plan

Last week voters across the country rejected Republican politicians and the Trump administration’s agenda. Democrats gained control of both the House of Representatives and the Senate — nabbing historic pickups in Republican strongholds such as Kansas, South Carolina and Texas.

Notably, Latino voters turned their back on Republicans after giving Donald Trump 48% of the vote in 2024. A New York Times voter analysis found that Latino voters shifted 29 points toward Democrats between 2024 and 2026, compared with a 15-point shift among voters overall.

After the monumental about-face, President Trump processed the defeat by blaming everyone around him for the blue tsunami.

After Trump-endorsed candidates lost pivotal Senate seats, the president posted on social media, “I wasn’t on the Ballot and if I was, we would have won IN A LANDSLIDE!”

The resignation of White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles last week was perhaps the most telling move about how Trump plans to deal with Republican losses nationwide. Wiles was promptly replaced with far-right advisor Stephen Miller, who previously served as the deputy chief of staff.

“I wanted to make a change,” Trump told reporters Nov. 6. “I think Susie’s done a very good job. … Stephen’s been great and we’ve got to make moves.”

Political observers now fear the appointment signals Trump will double down on an agenda that has alienated broad swaths of voters, including Latinos, who were among the most targeted demographic in the administration’s campaign of aggressive immigration enforcement spearheaded by Miller.

To better understand what Miller’s promotion will mean for the president’s future plans, The Times spoke with New York Times contributing writer and USC associate professor of journalism Jean Guerrero, who literally wrote the book on Miller.

Her 2020 book, “Hatemonger: Stephen Miller, Donald Trump, and the White Nationalist Agenda,” examined Miller’s upbringing, the political forces that shaped his ideologies and the origins of his anti-immigrant policies.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

With the big news of this election cycle being that Latinos turned their back on Trump, do you see the appointment of Stephen Miller as an act of revenge by Trump? What do you think he’s trying to signal for his agenda over the next two years with this promotion?

I think he’s trying to signal that he plans to double down on talking down on Latino and immigrant communities because [Trump and his allies] need the war on immigrants to continue their war on the working classes, which is what this is all about.

The general public is fed up with this administration because of how de-prioritized working families have been, and that’s across the board: white, Latino, Black, Asian. The war on immigrants is central to that de-prioritization because by criminalizing a sector of the population and keeping [them] in the shadows and in fear, they are able to suppress wages for the entire working class and they’re able to keep immigrants from being able to organize with their citizen co-workers in the workplace.

What do you think we can expect to happen to immigrant Latino communities specifically under this era of Stephen Miller?

I think what we’re going to see is an extreme expansion of the war on immigrant communities and their allies specifically. That is going to disproportionately target U.S. citizen Latinos — using what power and privilege they’ve been able to accumulate through the sacrifices of their parents and grandparents — who are at the front lines of defending their community members.

Your book discussed how Miller’s high school years helped shape his anti-immigrant, anti-Latino sentiment and how that seems to have stemmed a bit from going to a public school in Santa Monica. Can you talk a little bit about that?

A lot of people get surprised when they learn that Stephen Miller was from Santa Monica, because it’s a liberal enclave, but he is very much a product of the liberal hypocrisy that he witnessed growing up in California. What he witnessed remains true of establishment and corporate Democrats today, which is a professed concern for marginalized communities and performative support for social justice, while completely neglecting to pursue any concrete policies that would make the lives of marginalized communities any better.

One of the ways he exploited that fact to rise in power was by aligning himself with the conservative movement that was growing rapidly in California during the 1990s, led by David Horowitz — a conservative activist in Studio City — who became one of Stephen Miller’s main mentors and who groomed a generation of young conservatives to use the tools and terms of the civil rights movement against the gains of the civil rights movement. Miller learned to perceive multiculturalism and people of color as an existential threat to the U.S.

Do you think that putting Miller in the position of chief of staff is a way for Trump to reposition this war on immigrants as his main thing and to move away from the more economic and cost-of-living concerns that people also seem aggravated by?

They’re going to continue to try to frame immigrants as the enemies of the working classes, which is masterful gaslighting. By doing that, they are ensuring that citizen workers don’t organize alongside immigrants for higher wages, for economic equality. I think the immigration issue is actually at the heart of the economic issues that people are upset about. I say that because you saw the mass deportations affecting things like construction sites, which were left empty of workers, so people who were trying to build housing at a time of housing scarcity were being targeted. You saw farmworkers getting targeted in the fields, which led to higher food prices.

The war on immigrants is a war on the working classes. By doubling down on it, Trump is going to be trying desperately to confuse people into thinking that immigrants are to blame for the economic pain that everybody is feeling. When in reality, the economic pain that everybody is feeling is because of this war on immigrants which is pouring billions of taxpayer dollars into mass surveillance, mass incarceration of people based on their race and language. It is a huge waste of taxpayer dollars.

Trump has been speaking out of both sides of his mouth on his immigration messaging. He recently acknowledged that people might have thought he was too tough on immigration, but this appointment of Miller signals that he will be going harder on the issue. What is the calculation there in your view?

He’s trying to exploit the echo chambers, which makes sense for a dear friend of the tech elites for him to know how to do that. He’s hoping that one piece of information will reach one audience and another piece of information will reach the other audience. So the people who are fed up with the war on immigrants will hear him say that he’s scaling it back and they’ll be happy and they’ll support him. The people who love the war on immigrants, which are fewer and fewer every day, will hear about Stephen Miller and get really excited about that. He’s just hoping that the [online] algorithm will work in his favor.

You’ve previously spoken about noticing a shift in Miller’s immigration mindset over the years, can you talk about that change?

During the first administration, he was focused entirely on strangling legal pathways into this country, such as gutting the asylum and refugee systems, and restricting green card access and separating families at the U.S.-Mexico border. All of this geared towards racially reengineering the demographics of this country. During the second administration, he’s done some of that with these mass deportations where he’s directed agents to round people up at worksites and where they’ve been racially profiling people and detaining people based on their skin color and language and blue-collar jobs as opposed to their criminal records.

At the same time, Miller has been one of the most vocal proponents of Trump’s foreign interventions and invasions, which have set the stage for the mass displacement of new refugees and immigrants. Watching Miller be so vocally supportive of these interventions, I realized he had shifted, and that he was no longer primarily motivated by restrictionist ideologies and white nationalist ideologies — it was about class.

Trump and Miller are using the war on immigrants to manufacture and maintain a permanent underclass in the United States, which is something that has been done by many administrations for many generations. But they’ve taken it to an astounding level that has caused an unprecedented amount of economic, spiritual and psychological pain across this country.

With Democrats gaining a bunch of seats in the Senate and the House, and taking control of a bunch of state legislatures, what can they do to potentially minimize Miller’s effect in the White House?

It is imperative that the Democrats use their majorities not only to investigate the crimes against humanity that this administration has been committing, but also to deliver on behalf of working families. At the center of that has to be ending the war on immigrants. They have to abolish ICE. They have to pass legislation to protect the longtime undocumented population — who Democrats have said that they’ve been going to protect for many administrations and have not prioritized, even when they previously had majorities in Congress.

If they do not deliver on behalf of working families by emancipating the subjugated classes, then they’re admitting they too are in alliance with the pillaging classes and that they are no different from Trump and Miller. The main thing they have to do is counter any maneuvers that Miller is going to be making from the White House. They can’t just be all talk. They have to deliver in concrete ways for working families and they’re not going to be able to do that if they ignore the immigrant community that has been at the center of the Trump administration’s persecution.

Nithya Raman’s win upends L.A. Latino politics

A few weeks back in this newsletter, I discussed how Latino voters would be the deciding factor in the L.A. mayoral race as the demographic helped carry Mayor Karen Bass in the primary, with her winning 35 Latino-majority neighborhoods in the June 2 election.

Five months, much campaigning and the botched response to a massive warehouse fire in heavily Latino Boyle Heights later, Bass’s competitor, Councilmember Nithya Raman, courted the Latino vote in last week’s election. A Times analysis of early election returns showed Raman won big in the heavily Latino neighborhoods such as Wilmington, South L.A. and Pico-Union.

My colleague and Latino voting expert Gustavo Arellano wrote about how Raman’s win was the death knell for L.A.’s Latino political establishment.

Arellano discussed how Bass consistently aligned herself with a cohort of moderate Latino politicians — such as City Councilmembers Monica Rodriguez and Imelda Padilla, Assemblymember Celeste Rodriguez and Rep. Luz Rivas — at reelection events. Conversely, Raman focused on activating younger, more progressive Latinos throughout her campaign.

The L.A. Latinos’ traditional political machine was in trouble before hitching its wagon to Bass’s failed reelection campaign, Arellano noted. It began in 2022 when three City Council members were embroiled in an audio leak scandal, which created an avenue for two democratic socialists to grab council seats. The Latino old guard also lost two more council members in 2024, and former L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, bastion of that political class, ran a supremely unsuccessful gubernatorial campaign this year.

Raman’s grassroots approach met Latino voters where they were and not where she thought they were supposed to be — something Bass’ chief campaign strategist, Julie Chavez Rodriguez, could learn a lesson from.

“The mayor ran on a very institutional playbook of getting a bunch of Latino politicians together so they could tell Latinos how to vote,” Marco Santana, who ran for City Council earlier this year, told Arellano. “That doesn’t work anymore. Latinos want deeds.”

One actor’s pursuit to dub “The Lion King” in Quechua

Voice actor Fernando Valencia grew up in the Andean Peruvian town of Huanimpampa, where the Indigenous language of Quechua is still an integral part of everyday life. He noticed that the dialect is never represented in dubbed versions of Hollywood family hits, which creates a barrier for comprehension among children whose primary language is Quechua.

To point out this lack of availability and to show that an avenue for accessibility was possible, Valencia dubbed segments of Hollywood blockbusters such as “Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back” and “The Lion King” into the language spoken by nearly 10 million South Americans.

He has since dared to dub “The Lion King” — the first movie Valencia watched in its entirety as a child — fully into Quechua. Valencia’s attempts are documented in Peruvian filmmaker Augusto Zegarra’s debut feature, “Runa Simi,” which is the name of the Quechua language in Quechua and translates to ”language of the people.”

De Los contributor Carlos Aguilar recently spoke with Valencia and Zegarra about the film and the voice actor’s monumental undertaking.

“If I keep my language and culture in a fragile little jar, someone will come along and trample it, and it will disappear forever,” Valencia said. “But if I open this little jar and build bridges, it will be difficult to eliminate it because it will be integrated into the world.”

A similar linguistic venture to preserve a native language was completed by Tweedie Waititi, the sister of Oscar-winning director Taika Waititi, who partnered with Disney to dub multiple titles into te reo Māori.

Valencia’s mission was given a major bump after Peter and Benjamin Bratt, whose mother, Eldy Banda, is an Indigenous activist of Quechua descent, signed on to the project as executive producers.

“It felt like a statement to have someone who has never heard of the Quechua language, maybe someone in Europe or the U.S., ask what runa simi is and then being able to tell them: ‘You’re already speaking it! By saying the words runa simi, you’re already using the language,’” Zegarra said.

Stories we read this week that we think you should read

Unless otherwise noted, stories below were published by the Los Angeles Times.

Politics and immigration

Arts and entertainment

Southern California

Kennedy dynasty has filed a motion to stop Trump’s arch from obscuring JFK Eternal Flame and slain family gravesites.

Members of the prominent Kennedy family have filed a legal motion to halt the construction of US President Donald Trump’s 76-metre (250ft) “triumphal arch” in Washington, DC, arguing it mars the area near the graves of the family’s famous forebears.

On Tuesday, the nine plaintiffs, children and grandchildren of former Senators Robert F Kennedy and Edward M Kennedy, filed a motion to intervene and an accompanying complaint in two existing federal lawsuits to block the arch’s construction.

The project would sit near the final resting places of the late senators, buried alongside their brother, former President John F Kennedy, and the Eternal Flame commemorating him at Arlington National Cemetery.

Plaintiffs argued the proposed arch would “fundamentally alter the experience of visiting the gravesites”, a site that draws millions of visitors each year.

The intervention motion was filed by veteran Washington lawyer Norm Eisen and Democracy Defenders Fund, a centre-left legal advocacy group.

It contends that the National Park Service and the Department of the Interior authorised the granite, gold-ornamented structure, dubbed the “Arc de Trump” by critics, without required congressional approval.

The plaintiffs also argue the megastructure would destroy the intentionally designed, century-old line of sight between the Lincoln Memorial and the cemetery’s Arlington House across the Memorial Bridge.

Many plaintiffs

The high-profile intervention adds to an already sprawling roster of plaintiffs who have launched legal challenges against the polarising monument, including Vietnam War veterans, a historian, and the governments of the District of Columbia, Virginia and Arlington County.

Last week, District Judge Tanya Chutkan prohibited the Trump administration from breaking ground on the structure for another 14 days following the string of lawsuits.

Building the arch would be a “permanent denigration” of the gravesites, and the Kennedy offspring “would never again be able to appreciate both sites as they always have before, and as the Kennedy family always intended”, lawyers for the relatives wrote on Tuesday.

The project is just one component of the president’s effort to remodel much of Washington, DC, alongside a historic golf course renovation and threats to demolish the Kennedy Center.

But with Democrats seizing control of Congress in last week’s midterm elections, the overhauls may be set for heightened scrutiny.

Speaking on behalf of the Kennedy family, Rory and Maxwell Kennedy, children of the late senator Robert F Kennedy, said the action is about “protecting sacred spaces that belong to the American people”. They said several members of their slain family are “among the more than 400,000 veterans and family members buried or honored on this hallowed ground”.

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr, a Trump appointee who is estranged from much of his family,  did not join the litigation.

The Los Angeles City Council moved Tuesday to drastically increase the cost of appealing development and other land-use decisions, despite opposition from homeowner groups who said it will make it much harder for residents to challenge city actions.

The proposal raises the fee for appeals on city development decisions from a flat rate of $229 to $1,145 for residents living in the project’s vicinity.

For those who don’t live near the project, the fee nearly doubles to $2,289, an almost 900% increase from the previous rate. The system also tacks on a various surcharges that would take the non-neighbor rate for appeal applications to over $2,800, advocates said.

The City Council voted 13-0 without discussion to instruct the City Attorney to draft an ordinance for the fee hike, which will require council approval.

“To take away essentially the right of the community to have an opportunity to raise their voice about their concerns…is really an indication of how this is just a punitive measure on the part of the City Council to shut the people up,” Doug Haines, a representative for the East Hollywood Neighborhood Council, said to The Times before the vote.

City Council members didn’t defend the planned fee hike at Tuesday’s meeting, but supporters have said previously that the higher fee would put Los Angeles on par with what other cities are charging and would discourage frivolous challenges that raise the cost of developing housing.

The Housing Action Coalition, a nonprofit that advocates for building more housing in California, called the proposed increase is a small and meaningful step toward deterring unnecessary delays.

“We need to pull housing out of this doom loop,” said Victoria Gomez, the coalition’s political organizer for Southern California. “As long as appeals stay this cheap and heavily subsidized, they’ll keep being used to slow down homes Los Angeles can’t afford to wait for.”

The council did agree, on the motion of Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martinez, to consider keeping the fee at $229 in the cases of tenants who would be displaced by a development. That proposal was referred to committee for study.

The L.A. City Planning Department manages the city’s land use and makes key decisions on development projects and zoning regulations. Residents who disagree with projects that are green lit by the department can go through an appeals process.

Residents can appeal a variety of city planning decisions, ranging from zoning exemptions granted by the department to fire safety violations and roadway or parking concerns regarding new project builds.

Residents were for years able to file appeals against these decisions for a minimal fee that represented 1% of what the city estimated it cost to process the appeal, while the rest is subsidized through the city’s general fund. That amounted to $229 since February, which has only increased slightly every year to adjust for inflation. The proposed change would bump the price to 5% of the expected cost for neighbors and 10% for anyone else choosing to file an appeal.

Appeal applications have steadily decreased from 217 in 2020 to 91 in 2025. The city department has received 90 applications this year so far, the department told The Times.

The Planning and Land Use Committee instructed the city Planning Department in October 2025 to explore alternative price points for appeals that would decrease the amount of money the city’s general fund would have to subsidize.

Neighboring residents would include people who live within the noticing radius of a development project, which can vary but is typically around a 500-feet radius. Only about 30% of appeals submitted in the past came from residents living within that radius, according to the city planning department.

The appeals process is only chance for city residents to challenge development decisions that impact their neighborhoods, and it’s a required step for an issue to reach the courtroom.

The proposed change was hidden in a procedural City Council item to deceive residents and lacked transparency, said Mark Kenyon, who lives in Mount Washington, in written opposition to fee hike.

“I see it as a way of blocking public participation,” Kenyon told The Times. “If they can’t come up with the money, the appeals aren’t going to happen.”

The proposed change could save the city about $254,086 in subsidies, according to the city planning department’s report, what Kenyon said amounts to pocket change for the city.

“People will simply not be able to appeal,” Kenyon said. “The process is already technically complicated.”

The city planning department estimated that processing an appeal application costs about $22,894.

“The Department brought on an independent consultant to evaluate the cost of all department processes,” a spokesperson for the department said. “It is important to note that determining the cost is separate from determining the fee. A number of planning functions have costs that are subsidized by the city, including appeals.”

Angelenos for Historic Preservation, an independent advocacy group, petitioned the California Department of Justice and the state’s deputy attorney general to defer Tuesday’s vote. The department didn’t immediately respond to The Times’ request for comment.

The fee change will bring L.A. in line with other cities across California, Councilmember Bob Blumenfield said during a Planning and Land Use Commission meeting in August.

Appeals to Los Angeles County cost over $1,000. Santa Monica charges around $750 and San Diego charges $1,000, while appeal fees in Berkeley can cost up to $3,000, according to the city planning department’s report.

“I don’t think there’s a magic number, but our appeal fees, I think, are clearly far below our peer cities,” Blumenfield said. “They need to go up because…there’s no free money. All the money that we have does come at the expense of other critical programs.”

The city’s convoluted building and development process is unique to the city of L.A. and can’t be compared to other cities in the state, said Haines of the East Hollywood Neighborhood Council. An affordable appeals process is necessary for residents to fight against dangerous builds in their neighborhoods, he said.

“It’s basically a corrupt process from beginning to end,” Haines said.

LOS ANGELES — A U.S. deportation flight of Iranian nationals bound for Iran by way of Pakistan was abruptly canceled Sunday morning, according to an attorney who spoke to some of the detainees scheduled for repatriation.

At least eight Iranians were loaded onto a plane Sunday morning in Mesa, Ariz., for a deportation flight headed to the Caucasus nation of Georgia, then on to Pakistan, according to Ali Rahnama, an attorney with the Iranian American Legal Defense Fund who filed emergency motions on behalf of some of the Iranian detainees. The flight was canceled without explanation, he said.

Court documents unsealed days ago in a civil lawsuit filed by the fund showed the Trump administration as recently as mid-October said it had plans to deport the Iranians to Iran, even as the war there drags on, via an unnamed third country. The lawsuit was filed in July and alleges that the U.S. government illegally shared confidential information with Iranian officials about Iranians seeking asylum in the U.S.

There were three deportation flights to Iran between September 2025 and January 2026, with more than 100 Iranian nationals deported. But the administration’s confirmation of the new plans amid the war that began with U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran in late February highlights its resolve in carrying out its hard-line immigration crackdown, which has involved ramping up removals, including to places that critics say could endanger the lives of the returnees.

Homeland Security response

In response to questions Sunday from the Associated Press, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that Immigration and Customs Enforcement does not comment on “prospective removal operations, including flight schedules, passenger manifests, destinations, or individual case details,” nor would the agency confirm future removal operations.

“As promised, the Trump Administration is employing all lawful options to carry out the largest deportation operation in history,” the statement said.

The administration did not specify in the October court records when the deportations would be carried out. But in the last week, roughly a dozen Iranian nationals in immigration detention said they were notified that they were scheduled for an upcoming deportation flight to Pakistan and then to Iran, according to numerous attorneys who have since confirmed those plans with Homeland Security.

Iranian government contacts reported

According to Rahnama, the eight detainees who boarded the flight on Sunday were visited by a senior official with the Iranian Interests Section — an Iranian representative office in the Pakistani Embassy in Washington that handles consular affairs — and were told that the Iranian government would transport them from Pakistan to Iran.

In the litigation brought by the Iranian immigrant advocacy group, at least a dozen Iranian detainees have said they’ve been contacted by Iranian officials who had knowledge of sensitive information on their asylum claims.

U.S. District Judge Ana C. Reyes, a nominee of President Biden, has not ruled on the claims but ordered the U.S. government to give the court 24-hour notice of any finalized plans to deport Iranians to Iran or to any other country, and five days’ written notice before any such deportation is carried out.

In a court filing Sunday, the defense fund laid out what it had learned about plans for a removal flight Sunday and argued that the administration may have violated the judge’s directive to give advance notice of deportation plans.

Later Sunday, the government filed court documents in the case, but they were sealed and inaccessible to the public.

Group says individuals could face persecution

The Iranian American Legal Defense Fund has called for a halt to the removal flights, saying in a news release that they would “reportedly mark the first deportation of Iranians to Iran since the U.S.-Iran war began.”

The group’s executive director, Yasmine Chubin, said in a statement Sunday that it was difficult to comprehend why the U.S. would forcibly deport Iranians, including asylum seekers, to Iran, amid ongoing military hostilities.

The consequences of removal, Chubin said, “could be irreversible and individuals may face persecution, torture, or death.”

At least one person who had been part of the scuttled flight volunteered to go back to Iran after nearly two years of detention, Rahnama said, out of desperation to leave what he described as inhumane imprisonment. It’s not clear how many other of the deportees may have volunteered to leave.

Riddle writes for the Associated Press. AP reporter Sarah Rankin in Richmond, Va., contributed to this report.

Jane Kim, a progressive former San Francisco supervisor with no insurance experience, appears to have won the race to be California’s industry commissioner, topping veteran legislator Ben Allen, who represents the Pacific Palisades community devastated by the January 2025 wildfires.

Kim, 49, declared victory Friday in the contest to replace outgoing Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara, ahead of a final vote count. However, a narrow gap between the two Democratic candidates has widened since election day. She also topped June’s primary field.

“We pay into the system so that when the worst happens, we’re protected. Californians have kept our end of that bargain, but insurance companies have broken their side of the promise by denying, delaying and underpaying valid claims and dropping coverage. Voters made clear in this election that they want — and deserve — that promise restored,” she said in a statement that called the vote a “rejection of the status quo.”

Allen, 48, issued a statement noting that he had congratulated Kim earlier in the day and wished her well.

“Jane ran a strong race, and it appears that she has won,” he said. “Assuming that is the case, I desperately want her to succeed, because if she succeeds, the state succeeds, especially the families in need that we’ve been fighting for across the state.”

“I ran for this office because of what I saw after fires devastated my community and region. Families in the Palisades and Altadena who had paid their premiums for decades and did everything right and who are now struggling to get the help they need,” Allen added.

Election officials continue to tally the votes in the race, and no winner had been declared by the Associated Press as of Friday afternoon.

The downballot contest didn’t draw attention like the race for governor or Los Angeles mayor, even as Kim will take office amid a state home insurance crisis in which private carriers have raised rates and dropped hundreds of thousands of residential policyholders amid rising wildfire risks.

The January 2025 wildfires that devastated Altadena, Pacific Palisades and nearby communities exacerbated the problems, with widespread complaints that some insurers were illegally delaying, underpaying or denying claims — including from smoke-damaged homes . The situation prompted investigations by the department and Los Angeles County.

The commissioner oversees an office with 1,400 employees that regulates more than 1,700 home, auto, workers’ compensation and other insurers, as well as more than 510,000 agents, brokers, adjusters, bail agents and other business entities.

Kim, the daughter of Korean immigrants who attended Stanford and has a UC Berkeley law degree, entered the race with little statewide recognition but serious progressive bona fides.

During her time on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors from 2011 to 2019, she led campaigns to sharply raise the minimum wage and make the local community college tuition free. She also served as California political director for the 2020 presidential run of Bernie Sanders, the progressive independent senator from Vermont who stumped for her commissioner’s bid.

She was endorsed by the California Federation of Labor Unions, an affiliate of the AFL-CIO that represents more than 1,300 state labor unions, while Allen got the Democratic Party nod.

Kim built her campaign around a novel proposal to establish a state-run insurance pool largely funded by homeowners that would cover wildfire claims and invest in programs to reduce fire risks for homeowners and communities. Insurers would continue to cover other claims.

The plan responds to the growing number of homeowners who can’t find insurance and are forced into the California FAIR Plan, the state’s privately operated insurer of last resort, which typically offers more expensive and less broad coverage than the open market. Though the plan’s growth has slowed, as of Sept. 30 it insured 677,000 residential policyholders, up from 271,000 four years earlier.

Kim was criticized during the campaign by Allen and others for failing to provide details on how her so-called “single payer” system would work. In late October, she released a policy brief with more details, including how coverage would be capped at a replacement cost to fully rebuild the typical California home, with more expensive homes needing additional private wildfire insurance.

The novel plan would require buy-in from Gov.-elect Xavier Becerra, the Legislature and the industry.

Allen, who called the plan unworkable and too expensive, campaigned on a platform that called attention to his three Senate terms in the Legislature, where he authored bills that cracked down on insurers and offered consumers more protection. They included higher up-front payouts in fire losses without requiring itemization by policyholders during states of emergency, and requiring insurers to fix any deficiencies uncovered by department examinations.

Kim was outspent by Allen, who raised $3.7 million compared to Kim’s $1.5 million. He also was the recipient of $2.3 million of spending by independent political action committees on his behalf.

Although Allen said he would not take insurance industry money for the race, Kim sought to tie him to the industry through past donations to his prior campaigns for office.

In her victory speech, she said insurers “lined up” behind Allen, a characterization he rejected.

The attempt to tie Allen to the industry followed controversies surrounding Lara, who The Times reported last year took at least 32 international trips but consistently failed to disclose who paid for luxury hotels, airfare and fine dining, while soliciting charity donations from those with business before the agency.

Lara has denied any wrongdoing and has pointed to his Sustainable Insurance Strategy as the reason for the slowing of the FAIR Plan’s growth. The strategy provided insurers with concessions such as the right to charge policyholders for the reinsurance carriers must buy to protect themselves from catastrophes, such as the January 2025 wildfires.

Kim’s victory brought congratulations across the business and political spectrum.

Denni Ritter, vice president of state government relations for the American Property Casualty Insurance Assn., a leading trade association for home, auto and business insurers, said the group was “looking forward” to working with Kim, Becerra and lawmakers to resolve the state’s insurance issues.

“While recent reforms are beginning to stabilize the market, the insurance crisis is far from over, and a full recovery will take time. Protecting this progress is critical. Costly new mandates or regulatory actions that drive up costs or limit coverage options risk reversing this progress and worsening the crisis,” Ritter said in a statement.

The California Working Families Party, a grassroots progressive political organization that Kim served as founding director, said the “cozy relationship between the California Insurance Commissioner and the insurance industry is over. Jane’s bold proposals and plans for real accountability for insurers overcame a tsunami of special interest spending against her.”

President Trump and his Department of Justice are taking a combative stance toward Democrats after their election victories in the midterms, signaling intense conflict to come as lawmakers prepare aggressive investigations into the executive branch next year over alleged corruption and other issues.

Trump declared on social media that investigative requests already made by Democrats are “extortion at the highest level, and they should be held accountable.” Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche echoed the Republican president and said criminal investigations of Democrats are possible.

“They are not allowed to just go around threatening existing members of the administration, to go around threatening companies, and that’s what President Trump is extremely worried about and he should be,” Blanche said as he and congressional Democrats appeared on the Sunday news shows to discuss the repercussions from last week’s elections.

Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Long Beach), who is poised to chair the powerful House Oversight Committee in the next Congress, is preparing investigations into what he calls the “Trump crime family.” He said Democrats are not going to be intimidated.

“The days of us not fighting back are over,” Garcia said.

The early rhetoric sets up a showdown ahead that is likely to define Trump’s remaining two years in office and test the power of Congress to put a check on the White House.

About 7 in 10 voters nationally say Congress is not doing enough to provide checks and balances on the presidency, according to the AP Voter Poll, a survey of more than 100,000 midterm voters. Voters in several polls during the campaign identified corruption among their top issues.

Democrats have made clear that impeachment is an option.

If there are people who have been “shortchanging the American people, screwing over the American people, or stealing from the American people, then they need to be held accountable in a manner consistent with Congress’ role, constitutionally,” said Democratic House leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York.

Some Democrats worried about overreach

But the investigative onslaught is also a source of tension for Democrats, with many warning that delivering on their central promise to voters — actions to lower the cost of living — must take precedence.

Some are concerned that their resounding wins Tuesday that have given them healthy majorities in the House and Senate will prove fleeting if conflict with Trump defines the agenda.

Sen.-elect Adam Hamilton, the first Democrat elected to the chamber from Kansas in 94 years, expressed skepticism about impeachment, saying his campaign was about trying to bring people together. He said he does not want the next two years to be spent “dividing our country further.”

“I’m not as interested in impeachment as setting up guardrails,” Hamilton said. Still, he said he understands that some investigations are necessary, and Democrats “have to look at what’s happened in Washington.”

Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent who caucuses with Democrats, said he wants to hold Trump accountable, but warned that there was only so much time.

“We cannot spend all of our time investigating Trump,” Sanders said. “We’ve got to stand up for working-class families, make a real difference in their lives.”

Jeffries casts doubt on working with Stephen Miller

Jeffries, who is on the cusp of becoming the nation’s first Black House speaker, was asked on election night about the prospects of working with Trump. He said he would be ready to work with Republicans “whenever and wherever possible to deliver real results.”

Jeffries on Sunday criticized Trump’s choice of longtime advisor Stephen Miller to succeed Susie Wiles as his chief of staff, calling him an “awful choice” and casting doubt on the prospect of working with him.

“There’s not going to be an opportunity, certainly, to work with Stephen Miller and what he represents. And we’re committed to forcefully pushing back against the extremism that they may try to continue to unleash on the American people,” he said.

Democrats across the ideological spectrum have been critical of the appointment of Miller, a primary force behind Trump’s mass deportation machine that became an issue in the midterm elections. Nationally, about 6 in 10 voters said the administration’s actions on immigration enforcement had “gone too far,” according to the AP Voter Poll.

Jeffries also said he supports a pending resolution from Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) to impeach Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Jeffries said Democrats would be discussing it when they return to the Capitol this week. “Hegseth has got to go,” he said.

“I’m a hard yes on the Hegseth resolution,” Jeffries said.

Hegseth in a video dismissed the impeachment push as “all about the politics of personal destruction.” He said it “won’t work with me.”

New senators express skepticism about Schumer

At least two new incoming Democratic senators expressed some reservations Sunday about Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, who’s expected to be reelected to his post after leading his party back to the majority.

Hamilton said he’s told Schumer, who is currently running unopposed, that he means no disrespect but that the New Yorker is a polarizing figure in Kansas and Hamilton is aiming for someone less divisive.

“What I’d be looking for is a leader who can lead from the center, somebody who can bring Republicans and Democrats together,” Hamilton said. “It feels like it is a time for fresh and new ideas and somebody who can unite us instead of dividing us.”

Hamilton said he wants to get to know the other Democratic senators better before he makes any recommendations.

Sen.-elect Abdul El-Sayed of Michigan, whom Schumer did not back in the Democratic primary, said he had been committed to Sen. Chris Van Hollen, but acknowledged that the Maryland Democrat does not appear to be running for the post.

El-Sayed said he and Schumer, who put $67 million into El-Sayed’s general election campaign, “figured out how to work together” after the primary.

“The question to me is, who wants to be the leader who’s going to make sure that we deliver on the mandate that we just got?” El-Sayed said.

Blanche was interviewed on “Fox News Sunday” and CNN’s “State of the Union.” Garcia also was on CNN, Jeffries spoke on ABC’s “This Week,” Hamilton and Sanders were on CNN and NBC, and El-Sayed appeared on ABC.

Catalini writes for the Associated Press. AP writers Mary Clare Jalonick and Lisa Mascaro in Washington contributed to this report.

For more than a year, Marissa Roy has vowed to turn the Los Angeles city attorney’s office into a massive “public interest law firm.”

Now, she has a sweeping mandate to put that plan into action.

As of Wednesday morning, Roy had nearly double the vote tally of her opponent, L.A. County Deputy Dist. Atty. John McKinney, all but assuring the 34-year-old progressive will walk into City Hall in one of her jewel-toned blazers next year as Los Angeles’ chief lawyer. While the contest has not officially been called, McKinney effectively conceded the race in an interview with The Times on Wednesday.

For decades, the L.A. city attorney’s office has focused almost exclusively on prosecuting minor crimes and defending the city from increasingly expensive litigation. In an interview in May, outgoing City Atty. Hydee Feldstein Soto scowled when a reporter mentioned Roy’s campaign line about running the office as a “public interest law firm.”

“That’s insane,” Feldstein Soto said, days before her historic primary defeat.

But in Roy, an enthusiastic and tenacious California deputy attorney general, the city will have a proactive top litigator who’s ready to play offense. Roy has promised to take her experience from a years-long legal battle with Meta to aggressively pursue litigation against corporations and landlords for alleged misconduct that harms the average Angeleno.

Long before she announced her candidacy, Roy had begun courting public servants inside the sprawling city attorney’s office to ensure her plan passed muster.

What began as a series of informal coffees at Pitchoun! Bakery downtown quickly evolved into a network of trusted advisors, who helped shape her campaign promises and fine-tune policy proposals so they could be executed on Day One.

“There’s not a single word on my website that they haven’t reviewed first to make sure that we can implement it,” Roy said in an October interview. “It’s why sometimes I won’t take a hard line on something, because I talk to the deputies involved and they say they need discretion.”

Despite attack ads saying otherwise, Roy hasn’t vowed to block prosecution of certain misdemeanor crimes — even though she prefers diversion programs as a way to aid homeless defendants.

She’s been more direct about her plans to protect the city’s immigrant communities from potential future raids and aggressively fight the Trump administration in court when it targets Los Angeles. Given her affiliation with the Democratic Socialists of America, Roy’s stances on litigation involving the Los Angeles Police Department could also depart from her predecessors’.

The union representing rank-and-file LAPD officers spent millions against Roy. Feldstein Soto also steadfastly defended the LAPD’s widely criticized uses of force on protesters and journalists during immigration raids last year.

Roy also benefits from a deep bench of elected allies across the state, including her current boss, California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta, and fellow progressive city attorneys in San Diego, San Francisco and Oakland. Many local supporters showed up to toast her presumptive win Tuesday night, already riding high on the blue wave that crashed across the U.S. when the first Los Angeles returns dropped around 8:20 p.m.

The event at Audio Graph Brewery in downtown L.A. had all the energy of a wedding reception, with DSA acolytes munching cookies emblazoned with Roy’s face in icing and union organizers bopping up and down to the viral Slayyyter track “Dance…” as results rolled in.

Roy is an evangelist for affirmative litigation, proactive suits of the type that forced President Trump to cede control of the California National Guard late last year after he deployed thousands of soldiers to quell protests and aid immigration enforcement across the state.

“We need someone who knows how to sue the Trump administration, who also has the relationships and can pick up the phone and call the San Francisco and San Diego city attorney,” Roy said. “We’re all part of this very tiny niche of municipalities suing the federal government. We all became experts [in those methods] together.”

Despite at times amplifying inaccurate claims that McKinney was a conservative, Roy and her opponent shared some policy planks. Both were highly critical of ballooning legal costs under Feldstein Soto, as well as her penchant for hiring outside law firms to fight the city’s battles. Both also said they wanted to revive internal programs the outgoing city attorney had scuttled, such as neighborhood prosecutors and specialized units for handing child abuse and domestic violence.

“This election is gonna go her way, and I’m just really truly grateful for the opportunity to be part of this over the last nine months,” McKinney said Wednesday morning. “I met a remarkable group of people. I learned a lot about the city, the City Attorney’s office, about city politics and I’m a better person for it. I congratulate Marissa on her victory, I wish her well.”

McKinney said he hopes Roy can “uplift that office to be the finest municipal law office in the country,” but also suggested she spend her energy on more than legal combat with business leaders or the White House.

“She’s gonna have to broaden her focus to issues related to public safety, homelessness. Obviously, we both agree that city liabilities need aggressive proactive risk management,” he said.

Meanwhile, Roy could scarcely contain her excitement as she laid out her plan to supporters chanting her name.

“I’m much more comfortable when people chant things like ‘Let’s sue it’, because that’s the work that we’re going to do,” she said.

“Let’s sue it!” the crowd cheered.

Iran says a ‘maximum deterrence’ plan is ready against any new US attack, warning of an immediate response.

Emmerdale fans think Steve Marchant’s return will confirm he’s targeting his ex Kim Tate in a revenge storyline on the ITV soap, and that another resident could be helping him

Steve Marchant’s Emmerdale return could see a revenge plot in play, according to fans of the ITV soap.

Fans are wondering if a recent scene with Graham Foster could suggest the pair are in cahoots, and plotting to take down Kim Tate. Steve’s return to the show, nearly 30 years after his exit, comes about after he finds out from Thea Ramsden that she is his daughter.

As Steve wants answers, he heads back to the village – but given his history with Kim, fans think he will want payback. Amid his actual crimes, she framed him for her own and he was sent to prison.

Then there’s Graham who is currently on good terms with his ex Kim. But it was only a matter of months ago that he was out to get her, and even tried to kill her.

Graham phoned someone to tell them their plan had not worked. He seemingly parked the plan to kill her, but fans are confused over why this was never revisited or explained.

So is Steve the person in cahoots with Graham and the person who was on the phone? Some viewers are starting to think this is the case, ahead of actor Paul Opacic is reprising the role after almost 30 years.

Taking to X, one fan said: “To anyone who remembers Graham’s poisoning of Kim and his reference to ‘we’re going to have to find another way to get rid of this pain in the neck’. Could his contact be Steve?”

Another fan replied: “Yeah that plot line went quiet very quickly. Hope they don’t ignore it.” A third added: “I know Graham tried to kill Kim now their best friends makes no sense.”

A final post suggested though: “Is Graham someone who would work with Steve though? Steve always seemed slightly out of his depth, and not someone Graham would trust, even for revenge.

“Could it be Ramsden? There was also a scene when she was introduced where Graham seemed to recognised her.” Teasing his comeback after almost three decades away, Steve actor Paul shared: “Things were left rather bitter between Kim and Steve, so he’s very surprised when a solicitor contacts him out of the blue. He guesses something is afoot when Kim starts brandishing notes to keep him away.

“With the sniff of more cash to be made, Steve wonders what is going on. And soon Thea leaves him a jaw-dropping voicemail.” Emmerdale Producer Laura Shaw also teased what is ahead for the returning character, as well as Thea and Kim.

Laura commented: “Determined to uncover the truth about her father, Thea devises a clever ruse to lure him into a meeting under false pretences. But will Steve fall for her deception, and does he even realise he has a child – or could he know secrets that even Kim isn’t aware of?”

This obviously teases more twists and turns ahead. So are there yet more bombshells to be revealed with the storyline, and could it risk Thea and Kim’s relationship?

Emmerdale airs weeknights at 8pm on ITV1 and ITVX. * Follow Mirror Celebs and TV on TikTok , Snapchat , Instagram , Twitter , Facebook , YouTube and Threads .

FIFA Council members may view documents related to Gianni Infantino’s doomed plan, but only in person in Zurich

FIFA will release details of President Gianni Infantino’s aborted plan to sell off stakes in future World Cups to private investors, but they will not be shared with the public.

Reports in the British media said members of the FIFA Council, the main decision-making body of football’s world governing body, will be given access to “key documents” related to the proposal, named FIFA Forward Enterprise.

However, they can only view them under “strict protocols to preserve confidentiality”, the reports said. Those include the 37 members of the council having to register for an in-person appointment to view selected paperwork in Zurich, Switzerland, in the next two weeks.

The news came out late on Monday, the deadline European football’s governing body, UEFA, had set for FIFA to release details about the $4.2bn scheme and answer questions about how the proposal came about and who approved it before the plans were dropped in July amid a worldwide backlash.

UEFA set the deadline after a tense council meeting at which Infantino apologised for the proposal but provided no details about how the plan was formed. He asked council members to submit their questions in writing.

UEFA is leading attempts to remove Infantino before or at the FIFA presidential election on March 18 in Rabat, Morocco. Infantino, who was elected in 2016, is seeking a fourth term through 2031.

Q4 guidance calls for 400 to 475 transactions, $100 million to $120 million in revenue, and sequential adjusted EBITDA improvement. The company ended Q3 with $12.1 million in unrestricted cash, estimated $55 million of equity in its inventory, and approximately $251 million of undrawn inventory financing capacity, most of it uncommitted.

This comes as leading opposition leader, Maria Corina Machado, returns to Venezuela and hints at criticism of Trump administration.

The United States has urged Venezuela to continue on a phased plan of economic recovery and political reconciliation before embarking on democratic elections.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio discussed the gradual plan during a meeting on the country’s political future with Venezuelan Minister of Foreign Affairs Oliver Blanco on Monday. The meeting comes nearly a year after US forces abducted former Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro from Caracas and brought him to the US to face drug trafficking and other charges.

Neither Rubio nor Blanco spoke to the media after the meeting, but in a readout. The State Department said in a readout that Washington had reaffirmed President Donald Trump’s “three-phase plan for Venezuela: stabilization, economic recovery and political reconciliation, and democratic transition”.

Last week, Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado returned to her country, thanking the US president and Rubio for their support. Machado, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate who gifted her medal to Trump in 2025, said she had come to organise a movement in preparation for Venezuelan elections.

Rubio “has set out a sequence of events aimed at moving toward a democratic transition that makes clear the holding of presidential elections in 2027”, she said.

Machado is balancing an election campaign with a Trump administration that has sought to extract oil from Venezuela by striking deals with the government of interim President Delcy Rodriguez, who served as Maduro’s vice president and took over after his abduction.

In September, the Trump administration said it had struck a deal with Venezuela that would give Washington a stake in about one-fifth of the country’s oil resources.

The US said it was creating a joint venture with North American Blue Energy Partners (NABEP), owned by Venezuelan businessman Alejandro Betancourt, which is the second-largest private oil operator in Venezuela, behind Chevron.

Under the deal, Caracas is giving the company 100-year rights over 17 oilfields with proven reserves of 65 billion barrels. The Pentagon will have a 35 percent stake in NABEP, and the US will be guaranteed the right to buy 20 percent of its oil output at cost, the Trump administration has said.

Shortly before Machado’s statements on Thursday, Rodriguez assured the nation that elections would be held in Venezuela “with the world as witness”, but did not specify a date.

When asked about a possible meeting with Rodriguez, Machado said she had not received any message from the interim president or from Washington.

In remarks after returning Venezuela, Machado seemed sceptical of the oil agreement with the US.

“This agreement does not reflect the levels of transparency that Venezuelan society wants,” Machado said.

Mark Walter isn’t selling the Dodgers, right?

He is selling the Lakers. He is selling his share of Chelsea, the Premier League team. He is looking into selling the Sparks.

And now he is looking into selling his share of the Cadillac Formula One racing team, as Sportico first reported Monday.

But keeping the Dodgers, right? “No matter what,” Walter told the California Post last week.

Wait a second, though. In August, Walter’s TWG Global holding company issued a statement that was definitive in two specific aspects: the Dodgers were “not being sold” and his company was “not considering exiting its stake in the Cadillac Formula 1 team.”

So I reached out to Walter’s company and to his personal spokesman, asking how to reconcile the definitive statement denying interest in a Formula One sale with the news of a possible sale and, in light of that development, whether the denials of interest in a Dodgers sale should remain credible.

No one at the company emailed me back, and the spokesman declined to comment. Someone in contact with Walter, speaking on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to comment, advised me to wait and see if a Formula One deal actually materializes and, if so, for what value.

Amid federal investigations into whether the insurance companies Walter controls might have violated laws designed to protect investors, and as he is a defendant in multiple civil lawsuits filed by investors that allege fraud and breach of contract, Walter is selling off assets from his sports empire.

He could generate a significant share of the more than $20 billion he might need to recapitalize the insurance companies and satisfy state regulators. It is uncertain how that might influence the federal investigations and civil lawsuits.

The Lakers sold for $12.5 billion — the valuation for the entire team, not for Walter’s controlling share.

Walter is seeking $3 billion for his interest in the Formula One team, according to Sportico, and $700 million for the Sparks, according to Bloomberg. The sale of the Chelsea stake, owned jointly by Walter and Dodgers co-owner Todd Boehly, generated about $1.27 billion, according to the Financial Times.

The sale of the Dodgers could generate $10 billion to $13 billion, The Times has reported.

None of this is to say Walter is not genuine in his proclamation that he is not selling the Dodgers. He said the Dodgers would win, and they have: three championships within six years, after three in the previous 56. The shine has been restored to an L.A. crown jewel.

But things can change. Potential Dodgers bidders, including Times owner Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, are considering offers should Walter decide to sell. Some have inquired discreetly and been told what everyone has been told: the team is not for sale. Commissioner Rob Manfred said the league is keeping an eye on developments surrounding Walter’s insurance empire.

“As always when we have an investigation — external, law enforcement, whatever — we monitor that,” Manfred said at the World Series. “That’s where we are right now. We’re just watching what’s going on right now.”

And that is indeed where we are right now: We don’t know what’s going to happen with the feds, and in the courts. For today, and for the immediate future, the Dodgers are not for sale. But plans can change, as Walter’s Formula One team just learned.

WASHINGTON — People heading into the Affordable Care Act open enrollment period with plans to sign up for insurance should expect a variety of changes in 2027, including higher premiums and fewer coverage options.

The sign-up window for the marketplace, also known as Obamacare, started Sunday in most states and runs through Jan. 15.

Big changes to the exchange include expiring financial assistance, rising rates, potential delays in working with a broker, new restrictions on immigrants, and stricter enrollment checks.

Financial help, including premium tax credits and cost-sharing reductions, is now restricted for many groups of people who were previously eligible.

Across the board, healthcare experts predict less coverage and higher prices, with the average price of health insurance purchased through the marketplaces expected to rise by 13% in 2027, according to analysis of new CMS data by the healthcare research nonprofit KFF.

Increases are driven by multiple factors

Cynthia Cox, a vice president and director of the ACA program at KFF, said the increase is primarily driven by rising healthcare costs, hospital market concentration, and potential factors such as the No Surprises Act, which took effect in 2022 and bans surprise billing, or the rising availability of GLP-1 drugs.

The people who will be most affected by the new increases are those who do not qualify for a subsidy.

“They may or may not be able to afford to continue to keep their coverage into next year,” Cox said, adding that “a lot of them have already moved into bronze plans, which are the cheapest plans.”

A CMS fact sheet about open enrollment that was distributed Friday says, “Americans using HealthCare.gov will have robust access to low-cost plans.”

The price of ACA insurance has skyrocketed for many people during President Trump’s second term after Republicans opposed extending COVID-era subsidies that had helped offset the costs of health insurance for most enrollees during the Biden administration.

That resulted in 1.2 million fewer people signing up for coverage in the exchanges.

Falling number of enrollees

As of February, roughly 19.2 million people in the United States were actively enrolled in ACA marketplace health plans, according to the Department of Health and Human Services website. The number of enrollees grew during the COVID-19 pandemic when enhanced subsidies became available through the American Rescue Plan Act and Inflation Reduction Act, both signed into law by President Biden.

New regulations starting in 2027 will also limit tax credits for certain lawfully present immigrants, which could result in an additional 1 million uninsured individuals over time.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration has been removing ACA enrollees from the program as part of the ongoing campaign against what it characterizes as waste, fraud and abuse.

In September, Vice President JD Vance and other officials in the Republican administration announced plans to remove 760,000 ACA enrollees from public healthcare exchanges, alleging the individuals were fraudulently enrolled in the program or simply did not exist.

Vance said the discovery and canceled subsidy payments for hundreds of thousands of people from the exchanges, part of an administration-wide crackdown on alleged fraud, would result in $2.2 billion in cost savings.

It’s unclear how many more people will drop off of ACA coverage in 2027, Cox said. But with higher premiums, immigration eligibility changes and the anti-fraud efforts, “I think there’s going to be fewer people enrolled in this market, but it’s going to be harder to understand why.”

Hussein writes for the Associated Press.

Iran’s top diplomat tells Al Jazeera Tehran has reached a plan with Qatari mediators to reopen Hormuz within two days if the US meets its conditions.

Influencer and reality TV star Princess Andre shares all about her famous family, dating and making a name for herself

11:55, 31 Oct 2026Updated 13:02, 31 Oct 2026

Her reality show, The Princess Diaries , is one of ITVX’s biggest hits, with the third series clocking up a staggering four million streams since its July release. Now, having conquered TV, Princess Andre has her sights on beauty with the launch of her own make-up range, By Princess, out this month.

Despite being the daughter of two of the UK’s best-known stars, Peter Andre and Katie Price, the 19-year-old says she is determined to carve out a career in her own right. And it looks like she’s succeeding.

“It used to be, ‘Oh my God, you’re Peter Andre and Katie Price’s child,’” says the star, who has more than a million Instagram followers. “Now it’s like, ‘Oh my God, you’re Princess.’ It’s really nice. Obviously, my parents brought me up in the industry, but now I’m building my own lovely fanbase and I’m getting my own community.”

Living her life in the glare of the spotlight is nothing out of the ordinary for the ambitious teen. Since she was a baby, Princess has grown up being photographed and filmed.

She was born on 29 June 2007, just over three years after her parents met in the Australian I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here! jungle. During the couple’s turbulent four-year marriage, the pair were rarely out of the spotlight, starring in a succession of reality shows and appearing on countless magazine covers.

So for Princess it’s very much a case of “been there, done that”, and when we ask about recent snaps of her and Love Island hunk Harrison Solomon at a Halloween event – and the whispers that they’re dating – she doesn’t flinch.

“It’s not true… the rumours are really funny,” she laughs. “Me and Harrison are part of the same management, so we were at an event together with lots of other people. We get on really well, but there’s no romance there.” So is she dating anyone?

“No, and do you know what? I’m really busy working so I don’t have time for a boyfriend at the moment,” she says. “In the future, I’d love to have a partner, but it’s not my main interest right now.”

This will be music to the ears of her notoriously protective dad Peter, who once joked that he’d like her to become “a nun”.

Princess says, “My dad is protective, but at the same time he knows I’m an adult. We have a great relationship and so much fun together.”

She is close to both her parents and, as she tells us, “They have very different personalities, but I love them both.”

Princess and her brother Junior, 21, recently moved viewers when they shared their upset over their mum’s past when appearing on her Sky docuseries, Katie Price: Nothing To Hide . Blinking back tears, Princess told how she would hug a scented blanket, sobbing, when her mum wasn’t there, while Junior said Katie simply “wasn’t being a mum” during that time.

Thankfully, things have since changed for the better.

“Me and Mum get on so well – she’s a different person now,” Princess assures us. “I think people hold on to the past quite a lot and I’m really proud of how she is trying to turn her life around. I genuinely have a good relationship with both my parents.”

Princess and Katie share a love of horses and enjoy spending quality time together at the stables.

“I’ve ridden since I was three years old,” Princess says. “Some of my earliest memories are of my mum putting me on a horse, and in the summer we love to ride. We’ll spend a few hours together at the stables.”

Princess also has a close relationship with Junior, with whom she’s currently starring in the hit BBC travel challenge show, Celebrity Race Across The World.

Touchingly, she describes him as her “best friend”, but chatting to her today, it sounds like shared past trauma may be partly responsible for helping strengthen their bond.

In 2018, the siblings were caught up in a terrifying carjacking incident in South Africa while filming their mum’s reality show, My Crazy Life . The attackers were never caught, and local police said they were lucky to escape. Unsurprisingly, the incident had a lasting effect on them both.

“I did have some counselling around that time,” says Princess. “Even now there are certain things I avoid. I don’t like being alone anywhere, ever, and I don’t like driving at night, or getting out of my car at night. And there’s something that you’ll see on Race Across The World . I had a moment of panic.”

She adds, “I feel like counselling has helped, but I’m a person who likes to keep things to myself, so I don’t like talking to people about how I feel. I also feel like, growing up, you learn to deal with things and how to cope.”

One of the things that makes Princess feel safe is being surrounded by her brothers and sisters – and the noise and familiar chaos that comes with that. She lives with dad Peter, 53, stepmum Emily, 37, and three of her seven siblings – Amelia, 12, Theo, nine, and Arabella, two.

“Because I’ve always grown up in a busy household where there’s constantly people around, it makes me feel safer when it’s not just silence,” she explains. Coming from such a big family, Princess also has her sights set on a large brood. “I either want two or four kids,” she says. “And lots of animals. I like good chaos. I sleep better when there’s noise going on.”

Of her siblings, she’s particularly taken with Peter and Emily’s youngest daughter, Arabella.

“I adore her so much,” she beams. “She is the cutest little thing, like a doll. It’s weird for me, because the age gap is like 18 years. It’s like having my own child, but I don’t actually have to help with changing nappies.”

With Princess’s profile soaring, the brand deals are flooding in. She’s already worked with some big names and now she’s gearing up to launch her very own beauty brand, By Princess.

So now she’s earning her own income, how does she spend her money?

“Quite a lot of Louis Vuitton, that I save up for,” she laughs. “But I also wear high street – I like mixing it up. But I think Junior and my dad have knocked some sense into me, as my main focus now is saving up for a house, rather than splurging on things I don’t actually need. I have looked at flats in London, but to be honest, I don’t see myself living in the UK permanently when I’m older. I picture my life abroad – somewhere hot.”

Her beauty venture is already generating a buzz on social media and Princess is understandably proud to have created her own independent brand.

“It has taken over two years to build,” she reveals. “When it first came around, I was quite unsure, because I thought, ‘This is scary, to have my own products.’ I was only 17 when I made the decision, but I was also really excited because it’s always been my dream to have my own make-up brand. I designed the products with an amazing team behind me and we made sure they are suitable for all skin tones and colours.

“It was also so important to me that the range is affordable – which is why every product is £12 – not tested on animals, and makes people feel good about enhancing their natural features through make-up, rather than changing themselves.To have a lovely community of fans, and my own make-up brand launching in Boots stores across the country, is a dream come true. I can’t wait for everyone to see it. I’m also excited to do some signings too when it’s launched, so I can meet my fans face to face.”

With her own TV show and now a beauty brand set to launch, what’s next?

“I want to properly get into brand ambassadorship,” Princes says. “I like fashion and make-up and I really want to go travelling, too.”

How about a pop career, like her dad?

“Weirdly, I do see myself in the music industry, but I just don’t have time right now,” she shrugs. It seems whatever she decides to do, Princess is doing a great job of shaking off the “nepo baby” tag and is now being seen by the public as a talent in her own right.

She says, “There are a lot of comparisons, always, but now I’m standing on my own two feet.” By Princess is launching on boots.com and in selected stores from 17 November. byprincess.co.uk

WASHINGTON — A federal judge said Friday she would open a “formal inquiry” to investigate if attorneys for the Trump administration violated ethical boundaries during a legal dispute about a golf course project — one in a pair of plans that are revealing the breadth of the president’s attempts to mold parts of the District of Columbia to his own vision.

The two cases, unfolding at the same time in the same federal courthouse, also showcase the underlying executive authority claims that lie beneath them — a glimpse into the uses of presidential power under Donald Trump.

U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes’ declaration that the court would appoint a “special master” into whether agency officials, and Justice Department attorneys, had made misrepresentations in the court is a far cry from her relationship with the government until this month. She had rejected numerous motions from the plaintiffs to step in, saying she trusted the government attorneys.

The cases involved are an impending shutdown and reconfiguration of a historic public golf course and the construction of a monumental arch that, at 250 feet, would be 100 feet taller than the Statue of Liberty is from its base to the top of the torch. The two projects are barely three miles apart.

The hearing on the golf course change began as other recent ones have: Reyes questioned Associate Atty. Gen. Stanley Woodward Jr. over how Trump’s desires to turn the golf course, near the National Mall, into a world-class facility have become urgent plans that match his public pronouncements.

Reyes stopped the hearing several times and adjourned to her chambers to check previous transcripts of the trial as she questioned Woodward. Among things she wants examined: Was a National Park Service official told to exclude details in a court declaration? Did witnesses offer misleading testimony about the extent of plans in place for the course’s closure and renovation?

At one point, Reyes read the code of conduct to government attorneys on presenting erroneous or false information during a hearing.

Reyes ordered Friday’s hearing after multiple Truth Social posts by Trump indicated that there were plans for the golf course and construction was expected to begin Nov. 15. Trump said the park would be closed for 15 months while work goes on.

The presidential posts, which began Oct. 18, created a tense dynamic in multiple court hearings afterward when officials from the Interior Department, Justice and Park Service could not confirm the existence of the plans under questioning from Reyes. She eventually asked whom she should trust. The Justice Department filed notice Wednesday night that the plans were real.

“On Friday, October 30, 2026, the National Park Service will submit to the National Capital Planning Commission for review a rendering designed by Tom Fazio for a World Class, championship-level golf course that is capable of hosting major events,” the notice said.

Reyes locked in on the filing and Trump’s multiple Truth Social announcements as she questioned Woodward.

At one point, as they talked about plans that Woodward said came about only this week, he slipped and included tree cutting as part of the preparation for the closure.

Reyes responded immediately: “News flash.” She allowed him to correct himself that the tree cutting, which occurred earlier this month, was not part of the plan to close the East Potomac Park Golf Course.

The golf course lawsuit was one of two cases in court Friday dealing with the Trump administration’s push to expand its executive authority as the president remakes the federal areas of the capital near the National Mall and along the Potomac River.

Three courtrooms away, U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan was to hold a hearing on a motion asking that she call a temporary halt to plans to begin construction as early as Nov. 5 on the memorial arch. The arch is opposed by a small group of veterans and an architectural historian who sued in federal court in Washington, saying Congress must endorse the project.

“The public interest leans heavily against allowing defendants to blaze ahead,” the plaintiffs said in seeking the injunction. “This court should enter a preliminary injunction blocking defendants from beginning construction on Memorial Circle in the hope that they can render the arch a fait accompli before this Court has made a final determination.”

Legal experts who have been watching the numerous cases underway say that what might appear at first glance to be vanity projects are in truth cases that test the limits of presidential power.

Past administrations pursued legal theories that were sometimes legally sound, sometimes not, said David Super, law professor at the Georgetown University Law Center.

“But there was always the assumption that you would try to do things that were legal,” he said. “What we’re seeing here now is that if you think the federal courts can’t stop you,” you can break the law.

That’s ”going to do long-term damage to the country,” Super said.

Fields writes for the Associated Press.

VATICAN CITY — Pope Leo XIV has become the first pope to vote in a U.S. general election, casting a mail-in ballot in a contest that will decide America’s future as the Trump era slowly comes to an end.

The Vatican confirmed Friday that the Chicago-born pontiff had submitted a mail-in ballot in Chicago ahead of the Nov. 3 midterm elections, citing his long-standing belief in civic participation.

Leo, formerly Robert Prevost, “has exercised his right to vote as a United States citizen” and has done so “whenever he was eligible to do so,” the Holy See press office said.

The statement said he had also voted while living in Peru whenever he was eligible. Leo lived in Peru as a missionary priest and bishop for over 20 years.

“The Holy Father expresses his belief in the right and the duty of citizens to participate in democratic processes,” it added.

Leo holds U.S. and Peruvian citizenship, and is also the head of state of a foreign country, the Holy See. The city state is an absolute monarchy with no political elections.

This election, Illinois voters are deciding whether to elect Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker to his third term, and they’re also filling an open U.S. Senate seat after longtime Catholic Democrat Dick Durbin’s retirement. President Donald Trump is not on the ballot but he has campaigned hard to try to preserve Republican control of the U.S. House and Senate for the final two years of his second term.

Leo’s vote was first reported by the Chicago Sun-Times, which quoted the chief of staff at the Will County clerk’s office as saying the pope, registered at a New Lenox address, requested a mail-in ballot on Oct. 3.

The request was made just 10 days before Leo underwent surgery to remove a cancerous tumor from his right lung. Leo has been slowly resuming his activities at the Vatican after being released from the hospital Oct. 17.

It is unclear how Leo returned the ballot. The pope’s older brother, John Prevost, was in Rome this week accompanying parishioners from St. Jude’s, an Augustinian-run parish in New Lenox, Illinois. The elder Prevost attends Mass there, and Leo gave a talk at the parish in 2024 while still a cardinal.

Prevost’s past votes have gone Democratic and Republican

Since 2000, Robert Prevost has voted in five primary elections, requesting Democratic ballots twice and Republican ballots three times, according to records held by the Illinois State Board of Elections.

The records do not show which candidates he supported. Illinois voters must declare a party preference to receive a primary ballot. No such declaration is required in general elections.

While registered in heavily Democratic Cook County, Prevost requested Democratic primary ballots in 2008 and 2010. After moving to the more conservative suburban Will County, he requested Republican primary ballots in 2012, 2014 and 2016.

The records also show that he submitted ballots in every general election since 2000 except those in 2020 and 2022.

Clashes with Trump

Since becoming pope, Leo has drawn criticism from President Donald Trump for repeatedly condemning the U.S.-Israeli war in Iran and calling for dignified treatment of immigrants.

Earlier this year, Trump called Leo “weak” and captive to the “radical left.”

Responding to Trump’s public rebuke, Leo told reporters en route to Algeria in April: “I’m not afraid of the Trump administration or of speaking out loudly about the message of the Gospel, which is what the church works for.”

“I will continue to speak out strongly against war, seeking to promote peace, promoting dialogue and multilateralism among states to find solutions to problems,” he said.

The public dispute has subsided in recent months.

A pope who follows U.S. politics closely

Leo has made clear on several occasions that he follows local and national U.S. politics closely, and is not afraid to intervene.

He has repeatedly called for reflection and humane treatment for immigrants in his native U.S. amid the Trump administration crackdown and mass deportation program.

Recently, Leo reiterated official church teaching declaring the death penalty “inadmissible.” He made the pronouncement in a social media post on the World Day Against the Death Penalty, which came as the U.S. announced plans to livestream an execution by firing squad. The plans were later scrapped.

In 2025, Leo intervened in a debate over abortion, after Chicago Cardinal Blase Cupich announced plans to give a lifetime achievement award to Sen. Durbin. The plans drew objection from some conservative U.S. bishops given the powerful Democratic senator’s support for abortion rights. Leo called for respect for both sides, but he also pointed out the contradiction between people who call themselves “pro-life” but also support the death penalty.

Also in 2025, Leo said he was “very disappointed” that his home state of Illinois approved a law allowing medically assisted dying, which is condemned by the Catholic Church.

Winfield writes for the Associated Press. AP editor Holly Meyer contributed to this report from Nashville, Tenn.

As the weeks pass, the transition framework being tested by the U.S. State Department for Venezuela is becoming increasingly clear. On Monday the 26th, a senior State Department official told the press: “That is the goal here:  a new TSJ before the end of this year; a new CNE shortly thereafter; declare the vacant – permanent vacancy in the presidency that triggers the six-month cycle for the presidential election.  And that’s – and then that election will happen, run by the nonpolitical CNE and governed by a TSJ that you’re not going to go to and basically annul the results of the elections because it’s been compromised or politicized the way the regime used it in the past.”

Secretary of State Rubio has been consistent on this point: institutional conditions in Venezuela must be restored before elections can be held. This is also what Venezuelans have demanded for years: an independent Supreme Court, TSJ, and an electoral board, CNE that ensure the will expressed through elections is respected. This is the exact opposite of what occurred in 2024, when the regime used the CNE and the TSJ to disregard Edmundo González’s electoral victory.

Venezuela must undergo a process of institutional reorganization, which will be a central component of the political transition. The first issue to be addressed is the “absolute absence” in the Presidency of the Republic following January 3rd. While the individual who served as Executive Vice President has filled that void, under the Venezuelan Constitution, it is indisputable that we are facing a case of “absolute absence,” which must be resolved according to the rules outlined in the Constitution itself.

In this regard, the Constitutional Chamber could play a significant role by interpreting—in accordance with the Constitution—any questions that may arise concerning this “absolute absence” and how it should be resolved. Furthermore, regarding the organization of elections, the Electoral Chamber could play a decisive role by resolving issues related to restoring the conditions for electoral integrity—conditions that are essential in Venezuela.

Given the lack of political will on the part of the interim authorities to repeal laws that run counter to human rights, the Constitutional Chamber could declare such laws null and void.

This is why the roadmap adopted by the negotiating team is based on a highly sound logic: Venezuela’s institutional vulnerability is so severe that the country cannot sustain an electoral process—such as one for the presidency—without first stabilizing, at the very least, the Supreme Tribunal of Justice and the National Electoral Council.

Naturally, this is not incompatible with the demand for elections, as María Corina Machado calls for.

However, it seems both logical and prudent first to restore the Supreme Tribunal of Justice and the National Electoral Council to take that step securely.