are mental health, protection of children and adolescents, concentration of power among major technology platforms, development of artificial intelligence and the possibility of establishing limits on cellphone use in schools.

“The discussion should be opened on the control of platforms: Who controls them? How many people own these platforms? How is that power concentrated?” the president said during her Tuesday morning news conference.

Sheinbaum also raised the need to examine who controls the development of artificial intelligence, what regulatory frameworks exist in other countries, what benefits they offer and what risks they pose for Mexico.

“It is very important for Mexico to enter this regulatory process without resorting to censorship,” she said.

The announcement prompted immediate reactions on social media, where experts, civil society organizations, academics and users began debating the scope of possible regulation.

While some argued that Mexico’s legal framework needs to be updated to address the challenges posed by digital platforms and artificial intelligence, others expressed concern that poorly drafted legislation could become a tool to limit criticism or restrict freedom of expression.

News outlet Sinaloa Hoy reported that the proposal comes at a time when social media has become the primary source of information and political criticism for young people.

According to opinion polls, including one conducted by consulting firm Enkoll, the president has a 44% disapproval rating among people ages 18 to 24.

Mexican political analyst Juan Ortiz wrote on X that regulation may be necessary, “but a poorly written rule could end up punishing political criticism under the pretext of protecting minors or combating disinformation.”

“In San Luis Potosí, its ‘regulation’ of AI ended with women journalists being detained,” he said.

Mexican attorney Gildo Garza also questioned the announcement, arguing that regulation could become a mechanism to control public discourse.

In a post on X, he warned that previous experiences in Venezuela and Nicaragua show how initial narratives about protection or regulation ultimately resulted in restrictive laws, judicial persecution and punishment of critical voices.

According to a report by the Anáhuac Universities Network, the path toward digital legislation in Mexico has been marked by intense activity in Congress. Since April 2023, lawmakers have introduced 85 legislative initiatives to create laws or amend existing ones to regulate artificial intelligence and the digital environment.

The vast majority of those proposals, 67, have remained stalled or are pending approval. That has been attributed to a lack of consensus, technical complexity and concerns among various sectors that such measures could affect freedom of expression.

A man named Daniel took to Twitter to share his frustration after a fellow passenger refused to swap seats with him so he could sit next to his girlfriend on their flight, sparking a viral plane passenger etiquette debate

What would you say if someone asked to swap seats with you on a flight?

It’s a difficult and touchy topic. We live in an age in which most people who fly will play the easyJet and Ryanair lottery, in which seats are allocated to them at random if they opt not to pay a hefty fee to choose where they sit.

That means that if you end up with a solid spot on a flight, you’ve either forked out for it or your lucky numbers have come in.

I recently wrote about how I played the Ryanair roulette during a trip to Athens and ended up with the best seats on the plane, for both the outbound and return flight. You can read about my unproven but promising technique here.

Tensions rose on a recent flight over seats, and specifically, whether it is acceptable to ask somebody to swap with you. It all kicked off when one man took to Twitter to vent his frustration after a fellow passenger refused to exchange seats with him so he could sit alongside his girlfriend.

Their reason for declining? They simply wanted to enjoy the window view.

But who was in the right here, and who was in the wrong?

In his tweet, the man, named Daniel, wrote: “A boomer refused to swap seats on a flight this morning to let my gf and I sit together on the last day before we’re apart for 2.5 months – because they wanted to look out the window. Strong generational metaphor areas, Shane.”

Hundreds liked his post, yet more than 200 people waded in with their opinions in the comments section.

One user branded him an “entitled brat” saying: “Did you stomp your feet like the spoiled, entitled brat you come across as???”

Another fired back: “Your lack of planning is nobody else’s problem.” A third chimed in: “Your petty complaint has no merit and naming him reflects very much on you, not the boomer.”

A fourth person argued that the poster could have taken steps to avoid the situation unfolding. “There are so many steps you could have taken prior to boarding to ensure you sat next to her if you felt it that important. You put yourself in that situation, not the boomer,” they wrote. Some users noted that it was difficult to fully assess the situation without knowing what the other passenger was thinking or going through at the time.

Following the wave of criticism, Daniel decided to launch a poll to settle the debate once and for all. He asked followers to vote on whether or not it’s acceptable to request a seat swap on a plane.

The final results revealed that 64 percent of those who participated considered it a “reasonable request”, while 36 percent felt you’d be pushing your luck by doing so.

Do you think it’s unreasonable to ask someone to swap seats with you on a plane? Let us know in the comments below.

TIJUANA, Mexico — Vivianne Petit Frere’s brightly painted Haitian restaurant sits blocks from the towering U.S. border wall in Tijuana.

Called Lakou Lakay, the name in Haitian creole means “home,” and it reflects her family’s deepening roots in their adopted homeland where her granddaughter was born two years ago, automatically making her a Mexican citizen.

Like the United States, Mexico extends citizenship to children born within its borders.

President Trump insists the U.S. is the only nation to do so as he seeks to deny birthright citizenship for children whose parents are living in the country illegally or have temporary legal status.

The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to weigh in soon on the constitutionality of his birthright citizenship order. Trump signed it on Jan. 20, 2025, the first day of his second term, amid his Republican administration’s broad immigration crackdown. The idea has faced skepticism from conservative and liberal justices alike.

In April, Trump posted on Truth Social: “We are the only Country in the World STUPID enough to allow ‘Birthright’ Citizenship!”

In fact, about three dozen countries, mostly in the Americas, guarantee automatic citizenship to children born on their territory — among them, Canada, Honduras, Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela and of course, Mexico.

Petit Frere fled Haiti in 2019. She traveled from Brazil and walked through the Panamanian jungle to Mexico chasing the so-called American Dream with the intention of crossing the border and settling with relatives in Florida. But she soon learned that was an illusion, while Mexico opened its doors.

Her restaurant’s name symbolizes in her Haitian culture a shared space affording a sense of belonging. On the walls she has framed signs in Spanish, English and Creole that make clear it is more than an eatery offering tasty traditional Haitian dishes, such as fish with plantains, and rice and beans.

“Every dish tells a story, every detail connects cultures,” one sign says. “We aim to promote an authentic cultural exchange between two peoples with similar historical roots yet where Haitian identity proudly blossoms on Mexican soil.”

In just over five years in Tijuana, Petit Frere has established a thriving business, become fluent in Spanish and is getting a degree in social work.

And she welcomed the first generation Mexican in her family, her granddaughter, Alexca.

There are no figures on how many children born to noncitizens have received Mexican birthright citizenship. Tens of thousands of Haitians are living in Mexico. In 2021, when Mexico saw a significant increase in Haitian migration, at least 10 percent of arriving Haitian women were pregnant, according to the United Nations’ International Organization for Migration.

Citizenship and birth

In the U.S., birthright citizenship was enshrined after the Civil War through the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, in part to ensure former slaves would be citizens.

The right was expanded to immigrants’ children in the late 1800s when the Supreme Court ruled nearly anyone born in the U.S. — no matter their parents’ legal status — has citizenship.

The practice, many legal historians believe, dates to the 1600s and 1700s, with European rulers encouraging migration to the expanding American colonies. Those colonists, though, wanted any of their children born overseas to retain European citizenship.

So even as the colonial boundaries shifted “you’re a citizen as long as you’re born within the domain of the king, of the monarch,” said César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández, a law professor at Ohio State University. “But the legal tie between the home country in Europe and the settlers remained strong through the promise of birthright citizenship.”

Dominican Republic removed birthright citizenship

In 2007, the Dominican Electoral Council officially ordered the denial of citizenship to all children born to parents without legal status.

Six years later, a Dominican court applied it retroactively to 1929.

Over a decade later, as many as 130,000 people remained stateless despite passage of a law in 2014 to correct the court decision after it drew strong international condemnation, according to the Center for Migration Studies of New York. The law now impacts the next generation, which remains vulnerable to deportation.

Her growing Mexican family

Petit Frere was born in French Saint Martin, a Caribbean island that does not offer automatic birthright citizenship. She and her mom, who is Haitian, were deported to Haiti when she was 6.

Petit Frere left Haiti seeking a better life. She was dismayed to discover when her teenage daughter left Haiti to be reunited with her in Tijuana three years later, she was nearly five months pregnant. She had been a teen mother herself and had hoped for a different path for her daughter.

But Alexca, a bubbly toddler who giggles and runs about, has conquered her grandmother’s heart. Petit Frere said she’s grateful her granddaughter was born in Mexico rather than Haiti, where surging gang violence has left more than 1 in 10 homeless.

A Mexican passport will make travel easier, she said. Few nations allow Haitian passport holders to visit visa-free.

“As a Mexican citizen, she will have more opportunities,” Petit Frere said.

That’s also true for her three nieces who were born in Brazil and were made automatic citizens there, she said.

Petit Frere said she and her daughter had permanent residency in Mexico before her granddaughter was born. But other parents in Tijuana’s Haitian community did not. Mexico allows the parents of children with birthright citizenship to become permanent residents.

“There are a lot of children in Tijuana who are 6, 7, 8 years old now who are Mexican and their parents who are Haitian did not have legal status but now have become permanent residents because their children were born here,” she said.

Petit Frere started paperwork for Mexican citizenship, which would make it easier to expand her business.

Petit Frere also is a community organizer with the Haitian Bridge Alliance, advocating for the Haitian migrant community. She said she hopes to pursue another degree in international migration, possibly through a U.S. university.

“The children of immigrants are proving to be the most outstanding in the world,” she said. Efforts to limit birthright citizenship “could just be out of jealousy,” she said.

Watson writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Tim Sullivan in Minneapolis contributed to this report.

JESY Nelson has shared her twin daughters’ spinal braces with an emotional message ahead of the upcoming Parliament debate.

The mum-of-two made a candid post explaining her daughters now have to wear them every day.

Jesy shared a snap of her twin daughters Ocean and Story’s spinal braces as she urged fans to attend the Parliament debate on SMA screening.

She captioned the image: “Just a reminder that future SMA babies’ lives don’t need to look like this!

“These are Ocean and Story’s spinal braces that [they] now have to wear every day.”

Jesy also shared a snap of the Parliament debate poster and wrote: “I hope to see as many of you there tomorrow. It’s going to be a big day.”

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It comes after Jesy spoke out about the unjust and “nsane” SMA “postcode lottery” – which “decides if children will be disabled or not.”

The loving mum appeared on social media in a candid video expressing her deep frustrations over ‘unfair’ Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA) heel prick testing.

The X Factor star – who has racked up over 150k signatures – is calling for SMA to be tested for at birth regardless of where you live.

The debate is set to take place tomorrow, June 22, and, if granted, SMA screenings will be added for newborns.

The singer’s daughters Ocean Jade and Story Monroe were born prematurely in May last year and were diagnosed with Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA) Type 1.

In the emotional video, the singer said: “I just wanted to come on here to basically chat about a few things that are just so incredibly important to me and I know so many other people.

“Some of you may be aware of the fact that I’ve been trying to get SMA as part of the heel prick test here in England, and thank God for you guys, the signatures got over 150,000 and because of that, it is now going to get debated in parliament this Monday coming up, which is just crazy to me to know that we did that and I just need you guys to know that this has never been debated in parliament before.

“There has been a whole community of people that have been screaming and shouting about this for years and years and years, and it’s never been able to get this far, because it’s been ignored every single time.

“But you guys did it, because you made enough noise and you supported this and you got it there and I cannot thank you guys enough…

“So many thoughts have been going through my mind over this week, because every time I think about it, I’m like, how am I going to Parliament on Monday to debate whether children, future children, are going to be disabled or not?

“That’s how deep it is, because if your child gets this treatment from birth with a simple heel prick test and they get this treatment, you would not even know that they have SMA. 

“That’s how deep it is, right? That is how life-changing this treatment is. You would not even know that your child has SMA, but if they don’t get this treatment and they don’t get the heel prick test, they will go on to be disabled…

“And not only be disabled, but they will go on to have breathing machines, coughing machines, constant operations. It never ever ends.

“And I still can’t believe that in this day and age, when we’ve had three life-changing treatments now for nearly six years, it’s still a thing. It’s still not here in England.

“It is being rolled out in October, but only in certain parts of England.

“How does that make sense? How are we playing postcode lottery with children’s lives? How is that okay? I cannot stress you how important this is.

“This is our future, future children we are deciding on. Mums now that are currently pregnant and maybe about to have a baby that could potentially have this disease. We’re basically going to decide whether they’re going to be disabled or not, like it blows my mind.

“And I just seem to stress this so much, because that’s how deep it is. We are playing with children’s lives and it is not okay.

“It’s not okay to be like, if you live in this area, your child won’t be disabled, but if you live in this area, yeah, they’ll be disabled.

“We’re not doing this anymore. We’ve made too much noise now for this to be ignored.

“Anyway, sorry for getting irate about this, but it makes me so sad to think that my children’s lives could look so different and not only my children’s lives, but so many other families and children are dealing with this across the whole of England.”

Alongside the tear-jerking post, she added: “We have had some amazing news that screening is due to start in October this year, which is a huge step forward!

“But there’s still a big problem… it will only cover 72% of England. That means some babies won’t be screened simply because of where they live.

“A postcode lottery like that just isn’t fair. Every baby deserves the same chance, everybaby’ss life matters!

“On Monday 22nd June, the petition will be debated by MPs in Parliament. I’ll be there alongside @gileslomax from SMA UK and we’re hoping this debate will help push for screening to be available for every newborn across England.

“We’ll be arriving at 5pm on Monday, and it would mean so much to see as many of you there as possible. We’d love to get a photo together outside Parliament before we head inside.

“Please if you can, tag your MP in the comments and ask them to attend the debate and support universal newborn screening for SMA.

“The areas currently missing out on screening are: Bristol, Cambridge, Portsmouth, Leeds, Liverpool, Oxford.

“No baby should miss out because of their postcode. Let’s keep fighting until every newborn has the same opportunity. Thank you for standing with us every step of the way!”

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Republican Steve Hilton, a former Fox News commentator, clinched one of the top spots in California’s gubernatorial primary on Tuesday, earning him the right to challenge veteran Democratic politician Xavier Becerra in the November election to determine the state’s next governor.

The contest offers voters two starkly different politicians. Hilton was endorsed by President Trump and has wooed his MAGA supporters, blaming Democratic policies for California’s homelessness crisis, high cost of living and other entrenched ills. Becerra campaigned as a battle-tested warrior against the Republican president and a champion of affordable healthcare. He could make history as the state’s first elected Latino governor.

Hilton’s victory was declared by the Associated Press on Tuesday, days after Becerra secured one of the top spots and a week after the June 2 election. Under California’s primary system, the two candidates who receive the most votes in the primary advance to the November general election, regardless of their party affiliation. According to the latest vote count, which is ongoing, Becerra has a slight edge over Hilton.

California Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton, center, flanked by lieutenant governor candidate Gloria Romero, left, and California Republican Party Chairwoman Corrin Rankin, right, hold a press conference to discuss election and voting reforms at the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk headquarters on Tuesday in Norwalk.

(Gary Coronado / For The Times)

Democrat Tom Steyer finished in third place. The hedge fund founder and environmental activist spent $216 million of his own money on his campaign, and now joins the legion of other high-profile, self-funding candidates rejected by California voters.

Becerra heads into the Nov. 3 election with a distinct advantage — Democratic voters in California outnumber Republicans by an almost 2-to-1 margin, a telltale reason why no GOP candidate has won a statewide race since 2006.

The contrast between Becerra and Hilton, both on policy and political personas, couldn’t be more pronounced.

A British immigrant and former political advisor to U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron, Hilton, 56, embraces traditional conservative ideals that have echoed across the country since the days of President Reagan — cutting taxes, weeding out government fraud and waste and promising to unbridle entrepreneurs and homebuilders from stifling state regulation.

But he’s also ventured into MAGA territory, declining to acknowledge that Trump lost the 2020 presidential election and promising to extradite California doctors who provide abortion pills to other states for prosecution.

Becerra, 68, came up in Los Angeles politics in the 1980s and has long supported policies to expand protections and resources for immigrants with or without legal status. Married to Harvard-educated OB-GYN Carolina Reyes, Becerra has also staunchly opposed abortion restrictions throughout his career.

In Congress and other positions, Becerra earned a reputation as a cerebral, analytical politician who would fully commit to his positions after taking time to mull them through.

A straight-laced family man with a Catholic upbringing, Becerra was more reserved during the debates — a quiet confidence that drew some voters to support him. He also faced criticism from his rivals for failing to offer detailed housing and healthcare policies.

Hilton, who cuts an unmistakable image with his bald crown and clipped English accent, proved himself as a polished communicator during the debates, skills honed by his years as a Fox News analyst.

Television hosts must translate complex issues into easily digestible sound bites, said Republican strategist Matt Klink. “Most voters want a CliffsNotes version of the issues,” Klink said.

Republican strategist Kevin Spillane credits Hilton’s TV show, “The Next Revolution,” which ran for six years, with boosting his profile, calling Fox News the most important media vehicle within the conservative and Republican framework.

Hilton “understands how politics and how communications work,” Spillane said.

He often appeared relaxed during the gubernatorial debates, at points even complimenting or joking with his rivals as they parried on stage.

At a CBS debate earlier this year, Becerra referred to President Trump, who endorsed Hilton, as the Republican candidate’s “daddy.” Hilton responded with a quip that quickly deflated the attack.

“It would be rather amazing,” said Hilton, at the possibility of being Trump’s son. “My daddy was the goalie for the Hungarian national ice hockey team.”

In an interview last week, before the election, Hilton said he enjoyed the debates. “In a weird way, I was sad when we had the last one,” he said. “I’m looking forward to debating whoever it is.”

As a former political advisor to Britain’s Conservative Party, Hilton helped usher in a green, socially liberal strain of conservatism.

He also infuriated colleagues in the coalition government, the British press reported, proposing a stream of unconventional ideas: scrapping maternity leave, abolishing job centers, even buying cloud-bursting technology so Britain would have more sunshine. In 2012, he moved full time to the Bay Area.

Hilton, who founded a nonprofit on California policies, was known for his frequent visits in the last couple of years to the state Capitol for discussions with legislators.

Rival Republican candidate Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, who was trailing Steyer in fourth place in the latest vote count, ultimately didn’t seek to appeal to those beyond his rural, MAGA base, Klink said.

By contrast, Hilton presented himself as the “more cosmopolitan” candidate who “can talk to the hedge fund manager or the small-business owner or the Sacramento lobbyist,” said Klink said.

“Hilton was more energized at the end, when it mattered,” said Spillane, contrasting the two Republicans.

Past Republican candidates, including businessman John Cox in 2018 and former eBay CEO Meg Whitman in 2010, have self-financed their campaigns with their vast fortunes.

By contrast, Hilton spent just a few million dollars on media advertising, he said in an interview last week.

He said he ignored advice from consultants who told him to do a launch announcement and then unleash a wave of ads in the last month of the campaign.

“I just said, ‘I want to do it the old-fashioned way,’ and that’s what we’ve been doing,” said Hilton in the interview before the election. “We’ve been to nearly every single county…. stepped it up with our town halls.”

Nina Royal, 83, who lives in Los Angeles and is a community advocate for her Tujunga neighborhood, voted for Hilton, saying that he understands California’s problems.

“He’s a realist,” said Royal. “He has a clear view of what needs to be done.”

Times staff writer Jenny Jarvie contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON, June 3 (UPI) — As the Justice Department increases efforts to strip some naturalized Americans of their U.S. citizenship, U.S. senators on Wednesday debated whether such efforts violate the Constitution.

Republicans argued during a Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution that it has been too hard to take away citizenship of naturalized citizens. But Democrats oppose increasing denaturalization and said it reflects President Donald Trump‘s broader anti-immigrant agenda.

“When someone lies during that [naturalization] process, conceals material facts, hides criminal conduct, masks allegiance to a foreign enemy or swears loyalty with mental reservation, he commits fraud against the United States,” said Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., chairman of the subcommittee.

Countered Sen. Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, a naturalized citizen. “It’s more than astounding, it should be unconstitutional. Let’s be clear. This has never been about law and order for the Republicans. This is all about getting immigrants. It’s about terrorizing immigrant communities.”

The Trump administration has significantly increased denaturalization efforts since the beginning of the president’s second term. Between 1990 and 2017, the government opened 11 denaturalization cases, on average, every year, according to the Immigrant Legal Resource Center.

Since January, the government has opened 34 denaturalization cases and revoked citizenship of 11 people. This is part of a larger, unprecedented push led by the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services to review 100 to 200 denaturalization cases per month.

“The Trump administration is right to revive denaturalization,” Schmitt said. Democrats, however, raised alarms that the push will have far-reaching consequences for naturalized Americans who are accused of crimes after becoming citizens.

Sen. Peter Welch, D-Vt., the top Democrat on the subcommittee, said he has no issue denaturalizing citizens who have committed fraud or misled officials during their naturalization process.

“I support that, but I don’t agree that naturalized citizens should be punished for something that happens after they become a citizen,” he said. “It’s the view of the Supreme Court. So, we do not have to reach too far back in our nation’s history to see that a familiar cycle is unfolding.”

The denaturalization campaign has marked a significant shift from previous administrations, which mainly targeted those with links to terrorist organizations or found guilty of war crimes.

But a June 2025 memo from the Department of Justice told government attorneys to expand the campaign to those involved in fraud or sex crimes. The memo later added a broad instruction that attorneys should pursue “any other cases … that the division deems to be sufficiently important.”

A law professor and an attorney pushed back against that tactic.

“The idea is to try to normalize the idea of denaturalization so that they can focus efforts against people who are kind of universally condemned,” said Cassandra Robertson, a law professor at Case Western Reserve University. “Then it’ll be a smaller step to start using denaturalization against other people.”

Robertson said that she had spoken to many naturalized citizens who now fear their citizenship may be revoked over actions like criticizing the government. She cited growing attacks from lawmakers to denaturalize public figures like New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani.

“If they’re threatening these high level people, what protection does an ordinary person have?” Robertson asked rhetorically.

David Leopold, an immigration attorney in Cleveland and former president of the American Immigration Attorney’s Association, said he sees similar fears among many of his naturalized clients. He said some have been stopped at airports and asked about their immigration history, despite having U.S. citizenship.

“This administration has succeeded in doing what a lot of authoritarian governments do, and that is spreading fear,” Leopold said.

Democrat Welch said the Trump administration’s denaturalization push seeks to advance the president’s deportation goals.

“The administration has — it is absolutely clear — a very radical goal. And that is mass deportation of immigrants from our country,” Welch said. “It’s doing real damage to our country, and as part of that effort, we’ve seen the abusive lengths that this administration is willing to go to.”

In January, Schmitt, supported by Majority Whip Tom Emmer, R-Minn., introduced the SCAM Act, which would amend the Immigration and Nationality Act to clarify the denaturalization process.

One notable expansion of the Act would lengthen the statute of limitations from five to 10 years for being able to revoke the citizenship status of naturalized Americans. The bill has yet to face votes.

“I’m proud to co-sponsor the Scam Act because I believe citizenship must be grounded in conduct that confirms rather than contradicts the promises made in connection with the naturalization process,” said Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah.

SAN FRANCISCO — As Californians cast ballots in the most unsettled governor’s race in recent history, former U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, a Democrat surging in the polls, once again took most of the heat during a contentious debate among the top candidates for California governor.

Becerra’s rapid rise as the top Democrat in the race was greeted on stage by a fusillade of political attacks from rival Democrats and Republicans, notably regarding his former campaign manager’s guilty plea to federal corruption charges hours before the clash.

Then came accusations that he wavered on support for single-payer healthcare, and failed to stem healthcare and unemployment fraud while serving as California’s attorney general.

“This is what happens when you take the lead in the polls and you’re ahead of everyone else. They all come at you,” Becerra said. “I get it. So they have to try to beat you down. This is a great Trump tactic that’s used. I didn’t expect it to come from fellow Democrats.”

“With friends like that, who needs enemies?” Becerra later said.

The face-off took place at a critical moment before the June 2 primary. Republican voters appear to be consolidating behind Hilton, who was endorsed by President Trump, while Becerra and billionaire hedge fund founder Tom Steyer are favored most by Democrats.

From left, Katie Porter, Chad Bianco, Antonio Villaraigosa and Xavier Becerra at Thursday’s debate.

(Godofredo A. Vásquez / Pool via Associated Press)

Up for grabs

As ballots land in mailboxes, California voters are finally tuning in to the race to lead the nation’s most populous state and fourth-largest economy in the world. Thursday’s 90-minute CBS debate may have been the final opportunity for candidates to directly address large numbers of voters.

Until now, scandal drew the most attention to the contest, as former U.S. Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Dublin), once an establishment favorite and nominal front-runner, dropped out in April amid allegations of sexual assault and misconduct

Five Democrats — Becerra, Steyer, San José Mayor Matt Mahan, former Orange County Rep. Katie Porter and former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa — and two Republicans — Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco and former conservative commentator Steve Hilton — clashed about affordability, housing, public safety, climate, education and healthcare. State Supt. of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond, a Democrat, failed to reach the polling threshold to qualify for the debate.

CBS News Bay Area reporter Ryan Yamamoto, CBS News Los Angeles reporter Tom Wait, and San Francisco Examiner Editor-in-Chief Schuyler Hudak Prionas moderated the face-off in front of nearly 200 people at the historic Julia Morgan Ballroom in San Francisco’s Financial District, with sweeping views of the city.

The opulent Beaux-Arts venue contrasted with the tense confrontations among the candidates that underscored Becerra’s swift rise among Democrats in the field after Swalwell dropped out of the race. Even before the face-off, his Democratic rivals began ramping up their focus on Becerra.

Becerra under attack

The candidate faced a barrage of attacks over a string of unfavorable publicity this week, including a widely circulated exchange with a KTLA reporter in which the Democratic candidate asked, “This is a profile piece, this is not a gotcha piece, right?”

Earlier Thursday, his former campaign manager Dana Williamson, who also spent time as Newsom’s chief of staff, pleaded guilty to federal corruption charges alleging she and Becerra’s former top advisor were among those who illegally siphoned $225,000 from Becerra’s campaign accounts.

Although Becerra has not been accused of wrongdoing, that did not temper criticism from his political rivals during Thursday’s debate. They questioned his judgment and said Becerra should have noticed where his money was going.

Hilton said Becerra should be preparing his own criminal defense, rather than running for governor. Porter warned that damning evidence against Becerra could come out later — which, if he finishes as the top Democrat in the primary election, could undercut his campaign and lead to a Republican being elected California’s next governor.

Becerra defended himself, pointing out that federal prosecutors never accused him of being involved and stated that none of the candidates for governor were implicated in scandal.

Democrats also painted Becerra as a leader who allowed fraud and mismanagement to fester under his watch.

“He wasn’t minding the shop” as state attorney general, Mahan said, pointing to fraudulent unemployment and hospice claims early in the COVID-19 pandemic. “I mean, the Biden administration had to sideline him during COVID. This is not good leadership.”

Matt Mahan, left, is polling in the single digits and made a last-ditch effort to leave an imprint during Thursday’s debate.

(Godofredo A. Vásquez / Godofredo A. Vásquez/pool Ap Via Ap)

Major focus on kitchen table issues, a critical concern among voters

Affordability was a major theme in the debate, which included an introductory video of a single mother struggling to fill her gas tank and buy groceries.

Steyer said he would reduce costs by taking on special interests and bringing about structural change and breaking up monopolies.

“I am the person who will tax the billionaires like me, and the big corporations so we can afford to make the changes” to pay for healthcare and great education, he said.

Mahan said the answer was to “put more money in people’s pockets by bringing down costs,” and that that would not occur under either Steyer or Hilton.

“Tom Steyer’s structural change sounds to me more like socialism. His plans literally would double the size of state government,” Mahan said. “That’s not going to drive affordability. Steve Hilton is touting his Donald Trump endorsements. You’ve got tariffs and wars driving up costs.”

Hilton returned fire: “I love the way Matt talks about how he’s going to lower costs when his city was recently rated the most expensive, the least affordable for housing, in the world.”

Daylight between Republicans about climate change

The Republican candidates avoided attacking each other during the debates, offering compliments instead. But the two split when asked about whether climate change was having a real-world impact.

Bianco said California is destroying itself with its environmental policies.

“Of course we can say that temperatures are increasing,” he said, but he also said he was not “naive” enough to think that humans can affect or control the climate, which has been changing since he was a child, and that California has to stop all the environmental regulations that are “activist related” and destroying the state’s economy.

Tom Steyer spoke Thursday of affordability, a hot-button issue: “I am the person who will tax the billionaires like me.”

(Godofredo A. Vásquez / Pool via Associated Press)

Hilton said he believes in climate change but that California needs to have “common sense” on the issue rather than ideological responses. He said it is “of course” right to want clean water and air but that policies in California are not working — as has been made clear by the recent “mega-fires” in the state.

The Democrats on stage were closely aligned on the need to respond to the climate crisis and ensure that environmental protections are not dismantled by the Trump administration.

Last-ditch efforts by struggling candidates

Candidates in the crowded field who have struggled to break through — centrist Democrats Mahan and Villaraigosa, who have languished in the single digits in the polls — made a last-ditch effort to leave an imprint during Thursday’s gathering.

Mahan went after nearly every candidate on the stage in the opening moments of the debate.

“The change we need is rooted in accountability for results,” Mahan said. “It’s not the change billionaire Tom Steyer’s offering, which is higher taxes and bigger government. It’s not the change Fox News talking head Steve Hilton’s offering — fear, division and more Donald Trump. And let’s be honest, Xavier Becerra is not offering change; he’s the embodiment of the status quo.”

Villaraigosa leaned heavily into his experiences leading Los Angeles and in the state Assembly to argue that he was most qualified to lead the state while castigating his fellow Democrats’ policies.

“This is a state with big challenges, the challenge of affordability, the challenge of healthcare, homelessness, and dirty streets and crime-filled streets,” Villaraigosa said. “The fact is, I’m the only candidate on this stage who, in addition to hitting Donald Trump, which I do, have challenged us, challenged this party, and said, ‘Hold it, a lot of the problems that we face have come from Sacramento policies.’ We need someone with the courage to take on Donald Trump, but also take on our friends when they’re wrong. I’ve had a record of doing that.”

Mehta reported from Los Angeles and Nixon from San Francisco.

For the sixth and final time before votes are counted, the leading contenders for California governor gathered Thursday night for a televised debate, this one a 90-minute session in San Francisco.

Times columnists Gustavo Arellano, Mark Z. Barabak and Anita Chabria absorbed the rhetorical blows, followed the heated back-and-forths and took in each and every one of the candidates’ myriad policy prescriptions. Here’s their assessment:

Arellano: Near the end of the debate, co-moderator and San Francisco Examiner editor-in-chief Schuyler Hudak Prionas groaned as candidates talked over each other while trying to answer a question that was supposed to elicit a yes or no response.

That’s pretty much how California voters have reacted to this primary.

In an era where politics are far too often about choosing the least worst option, voters in this election are left with the political version of the Angels baseball team.

No candidate has polled higher than 20-some percent — a testament to how many are in the running, but also an indication that none of them has truly captured the zeitgeist of today’s California.

This year’s debates have done little to catapult anyone to the top, and tonight was more of the same. I still don’t know who I’m going to vote for, and no one inspired me to side with them. No one offered a clear vision of how they would pull Californians out of a spiritual malaise that has so many of us leaving the state, or thinking about leaving.

Instead, what I heard too many of the candidates evoke was the glories of the past — their past.

Antonio Villaraigosa’s closing remarks made a mantra out of “Dream with me,” a slogan he used back when he was L.A. mayor — that was 13 years ago.

Xavier Becerra bragged about how he stood up to President Trump as California attorney general — that was five years ago.

Katie Porter pulled out a white notebook with something written on it and directly challenged Becerra to answer a question — a callback to her time as a congressmember grilling people on Capitol Hill with a whiteboard and a marker, which she first made famous seven years ago.

The two Republicans, Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco and conservative commentator Steve Hilton, spoke of a halcyon California destroyed by feckless Democrats and vowed a return to those days.

The only candidates who didn’t live in the past were San José Mayor Matt Mahan and hedge fund billionaire Tom Steyer — but they seemed particularly out of their league, with Steyer too often looking down at notes instead of speaking off the cuff with his well-rehearsed populist pluck.

The word “nostalgia” first emerged to describe what doctors back then considered a malady, thinking it unwise to long for the past. It’s a concept historically antithetical to California, long boosted as the land of today and tomorrow by everyone from the Mission fathers to orange barons, developers to politicians. Indeed, nostalgia has sometimes been a dangerous factor in California politics, unleashing the Spanish fantasy heritage movement, Prop. 13, Prop. 187 and all sorts of other nonsense.

The two candidates who advance to the general election would be wise to offer Californians a hope for the future that doesn’t call back to our yesterdays. For now, the only real winners are the political consultants, and the only real losers are Californians, because we still don’t know for sure that any of the candidates can make things better.

All we can expect is that they’ll turn things for the worse.

Barabak: A popular expression — which Steyer mentioned — defines insanity as doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.

By that measure, was the audience for Thursday night’s throwdown insane? Masochistic? Or a group of high-minded, dutiful, quite-conscientious California voters?

The leading gubernatorial candidates have been at this so long that they’re like actors in a stage troupe, delivering well-rehearsed lines, or an old band getting together to play their greatest hits, though far less melodious.

Among those reprising familiar roles were Steyer as the boastful billionaire; Bianco as the angry white avenger; Hilton as the chipper doomsayer; Mahan as the kid brother insinuating his way into the conversation; Porter as the left-wing tribune promising a progressive Valhalla; and Villaraigosa as the old political war horse.

Once more, Becerra was the focal point of attacks, befitting his newfound status as the candidate to beat. “This is what happens when you take the lead in polls,” he rightly noted.

And so rivals again assailed Becerra’s performance as state attorney general and Health and Human Services secretary in the Biden administration. They accused of him being a shill for Big Oil. They tried, implying guilt-through-association, to rope Becerra into the scandal involving his former aides who embezzled from a dormant campaign account.

(Becerra, crisper and more lively than he’s previously been, noted that prosecutors in the case have described him as a victim and not a perpetrator or co-conspirator.)

It’s hard to see all the jostling and thrown elbows making a huge difference. The promises made and attacks scattered like buckshot on the San Francisco soundstage all seem much less important than the numbers that show up in opinion polls between now and Election Day.

Many Democrats, spooked by the prospect of their party being frozen out in June’s top-two primary, have been clinging to their ballots, intending to vote at the last moment for whichever Democrat appears likeliest to finish first.

In that way, the race seems to be shaping up as less a competition than a self-fulfilling prophecy. And Thursday night’s performance, while not wholly irrelevant, was just another television rerun broadcast to a less-than-mass audience.

Chabria: Here’s what I’ll say about Thursday night: It was a debate. The old-school kind where everybody is mostly well-behaved and polite, and the audience scrolls on their phones to stay awake.

The candidates themselves seemed low-energy, even with their jabs — which were largely directed at Becerra, as Mark said.

But no sparks also means we have more clarity. Barring an Eric Swalwell-style blow-up, the top three — Becerra, Steyer and Hilton — are really the only true contenders.

But I’ll give a shout-out to Porter, who had her best performance to date with answers that were clear and laid out policy with detail. Still, I fear it’s too little, too late.

Becerra, on the other hand, seemed subdued to the point of flat (sorry, Mark, he came off crisp like a week-old apple to me) often relying on the line that he sued Trump more than a hundred times as attorney general of California during Trump’s first term. I’m not sure that’s inspiring, though it did lead to some court victories.

Granted, Becerra has had a hard week, with a gaffe with a reporter that went viral and a plea deal by a former aide in that case of money misappropriated from his dormant campaign account. It’s not clear yet if voters care about either of those glitches — but if they stick in people’s minds, that could open a path for Steyer to scrape up the small margin he needs to get through the primary.

But Thursday night also did little to help Steyer’s cause — or hurt it. He made some clear, forceful points that positioned him as the changemaker progressive, especially around his policies on moving away from fossil fuels. He also had some convoluted answers that didn’t land. He didn’t give undecided voters much to work with.

I’ll end with one answer from Hilton that women should pay attention to: He said that if elected, he would allow California abortion providers to be extradited to states such as Louisiana to face criminal charges for mailing abortion medications.

Women across the U.S. now must rely on states such as California for any access to abortion care. Hilton’s position is not just bad for California but presents a risk to women everywhere.

For me, that answer should disqualify him for the highest office in our pro-choice state.

HumAngle Media, a Pan-African publication covering conflict, humanitarian, and development issues, held an X Spaces on Saturday, May 9, to discuss ethical dilemmas surrounding financial assistance to vulnerable sources, especially for journalists reporting from conflict zones and areas affected by humanitarian crises. 

The conversation was inspired by a recent HumAngle analysis examining the issue. Ahmad Salkida, HumAngle’s Editor-in-Chief and a veteran journalist who authored the article, argued that “in theory, [journalism] is expected to observe some emotional distance from its sources and the stories they tell. However, that model is inoperable in conflict-affected regions of northern Nigeria and the Sahel.” 

The article sparked widespread debate, particularly among journalists and media educators. While some argued that reporters should remain strictly bound by professional ethics, others contended that it is difficult not to extend a helping hand, especially when the source is struggling with basic needs like food and water. 

Hauwa Shaffii Nuhu, HumAngle’s Managing Editor, who moderated the X Spaces, opened the conversation with the story of Kevin Carter, a South African journalist who died by suicide three and a half months after being awarded the Pulitzer Prize for feature photography. The award-winning image showed a visibly malnourished child in Sudan who collapsed to the ground while a vulture lurked in the background. 

In his suicide note, Kevin said, “I am haunted by the vivid memories … of starving or wounded children”. Hauwa noted that Kevin’s experience shows that the conversation about offering support to vulnerable sources in conflict-affected or humanitarian crisis-hit regions has serious emotional and ethical real-world consequences. 

The conversation was enriched with insights from other speakers, including Lami Sadiq, a data and investigative journalist; Daniel Ojukwu, an investigative journalist with Foundation for Investigative Journalism; and Ibrahim Adeyemi, HumAngle’s Investigations Editor. 

The speakers shared instances in which they felt compelled to offer bags of water, food, and sometimes money to people who were evidently struggling. They agreed that being a journalist does not excuse one from basic human decency and empathy.

Lami stressed that it is important to distinguish between support offered out of humanity and responsibilities carried out in a professional journalistic capacity. She emphasised that when the source outrightly demands payment at the start of an interview, journalists should not only not pay the source but also seek other sources to replace them, to maintain credibility.

“It makes everything transactional, and that affects the credibility of the journalists and the report in question,” she said. 

While it is sometimes difficult to deal with sources who are used to getting humanitarian aid in exchange for information, Lami said journalists must stand their ground and use other sources, especially if the issues to be reported are not exclusive.

Hauwa emphasised that helping vulnerable sources to understand that telling their story is in their best interest will help address issues such as financial compensation, especially when dealing with sources who can be very demanding. 

While speaking on the risks of financially supporting sources, Daniel urged journalists to be mindful of directly supporting sources, as doing so might incriminate them if the sources are later engaged or are linked to criminal networks. 

“If a source you once offered money to is later linked with criminal activity, it could look really bad on you. In Nigeria, you might even be dubbed a terrorist financier when all you are doing is your job as a journalist. We have seen this happen many times in Nigeria,” he said. 

Daniel added, “When I interact with sources or with fixers, I have to profile everyone I’m interacting with. Sometimes, I have to withdraw from sources or fixers because of the manner in which they approach matters.”

While paying for information remains unethical in principle, there are distinct instances in which journalists say they must step in to provide financial aid. 

Drawing on his field experience, Ibrahim recounted a time when he had to assist a source in taking her child to the hospital due to a medical emergency. He paid for the medical bills, and when the doctor said the child might have died if they had shown up an hour later, Ibrahim said he was glad he had helped. 

“Acting first as a human is at the core of humanitarian journalism,” Ibrahim stated. 

However, he stressed that moments requiring urgent humanitarian intervention should not blur ethical boundaries in reporting. Ibrahim further called on editors to educate reporters on the challenges they might face when dealing with sources who require monetary compensation for information. 

“They [reporters] should always look for ethical alternatives rather than compromising their standards just to get the stories,” he said. 

The speakers also urged journalists to be mindful when dealing with displaced persons or vulnerable communities, as they may exaggerate their situation to generate sympathy, believing it might lead to aid. For journalists, this makes verification especially important, even in highly emotional reporting environments.

That same need to maintain professional boundaries also came up in discussions about interviewing experts. Daniel, when asked whether experts should be paid for granting interviews, stated: “Never do so.” Instead, he stressed that building rapport with experts before they are needed helps address such issues. 

May 8 (Asia Today) — A new political group supporting Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi is set to launch within the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, raising questions about the return of faction-style politics less than two years after the party formally moved to dismantle its traditional factions.

The Yomiuri Shimbun reported Thursday that the new group, called the National Power Research Association, will hold its first meeting on May 21 with participation from senior ruling party figures including former Prime Minister Taro Aso and former Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi.

The organization is being positioned as a policy study group, but analysts say it could effectively serve as a new political base for Takaichi inside the party.

The group’s abbreviated name, “JiB,” is derived from Takaichi’s campaign slogan, “Japan is Back,” used during the Liberal Democratic Party leadership race last year.

Founding documents distributed to lawmakers this week state that the government and ruling party “will work as one” to implement policy, with a focus on security, energy and resource issues.

George Glass, the U.S. ambassador to Japan, has reportedly been invited to speak at the inaugural meeting on U.S.-Japan relations and related topics.

Although Takaichi herself is not expected to attend the first gathering, the decision to feature the American ambassador highlights the group’s emphasis on the U.S.-Japan alliance, economic security and defense cooperation.

The organization was reportedly spearheaded by Hiroshi Yamada, a lawmaker close to Takaichi, along with senior party officials including Koichi Hagiuda.

Other participants include prominent ruling party lawmakers and potential future leadership contenders such as Defense Minister Shinjiro Koizumi and policy chief Takayuki Kobayashi.

The group is encouraging participation across current and former factions, both chambers of parliament and newly elected lawmakers.

Still, questions remain over whether the organization will be accepted as a legitimate policy forum or criticized as a de facto revival of faction politics under a different name.

The Liberal Democratic Party pledged reforms after political funding scandals triggered public backlash and accelerated efforts to dissolve traditional factions.

Critics argue that reorganizing lawmakers through policy groups risks recreating the same power structures the party had promised to dismantle.

The development is also being closely watched in South Korea because of its potential implications for regional security and economic policy.

If Takaichi strengthens her position inside the ruling party, analysts expect Japan to pursue more consistent policies on military expansion, the U.S.-Japan alliance, trilateral cooperation with the United States and South Korea, and energy and supply chain security.

At the same time, observers warn that a stronger conservative political base inside the ruling party could also affect disputes involving history, defense policy and constitutional revision.

Analysts say the launch of the new group signals that the Takaichi administration is beginning to build a longer-term organizational foundation for its security and economic agenda inside the ruling party.

— Reported by Asia Today; translated by UPI

© Asia Today. Unauthorized reproduction or redistribution prohibited.

Original Korean report: https://www.asiatoday.co.kr/kn/view.php?key=20260508010001815

I’m going to start this story on a quiet tree-lined street in Mar Vista, where a couple I met with on Thursday — the day after the L.A. mayoral debate — have a problem.

It’s not an unusual matter, as things go in Los Angeles. On both sides of the street, the sidewalk rises and falls, uprooted and cracked by shallow roots because over many decades, the trees were not properly maintained.

John Coanda, 61, who grew up in Los Angeles, was never bothered by torn-up sidewalks as a kid.

“In fact,” he said when he first emailed me about his predicament, “my friends and I sometimes used the ramping pavement as jumps for our bicycles.”

But his wife, Barbara, was diagnosed in 2024 with ALS, and she uses a wheelchair. When John pushes her, they can’t use the sidewalk if they want to go to the store or meet with friends, or just enjoy a nice pass through the neighborhood without getting into a vehicle.

So John pushes Barbara’s wheelchair in the street, which creates an obvious safety problem. And despite John’s best efforts to get City Hall to fix the sidewalks, he’s not expecting help anytime soon.

I’ll circle back to this story in a bit, but first, about that debate.

I recruited a half-dozen L.A. residents to watch and send me their thoughts about how the candidates tackled the important issues. And then I felt guilty for having done so, because the candidates didn’t do much tackling at all.

Candidate Spencer Pratt is shown on a television while journalists work during the 2026 Los Angeles mayoral debate at Skirball Cultural Center.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

They hit their talking points, for sure, and Mayor Karen Bass, Councilmember Nithya Raman and TV personality Spencer Pratt each had their moments. But by the end of the debate, and two straight nights of gubernatorial debates as well, I came away thinking there were no clear winners, but there was a definite loser.

Voters.

This is the fault of the format more than of the candidates themselves. The deck is stacked against meaningful, substantive discussions, especially when moderators ask — as they did several times — for one-word answers.

“Moderator questions are so meaningless … and they make it easy for candidates to take potshots at each other,” said longtime political sage Darry Sragow. “The format is guaranteed to elicit nothing that matters.”

It’d be better to have single-issue debates, and to have candidates pressed for details by journalists who cover those issues and can push back against unrealistic promises and expose a lack of depth.

My debate watchers did some of that themselves. CSUN librarian Yi Ding had praise and criticism for each candidate, but was looking for concrete plans and didn’t get many.

Ding was also disappointed that two other mayoral candidates — Ray Huang and Adam Miller — were not invited to the debate, and I agree with her. Both have been polling low, but with so many undecided voters, and such high unfavorability ratings for Bass, they should have been in the mix.

Mike Washington, a retired pharmacist and West Adams resident, said Bass has done better than previous mayors on homelessness and he didn’t think Raman or Pratt came off as worthy of bumping her out of City Hall.

“The public would have benefited from more questions related to the challenges young people are facing,” said Juan Solorio Jr., president of the San Fernando Valley Young Democrats club. His colleague David Ramirez agreed, saying he was hoping for “more discussion about the cost of living for young adults,” but he and Solorio are both backing Bass.

West L.A. software developer Mike Eveloff asked the million-dollar question in one of his many observations during the debate:

“Why is LA spending record amounts on homelessness, fire, police, and infrastructure while results deteriorate? Streets and sidewalks crumble. Even the city emblem right in front of City Hall is deteriorated. With the World Cup and Olympics approaching, voters need to know: Do these leaders have the financial discipline and operational competence to manage a fourteen billion dollar city?”

Venice resident Dennis Hathaway, author of “An Octogenarian’s Journal,” said he thinks “these kinds of debates are pretty non-edifying.” And, as someone I wrote about two years ago regarding busted sidewalks in his neighborhood, he shared this lament about Thursday’s debate:

“No mention of broken sidewalks, potholed streets, other deteriorated infrastructure. To me, that’s a much more important subject than non-citizens voting in city elections.”

(Bass did say during the debate that there was a new infrastucture plan in place, and that’s a step in the right direction. But there was no discussion, and when you read the details, 2028 Olympics projects will be prioritized, and it’ll take years to figure out how to fund thousands of additional much-needed fixes.)

The Coandas live not far from Hathaway, and their lives have been upended first by Barbara’s diagnosis and then by John getting laid off in February from his job as a data analyst. Barbara still teaches French via Zoom, and John is tending to her needs. They started a Gofundme campaign to help pay their bills.

With Barbara in a wheelchair, John contacted the city’s Safe Sidewalks L.A. program last fall, and I think it’s fair to say that name is somewhere between a misnomer and a bad joke.

The “program” responded by email on Halloween, appropriately enough, informing him that under the City Council-approved “Sidewalk Repair Program Prioritization and Scoring System,” his request for help merits only 15 points out of a possible 45.

“Currently,” he was informed, “the estimated wait time for completion of an Access Request with a score of 15 is in excess of 10 years.”

Happy Halloween.

Over the years, responsibility for sidewalk repairs has shifted between the city and homeowners. There’s a rebate program available to people who repair their own sidewalks, but it’s capped at an amount that doesn’t always cover the costs. And ruptured pavement is keeping lots of lawyers busy with trip-and-fall lawsuits that cost the city millions each year.

Barbara Durieux Coanda, who has ALS, and her husband, John Coanda, make their way down the ramp in front of their home in Mar Vista.

(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

Coanda told me he doesn’t have the funds at the moment to pay for repairs, and even if he did, there are several more sidewalk disaster zones on both sides of his street, so he’d still have to push his wife’s wheelchair in the street even if he fixed the cracks in front of his own house.

Barbara graciously said she thinks the city has other, higher priorities, but in November her husband contacted the office of Councilmember Traci Park, saying he was told that he would have to wait 10 years for repairs.

“Sadly,” he wrote, “I don’t think my wife will live that long.”

A Park staffer wrote back, saying, “The turnaround time does sound realistic given the budgetary crisis the city finds itself in.” But, the staffer added, maybe the council member’s office could “help move the needle on this request.”

Coanda said he’s been too busy with his wife’s issues to follow up. But Pete Brown, Park’s communications director, told me Friday afternoon that the office is exploring ways to pay for fixes that don’t take 10 years, including the use of discretionary funds.

I don’t know how that might play out, but I do know that L.A. doesn’t need another debate like the last one.

We need a mayor and council members who refuse to accept that it takes 10 years to create safe passage for a wheelchair.

In the national capital of broken sidewalks, we need concrete plans.

steve.lopez@latimes.com