nominee

Eighty-three lawsuits filed against the Trump administration in 18 months, at a cost of more than $20 million.

California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta announced those stats this week, part of an annual report to the Legislature on how we’re spending a special fund set aside to combat President Trump’s overreach.

That doesn’t include more than 120 friend of the court briefs the Golden State has written in legal matters brought by others, or the multitude of cases in which the Trump administration has sued California and Bonta’s office is defending us.

That’s a whole lot of litigation. Is it worth it? Are we huffing and puffing for political points, or do all these lawsuits actually do something positive for the average Californian?

You get what you pay for

I’m going to sound like a bus bench ad for the legal profession, but, at this point, “the courts are standing as the only barrier to the president doing anything that the president wants to do,” Hiroshi Motomura, a professor of law at UCLA, told me.

And what the president apparently wants to do is make the poor and vulnerable poorer and more vulnerable. And don’t think there’s a middle-class exemption. In his second term, Trump has attacked healthcare coverage, special education, education in general, reproductive rights, gender rights, the environment, endangered species, immigrants and more.

“The disastrous impact of Trump’s lawlessness isn’t theoretical or hypothetical. It’s not imagined. It is real. It is hurting real people,” Bonta said. “It is hurting Californians, real families, real businesses, real communities every single day.”

You name it, if it’s not rich and connected, it’s probably under attack. President Lyndon B. Johnson launched a very different war on poverty in 1964 with social programs such as Medicare, Medicaid and Head Start. This new war on poverty seems intent on increasing it, not eradicating it.

It would be nearly impossible for the people affected by these attacks on government services to fight them on their own, said Richard Abel, a professor emeritus of law at UCLA and the author of multiple books on the Trump presidency.

“They don’t know why it’s happening,” he said. “They don’t have access to lawyers. Many of them are undocumented or afraid to mobilize the legal system.”

That leaves the states, which are often the only other entities that have a legal right to sue, because they too are being harmed by the cuts.

So yeah, our $20 million is well spent. Bonta said his legal work has protected about $207 billion in funding. But I’ll argue the true return on investment is California residents who have been protected in ways they don’t even realize.

Risks we don’t even realize

Take Massachusetts vs. Department of Agriculture, one of the cases California is involved in. This is Trump’s attempt to put new rules on USDA grants for food programs including emergency food assistance, school lunches and food stamps. It would tie compliance with his right-wing, discriminatory policies on immigration, gender ideology and diversity issues to receiving those funds.

California and other states sued and won a preliminary injunction stopping them in June — meaning most recipients kept their benefits without ever realizing they were at risk.

Then there’s New York vs. Administration for Children & Families, in which Trump goes after child welfare funds; Washington vs. Department of Education, which attacks mental health grants that help hire school psychologists and counselors; and Illinois vs. Vought, which targets California and three other states run by Democrats for cuts to transportation and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention funding for no other reason than politics, the states argue.

Food benefits, access to mental health care, lead poisoning prevention. Just a few more things most of us didn’t realize could be at risk for some of us.

In each of those cases, Bonta and the other Democratic attorneys general stopped the federal actions, even if only temporarily. Some of those cases are ongoing, but with restraining orders or injunctions in place.

Then there’s United States vs. Baass, Trump’s attempt to force Michelle Baass, the director of the California Department of Health Care Services, to turn over a bunch of applications for Medi-Cal benefits for the last five years so the federal government can go on a witch hunt for undocumented folks.

Supposedly these applications, which Baass and her agency were subpoenaed for, are needed for an immigration investigation in the Central Valley. California won in court in March, when a judge denied the federal government’s petition to enforce that subpoena.

Now, the feds are appealing to the 9th Circuit — and California continues to fight to protect the privacy and maybe even safety of the residents who just needed medical care, but could see their sensitive information, including addresses, turned over to immigration authorities if Trump had his way.

How could they possibly fight that on their own?

Then there’s a lawsuit in which Trump is trying to prevent California from continuing to give in-state tuition to Dreamers — undocumented immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as youngsters.

In battles such as that one, fought because it’s the right thing to do, Motomura sees a benefit greater than just protecting funding.

It forces us to push back against the federal government’s framing that immigration is “about invaders, you know, climbing walls,” Motomura said.

“This is about people who live in our communities,” he said. “And I think that when Bonta claims that space, he’s not just pushing back. He’s saying, ‘Let’s think about this in terms of building stronger communities,’ and I think that’s a significant shift.”

The rule of law may be battered and bruised, and even at times a bit hinky. But so far, it has held — in no small part because of Democratic attorneys general like Bonta who aren’t just filing lawsuits but have built the staffs and networks to do it effectively. It’s a much larger effort than we give it credit for, but one that has fundamentally protected our everyday lives so well that many have barely noticed the wolves at the door.

I’m sure there will be losses, wolves that crawl through windows, and we will all feel the bite of that. But 83 lawsuits will soon likely be 84, 94, whatever it takes to protect Californians.

Each one is a fight worth having, because every Californian is worth fighting for.

What else you should be reading

The must-read: From decorated U.S. Marine to arrested at Trump golf course: What we know about Jeanine John Taele
The deep dive: The obscure financial maneuver at issue in Dodgers owner probe explained
The L.A. Times Special: New park under neglected 6th Street Bridge stirs up hope, Boyle Heights gentrification fears

Stay Golden,
Anita Chabria
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SACRAMENTO — Today we’re talking about California’s Proposition 39, a bid to turn Trump’s election conspiracy fantasies into California law, and a proposal so disingenuous it’s caused Democratic legislators to sue the Democratic secretary of state in an attempt to stop the misinformation surrounding it.

As these lawsuits move forward and the November election rolls closer, we’re going to hear a lot about Proposition 39 — a measure that would require in-person voters to present government-issued identification, among other provisions. I fear most if not all of this debate will revolve around the false claim that large numbers of undocumented people vote illegally in our elections.

“It’s directly a product of all of the rhetoric that Trump has been putting out there regarding election fraud and voting fraud,” said Mindy Romero, founder and director of the nonpartisan Center for Inclusive Democracy.

Romero stresses that there is not and has never been any evidence of widespread voter fraud in California, and the state already has a system that effectively checks voter eligibility.

Proposition 39 is “seeking a solution for a problem that doesn’t exist, and a solution that actually could cause additional problems,” she said. “So in and of itself, it perpetuates this false and dangerous narrative that there has been voter fraud in California.”

That lie is part of the ongoing grievance-fueled Trump campaign against non-white “replacement” Americans, meant to undermine trust in elections — you may recall he’s gone so far as to say immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country.” It’s a venal and dark vein of partisanship aimed at keeping the far-right in power even at the expense of democracy.

But also an effective lie. Because many folks don’t know exactly how their ballots are verified but do have ID, they don’t see the full impacts of Proposition 39.

The easy ID myth

I’ll tell you more about Proposition 39, but I’m starting with a story about an all-American teenager I’ll call “Sofia.” I’ve been helping Sofia,18, attempt to get her first government-issued identification. I stress attempt.

Folks, there’s been hoops, there’s been hurdles, there’s been Kafkaesque bureaucracy.

For people like Sofia that don’t have bills or jobs or even accurate student records (she’s moved a lot), scraping up enough documentation to convince the DMV you are who you say you are is tough. First, you really need a certified birth certificate.

Sofia wasn’t born in the county where she lives (it’s county recorders that keep them), which means she had to either drive hours or go through the state’s third-party online vendor to order one, at a cost of about $30. But here’s the catch — she needed proof of identity to order it.

So to get a birth certificate to get her ID, she needed ID.

Stuck in this circular nightmare, we found, after much effort, a loophole: I could appear in front of a public notary with Sofia, to testify using my ID that she was indeed Sofia. Strange, but whatever. We did it.

That wasn’t enough for the DMV. Sofia also needed two bills or other documents verifying her address. Because they will literally give a credit card to anyone, she applied to an online company, and got her first statement. One document down.

Again, scouring the DMV rules for days, we found another weird loophole: The second document can be a letter from a nonprofit with the person signing it vouching for Sofia’s identity. We got the letter, and Sofia’s Real ID was issued.

But then she had to move before it arrived. She tried to arrange mail forwarding with the postal service, but guess what? They required ID.

So the ID was lost in transit, and we are back to square one.

Who Proposition 39 really targets

That means Sofia is one of thousands of Californians, born and raised in the Golden State, who lack official identification because its not as easy to obtain it as some want you to believe.

And because she lacks it, she could be prevented from voting if Proposition 39 is passed, even though she is a legal citizen with every right to have her ballot counted, and California already has a system in place to ensure only citizens vote.

Sofia is exactly the kind of voter that Proposition 39 is actually aimed at. This is a voter suppression law, plain and simple, and it will harm women with name changes, naturalized citizens, young people, older people and virtually anyone who cares about not returning to Jim Crow-style laws that push people out of voting with subterfuge.

Proponents of the proposition would like you to believe it’s something very different from what I just described. Their fight about how we talk about this proposal has led to two lawsuits so far — one filed by the backers of Proposition 39 because they don’t like the official title the California attorney general put on it, and one filed by the leaders of the state Legislature because they argue the statements written by proponents for official voting materials aren’t truthful.

I’ll give you a taste of both of those arguments. Right now, the state is proposing to title the measure “Prohibits citizens from voting unless they present government-issued identification.”

State Assemblymember Carl DeMaio (R-San Diego), the always-Trumper behind Proposition 39, helped lead a lawsuit claiming that is inaccurate.

DeMaio issued a statement claiming Democrats are “trying to deceive voters by putting a false ballot title on it and are now even distracting voters from their tampering of the ballot title with this frivolous lawsuit.”

That frivolous lawsuit he’s complaining about is the one where the Democratic leaders of the Legislature last week sued the Democratic secretary of state and others over the language included in the state voter guide. The Democrats aren’t really angry at each other, it’s just that Secretary of State Shirley Weber is in charge of voter materials, so she’s one of the folks they’ve got to sue to make their case.

The lawsuit alleges, among other complaints, that proponents are falsely framing Proposition 39 as making it “easier to vote” when in fact it does the opposite.

“Prop. 39 requires no burdens be placed on voters,” the materials at issue read, according to the lawsuit. “No additional documents (birth certificate, marriage license, etc.) are required.”

So I take you back to Sofia. Because while Proposition 39 might not ask her to bring her birth certificate to the polls, it would ask her to bring her ID, which required her birth certificate to get.

A distinction without a difference.

“The fact that Donald Trump has endorsed it tells you everything you need to know,” wrote the lawsuits’ plaintiffs, House speaker Robert Rivas and Senate pro Tempore Monique Limón, in a statement. “As Californians and Latinos, we will not let MAGA cronies take Constitutional rights away from voters.”

That lawsuit will likely have its first hearing in court this week. But whatever a judge decides, the ballot box is where the fate of Proposition 39 rests.

Though it seems like average Californians could see through this sham, there are big bucks backing it, and money always speaks loudly.

The donors in support read like the guest list for a White House dinner. So far, they’ve raised more than $15 million. That includes $4 million from Richard Uihlein, the Illinois billionaire and Trump supporter who often funds organizations and causes that promote election conspiracies and far-right candidates.

The crypto-billionaire Winklevoss twins, Cameron and Tyler, have each donated $250,000, along with other Silicon Valley types including former RFK Jr. running mate Nicole Shanahan, who ponied up $370,000 in support of Proposition 39.

Oh, and by the way, L.A. developer and former mayoral candidate Rick Caruso has donated $25,000 to the effort.

That’s a lot of dough being poured into stopping certain Californians from voting. If they succeed, it won’t just be an inconvenience at the polls — but instead a double victory for Trump, both suppressing the vote ahead of the presidential election and legitimizing his election lies through law.

What else you should be reading

The must-read: FBI Escalates Trump’s “Voter Fraud” Crusade With Disturbing Move
The California angle: How Trump’s Endangered Species Act rollback is roiling Northern California
The L.A. Times Special: Trump running out of options to fix inflation, economic woes before election, experts say

Stay Golden,
Anita Chabria

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The 2026 Emmy nominations have been revealed.

HBO’s emergency medical drama “The Pitt” was the top nominee, with a total of 25. The premium cable network’s intergenerational comedy comeback story “Hacks,” meanwhile, earned 24 nominations. Other top nominees include Apple TV’s freshman offerings “Widow’s Bay” and “Pluribus,” which nabbed 19 and 18 nods a piece, respectively.

With its 24 nominations, “Hacks” set a new record for most nominations in a year by a comedy series. The previous record of 23 nods was set by “The Bear” in 2024 and matched by “The Studio” in 2025.

“[The nominees’] creativity and talent remind us why television remains one of our most powerful art forms,” Television Academy chair Cris Abrego said in his introductory remarks Wednesday morning. “While these nominations recognize individual achievement, they also celebrate the collaborative spirit that defines our industry. Every nomination today is a result of countless people coming together to create work that moves us, entertains us and, above all, inspires us.”

Previous Emmy winners Liza Colón-Zayas, known for her role as no-nonsense chef Tina on FX’s culinary dramedy “The Bear,” and Jeff Hiller, the “Widow’s Bay” actor who also portrayed sweet and lovable best friend Joel on HBO’s tender comfort-watch “Somebody, Somewhere,” were on hand at the Television Academy’s Wolf Theatre to joke about their nerves — and height difference — while presenting the nominations.

The nominees for variety series and reality competition program were announced before the main nominations ceremony on NBC’s “Today” show.

The 78th Emmy Awards will be held Sept. 14 at 5 p.m. at the Peacock Theater in downtown Los Angeles. Hosted by “Law & Order: SVU” star Mariska Hargitay, the live telecast will air on NBC and stream on Peacock. The Creative Arts Emmy Awards, which honor artistic and technical achievements as well as some performance categories, will be held on Sept. 5 and 6.

Drama series

“The Diplomat”
“The Gilded Age”
“A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms”
“Paradise”
“The Pitt”
“Pluribus”
“Slow Horses”
“Your Friends & Neighbors”

Drama lead actress

Carrie Coon, “The Gilded Age”
Chase Infiniti, “The Testaments”
Keri Russell, “The Diplomat”
Rhea Seehorn, “Pluribus”
Zendaya, “Euphoria”

Drama lead actor

Sterling K. Brown, “Paradise”
Gary Oldman, “Slow Horses”
Mark Ruffalo, “Task”
Rufus Sewell, “The Diplomat”
Noah Wyle, “The Pitt”

Drama supporting actress

Taylor Dearden, “The Pitt”
Fiona Dourif, “The Pitt”
Allison Janney, “The Diplomat”
Katherine LaNasa, “The Pitt”
Sepideh Moafi, “The Pitt”
Julianne Nicholson, “Paradise”
Karolina Wydra, “Pluribus”

Drama supporting actor

Patrick Ball, “The Pitt”
Billy Crudup, “The Morning Show”
Shawn Hatosy, “The Pitt”
Gerran Howell, “The Pitt”
Jack Lowden, “Slow Horses”
Tom Pelphrey, “Task”
Carlos-Manuel Vesga, “Pluribus”

Comedy series

“Abbott Elementary”
“The Bear”
“Hacks”
“Margo’s Got Money Troubles”
“Nobody Wants This”
“Only Murders in the Building”
“Shrinking”
“Widow’s Bay”

Comedy lead actress

Quinta Brunson, “Abbott Elementary”
Ayo Edebiri, “The Bear”
Elle Fanning, “Margo’s Got Money Troubles”
Lisa Kudrow, “The Comeback”
Jean Smart, “Hacks”

Comedy lead actor

Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, “Wonder Man”
Steve Carell, “Rooster”
Matthew Rhys, “Widow’s Bay”
Jason Segel, “Shrinking”
Martin Short, “Only Murders in the Building”

Comedy supporting actress

Dale Dickey, “Widow’s Bay”
Hannah Einbinder, “Hacks”
Janelle James, “Abbott Elementary”
Kate O’Flynn, “Widow’s Bay”
Michelle Pfeiffer, “Margo’s Got Money Troubles”
Megan Stalter, “Hacks”
Jessica Williams, “Shrinking”

Comedy supporting actor

Colman Domingo, “The Four Seasons”
Paul W. Downs, “Hacks”
Harrison Ford, “Shrinking”
Nick Offerman, “Margo’s Got Money Troubles”
Stephen Root, “Widow’s Bay”
Michael Urie, “Shrinking”
Tyler James Williams, “Abbott Elementary”

Limited series

“All Her Fault”
“The Beast in Me”
“Beef”
“DTF St. Louis”
“Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette”

Television movie

“Heads of State”
“Miss You, Love You”
“People We Meet on Vacation”
“Remarkably Bright Creatures”
“Jack Ryan: Ghost War”

Limited series / TV movie lead actress

Claire Danes, “The Beast in Me”
Sally Field, “Remarkably Bright Creatures”
Carey Mulligan, “Beef”
Sarah Pidgeon, “Love Story”
Sarah Snook, “All Her Fault”

Limited series / TV movie lead actor

Riz Ahmed, “Bait”
Jason Bateman, “Black Rabbit”
Charlie Hunnam, “Monster: The Ed Gein Story”
Oscar Isaac, “Beef”
Matthew Rhys, “The Beast in Me”

Limited series / TV movie supporting actress

Linda Cardellini, “DTF St. Louis”
Dakota Fanning, “All Her Fault”
Laurie Metcalf, “Monster: The Ed Gein Story”
Joy Sunday, “DTF St. Louis”
Yuh-Jung Youn, “Beef”
Constance Zimmer, “Love Story”

Limited series / TV movie supporting actor

Jason Bateman, “DTF St. Louis”
Richard Gadd, “Half Man”
David Harbour, “DTF St. Louis”
Richard Jenkins, “DTF St. Louis”
Charles Melton, “Beef”
Nick Offerman, “Death by Lightning”

Variety series

“The Daily Show”
“Jimmy Kimmel Live!”
“Last Week Tonight With John Oliver”
“The Late Show With Stephen Colbert”
“Saturday Night Live”

Reality competition program

“Dancing With the Stars”
“RuPaul’s Drag Race”
“Survivor”
“Top Chef”
“The Traitors”

The complete list of 2026 Emmy nominees is available on the Television Academy website.

Maybe there is something in the fog. Matthew Rhys landed two Emmy nominations in different categories for darkly comedic and darkly chilling turns this TV season.

Rhys is nominated for lead actor in a comedy series for his deft performance as Tom Loftis, a single dad and the mayor of a cursed New England island who is trying to balance the town’s supernatural threats with his efforts to boost tourism, in Apple’s TV’s breakout horror-comedy series “Widow’s Bay.” The word-of-mouth buzz around the series, which premiered in April, intensified each week leading up to its finale last month and prompted chatter around its prospects as a major Emmys contender. The series arrived late in the season, so only its first seven episodes qualify for the 2026 awards cycle, but that was enough for Rhys to nab a nod.

It wasn’t the only performance from Rhys that voters boosted. He is also nominated for lead actor in a limited or anthology series for his role as the sociopath Nile Jarvis, a famed and formidable real estate developer who once was the prime suspect in the killing of his wife, in Netflix’s “The Beast in Me.” Nile finds himself in a cat-and-mouse dynamic with his new neighbor (Claire Danes), an author in search of her next book subject who is suspicious of his innocence.

Prior to this year’s nominations, Rhys received five Emmy nominations over his career, including for his lead roles in “The Americans” and “Perry Mason,” as well as a guest actor nod in “Girls.” He won in 2018 for his role as KGB spy Philip Jennings in “The Americans.”

The Times spoke with Rhys about his nomination; these are edited excerpts.

Matthew Rhys as Mayor Tom Loftis in Apple TV’s “Widow’s Bay.”

(Apple)

Congratulations on your exciting morning — it’s a big day in the Rhys-Russell household [Keri Russell, Rhys’ partner, is nominated for lead actress in a drama for her role in “The Diplomat”]. Let’s start with the most important question: What’s in the fog, Matthew?

[laughs] I love how it took me a moment. I was like, “Wait, what?” Oh, yes, the fog! What’s in the fog is an incredible Season 2.

Place me in the moment when you got the news.

I was in Brooklyn Bridge Marina at the time. I just got off a boat, and I thought, “Oh, God, it’s 11:40.” So I thought quite possibly [they] got to our categories. I checked my phone and there were the many texts. That was the exciting moment because if you haven’t been nominated, there’s no text.

Did one text stand out from the others?

The real pinch-me moment — this is going to sound like a real name drop — but it really got me emotional because I thought, if I’d have told my 18-year-old self that Gary Oldman would text me to congratulate me, I wouldn’t have believed it. That’s when it got me in an emotional way because he’s such a true hero.

Let’s start with “Widow’s Bay,” which recently wrapped its first season. There’s something so thrilling about how it broke through the way that it did. What has struck you about how viewers responded to this horror comedy?

There was a great degree of nervousness about how this would land, whether indeed it would land at all, and the fact that it has, and kind of the depth and the complex nature that’s landed or resonated with people in different ways, is what I’ve loved. Some people go, “Oh my God, it’s so funny”; some people say, “Oh my God, it’s terrifying” — some people say both. And some people pick up on the weirdest things, and then some people pick up on the most obvious, great things. But it’s the length and breadth and the variety of its resonances that has really made me very happy, and really made me doff my cap to [creator] Katie Dippold, for what she did.

What should networks and studios take away from the success of “Widow’s Bay” if they are really paying attention?

Take the risk. And challenge audiences. Everyone’s more than ready for it and thirsty for it in a real way. I really hope this does something in the Hollywood psyche, where they go, “Let’s put away the remakes and let’s just get after new challenging, original material.”

What guidance did you get from Katie about who Tom was and how to play him?

She’s dizzyingly collaborative, so she said, “Tom is yours.” It was more me going, “But what about this for Tom?” She would help, but she really said, “Tom is yours to create now. Everything I’ve done is on the page.” And it was. That’s the beauty of her writing. If you’re true to it, and you don’t get in the way of it, it sings.

The way Tom reacts to situations and people is such a master class in facial expressions. Did you recognize that would be your tool for your performance early on?

We had a kind of sliding scale — Hiro [Murai, executive producer and director], myself and Katie — because it was a departure for me. I’d go, “I don’t know where this lives or where reality lives.” And as much as anyone can say, “Play for real” — playing it for real can mean many things. It can mean a very minimal reaction, and it can mean a great reaction, and so there were times when I was like, “I’m gonna hit the sliding scale, and you let me know where it should be landing, or where, in your opinion, it’s landing in a real way.” Sometimes they were like, “Maybe a little less,” and then they were like “Maybe a little more.” That element of collaboration was wonderful too.

The moment on the boat is a GIF I send often. The jolt.

It’s funny, we have a great and incredible stunt coordinator Paul [Marini]. He said, “You have to lead where the momentum of the energy would be; it’d be your hips. So let your hips lead, and then let your body follow.” And I was like, “Oh, that’s smart.” Then if you do that, then it has a degree of comic effect to it. But my pelvis hasn’t quite recovered.

Matthew Rhys as Nile Jarvis opposite Claire Danes as Aggie Wiggs in Netflix’s “The Beast in Me.”

(Netflix)

Sort of like your dance moment in “The Beast in Me” — lead with the hips. This is your thing, Matthew.

Anytime, in the stage direction, it says “dances,” I’m like [mimics vomit sound]. That strikes ice in my veins because I’m always like, “Oh my God.”

That’s your horror comedy.

That is my true horror comedy because my dancing can be horrific and comical when it is to be neither.

Let’s talk about “The Beast in Me.” Nile Jarvis was also quite the departure from you. What was your entry point to understanding him and figuring out how chilling to make him?

It was a lot of YouTube watching, where you just type in “psychopaths” and stuff comes up. I read Jon Ronson’s “The Psychopath Test” and “The Journalist and the Murderer” [by Janet Malcolm]. The writing was so strong in “The Beast in Me,” so much of Nile was preemptively done for me. As [director] Antonio Campos said, “The trick might be not to do too much because enough has been said.” Everyone has this predisposed idea of who he is and, therefore, the idea we came up with was to do not as little as possible, but to be minimal with it because he’s aware of what everyone thinks of him and there’s a degree of enjoyment and relishing in that.

Have you been able to sensibly eat a roast chicken since?

No, not sensibly. It’s become Pavlovian for me now. When I eat roast chicken, I devour it in a slightly psychotic way. I love that scene. It’s an astute piece of writing to say so much about someone without words.

What would you be best suited to achieve: rebranding the town of Widow’s Bay as a tourist destination or charming your neighbors into signing paperwork for the construction of a running path through the backwoods of their properties?

I’m not saying I could charm the neighbors, but I would attempt to charm the neighbors. Playing Tom was exhausting in a way that playing Nile wasn’t. I always spent the end of the day on “Widow’s Bay” going, “My God, I’m exhausted” — because you’re just vibrating on a higher level with Tom. It’s always like, “Listen, please!” The pitch is always higher; you’re always like, “You’ve got to listen to me!” Or if you’re terrified, you’re just hyperventilating.

I know the news of these nominations is still fresh and I don’t want to tell you how to approach the big night, but I just have to say, this could be the moment you take a page from Philip Jennings of “The Americans” and come with a wig and getup so when they pan to you during both categories, you can make them feel distinct.

That’s exactly what I’m going to do. I’m going to Jennings it. I’m going to PJ it. When it pans to me in the second category, I’m gonna look completely different. I’m going to be dressed as Elizabeth [Jennings].

Well, congratulations. How do you think you and Keri are going to celebrate?

Keri, in true “Americans” style, is having me meet her in a clandestine spot that I don’t know anything about, so who knows what. I don’t know what the afternoon is going to unfold, but it’s a big surprise. She might end up killing me, who knows.

WASHINGTON — Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas publicly praised Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan and his philosophy of black empowerment eight years ago, but the embattled judge said Friday that he “repudiates” the anti-Semitic views later attributed to Farrakhan.

“I cannot leave standing any suggestion that I am anti-Semitic,” Thomas said in a prepared statement. “I am and have always been unalterably and adamantly opposed to anti-Semitism and bigotry of any kind, including by Louis Farrakhan.”

Disclosures that Farrakhan was praised in two speeches prepared for delivery by Thomas to black organizations in 1983 prompted expressions of concern from leading Jewish organizations and raised new questions about the beliefs of the conservative black jurist. The Farrakhan material was actually delivered in only one speech.

Since President Bush nominated him two weeks ago to replace retiring Justice Thurgood Marshall, the Supreme Court’s only black and its leading liberal voice, Thomas has come under increasing criticism for his views on civil rights and other issues.

At the time of Thomas’ speeches in 1983, Farrakhan was a relatively unknown Chicago preacher who had yet to attain national notoriety for his militancy and anti-Semitic views.

Thomas, who currently sits on the U.S. Court of Appeals in the District of Columbia, opposes affirmative action and other race-based remedies for discrimination long favored by civil rights organizations and many members of Congress.

On Thursday, the Congressional Black Caucus registered its opposition to Thomas, saying it was concerned about his commitment to civil rights. Although the House members who belong to the caucus will play no direct role in the Senate confirmation process, their opposition could prompt other black organizations to coalesce against Thomas.

The list of groups expressing reservations about Thomas was joined Friday by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, the nation’s largest public employee union. It urged the Senate Judiciary Committee to reject Thomas, saying that he “lacks the judicial experience necessary” to serve on the high court and has exhibited a “lack of commitment to equal justice and fundamental rights.”

Thomas has also had to deal with the problem of reports that he had used marijuana as a college student, although President Bush on Friday dismissed the significance of his drug experimentation.

“I think the matter has been put in proper perspective, and I think he handled it very well, and, certainly, in this instance, in these circumstances, in no way is disqualifying,” Bush told reporters in Kennebunkport, Me.

The references to Farrakhan were contained in the prepared texts of two speeches written for Thomas when he was chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission during the Ronald Reagan Administration.

Farrakhan, who has espoused black separatism as leader of the Nation of Islam, has drawn fire from Jewish rights groups for characterizing their faith as “a dirty religion” in early 1984, several months after Thomas delivered his speeches.

According to the texts of the prepared speeches, which were released by EEOC officials, Thomas concluded his remarks about black self-empowerment with a reference to Farrakhan as “a man I have admired for more than a decade.”

Both speeches went on to quote Farrakhan: “And so, I say to you, whether America overcomes or not, we the poor, we the oppressed, we the blacks, we the Hispanics, we the disinherited, we the rejected and most despised, we will overcome and then together we will be able to say in the words of Dr. Martin Luther King: Free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty, we have united and made freedom a reality at last.”

The speeches were written by Thomas aide Armstrong Williams, who said they were intended to endorse only the self-help philosophy espoused by Farrakhan. In late 1983, he said, there was “no inkling” that Farrakhan later would become associated with anti-Semitism.

“Farrakhan was not controversial at that time,” Williams said. “If he had been the least bit controversial, I would not have included the quote in a speech, and Clarence would never have used it.”

In his statement, Thomas sought to distinguish between Farrakhan’s self-help philosophy and his other views. “I repudiate the anti-Semitism of Louis Farrakhan or anyone else,” he said. “While I support the concept of economic self-help, I have never supported or tolerated bigotry of any kind.”

Despite that assurance, the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith said that Thomas “unfortunately did not go far enough” to distance himself from Farrakhan. “It is not possible to separate Farrakhan’s message from Farrakhan, the messenger,” said Abraham H. Foxman, the group’s national director.

However, spokesmen for the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles said they were satisfied with Thomas’ explanation. “That put the issue to rest,” said Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean of the center. “We are satisfied as far as the Farrakhan issue is concerned.”

Sen. John C. Danforth (R-Mo.), who is serving as Thomas’ sponsor during the confirmation process, said the nominee “was adamant” in his opposition to anti-Semitism. “As a victim of prejudice himself, he feels most strongly that it is morally wrong, and he has committed much of his professional life to combating it,” Danforth said in a statement.

One of the 1983 speeches, prepared for delivery to a group of black journalists in Washington, was not delivered as written, Williams said. Because he was speaking to an informal gathering of reporters, Thomas abandoned the prepared text and apparently did not mention Farrakhan in his off-the-cuff remarks, he said.

However, the second speech was a more formal presentation at a convention of the National Assn. of Black MBAs in Atlanta. In that case, Thomas stuck to the prepared text, including the reference to Farrakhan, Williams said.

Thomas received a standing ovation from the MBAs, something that happened only rarely in speeches to black groups, he said.

Williams, now a managing partner in a Washington public relations firm, said he included the Farrakhan quote in the Atlanta speech in an effort to link Thomas’ self-help philosophy with a similar opinion held by a figure familiar to inner-city blacks.

“We always discussed his speeches and interviews,” Williams said. After he drafted the speech and showed it to Thomas, Williams said, his boss told him: “This is one passage of Farrakhan’s I can relate to.”

Staff writer James Gerstenzang in Kennebunkport, Me., contributed to this story.

It’s hard to hate on Canada. It’s like cursing a cotton ball, or raging about tapioca.

The friendliest of neighbors, the country has fought alongside the U.S. in conflicts going back to World War I, purchased many trillions of dollars worth of American goods and blessed this country with, among other gifts, ice hockey, Drake, Joni Mitchell and Alex Trebek.

While you can question the nation’s culinary sensibility — the unofficial dish, poutine, is an abomination consisting of French fries, cheese curds and hot gravy — Canada is basically a very large, very pretty country filled with a lot of very nice, extremely polite people.

But for reasons only he can fathom, President Trump has declared economic war on our amiable northern neighbor.

After more than a year of trading tit-for-tat tariffs, Trump recently escalated the conflict by slapping a new 50% tax on a variety of Canadian exports, including cement, furniture, dairy products and, most iconically, hockey sticks. The added levy, which will further burden inflation-weary U.S. consumers, is set to take effect in mid-August.

The move makes little sense from an economic or foreign policy standpoint. It’s best to regard Trump’s trade moves as a wind gauge charts a blustery storm; his on-again, off-again tariffs are not the result of some carefully thought-out policy but, rather, a measure of the president’s shifting moods and pique toward certain foreign leaders.

And they carry a not-inconsiderable price tag — California’s struggling wine industry being just one example.

For decades, the industry has been a vital and growing part of California’s agricultural economy. Recent years, however, have seen a number of setbacks.

Costs are rising. Sales are falling, as younger generations favor hard seltzers, canned cocktails or premium beers over crushed grapes. At the same time, climate change and the growing incidence of wildfire threaten the viability of some of California’s premier wine-growing regions.

A Canadian ban on alcohol imports

Then there’s the trade war with Canada, the industry’s largest export market and formerly a major customer of California wines. Until recently, the Canadian market accounted for more than a third of the state’s exports.

But last year, several provinces stopped purchasing U.S. alcohol in response to Trump’s tariffs and his threats — more slapstick than real — to annex the country and make Canada the 51st American state. While two provinces, Saskatchewan and Alberta, soon lifted their bans, the two most populous, Ontario and Quebec, have not.

As a result of this “geopolitical friction,” to use the words of University of California researchers, California wine exports to Canada fell by nearly 80% in 2025 compared with the year before. Unsurprisingly, Canadian sales of homegrown wines have soared.

Stick that in your terroir!

In response to the dramatic drop in exports, more than a dozen California members of Congress wrote last month to Quebec’s premier, Christine Fréchette, urging her to lift the retaliatory ban on U.S. wine and spirits.

“Reopening the market to American wine would restore consumer choice and signal a commitment to restoring fair and balanced trade for Québecois consumers and American wineries who have no connection to the underlying trade disputes,” the letter read.

Sen. Adam Schiff also wrote Fréchette asking her to resume the sale of California wine and U.S. spirits.

“The restriction on American wine has had damaging consequences for regional consumers, businesses, and producers who have no influence over national policies,” the California Democrat stated. “In fact, I have repeatedly voiced my opposition to and voted against the President’s harmful trade policies, including as they pertain to Canada.”

Fréchette’s response was, in a word: “Non!”

“In the context of the ongoing trade war, the premier continues to defend Quebec’s economic interests,” a spokesperson for Fréchette told CBC Radio. “This measure will remain in place as long as the United States maintains these unjustified tariffs. Our government will re-evaluate its position when the American administration reverses these measures.”

And that statement came before Trump upped the ante, along with the tariffs on Canada, which, presumably, doesn’t help matters.

Red or white?

Mike Thompson has seen the damage of Trump’s economic warfare firsthand. The St. Helena Democrat represents the heart of Wine Country and spearheaded, along with Democratic Rep. Jimmy Panetta of Carmel and Republican Rep. David Valadao of Hanford, the bipartisan overture to Quebec’s premier.

“I talked to a vintner today,” Thompson said during a drive this week through his sprawling Northern California district. “They went from an $11-million annual wine export to a $2-million annual wine export to Canada because of this.”

Thompson has introduced legislation, including a measure to reimburse wine producers for the money they’ve lost due to Trump’s tariffs, but the proposals have stalled in the House despite bipartisan support. His effort, Thompson dryly noted, “has not been warmly embraced by the administration.”

Meanwhile, the cross-border hostilities continue. Neither Trump nor Fréchette seems ready to budge, with California vintners still stuck in the middle.

So the question in Montreal and Toronto remains: What pairs best with poutine? Canadian white or red?

What else you should be reading

The must-read: Trump administration targeted California and other blue states for clean energy cuts
The deep dive: Justice Kennedy reflects on his time deciding the Constitution’s promise of liberty and equality
The L.A. Times Special: His nickname was ‘Satan.’ His political influence was immense
Until next time,
mzb
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SACRAMENTO — Last week, news broke that an artificial intelligence thingamajig broke free from the constraints of its maker, OpenAI, and committed what could be considered a string of white-collar felonies if it were human.

Because the AI thingamajig is in fact not human, the incident raised a big kerfuffle but is largely being treated as a giant oopsie we can learn from, without needing the pesky intervention of new rules or laws to stop it from happening again.

Such is the state of AI regulation in America right now.

California Rep. Jay Obernolte (R-Big Bear Lake) would like to change that. Last week, he introduced the bipartisan Frontier Act with Rep. Lori Trahan (D-Mass.). While the bill might not make either safety advocates or big tech companies entirely happy, it offers up the most comprehensive and strongest regulations of this dangerous industry that we’ve yet seen at the federal level.

Roman Yampolskiy, an AI expert and professor at University of Louisville, called the Frontier Act a “positive step because it acknowledges that frontier AI presents risks requiring dedicated oversight.”

Now, the challenge becomes passing it, and passing it in a meaningful, not-watered-down form — no easy task in a dysfunctional Congress driven by money and Donald Trump, and paralyzed by its own sycophancy to both.

If anyone has a shot, though, it’s Obernolte, who is that rarest of birds, a legislator who understands science, and his colleagues.

Obernolte represents Inland Empire areas around San Bernardino, but grew up in Fresno back in the era when the movie “War Games” was just hitting theaters.

Those of a certain age will remember how far-fetched it seemed when Matthew Broderick’s high school genius character accidentally breaks into a military AI system to play chess, but “Joshua,” the computer, takes it too far and tries to blow up the world. Now, of course, that just sounds like a regular Tuesday.

By the time he was in high school himself, Obernolte was giving that Broderick character a run for his money. An apparent computer savant, Obernolte was competing in artificial intelligence contests as a teenager, back when most of us were still playing Pong on Atari. Then he headed off to Caltech and then UCLA for advanced AI degrees. He said AI was his “first calling,” sparked when his father bought him an Apple II computer when he was 8.

He ended up dropping out of UCLA after getting his master’s because his side hustle making video games, including “NFL ’95,” turned out to be more lucrative than being a starving student. He ended up founding his own video game company, FarSight Studios, and building up a personal net worth close to $100 million.

Not bad for a kid from Fresno. In Congress, he has stuck close to the MAGA power base and was one of seven California legislators to vote against certifying the 2020 election results, a vote he took in his first days in office. He has been endorsed by Trump multiple times, and now sits on a bunch of committees and subcommittees of relevance.

For the past few years, he has pushed hard, if unsuccessfully, to create a framework for regulating AI, combining his deep understanding of the technology with his equal understanding of MAGA distaste for intervening in business.

Now, though, we’re in a moment, thanks to more than one big oopsie by technology companies. Just a few months ago, Anthropic and the Pentagon had their own tense encounter after Anthropic questioned how its AI was being used by the military. Huffy Pete Hegseth is still huffing over that one.

The public is increasingly skeptical of allowing the AI industry to govern itself, which is pushing legislators to rethink their hands-off approach, even as AI money pours like Niagara Falls into elections. Even Trump seems more inclined to consider it, signing an executive order recently that largely called for voluntary restraints on AI companies.

The introduction of the Frontier Act “shows how far the Overton window has shifted just in the past few months,” wrote Charlie Bullock, a senior research fellow with the nonpartisan Institute for Law & AI. “Not too long ago, a bipartisan bill this good and serious would have been a pipe dream. But things change quickly.”

Obernolte said the bill has been “a long time in the making,” but he hopes to package it with other legislation and is “cautiously optimistic” he can get something passed and signed by the end of the year.

As written now, the bill would allow the federal government to set minimum safety requirements and set up a framework for licensed, independent auditors to monitor compliance. That third party verification has been a key push by safety experts.

The bill would also give the government emergency powers to pause an AI model if it has a “present or impending catastrophic risk.”

It also borrows from state laws including California’s Proposition 53 that require some (not enough) transparency on the part of AI companies when things do go wrong.

To the consternation of some, the bill still contains curbs on what states can regulate on their own — basically carving out AI regulation as federal turf. This has been a huge sticking point in the fight over AI regulation because AI companies hate state laws and want them squashed. Their argument is that a patchwork of rules across states is too complicated.

“You don’t want to have 50 different state requirements for every single product that gets sold on a market, and that is particularly true of AI,” Obernolte told me.

To some extent that’s reasonable — but the problem so far has been that states such as California and New York have been the only level of government willing to try at regulation. California in particular has created some of the most comprehensive AI regulations to date and has about 30 pending bills on this issue this legislative season. The Frontier Act threads the needle on this by creating lanes where states can still pass their own laws — such as around consumer safety that would protect children or stop pornography.

But preventing catastrophic risk would largely be dependent on the federal oversight, which is great when the federal government is up to the task. Currently, we can’t even keep measles in check. So that’s a bit worrisome.

And Obernolte’s bill isn’t the only one vying for attention. Another Californian, Rep. Ted Lieu, introduced a bipartisan measure of his own with Nathaniel Moran (R-Texas). Dubbed the AI Kill Switch Act, it would give the Department of Homeland Security the authority to shut down problematic models.

Yampolskiy, the Louisville professor, said that bill had promise as well, because it’s important for companies to have a way to “rapidly disable or contain systems that exhibit dangerous or unexpected behavior.”

But, he warns, that’s just one part of the “complete solution” we need. Regulation is going to require more than one law.

For Obernolte’s part, he’s shown a willingness to work on a practical solution, not just a political one. That alone is worthy of notice. The Frontier Act is a genuine attempt to govern a nascent industry that is too powerful and unpredictable to be left to its own devices.

“I’m hoping that this is we’ve landed somewhere that everyone can understand and be happy with,” Obernolte said. “AI is not something that needs to be a partisan issue, and I don’t think it should be.”

What else you should be reading

The must-read: How Jimothy the raccoon became the internet’s latest animal obsession
The California angle: Trump Administration Admits Canceling Grants to States That Did Not Vote for Him
The L.A. Times Special: Mayor’s press team uses disappearing WhatsApp messages, avoiding scrutiny
Stay Golden,
Anita Chabria

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BANGOR, Maine — Former state lawmaker and logger Troy Jackson secured the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate in Maine on Saturday and will face longtime GOP Sen. Susan Collins in November in a race that could decide which party controls the Senate.

Jackson replaces Graham Platner, who won the Democratic primary in June but withdrew from the race this month following an allegation of sexual assault that Platner has denied. Maine Democrats met Saturday to choose a new nominee to face Collins.

Support coalesced around Jackson, a former Maine Senate president and fifth-generation logger from rural northern Maine who campaigned alongside Platner during a failed bid for governor and was a favorite among progressives to replace him.

“When the people in power refuse to listen, you have to organize, you have to stand in solidarity, together. And you have to make them listen,” Jackson said during a speech at a last-minute nominating convention held Saturday.

The Maine Democratic Party has been scrambling to choose a new nominee after Platner, who sailed to victory in the Democratic primary in June, was accused by a former girlfriend of sexually assaulting her in 2021. Platner denies the allegation, but quit the race after key supporters called on him to withdraw.

Democrats have seen Maine as the party’s best opportunity to flip a Senate seat this year because it is a competitive Senate race in a state that Donald Trump lost in 2024. But defeating Collins won’t be easy. The five-term incumbent holds a fundraising advantage, while the new Democratic nominee will have less than four months to sell himself to voters.

Maine law gave the state party authority to choose a replacement and required a new nominee to be named by Monday — 99 days before the Nov. 3 election.

Maine Democrats’ never-before-used process of voting on a new nominee involved hundreds of Democratic delegates gathering in Bangor, about 130 miles north of Portland. The delegates were elected at county party meetings last weekend. The nominating convention began Saturday morning and wrapped by noon.

Jackson’s victory was largely expected after his campaign touted that more than 480 delegates selected to go to the convention had promised to vote for him, a progressive who supports Medicare for all and dismantling Immigration and Customs Enforcement. He ended up winning 566 of 571 delegates who cast votes.

Jackson first ran for office as a Republican in 2000 when he sought a seat in Maine’s House of Representatives. He lost, but won two years later when he ran as an independent. He switched to the Democratic Party in 2004 and eventually became the Maine Senate president before leaving the statehouse in 2024.

He came in third while running for governor in this year’s Democratic primary election, but had the backing of Platner, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders and Our Revolution, the political organization founded by the Vermont independent.

Other top candidates dropped out

Once Platner dropped out July 10, Jackson and a flood of other former gubernatorial candidates and others jumped in to try to take Platner’s place. But by July 19, most had abandoned their bids, with Jackson emerging as the clear favorite.

Jackson received early support from progressives who had backed Platner before he dropped out. Our Revolution initially backed Jackson for governor and Platner for Senate. When Platner left the race, the group rallied behind Jackson.

Jackson previously ran Maine operations for Sanders’ 2016 presidential bid. This election cycle, Sanders endorsed Jackson for governor and Platner for Senate, though he withdrew his support for Platner after the sexual assault allegation. He said he didn’t plan to weigh in on which Democrat should replace Platner.

Just one other candidate remained in the race for the Senate nomination — women’s health company Chief Executive Saundra Pelletier. She faced long odds against Jackson, who has been a fixture in Maine politics for more than a decade.

Jackson has supported progressive positions such as Medicare for all. He also has called for the abolition of ICE, whose presence in Maine has been hotly debated since an agent fatally shot Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, a 25-year-old Colombian national, near his home in Biddeford, Maine.

Maine key to Democrats’ Senate path

Democrats have a narrow path to take back the Senate in November, and it’s unlikely they can do it without a win in Maine. In addition, they need victories in most other competitive races — including in North Carolina, Alaska, Ohio and Texas — and they need to hang on to the seats they already have. That includes open Senate seats in Michigan and Minnesota, where Democratic incumbents are retiring.

Maine’s Democratic primary was one of the early contests where progressives took on establishment-backed Democrats. While Platner faced several controversies during his campaign, he easily outlasted Gov. Janet Mills, who was backed by Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer of New York but dropped out before the June 9 primary.

Platner had backing from Sanders as well as Arizona Sen. Ruben Gallego and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren. That support disintegrated after the sexual assault allegation surfaced this month.

Midterm messages

Jackson will need to convince the state’s large independent voting bloc that it’s time to replace Collins. Republicans have called Jackson too extreme for Maine voters, and Collins said this week that she knows Jackson well and that his positions are “clearly” in line with socialism.

She noted that Jackson ran democratic socialist Sanders’ first presidential campaign in Maine, adding, “He’s a Bernie Bro.”

Jackson also needs to scramble to make up a fundraising gulf against Collins, who has been raising money for months.

Federal filings show she has raised more than $16 million so far. Jackson’s campaign this week said he raised more than $1 million since jumping into the Senate race.

Jackson said Saturday he believed his team is up to the task.

“We’re not from the left, we’re not from the right. We’re from the bottom, and we are rising,” he said during a speech.

Whittle and Kruesi write for the Associated Press. AP journalist Nathan Ellgren in Washington contributed to this report.

July 23 (UPI) — A Senate committee delayed a vote on the Trump administration’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director nominee, Erica Schwartz, because enough members were not present.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, was absent from the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions meeting on Thursday because of a family emergency, which led committee chair Bill Cassidy, R-La., to postpone the vote, Politico reported.

Cassidy also said Thursday that he decided to vote for Schwartz because of a “good faith action” the CDC reportedly made to its website earlier in the day.

The action included changing language on its website about the lack of an association between vaccines and autism, which had been ordered changed by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. last year.

Cassidy asked detailed questions during her nomination hearing about vaccines and how the agency, which has had a full-time director for just one month since President Donald Trump re-entered the White House, would restore confidence in its public health mission, The Hill reported.

“I’m confident that she knows what she’s doing and will stand against those who do not,” Cassidy said during the meeting.

“If confirmed, I look forward to working with Dr. Schwartz to protect children’s health and regain trust in the CDC,” he said.

“There’s more to do to repair the damage that has been done to the U.S. public health response, but this is a start,” the Louisiana Republican added.

Even with Cassidy deciding to vote for Schwartz, Republicans on the committee would have needed a Democrat or Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., who caucuses with the Democrats, to vote in favor.

Sanders ended that possibility when he expressed respect for Schwartz’s career but said that he was concerned she would not be able to hold off some of the controversial changes Kennedy has either proposed or forced on the agency.

“I will be voting against Dr. Schwartz because we need people in this country who are going to stand up, protect the American people and I don’t think you can see that right now with Secretary Kennedy in his position,” Sanders said.

The HELP committee’s next executive session is scheduled for July 30, which is also the next time it will consider nominations, making it the next opportunity for Schwartz’s nomination to come up for a vote.

The committee also put off a vote on Sean Kaufman, who is nominated to lead the Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response, because Republicans did not have enough votes to forward the nomination to the full Senate.

There are certain truths that are self-evident to all but the willfully blind or stubbornly obtuse.

Heat is hot.

Rain is wet.

Donald Trump is the most brazenly corrupt president in the history of the United States.

The money-grubbing chief executive has raked in at least $2.2 billion during his first year back in office. He’s funneled millions of taxpayer dollars and foreign payments to his businesses. The grift, er, gift of a tricked-out Air Force One from the Qatari government — which Trump plans to keep in retirement — is only the most high-flying example of his avarice.

There’s so much more.

The notorious tax dodger filed suit against himself, allowing his complicit Department of “Justice” to engineer a flimflam settlement amounting to a get-out-of-jail free card that shields Trump and his sticky-fingered family from Internal Revenue Service oversight. He’s used his pardon power to draw contributions.

It’s so blatant and so consistent with Trump’s dodgy corporate background — a career checkered with six bankruptcies — that it’s easy to shrug off his presidential swindling as just more of the same. That’s been Trump’s political superpower: normalizing the outrageous and anesthetizing many Americans to all but the most extreme affronts. Even those have limited shock value these days.

On Thursday, California’s junior U.S. senator, Democrat Adam Schiff, will take to the floor of the chamber to assay the president’s many conflicts of interest, warn against complacency of the seen-it-all variety and offer his prescription for a cleansing once Trump slinks out of the gold-slathered Oval Office.

“The scope of the corruption we’ve seen in this administration is beyond anything we have imagined in prior years or prior administrations, “ Schiff said in a preview of his speech. “It’s really novel and breathtaking.”

Schiff is, of course, one of the president’s long-standing nemeses. As a House member, he led Trump’s first impeachment trial. His frequent criticism of the president, on the cable TV circuit and beyond, earned Schiff a slug of juvenile nicknames and other Trumpian put-downs, as well as a federal investigation — which now appears dormant — into supposed mortgage fraud.

Kitchen-table talk

Trump defenders will be quick to dismiss Schiff’s floor speech as just more overripe agitation.

Birds fly. Fish swim. Schiff attacks Trump.

But the purpose of his remarks, Schiff said, goes beyond simply enumerating the abundant examples of presidential profiteering. (It was a struggle, he said, keeping the list to a top 10.) His intent, he said, is “to bring home … the real cost to ordinary people” of Trump’s egregious self-dealing. Explaining why — in a practical, feel-it-in-your-wallet sense — people should care.

“If a president approves a merger not because it’s good for consumers, not because it’s good for the economy, but because participants in the merger paid him millions, what’s the cost to them?” Schiff said, referring to the proposed marriage of Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery and the money CBS shelled out for a flimsy lawsuit against “60 Minutes.” The settlement was widely seen as a way to smooth Paramount’s merger with Skydance Media, which is now bidding to swallow Warner Bros.

“The cost is they’re paying more for their streaming services,” Schiff said. “They’re getting laid off if they work in the industry. “

In 2024, Democrats lost the White House at least in part because they spent so much time talking about noble but abstract concepts like defending democracy and the rule of law, rather than highlighting ways they’d work to bring down the price of bacon and eggs.

Times change. Now it’s the cost of beef and gas that’s plundering paychecks.

Looking to November and beyond

Schiff insists it’s not an either/or choice. To prevail in November’s midterm elections, which means winning at least one chamber of Congress, Schiff said Democrats should discuss both affordability and Trump’s venality. He sees the two as being irrevocably entwined.

“The positive message is we are singularly focused on your cost of living,” Schiff said from his office on Capitol Hill. “We want to build more housing and bring down the cost of housing. We want to attack anti-competitive mergers of grocery stores and food companies to bring down the cost of food. We have a whole agenda that is designed to make your life more affordable.

“Why isn’t the administration doing this?” he said. “And the answer is, they’re corrupt. They’re focused on their own economic well-being. They’re doing great for themselves. They could care less about you.”

Schiff plans to introduce a number of proposed remedies. They include legislation to ban corporate executives from serving in the executive branch if they’ve been convicted of corruption or financial crimes, and a requirement that government employees recuse themselves from matters affecting the financial interests of any employer they’d worked for within the previous four years.

Although the measures stand no chance of passing in the current Congress, Schiff said “it’s important to show the American people, ‘Hey, this is what we intend to do if you give us the majority.’”

He acknowledged that the depth of presidential dishonesty, its constancy and deep weave in the fabric of this administration, can have a deadening effect: “When the guy working the teleprompter at the White House, betting on how many times the president will use a certain word in his speech, is a blip in the corruption…”

But Schiff said it’s important not to turn away or shrink from the malodor rising from Trump’s swampy Washington.

“You just have to take the time to break it down for people,” Schiff said. “I think putting things in context, trying to snap people out of the norm-shattering numbness of this administration, is a daily challenge. But it’s one that we have to undertake.”

There’s no certainly no harm in stating the truth. It’s worth trying, over and over.

What else you should be reading

The must-read: Trump, long a critic of ‘forever wars,’ may be stumbling into one with Iran
The deep dive: Unhappy with Kaiser’s medical dispute process, some patients push for state reform
The L.A. Times Special: Chabria: Newsom pushes California to crack down on sex trafficking — fast

Until next time,
mzb
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SACRAMENTO —  Gov. Gavin Newsom will soon leave office without gaining the support of fellow Californians for his most ambitious climate project: the banning of new gas-burning car sales by 2035.

Newsom issued an executive order in 2020 taking new fossil-fueled passenger vehicles off the California market nine years from now.

But roughly two-thirds of Californians think that’s a lousy idea, according to a poll released last week by the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California.

Among likely voters, 65% oppose the termed-out governor’s edict and just 34% support it. The opposition among infrequent or nonvoters is even stronger.

Negative attitudes are especially stiff in inland California — particularly the Central Valley — and among middle-class people with incomes between $40,000 and $100,000, those over age 55 and Republicans.

Opposition to being denied new gas vehicles has grown substantially since 2021, when Californians were evenly divided over the issue.

But the state’s anticipated next governor, moderate Democrat Xavier Becerra, is more in line with Californians’ thinking on gas cars than is Newsom.

Becerra told me during his primary election campaign that Newsom’s 2035 goal is not realistic.

“We can’t make it by ‘35,” he said. “But we can make it.” Sometime in the future.

The fact is lots of people can’t afford electric vehicles because they tend to cost more than cars fueled by gas.

Besides, there’s an inconvenience of having to pull off the road for a 40-minute recharging stop on a long trip — if you can find a vacant recharger.

And “electricity is not cheap. It often depends on the time of day,” notes PPIC Polling Director Mark Baldassare, who owns an electric vehicle and says he likes it.

Newsom has been hawking electric vehicles since he came into office, like some slick TV pitchman — his goal being to greatly reduce climate-warming greenhouse gas emissions.

The governor and the Legislature recently appropriated $135 million to motivate Californians to buy new or used electric vehicles.

First-time EV buyers will receive $3,500 rebates on vehicles with manufacturer’s suggested retail prices of $50,000 or less. Used car buyers will get $1,750 off if the sale price is $25,000 or less.

Automakers will pay for half the incentive costs — obstensibly, at least, if they don’t just secretly add their tab to the vehicle price.

This smacks of a huge taxpayer giveaway to manufacturers if the state isn’t careful. Is it really the state’s job to sell cars? Shouldn’t it be the automakers’ responsibility to offer competitive prices? Whatever.

Newsom’s plan partially replaces a $7,500 federal tax incentive for new EVs that President Trump and the Republican-led Congress allowed to expire last year.

California already leads the nation in EV ownership, with around 1.3 million vehicles registered. That’s more than five times the No. 2 state, Florida. And it’s not just because California’s population is much larger. We also lead in per capita ownership.

There’s plenty of contradiction and hypocrisy in the divided minds of Californians, as highlighted in the lengthy PPIC survey into their views on environmental policies.

People strongly favor fighting climate change — at least in concept — until it adversely affects them directly. That’s just human nature.

Asked what they consider the most important environmental issue facing California, those surveyed placed wildfires first, followed closely by global warming.

Baldassare says what struck him in the poll was “the disconnect between what people support in policies and what they’re prepared to do.”

“Two things are going on in California now,” the pollster continues. “People have their long-standing concerns about the environment. But they also have immediate concerns about affordability.

“When it comes to what people are willing to do, they’re worried about living costs and particularly the cost of energy. It’s something we’ve noticed even more this year. It affects the political and economic landscape.”

Nearly two-thirds of those surveyed support Newsom’s goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions to zero “as soon as possible, but no later than 2045.”

And there’s overwhelming support for taxing corporations based on the amount of carbon emissions they produce.

Roughly 60% favor requiring all electricity to be generated with renewable energy — such as wind and solar — by 2045, although support for that state edict has dropped by 15 percentage points in the last six years.

Paradoxically, people aren’t willing to pay more for electricity produced by renewable sources. Roughly 60% reject that idea. Ten years ago, almost that many told PPIC pollsters they were willing to pay extra.

And today they’re not nearly ready to surrender their option of buying a new gas-fueled automobile.

For one thing, they’re not convinced there’ll be enough charging stations to handle a lot more EVs. Twice as many people are not confident of that as are confident, the poll found.

The California Energy Commission reported in January that there were more than 200,000 public and private EV charging stations in the state, plus 800,000 chargers in homes. The state is helping to add more along highways.

Becerra has pledged to take a fresh look at several controversial Newsom projects, including the pokey bullet train. There’s much uncertainty about the pending new governor.

But there’s one pretty good bet: In 2035, sales of new gas cars will still be getting a green light.

What else you should be reading

The must-read: Trump escalates election attacks, threatens California over voter data
Bringing back competition: Too many congressional races are over before they start. Here’s a remedy
The L.A. Times Special: Trump’s voter fraud speech was bait. Stop biting

Until next week,
George Skelton

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The tight timeline to replace former Maine Senate nominee Graham Platner has left Democratic hopefuls scrambling to woo his progressive base while trying to turn the focus from the disgraced oysterman to defeating Republican Sen. Susan Collins in November.

It’s a delicate balance for the candidates, who are vying to face Collins in a contest that could decide control of the Senate as Platner’s shadow hangs over the race. In their first debate Thursday night, one of the first questions candidates were asked was: What was Graham Platner’s best idea?

Moving past Platner is just one of the challenges facing Democrats. The never-before-used process to pick a new nominee means candidates have less than three weeks to pull off what typically takes campaigns months or years, from organizing volunteers to raising money and preparing for debates.

The whiplash many of the candidates are facing was on display Thursday.

Asked by debate moderators about President Trump’s decision to capture Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife earlier this year, Secretary of State Shenna Bellows gave inaccurate information about Collins not pushing back against Trump, a Republican. When a moderator called her on it, Bellows said she was on vacation on the Kennebec River last week after previously focusing on her unsuccessful gubernatorial campaign and hadn’t expected to be running for the Senate.

“When I need to know the facts, I will. I’ll do my homework,” said Bellows, who lost to Collins in 2014.

The field of 12 candidates also includes former public health leader Nirav Shah and union-backed logger Troy Jackson, who campaigned alongside Platner in a failed bid for governor.

Platner’s exit means the clock is ticking

Platner quit the Senate race last week after he was accused of rape, which he denies, and his campaign quickly imploded as supporters revoked their endorsements and resources.

Democrats have until July 27 to choose a new nominee, according to state law. The Maine Democratic Party’s succession plan calls for a state party convention at which 601 delegates will meet on July 25 and vote for Platner’s replacement. The majority of the convention delegates will be selected this weekend from each of the state’s 16 counties.

Candidates hoping to replace Platner have been recruiting delegates who will vote for them at the convention. The candidates also must collect 500 voter signatures needed to qualify for the convention vote.

“I don’t think anyone’s happy that we’re in this situation,” said Dan Jenkins, a Maine Democrat who has applied to be a delegate. “We would have preferred that this had broken many, many months ago and then Graham had exited the race when there was a time for a democratic process. But it’s where we are.”

Some candidates might see a boost from prior campaigns

Jackson is among the handful of candidates pivoting to the Senate race after running for other political offices, likely giving them a leg up in not having to launch from scratch.

Our Revolution, a progressive organization founded by Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont that had originally backed Platner, has thrown its support behind Jackson, the former Maine Senate president. Sanders, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, has not endorsed in the race.

Shah, former director of Maine’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention, also unsuccessfully ran in this year’s Maine Democratic governor’s primary. He has been pitching Platner’s supporters that he’s also an outsider who can unify a fractured Democratic Party.

“You have an important place in this campaign, and we welcome your voices,” Shah said earlier this month speaking to Platner’s base.

Bellows also ran for governor. She’s hoping that her previous battles with Trump will bolster her argument that she’ll be an advocate for the working class.

Bellows previously attempted to run against Collins in 2014 as the Senate Democratic nominee and lost in a landslide. She later went on to win a seat as a state senator before becoming Maine’s secretary of state. She’s since downplayed her prior loss to Collins by pointing to the Democratic establishment’s unwillingness to take on the Republican in 2014.

Another candidate, Jordan Wood, initially announced his intent to run in the Maine Democratic Senate primary. He dropped out last fall to run in the state’s 2nd District but lost that race.

Candidates seize on recent ICE shooting

The fatal shooting by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Maine this week has been top of mind among the potential Senate nominees.

The Embassy of Colombia has identified the man killed Monday in Biddeford, roughly 15 miles southwest of Portland, as Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, a 26-year-old Colombian national. The Department of Homeland Security has since said an ICE officer fired his weapon when the man officers were pursuing attempted to flee the scene, threatening “public safety.”

Many have rushed to connect Collins to the embattled federal agency.

All the candidates who debated Thursday said they agreed with the call to “abolish ICE,” though Wood stopped short of saying the agency should be completely dissolved.

“I believe that when I say we have to abolish it, what I mean is that we need a new law enforcement agency that has the trust of the people,” Wood said.

Jackson disagreed, calling ICE a “rogue agency that goes around doing things that they’re being told to on high.”

Candidates asked about Platner’s best ideas

Platner attracted more than 150,000 votes during the June 9 primary, an eye-opening number that signaled a progressive base eager to support a candidate known for his promise to defend the working class and ability to rally large crowds.

With little more than a week until the state convention to find Platner’s replacement, it still remains unknown just who will be able to capture that same excitement seen among Platner’s base.

When pressed during Thursday’s debate about Platner’s best idea on the campaign trail, Jackson pointed to his commitment to “Medicare for All.” As a gubernatorial candidate, Jackson also voiced support for replacing job-based and individual private health insurance with a government-run plan that guarantees coverage for all with no premiums, no deductibles and only minimal copays for certain services.

Bellows said that she agreed with Platner’s description that democracy in the U.S. has been corrupted by those in power.

Shah said he would take up Platner’s commitment to “abolish ICE,” while Wood said he admired Platner’s decision to say that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, something Israel denies.

“Graham got into this race saying, ‘this is genocide.’ And I learned that it is so important in these moments to draw those moral lines,” Wood said.

Kruesi writes for the Associated Press.

Imagine if Sunday’s World Cup final were played under rules that blatantly favored one side over the other. Let’s say Argentina was spotted four goals against Spain.

Spain could, conceivably, overcome that 4-0 deficit. But it would be awfully hard and something of a miracle if the Spanish team prevailed.

Fans the world over would be rightly outraged. Why bother holding the tournament? What’s the point if one team is saddled with near-insurmountable odds?

Increasingly, that’s what elections for the House of Representatives look like.

As recently as the late 1990s, around 4 in 10 congressional districts were considered competitive, meaning Democratic and Republican candidates each had a plausible shot at winning. Today, per the nonpartisan handicappers at the Cook Political Report, only 18 of 435 House districts are considered toss-ups.

Another 20 districts are rated as either leaning Democratic or Republican, meaning candidates from one party or the other enjoy a noteworthy advantage, but aren’t necessarily a lock to win in November.

In sum, that means fewer than a tenth of all House seats are even somewhat competitive.

That’s hardly an accident, as lawmakers have increasingly manipulated the election process to suit themselves, rejiggering congressional districts to sideline voters and boost their political parties.

It’s undemocratic, and it stinks.

Stifling competition, rewarding extremes

“Every voter has a stake in making sure that these elections are fair and that the process is transparent,” said Rep. Jeff Hurd, a Republican who represents a large, mostly rural swath of western and southern Colorado. “Gerrymandering undermines representative democracy … by preventing voters and communities from having cohesive representation.

“It unfortunately rewards political extremes,” he went on. “It reduces competition and contributes to the polarization and dysfunction that prevents Congress from effectively addressing the issues that our constituents care about.”

Hurd is a member of the Problem Solvers Caucus, a bipartisan group of 44 House members dedicated to working through their ideological and political differences to — lordy! — try to get stuff done.

Recently, to mark Independence Day, the caucus announced a framework for legislation aimed at bringing competition back to many congressional races, in part by limiting the redrawing of political maps to once every 10 years, following the census. Among other reforms, the bipartisan group also called for establishing a uniform, national standard requiring that congressional districts be drawn “using clear, objective criteria while rejecting partisan advantage and incumbent protection as legitimate goals.”

The effort is, of course, too late for this election. The hope is Congress will enact the changes in time for the next scheduled round of redistricting, which is due to take place after the 2030 census. The rules would be in place starting in 2032.

The chances of passage are not strong. As Hurd noted: “Any reform that asks politicians to give up political leverage is going to be challenging.” But if ever there was a time for a badly needed systemic fix, it’s now.

A race to the bottom

Gerrymandering has been around for more than 200 years. The term derives from the efforts of Massachusetts Gov. Elbridge Gerry to skew state Senate races in the election of 1812. The portmanteau, which appeared in the Boston Gazette, described one politically engineered, misshapen district that resembled a salamander.

The practice reached new heights of creativity (or deviousness, depending on your perspective) in the modern age, when ever-more sophisticated computers allowed for ever-finer slicing and dicing of the electorate.

In 2019, the Supreme Court effectively greenlighted the practice in a 5-4 decision by the conservative majority, decreeing that partisan gerrymandering was beyond the purview of federal courts. In other words, have at it! And lawmakers did.

But this last year, in particular, has broken new, insidious ground.

Pressured by President Trump — who fears losing the GOP’s whisper-thin House majority — lawmakers in Texas tore up their political map mid-decade and redrew the state’s congressional districts in hopes of nabbing five additional seats this November. California responded in kind, with passage of Proposition 50, a measure that shelved the work of a nonpartisan redistricting commission in favor of a map aimed at handing Democrats five additional seats.

More than half a dozen other states — most of them Republican-run — have jumped into the fight, gerrymandering their congressional districts to gain a partisan edge. Lawmakers in several Democratic-run states are now looking at the prospect of retaliatory gerrymandering ahead of the 2028 election.

There’s not much upside to all this self-dealing — if, that is, you care about political competition and allowing the electorate a genuine say. But all that manipulation and maneuvering has, at least, made voters much more aware of the once-obscure practice of congressional line drawing. And that offers reformers a flicker of hope.

One ally, improbable though it may seem, is Paul Mitchell. He’s the Sacramento political guru who drew the gerrymandered map that California voters approved with passage of Proposition 50. (California, he said, was left no choice but to respond after Texas made its move.)

Mitchell said he has long favored a national redistricting standard that would apply to all 50 states and put the much-abused process on an even footing. “I really believe that redistricting should … serve the public, not serve the politicians,” Mitchell said.

Still looking on that bright side, he suggested perhaps the current redistricting war will prove so odious and have “done so much harm” that combatants will reach a point where they “put down [their] arms and embrace a kind of nonpartisan, non-politicized, public-oriented redistricting.”

It seems far-fetched. But miracles do happen.

What else you should be reading

The must-read: Californians rallied to save the coast 50 years ago. Trump is spoiling the celebration
The deep dive: On birthright citizenship, the Supreme Court originalists split on history and Trump
The L.A. Times Special: Inside the states’ case to block the Paramount-Warner Bros. merger: ‘Each side is taking risks’

Until next time,
mzb
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US President Donald Trump’s nominee to serve as the nation’s top intelligence official, Jay Clayton, evaded directly stating that Trump lost the 2020 election. During his Senate confirmation hearing Clayton said only that Biden had been ‘certified’ as president, adding ‘I am not an election denier’.

WASHINGTON — President Trump’s pick to head the nation’s intelligence agencies struggled to win Democratic support in a contentious confirmation hearing Wednesday where he clashed repeatedly with them over the 2020 election.

Democrats asked Jay Clayton, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York and a former Securities and Exchange Commission chairman, over and over again whether former President Biden won the election and defeated Trump. Echoing many of Trump’s nominees, Clayton said many times that the election was “certified” for Biden, declining to say outright that the Democrat won.

“I’m not going to get into this with you,” Clayton told Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff, the last of several Democrats on the committee to grill Clayton on the 2020 election. Clayton appeared frustrated and flustered as Ossoff repeated the question several times. “I’ve answered it,” he said.

Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, who had praised Clayton’s nomination when Trump picked him for the role last month, expressed exasperation with him at the end of the hearing. Democrats say they are concerned that Trump will try to direct intelligence agencies to influence U.S. elections as the president has repeated his false claims that the 2020 contest was stolen.

“I’ve known Mr. Clayton for some time, I worked with him closely when he was at the SEC,” said Warner, the top Democrat on the intelligence panel. “But I am bitterly disappointed.”

While Clayton has broad support among Republicans, the acrimony with Democrats could be a blow to GOP leaders who had hoped to gain their consent for a quick vote to replace temporary intelligence director Bill Pulte, a former housing official with no known intelligence experience and who used his previous administration perch to target perceived adversaries of the president.

Senators in both parties have criticized Pulte, and Republicans had hoped to confirm Clayton immediately after he was nominated in June so Pulte did not take over when Gabbard left office. But Trump delayed Clayton’s nomination, allowing Pulte to take the job temporarily.

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Tom Cotton, R-Ark., said the committee will vote on Clayton’s nomination next week.

Clayton emphasizes national security experience

Clayton did not mention Pulte in the hearing. But he emphasized his own government and national security experience, attempting to assuage senators in both parties.

“I saw firsthand how a strong national security apparatus depends on decisive judgment, discipline, integrity, and effective communication and cooperation across different branches of the government,” Clayton said in his opening statement. “If confirmed as Director of National Intelligence, I will commit to upholding these principles every day.”

Cotton expressed frustration last month when the hearing was delayed. He said in his opening statement Wednesday that Clayton has a reputation for operating with “morality, decency and integrity” in his previous positions and that he hopes his nomination will win bipartisan support.

Democrats press Clayton on Gabbard’s election activities

Democrats also pressed Clayton on former National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard’s visit to a Georgia election office earlier this year during an FBI search related to the 2020 election. Trump administration officials have given varying explanations for Gabbard’s involvement in the search, which appeared to be outside of her intelligence role.

Clayton declined to say whether Gabbard’s visit was appropriate or how he would handle the same situation. At one point he said he wasn’t aware of Gabbard’s visit before this week, then later appeared to backtrack, saying “it wasn’t something on my mind” before he started to prepare for the hearing.

Warner said it “strains credibility” that Clayton wasn’t aware of Gabbard’s election activities.

Democrats also asked Clayton about Trump’s announcement that he will deliver a primetime address on Thursday with a focus on elections, after the president suggested he could revisit long-debunked conspiracy theories about his 2020 defeat. Clayton said he had has no involvement with that speech.

As U.S. attorney in Manhattan, Clayton oversees vast portfolio

Clayton is currently the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, one of the most prestigious of the Justice Department’s prosecution offices. His cases have ranged from terrorism and espionage cases to security fraud and public corruption.

Democrats pressed Clayton on subpoenas of four New York Times journalists after they reported on security concerns involving the new, Qatari-gifted Air Force One. The Committee to Protect Journalists has called the subpoenas “an extraordinary escalation in President Trump’s efforts to threaten and intimidate independent news organizations and have a chilling effect on the work of journalists across the country.”

Clayton said he was not able to discuss the details of the subpoenas and declined to elaborate on whether he spoke to the White House before they were issued. He said he is “confident in procedures we have in place to protect freedom of press.”

Under Clayton, the office also facilitated the unsealing of thousands of pages of court records from the prosecutions of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell — documents that were made public as part of the Justice Department’s release of records related to the late sex offender and his longtime confidant.

Clayton has also overseen the prosecution of former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and Maduro’s wife, Cilia Flores, on drug trafficking charges.

Confirmation vote could unlock renewal of surveillance authority

Clayton’s confirmation could potentially clear the way for bipartisan legislation to renew Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, which stalled last month when Democrats had said they would not provide the necessary votes to pass the bill unless Pulte’s temporary appointment was withdrawn.

The law, which aims to prevent terrorist attacks by monitoring the communications of targeted foreigners located outside the United States, expired in June.

Even if Democrats relent, it is unclear if Trump would sign the bill. He said in his June social media post delaying Clayton’s nomination that he would not sign the FISA renewal without his legislation to require proof of citizenship for all voters. The voting bill does not have enough support to pass the Senate.

Jalonick writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Eric Tucker contributed to this report.

The Trump administration’s latest nominee to lead the nation’ top public health agency drew frustrated reactions from some U.S. senators on Wednesday when they pressed her on whether she would protect the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from political meddling.

Dr. Erica Schwartz told the Senate health committee she “will never betray the science” and pledged to use “radical transparency” in a bid to rebuild public trust in the agency. But several senators questioned how she might handle pressure from Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has repeatedly moved to alter U.S. vaccine and CDC policies. Schwartz repeatedly declined to dissent from some of those actions.

Schwartz, 54, is up for director of the Atlanta-based CDC, which is charged with protecting Americans from preventable health threats.

Her career has largely been spent in military uniform, including in a leadership position at the U.S. Coast Guard where she oversaw the organization’s system of 41 clinics and 150 sick bays — as well as policies promoting vaccinations of service members. She later served as deputy surgeon general, where she helped lead uniformed medical and health professionals posted at the CDC and government health agencies that serve the general public.

The CDC long enjoyed a sterling international reputation but has been in turmoil since Trump returned to office last year. Largely due to layoffs and resignations, the agency has lost more than 3,000 employees, or more than a quarter of its workforce. Morale has plummeted as a succession of mostly temporary leaders have come and gone — the front office filled with political appointees, many of them with little or no training in medicine or public health.

“There’s still really good people who work there (at the CDC). They are doing their best to navigate choppy waters,” said Dr. David Margolius, director of Cleveland’s health department and a leader in a U.S. coalition of big city health departments. But CDC no longer seems to the authoritative and communicative lead that it was on outbreaks and other public health emergencies.

“Basically everybody’s got to kind of choose their own adventure, as opposed to being led by a national public health department,” Margolius said.

CDC has had several leaders

The agency is overseen by Kennedy, who was a leading voice in the anti-vaccine movement before he was tapped to lead the CDC and other federal health agencies. Kennedy had promised not to change the nation’s vaccination schedule. But shortly after taking office, Kennedy said he was going to investigate the childhood vaccine schedule and went on to attempt a substantial rewrite of vaccine recommendations for kids. Some of those efforts were put on hold earlier this year by a federal judge.

The administration’s first pick to run the CDC was former Florida congressman Dr. David Weldon, but his March 2025 Senate confirmation hearing was canceled an hour before it was to begin. Weldon said at the time that he’d been told not enough senators were willing to vote for him.

The White House then moved on to Susan Monarez, who had been serving as the CDC’s acting director. Monarez was confirmed by the Senate, but she was ousted in less than a month. Trump administration officials said she wasn’t aligned with their agenda so they terminated her.

Several key CDC scientific leaders resigned in protest, saying Monarez’s dismissal dashed their hopes that a CDC director would be able to guard against political meddling in the agency’s scientific research and health recommendations.

Since then, there’s been a revolving door in agency leadership, with the short-term role of acting director being passed from one Washington-based HHS official to another. National Institutes of Health Director Jay Bhattacharya has been overseeing the CDC most recently.

Schwartz said she was unaware of actions that hurt the CDC

On Wednesday, some senators suggested Schwartz should follow Monarez’s example, and they asked her about actions Kennedy has taken that have affected CDC.

Schwartz said she was unaware that CDC programs that worked to prevent smoking and promote vaccinations had been curtailed. She declined to commit to taking down a CDC website that suggests there’s a link between childhood vaccines and autism (she said she had not seen it), though she agreed existing medical evidence has not found a link.

Sen. Maggie Hassan, a New Hampshire Democrat, asked if she would — if Kennedy ordered her — suspend promotion of a flu vaccination campaign during a deadly flu season.

“Senator, I don’t speak in hypotheticals,” Schwartz responded.

“It isn’t hypothetical. It happened,” said Hassan, referring to internal CDC emails, released by Sen. Bernie Sanders last month, that documented such a directive from Kennedy to CDC staff last year.

Schwartz said she agreed that CDC should prioritize responding to infectious diseases. “I think over time, the CDC has had some mission creep, and it’s trying to be all things to all people,” she said.

But she also agreed to requests from Republican senators to — if confirmed — look into whether AI data centers cause health problems and into the possibility of establishing a World Trade Center Health Program clinical center in Florida.

Senators also heard from nominee overseeing health emergency preparedness

In April, Trump nominated Schwartz, calling her “incredibly talented.” In a congressional hearing in April, Kennedy said he approved of the choice, but refused to commit to supporting whatever vaccine guidance she might issue.

Last month, Schwartz filed letters with the government that address her finances and potential conflicts of interest. She wrote that if confirmed, she will leave her current job with UnitedHealth Group, where she’s making about $850,000 in salary and bonus money and cash out her stock options. She also will resign from the board of directors of Butterfly Network Inc., a Massachusetts company that makes ultrasound devices; from the board of Atlanta-based Aveanna Healthcare, a medical home care provider; and from the board of the Florida-based Searching for Solutions Institute.

At Wednesday’s hearing, senators also considered the nomination of Sean Kaufman as the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response, or ASPR. That job entails overseeing preparations and response to public health emergencies and disasters.

Last year, the Trump administration announced a plan to bring those responsibilities under CDC, but the dramatic HHS restructuring has not happened.

The assistant secretary’s office is involved in decisions about funding next-generation vaccines against pandemic flu or other infectious disease threats. In postings on LinkedIn, Kaufman has made comments cheered by vaccine skeptics, arguing against hepatitis B vaccinations for newborns and saying he served as an expert witness to advocate for people who refused the COVID-19 vaccine.

On Wednesday, Kaufman faced questions about past social media posts, including one in which he expressed hatred for the CDC. He also repeatedly was asked about his support of a Trump administration decision last year to cancel 22 projects, totaling $500 million, to develop vaccines using mRNA technology.

Infectious disease experts say the mRNA technology used in vaccines is safe, and they credit its development during the first Trump administration with slowing the 2020 coronavirus pandemic. Future pandemics, they warned, will be harder to stop without the help of mRNA.

Kaufman said he supported mRNA technology and believes COVID-19 vaccines are safe and effective, but said it made sense to study work that’s been done so far before, including learning more about any side effects.

Sen. John Hickenlooper, a Colorado Democrat, said such evaluations are the responsibility of other federal offices — not ASPR. He also said it may slow the nation’s ability to respond to emerging new infectious threats.

Stobbe writes for the Associated Press.

SACRAMENTO — Recent news about literacy, education and general smarts in California and across the country has been somewhat distressing.

Along with claims that Americans are becoming illiterate, here in the Golden State there are worries that even the highest-achieving students aren’t prepared for our universities, and a study shows backsliding in civil rights protections in the vacuum created by federal changes under the Trump administration.

Despite being close to terming out of office, and also otherwise occupied with his ever-emerging presidential run, Gov. Gavin Newsom last week found time to announce a consequential, if controversial, move that has the potential to vastly improve educational outcomes for California kids: switching out an independent, voter-chosen leader for a hired gun.

In legislation signed last week, Newsom basically eviscerated the role of the elected superintendent of public instruction and instead shifted oversight of our K-12 schools to a newly created education commissioner — to be appointed by the governor.

The change, set to happen early next year, has been described as a “power grab” by some, and on its surface could be seen that way. The conservative candidate for state superintendent — Sonja Shaw, who says she is running to stop “political ideologies being shoved down everybody’s throats” — quickly claimed Newsom’s move was all about stopping her.

In reality, power grab or not, it’s the kind of reform we should all support — a long-overdue push to create accountability in a hot-mess system where there are too many people almost-sorta in charge of too many conflicting priorities.

‘A’ for accountability

It’s to Newsom’s credit that he’s setting up his successor to helm a system that at least has a chance at coherence, even if it raises the stakes for the next governor to deliver.

For years — decades, really — streamlining the governing structure of schools “has been proposed by Republicans and Democrats and bipartisan and nonpartisan commissions,” Linda Darling-Hammond told me. She’s a professor emeritus at Stanford University, an advisor to the governor and, by any measure, one of the preeminent education policy experts in the country.

“It’s not at all political. It is really about making the system run well,” she said. “The world is changing, the economy is changing. There’s just a need to be very efficient and effective in making policy and then implementing that policy.”

“Run well” is the key there. California operates the biggest and most diverse school system in the country. We’ve got roughly 10,000 regular schools (depending on how you count), including about 1,200 charter schools, around 1,00 school districts and 58 counties, each with their own slice of local control over those schools, according to the Department of Education.

That’s about 5.7 million students, nearly 300,000 teachers and $150 billion in costs (counting the new funding in the next budget).

To be kind, this system does not always run well. That’s in no small part because oversight and control are fragmented, overlapping and confusing. Currently, the State Board of Education sets policies, but the elected superintendent implements them through the Department of Education. Then control runs downhill to individual school districts, filtering through local school boards and even principals.

The board can’t control how the superintendent does their job, and vice versa. In fact, they don’t always agree, despite (or because of) the shotgun wedding nature of their relationship. At times, it can feel like they are working against each other. Never mind the complexities of local control.

This has been especially true in recent years as Newsom and the Legislature have pushed through big changes, such as the new prekindergarten grade, that have required massive coordination and effort. At the local level, administrators often complain there is little clarity on what is expected of them and, too often, outright conflict.

“The idea of having policy in one place and implementation in the other is really crazy,” Michael Kirst told me. He’s professor emeritus of education at Stanford and the longest-serving president of California’s State Board of Education, serving under both of Jerry Brown’s gubernatorial stints.

Newsom’s proposed system promises “much clearer, cleaner accountability,” Kirst said.

Expertise counts

It also has the benefit of putting an actual education expert in charge of schools. Because the superintendent role is elected, it has too often been coveted by career politicians looking for a landing spot. Its incumbent, Tony Thurmond, had a background in social work before running for various offices, but that kind of experience isn’t always the case. Neither is experience running a major organization with thousands of employees.

While Newsom’s plan leaves many, if not most, of the details to be ironed out later (a frustrating strategy he’s used more than once to keep the ball rolling on policy without having the drag of actual detail), it does promise to put in someone with the kind of high-level educational policy experience that should be required when managing this vast and important endeavor.

Kirst points out that this will be a “powerful position” charged with making sure our schools are indeed run well, and at the end of the day, it gives us one person to blame if they don’t: the governor.

So if schools don’t improve and our kids don’t learn, voters will know exactly who failed.

What else you should be reading

The must-read: Trump ousts members of bipartisan election commission ahead of midterms
The California edge: The Work of Helping A.I. Destroy Work
The L.A. Times Special: In bed 23 at Adelanto ICE detention center, a terrified teenager missed his mom

Stay Golden,
Anita Chabria

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PORTLAND, Maine — Graham Platner on Friday submitted his paperwork to formally withdraw from Maine’s U.S. Senate race, officially ending an upstart yet troubled campaign, the dissolution of which threatens Democrats’ pursuit of chamber control.

Platner’s paperwork was received by the Maine secretary of state’s office and reflected shortly thereafter in its online withdrawal list.

In a letter to the secretary of state’s office, which Platner also posted on social media, he wrote that the Mainers who had nominated him “voted for a new kind of politics” that is “representative of people down here in the real world — not billionaires, oligarchs, or the political establishment.”

It was the same outsider chord that had been a trademark of his tumultuous campaign, in which Platner drew backing from progressive leaders including Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and U.S. Rep. Ro Khanna of California. Both are among many who have since withdrawn their endorsements.

“I seek to further the movement we have built together and the future we believe in,” he went on, without elaborating.

Maine is considered a key state for control of the narrowly divided Senate, and Democrats were desperate for a candidate capable of defeating Republican Sen. Susan Collins.

The formal withdrawal comes two days after Platner said he would quit the race, facing an allegation of sexual assault that he has denied. Maine Democrats are seeking a new nominee, and several candidates have already begun jockeying for position.

State law includes a provision for Democrats to replace Platner before the general election, but the replacement must by named by July 27.

Just before Platner’s Wednesday announcement, more than 100 state Democratic Party committee members signed off on holding a nominating convention, in the event of his withdrawal, to choose the nominee. The state party has not publicly released details of when the convention will be held. Officials with the party did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday.

Several Democrats have announced plans to run for the Senate nomination this week. They include three candidates who lost the June primary for governor — former Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention director Nirav Shah, Secretary of State Shenna Bellows and former Maine Senate President Troy Jackson.

Others who have announced runs include Maine Beer Co. co-founder Dan Kleban; former 2nd Congressional District candidates Jordan Wood and Paige Loud; and former Maine Senate candidates David Costello and Andrea LaFlamme. State Rep. Valli Geiger has also expressed interest in the post but has not formally announced.

Kinnard and Whittle write for the Associated Press.

SOUTH HAVEN, Mich. — U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens is spending the closing weeks of Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary making a simple case: she’s the candidate who wins.

Stevens flipped a Republican-held House seat in suburban Detroit in 2018 and hasn’t lost since, including surviving a bruising primary against a fellow Democratic incumbent after redistricting in 2022. She says it’s what sets her apart from her opponent in the Aug. 4 primary, progressive Abdul El-Sayed.

“It is not a hypothetical that I beat Republicans,” Stevens told The Associated Press after a campaign stop in West Michigan this week. “I win tough races. I have had Republicans throw everything at me and still managed to win.”

Holding Michigan’s Senate seat is essential to any Democratic path back to the Senate majority this fall. That imperative only grew this week after Democrats’ nominee in Maine, Graham Platner, said he planned to drop out after he was accused of sexual assault, threatening another seat the party had hoped to keep competitive. While no Republican has won a U.S. Senate seat in Michigan since 1994, former U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers came within 20,000 votes of doing so in 2024.

That calculation has led Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer and influential Michigan Democrats, including former Sen. Debbie Stabenow, to rally behind Stevens, arguing she gives Democrats their strongest chance in November against Rogers, who is running again.

But if electability is the party establishment’s top priority, it’s an open question whether Democratic primary voters agree.

“Democratic leadership should think more in terms of what we want to accomplish, and less about, ‘We’ve got to make it appeal to everybody,’” said Dave Burdick, 71, of Douglas, Michigan. He’s backing El-Sayed, who has surged by arguing that Democrats don’t have to run to the middle to win.

El-Sayed has built his campaign around bold policy proposals, rejecting corporate PAC money and casting himself as an alternative to the status quo of the Democratic Party.

“People don’t want a moderate. They want somebody who’s going to come in and effect change,” Burdick added.

Stevens makes the case for retail politics

On a summer afternoon in South Haven, a community along Lake Michigan, Stevens walks into a pet supply store with the ease of a seasoned campaigner. Within minutes, she’s chatting with the owner about the area, greeting reporters by first name and striking up conversations with customers. She slips easily between small talk and campaign mode, asking about customers’ lives before mentioning legislation she’s championed and asking for their vote.

“I thought she was great fun,” said owner Roxanne Leder. “She was energetic and had a positive outlook.”

It’s the kind of campaigning Stevens’ allies say has defined her political career. They acknowledge she lacks the viral progressive moments that have fueled El-Sayed’s rise, but say she’s at her best in small rooms, union halls and local businesses — which they say is where elections are won.

Stevens has leaned into that contrast herself.

“Unlike my opponent, I’m not running at the first mic or camera I see,” Stevens said during a debate Tuesday. “We do not need a celebrity senator. We need a workhorse.”

It’s also a style familiar to Michigan Democrats. From former Gov. Jennifer Granholm to current-Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, successful statewide candidates have often paired an upbeat, personable campaign style with a pragmatic message centered on economic issues.

But unlike Granholm or Whitmer, Stevens has yet to generate the kind of broad grassroots enthusiasm that defined their statewide campaigns. El-Sayed, meanwhile, has packed rallies with progressive supporters and high-profile endorsers.

Stevens has leaned more heavily on tens of millions of dollars in outside spending, which could become one of Stevens’ biggest liabilities in the primary. Outside groups have spent more than $30 million to boost her candidacy, dwarfing the spending behind El-Sayed. The largest spender, United Democracy Project, the super PAC affiliated with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, has spent more than $13 million on Stevens’ behalf and reserved another $7 million before the primary.

For Burdick, the 71-year-old El-Sayed supporter, that spending is disqualifying. He said he would not vote for Stevens in the general election because of her support from AIPAC.

Leder, by contrast, said she expects to vote for Stevens in August because she’s far more familiar with the congresswoman than with El-Sayed. She said she still plans to do more research before making a final decision.

“I’m just a Democrat,” said Leder. “Please, please no Mike Rogers.”

Michigan has a populist streak

El-Sayed is running on Medicare for All, campaign finance reform, abolishing the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency and ending all U.S. weapons sales to Israel. He’s also a Muslim who has never held elected office.

To many Democratic leaders in Washington, that makes him a risky nominee in a battleground state often viewed as moderate and centered on manufacturing.

But Michigan has repeatedly rewarded candidates who cast themselves as outsiders challenging the political establishment. In 2016, Sen. Bernie Sanders defeated Hillary Clinton in the state’s Democratic presidential primary by running against party leaders. Donald Trump later built his own anti-establishment coalition, carrying Michigan in 2016 and again in 2024.

Burdick, a self-described “old white guy living in rural Michigan” who is a democratic socialist, said Trump and Sanders resonated with voters because they were upset.

“Well, you know what? They’re still mad,” he said. “They portray people like Abdul as unrealistic, but I think it’s unrealistic to think that we can continue the way that we’re heading.”

A two-person race changes the calculus

On Sunday, state Sen. Mallory McMorrow suspended her campaign. It prompted establishment Democrats to jump off the sidelines and back Stevens, including Democratic group EMILY’s List and Attorney General Dana Nessel.

“Haley is wicked smart, has won multiple highly competitive races, and she connects with people on a level so sincere and genuine that everyone who meets her feels truly seen and heard,” Nessel said in a statement.

El-Sayed has also built support among labor groups that have played an influential role in Democratic politics, including an endorsement from the United Auto Workers.

Fems for Dems, an influential Democratic grassroots group in the state, is not endorsing in the primary. But its founder, Lori Goldman, told AP in an interview that she planned to vote for El-Sayed.

“I personally am not going to have business as usual when I go to the ballot box. I want to vote for people, candidates that are going to go there and fight on our behalf,” she said.

Goldman, who founded the group 10 years ago in the politically important Oakland County, acknowledges the changing dynamics of Democratic primaries.

“Who would the natural choice be 10 years ago? Haley Stevens, right? Because we just followed the party line,” she said.

“People are breaking away from the party line. People want change.”

Cappelletti writes for the Associated Press.

SAN RAFAEL, Calif. — Jared Huffman was unstinting and unbowed as he raised an arm heavenward. Not for fear of a thunderbolt hurtling through the blue sky and, punitively, creasing his skull. Rather, he was illustrating a point.

“I believe in a lot of things,” he said over a tuna melt at a small Marin County cafe. “I just don’t believe in magic and a sky god that looks like an old bearded man sitting just beyond the clouds.”

Huffman is the rare American — one of only about 10% or so — who flatly state they do not believe in God, or any higher power for that matter. What makes him rarer still is his place in Congress. Huffman, who represents a sprawling slice of Northern California, reaching from the Bay Area to the Oregon border, is one of just four members (out of more than 500) who are openly agnostic or religiously unaffiliated.

He is, by far, the most outspoken.

Huffman, who publicly revealed his nonreligious status in 2017, helped form the Congressional Freethought Caucus, which consists of about three dozen members of various religious stripe, each dedicated to the proposition that church and state should be distinct. He’s written a book, due out next month, raising an alarm and summoning Americans to fight the rising tide of Christian nationalism roiling our divided land.

An overwhelming favorite to win an eighth congressional term in November, Huffman, a Democrat, calls himself a humanist and described it this way:

“To me, it means good without God. It means you don’t need the inducement or fear of an afterlife to have a moral framework and to know your place in the universe. You’re sort of at peace with the reality that, as far as we know, this is it. You get one time around.

Rep. Jared Huffman, right, greets Marin County Executive Derek Johnson during the opening of a housing community in Point Reyes Station, Calif., on Wednesday.

(Godofredo A. Vasquez / For The Times)

“There are people of faith who sometimes think, well, that must be sad, that must be incomplete,” Huffman went on. “I find it’s just the opposite. It makes this world and our opportunity to be part of it more sacred.”

Growing up in the Mormon faith

Huffman, 62, grew up in a religious household in Independence, Mo. His family practiced an offshoot of the Mormon faith; as a youth, Huffman served in the priesthood.

He began to question the church and its teachings when his father died of lung cancer at age 56. Huffman was 19 and enrolled at UC Santa Barbara on a full-ride volleyball scholarship. (A lean 6-foot-3, Huffman was a three-time NCAA All-American and is a member of the school’s athletic hall of fame.)

“I think in hindsight ignorant faith kept me from coming to terms with the fact that he was dying, and it made it way more traumatic than it should have been,” Huffman said of his father’s passing. “I didn’t really own up to the reality of what was happening, because I was this person of faith who thought rotten things would never happen to me and my father.”

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Shaken, Huffman spent years in a period of reflection and deep study — of various religions, spirituality, the Bible, which he can cite chapter and verse — before landing in his place of humanism and nonconformity.

After earning a law degree at Boston College, Huffman moved to the Bay Area and served as a senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council, the environmental group. His political career began in 1994 with his election to the Marin Municipal Water District. Huffman served for 12 years, until his election to the state Assembly. He won his congressional seat in 2012.

Huffman’s secularism never came up, he said, until his arrival in Washington, where religiosity, God-fearing and worship of a higher power are taken as articles of faith.

“All of a sudden, religion is all around you and everyone wants to know your religion,” Huffman said. “I knew that I was a nonbeliever. I knew that I was a humanist. But that was a very private thing and I had kind of intended to keep it that way.”

Losing his religion

Two things changed.

First, Huffman’s mother died at age 87. She was fervently religious, Huffman said, and “I didn’t really want to break her heart and tell her how deep my nonbelief actually was.” (In his book, Huffman recounts an awkward scene where he takes the congressional oath of office for the first time on a hastily borrowed Bible, to please his proud mom.)

The second factor was the ascent of Trump, riding a wave of ardent evangelical support.

Huffman was put off by the hypocrisy of such a blasphemous president surrounding himself with extremists using the language and symbols of religious faith to enact what he perceived, and perceives, as a distinctly antidemocratic, un-American agenda.

“I was always uncomfortable with the way I saw religion encroaching into government in Washington,” Huffman said. “My previous concerns were heightened by an order of magnitude because of what he did.”

Ignoring the counsel of family, friends and political advisors who, to a person, warned against it, Huffman revealed his religious disbelief in a series of statements and interviews in November 2017. At the time, the only member of Congress to ever publicly come out as an atheist was Rep. Pete Stark, who announced his sentiments in 2007; though the Fremont Democrat was reelected twice, he was eventually defeated by a Democratic rival who turned his lack of faith against him.

That rival was Eric Swalwell; make of it what you will.

Huffman braced for political blowback. There was none, though he’s gotten death threats and plenty of admonishments he’s bound for Hell.

(Meantime, the congressional ranks of the religiously unaffiliated have grown to include Democratic Reps. Yassamin Ansari of Arizona and Emily Randall of Washington and Republican Rep. Abraham Hamadeh of Arizona.)

In the first election after his announcement, Huffman was returned to Washington with 77% of the vote. He’s won reelection three times since, with never less than 72% support. “It turns out [constituents] don’t much care what my religion is if I’m doing good work,” Huffman said, “and that’s pretty great in my opinion.”

He underscored the sentiment with a hearty bite of his tuna melt.

The book Huffman has coming out next month — with chapters that include “Breaking Faith,” “Christian Privilege” and “Christian Zionism” — is a work that explains his personal evolution and expresses a dire fear the country is headed, if unchecked, toward a system of authoritarian theocracy.

He describes the Christian nationalism that informed the attempted coup on Jan. 6, 2021, and explains the biblical prophecies behind the messianic support among some Trumpian true-believers.

“The book is not so much about humanism,” Huffman said. “It is about the fight to protect our secular democracy, which, I think, is the bedrock of America as we know it.”

The dedication reads, “For everyone who refuses to bow.”

What else you should be reading

The must-read: 14 propositions that could remake California taxes, housing, healthcare and elections
The deep dive: Even without birthright citizenship, Supreme Court co-signs much of Trump’s immigration agenda
The L.A. Times Special: The right and left need to control the radicals in their own parties

Until next time,
mzb
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SACRAMENTO —  Could the Declaration of Independence be signed today by this crop of political leaders, particularly the one who occupies and defaces the White House?

Not just sign, but sincerely mean it.

Especially the guy who bangs a wrecking ball against the historic East Wing to make room for an incongruous ballroom monstrosity, who mars the sacred Oval Office with gold glitter and paves over the lovely Rose Garden.

But never mind these displays of egotism and tackiness that currently blemish landmarks throughout the nation’s capital, including the National Mall, traditional site of the annual July Fourth fireworks.

Back to my central question: Would there be enough patriots today to affix their John Hancocks to a rebellious document that bravely concludes:

“For the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.”

Political leaders would very likely sign the more famous preamble that includes this passage, widely regarded as the most important sentence in American history:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Those words probably would poll well and make salable talking points in local town halls. Even if the notion that all people are created equal would be recognized, as it was 250 years ago, as merely a lofty, hypocritical pie-in-the-sky goal. After all, the eloquent document’s principal author, Thomas Jefferson, owned 600 slaves.

We’ve made a world of progress since then on equality. But clearly President Trump and much of America today don’t agree that all people are created equal and guaranteed the same right, for example, of due process in court. People such as undocumented immigrants — the tired, the poor and the “huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”

But that’s a heated and politicized 250-year-old debate that will continue indefinitely.

For me, the most striking and sincere sentence in the Declaration of Independence is the last one, in which 56 delegates to the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia on July 4, 1776, unanimously pledged “our Lives, our Fortunes, and our Sacred Honor.”

“It was not a throwaway line,” notes UC Berkeley Law School Dean Erwin Chemerinsky, a constitutional scholar. “It was an acknowledgment that they were committing treason. It showed how deeply committed they were.”

The nation’s founders understood that in British King George III’s view, they were traitors. And if their rebellion failed, they’d be targets for execution.

“We must indeed all hang together or most assuredly we shall all hang separately,” Benjamin Franklin supposedly told delegates.

In fact, nine of the signers died during the Revolutionary War from disease, prison hardships or combat wounds.

An estimated 6,800 U.S. soldiers died in combat and more than 8,500 were wounded. An additional 17,000 Americans perished.

Several signers sacrificed their fortunes, some to help pay for the war.

Gen. George Washington — an immensely rich Virginia planter — refused to accept a salary as commander in chief of the Continental Army. He bought much of the ammunition and fighting gear himself, then was reimbursed after the war.

Sacred honor? That meant what it said back then. The revolutionary leaders proved their character with sacrifice and bravery.

The nation’s first president, Washington, could not tell a lie, according to myth. Of course, he routinely lied during the war to deceive the British. But our 47th president, Donald Trump, is a pathological liar who seems to prevaricate daily.

Would Trump pledge his fortune to the cause of liberty?

That’s hard to imagine of a president who uses the office to promote and prosper from his own brand name. And whose income ballooned to $2.2 billion in 2025, his first year back in the White House after being booted by voters in 2020, a humiliation he still doesn’t have the integrity to acknowledge.

“President Trump is using the office to enrich himself and his family in ways we’ve never seen before,” Chemerinsky asserts.

Pledge his life? Please!

This is a man who once faked bone spurs to avoid the military draft. OK, he wasn’t the only young fellow who dodged combat in the unnecessary Vietnam War, which claimed the lives of 58,000 Americans.

But Trump has called America’s war dead “suckers” and “losers,” according to former aides. He denies it.

There’s no question he expressed contempt for the late Sen. John McCain, who spent more than five years as a North Vietnamese prisoner. “He’s not a war hero,” Trump said. “I like people who weren’t captured.”

The Declaration of Independence was about severing the chains of a British monarchy and creating a government powered by the people with checks and balances.

Trump has attempted — often successfully — to govern as a monarch, ignoring the checks and balances of Congress and the judiciary. He has gotten away with it because bullied Republican congressional leaders have mostly rolled over like lapdogs.

But we may be seeing the early signs of a mild revolt against the king as Trump sinks further in the polls and we draw closer to the November elections.

That’s sort of what the founders had in mind: a government deriving its power “from the consent of the governed.” And when citizens are subjected to “absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government.”

So could the Declaration be signed today? Hard to say. There’s no King George hovering over us. Only a wannabe king.

But, yes, I suspect there’d be a signing. Independence is a dominant gene in America’s DNA.

What else you should be reading

The must-read: What you should know about the $351.7-billion state budget Newsom just signed
Go your own way: Facing setbacks and resistance, Trump presses bid to reshape elections on multiple fronts
The L.A. Times Special: More money and patience could help California’s vote count

Until next week,
George Skelton

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Chances are, right about now, you’re considering how you’d like to spend this upcoming Fourth of July weekend. At the beach, maybe, at a barbecue or whatever place sets fireworks pinwheeling through your holiday-happy mind.

Which makes it a perfectly excellent time to talk about elections and vote counting.

Every two years, in the spring and fall, California holds an election. Every two years the state faces an outraged chorus, voices raised nationwide, decrying the length of time it takes to tally the millions of ballots cast and, in a handful of races, determine the winner.

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Then, just as suddenly, the din fades away, the focus shifts and the election process is forgotten until the next round of howling protest.

Just that word, process, can throttle and snuff the life out of the subject.

So it’s good news that lawmakers in Sacramento have used this inattentive time to address the biennial hullabaloo and perhaps shut some people up.

The budget that Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law Monday includes an additional $40 million aimed at speeding up California’s vote count, and even if the sum is less than half the $90 million sought by reform-minded advocates, it’s something.

Most of the money will go toward staffing, technology and equipment upgrades. Another $10 million will pay for voter education and outreach. A further $750,000 will be used to combat election misinformation. (A $3.50 roll of duct tape would be a far more economical way to address the latter were it applied to the inciteful mouth of America’s election-denier-in-chief. More about him in a moment.)

“While the amount budgeted is less than we had recommended, it still represents a sizable investment that prioritizes timely election results,” said Kim Alexander, head of the nonpartisan California Voter Foundation, which has been at the forefront of election reform efforts in the state.

A surprise Supreme Court decision

As it happens, the budgetary infusion came the same day the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the right of states to count mail ballots that are postmarked by election day, even if they arrive days afterward. In California, where most voters mail their ballots, that lag time can be up to a week.

It was a surprise decision from this most Trump-obeisant court, a setback for the petulant president and a ruling that will have very little effect on California’s prolonged vote counting.

That’s because those late-arriving ballots have very little to do with the time it takes to complete the count. My colleague Kevin Rector reported that in 2024 California tallied more than 406,000 late-arriving mail ballots — which represents only about 2.5% of the more than 16 million ballots cast. The long count is a result of the huge number of ballots placed in drop boxes or arriving at processing facilities on or just before election day — and, really, is it such a bad thing for voters to watch for late developments before letting go of their ballot?

(Does the name Eric Swalwell ring any bells?)

Lawmakers in California made a purposeful decision that voting should be convenient and not a chore, as a way to to encourage the greatest turnout possible. That’s a good thing if you believe in our system of representative democracy. The voice of the people, and all that.

There wasn’t much hue or cry — especially about mail balloting, which has exploded in popularity and introduces all sorts of time-consuming steps, such as signature verification — until Trump cried fraud and made other specious claims. That’s what happens when you have a sore, whiny loser astride the bully pulpit; Trump is perfectly willing to torch people of good faith and burn working systems to the ground if it salves his eggshell ego.

An election, not a soccer match

Many political commentators are complicit in Trump’s arson.

Awaiting California’s election results, they act like pouty birthday children forced to leave their presents unopened until all the kids have had their cake. They speak of voters losing faith in the election process without explaining the commendable reason for the delay — seeking maximum voter participation — or acknowledging how their impatience contributes to the sense that something wrong is afoot.

At bottom, the push for instant results, and instant gratification, is much more about sating the curiosity of pundits and political junkies than some widespread agita among voters glued to the ballot-counting as if it were a World Cup match.

Is there a soul out there who feels there’s insufficient time between June 8, when the Associated Press called the Los Angeles mayoral race, and June 9, when the call came in the gubernatorial contest, for candidates to present their cases and voters — who haven’t already decided — to make up their minds?

Hang out with family and friends. Enjoy some barbecue. Watch fireworks paint the night sky. There’s plenty of time for speechifying, TV ads and campaign mailers to blitz the state between now and the election on Nov. 3.

Frankly, most Californians welcome the break.

What else you should be reading

The must-read: What you should know about the $351.7 billion state budget Newsom just signed
The deep dive: Costs of Iran war will linger despite conflict’s end, experts say
The L.A. Times Special: This California bill is so bad it has me agreeing with a Trump Republican

Until next time,
mzb
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