Jefferson

SACRAMENTO — Sneha Revanur has been called the “Greta Thunberg of AI,” which depending on your politics, is an insult or, as the youngs would say, means she’s eating.

That’s good.

Either way, Revanur, a 20-year-old Stanford University senior who grew up in Silicon Valley, isn’t worried about personal attacks, though she’s been getting more of them lately — especially from some big tech bros who wish she’d shut up about artificial intelligence and its potential to accidentally (or purposefully) destroy us all.

Instead of fretting about invoking the ire of some of the most powerful men on the planet, she’s staying focused on the breakneck speed with which AI is advancing; the utter ignorance, even resistance, of politicians when it comes to putting in place the most basic of safety measures to control it; and what all that will mean for kids who will grow up under its influence.

“Whatever long-term future AI creates, whether that’s positive or negative, it’s [my generation] that’s going to experience that,” she told me. “We’re going to inherit the impacts of the technology we’re building today.”

This week, California will make a big decision about that future, as legislators vote on Senate Bill 53.

Because I am a tech idiot who struggles to even change the brightness on my phone’s display, I will use the simplest of metaphors, which I am sure will make engineers wince.

Imagine lighting your gas stove, then leaving on vacation. Maybe it will all be fine. Maybe it will start a fire and burn your house down. Maybe it blows up and takes out the neighborhood.

Do you cross your fingers and hope for the best? Do your neighbors have a right to ask you to pretty please turn it off before you go? Should you at least put a smoke alarm up, so there’s a bit of warning if things go wrong?

The smoke alarm in this scenario is SB 53.

The bill is a basic transparency measure and applies only to the big-gun developers of “frontier” AI models — these are the underlying, generic AI creatures that may later be honed into a specific purpose, like controlling our nuclear weapons, curing cancer or writing term papers for cheating students.

But right now, companies are just seeing how smart and powerful they can make them, leaving any concerns about what they will actually do for the future — and for people like Revanur, whose lives will be shaped by them.

If passed, the law would require these developers to have safety and security protocols and make them public.

It would require that they also disclose if they are aware of any ways that their product has indicated it may in fact destroy us all, or cause “catastrophic” problems, defined as ones with the potential to kill or seriously injure more than 50 people or cause more than $1 billion in property damage.

It requires the companies to report those risks to the state Office of Emergency Services, and also to report if their models try to sneakily get around commands to not do something — like lying — a first requirement of its kind in law.

And it creates a whistleblower protection so that if, say, an engineer working on one of these models suddenly finds herself receiving threats from the AI (yes, this has happened), she can, if the company won’t, give us a heads-up about the danger before it’s unleashed.

There are a couple other rules in there, but that’s the gist of it. Basically, it gives us a tiny glimpse inside the companies that quite literally hold the future of humanity in their hands but are largely driven by the desire to make oodles of money.

Big Tech has lobbied full force against the bill (and has been successful in watering it down some). Enter Revanur and the AI safety organization she started when she was 15: Encode.

The California Capitol is nothing if not a mean high school, so maybe Revanur was more prepared than the suits expected. But her group of “backpack kids,” as they have been derogatorily called, has lobbied in favor of government oversight of AI with such force and effect that SB 53 actually has a chance of passing. This week, it is likely to receive final votes in both the Assembly and Senate, before potentially heading to the governor’s desk.

I’m not huge on quoting lobbyists, but Lea-Ann Tratten summed it up pretty well.

Revanur and her group have gone from being dismissed with a “who are you, you’re nothing” attitude from lawmakers to having “an equal seat at the table” with the clouty tech bros and their billions, Tratten said. And they’ve done it through sheer persistence (though they are not the only advocacy group working on the bill).

Tratten was hired by Encode last year when Revanur was backing a much stronger piece of legislation by the same author, Sen. Scott Wiener. That bill, SB 1047, would have regulated the AI industry, not just watched over it.

Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed that bill, basically saying it went too far, but still acknowledging that a “California-only approach may well be warranted especially absent federal action by Congress.” He also set up a commission to recommend how to do that, which released its report recently — much of which is incorporated into the current legislation.

But since that veto, Congress has indicated approximately zero interest in taking on AI. And last week, Trump hosted a formal dinner for the titans of AI where they sucked up to the businessman-in-chief, leaving little hope of any federal curbs on their aspirations.

Shortly after that meal, the White House sent out a press release entitled, “President Trump, Tech Leaders Unite to Power American AI Dominance.”

In it, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, gushed, “Thank you for being such a pro-business, pro-innovation President. It’s a very refreshing change. We’re very excited to see what you’re doing to make our companies and our entire country so successful.”

That left me wondering who exactly will be dominated. OpenAI recently sent a subpoena to Encode, digging around to see if it’s being funded by competitor Elon Musk (who is in a notoriously nasty legal battle with Altman), and demanding all their emails and communications about the bill. Revanur said Encode has no affiliation with Musk other than having filed an amicus brief in his lawsuit, and those claims are “ridiculous and baseless.”

“Like, we know for a fact that we have no affiliation with Elon,” she said.

Still, “people expect us to sort of hide in the corner and stop what we’re doing,” because of the pressure, she said.

But that’s not going to happen.

“We’re going to keep doing what we’re doing,” she said. “Just being a balanced, objective, thoughtful third party that’s able to be this watchdog, almost, as the most powerful technology of all time is developed. I think that’s a really important role for us.”

Right now, AI is in its toddler stages, and it’s already outsmarting us in dangerous ways. The New York Times documented how it may have pushed a teen to suicide.

In July, Musk’s AI tool Grok randomly starting calling itself “MechaHitler” and began making antisemitic comments, according to the Wall Street Journal. Another AI model apparently resorted to blackmailing its maker when it was threatened with being turned off.

An AI safety researcher familiar with that blackmail incident, Aengus Lynch, warned it wasn’t a one-off, according to the BBC.

“We see blackmail across all frontier models — regardless of what goals they’re given,” he said.

So here we are in the infancy of a technology that will profoundly change society, and we already know the genie is out of the bottle, has stolen the car keys and is on a bender.

Before we get to the point of having to choose who will go back in time to save Sarah Connor from Skynet and the Terminator, maybe we just don’t go there. Maybe we start with SB 53, and listen to smart, young people like Revanur who have both the knowledge to understand the technology and a real stake in getting it right.

Maybe we put up the smoke alarm, whether the billionaire tech bros like it or not.

What else you should be reading

The must-read: ICE Agents Are Wearing Masks. Is That Un-American?
The Sign of the Times: In face of extreme heat, L.A. may require landlords to keep their rentals cool
The L.A. Times Special: A ‘Roomba for the forest’ could be SoCal’s next wildfire weapon

Stay Golden,
Anita Chabria

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HELLO AND HAPPY THURSDAY. IT’S ME, ANITA LYNNE CHABRIA, COMING TO YOU IN ALL CAPS — BECAUSE THAT’S NOW HOW POLITICS IS DONE.

No, I won’t really torment you with shift-lock psychosis. But we will be diving into Gov. Gavin Newsom’s wildly successful social media trolling of Donald Trump. Although much has been written about his parody of the president’s bombastic style, replete with weird syntax and tongue-in-cheek self-aggrandizement, it turns out it’s far more than just entertaining.

More than any other Democratic presidential hopeful out there, the social media offensive has raised both his profile and political fortunes — and highlighted some uncomfortable truths about American politics in this moment when the vast majority of voters are getting their information in 20-second snippets on TikTok, YouTube and X: Social media is not the sideshow, it’s the main event.

But it’s about more than GCN (Gavin Christopher Newsom, as he now signs his posts) making it to the Resolute desk.

Whether you love Newsom or hate him, California is the epicenter on the resistance to Trump’s push to expand presidential powers into authoritarianism. In courts, in the Legislature and on social media, this is the state that has fought back most effectively.

Newsom’s recent decision to throw caution and subservience to the wind is at the heart of that, a move from frenemy to fighter that is essential to shaping and protecting the future of our democracy. One cheeky post at a time.

The seed of inspiration

How did we wind up here? Although January may seem like eons ago, it was in reality only nine short months since Newsom showed up uninvited on the tarmac in L.A. to greet Trump, even embrace him, as the president came to view the fire damage in Pacific Palisades and Altadena.

Newsom was still in that frenemy phase, trying to reason with, flatter and cajole a president who demands praise, but who, like the fable of the scorpion and the frog, will always attack because it’s in his nature. California needs fire aid, and as Newsom said at the time, “I hope he comes with a spirit of cooperation and collaboration. That’s the spirit to which we welcome him.”

That, however, didn’t work out great. Trump not only dillydallied with fire money, threatening conditions, he also sent the National Guard into L.A. for a nonexistent emergency around immigration protests, then strong-armed Texas into redrawing voting maps to help ensure MAGA keeps control of Congress in the 2026 midterm elections.

So now California has Proposition 50, the effort to redraw our own maps to find more Democratic seats, and a hoppin’-mad governor (get that frog reference?) who knows a scorpion when he sees one.

What does this have to do with social media, you ask? In mid-August GCN wrote to DJT with one last peace offering: California would stop its push for redistricting if other states stopped as well. No luck, big surprise.

But staffers at Newsom’s office were in a mood, and thought it would be funny to tweet out the last paragraph of that letter in all caps, Trump-style. The only change? Switching the last line from the statesman-like “And America will be better for it” to the Trump-favored “Thank you for your attention to this matter.”

And there, in a moment of frustration and gallows humor — no grand strategy intended — the seed of inspiration was planted.

The Result

That post has received 5 million views so far, and emboldened Newsom to go further. Since then, his trolling has been both prolific, pointed, and extremely popular.

The X account where Newsom does most of his smack-posting, @GovPressOffice, gained more than 500,000 followers in recent weeks, and racked up more than 480 million impressions. That’s up 450%, according to CNN’s Harry Enten.

He’s been in demand on traditional media as well (and seems to be living rent-free in the brains of right-wing Fox commentators), and has made himself available to digital content creators — who have helped him reach more than 30 million views across various platforms.

Newsom’s speech about the National Guard coming into L.A. — at nine minutes long, an eternity these days — was viewed more 40 million times in a week.

And, as Enten also pointed out, 75% of California Democrats now say they want Newsom to run for president, and betting markets give Newsom a 24% chance of being the Democratic nominee, rating him with the highest potential in the pack.

Love-bombed with all that success, Newsom has pushed further into the rage-baiting. The “GCN” sign-off? That came from Newsom himself. But there’s a team behind the effort, and they’re running 24/7 to keep the big, beautiful bludgeoning going.

But what about democracy?

Great for Newsom, you say, but how does a meme of him with bulging biceps save democracy? Here’s the thing I learned covering the rise not just of Trump, but of the extremist and fringe ideologies such as QAnon that fueled his base: It would not happen without social media.

Social media is the sauce that has seasoned this change in our politics, which sounds obvious but is much deeper than most realize. Social media created communities, communities largely without physical or ethical boundaries. Anything goes, and the more intense and crazy, the deeper it tends to go. The more people believe, the more involved they become.

Short take: Social media spreads extremism.

But can social media also spread resistance?

The hardest parts of an autocracy are division and fear. It feels lonely and scary to speak out. Newsom has done two crucial things with his social media barrage.

First, he showed us that the Republicans were right all along. For years, the far-right has found Trump’s social media hilarious, and all the funnier because Democrats were outraged by its crassness, vulgarity and childishness. Many Democrats found no humor in a president behaving in ways that would get their own teenagers grounded.

But as soon as Newsom did it, Democrats were the ones who found it funny, especially the irony-free Republican outrage. And empowering. And awesome. Suddenly, they got the joke.

In copying, Newsom was subverting — not just holding up a mirror to the bad behavior, but revealing that Democrats have in fact had a stick somewhere unnecessary and need to admit that low humor tickles the American fancy. He has given Democrats something light and amusing to rally around, creating community that has been sadly lacking.

And community is where resistance thrives, same as with extremism. When people feel not alone, they feel stronger.

That’s the second thing Newsom has brought with his trolling. Democrats, Republicans, democracy-backers of any stripe are relieved to laugh at Trump together — because nothing undermines his power more than a collective chuckle at his expense.

Like this:

What else you should be reading:

The must-read: The AI Doomsday Machine Is Closer to Reality Than You Think
The what happened: Trump can’t use Alien Enemies Act to deport Venezuelan gang members, court rules
The L.A. Times special: California pushes back on Trump’s CDC with West Coast Health Alliance

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SACRAMENTO — There are echoes from California Republicans’ disastrous past in their solid support of the Trump administration’s ugly raids targeting Latinos suspected of illegal immigration.

California’s GOP apparently still hasn’t learned. Scaring, insulting and angering people is not an effective recruiting tool. It doesn’t draw them to your side. It drives them into the opposition camp.

That should have been a lesson learned three decades ago when Republicans strongly pushed a harsh anti-illegal immigration ballot initiative, Proposition 187. It became principally responsible for changing California from a politically competitive state to one where the GOP is essentially irrelevant.

This occurred to me when reading recent poll data that showed strong overall objection in California to President Trump’s oft-inhumane immigration enforcement policies — among virtually every group, that is, except Republican voters. They overwhelmingly support his tactics.

The in-depth poll by the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies delved into voter attitudes toward Trump’s mass deportation actions.

On the basic question of his immigration enforcement strategy, 69% of registered voters disapproved and just 29% approved. But there was a sharp difference between political parties. Democrats almost unanimously disapproved — 95%. And 72% of independents were opposed. But 79% of Republicans approved.

Interviewers also asked about specifics. And GOP voters were with Trump all the way.

Strong majorities of Republicans disagreed that federal agents “have unfairly targeted Latino communities for their race or ethnicity,” believed the raids have “primarily focused” on undocumented “serious” criminals — although evidence shows that many law-abiders have been snatched — and thought “all undocumented immigrants need to be deported.”

Smaller Republican majorities disagreed that detained undocumented immigrants “have a right to due process” and a court hearing — although the due process clause of the 5th Amendment indicates they do — and agreed that “agents should expand enforcement into schools, hospitals, parks and other public locations.”

Democrats and independents expressed emphatically opposite views — and they greatly outnumber Republicans in California.

The parties also reported diametrically opposite feelings when viewing news accounts of raids by federal agents. Nearly two-thirds of Republicans said it made them feel “hopeful, like justice is finally being served.” Democrats said they were “enraged and/or sad. What is happening is unfair.”

Republicans were more divided on whether immigration agents should be required to show clear identification, such as wearing badges. Armed agents have been going incognito in street clothes, traveling in unmarked vehicles and wearing masks.

Among GOP voters, 50% opposed requiring identification and 45% supported the idea.

Two bills currently are awaiting votes in the state Assembly to require agent identification and ban masks in most circumstances.

“Agents have been running around wearing essentially ski masks, grabbing people, throwing them into unmarked cars and disappearing them,” says Sen. Mark Wiener (D-San Francisco), author of the mask ban bill. “In a democracy, we don’t have secret police running around masked.”

Listening to Republican voters, I’m hearing reverberations from 1994 when that GOP generation overwhelmingly backed Proposition 187, led by Gov. Pete Wilson, who was subsequently demonized by Democrats and, particularly, Latinos.

That now-infamous measure would have denied most public services — including schooling — to undocumented immigrants, and turned teachers and nurses into snitches. It passed by a landslide, but a federal judge ruled it unconstitutional.

Republicans voted for Proposition187 by 3 to 1 and independents by 3 to 2, according to a Los Angeles Times exit poll. Democrats opposed it by 2 to 1.

White people voted for Proposition 187 by 59% to 41% — the exact victory margin — but Latinos opposed it by 78% to 22%. Today, there are a lot fewer white people and lots more Latinos in California.

The measure awakened Latinos and spawned a new generation of Democratic political leaders, including U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla, former L.A. Mayor and Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa and other legislative honchos.

And it instigated a hemorrhaging of Republican voters in California. In the November presidential election, Republicans amounted to only 25% of registered voters. In 1994, they were 37%. Many have since shifted to registering as independents, who amounted to only 10% back then and are 22% now. Democrats also have lost slightly to nonpartisan ranks, falling from 49% to 46%.

No Republican candidate has won a statewide race since 2006, and Democrats hold supermajorities in both legislative houses.

The GOP has been touting an uptick in Latino support in November’s election. But is that a trend, or just the reflection of a sorry Democratic presidential campaign? How will Latino voters react to immigration agents chasing people through farm fields, seizing teens without telling their parents and stalking picnickers?

“Republicans can talk about crime and homelessness and gas prices all they want but the immigration issue is a boulder in the road that will keep large numbers in California from listening to what they say on any other issue,” says Dan Schnur, a USC and UC Berkeley political science instructor who was Wilson’s spokesman in 1994.

GOP consultant Mike Madrid, who has written a book about how Latinos are transforming democracy, says Republicans “are limiting what could be a tidal wave of voters in their direction. They’re their own worst enemies.”

He adds: “Latinos are primarily economic voters but will respond when attacked. As long as the GOP resorts to anti-Latino appeals they’ll fight back.”

Republican voter attitudes also are symptomatic of today’s extremely polarized politics.

“Wherever Trump decides to steer the ship, Republicans are following him. Trump is the Pied Piper here,” says Mark DiCamillo, the IGS pollster.

Republican consultant Kevin Spillane theorized that Republican respondents in the poll were “rallying around Trump. They thought they were really being asked about him.”

Whatever. They need to evolve into the increasingly diverse 21st century. We can secure the border without storming churches, hospitals and schools.

What else you should be reading

The must-read: Newsom, California lawmakers strike deal that would allow Uber, Lyft drivers to unionize
The TK: ‘The party is in shambles.’ But some Democrats see reasons for optimism
The L.A. Times Special: Their brotherly love transcends politics — and California’s tooth-and-nail redistricting fight

Until next week,
George Skelton

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WASHINGTON — The ghost of Jeffrey Epstein is back in Washington as Congress prepares to return for the fall.

Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson called an early start to summer break in July, attempting to shut down bipartisan clamor for the full release of the Epstein files. But Democrats are eager to launch back into a scandal that has dogged President Trump and divided his MAGA base.

Rep. Ro Khanna, a California Democrat, plans to partner with Republican Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky to quickly force a vote on the House floor ordering the Justice Department to release its entire trove of documents from the investigation of Epstein, a convicted sex offender who abused hundreds of women and girls.

The success of the measure is far from guaranteed. It is unclear whether the Justice Department would even abide by it. But Democrats plan to make sure the issue does not go away, regardless of its outcome, multiple Democratic aides said.

Democratic lawmakers’ focus on Epstein will be “high” out of the gate once Congress returns after Labor Day, one senior House Democratic staffer told The Times.

Republicans “will not want to be put in a position of voting against disclosure,” said the staffer, who requested anonymity to share internal discussions. “The same thing that tripped up Johnson in July is still there.”

California Dems lead charge for release

Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Long Beach) has pushed for the release of the Epstein documents.

(Damian Dovarganes / Associated Press)

Epstein, a wealthy financier with a deep bench of powerful friends, died in a New York City prison in August 2019 facing federal charges in a sprawling child sex trafficking conspiracy.

The charges followed reporting by the Miami Herald of a scandalous sweetheart deal brokered by federal prosecutors in Florida that had allowed Epstein to serve a months-long sentence, avoiding federal charges that could have resulted in life imprisonment.

The chief prosecutor in that case, Alex Acosta, the former U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida, went on to serve as Labor secretary in Trump’s first term.

Acosta has agreed to sit for a transcribed interview with the House Oversight Committee on Sept. 19.

It is just one of several milestones coming up for the Oversight Committee, which voted to subpoena all Justice Department records in the case before dismissing for recess. Democrats, partnering with Republicans rebelling against the party line, forced the subpoena vote.

The first set of those documents were delivered last week. But Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Long Beach), the top Democrat on the committee, said that 97% of the 33,000 pages of documents handed over by the Justice Department so far were already public.

The Justice Department and the Oversight Committee said that the records would be released on a piecemeal basis as department officials work to redact sensitive information on Epstein’s victims.

Garcia and Khanna have been leading the charge for an expansive release of documents in the Epstein case — a call that has drawn fierce pushback from Trump, who had a close friendship with Epstein for roughly a decade.

“There is no excuse for incomplete disclosures,” Garcia said. “Survivors and the American public deserve the truth.”

‘Gentleman in all respects’

Democrats never made an issue of the Epstein files when they held Congress and the White House under President Biden, dismissing the story as another right-wing conspiracy theory. But Democratic lawmakers now see the issue as an opportunity to cause a split between Trump and his supporters, highlighting his resistance to releasing the files for a voter base that has called for their disclosure since Epstein’s 2019 death.

Rep. James Comer of Kentucky, chairman of the Oversight Committee, issued a new subpoena this week to Epstein’s estate for all material from 1990 through his death that references presidents and vice presidents, as well address books, contact lists, and videos recorded at Epstein’s properties.

That could result in the disclosure of a book compiled for Epstein marking his 50th birthday in the early 2000s, first reported over the summer by the Wall Street Journal, that allegedly includes a letter from Trump featuring a lewd doodle and a note that reads, “Happy Birthday — and may every day be another wonderful secret.” Trump has denied he wrote the note.

The Oversight Committee has also voted to subpoena Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s close associate who is serving a 20-year sentence in federal prison for her role in a scheme to sexually exploit and abuse multiple minor girls.

Maxwell and her attorneys are openly angling for a pardon from Trump, raising suspicions among Democrats over the reliability of her testimony. But any appearance by Maxwell on Capitol Hill would become a media sensation, drawing national attention back to the case.

The second most powerful figure in the Justice Department, Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general, personally interviewed Maxwell in July over the course of two days. She absolved Trump of any criminality in the interview without even being asked to do so.

“The president was never inappropriate with anybody,” Maxwell said, according to a transcript released last week.

“In the times I was with him,” she added, “he was a gentleman in all respects.”

What else you should be reading

The must-read: Why the Grateful Dead are one of California’s greatest natural phenomena
The deep dive: Will your congressional district shift left or right in Newsom’s proposed map?
The L.A. Times Special: Why COVID keeps roaring back every summer, even as pandemic fades from public view

More to come,
Michael Wilner
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SACRAMENTO — There are “Wizard of Oz” echoes in the retaliatory redistricting fight being waged by California Democrats against President Trump and Texas Republicans.

That’s mainly because of the script being followed by Republican opponents. But Democrats seem to be parroting some Oz lines, too.

That was evident last week during several tense debates by California lawmakers on legislation setting a special state election for Nov. 4 to counteract Texas’ attempts to flip five congressional seats from Democrats to Republicans.

The California measures would temporarily suspend the state Constitution to allow legislators — rather than an independent citizens commission — to redraw U.S. House districts. The Democrats’ aim is to flip five Republican seats in California and neutralize the Texas GOP’s action. Democrats already have drawn the new lines, but voters must approve them.

At stake is control of the U.S. House of Representatives after next year’s midterm elections.

California’s Legislature, after much emotional rhetoric, easily passed the Democrats’ proposed constitutional amendment and supporting legislation on party-line, supermajority votes. The bills were immediately signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom, their instigator and chief promoter. They’ll be Proposition 50 on the November ballot.

All the while, script lines from “The Wizard of Oz” movie classic kept ringing in my ears.

“Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain,” the Wizard implores Dorothy and her pals after her little dog, Toto, pulls back the curtain to reveal him as a fraud.

In Sacramento, it’s as if Republicans — and progressive do-gooders — are being admonished to pay no attention to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who has committed the same sins of partisan redistricting that they’re attacking Newsom for. The Texan isn’t even mentioned by California assailants of Newsom’s gerrymandering. It smacks of hypocrisy.

What Abbott’s doing is even worse by good government standards. Unlike Newsom, he isn’t seeking voter approval.

Abbott doesn’t have to, of course. In Texas, it’s perfectly legal for the legislature to rig congressional districts for partisan advantage. In California, voters banned gerrymandering of congressional districts in 2010 and turned over their drawing to the bipartisan citizens commission. Newsom needs voter permission to suspend that law.

Nationally, Democrats need to gain only a handful of seats to capture control of the House and end the GOP’s one-party rule of Washington. Trump fears that likelihood. So he pressured Abbott into engineering a legislative gerrymandering of Texas’ House districts in mid-decade, rather than wait for the normal redrawing after the 2030 census. And he’s browbeating other red state governors to likewise rig their congressional lines.

“California will not be a bystander to Trump’s power grab,” Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas (D-Salinas) said as Newsom signed the legislation. “We will not stand by while the House is hijacked by authoritarianism.”

But back to the Emerald City.

The Wizard introduces himself to Dorothy by bellowing behind the curtain: “I am Oz, the great and powerful.” Later, he breaks his word to the girl, she sees through his bullying and stands up to him, scolding: “If you were really great and powerful, you’d keep your promises.”

Trump is a great big bully whose word can’t be taken at face value because he consistently changes his mind to fit the moment. He’s clearly anti-California, holding back federal funds, assessing fines and reducing environmental protections. Newsom and Democratic leaders will repeatedly remind voters of that as the election approaches.

Unlike Dorothy, it’s a rare Republican elected official who has the courage to stand up to this power-obsessed bully. But one surprisingly surfaced during the Assembly redistricting debate.

Referring to Trump’s urging Abbott and other GOP governors to gerrymander districts, Assembly Minority Leader James Gallagher of Yuba City asserted: “He is wrong to do so.” And he added for emphasis: “Let me repeat. He is wrong…. Where does it end?”

Later, Gallagher reiterated, “My president is wrong on this point. What I don’t hear from the other side is, ‘My governor is wrong.’ ”

Gallagher and several Republicans insist — as Newsom and Democrats do — that gerrymandering should be outlawed in every state and district lines drawn by citizens’ commissions rather than self-interested legislators. But that won’t happen in the foreseeable future.

Gallagher also contended that Democrats are hyping Trump’s threat to democracy. He said they’re arguing that “in order to save democracy, we must undermine it” by committing sleazy gerrymandering.

He has a point about the Democrats’ excessive warning of democracy’s peril under Trump.

“Californians won’t stand by while Donald Trump destroys democracy,” Sen. Sabrina Cervantes (D-Riverside) declared during an oft-uncivil hearing of the Assembly Elections Committee. “If we let Trump get away with this rigging of elections, then we may not have free and fair elections in the future.”

That seems a stretch.

This and other hyperbole by several legislators of both parties reminded me of frightened Dorothy, Tin Man and Scarecrow chanting in the dark forest: “Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!”

I suspect the best pitch for Proposition 50 in this heavily Democratic state is a straight-forward anti-Trump message focused on his inhuman policies and the urgent need to restore checks and balances in Washington.

“We are going to punch this bully in the mouth,” Newsom vowed during a press conference hosted by the Democratic National Committee.

OK, but the governor should cool the Trump-like rhetoric. It probably wouldn’t impress Dorothy or — more important — her Uncle Henry and Aunt Em.

What else you should be reading

The must-read: Most California voters disapprove of Trump’s immigration enforcement policies, poll shows
The TK: The Supreme Court could give immigration agents broad power to stop and question Latinos
The L.A. Times Special: This red state fears Californians bringing ‘radical, leftist ideology.’ It’s targeting teachers

Until next week,
George Skelton

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Happy Thursday. Your usual host, D.C. Bureau Chief Michael Wilner, is off today. So you’re once again stuck with me, California Columnist Anita Chabria.

I’m reporting from Columbus, Ohio. Although it’s 2,300 miles from Sacramento, you wouldn’t know it from the national news, where Gov. Gavin Newsom’s push to gerrymander the Golden State’s election maps is dominating the conversation, even in the Midwest.

That’s a huge win for Newsom’s presidential aspirations. A week ago, I might have argued that Newsom’s chances at the Oval Office were irrevocably tied to the success of his “Election Rigging Response Act,” which seems likely (though not certain) to make it onto a November ballot.

But it’s increasingly seeming like win or lose on that initiative, the fight itself is a victory for Newsom.

Let’s dig into the details on where we are and why.

The recap

President Trump does not like uncertainty, especially when it comes to his power. The midterm elections in 2026 are nothing but uncertainty. Republicans hold a Ozempic-thin majority in the House at 219-212, with four seats vacant. If Democrats were to take control, it would make autocracy really hard.

So Trump’s team reportedly called up Texas and asked them to rig their election maps to gain five GOP seats and a comfortable margin for the election. Newsom responded, unexpectedly, by pushing an if/then proposition for the same map-rigging in California: If Texas does it, then so will we.

The Legislature is expected to approve that plan (and new maps that smash the state’s Republicans mostly along an inland stretch against the Sierra Nevada), allowing it to go before voters in November. Because unlike Texas, California voters will have to OK the gambit for it to move forward.

That seems as though it could happen. Axios reported this week that Newsom’s pollster, David Binder, found that 57% of California voters were likely to back the redistricting plan once they understood two points. First, that it was temporary and the state would go back to fair maps in a few years; and second, that California will go forward only if Texas or another state gerrymanders first.

Indiana, Illinois, Florida, Missouri and Ohio could also redraw maps before 2026.

And it seems as if Trump is pushing these just-in-case states to at least try. Vice President JD Vance visited Indiana recently, supposedly to encourage that state to drum up support for the idea, even though Republicans hold seven of nine of the state’s seats already. Florida is another place where map-rigging could happen. MAGA drummed up four additional seats after Gov. Ron DeSantis redrew maps in 2022 to give the GOP more seats. So there is little reason to believe he wouldn’t push it even further.

From Gavin to gavel

But like so many political policies these days, redistricting is likely to end up in courts.

California Republicans appealed to the state Supreme Court to at least delay redistricting. They are argued that state law requires any legislation to be in print for 30 days before a vote is taken on it.

The Legislature has a long-used but ethically dubious workaround to this — they take another bill, one that is already written but basically dead, and simply delete its contents and drop in whatever new measure they don’t have time to pass under a fresh bill number. Voila — in print for 30 days, technically.

Will the Supreme Court choose to censure that behavior now?

Nope. Wednesday, the court declined to take the case.

Texas might also find itself in courts with new maps it advanced on Wednesday.

The UCLA Voting Rights Project released a study this week that found the new Texas maps may violate federal law that protects minority voters from being pushed into districts where their favored candidate has no chance of winning.

“Federal law prohibits purposefully drawing large minority populations of Black and Hispanic voters into districts in which their preferred candidate loses,” the report notes. “While the map appears to add an extra Hispanic-majority district, VRP findings show it systematically places minority communities in districts where bloc-voting by white voters overrides their candidate of choice.”

The report found that minority-crunching especially problematic around Dallas and San Antonio.

Someone will probably sue. Which raises the interesting but as-yet unanswered question (I did ask, but no word back yet from the governor’s office) on whether California would still move forward if the Texas maps are passed by the Legislature but held up in courts. That scenario might melt Republican heads — the possibility of five new Democratic seats without Texas to even them out.

A win, regardless

Whether or not Newsom manages to get his “big beautiful maps,” as he’s cheekily calling them, through voters, this is already a win for him.

Trump is in public opinion trouble. A recent report from consumer-data company Resonate found that 50% of respondents were “dissatisfied with Trump’s behavior.”

That aligns with a new Economist/YouGov poll showing that 56% of voters disapprove of Trump, a really high number.

Meanwhile, between his social media explosion and map-rigging, Newsom is seeing a huge bump. One California poll by Politico-Citrin Center-Possibility found him significantly leading over former Vice President Kamala Harris when it comes to who state voters would back in the next presidential race.

That poll found that Newsom leads Harris 25% to 19% among the state’s registered no-party-preference, Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters.

But it’s not just California. I am seriously shocked that even here in the Midwest, folks are talking about Newsom and many — even if they don’t agree with redistricting — see him in a favorable light for fighting back so aggressively on Texas and Trump.

Even if Newsom loses the redistricting initiative in California, he will be able to argue that he fought harder than anyone else to curtail Trump’s power, and have the receipts to back that up.

So whether he gamed this out in advance or luck and timing have collided in that magical fashion, Newsom has, for the moment, captured lightning in a bottle — and certainly will ride that energy as far as it will take him.

What else you should be reading:

The must-read: How Georgia Went From the Vanguard of Democracy to the Front Lines of Autocracy
The what happened: How Gavin Newsom trolled his way to the top of social media
The L.A. Times special: How California’s proposed redistricting map compares to current congressional districts

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SACRAMENTO — One accusation hurled at Gov. Gavin Newsom for his retaliatory redistricting move against President Trump and Texas Republicans is that he’s overriding the will of California voters. Rubbish.

The flawed argument goes like this:

Californians — once upon a time — voted overwhelmingly to ban partisan gerrymandering and strip the task of drawing congressional seats from self-interested legislators. In a historic political reform, redistricting was turned over to an independent citizens’ commission. Now, Newsom is trying to subvert the voters’ edict.

“It is really a calculated power grab that dismantles the very safeguards voters put in place,” California Republican Party Chairwoman Corrin Rankin said in a statement last week, echoing other party members. “This is Gavin the Gaslighter overturning the will of the voters and telling you it’s for your own good.”

Again, baloney.

Power grab? Sure. Overturning the voters’ will? Hardly.

Newsom is asking voters to express a new will–seeking permission to fight back against Trump’s underhanded attempt to redraw congressional districts in Texas and other red states so Republicans can retain control of the U.S. House of Representatives after next year’s midterm elections.

First of all, that anti-gerrymandering vote creating the citizens’ commission was 15 years ago. It was a wise decision and badly needed, and still a wonderful concept in the abstract. But that was then, this is now.

Just because a ballot measure was passed one or two decades ago doesn’t mean it has been cast in stone. Would Californians still vote to ban same-sex marriage or deny public schooling to undocumented children? Doubtful. Circumstances and views change.

Second, that 2010 electorate no longer exists. Today’s electorate is substantially different. And it shouldn’t necessarily be tied to the past.

Consider:

• Of the 23.6 million adult California citizens in 2010 — the eligible voters — an estimated 3.6 million have died, or more than 15%, according to population experts at the state Finance Department.
• In all, “at least half of the voter registration file is totally new compared to 2010. And that might even be an understatement,” says Eric McGhee, a demographer at the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California. “There’s been a lot of turnover. It’s a different electorate.”
  People have left the state and others have moved in. Millions of kids have become voting adults.
• There are roughly 6 million more Californians registered to vote today than 15 years ago — 23 million compared to 17 million. “That’s a pretty huge change,” says Paul Mitchell, vice president of Political Data Inc., who has drawn the proposed new Democratic-friendly California congressional maps for Newsom.
• And the partisan makeup of registered voters has become more favorable toward Democrats, who enjoy a nearly 2-to-1 advantage. In last year’s presidential election, Democrats accounted for 46% of registered voters and Republicans 25%. In 2010, it still seemed somewhat competitive. Democrats were at 44% and Republicans 31%.

PPIC researchers recently reported that “partisanship now shapes the state’s migration — with those moving out of the state more likely to be Republican and those moving in more likely to be Democrat. … This process makes California more Democratic than it would otherwise be.”

So, Newsom and Democratic legislators are not thumbing their noses at the voters’ will. They’re asking today’s voters to suspend the ban on gerrymandering and adopt a partisan redistricting plan at a Nov. 4 special election. The good government process of map drawing by the citizen’s commission would return after the 2030 decennial census.

The heavily Democratic Legislature will pass a state constitutional amendment containing Newsom’s plan and put it on the ballot, probably this week.

It would take effect only if Texas or other red states bow to Trump’s demand to gerrymander their congressional districts to rig them for Republicans. Trump is seeking five more GOP seats from Texas and Gov. Greg Abbott is trying to oblige. Republicans already hold 25 of the 38 seats.

Newsom’s plan, released Friday, counters Texas’ scheme with a blatant gerrymander of his own. It would gain five Democratic seats. Democrats already outnumber Republicans on the California House delegation 43 to 9.

Neither the governor nor any Democrats are defending gerrymandering. They agree it’s evil politics. They support redistricting by the citizens’ commission and believe this high-road process should be required in every state. But that’s not about to happen. And to stand by meekly without matching the red states’ election rigging would amount to unilateral disarmament, they contend correctly.

“It’s not good enough to just hold hands, have a candlelight vigil and talk about the way the world should be,” Newsom declared at a campaign kickoff last week. “We have got to recognize the cards that have been dealt. And we have got to meet fire with fire.”

But polling indicates it could be a tough sell to voters. A large majority believe the bipartisan citizens commission should draw congressional districts, not the politicians who they don’t particularly trust.

“It’ll be complicated to explain to voters why two wrongs make a right,” says Republican strategist Rob Stutzman, a GOP never-Trumper.

Former GOP redistricting consultant Tony Quinn says: “There is no way to ‘educate’ voters on district line drawing. And Californians vote ‘no’ on ballot measures they do not understand. … It’s sort of like trying to explain the basketball playoffs to me.”

But veteran Democratic strategist Garry South doesn’t see a problem.

“The messaging here is clear: ‘Screw Trump’,” South says. “If the object is to stick it to Trump, [voter] turnout won’t be a problem.”

Gerrymandering may not be the voters’ will in California. But they may well jump at the chance to thwart Trump.

What else you should be reading

The must-read: Newsom’s decision to fight fire with fire could have profound political consequences
The TK: Trial in National Guard lawsuit tests whether Trump will let courts limit authority
The L.A. Times Special: Hundreds of Californians have been paid $10,000 to relocate to Oklahoma. Did they find paradise?

Until next week,
George Skelton

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ANCHORAGE — The first presidential summit in years between Russia and the United States is on, setting nerves in Europe and Ukraine on a knife’s edge. But President Trump may have a surprise in store for Vladimir Putin.

Efforts to scuttle the high-stakes meeting have not been subtle. European officials issued statements in recent days on the futility of Trump negotiating with Putin over Ukraine without Ukraine, urging the U.S. president on Wednesday to not cut a unilateral deal. Kyiv warned that Moscow’s proposals for peace — rewarding its war of conquest with territorial concessions — are a nonstarter. Many Russia experts are hoping one side simply decides to call it off.

Despite their efforts, the summit — haphazardly scheduled on American soil with days to spare — is moving ahead, with Trump scheduled to host the Russian leader at a U.S. military base in Anchorage on Friday, the first meeting of its kind since 2021.

Experts fear Putin may be laying a trap for the Americans, manipulating Trump in private to solidify Russia’s position on the battlefield. But Trump suggested Wednesday that he would demand Putin agree to a ceasefire in Alaska.

“There will be very severe consequences” if he doesn’t, Trump told reporters.

‘Very grave risk’

Hosting the meeting is an about-face from Trump, who over much of the summer appeared in the throes of a remarkable transformation on Putin, criticizing the Russian leader in harsh terms for the first time. To the relief and delight of Europe, Trump appeared to be losing his patience — embarrassed, even — at Putin’s open refusal to heed his calls for a ceasefire in Ukraine.

But Trump’s threats of a response, increasing sanctions against Russia and its trading partners, lasted only a matter of days.

On Aug. 6, the president’s special envoy on the crisis, Steve Witkoff, a real estate investor with no experience in diplomacy and no background in the region, was dispatched to Moscow. Planning for a summit began within hours of his departure from the Kremlin.

On Tuesday, as White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters that the summit would amount to a “listening session” for Trump on Putin’s interest in peace, battlefield reports emerged of a significant Russian breach in Ukrainian lines.

In a phone call, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told Trump that Putin was “bluffing” on his commitments to peace, pressing ahead with an offensive to gain more territory. “There should be joint pressure on Russia, there should be sanctions — and there should be a message that if Russia doesn’t agree to a ceasefire in Alaska, this principle should work,” Zelensky said Wednesday.

“It sure looks like it’s moving in the wrong direction,” John Bolton, Trump’s former national security advisor in his first term, told The Times, dismissing Witkoff as a chief culprit behind what he fears is a coming diplomatic crisis: “Better send the Bobbsey twins.”

The perils of this meeting, Bolton said, lie in Putin’s skills as a manipulator. The Russian president may well convince Trump that his designs on Ukraine are reasonable — and the only way forward.

“There’s a very grave risk it does become an almost take-it-or-leave-it proposition for Zelensky,” Bolton said. On Wednesday morning, Trump criticized the media for being “very unfair” to him for quoting “fired losers and really dumb people like John Bolton.”

Russia invaded the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea and its eastern regions in 2014, and launched a full-scale invasion of the country in 2022. Nearly a million Russian soldiers have been killed or wounded in pursuit of Vladimir Putin’s war of conquest, according to independent analysts, with hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers adding to the casualty count.

“Clearly, Trump wants to sit down with the guy that he thinks is his friend again,” Bolton said. “And from Putin’s point of view, he doesn’t want any pesky Europeans around — and particularly not Zelensky. He wants to see if he can correct the damage he did.”

Echoes of Helsinki

President Trump shakes hands with Russian President Vladimir Putin at 2018 Helsinki summit.

(Alexander Zemlianichenko/Associated Press)

Seven years ago, entering a meeting with his Russian counterpart, Trump set a similar bar for success as Leavitt has this week. “I don’t expect anything,” Trump said in an interview at the time from Scotland, before leaving for Helsinki. “I go in with very low expectations.”

On Air Force One en route to Helsinki, he cast himself as a dealmaker and tweeted that, “no matter how well I do at the Summit, if I was given the great city of Moscow as retribution for all of the sins and evils committed by Russia,” it would still not be enough to earn him praise. He repeated the turn of phrase Wednesday morning in his post criticizing Bolton.

“If I got Moscow and Leningrad free,” Trump wrote, “as part of the deal with Russia, the Fake News would say that I made a bad deal!”

What resulted was a meeting and subsequent news conference that produced one of the most notorious moments of Trump’s first term. On the heels of calling the European Union a “foe” of the United States, Trump stood beside Putin and took his side over the U.S. intelligence community, disputing its assessment that Russia had interfered in the 2016 presidential election.

Experts fear that a similar diplomatic rupture could unfold if Trump, deferential to Putin, emerges from their meeting Friday siding with the Russian leader over Ukraine in the war.

In recent days, Trump has said that a deal between the two sides would have to include land “swapping” — territorial concessions that are prohibited by the Ukrainian Constitution without a public vote of support — and that he would give Zelensky the “courtesy” of a call after his meeting with Putin, if all goes well.

“This will be the first U.S.-Russia summit brought about by sheer ignorance and incompetence: The U.S. president and his chosen envoy mistook a Russian demand for a concession,” said Brian Taylor, director of the Moynihan Institute of Global Affairs at Syracuse University.

“Ultimately, this is not a war about this or that piece of territory, but about whether Russia can establish political control over Ukraine, or whether Ukraine will remain free to choose its own domestic and international path,” Taylor said. “Trump’s false suggestion again that Zelensky is somehow at fault for Russia invading Ukraine indicates he still does not understand how we got here or what’s at stake.”

Konstantin Sonin, a professor at the University of Chicago who has been sentenced in absentia to 8½ years in prison in Russia for publishing information on a Russian massacre of Ukrainian civilians at Bucha, said that Trump’s attempts to negotiate away Ukrainian territory could be diplomatically disastrous — but will make little difference on the ground.

“This is not a very popular view, but I am not sure that the U.S. has that much leverage over President Zelensky to force him into major concessions,” Sonin said. “Many European countries would support Ukraine no matter what — even at the cost of their relationship with the U.S. With full withdrawal of the U.S. support, the catastrophic scenario, Ukraine will still be able to fight on.”

Pitfalls for both sides

Kremlinologists tend to believe Putin’s training as a KGB officer at the end of the Cold War gave him unique skills to navigate the world stage.

In Helsinki — as he had so often done with other world leaders, including the queen of England and the pope — Putin kept Trump waiting for half an hour, seen as a move to throw off the U.S. delegation leading up to the meeting.

Last week, in his meeting with Witkoff, the Russian president offered an Order of Lenin to a CIA official whose son died in Ukraine fighting for Russian forces.

Russia watchers fear that Friday will be no different. Already, Putin has secured a meeting with the U.S. president on his own terms.

“Whatever else you think about Putin, he’s an experienced and clever ruler who has successfully manipulated Trump in the past,” Taylor said. “Putin’s intransigence in rejecting Trump’s proposed ceasefire led not to the sanctions that Trump promised to apply last Friday, but an invitation to the United States for a summit at which the U.S. president has already signaled he will endorse territorial changes achieved through military conquest.”

But there may also be pitfalls in store for Putin, experts said.

Trump’s shift in tone on Putin since a NATO summit in The Hague in June suggests it is possible, if unlikely, that Trump is preparing to enter the meeting with a tougher stance. In recent months, the president has seen political benefit in catching world leaders off guard, berating Zelensky and South Africa’s leader in the Oval Office with cameras rolling.

At the North Atlantic Treaty Organization summit, showered in praise by European leaders, Trump said in unusually clear terms that he was with the alliance “all the way.” Days later, he accused Putin of throwing “meaningless … bull—” at him and his team over the Ukraine war.

“I think there is some risk for Putin,” Sonin said. “He is not comfortable in any kind of adversarial situation — he quickly gets angry and defensive. And President Trump has the ability to put people in uncomfortable situations publicly. He has never done this to Putin before, but who knows.”

To Bolton, the best outcome of the summit would be that Putin fails to persuade Trump that he’s seriously interested in peace.

“I don’t think that’s going to happen, but it’s possible,” Bolton said. “I think in the environment that they’ve got, one on one — only Russians and Americans present — that’s ideal for Putin to do his thing.”

“So he’s got what he wants,” Bolton added. “He’s on American soil, with no one else around.”

What else you should be reading

The must-read: Schools to open with unprecedented protections for children and their parents amid ICE raids
The deep dive: Here are the EVs you can buy for less than $35,000
The L.A. Times Special: The dark side of California’s backyard ADU boom: How much do they ease the housing shortage?

More to come,
Michael Wilner
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SACRAMENTO — Three years ago, a series of political advertisements in Florida kicked off a war between Gov. Gavin Newsom and oil companies over blame for California’s highest-in-the-nation gas prices.

In a jab at Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Newsom ran ads contrasting Florida’s conservative policies with California’s liberal stances on abortion, education and LGBTQ+ rights.

The Western States Petroleum Assn., a trade group that represents the industry, responded with a warning for Floridians about the cost of gas and electricity in Newsom’s Golden State.

“Gavin Newsom is banning gas cars and shutting down California oil production,” the association’s ad stated. “California can’t afford Gavin Newsom’s ambition. Can Florida?”

It turns out, the price of California’s battle with oil — both politically and at the pump — may be too much for the governor and the state to bear.

Now with two oil refineries expected to shut down over the next year, the Democratic governor has halted his fight with the industry he accused of price gouging and targeted in two special legislative sessions.

A Phillips 66 refinery in Wilmington is slated to close by the end of the year and a Valero facility in Benicia announced plans to shut down in April. The closures could reduce California’s in-state oil refining capacity by 20%, setting off alarm bells for the Newsom administration.

Having fewer California refineries would increase reliance on foreign oil and drive up gasoline prices once again — a financial jolt for consumers that the governor wants to avoid.

Instead of lambasting the industry, Newsom is now directing his administration and asking lawmakers to try to help refineries remain open.

“My optimism now is that this is a pivot,” said Catherine Reheis-Boyd, president and chief executive of the association. “This is a turn.”

The turn

In April, Newsom sent a letter to Siva Gunda, the vice chair of the California Energy Commission, requesting that he “redouble the state’s efforts to work closely with refiners” to ensure access to reliable transportation fuels and “that refiners continue to see the value in serving the California market” even as the state transitions away from fossil fuels.

Newsom included a request for Gunda to recommend changes by July 1 to the state’s approach to maintain adequate oil supply. The letter was sent days after Valero notified the Energy Commission of its intent to close the Benicia refinery.

Gunda responded in late June with a warning that the state “faces the prospect of continued reduction in in-state petroleum refining capacity that outpaces demand decline for petroleum-based fuels” and offered industry-friendly suggestions to boost supply.

In short, California’s efforts to reduce consumption of gasoline have gotten ahead of consumer demand for zero-emission vehicles. Gunda said the state needs to increase investor confidence in refineries to enable them to maintain operations and meet demand.

Newsom has downplayed the change in approach.

“It’s completely consistent,” he said at a recent news conference. He’s also not naive, he said.

“We are all the beneficiaries of oil and gas,” he said.

“So it’s always been about finding a just transition of pragmatism in terms of that process.”

His comments this summer have marked a noticeable change in tone from a Democratic governor whose climate change advocacy became synonymous with attacking the oil industry.

Although now in limbo due to actions taken by the Trump administration, Newsom set a goal for 100% of in-state sales of new passenger cars and trucks to be zero-emission by 2035.

In 2022, Newsom also pushed legislation at the statehouse that banned new oil wells within 3,200 feet of homes and schools.

In a special session months later, Newsom urged lawmakers to place monetary penalties on excessive oil company profits. Newsom accused the oil industry of intentionally driving up the cost of gasoline as retribution for the state’s policies to phase out dependence on fossil fuels in an effort to curb climate change.

Lawmakers balked and Newsom backed off his initial request for them to pass an oil profits penalty. Instead, lawmakers gave state regulators more authority to investigate gasoline price surges and potentially place a cap on profits and penalize oil companies through a public hearing process.

The governor called a special session redux in 2024 after Democrats pushed back on his request to approve new requirements on oil refineries in the final days of the regular legislative session. Lawmakers ultimately approved a state law that could lower gasoline price spikes by giving regulators the authority to require that California oil refiners store more inventory.

Reheis-Boyd said the change reflects that the governor is realizing that reducing supply without reducing demand only increases costs.

The “truckloads of data” required from the industry through the special sessions also showed that refineries weren’t gouging customers, she said, and gave state officials insight into why refineries struggle to maintain their operations in California.

“When Valero announced they were leaving California, the next day, their stock price went up. And that just says everything you need to know, right?” Reheis-Boyd said. “You have to send a market signal that says, ‘We’re open for business here. We need you. We want to collaborate with you as we all plan for this lower-carbon economy in the future, but that pace and skill has got to match up.”’

What’s to come

When California lawmakers return to the state Capitol next week to begin the monthlong slog until they adjourn for the year, industry-friendly bills await them.

Among the considerations is Newsom’s proposal to make it easier to drill new wells in oil fields in Kern County. His plan also would streamline new wells in existing oil fields across the state if companies permanently plug two old wells.

Later this week, the Energy Commission is expected to consider pausing a possible cap on oil industry profits and suspending potential new state oversight of the timing of refinery maintenance. The state is also reportedly attempting to intervene to find a buyer for the Valero plant in Benicia.

While the oil industry is hopeful, environmentalists are dismayed.

California is at a crucial inflection point in its transition to clean energy, said Mary Creasman, chief executive of California Environmental Voters. With federal climate rollbacks, the world is watching the state.

“Now is not the time to retreat,” she said. “Now is the time to double down and innovate the way through this. That’s what this moment calls for. That’s the leadership we need nationally and the leadership we need globally.”

What else you should be reading

The must-read: California’s redrawn congressional districts could be bad news for these Republicans
The TK: Apple commits another $100 billion for U.S. manufacturing amid Trump tariffs
The L.A. Times Special: Millions of Californians may lose health coverage because of new Medicaid work requirements

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California is in a standoff with Texas over redistricting that could decide the balance of power in Congress for the end of Donald Trump’s presidency — a high-stakes gambit with risks for both sides. But if the courts have their say, Texas, facing accusations of racial discrimination, may find itself at a distinct legal disadvantage.

Partisanship unleashed

Both efforts by Texas Republicans and California Democrats are blatantly partisan, proposing a mid-decade redrawing of district lines for the express purpose of benefiting their party in the 2026 midterm elections.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom is working with a Democratic supermajority in the Legislature on “trigger” legislation that would schedule a ballot initiative this fall for the new maps. It was a direct response to a Texas plan, supported by Trump and currently in motion in the Austin statehouse, to potentially flip five seats in the upcoming election from blue to red.

The Supreme Court has ruled that judges are powerless to review partisan gerrymandering, even if, as it wrote in 2019, the practice is “incompatible with democratic principles.”

The court ruled in Rucho vs. Common Cause that partisan gerrymandering “is incompatible with the 1st Amendment, that the government shouldn’t do this, and that legislatures and people who undertake this aren’t complying with the letter of the Constitution,” said Chad Dunn, a professor and legal director of the UCLA Voting Rights Project who has argued multiple cases before the Supreme Court. “But it concluded that doesn’t mean the U.S. Supreme Court is the solution to it.”

What courts can still do, however, is enforce the core provisions of the Voting Rights Act, which bars states from redistricting that “packs” or “cracks” minority groups in ways that dilute their voting power.

“Texas doesn’t need to have a good reason or a legitimate reason to engage in mid-decade redistricting — even if it’s clear that Texas is doing this for pure partisan reasons, nothing in federal law at the moment, at least, would preclude that,” said Richard Pildes, a constitutional law professor at New York University. “But Texas cannot redistrict in a way that would violate the Voting Rights Act.”

Vestiges of a landmark law

In 2023, addressing a redistricting fight in Alabama over Black voter representation, the current makeup of the high court ruled in Allen vs. Milligan that discriminating against minority voters in gerrymandering is unconstitutional, ordering the Southern state to create a second minority-majority district.

Today, Texas’ proposed maps may face a similar challenge, amid accusations that they are “cracking” racially diverse communities while preserving white-majority districts, legal scholars said. Already, the state’s 2021 congressional maps are under legal scrutiny over discrimination concerns.

“The Supreme Court affirmed two years ago that the Voting Rights Act works the way we all thought it worked,” said Justin Levitt, a professor at Loyola Law School and former deputy assistant attorney general in the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division. “That’s part of the reason for current litigation in Texas, and will undoubtedly be a part of continuing litigation if Texas redraws their lines and goes ahead with it.”

The groundwork for the current Texas plan appears to have been laid with a letter from Harmeet Dhillon, assistant attorney general for civil rights at the Justice Department, who threatened Texas with legal action over three “coalition districts” that she argued were unconstitutional. Coalition districts feature multiple minority communities, none of which comprises the majority.

The resulting maps proposed by Texas redraw all three.

J. Morgan Kousser, a Caltech professor who recently testified in the ongoing case over Texas’ 2021 redistricting effort, said the politics of race in Texas specifically, and the South generally, make its redistricting challenges plain to see but harder to solve.

How do you distinguish between partisanship, which is allowed, and racism, which is not, in states where partisanship falls so neatly down racial lines?

That dilemma may become Texas’ greatest legal problem, as well as its saving grace in court, Kousser said.

“In Texas, as in most Southern states, the connection between race and party is so close that it is exceedingly difficult to distinguish between them,” he said. “That seems to give a get-out-of-jail free card, essentially, to anybody who can claim this is partisan, rather than racial.”

Today, nine states face ongoing litigation concerning potential violations of the Voting Rights Act, a law that turned 60 years old this week. Seven are in the South — states that had for decades been subject to a pre-clearance requirement at the Justice Department before being allowed to change state voting laws.

The Supreme Court struck down the requirement, in the case of Shelby County vs. Holder, in 2013.

California moves forward

Newsom has been vocal in his stance that California should position itself to be the national bulwark against the Texas plan.

Last week, the Democratic caucuses of the state Legislature heard a presentation by the UCLA Voting Rights Project on how California might legally gerrymander its own maps for the 2026 midterms.

Matt Barreto, the co-founder of the project and a professor of political science and Chicana/o and Central American studies, said his organization’s position is that gerrymandering “should not be allowed by any state,” he said.

But “if other states are playing the game, the governor is saying he wants to play the game too,” Barreto added.

He said that although five seats have been discussed to match what Texas is doing, he sees a pathway for California to create seven seats that would be safely Democratic.

That includes potential redraws in Orange County, San Diego, the Inland Empire and the northern part of the state. Barreto said there are many districts that currently skew as much as 80% Democratic, and by pulling some of those blue voters into nearby red districts, they could be flipped without risk to the current incumbents, though some new districts may have odd shapes.

For example, districts in the north could become elongated to reach into blue Sacramento or the Bay Area, “using the exact same standards that Texas does,” he said.

Legislators seemed receptive to the idea.

“We’ve taken basic American rights for granted for too long,and I think we’re ill equipped to protect them,” said Assemblymember Maggy Krell (D-Sacramento), who attended the meeting.

“To me, this is much bigger than Texas,” she said.

State Sen. Tom Umberg (D-Santa Ana), who has worked on redistricting in the past, echoed that support for Newsom, saying he was not “comfortable” with the idea of gerrymandering but felt “compelled” in the current circumstances.

“In order to respond to what’s going on in Texas in particular,” Umberg said, “we should behave in a like manner.”

Barreto, the UCLA professor, warned that if any redistricting happens in California, “no matter what, there’s going to be a lawsuit.”

Dunn said that it’s possible voters could sue under the Voting Rights Act in California, claiming the new districts violate their right to fair representation — even white voters, who have more traditionally been on the other side of such legal actions.

The 1965 law is “for everybody, of every race and ethnicity,” Dunn said. A lawsuit “could be on behalf of the places where the white community is in the minority.”

The prospect of that litigation and the chaos it could cause gives pause to some voting rights experts who see the current situation as a race to the bottom that could ultimately harm democracy by undermining voters’ trust in the system.

“It’s mutual destruction,” said Mindy Romero, a voting expert and professor at USC, of the Texas-California standoff.

The best outcome of the current situation, she said, would be for Congress to take action to prohibit partisan gerrymandering nationwide. This week, Rep. Kevin Kiley (R-Rocklin), who represents a district north of Sacramento that would be vulnerable in redistricting, introduced legislation that would bar mid-decade redistricting. So far, it has gained little support.

“Just like lots of other things, Congress is dropping the ball by not addressing this national problem,” said Richard Hasen, a UCLA professor of political science and director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project.

“When it comes to congressional redistricting, fairness should be evaluated on a national basis, since the decisions made in California or Texas affect the whole country,” he said.

What else you should be reading:

The must-read: Tired of waiting for the city, Angelenos paint their own crosswalks. Some become permanent
The what happened: Federal agents use Penske rental truck as ‘Trojan Horse’ to raid Los Angeles Home Depot
The L.A. Times special: Inside the high-stakes clandestine poker world that led to a Hollywood Hills murder

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SACRAMENTO — Former Vice President Kamala’s Harris’ decision to forgo a 2026 run for California governor came as a bit of a surprise, given her impressive winning streak in the state and comfortable lead in early polling. But that’s what makes campaigns so interesting, the unpredictability. It’s also why everyone should view nattering political punditry and campaign handicapping with a healthy heap of skepticism.

So keep that in mind now that the California governor’s race is wide open. The current field of candidates — yes, there’s still plenty of time for folks to jump in — is filled with gubernatorial hopefuls who have a legitimate if not outside chance of taking over for two-term Gov. Gavin Newsom, who is barred from running again.

Four of the top Democrats in the race already have won statewide races — former Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra, Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis, state Supt. of Public Instruction Tony Thurman and former Controller Betty Yee. One is the former mayor of California’s largest city, Antonio Villaraigosa of Los Angeles. Two were impactful lawmakers — Orange County Rep. Katie Porter and former state Sen. Toni Atkins. And, as always, there are the wild cards: wealthy Democratic businessman Stephen J. Cloobeck; and Republicans Chad Bianco, the Riverside County sheriff, and conservative commentator Steve Hilton.

Some of them have a better chance than others, of course, but all have enough political juice to stir up the race and at least influence the ultimate outcome.

This is Phil Willon, the L.A. Times California politics editor, filling in for columnist George Skelton this week. I’m joined by senior Sacramento reporter Taryn Luna to bring you up to speed on the latest.

The early money

On the same week Harris announced that she wasn’t running, just by coincidence, the latest campaign fundraising reports for the governor’s race were released to the public.

Those financial reports, which cover the first half of 2025, offered a glimpse of a candidate’s popularity and viability, since running a successful gubernatorial campaign in the most populous state in the union can cost tens of millions of dollars.

Campaign fundraising has been a bit frozen; donors were waiting to hear whether Harris was going to jump in the race, since she would have started as the clear favorite.

Plus, the fundraising totals don’t always tell the whole picture, as Times reporters Kevin Rector, Seema Mehta and Laura J. Nelson pointed out in their story on Sunday.

Kounalakis raised just over $100,000 during the first half of this year, a relatively paltry amount. But she had more than $4.6 million socked away and millions more in her lieutenant governor campaign account. Kounalakis’ father, the wealthy developer Angelo Tsakopoulos, also helped bankroll an independent expenditure committee supporting his daughter’s 2018 campaign for lieutenant governor.

Cloobeck, a Los Angeles Democrat, raised about $160,000 — but on Friday, he made a $10-million contribution to his campaign that he said “turbocharged” it.

Here’s a look at what the other candidates hauled in during the first half of the year and how much money they have in their accounts, since they were busy spending money as well:

• Atkins reported having $4.3 million in the campaign, while raising $648,000.
• Villaraigosa raised $1.1 million. He reported $3.3 million cash on hand based on fundraising he did last year.
• Becerra had $2.1 million in the bank after raising $2.5 million.
• Porter reported raising $3 million since announcing she was running for governor in March. She said she had $2 million in the bank.
• Bianco reported raising $1.6 million, and had $1 million in the bank.
• Hilton raised about $1.5 million, of which $200,000 was a personal loan. Hilton has a little less than $800,000 in the bank.
• Yee raised almost $238,000 and had $637,000 on hand.
• Thurmond raised about $70,000, and had almost $560,000 on hand.

Although a few seemingly have a pile of money and others look like they are barely scraping by, the reality is that none of them has enough money to wage a successful campaign for governor at this point. So, how much they rake in in the months ahead will be pivotal.

Harris’ next act

Speculation about Harris’ plans for the future is focused heavily on whether she will run for president again in 2028, talk that started almost immediately after the former vice president announced that she wasn’t running for California governor. Harris indicated that she’d remain active in national politics, but just how remains the big question.

The Times’ story on what Harris might do next explained what might be a motivating influence for Harris:

Experts in power and political leadership expect Harris’ next move to be something in the public eye, given she is relatively young at 60 and no doubt wants her last chapter in the spotlight to be something other than her humbling loss to Trump in the 2024 presidential election.

“Even if it isn’t the governorship of California, the idea of wanting something else other than the 2024 election to be the last thing Kamala Harris ever did would be very appealing,” said Gregory H. Winger, an assistant professor of public and international affairs at the University of Cincinnati who has studied former presidents’ lingering influence.

Winger said his research showed those “most active in trying to be influential” in their post-White House years were those whose time in office ended on a sour note, such as failing to win reelection.

“It’s kind of a frustrated ambition that then leads into higher activity,” Winger said — and Harris has that.

Harris was careful to leave her options open — framing her hopes for the future around ideals such as “fighting for the American people.”

The Democratic Party is losing support from young men

One of the many takeaways from the 2024 presidential election, including Harris’ defeat to Trump, is that Democrats are losing men — and young men feel particularly unseen by the party.

In his ongoing dissection of how Trump prevailed, Newsom brought Richard Reeves, a social scientist and author, onto his podcast this week and asked what he thought about efforts to speak to male voters.

“The way I think about this is that in politics something almost always beats nothing,” said Reeves, founding president of the American Institute for Boys and Men. “And what there was from the Democrats on issues around boys and men was nothing.”

For a Democratic governor of California weighing a potential 2028 presidential run, there are plenty of political reasons for Newsom to strive to understand why men feel disconnected from his party. Kamala Harris won 55% of women and 42% of men, a 9-point increase in the gender gap compared to the 2020 presidential election.

But Newsom also has personal reasons to ponder, too. The governor has talked about his own 14-year-old son, Hunter, and his interest in MAGA podcasters and influencers, such as Charlie Kirk.

Reeves said Democrats lost support from men in the election because they made a conscious choice to appear as the party that supports women — at the exclusion of men.

“I think that was a fatal miscalculation,” Reeves said. “I also think, honestly, it was somewhat insulting to women because there are plenty of women out there, and we may know some in our own lives, governor, who are simultaneously worried about the issues facing women. Access, for example, to reproductive healthcare, justice at work. And they’re desperately worried about their son’s mental health, and they’re very worried about their brother’s job.”

Trump made a stronger effort to win over a micro-generation of young men “who grew up with terms like toxic masculinity and mansplaining and the women’s movement,” Reeves said.

“The Republicans managed to convince young men, ‘We see you and we like you,’ and I don’t think there’s anything more to it than that, but I don’t think the Democrats did a very good job of making young men feel the same way,” Reeves said. “If anything, Democrats struggle with the idea that men might have problems because too many of them are still convinced that men are the problem.”

Men’s issues are a topic Reeves writes and speaks about often. Compared to women, men suffer from higher suicide rates and a greater sense of disconnection from peers. Men are less likely to attend college and more prone to violence.

Reeves casts the problem as the refusal to address the reality that men are struggling, too.

Ignoring men’s issues creates a gulf that the “reactionary online right” fills, he said, and draws young men to controversial figures such as Andrew Tate, a British influencer who promotes misogyny.

When the podcast with Reeves aired on Wednesday, Newsom announced an executive order that directs various state agencies to make recommendations to address suicide among young men, to improve recruitment of male teachers and counselors, and to increase male participation in state-funded volunteer programs, job training, educational partnerships and behavioral health initiatives.

Newsom said the work of Reeves and others “really is a call to arms.”

What else you should be reading

The must-read: In America’s hardest-fought congressional district, voters agree: Release the Epstein files
The TK: Newsom provides new details about his plan for a redistricting fight with Trump
The L.A. Times special: Feds move to drop charges in controversial cases as Trump re-ups L.A. prosecutor

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WASHINGTON — When President Trump rocked the economy with an unprecedented attack on global trade in April, the plan was dismissed as swaggering, capricious and unsustainable. Market meltdowns and price increases would teach the White House the true cost of its mistakes, economists warned.

Yet, four months later, Trump is largely getting his way, refashioning the global economic order around his long-standing worldview that the United States has been ripped off for decades — all before the economy can fully absorb the shock.

Prices are ticking up, but markets have rebounded, and consumer confidence is resurgent after Trump backed down from his most draconian threats. Projections of a looming recession are being tempered. And a handful of deals have been struck that, on their surface, give Trump much of what he wanted.

A long road ahead

A staff member inspects clothing material for defects at the apparel manufacturing unit at Bhiwandi in the Thane district of India’s Maharashtra state on July 30, 2025. President Trump said July 30 that imports from India will face a 25% tariff, while also announcing an unspecified “penalty” for New Delhi’s purchases of Russian weapons and energy.

(Indranil Mukherjee / AFP via Getty Images)

Experts still warn that the net effect of Trump’s trade war will hurt the U.S. economy, slowing growth and raising prices in the short term while depressing living standards in the long term.

A handful of preliminary agreements with important trading partners have been announced in recent days. But the president said Wednesday that he was committed to raising tariffs on others by Friday.

“THE AUGUST FIRST DEADLINE IS THE AUGUST FIRST DEADLINE — IT STANDS STRONG, AND WILL NOT BE EXTENDED,” Trump wrote on social media. “A BIG DAY FOR AMERICA!!!”

That leaves the most valuable U.S. trading relationships — with China, Mexico, Canada and India — vulnerable to devastating rate hikes that could severely roil the U.S. economy by the holiday season, when U.S. retailers makeas much as a quarter of their annual sales, experts said. Trump said Wednesday that he would raise the tariff on India to 25%.

The most dramatic provisions in the biggest deals struck thus far — with the European Union, Japan, the United Kingdom and Vietnam, among others — lack enforcement mechanisms and are, in some cases, downright fanciful, such as an EU pledge to purchase $750 billion in American energy over the next three years.

Yet, despite raising tariff rates in those deals up to an average of between 15% to 20% — higher than the 10% baseline that Trump unveiled in April, itself a marked increase from historic standards — Trump’s reversals on his most dramatic levies, such as a 125% import duty on Chinese products, have helped calm markets and buoy business confidence.

The gap between reality and public perception is evident in recent economic data, which show slowing U.S. growth but rising U.S. consumer confidence.

U.S. economic growth last year was at 2.8%. This year, economists warn that the country is still on track for less than 2% growth overall, a slowing rate not seen since the height of the COVID-19 pandemic that began in 2020.

“The president’s recent push on trade has produced a flurry of agreements that, while stopping short of the sweeping free‑trade deals of past administrations, have headed off the threat of a full‑blown tariff war,” said Sung Won Sohn, an economist and a former commissioner at the Port of Los Angeles.

“The administration has managed to calm immediate fears of a trade shock while locking in a costlier trading environment,” he added. “The deals represent progress, but the toughest negotiations — with some of America’s most important partners — still remain.”

‘Fragile’ deals

An employee works at the Canadian Copper Refinery in Montreal on July 17, 2025. President Trump on July 9 announced that a 50% tariff would be placed on U.S. imports of copper, a key metal for green energy and other technologies, and will take effect Aug. 1.

(Andrej Ivanov / AFP via Getty Images)

The deals Trump has cut so far amount to loose conceptual frameworks that have not been formalized through U.S. or foreign governing systems — and will ultimately survive at the whims of a president who has thrown out his own trade deals before.

The United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or USMCA, was a genuine trade deal negotiated by Trump himself during his first term in 2020 that overhauled trade across the continent. Yet that has not stopped him from entering a retaliatory spiral over trade with Canada and putting extraordinary pressure on Mexico’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum, to bend to painful U.S. demands.

“It is fair to say no comprehensive trade agreements have been reached really with any of our trading partners,” said Stan Veuger, a senior fellow in economic policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute and a frequent visiting lecturer at Harvard, referring to the settlements reached thus far as “side deals.”

Those deals, he said, “have been limited in scope, and can only be read as an effort to get the U.S. government to calm down and focus on something else.”

“They are also very fragile, as they are ill-defined, barely formalized or not at all, and especially on the U.S. side a mere product of executive action,” Veuger said.

“Neither the tariffs nor the side deals,” Veuger added, “seem to reflect any kind of broader strategy other than trade is bad and tariff revenue is good.”

Recession fears remain

A television on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange shows President Trump on July 28, 2025. U.S. equity futures climbed along with the dollar after the European Union reached a trade deal with Trump.

(Michael Nagle / Bloomberg via Getty Images)

After Trump’s “Liberation Day” announcement of global tariffs April 2, nearly every U.S. financial institution issued forecasts warning that a U.S. recession this year was more likely than not.

Those forecasts have been downgraded — but the risk is still significant, analysts say. According to J.P. Morgan, the probability of a recession has fallen to 40%. Apollo Global Management warned that the fate of U.S. economic growth probably would fall on the administration’s ongoing trade negotiations with China.

“In this first round of the trade war, Trump has triumphed, at least on the terms he set out for himself. The way the EU caved, in particular, is stunning,” said Kenneth Rogoff, a prominent economist and professor at Harvard. “That said, so far the tariffs seem to have been mostly paid by U.S. importers, not foreign countries that export to the U.S. Eventually, now that the war has settled down, the cost will be passed on to consumers.”

Rogoff still put the odds of an “outright recession over the next 18 months” at greater than 50%.

“It is very likely that there will be some modest inflation over the next year and weaker growth,” he said, adding, “it is already becoming harder to find jobs in many sectors.”

What else you should be reading

The must-read: How ICE is using the LAPD to track down immigrants for deportation
The deep dive: Who is Kim Yo Jong, sister and ‘right hand’ of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un?
The L.A. Times Special: Inside the fringe movement teaching Americans to punish officials with fake debt claims

More to come,
Michael Wilner
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SACRAMENTO — In fighting President Trump, Gov. Gavin Newsom reminds me of actor Gene Hackman’s hard-nosed character in the movie “Mississippi Burning.”

Hackman plays a take-no-prisoners FBI agent, Rupert Anderson, who is investigating the disappearance of three young civil rights workers in racially segregated 1964 Mississippi. His partner and boss is stick-by-the-rules agent Alan Ward, played by Willem Dafoe.

The 1988 film is loosely based on a true story.

The two agents eventually find the victims’ murdered bodies and apprehend the Ku Klux Klan killers after Anderson persuades Ward to discard his high-road rule book in dealing with uncooperative local white folks.

“Don’t drag me into your gutter, Mr. Anderson,” Ward sternly tells his underling initially.

Anderson shouts back: “These people are crawling out of the SEWER, MR. WARD! Maybe the gutter’s where we oughta be.”

And it’s where they go. Only then do they solve the case.

Newsom contends Trump is playing gutter politics by pressuring Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and the GOP-controlled Legislature to redraw the state’s U.S. House seats in an effort to elect five additional Republicans in next year’s midterm elections. House seats normally are redrawn only at the beginning of a decade after the decennial census.

Democrats need to gain just three net seats to retake control of the House and end the GOP’s one-party rule of the federal government.

Trump is trying to prevent that by browbeating Texas and other red states into gerrymandering their Democrat-held House districts into GOP winners.

Republicans currently hold 25 of Texas’ 38 House seats. Democrats have 12.

In California, it’s just the opposite — even more so. Out of 52 seats, Democrats outnumber Republicans 43 to 9, with room to make it even more lopsided.

“We could make it so that only four Republicans are left,” says Sacramento-based redistricting guru Paul Mitchell, vice president of Political Data Inc.

Mitchell already is crafting potential new maps in case Newsom follows through with his threat to retaliate against Texas by redrawing California’s districts to help Democrats gain five seats, neutralizing Republican gains in the Lone Star State.

Newsom and the Legislature would be seizing redistricting responsibility from an independent citizens’ commission that voters created in 2010. They took the task away from lawmakers because the politicians were acting only in their own self-interest, effectively choosing their own voters. As they do in Texas and most states, particularly red ones.

But the governor and Democrats would be ignoring California voters’ will — at least as stated 15 years ago.

And Newsom would be down in the political gutter with Trump on redistricting. But that doesn’t seem to bother him.

“They’re playing by a different set of rules,” Newsom recently told reporters, referring to Trump and Republicans. “They can’t win by the traditional game. So they want to change the game. We can act holier than thou. We could sit on the sidelines, talk about the way the world should be. Or we can recognize the existential nature that is the moment.”

Newsom added that “everything has changed” since California voters banned gerrymandering 15 years ago.

That’s indisputable given Trump’s bullying tactics and his inhumane domestic policies.

“I’m not going to be the guy that said, ‘I could have, would have, should have,’” Newsom continued. “I’m not going to be passive at this moment. I’m not going to look at my kids in the eyes and say, ‘I was a little timid.’”

Newsom’s own eyes, of course, are on the White House and a potential 2028 presidential bid. He sees a national opportunity now to attract frustrated Democratic voters who believe that party leaders aren’t fighting hard enough against Trump.

Newsom continued to echo Hackman’s script Friday at a news conference in Sacramento with Texas Democratic legislators.

Referring to Trump and Texas Republicans, Newsom asserted: “They’re not screwing around. We cannot afford to screw around. We have to fight fire with fire.”

But yakking about redrawing California’s congressional maps is easy. Actually doing it would be exceedingly difficult.

“Texas can pass a plan tomorrow. California cannot,” says Tony Quinn, a former Republican consultant on legislative redistricting.

Unlike in California, there’s no Texas law that forbids blatant gerrymandering.

California’s Constitution requires redistricting by the independent commission.

Moreover, a 1980s state Supreme Court ruling allows only one redistricting each decade, Quinn says.

Trying to gerrymander California congressional districts through legislation without first asking the voters’ permission would be criminally stupid.

Newsom would need to call a special election for November and persuade voters to temporarily suspend the Constitution, allowing the Legislature to redraw the districts.

Or the Legislature could place a gerrymandered plan on the ballot and seek voter approval. But that would be risky. A specific plan could offer several targets for the opposition — the GOP and do-gooder groups.

In either case, new maps would need to be drawn by the end of the year to fit the June 2026 primary elections.

Mitchell says polling shows that the independent commission is very popular with voters. Still, he asserts, “there’s something in the water right now. There’s potential that voters will not want to let Trump run ramshackle while we’re being Pollyannish.”

“The reality is that a lot of Democrats would hit their own thumb with a hammer if they thought it would hurt Trump more.”

Mitchell also says that California could out-gerrymander Texas by not only weakening current GOP seats but by strengthening competitive Democratic districts. Texas doesn’t have that opportunity, he says, because its districts already have been heavily gerrymandered.

Democratic consultant Steve Maviglio says Newsom is “trying to put the toothpaste back in the tube” and doubts it will work. “Unilaterally disarming was a mistake.

“But Newsom’s not wrong. They play hardball. We don’t.”

Newsom and California Democrats should fight Trump and Texas Republicans in the MAGA gutter, using all weapons available.

As Hackman’s character also says: “Don’t mean s— to have a gun unless you (sic) ready to use it.”

What else you should be reading

The must-read: Texas Republicans aim to redraw House districts at Trump’s urging, but there’s a risk
The TK: The Age-Checked Internet Has Arrived
The L.A. Times Special: Trump’s top federal prosecutor in L.A. struggles to secure indictments in protest cases

Until next week,
George Skelton

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WASHINGTON — President Trump revealed an “action plan” for artificial intelligence on Wednesday ostensibly designed to bolster the United States in its race against China for AI superiority.

But experts in the field warn the administration is sidestepping safety precautions that sustain public trust, and is ignoring the impacts of research funding cuts and visa restrictions for scientists that could hold America back.

‘Dangerous incentives to cut corners’

President Trump at a meeting Tuesday in the Oval Office.

(Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images)

Trump introduced the new policy with an address in Washington, a new government website and a slew of executive actions, easing restrictions on the export of AI technology overseas and greasing the wheels for infrastructural expansion that would accommodate the computing power required for an AI future — both top requests of American AI companies.

The plan also calls for AI to be integrated more thoroughly across the federal government, including at the Pentagon, and includes a directive targeting “woke” bias in large language models.

The new website, ai.gov, says the United States “is in a race to achieve global dominance in artificial intelligence,” and lays out three pillars of its plan for success: “Accelerating Innovation, Building AI Infrastructure, and Leading International Diplomacy and Security.”

Scholars of machine learning and AI believe that whichever country loses the race — toward general artificial intelligence, where AI has capabilities similar to the human mind, and ultimately toward superintelligence, where its abilities exceed human thought — will be unable to catch up with the exponential growth of the winner.

Today, China and the United States are the only powers with competitive AI capabilities.

“Whether we like it or not, we’re suddenly engaged in a fast-paced competition to build and define this groundbreaking technology that will determine so much about the future of civilization itself, because of the genius and creativity of Silicon Valley — and it is incredible, incredible genius, without question, the most brilliant place on Earth,” Trump said on Wednesday in his policy speech on AI.

“America is the country that started the AI race. And as president of the United States, I’m here today to declare that America is going to win it,” he added. “We’re going to work hard — we’re going to win it. Because we will not allow any foreign nation to beat us. Our children will not live in a planet controlled by the algorithms of the adversary’s advancing values.”

Yoshua Bengio, founder of Mila-Quebec AI Institute and a winner of the Turing Award for his work on deep learning, told The Times that the urgency of the race is fueling concerning behavior from both sides.

“These technologies hold enormous economic potential,” Bengio said, “but intense competition between countries or companies can create dangerous incentives to cut corners on safety in order to stay ahead.”

‘Self-inflicted ignorance’

Silicon Valley may be getting much of what it wants from Trump — but the administration’s continued assault on the student visa program remains a significant concern for the very same tech firms Trump aims to empower.

Yolanda Gil, senior director of AI and data science initiatives at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering, said that the Trump administration’s reductions in funding and visas “will reduce U.S. competitiveness in AI and all technology areas, not just in the near future but for many years to come,” noting that almost 500,000 international students in science and engineering are currently enrolled in U.S. universities.

The majority of America’s top AI companies have been founded by first- or second-generation immigrants, and 70% of full-time graduate students at U.S. institutions working in AI-related fields have come from abroad. Yet the administration’s revocation and crackdown on F-1 visas risks crippling the talent pipeline the industry views as essential to success against China.

Funding cuts to research institutions, too, threaten the stability of programs and their attractiveness to the best foreign minds, said Sheila Jasanoff, a professor of science and technology studies at the Harvard Kennedy School.

“Our openness to ideas and people, combined with steadiness of funding, drew bright talents from around the globe and science prospered,” Jasanoff said. “That achievement is in a precarious state through the Trump administration’s unpredictable and exclusionary policies that have created an atmosphere in which young scientists are much less comfortable coming to do their science in America.”

“Why would a talented young person wish to invest in a U.S. graduate program if there is a risk their visa could be canceled overnight on poorly articulated and unprecedented grounds? It’s clear that other countries, including China, are already trying to benefit from our suddenly uncertain and chaotic research environment,” she added. “We seem to be heading into an era of self-inflicted ignorance.”

Teddy Svoronos, also at Harvard as a senior lecturer in public policy, said that the president is deregulating the AI industry “while limiting its ability to recruit the highest-quality talent from around the world and de-incentivizing research that lacks immediate commercial use.”

“His policies thus far convince me that the future of the U.S. will certainly have more AI,” Svoronos said, “but I don’t see a coherent strategy around creating more effective or more aligned AI.”

Safety fears

Aligned AI, in simple terms, refers to artificial intelligence that is trained to do good and avoid harm. Trump’s action plan doesn’t include the phrase, but repeatedly emphasizes the need to align AI development with U.S. interests.

The deregulatory spirit of Trump’s plan could help expedite AI development. But it could also backfire in unexpected ways, Jasanoff said.

“It’s not clear that technology development prospers without guardrails that protect scientists and engineers against accidents, overreach and public backlash,” she added. “The U.S. biotech industry, for example, has actively sought out ethical and policy clarification because missteps could endanger entire lines of research.”

The plan also has the United States encouraging the development of open-source and open-weight AI models, allowing public access to code and training data. It is a decision that will allow AI to be more readily adopted throughout the U.S. economy — but also grants malicious actors, such as terrorist organizations, access to AI tools they could use to threaten national security and global peace.

It is the sort of compromise that Bengio feared would emerge from the U.S.-China race.

“This dynamic poses serious public safety and national security risks, including AI-enabled cyberattacks, biological threats and the possibility of losing human control over advanced AI — outcomes with no winners,” Bengio said.

“To realize the full benefits of these technologies,” he added, “safety and innovation must go hand in hand, supported by strong technical and societal safeguards.”

What else you should be reading

The must-read: National Guard came to L.A. to fight unrest. Troops ended up fighting boredom
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The L.A. Times Special: As west Altadena burned, L.A. County fire trucks stayed elsewhere

More to come,
Michael Wilner
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SACRAMENTO — No outsider politicians venture into sultry South Carolina in July unless they are running for president.

Certainly not a West Coast politician. Especially a California governor who lives in delightful Marin County near wonderful cool beaches. A governor who could easily vacation at spectacular Big Sur or hike a wilderness trail into the majestic Sierra.

We can assume Gov. Gavin Newsom didn’t choose South Carolina for its nightly light show of amazing fireflies or symphony of crickets. He was attracted to something so alluring that he was willing to brave skin-eating chiggers and oppressive humidity.

The lure, of course, was that South Carolina will hold one of the earliest — perhaps the first — Democratic presidential primaries in 2028. The precise calendar for contests hasn’t been set. But Newsom knows this: South Carolina propelled Joe Biden to the party’s nomination in 2020. And it provided a huge boost for Barack Obama in 2008.

“What South Carolinians saw this week as … Newsom made a two-day swing through the state was more than a highly visible candidate who probably will run for president in 2028,” wrote Andy Brack, editor, publisher and columnist at the Statehouse Report and Charleston City Paper.

“They saw a guy sweating through a white shirt in the South Carolina heat who was having fun. Yep, he seemed to enjoy engaging with voters in rural places too often forgotten by many candidates.”

Yes, Newsom, 57, loves campaigning on the stump — a whole lot more than he does toiling in the nitty-gritty of governing.

I’d only bicker with Brack’s word “probably” when characterizing Newsom’s White House bid. We’re talking semantics.

California’s termed-out governor actually has been running for months. And he’ll run as far as he can, slowly for a while and try to pick up speed down the road.

That’s conventional politics. Most candidates — especially office holders — initially claim that running for president is “the furthest thing” from their mind, then ultimately declare their candidacy with all the hoopla of a carnival barker.

OK, I admit to having been wrong about the governor in the past. I should have known better. I took him at his word. He persistently denied any interest in the presidency. “Subzero,” he asserted. But to be fair, he and reporters previously were centered on the 2024 race and the distant 2028 contest got short shrift.

I figured Newsom mostly was running for a slot on the “A” list of national political leaders. He wanted to be mentioned among the roster of top-tier potential presidents. He clearly savors the national attention.

But I’ve also always wondered whether Newsom might be leery of running for president because of his lifelong struggle with dyslexia. He could view the task with some trepidation. The governor has acknowledged having difficulty reading, especially speeches off teleprompters.

That said, he has adapted and is an articulate, passionate off-the-cuff speaker with a mind full of well-organized data. He excels on the stump — especially when he restrains a tendency to be long-winded and repetitive.

Newsom is finally starting to acknowledge the White House glimmer in his eye.

“I’m not thinking about running, but it’s a path that I could see unfold,” he told the Wall Street Journal last month.

More recently, in a lengthy interview with conservative podcaster Shawn Ryan, Newsom said: “I’ll tell you, the more Trump keeps doing what he does, the more compelled I am to think about it.”

Newsom’s proclaimed hook for traveling to South Carolina was to “sound the alarm” about President Trump’s brutish policies and to light a fire under Democratic voters to help the party win back the U.S. House next year.

He’s again trying to establish himself as a leader of the anti-Trump resistance after several months of playing nice to the president in a losing effort to keep federal funds flowing to California.

But it’s practically inevitable that a California governor will be lured into running for president. Governors have egos and ears. They constantly hear allies and advisors telling them they could become the leader of the free world.

And, after all, this is the nation’s most populous state, with by far the largest bloc of delegates to the Democratic National Convention — 20% of those needed to win the nomination.

But there’s a flip side to this California benefit. There’s a California burden. In much of the country, we’re seen as a socialist horror with dreadful liberal policies that should never be emulated nationally.

“People who live in other states just don’t like us, whether they’re Democrats or Republicans,” says Democratic strategist Darry Sragow. “A Democrat from California is going to have an uphill fight no matter who they are. That’s just a reality.

“The odds [for Newsom] are pretty long, although he has a shot because the field is totally open.”

But Democratic strategist Bill Carrick — a South Carolina native — says the California burden “is exaggerated. That’s just the Republican stereotype of California. Who cares?

“If Newsom runs, he’ll be competitive. He’s smart. Good charisma. South Carolina was a good trip for him.”

Former Democratic consultant Bob Shrum, director of the Center for the Political Future at USC, says: “Too many people write Newsom off. He has a realistic chance.

“He’s very good at pushing off against Trump. It all depends on whether he goes into the election with a message about the future. The message has to center around the economy. The two times Trump was elected he won the message war.”

Can Newsom win the nomination? Maybe. The presidency? Probably not.

But there’s no certainty about anything in an antsy country that swings from twice electing Barack Obama to twice anointing Donald Trump. Newsom is smart to roll the dice.

What else you should be reading

The must-read: Forget the high road: Newsom takes the fight to Trump and his allies
The TK: Will she or won’t she? The California governor’s race waits on Kamala Harris
The L.A. Times Special: The forgotten godfather of Trump’s scorched earth immigration campaign

Until next week,
George Skelton

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WASHINGTON — Democrats may not agree on a solution to the country’s broken immigration system — but President Trump’s crackdown in Los Angeles has finally given them a line of attack.

‘Better terrain’

A flicker of hope has emerged from a brutal polling environment for the party suggesting the public is torn over Trump’s blunt tactics in the immigration raids. The recent set of numbers have been an outlier on an issue that has otherwise been Trump’s strongest since taking office.

“Absolutely, sentiment is shifting,” said G. Cristina Mora, a sociology professor at UC Berkeley. “You’re seeing more dissatisfaction and less agreeance with the president’s strategy on immigration enforcement.”

Polls released over the course of the last month found that, while a plurality of Americans still support Trump’s overall approach to immigration, a majority believe that ICE has gone too far in its deportation efforts. And a new survey from Gallup found record public support for immigration, with public concern over crossings and support for mass deportations down significantly from a year ago.

Top Democratic operatives are testing new talking points, hoping to press their potential advantage.

“The only place in the world that Donald Trump has put boots on the ground and deployed troops is in America,” Rahm Emanuel, a veteran party insider who served under President Obama before becoming mayor of Chicago, said this week. “In L.A., they get troops on the ground. That’s the Trump Doctrine. The only place he’s actually put boots on the ground is in an American city.”

In Washington, efforts to corral Democratic lawmakers behind a unified message on immigration have been futile ever since the party split over the Laken Riley Act, one of the first bills passed this term. The law allows ICE to detain undocumented immigrants that have faced charges, been arrested or convicted of nonviolent crimes such as burglary, theft, larceny, or shoplifting.

But last month, when the shock of Trump’s military deployment to Los Angeles was still fresh, every single Democrat in the Senate joined in a call on the White House to withdraw the troops. The letter had no power or influence, and was paid little attention as the nascent crisis unfolded. But it was a small victory for a party that saw a rare glimpse of political unity amid the chaos.

Now, Democrats are hoping in part that Trump becomes a victim of his own success, with focus pulled from a quiet border that has seen record-low crossings since he resumed office.

In the House, Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-Redlands) is leading an immigration working group, sources said, hoping to foster consensus in the party on how to proceed.

“The issue has gotten a little less hot, because the border is calmed down,” said one senior Democratic congressional aide, granted anonymity to speak candidly. “Now the focus is raids, which is better terrain for us.”

A party split

In May, Ruben Gallego, a Democrat who won a statewide race for his Senate seat in Arizona the same year that Trump handily won the state’s presidential contest, released a vision for immigration policy. His proposal, titled “Securing the Border and Ensuring Economic Prosperity,” received little fanfare. But the plan called for significant border security enhancements as well as an increase in visa and green card opportunities and a pathway to citizenship.

It was a shot at the middle from an ambitious politician scheduled to visit Iowa, a crucial state in the presidential nominating contest, early next month.

Yet it is unclear whether efforts by Gallego, a border state senator, to moderate the party’s messaging on immigration will resonate with its base. Gallego was one of only 12 Democratic senators who voted for the Laken Riley Act.

On the other side of the party, leaders like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, as well as Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee for mayor of New York City, have focused their criticism on Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, with Mamdani calling the agency “fascist” in its tactics.

“Democrats built the deportation machine that Trump has now turbocharged,” said Elliott Young, a history professor at Lewis & Clark College. “The Democrats have an opportunity to stake out a humane and economically sensible position of encouraging immigration and welcoming our future citizens from around the world. The Republicans will always be better at cruelty and xenophobia, so better to leave that to them.”

In her research at UC Berkeley, Mora still sees “very strong support” across party lines for a pathway to citizenship, as well as for the constitutional preservation of birthright citizenship. But she is skeptical of an emerging strategy from a segment of Democrats, like Gallego, to adopt a prevailing Republican narrative of rampant criminal activity among immigrants while still promoting legal protections for the rest.

Having it both ways will be difficult, she said. The Trump administration says that anyone who crossed the border without authorization is a criminal, regardless of their record once they got here.

“The Democratic Party is in this sort of place where, if you look at the Ruben Gallegos and that element, they’re sort of ceding the narrative as they talk about getting rid of the criminals,” Mora said. “Narratives of immigrants and criminality, despite all the data showing otherwise, are so tightly connected.”

“It’s a tricky dance to make,” she added.

An L.A. opportunity

Before Gallego’s visit to Iowa, California Gov. Gavin Newsom visited South Carolina earlier this month, a transparent political stop in another crucial early primary state by a Democratic presidential contender.

For Newsom, the politics of the raids in his home state have been unavoidable from the start. But the governor’s speech in Bennettsville teased a political line of attack that appears to reflect shifting public opinion against ICE tactics.

Linking the raids with Trump’s response to the Los Angeles fires, Newsom noted the president was silent on the six-month anniversary of the devastating event, while that day ordering hundreds of federal troops into MacArthur Park in the heart of the city.

“Kids were taken away and hidden into the buildings, as they paraded around with American flags on horseback in military garb and machine guns — all masked,” Newsom said. “Not one arrest was made.”

“He wanted to make a point,” Newsom added. “Cruelty is the point.”

What else you should be reading

The must-read: Newsom threatens Texas over power grab. He’s blowing smoke
The deep dive: Trump cuts to California National Weather Service leave ‘critical’ holes: ‘It’s unheard of’
The L.A. Times Special: These California tech hubs are set to dominate the AI economy
More to come,
Michael Wilner
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SACRAMENTO — If there were more people like George Steffes in politics, the public wouldn’t hold the institution in such low esteem.

There’d be a lot less bull and much more thoughtful debate.

Paralytic polarization would give way to problem solving.

Steffes was the kind of person who people profess to want in the halls of government power.

If more Republicans like him were in Washington, there’d be no rationalization for tyrannical ICE raids at schools and workplaces because Congress and the president would have long ago compromised on immigration reform.

The Republican Party would still be modeled after Steffes’ early mentor — pragmatic conservative Ronald Reagan — and not be the misused tool of demagogue Donald Trump.

Steffes, 90, died peacefully in his sleep in a Sacramento hospital July 6. He was admitted two weeks earlier after a painful bathroom fall. The precise cause of death was unknown at this writing, according to his wife, Jamie Khan.

He was the last remaining top advisor of Gov. Reagan who remained in Sacramento after the future president moved on — the last person around the state Capitol with firsthand, close-up knowledge of the GOP icon’s governorship. He was Reagan’s lead legislative lobbyist.

Ordinarily, Steffes would be best known around the Capitol for being a past Reagan honcho. But he’s better known for being a classy guy.

No one in Sacramento for the last 60 years — at least — has been more liked, respected and successful as a lobbyist than Steffes. He’d easily rank in the top 10. No, make that top 5.

If there were more lobbyists like Steffes, the profession wouldn’t be such a pejorative.

He didn’t try to BS governors, legislators, clients or journalists. He was a straight shooter. People trusted him.

He always had a smile, but wasn’t a backslapper.

People instantly liked him — as I did when we first met in a Santa Cruz hotel bar one night in 1966 after a day of traipsing after Reagan running for governor. Steffes was a campaign aide. I was a reporter who found him highly interesting, thoughtful and candid.

But don’t take just my word about the guy.

“He was never part of the nonsense that is characteristic of those of us in politics,” former Democratic Assembly Speaker Willie Brown told me. “I could rely on his word about good public policy. He was knowledgeable. He knew what he was doing.”

Brown, who was elected San Francisco mayor after leaving the Legislature, recalled that Steffes helped him pass a landmark bill “eliminating a law punishing people for being gay. I had to get Republican votes. George talked to them about how it wasn’t a bad vote to cast.”

The 1975 bill, signed by new Gov. Jerry Brown, repealed a century-old law prohibiting “crimes against nature.” The measure eliminated criminal penalties for oral sex and sodomy between consenting adults.

“The biggest thing that stands out to me about Steffes is how different he was from the mean-spirited slashing politics of today,” says Kip Lipper, a chief environmental consultant for several Democratic state Senate leaders. “He was unfailingly considerate, always in good spirits. He didn’t wear his politics on his sleeve like a lot of others.”

Retired journalist Lou Cannon, who has written several Reagan biographies, recalls that after the new Republican governor took office in 1967, he continued to bash Pat Brown, the Democratic incumbent he had trounced the previous year.

“George told him, ‘Governor, that ‘s not worthy of you.’ So Reagan stopped. And he actually became quite fond of Pat Brown. George was never afraid to say to Reagan that he was wrong about something. And Reagan appreciated that.”

If only we had some White House aides with that courage and wisdom today.

Cannon adds: “One of the reasons I liked George is he didn’t bulls— you. If he couldn’t tell you something, he’d tell you he couldn’t tell ya. He was straight. Some people you interview them and you think, ‘Why did I waste my time?’”

Public relations veteran Donna Lucas says, “He set the standard for good lobbying in the Capitol.”

One Steffes rule: “He would never ask a legislator to do anything that wasn’t in their interest as well,” says Jud Clark, a former legislative staffer for Democrats and a close friend and business associate of Steffes.

Before he retired a few years ago, Steffes had a very long A-list of clients, such as American Express, Bechtel, IBM, Exxon and Union Pacific.

He also represented less lucrative clients such as newspapers, including The Times. And he advocated for some interests pro bono, mostly golf associations.

His passion was golf. And he became a golf instructor after retiring from lobbying.

“George was such a cerebral teacher,” says a pupil, Capitol Weekly editor Rich Ehisen. “He didn’t spend a lot of time correcting your elbow bend. He focused on the mental part of the game.”

Steffes once told an interviewer: “Golf offered good lessons for life. If I had a bad stroke, I can’t fix it now. It’s in the past. … Sitting and stewing [about it] saps our mental energy. Focus on what you can do to move forward, win the issue.”

But Steffes did stew about the declining state of politics.

“Politics became too polarized — Republican conservatives, Democratic liberals. The middle ground where he used to operate was disappearing,” his wife, Jamie, told me last week.

Reagan’s GOP that formed Steffes’ philosophy of political pragmatism had already disappeared. In the last election, he voted for Democrat Kamala Harris over Republican nominee Trump.

Steffes was honest even with himself — a human quality possessed by too few in politics.

What else you should be reading

The must-read: Glimpse of Newsom’s presidential appeal, challenges seen during South Carolina tour
The TK: New poll finds most Californians believe American democracy is in peril
The L.A. Times Special: Six months after L.A. fires, Newsom calls for federal aid while criticizing the Trump administration

Until next week,
George Skelton

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WASHINGTON — National Guard troops and immigration agents on horseback, clad in green uniforms and tactical gear, trotted into MacArthur Park on Monday, surrounding the iconic square with armored vehicles in a show of force widely denounced as gratuitous. The enforcement operation produced few tangible results that day. But the purpose of the display was unmistakable.

The Trump administration’s monthlong operation in Los Angeles, which began on June 6 with flash raids at work sites and culminated days later with Trump’s deployment of Marines and the Guard, continues to pay political dividends to a president who had been in search of the perfect foil on his signature issue since retaking office, officials close to the president told The Times.

At first, officials in the West Wing thought the operation might last only a week or two. But Trump’s team now says the ongoing spectacle has proven a resounding political success with few downsides. Thus far, the administration has managed to fend off initial court challenges, maintain arrests at a steady clip, and generate images of a ruthless crackdown in a liberal bastion that delight the president’s supporters.

It may be premature for the president to declare political victory. Anger over the operation has swelled, prompting activism across California. And signs have emerged that the White House may be misreading Trump’s election mandate and the political moment, with new polls showing public sentiment turning nationwide on the president’s increasingly aggressive enforcement tactics.

The city has struggled to cope, hobbled by an unpopular mayor and a nationally divisive governor who have been unable to meaningfully respond to the unprecedented federal effort. But the raids have also provided California’s Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, with an opportunity to fill a leadership vacuum as his party grapples to find its footing in the resistance.

Lawsuits could still change the course of the operation. A crucial hearing set for Thursday in a case that could challenge the constitutionality of the operation itself.

But critics say the pace of litigation has failed to meet the urgency of the moment, just as the president’s aides weigh whether to replicate their L.A. experiment elsewhere throughout the country.

To Trump, a gift that keeps on giving

Trump has succeeded in the most significant legal case thus far, with the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals allowing him to maintain control of the California National Guard. Troops remain on L.A. streets despite protests that the administration cited to justify their deployment in the first place ending weeks ago. And the administration has put the city on the defensive in a suit over the legality of its sanctuary city policy.

One White House official told The Times that the administration’s aggressive, experimental law enforcement tactics in Los Angeles have proven a “grand success,” in part because national media coverage of the ongoing crisis has largely moved on, normalizing what is happening there.

A spokesperson for the White House said the administration’s mission in the city is focused on detaining migrants with violent criminal records, despite reporting by The Times indicating that a majority of individuals arrested in the first weeks of the operation were not convicted criminals.

“President Trump is fulfilling his promise to remove dangerous, criminal illegal aliens from American communities — especially sanctuary cities like L.A. that provide safe harbor to criminal illegals and put American citizens at risk,” said Abigail Jackson, a White House spokesperson.

“One month later it’s clear, President Trump is doing his job to protect American citizens and federal law enforcement,” Jackson added. “But Gavin Newsom and Karen Bass have enabled violent rioters who attacked federal law enforcement, protected violent criminal illegal aliens, and betrayed the trust put in them by the American people.”

Trump’s use of Los Angeles as a testing ground to demonstrate raw presidential power has shown his team just how much a unitary executive can get away with. Masked agents snatching migrants has sent a chill through the city and its economy, but there is no end in sight for the operation, with one Homeland Security official telling The Times it would only intensify going forward.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection have arrested nearly 2,800 people in the L.A. area since the crackdown began.

This week, California Sen. Alex Padilla, a Democrat, introduced a bill with Democratic Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey that would bar immigration officers from wearing masks and require them to display clear identification while on the job.

“They wouldn’t be saying that if they didn’t hate our country,” Trump said Wednesday, responding to the legislation, “and they obviously do.”

Trump could still face setbacks

The 9th Circuit ruling last month, allowing Trump to maintain temporary control over the California National Guard, thwarted momentum for Trump’s opponents hoping for a decisive early victory against the operation in federal court.

But a case brought by the American Civil Liberties Union and joined by the city of Los Angeles, set for arguments in court on Thursday, addresses the core of the raids themselves and could deal a significant policy blow to the Trump administration. The ACLU has found success in another case, over raids conducted earlier this year by Border Patrol in the Central Valley, using similar arguments that claimed its tactics were unconstitutional.

“It is far too early to say that challenge has been thwarted,” said Ahilan Arulanantham, co-director of the Center for Immigration Law and Policy at UCLA School of Law.

But Arulanantham argued that city and state officials have demonstrated a lack of leadership in the pace of their response to an urgent crisis.

“There is much more local leaders could be doing to challenge the unlawful actions the federal government is taking against their residents,” he added. “The state also could have sued but did not — they sued to challenge the guard deployment, but not the ICE raids themselves.”

The raids have generated favorable coverage for the administration on right-wing media, presenting the crackdown as Trump finally bringing the fight over immigration to the heart of liberal America. But it is unclear whether Americans agree with his tactics.

Polls released last month from Economist/YouGov and NPR/PBS News/Marist found that while a plurality of Americans still support Trump’s overall approach to immigration, a majority believes that ICE has gone too far in its deportation efforts.

Newsom, speaking this week in South Carolina, a crucial state in the Democratic presidential primary calendar, suggested he saw the president’s potential overreach as a political opportunity.

“They’re now raiding the farms,” he told a crowd. “Quite literally, federal agents running through the fields.”

The governor told the story of a teenage boy from Oxnard whose parents disappeared in a federal raid, despite having no criminal records, leaving their son helpless and alone.

“That’s America,” he said, “Trump’s America.”

What else you should be reading

The must-read: Stephen Miller finally gets his revenge on L.A.
The deep dive: Kidnappers or ICE agents? LAPD grapples with surge in calls from concerned citizens
The L.A. Times Special: Most nabbed in L.A. raids were men with no criminal conviction, picked up off the street

More to come,
Michael Wilner
—
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