GOP

The high desert is not typically a place you look for a wave. But in the vast expanse between the Sierra Nevada and Utah border, a not-exactly-wide-open race for Congress is testing whether a blue wave, should one come November, is ankle-high or something more akin to a political tsunami.

Nevada’s 2nd District has been represented by just four lawmakers since its creation more than 40 years ago. All those representatives have been Republicans.

November’s contest should be another shoo-in for the GOP and its nominee, David Flippo. The district, which takes in northern Nevada, is overwhelmingly white and rural, which makes it solidly conservative. In 2024, Donald Trump beat Kamala Harris by a decisive 56% to 42%; only Washoe County, home to Reno, kept things that close. Trump won other portions of the district by 50 percentage points or more.

But inflation, Trump’s sagging approval rating and other factors — northern resentment toward southern Nevada, where Flippo lived until fairly recently, the refusal of the incumbent to support his party’s nominee — offer Democrats the not-entirely-far-fetched hope of a major upset.

“It will be an interesting summer and fall,” Mark Amodei, who has represented the district for 15 years, wrote on social media after the June primary. “But I believe it’s fair to say that CD-2, for the first time in its history, isn’t a Republican guarantee.”

That’s just about the kindest thing the congressman has had to say about his would-be successor.

All of which make the sprawling district in Nevada’s rough and rocky Great Basin an improbable political bellwether. A win on such forbidding terrain would almost certainly mean a nationwide Democratic gain of 30 or more seats in November; they need to flip just three to take control of the House.

Flippo, 63, a 25-year Air Force veteran and Trump stalwart, arrived in the district from Las Vegas. He ran for Congress there in 2024, losing in the Republican primary. He was preparing for a second try in the Democratic-leaning 4th District when Amodei unexpectedly announced his retirement in February. So Flippo hightailed it north to run in the far more hospitable 2nd District.

He took on the favored candidate of Amodei and others in the GOP establishment, James Settelmeyer, a former minority leader of the state Senate. Backed by a constellation of MAGA celebrities, Flippo waged a fiercely negative campaign, accusing “Tampon Jim” of voting to put menstrual products in boys’ bathrooms and coddling undocumented immigrants, among other distortions. With Trump’s endorsement, Flippo handily defeated Settelmeyer and 11 other primary opponents.

“”Absolutely scurrilous campaign against … one of the nicest guys around,” Amodei said afterward, on the program “Nevada Newsmakers.” “The voters are never wrong. But guess what? Mark Amodei’s not endorsing [Flippo.] I wish him all the best. No way. No, thank you.”

Apart from his exceedingly short-term residency in the district, questions have also been raised about Flippo’s opaque finances. He has lent his campaign more than $1.6 million and failed to provide the personal disclosure information required of federal candidates. There is also no record of Flippo filing the required statement during his 2024 campaign, according to the Washington news outlet NOTUS.

In addition, it reported that Flippo was fired from a job in the financial services industry after his company accused him of violating policies and regulations.

So, a carpetbagger with a sketchy history.

Flippo’s main opponent is Teresa Benitez-Thompson, 48, a longtime Reno resident, former member of the state Assembly and a relatively moderate Democrat. Those credentials also buoy Democratic hopes. The party’s congressional campaign committee has, for the first time in decades, added Nevada’s 2nd District to its target list, though it remains to be seen how much time and money national Democrats commit to the race.

To prevail, Benitez-Thompson would have to defy political gravity, which is to say overcome the reflexive partisanship that has typified politics in this age of deep voter polarization.

In the last two midterm elections, according to the Pew Research Center, more than 90% of Republican and Republican-leaning voters supported GOP candidates for the House. In other words, the kind of crossover voters that Benitez-Thompson needs to win have become rare indeed.

““Trump is a huge liability for Republicans; there is no question that the GOP is going to have huge turnout problems, meaning that in a lot of races, Democrats are going to greatly exceed expectations,” the veteran election handicapper Charlie Cook wrote in a recent midterm analysis. “But converting Republican voters to actually back a Democrat — even for a day — is so much harder now.”

Jon Ralston, one of Nevada’s leading political savants, agreed.

“Some of those rural Nevada voters would rather commit hara-kiri than vote for a Democrat,” Ralston said. (No, Japan’s ancient suicide ritual is not particularly associated with honor or custom in the cow counties, as Nevada’s lightly populated stretches are known. But you get the point.)

“I don’t think it’s impossible,” Ralston, founder and chief executive of the Nevada Independent news site, said of a Democratic upset. “But I remain skeptical.”

Here’s the thing, though, about wave elections — and, to be clear, your friendly political columnist is offering no predictions ahead of November. Like a massive ocean swell, which can bear all kinds of flotsam and jetsam ashore, a political wave that is big enough, broad enough and strong enough can carry all manner of unlikely candidates to victory.

Even in the bone-dry desert.

Aug. 19 (UPI) — A Missouri judge ruled Wednesday against voters seeking to put a Republican redistricting effort in the state to a referendum, stating that the new GOP-favored maps can be used in November’s midterm elections.

Cole County Circuit Court Judge Daniel Green ruled that referendum provisions in the state’s constitution do not apply to congressional redistricting.

“The Missouri Constitution does not supply any statement — let alone a clear one — reallocating authority over congressional redistricting away from the General Assembly to a referendum process,” Green wrote in his ruling.

The People Not Politicians coalition that filed the lawsuit told UPI in an emailed statement that what was important was that a ruling had been made, while accusing the Republicans of stalling the litigation process and stating that the case can now move forward toward the Missouri Supreme Court.

“The most important thing that happened today is that there was a ruling,” PNP Executive Director Richard von Glahn said.

“The state has tried to slow down the judicial process for months and now that we are out of Cole County, the real decision will be made. Our case now moves forward.”

Missouri Republicans spearheaded efforts to redraw the state’s congressional map last summer as part of President Donald Trump‘s push for GOP-led states to create more GOP-favored seats for November’s midterm elections.

The map, signed into law in September, redraws a Democrat-held district in Kansas City to be more rural, positioning it to lean more favorably toward Republicans. Of the state’s eight House seats, two are currently held by Democrats. The redraw is expected to reduce that to one.

Voters have challenged the redistricting effort. In December, PNP submitted more than 300,000 signatures to Secretary of State Denny Hoskins, a Republican, to trigger a statewide referendum on the issue. While PNP contended that delivering the signatures would pause use of the new map, Hoskins disagreed.

In May, the state Supreme Court upheld the new map, while rejecting an argument that submitting referendum petitions automatically suspended the map.

On the day of the Aug. 4 primary, Hoskins issued a certificate finding PNP’s referendum petition was insufficient, stating the state’s Constitution does not permit referenda on congressional maps, prompting PNP to file a lawsuit that evening.

Missouri Gov. Mike Kehoe, a Republican, celebrated Wednesday’s decision in a social media statement, calling Green’s decision a “quick, common-sense ruling.”

“Missourians voted for candidates using this map in August, and they deserve the ability to elect those candidates in November,” he said.

The Republican Party also cheered it as a “resounding victory for Missouri voters and election integrity.”

“The court rejected Democrats’ latest scheme to overturn lawful congressional maps and create chaos ahead of the election. Missouri’s maps were fairly enacted by the legislature, upheld in court and used in this year’s primary. Today’s ruling makes clear those maps will stand,” Republican National Committee Chairman Joe Gruters said in a statement.

The nationwide GOP effort to redraw maps comes as Trump has repeatedly voiced concern about potential impeachment proceedings if Republicans lose the House in November. Creating additional Republican-leaning seats increases the GOP’s chances of maintaining control of the chamber, making impeachment less likely while strengthening the Republicans’ ability to advance Trump’s agenda.

Texas was the first state to move on mid-decade redistricting, kicking off a gerrymandering arms race in which Democratic-led states sought to counter with their own maps and Republican-led states responded with additional redraws.

Since summer 2025, 17 statesMike Kehoe have moved to redistrict, with 10 states having changed their maps, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Of those 10 states, eight adopted GOP-favored maps while two adopted maps expected to benefit Democrats.

LINCOLN, Calif. — One thing Anne Smull, a retired feedstore owner, was looking forward to on election day was voting for the man who currently represents her in Congress, conservative Rep. Kevin Kiley. Now she can’t.

That’s because California Democrats sliced Kiley’s district six ways as payback for Republican redistricting in Texas and elsewhere. The chunk of the district that Smull, who identifies as a conservative, lives in is now grafted onto an overwhelmingly Democratic seat based in the state’s wine country.

During a recent lunch at a cafe in Lincoln, a onetime agricultural town that has morphed into a bedroom community on the edge of Sacramento’s exurban sprawl, Smull was heartbroken to hear she can no longer vote for Kiley.

“He believes in the same things I do,” Smull said. “It feels sneaky and underhanded.”

Republicans started the redistricting competition. Democrats might finish it

Democratic voters in several other states know how Smull feels.

President Trump last year told GOP-controlled states to redraw their maps before this year’s midterm elections to increase the number of winnable seats for Republicans in order to help the party hold on to the U.S. House. The effort was turbocharged by a U.S. Supreme Court decision in the spring of this year that neutralized a key provision of the Voting Rights Act and cleared the way for Republicans to redraw more seats across the South that had elected Black Democrats.

Democratic-leaning and heavily minority communities from Texas to Tennessee have been split into multiple congressional districts that dilute the Democratic vote by stretching deep into conservative areas.

In the future, it is likely that more Republican voters in other states will go through what Smull and other conservatives in Northern California are facing. Democrats in Maryland, New York, Illinois and other strongholds have pledged to retaliate in time for the 2028 elections and split Republican-leaning districts the way their California counterparts did Kiley’s.

Democrats have been hindered nationally by stricter rules against partisan line-drawing in their states, but California showed a way around that. California Democrats won voter approval last year to redraw the state’s congressional map, originally made by an independent commission, and formed five new Democratic-leaning seats.

‘We have zero voice,’ says voter angry at the Democratic drive for a new political map

Kiley’s is one of them. The reworked political lines led the two-term congressman to leave the Republican Party and run as an independent in the slightly Democratic-leaning district that now includes his home.

He spoke out against partisan gerrymandering, even unsuccessfully trying to force the Republican-led House to allow a vote on a bill to ban mid-decade redistricting.

“We’ve seen partisan divisions really spin out of control in really harmful ways, and I think Exhibit No. 1 is the redistricting wars,” Kiley recently told a group of voters in the suburb of Citrus Heights.

Democrats contend Kiley’s party switch is purely a political trick to survive in a more liberal district. They note that he still caucuses with House Republicans and has voted for many of the GOP’s priorities, including Trump’s sweeping budget and tax cut bill last year, and that political organizations run by House Republicans are spending money to back his reelection.

Even some of Kiley’s supporters think the election was a factor in the congressman’s decision to become an independent.

“My original thinking was he did it because of redistricting — maybe it’d help him get reelected,” said John Coburn, a 68-year-old retired business owner, at the Citrus Heights event.

Coburn is furious at the Democrats’ redistricting and hopes Kiley wins. Coburn does not care that they did it in retaliation for Texas, where Republicans at Trump’s directive revised that state’s map to carve out up to five new winnable conservative seats.

“I don’t care about Texas, I live in California,” Coburn said, adding that “40% of the state is Republican, and we have zero voice. Zero. It’s not how our Founding Fathers intended.”

For Democrats in the district, a rare political opportunity

In an interview, Kiley said his switch to independent was no political gambit. If he wanted to stay in the House, he argued, he could have had an easier time staying in the GOP, moving to a more conservative district that included parts of his old one and running in a Republican primary there.

“I could have gone there and run and played the same game these other politicians are playing,” he said.

Kiley said that he is caucusing with Republicans to avoid losing his seats on committees and that in the next Congress he will try to change rules so independent members do not lose committee seats because they do not caucus with one of the two major parties.

Among his backers, he noted, is onetime Democratic presidential hopeful Andrew Yang, a former technology entrepreneur who co-founded a centrist party for independents.

The Democrat running against Kiley, former state Sen. Richard Pan, scoffs at his rival’s newfound independent status.

“He was a MAGA champion when he first ran for Congress, and now he’s trying to say ‘I’m not,’” Pan told a crowd at a senior community in Roseville, referring to Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement.

Earlier that day, Pan swung by the Placer County Democratic Party office, tucked away on the second story of a brick shopping arcade in Lincoln’s compact downtown.

Placer is a Republican county that stretches from the Sacramento suburbs to the northwestern shores of Lake Tahoe. The entire county is in Kiley’s current district, but it will be divided among three districts in the new map.

Kathleen Crawford, chair of the county Democratic Party, was enthusiastic about the county getting carved up.

“It’s worth it, because we have an opportunity to get Democratic representation, which has been missing from our county,” Crawford said. “I’ve been here 15 years, and this is my first real opportunity to elect a Democrat.”

A never-ending cycle that cuts out ‘the little people’

Lincoln’s downtown is flanked by fruit, vegetable and flower farms, as well as new subdivisions. The community and its neighboring suburbs have become a destination for people fleeing the San Francisco Bay Area’s housing prices. That has helped change the once solidly conservative area into a political battleground where skilled mapmakers can draw winnable seats for Democrats.

Ed Church, a 61-year-old risk manager, was eating lunch at Simple Pleasures cafe in Lincoln when he contemplated Kiley’s shift. A Democrat, Church has not been a Kiley fan and he was bemused by the congressman’s move.

“If that’s how he’d been initially and not so MAGA, I probably could have supported him,” Church said of Kiley’s independent status. Now Church, as a Lincoln resident, is in a purely Democratic district and will not have a say in Kiley’s fate in November. His main criteria in the election will be “who’s going to stand up to Trump?”

Across the street at a gun store, Wesley Johnson, 43, who considers himself a conservative independent, said he was dispirited by the state’s redistricting.

“I feel Northern California is not represented fairly,” Johnson said. “San Francisco, Sacramento and Los Angeles control everything.”

He acknowledged Republicans were doing the same thing in states they controlled and said he did not know how it could stop.

“You’re just cutting out the little people,” Johnson said.

Riccardi writes for the Associated Press.

President Trump touched down in Los Angeles on Tuesday evening and headed directly to his Rancho Palos Verdes golf course to headline a fundraiser for the Republican Party.

Though the visit was for a standard campaign benefit in the run-up to November’s elections, it was not without drama.

While the President was en route to California, authorities announced the arrest of an armed man who had been spotted suspiciously documenting security preparations at the golf course Sunday.

Sheriff’s deputies discovered the man had brought a gun and ammunition to the golf course. On Monday, they uncovered an alarming weapons stash, including an illegally modified AR-style rifle, a .45-caliber pistol and high-capacity magazines, at his Downey residence.

Meanwhile, on Tuesday afternoon, a group of more than two dozen protesters gathered outside the Trump National Golf Club entrance in anticipation of the president’s arrival.

The demonstrators chanted “Impeach Trump”and waved signs with slogans such as “Save our democracy” and “Pretti good time to resist,” referencing ICU nurse Alexander Pretti, who was fatally shot by federal agents in January, as passing cars periodically honked in approval.

“There are so many things that have happened [during the Trump administration] that are so disgusting, and I’m so worried for my children, my grandchildren and future generations,” said Redondo Beach resident Jeanette Boston. “They deserve better.”

A smaller group of around 10 counter-protesters gathered along Palos Verdes Drive wearing MAGA gear and American flag clothing. Several yelled “We love you Trump” as Marine One landed at the golf course carrying Trump just after 5 p.m.

The campaign fundraiser was closed to members of the media. However, a White House spokesperson said Trump would use the event to tout his administration’s achievements and “draw a sharp contrast between his commonsense agenda and the radical policies of Democrats like Gavin Newsom.”

Tuesday marked Trump’s second visit to Los Angeles during his second term in office. He last visited the region in January 2025, when he toured the fire damage in the Pacific Palisades and signed an executive order intended to expedite rebuilding efforts.

Since then, there has been a standoff between California leaders and the Trump administration over federal disaster aid.

California has submitted more than $1.5 billion in Federal Emergency Management Agency reimbursement claims for emergency response and infrastructure repairs stemming from the Eaton and Palisades fires, but only $37 million in funding has been approved thus far, according to the governor’s office.

“Donald Trump is coming to Los Angeles to raise money while wildfire survivors are still waiting for the federal recovery funding he promised 18 months ago,” Tara Gallegos, a spokesperson for the governor, said in a statement. “Californians deserve a President focused on helping families rebuild — not raising money for himself at his golf course.”

Trump, for his part, ignored criticism around the wait for wildfire relief on Tuesday and instead took to social media to promote what he sees as his administration’s economic achievements.

He wrote in a Truth Social post that investments in the U.S. economy and more “factory activity” were evidence of how well the country was doing.

“The Fake News and the Dumocrats are doing everything they can to distract people’s thoughts from these MASSIVE Successes, but it’s getting harder and harder for them to do,” Trump wrote. He added: “This is the GOLDEN AGE OF AMERICA, and we’re just getting started.”

On Wednesday, Trump will head to Las Vegas to deliver a speech at a casino focused on the economic achievements of his administration. While his California visit is focused on replenishing campaign coffers, the Nevada stop is more closely tied to election strategy as the swing state could play a key role in deciding who controls Congress after the November midterms.

WASHINGTON — Two Republican senators who threatened to block acting Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche’s bid to lead the Justice Department said Monday that they will vote to advance his nomination, ending an impasse over plans to create a fund to compensate allies of President Trump.

The statement from Republican Sens. John Cornyn and Thom Tillis came after Blanche issued an order late Sunday formally rescinding the $1.8 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund” to compensate people who believe they were unfairly prosecuted by the Justice Department.

Cornyn and Tillis, whose votes Blanche needs to advance through the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, had said they would not endorse his nomination without written confirmation that the fund is dead.

“We want to express our gratitude to Mr. Blanche and his staff for working with us on this, and we look forward to voting to advance his nomination out of the Senate Judiciary Committee soon,” Cornyn and Tillis, who are not returning to the Senate next year, said in a statement.

DOJ order says ‘beyond any doubt’ that fund is dead

In a statement accompanying the order, the Justice Department said that “although the Acting Attorney General has repeatedly advised Congress through testimony, including under oath, as well as in written responses, that the Fund is not moving forward, and the Department has repeatedly represented to district courts that the Fund is not moving forward, today’s Order officially rescinds the May 18, 2026 Order.”

Since the settlement of the president’s lawsuit against the IRS was announced, “No Members were appointed; no funds were transferred; no process for receiving claims was established; no claims were paid,” the order says. “This order establishes, beyond any doubt, that there is no Fund.”

The document released by Blanche on Sunday night also limits the scope of another provision of the settlement that provided broad immunity for Trump and members of his family from tax audits.

The deal clarifies that the tax audit immunity agreement “applies by its terms only retroactively” to claims open at the time of the settlement and does not protect the president from examination of future tax filings.

Cornyn, who lost reelection this year after Trump endorsed his primary opponent, and Tillis, who is retiring when his term ends in January, have blocked Blanche’s nomination as many of their GOP colleagues have criticized the fund.

The Judiciary Committee postponed a vote on Blanche’s nomination that had been scheduled for Thursday morning after Tillis and Cornyn said they needed more from the administration before they could provide the necessary votes.

The two senators have repeatedly said the Justice Department seemed interested in reaching an agreement, but the White House wouldn’t budge even to aid the confirmation of Trump’s loyal former personal attorney, who has aggressively pursued the administration’s priorities as acting attorney general.

“I think as far as Blanche and the Department of Justice, we were pretty much on the same page,” Cornyn said Thursday. “But then when the president got wind of it, he wasn’t willing to go along with it.”

Trump continues to express support for his settlement

The two sides have been negotiating for weeks, but Trump has said repeatedly during the talks that he thinks the fund should go forward and threatened to move forward with it if Blanche was not confirmed.

After the Thursday vote was delayed, Trump said in a social media post that he might pull Blanche’s nomination and resubmit it after Cornyn and Tillis leave office next year.

On Sunday evening, Trump said that people who had faced charges from the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol and could have benefitted from the fund had “their lives destroyed.”

“This would be a reimbursement for the pain that they suffered,” Trump said. “A lot of people like it.”

Jalonick and Richer write for the Associated Press.

The high-stakes nomination of Todd Blanche to be attorney general has turned into a clash of wills between President Trump and two Senate Republicans whose political careers he claims credit for ending.

After a vote on Blanche’s nomination was delayed over concerns raised by two lame-duck Republican senators, the president said Thursday he might put Blanche’s nomination on hold rather than meet their demands.

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) and Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) have indicated that they will vote to support advancing Blanche’s nomination only if the Justice Department provides written assurance that it has completely abandoned a controversial $1.8-billion “anti-weaponization” fund created as part of a settlement between Trump and the Internal Revenue Service and will limit the scope of tax audit immunity granted to Trump, his sons and a business.

Those provisions were part of a proposed settlement of a $10-billion lawsuit Trump filed against the IRS, which is part of his administration.

“The opposition to such a high-ranking executive branch nomination from within Republican ranks is quite unprecedented,” said Phil Brest, who was a top Democratic staffer for the Senate Judiciary Committee during the nominations of Jeff Sessions, Bill Barr and Merrick Garland, who each served as attorney general.

The Senate careers of both Cornyn and TIllis are coming to an end this year after Trump declined to endorse them.

“John Cornyn, of Texas, and Thom Tillis, of North Carolina, both of whom I refused to Endorse, and whose political careers have been ended by my action, are refusing to vote for this Great Nominee,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, his social media platform. “I have no objection to temporarily withdrawing Todd’s name, if they do not do the right thing, and putting him back after Cornyn and Tillis are out of office.”

But that decision brings about its own political risk.

With the president’s approval rating sitting below 35% in recent polls, Democrats could shrink or even reverse the Republican Party’s current 53-seat Senate majority this November. Cornyn‘s and Tillis’ seats in Texas and North Carolina are both at risk of flipping to Democrats.

“So waiting until 2027 could be far harder than it is right now,” said Jessica Taylor, the Senate and governors editor at the nonpartisan Cook Political Report.

Blanche has been serving as acting attorney general since Atty. Gen Pam Bondi was fired in April. He was previously the deputy attorney general and has been associated with some of the most controversial policies associated with the Trump administration, including the IRS settlement, the handling of the Epstein files and prosecutions of Trump’s perceived enemies.

Blanche can continue in the acting role even if he is not confirmed, but the Trump administration would be blocked from appointing a new deputy attorney general unless he is confirmed.

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which is vetting Blanche, told reporters Thursday that he is hoping to keep Blanche’s nomination on track.

“I’m going to work real hard the next few days to get this thing settled. That’s what we’re going to do. I’m not going to consider any other option, because there’s no reason to consider other options at this point,” Grassley said.

Because the Senate is scheduled to begin its five-week August recess at the end of next week, Blanche probably wouldn’t come before the full Senate for a vote until September at the earliest if the nomination advances out of the Judiciary Committee.

That would put the vote squarely in the middle of peak campaign season, which could present vulnerable Republicans such as Sen. Susan Collins of Maine and Sen. Dan Sullivan of Alaska with a difficult vote on a nominee who has been linked to many of the Trump administration’s most polarizing policies.

A vote against Blanche could incur the wrath of Trump, while a vote for him could turn off moderate voters.

“It’s a Catch-22 for a lot of these candidates. They still need Trump’s voters to come out, but they still need a swing vote as well,” Taylor said.

Blanche worked earlier in his career as a federal prosecutor in New York but was more recently Trump’s criminal defense attorney in the lead-up to his second term in the White House.

Blanche faced questions about his independence from his former client throughout his nomination hearing earlier this month. But his answer to one seemingly friendly question, about whether he and Trump are friends, might have inadvertently hurt his case.

“I’m his lawyer,” Blanche replied, before correcting himself. “Was his lawyer.”

The Judiciary Committee currently has 12 Republicans and 10 Democrats. With all 10 Democrats firmly in opposition to Blanche, a vote against moving forward by Cornyn or Tillis would probably put an end to the nomination.

This isn’t the first time Tillis has wielded his political leverage during a high-stakes nomination process.

He briefly blocked the nomination of Federal Reserve Chairman Kevin Warsh until the Justice Department dropped a lawsuit against outgoing Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell.

“Sen. Tillis has been unafraid to use his vote to extract concessions from the Trump administration,” said Brest, who is now president of the American Constitution Society, a progressive legal nonprofit. “There’s a playbook for this and he has been effective with that playbook.”

Trump-endorsed Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton formally launched his general election campaign Wednesday by pitching himself to California’s abundance of anti-Trump voters.

In a speech, Hilton said Democrats had “abandoned” working-class and Latino communities and crushed small businesses. He criticized Gov. Gavin Newsom for leading the state into decline, pointing to low literacy rates and slow responses to crises such as the Boyle Heights warehouse fire.

Hilton, a British-born conservative political commentator and former Fox News host, faces an uphill battle in California, a Democratic stronghold. In June, Hilton clinched second place in California’s gubernatorial primary behind veteran Democratic politician Xavier Becerra.

In an effort to persuade voters who are dissatisfied with the status quo, Hilton bought a full-page ad in the Wednesday editions of the Los Angeles Times and San Francisco Chronicle.

The ad read, “Can you be anti-Trump and still vote for me?,” followed by a checklist readers could use to “test” if they shared common ground with Hilton.

“I can’t stand Trump, but I’m not happy with the way things have been run in California lately,” reads one line in the ad.

“I want to fight climate change, but $6.00 gas is crazy!” reads another.

At a news conference Wednesday, Hilton said the ad is aimed at voters who “know that we need change in California.”

Trump’s unpopularity in the state “doesn’t matter because we’re not talking about national policies here,” he said. “This is about what we can do in our state to make life better for Californians.”

Hilton then framed himself as a “pragmatic, problem-solving change-maker” focused on affordability, promising to lower gas prices, electricity costs and taxes and the cost of homes.

“We may not agree about national politics, but I think we can agree that we need change in California, and I’m going to bring that change,” he said.

The news conference, which marked the formal launch of Hilton’s general election campaign, took place at a Boyle Heights auto body shop across the street from the Lineage cold storage facility that was destroyed by a fire last month.

The location was chosen because it is a “symbol of Democrat failure,” Hilton said. The nauseating stench of rotting food filled the surrounding neighborhood. Swarms of flies buzzed about, occasionally landing on top of Hilton’s head.

Hilton said he’s not expecting Trump to campaign on his behalf in California. But, he added, “I’m proud to be endorsed by the president and I think it’s a very good thing to have a governor who has a good relationship with the federal administration.”

No Republican has been elected to a statewide office since 2006. A poll by the Public Policy Institute of California published earlier this month showed Becerra with support from 61% of likely voters, compared with 36% for Hilton.

Hilton insists his campaign is different from previous Republican bids.

“We’ve got to the point in California where people are looking for a positive alternative,” Hilton told The Times. “We’re going to be fighting very hard … already in the last year and a half I’ve fought a campaign like no one’s seen in California for 20 years. I’ve been to nearly every single county in our state.”

WASHINGTON — President Bush, formally abandoning the central pledge of his 1988 presidential campaign, declared Tuesday that preserving a healthy economy will require new taxes.

“It is clear to me that both the size of the deficit problem and the need for a package that can be enacted require” a series of measures including “tax revenue increases” as well as spending cuts, Bush said in a written statement issued after a breakfast meeting with congressional leaders of both parties.

He specifically mentioned the possibility of trimming “entitlement and mandatory” spending programs, a reference to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and other benefit programs. He did not specify the type of tax increase he had in mind.

With his statement, Bush abandoned his campaign pledge–”Read my lips, no new taxes”–and opened the door to a “grand compromise” with Congress that could narrow or even close the federal deficit. Richard G. Darman, Bush’s budget director, has been advocating such a compromise almost since the day Bush took office.

At the same time, however, Bush may have sparked a full-scale revolt among conservatives in his party, many of whom believe that higher taxes are far worse for the country than continued deficits. He may also have given up what many Republican strategists see as the party’s most important issue–low taxes.

Rep. Robert K. Dornan (R-Garaden Grove) said the President’s announcement that he would consider raising tax revenues set off a “firestorm” among conservative Republicans.

“I signed a letter today . . . that said, ‘Mr. President, we hope that (tax) rates are untouchable, that they are absolutely radioactive.’ ”

Rep. William E. Dannemeyer (R-Fullerton), one of the most fiscally conservative members of Congress, said, “The Democrat game plan all along in this Congress has been to break George Bush of his promise not to raise taxes and so to lay the foundation of a campaign against him by saying he broke his promise and he can’t be trusted.

“And frankly, I’d disappointed in Mr. Bush. I thought he was smarter than falling for that.”

Democratic leaders, by contrast, welcomed Bush’s new stance, which was prepared, word by word, during the breakfast meeting.

Administration and congressional negotiators, who have been meeting since May 9 to try to craft a deficit-reduction package acceptable to all parties, have discussed a host of potential tax increases.

Some proposals, such as increased “user fees” and hikes in tobacco and alcohol taxes, might be relatively easy for Bush to embrace. The Administration has already proposed roughly $20 billion in new user fees and other minor revenue increases.

But Tuesday’s statement was made necessary because Democratic leaders said that package was unacceptable. And while White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater said it was up to the negotiators to decide what to do next, he pointedly refused to rule out broader tax increases.

Republicans, however, may find it difficult to accept Democratic demands to increase income taxes for the wealthiest Americans. “I can’t see Democrats agreeing unless there are (income tax) rate changes that ensure that (the final package) is not unfair to the poor and middle class,” said House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dan Rostenkowski (D-Ill.).

Budget negotiators hope to work out a final package before Congress leaves Washington for its August recess.

Before Tuesday’s developments, said Senate Budget Committee Chairman Jim Sasser (D-Tenn.), the budget talks “were stalemated, going nowhere. The President broke an impasse.”

Bush himself told reporters at the White House Rose Garden Tuesday afternoon: “It is essential that these talks get moving and get moving faster. I want to see this economy grow. I want jobs. I want to see the deficit down.”

Democratic leaders had insisted when the talks began that they would not get involved in specific negotiations unless Bush publicly admitted that a tax increase would be needed.

At the time, the White House insisted that all issues were “on the table” and that Bush would impose “no preconditions” on the talks. But Democrats had insisted on a more explicit statement.

After Bush gave them what they had sought, Democratic leaders appeared solemn and reserved as they struggled to avoid seeming to take political advantage of Bush’s retreat.

“We hope this is not going to be the subject of a political campaign effort,” said House Speaker Thomas S. Foley (D-Wash.) “Someone who wants to complain about taxes being raised will have to complain against both parties.”

When the negotiations began, Democrats feared that Republicans would maneuver them into a corner–forcing them to call for a tax increase and then campaigning against them as “tax-and-spend” liberals.

Many Republican candidates for the Senate this fall already have been doing just that, much as Bush had done in 1988. In that year, Bush’s favorite line–”Read my lips, no new taxes”–formed the centerpiece of his standard stump speech.

Tuesday’s statement not only abandoned that pledge but also gave up on a central tenet of the Republican political philosophy for the past decade–that the deficit is caused by too much spending, not by too little revenue.

Fitzwater, explaining Bush’s decision, said that closing the deficit without new taxes would require spending cuts so large that they “would be unacceptable to all parties.”

The White House estimates that the federal deficit will be roughly $160 billion in fiscal 1991, which begins on Oct. 1. The Gramm-Rudman deficit reduction law would require about $100 billion in across-the-board spending cuts unless the President and Congress agree on a new budget plan.

To mollify conservatives, Bush aides spent much of the day circulating word that the White House was not agreeing to anything beyond the approximately $20 billion in new user fees and related taxes that Bush has already advocated.

“I’m not changing my mind at all” on taxes, Bush insisted during a 45-minute session with 15 Latino reporters from around the country.

Vice President Dan Quayle echoed the theme. “It should not be viewed as a change of policy,” he said in an interview in Los Angeles, where he was raising money for GOP candidates. “This is a deficit reduction summit, not a tax increase summit.”

Asked if he would now admit that Bush was breaking his campaign pledge against new taxes, Fitzwater responded with a laugh: “Are you crazy? . . . Everything we said was true then, and it’s true now. We feel he said the right thing then; he’s saying the right thing now.”

Democratic leaders reacted with some anger to the White House damage control efforts.

“The President’s statement is clear and unambiguous,” said Senate Majority Leader George J. Mitchell (D-Me.). “He said that it is clear to him that tax increases are required. This is a new statement by the President. Any attempt by White House officials or other Republicans to describe the statement otherwise are totally inconsistent with what occurred today.”

Even Fitzwater conceded as much as he listed a series of factors that had forced Bush to change his mind.

The most important was the weakening of the economy since Bush took office. Fitzwater noted that economic statistics continue to show interest rates higher and growth rates lower than the White House had hoped. Bush advisers and most Democratic economists hold deficits at least partly responsible, a point conservatives dispute.

Moreover, the mounting cost of the savings and loan bailout has swelled the deficit, Fitzwater said.

Not all members of Bush’s party, however, were willing to abandon their belief that new taxes are worse than continued deficits.

“Any tax rate increase now threatens recession,” Rep. C. Christopher Cox (R-Newport Beach) said in a statement. “Just the prospect of a tax increase is like a dagger pointed at the jugular vein of the American economy.”

Within hours of Bush’s statement, 90 Republican members of Congress signed a letter to Bush declaring “we were stunned by your announcement that you would be willing to accept tax revenue increases as a part of a budget summit package.”

Rep. Ron Packard (R-Carlsbad), who represents southern Orange County, said he was “a little bit disappointed and a little bit surprised, because I think it was in a way caving in on the issue.”

“A tax increase is unacceptable,” the GOP congressmen wrote. “We will not vote for a budget package that increases tax rates for the American people.”

Sen. Phil Gramm (R-Tex.), one of the authors of the Gramm-Rudman law, said that an agreement may not be worth having if it means a tax increase.

Times staff writers George Ramos and Robert W. Stewart in Washington and Cathleen Decker in Los Angeles contributed to this story.

GEORGE BUSH ON TAXES Oct. 12, 1987: “There are those who say we must balance the budget on the back of the workers–raise taxes again. . . . I am not going to raise taxes again.” Announcement of candidacy in Houston. Jan. 16, 1988: “I want to be the President who finally whips the budget into shape by holding the line on taxes.” Televised debate with five Republican rivals in Manchester, N.H. May 31, 1988: “I’m not going to propose a tax increase.” After meeting with campaign economic advisers at summer home in Kennebunkport, Me. June 14, 1988: “That’s the difference–as plain as day–between us. Tax cuts vs. tax hikes. I will not raise your taxes, period.” At Cincinnati rally, comparing his position with that of Democratic front-runner Michael S. Dukakis. June 24, 1988: “I’ve ruled them all out.” At a Cincinnati news conference, when asked if Bush included excise taxes or other “revenue enhancers” in his rejection of new taxes. July 9, 1988: “If you go to Yosemite Park with your trailer . . . you may have to pay a little more.” At Atlanta news conference, conceding that costs of some programs might rise for users but asserting that voters understood the difference between user fees and tax hikes. Aug. 18, 1988: “My opponent won’t rule out raising taxes, but I will, and the Congress will push me to raise taxes, and I’ll say no, and they’ll push again, and I’ll say to them ‘Read my lips: no new taxes.’ ” Acceptance speech, Republican National Convention, New Orleans. Jan. 31, 1990: “That budget brings federal spending under control. It meets the Gramm-Rudman target. It brings that deficit down further and balances the budget by 1993 with no new taxes.” State of the Union address, discussing budget he proposed to Congress. March 13, 1990: “You know my position and I have no intention of changing that position.” At White House news conference, when asked if he could promise no new taxes this year. May 24, 1990: “Things are complicated out there on this subject. . . . I’d like to do it exactly the way I propose. I’m now enough of a realist to realize that it might not be done exactly that way.” At White House news conference, when asked if he could fulfill his campaign promise. June 26, 1990: “It is clear to me that both the size of the deficit problem and the need for a package that can be enacted require . . . tax revenue increases.” Written statement after meeting with congressional leaders. PROJECTED IMPACT OF VARIOUS TAX INCREASES

Revenue Impac Proposal Next Year Fossil Fuels Tax fuels linked to global $23 warming Social Security Raise tax on benefits to 12 high earners Energy Impose 5% tax on wide range 14 of energy sources Gasoline Raise tax to 21 cents per 12 gallon from 9 cents Stock Market 0.5% tax on stock and bond 8 transactions Cigarettes, Raise 32 cents per pack and 10 Alcohol 25 cents per ounce Income Increase top income tax 4 rate to 33% Acid Rain Tax sources of air 3 pollution Estate Tax capital gains held 2 until death

t (in billions) Proposal Five Years Fossil Fuels $163 Social Security 100 Energy 80 Gasoline 59 Stock Market 58 Cigarettes, 51 Alcohol Income 42 Acid Rain 22 Estate 10

Source: Congressional Budget Office

PERSPECTIVE ON CHANGE–White House feared that Democrats would quit budget talks and blame Bush. A15

OTHER COVERAGE: A14

WASHINGTON — For Mary Fisher–mother, artist, philanthropist and HIV-positive woman–the moment is now.

She tries hard not to think about the future: her future, or the possibility that her children will face their future without her. When she feels the fear, it comes “in that reflective place you find yourself in at night, when you’re forced to find a quiet time,” she said.

“I allow my work and my children to fill my time, so I don’t have to think about those things on a daily or hourly basis,” she said. “I couldn’t get through the days if I did.”

Nor does Fisher dwell on her medical situation with her two young sons, who are now 6 and 4. Neither of them is infected with the human immunodeficiency virus, which causes AIDS.

“The best thing I can do for them is be with them, look them straight in the eye, answer their questions as best I can and be here, be involved in their lives as best I can,” she said. “They know I have a disease. I don’t know if they’re relating it to what their dad had–and I don’t know if I want them to relate to it, because I’m not sick.

“I don’t want to instill my fears–if I have them–in my children,” she added.

It has been nearly two years since Fisher, 45, seared the public consciousness with her speech before the Republican National Convention.

Standing before her fellow Republicans, she spoke in calm, gentle tones–but delivered a personal story that shocked the hall into silence.

“I think she reaches people that activists like myself can never reach, which is people who respond to maternal warmth and not to yelling,” said playwright Larry Kramer, a close friend of Fisher’s who is a founding member of ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power).

“That’s why she is as important as we are, maybe more so,” he said. “We’re a funny pair because she’s always saying to me: ‘Larry, I wish I had some of your anger.’ And I’m always saying to her: ‘Mary, I wish I had some of your compassion.’ I see her speeches on TV and say: ‘Mary, why don’t you get angrier?’ And she says: ‘Larry, I can’t.’ But I think she’s exceedingly effective being as she is, and I don’t want her to change a decibel.”

Fisher challenged the Republican Party to confront the AIDS epidemic with candor and compassion and to make the issue its own.

Since then, she has traveled the nation, speaking in churches, schools, prisons–wherever there is an audience that can learn from her message: If it can happen to me, it can happen to you.

In many quarters, “people perceive AIDS as a depressing subject and don’t want to take personal responsibility,” Fisher said from the home she now rents in a Maryland suburb outside Washington, where she moved her family from Boca Raton, Fla., last summer.

“They try to make me an exception,” she said. “I am not unusual. I am unusual only because I am speaking out. . . . The point is, there are a lot of me’s out there, women with small children who are (HIV) positive, women who are devastated, women who are scared to talk about it. I know, because they come to me when I am traveling. It’s truly amazing.”

In some ways, Fisher is wrong–she is unusual in the framework of the AIDS epidemic: She is wealthy — the daughter of longtime GOP fund-raiser and Detroit real estate mogul Max Fisher — and she works for herself at home (she creates art using handmade paper) so she has no “workplace problem” with AIDS.

And she has enough money to keep her children sheltered, although she has not isolated them.

Moreover, she is a longtime Republican with impeccable political credentials and connections.

Fisher includes former Presidents Gerald R. Ford and George Bush and their families among her closest friends. She once worked in the Ford White House, and photographs of Ford and her two sons, Max and Zachary, adorn her living room.

But AIDS is the great leveler, so she is also right–in many ways, she is no exception at all.

Fisher was infected by her former husband, Brian Campbell, who reportedly was at one time an intravenous drug user. He has since died of AIDS. Women infected through heterosexual contact have become a rapidly growing population.

Fisher said it took a long time for her to come to grips with her infection–and to speak about it.

“The discovery that we are HIV-positive tends to divide our lives into ‘before’ and ‘after,’ ” Fisher wrote in a newly published collection of her speeches, “Sleep with the Angels,” subtitled, “a mother challenges AIDS.”

The book, she says, “is not just about AIDS, it’s about children. It’s about religion. It’s about how we as a people deal with each other, and it’s about my life, my relationships with others and the unconditional love that’s out there.”

Kramer, who is quick to criticize others involved in AIDS activities, has only praise and affection for Fisher.

“It’s impossible not to like Mary because she is so caring and loving and motherly and interested, and because she puts her arms around you and gives you wonderful hugs,” he said.

Fisher learned in July, 1991, that she was infected, but she said it took six months before she was ready to tell her story publicly.

After she did, and after she spoke to the GOP convention, Bush appointed her to the now-defunct National Commission on AIDS, replacing Earvin (Magic) Johnson, the HIV-positive retired Los Angeles Lakers star who quit over what he said was an unresponsive Administration.

Fisher also founded the Family AIDS Network, a nonprofit organization dedicated to raising AIDS awareness nationwide.

The network, she says, plans to give “care-giver” awards this spring because “they are the people who take care of us. They are the people who do not leave this epidemic.” She also said she hopes that the organization can raise enough money for small AIDS research grants.

Currently, Fisher has no symptoms and takes no AIDS medication. “I feel really healthy, and am doing fine,” she said. “As far as I know, everything is good.”

Fisher said she intends to keep doing everything she is doing for as long as she can, speaking quietly and forcefully about the epidemic to whoever will listen.

“If we can create a dialogue and keep it going, I believe it’s the only way we can make a difference,” she said.

WASHINGTON — President Trump will let the bipartisan housing bill approved by Congress become law without his signature, saying Friday that he was refusing to put his name on it because of the little progress made in passing a strict voter ID bill that he has been pushing.

“I will not sign the Housing Bill, which has been fully approved by Congress and sent to the White House, in PROTEST over the fact that the United States Senate is not capable of passing THE SAVE AMERICA ACT,” Trump posted on social media.

Trump had 10 days until the Friday deadline to sign the bill, issue a veto, or allow the measure to take effect without his signature. He has chosen to let the measure become law without his express approval, undercutting his administration’s claims that he considers it a priority to combat inflation.

Trump’s rejection of the bipartisan housing legislation exacerbates tensions with his own party in a midterm election year and cuts short their efforts to address a key voter concern about rising costs. His post comes more than a week after he canceled plans to sign the bipartisan legislation, announcing he was using it as leverage in his push for a strict voter ID bill.

The 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act aims to lower the cost of housing and spur more home construction. It’s the broadest federal effort in decades to address America’s housing affordability problems, as state and local regulations have made it difficult to build in many of the communities that are also sources of job growth and economic opportunity. White House economists estimated earlier this year a national shortage of 10 million homes and the bill could help to close a portion of that gap.

But Trump called the bill “a yawn” and “so unimportant” compared to legislation that would require proof of citizenship for all voters.

He surprised Republican lawmakers on June 24, when, shortly before a planned signing ceremony at the Capitol, he announced he would not approve the bill until lawmakers first passed the voting legislation.

That bill, the SAVE America Act, doesn’t have enough Republican support to pass.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said after submitting the housing bill to the White House that he told Trump he should get the “fattest black marker you have, and sign your name really big on that.”

“I hope he does sign it,” Johnson told reporters at the time. “If he doesn’t, it’s still law. We’ll still celebrate it.”

He said he also understood Trump was trying to make a point that the elections bill is the top priority. “And I think he’s making it very effectively,” Johnson said.

Still, Trump’s decision not to sign the bill gave Democrats an opening to criticize him on the issue of affordability.

“His priorities couldn’t be clearer: higher cost for families and more power for himself,” Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said on X.

The housing bill passed the Senate on an 85-5 vote and the House approved it with an 358-32 vote.

That legislation seeks to cut federal housing rules, slim-down environmental reviews, make it faster to build homes and limit the ability of corporations to buy single-family homes.

The bill does not address all of the causes of the country’s housing woes, including a shortage of construction workers, climbing insurance costs and wages that have not risen fast enough for renters and buyers.

But the bill has drawn support from the real estate industry and housing advocates.

The U.S. housing market has been a driver of recent affordability challenges as skyrocketing prices have kept aspiring buyers out of the market. The National Association of Realtors said Thursday that the median sales price increased 1.8% in June from a year earlier to $440,600, an all-time high on data going back to 1999.

Price and Boak write for the Associated Press. AP reporter Kevin Freking contributed to this report.

July 1 (UPI) — President Donald Trump has announced that the Republican Party will hold a midterm convention, an unprecedented development seemingly aimed at mobilizing the GOP base ahead of November’s midterm elections.

The convention highlights the importance Trump has placed on the midterms, framing Republican control as necessary to protecting his presidency and the implementation of his America First agenda. He has warned Republicans that if they lose the House, Democrats would seek to impeach him and use their investigative powers to probe him, his family and other GOP officials.

Trump announced the convention Tuesday on his Truth Social media platform, saying it will be held Sept. 9-10 in Dallas, Texas.

“It will be fantastic! It has never been done before, and will be a truly Historic Event,” he said, describing it as an opportunity to promote his administration’s purported accomplishments.

“We are going to celebrate the GREAT AMERICAN COMEBACK, and the incredible successes of the American People who transformed our Country through the America First Agenda.”

GOP Chairman Joe Gruters emphasized that the event will be centered on the president, calling it “Trumpapalooza” in an online statement.

“This historic midterm convention will highlight President Trump’s many accomplishments and unwavering commitment to restoring America!” Gruters said, adding that the event will “showcase the work Republicans have done to advance the America First agenda!”

The convention will be held in a solidly red state but comes as Trump’s approval sinks and a as November Senate race is competitive.

Democrat James Talarico is running against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in the Senate contest, and the convention may give draw attention to the GOP’s candidate.

Texas state Rep. Cassandra Garcia Hernandez, a Democrat, said the convention was proof that both the national and Texas Republican parties were worried about the Senate seat.

“They’re not only holding their first-ever midterm convention, they’re holding it right here in our state,” she said in an online statement.

“The battleground for our nation runs through Texas.”

Trump first said in September 2025 that the Republican Party would hold a midterm convention, saying it would “show the great things we have done since the Presidential Election of 2024.”

Democratic National Committee Executive Director Roger Lau responded to Trump’s September announcement by saying his party would be more reserved and precise with how it uses its resources.

“Republicans were baited into wasting time and money on a midterm convention that will sink their swing-seat candidates by tying them directly to Trump’s wildly unpopular policies,” Lau said in a statement.

WASHINGTON  — The Supreme Court on Tuesday struck down Watergate-era limits on how much political parties can spend in a coordinated campaign with their candidates.

By a 6-3 vote, the court said the restrictions on parties and their campaign ads violate the 1st Amendment.

Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh said the court was restoring broad free speech protections for parties and their candidates.

“For nearly 200 years after the ratification of the 1st Amendment, parties could spend freely to support their candidates during campaigns and could do so in coordination with the candidates,” he wrote. “Notably, no one suggests ‘that these elections were not functional or that they were marred by corruption’.”

The decision is a victory for the National Republican Senatorial Committee and is likely to give a boost to Republicans this year in their bid to maintain control of Congress.

That’s because the national Republican committees that support their Congressional candidates have $230 million available to spend this year, while the struggling Democratic committees have less than $120 million.

The party funding limits were challenged in 2022 in a lawsuit filed by JD Vance, who was then running in Ohio for a Senate seat, along with the Republican party committees.

Republicans argued these restrictions on parties were outdated and unwise in an era when “SuperPACs” can raise and spend huge amounts of money to promote candidates because they are independent.

If so, they asked, why shouldn’t the parties be free to raise money and coordinate their campaign ads with the candidates?

Under the current limits, the Federal Election Commission says an individual donor may give only $3,500 to a candidate seeking a federal office, but $132,900 to the national party committees.

Since the 1970s, however, federal election law has limited the parties from funding the campaigns of their candidates on the grounds that it could allow wealthy donors to buy influence.

But the court’s conservatives have repeatedly ruled that campaign money is protected as free speech under the 1st Amendment.

In the Citizens United case of 2010, they struck down the laws that restricted election spending by individuals, companies, unions and other groups.

Left standing were the rather low limits on direct contributions to candidates as well as the limits on how much parties could contribute to directly support candidates.

The limitations on parties and how they support their candidates have been disputed for decades.

The Supreme Court upheld the limits by a 5-4 vote in 2001 and said these “coordinated expenditures” were more like contributions than independent spending, and therefore, could be limited to protect against corruption.

Two years ago, the Biden administration defended the law, and an appeals court upheld it based on the court’s 2001 decision.

But last year, the Supreme Court agreed to hear the new challenge in National Republican Senatorial Committee vs. FEC.

Rather than defend the law, the Trump administration sided with the GOP and said the party limits should be struck down.

In dissent, Justice Elena Kagan looked back to the history of the Watergate era.

“For over half a century, a federal statute has guarded against actual and apparent quid pro quo corruption in our political system by limiting the amount of money a donor can contribute to a candidate,” she said. “The law’s theory is simple: A candidate may be induced to trade official acts for campaign contributions—and the bigger the contribution, the stronger both the candidate’s temptation and the public’s suspicion.

“But today, the court rewrites the rules, to allow circumvention of the contribution limits … and ushers back in the same opportunities for quid pro quo corruption that the contribution limits were meant to check.”

Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson agreed.

The Democratic National Committee and attorney Marc Elias had stepped in to defend the limits.

He said the parties are free to speak in favor of their candidates but he argued that allowing them to “subsidize the campaign expenses of their candidates” is a contribution that can be regulated.

Otherwise, the “potential for actual or apparent corruption is is obvious,” he said.

The ruling is another election-year boost for the GOP.

Last month, the court’s conservatives ruled the Voting Rights Act did not prevent Republican-controlled states in the South from redrawing congressional districts that favored Black Democrats.

New maps in Louisiana, Alabama, Tennessee and Florida are expected to flip several seats in favor of the GOP.

WASHINGTON — The question hangs in the halls at the Capitol: Was it worth it?

Congress, which never authorized the war against Iran yet never fully objected to it, now must grapple with the consequences of President Trump’s nearly four-month conflict: the lives lost, the billions spent and the national security fallout that has reordered the political dynamics in the Middle East.

Ask senators what they think about the deal Trump struck to end the war, and they do not search too far for words.

“Pathetic. Failure. Inevitable conclusion of a combination of never making the case to the American people, flawed strategic vision, lack of grasp of the regional dynamics,” said Delaware Sen. Chris Coons, a Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

“How many ways, can I say, bad, bad, bad?”

Many Republicans too have been critical. Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska said it’s hard to see what leverage the U.S. gained to force Iran to a better negotiation.

“You want to be able to give the benefit of the doubt,” she said. But, she said, “I think we’re in a place where there is a deal that has been signed, but it doesn’t appear to me that it puts us in that much of a different position than prior to the beginning of the war.”

Others in the GOP remain supportive of Trump’s efforts. Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, a past chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said that because of the president’s actions, “We are safer today.”

“You can criticize — oh, he didn’t totally win,” Johnson said. “Well, that was always going to be very difficult.”

As Trump moves on to the next phase, it is left to the Congress to pick up the pieces: explaining the war to voters back home, restocking the military arsenal that has run low from bombing runs and trying to ensure the fragile ceasefire holds as the United States seeks to halt Iran’s nuclear ambitions and work toward an uneasy peace.

More money for the Pentagon

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth made the rounds on Capitol Hill last week as lawmakers consider Pentagon funding as part of the Republican majority’s next big budget package.

The White House has asked for a remarkable $1.5 trillion for the Defense Department this year, on top of the extra money the GOP delivered as part of the Trump’s tax cuts package last year.

Republicans are considering a sizable, $350-billion-plus increase in Defense spending on par with the White House’s budget request that the GOP could pass on its own, through the reconciliation process that allows Senate majority rule over potential objections from Democrats.

Senators, meanwhile, are seeking to set some guardrails on Hegseth with a provision to block a portion of his travel fund until the Pentagon delivers various reports. One such report is on an investigation into the strike on an elementary school in Iran that killed more than 165 people on the first day of the war, most of them children.

Officials have acknowledged that they believe the U.S. was responsible for the strike and say it was based on faulty intelligence.

What’s next in Iran?

Lawmakers are still processing what just happened after Trump swiftly signed a memorandum of understanding with Iran and opened a window of 60-day talks toward ending Tehran’s nuclear program, which got underway Sunday in Switzerland.

“I understand the president’s trying to find a peaceful solution to this,” said Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.), who serves on the Senate Armed Services and Intelligence committees. “I commend him for that. But we’ve got a lot of questions.”

Senators are particularly concerned about the tentative deal’s provision for a potential $300-billion fund for the “reconstruction and economic development” of Iran.

To many skeptical Republicans, that money sounds similar to the “planeloads of cash” narrative they used against the Obama-era Iran nuclear deal, which offered a slim fraction of that amount, some $1.7 billion overall. To this day, Trump tells an exaggerated story of how that payment to Iran, for U.S. military equipment it never received, was made.

“The only concerns I have are the money and the conditions,” said Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.).

“If we send a trainload, a shipload, it’s gonna age as well as that,” he said, referring to the Obama-era issue.

What was gained and lost

Over and again Congress tried and failed to exert its authority under the war powers act to halt the U.S. military action in Iran.

The House ultimately passed a war powers resolution that sought to force an end to the war after a small number of Republicans joined the Democratic measure last month. The Senate has voted nine times, including last week, but failed to reach the majority needed.

At the same time, Congress did not affirmatively authorize the war with a use-of-force resolution, as has been done in certain other conflicts, including the Iraq war.

“I’m glad that the conflict has finally ended and hope the ceasefire holds,” Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said in a statement.

But she said the country must be clear-eyed about what has come about. Not one of the president’s objectives has been achieved, she said, and Iran won significant concessions.

“The American people are paying the price with higher costs in every aspect of life and tens of billions in tax dollars spent,” she said.

Mascaro writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Mary Clare Jalonick contributed to this report.

June 17 (UPI) — Oklahoma voters have rejected raising the state’s nation-lowest minimum wage as several states held primaries on Tuesday.

The Sooner State sets its minimum at $7.25, the federal minimum wage floor, tying it with 19 other mostly Republican-led or -leaning states for the nation’s lowest. Oklahoma raised its minimum wage to $7.25 in 2009 to comply with federal law.

Voters were asked in State Question 832 whether Oklahoma employers must pay employees at least $15 per hour by 2029, putting the state above the median of $11.63 an hour but still below the highest-wage states.

However, voters rejected the move. Unofficial state results show that with 1,984 precincts reporting, 55.3% of voters said “no” to State Question 832, compared to 44.6% in favor of raising the minimum wage.

“Oklahomans sent a clear message: We can grow our economy, create opportunities and keep life affordable without one-size-fits-all mandates that make it harder for businesses to hire and grow,” Chad Warmington, State Chamber of Oklahoma president and CEO, said in a press release.

The initiative was championed by Raise the Wage Oklahoma, which had argued that raising the state’s minimum wage would ensure tens of thousands of workers are better paid while helping wages keep up with rising costs.

“Tonight did not go as we hoped,” the initiative said in a social media statement.

“But the fight doesn’t end here. Because a better Oklahoma is worth fighting for.”

Oklahoma voters also heavily backed Rep. Kevin Hern for the Republican nomination for the Senate seat held by Markwayne Mullin until March, when he was sworn in as secretary of Homeland Security, replacing Kristi Noem.

“Oklahomans deserve strong conservative leadership and a senator who will fight for your values,” he said on social media Tuesday night.

“I look forward to earning your support again in November and serving as your next United States senator!”

Unofficial state results show he secured 69.7% of the vote, with only one other candidate — Gary England — netting a double-digit vote share with 13.5%.

Hern will face the winner of the Aug. 25 Democratic runoff between N’Kiyla “Jasmine” Thomas and Jim Priest.

Meanwhile, the GOP gubernatorial primary appears to be heading to a runoff.

Nine Republican candidates vied for the governorship, but none surpassed the 50% threshold. Gentner Drummond had secured the highest number of votes with 26.26% of the vote share, followed by Mike Mazzei with nearly 26%. No other candidate broke 20%.

June 17 (UPI) — Rep. Mike Collins was projected Tuesday night to win Georgia’s Republican Senate primary runoff, defeating former football coach Derek Dooley as voters cast ballots in contests across the country.

The Collins-Dooley race was the highest-profile race on a primary night.

President Donald Trump has loomed large over November’s midterm elections, encouraging GOP-led states to redraw congressional maps, warning of impeachment and investigations if Democrats win control of the House and endorsing candidates who align with his agenda.

The Georgia Senate runoff drew national attention as a race that could help decide control of the Senate and test Trump’s influence in a battleground state.

Collins of Georgia’s 10th Congressional District ran with Trump’s endorsement, while Dooley had the support of Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp.

With all 159 localities reporting, Collins had secured 55.5% of the vote to Dooley’s 44.4%, according to unofficial results from the office of Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.

Collins, speaking to supporters Tuesday night, projected an image of GOP unity, stating he had spoken with both Dooley, thanking him for running a “spirited campaign,” and Kemp “for his leadership and his friendship over the years.”

“We’re going to have some robust primaries out there. Sometimes, we got some strong disagreements, but I can tell you we stand united around one mission,” he said to applause.

“That’s right. And y’all know what the mission is: Is to put a Republican in that seat and get rid of that Jon Ossoff in November.”

Ossoff, a Democrat, won the Senate seat in 2021, flipping control of the chamber from the Republicans.

In his victory speech, Collins attacked Ossoff for voting in favor of President Joe Biden‘s landmark Inflation Reduction Act and the American Rescue Plan as well as voting against banning transgender athletes from competing in female-segregated sports.

Following Collins’ victory, Ossoff attacked him on social media, calling him a “notorious bigot, antisemite and extremist” who is being investigated by the House Committee on Ethics for illegal misuse of tax dollars.

“Collins, who is only a congressman because his daddy was a congressman, voted to double health insurance premiums for more than a million Georgians, for the Iran War and for the Trump tariffs,” he said in a statement.

Dooley conceded defeat.

“While tonight didn’t go our way, I want you to know that I’ll continue to be in this fight,” he said on social media.

“No matter who you voted for or what you believe, one thing we all can agree on is Jon Ossoff does not represent our Georgia values. In November, we’re sending him to the bench!”

Trump endorsed Collins on Friday after early voting ended, while Kemp endorsed Dooley in August.

But Tuesday night was not a clean sweep for Trump-backed candidates in Georgia. Rick Jackson, the billionaire founder of Jackson Healthcare, was poised to defeat Trump-endorsed Georgia Lt. Gov. Burt Jones in the GOP governor runoff race.

According to unofficial results, Jackson had secured 52.65% of the vote share to Jones’ 47%.

The Georgia governor’s mansion is up for grabs as Kemp, a Republican, has been term limited. He faced Democrat Stacy Abrams in the last two gubernatorial elections.

Jones had won 38% of the vote in the primary election last month. Jackson received 32% of the vote. The runoff was scheduled as neither candidate surpassed the 50% threshold needed to win the GOP nomination outright.

Joe Fisher contributed reporting.

WASHINGTON — As Bill Clinton struggles with his draft history and President Bush his tax promises, they might look back wistfully at something that happened 40 years ago last week. Richard M. Nixon, in much worse trouble, talked his way out with a single TV appearance that became famous as the “Checkers” speech.

On Sept. 23, 1952, the newly minted vice presidential candidate of the Republican Party faced allegations that threatened to force him off the ballot and end his political career–the disclosure of an $18,000 fund set up for him by rich businessmen.

Nixon, a first-term senator from California, dealt with the crisis dramatically, gambling everything that the public could be won over to his side with a mixture of pathos and candor in a single speech.

He denied any impropriety in using the private fund. But that part is hardly remembered.

“One other thing I probably should tell you, because if I don’t, they will probably be saying this about me, too,” Nixon told a television audience of 60 million. “We did get something, a gift, after the nomination.”

He explained it was a black-and-white cocker spaniel that 6-year-old Tricia Nixon had named Checkers. “I just want to say this, right now,” said Nixon, in a fight to stay on the ticket with Dwight D. Eisenhower, “regardless of what they say about it, we are going to keep it.”

The “Checkers” speech also included Nixon’s famous reference to wife Pat’s “Republican cloth coat” to point out that she didn’t wear mink. He ended it with a defiant vow not to quit. He urged listeners to tell the Republican National Committee “whether you think I should stay on or whether I should get off.”

The outpouring of sympathetic support cemented his spot on the ticket.

The fund had been set up by Dana Smith, a Los Angeles lawyer who had been finance chairman for Nixon’s successful 1950 race for the Senate. Smith intended it to pay for Nixon’s political travel, printing and mailing of speeches and clerical help, which would not be reimbursed by the Senate.

Once the existence of “the millionaire’s club” exploded in headlines, it ballooned and overshadowed everything else in the 1952 campaign. Eisenhower’s advisers urged the general to dump Nixon and find himself a new running mate.

Nixon got scant comfort from Eisenhower, who told him: “I have come to the conclusion that you are the one who has to decide what to do,” Nixon recalled, in his book “Six Crises.” “I think you ought to go on a nationwide television program and tell them everything there is to tell, everything you can remember since the day you entered public life. Tell them about any money you have received.”

To others, Eisenhower insisted that Nixon prove himself “clean as a hound’s tooth.”

The GOP and the Senatorial Congressional Campaign Committee pledged the $75,000 to buy a half-hour in prime time for Nixon’s speech, which was broadcast from the 750-seat El Capitan Theater in Los Angeles–the same hall where the “Colgate Comedy Hour” and “This Is Your Life” originated.

An hour before he left for the theater, came a call from Thomas E. Dewey, a two-time losing candidate for president and then a member of Eisenhower’s inner circle. He insisted that Nixon end his broadcast with his resignation–and even resignation from the Senate.

“If they want to find out they’d better listen to the broadcast,” Nixon shouted at Dewey. “and tell them I know something about politics too.”

Nixon went on the air in the empty theater. “Not one cent of the $18,000 or any other money of that type ever went to my personal use,” he said. “Every penny of it was used to pay for political expenses that I did not think should be charged to the taxpayers of the United States.”

He listed his assets and his debts, in detail, then said of his wife, “Pat doesn’t have a mink coat. But she does have a respectable cloth coat. And I always tell her that she’d look good in anything.”

The next day, Nixon flew to Wheeling, W.Va., to meet with Eisenhower. Just as he was about to leave the plane, Eisenhower came up the steps.

“You didn’t have to come down here to meet me,” said Nixon.

“You’re my boy,” said the general. And Nixon wept.

PORTLAND, Maine — This election year is déjà vu for Sen. Susan Collins — the Maine Republican is running for reelection as Democrats pin their hopes on a new candidate to defeat her. Last time, it was state lawmaker Sara Gideon. This time, it’s combat veteran and oyster farmer Graham Platner.

But Collins has proved to be a hard target for Democrats over the years — even for candidates without the baggage of Platner, who has faced criticism for his relationships with women, inflammatory online posts and a previous tattoo recognized as a Nazi symbol. Collins is seeking her sixth term with sky-high name recognition, a record-breaking run of consecutive Senate votes and a history of bringing back federal funding for her state for years.

She is also the rare Republican who sometimes can boost her own popularity back home by keeping her distance from President Trump, and she has perfected that delicate dance even as his tightening grip on the party has cost two of her Senate Republican colleagues their reelection.

Sens. John Cornyn of Texas and Bill Cassidy of Louisiana lost their primaries when facing Trump-endorsed opponents. But despite the president’s complaints about Collins, he did not campaign against her. Years of practice have made her adept at staying close — but not too close — to the president when it is politically advantageous, and moving away when showing an independent streak is helpful.

“She’s shown time and time again where her state’s electorate is. She understands what’s too far, she understands where she needs to be,” said political consultant Matt Mackowiak, who worked for Cornyn’s failed reelection campaign. Trump endorsed Cornyn’s opponent, Texas Atty. Gen. Ken Paxton.

The road to Senate control goes through Maine

The Democrats need to flip four seats to take control of the Senate in November and hope that Trump’s falling approval ratings and the war in Iran — as well as its subsequent effect on oil prices and the economy — could buoy their chances. Maine is among the top targets, along with Alaska, Ohio and North Carolina.

Platner wants to make the case that Collins isn’t as independent of Trump as her reputation suggests — repeatedly noting that she allowed his Supreme Court nominations to go through, which in 2022 led to the overturning of Roe vs. Wade, a landmark 1973 decision that legalized abortion, among other major issues.

“Susan Collins may have started her career decades ago in Washington with good intentions, but she has become just as spineless and corrupt as the establishment she now serves,” Platner said at a victory party on Tuesday.

Platner supporters are ready for change, said John Keenan, of Sullivan, Maine.

“I think Maine has grown tired of the same old system,” he said. “And putting youth into the campaign, with new instead of a rubber stamp, is very refreshing.”

Republicans have already launched their campaign in support of Collins. The National Republican Senatorial Committee posted a pro-Collins video on the social media channel X on Tuesday that resembled a 1980s video game. It stated that Collins “has brought more than $1.5 billion back to Maine” and that Platner “spent time as a kid at a $70,000 a year prep school in Connecticut.”

Trump has often criticized Collins — but not lately

Even as she faces Platner in November, Collins may have to stay wary of Trump. The president has spent years singling her out for daring to occasionally defy him on some issues.

However, he’s refrained from doing so more recently — especially as Collins failed to draw a credible challenger and cruised to a Republican primary victory.

The White House declined to comment. Political advisors close to Trump, however, said the president understands how critical it is that Republicans maintain control of Congress after November, which requires accommodating Collins. Trump understands the need to avoid a Republican wipeout like 2018’s “blue wave” midterms that saw Democrats flip the House and derail much of the last two years of his first-term plans.

“Senator Susan Collins represents the people of Maine first and foremost and has proven herself to be a dedicated public servant,” said Republican National Committee spokesperson Kristen Cianci in a statement.

Collins spokesperson Blake Kernen said the senator “has worked with five different Presidents throughout her Senate tenure, and has never agreed with any of them on every issue.”

“When she agrees with an effort, she will support it; when she disagrees, she does not hesitate to speak up for what she believes is the right outcome for Maine and for America,” Kernen said in a statement.

Other Republicans ran into trouble with Trump

That didn’t work out for some Republican senators.

Cornyn was among his party’s top voices, rising through the ranks after joining the Senate in 2002. Paxton trounced him in a runoff race days after Trump endorsed the attorney general.

In office since 2015, Cassidy voted to convict Trump during his impeachment trial after the U.S. Capitol siege on Jan. 6, 2021. He lost his primary to Trump-endorsed state Rep. Julia Letlow.

Maine figures to be a more competitive race in November — as evidenced by Trump recently refraining from singling out Collins. That’s despite her voting last week with Democrats to block the nearly $1.8-billion fund the president wanted to create to benefit allies that he claims were unfairly targeted by law enforcement.

“She’s always down in the polls and she survives,” Trump conceded when asked about Collins in an interview with the New York Post last week.

Collins defeated Gideon, the Maine House speaker, by almost 9 points in 2020, the same year that Biden beat Trump by a similar margin in the state.

Mackowiak said that “there’s just no pathway to a MAGA senator from Maine.”

“It does appear that the Trump political operation is soberly analyzing the electoral environment in Maine and really kind of follows her lead as it relates to that state and that race, particularly this cycle,” he said.

Maine Republicans are ‘a bit more pragmatic’

Chuck Ellis, a Republican from Westbrook who runs a digital marketing company, said Collins’ reluctance to move in lockstep with Trump can be a plus.

Although there are some “hard-line” voters who may disapprove, Ellis said, “ultimately a lot of your conservatives, your Republicans, are people who are a bit more pragmatic.”

After Collins opposed the White House’s signature tax cut and spending package last year, and voted against a proposal to claw back $9 billion in foreign aid and public media funding, the president complained about her on social media.

“Republicans, when in doubt, vote the exact opposite of Senator Susan Collins,” he wrote.

Then, in January, Trump lashed out at the “stupidity” of Collins and four other Senate Republicans who joined Democrats to start a debate over restricting the president’s use of force in Venezuela.

She later received a profanity-laced call from Trump.

White House may keep a further distance from Collins’ race

As chair of the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee, Collins last week cast her 10,000th Senate vote in a row, setting a record.

“She has been able to do and show that ‘I am bringing money and resources from the federal government to Maine to help Maine,’ ” Ellis said.

The president is unlikely to travel to Maine ahead of November despite visiting other states with key Senate races, like Iowa and Michigan. He could even campaign personally for Paxton.

Vice President JD Vance has been to Maine, where he promoted his anti-fraud task force. Collins didn’t attend Vance’s speech in Bangor last month in which he acknowledged the senator’s distance from the Trump administration.

“If she was as partisan as I sometimes wish that she was,” Vance said, “she would not be a good fit for the people of Maine.”

Whittle and Weissert write for the Associated Press. Weissert reported from Washington.

LAS VEGAS — Retired Air Force Lt. Col. David Flippo has won the Republican primary in Nevada’s 2nd Congressional District after securing President Trump’s endorsement in the closing weeks of the campaign.

The race, which was called Wednesday, put Trump opposite Republican Nevada Gov. Joe Lombardo and retiring Rep. Mark Amodei, who both backed former state Sen. James Settelmeyer. Amodei announced he was retiring after 15 years, opening up a competitive primary for Nevada’s only Republican-held House seat.

Flippo said he will fight “relentlessly” for secure borders, American energy, tax cuts, national defense and “the America First agenda our country needs.”

“Nevada deserves a fighter, and that’s exactly what I will deliver,” he said in a statement.

Democrats had hoped for a Flippo victory, thinking it would make it easier for them to win over less partisan voters in November in the conservative-leaning district. They nominated the chief of staff to state Atty. Gen. Aaron Ford, former majority floor leader Teresa Benitez-Thompson.

“I will ensure that Nevada families have an authentic Nevadan voice fighting for their needs in Washington DC,” Benitez-Thompson said in a Wednesday morning statement.

The 2nd District race is one of several Nevada contests that will be watched closely this year. In southern Nevada’s 3rd Congressional District, Democratic Rep. Susie Lee will face Marty O’Donnell, a composer known for writing the soundtrack to the video game “Halo.”

Trump won the 3rd district in 2024 and backed O’Donnell, who thanked Trump in his victory statement.

Tuesday’s primary also set the general election contest for governor, with Ford defeating a progressive candidate in the Democratic primary and moving on to face Gov. Lombardo. The incumbent, a former Clark County sheriff, is running on his record of public safety and job creation while pledging to work on housing affordability in a second term.

Ford is tying Lombardo to Trump in placing blame for soaring prices across the state and has pledged to lower costs for families. He would be the state’s first Black governor if elected in November.

In other races for statewide offices, Republican primaries for attorney general and secretary of state included several candidates who had pushed election conspiracy theories or been skeptical of election operations. Adriana Guzmán Fralick, who has expressed concerns about voting security, won the GOP nomination for attorney general and will face Democratic state Senate Majority Leader Nicole Cannizzaro.

The Republican primary for secretary of state, the office that oversees elections, included Jim Marchant, a former state lawmaker who has said the 2020 election “ was probably stolen,” and Sharron Angle, a former state lawmaker who was part of an effort to block the certification of Nevada’s 2020 election results. Another candidate who was competitive in the race, Shirley Folkins-Roberts, is an attorney who has denied that there is widespread voting fraud in Nevada.

In the 2nd District race, Flippo said he understands issues important to the region, including mining, water rights and fuel prices. He sought to turn Settelmeyer’s long political record into a liability, pointing to votes he said did not match conservative values.

He moved to the district this election cycle after losing a race in southern Nevada in 2024. The 2nd District covers all northern Nevada. It mostly rural but includes the major battleground county of Washoe, home to Reno.

Hill writes for the Associated Press.

PORTLAND, Ore. — Former Sen. Bob Packwood, a moderate Oregon Republican whose reputation as a champion of women’s rights was tainted late in his career by a sexual harassment scandal, has died. He was 93.

Packwood’s death Saturday was announced in an obituary sent to media outlets by his family. The release didn’t include additional details.

As the scandal unfolded, Packwood initially refused to quit the chamber in which he had served for 27 years, saying he didn’t want to be remembered only for that.

Before the #MeToo era, Packwood stood out as an example of private behavior undermining a man’s public image. He previously had been praised by Planned Parenthood and others.

The great-grandson of a member of the 1857 Oregon Constitutional Convention, Packwood established himself as a social moderate and fiscal conservative who often voted across party lines. He considered running for president in 1980.

Elected to the Senate in 1968, Packwood was best known as the leading Republican advocate of abortion rights — at a time when the position had bipartisan support — and was widely admired by women’s groups throughout the country until the Senate Ethics Committee launched an investigation into the allegations of sexual and official misconduct in 1993.

More than two dozen women, former employees and acquaintances, accused him of making unwanted or uninvited sexual advances.

The allegations remained the target of an ethics inquiry that widened to include other alleged acts of official misconduct. He resigned in September 1995, and went on to start a lucrative lobbying business in Washington.

Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden, who replaced Packwood in 1996, said that although he should be praised for his record on abortion rights and tax reform, how Packwood treated women overshadows it all.

“His horrible history as documented in his own diaries will forever overshadow that public record. Simply put, historians’ first line about Bob Packwood must include those women who he abused and assaulted for years and years,” Wyden said in a statement.

As chair and then ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, Packwood was a master of cutting deals and forging compromises needed to pass tax legislation through Congress. He was most proud of the lead role he played in a sweeping tax reform of 1986 that lowered the top income tax bracket and eliminated many itemized deductions.

Over his career, he was described as a blunt, independent, outspoken politician who was a boat-rocker, loose cannon, skilled partisan, and — for most of his career — political survivor.

“I think they probably all ring true,” Packwood told the Associated Press in December 1992.

“I would like to think that I am nobody’s lackey. I try to reach conclusions independently and then I’m willing to fight for those conclusions; if necessary, having to fight against my party or my party’s president,” he said.

Packwood won his first Senate election at age 36, narrowly defeating Democratic Sen. Wayne L. Morse, an Oregon legend who had held the seat for 23 years. He quickly grabbed attention as a rising star in the GOP. By 1980, he was elected chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

But he lost the seat when the White House backed a competitor after Packwood publicly accused President Reagan of alienating women, African Americans and Jews.

Just two weeks after Packwood’s reelection in 1992, the Washington Post printed allegations from former female employees and acquaintances that the senator had subjected them to uninvited sexual advances.

The Senate Ethics Committee also investigated allegations that Packwood solicited jobs from lobbyists for his ex-wife, used his staff to try to threaten the female accusers into keeping quiet and obstructed the investigation by altering his personal diaries.

The Senate held two days of extraordinary debate in 1993 over whether Packwood should have to comply with an Ethics Committee subpoena for his diaries, in which he reportedly made entries relevant to the investigation. The Senate voted 94 to 6 to enforce the subpoena.

Packwood took the case to federal court and lost, ending when Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist refused the senator’s request for the high court to intercede.

Packwood launched his lobbying business, Sunrise Research Corp., in 1997. By 1999, the firm was grossing $1.5 million a year. His business slowed in later years, but he told a City Club of Portland audience in 2010 that he was still spending about half his time in Washington lobbying for a number of clients.

It was interesting work, Packwood told the audience, according to the Oregonian, but “it is not as much fun as being in the Senate.”

As Congress became increasingly partisan after his departure, Packwood continued to advocate a centrist tack and in his 2010 City Club speech called for Oregon to create nonpartisan elections.

Buoyed by a new Congressional map favoring their party, California Democrats were eyeing Tuesday’s primary elections as a critical first step toward flipping a handful of House seats and taking back power in Washington.

Results from California’s massive and slow-moving election process were not immediately clear late Tuesday, as polls closed and mail ballots continued to be processed and counted. Still, Democrats were bullish about their chances of advancing candidates to November’s general election in all five districts that were redrawn in their favor as a result of last year’s Proposition 50 ballot measure.

“The path to winning back the House starts with voting in the June 2nd primary,” the California Democratic Party posted online Monday.

Meanwhile, California Republican Party Chairwoman Corrin Rankin urged Republican voters to make their own voices heard too.

“Like President Trump said, we need to make it too big to rig,” Rankin said on “The Benny Show.” “We need to swamp the vote.”

One of the most closely watched races was in the redrawn 22nd Congressional District in the Central Valley, where incumbent Rep. David Valadao (R-Hanford) is facing challenges from moderate Assemblymember Jasmeet Kaur Bains (D-Delano) and progressive college professor Randy Villegas.

Another closely watched race was in the redrawn 48th Congressional District in San Diego and Riverside counties, where Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Bonsall) decided to retire rather than run for reelection, and where Republican San Diego County Supervisor Jim Desmond — who is endorsed by Trump — is running against a pack of Democrats.

Prop. 50 — which Californians passed with nearly 65% of the vote a year ago — was California Democrats’ response to Texas Republicans redrawing their state’s Congressional maps in the GOP’s favor, at President Trump’s behest. It was also the only major Democratic counterpunch in the wider mid-decade redistricting brawl that has spread across the country in the last year.

Experts expect the redistricting battle to deliver a net gain of a handful or more House seats to Republicans. But Democrats could gain even more ground given Trump’s lousy approval ratings and the long history of midterm election losses for the president’s party.

Combined, those factors make the battle for control of the House incredibly close, which in turn makes the five seats up for grabs in California pivotal — and potentially decisive.

Tuesday’s primaries won’t determine if any of those five seats will indeed flip parties in November. However, the primaries will define those head-to-head races to come and better inform the odds of Democrats toppling Republican incumbents, experts said.

In addition to flipping the seats currently held by Valadao and Issa, Democrats are hoping to pick up three additional seats.

In the 1st Congressional District — which after Prop. 50 lost rural reaches of northeast California and picked up liberal North Bay communities — various candidates were vying for the seat long held by the late Rep. Doug LaMalfa (R-Richvale), who died in January. They include Democratic state Sen. Mike McGuire and Republican Assemblymember James Gallagher, who is endorsed by Trump.

Voters from the existing district are also voting in a special election Tuesday to fill the remainder of LaMalfa’s term.

In the 3rd Congressional District, which lost an eastern rural stretch along Nevada and now holds more tightly to the Sacramento suburbs, Rep. Ami Bera (D-Elk Grove) — who currently represents a different district — is running to remain in Congress in a new seat.

Meanwhile, the 3rd Congressional District’s incumbent, Rep. Kevin Kiley (I-Rocklin), is seeking to do the opposite. He quit the Republican Party, became an independent and is now running for Bera’s current seat in Congressional District 6, which includes the city of Sacramento and Placer County suburbs.

In the 41st Congressional District, which became more liberal after Prop. 50 by losing voters in Riverside County and gaining them in Los Angeles County, a slate of candidates — including Rep. Linda Sánchez (D-Whittier), who currently represents a different district — are running to replace Rep. Ken Calvert (R-Corona). Calvert, a 17-term incumbent, decided to run in the neighboring 40th Congressional District instead.

In the 40th Congressional District, which covers a swath of inland Orange County and portions of San Bernardino and Riverside counties, incumbent Rep. Young Kim (R-Anaheim Hills) is now going head-to-head with Calvert, while also facing several Democratic challengers.

Other districts that were not part of the Prop. 50 shuffle are also attracting attention.

In the 11th Congressional District in San Francisco, several Democratic candidates are vying to replace Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), the retiring former House Speaker, including state Sen. Scott Wiener; tech millionaire and Democratic political operative Saikat Chakrabarti; and Connie Chan, a member of the San Francisco board of supervisors who Pelosi endorsed.

Democrats are also closely watching several races where younger Democrats and progressives are challenging older incumbent Democrats, and where newer Democratic incumbents are seeking to hold onto their seats in relatively competitive districts.