lawmaker

To say the U.S. Senate has grown dysfunctional is like suggesting water is wet or the nighttime sky is dark.

The institution that fancies itself “the world’s greatest deliberative body” is supposed to serve as a cooling saucer that tempers the more hotheaded House, applying weight and wisdom as it addresses the Great Issues of Our Time. Instead, it’s devolved into an unsightly mess of gridlock and partisan hackery.

Part of that is owing to the filibuster, one of the Senate’s most distinctive features, which over roughly the last decade has been abused and misused to a point it’s become, in the words of congressional scholar Norman J. Ornstein, a singular “weapon of mass obstruction.”

Democrat Jeff Merkley, the junior U.S. senator from Oregon, has spent years on a mostly one-man crusade aimed at reforming the filibuster and restoring a bit of sunlight and self-discipline to the chamber.

In 2022, Merkley and his allies came within two votes of modifying the filibuster for voting rights legislation. He continues scouring for support for a broader overhaul.

“This is essential for people to see what their representatives are debating and then have the opportunity to weigh in,” said Merkley, speaking from the Capitol after a vote on the Senate floor.

“Without the public being able to see the obstruction,” he said, “they [can’t] really respond to it.”

What follows is a discussion of congressional process, but before your eyes glaze over, you should understand that process is what determines the way many things are accomplished — or not — in Washington, D.C.

The filibuster, which has changed over time, involves how long senators are allowed to speak on the Senate floor. Unlike the House, which has rules limiting debate, the Senate has no restrictions, unless a vote is taken to specifically end discussion and bring a matter to resolution. More on that in a moment.

In the broadest sense, the filibuster is a way to protect the interests of a minority of senators, as well as their constituents, by allowing a small but determined number of lawmakers — or even a lone member — to prevent a vote by commanding the floor and talking nonstop.

Perhaps the most famous, and certainly the most romanticized, version of a filibuster took place in the film “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.” The fictitious Sen. Jefferson Smith, played by James Stewart, talks to the point of exhausted collapse as a way of garnering national notice and exposing political corruption.

The filibustering James Stewart received an Oscar nomination for lead actor for his portrayal of Sen. Jefferson Smith in the 1939 classic “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.”

(From the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences)

In the Frank Capra classic, the good guy wins. (It’s Hollywood, after all.) In real life, the filibuster has often been used for less noble purpose, most notably the decades-long thwarting of civil rights legislation.

A filibuster used to be a rare thing, its power holstered for all but the most important issues. But in recent years that’s changed, drastically. The filibuster — or, rather, the threat of a filibuster — has become almost routine.

In part, that’s because of how easy it’s become to gum up the Senate.

Members no longer need to hold the floor and talk nonstop, testing not just the power of their argument but their physical mettle and bladder control. These days it’s enough for a lawmaker to simply state their intention to filibuster. Typically, legislation is then laid aside as the Senate moves on to other business.

That pain-free approach has changed the very nature of the filibuster, Ornstein said, and transformed how the Senate operates, much to its detriment.

The burden is “supposed to be on the minority to really put itself … on the line to generate a larger debate” — a la the fictive Jefferson Smith — “and hope during the course of it that they can turn opinions around,” said Ornstein, an emeritus scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. “What’s happened is the burden has shifted to the majority [to break a filibuster], which is a bastardization of what the filibuster is supposed to be about.”

It takes 60 votes to end a filibuster, by invoking cloture, to use Senate terminology. That means the passage of legislation now effectively requires a supermajority of the 100-member Senate. (There are workarounds, which, for instance, allowed President Trump’s massive tax-and-spending bill to pass on a 51-50 vote, with Vice President JD Vance casting the tie-breaker.)

The filibuster gives outsized power to the minority.

To offer but two examples, there is strong public support for universal background checks for gun buyers and greater transparency in campaign finance. Both issues have majority backing in the Senate. No matter. Legislation to achieve each has repeatedly been filibustered to death.

That’s where Merkley would step in.

He would not eliminate the filibuster, a prerogative jealously guarded by members of both parties. (In a rare show of independence, Republican senators rejected President Trump’s call to scrap the filibuster to end the recent government shutdown.)

Rather, Merkley would eliminate what’s come to be called “the silent filibuster” and force lawmakers to actually take the floor and publicly press their case until they prevail, give up or physically give out. “My reform is based on the premise that the minority should have a voice,” he said, “but not a veto.”

Forcing senators to stand and deliver would make it more difficult to filibuster, ending its promiscuous overuse, Merkley suggested, and — ideally— engaging the public in a way privately messaging fellow senators — I dissent! — does not.

“Because it’s so visible publicly,” Merkley said, “the American citizens get to weigh in, and there’s consequences. They may frame you as a hero for your obstruction, or a bum, and that has a reflection in the next election.”

The power to repair itself rests entirely within the Senate, where lawmakers set their own rules and can change them as they see fit. (Nice work, if you can get it.)

The filibuster has been tweaked before. In 1917, senators adopted the rule allowing cloture if a two-thirds majority voted to end debate. In 1975, the Senate reduced that number to three-fifths of the Senate, or 60 members.

More recently, Democrats changed the rules to prevent filibustering most presidential nominations. Republicans extended that to include Supreme Court nominees.

Reforming the filibuster is hardly a cure-all. The Senate has debased itself by ceding much of its authority and becoming little more than an arm of the Trump White House. Fixing that requires more than a procedural overhaul.

But forcing lawmakers to stand their ground, argue their case and seek to rally voters instead of lifting a pinkie and grinding the Senate to a halt? That’s something worth talking about.

On a glorious September morning, a scientist emerged cheerfully from the depths of a corrugated metal tunnel under a remote stretch of Highway 395 north of the town of Bridgeport.

It wasn’t a planned encounter. I happened upon Ben Carter, of the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, as I toured the area with a couple of Caltrans employees.

Carter was switching out the SD cards from cameras installed to document animals that might be using two wildlife crossings recently constructed under the highway near Sonora Junction.

“We’ve got some deer sign coming through here, which is great,” he said, referring to cloven hoof prints pressed into the soft earth. He’d looked through a few photos at the other culvert and saw deer there, too, and perhaps a coyote.

The effort comes at a critical moment. Mule deer in the region have declined in recent years, sparking concern among hunters. Getting hit by cars or trucks is the second biggest cause of deer death, not counting unknown causes.

Some hunters would like the state to control the population of mountain lions in the area to help the deer, which the cougars eat. But state wildlife officials aren’t allowed to do that.

The big, charismatic cats are a “specially protected species” in the Golden State. (Officials are permitted to kill mountain lions in limited circumstances, including to protect endangered bighorn sheep. They recently began doing that again after a long hiatus, which I wrote about in a story this week.)

So wildlife crossings could be a win-win solution. Both hunters and conservationists are especially keen to see one rise along a stretch of the 395 that runs past the Mammoth Yosemite Airport — the top roadkill hot spot in the Eastern Sierra.

There are plans to put one there, but getting it off the ground is estimated to cost more than $65 million, according to Caltrans, which is leading the project.

Brian Tillemans, a hunter and former watershed resource manager for the L.A. Department of Water and Power, who has called on the state to help deer, said the crossing can’t come too soon.

“If there’s ever a spot for a deer crossing, it’s up here,” he added, driving near the proposed site.

Ben Carter, of the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, checks a trail camera at a wildlife undercrossing recently installed near the town of Bridgeport.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

At the other crossing, about 70 miles to the north, Carter expressed both hope and concern.

It’s among the top three roadkill hot spots in the region because deer migrate across the highway. But the project area didn’t perfectly align with their route, according to Carter. That’s because the undercrossings were put in opportunistically, as part of a shoulder-widening endeavor spearheaded by Caltrans.

Beth Pratt, of the National Wildlife Federation, who joined a tour of the crossing, was optimistic the animals would use it.

“I feel like word’s gonna get out,” she said. “I know they are really loyal to their migration sites. On the other hand, they can start being loyal to this.”

The trail cameras will determine if she’s right.

More recent animal news

It’s been a sad few weeks for real-life animal mascots in the northern part of the state.

Last week, Claude, a striking albino alligator living in San Francisco’s California Academy of the Sciences — where he served as unofficial mascot — passed away from liver cancer at the age of 30, my fellow Times reporter Hailey Branson-Potts reported. During his 17 years at the science museum, the ghostly white reptile became a cultural icon, appearing in children’s books, city advertisements and a 24/7 livestream. “Claude represented that core San Francisco value of seeing the beauty & value in everyone, including those who are a bit different from the norm. Rest in peace, buddy,” state Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) tweeted.

A month earlier, a beloved bald eagle named Hope was fatally electrocuted on power lines near a Milpitas elementary school where she and her mate presided as mascots. The feathered local celebrity’s unceremonious end — covered by my colleague Susanne Rust — is not a one-off. Every year, as many as 11.6 million birds perish on wires that juice our TVs and blow dryers, according to a 2014 analysis. PG&E, which operates the power lines that killed Hope, said it took measures to make lines and poles around the eagle’s nesting area safe for raptors. (As for Hope’s widower, he may already have a new girlfriend.)

It’s not all doom and gloom for animals in the Golden State — and around the world.

The Los Angeles Zoo recently welcomed the birth of a baby gorilla, the fifth and latest addition in a baby boom of adorable great apes that includes three chimpanzees and an orangutan, writes Times staffer Andrea Flores.

Meanwhile, a global treaty has extended trade protections to more than 70 shark and ray species who have seen sharp declines, according to the New York Times’ Alexa Robles-Gil. She writes that the agreement includes a full international commercial trade ban for oceanic whitetip sharks, manta and devil rays, and whale sharks.

A few last things in climate news

Soon, the country’s largest all-electric hospital will open in Orange County, my editor Ingrid Lobet reports. It’s only the second facility of its kind in the U.S., and offers an alternative to the way that buildings contribute to climate change: burning natural gas.

Not far away, the city of Los Angeles is shifting away from the power source most harmful to the environment. Times staffer Hayley Smith writes that the L.A. Department of Water and Power has stopped receiving any coal-fired power. L.A. Mayor Karen Bass called it a “defining moment” for the city.

There are plans by the Trump administration to pump more water to farmlands in the Central Valley from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, per my colleague Ian James. California officials said the move could threaten fish and reduce the amount of water available for millions of people in other parts of California.

A nonprofit is trying to create a 1.2 million-acre national monument centered on the Amargosa River, which runs through the bone-dry Mojave Desert, according to Kurtis Alexander of the San Francisco Chronicle. Early this year, former president Joe Biden designated two massive national monuments in the Golden State, including one covering a large swath of the desert.

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

For more wildlife and outdoors news, follow Lila Seidman at @lilaseidman.bsky.social on Bluesky and @lila_seidman on X.

Congressional Democrats are sounding alarms over the deep involvement of Saudi Arabian and other Middle Eastern royal families in Paramount’s proposed bid for Warner Bros. Discovery.

Warner Bros. Discovery owns CNN, HBO and the historic Warner Bros. film and television studios in Burbank, behind such beloved American classics as “Casablanca,” “Citizen Kane,” and Bugs Bunny, and blockbuster hits including “Harry Potter,” “Dirty Harry,” “The Matrix,” and “Friends.”

Late last week, the Larry Ellison controlled Paramount came up short in the bidding for Warner Bros., in part, over the Warner board’s concerns about Paramount’s deal financing. On Monday, Paramount launched a hostile takeover of Warner Bros., appealing directly to Warner shareholders — asking them to sell their Warner stock to Paramount for $30 a share.

Paramount’s gambit has thrown the auction, and Warner board’s selection of Netflix’s $72-billion deal, into doubt.

Paramount has long insisted that it represents the best partner for Warner Bros., in part, because of the Ellison family’s cozy relations with President Trump. The company has trumpeted its ability to gain the blessing of the Trump administration.

Paramount’s bid is heavily backed by Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi and Qatar’s sovereign wealth funds. The three royal families have agreed to contribute $24 billion — twice the amount the Larry Ellison family has agreed to provide in financing for Paramount’s proposed $78-billion takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery, according to regulatory filings.

Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner’s private equity firm, Affinity Partners, would also have an ownership stake.

On Wednesday, U.S. Reps. Sam T. Liccardo (D-San Jose) and Ayanna Pressley (D-Boston) called on Warner Bros. board to recognize the consequences of selling the legendary company, which includes news organization CNN, to foreign governments.

“This transaction raises national security concerns because it could transfer substantial influence over one of the largest American media companies to foreign-backed financiers,” Liccardo and Pressley wrote.

“Warner’s platforms reach tens of millions of American households through HBO, Max, CNN, Warner Bros. Pictures, Discovery, and numerous digital and cable properties,” the lawmakers wrote. “They also shape the news, entertainment, and cultural content consumed by the American public.”

Transactions “foreign investors with governance rights, access to non-public data, or indirect influence over content distribution creates vulnerabilities that foreign governments could exploit,” the lawmakers wrote.

Paramount Chairman and Chief Executive David Ellison on the Paramount lot in August.

(Paramount)

Paramount, in its regulatory filings, said the three Middle Eastern families had agreed to give up voting rights and a role in the company’s decision-making — despite contributing more than half the equity needed for the deal.

Representatives of Warner Bros. and Paramount declined to comment.

The Ellison family acquired Paramount in August. David Ellison, the chief executive, attended a White House dinner last month to celebrate Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

The involvement of bin Salman was concerning to the lawmakers.

“The fund is controlled by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, whom (according to the declassified 2021 report of the U.S. Director of National Intelligence) ordered the murder of U.S. resident and Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi,” the lawmakers wrote.

Over the weekend, Trump said the Netflix deal, which would give the streaming an even more commanding presence in the industry, “could be a problem.”

A Brazilian lawmaker was removed from Congress by police on Tuesday as he staged a protest against a bill which could drastically reduce ex-President Jair Bolsonaro’s 27-year prison sentence.

WASHINGTON — Pamela Smith, who was catapulted into national attention after President Trump moved to federalize Washington’s police force and who worked to confront rising violence in the nation’s capital, is stepping down as the city’s police chief, Mayor Muriel Bowser said Monday.

Smith, appointed in 2023, had been brought in to stabilize a department facing staffing shortages and a city shaken by post-pandemic crime. But her tenure unfolded amid a fierce battle over authority, as Trump asserted federal control over the Metropolitan Police Department and deployed National Guard troops and federal agents alongside the city’s officers.

In announcing her resignation, Bowser praised Smith for “stepping up” at a moment of “significant urgency,” crediting her with helping drive down violent crime, cutting homicides to an eight-year low and launching major policing initiatives, including a Real-Time Crime Center and new technology upgrades.

“Chief Smith got all of this done while navigating unprecedented challenges and attacks on our city’s autonomy,” Bowser said.

The mayor did not say why Smith is leaving. She also did not announce who would take over the department or whether the change in leadership might affect the city’s broader public-safety strategy at a moment when Washington continues to recover from historic levels of violence.

The announcement comes after Bowser said she would not seek a fourth term. Smith and Bowser have been under tremendous pressure from constituents over the police force’s performance during the federal law enforcement intervention.

In a statement, Smith said she was confident the police force “is in a strong position and that the great work will continue” and that the role has been both a challenge and a reward.

“I am proud of the accomplishments we achieved together, and I thank the residents of this city for their trust and partnership,” Smith said. “While my aspiration has always been to see zero percent crime, we are not there yet. Nonetheless, we have made tremendous progress, and there remains important work ahead.”

Smith, a longtime federal law enforcement official and former head of the U.S. Park Police, assumed command during one of Washington’s most volatile years in nearly two decades, as homicides surged, carjackings hit record highs and frustration mounted among residents and lawmakers.

The spike in 2023 violence prompted congressional hearings and led city leaders to expand police authority, including authorizing drug-free zones in areas with persistent crime. Lawmakers also rewrote parts of the city’s criminal code in an effort to stem the rise in violent offenses.

The city began to see improvement in early 2024. Overall crime fell by about 17% in the first 10 weeks, a drop Smith attributed to the new law and to targeted deployments in neighborhoods experiencing repeated trouble. She also imposed temporary youth curfew zones in parts of the district.

Pointing to the city’s crime, Trump issued an emergency order in August that federalized the police force and sent in hundreds of National Guard troops. Trump has hailed the operation as a resounding success that has brought down crime, although rates already were on the decline.

Spencer Deery’s son was getting ready for school when someone tried to provoke police into swarming his home by reporting a fake emergency.

Linda Rogers said there were threats at her home and the golf course her family has run for generations.

Jean Leising faced a pipe bomb scare that was emailed to local law enforcement.

The three are among about a dozen Republicans in the Indiana Senate who have seen their lives turned upside down while President Trump pushes to redraw the state’s congressional map to expand the party’s power in the 2026 midterm elections.

It’s a bewildering and frightening experience for lawmakers who consider themselves loyal party members and never imagined they would be doing their jobs under the same shadow of violence that has darkened American political life in recent years. Leising described it as “a very dangerous and intimidating process.”

Redistricting is normally done once a decade after a new national census. Trump wants to accelerate the process in hopes of protecting the Republicans’ thin majority in the U.S. House next year. His allies in Texas, Missouri, Ohio and North Carolina have already gone along with his plans for new political lines.

Now Trump’s campaign faces its greatest test yet in a stubborn pocket of Midwestern conservatism. Although Indiana Gov. Mike Braun and the House of Representatives are on board, the proposal may fall short with senators, many of whom say they value their civic traditions and independence over what they fear would be short-term partisan gain.

“When you have the president of the United States and your governor sending signals, you want to listen to them,” said Rogers, who has not declared her position on the redistricting push. “But it doesn’t mean you’ll compromise your values.”

On Friday, Trump posted a list of senators who “need encouragement to make the right decision,” and the conservative campaign organization Turning Point Action said it would spend heavily to unseat anyone who voted “no.”

Senators are scheduled to convene Monday to consider the proposal after months of turmoil. Resistance could signal the limits of Trump’s control over the Republican Party.

Threats shadow redistricting session

Deery considers himself lucky. The police in his hometown of West Lafayette knew the senator was a potential target for “swatting,” a dangerous type of hoax in which someone reports a fake emergency to provoke an aggressive response from law enforcement.

So when Deery was targeted last month while his son and others were waiting for their daily bus ride to school, officers did not rush to the scene.

“You could have had SWAT teams driving in with guns out while there were kids in the area,” he said.

Deery was one of the first senators to publicly oppose the mid-decade redistricting, arguing that it interferes with voters’ right to hold lawmakers accountable through elections.

“The country would be an uglier place for it,” he said just days after Vice President JD Vance visited the state in August, the first of two trips to talk with lawmakers about approving new maps.

Republican leaders in the Indiana Senate said in mid-November that they would not hold a vote on the matter because there was not enough support for it. Trump lashed out against the senators on social media.

“Any Republican that votes against this important redistricting, potentially having an impact on America itself, should be PRIMARIED,” he wrote.

The threats against senators began shortly after that.

Sen. Sue Glick, a Republican who was first elected in 2010 and previously served as a local prosecutor, said she has never seen “this kind of rancor” in politics in her lifetime. She opposes redistricting, saying “it has the taint of cheating.”

Not even the plan’s supporters are immune to threats.

Republican Sen. Andy Zay said his vehicle-leasing business was targeted with a pipe bomb scare on the same day he learned that he would face a primary challenger who accuses Zay of being insufficiently conservative.

Zay, who has spent a decade in the Senate, believes the threat was related to his criticism of Trump’s effort to pressure lawmakers. But the White House has not heeded his suggestions to build public support for redistricting through a media campaign.

“When you push us around and into a corner, we’re not going to change because you hound us and threaten us,” Zay said. “For those who have made a decision to stand up for history and tradition, the tactics of persuasion do not embolden them to change their viewpoint.”

The White House did not respond to messages seeking a reaction to Zay’s comments.

Trump sees mixed support

Trump easily won Indiana in all his presidential campaigns, and its leaders are unquestionably conservative. The state was the first to restrict abortion after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe vs. Wade.

But Indiana’s political culture never became saturated with the sensibilities of Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement. Some 21% of Republican voters backed Nikki Haley over Trump in last year’s presidential primary, even though the former South Carolina governor had already suspended her campaign two months earlier.

Trump also holds a grudge against Indiana’s Mike Pence, who served the state as a congressman and governor before becoming Trump’s first vice president. A devout evangelical, Pence loyally accommodated Trump’s indiscretions and scandals but refused to go along with Trump’s attempt on Jan. 6, 2021, to overturn his election loss to Democrat Joe Biden.

“Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what was necessary,” Trump posted online after an angry crowd of his supporters breached and ransacked the U.S. Capitol, violently attacked police officers and threatened to “hang” Pence.

Pence has not taken a public stance on his home state’s redistricting effort. But the governor before him, Republican Mitch Daniels, recently said it was “clearly wrong.”

The proposed map, which was released Monday and approved by the state House on Friday, attempts to dilute the influence of Democratic voters in Indianapolis by splitting up the city. Parts of the capital would be grafted onto four Republican-leaning districts, one of which would stretch all the way south to the Kentucky border.

Rogers, the senator whose family owns the golf course, declined to discuss her thoughts about the redistricting plan. A soft-spoken business leader from the suburbs of South Bend, she said she was “very disappointed” about the threats.

On Monday, she will be front and center as a member of the Senate Elections Committee, the first one in that chamber to consider the redistricting bill.

“We need to do things in a civil manner and have polite discourse,” she said.

Beaumont and Volmert write for the Associated Press and reported from Des Moines and Lansing, Mich., respectively.

ATLANTA — Rep. Pat Swindall (R-Ga.) gave up any hope of a pre-election verdict in his perjury trial Wednesday when a judge dismissed the jury because the congressman had mailed campaign literature mentioning the case.

U.S. District Judge Robert Vining made it clear that there would be no further attempt to seat a jury before the Nov. 8 election. The 12 jurors and two alternates were excused before hearing any arguments or testimony.

In addition, Vining rejected a request by the two-term Republican to proceed with a non-jury trial, in which the judge renders the verdict.

No Regrets on Mailings

“I’m disappointed,” Swindall said, but he expressed no regrets about the campaign mailings, one of which included his claim that he had passed a private polygraph test about his truthfulness.

The government contends that an agent posing as a money broker told Swindall that an $850,000 home mortgage the congressman was seeking might be drug money. Prosecutors said Swindall lied in telling a grand jury that he did not remember such a warning.

The judge, in dismissing the jury, cited two pieces of campaign literature that he said could have reached potential jurors. He said also that he wants authorities to investigate whether Swindall, who is representing himself, violated court rules governing the comments lawyers may make about their cases.

Trial Difficulty Cited

“It became apparent this morning that it would be extremely difficult for you to try a case during a political campaign when one of the parties is involved in the campaign,” Vining told the jurors.

Swindall is locked in a reelection fight with Democrat Ben Jones, a former actor who played Cooter on television’s “Dukes of Hazzard.”

WASHINGTON — The Navy admiral who reportedly issued orders for the U.S. military to fire upon survivors of an attack on an alleged drug boat was on Capitol Hill for a classified briefing Thursday with top congressional lawmakers overseeing national security.

Joining Adm. Frank “Mitch” Bradley for the closed-door meeting was Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The information the Pentagon is expected to provide comes at a potentially crucial moment in the unfolding congressional investigation into how Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth handled the military operation in international waters near Venezuela. There are mounting questions over whether the strike may have violated the law.

Lawmakers are seeking a full accounting of the strikes after The Washington Post reported that Bradley on Sept. 2 ordered an attack on two survivors to comply with Hegseth’s directive to “kill everybody.” Legal experts say the attack amounts to a crime if the survivors were targeted, and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are demanding accountability.

The briefing in secure facility at the Capitol is with congressional leaders, including the Republican chairs and ranking Democrats of the House and Senate Armed Services committees, and separately to the GOP chairman and Democratic vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

“What I saw in that room was one of the most troubling things I’ve seen in my time in public service,” Connecticut Rep. Jim Himes, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, told reporters after emerging from a briefing. “You have two individuals in clear distress without any means of locomotion, with a destroyed vessel were killed by the United States.”

Lawmakers will be seeking answers to questions such as what orders did Hegseth give regarding the operations and what was the reasoning for the second strike.

Democrats are also demanding that the Trump administration release the full video of the Sept. 2 attack, as well as written records of the orders and any directives from Hegseth. While Republicans, who control the national security committees, have not publicly called for those documents, they have pledged a thorough review.

“The investigation is going to be done by the numbers,” said Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi, who leads the Senate Armed Services Committee. “We’ll find out the ground truth.”

Pressure builds on Hegseth

President Trump has stood behind Hegseth as he defends his handling of the attack, but pressure is mounting on the defense secretary.

Hegseth has said the aftermath of an initial strike on the boat was clouded in the “fog of war.” He has also said he “didn’t stick around” for the second strike, but that Bradley “made the right call” and “had complete authority” to do it.

Also on Thursday, the Defense Department inspector general was expected to release a partially redacted report into Hegseth’s use of the Signal messaging app in March to share information about a military strike against Yemen’s Houthi militants.

The report found that Hegseth put U.S. personnel and their mission at risk by using Signal, according to two people familiar with the findings. The Pentagon, however, has cast the report as an exoneration of Hegseth.

Who is Adm. Bradley?

At the time of the attack, Bradley was the commander of Joint Special Operations Command, overseeing coordinated operations between the military’s elite special operations units out of Fort Bragg in North Carolina. About a month after the strike, he was promoted to commander of U.S. Special Operations Command.

His military career, spanning more than three decades, was mostly spent serving in the elite Navy SEALs and commanding joint operations. He was among the first special forces officers to deploy to Afghanistan after the Sept. 11 attacks. His latest promotion to admiral was approved by unanimous voice vote in the Senate this year, and Democratic and Republican senators praised his record.

“I’m expecting Bradley to tell the truth and shed some light on what actually happened,” said Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, adding that he had “great respect for his record.”

Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., described Bradley as among those who are “rock solid” and “the most extraordinary people that have ever served in the military.”

But lawmakers like Tillis have also made it clear they expect a reckoning if it is found that survivors were targeted. “Anybody in the chain of command that was responsible for it, that had vision of it, needs to be held accountable,” he said.

What else are lawmakers seeking?

The scope of the investigation is unclear, but there is other documentation of the strike that could fill in what happened. Obtaining that information, though, will largely depend on action from Republican lawmakers — a potentially painful prospect for them if it puts them at odds with the president.

Rhode Island Sen. Jack Reed, the top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, said he and Wicker have formally requested the executive orders authorizing the operations and the complete videos from the strikes. They are also seeking the intelligence that identified the vessels as legitimate targets, the rules of engagement for the attacks and any criteria used to determine who was a combatant and who was a civilian.

Military officials were aware that there were survivors in the water after the initial strike but carried out the follow-on strike under the rationale that it needed to sink the vessel, according to two people familiar with the matter who were not authorized to discuss it publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity. What remains unclear — and what lawmakers hope to clarify in their briefing with Bradley — was who ordered the strikes and whether Hegseth was involved, one of the people said.

Republican lawmakers who are close to Trump have sought to defend Hegseth, standing behind the military campaign against drug cartels that the president deems “narco-terrorists.”

“I see nothing wrong with what took place,” said Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla., as he argued that the administration was justified in using war powers against drug cartels.

More than 80 people have been killed in the series of strikes that started in September. For critics of the campaign like Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., the pressing questions about the legality of killing survivors are a natural outgrowth of military action that was always on shaky legal ground. He said it was clear that Hegseth is responsible, even if Hegseth did not explicitly order a second attack.

“He may not have been in the room, but he was in the loop,” Blumenthal said. “And it was his order that was instrumental and foreseeably resulted in the deaths of these survivors.”

Groves and Mascaro write for the Associated Press.

As I’ve followed the long-running negotiations over the Colorado River the last couple of years, very little progress has been made in transforming the century-old system of managing the river’s dwindling water. The Colorado’s giant reservoirs have dropped because of heavy water use and a quarter-century of drought, worsened by climate change, yet seven Western states have remained deadlocked on how to take less water and live within the river’s limits.

In the last month, though, leaders of a tribal nation on the California-Arizona border offered a concept that might help transform the discussions — or at least ensure that the health of the river itself isn’t completely ignored.

The Tribal Council of the Colorado River Indian Tribes decided to recognize the river as a legal person under tribal law. It’s the second time a Native tribe has declared legal personhood for a river in the United States. The Yurok Tribe in Northern California in 2019 declared the Klamath River a legal person.

I was interested to learn more about why the leaders of the Colorado River Indian Tribes, or CRIT, wanted to take this step, and Chairwoman Amelia Flores agreed to talk with me.

She said they reached the decision after discussing the idea for a year, holding community meetings to hear input from the more than 4,000 tribal members.

“It just reaffirms what our tribal members already know and what we believe,” Flores said. “This river is alive, and has taken care of us for many, many, many years.”

“This river is a part of us,” she added. “It’s who we are.”

When Flores was growing up in the 1950s and ‘60s, she and her family swam, fished and camped at the river on summer weekends.

The reservation, established in 1865, encompasses nearly 300,000 acres straddling the river in Arizona and California, a patchwork of lush farm fields across a wide plain bordered by desert mountains.

The Mojave people, one of the tribes that make up CRIT, have lived along the river for thousands of years. Their traditional name is Aha Makav, meaning the People of the River.

Flores noted it’s a central part of their creation story, and features prominently in traditional songs.

“We always say we’re stewards of the river from our Creator, who gave us our resources, our land and our water,” she said.

“It’s ingrained in us by our ancestors to protect the river,” she said. “And we carry that on from one generation to the next.”

In the Colorado River Basin, there are 30 tribal nations. They have rights to roughly one-fourth of the river water. Indigenous leaders have long been largely excluded from the states’ negotiations, but tribes have volunteered to take part in previous water conservation deals.

CRIT and other tribes have said they are willing to help reduce water use as the states try to hash out a plan to keep reservoirs from falling to critically low levels.

The personhood decision was to “acknowledge that the river itself has needs,” said John Bezdek, a water attorney for CRIT, and to affirm tribal leaders’ commitment to addressing those needs.

The river ecosystem has been largely an afterthought in talks about managing its water. For decades, so much water has been taken out for farms and cities that the river has seldom met the sea.

The decision means that future leaders will have to account for the river’s welfare when, for example, they agree to lease out some of the reservation’s water, Bezdek said.

Flores said she knows of at least two other tribes that are interested in taking the same step. The more that follow suit, she said, “the better it’s going to be in protecting the river.”

More recent water news

For more about the personhood decision, read this great article by Debra Utacia Krol of the Arizona Republic. Alex Hager of the public radio station KUNC also visited the reservation for a story earlier this year. Tribal Chairwoman Amelia Flores wrote in an op-ed in the Republic that she and others see a sacred obligation to protect the river ecosystem “at a time when, more than ever, it is needed.”

A year after the removal of four dams on the Klamath River, salmon can once again reach spawning habitats far upriver near the California-Oregon border. Michael Harris, an environmental program manager for the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, said “there are salmon everywhere” and their quick reappearance in their ancestral habitats is “both remarkable and thrilling.” Barry McCovey Jr., fisheries director for the Yurok Tribe, said he was also surprised by how quickly the salmon returned. “I don’t think anyone really expected how well the fish would respond to dam removal.”

The Trump administration recently notified California agencies that it plans to weaken environmental protections and pump more water out of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta into the southbound aqueducts of the Central Valley Project. The proposal has drawn strong opposition from Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration, as shown in letters to the federal government. I wrote about the debate over the plan, which state officials warn would threaten native fish and could reduce water to millions of Southern Californians.

More climate and environment news

President Trump announced a proposal this week to weaken vehicle mileage rules for the auto industry that limit air pollution. My L.A. Times colleagues Tony Briscoe and Hayley Smith report that the plan is expected to be finalized next year and would significantly reduce fuel efficiency standards for new vehicles in model year 2031. Trump said the government is terminating what he called “ridiculously burdensome, horrible” standards. Gov. Gavin Newsom said the president is helping his “Big Oil campaign donors” and it will “poison our air.”

A California environmental oversight board has taken another step toward improving how it deals with hazardous waste. But Briscoe reports for The Times that environmental groups fear the plan could weaken protections by potentially redefining what counts as hazardous.

Searching for economical strategies to prevent wildfires, power utilities are working with a handful of artificial intelligence startups to map fire risks along thousands of miles of power lines. Lauren Rosenthal and Joe Wertz report for Bloomberg that utilities including PG&E are contracting AI startups to analyze satellite images and identify where trees are most likely to topple onto power lines and spark fires, enabling them to select individual trees to cut and poles to replace.

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

For more water and climate news, follow Ian James @ianjames.bsky.social on Bluesky and @ByIanJames on X.

WASHINGTON — Pete Hegseth barely squeaked through a grueling Senate confirmation process to become secretary of defense earlier this year, facing lawmakers wary of the Fox News Channel host and skeptical of his capacity, temperament and fitness for the job.

Just three months later, he quickly became embroiled in Signalgate as he and other top U.S. officials used the popular Signal messaging application to discuss pending military strikes in Yemen.

And now, in what may be his most career-defining moment yet, Hegseth is confronting questions about the use of military force after a special operations team reportedly attacked survivors of a strike on an alleged drug boat off the coast of Venezuela. Some lawmakers and legal experts say the second strike would have violated the laws of armed conflict.

“These are serious charges, and that’s the reason we’re going to have special oversight,” said Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi, the Republican chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

The scrutiny surrounding Hegseth’s brash leadership style is surfacing what has been long-building discontent in Congress over President Trump’s choice to helm the U.S. military. And it’s posing a potentially existential moment for Hegseth as the congressional committees overseeing the military launch an investigation amid mounting calls from Democratic senators for his resignation.

Hegseth vowed a ‘warrior culture,’ but lawmakers take issue

Since working to become defense secretary, Hegseth has vowed to bring a “warrior culture” to the U.S. government’s most powerful and expensive department, from rebranding it as the Department of War to essentially discarding the rules that govern how soldiers conduct themselves when lives are on the line.

Hegseth on Tuesday cited the “fog of war” in defending the follow-up strike, saying that there were explosions and fire and that he did not see survivors in the water when the second strike was ordered and launched. He chided those second-guessing his actions as being part of the problem.

Yet the approach to the operation was in line with the direction of the military under Hegseth, a former infantry officer with the Army National Guard, part of the post-Sept. 11 generation, who was deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan and earned Bronze Stars.

During a speech in September, he told an unusual gathering of top military brass whom he had summoned from all corners of the globe to the Quantico Marine Corps Base in Virginia that they should not “fight with stupid rules of engagement.”

“We untie the hands of our warfighters to intimidate, demoralize, hunt and kill the enemies of our country,” he said. “No more politically correct and overbearing rules of engagement, just common sense, maximum lethality and authority for warfighters.”

But now lawmakers and military and legal experts say the Sept. 2 attack borders on illegal military action.

“Somebody made a horrible decision. Somebody needs to be held accountable,” said Sen. Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican who in January held out support for Hegseth until only moments before casting a crucial vote for his confirmation.

“Secretary Talk Show Host may have been experiencing the ‘fog of war,’ but that doesn’t change the fact that this was an extrajudicial killing amounting to murder or a war crime,” said Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md. “He must resign.”

Rep. Don Bacon, a Republican who served 30 years active duty in the Air Force, finishing his career at the rank of brigadier general, said he hasn’t been a fan of Hegseth’s leadership. “I don’t think he was up to the task,” Bacon said.

Will Hegseth keep Trump’s support?

Trump, a Republican, has largely stood by his defense secretary, among the most important Cabinet-level positions. But the decisions by Wicker, alongside House Armed Services Chair Mike Rogers of Alabama and the top Democrats on the committees, to open investigations provide a rare moment of Congress asserting itself and its authority to conduct oversight of the Trump administration.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., who shepherded the defense secretary’s nomination to confirmation, has said the boat strikes are within Trump’s authority as commander in chief — and he noted that Hegseth serves at the pleasure of the president.

“I don’t have, at this point, an evaluation of the secretary,” Thune said at the start of the week. “Others can make those evaluations.”

But Hegseth also has strong allies on Capitol Hill, and it remains unclear how much Republicans would actually be willing to push back on the president, especially when they have spent the first year in his administration yielding to his various demands.

Vice President JD Vance, who cast a rare tiebreaking vote to confirm Hegseth, has vigorously defended him in the attack. And Sen. Eric Schmitt, another close ally to Trump, dismissed criticism of Hegseth as “nonsense” and part of an effort to undermine Trump’s focus on Central and South America.

“He’s not part of the Washington elite,” said Schmitt, R-Mo. “He’s not a think tanker that people thought Trump was going to pick. … And so, for that reason and others, they just, they don’t like him.”

Tension between some Republican lawmakers and the Pentagon has been rising for months. Capitol Hill has been angered by recent moves to restrict how defense officials communicate with lawmakers and the slow pace of information on Trump’s campaign to destroy boats carrying drugs off the coast of Venezuela.

As he defends his job, Hegseth has spoken to both Wicker and Rogers, the top lawmakers overseeing the military. Rogers said he was “satisfied” with Hegseth after that conversation, while Wicker said that he told Hegseth that he would like him to testify to Congress.

Hegseth at first tried to brush aside the initial report about the strike by posting a photo of the cartoon character Franklin the Turtle firing on a boat from a helicopter, but that only inflamed criticism of him and angered lawmakers who felt he was not taking the allegations seriously.

Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York called Hegseth a “national embarrassment,” adding the defense secretary’s social media post of the cartoon turtle is “something no serious leader would ever think of doing.”

What information will Congress get?

Later this week, the chairs of the armed services committees, along with the top Democrats on the committees, will hear private testimony from Navy Vice Adm. Frank “Mitch” Bradley, who the White House has said ordered the second strike on the survivors.

Republicans have been careful to withhold judgment on the strike until they complete their investigation, but Democrats say that these problems with Hegseth were a long time coming.

Sen. Tim Kaine, a Virginia Democrat, pointed back to Hegseth’s tumultuous confirmation hearing, at which issues were raised with his management of nonprofits, as well as allegations of a sexual assault and abuse, and drinking on the job. Hegseth had vowed not to consume alcohol if confirmed.

“You don’t suddenly change your judgment level or change your character when you get confirmed to be secretary of defense,” Kaine said. “Instead, the things that have been part of your character just become much more dire and existential.”

Groves and Mascaro write for the Associated Press.