Politics

Nov. 30 (UPI) — Top Ukrainian and American leaders are scheduled to meet late Sunday to renew talks about a plan to end the latest chapter in the decades-long battle between Russia and Ukraine.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio and President Donald Trump‘s special envoy Steve Witkof are set to meet with a Ukrainian delegation to discuss details of the U.S. backed plan to bring the violence to an end.

Ukraine seeks international security guarantees as part of the agreement, as well as a ceasefire based on the existing frontlines, and has refused to cede any Ukrainian territory that is not already under Russian control.

Russian President Vladimir Putin does not appear set to offer any concessions, instead demanding that any military aggression will end “once Ukrainian troops withdraw from the territories they occupy,” according to CNN.

Rubio met with the Ukrainian delegation in Geneva last week to discuss a 28-point plan to end the war, which included demands by Putin that Russia regain its standing on the international stage and that Ukraine be forbidden from joining NATO, a group to which it has long sought membership.

Ukraine said then that the plan was highly favorable to Russia, and that it required “additional work.” The plan ultimately fell by the wayside, prompting the need for the Sunday meeting between the U.S. and Ukrainian delegations.

Russian officials have said they have received some details of the new plan, but have not disclosed them.

“This isn’t an official one, but we do have the document,” Putin aide Yuri Ushakov said. “We haven’t discussed it with anyone yet because the points in it require truly serious analysis and discussion.”

Trump suggested a Thanksgiving Day deadline for a deal to be signed, but later backed away from that, or any, timeline for the war to end.

“You know what the deadline is for me? When it’s over,” Trump said.

The negotiations are happening amidst Russian missile and drone attacks on key infrastructure in cities across Ukraine.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky claimed Sunday that over the last week, Russia has launched at least 1,400 drone attacks, 1,100 guided aerial bomb strikes and carried out 66 missile attacks on Ukraine.

Ukraine has responded by targeting Russian energy and military infrastructure outposts, striking them with long-range drones and missiles. It also launched drone attacks over the weekend on two tankers shipping oil to Russia in the Black Sea.

Nov. 30 (UPI) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has requested a pardon from President Isaac Herzog for a series of long running corruption charges.

Herzog’s office said the president would take the request under advisement and solicit input from justice officials before making a decision, which the office said “carries with it significant implications.”

Netanyahu has been standing trial for the past five years on charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust related to three separate cases.

He said in a video message that he would have preferred to let the legal process play out, but that the national interest “demanded otherwise.” Netanyahu has denied wrongdoing.

His critics have said that Netanyahu should admit guilt before seeking a pardon.

Earlier this month, President Donald Trump urged Herzog to “fully pardon” Netanyahu.

Herzog had previously said that anyone seeking a presidential pardon in Israel was required to submit a formal request. Herzog has not said when he may reach a decision.

In 2020, Netanyahu became the first active Israeli prime minster to stand trial in a series of cases. In the first, he is alleged to have received cigars and champagne from business executives in exchange for political favors.

In another case, Netanyahu is accused of boosting circulation for an Israeli newspaper in exchange for positive coverage.

In a third, he is alleged to have promoted regulatory decisions that would benefit an Israeli telecoms company in exchange for coverage by an online news outlet.

He has pleaded not guilty to all of the charges and called the trials a “witch hunt” by his political opponents.

He said in Sunday’s video messages that the charges were falling apart and the incidents are damaging the country’s morale.

“I am certain, as are many others in the nation, that an immediate end to the trial would greatly help lower the flames and promote broad reconciliation — something our country desperately needs,” he said.

His critics, including a former deputy commander of the Israeli forces and left-wing politicians, have said that “only the guilty” seek pardons.

Presidential pardons in Israel have rarely been granted prior to a conviction, with a rare exception of a 1986 case that involved the Shin Bet security service. A pardon before a conviction in a political corruption case would be highly controversial in Israel, experts have said.

NEW ORLEANS — About 250 federal border agents are expected to launch a months-long immigration crackdown Monday in southeast Louisiana and into Mississippi.

The operation dubbed “Swamp Sweep,” which aims to arrest 5,000 people, is centered in liberal New Orleans and is the latest federal immigration enforcement operation to target a Democratic-run city as President Trump’s administration pursues its mass deportation agenda.

Border Patrol commander Gregory Bovino, who has led aggressive operations in Chicago, Los Angeles and Charlotte, N.C., is expected to lead the campaign.

Many in the greater New Orleans area, particularly in Latino communities, have been on edge since the planned operations were reported this month. Republican Gov. Jeff Landry said he welcomes the federal agents.

Here’s what to know:

Border Patrol tactics criticized

Bovino has become the Trump administration’s go-to operative for leading large-scale, high-profile immigration enforcement campaigns. During his operation in Chicago, federal agents rappelled from a helicopter into an apartment complex and fired pepper balls and tear gas at protesters.

Federal agents arrested more than 3,200 immigrants during a surge in the Chicago area in recent months, but have not provided many details. Court documents on roughly 600 recent arrests showed that only a few of those arrested had criminal records representing a “high public safety risk,” according to federal government data.

The Border Patrol, which does not typically operate in dense urban areas or in situations with protesters, has been accused of heavy-handed tactics, prompting several lawsuits. A federal judge in Chicago this month accused Bovino of lying and rebuked him for deploying chemical irritants against protesters.

Bovino has doubled down on the efficacy of his agency’s operations.

“We’re finding and arresting illegal aliens, making these communities safer for the Americans who live there,” he said in a post on X.

Louisiana’s strict enforcement laws

The Department of Justice has accused New Orleans of undermining federal immigration enforcement and included it on a list of 18 so-called sanctuary cities. The city’s jail, which has been under long-standing oversight from a federal judge, does not cooperate with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement under most circumstances, and its Police Department views immigration enforcement as a civil matter outside its jurisdiction.

Louisiana’s Republican-dominated Legislature, however, has passed laws to compel New Orleans agencies to align with the Trump administration’s hard-line immigration stance.

One such law makes it a crime to “knowingly” do something intended to “hinder, delay, prevent, or otherwise interfere with or thwart” federal immigration enforcement efforts. Anyone who violates the law could face fines and up to a year of jail time.

Additionally, lawmakers expanded the crime of malfeasance in office, which is punishable by up to 10 years in jail, for government officials who refuse to comply with requests from agencies like ICE. It also prohibits police and judges from releasing from their custody anyone who “illegally entered” the U.S. “or unlawfully remained” here without providing advance notice to ICE.

New Orleans braces

In and around New Orleans, some immigration lawyers say they have been inundated with calls from people trying to prepare for the upcoming operation. One attorney, Miguel Elias, says his firm is conducting many consultations virtually or by telephone because people are too afraid to come in person.

He likens the steps many in the immigrant community are taking to what people do to prepare for a hurricane — hunker down or evacuate. Families are stocking up on groceries and making arrangements for friends to take their children to school to limit how frequently they leave the house, he said.

In the days leading up to Border Patrol’s planned operations, businesses have posted signs barring federal agents from entry and grassroots advocacy groups have offered rights-related training and workshops on documenting the planned crackdown.

New Orleans is famous for its blend of cultures, but only around 6.7% of its population of nearly 400,000 is foreign-born, rising to almost 10% in neighboring metro areas. That’s still well below the national average of 14.3%, according to U.S. census data.

The Latino population ballooned during rebuilding efforts after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and now makes up around 14% of the city , according to figures compiled by the New Orleans-based Data Center.

The Pew Research Center estimates 110,000 immigrants who lack permanent legal status were living in Louisiana as of 2023, constituting approximately 2.4% of the state’s population. Most of them are from Honduras.

Amanda Toups, who owns the New Orleans Cajun restaurant Toups Meatery and runs a nonprofit to help feed neighbors in need, said she expects the federal operations will hurt the city’s tourism-dependent economy, which supports the rest of Louisiana.

“If you’re scaring off even 5% of tourism, that’s devastating,” she said. “You’re brown and walking around in town somewhere and you could get tackled by ICE and you’re an American citizen? Does that make you want to travel to New Orleans?”

Brook, Santana and Cline write for the Associated Press and reported from New Orleans, Washington and Baton Rouge, La., respectively.

COSTA MESA — The schedule could hardly be more unusual: Just a little less than two weeks before the election, a Democratic presidential nominee appeared Thursday night in the Republican bastion of Orange County.

But that is the way Campaign ’92 has gone for Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton.

“It’s tough to be a Democrat here, but no more,” Orange County Democratic Chairman Howard Adler said Thursday night as he surveyed the crowd of more than 18,000 who crowded into the Pacific Amphitheatre to cheer Clinton on. On Election Day, Adler added, “We’re going to dance in the streets of Orange County.”

And dance Clinton did–a tad stiffly, perhaps–as he entered the amphitheater to the sound of Whoopi Goldberg and the choir from her recent film “Sister Act” singing “Shout.”

Taking the microphone, Clinton told the enthusiastic crowd that when he first came to Orange County for a much-publicized fund-raiser hosted by local Republicans, people told him Democrats in the area “were an endangered species.” But, he said, he decided to “go tell them (county residents) there’s a new Democratic Party, an old Republican Party, and we’re going to help lift America up together.”

He trotted out a line that his aides hope will become the theme of the campaign’s waning days–one featured in Clinton’s latest television advertisements. President Bush, he said, had promised in 1988 to make things better for Americans. “So let me ask you a question in Orange County–how you doing?”

And he urged his listeners to talk to their neighbors and tell them that “it won’t kill them if they hold their noses this one time and vote for a Democrat, because they’ll like what they get.”

Clinton also deftly defused a heckler who briefly interrupted the start of the speech and, to a chorus of boos, waved a Bush sign.

Noting that the man was wearing a Clinton T-shirt, the candidate said the heckler had “got in here under false pretenses.” Then, referring to Bush and the “Read my lips, no new taxes” pledge that he broke, Clinton said: “This whole crowd travels under false pretenses.”

After speaking for about 20 minutes, Clinton left the stage, walked outside the amphitheater and briefly greeted some of the thousands of supporters who had arrived too late to get a seat at the rally.

Some local Republicans sought to downplay the rally. “You look at those buses, you look at the signs, they’re from up in L.A. or down in the Imperial Valley,” said Assemblyman Mickey Conroy (R-Orange), who was among a group of military veterans protesting Clinton’s appearance. “What you’re seeing is a charade.”

Indeed, Clinton may not actually carry Orange County, which has not voted for a Democratic presidential candidate in 56 years. But polls taken last month showed him running virtually even with Bush among the county’s voters. Fueled in part by this strong showing, Clinton held a 21-percentage-point lead in two recent statewide voter surveys.

And the fact that at this stage in the campaign, a Democrat could stage a rally here and draw a crowd so large that the fire marshal shut off the entrances more than 1 1/2 hours before Clinton arrived, was a stunning display of how the nation’s political map has changed this year.

Sensing that change, the crowd broke into chants of “12 more days” when they weren’t loudly cheering the entertainers that helped warm them up–who aside from Goldberg included Linda Ronstadt, Bruce Hornsby and Paula Poundstone.

For the political half of the evening, the theme was putting the entire Democratic ticket over the top in California. “One is not enough,” Senate candidate Dianne Feinstein told the crowd. “An individual can make a difference, but a team can make a change.”

Barbara Boxer, the Democratic nominee in California’s other Senate race, spent 30 minutes doing satellite television interviews with Clinton that were beamed to other parts of the state before her brief appearance at the rally. “It’s tough out there. There’s been negative politics,” she told the crowd. “Stick with us these 12 more days.”

Clinton, too, stuck to that theme, telling the crowd: “I want you to help me be a better President by electing Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein to the United States Senate.”

As the Nov. 3 vote grows closer, Clinton has become bolder about trying to use his support to achieve goals other than his own election. That was clear not only at the Orange County rally, but at an appearance earlier in the day in Orgeon.

Last month, for example, when Clinton visited the state, he avoided taking a strong stand on Measure 9, the anti-homosexual ballot initiative backed by fundamentalist groups. On Thursday, speaking before an enthusiastic crowd of several thousand packed into and around the University of Oregon gymnasium, Clinton unequivocally condemned it.

“This country has been divided too long and in too many ways,” he said.

Then, to growing cheers, he exhorted the crowd: “Many people look to the West and see tomorrow. They see the shape of tomorrow. I ask you to send a message to America by resoundingly defeating Resolution 9. Vote no.”

Similarly, as Clinton seeks to portray the race as a choice between “can do” Democrats and “can’t do” Republicans, between “the things-could-be-worse crowd and the things-can-be-better crowd,” he has begun making far more direct appeals to his supporters to vote for other Democratic candidates as well.

In recent weeks, Clinton briefly has asked his audiences to vote for local Democratic candidates. But Thursday, for the first time, he made an extended argument for a party victory, asking Oregonians to vote for Democratic Senate candidate Les AuCoin so that as President he would have a filibuster-proof 60-member majority in the Senate.

“If you elect me on Nov. 3,” he said, “I need help to implement that program for change.”

Amid the cheering crowds, Clinton aides do their best to keep their guard up. Having watched near-disaster overtake them repeatedly in the winter and spring, this group has learned at least one lesson clearly–yesterday’s dream can become today’s nightmare.

And Clinton advisers do worry about a voter backlash if they appear to be taking the election for granted. “What worries me more than anything is that voters will feel disenfranchised by a media that tells them this thing is over,” Clinton strategist Paul Begala said.

Today on the Trail . . .

Gov. Bill Clinton campaigns in Las Vegas, Fayetteville, Ark., and Springfield, Mo.

President Bush campaigns in Lexington and London, Ky., and Miami and Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.

Ross Perot has no public events scheduled.

TELEVISION

Vice President Dan Quayle is a guest on NBC’s “Today” at 7 a.m. PDT.

First Lady Barbara Bush is a guest on ABC’s “Good Morning America” at 8 a.m. PDT. and a guest on CNN’s “Larry King Live” at 6 p.m. PDT.

Perot airs a new 30-minute commercial on NBC at 8 p.m. PDT.

C-SPAN may air repeats of the presidential debates. For updated program schedules, call C-SPAN at 202-628-2205.

Nov. 30 (UPI) — The Afghan national accused of shooting a two National Guard troops while they were deployed in Washington, D.C., was part of an elite CIA unit in Afghanistan, members of which have struggled to adjust to life in the United States.

The alleged shooter, Rahmanullah Lakanwal, 29, worked with the CIA in Afghanistan as part of a “zero unit,” or national strike unit, who worked with the American military to track down high value Taliban targets in Afghanistan.

Many members of these units, whom NBC News reports are among the most vetted Afghans who worked with the U.S. military, were evacuated in 2021 when the United States pulled out of Afghanistan because they were expected to targeted for retribution by the Taliban after it retook power.

“He was brought into the country by the Biden administration through Operation Allies Welcome. And then, maybe vetted after that, but not done well, based on what the guidelines were put forward by President Biden,” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said Sunday on ABC News’ “This Week.”

“And now, since he’s been here, we believe he could have been radicalized in his home community and in his home state,” Noem said.

Lakanwal arrived in the United States in 2021, after having been vetted regularly while he was working with U.S. forces in Afghanistan, and was granted asylum in April by the Trump administration after another round of vetting, officials have said.

In the aftermath of the shooting, the Trump administration ordered that visa holders from “every country of concern” would be required to undergo reviews to determine if they will be permitted to stay in the U.S.

The administration also said it would pause all applications for asylum, in addition to “permanently pausing migration from all third world countries.”

Members of the zero units took part in intense combat, which has left them with wartime trauma similar to the special operations forces they worked with, as well legal challenges related to their status in the U.S., and have suffered intense mental health challenges, experts have said.

“If you bring people here and you don’t let them feel like there is any hope, you’re leaving them in a very troubling situation,” a spokesperson for the 1208 Foundation, which helps Afghans who worked with the U.S. during the war, told ABC News, suggesting that treating these people like “pariahs” is going to make for a worse situation.

Although the Trump administration agreed to a deal bringing Afghans who worked with the zero units to the U.S., many have struggled to find work, let alone clarity on their asylum or visa status.

“Without your help, we are trapped,” Mohammad Shah, an Afghan in the U.S. who commanded a zero unit, wrote in a letter to members of Congress.

“Recently, there have been cases of suicide within our community driven by the overwhelming sentiment of helplessness we feel as our requests for immigration assistance go ignored by the U.S. government,” Shah wrote.

President Bush sidestepped two controversial environmental issues Monday as he took a brief swing along the West Coast.

In Portland, Ore., where Bush arrived Sunday night and left Monday morning, the President avoided committing himself on protection for the northern spotted owl, the bird whose fate has been bound up with the future of the Northwest’s remaining stands of “old growth” virgin forest.

Bush called for “balance” but did not define it.

Later in the day, during a brief stop in Los Angeles before flying back to Washington, Bush avoided any comment on offshore oil drilling. Last week, he said he was within “days, not weeks” of making a decision on whether to restrict drilling off the coasts of California and Florida.

Bush is widely expected to allow drilling off at least some parts of the Southern California coast. The White House has delayed for months announcing its policy, in part out of concern for the impact a politically unpopular decision to drill would have on Republican hopes of winning this fall’s election for governor.

Politics was at the center of the trip, which brought Bush from Texas to Oregon to Los Angeles and back to Washington in about 31 hours, roughly 11 hours of it on airplanes and only about 45 minutes in public.

But he will have spent several hours in political functions, mostly behind closed doors, in efforts to raise money for Republican candidates.

The chief purpose of Bush’s three-hour stop in Los Angeles, for example, was a lunch at the Bel-Air home of David Murdock, head of Castle Entertainment, where guests paying up to $25,000 apiece were expected to contribute about $700,000 to Republican coffers.

In Oregon, GOP officials estimated Bush raised more than $750,000 for Dave Frohnmayer, the Republican candidate for governor, as he spoke to several hundred people who had paid $1,000 to eat scrambled eggs and listen to political rhetoric at 8 o’clock on a Monday morning.

Because the White House added two non-political stops to the schedule–a 20-minute visit to view the model of a planned memorial to slain policemen in Portland and another 20 minutes at an anti-drug program here–the trip is considered “presidential,” rather than purely “political.” As a result, taxpayers, rather than the GOP, foot much of the bill.

In his remarks on Frohnmayer’s behalf, Bush spoke on both sides of the spotted owl issue.

“I reject those who would ignore the economic consequences of the spotted owl decision,” he said. “I also reject those who do not recognize their obligation to protect our delicate ecosystem.”

His audience, however, left no doubt about their sympathies, loudly applauding when he spoke in favor of considering economic factors and greeting his call for environmental protection with silence.

One of the GOP candidates Bush praised, Rep. Denny Smith (R-Ore.), was even more blunt. “There are millions of owls in the world,” he said. “The bottom line is people are more important than owls.”

Outside the hotel where Bush spoke, several dozen protesters demonstrated against logging. They were joined by other demonstrators protesting about a range of issues from AIDS to the policies of the Indian government in Kashmir.

One group of protesters did a dance across a downtown Portland street representing forest creatures. In keeping with the area’s reputation for civility, the group pranced into the street only when street lights said “Walk,” quickly returning to the sidewalk each time the “Don’t Walk” sign lit up.

Later, however, some demonstrators burned American flags and piles of newspaper in a street near the hotel, sparking at least 27 arrests, police said.

Environmental activists have campaigned to preserve the owl, which lives only in dense “old growth” forests of the Northwest, in large part as a way of protecting the forest ecosystem. Environmental groups argue that the remaining old-growth forests will be entirely gone within a generation if logging of them is not restricted.

Timber companies and many timber industry workers argue that logging restrictions sought by conservationists will put them out of work.

The federal Fish and Wildlife Service has proposed protecting the owl under the Endangered Species Act and is supposed to make a decision by June 23.

Bush has little role to play in that decision. But if the owl is listed as “endangered” or “threatened,” the White House could strongly influence the required writing of a plan to protect the creature. Environmentalists, in turn, could go to court if they believe the Administration does not protect the owl sufficiently.

Citing the failure of the state Legislature to act, Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom said Thursday that he has collected 600,000 signatures of California voters, more than enough to qualify a gun control initiative for the November ballot.

“We’re there. This is going to be on the November ballot,” Newsom said Thursday. “Over 600,000 registered voters want to take some bold action on gun safety.”

Newsom’s campaign plans to begin delivering signatures tomorrow to county clerks for verification. If at least 365,880 signatures are found to be valid, the measure qualifies for the ballot.

Newsom said most of the proposals in the initiative “have one thing in common, that over the past number of years they have suffered the fate of either being watered down or rejected by the Legislature. We’re hopeful and confident that the voters of California will overwhelmingly support the initiative.”

The broad measure would require background checks for purchasers of ammunition, ban possession of ammunition magazine clips holding more than 10 rounds, provide a process for felons and other disqualified persons to relinquish firearms and require owners to report when their guns are lost or stolen.

The initiative would also address an issue caused by the previous adoption of Proposition 47, which made thefts of guns worth under $1,000 a misdemeanor. The ballot measure would make all gun thefts a felony.

Last week, Senate President Pro Tem Kevin De Leon (D-Los Angeles) said key provisions of the initiative, including the ban on large capacity magazines, are addressed by legislation this year, but that bills could be harmed by the initiative going forward.

A campaign committee including gun groups and law enforcement is being formed to defeat the initiative, according to one member, Sam Paredes, executive director of Gun Owners of California. He noted that the measure has already been opposed by the California State Sheriffs’ Assn., which said it would put restrictions on law-abiding people without taking guns from criminals.

“it’s an initiative that carries multiple proposals that were either killed by the Legislature as not workable or vetoed by the governor,” Paredes said. “Newsom has collected failed policy issues from the Legislature and put them up as an initiative. Its going to be a massive effort to defeat him.”

Paredes said the initiative is a cynical attempt by Newsom to gain higher office.

“We know he’s doing this to pump himself up for his gubernatorial run,” Paredes said.

Newsom said his campaign for governor is secondary to his current effort to enact gun safety laws.

He said he has been active in the gun safety movement going back 15 years when he was mayor of San Francisco and a founding member of the group Mayors Against Guns. The NRA was so upset, they protested at his wedding in Montana, he said.

“I expect a good challenge from them,” Newsom said of the NRA. “They have been very aggressive to date. But we are very enthusiastic to be getting to this next phase.”

He cited internal polls indicating more than 70% of California voters support the initiative and a Field Poll that found greater support for provisions of the measure, including the ban on high capacity ammunition magazines.

The measure is also opposed by Chuck Michel, co-chair of the new Coalition for Civil Liberties. “Politicians like Newsom need to concentrate on stopping criminals and terrorists, not law-abiding citizens exercising their rights,” Michel said in a statement.

[email protected]

Twitter: @mcgreevy99

ALSO:

Opening political rift, Sen. De Leon slashes staff of Lt. Gov. Newsom

On gun control, Gavin Newsom seems to be following Gov. Bloomberg’s strategic lead

Updates from Sacramento

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Former U.S. Atty. Gen. Janet Reno, still weighing whether she’ll run for governor, said Saturday she considers it important to improve the image of politics.

Reno and four other potential Democratic gubernatorial candidates spoke at the Young Democrats Summer Convention as they test the waters to explore running to unseat Gov. Jeb Bush next year.

Reno said she expects to decide in the next six weeks on whether to run for governor. She called for improvements to the state education system, a health care system that works with the federal government and a ban on new oil drilling.

“Let us do everything we can to preserve that fragile, wonderful land for our children and their children, and on and on and on,” she said.

The governor’s race is expected to be one of the most closely watched next year, and many Democrats view Bush as vulnerable because of the state’s contested vote in last year’s presidential election.

State House Minority Leader Lois Frankel was the only announced gubernatorial candidate to attend.

“We need to get rid of Jeb Bush. He needs to be retired,” Frankel told the gathering of about 150 people. She said winning the election was also about “political payback.”

The gathering also included speeches from Tallahassee Mayor Scott Maddox and U.S. Rep. Jim Davis, both of whom are considering entering the race.

Davis, a three-term congressman from Tampa, said he expects to decide by Labor Day whether he will run for governor.

“This election is not about payback,” he said. “It’s not about getting even. This is about replacing Jeb Bush with leadership that is going to move the state forward.”

Maddox said he did not know if he would run.

“There are a lot of good ones out there,” he said.

Three possible Democratic hopefuls did not attend the convention. They were former U.S. ambassador to Vietnam Pete Peterson, a former Panhandle congressman; state Sen. Daryl Jones of Miami; and Tampa attorney Bill McBride.

On Tuesday night, President Trump once again emboldened the violent far-right when he deflected a debate moderator’s request to tell those groups to stand down, instead responding that one such organization, the Proud Boys, should “stand back and stand by,” adding, “Somebody has got to do something about antifa and the left.”

Here’s what you need to know about the far-right movement in the U.S. and why the president’s remarks were significant.

What does ‘far right’ mean?

There is no single definition of what it means to be “far right,” which is a broad term applied to a fragmented series of groups and ideologies that have operated along the fringes of U.S. politics, some for well over a century. Such groups embrace ideals of white racial purity, ultranationalism, “Western civilization” or male dominance. They have often expressed hostility to Black people, immigrants, members of certain religious groups (typically Jews, Muslims and Catholics), left-wing organizations, feminists, the federal government and even liberal democracy itself.

Far-right groups are also often labeled as racists, white supremacists, white nationalists, fascists, “alt-right,” neo-Nazis, neo-Confederates, chauvinists and militias, with the distinction frequently depending on their history or ideology. Historically, America’s best-known right-wing extremist organization is the Ku Klux Klan, which was violently dedicated to preserving white power after the Confederacy’s defeat in the Civil War brought new rights to formerly enslaved Black Americans.

The Klan’s power has waned, but such groups continue to appear in the public sphere. Many Americans will be most familiar with their gathering at the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Va., where far-right groups clashed with anti-racist protesters, killing one woman.

Who are the Proud Boys?

The Anti-Defamation League, which monitors extremists, describes the Proud Boys as “violent, nationalistic, Islamophobic, transphobic and misogynistic,” but says “its members represent a range of ethnic backgrounds, and its leaders vehemently protest any allegations of racism.”

Its membership is estimated to be in the hundreds, organized into local chapters that have attended public rallies and protests and sometimes violently confronted left-wing protesters. Its founder, Gavin McInnes, describes the group as a “pro-Western fraternity,” but the Anti-Defamation League says it has “many of the hallmarks of a gang, and its members have taken part in multiple acts of brutal violence and intimidation.”

On Wednesday, media outlets in Portland, Ore., reported that one Proud Boy member had been arrested on suspicion of assault and pointing a gun at anti-fascist protesters at an Aug. 22 confrontation in the city.

What is Trump’s relationship to the far right?

Trump’s groundbreaking 2016 presidential campaign energized far-right groups as he made harsh attacks on immigrants, Muslims, liberals and the idea of America as a collaborative participant in international diplomacy and trade. He embraced what are sometimes called “white grievance” politics, attracting large numbers of white voters, most frequently men, who believed that they themselves had been the victims of racial discrimination.

After winning, Trump populated his White House with hard-line conservatives such as Stephen K. Bannon, whose website Breitbart had been a key platform for elevating the so-called “alt-right,” which turned out to just be another name for fascism.

This drew praise from the far right, which felt that in Trump it now had a vessel to inject its own extremist politics into the mainstream after decades of marginalization, humiliation and defeat.

As The Times reported in 2016, David Duke, a former Klan grand wizard, declared that “the fact that Donald Trump’s doing so well, it proves that I’m winning.” Richard Spencer, president of the National Policy Institute, who called for a separate white nation, said, “Before Trump, our identity ideas, national ideas, they had no place to go.” Andrew Anglin, operator of the neo-Nazi website the Daily Stormer, said, “Virtually every alt-right Nazi I know is volunteering for the Trump campaign.”

How has Trump talked about the far right in the past?

It’s typical for politicians to publicly distance themselves from their most extreme supporters, usually to avoid alienating moderates or energizing opponents. But Trump, who has sometimes retweeted Twitter accounts associated with white nationalists, has often stumbled, prevaricated, pleaded ignorance or shifted blame to the left when confronted about his support from the far right.

In 2016, after retweeting a quote by Benito Mussolini, the Italian fascist leader who was allied with Adolf Hitler, Trump said, “Look, Mussolini was Mussolini … and I know who said it,” calling it “a very good quote, an interesting quote.”

Asked to disavow Duke and the KKK, Trump evaded, saying, “I don’t know anything about David Duke. I don’t know anything about what you’re even talking about with white supremacy or white supremacists. So, I don’t know.”

After the deadly 2017 Charlottesville rally, Trump told reporters: “I’ve condemned neo-Nazis; I’ve condemned many different groups,” but said he believed that not all of the right-wing participants were neo-Nazis, and that “you also had people that were very fine people on both sides.”

That comment caused an uproar among Trump’s critics, who took the remark as Trump calling neo-Nazis “very fine people” and who denounced his unwillingness to take a hard stand against racists while the nation was rattled by its largest fascist gathering in years.

What Trump said at the debate

At Tuesday night’s debate, moderator Chris Wallace gave Trump yet another chance to denounce far-right radicals, and the president once again created an uproar with his unwillingness to denounce extremist supporters.

“Are you willing tonight to condemn white supremacists and militia groups and to say that they need to stand down and not add to the violence in a number of these cities … ?” Wallace asked.

“Sure, I’m willing to do that. I would say, I would say, almost everything I see is from the left wing, not from the right wing,” Trump said. “I’m willing to do anything. I want to see peace.”

“Then do it, sir,” Wallace said.

“Say it. Do it. Say it,” Democratic nominee Joe Biden said.

“You want to call ’em — what do you want to call ’em? Give me a name, give me a name,” Trump said. “Who would you like me to condemn?”

Wallace and Biden, talking over each other, suggested “white supremacists” and the right-wing group the Proud Boys.

“Proud Boys, stand back and stand by — but I’ll tell you what, I’ll tell you what, somebody’s got to do something about antifa and the left,” Trump said.

Many listeners, including members of the Proud Boys, saw Trump’s response as a sign of support, the opposite of a denunciation.

Facing widespread criticism afterward, Trump attempted Wednesday to walk back his remark, saying, “I don’t know who Proud Boys are, but whoever they are, they have to stand down, let enforcement do their work.” But he reiterated, “now, antifa is a real problem, because the problem is on the left.”

Pressed again by a reporter to denounce white supremacists, Trump responded, “I’ve always denounced any form of any of that.”

Donald Trump has called himself a “wartime president” for leading the fight against COVID-19. He has called Americans “warriors” for showing up at their jobs, shopping in stores and generally getting the economy back on track despite knowing that these activities increase the risk of a coronavirus infection.

The metaphor is apt, in that our war on COVID-19 has resulted in substantial casualties — more than 229,000 dead and counting. That’s more double the 90,220 deaths Americans suffered throughout the Vietnam War.

During the Vietnam years, there was a clear correlation between the number of combat deaths suffered by a county and the degree to which residents backed the conflict — when deaths went up, support for the president’s war policies fell, researchers have found.

Likewise, voters in areas that suffered more casualties during the Iraq War were less likely to vote for Republican congressional candidates in the 2006 midterm elections, while voters in areas that took more casualties in Afghanistan were more likely to support Trump for president in 2016 instead of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Now political scientists are seeing the pattern again — except this time the war is happening on U.S. soil and the foe is COVID-19.

“Increasing fatalities from the disease leads to losses for Republicans,” a team from George Washington University and UCLA reported Friday in the journal Science Advances.

The researchers used data collected by the New York Times to tally COVID-19 deaths in every state up through May 31. They also looked at responses gathered by the Democracy Fund + UCLA Nationscape Project, a public opinion survey that reaches about 6,400 people each week.

They found that people in the states with high COVID-19 fatalities were 3% less likely to support Trump’s reelection than were people in states where the coronavirus had made little impact. They were also nearly 13% less likely to favor GOP candidates for Senate seats and 5% less likely to back GOP candidates for the House of Representatives.

That was just their starting point. To look more carefully at the relationship between deaths and political preferences, the political scientists compared COVID-19 deaths in the previous 30 days with changes in support for Republican candidates in a state or even county. This allowed them to account for the influence of factors like voters’ race, ethnicity, gender, education and who they voted for in the 2016 presidential election. It also helped them see whether COVID-19 deaths were actually causing voters to turn away from the party controlling America’s response to the pandemic.

The results were clear.

“Overall, areas with higher COVID-19 fatalities are significantly less likely to support President Trump and other Republican candidates,” they reported. This pattern was seen “at every level of geography and for every office.”

The degree of lost support was small, but it may be enough to swing an election in a close race, the researchers wrote.

For instance, if COVID-19 deaths in a county had doubled over the previous 30 days, voters in that county became 0.14% less likely to support Trump’s reelection, 0.28% less likely to support Republican Senate candidates and 0.22% less likely to support Republicans running for seats in the House.

Additionally, if COVID-19 deaths in a state doubled over the previous 30 days, people in that state became 0.37% less likely to say they’d vote for Trump, 0.79% less likely to say they’d vote for a GOP Senate candidate and 0.58% less likely to say they’d vote for a Republican House candidate.

The political scientists noted that in 2016, Trump carried Michigan by a margin of just 0.2%, and he lost New Hampshire by a mere 0.4%. In Florida, Republican Rick Scott unseated Democrat Bill Nelson in a 2018 Senate race with an advantage of less than 0.2%.

Indeed, COVID-19 casualties could be even more influential than the health of the economy, the study authors wrote.

“Just as the public penalizes the president for casualties during wars, the public is penalizing the president and other members of his party for local fatalities during the pandemic,” they concluded. “This could swing the presidential election and the U.S. Senate toward Democrats, with particularly high effects in swing states such as Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Arizona, and Florida.”

A few weeks ago, Katie Porter’s campaign for California governor was reeling. A day after an irritable TV interview went viral, an old video surfaced of the former Orange County congresswoman cursing and berating one of her aides.

Around the same time, the race for U.S. Senate in Maine was shaken by a number of disturbing online posts. In them, Democratic hopeful Graham Platner disparaged police and Black people, among other crude remarks. Soon after, it was revealed Platner had a chest tattoo resembling a Nazi symbol.

Meanwhile, in Virginia, several old text messages swallowed attorney general nominee Jay Jones in a cumulus of controversy. The Democrat had joked about shooting the Republican leader of the state House and blithely spoken of watching his children die in their mother’s arms.

Once — say, 20 or 30 years ago — those blow-ups might have been enough to chase each of those embattled candidates from their respective races, and maybe even end their political careers altogether.

But in California, Porter has pressed on and remains in the top tier of the crowded gubernatorial field. In Maine, Platner continues to draw large, enthusiastic crowds and leads polling in the Democratic primary. In Virginia, Jones was just elected attorney general, defeating his Republican opponent by a comfortable margin.

Clearly, things have changed.

Actions that once caused eyes to widen, such as the recreational puffs of marijuana that cost appeals court judge Douglas Ginsburg a Supreme Court seat under President Reagan, now seem quaint. Personal indiscretions once seen as disqualifying, such as the extramarital affair that chased Gary Hart from the 1988 presidential race, scarcely raise an eyebrow.

Gary Hart quit the 1988 presidential race soon after reports surfaced of an extramarital affair. He later unsuccessfully jumped back into the contest.

(Getty Images)

And the old political playbook — confession, contrition, capitulation — is obviously no longer operative, as candidates find it not only possible but even advantageous to brazen their way through storms of uproar and opprobrium.

Look no further than the extravagantly checkered occupant of the White House. Donald Trump has seemingly survived more controversies — not to mention two impeachments, an $83.3-million judgment in a sexual abuse and defamation case and conviction on 34 felony counts — than there are stars winking in the nighttime sky.

Bill Carrick has spent decades strategizing for Democratic office-seekers. A generation or so ago, if faced with a serious scandal, he would have told his candidate, “This is not going to be sustainable and you just better get out.” But now, Carrick said, “I would be very reluctant to tell somebody that, unless there was evidence they had murdered or kidnapped somebody, or robbed a bank.”

Kevin Madden, a veteran Republican communications strategist, agreed. Surrender has become passe. Survival is the new fallback mode.

“The one thing that many politicians of both parties have learned is that there is an opportunity to grind it out, to ride the storm out,” Madden said. “If you think a news issue is going viral or becoming the topic everyone’s talking about, just wait. A new scandal … or a new shiny object will be along.”

One reason for the changing nature of political scandal, and its prognosis, is the way we now take in information, both selectively and in bulk.

With the chance to personally curate their news feed — and reinforce their attitude and outlook — people can select those things they wish to know about, and choose those they care to ignore. With such fragmentation, it’s much harder for a negative storyline to reach critical mass. That requires a mass audience.

“A lot of scandals may not have the impact that they once had because people are in these silos or echo chambers,” said Scott Basinger, a University of Houston political scientist who’s extensively studied the nature of political scandal. “They may not even hear about it, if they don’t want to hear about it.”

The sheer velocity of information — “not only delivered to you on your doorstep, or at 6:30 p.m. by the three networks, but also in your pocket, in your hand at all times, across multiple platforms,” as Madden put it — also makes events more fleeting. That makes it harder for any one to penetrate deeply or resonate widely.

“In a world where there’s a wealth of information,” he said, “there’s a poverty of attention.”

Seven months after abruptly dropping out of the 1988 presidential race, Hart jumped back into the contest. “Let’s let the people decide,” he said, after confessing his marital sins.

(He also said in the same interview, a few months before relaunching his candidacy, that he had no intention of doing so.)

Hart did not fare well. Once he’d been the overwhelming front-runner for the Democratic nomination. As a reincarnated candidate, he trudged on for a few months before dropping out for good, having failed to secure a single convention delegate or win double-digit support in any contest.

“The people have decided,” he said, “and now I should not go forward.”

That’s how it should be.

Porter in California and Platner in Maine both faced calls to drop out of their respective races, with critics questioning their conduct and whether they had the right temperament to serve, respectively, as California governor or a U.S. senator. Each has expressed contrition for their actions. (As did Jones, Virginia’s attorney general-elect.)

Voters can take all that into account when they pick their candidate.

If they want a governor who drops f-bombs and snaps at aides, a senator with a history of off-putting remarks or — gulp — an adulterous convicted felon in the White House, that’s their choice.

Let the people decide.

WASHINGTON — Rep. Robert Garcia and his team faced a monumental task on Nov. 5: Sift through more than 20,000 documents obtained from the estate of Jeffrey Epstein in search for something that would shed more light into President Trump’s relationship with the now-deceased convicted sex offender.

After six tedious days combing through the records, Garcia, the top Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, and four staff members identified three emails that would go on to ignite a political firestorm.

In the emails, Epstein wrote that Trump had “spent hours” at the late financier’s house with one of his victims and that he “knew about the girls,” suggesting the president knew more about Epstein’s abuse than he had previously acknowledged. The estate released the emails to the committee after receiving a subpoena.

“We thought [the emails] really raised questions about the relationship between the president and Jeffrey Epstein,” Garcia said in an interview last week. “We knew we had to get those out as soon as possible.”

Garcia’s plan to release the emails quickly thrust the second-term Democrat into the national spotlight, elevating his profile as a chief antagonist of Trump on a issue that has dogged the president since his first term. It also increased the pressure on the White House to release its investigative Epstein files.

The assertions in Epstein’s emails about Trump’s involvement or awareness of Epstein’s illicit acts have not been corroborated and the White House has denied the veracity of those accounts.

The White House accused Democrats of “selectively” leaking emails to create a “fake narrative to smear President Trump,” adding that Democrats redacted the name of one of the victims, Virginia Giuffre, who died by suicide in April and had previously said she had not witnessed Trump participating in abuse at Epstein’s house.

The email disclosures on Nov. 12 prompted Republicans on the committee to publish the full cache of records just hours later. At the same time, Democrats — joined by a handful of Republicans — were on the verge of forcing a House vote to compel the Justice Department to release its Epstein files. Days later, Trump urged GOP lawmakers to back the bill he had long resisted, and he ultimately signed it into law.

“If we hadn’t released the initial emails, Republicans would likely have released nothing,” Garcia said. “They never release anything until we push them and we bring pressure from the public.”

Garcia said Democrats were prepared to publish the full set themselves — but incrementally over the course of the week, arguing that such a release needed to be done carefully to protect victims’ privacy.

Republicans on the committee have criticized the minority party’s approach, arguing that it focuses on sensationalizing select pieces of information to damage Trump and politicizing the Epstein investigation.

“The most dangerous place in D.C. is between Robert Garcia and a cable news camera,” Republican strategist Matthew Gorman said. “This is simply a ploy for him to draw more attention to himself, and he’s using this issue to do it.”

‘Sometimes you gotta punch back harder’

Garcia’s allies view the 47-year-old’s rise as both foreseeable and reflective of his past.

Born in Peru, Garcia immigrated to the United States as a young child and became a citizen in his early 20s. He later became Long Beach’s first Latino and first openly gay mayor before arriving in Washington — where he is now one of the youngest to ever serve as the ranking member of the main investigative panel in the House.

Five months into the role, Garcia says he remains in disbelief that he is in the position that has been held by people like Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), whom he considers one of his “heroes.”

“To be in a place where I’m doing the job that he was in when I got to Congress a couple of years ago is not something that I expected,” Garcia said. “I want to contribute back as best I can, and take on this corruption, take on what is happening with the Jeffrey Epstein case and holding the administration accountable.”

The oversight committee is one of the House’s most high-profile panels and its chair, Republican Rep. James Comer of Kentucky, has broad subpoena power. Comer, a staunch Trump ally, has been leading a review of the government’s investigation into Epstein and his longtime associate, Ghislaine Maxwell. Comer has subpoenaed both the Epstein estate and the Justice Department.

Comer declined to be interviewed for this article, as did other House Republicans. But Comer told Politico last week that he was “done with Garcia” and that the Democrat had “burned his bridges with this.”

“He just needs to do TikTok videos or something. … He’s not a serious investigator. He’s like a TikTok video kind of guy,” Comer said.

Garcia responded to Comer’s comments with a reference to the movie “Mean Girls.”

“Why’s he so obsessed with me?” he said Wednesday in an Instagram post — an example of how Garcia often uses pop culture to communicate to a more general audience.

Garcia says his tactics are motivated by an allergy to bullies.

“I grew up as an immigrant kid. … I know what it is like to be on the other side of the bully,” he said. “If the bully is going to punch or cause harm to you or others that you care about, you have to punch back. Sometimes you gotta punch back harder.”

Democrats credit Garcia for pushing Comer to act. In July, a Republican-led subcommittee passed a Democrat-led motion to subpoena the Justice Department’s Epstein documents — a move that ultimately prompted Comer to issue his subpoenas.

Rep. Robert Garcia speaks at a ceremonial swearing-in event in Long Beach in August to commemorate his new role as ranking member of the House oversight committee.

(Jonathan Alcorn / For The Times)

Rep. Greg Casar, a Texas Democrat, said the vote “began knocking over the dominoes” that eventually led to the public seeing a copy of Epstein’s “50th birthday book,” which includes Trump’s name, as well as the three emails linking Trump to Epstein.

Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Fremont), a member of the oversight committee, praised Garcia for securing bipartisan support to secure documents and pushing records out to the public. Khanna, who led the push to force a vote on the House floor to demand the Justice Department release the Epstein files, also co-wrote a letter with Garcia to Epstein’s estate requesting an unredacted copy of the birthday book.

Attorneys for the estate said that they would cooperate, but that they required a subpoena to release materials due to privacy concerns. Khanna said he believes the letter set in motion the push that ultimately led Comer to subpoena the estate.

“I think the way he has worked with Comer to make sure a lot of the investigation has been bipartisan, has been effective,” Khanna said in an interview.

A ‘dynamic’ approach to oversight

Garcia — who is known to use social media and pop culture to amplify his message — has folded those communication tactics into his role on the oversight committee.

The day the emails were released, Garcia promoted them in social media posts and videos and gave multiple interviews. The congressman — a self-described Bravo fan — is scheduled to appear this week on the cable channel’s “What Happens Live with Andy Cohen.”

Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) told The Times that Garcia’s “dynamic” leadership approach is creating new ways to communicate to a younger generation about the work Congress is doing.

“He seems to thrive on it, and that’s a joy to behold,” the former speaker said. “He is young, but has brought members along and the public along as to what the challenge is.”

Rep. Robert Garcia speaks with Mayor Karen Bass at a congressional field hearing at the Metropolitan Water District on Monday.

(Eric Thayer / Los Angeles Times)

Republicans on the committee have accused Garcia and Democrats of intentionally using the Epstein investigation to generate a false narrative against Trump — criticism that Democrats see as Garcia being willing to “fight fire with fire.”

Sen. Adam Schiff, who served on the House Select Committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, said Garcia’s push to seek records “outside of traditional channels,” including the Epstein estate, helped drive a “public narrative that broke through.”

“Under such a lawless and corrupt administration, we need talented and creative leaders to do oversight work, expose the malfeasance to the public and break through in a fractured media environment, and Congressman Garcia has proven adept at all three,” Schiff said.

Matthew Bartlett, a Republican strategist and former Trump administration appointee, said Garcia’s strategy could backfire if or when all the information on the Epstein investigation comes out.

“I believe that they’ve sprung Pandora’s box with a whole bunch of conspiracy theories, fake memes and news that the left is fully embracing and that may not actually be real,” he said.

As more records from Epstein’s estate are expected to come to light in the coming weeks, Garcia says he is committed to exposing wrongdoing from anyone, regardless of party. The documents have already shown Epstein’s links to prominent Democrats.

The records have also shown links to major banks, a thread Garcia says he believes could be central in understanding Epstein’s plea deal negotiated by a prosecutor who served in Trump’s Cabinet during his first term.

“I am not interested in protecting anybody,” he said. “I’m interested in justice for the survivors.”

A wealthy young Silicon Valley venture capitalist hopes to recruit statewide and congressional candidates and launch an affordable-housing ballot measure in 2018 because he says California’s leaders are failing to address flaws in the state’s governance that are killing opportunities for future generations.

Sam Altman, 32, said in May that he was considering a run for governor. But he said in an interview with The Times this week that he has no plans to run for office — at the moment — and will instead roll out an effort Wednesday to enlist candidates around a shared set of policy priorities — including tackling how automation is going to affect the economy and the cost of housing in California — and is willing to put his own money behind the effort.

“I think we have a fundamental breakdown of the American social contract and it’s desperately important that we fix it,” he said. “Even if we had a very well-functioning government, it would be a challenge, and our current government functions so badly it is an extra challenge.”

Altman is the president of Y Combinator, a technology incubator that has provided start-up funding to hundreds of Silicon Valley companies, notably Airbnb, Dropbox and Stripe. He first made his mark by co-founding a social media app called Loopt when he was 19 that later sold for $43 million.

He said he hopes to recruit a slate of four candidates to run for office — possibly for governor, lieutenant governor, mayor of a major city in California and Congress — and could provide technology platforms and seed money for their campaigns.

Though Altman said he is not specifically targeting Democratic politicians, he made clear he is not happy with incumbents such as Sen. Dianne Feinstein or the current gubernatorial field, which includes Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom and former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.

“I’m not satisfied with the current choices,” Altman said. “I don’t want to make this about dumping on specific people, [but] I don’t think any of the current candidates are the best we could do.”

He would not be the first wealthy Silicon Valley entrepreneur to try to shake up California politics based on his tech resume. Among them are former eBay chief Meg Whitman, who spent $144 million of her own money on an unsuccessful gubernatorial run in 2010, and former Hewlett-Packard Chief Executive Carly Fiorina, who ran for Senate in 2010 before running for president in 2016.

In recent years, tech industry executives have played notable roles helping candidates get elected to top office, including Google parent company Alphabet Inc. CEO Eric Schmidt, who backed former President Obama, and PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel, who supported President Trump.

Altman declined to say how much he was willing to spend on his effort but said he would prefer to invest heavily on a cause rather than underwriting individual campaigns.

“That’s always felt gross to me,” he said. “I’m happy to spend a lot of money supporting the movement.”

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Over the years, Altman has been registered as a Democrat and as having no party preference, and his political donations swing between liberal and center-left.

Last year, he donated $100,000 to a San Francisco group working to elect moderates to the county Board of Supervisors, and $50,000 to an Airbnb committee that backed an increase in the city sales tax. He has also spent thousands of dollars backing Obama and national and local Democratic groups, as well as congressional, legislative and local candidates.

On a website that launches Wednesday, Altman lays out his concerns and policy goals. He argues that the state’s priorities have become unbalanced, resulting in inequality, stalled growth and declining opportunity. And it will only become worse because of an upcoming economic shift driven by automation, he says.

“We need to figure out a new social contract, and to ensure that everyone benefits from the coming changes,” Altman writes on the site.

Altman lays out 10 principles including lowering the cost of housing, creating single-payer healthcare, increasing clean energy use, improving education, reforming taxes and rebuilding infrastructure.

He has few specific policy edicts, and floats proposals that will generate controversy, such as creating a universal basic income for all Americans in an effort to equalize opportunity, public funding for the media and increasing taxes on property that is owned by foreigners, is unoccupied or has been “flipped” by investors seeking a quick return on an investment.

Altman said he recognizes he faces an uphill battle.

“Maybe this will go nowhere,” he said. “There’s always the possibility I put this out and there’s exactly one person who believes in this stuff and it’s me.”

[email protected]

For the latest on national and California politics, follow @LATSeema on Twitter.

Updates on California politics

Kurdish authorities say one killed, several wounded in riots in Erbil’s Gwer, as authorities try to restore power after attack on Khor Mor.

A group of “rioters” have opened fire at fuel tanker trucks in the northern Iraqi governorate of Erbil, killing at least one person and wounding several others, Kurdish authorities said, days after a rocket attack on the region’s Khor Mor gas field.

In a statement carried by the Iraqi News Agency late on Saturday, the Ministry of Interior of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) linked the shooting to the Khor Mor attack.

The rocket attack hit a storage tank at the gas field, which is one of the region’s largest facilities, late on Wednesday, leading to production shutdown and extensive power cuts.

The ministry said the KRG sent liquid fuel to supply power plants following the Khor Mor attack, but that “a group of rioters blocked the road used by fuel tankers and civilians in Gwer, opening fire on passersby and travellers”.

The shooting “resulted in the death of one citizen and injuries to several others”, it said.

The ministry pledged action against the “riots”, saying “we will put an end to these acts of sabotage”.

The ministry statement followed an earlier report by the Iraqi News Agency in which it said there had been armed clashes between the Harkiya tribe and security forces in Erbil, near the village of Lajan on the Erbil-Gwer road.

The agency cited security forces as saying that the clashes, adjacent to the Lanaz Company refinery, had “resulted in fatalities and injuries”.

Meanwhile, Iraqi Kurdish Prime Minister Masrour Barzani has announced that the KRG has agreed with the company operating the Khor Mor gas field to restart production within hours to restore electricity.

The attack on Thursday on Khor Mor was the most significant violence since a series of drone attacks in July that cut production by about 150,000 barrels per day.

“I have spoken with the company’s [Dana Gas] leadership to thank them and their workforce for their extraordinary resilience and determination amid eleven attacks on the Khor Mor field,” Barzani said in a statement posted in English.

“I have urged [Iraqi] Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani to hold the perpetrators of this attack accountable to the full extent of the law, whoever they may be and wherever they are,” Barzani added.

There has been no claim of responsibility for the attack on Khor Mor, and authorities have not said who was behind the attack.

Abdulkhaliq Talaat, a military expert and former official from the Kurdish region of northern Iraq, however, told the Rudaw news channel that the drone attack on the Khor Mor gas field was launched from an area under the control of Iraqi forces.

The storage tank at Khor Mor is part of new facilities partially financed by the US and built by a US contractor, an industry source told the Reuters news agency earlier this week.

The KRG exercises autonomy in parts of northern Iraq, where US companies have significant investments in energy.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has approved two major initiatives that will require utilities to pay consumers for generating extra power and will boost the payoff for certain solar facilities.

Homes, businesses and schools that have solar panels or wind turbines previously had no financial incentive to use less electricity than they generated. But AB 920, written by Assemblyman Jared Huffman (D-San Rafael), will encourage efficiency, supporters say.

SB 32, by state Sen. Gloria Negrete McLeod (D-Chino), requires utilities to purchase solar electricity from facilities that produce up to three megawatts and could increase installations on unused spaces such as warehouse roofs. The old limit was 1.5 megawatts.

The two bills will go into effect Jan. 1. Schwarzenegger signed them late Sunday, the last day to act on bills from this year’s legislative session.

Under AB 920, the state Public Utilities Commission will set a rate for utilities to compensate customers whose solar or wind systems produce more power than they use in a year. Under California’s current law, customers are not paid for any surplus electricity they feed back into the grid.

The state requires that when a consumer installs a solar power system, it be the right size to produce only enough power necessary for on-site use. Rebates from the California Solar Initiative, overseen by the utilities commission, discourage anything larger. So customers who later reduce their energy consumption often end up underutilizing their solar panels.

“The current system instills a perverse incentive for people to waste their solar electricity just so they don’t give it away for free to the utilities,” said Bernadette Del Chiaro, a clean energy advocate with Environment California, which sponsored the bill.

The new law could boost sales of photovoltaics, especially in regions with sunny summers. Homes that use less power than they did when their solar panels were installed — such as those that add energy-efficient appliances, insulation or weatherproofing — and those with children who have moved out can also benefit.

“This bill applies to individual homeowners as well as small businesses, farms, wineries, schools and even affordable housing developments,” Huffman said in a statement.

Customers can either receive a check for the extra energy or have credit rolled forward on their electricity bills. Experts, however, said they should expect little profit.

SB 32, meanwhile, could spark more interest in commercial rooftop systems. The law expands an existing program to include municipal utilities, which now must purchase solar power at a set rate until they reach their portion of a statewide 750-megawatt cap. The limit was previously set at 500 megawatts.

The utilities commission will set the rate, which will be higher than market price after incorporating environmental compliance costs and other benefits, said Sue Kateley, executive director of the California Solar Energy Industries Assn., which sponsored the bill.

Between the sweeping solar installations in the desert and the small-scale ones on homes, she said, there had been a category of properties that had plenty of space but didn’t use enough power to justify setting up huge solar panels.

But now, owners of large storage units and similar low-energy facilities will be able to install solar power systems and sell the extra electricity back to the utilities, a program known as a feed-in tariff.

The program took cues from countries such as Germany — where, some in the industry have complained, a similar tariff format stimulated the market so much that prices of solar energy shot too high. Other critics are worried that the tariff could be too low to interest investors.

“We didn’t want to replicate the German model, which was a social movement to create an industry,” Kateley said. “In California, we already had an industry, but we wanted to fill a market gap. And within the community, it’s really exciting because this law will create local jobs.”

In a note to the state Senate on Sunday, Schwarzenegger encouraged the utilities commission to continue investigating an expanded tariff for small to medium-size producers of renewable energy.

“In order to meet our greenhouse gas emission reduction goals and a Renewable Portfolio Standard of 33% by 2020, we will need to use all the tools available under our existing programs,” he said.

But Schwarzenegger vetoed a slate of bills — including SB 14 and AB 64 — that would have required the state to rely on renewable resources for at least one-third of its electricity. He has issued an executive order to meet the 33% goal using a different plan and supports efforts to create 1 million solar roofs by 2018.

Assemblyman Paul Krekorian (D-Los Angeles), chairman of a renewable energy committee, called the vetoes a dangerous setback. The bills, Krekorian said, would have created “green” jobs and steadied price volatility while cutting market manipulation from solar hubs outside of California. He said the vetoes would sour developers to the California market, leading them elsewhere.

“If we don’t get started now,” he said, “our opportunities to complete projects are going to be missed.”

—

[email protected]

Sen. Kamala Harris aggressively challenged Joe Biden on his nostalgic comments about working with segregationists and his record on school integration during an often contentious debate between Democratic presidential candidates.

“It was actually very hurtful to hear you talk about the reputation of two United States senators who built their reputations and career on the segregation of race in this country,” Harris said, her voice thick with emotion, to the former vice president and senator. She noted she was the only black person on the debate stage and drew on her own experiences.

“You also worked with them to oppose busing,” the California senator said. “And there was a little girl in California who was part of the second class to integrate her public school, and she was bused to school every day. And that little girl was me.”

The exchange between two Democrats fighting to occupy the same lane in the presidential nominating contest was a pivotal moment in Thursday’s debate from Miami, the second night of the event.

Harris was referring to the Biden’s remarks this month about lost “civility” in the nation’s capital, including being able to work with segregationist Sens. James O. Eastland of Mississippi and Herman Talmadge of Georgia, even though he disagreed with them.

Biden said his position was being mischaracterized, that he did not praise racists; he pointed to his work with President Obama without mentioning him by name.

This is not your father’s Democratic Party: Debate shows how leftward it has moved »

Biden also said he did not oppose busing, but rather believed it was an issue that should be handled by the states rather than the federal government.

“You would have been able to go to school the same exact way because it was a local decision,” he said.

Harris noted that such states’ rights arguments were used to fight integration in certain parts of the country.

“That’s why the federal government must step in,” Harris said. “That’s why we have the Voting Rights Act, that’s why we have the Civil Rights Act, that’s why we need to pass the Equality Act. That’s why we need to pass the ERA, because there are moments in history when states fail to preserve the civil rights of all people.”

Biden noted his support for the Equal Rights Amendment and the Voting Rights Act before noting that he had run out of time.

Harris clearly came prepared to go after Biden on this issue. Her campaign tweeted a picture of her as a schoolgirl shortly after the exchange.

Did the Biden administration help cover up the killing of Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh by Israeli forces?

This week on UpFront, Marc Lamont Hill speaks to Steve Gabavics, a colonel-turned-whistleblower who was sent by the United States Department of State to investigate Abu Akleh’s killing in 2022.

Gabavics found that Israel intentionally killed Abu Akleh, who was fired at 16 times while wearing a blue vest marked “press”, but the State Department labelled her killing “accidental” to avoid angering the Israeli government.

Gabavics claimed that Abu Akleh is among several American citizens killed by the Israeli military for whom the US has taken no action to hold Israel accountable.

A winter storm blanketed much of the central Midwest with snow on Sunday at the end of the Thanksgiving weekend, bringing blizzard-like conditions that grounded hundreds of flights and forced the closure of major highways on one of the busiest travel days of the year.

“It’s going to be messy,” said Todd Kluber, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service who is based in suburban Chicago.

With much of the central Plains and Great Lakes region under blizzard or winter storm warnings, about 1,200 flights headed to or from the U.S. had been canceled as of Sunday evening, according to the flight-tracking website FlightAware.

Most were supposed to be routed through Chicago or Kansas City, Mo. — areas forecast to be hit hard by the storm.

Strong winds and snow created blizzard conditions across much of Nebraska and parts of Kansas, Iowa and Missouri. The National Weather Service was warning that those conditions would make travel difficult in places.

By midday, the blizzard warning was extended to parts of eastern Illinois near Chicago, where snow is forecast to fall at a rate of about 2 inches an hour.

Other parts of the central Plains and Great Lakes region were under a winter storm warning that could see a foot or more of snow dumped in some places by the end of the day.

In eastern Nebraska, part of Interstate 80 between Lincoln and Omaha was closed Sunday morning because of multiple accidents after snow blanketed that area. That included semitrailer trucks jackknifed across the highway. It was reopened by Sunday afternoon.

In Kansas, Gov. Jeff Colyer issued a state of emergency declaration. The action came as a large stretch of Interstate 70, spanning much of the state, was closed between Junction City and WaKeeney.

in Missouri, a portion of Interstate 29 was shut down near the Iowa border.

As much as a foot was expected in Chicago. Four to 6 inches of snow was expected in the Kansas City area. Forecasters predict more than a foot of snow is likely in southeastern Nebraska, northeastern Kansas, northwestern Missouri and southwestern Iowa.

By Monday morning, the storm was expected to hit parts of northern Indiana and southern Michigan.

Kluber said that the storm was expected to hit the Chicago region Sunday night and that rain will give way to heavy snowfall and “near whiteout conditions” that will make for dangerous travel.

According to an old Latin proverb that might be democracy’s motto, vox populi, vox dei (“The voice of the people is the voice of God”). But when God is speaking, do we drum our fingers on the table and interrupt with “Cut to the chase, we don’t have all day”?

No, we don’t, and we should not hurry along the electoral process that “hears” the sacred voice of the American people either. If recounts in New Mexico or Wisconsin or Oregon are in order, and if they swing the election to George W. Bush, so be it, but take the time to get the counts right. If recounts in Florida or Missouri do the same for Al Gore, then so be it again, but again take the time to get the counts right. Doing so is not a breakdown of the system, it is the system.

When the American republic was founded, all voting was by hand, and so was all counting of votes. The founding fathers allowed enough time between the election and the inauguration of a new president for that laborious counting to take place and for any irregularities along the way to be resolved. Sure, there are many more votes to be counted now, but there are also many more people to do the counting, whatever method they use. The notion that unless the results are known instantly, the nation is in crisis would surely have struck the founders as alarmist. Television, not the Constitution, is responsible for the impression that something is badly amiss if an event cannot be projected beforehand and instantly replayed afterward.

Some of the major editorial pages of the nation seem to be setting themselves up for their own version of the humiliating double reverse that the networks went through on election night. With votes still being counted and Bush maintaining a narrow lead, several have called on Gore to concede for the good of the country. If Gore pulls into the lead, will they then call on Bush to concede for the good of the country? And then, if the race again becomes too close to call, will they decide that for the good of the country neither should yet concede to the other?

That final position should, in fact, be the initial position. Both the principals and those reporting on them need to calm down, take a deep breath and inhabit the space that the American polity has so wisely provided for this uniquely important decision.

Nov. 29 (UPI) — Rep. Troy Hehls, R-Texas, on Saturday announced he will not seek re-election in 2026 and will retire from Congress and focus on his family.

Nehls, 57, since 2021 has represented Texas’ 22nd Congressional District, which is situated southwest of Houston and includes parts of Sugar Land, Richmond and Rosenberg, among other Texas communities.

“I have made the decision, after conversations with my beautiful bride and my girls over the Thanksgiving holiday, to focus on my family and return home after this Congress,” he said Saturday in a post on X.

“Before making this decision, I called President Trump personally to let him know of my plans,” he continued.

“President Trump has always been a strong ally for our district and a true friend, and I wanted him to hear it from me first,” Nehls added.

“Serving this country in the military, serving our community in law enforcement and serving this district in Congress has been the honor of my life.”

Nehls enlisted in the Army Reserve in 1988 and earned two Bronze Stars while serving in Bosnia, Iraq and Afghanistan.

He joined the Richmond (Texas) Police Department in 1994 and was elected sheriff of Fort Bend County in 2012, before winning the 2020 House election.

His announced retirement is among several made recently by Republicans and Democrats in the House of Representatives, including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb. and Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.

Nehls’ twin brother, Trever Nehls, already announced his candidacy for the seat and has been endorsed by Troy.