leaders

WASHINGTON — President Trump will host leaders of five Central Asian countries at the White House on Thursday as he intensifies his hunt for rare earth metals needed for high-tech devices, including smartphones, electric vehicles and fighter jets.

Trump and the officials from Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan are holding an evening summit and dinner on the heels of Trump managing at least a temporary thaw with Chinese leader Xi Jinping on differences between the United States and China over the export of rare earth elements, a key point of friction in their trade negotiations.

Early last month, Beijing expanded export restrictions over vital rare earth elements and magnets before announcing, after Trump-Xi talks in South Korea last week, that China would delay its new restrictions by one year.

Washington is now looking for new ways to circumvent China on critical minerals. China accounts for nearly 70% of the world’s rare earth mining and controls roughly 90% of global rare earths processing.

Central Asia holds deep reserves of rare earth minerals and produces roughly half the world’s uranium, which is critical to nuclear power production. But the region badly needs investment to further develop the resources.

Central Asia’s critical mineral exports have long tilted toward China and Russia. Kazakhstan, for example, in 2023 sent $3.07 billion in critical minerals to China and $1.8 billion to Russia compared with $544 million to the U.S., according to country-level trade data compiled by the Observatory of Economic Complexity, an online data platform.

A bipartisan group of senators introduced legislation Wednesday to repeal Soviet-era trade restrictions that some lawmakers say are holding back American investment in the Central Asian nations, which became independent with the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union.

“Today, it’s not too late to deepen our cooperation and ensure that these countries can decide their own destinies, as a volatile Russia and an increasingly aggressive China pursue their own national interests around the globe at the cost to their neighbors,” said Republican Sen. Jim Risch of Idaho, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a sponsor of the legislation. “The United States offers Central Asian nations the real opportunity to work with a willing partner, while lifting up each others’ economies.”

The grouping of countries, referred to as the “C5+1,” has largely focused on regional security, particularly in light of the two-decade U.S. military presence and then withdrawal from neighboring Afghanistan, China’s treatment of ethnic Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang and attempts by Russia to reassert power in the region.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio welcomed the Central Asian leaders at the State Department on Wednesday to mark the 10-year anniversary of the C5+1 and to plug the potential for expanding the countries economic ties to the U.S.

“We oftentimes spend so much time focused on crisis and problems – and they deserve attention – that sometimes we don’t spend enough time focused on exciting new opportunities,” Rubio said. “And that’s what exists here now: an exciting new opportunity in which the national interests of our respective countries are aligned.”

Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau and the U.S. ambassador to India, Sergio Gor, who also serves as President Donald Trump’s special envoy to South and Central Asia, recently visited Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan to prepare for the summit.

Administration officials say deepening the U.S. relationship with the countries is a priority, a point they have made clear to the Central Asian officials.

The president’s “commitment to this region is that you have a direct line to the White House, and that you will get the attention that this area very much deserves,” Gor told the Central Asian officials Wednesday.

In 2023, Democratic President Joe Biden met with the five leaders on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly. That was the only other time that a sitting president has taken part in a C5+1 summit.

Madhani writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Matthew Lee contributed to this report.

California’s tech companies, the epicenter of the state’s economy, sent politicians a loud message this year: Back down from restrictive artificial intelligence regulation or they’ll leave.

The tactic appeared to have worked, activists said, because some politicians weakened or scrapped guardrails to mitigate AI’s biggest risks.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom rejected a bill aimed at making companion chatbots safer for children after the tech industry fought it. In his veto message, the governor raised concerns about placing broad limits on AI, which has sparked a massive investment spree and created new billionaires overnight around the San Francisco Bay Area.

Assembly Bill 1064 would have barred companion chatbot operators from making these AI systems available to minors unless the chatbots weren’t “foreseeably capable” of certain conduct, including encouraging a child to engage in self-harm. Newsom said he supported the goal, but feared it would unintentionally bar minors from using AI tools and learning how to use technology safely.

“We cannot prepare our youth for a future where AI is ubiquitous by preventing their use of these tools altogether,” he wrote in his veto message.

The bill’s veto was a blow to child safety advocates who had pushed it through the state Legislature and a win for tech industry groups that fought it. In social media ads, groups such as TechNet had urged the public to tell the governor to veto the bill because it would harm innovation and lead to students falling behind in school.

Organizations trying to rein in the world’s largest tech companies as they advance the powerful technology say the tech industry has become more empowered at the national and state levels.

Meta, Google, OpenAI, Apple and other major tech companies have strengthened their relationships with the Trump administration. Companies are funding new organizations and political action committees to push back against state AI policy while pouring money into lobbying.

In Sacramento, AI companies have lobbied behind the scenes for more freedom. California’s massive pool of engineering talent, tech investors and companies make it an attractive place for the tech industry, but companies are letting policymakers know that other states are also interested in attracting those investments and jobs. Big Tech is particularly sensitive to regulations in the Golden State because so many companies are headquartered there and must abide by its rules.

“We believe California can strike a better balance between protecting consumers and enabling responsible technological growth,” Robert Boykin, TechNet’s executive director for California and the Southwest, said in a statement.

Common Sense Media founder and Chief Executive Jim Steyer said tech lobbyists put tremendous pressure on Newsom to veto AB 1064. Common Sense Media, a nonprofit that rates and reviews technology and entertainment for families, sponsored the bill.

“They threaten to hurt the economy of California,” he said. “That’s the basic message from the tech companies.”

Advertising is among the tactics tech companies with deep pockets use to convince politicians to kill or weaken legislation. Even if the governor signs a bill, companies have at times sued to block new laws from taking effect.

“If you’re really trying to do something bold with tech policy, you have to jump over a lot of hurdles,” said David Evan Harris, senior policy advisor at the California Initiative for Technology and Democracy, which supported AB 1064. The group focuses on finding state-level solutions to threats that AI, disinformation and emerging technologies pose to democracy.

Tech companies have threatened to move their headquarters and jobs to other states or countries, a risk looming over politicians and regulators.

The California Chamber of Commerce, a broad-based business advocacy group that includes tech giants, launched a campaign this year that warned over-regulation could stifle innovation and hinder California.

“Making competition harder could cause California companies to expand elsewhere, costing the state’s economy billions,” the group said on its website.

From January to September, the California Chamber of Commerce spent $11.48 million lobbying California lawmakers and regulators on a variety of bills, filings to the California secretary of state show. During that period, Meta spent $4.13 million. A lobbying disclosure report shows that Meta paid the California Chamber of Commerce $3.1 million, making up the bulk of their spending. Google, which also paid TechNet and the California Chamber of Commerce, spent $2.39 million.

Amazon, Uber, DoorDash and other tech companies spent more than $1 million each. TechNet spent around $800,000.

The threat that California companies could move away has caught the attention of some politicians.

California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta, who has investigated tech companies over child safety concerns, indicated that despite initial concern, his office wouldn’t oppose ChatGPT maker OpenAI’s restructuring plans. The new structure gives OpenAI’s nonprofit parent a stake in its for-profit public benefit corporation and clears the way for OpenAI to list its shares.

Bonta blessed the restructuring partly because of OpenAI’s pledge to stay in the state.

“Safety will be prioritized, as well as a commitment that OpenAI will remain right here in California,” he said in a statement last week. The AG’s office, which supervises charitable trusts and ensures these assets are used for public benefit, had been investigating OpenAI’s restructuring plan over the last year and a half.

OpenAI Chief Executive Sam Altman said he’s glad to stay in California.

“California is my home, and I love it here, and when I talked to Attorney General Bonta two weeks ago I made clear that we were not going to do what those other companies do and threaten to leave if sued,” he posted on X.

Critics — which included some tech leaders such as Elon Musk, Meta and former OpenAI executives as well as nonprofits and foundations — have raised concerns about OpenAI’s restructuring plan. Some warned it would allow startups to exploit charitable tax exemptions and let OpenAI prioritize financial gain over public good.

Lawmakers and advocacy groups say it’s been a mixed year for tech regulation. The governor signed Assembly Bill 56, which requires platforms to display labels for minors that warn about social media’s mental health harms. Another piece of signed legislation, Senate Bill 53, aims to make AI developers more transparent about safety risks and offers more whistleblower protections.

The governor also signed a bill that requires chatbot operators to have procedures to prevent the production of suicide or self-harm content. But advocacy groups, including Common Sense Media, removed their support for Senate Bill 243 because they said the tech industry pushed for changes that weakened its protections.

Newsom vetoed other legislation that the tech industry opposed, including Senate Bill 7, which requires employers to notify workers before deploying an “automated decision system” in hiring, promotions and other employment decisions.

Called the “No Robo Bosses Act,” the legislation didn’t clear the governor, who thought it was too broad.

“A lot of nuance was demonstrated in the lawmaking process about the balance between ensuring meaningful protections while also encouraging innovation,” said Julia Powles, a professor and executive director of the UCLA Institute for Technology, Law & Policy.

The battle over AI safety is far from over. Assemblymember Rebecca Bauer-Kahan (D-Orinda), who co-wrote AB 1064, said she plans to revive the legislation.

Child safety is an issue that both Democrats and Republicans are examining after parents sued AI companies such as OpenAI and Character.AI for allegedly contributing to their children’s suicides.

“The harm that these chatbots are causing feels so fast and furious, public and real that I thought we would have a different outcome,” Bauer-Kahan said. “It’s always fascinating to me when the outcome of policy feels to be disconnected from what I believe the public wants.”

Steyer from Common Sense Media said a new ballot initiative includes the AI safety protections that Newsom vetoed.

“That was a setback, but not an overall defeat,” he said about the veto of AB 1064. “This is a David and Goliath situation, and we are David.”

NEW YORK — Fresh off winning New York City’s mayoral election, Zohran Mamdani announced Wednesday that a team including former city and federal officials — all women — would steer his transition to City Hall, and that he would “work every day to honor the trust that I now hold.”

“I and my team will build a City Hall capable of delivering on the promises of this campaign,” the mayor-elect said at a news conference, vowing that his administration would be both compassionate and capable.

He named political strategist Elana Leopold as executive director of the transition team. She will work with United Way of New York City President Grace Bonilla; former Deputy Mayor Melanie Hartzog, who was also a city budget official; former Federal Trade Commission chair Lina Khan; and former First Deputy Mayor Maria Torres-Springer.

With his win over former Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Republican Curtis Sliwa, the 34-year-old democratic socialist will soon become the city’s first Muslim mayor, the first of South Asian heritage, the first born in Africa and the youngest mayor in more than a century.

He now faces the task of following through on his ambitious affordability agenda while navigating the bureaucratic challenges of City Hall and a hostile Trump administration.

“I’m confident in delivering these same policies that we ran on for the last year,” he said in an interview earlier Wednesday on cable news channel NY1.

More than 2 million New Yorkers cast ballots in the contest, the largest turnout in a mayoral race in more than 50 years, according to the city’s Board of Elections. With roughly 90% of the votes counted, Mamdani held an approximately 9 percentage point lead over Cuomo.

Mamdani, who was criticized throughout the campaign for his thin resume, will now have to begin staffing his incoming administration and planning how to accomplish the ambitious but polarizing agenda that drove him to victory.

Among the campaign’s promises are free child care, free city bus service, city-run grocery stores and a new Department of Community Safety that would expand on an existing city initiative that sends mental health care workers, rather than police, to handle certain emergency calls. It is unclear how Mamdani will pay for such initiatives, given Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul’s steadfast opposition to his calls to raise taxes on wealthy people.

On Wednesday, he touted his support from Hochul and other state leaders as “endorsements of an agenda of affordability.”

His decisions around the leadership of the New York Police Department will also be closely watched. Mamdani was a fierce critic of the department in 2020, calling for “this rogue agency” to be defunded and slamming it as “racist, anti-queer & a major threat to public safety.” He has since apologized for those comments and has said he will ask the current NYPD commissioner to stay on the job.

Mamdani has already faced scrutiny from national Republicans, including President Trump, who have eagerly cast him as a threat and the face of a more radical Democratic Party that is out of step with mainstream America. Trump has repeatedly threatened to cut federal funding to the city — and even take it over — if Mamdani won.

”…AND SO IT BEGINS!” the president posted late Tuesday to his Truth Social site.

Mamdani, for his part, said at his news conference that “New Yorkers are facing twin crises in this moment: an authoritarian administration and an affordability crisis,” and that he would tackle both.

While saying he was committed to “Trump-proofing” the city — to protect poor residents against “the man who has the most power in this country,” as he explained — the mayor-elect also reiterated that he was interested in talking to the president about ”ways that we can work together to serve New Yorkers.” That could mean discussing the cost of living or the effect of cuts to the SNAP food aid program amid the federal government shutdown, Mamdani suggested.

“I will not mince my words when it comes to President Trump … and I will also always do so while leaving a door open to have that conversation,” Mamdani added.

Mamdani also said during his news conference and interviews that he had not heard from Cuomo or the city’s outgoing mayor, Eric Adams. He did speak with Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa.

A spokesperson for Cuomo, Rich Azzopardi, said he would “let their respective speeches be the measuring stick for grace and leave it at that.”

In his victory speech to supporters, Mamdani wished Cuomo the best in private life, before adding: “Let tonight be the final time I utter his name, as we turn the page on a politics that abandons the many and answers only to the few.”

Asked about the comments Wednesday on NY1, Mamdani said he was “quite disappointed in the nature of the bigotry and the racism we saw in the final weeks.” He noted the millions of dollars in attack ads that were spent against him, some of which played into Islamophobic tropes.

Izaguirre and Colvin write for the Associated Press. AP writers Jake Offenhartz and Jennifer Peltz contributed to this report.

Dominant football win moves defending La Liga champions to second place in the standings, five adrift of archrivals Madrid.

Lamine Yamal, Ferran Torres and Marcus Rashford struck for Barcelona as they earned a 3-1 win over Elche in La Liga to bounce back from last weekend’s El Clasico defeat and move back into second place to trail leaders Real Madrid by five points.

Barca continued to struggle in defence and Elche had chances to cause an upset on Sunday, scoring through Rafa Mir, with the striker also twice hitting the woodwork.

Hansi Flick’s Barca have failed to keep a clean sheet in six consecutive league games, in the midst of an injury crisis.

The champions were missing Pedri, Gavi, and Joan Garcia among others, but were able to bring on Robert Lewandowski and Dani Olmo following spells out of action.

Teenage star Lamine Yamal underwhelmed in last week’s defeat by Real Madrid after coming back from a groin issue, but looked more spritely against Elche.

Coached by Eder Sarabia, a former Barcelona assistant coach under Quique Setien, the ninth-placed visitors came to play and impressed.

Barca took the lead after nine minutes when Alejandro Balde drove forward and fed Yamal in the area.

The winger took a touch to set himself and then whipped a clinical finish past former Barca goalkeeper Inaki Pena, a teammate of his last season.

Three minutes later, Torres doubled the hosts’ advantage, tapping home after Fermin Lopez broke into space down the left and provided an inch-perfect cross.

The striker revealed a T-shirt paying tribute to Valencia, his home region, a year on from the deadly flooding that hit Spain’s east coast.

Lopez and Rashford fired narrowly off-target while Pena saved from Torres as Barca squandered some presentable chances.

Mir pulled a goal back shortly before half-time. Barca tried to catch the forward offside, but he was in his own half when he was played in. Mir bent a shot past Ronald Araujo and Barca goalkeeper Wojciech Szczesny and in at the far post.

Torres might have scored again before the interval, but Pena produced a superb save to tip his strike to safety.

Early in the second half, Mir clipped the top of the crossbar with a curling effort as Elche battled well.

Rashford sealed Barca’s victory with a superb finish after Lopez picked him out with a cross, for his second league goal of the campaign.

Veteran goalkeeper Szczesny pushed a Mir effort onto the post to save Barca sweating over their advantage in the final stages.

“It was very important to start strong and intense. From there, we could take the game where we wanted it to go,” Torres told DAZN.

“We knew the type of game they were going to play, and we started very strong. We were a bit off afterwards, but we found our spirit and our intensity again in the second half.”

Polls open in the West African nation in a heated election set to deliver a fourth term to 83-year-old Alassane Ouattara.

Voters in the Ivory Coast are casting ballots for president with incumbent Alassane Ouattara the overwhelming favourite as he runs for a fourth term.

Nearly nine million Ivorians will vote on Saturday from 8am to 6pm (08:00 to 18:00 GMT), choosing from a field of five contenders.

Opposition heavyweights, however, aren’t running for the post. Former President Laurent Gbagbo and former Credit Suisse CEO Tidjane Thiam have been barred from standing, the former for a criminal conviction and the latter for acquiring French citizenship.

Critics said the exclusion of key candidates has given Ouattara, 83, an unfair advantage and essentially cleared the way for his fourth term.

None of his four rivals represents an established party nor do they have the reach of the ruling Rally of Houphouetistes for Democracy and Peace (RHDP).

Agribusinessman and former Trade Minister Jean-Louis Billon, 60, hopes to rally backers from his former party, the Democratic Party, while former first lady Simone Ehivet Gbagbo, 76, is looking to garner votes from supporters of her ex-husband.

The left-wing vote hangs in the balance between Gbagbo and Ahoua Don Mello, a civil engineer and independent Pan-African with Russian sympathies. Henriette Lagou Adjoua, one of the first two women to run for the presidency during the 2015 election, is representing a centrist coalition, the Group of Political Partners for Peace.

At the Riviera Golf 1 Primary School in the Ivory Coast’s economic capital, Abidjan, where Gbagbo is expected to cast her vote, the atmosphere appeared calm as the first voters began to queue in the early hours of Saturday.

“This vote means a lot to us,” Konate Adama told Al Jazeera. “We need a candidate to emerge from these elections. It will lead us towards peace, wisdom and tranquillity.”

Turnout will be key as the opposition continues to call for a boycott. About 8.7 million people aged above 18 are eligible to vote in a country of 33 million with a median age of 18.3.

To win, a candidate must take an absolute majority of the votes. A second round will take place if no one clears that hurdle.

Controversial fourth term

Results are expected early next week, and observers forecast Ouattara to win the more than 50 percent needed to secure victory in the first round.

The octogenarian has wielded power in the world’s top cocoa producer since 2011 when the country began reasserting itself as a West African economic powerhouse.

Under the constitution, presidents may serve a maximum of two terms. Ouattara argues a major constitutional change implemented in 2016 “reset” his limit.

The decision has angered his detractors. Opposition and civil society groups also complain of restrictions on Ouattara’s critics and a climate of fear.

About 44,000 security forces were deployed across the country to keep protests in check, especially in opposition strongholds in the south and west. A night-time curfew was in place on Friday and Saturday in the region where the political capital, Yamoussoukro, is located.

Authorities said they want to avoid “chaos” and a repeat of unrest surrounding the 2020 presidential election. According to official figures, 85 people died then while the opposition said there were more than 200 deaths.

Opposition parties have encouraged Ivorians to protest against Ouattara’s predicted fourth term. On Monday, an Independent Electoral Commission building was torched.

The government has responded by banning demonstrations, and the judiciary has sentenced several dozen people to three years in prison for disturbing the peace.

In 2010, the country was plunged into a conflict that killed at least 3,000 people after the presidential election between Gbagbo and Ouattara.

EU leaders had hoped to agree on a plan to fund a loan of 140 billion euros to bolster Ukraine.

Leaders across the European Union have agreed to help Ukraine fund its fight against Russia’s invasion, but stopped short of approving a plan that would draw from frozen Russian assets to do so, after Belgium raised objections.

EU leaders met in Brussels on Thursday to discuss Ukraine’s “pressing financial needs” for the next two years. Many leaders had hoped the talks would clear the way for a so-called “reparation loan”, which would use frozen Russian assets held by the Belgian financial institution Euroclear to fund a loan of 140 billion euros ($163.3bn) for Ukraine.

The EU froze about 200 billion euros ($232.4bn) of Russian central bank assets after the country launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. In order to use the assets to fund Ukraine’s war effort, the European Commission, the EU’s executive, has floated a complex financial manoeuvre that involves the EU borrowing matured funds from Euroclear.

That money would then, in turn, be loaned to Ukraine, on the understanding that Kyiv would only repay the loan if Russia pays reparations.

The scheme would be “fully guaranteed” by the EU’s 27 member states – who would have to ensure repayment themselves to Euroclear if they eventually decided Russia could reclaim the assets without paying reparations. Belgium, the home of Euroclear, objected to this plan on Thursday, with Prime Minister Bart De Wever calling its legality into question.

Russia has described the idea as an illegal seizure of property and warned of retaliation.

Following Thursday’s political wrangling, a text approved by all the leaders – except Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban – was watered down from previous drafts to call for “options for financial support based on an assessment of Ukraine’s financing needs.” Those options will be presented to European leaders at their next summit in December.

“Russia’s assets should remain immobilised until Russia ceases its war of aggression against Ukraine and compensates it for the damage caused by its war,” the declaration added.

Earlier, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, a guest at the summit, had urged a quick passage of the plan for the loan.

“Anyone who delays the decision on the full use of frozen Russian assets is not only limiting our defence, but also slowing down the EU’s own progress,” he told the EU leaders, saying Kyiv would use a significant part of the funds to buy European weapons.

Earlier, the EU adopted a new round of sweeping sanctions against Russian energy exports on Thursday, as well, banning liquefied natural gas imports.

The move followed United States President Donald Trump’s announcement on Wednesday that Russia’s two biggest oil companies would face US sanctions.

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday struck a defiant tone over the sanctions, saying they were an “unfriendly act”, and that Russia would not bend under pressure.

How democratic is your water utility?

Does everyone who is registered to vote get to choose their leaders in elections? Or do only property owners get to vote for the managers? Maybe the public has no say at all in selecting the people who make decisions that determine safe and affordable drinking water?

“We see significant differences based on democracy,” said Kristin Dobbin, a researcher at UC Berkeley. “It really does influence the outcomes of a water system.”

In a new study she led, it turns out that water utilities where all voters have a say in choosing leaders tend to perform better.

I contacted Dobbin to learn more about what she and her colleagues discovered about what they call “water democracy” in California.

The researchers analyzed nearly all of the state’s residential water suppliers, more than 2,400 of them. They looked at three categories: those where all registered voters can elect board members; those where only property owners can; and those where people have no vote in choosing decision-makers. Fully 25% of the systems fall into this last category.

In 2012, California became the first state in the nation to declare access to clean, accessible and affordable drinking water a human right. The researchers wanted to see how these different types of utilities have fared in achieving that.

They already knew more than 700,000 Californians rely on water systems that are failing to meet drinking water standards, according to the State Water Resources Control Board, and an additional 1.8 million have systems considered “at risk” of failing.

The study, published this month in the journal Nature Water, found that 13% of water utilities with limited voting rights are identified as “failing,” similar to those where customers can’t vote on leaders. For fully democratic water systems, only 9% fall into that category.

Fully democratic water purveyors, which tend to be larger, also have significantly fewer cases of E. coli contamination from sewage leaks or agricultural runoff.

Those with the most cases of bacterial contamination are water utilities with no elected boards that are run by companies or mobile home parks. These serve many low-income communities and tend to serve more African Americans.

“We find very clearly that low-income communities of color are less likely to have water democracy than others,” Dobbin said.

The group of for-profit utilities led by unelected managers is also more likely to rely on a single source of water rather than diversifying, which Dobbin said puts them more at risk of an emergency if a well goes dry or tests reveal contamination.

Growing numbers of Californians are also struggling to afford the rising costs of their water bills. And on affordability, the group that performs the worst is utilities that allow only property owners, not all registered voters, to vote. The researchers found the utilities with the most democracy perform much better in delivering affordable water.

One caveat: Another recent study, led by UC Davis professor Samuel Sandoval Solis, examined who is leading nearly 700 public water agencies in California, and found that Latinos, as well as Black and Indigenous people, remain significantly underrepresented on their boards, as do women.

Here’s a look at other news about water, the environment and climate change this week:

Water news this week

I wrote about how tribes are urging Los Angeles to pump less groundwater in the Owens Valley. In addition to siphoning water from streams into its aqueduct, the Department of Water and Power says the city has 96 wells it can use to pump groundwater. Indigenous leaders told me the pumping has dried up springs and meadows. DWP says the water is used locally for purposes including controlling dust on the dry bed of Owens Lake, and that the city is taking steps to ensure protection of the environment.

Meanwhile, in a unanimous vote, the board of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, which delivers water for 19 million people, chose the agency’s new general manager: Shivaji Deshmukh, who leads the Inland Empire Utilities Agency. His appointment comes nearly nine months after the board fired general manager Adel Hagekhalil after an investigation into allegations of discrimination that exposed divisions within the agency.

Up north along the California-Oregon border, one year after the last of four dams was dismantled on the Klamath River, tribes and environmentalists say the river and its salmon are starting to rebound. Damon Goodman, regional director of the group California Trout, says shortly after the dams were removed, “the fish returned in greater numbers than I expected and maybe anyone expected,” Debra Utacia Krol reports in the Arizona Republic. Oregon Public Broadcasting also reports that Chinook salmon have returned to southern Oregon for the first time in more than a century.

In a new report, researchers say President Trump’s proposed budget would slash funding for federal programs aimed at bringing clean drinking water to Native communities by about $500 million, a nearly 70% decrease. The researchers, part of an initiative called Universal Access to Clean Water for Tribal Communities, said the proposal would reverse “hard-won progress toward clean, reliable water supplies for Native communities,” and they’re urging Congress to reject the cuts.

More climate and environment news

California hasn’t issued an emergency plea for the public to conserve energy, known as a Flex Alert, since 2022. As my L.A. Times colleague Hayley Smith reports, much of the credit for that goes to new battery energy storage, which has grown more than 3,000% since 2020.

The Trump administration plans to further cut staff at the Environmental Protection Agency and the Interior Department. Inside Climate News’ Katie Surma reports that the Interior Department plans to slash about 2,000 positions affecting national parks, endangered species and research. The plan surfaced in a court case after a judge temporarily blocked the administration from cutting staff during the government shutdown.

Earlier this year, my colleague Grace Toohey wrote about problems in Ventura County during the Thomas fire of 2017 and the Mountain fire of 2024, when firefighters saw hydrants run dry and found themselves short of water. Assemblymember Steve Bennett (D-Ventura) introduced legislation requiring Ventura County water suppliers to take various steps to try to prevent that, including having 24 hours of backup power to pump water for firefighting. Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the bill, which Bennett says is “implementing the lessons learned” from the fires.

One other thing

My former colleague Sammy Roth recently left the L.A. Times and has started his own newsletter about climate and culture called Climate-Colored Goggles. His first edition just came out, focusing on how Toyota has tarnished its green reputation so much that some of Hollywood’s leading environmentalists no longer want to be associated with it. Sammy writes that the Environmental Media Assn., Hollywood’s leading sustainability group, appears poised to cut ties with Toyota, its sponsor.

Sammy’s piece is, as usual, hard-hitting and insightful. I hope you’ll join me in continuing to follow and subscribe to his work.

Boiling Point, which Sammy helmed so brilliantly, will be back with a new installment next week from another member of our Climate and Environment team.

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.

Reporting from Sacramento — California is poised to charge the highest taxes and fees on gas in the country when an increase kicks in July 1, but officials say the state is still billions of dollars short of what’s needed to properly fix the roads and are considering additional charges.

The gasoline tax is set to climb by 5.6 cents per gallon, the second in a wave of increases approved by state leaders two years ago to raise billions of dollars for road and bridge repairs and mass transit.

Combined with a 12-cent increase that took effect in November 2017, the taxes and vehicle fees approved in a bill known as SB 1 are projected to add $5.4 billion in the coming year to transportation funding.

But officials estimate $130 billion is needed to bring the state’s roads and bridges into a state of good repair. The gas tax increases of 2017 will raise some $52 billion during the first 10 years but that will leave a road repair shortfall of approximately $78 billion.

The tax does not expire after 10 years and will continue to grow with the cost of living in future decades.

“The current funding is not sufficient, it is not enough,” said Tony Akel, a Fresno engineer who is a leader of the American Society of Civil Engineers. “We know that there is a big gap that is a result of years of underfunding.”

The group just released a study that gives California’s roads a “D” grade, saying they are among the worst in the country. State Sen. Jim Beall (D-San Jose), who authored the gas tax measure, said the evaluation appears accurate, but argued it is not a failure of the tax measure, just too early an assessment.

“You won’t see the impact of SB 1 for another couple of years,” Beall said. “The grades are based on actual conditions, and the SB 1 projects are underway but they are not finished. Road conditions will improve.”

The state has completed about 100 transportation projects and 400 more are in the works, according to the administration of Gov. Gavin Newsom.

Projects funded so far include $135.9 million to improve 104 lane miles of Interstate 605 and $54.9 million for 99 lane miles of State Route 1 in Los Angeles County. Projects completed so far include repaving a stretch of Interstate 5 between the 605 and Washington Boulevard in Los Angeles County.

“SB 1 was never expected to completely fund all backlog work, but it has given us a great start to making up for years of underfunding,” said Jeff Burdick, a spokesman for Caltrans.

The increase taking effect next month means the total state taxes and fees on gasoline will be 57.8 cents per gallon, based on the current average price of gas across California.

That will just edge out the 57.6 cents-per-gallon charged by Pennsylvania. Washington state will remain in third place, charging motorists 49.4 cents per gallon.

(Some of the California tax is based on a percentage of the cost of a gallon of gas, so a significant drop in prices could cause the overall tax to drop — at least temporarily — below Pennsylvania’s.)

Alaska and Missouri have the lowest gas taxes in the country, with per-gallon charges of 14.34 and 17.35 cents respectively, according to the American Petroleum Institute. Motorists in all states also pay 18.4 cents per gallon in federal fuel taxes.

“California will be number one in another category that it shouldn’t be number one in,” said state Sen. John Moorlach (R-Costa Mesa), who opposed SB 1 as it made its way through the Legislature. “These incremental increases drive people nuts. They are trying to meet their budgets, and we keep pounding away at it.”

Assembly Democrats, in a 49-17 vote, on Monday blocked an attempt by Republicans to postpone the July tax hike. “Democrats reaffirmed their support for a regressive gas tax increase that punishes every Californian who can’t afford a Tesla,” said Assemblyman Devon Mathis (R-Visalia). “So much for being the party of working people.”

SB 1 calls for additional annual increases to California’s gas tax based on inflation starting July 1, 2020.

Beall, the chairman of the Senate Transportation Committee, agreed with the assessment of the engineers’ group that current revenue is insufficient.

“Money went to local [agencies] from the gas tax, but they still need more,” Beall said, adding that the federal government needs to increase its funding for roads, while counties also can go to their voters for local sales tax increases for transportation projects.

Voters in Riverside County are among those who may be asked next year to raise taxes to fill a funding shortfall to fix the roads.

The Riverside County Transportation Commission has launched a study to determine how to make up a $12.6-billion gap between its transportation needs and expected funding over the next 20 years, according to Cheryl Donahue, a manager at the agency.

“As part of its review, the commission will determine whether asking county voters to consider a sales tax measure to fund transportation improvements is part of the best overall approach to reducing congestion and improving mobility,” Donahue said.

The San Diego Metropolitan Transit System also is considering whether to ask voters to increase the sales tax by up to one-half cent next year to pay for transit, highway and road improvements, spokesman Rob Schupp said. The San Diego Assn. of Governments released a poll in March that found strong voter support for such a tax, with 70% of those surveyed saying “improving roads to support transit services” is important.

Voters in San Mateo and San Benito counties approved sales tax increases in November for road projects.

Moorlach said Orange County, where he lives, has approved two local tax measures to fund its transportation needs in recent years, and he does not have a problem with other counties following suit.

The group Move L.A. has proposed a grander plan, suggesting that raising local sales taxes by a half-cent in Los Angeles, Orange, San Bernardino and Riverside counties could bring in about $1.5 billion per year for public projects.

Much of the money would go to South Coast Air Quality Management District efforts to increase non-polluting transportation, including electric cars and trucks. But some could be spent on infrastructure including bike and pedestrian lanes, which SB 1 finances.

The air district has sponsored a bill, SB 732, that would allow it to ask voters to raise the sales tax by up to 1% in the four counties. The legislation is expected to be taken up next year.

State law requires a two-thirds vote to approve a local tax increase for transportation, but a pair of other pending bills could make approval easier. A bill in the Legislature would put a measure on the November 2020 statewide ballot that would allow cities, counties and special districts to impose taxes if 55% of local voters approve. The measure would benefit projects involving affordable housing and infrastructure, including improvements to transit and streets and highways.

Another bill, AB 1413, would allow local transportation agencies like San Diego’s to seek voter approval of tax increases in any portion of the county, so if some areas want better roads they can vote on them. The measure would allow communities to pay for “improving roads, transit, highways, or other transportation infrastructure as they see fit,” said Assemblyman Todd Gloria (D-San Diego).

But the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn. argued agencies “shouldn’t be able to pick and choose among their tax base to make it easier to increase regressive sales taxes.”

State lawmakers also are considering a bill that would charge a 10% tax on every barrel of oil pumped from the ground in California to bring in some $900 million annually. That, critics say, would mean motorists will pay more at the pump. Backers of the bill deny there would be a significant impact on drivers.

Money raised by the bill would go to the general fund but could help with transportation, said Sen. Bob Wieckowski (D-Fremont), the legislation’s author.

“While other states have brought in billions of dollars for their constituents through an oil severance tax, California has had to dip into its own pockets to cover extensive clean-up costs brought about by the oil industry’s irresponsible actions,” Wieckowski said. “Californians deserve better.”

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SAN FRANCISCO — About 24 hours after President Trump declared San Francisco such a crime-ridden “mess” that he was recommending federal forces be sent to restore order, Manit Limlamai, 43, and Kai Saetern, 32, rolled their eyes at the suggestion.

The pair — both in the software industry — were with friends Thursday in Dolores Park, a vibrant green space with sweeping views of downtown, playing volleyball under a blue sky and shining autumn sun. All around them, people sat on benches with books, flew kites, played with dogs or otherwise lounged away the afternoon on blankets in the grass.

Both Limlamai and Saetern said San Francisco of course has issues, and some rougher neighborhoods — but that’s any city.

“I’ve lived here for 10 years and I haven’t felt unsafe, and I’ve lived all over the city,” Saetern said. “Every city has its problems, and I don’t think San Francisco is any different,” but “it’s not a hellscape,” said Limlamai, who has been in the city since 2021.

Both said Trump’s suggestion that he might send in troops was more alarming than reassuring — especially, Limlamai said, on top of his recent remark that American cities should serve as “training grounds” for U.S. military forces.

“I don’t think that’s appropriate at all,” he said. “The military is not trained to do what needs to be done in these cities.”

Across San Francisco, residents, visitors and prominent local leaders expressed similar ideas — if not much sharper condemnation of any troop deployment. None shied away from the fact that San Francisco has problems, especially with homelessness. Several also mentioned a creeping urban decay, and that the city needs a bit of a polish.

But federal troops? That was a hard no.

A range of people on Market Street in downtown San Francisco on Thursday.

“It’s just more of [Trump’s] insanity,” said Peter Hill, 81, as he played chess in a slightly edgier park near City Hall. Hill said using troops domestically was a fascist power play, and “a bad thing for the entire country.”

“It’s fascism,” agreed local activist Wendy Aragon, who was hailing a cab nearby. Her Latino family has been in the country for generations, she said, but she now fears speaking Spanish on the street given that immigration agents have admitted targeting people who look or sound Latino, and troops in the city would only exacerbate those fears. “My community is under attack right now.”

State Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) said troop deployments to the city were “completely unnecessary” and “typical Trump: petty, vindictive retaliation.”

“He wants to attack anyone who he perceives as an enemy, and that includes cities, and so he started with L.A. and Southern California because of its large immigrant community, and then he proceeded to cities with large Black populations like Chicago, and now he’s moving on to cities that are just perceived as very lefty like Portland and now San Francisco,” Wiener said.

Abigail Jackson, a White House spokesperson, defended such deployments and noted crime reductions in cities, including Washington, D.C., and Memphis, where local officials — including D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, a Democrat — have embraced them.

“America’s once great cities have descended into chaos and crime as a result of Democrat policies that put criminals first and law-abiding citizens last. Making America Safe Again — especially crime-ridden cities — was a key campaign promise from the President that the American people elected him to fulfill,” Jackson said. “San Francisco Democrats should look at the tremendous results in DC and Memphis and listen to fellow Democrat Mayor Bowser and welcome the President in to clean up their city.”

A police officer shuts the door to his car after a person was allegedly caught carrying a knife near a sign promoting an AI-powered museum exhibit in downtown San Francisco.

A presidential ‘passion’

San Francisco — a bastion of liberal politics that overwhelmingly voted against Trump in the last election — has been derided by the conservative right for generations as a great American jewel lost to destructive progressive policies.

With its tech-heavy economy and downtown core hit hard by the pandemic and the nation’s shift toward remote work, the city has had a particularly rough go in recent years, which only exacerbated its image as a city in decline. That it produced some of Trump’s most prominent political opponents — including Gov. Gavin Newsom and former Vice President Kamala Harris — has only made it more of a punching bag.

In August, Trump suggested San Francisco needed federal intervention. “You look at what the Democrats have done to San Francisco — they’ve destroyed it,” he said in the Oval Office. “We’ll clean that one up, too.”

Then, earlier this month, to the chagrin of liberal leaders across the city, Marc Benioff, the billionaire Salesforce founder and Time magazine owner who has long been a booster of San Francisco, said in an interview with the New York Times that he supported Trump and welcomed Guard troops in the city.

“We don’t have enough cops, so if they can be cops, I’m all for it,” Benioff said, just as his company was preparing to open its annual Dreamforce convention in the city, complete with hundreds of private security officers.

The U.S. Constitution generally precludes military forces from serving in police roles in the U.S.

On Friday, Benioff reversed himself and apologized for his earlier stance. “Having listened closely to my fellow San Franciscans and our local officials, and after the largest and safest Dreamforce in our history, I do not believe the National Guard is needed to address safety in San Francisco,” he wrote on X.

He also apologized for “the concern” his earlier support for troops in the city had caused, and praised San Francisco’s new mayor, Daniel Lurie, for bringing crime down.

Billionaire Elon Musk, the chief executive of Tesla, also called for federal intervention in the city, writing on his X platform that downtown San Francisco is “a drug zombie apocalypse” and that federal intervention was “the only solution at this point.”

Trump made his latest remarks bashing San Francisco on Wednesday, again from the Oval Office.

Trump said it was “one of our great cities 10 years ago, 15 years ago,” but “now it’s a mess” — and that he was recommending federal forces move into the city to make it safer. “I’m gonna be strongly recommending — at the request of government officials, which is always nice — that you start looking at San Francisco,” he said to leading members of his law enforcement team.

Trump did not specify exactly what sort of deployment he meant, or which kinds of federal forces might be involved. He also didn’t say which local officials had allegedly requested help — a claim Wiener called a lie.

“Every American deserves to live in a community where they’re not afraid of being mugged, murdered, robbed, raped, assaulted or shot, and that’s exactly what our administration is working to deliver,” Trump said, before adding that sending federal forces into American cities had become “a passion” of his.

Kai Saetern, 32, was playing volleyball in Dolores Park on Thursday. Saetern said he has never felt unsafe living in neighborhoods all over the city for the last 10 years.

Crime is down citywide

The responses from San Francisco, both to Benioff and Trump, came swiftly, ranging from calm discouragement to full-blown outrage.

Lurie did not respond directly, but his office pointed reporters to his recent statements that crime is down 30% citywide, homicides are at a 70-year low, car break-ins are at a 22-year low and tent encampments are at their lowest number on record.

“We have a lot of work to do,” Lurie said. “But I trust our local law enforcement.”

San Francisco Dist. Atty. Brooke Jenkins was much more fiery, writing online that Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem had turned “so-called public safety and immigration enforcement into a form of government sponsored violence against U.S. citizens, families, and ethnic groups,” and that she stood ready to prosecute federal officers if they harm city residents.

Attendees exit the Dreamforce convention downtown on Thursday in San Francisco.

“If you come to San Francisco and illegally harass our residents … I will not hesitate to do my job and hold you accountable just like I do other violators of the law every single day,” she said.

Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) — whose seat Wiener is reportedly going to seek — said the city “does not want or need Donald Trump’s chaos” and will continue to increase public safety locally and “without the interference of a President seeking headlines.”

Newsom said the use of federal troops in American cities is a “clear violation” of federal law, and that the state was prepared to challenge any such deployment to San Francisco in court, just as it challenged such deployments in Los Angeles earlier this year.

The federal appellate court that oversees California and much of the American West has so far allowed troops to remain in L.A., but is set to continue hearing arguments in the L.A. case soon.

Trump had used anti-immigration enforcement protests in L.A. as a justification to send troops there. In San Francisco, Newsom said, he lacks any justification or “pretext” whatsoever.

“There’s no existing protest at a federal building. There’s no operation that’s being impeded. I guess it’s just a ‘training ground’ for the President of United States,” Newsom said. “It is grossly illegal, it’s immoral, it’s rather delusional.”

Nancy DeStefanis, 76, a longtime labor and environmental activist who was at San Francisco City Hall on Thursday to complain about Golden Gate Park being shut to regular visitors for paid events, was similarly derisive of troops entering the city.

“As far as I’m concerned, and I think most San Franciscans are concerned, we don’t want troops here. We don’t need them,” she said.

Passengers walk past a cracked window from the Civic Center BART station in downtown San Francisco.

‘An image I don’t want to see’

Not far away, throngs of people wearing Dreamforce lanyards streamed in and out of the Moscone Center, heading back and forth to nearby Market Street and pouring into restaurants, coffee shops and take-out joints. The city’s problems — including homelessness and associated grittiness — were apparent at the corners of the crowds, even as chipper convention ambassadors and security officers moved would-be stragglers along.

Not everyone was keen to be identified discussing Trump or safety in the city, with some citing business reasons and others a fear of Trump retaliating against them. But lots of people had opinions.

Sanjiv, a self-described “techie” in his mid-50s, said he preferred to use only his first name because, although he is a U.S. citizen now, he emigrated from India and didn’t want to stick his neck out by publicly criticizing Trump.

He called homelessness a “rampant problem” in San Francisco, but less so than in the past — and hardly something that would justify sending in military troops.

“It’s absolutely ridiculous,” he said. “It’s not like the city’s under siege.”

Claire Roeland, 30, from Austin, Texas, said she has visited San Francisco a handful of times in recent years and had “mixed” experiences. She has family who live in surrounding neighborhoods and find it completely safe, she said, but when she’s in town it’s “predominantly in the business district” — where it’s hard not to be disheartened by the obvious suffering of people with addiction and mental illness and the grime that has accumulated in the emptied-out core.

“There’s a lot of unfortunate urban decay happening, and that makes you feel more unsafe than you actually are,” she said, but there isn’t “any realistic need to send in federal troops.”

She said she doesn’t know what troops would do other than confront homeless people, and “that’s an image I don’t want to see.”

Times staff writer Dakota Smith contributed to this report.

Oct. 16 (UPI) — Ontario’s Premier Doug Ford said he received an assurance from Jeep maker Stellantis’ Canadian chief the company will keep its Canadian plant open for future manufacturing.

Ford said Wednesday that the company’s Brampton auto plant will continue running despite Tuesday’s revelation that Jeep Compass production will shift to an American facility.

“I want to keep the Brampton plant open, no matter what,” Ford said following talks with Stellantis Canada president Jeff Hines. “He’s given me his word, they are going to keep it open.”

Stellantis, the parent company of multiple auto brands including Jeep and Chrysler, announced this week plans to invest billions in the United States to reopen facilities and add roughly 5,000 U.S. jobs plants in Illinois, Ohio, Michigan and Indiana over the next four years.

In April, Stellantis put a hold on production of its new electric SUV at its Canadian plant on Williams Parkway in the wake of tax-like tariffs imposed by U.S. President Donald Trump.

It was set to move forward with production later this year.

“Our government will continue to use every tool we have, including through our $20 million investment in POWER Centers to support displaced workers, including through retraining to re-enter the workforce as quickly as possible,” Ford posted Wednesday on X.

On Tuesday, Ford spoke with Canada’s Stellantis chief who reportedly said the company is “going to postpone it for a year” and claimed Stellantis will “find a new model” to build at the Canadian site.

“They are going to see what products they are going to put in there,” said Ford.

Ford, the leader of Ontario’s Progressive Conservative Party, added plans exist to add a third shift to a Windsor plant to possibly transfer up to 3,000 or less workers.

A Stellantis spokesperson pointed to its 100-year history in Canada and said Britain’s fellow commonwealth nation was “very important” to Jeep’s parent owner.

“We have plans for Brampton and will share them upon further discussions with the Canadian government,” the company stated.

Meanwhile, Canada’s Industry Minister Melanie Joly reminded CEO Antonio Filosa in a letter that Stellantis made critical commitments to Canadians.

“While the current U.S. tariff environment is creating complex challenges, Stellantis has made important commitments to Canada and to its workforce,” Joly wrote.

Joly said if Stellantis chooses not “to respect its obligations,” the Canadian government would “act in the interests of all Canadians and hold the company to full account, and exercise all options, including legal.”

Signing comes as families in Israel and Palestine reunite with their loved ones released from captivity in Gaza and Israeli jails.

Reporting from Washington and Honolulu — House Republican leaders, bowing to pressure from both the White House and their Senate colleagues, agreed to a stopgap measure that will forestall a tax increase on American workers that was scheduled to take effect Jan. 1.

The deal is expected to come to a vote Friday under procedures that would require all members in both chambers to agree. If any members object, Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) would call the House back into full session next week for a vote, he told reporters Thursday.

In addition to keeping Social Security payroll taxes at current levels for an additional two months, the deal would maintain unemployment insurance for people who have been jobless for an extended period and would block a cut in the payments doctors receive for treating Medicare patients. After Jan. 1, congressional negotiators would meet to decide how to extend the provisions for the rest of 2012.

Accepting the deal would mark a significant defeat for House conservatives, who in past confrontations have wrested major concessions from President Obama and congressional Democrats. Those previous standoffs, however, involved efforts to reduce spending. This time, the House was in the far trickier position of appearing to oppose a tax cut, and the deal almost entirely followed the terms negotiated in the Democratic-controlled Senate.

Agreement came hours after Obama and Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, adversaries who rarely agree, both urged House Republicans to accept a bill to keep payroll taxes at their current level.

“This is an issue where an overwhelming number of people in both parties agree. How can we not get that done?” Obama said at a White House event, where he read letters from workers who detailed the hardships that a tax increase would cause. “Enough is enough.”

Earlier in the day, McConnell split publicly from his House colleagues and issued a statement saying Americans “shouldn’t face the uncertainty of a New Year’s Day tax hike.” The House should accept the two-month extension that passed the Senate on Saturday, McConnell said.

The Senate had approved its stopgap measure with bipartisan support, 89 to 10. But when Boehner presented it to House Republicans last weekend, conservatives rebelled.

The impasse largely concerned how to pay for extending the tax cut for a full year. The House had rejected the Democrats’ idea to increase the income tax on millionaires, instead passing a one-year extension that covered the cost by spending cuts and new revenue. The Senate’s stopgap measure would raise fees on federally backed mortgages.

As Thursday wore on, House Republicans who had previously balked began to change their stance. One statement came from Rep. Sean Duffy, a tea party-backed freshman from Wisconsin, who said that he still didn’t like the two-month plan, but that the Senate had “left us with few other options.”

Failure to pass some payroll tax bill by Dec. 31 would mean an increase for the average family of about $40 per biweekly paycheck, or about $1,000 a year.

Conservatives disliked the payroll tax proposal for several reasons. It would increase the deficit and do little to help the economy, they said. And they raised concerns that because payroll taxes fund Social Security, any reduction would hurt that program’s long-term stability, even though the deal calls for the fund to be replenished. Many argued that their constituents would regard the tax increase as acceptable and would rather see taxes go up than give in to one of Obama’s legislative priorities.

But as the reality of a New Year’s tax increase began to sink in, the unpopularity of the idea became increasingly clear. Senior Republicans began warning that their party risked the kind of political damage it suffered 16 years ago with the Christmas-season shutdown of the government — a move that helped reelect then-President Bill Clinton.

Democrats were clearly enjoying the spectacle of Republicans trying to justify opposition to a tax cut. “This is a big moment,” said Democratic strategist Stanley Greenberg, who was Clinton’s pollster. Republicans “put the spotlight on themselves” on an issue involving “money coming out of your pocket,” he said. “I don’t think it could be more powerful symbolically.”

Obama did his best to heighten Republican discomfort at his White House event, where he stood surrounded by ordinary citizens and read stories from people who had written to the White House about what a $40 cut in take-home pay would mean for them.

A teacher said she wouldn’t be able to go to the thrift store to buy pencils and books for her fourth-grade class, Obama said. A man from Rhode Island said that $40 buys three nights worth of home heating oil. A Wisconsin man wrote that he would have to give up some of the weekly 200-mile drives he makes to visit his father-in-law in a nursing home.

“What’s happening right now is exactly why people just get so frustrated with Washington,” Obama said. “This is it.”

Inside the White House, officials had believed all along that the payroll tax cut eventually would get renewed. Republicans would not be willing to be tagged as “the cause of taxes going up on 160 million Americans,” one senior White House official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly.

At the same time, “their handling of it seemed irrational, so it was hard to know what they were going to do,” the official added.

Republican officials rejected the “irrational” label, but agreed that their handling of the issue had damaged their cause. “It may not have been, politically, the smartest thing in the world,” Boehner told reporters, referring to his caucus’ opposition to the payroll tax bill. “Sometimes it’s hard to do the right thing.”

In the end, however, the agreement came quickly, according to White House and congressional staff who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the negotiations publicly.

Thursday morning, Boehner called Obama and asked him to send members of his economic team to Capitol Hill for further negotiations. Obama declined, saying that the House would have to approve the Senate-passed bill first.

With his options running out, Boehner met with senior Republicans, who gave him approval to negotiate terms with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada. All agreed that the time had come, aides said.

In the afternoon, Boehner’s aides contacted Reid’s staff. They offered to accept the Senate plan if Reid agreed to two minor matters. One would amend the Senate bill to avoid new tax-reporting requirements that the Senate language might have imposed. The other was an agreement by Reid to appoint Senate members to a conference committee to work out a full-year deal.

Reid, who had orchestrated the successful Democratic negotiating strategy, ratified the agreement in a brief statement: “I am grateful that the voices of reason have prevailed,” he said.

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Kathleen Hennessey in the Washington bureau contributed to this report.

ROME — Pope Leo XIV urged labor union leaders from Chicago on Thursday to advocate for immigrants and welcome minorities into their ranks, weighing in as the Trump administration crackdown on immigrants intensifies in the pontiff’s hometown.

“While recognizing that appropriate policies are necessary to keep communities safe, I encourage you to continue to advocate for society to respect the human dignity of the most vulnerable,” Leo said.

The audience was scheduled before the deployment of National Guard troops to protect federal property in the Chicago area, including a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement building that has been the site of occasional clashes between protesters and federal agents.

Chicago Cardinal Blase Cupich, who accompanied the labor leaders, said that Leo was well aware of the situation on the ground. In an interview with the Associated Press, Cupich said Leo has made clear, including in recent comments, that migrants and the poor must be treated in ways that respect their human dignity.

“I really didn’t have to tell him much at all, because he seemed to have a handle on what was going on,” Cupich told the AP afterward.

He said that Leo had urged U.S. bishops in particular to “speak with one voice” on the issue. Cupich said he expected the November meeting of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops would make immigration a top agenda item.

“This has to be front and center right now. This is the issue of the day. And we can’t dance around it,” Cupich said.

Catholic leaders in the U.S. have denounced the Trump administration’s crackdown, which has split up families and incited fears that people could be rounded up and deported any time. The administration has defended the crackdown as safeguarding public safety and national security.

Leo “wants us to make sure, as bishops, that we speak out on behalf of the undocumented or anybody who’s vulnerable to preserve their dignity,” Cupich said. “We all have to remember that we all share a common dignity as human beings.”

Cupich said he was heartened by Leo’s remarks last week, in which the pope defended the cardinal’s decision to honor Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin for his work helping immigrants. The plans drew objection from some conservative U.S. bishops given the powerful Democratic senator’s support for abortion rights, and he ultimately declined the award.

It was the second meeting in as many days that history’s first American pope has heard firsthand from a U.S. bishop on the front lines of the migration crackdown. On Wednesday, El Paso Bishop Mark Seitz brought Leo letters from desperate immigrant families.

Cupich was in Rome for Vatican meetings and to also accompany a group of Chicago schoolchildren who got a special greeting from Leo during his Wednesday general audience. The kids had staged their own “mock conclave” in school this past spring, and footage of their deliberations went viral online as the real conclave unfolded in Rome. They arrived at the audience Wednesday dressed as cardinals, Swiss Guards and the pope himself.

Winfield writes for the Associated Press.

The frenzy over artificial intelligence (AI) stocks kicked off in late 2022 with the arrival of OpenAI’s ChatGPT. While this watershed moment occurred years ago, the AI market shows no sign of slowing down.

In fact, Google parent Alphabet (GOOGL -0.16%) (GOOG -0.04%) achieved a recent breakthrough with Gemini, a large language model (LLM) comparable to ChatGPT in many ways.  The innovation suggests the AI industry could enjoy prosperity for decades.

If so, now may be the time to invest in AI giants like Alphabet. Here’s a dive into the company’s artificial intelligence accomplishment, as well as the implications for Alphabet’s stock and the broader AI market.

Alphabet’s AI achievement

In September, Alphabet’s Gemini achieved a groundbreaking outcome, becoming the first AI model to win a gold medal in an international computer programming competition. It successfully solved complex, real-world calculations that stymied human participants.

Google DeepMind, Alphabet’s AI research division, was responsible for Gemini. The DeepMind team highlighted the significance of the landmark achievement by stating, “Solving complex tasks at these competitions requires deep abstract reasoning, creativity, the ability to synthesize novel solutions to problems never seen before, and a genuine spark of ingenuity.”

Gemini demonstrated these traits in the competition, including successfully coming up with a creative solution to one challenge that no human participant was able to solve. This result marked a crucial step on the path toward artificial general intelligence (AGI). AGI is a theoretical level of AI proficiency considered equivalent to human thinking.

Gemini’s milestone is a memorable bellwether, akin to the moment when the world was stunned by IBM’s Deep Blue computer beating the reigning human chess champion in 1997.

How Alphabet’s milestone impacts the AI industry

A quarter-century after Deep Blue’s achievement, OpenAI’s introduction of ChatGPT opened the floodgates for the current AI boom. Now, Gemini’s breakthrough signals the start of a new era in the evolution of artificial intelligence, as the tech edges closer to the capacity for original thought.

AI is evolving from simply completing specific tasks toward solving more complex problems that require leaps in thinking — for example, designing innovative microchips or coming up with new medicines. The possibilities to upend markets in the years to come could be akin to how today’s AI is delivering unprecedented transformation across industries.

One example is Nvidia, the semiconductor chip leader. AI systems require increasingly potent computing capabilities. This need led to the company’s impressive 56% year-over-year sales growth to $46.7 billion in its fiscal second quarter, ended July 27, and drove its stock to a $4 trillion market cap.

Alphabet was among the first to power its AI with Nvidia’s new Blackwell chips. When the chip debuted in 2024, Nvidia stated, “Blackwell has powerful implications for AI workloads” and that the tech would help “drive the world’s next big breakthroughs.” Following Gemini’s AI milestone, it appears that Nvidia’s words were something more than empty marketing boasts.

The computing power needed to produce the Gemini breakthrough must have been substantial. Alphabet declined to specify how much, but admitted it was more than what’s available to customers subscribing to its top-tier Google AI Ultra service for $250 per month. With that kind of computing capability required for AI to perform advanced reasoning, Nvidia and other hardware providers can continue to benefit from AI advances.

What the Gemini breakthrough means for Alphabet stock

While building toward artificial general intelligence will increase computing costs for Alphabet, the company can afford it. Thanks to its search engine dominance, Alphabet generates substantial free cash flow (FCF) to invest in its AI systems. The company produced $66.7 billion in FCF over the trailing 12 months through Q2.

In addition, AI is already delivering business growth for the company. Its second-quarter sales were up 14% year over year to $96.4 billion as customers adopted AI features Alphabet released onto its search engine, cloud computing services, and advertising platforms.

Despite these strengths and Gemini notching a significant AI victory, Alphabet shares remain reasonably valued compared to rivals such as Microsoft. This can be seen in the stock’s price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio, which reflects how much investors are willing to pay for each dollar of a company’s earnings, based on the trailing 12 months.

Data by YCharts.

The chart shows Alphabet’s P/E ratio is lower than Microsoft’s, suggesting it’s a better value. In other words, now could be a good time to pick up Alphabet shares at a reasonable price.

Since the Google parent isn’t the only beneficiary of ongoing AI progress, it’s worth considering the growth potential in other AI players, such as Nvidia, IBM, and Microsoft. As the tech industry moves closer to achieving AGI, the AI space is poised for innovations that are likely to fuel the sector’s growth for decades to come.

Los Angeles County supervisors criticized the long-awaited $1.9-million outside investigation on government failures during the January wildfires as full of gaping holes after outcry from residents who say the report failed to answer their key question: Why did evacuation alerts come so late for so many?

“I’ve heard from many residents, some of whom are in the audience, who share that this report leads to more questions than answers, and, quite frankly, a lot of anger,” said Supervisor Kathryn Barger, who represents unincorporated Altadena, as the board discussed the report’s findings at its Tuesday meeting.

Nineteen people died in the Eaton fire, all but one of whom was found in west Altadena, an area that did not get evacuation alerts until hours after the fire threatened the area.

The report from McChrystal Group found, among other failures, that there was no clear guide of which county department was responsible for deciding which areas to evacuate. The responsibility for evacuations is split among the Office of Emergency Management, the Sheriff’s Department and the Fire Department, and none have taken responsibility for the evacuation blunders. The county also failed to consistently issue evacuation warnings to neighborhoods next to ones that were under an evacuation order, the report found.

The pushback by supervisors is notable because they commissioned the report in January and vowed it would get to the bottom of what went wrong. When it was unveiled last week, top county officials hailed it as a blueprint for improvements. But it almost immediately faced criticism from residents and others.

Despite the shortcomings, the supervisors said they were eager to implement the report’s recommendations, which included making it clear who was responsible for issuing evacuations and beefing up staffing for the Office of Emergency Management. The supervisors unanimously approved a motion Tuesday, to start the process of implementing some of the report’s recommendations.

One of the report’s problems, Barger said, is that so many noncounty agencies declined to participate in the report. Several California fire agencies including the Pasadena Fire Department, the state’s Office of Emergency Services and the Los Angeles Fire Department declined to provide information, according to the report.

“It is inexcusable and I would challenge any one of those departments, or any one of those chiefs, to look the survivors in the eye and explain why they were compelled not to cooperate, because that does lead to ‘What are you hiding?’” said Barger, who said she was “incredibly frustrated and disappointed.”

“We have very one-sided information,” acknowledged Erin Sutton, a partner with McChrystal Group. “It is the county information.”

Fire Chief Anthony Marrone said the consultants had been “unable to compel” other agencies to share their automatic vehicle locator data. The Times used county vehicle locator data earlier this year to reveal that most county fire trucks didn’t shift into west Altadena until long after it was ravaged by fire. The Times was not able to obtain vehicle locator data from any of the other fire agencies that were dispatched to the Eaton fire that night.

“We were out of L.A. County Fire trucks. We were relying on our mutual aid partners that were there,” Marrone said. “We just don’t have their data.”

The Sheriff’s Department has also yet to release vehicle locator data on where deputies were that evening. Sheriff Robert Luna said Tuesday that the department had dozens of deputies assisting with evacuations that night.

“We can absolutely do better, and we’re already putting systems in place so that we can do better,” Luna told the supervisors Tuesday. “They weren’t waiting for warnings.”

A spokesperson for the Pasadena Fire Department said the agency didn’t participate beyond providing written information because the “scope of the review was the response by Los Angeles County.” The L.A. Fire Department said it didn’t participate because it was outside the agency’s jurisdiction. The state’s Office of Emergency Services noted it was already conducting its own review.

“I too am frustrated by what I feel are areas of incompleteness,” said Supervisor Lindsey Horvath, whose district was scarred by the Palisades fire.

The 133-page report makes only one mention of deaths from the fire. Horvath said she felt the report failed to include the “very painful” accounts from survivors and should have delved into the issue of rogue alerts that urged many to get ready to evacuate even though they were miles away from fire.

Supervisor Holly Mitchell said she wanted to highlight the racial disparity of outcomes in Altadena, an issue she called the “elephant in the room” and one that was not mentioned in the report. Black residents of Altadena were more likely to have their homes damaged or destroyed by the Eaton fire, according to research by UCLA.

Residents feel deeply that their experience — receiving later alerts and fewer fire resources than their neighbors — is not reflected in the report, she said. “We have to figure out how to acknowledge that disconnect, not diminish it,” she said

Congresswoman Judy Chu, whose district includes Altadena, said in a letter to the board that the report left “unresolved questions” around evacuation failures.

“The report does not explain why officials concluded it was safe to wait until 3:25 a.m. to issue the order, or who was responsible for that decision,” she wrote.

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors reviewed the McChrystal report on the January fires at a meeting Tuesday.

(Terry Castleman / Los Angeles Times)

Standing on a vacant lot in west Altadena, hundreds of residents said they were frustrated with the report.

“Officials have responded with unconscionable ineptitude,” said Kara Vallow, who said she believed the document “goes out of its way to avoid accountability.”

Speakers called for Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta to investigate separately, questioning the independence of the report. Survivors held signs with victims’ names, while others questioned why alerts came so late for west Altadena.

Lauren Randolph, a west Altadena resident, asked why, if flames were near her home in Farnsworth Park at 2:20 a.m., her family nearby didn’t receive an evacuation alert until almost 3:25 a.m.

“I ask again — who was in charge?” she said.

She said she felt the report failed to look into west Altadena, where she alleged that 911 calls were ignored and evacuation notices came late, noting that the area was home to most of Altadena’s Black and brown families.

The report emphasized that the “fire front” had not crossed into west Altadena, where nearly all the deaths took place, until around 5 a.m., nearly two hours after the evacuation orders came for the area. But many west Altadenans decried the description, saying their homes started to burn long before then.

“That is not true,” Sylvie Andrews said, the crowd around her laughing at the assertion.

Shawn Tyrie, a partner with McChrystal Group, acknowledged Tuesday that the satellite images they used don’t provide a “definitive picture,” particularly in cases with extreme wind, ember cast and smoke.

“Those images are severely degraded in smoke conditions like that,” he said, leaving open the possibility that the fire was in west Altadena well before 5 a.m., as residents previously reported to The Times.

Altadena residents voice their displeasure with the McChrystal report shortly before the Board of Supervisors met to review the report.

(Terry Castleman / Los Angeles Times)

Many of the residents’ questions were echoed Tuesday at the Hall of Administration by Barger, who drilled down on the difference between the fire front, which didn’t cross into west Altadena until 5 a.m, and the ember cast, which started dangerous spot fires in the neighborhood long before then.

“For people I’ve talked to who lost their homes, fire front versus ember cast mean nothing other than there was fire in their community, in their neighborhood, burning down homes,” she said.

Marrone said he believed they should have taken the ember cast into account.

“With hindsight being 2020, we do understand now that we must evacuate well ahead of not only the fire front … but we also need to take into account the massive ember cast,” he said.

Marrone said repeatedly that his firefighters were overwhelmed responding to multiple fires that day. Firefighters battled the Eaton fire as hurricane-force winds scattered embers for two miles. Unlike the Palisades fire, the most difficult stretch of the Eaton fire was fought in the dark with winds requiring all aircraft grounded by 6:45 p.m as the fire was just beginning. This left first responders without an aerial view of the flames, reducing their awareness of the fire direction.

Marrone said they’ve made a National Guard satellite program available to incident command, so fire officials can see the path of a fire on nights when they have no aerial support.

“Like I said before, and this is not an excuse, this was a massive, unprecedented disaster that presented severe challenges,” he said.

Barger also questioned why there was such a delay between when fire officials first noticed the fire was moving west and when the evacuation orders were issued. According to the report, a county fire official in the field in Altadena said they suggested to incident command staff a little before midnight that, due to high winds, evacuation orders should go out for the foothills of Altadena, all the way west to La Cañada Flintridge. About two hours later, at 2:18 a.m., a fire official radioed that they saw fire north of Farnsworth Park moving west along the foothills.

The first evacuation order for west Altadena came at 3:25 a.m.

Marrone said incident command needed to validate the report before requesting the order be sent out.

“That took time — probably too much time in retrospect,” Marrone said.

Sept. 29 (UPI) — The chances of a government shutdown increased on Monday after congressional leaders from both parties, during a meeting with President Donald Trump in the Oval Office, weren’t able to agree on a stopgap funding bill less than 48 hours before the deadline.

Without the funding bill signed by Trump, the government will run out of money, starting after midnight Wednesday.

Democrats, led by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, both serving New York, have said they won’t support any stopgap bill unless it protects healthcare programs. House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana and Senate Majority Leader John Thune of South Dajota, both Republicans, don’t want to restore recent Medicaid cuts, and it omits an extension of the currently enhanced Affordable Care Act tax credits scheduled to expire.

The congressional leaders spoke separately with reporters outside the White House. Trump didn’t comment, including on Truth Social.

Schumer told reporters outside the White House’s West Wing that “there are still large differences between us.”

He added: “Their bill has not one iota of Democratic input.”

On Sept. 19, the House passed a seven-week stopgap funding bill that Senate Democrats rejected earlier this month.

“That is never how we’ve done this before,” Schumer said.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune accused Democrats of “hostage taking” in their demands

“Republicans are united,” Thune said. House Republicans, Senate Republicans, President Trump. The House has passed a clean funding resolution to fund the government until November the 21st. It’s clean, it’s bipartisan, and it is short-term, but it gives us enough time to finish the appropriations process, which is the way we should be funding the government.”

He held up a copy of the bill, saying: “This is sitting right now at the Senate desk. We could pick it up and pass it tonight, pick it up and pass it tomorrow before the government shuts down, and then we don’t have the government shut down. It is totally up to the Democrats, because right now, they are the only thing standing between the American people and the government shutting down.”

Thume said the Senate will vote on the House’s continuing resolution before negotiating a full-year appropriations bill. They have a 53-47 majority, but 60 votes are needed for passage.

Last week, a memo from the White House Office of Management and Budget sent to federal agencies said there will be mass firings without stopgap funding. The OMB asked the federal agencies to identify programs that would lose funding and have no other sources of funding.

Essential services, including Social Security and Medicare payments, and mail delivery, will continue, though new applications, loans and some regulatory functions can face delays. Air travel and law enforcement also remain in place.

Essential workers and those sent home won’t get paid initially, but they all will get the money when the government reopens.

Vice President JD Vance said the nation is headed into a shutdown “because the Democrats won’t do the right thing.”

“Look the principle at stake here is very simple,” Vance said. “We have disagreements about tax policy, you don’t shut that government down. We have disagreements about healthcare policy, but you don’t shut the government down. You don’t use your policy disagreements as leverage to not pay our troops and not have essentials for services.”

Vance took a more conciliatory tone than the Republicans, saying he favors further discussing the Democrats’ demand. “They had some ideas that I actually thought were reasonable, and they had some ideas that the President thought was reasonable,” he told reporters. “What’s not reasonable is to hold those ideas as leverage and to shut down the government unless we give you everything you want.”

Democrats are concerned about increased healthcare premiums and closure of rural hospitals. On July 4, Trump signed the legislation that is called “the Big Beautiful Spending Bill” of tax and spending policies.

“By his face and by the way he looked, I think he heard about them for the first time,” Schumer said, noting he told Trump some families could see monthly premiums for the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare, will rise $400 if enhanced subsidies are allowed to expire at the end of the year.

The Democrats warn that many rural hospitals would close in the next year because of nearly $1 trillion in Medicaid cuts.

Republicans also rejected a stopgap bill to last seven to 10 days.

Republicans have differed on how to handle subsidies to help healthcare, including rural hospitals.

Trump continues to criticize Democrats, including a joint news conference with Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu before the meeting with congressional leaders.

“They’re going to have to do some things because their ideas are not very good ones,” he said. “They’re very bad for our country, so we’ll see how that works out.”

The meeting was Trump’s first with top Democrats since he became president again on Jan. 20. Trump canceled a meeting scheduled for last week at the request of Johnson and Thune.

The meeting was announced late Saturday.

“I want to thank President Trump for the strong, solid leadership,” Johnson said. “He listened to the arguments and they just wouldn’t acknowledge the simple facts. If the Democrats make the decisions to shut the government down, the consequences are on them.”

Jeffries said, though “significant and meaningful differences remain,” they had a “frank and direct discussion” in the Oval Office.

The last U.S. government shutdown was 35 days, starting on Dec. 22, 2018, and ending on Jan. 25, 2019, when Trump was first president. Trump demanded $5.7 billion in federal funding for a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border at that time.

The US government faces a partial shutdown from Wednesday unless Republicans and Democrats can agree on a spending bill.

United States President Donald Trump is set to meet with top Republicans and Democrats in Congress amid a looming deadline to keep funding the federal government.

Trump’s scheduled meeting with congressional leaders on Monday comes as the US government is facing a partial shutdown from midnight on Wednesday unless lawmakers can agree on a spending bill.

The standoff comes after Democrats in the US Senate earlier this month rejected a Republican-drafted stopgap spending bill to keep the government running until November 21.

Democrats have argued that any spending bill should include provisions to expand healthcare coverage, including by reversing cuts to Medicaid that were included in Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

Republicans argue that healthcare-related provisions should be addressed separately as part of negotiations for a comprehensive spending package.

While Republicans hold 53 seats in the 100-member Senate, at least 60 lawmakers must approve spending bills in the upper chamber.

In interviews on Sunday, Republican Senate Majority Leader John Thune and Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer traded blame for the impasse.

“The ball is in their court,” Thune told NBC News’s Meet the Press. “There is a bill sitting at the desk in the Senate right now, we could pick it up today and pass it.”

Speaking on the same programme, Schumer described the meeting with Trump and his Republican counterparts as “only a first step” to resolving the issue.

“We need a serious negotiation,” Schumer said.

“Now, if the president at this meeting is going to rant, and just yell at Democrats, and talk about all his alleged grievances, and say this, that, and the other thing, we won’t get anything done. But my hope is it’ll be a serious negotiation.”

The planned gathering comes after Trump last week called off a meeting with Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, citing what he described as “unserious and ridiculous demands” by Democrats.

If Democrats and Republicans fail to pass a spending bill by the deadline, federal government employees will not receive pay during the shutdown period – though they will be eligible for backpay – and those who are not considered essential will be furloughed.

There have been 14 government shutdowns since 1980, according to the Bipartisan Policy Center.

Most of those only lasted a few days. The longest shutdown in US history, which took place in late 2018 and early 2019, lasted 34 days.

US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has ordered 200 Oregon National Guard soldiers to be deployed to the state of Oregon under federal authority, in a move swiftly challenged by the Democratic-run state in a federal lawsuit.

A memorandum signed by Hegseth and addressed to the state’s top military officer said that the troops would be “called into Federal service effective immediately for a period of 60 days”, a day after US President Donald Trump said he wanted to send soldiers to ‘war-ravaged Portland,’ the state’s capital.

Oregon’s governor, Democrat Tina Kotek, said on Sunday that she had objected to the deployment in a conversation with the president.

“Oregon is our home — not a military target,” she said in a statement.

Democratic Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield filed a lawsuit in federal court in Portland on Sunday against Hegseth, Trump and US Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, shortly after state officials received the memo.

“What we’re seeing is not about public safety,” Rayfield said. “It’s about the president flexing political muscle under the guise of law and order, chasing a media hit at the expense of our community.”

The National Guard is a state-based reserve military force in the US that can be mobilised for active duty when needed. It typically responds to domestic emergencies, such as natural disasters and civil unrest, and also supports military operations abroad.

While the memorandum does not specifically cite Portland as the target of the proposed deployment, Trump, in a social media post on Saturday, said he had directed the Pentagon, at Noem’s request, “to provide all necessary Troops to protect War ravaged Portland, and any of our ICE Facilities under siege from attack by Antifa, and other domestic terrorists”.

ICE, the department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, sits under the Homeland Security Department.

“I am also authorising Full Force, if necessary,” Trump added.

While the Trump administration has promised to crack down on Antifa, a loosely affiliated left-wing anti-fascist movement, according to the CATO Institute, people with right-wing ideologies have been responsible for 54 percent of politically motivated murders in the country since 2020, more than double the number attributed to the left.

Just days before Trump’s announcement on Saturday, a deadly shooting took place at an ICE facility in Texas. One detainee was killed and two others were severely injured in the attack, which Trump blamed, without providing evidence, on the “radical left”.

Since taking office, Trump has ordered troops deployed to several states and cities where his political rivals, the Democratic Party, are in power.

Most recently, he has also ordered troops deployed to Memphis, Tennessee, and Chicago, Illinois, after earlier deployments to the nation’s capital, Washington, DC, and Los Angeles, California.

Despite the crackdown, protests against the US government’s anti-immigration policies have continued outside ICE facilities, where advocates say people are being held in degrading and crowded conditions, as the Trump administration continues to push for mass deportations.

Protesters gathered outside an ICE building in Portland over the weekend, some wearing brightly coloured costumes.

According to The Oregonian newspaper, fewer than 100 people remained at the protest outside the federal building, in the city which is home to some 635,000 people, on Sunday evening after an earlier crowd had begun to disperse.

The Oregonian also reported on Saturday that federal officers had arrested more than two dozen people outside the federal building since June, but that most of the arrests had occurred in the first month of protests against Trump’s immigration crackdown.

WASHINGTON — Two hundred members of the Oregon National Guard are being placed under federal control and deployed within the state, a move the Trump administration says is needed to protect immigration enforcement officers and government facilities, according to a Defense Department memo received by state leaders on Sunday.

The deployment is being made over the objections of state leaders and is similar to one in June in Los Angeles, where protesters demonstrated against federal immigration raids, though on a much smaller scale.

There was no immediate comment from the White House. Multiple Pentagon officials were contacted, but none would confirm or deny the authenticity of the memo.

President Trump had announced Saturday that he would send troops to Portland. The state’s governor, Democrat Tina Kotek, said Sunday that she objected to the deployment in a conversation with the president.

“Oregon is our home — not a military target,” she said in a statement.

Dan Rayfield, the state attorney general, said he was filing a federal lawsuit arguing that Trump was overstepping his authority.

“What we’re seeing is not about public safety,” he said. “It’s about the president flexing political muscle under the guise of law and order, chasing a media hit at the expense of our community.”

The Pentagon memo provided by Oregon leaders drew a direct comparison between the deployment of thousands of National Guard troops to Los Angeles and the proposed deployment to the state, adding, “This memorandum further implements the President’s direction.”

While the memorandum does not specifically cite Portland as the target of the proposed deployment, Trump, in a social media post Saturday, said he directed the Pentagon, at the request of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, “to provide all necessary Troops to protect War ravaged Portland, and any of our ICE Facilities under siege from attack by Antifa, and other domestic terrorists.”

“I am also authorizing Full Force, if necessary,” Trump added.

Unlike in Los Angeles, it does not appear that Trump or Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth are currently directing the deployment of active-duty troops to the state. The Trump administration deployed about 700 active-duty Marines to Los Angeles, who were withdrawn about a month later.

The action also would be far less than Trump’s deployment to Washington, D.C., where more than 1,000 National Guard troops, including units from other states, have patrolled the streets for weeks. He also has been suggesting that he will send troops into Chicago, but so far has not done so.

Megerian and Toropin write for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — President Trump plans to meet with the top four congressional leaders at the White House on Monday, one day before the deadline to fund the federal government or face a shutdown.

The meeting involving the top Republican leaders, House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune, as well as the Democratic leaders, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, was confirmed Saturday by a White House official and two other people familiar with the planning. They were granted anonymity to discuss a meeting that has not been announced.

Trump relented after initially refusing to meet with the top Democrats.

“President Trump has once again agreed to a meeting in the Oval Office. As we have repeatedly said, Democrats will meet anywhere, at any time and with anyone to negotiate a bipartisan spending agreement that meets the needs of the American people,” Schumer and Jeffries, both of New York, said in a joint statement Saturday night. “We are resolute in our determination to avoid a government shutdown and address the Republican healthcare crisis. Time is running out.”

The meeting was first reported by Punchbowl News.

The parties have been at a standoff for days as Democrats are pushing for healthcare protections as a condition of their support for the spending plan. Senate Democrats have refused to offer the necessary votes to pass a funding measure that would keep the government open beyond Tuesday.

Absent any action, a shutdown would begin at 12:01 a.m. ET on Wednesday.

Democrats had secured a meeting with Trump until Republican leaders intervened and the president called it off. But Schumer spoke privately with Thune (R-S.D.) on Friday, pushing the majority leader to get a meeting with the president scheduled because of the approaching funding deadline, according to an aide to Schumer.

“As rank-and-file Democrats begin to question their leadership’s unsustainable position, Sen. Schumer is clearly getting nervous,” Ryan Wrasse, a spokesman for Thune, responded Saturday night. “There’s an easy way out, and they’ll get a chance to take it next week.”

Democrats, believing they have leverage, have insisted on key healthcare provisions in exchange for their votes. They want an extension of subsidies that help low- and middle-income earners purchase insurance through the Affordable Care Act. Democrats are also insisting on reversing cuts to Medicaid that were included the GOP’s signature tax measure this summer.

Republicans say that those demands are nonstarters and that they are willing to have a conversation with Democrats on those issues separate from government funding talks. The GOP is asking for a straight extension of current funding for seven weeks.

Earlier last week, Johnson acknowledged he had encouraged Trump not to meet with the Democratic leaders.

“He and I talked about it at length yesterday and the day before. I said, ‘Look, when they get their job done, once they do the basic governing work of keeping the government open, as president, then you can have a meeting” with them, Johnson said on the “Mike & McCarty Show” in his home state of Louisiana. “Of course, it might be productive at that point, but right now, this is just a waste of his time.”

And Thune had said earlier in the week that he “did have a conversation with the president” and offered his opinion on the meeting, which he declined to disclose. “But I think the president speaks for himself, and I think he came to the conclusion that meeting would not be productive,” Thune said.

Democrats have expressed confidence that voters would blame Trump and Republicans for any disruptions in federal services, even though that is uncertain.

Republicans, on the other hand, had been heading toward the work week with plans in the Senate to keep showcasing Democrats’ refusal to agree to the stopgap measure, while the House GOP planned to stay away from Washington in a show of their own unwillingness to engage Democratic alternatives.

That too, came with potential political drawbacks for House Republicans, as Democrats hammered them for being, as Jeffries said, “on vacation.”

Kim and Mascaro write for the Associated Press.