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WASHINGTON — Five years after the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol by President Trump’s supporters, the White House released a website this week attempting to revise history.

Reasserting Trump’s false claim that he had won the 2020 presidential election, the administration doubled down on his decision to issue blanket pardons for the rioters, blamed Capitol Police for escalating tensions that day, and denounced Trump’s vice president at the time, Mike Pence, for “refusing to act” in defiance of the Constitution to stop congressional certification of Trump’s loss.

It was a display of political audacity that has become the hallmark of Trump’s second act — challenging anyone to stop him from asserting raw executive authority, both at home and increasingly abroad.

Whether on foreign or domestic policy, lawmakers have struggled to respond to an administration that moves with unfettered restraint and exceptional speed. The U.S. Supreme Court has only facilitated Trump’s expansion of unitary executive power. And governments abroad accustomed to Trump’s lack of predictability now face a president whose entire philosophy toward foreign interventionism appears to have turned on a dime.

“There are political checks. They are checks, though, that have been degraded,” said William Howell, dean of the School of Government and Policy at Johns Hopkins University and author of “Trajectory of Power: The Rise of the Strongman Presidency.”

“They are checks that are looked upon not just with frustration, but an outward animosity by the president,” Howell added. “It’s a feature of his populist politics for him to say, ‘anything that stands in my way is illegitimate.’”

Unitary rule

Trump’s extraordinary use of executive authority has no comparison in recent times. The president has issued more than 220 executive actions in his first year back in office — more than the 220 orders he issued throughout his entire first term, and dwarfing the 276 actions that President Obama issued over eight years in office.

Directing the Justice Department to prosecute his political enemies, and deploying his pardon power to shield his friends and allies, Trump risks fueling the very sort of politicized system of justice he campaigned against as a presidential candidate.

And his administration has shown derision for Congress, controlled by the president’s own party, approving historically few bills and neglecting those that have passed, such as the Epstein Files Transparency Act. Trump has attempted to unilaterally rename the Defense Department and the Kennedy Center, despite straightforward laws requiring acts of Congress to do so, and has impounded funds appropriated by Congress for child care and family assistance allocated to Democratic states.

“The nature of presidential power is that it is given as much as taken,” said Andrew Rudalevige, a professor of government at Bowdoin College and author of “The New Imperial Presidency.” “You can’t have an imperial presidency without an invisible Congress. And certainly, the current Congress is setting new records for intentional invisibility.”

After Trump bulldozed the East Wing of the White House, a reporter asked his press secretary what was stopping him from knocking down the entire building. Karoline Leavitt demurred. “That’s a legal opinion that’s been held for many years,” she said, suggesting he could, in fact, demolish the rest of it.

“The institutional constraints on the unilateral presidency are weak,” said Dino Christenson, a political science professor at Washington University in St. Louis and co-author of “The Myth of the Imperial Presidency.” “The conservative majority of the [Supreme] Court has also recently chosen to back executive power.

“Arguably,” he added, “international constraints are even weaker, at least for powerful nations like the U.S.”

‘Governed by force’

Trump’s order over the weekend to depose Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, seizing him and his wife from their bedroom in a stunning military raid, was the type of rare exercise in American power that has defined past presidencies. But Trump said he was just getting started.

Beaming from the operational success in Caracas, Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One that he was considering military action against no fewer than five countries, allies and foes alike. His homeland security advisor, Stephen Miller, said that no one would even try to stop Trump from militarily taking over Greenland, an autonomous region of Denmark, a NATO ally and European Union member state.

“We live in a world,” Miller told CNN, “that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power.”

At the State Department, veteran U.S. diplomats waited anxiously for guidance from the administration on how it would justify the operation based on international law on the global stage. It never came. “At least with Iraq, Libya, Syria, there was an effort to seek legal cover,” one diplomat said, granted anonymity to speak candidly. “This is just grab-and-go.”

After the president vowed to run Venezuela going forward as a vassal state, Trump’s energy secretary said the United States would exert control over its oil production “indefinitely.”

And the Trump administration ordered the seizure of two foreign tankers on Wednesday in international waters that have violated its unilateral oil embargo against Caracas, risking precedent governing the laws of the seas that have for decades ensured international commercial flows.

It was a surprising turn for a president who had campaigned on a promise to focus on domestic policy, under a slogan of “America first.”

“So many of the claims that he was making — both in terms of his power and his politics — was about an inward turn, about standing up for America and attending to core problems that it had failed to face, whereas all these foreign entanglements were distractions to be avoided,” Howell said. “So it is striking that he has assumed this new posture of outward imperialism — land grabs, oil tankers, removing heads of state — all at once.”

Several Republican lawmakers expressed skepticism over Trump’s new posture, warning the president against entrenching the U.S. military in foreign conflicts. House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican from Louisiana, warned that U.S. military action against Denmark in Greenland “would not be appropriate” after the White House issued an explicit threat of force.

Scholars of the imperial presidency often say that public opinion — not the legislature or the courts — remains the strongest check on executive authority. Trump is ineligible for a third term in office, and has signaled in recent weeks that he recognizes that constitutional limit as unambiguous.

“I don’t think Trump is immune from the laws of political gravity,” Rudalevige said. “Despite his bluster, he is a lame duck. He has never had a Gallup approval rating above 50%, and that rating is in the 30s. His policy actions are even less popular.”

But he also said he believes the public supports him in his brash use of power, telling lawmakers there could be a “constitutional movement” to keep him in office.

“MAGA loves it,” Trump said in an interview with NBC News this week, defending his foreign policy approach. “MAGA loves what I’m doing. MAGA loves everything I do.”

“MAGA is me,” he added. “MAGA loves everything I do, and I love everything I do, too.”

What else you should be reading

The must-read: Palisades fire report was sent to mayor’s office for ‘refinements,’ Fire Commission president says
The deep dive: Michael Reagan’s death reverberates among Californians of both parties
The L.A. Times Special: One year since my childhood home burned

More to come,
Michael Wilner
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SACRAMENTO — Congratulations, you survived 2025. What will the new year bring? Joy and prosperity for all, hopefully, but it’s hard to say.

Few in California could have predicted some of the most life-changing events of 2025 — the deadly Los Angeles area wildfires, the Trump administration’s militant, often inhumane immigration crackdown and an obscure congressional redistricting fight that could alter the balance of power in Washington.

With that in mind, California can expect one of 2026’s most consequential stories to be the turmoil in Sacramento over the entrenched state budget deficit — which will be compounded by the massive federal healthcare cuts by the Trump administration.

The good news is that, after a rain-soaked Christmas holiday, California enters the new year with reservoirs brimming, even if its coffers are not. It also just got easier to delete Facebook, X and other social media accounts that consume too much of our lives. And let’s not forget that the Los Angeles Dodgers reign as World Series champions!

Happy New Year! This is Phil Willon, the California Politics editor for the Los Angeles Times, filling in for columnist George Skelton. Along with the state budget crisis, 2026 will bring a wide-open race for governor — and the person the candidates hope to replace, Gov. Gavin Newsom, is flirting with a run for president in 2028 and has just a year left in his final term to deliver on all his promises. So buckle up and visit latimes.com early and often.

An $18-billion problem

The California Legislature returns to work Monday for the 2026 session, and a major financial headache awaits.

The Legislative Analyst’s Office estimates that the state will have an $18 billion budget shortfall in the upcoming fiscal year – $5 billion higher than what the Newsom administration predicted in June.

As Times reporter Katie King reported earlier, state revenue has been improving, but a shortfall is still expected. That’s because mandatory spending requirements under Proposition 98, which sets minimum annual funding for public schools, and Proposition 2, which specifies reserve deposits and debt payments, almost entirely offset any gains, according to the legislative analysis.

And it gets worse. The LAO said that, starting in 2027-28, California’s structural deficits are expected to grow to about $35 billion annually “due to spending growth continuing to outstrip revenue growth.”

The solution? Cut spending and/or increase revenue, the LAO report says.

But cut what, and raise money how? That’s up to Newsom and the Legislature to decide, and their difficult task will begin later this week when the governor releases his proposed budget.

Poking the billionaire

One controversial idea — outside of the legislative process — already is being kicked around.

A November ballot measure proposed by a labor organization, the Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West, would impose a one-time 5% wealth tax on billionaires that could raise $100 billion for healthcare programs. Opponents say it will drive wealthy, taxpaying, job-creating, economy-driving Californians out of the state.

The measure has yet to qualify for the November ballot but will receive ample attention regardless.

Supporters say the revenue is needed to backfill the massive federal funding cuts to healthcare that President Trump signed this summer under what’s known as the “Big Beautiful Bill,” according to a report by The Times’ Seema Mehta and Caroline Petrow-Cohen.

The California Budget & Policy Center estimates that as many as 3.4 million Californians could lose Medi-Cal coverage, more rural hospitals could close and other healthcare services would be slashed unless a new funding source is found.

Federal cuts to healthcare

If California does not backfill those federal cuts by raising taxes, or other creative means, costs for the state will still increase, according to the Legislative Analyst’s Office. That seems counterintuitive, since millions of Californians may lose coverage. But under the “Big Beautiful Bill,” cuts to federal cost sharing and a drop in health provider tax revenue will far outpace any potential cost savings for the state.

Newsom’s possible White House run will ensure that California’s budget shortfall and liberal policies it spends money on will whip up the nation’s caustic partisan divide. Near the top of the list will be California’s decision to extend state-sponsored healthcare coverage to low-income, undocumented immigrants. The expansion has cost the state billions and drawn sharp criticism from Republicans and, last year, Newsom and the Democratic-led Legislature reduced the expansion of state-sponsored healthcare to those immigrants due to the high cost.

On top of that, the monthly premiums for federally subsidized plans available on the Covered California exchange — often referred to as Obamacare — will soar by 97% on average for 2026. That’s due to decisions by the Republican-led Congress and Trump not to extend federal subsidies for that coverage. State officials estimate that roughly 400,000 Californians will drop their coverage under the program because of the higher cost. And California counties are ill prepared to step into the breach, as KFF Health News recently reported.

Needless to say, the healthcare situation will be extremely volatile in 2026, which will make the state’s upcoming high-stakes budget process even more unpredictable.

What else you should be reading

The must-read: Billionaire tax proposal sparks soul-searching for Californians
CA vs. Trump: Trump pulls back National Guard from L.A. and other cities, Newsom claims win
The L.A. Times Special: California rolls out sweeping new laws for 2026, from cellphone limits in schools to a ban on cat declawing

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Washington’s unprovoked aggression against Venezuela, and the likely coming ground attack, are an attempt at reimposing “proud, stable democracy” in the country, in the words of the US front surrogate, Maria Corina Machado.

When you decode the meaning of those words and the pretexts put forth for US aggression, you will find a remarkable culture of terrorism and gangsterism on display. Let us take a look.

The initial pretext was that Venezuela was an exporting “narco-terrorist” state. The knowingly fraudulent story did not merit even laughter by US intelligence agencies and the DEA. In the DEA’s most recent report, Venezuela is mentioned in only a single paragraph. In fact, Venezuela did not merit even a single mention in the one-hundred pages long 2025 UN World Drug Report, just like the EU’s own annual drug assessment report.

Nevertheless, Western media still incessantly report the fabricated charges without comment, while omitting the conclusions from Western intelligence, since it reached the wrong conclusion. The servility could not be more startling.

US propaganda then had to shift its main focus back to its staple: Maduro the dictator must be removed. “Maduro ramps up repression in Venezuela,” noted CNN, which failed to mention that the country is, after all, under a multi-pronged attack by a superpower. 

CNN did not mention, either, that no opposition funded and directed by a hostile superpower would ever be tolerated in the West’s best friends, like Egypt, Israel, the Philippines and so on. Countries that routinely murder – not just imprison – their opposition under far less onerous circumstances. 

The thought that such “opposition” would parade the capital calling for the overthrow of the government in any of these states is plainly absurd. However, that is exactly what happened in Venezuela, with CIA-sponsored figurehead Juan Guaido in 2019. It is Venezuela alone that must live up to such standards.

The idea that democracy promotion could be the real motivation behind the hostility is too ridiculous to merit even a comment. After all, the West lends its full support and sends hundreds of billions in arms to ICJ- and ICC-indicted Israel, Saudi Arabia (which doesn’t even pretend to have elections), Egypt and so on. 

Incidentally, for those interested in actual election fraud in Latin America, there is certainly no shortage of issues to be concerned about. Namely, the election manipulations that are run out of Washington, which is by far the league leader. 

Just to pick some examples known to all media offices – though few, if any, care: Trump was effectively “bribing Honduran voters” to “restore [the] narcotrafficking government to power”. Trump demanded that they vote for Tito Asfura, the colleague of the indicted narco-trafficker he just pardoned, Juan Orlando Hernández. Or else the US would withhold aid to the country, effectively “threatening to destroy the Honduran economy unless the country elects the oligarch-run National Party”. “Trump deployed the same strategy in Argentina’s October 2025 midterm elections,” in which he threatened to withhold a $20 billion bailout, “successfully strong-arming voters there into backing the party of the country’s mentally unstable president, Javier Milei.”

With a naval armada outside their shores to display what will happen if countries disobey, Washington thus sends the appropriate message: “you are free to choose as long as it is the right guys; otherwise you will starve.”

Thus, no reason for going to war with Venezuela worthy even of consideration from anyone with two functioning brain cells has been put forth.

The actual reason is explained openly by the aggressors themselves. In Trump’s own words: “When I left, Venezuela was ready to collapse. We would have taken it over. We would have gotten all that oil. It would have been right next door.” More recently, perhaps tired of the “narco-terrorism” script, Trump conceded that he wants “the oil and land rights.”

Congresswoman Maria Elvira Salazar boasted that “Venezuela, for the American oil companies, will be a field day, because it will be more than a trillion dollars in economic activity.”

This pitch was further explained by Washington’s minion Machado in a speech to the America Business Forum. As soon as she leads a “proud, stable democracy” there will be a “massive privatization program,” offering “a $1.7 trillion opportunity.” “We will open markets … And American companies are in, you know, a super strategic position to invest. … This country, Venezuela, is going to be the brightest opportunity for investment of American companies,” which “are going to make a lot of money.” 

The only criticism found in the political and media establishment against an attack, then, is tactical concerns. Will it work? Will Trump get away with aggression?

Thus, coup plotter Elliott Abrams explained that Venezuela “previously was” a democracy, and “has a long democratic history,” with which he must mean as a US-run junta and staged colony, if words have any meaning whatsoever. If aggression is successful, “oil production can start rising again … As it was before the Chávez-Maduro years, Venezuela can be a major supplier of oil to the United States and a partner in Latin America.” Hopefully “Cuba, and Nicaragua” will fall too, but aggression could hurt American “clout on the international stage.” Abrams concludes by complaining that the “economic and diplomatic pressure we put on Maduro in the first term was simply not enough.”

“For 26 years, the U.S. has tried to restore democracy in Venezuela through negotiations, concessions, sanctions and a combination of carrots and sticks. Nothing has worked,” noted former OAS ambassador and Harvard lecturer Arturo McGields. 

An illegal economic siege, eradicating perhaps 75% of the country’s GDP, and which has killed tens or hundreds of thousands of civilians, a failed mercenary invasion, and numerous coup attempts are not wrong in principle, only tactically unfortunate, since none of it “has worked.”

The euphoria liberals display at this show of sadism is quite revealing. For example, Rebecca Heinrichs pointed out that Cuba could fall if Venezuela is sufficiently squeezed. ”If you pressure” Venezuela “so much” and eliminate “80 to 85% of the revenue” through the illegal naval blockade imposed on them, then ”you are immediately going to have further crises” for the civilian population, and ”they are going to feel that pressure even more, and they will blame Maduro” – Cuba-style, in other words. 

James Story, one of the key architects of the illegal regime change operations against Venezuela in recent years, wrote an op-ed repeating all the standard propaganda charges. Story gloated that the recent oil blockade on Venezuelan exports “is a more effective and acceptable way” of overthrowing the government, since “squeezing this revenue stream would” starve the population sufficiently so as to “recognize that life without him [Maduro] in power is preferable to him remaining”.

You will notice the transparent hypocrisy, since the US a month prior to its “total and complete blockade” on Venezuela denounced “Iran’s use of military forces to conduct an armed boarding and seizure of a commercial vessel in international waters [which] constitutes a blatant violation of international law, undermining freedom of navigation and the free flow of commerce”. 

It is not that Western journalists do not know about Washington’s propaganda plot when it condemned Iran only to then conduct global piracy itself, since it was publicly reported. Rather, connecting the dots would expose the media as totally servile to state propaganda, and give the game away.

To be sure, there is nothing that causes more outrage than Venezuela supposedly collaborating with the “enemy states.” Even if the charges are true, this illustrates the leading principle that must be accepted if you wish to be part of the debate: no country, however weak, has the right to defend itself against unprovoked Western aggression.

Thus, Elliot Abrams demanded the US attack Venezuela due to its supposed “cooperation with China, Cuba, Iran, and Russia, which gives countries hostile to U.S. interests a base of operations on the South American mainland,” with weapons that can “reach U.S. territory from Venezuela”. Abrams has no issues with the “legality” of such strikes, only “doubts about the chances of success.” “Merely starving” the country “will not be enough: it must be forced out of power with military strikes, which will throw the regime’s support structures, including in the military, into disarray and make them fear for their own futures.” 

No doubt the Nazi press “criticized” Operation Barbarossa on the same grounds before invading the Soviet Union. Their ideological heirs have learned that “starving” the population is not enough to win; they must smash their opponents “and make them fear for their own futures.”

In fact, without a hint of irony, we read that it is Venezuela with “Castro’s Cuba” who are “attacking” the US “asymmetrically” in Machado’s words – not the other way around, of course. The goal of US aggression is to open “an extraordinary frontier for US investment in energy, infrastructure, technology and agriculture.” 

In short, Washington and its allies cannot tolerate that Venezuela is “associated with” those that the Mafia Don has prohibited, as liberal media darling David Frum put it. So the “goal is to restore the Venezuelan democracy that existed before [Hugo] Chávez and Maduro” – which, again, must refer to the US-directed junta and staged oligarchy.

This is what is called “public debate,” in which the outermost “critics” warn that Western aggression simply may not succeed, while the hawks joyfully celebrate that “military strikes” can “make them fear for their own futures.”

The deep totalitarian streak in Western intellectual culture is beautifully illustrated by these statements, as well as the reactions to them: nil. 

Loyal and brainwashed Westerners cannot notice that the same type of arguments could just as well be used by Putin if he wished to invade Sweden, Ayatollah Khamenei to invade Israel or Xi Jinping to invade Taiwan.

This shows that Western intellectuals reflexively view world order and violence the same way they claim Putin does: “we have our sphere of influence, and must boss it as we please.” Such simple observations cannot be uttered in cultivated circles, no matter how obvious they may be.

Through such means, the Western media have effectively become servants of one of the century’s textbook examples of an unprovoked campaign of aggression against a sovereign state.

Andi Olluri is a freelance writer on propaganda and foreign affairs, publishing mostly in European and occasionally in American leftist papers. In his professional life, he does research in epidemiology and evidence-based medicine, studying at Sahlgrenska Academy University Hospital (Gothenburg, Sweden).

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Venezuelanalysis editorial staff.

SACRAMENTO — Lou Cannon was a good friend and a daunting competitor. And he was a national treasure.

The retired newspaper reporter and Ronald Reagan biographer died Dec. 19 at age 92 in hometown Santa Barbara from complications of a stroke.

I use the words “national treasure” hesitantly because they smack of trite hyperbole. But they truly fit.

That’s because it was Cannon who brought to light through several Reagan books innumerable broad details of the actor-turned-politician’s important and often controversial actions as America’s 40th president and California’s 33rd governor.

Bookshelves are crammed with Reagan tomes. But no author has been so thorough on a sweeping scale as Cannon. That’s because he put in the time and did the hard work of sifting through records and conducting hundreds of interviews, then painstakingly explaining it all in very readable nongovernmentese.

Cannon also covered Reagan up close as a reporter during the early years of his governorship and both his terms as president.

Reagan once asked Cannon why he was embarking on yet another book about him. “I’m going to do it until I get it right,” the writer replied, only half-jokingly, according to Cannon’s son, longtime journalist Carl Cannon.

In all, Lou Cannon authored five books on Reagan‘s tenures as governor and president.

That’s an invaluable contribution to historians and contemporary America’s sense of this oft-misunderstood and underestimated world leader.

But that’s not what mainly prompted me to write this column. I wanted to point out Cannon’s core strength. And that was his dedication to strict nonpartisanship in writing, whether it be straight news stories for the Washington Post, syndicated columns or his Reagan biographies.

I knew Cannon for 60 years, competed against him covering Reagan for at least 20 and we became friends very early based on professional respect. In none of my countless conversations with him did I ever learn whether he leaned right or left. He registered to vote as an “independent,” as do many of us political journalists.

Cannon was the type of journalist that millions of Americans — particularly conservative Republicans and MAGA loyalists — claim is rare today: An unbiased reporter who doesn’t slant stories toward one side or the other, especially left.

Actually, most straight news reporters follow that nonpartisan credo or they leave the business. Columnists? We’re supposed to be opinionated. But for some, their opinions are too often rooted more in predetermined bias than in objective facts. But that has always been true, even in the so-called “good ol’ days.”

Cannon’s sole goal was to report the news accurately with analysis and, if possible, beat his competitors to the punch. He beat us plenty, I hate to admit.

I vividly remember one such beating:

At the 1980 Republican National Convention in Detroit, Cannon scooped everyone for a full news cycle on Reagan selecting former campaign rival George Bush as his vice presidential running mate. Still pounding in my ears are the loud whoops and cheers by Cannon’s colleagues as he walked into the Post working area — next to the Los Angeles Times quarters — after Reagan formally announced Bush’s selection. It was deflating.

News sources readily opened up to Cannon, who was intense but always wore a slight smile.

I asked former Reagan speechwriter and Republican strategist Ken Khachigian what Cannon’s secret was.

“You’d get a fair shot from him,” Khachigian says. “He’d always be straight. He just wanted to get information mostly and find out what was going on.

“He had a way of talking to people that made them comfortable and he’d get a lot out of them. He wasn’t aggressive. He had a soft personality, one of his benefits. He’d put people at ease, a big advantage.”

His son, Carl Cannon, says: “If he’d been in politics, he’d have been a Democrat. But he didn’t go into politics. He went into journalism. He wasn’t partisan. He was a reporter who wanted to know what happened and why.”

Cannon began covering the state Capitol in 1965 for the San Jose Mercury News and became friends with Jud Clark, a young legislative staffer. Clark ultimately co-founded the monthly California Journal and persuaded Cannon to write for it on the side. Cannon did that for many years and when it folded, followed up by writing columns for a successor publication, the Capitol Weekly.

Cannon just loved to report and write and juggled it all in — reporting full time for the Washington Post, authoring books and writing for friends’ small publications in Sacramento.

“He would always want something new. In interviews, he didn’t want the standard stock story,” Clark says.

“Lou was curious about everything,” says Rich Ehisen, his longtime editor at Capitol Weekly. “He liked understanding what was going on and breaking things down. He told the straight story unvarnished. Never shortchanged on facts.”

Cannon was a workaholic, but he also knew how to carve out time for fun.

One summer while we covered Reagan vacationing at his beloved Santa Barbara hilltop ranch, Cannon decided he wanted to drive down to Los Angeles to see a Dodgers’ night game. But it’s risky to abandon your post while bird-dogging the president. Anything could happen. And you’d need to explain to your bosses why you weren’t there but your competitors were.

Cannon’s solution was to also get good seats for the two reporters he considered his main competitors– Steve Weisman of the New York Times and me at the L.A. Times. We’d provide each other some cover if any news broke out around the president, which it didn’t. Cannon even managed to wrangle us free dinners in a large suite overlooking the playing field.

He’ll be missed as a friend and a journalist — but not as an unrelenting competitor.

What else you should be reading

The must-read: How the Trump administration sold out public lands in 2025
The Golden State rules: After a year of insults, raids, arrests and exile, a celebration of the California immigrant
The L.A. Times Special: America tried something new in 2025. It’s not going well

Until next week,
George Skelton

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SACRAMENTO — I’ve got a wish list for Santa and it’s topped by this urgent request: a remodeled president with at least an ounce of humanity and humility.

Maybe a Ronald Reagan type. I’m not referring here to ideology or policies. Just common decency, someone who acts presidential.

I know, forget it. That’s beyond Santa’s reach. It would require a miracle. And that’s not likely to happen with President Trump, who seems increasingly to be auditioning for the devil’s disciple.

But you’d think as we approach our nation’s 250th birthday, America could be led by a president who at minimum doesn’t publicly trash the newly deceased.

Someone who follows the basic rules of good behavior and respect for others that our mothers taught us.

For Trump, the Golden Rule seems to be only about cheapening the historic Oval Office with tasteless gilded garnishments, turning it into an extension of his Mar-a-Lago resort. That’s what you’d expect from someone who would pave over the lovely Rose Garden.

But I’ve gotten off the point: the despicable way our unhinged president treats people he deems the enemy because they’ve criticized him, as we’ve got a right and often a duty to do in a democratic America.

What our president said about Rob Reiner after the actor-director-producer and his wife Michele were brutally stabbed to death in their Brentwood home, allegedly by their son Nick, should not have shocked us coming from Trump.

After all, this is a guy who once said that the late Sen. John McCain, a Navy pilot shot down over North Vietnam, tortured, maimed and held captive for five years, was “not a war hero … I like people that weren’t captured.”

He also once mocked a disabled New York Times reporter at a campaign rally, saying: “The poor guy, you ought to see this guy.” Then Trump jerked his arms around imitating someone with palsy.

He frequently attacks female reporters for their looks.

Recently, he called all Somali immigrants “garbage. … We don’t want them in our country.” As for Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar, a onetime Somalian refugee, “she’s garbage. Her friends are garbage.”

But even with Trump’s sordid history of insults and insensitivity, what he disrespectfully said about Reiner was stunning. He implied that the Hollywood legend was killed by someone angered by Reiner’s criticism of Trump. Again, everything’s all about him, in this egotistical president’s mind.

Trump said the Reiners died “reportedly due to the anger he caused others through his massive, unyielding and incurable affliction with a mind crippling disease known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME.”

Then the next day, he doubled down, telling reporters that Reiner “was a deranged person. … I thought he was very bad for our country.”

Topping off the holiday season for Trump, he orchestrated the renaming of Washington’s classy John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts after himself. From now on, it’s to be called the Trump Kennedy Center.

What’s next? The Washington National Cathedral?

OK, next on my Santa’s wish list is a governor who spends his last year in office trying to improve California rather than his presidential prospects. Actually, he could do the latter by doing the former: making this state a better place to live and proving his ability to sensibly govern.

Too many of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s projects fall flat, collapse or are a waste of energy and dollars.

One recently announced Newsom venture particularly is questionable. He seems to be using state resources and tax money to expand his overdone war with Trump rather than helping Californians with their everyday lives.

The governor unveiled a new state-run website that tracks what his office calls Trump’s “criminal cronies.” It catalogs major criminal convictions that were followed by Trump pardons — from Jan. 6 rioters to former politicians and business tycoons.

Yeah, well, so what? I suppose some people may be interested in that. But at taxpayers’ expense? Will the information lower gas prices? Make it easier to buy a home? Pay for childcare?

Here’s just one example of a Newsom program that failed miserably:

Early in his administration the governor announced with great fanfare that he was increasing fees on telephone service to pay for upgrading California’s 911 emergency communication system. The state spent $450 million, couldn’t make the new stuff work and abandoned the project, the Sacramento Bee reported after a lengthy investigation. Now they’re apparently going to start all over.

A little hands-on supervision by the governor next time could help.

Also on my wish list: A Legislature that doesn’t hibernate through the winter and wait until late spring before starting to push bills.

They’d need to change legislative rules. But Democrats with their supermajorities could do practically anything they wanted — even work earnestly during the cold months.

Either that or just stay home.

Included in the gift package: Legislation focused more on quality and less on quantity. This year, the Legislature passed 917 bills. My guess is that 100 meaty measures would have sufficed.

There’s one more item on my Santa list that all of America needs: A new casual greeting to replace “How ya doing?”

Nobody really wants to hear how most people are doing and they probably don’t want to candidly say anyway — not in an elevator, on the sidewalk or in a restaurant.

“Bad stomach flu,” I might honestly answer. You really want to hear that while chomping on a hamburger.

So, what do we replace it with?

Maybe simply: “Good morning.” Or “Go Dodgers.”

Or “Go Trump” — far away out of earshot.

What else you should be reading

The must-read: Ronald Reagan biographer, legendary California journalist Lou Cannon dies
The TK: Newsom taps former CDC leaders critical of Trump-era health policies for new initiative
The L.A. Times Special: In a divided America, Rob Reiner was a tenacious liberal who connected with conservatives

Until next week,
George Skelton

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WASHINGTON — Today’s political consensus crosses all ages, demographics and party lines: Three out of four Americans think the economy is in a slump. It is not just in their heads. Economic growth this year has been practically stagnant, save for one exception, economists say.

A national California economy

Hundreds of billions of dollars invested by California-based tech giants in artificial intelligence infrastructure accounted for 92% of the nation’s GDP growth this year, according to a Harvard analysis, supported by other independent economic studies.

It is a remarkable boon for a handful of companies that could lay the groundwork for future U.S. economic leadership. But, so far, little evidence exists that their ventures are expanding opportunities for everyday Americans.

“You have to watch out for AI investments — they may continue to carry the economy or they may slow down or crash, bringing the rest of the economy together with them,” said Daron Acemoglu, an economics professor at MIT. “We are not seeing much broad-based productivity improvements from AI or other innovations in the economy, because if we were, we would see productivity growth and investment picking up the rest of the economy as well.”

Even in California itself, where four of the top five AI companies are based, the AI boom has yet to translate into tangible pocketbook benefits. On the contrary, California shed 158,734 jobs through October, reflecting rising unemployment throughout the country, with layoffs rippling through the tech and entertainment sectors. Consumer confidence in the state has reached a five-year low. And AI fueled a wave of cuts, cited in 48,000 job losses nationwide this year.

“It is evident that the U.S. economy would have been almost stagnant, absent the capital expenditures by the AI industry,” said Servaas Storm, an economist at the Institute for New Economic Thinking, whose own analysis found that half of U.S. economic growth from the second quarter of 2024 through the second quarter of 2025 was due to spending on AI data centers.

The scale of investments by AI companies, coupled with lagging productivity gains expected from AI tools, is spawning widespread fears of a new bubble on Wall Street, where Big Tech has driven index gains throughout the year.

The top 10 stocks listed in the Standard & Poor’s 500 index, most of which are in the tech sector, were responsible for 60% of the yearlong rally, far outperforming the rest of the market. And the few who benefited from dividends fueled much of the rest of this year’s economic growth, with the vast majority of U.S. consumption spending attributed to the richest 10% to 20% of American households.

“There were ripple effects into high-end travel, luxury spending, high-end real estate and other sectors of the economy driven by the financial elite,” said Peter Atwater, an economics professor at William & Mary and president of Financial Insyghts, a consulting firm. “It tells the average consumer that while things are good at the top, they haven’t benefited.”

Stan Veuger, a senior fellow in economic policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute and a frequent visiting lecturer at Harvard, said that slowing growth and persistently high inflation were diminishing the effects of the AI boom.

“Obviously, that’s not a recipe for sustainable growth,” he said.

U.S. growth today is based on “the hope, optimism, belief or hype that the massive investments in AI will pay off — in terms of higher productivity, perhaps lower prices, more innovation,” Storm added. “It should tell everyday Americans that the economy is not in good shape and that the AI industry and government are betting the farm — and more — on a very risky and unproven strategy involving the scaling of AI.”

Trump’s AI bet

The Trump administration has fully embraced AI as a cornerstone of its economic policy, supporting more than $1 trillion in investments over the course of the year, including a $500-billion project to build out massive data centers with private partners.

Trump recently took executive action attempting to limit state regulations on AI designed to protect consumers. And House Republicans passed legislation this week that would significantly cut red tape for data center construction.

Administration officials say the United States has little choice but to invest aggressively in the technology, or else risk losing the race for AI superiority to China — a binary outcome that AI experts warn will result in irreversible, exponential growth for the winner.

But there is little expectation that their investments will bear fruit in the short term. Data centers under construction under the Stargate program, in partnership with OpenAI and Oracle, will begin coming online in 2026, with the largest centers expected to become operative in 2028.

“AI can only fulfill its promise if we build the compute to power it,” OpenAI Chief Executive Sam Altman said at the launch of the Stargate project. “That compute is the key to ensuring everyone can benefit from AI and to unlocking future breakthroughs.”

In the meantime, the Americans expected to benefit are those who can join in the investment boom — for as long as it lasts.

“2025 has been a very good year for people who already have significant wealth, a mediocre year for everyone else,” said Kenneth Rogoff, a prominent economist and professor at Harvard. “While the stock market has exploded, wage growth has been barely above inflation.”

“Whether the rest of the economy will catch fire from AI investment remains to be seen, but near term it is likely that AI will take away far more good jobs than it will create,” Rogoff added. “The Trump team is nevertheless optimistic that this will all go their way, but the team is largely built to carry out the president’s vision rather than to question it.”

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The deep dive: ‘Both sides botched it.’ Bass, in unguarded moment, rips responses to Palisades, Eaton fires
The L.A. Times Special: Hiltzik: Republicans don’t have a healthcare plan, just a plan to kill Obamacare

More to come,
Michael Wilner
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SACRAMENTO — It turns out Proposition 50 smacked California Republicans with a double blow heading into the 2026 congressional elections.

First, there was the reshaping of House districts aimed at flipping five Republican-held seats to Democrats.

Now, we learn that the proposition itself juiced up Democratic voter enthusiasm for the elections.

Voter enthusiasm normally results in a higher casting of ballots.

It’s all about the national battle for control of the U.S. House of Representatives — and Congress potentially exercising its constitutional duty to provide some checks and balance against the president. Democrats need a net pickup of only three seats in November’s elections to dethrone Republicans.

President Trump is desperate to keep his GOP toadies in power. So, he has coerced — bullied and threatened — some red-state governors and legislatures into rejiggering Democratic-held House seats to make them more Republican-friendly.

When Texas quickly obliged, Gov. Gavin Newsom retaliated with a California Democratic gerrymander aimed at neutralizing the Lone Star State’s partisan mid-decade redistricting.

California’s counterpunch became Proposition 50, which was approved by a whopping 64.4% of the state’s voters.

Not only did Proposition 50 redraw some GOP-held House seats to tinge them blue, it stirred up excitement about the 2026 elections among Democratic voters.

That’s the view of Mark Baldassare, polling director for the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California. And it makes sense. Umpteen millions of dollars were spent by Newsom and Proposition 50 backers advertising the evils of Trump and the need for Democrats to take over the House.

A PPIC poll released last week showed a significant “enthusiasm gap” between Democratic and Republican voters regarding the House contests.

“One of the outcomes of Proposition 50 is that it focused voters on the midterm elections and made them really excited about voting next year,” Baldassare says.

At least, Democrats are showing excitement. Republicans, not so much.

In the poll, likely voters were asked whether they were more enthusiastic than usual about voting in the congressional elections or less enthusiastic.

Overall, 56% were more enthusiastic and 41% less enthusiastic. But that’s not the real story.

The eye-opener is that among Democrats, an overwhelming 72% were more enthusiastic. And 60% of Republicans were less enthusiastic.

“For Democrats, that’s unusually high,” Baldassare says.

To put this in perspective, I looked back at responses to the same question asked in a PPIC poll exactly two years ago before the 2024 elections. At that time, Democrats were virtually evenly split over their enthusiasm or lack of it concerning the congressional races. In fact, Republicans expressed more enthusiasm.

Still, Democrats gained three congressional seats in California in 2024. So currently they outnumber Republicans in the state’s House delegation by a lopsided 43 to 9.

If Democrats could pick up three seats when their voters weren’t even lukewarm about the election, huge party gains seem likely in California next year. Democratic voters presumably will be buoyed by enthusiasm and the party’s candidates will be boosted by gerrymandering.

“Enthusiasm is contagious,” says Dan Schnur, a former Republican operative who teaches political communication at USC and UC Berkeley. “If the party’s concentric circle of committed activists is enthusiastic, that excitement tends to spread outward to other voters.”

Schnur adds: “Two years ago, Democrats were not motivated about Joe Biden or Kamala Harris. Now they’re definitely motivated about Donald Trump. And in order to win midterm elections, you need to have a motivated base.”

Democratic strategist David Townsend says that “enthusiasm is the whole ballgame. It’s the ultimate barometer of whether my message is working and the other side’s is not working.”

The veteran consultant recalls that Democrats “used to go door to door handing out potholders, potted plants, refrigerator magnets and doughnuts trying to motivate voters.

“But the best turnout motivator Democrats have ever had in California is Donald J. Trump.”

In the poll, 71% of voters disapproved of the way Trump is handling his job; just 29% approved. It was even worse for Congress, with 80% disapproving.

Among Democratic voters alone, disapproval of Trump was practically off the chart at 97%.

But 81% of Republicans approved of the president.

Among voters of all political persuasions who expressed higher than usual enthusiasm about the House elections, 77% said they‘d support the Democratic candidate. Also: 79% said Congress should be controlled by Democrats, 84% disapproved of how Congress is handling its job and 79% disapproved of Trump.

And those enthused about the congressional elections believe that, by far, the most important problem facing the nation is “political extremism [and] threats to democracy.” A Democratic shorthand for Trump.

The unseemly nationwide redistricting battle started by Trump is likely to continue well into the election year as some states wrestle with whether to oblige the power-hungry president and others debate retaliating against him.

Sane politicians on both sides should have negotiated a ceasefire immediately after combat erupted. But there wasn’t enough sanity to even begin talks.

Newsom was wise politically to wade into the brawl — wise for California Democrats and also for himself as a presidential hopeful trying to become a national hero to party activists.

“Eleven months before an election, nothing is guaranteed,” Schnur says. “But these poll numbers suggest that Democrats are going to start the year with a big motivational advantage.”

Trump is the Democrats’ proverbial Santa who keeps on giving.

What else you should be reading

The must-read: Kristi Noem grilled over L.A. Purple Heart Army vet who self-deported
The TK: Newsom expresses unease about his new, candid autobiography: ‘It’s all out there’
The L.A. Times Special: A Times investigation finds fraud and theft are rife at California’s county fairs

Until next week,
George Skelton

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