Nation

Nimesh Patel’s stock in comedy has been on an upswing lately. From sold-out shows to a skyrocketing social media following and the release of his first Netflix special, “Buy the Dip,” last month, it’s been amazing the difference a year makes. The new hour filmed in Washington, D.C., delivers surgically precise, dryly delivered jokes and personal stories about America falling apart from the heart of our nation’s capital.

Despite the dire circumstances, it’s in our country’s DNA to believe in the power of the rebound. So does Patel, who’s seen one play out with his own career after taking an unexpected hit. Last fall, the comedian faced public backlash for his decision to accept — and then reject — a spot on the controversial Riyadh Comedy Festival, for which he’d been offered $125,000 to perform along with major names like Dave Chappelle, Bill Burr, Sebastian Maniscalco, Whitney Cummings and many more. The rollout of a comedy festival in Saudi Arabia, a nation whose government has been accused of human rights abuses and, according to U.S. intelligence, the brutal murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi at its consulate in Turkey, lead to a war of words on the internet aimed at the comedians on the lineup. Hearing the scrutiny loud and clear and ultimately deciding the money wasn’t worth it, Patel decided to pull out and tell the world via Instagram that he wasn’t going, opting instead (and somewhat grudgingly) to make up for the lost bag with 40 extra shows added to his nationwide theater tour. The response to his video announcement drew even more ire from comedy fans. Looking back on it now, he admits his delivery at the time, looking tired and somewhat annoyed by his own decision, wasn’t the greatest.

“People read that as sarcasm and like woe is me,” Patel said in a recent conversation with The Times over Zoom. “I can see why they thought that I was a poor actor in the video that I posted. But everyone acts better than the person they see on the screen until it becomes their life and then they’re like, ‘Oh s—, yeah, I probably would have done the same thing.’ So, f— them!”

Despite the roasting he received, Patel stuck to his word and did the shows. Stepping on stage night after night to earn the money he had planned on making last year from one canceled gig in Saudi Arabia gave him the reps he says he needed to perfect the new hour of material. The title “Buy the Dip” is a nod to the remnants of his former career in finance — it’s stock market terminology about buying a failing asset with the hope that it will go up in value again. But it also describes the optimism from which he now makes his decisions as a parent and as someone who still believes that things can get better, even at their lowest.

“I have to be an optimist, I have to believe the world is getting better, because otherwise, what the f— did I do by having a kid?” he said.

In his Netflix debut special, “Buy the Dip,” comedian Nimesh Patel turns personal setbacks and a troubled America into sharply observed jokes grounded in unexpected optimism.

(Courtesy of Netflix)

His belief in positivity followed him to D.C. to record the special, the town where he says he got his first big breaks as a comedian opening for major acts like Maz Jobrani at the Warner Theatre, headlining the Bier Baron and the DC Improv and even the Kennedy Center — “or the now-defunct Trump whatever you’re supposed to call it,” he joked. When it comes to his comedy trajectory, taking the long view is essential to realizing that Patel’s path to this special started over a decade ago when Chris Rock discovered him while on stage in Brooklyn and helped him get writing gigs on “Saturday Night Live” and the 2016 Oscars ceremony, two opportunities that solidified his resolve to go into comedy full-time after he lost his job in finance.

As an Indian American comedian, he knows there is a spotlight of cultural representation on him, which he notes in the special and even makes fun of. That kind of attention isn’t on just him but also on Indian Americans in even higher-profile jobs, such as, say, the first Indian American director of the FBI, the chronically embattled Kash Patel.

“Let me be clear, it’s really difficult to both be proud of Kash and despise him at the same time,” Patel says. On the one hand, there’s the astonishing feat of going from being one of the few Indian kids in Virginia amid post-9/11 racism to becoming head of the nation’s domestic intelligence agency. On the other there’s a career riddled with gaffes and allegedly immoral conduct that makes him an easy punching bag for the writers at “SNL” with the help of his late-night TV doppelganger Aziz Ansari.

“For him to go from that to then be serving the country at this level, that is an incredible achievement, and it’s just so sad that that is who our representative is at the moment,” Patel said. “Just like when an Uber driver says to me, ‘Your last name is Patel? Like Kash?’ I’m like, ‘Yeah, just like that, but not like that at all, you know?’”

Patel revisits the backlash he faced after accepting, then withdrawing from, Saudi Arabia’s Riyadh Comedy Festival, and how dozens of extra tour dates helped shape his new material.

(Courtesy of Netflix)

While trying to distance himself from one person who shares his family name, when it comes to his actual family, Patel has plenty of jokes of being too close to them. Like many millennials, he’s squeezed tight between caring for aging parents and raising a child. At 40, he says in the special that people in his age bracket have become the “Sandwich Generation.” Though, to be fair to his toddler, keeping track of his parents is a much harder task at times.

“They won’t take help. They’re very independent, and I imagine I was the same way when I was growing up,” Patel said. “So it’s that in itself is just like the Progressive commercial that we’re all becoming our parents, but in real life and not driven by a corporate marketing team. It’s just funny to see that play out.”

Whether the obstacles he faces in life are laugh-out-loud funny or career hurdles that threaten to topple him into the abyss, the idea that he can always bounce back is the key to staying unfazed during the highs and the lows of life. And to the extent that anyone can take a lesson from Patel in the art of staying even-keeled, he hopes the special will make people feel a little less bad about the country being on the brink of destruction.

“Everyone knows that we’re not in a good spot right now,” he said. “The dip is here now. I fully believe that we can recover, I hope that we can. It’s going to be a lot of pain. I don’t know if we’re at the bottom just yet, but I’m optimistic, and I have to be. Otherwise, I don’t know what I’m doing.”

Oct. 3, 2026 3:04 AM PT

Like any other building from 1971, or a democracy created in 1776, the Kennedy Center could use some attention and possibly some structural repair. But I was a vice president at that arts center in Washington, and I can tell you that maintenance is almost certainly not why it closed its doors last month.

Officially, it’s closed because a section of the Grand Foyer ceiling gave way in a storm, plaster crashing to the floor, and the building needed to be shut down for safety. The Justice Department itself has argued in court filings that there is no real emergency requiring the closure. The board, meanwhile, has approved a quarter-billion-dollar renovation plan, put together without competitive bidding, while the president muses openly about tearing the building down altogether if his own name isn’t affixed to it. This administration is effectively bulldozing arts infrastructure in an attempt to abolish an infrastructure of the imagination.

I watch all of this from the outside now. When the new “leadership” took over last year, my team and I were among the first let go. My department worked on free public programming, on creative equity, on cross-sector community development and on measuring the social impact of art. That we were among the first out the door probably tells you everything you need to know about who was put in charge of the place.

As an American, as an artist and as a former member of its labor force, I understand that the Kennedy Center is more than a building. It is a living memorial to a president who was taken from us too soon, a man who had the audacity to aim for the moon before the science existed to get us there. To honor that kind of visionary, this country built a center for the creative impossible, and gave it his name.

And true to that name, my job at the Kennedy Center was to investigate the correlation between the arts economy and the economy of civic aspiration. As a team, we believed that inspiration erodes apathy and yields empathy. The building is a container of federal infrastructure, but the arts that imbue the Kennedy Center make the argument that inspiration itself is part of the infrastructure of our democracy. An arts center is built to ask: “What are the conditions necessary to dream together in public?”

Who, if not artists, are the authors of the public imagination? When a baby is born, or your daughter gets married, do you read a piece of legislation to commemorate the occasion or do you quote a poem, or dedicate a song? Who, if not artists, might light the path to a post-fear economy?

So why invade an arts center? What could possibly be gained by shuttering a national citadel for creative excellence? How perverse that a president whose policies have underfunded education and the arts would gut a national sanctuary for curiosity, and then demand that his name be emblazoned on the shell of what was. This president has used executive orders to intimidate artists, banned writers and journalists, sabotaged arts education, created oppressive red lines within the National Endowment for the Arts and threatened philanthropic organizations that fund arts and culture, and then he turns around and wants his name on our national cultural center.

When I worked there, the Kennedy Center wasn’t perfect. No institution is. But the business was viable, the staff was talented and reliable, and the work we made together would, often enough, touch something close to the sublime. Our job, like those of so many arts workers across the country, was to activate creative magic in service of social cohesion and well-being.

This is what gets lost in the noise of storms and lawsuits and renovation budgets: Entertainment is everywhere, but inspiration is rare. Sometimes you are sitting in a dark theater with strangers and the right note gets struck, and you hear it with your ears but you feel it somewhere else entirely. In the gut and heart. And the person next to you, a stranger, feels it too, at the exact same moment. You can practically feel the room change. All that magic can happen in one theater, and the Kennedy Center has nine of them. If a solar panel uses the energy of the sun to power a building, an intentionally run theater can use the energy of its inspired audiences to power a city.

Art holds memory. It also holds the horizon, the sense of what a country could still become. Patriotism as enacted by the creative community takes the American experiment seriously enough to question, examine, remember what we’ve forgotten and catalyze collective American dreaming. That is what the Kennedy Center was named for: a president who dreamed of a country unafraid of beauty, unafraid of grace.

Thankfully, America’s creative labor force tirelessly stewards that sense of creative provocation and patriotic inquiry. It is alive everywhere, including in the work of individual artists such as Carrie Mae Weems or in the work of collectives such as For Freedoms and their “America, the Beautiful” initiative.

We, the chronically underwhelmed citizenry of the United States, can’t afford one less pillar of creativity. We should be fighting to reconstitute any and all artistic institutions with an eye toward an inspired future.

Marc Bamuthi Joseph, a spoken-word artist and actor, was vice president for social impact at the Kennedy Center.

The California I grew up in had its pluses and minuses, just like the state I’m living in now.

But consider this:

In 1974, I wrote a check for a semester of college.

The fee was $98.

That was the cost of registration, by the way. Tuition for in-state residents was free at San José State University and other public universities in California. The state’s leaders believed subsidized higher education would serve the greater good and seed economic growth.

Two years after graduating, I was working as a sportswriter for a small Bay Area newspaper. My spouse was a drug store clerk. Together we made less than $20,000 a year.

And we bought a brand-new house, 45 minutes east of Oakland, for just under $50,000.

In a thousand ways, we’re living in a different California today. Tuition and fees for a semester on a Cal State campus now run about $4,500, and the average mid-tier home costs about $775,000 in some places and far more in others, which is out of reach for nearly 80% of working people.

So as I watched the gubernatorial debate Wednesday night between the two men who want to lead us into the future, I was wondering which California is better in terms of hope, opportunity and livability?

The one I was born in during the postwar boom, or the one we’re living in now?

There’s no easy answer. The California of my youth was more affordable, but it was no utopian dreamscape. Housing discrimination and segregation were deep-seated, and the Los Angeles sky was the color of swamp water.

In the last half of the 20th century, California went on to become a global leader in technology, aerospace, the arts and healthcare, and its investment in public education helped build an economic superpower. Even the air got cleaned up, to a degree.

But for all of California’s riches and unrivaled natural beauty, it’s fair to say things are out of whack at the moment. How is it that the world’s fourth-largest economy also has the nation’s highest poverty rate?

There’s a flotilla of yachts, but millions of have-nots, and enough homeless people to fill stadiums. If we’re so progressive, and swimming in more venture capital than the rest of the nation combined, why are the masses crippled by a housing shortage and the high cost of living, and why did we build a soaring higher education model while letting our once exalted K-12 system sink in national rankings?

If California weren’t so lopsidedly blue, Republican candidate Steve Hilton might get a little more traction with a campaign built around the idea that there’s an easy explanation for the state’s misery of problems: Democrats have been in charge for years, they’ve mucked things up, and Xavier Becerra is yet another textbook California liberal who will stay the course.

“It’s impossible for regular working people to live in this state anymore,” Hilton charged during the debate, calling out over-regulation, the high cost of living, the housing shortage and a homelessness problem that “shames” our state. “And all you’re offering,” Hilton continued, “is more of the same, backed by the same corrupt machine in Sacramento.”

Becerra, meanwhile, kept handcuffing Hilton to President Trump, a good move, given that the president has helped launch an idiotic war, gummed up the economy, and seen his favorability plummet.

Hilton is not entirely off base, although there’s no evidence he has plausible solutions.

What he doesn’t tell you is that other states have their own problems, many of which have more to do with global economic forces — and President Trump’s war-mongering and tariff tirades — than with public policy decisions at the state level.

When I was a lad, my father drove a milk truck, and then a bread truck, and then he sold candy and tobacco for a wholesale distributor based in Oakland, near the Coliseum, where he’d take me to A’s games but save a few bucks by parking next to the railroad tracks a half-mile away from the parking lot.

His jobs were mostly unionized. Unions were plentiful in the private sector back then. My family saved up for a house while we lived in an apartment, and then I paid next to nothing for a college degree.

The boldness of that idea — a free education at an elite university, with a lofty if unfulfilled goal of equal access for all — is still a testament to California’s long-ago grand ambition, even if Gov. Ronald Reagan eventually ended free tuition.

In her new book, “California Dreams: The Making and Remaking of the University of California,” Miriam Pawel references a quote from UC Berkeley alum Joan Didion, who called the system “the most coherent expression of the California possibility.”

The staircase I climbed was the essence of what USC professor Natalia Molina called “the infrastructure” of upward mobility. In her immigrant family, her grandmother established an Echo Park restaurant that Molina wrote a book about — “A Place at the Nayarit” — and her mother ran the bar there after attending bartending school.

Molina went to UCLA, and is now both a MacArthur Foundation fellow (the “genius” grant) and a Guggenheim fellow.

“There’s not that same path for upward mobility,” Molina said. “But there sure seems to be a path for downward mobility.”

That brings me back to the economy, and lessons I learned in 2018, when I spent several weeks in and around Telfair Elementary School in Pacoima, looking into why nearly a quarter of the students were homeless.

The answer? Several once-bustling manufacturing and aerospace companies in the area had shut down. The new economy was fast food and big box stores. Pay dropped; housing prices spiked. It was a snapshot of a changing world — one we haven’t yet adapted to.

Modern politics is not built to foster long-term thinking about such challenges, said longtime political strategist Darry Sragow.

“What are the dreams, what are the aspirations, where do you want to go?” said Sragow, who doesn’t know the answers but would like to at least hear the questions. “I keep looking for somebody who will do that.”

Agoura Hills resident and attorney Dan Douglass, 80, who detests President Trump and isn’t a fan of Hilton, told me that as a moderate Republican, he feels like “a man without a party.” But he is not without an answer to California’s housing problem.

“They’ve made it too complicated to build anything,” Douglass said. “Too many permits. Too much time to build.”

He is not wrong.

Samuel Trachtman, a political scientist with the UC Berkeley Economy and Society Initiative, argues that despite recent legislative progress on the housing crisis, state policies are restricting growth and making California more unaffordable.

“California must reduce regulatory costs that fall disproportionately on low- and middle-income residents,” Trachtman wrote in a recent four-part analysis.

“The state has “long led the nation in regulations promoting safety, sustainability, and quality,” he went on. “These policies can produce strong benefits. But they can also drive up the cost of essentials — costs that hit the poor hardest. This amounts to regressively funded progressivism.”

California was, and is, a work in progress, richly endowed and deeply flawed. Fixing complicated problems isn’t easy, but what I’d like to see from the next governor is more of the striving, imagination and sense of collective purpose that made California great.

There’s no way and no reason to go back to the state of my youth, but Trachtman had a thought about where to go next.

“In some ways we can use the past as a model,” he told me. “But in other ways we need to be more innovative and think about charting a path forward.”

Toward the most coherent expression of the California possibility.

steve.lopez@latimes.com

Sept. 24, 2026 9:29 PM PT

PITTSBURGH — James Copenhaver, one of three campaign rally attendees shot in 2024 during an assassination attempt on then-candidate Donald Trump, has died in Pittsburgh, his lawyer said Thursday. He was 76.

Copenhaver was in the bleachers during the event in Butler, Pa., when a 20-year-old gunman opened fire from a nearby rooftop, grazing Trump’s right ear with one bullet. Copenhaver was struck in the arm and in the abdomen, wounds that left him with lingering injuries and walking with a cane.

Two other attendees were also shot: David Dutch, who survived, and Corey Comperatore, who shielded his family from gunfire and was killed.

Copenhaver died Wednesday at Allegheny Health Network’s West Penn Hospital in Pittsburgh, according to a statement from the Allegheny County medical examiner cited in local media accounts.

Copenhaver’s lawyer, Joseph Feldman, said in a statement issued on behalf of the family that he died surrounded by loved ones. The statement did not specify whether his death was directly related to the injuries he suffered at the rally.

Copenhaver and his wife, Marianne Copenhaver, sued the federal government in June, alleging that the Secret Service and Department of Homeland Security had “utterly failed” to provide appropriate security at the rally. Copenhaver’s injuries required multiple surgeries, including a transection of his colon, and he had lingering kidney and other damage, including a loss of feeling in his leg. The lawsuit described the wounds as “debilitating, grievous, permanent and life altering.”

The family’s statement Thursday called Copenhaver above all else a devoted husband, father and grandfather who instilled the values of hard work, integrity and the service to others in his children.

“James’s dedication to this great country was a defining part of his life,” it said. “As a veteran, he proudly served our nation in the armed forces, and his love of country never wavered. James was a true American patriot who believed deeply in the freedoms and ideals upon which this nation was founded, and he embodied the very best traits of our great nation.”

In a statement posted to social media, President Trump on Thursday called Copenhaver “a true American Patriot.”

“Jim showed tremendous bravery, courageously continuing to FIGHT, FIGHT, FIGHT, and maintaining a positive spirit despite unimaginable hardships,” Trump wrote.

Johnson and Smyth write for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — FBI Director Kash Patel on Tuesday defended the bureau’s loosening of hiring standards regarding an applicant’s past experience with prostitution and bestiality, insisting that the changes were meant to enable victims of those acts to be considered for employment without fear of automatic disqualification.

The subject arose during a contentious Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in which Patel clashed with Democrats over his firing of agents who participated in investigations of President Trump, a spate of media leak probes, and whether employees would be dispatched to the polls on Election Day in light of the bureau’s ongoing election-related investigations and Trump’s repeated and false claims about the existence of pervasive voter fraud.

The hearing featured the name-calling and bitingly personal exchanges that have come to define Patel’s appearances on Capitol Hill, with Democrats characterizing the Trump appointee as unqualified, criticizing him for politically charged investigations into Trump’s enemies and highlighting travel that has included a trip to the Winter Olympics in Italy during which he partied with U.S. hockey players and a snorkeling excursion at the Pearl Harbor memorial in Hawaii.

“He’s an incompetent lackey. He’s like an 18-year old-kid who wants to join a fraternity that he could never be a member of, doing keg stands and chugging with friends. He’s an embarrassment to the agency and wouldn’t qualify even to be an FBI agent,” said an exasperated Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), his voice rising in anger.

Given a chance to respond, Patel replied: “I don’t have much to say. This guy called me a thug. It’s kind of ironic. He’s running for president of the United States. He just got his 20-second ad campaign.”

Booker ran for president in 2020. He has not announced a candidacy for 2028.

Patel was pressed on the FBI’s hiring standards

The FBI quietly issued guidance this spring lifting a categorical hiring ban on applicants who had previously engaged in prostitution. The bureau made a similar change with regard to past experience in bestiality as a child.

Under questioning, Patel denied that the changes reflected a lowering of employment standards and insisted they were designed to prevent victims who’d been forced to engage in that conduct from being automatically disqualified.

“We did not want to punish victims of bestiality, victims who were trafficked. We did not want to make it an automatic disqualification for the FBI to consider you if were a victim of these awful, heinous acts,” Patel said. “We are not going to target victims and prevent them from serving in their capacity to serve this country.”

The questioning spanned partisan lines, with Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) grilling Patel about the rationale for a change that the FBI director said was proposed to him by subordinates.

“When you saw bestiality, I say this with respect: The person who recommended it, why didn’t you just say, ‘What planet did you parachute in from?’” Kennedy asked. Patel conceded that that was his initial reaction.

The Associated Press reported last month that the FBI still intends to disqualify some applicants who are revealed to have previously engaged in prostitution, including if they’ve done so within the last 10 years.

Patel faced questions about the FBI’s role on Election Day

The hearing unfolded two months before the midterm elections in November and at a time when the FBI has opened investigations related to the 2020 contest, including by seizing voter data in Fulton County, Ga.

Trump regularly makes false claims that elections are rigged and riddled with fraud, especially in the months before an election. But there is no widespread fraud in American elections. Local election officials have detailed processes for auditing the accuracy of the vote after ballots are tallied. Even as he disputed his loss in 2020, audits, reviews and recounts in the battleground states where he challenged the outcome all affirmed President Biden’s win.

Democrats repeatedly pressed Patel on whether the FBI would be dispatching agents to polls. The director said the FBI has an election coordinator in each of its 56 field offices to respond to issues at polling places, including alleged election interference. He did not rule out the idea that agents could be dispatched to the polls if problems arose.

“Do you pledge that you will not in any way interfere in the will of the America people when they go to the polls in November?” asked Sen. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) in one of the more combative exchanges.

“I pledge unequivocally that I will not participate in your charade of lies,” Patel said, later calling Welch a “total fraud.”

FBI firings were also a featured topic of the hearing

Patel repeatedly touted what he asserted was his record-breaking success at the FBI, proclaiming the “most prolific reduction in crime in U.S. history” even though murder rates in American cities had begun dropping even before Trump took office last year.

The Republican-led panel tried through its questioning to keep the focus on Patel’s crime-fighting efforts from his perch at the nation’s premier federal law enforcement agency. But Democrats seized on the tumult inside the FBI over the last year, including sweeping firings of agents who participated in investigations of Trump, the bureau’s aggressive efforts to investigate media leaks by serving subpoenas at reporters’ home and Patel’s travel schedule that has blended private leisure with professional responsibilities.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) pressed Patel on the firing of national security agents with expertise in Iran shortly before the U.S. launched attacks on the country last February. He noted that the agents had participated in an FBI investigation into Trump over his retention of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.

“Do you think firing the president’s political opponents is more important than retaining the decades of experience and expertise monitoring intelligence threats from Iran?” Blumenthal asked.

“I think what’s most important is to not have a weaponized FBI, and I will endeavor every single day to make sure we have no one there that is doing that,” Patel responded. He did not say why their participation in the Mar-a-Lago investigation represented “weaponized” law enforcement.

Patel later suggested that the firings had been overblown, saying many agents had retired on their own. And he defended his personal travels by pointing to numbers that he said showed that two recent predecessors, Chris Wray and James Comey, had traveled more.

Tucker writes for the Associated Press.

The LA Times/SurveyMonkey poll set out to measure feelings about football and Super Bowl, both in the U.S. as a whole and in the Los Angeles region.

Each day, a huge range of organizations — schools, churches, bowling leagues, companies and more — use SurveyMonkey’s online platform to poll their members, customers or associates.

In total, more than 2 million people take SurveyMonkey polls on an average day, giving the company access to a broad cross-section of the American public.

To conduct surveys on questions of broad public interest, like this one, SurveyMonkey randomly selects some of those people and asks them if they’d be willing to take an additional online poll. Those who say yes get a survey to fill out.

As with traditional telephone surveys, the results then are weighted to match standard Census Bureau measures of the nation’s population — to make sure that the sample mirrors the nation’s distribution of age, race, gender, geography and education levels.

The result is a representative sample of the adult population.

In this case, the poll, which was developed jointly by SurveyMonkey and The Times, was conducted in English and Spanish from Feb. 1-7 among a national sample of 7,590 adults. The sample included 1,659 Californians and 743 people who live in Greater Los Angeles, which encompasses Los Angeles, Orange, Ventura, San Bernardino and Riverside counties.

As with all polls, the results are subject to sampling error. For this survey, the modeled error estimates are 2 percentage points in either direction for the national sample, 3.5 percentage points for the statewide California sample and 5 percentage points for the Los Angeles metro area.

Native authorities issue condolences after two adults and a child swept away by floodwaters in southwestern US state.

Indigenous authorities in the United States have said that three people have been killed in flooding in the southwestern state of New Mexico, where heavy rains left roadways blocked by water.

Navajo Nation President Buu Nygren said on Wednesday that police had responded to reports of people being swept away by floodwater at 12:30am (06:30 GMT) near the community of Newcomb in northwestern New Mexico.

Nygren said that two adults and a child were killed in the incident and offered condolences to the community, while advising residents to exercise caution in areas impacted by rainfall.

“There are no words that can ease the pain of losing a loved one so suddenly, and our hearts are especially heavy knowing that three lives were lost,” Nygren said. “To the family, relatives, and loved ones who are grieving today, we offer our deepest condolences. We pray that you are surrounded by strength, comfort, and the love of your family and community in the difficult days ahead.”

The National Weather Service (NWS) in Albuquerque, New Mexico, issued a special briefing on Tuesday warning of the possibility of widespread thunderstorms in the coming days. The service repeated those warnings on Wednesday, noting that moisture levels are expected to be at record levels for mid-September.

“A Flash Flood Watch is in effect for the western third of New Mexico and the South Central Mountains today,” NWS Albuquerque said in a social media post on Wednesday. “However, flash flooding could occur anywhere in central and northern New Mexico today.”

Heavy rainfall is predicted across parts of Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and Utah through Thursday. Flash flood warnings were issued for parts of northwestern New Mexico, along with flash flood watches for large areas of central and northern Arizona.

The deaths on Wednesday come several weeks after three hikers were swept away and dozens were rescued after heavy rainfall caused flooding at the Grand Canyon, a popular destination for tourists and outdoor recreation in Arizona.

Californians are deeply frustrated with the length of the November ballot, which includes 14 statewide propositions, and gloomy about the direction of the state and the nation, according to a Public Policy Institute of California poll published Tuesday night.

They “are feeling very pessimistic,” said Mark Baldassare, PPIC’s statewide survey director. “You know that comes out not just in the questions we ask about the economy, but generally about the direction of the state and the nation. This just indicates the level of negativity that people have going into this final stage before people cast their ballots this November.”

More than half of the state’s likely voters believe that California is headed in the wrong direction, and 73% predict sour economic times in the state next year. Less than a quarter of likely voters believe the nation is headed in the right direction.

President Trump has an approval rating of 27% of likely voters, but that’s better than Congress, which has a 16% approval rating. Majorities do not have confidence in either major political party’s ability to solve problems.

Ballots will begin arriving in 23.2 million voters’ mailboxes in a little over two weeks. Nearly 80% of likely voters are frustrated by the length of the ballot, which includes 14 propositions as well as statewide, congressional and local elections. This a rare consensus among Democratic, Republican and independent voters.

“This year, there are more propositions on the ballot than we’ve seen for a decade,” Baldassare said. “Overwhelming majorities of Californians say that there are too many propositions on the ballot, too many things for them to decide. And many Californians feel that the wording of ballot initiatives makes it very hard for them to understand what happens if one passes.”

The proposal to tax the assets of billionaires to make up for federal government healthcare cuts, Proposition 40, has a slim lead in the poll, with 52% of likely voters saying they support the one-time 5% levy.

However, there are two ballot measures, Propositions 41 and 42, that would nullify the wealth tax if one is approved and gets more votes than Proposition 40. Narrow majorities support both of these proposals, creating a quandary for wealth tax supporters: ensuring their proposal receives the support of a majority of voters while also tamping down support for the competing efforts.

Findings about the proposal to require showing government-issued identification to vote and the governor’s race show less competitive contests that break along predictable partisan lines in a state where registered Democratic voters outnumber Republicans nearly 2 to 1.

The voter ID measure is opposed by 55% of likely voters. In the race to succeed termed-out Gov. Gavin Newsom, 60% of likely voters support Democrat Xavier Becerra, and 38% support Republican Steve Hilton. The other 2% were undecided or do not plan to vote on the race.

The poll of 1,745 adult Californians was conducted Sept. 4-10, and has a margin of error of about 3 percentage points in either direction, and 3.8 percentage points among the 1,103 likely voters.

At a highly sensitive juncture, and amid increasing talk regarding the possibility of a third round of regional escalation, Iraqis are confronted with a fateful question: Is there someone seeking to make Iraq a part of this conflict – not merely a venue from which messages are dispatched or through which pressure is managed, but rather one of its open arenas?

There can be no avoiding the question, as the answer is linked to Iraqi blood, state sovereignty, the future of the economy, and Iraq’s standing among its brethren, neighbors, and the world. The matter is no longer a limited security issue; rather, it is a question of statehood, destiny, and direction, as well as a question of Iraq’s ability to protect itself from being dragged into what it does not want.

Repeated attempts to use Iraqi territory to target fraternal and neighboring Arab countries – the latest of which was the announced targeting of Saudi Arabia, preceded by the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Bahrain, and Jordan – reveal that we are facing a systematic trajectory rather than an isolated incident. If not decisively resolved, this trajectory could transform into a de facto policy.

Should the state succumb to the blackmail of forces acting outside its authority, it loses not only its security decision-making power but the very meaning of statehood itself. Iraq must not remain a conduit for messages, a proxy mailbox for others, a negotiating card in their conflicts, or an arena pushed forward during every regional escalation.

The problem is no longer about issuing a statement after each incident or settling for a reassuring narrative that does not prevent the recurrence of danger. The deeper problem is the existence of a repeating pattern that consumes Iraq’s political and moral capital, leaving the government to face the consequences of actions that do not reflect its own decisions. The longer a decisive resolution is delayed, the more a dangerous perception takes root abroad that the Iraqi state alone does not control its security decisions. This is an unfair image of Iraq and harmful to its interests, but it cannot be corrected by words alone.

Sovereignty is not safeguarded through slogans; rather, it is maintained by the state’s capacity to serve as the sole authority for force and decision-making. Consequently, restricting weapons to state control is neither a stance against any faction nor a detraction from anyone’s sacrifices. Instead, it is a prerequisite for the survival of the state and the protection of everyone. A state that does not hold exclusive authority over the decisions of war and peace can neither demand that others respect its borders, reassure its citizens, nor build stable relations with its neighborhood. It is in the interest of all forces, above all others, for the state to be strong, because a weak state protects no one; instead, it leaves everyone exposed.

Today, under highly sensitive circumstances, the Iraqi government is working to reconnect Iraq with its Arab, regional, and international surroundings, and to sincerely leverage available support and openness to serve the interests of Iraqis. These efforts deserve support – not because they are the efforts of a specific government, but because they represent the trajectory of a state. However, there are those, both internally and externally, who do not want Iraq to move past the logic of conflict and axes, and who seek to undermine any attempt to solidify its position as a balanced, secure partner state that is capable of speaking for itself, rather than for others.

The truth is that the Arabs, despite all the complexities that have affected the relationship, have not turned their backs on Iraq; rather, they have continued to view it as a pivotal country indispensable to regional stability. Throughout the difficult years, there remained an Arab readiness to embrace Iraq and restore it to its natural position, out of belief in its role, presence, and civilized and political depth. The problem has never been an Arab desire to break ties with Iraq; rather, it lay in Iraq’s ability to present itself as a state with a single decision-making authority – not a country where decisions are contested between the government and factions, the constitution and weapons, and national interest and wills that do not emanate from Iraqi state institutions. It is unfortunate that opportunities for openness and trust are squandered due to practices that reflect neither the will of Iraqis nor the interest of their state.

The risk of slipping today is greater than some believe. Every uncalculated action could drag Iraq into a confrontation it does not want, and every use of its territory outside state decisions could push it an additional step toward isolation. Isolation is neither heroism, an interest, nor a viable option in a world where countries thrive on economy, partnerships, investment, and trust. Every armed message launched outside the state is met with a message of concern from the investor, the partner, and the fraternal state, and every new disruption reflects on the market, labor, energy, banks, and Iraq’s image in the world. Iraq needs projects, energy, job opportunities, education, infrastructure, and openness – not more anxiety, armed messages, and alignments that deplete it.

We must be candid with our people: statements are no longer enough. Neither the domestic public is convinced by statements, nor is the outside world reassured by them. What preserves Iraq’s standing is action: a professional investigation, fair accountability, real control, and a clear decision that no entity, regardless of its title, can place the country in war, isolation, or economic loss. Backing the government along this path is a national duty, because it is a support for the state, its right to protect sovereignty, preserve relations, and build the future.

Iraq is subordinate to no one, an enemy to no one, and an arena for no one. It is a great homeland, and the decision of war and peace within it belongs to the Iraqis and their state alone. This is the hour of the state, the hour of reason, and the hour to say clearly: Iraq first.