SACRAMENTO — Hours before Gov. Gavin Newsom is expected to present his budget plan on Thursday, his office released new projections of a $16.5-billion state revenue windfall over three years and offered a rosy outlook on California’s fiscal position during his final year in office and the year after.
Newsom’s office provided few details about his plan to reduce spending or other adjustments that he would need to propose in combination with the increase in revenue to eliminate projected deficits from 2026-27 through 2027-28.
The unusual early look at his budget proposal comes as Newsom begins to wind down his time at the state Capitol and considers a run for president in 2028.
Two weeks ago, the Legislative Analyst’s Office issued an analysis of state spending that said California could not, in the long term, afford to pay for existing services and the new programs that Newsom and Democratic lawmakers have enacted since he took office in 2019. State spending has outpaced California’s strong revenue growth by about 10%, creating a perennial budget shortfall, defined as a structural deficit.
California’s spending problem threatens to define Newsom’s fiscal legacy and could provide ripe fodder for his critics. If projections of the unexpected tax windfall, which analysts attribute to stock market interest in artificial intelligence companies, bear out, the upswing could mark a lucky break for Newsom.
The governor has largely resisted adopting new across-the-board tax increases or sharply curtailing his expensive policy proposals in order to align state spending with revenue.
His budget proposal includes a call to increase taxes on corporations by limiting state tax credits to no more than $5 million, or 50% of a company’s tax liability, beginning in the tax year 2027. No estimates were offered to explain how much revenue the new cap would bring in to support the state budget.
The preview of his budget has several new spending proposals, including providing $300 million to help low-income Californians keep $0 monthly premiums on healthcare coverage through the Affordable Care Act in response to cuts by the federal government, as well as $100 million to help wildfire victims afford construction loans to rebuild their homes. Two days before Mother’s Day, Newsom also introduced a plan to provide 400 free diapers for every California newborn at select hospitals beginning this summer.
Newsom is expected to present his budget in more detail late Thursday morning in Sacramento.
Each one says less about the candidates involved, and more about this moment in politics and where the races for California governor and L.A. mayor may be headed. Each ad also hints at deeper issues that haven’t quite reached the water-cooler conversation level, but maybe should.
Becerra blunder
The first ad that grabbed my attention was a quick-turn by San José Mayor and gubernatorial candidate Matt Mahan (still stuck in single-digit polling numbers), who jumped on Xavier Becerra’s first major mess-up.
Becerra chastised KTLA interviewer — on camera — not to give him too many hard questions because, “This is not a gotcha piece, right?”
That left a lot of folks wondering about his temperament and transparency, something rival Katie Porter knows a bit about.
The video went viral, and Mahan mashed it up with now-infamous clips of Porter walking out of a different interview earlier in the campaign cycle.
The result was a fast, funny, pointed jab that made both Becerra and Porter look prickly and unaccountable. For Porter, that damage was done long ago. But this moment for Becerra, the very-slim-margin front-runner, could have sticking power.
The bigger issue is that there are many hard questions that Becerra will likely need to answer if he does make the general election — questions he’s largely been dodging with pat answers.
This week, one of the lobbyists charged in a scheme that allegedly stole more than $200,000 from one of Becerra’s old campaign accounts will appear in court again.
She’s apparently been working on a plea deal, so it’s likely either that will be formalized, or the case will move forward to a trial. Becerra is not accused of any wrongdoing and told my colleague Dakota Smith that he had testified before the grand jury in the case.
But Becerra has also said he was aware that up to $10,000 a month was being paid out of a dormant campaign account to manage that money, since his role as the Health and Human Services Secretary made it illegal for him to be involved directly.
The question that seems relevant in this age of fraud-and-waste panic is who pays $10,000 a month to have someone watch over a dormant account and doesn’t think that’s excessive? Becerra may have been an innocent victim, but $120,000 a year is a lot of money to pay someone to babysit a largely unused stack of cash.
If Becerra does make it through to the primary and faces Hilton or potentially Steyer, both successful businessmen, expect this lack of financial acumen to be an issue — a hard question that is fair to ask of the person who wants to run the fourth largest economy in the world.
Steyer backers
Speaking of money, the second ad (or sort-of ad) that caught my attention is tied to Steyer, the billionaire who has spent more than $100 million of his own money in this race.
The Sacramento Bee reported that Steyer’s campaign has been paying influencers to post support of him online. The account mentioned in the Bee’s report seems to have removed those videos, but others have archived some of them.
These posts are meant to decidedly not feel like advertisements, but just organic support from Steyer supporters. Steyer’s is far from the first campaign to do this and won’t be the last.
While there may be nothing shocking in Steyer’s digital strategy, it should alarm us on the larger level of having a healthy democracy. We’ve largely forgotten the black hole of delusion that millions of Americans fell into during the pandemic era from online misinformation brokers. Remember QAnon?
Influence campaigns are shockingly powerful, and growing in sophistication by the minute. While Steyer’s efforts may be run-of-the-mill, it’s an area of political communication that demands greater transparency and regulation.
Pratt problems
Which brings us to Spencer Pratt, and the ad (ads, really) that caught everyone’s attention — the AI-generated mini-movies that blatantly steal the “Batman” and “Star Wars” intellectual property and which have earned so much viral attention that the mayor’s race can now fairly say it’s got national reach.
Pratt did not make these ads, but he’s reposted them, and millions have watched. Though it may seem obvious they are made by artificial intelligence, they are not identified as such.
Though parody is protected speech, one of the AI videos Pratt has promoted ends with a crowd, including a child, pelting L.A. Mayor Karen Bass, Gov. Gavin Newsom and Kamala Harris with fruit until they flee.
I disagree. While a certain segment of conservative white male voters might find it hilarious to pelt women of color until they run in fear, I’m pretty sure there are some messages in that missive that aren’t getting the scrutiny they deserve.
The links between hate speech and political violence are well documented. Outrage and action are tied, but now increasingly removed from reality. How AI — especially AI depicting political rivals as unhinged, evil villains — will affect voters, and democracy in general, isn’t yet understood.
I doubt these ads on behalf of Pratt will change the minds of many voters, but they do change politics.
Ahead of President Trump’s arrival in Beijing on Wednesday for his summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping, longtime China expert Kurt M. Campbell offered a novel way of watching the two leaders’ high-stakes faceoff. Think of it not as nation-versus-nation or army-versus-army, but as the sort of “single combat” celebrated in ancient literature, along the lines of David and Goliath in the Bible or Achilles and Hector in “The Iliad.”
“This one has the feel of a geopolitical heavyweight matchup,” Campbell, chairman of the Asia Group strategic consulting firm, wrote in Foreign Affairs this week.
Unlike in their initial get-together early in Trump’s first term, both men now are seasoned leaders in their separate ways — Xi an unchallenged dictator, and an envious Trump seeking to be. Both act with few immediate checks on their power, though Xi acts strategically and Trump impulsively and transactionally. And both, as leaders of super-powers, have the capability to shape the economic and security fates of a wary world.
That world, Campbell concluded in his essay, is “eager to see whether the two leaders emerge driving together in the chariot, or with one dragging the other behind,” as Achilles did the vanquished Hector.
However the Trump-Xi meeting ends, Trump is no Achilles going into this match. In fact, in the six decades of U.S.-China relations, perhaps no American president has entered the summit arena in a weaker position than Trump, the would-be strongman and artiste of the deal. Worse, his weakness — and by extension his country’s — is mostly self-inflicted.
Trump had postponed what was intended as an early April meeting in hopes of striding triumphantly into Beijing as the conqueror of Iran, a China ally. Instead China is receiving him as a “giant with a limp,” in the phrase of its Communist Party-controlled Global Times newspaper.
Trump’s Mideast war, the sort he’d promised never to start, lingers for a third month in a costly stalemate — $29 billion and counting — that has humiliated the president in the public words of Germany’s chancellor and the private thoughts of many more global leaders, Xi likely among them. Trump can’t “project the same arrogance” as he did visiting China in 2017, a former Chinese army officer, Yue Gang, told the New York Times.
At home, the conflict has caused gasoline prices and inflation to spike while tanking Trump’s already depressed polls. A newly released CNN poll conducted April 30 to May 4 had 65% of Americans disapproving of his overall job performance and a whopping 70% against his handling of the economy — the issue that arguably got him elected. With experience, American consumers and soybean farmers now know that they, not the Chinese, have paid for Trump’s beloved tariffs.
The president’s standing at home could hardly have been helped by his parting words to reporters at the White House. Asked “to what extent are Americans’ financial situation motivating you to make a deal” with Iran, Trump blithely replied, “Not even a little bit.” He added, in the sort of political gaffe that journalist Michael Kinsley defined as telling the truth: “I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation. I don’t think about anybody.”
He’s already a loser in the negotiations with Xi. For weeks the Trump administration has unsuccessfully urged China to use its leverage to goad Iran to accept a peace on Americans’ terms or, at a minimum, to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, given China’s self-interest as Iran’s biggest oil customer by far. As China scholar Henrietta Levin of the Center for Strategic and International Studies told the Associated Press, “I don’t think China has any interest in solving the problems the U.S. has created for itself in the Middle East.”
Not least, perhaps, because China has seen that, by the Pentagon’s own reckoning, the war has depleted U.S. stockpiles of weaponry after thousands upon thousands of strikes against Iran. And that has further raised questions in China and beyond about whether Trump would have the United States come to the defense of Taiwan, the self-governing, U.S.-armed island that China claims as its own.
After all, the thinking goes, if the United States can’t bring a lesser power like Iran quickly to heel, how might it fare against a near-peer such as China, especially with a diminished U.S. arsenal and Mideast distractions?
It’s mostly a mystery what the leaders’ talks might yield. In a break with diplomatic tradition, though not with Trump’s seat-of-the-pants style, apparently little planning went into this super-power summit — another reflection of a distracted U.S. side. Still, with a number of tech, agribusiness, finance and aerospace chieftains in tow, Trump and his team are hoping for a few politically appealing deliverables, such as sales of U.S. soybeans and Boeing aircraft, to give the president a lift back home.
But don’t look for progress on the longstanding issues dividing the United States and China over trade and military dominance in the Pacific region. And as for another of those perennial issues — climate change and clean-energy technology — the U.S. under Trump has willfully surrendered global preeminence to China, ceding markets for solar, wind energy, electric vehicles, grid storage and more in his backward-looking, ostrich-like obsession with drilling oil and mining coal.
Whatever hyperbolic claims Trump makes for his China trip, the outcome of the summit (on top of his quagmire in Iran) should at least be this: retiring the myth of Trump the deal-maker and savvy businessman.
If he were such a visionary, Trump would be prodding the nation to global leadership in technology and clean-energy investments, not reversing past progress and paying companies billions of taxpayers’ dollars to stop clean-energy projects. In markets worldwide, the future is now and America is forfeiting the game to China.
In this contest, Trump is letting Xi drive the chariot. Unfortunately, average Americans are the ones being dragged through the dust as China rides into the 21st century.
Reporting from Columbus, Ohio — Donald Trump romped to victory Tuesday in Florida, chasing Marco Rubio from the race, but Ohio Gov. John Kasich won his home state, raising hopes for those seeking to stop Trump and settle the presidential contest on the floor of the Republican National Convention.
Trump also won North Carolina and Illinois and was locked in a close fight with Sen. Ted Cruz in Missouri.
“I’m getting ready to rent a covered wagon, we’re going to have a big sail and have the wind blow us to the Rocky Mountains and over the mountains to California,” Kasich said at a jubilant rally outside Cleveland.
That is just the sort of extended nominating fight the GOP establishment sought to avoid by stacking the political calendar with big early contests, capped by Tuesday night’s winner-take-all primaries in Florida and Ohio. California votes on June 7, near the close of the primary season.
Now, many of those same party types see an inconclusive nominating contest as the best and perhaps only chance of thwarting Trump, even if it threatens to shred the GOP in the process.
The setback in Ohio, where Trump campaigned hard, was his most disappointing performance since he finished second to Cruz in February’s Iowa caucuses.
His unhappiness was evident as he addressed reporters at his posh Mar-a-Lago private club in Palm Beach, Fla., and complained about the miseries of running for president.
“Lies, deceit, viciousness. Disgusting reporters. Horrible people,” the Manhattan businessman and reality TV star said. “Some are nice.”
Cruz, speaking with 99% of the Missouri votes counted, once more insisted he was the only candidate who could defeat Trump.
“Starting tomorrow morning, every Republican has a clear choice. Only two campaigns have a plausible path to the nomination — ours and Donald Trump’s,” the Texas senator told supporters in Houston. “Nobody else has any mathematical possibility whatsoever. Only one campaign has beaten Donald Trump over and over again.”
With Trump’s unmatched string of victories, no other candidate is nearly as well positioned to win the nomination ahead of the July convention in Cleveland. He padded his overall delegate lead with Tuesday’s victories, putting him ahead of Cruz and Kasich, who had not won a state before Ohio.
But there were signs Tuesday that not just the establishment but rank-and-file Republicans have yet to rally around the party’s polarizing front-runner.
Nearly 3 in 10 Republican voters across the five states said they would not vote for Trump if he wins the party’s nomination, according to exit poll interviews. Four in 10 said they would consider voting for a third-party candidate if the choice came down to Trump or the Democratic front-runner, Hillary Clinton.
Defections of that magnitude could badly undermine Trump in the general election, and that prospect will probably be stressed by his opponents going forward into next week’s contests in Arizona and Utah.
Rubio spoke to the controversy surrounding the GOP front-runner as he departed the race.
In a Miami concession speech delivered less than half an hour after the polls closed in Florida, the freshman senator congratulated Trump, wagging a finger and shushing members of the audience who booed his kind words.
Ohio Gov. John Kasich votes Tuesday in Westerville, Ohio.
(Matt Rourke / Associated Press)
Rubio then devoted the bulk of his lengthy remarks to warn against succumbing to the anger and frustration that have fueled Trump’s improbable rise.
“The politics of resentment against other people will not just leave us a fractured party,” Rubio said, as disconsolate family members stood by onstage. “They’re going to leave us a fractured nation” where people hate each other for their political views.
“Do not give in to the fear,” Rubio said. “Do not give in to the frustration.”
The son of Cuban immigrants and, at age 44, the youngest candidate in the field, Rubio was seen as one of the GOP’s rising stars, with a capacity to broaden the party’s support among millennial voters and the nation’s fast-growing Latino population.
But he failed to win more than a few contests and was never seriously competitive in his home state. Trump captured 99 delegates in Florida’s winner take-all-primary, more than a quarter of those at stake in Tuesday’s balloting.
The victory in winner-take-all Ohio gave Kasich 66 delegates, more than doubling his total but still leaving him well behind Trump. His goal is to build momentum with a series of wins positioning him as the strongest candidate heading into the Cleveland convention even if, as seems inevitable, Kasich is shy of the 1,237 delegates needed to win the nomination outright.
Pennsylvania, where Kasich was born, is the next big target on April 26.
The results Tuesday followed one of the oddest, most contentious weeks in a campaign that has been filled with strange and surreal moments.
The precipitating event was a racially charged near-riot at a Trump rally Friday night in Chicago, which was canceled out of security concerns.
Trump’s opponents quickly seized on the moment and the violent imagery that played around the world to once more challenge his temperament and fitness to be president. They accused him of fomenting the unrest through belligerent remarks that seemed to egg on his audiences into physically confronting dissenters.
Trump denied any responsibility, blaming the violence on what he called professional agitators linked to Democratic hopeful Bernie Sanders. He said the protesters provoked his supporters and were stifling their rights to free speech and assembly.
“I don’t condone violence,” Trump said repeatedly, though he sympathized with backers who chose to “be effective” with protesters in the audience. (Previously he used more pugilistic language.)
Trump said he might even pay the legal fees for a supporter who sucker-punched a demonstrator at a North Carolina rally, drawing widespread condemnation. He won the state anyway.
Indeed, for weeks increasingly desperate Republican opponents have mounted an effort to stop Trump, to seemingly little effect.
More than $10 million in negative ads blazed across the Florida airwaves in just the last week alone, attacking Trump for his ethics, the failings of his business empire and his all-over-the-map political ideology.
Those meant nothing to Mark Owens, who stepped into the Miami Beach sunshine Tuesday and lighted a cigar after casting a ballot for the political neophyte.
“We’ve trusted politicians for 200 years to run our country,” Owens said. “It’s time to give someone else a shot.”
With polls suggesting Florida was firmly in Trump’s grasp, much of the campaign focused on Ohio, another traditional fall battleground.
Trump laid on extra events, including an election-eve rally outside Youngstown in place of a planned Florida appearance, and he turned his attention to attacking Kasich after long ignoring the Ohio governor.
He assailed him for his support as a congressman for the North American Free Trade Agreement, a pact with Canada and Mexico that, Trump said, devastated the state’s economy. He also laid on personal insults in a bid to snatch a victory in Kasich’s home state and clear the governor from the race.
Kasich, whose strategy centered on staying above the salvos flying among other candidates, accused Trump of creating a “toxic” political atmosphere and, wrapping himself in the establishment mantle, spent Monday stumping alongside Mitt Romney, the party’s 2012 nominee.
With Kasich suddenly a factor in the GOP contest, the skirmishing here in Ohio seems a likely preview of what is to come.
While he pledged to take the high road at his victory party Tuesday night, Kasich sent a different message speaking to reporters earlier in the day.
He said, “I will be … forced going forward to talk about some of the deep concerns I have about the way this campaign has been run by some others — by one other in particular.”
SAN DIEGO — Republican presidential candidates renewed their criticism of President Obama’s healthcare program Monday in a double-barreled assault from both coasts.
Standing before a “Repeal and Replace Obamacare” banner at a medical device manufacturer in San Diego as he opened a campaign swing in the state, Mitt Romney called the president’s policies “an attack on free enterprise, an attack on economic freedom unlike anything we have ever seen before.”
“We’ve got to make sure that we replace President Obama with someone who truly understands what it is that makes America’s economy work,” Romney said.
Decrying a tax on medical devices that is a component of the healthcare law, he argued that the Obama administration was thwarting the endeavors of entrepreneurs like NuVasive’s chief executive “tax by tax, regulator by regulator, regulation by regulation.”
“Washington is crushing the dreams, and crushing the dreamers. We can’t let it happen,” he said.
Rick Santorum, who has doggedly criticized the healthcare program his rival Romney pushed as Massachusetts governor as “the blueprint” for Obama’s law, made an unannounced stop outside the Supreme Court, where the first day of arguments were being held in a challenge to the law.
He called for its repeal and underscored what he says is a key argument for his candidacy — that he would be a stronger adversary against Obama in November.
“There’s only one candidate who has a chance of winning the Republican nomination, who can make this [Obama’s healthcare law] the central issue, a winning issue for winning the presidency back, and that’s Rick Santorum,” the former senator from Pennsylvania said. “The worst person to make that case is Mitt Romney.”
Later, in an interview on CNN, Santorum chided Romney for campaigning in California. “The whole world is watching what’s going on here in Washington,” he said. “Mitt Romney is 3,000 miles away. He should be here.”
Romney, who has defended his Massachusetts healthcare mandate as an appropriate statewide approach, brushed aside Santorum’s criticism by asserting that he was “not going to worry too much about what Rick is saying these days.”
Romney’s speech at NuVasive, whose chief executive, Alexis V. Lukianov, is an avowed critic of the Obama healthcare law, was a brief diversion from his main objective in California: raising money.
Over two days, he plans to hold five fundraisers headlined by leading figures in the state Republican establishment: 2010 gubernatorial nominee Meg Whitman, former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan, real estate mogul Donald Bren and former Gov. Pete Wilson.
Alex Spanos, owner of the San Diego Chargers, is hosting one of the fundraisers at his Villa Angelica mansion in Stockton. Dean Spanos, Alex’s son and president of the Chargers, is leading another fundraiser at the U.S. Grant hotel in San Diego.
His star-studded political events stood in contrast to those of Santorum, who will visit California later this week. While donors were asked to contribute as much as $25,000 at Romney’s events, Santorum supporters were asked for a maximum of $2,500. Santorum’s admirers may gain entree for as little as $125 at a dessert reception Thursday at the Alamo home of Ubokia.com Chief Executive Mark Pine. Hosts include former Rep. Bill Baker and tea party activist Bridget Melson.
Though Romney has built what his campaign views as an insurmountable lead in the Republican delegate count, his rivals have refused to step aside — lending greater importance to California’s June 5 primary, when 172 delegates will be at stake.
“I need you guys to get ready, to organize your effort, to get your friends to vote, to collect some money, to get campaign contributions,” Romney said in San Diego on Monday. “We’ve got a ways to go.”
A new USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times poll showed Romney drawing the support of 42% of registered Republican voters. Santorum trailed him by 19 percentage points, with Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul a distant third and fourth.
Gingrich and Santorum acknowledged Monday that they were unlikely to pass Romney in delegates through the remaining primaries, but they said the race for the nomination would go to the party convention in August.
“If he can get to 1,144, he’s the nominee. But if he can’t get to 1,144 on the 26th of June, the last primary, then it is going to be a wide-open electronic convention for 60 days of talking among the American people,” Gingrich said on CNN.
Santorum, speaking on the same program, said the likelihood was that no candidate would accumulate enough delegates by the time the voting contests concluded.
“This race is going to — is [in] all likelihood going to go to the convention,” he said.
Police spokesperson Randulf Tuano says one person has been arrested after gunshots rang out in Senate.
Published On 14 May 202614 May 2026
The Philippine Senate President says that a politician wanted by the International Court (ICC) was no longer in the Senate building where he had been taking refuge, fearing his arrest.
Senator Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa, the former national police chief and top enforcer of former President Rodrigo Duterte’s bloody “war on drugs”, has been under Senate protection and is wanted for crimes against humanity, the same charges Duterte is accused of.
“The sergeant-at-arms has confirmed that he is no longer in the building,” Senate President Alan Peter Cayetano told reporters on Thursday.
The announcement comes a day after gunfire rang out at the Senate, where dela Rosa had been holed up. Confusion and chaos filled the legislature as people inside scrambled for cover on Wednesday, hours after dela Rosa, had appealed to his supporters on social media to mobilise and said law enforcement agents were planning on arresting him.
The incident caused chaos, with a heavy police presence and armed guards at the Senate. Protests were also held outside, and more than a dozen shots were fired after the Marines were called in to help the situation.
Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr held an emergency meeting with government and security chiefs on Thursday, as police spokesperson Randulf Tuano told DZBB radio that one person had been arrested following the shooting and investigations were under way.
“The person has provided names, but these still need confirmation,” Tuano told the radio station.
Dela Rosa has denied involvement in the illegal killings, but on Monday, the ICC unsealed an arrest warrant for him.
Duterte is also accused of crimes against humanity and has been held in ICC custody in The Hague since March 2025. The ICC estimates that between 12,000 and 30,000 people were killed from 2016 to 2019 in the former president’s “war on drugs”.
Reporting from Manila, Al Jazeera’s Jamela Alindogan said two independent, credible sources confirmed that dela Rosa had fled the building.
“He was able to escape at around 2 or 3 this morning,” she said.
Lawyer Jimmy Bondoc, who represents dela Rosa, also told reporters that he spoke to the lawmaker late at night and believed he was inside the Senate after the incident.
“As his lawyer, I asked him if you have plans to leave, he said none,” Bondoc told reporters.
In an interview that aired on DZBB radio on Thursday morning, dela Rosa said he would “exhaust all available remedies” to block his transfer to the ICC, and after learning about the conditions Duterte was being held under, he was no longer willing to fight his case at The Hague.
It remains unclear when the interview was initially conducted.
WASHINGTON — Senate Republicans on Wednesday again blocked Democratic legislation that would halt President Trump’s war with Iran, but the number of GOP senators voting against the war grew.
Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska voted against the war for the first time since it began at the end of February. Two other Republicans, Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Rand Paul of Kentucky, also voted against the war, as they had done previously.
The war powers legislation ultimately failed to advance 49-50, with Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania the only Democrat to oppose it, yet the close tally reflected growing unease with Trump’s war. Several other Republican senators have signaled they want Congress to weigh in on the direction of the conflict.
“There will be a day — and it might be soon, I believe — where this Senate will say to the president, ‘Stop this war,’” Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia, who has spearheaded his party’s tactic of forcing repeated votes on the war, said before the vote.
Even if it passes the Senate, a war powers resolution would have a slim chance of passing the House and would also certainly be vetoed by Trump. But Democrats say the votes are about building political pressure on the president either to withdraw from the conflict or seek congressional authorization to wage the war.
Trump officials downplay role for Congress
The White House, meanwhile, has asserted that it does not need congressional authorization for the war and has circumvented legal requirements to gain approval from Congress to continue the military campaign. It claims that it has “terminated” hostilities with Iran because the U.S. has entered a ceasefire.
That posture has created tension between the Republican-controlled Congress and the White House because presidents under the War Powers Resolution of 1973 are required to obtain authorization from Congress after 60 days of engaging in a conflict.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told lawmakers this week that the U.S. could start attacking Iran again without the White House seeking congressional approval. He told Murkowski during a hearing on Tuesday that the Trump administration believes it has “all the authorities necessary.”
Murkowski voiced skepticism about that argument. She pointed to the troops and war ships deployed to the region, saying, “It doesn’t appear that hostilities have ended.”
GOP leaders back the war, but unease grows
Republican leadership has continued to back the war with Iran, arguing that the stalemate in the Strait of Hormuz that has blocked most commercial shipping puts more economic pressure on Iran than it does on the U.S.
“Iran’s economy is on life support. Its leadership is eliminated,” said Sen. John Barrasso, the No. 2 Republican in leadership, during a floor speech Wednesday.
He also argued that the Democratic effort on the war is all about undermining Trump. Forcing the issue just as he arrived in China for a summit would “pull out the rug from under him,” Barrasso said.
Still, Republicans are also growing uneasy about the high gas prices, especially as the November elections draw near.
Sen. Mike Rounds, a Republican from South Dakota, said Wednesday he’d prefer that the two branches of government work out the constitutional issues instead of a congressional war powers vote or a potential challenge in court.
The two sides should sit down together and say “we have shared constitutional responsibilities,” Rounds said.
Democrats plan to keep forcing weekly votes on war powers resolutions and are looking ahead to put limitations on Trump during the debate over annual legislation that authorizes and funds the military.
Sen. Jeff Merkley, an Oregon Democrat who sponsored Wednesday’s resolution, told reporters that he believes there is an “erosion of support, erosion of enthusiasm, an increase in skepticism” about the war from Republicans.
SACRAMENTO — Gov. Gavin Newsom will propose a new $100-million fund to help wildfire victims afford loans to rebuild their homes under a revised budget plan set to be released Thursday.
The Newsom administration estimates that thousands of victims of the Los Angeles wildfires cannot afford to rebuild, blaming a lack of access to affordable loans and a gap between insurance payouts and the cost to build again.
“We have been on the ground in L.A. since Day One of recovery from these fires, and we aren’t turning our backs now,” Newsom said in a statement. “This community deserves continued support to help them get back on their feet, and rebuild their homes and their lives. “
The new fund would be designed to cover loan-loss guarantee to lenders, in which the state would commit to paying back a percentage of a loan amount if a borrower defaults, in order to lower the risk for lenders and encourage them to award construction loans to borrowers who might not otherwise qualify or only be eligible for loans at high interest rates. The money would also be available for homeowners to buy down their interest rates during the construction period, according to Newsom’s office.
The Eaton and Palisades fires killed 31 people and destroyed over 16,000 structures in January 2025.
Under Newsom, California has also provided mortgage relief to more than a thousand wildfire survivors under CalAssist, a program that provides grants to eligible homeowners to cover mortgage payments for 12 months up to $100,000.
The governor’s new proposal will be included in his funding plan for the upcoming 2026-27 budget year that begins July 1.
State revenue from income tax collection is higher than initially forecast, a boon that is expected to wipe out a projected deficit in the year ahead. Analysts attribute the revenue increase to an artificial intelligence boom in the stock market.
Though likely temporary, the extra funding is expected to give Newsom enough cushion to balance the state budget without major cuts and lower a projected shortfall in 2027-28.
The proposal to create the rebuilding fund requires support from both houses of the California Legislature and would move forward as a trailer bill accompanying the state budget. The funding would be available to disaster survivors, though details on eligibility will be determined during the legislative process.
WASHINGTON — David Venturella, a former executive at a private prison operator, will serve as the acting head of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Trump administration says, after the agency’s current leader steps down at the end of the month.
A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security said late Tuesday that Venturella would succeed Todd Lyons, who led the agency through much of the administration’s tumultuous crackdown on immigration. ICE did not immediately respond to an email seeking additional information Wednesday.
Venturella left the Geo Group in early 2023 and has been working at ICE leading the division that oversees detention contracts, members of Congress wrote in a public letter earlier this year.
At the Geo Group, which houses around one-third of ICE detainees, Venturella served in a number of posts, including executive vice president overseeing corporate development, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing. He also oversaw removal operations for ICE in 2011 and 2012 after working for federal contractors, including one that specializes in security clearances and background checks.
Geo has benefited from President Trump’s mass deportation push, garnering big contracts to open three shuttered facilities. Among them was a $1-billion, 15-year deal for a detention center in New Jersey’s largest city.
“Last year was the most successful period for new business wins in our company’s history,” Geo’s CEO George Zoley said during an earnings call last week.
Geo owns and operates 23 ICE detention facilities, with about 26,000 available beds. Zoley also said that ICE’s air transportation subcontract had continued to steadily increase and that it secured a new contract last year for electronic monitoring.
Venturella will lead ICE at a time when the public mood has soured on Trump’s immigration crackdown, which sent surges of federal immigration officers into American cities to round up immigrants. Those raids sent tensions soaring and prompted clashes between protesters and law enforcement, leading to the fatal shootings of two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis earlier this year.
Trump returned to the White House on a promise of mass deportations, and ICE has been a central executor of that vision. Under Lyons’ leadership, the agency used a massive infusion of cash to expand hiring and detention capabilities, and it ramped up arrests to meet demand from the Republican administration.
Federal officials announced Lyons’ departure last month from ICE, which had gotten $75 billion from Congress to fulfill Trump’s mass deportation campaign.
Venturella’s appointment comes as Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin settles into his role atop the Cabinet agency overseeing ICE. Mullin has promised to keep his department out of the headlines and has indicated a softer tone on immigration, although he is expected to align with the president’s priorities on mass deportations.
One contentious issue confronting Homeland Security now is a plan for converting warehouses into immigrant detention centers. Conceived while Kristi Noem led the department, the effort has encountered multiple lawsuits and intense community blowback, including in Republican-led states.
The $38.3-billion plan would increase detention capacity to 92,000 beds and mean acquiring eight large-scale facilities, capable of housing 7,000 to 10,000 detainees each, and 16 smaller regional processing centers.
Those, and other sites, were supposed to be running by the end of November. But after Noem’s departure, the department paused the purchase of new warehouses as it scrutinizes all contracts signed during her tenure.
Last month a judge extended a pause on transforming a massive Maryland warehouse into a processing facility for immigrants, and there are signs that federal officials are scaling back the plans.
This could be good news for Geo. The Florida-based company has about 6,000 idle beds at six company-owned facilities, Zoley said last week.
Zoley had offered a note of skepticism about the warehouse plan during an earlier earnings call in February, noting that renovating a warehouse is “more complicated than you may think.” At that point, he said the company was “cautiously” looking at whether to bid to help operate some of them.
The Justice Department on Wednesday filed a lawsuit seeking to nullify D.C. disbarment proceedings against Jeffrey Clark, seen here in October 2020 as acting assistant U.S. attorney general. File Photo by Yuri Gripas/EPA-EFE
May 13 (UPI) — The Justice Department filed a lawsuit Wednesday evening against D.C. disciplinary officials who recommended Jeffrey Clark be disbarred over his efforts to overturn 2020 election results, the latest move by the Trump administration to defend allies accused of helping President Donald Trump remain in power after that election loss.
The lawsuit in a federal court in D.C. alleges the disciplinary officials used their powers to punish lawyers over what federal prosecutors describe as “internal Executive Branch deliberations” in order to regulate federal government actions.
“Weaponizing state bar discipline against Executive Branch attorneys in this way chills them from giving candid legal advice to others in the Executive Branch, including the president and attorney general,” the lawsuit states.
“To permit these proceedings is to allow state bar authorities to control the Executive Branch. That is not the law.”
Clark was an assistant attorney general at the Justice Department following Trump’s 2020 election loss to Joe Biden, and urged Justice Department officials to issue a letter he wrote casting doubt on election results, according to congressional investigators and D.C. disciplinary officials.
The letter specifically targeted the results in Georgia, a swing state Trump lost to Biden by 11,779 votes, alleging a Justice Department investigation had uncovered election “irregularities” despite Attorney General William Barr having already announced there was no evidence of outcome-determinative fraud in the election prior to his resignation.
Clark had prepared the letter to be signed by Barr’s replacement, then-acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen, and Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue, the second highest-ranking Justice Department lawyer, both of whom refused because they knew its contents were untrue.
Clark continued to push for the Justice Department to issue the letter, which he intended to be used as a template to be sent to other states. Amid the political turmoil, Trump considered appointing Clark as attorney general — a move Clark encouraged so he could launch nationwide investigations to uncover unfounded claims of election issues.
Trump abandoned the idea of appointing Clark only after being informed doing so would cause mass resignations among Justice Department leadership.
The D.C. Office of Disciplinary Counsel opened its investigation into Clark’s actions after Sen. Dick Durbin, as then-chairman of the committee, asked it to probe his “serious violations of professional conduct.”
The D.C. Court of Appeals Board on Professional Responsibility in July recommended that Clark be disbarred in D.C., stating that “when a lawyer attempts to make intentional false statements on an issue that the lawyer understands to be a ‘pressing matter of overriding national importance,’ or knowing that the false statement would have serious and far-ranging consequences, they deserve the ultimate sanction.”
A final judgment has not yet been issued in the case.
The Justice Department on Wednesday asked the court to quash the D.C. disciplinary proceedings against Clark, and alleged they violate the Supremacy Clause and Article II of the Constitution by arguing that Clark was acting as a federal government employee who cannot be punished for performing Executive Branch duties.
Federal prosecutors also frame the issue as involving internal discussions. They said Clark attempted to persuade his superiors to issue a draft letter “that he felt reflected the actual law and facts about the 2020 election.”
“D.C. disciplinary authorities may not punish a United States official for disagreeing with a superior or coworker or for sharing an opinion just because those disciplinary authorities disagree with it,” the filing states.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche also accused the D.C. Bar of being “a blatantly partisan arm of leftist causes,” accusing it of being weaponized.
“The D.C. Bar will no longer be permitted to probe sensitive Executive Branch deliberations and target Executive Branch officials with whom they happen to politically disagree, and federal attorneys will once again be free to share their candid legal advice with their bosses and colleagues,” he said in a statement.
Clark was never charged in federal court in connection with his role in the alleged scheme, but he, Trump and 17 others were indicted in Georgia on racketeering charges. The case was dismissed after the prosecutor appointed following Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ removal declined to pursue the charges.
Other Trump allies accused of aiding his efforts to overturn the 2020 election have also been sanctioned in D.C., including Rudy Giuliani, who was disbarred in D.C. and New York, and John Eastman, whose D.C. law license was suspended on an interim basis after he was disbarred in California.
Wednesday’s lawsuit is the latest action by the federal government aiding those who supported Trump’s false election claims.
On Trump’s first day in office, he issued clemency to the roughly 1,500 people charged or convicted in the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection.
He also issued pardons to Giuliani, Eastman, Clark, Sidney Powell and many others accused of aiding his efforts.
BEIJING — An extraordinary display of power and precision along Tiananmen Square greeted President Trump in Beijing on Thursday, kicking off a two-day summit with particularly high stakes for the Americans.
Trump’s meetings with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, began at the Great Hall of the People moments after a welcome ceremony that seemed to impress the president, featuring a Chinese military honor guard and a greeting from excited school children. American flags waved as “The Star Spangled Banner” rang out on a smoggy day in the heart of the capital.
Children holding Chinese and U.S. flags rehearse before the welcome ceremony for President Trump.
(Maxim Shemetov / Associated Press)
Trump reflected on the stakes of his visit at the top of the meeting, telling Xi that the ceremony was an honor “like few I’ve seen before.”
“There are those who say it may be the biggest summit ever,” he said. “I have such respect for China, the job you’ve done.”
Both men struck a conciliatory tone, despite the agenda for the summit featuring some of the thorniest issues facing the two superpowers today, from the U.S. war in Iran to trade relations and the future of Taiwan.
“We’ve gotten along — when there have been difficulties, we’ve worked it out,” Trump added. “We’re going to have a fantastic future together.”
Trump is expected to ask Xi for help reopening the Strait of Hormuz, a vital commercial waterway disrupted by Iran since the start of the war, and for the extension of a truce in the trade war he started at the beginning of his second term.
China, in turn, will ask the Trump administration not to proceed with arms sales to Taiwan, despite their approval by Congress, and for a declaration of opposition to Taiwanese independence. Beijing also seeks access to top-end chips made by American manufacturers.
Chinese President Xi Jinping and President Trump shake hands at the Great Hall of the People.
(Kenny Holston / Associated Press)
The agenda exposes the mutual dependence of the two rival superpowers, marked by distrust but driven by a quest for cooperation and stability.
The welcome ceremony outside of the Great Hall kicked off with Xi shaking the hands of Trump’s delegation, including figures such as his political advisor, James Blair, his communications director, Steven Cheung, and his daughter-in-law, Lara Trump.
They were just a few members of a U.S. delegation accompanying Trump filled with curiosities.
Chinese officials were surprised to learn that Pete Hegseth was joining Trump in Beijing this week, marking the first time a president has brought his secretary of defense on an official state visit. It wasn’t immediately clear to the Chinese what his inclusion was meant to convey.
Eric Trump, the president’s son, is here, seeking to leverage the family name for lucrative business deals as Beijing aggressively campaigns against government corruption at home. And First Lady Melania Trump decided to stay at home, an unusual snub of such a high-level event.
A contingent of U.S. business leaders was given little notice to prepare for the trip, including the CEO of Nvidia, who raced to join Trump aboard Air Force One at a refueling stop in Alaksa.
The diplomatic faux pas follow weeks of Chinese frustration over what they see as the Trump administration’s lack of preparation — a perceived display of incompetence that boosts their confidence heading into the negotiations.
Over the course of the visit, Trump is expected to visit the Temple of Heaven, a monument to imperial China and Confucian thought in the center of Beijing. Ahead of Trump’s arrival, an area roughly the size of 400 American football fields was closed in preparation for a stop here.
On Thursday night, local time, Trump will return to the Great Hall of the People for a banquet dinner. Additional meetings are scheduled for Friday morning before Trump departs midday for home.
WASHINGTON — The Senate confirmed President Trump’s nominee to lead the Federal Reserve, Kevin Warsh, bringing new leadership to the world’s most powerful central bank at a fraught moment for the global economy.
Warsh was confirmed Wednesday in a largely party-line vote. His nomination had been thrown into doubt in recent months after Republican Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina said he would block the nomination while the Justice Department investigated Fed Chair Jerome H. Powell. The Powell inquiry was dropped in April, clearing the way for the Senate to confirm Warsh.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) urged colleagues to support Warsh during a floor speech Wednesday morning, saying it’s crucial that a Fed chair “understand not only the macro” but also “appreciate the microeconomy: and that’s the hardworking Americans, their jobs and their livelihoods.”
“Kevin Warsh is just such a person,” Thune said.
Warsh, 56, a former top Fed official, will become chair at an unusually difficult time for the independent agency.
Inflation has topped the Fed’s 2% target for five years and is now rising faster because of surging gas prices. The Fed’s interest rate-setting committee is divided and saw the most dissenting votes in more than three decades last month. And Powell, after years of personal attacks from the Republican president and an unprecedented legal investigation by the Justice Department, plans to stay on the Fed’s board even after his term as chair ends, potentially creating a competing power center.
Trump has demanded change at the Federal Reserve
The Fed has faced numerous threats to its independence from Trump, who has repeatedly attacked Powell for not cutting interest rates. Trump also sought to fire Fed Gov. Lisa Cook and launched an investigation into brief Senate testimony by Powell on a building renovation.
Kevin Hassett, director of the White House’s National Economic Council, said in a Fox News interview on Sunday that he believes the markets are relieved that Warsh “is going to help lower interest rates over time.”
“Obviously, data driven,” said Hassett. “I’m not putting any pressure on Kevin Warsh.”
In December, Trump said on his social media platform that he wanted a Fed chair who would cut interest rates when the stock market rose — the opposite of what traditional economics would prescribe — and added, “Anyone that disagrees with me will never be the Fed chairman!”
Trump’s comments have fueled concerns over whether Warsh will set rates based on economic conditions or seek to cut rates to appease Trump, even if doing so could worsen inflation. At Warsh’s confirmation hearing last month, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat from Massachusetts, derided him as a “sock puppet” for Trump. Warsh declined to say that Democrat Joe Biden had won the 2020 election against Trump, who has falsely claimed that voter fraud cost him reelection.
Still, Warsh denied at the hearing that Trump had pressured him to reduce the Fed’s key rate.
“The president never once asked me to commit to any particular interest rate decision, period,” Warsh said then. “Nor would I ever agree to do so if he had. … I will be an independent actor if confirmed as chair of the Federal Reserve.”
A critic of the Fed’s leadership in the past
Warsh has been highly critical of the Fed’s recent track record, particularly the inflation spike in 2021-22, the worst in four decades, and has called for “regime change.” Yet he has provided only broad outlines of what that change would involve.
He has called for limiting the Fed’s communications, which would be a sharp shift after decades of increasing transparency. He has argued that some of its communications tools, such as quarterly forecasts of where its key rate may head, have made it harder for officials to switch gears.
Senate Democrats also have condemned Warsh for not fully divulging the details of his extensive wealth, which disclosures show amounts to at least $100 million. His investments include stakes in Polymarket and SpaceX, but he hasn’t revealed how large those holdings are. He promised to sell all such assets within 90 days of being sworn in.
“He will be the wealthiest Fed chair in history, but he refuses to provide transparency to the American people about who he is entangled with,” Warren said.
Warsh faces difficult economic conditions
The Fed is still grappling with how to respond to the 50% jump in gas prices from the Iran war. The increase has boosted inflation, which reached 3.8% in April.
The Fed is tasked by Congress with keeping prices stable, which it seeks to do by raising its short-term rate to make borrowing and spending more expensive, cooling growth and inflation.
The Fed typically looks past temporary price increases that stem from supply disruptions, such as the war’s cutoff of oil through the Strait of Hormuz, because those prices typically level off — or even fall back down — once the supply is restored.
But the Fed also followed that approach after the COVID-19 pandemic snarled global supply chains for goods, lifting prices for things such as cars, furniture and electronics. Inflation turned out to last longer than expected, and Powell and other Fed officials have acknowledged they waited too long to raise rates. Inflation surged to 9.1% by June 2022.
The Fed’s rate-setting committee has kept rates unchanged for three straight meetings as it evaluates the effect of the gas price spike. At its most recent meeting last month, three members of the committee objected to language that suggested its next move would be a rate cut. They preferred more neutral language that would allow for a hike. Many Fed watchers saw those dissents as a warning shot to Warsh that he won’t be able to easily engineer rate reductions.
A fourth member of the 12-member committee, Stephen Miran, dissented in favor of a rate cut, as he has at every meeting since Trump appointed him to the Fed’s board last September. Miran is serving until a replacement is named, and Warsh will take his spot.
Powell, meanwhile, said at a news conference April 29 that he would remain as a Fed governor until the Justice Department closes its investigation into the Fed’s building project, the first time a chair may stay on the board for an extended period since 1948. His term as a governor lasts until January 2028.
U.S. Atty. Jeanine Pirro has dropped the government’s investigation, but she has said it could be reopened if the Fed’s inspector general office, which has looked into the renovation project since last July, finds evidence of criminal activity.
Rugaber and Cappelletti write for the Associated Press.
SAN SALVADOR — The number of people deported to El Salvador from the U.S. nearly doubled in the first months of 2026, according to official figures, coming as Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele has positioned himself as an ally willing to help the Trump administration accelerate deportations, a central priority.
The U.S. deported 5,033 Salvadorans back to their country in the first three months of 2026 compared with 2,547 deportees in the same period in 2025, according to El Salvador migration authority figures obtained by the Associated Press on Tuesday.
That marks nearly a 98% increase at the same time that the Trump administration has boosted deportation flights across the world. Globally, deportation flights from the U.S. rose an estimated 61% between 2024 and 2025, according to data compiled by the Asociación Agenda Migrante El Salvador, or AAMES, and other organizations.
The U.S. has stopped regularly releasing deportation data, so experts instead are relying on other information from countries such as El Salvador, deportation flights and other numbers.
The sharp increase in deportations “confirms a real hardening of the U.S. immigration system toward the region,” said César Ríos of AAMES.
The jump comes as Bukele, a tough-on-crime politician, has sought to align himself with President Trump, and the U.S. government has lined up allies across Latin America to help the Republican carry out his agenda. While Mexico and other Central American nations have quietly accepted deportees from third countries, Bukele has boldly embraced Trump’s efforts in Latin America.
In March 2025, Bukele most notably accepted 238 Venezuelan deportees accused of being members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua and locked them up in a mega-prison built for accused gang members in the Salvadoran leader’s ongoing offensive on domestic gangs. The incident fueled widespread accusations of human rights abuses.
The geopolitical firestorm came after Trump’s government struck a deal with Bukele to accept what they described as transfer and imprisonment of foreign criminals to El Salvador. Under the agreement, El Salvador would receive $6 million from the U.S.
In March 2025, the Trump administration mistakenly deported Kilmar Abrego García, a Maryland resident and Salvadoran citizen with protected status in the U.S., setting off yet another legal and political controversy. Bukele originally refused to return Abrego García and denied accusations of beating and torture — which have been widely documented by human rights groups in Salvadoran prisons.
He was returned to the U.S. in June to face charges that he helped bring immigrants to the U.S. illegally, something his lawyers call “baseless.” Abrego García has pleaded not guilty and asked a judge to dismiss his case as the U.S. Department of Homeland Security announced that it hoped to deport Abrego García to Liberia.
Even more recently, Bukele joined a coalition of other right-leaning Trump allies in a group of countries that the Republican president dubbed the Shield of the Americas, purportedly aimed at cracking down on criminal groups in Latin America, even though the two most essential countries in that effort — Mexico and Colombia — refused to attend.
Meanwhile, many migrants in the U.S. are turning their eyes on U.S. Supreme Court arguments as Trump seeks to stop shielding hundreds of thousands of migrants from Haiti and Syria, a decision many of the more than 200,000 Salvadoran migrants with temporary protections worry might eventually affect them.
Bukele has helped the U.S. with its immigration agenda even before Trump entered office.
In 2023, El Salvador’s government began to slap a $1,130 fee on travelers from dozens of countries connecting through the nation’s main airport, amid pressure from the Biden administration to help control the number of migrants moving toward the United States’ southern border. At the same time, migration from El Salvador, fueled by gang violence and poverty, dipped after Bukele’s contentious war on the gangs.
Analysts said that Bukele’s government used dips in migration as a bargaining chip to offset human rights criticisms by the U.S.
Alemán and Janetsky write for the Associated Press. Janetsky reported from Mexico City.
Vice President JD Vance said Wednesday that the Trump administration is deferring $1.3 billion in Medicaid reimbursements to California over concerns the state is allowing “fraudsters” to drive up costs to taxpayers, including by pushing unnecessary medications on unsuspecting patients.
“There are California taxpayers and American taxpayers who are being defrauded because California isn’t taking its program seriously. But also, you have people who’ve been prescribed medications that they don’t even need,” Vance said. “Sometimes they’ve had drugs put into their bodies that they don’t need because fraudsters have actually encouraged false prescriptions and false administration and medications.”
Vance, standing alongside Dr. Mehmet Oz, the administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said the administration is also sending letters to all 50 states informing them that if they do not “effectively and aggressively prosecute Medicaid fraud in their states,” they will see federal funding cut off as well.
“We want California to get serious about this fraud,” said Vance, who President Trump named his “fraud czar” last month.
Oz called out what he said was widespread fraud in hospice services and similar in-home care programs nationally — and particularly in the Los Angeles region — and announced a six-month moratorium on new Medicare enrollment for hospices and home health agencies.
“A third of all these programs in the entire country are in Los Angeles. Ask yourself, how is that possible? It’s not,” Oz said. “They’re not that many people dying in Los Angeles. We’re not talking about California, just Los Angeles.”
He said he and others in the administration determined that “at least half of the hospices, in the entire area around Los Angeles, are fraudulent,” and had shut down 800 of them that last year had “charged the federal taxpayer $1.4 billion,” which “will no longer be paid.” That is a major increase from the 450 providers the administration said it had suspended as of last month.
The announcement was the latest attempt by the Trump administration to highlight and rein in fraud in federal healthcare benefits programs, particularly in blue states. The actions were met with immediate push back from California officials.
“We hate fraud. But that’s NOT what this is,” Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office posted on the social media site X. “Vance and Oz are attacking programs that keep seniors and people with disabilities OUT of nursing homes. Pretty sick.”
Newsom’s office said that the growth of In-Home Supportive Services placements in California was “simple,” and due to California “keeping more people OUT of far more expensive nursing homes!”
Such services cover assistants who help people with daily tasks such as bathing, laundry or cooking; provide needed care such as injections under the direction of a medical professional; and accompany them to and from doctor’s appointments. A 2020 report by the California state auditor found that nearly three-quarters of IHSS caregivers assist a family member.
Newsom’s office wrote IHSS care costs $30,000 a year, while nursing home care costs $137,000 a year. “SAVING TAXPAYERS: $107K per person,” it wrote.
California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta also criticized the administration’s moves.
“Once again, California appears to be targeted solely for political reasons,” Bonta said. “The Trump administration is planning to defer over $1 billion in Medicaid funding for vital programs that helps seniors and people with disabilities remain safely in their homes.
“My team is carefully reviewing all available information. We have not hesitated to challenge unlawful actions by the Trump administration, and we will continue to act whenever Californians’ rights or access to critical services are threatened,” he said.
Democratic Sen. Alex Padilla also lashed out at the Trump administration.
“The Trump Administration is attacking California over claims that they can’t back up,” Padilla wrote on social media. “Let’s be real, this isn’t about fraud — it’s about punishing a state that didn’t vote for him. Political retribution plain and simple.”
Fraud in California’s hospice industry has been a problem for years.
Authorities in the state promised to crack down on the issue after a Times investigation in late 2020 revealed that unscrupulous providers were billing Medicare for hospice services and equipment for patients who were not actually dying — with the hospice industry in the state exploding in size.
California’s Medicaid program, known as Medi-Cal, is expected to cost about $222 billion for the budget year starting July 1, including both state and federal funding. Roughly 15 million Californians, more than a third of the state, are on Medi-Cal.
Vance, a potential 2028 presidential hopeful, has taken up his work as “fraud czar” with vigor, traveling around the country to drive home the idea that the Trump administration is working diligently to bring down healthcare costs by addressing waste, fraud and abuse that is rampant across the system.
He has said that waste and abuse is particularly prevalent in Democratic-led states such as California, New York and Minnesota.
“We have red states and blue states that go after fraud aggressively, but we also, unfortunately, have some states, mostly blue states, unfortunately, that do not take Medicaid fraud very seriously,” he said Wednesday.
Vance specifically threatened to cut off what he said is billions in federal funding for state-run fraud control units that are meant to prosecute people who abuse the system, but which he said aren’t doing the work. “This is a tool that we want the states to use, but unfortunately, a lot of states aren’t using these tools at all,” he said.
The focus on fraud comes against a backdrop of criticisms that other policy measures pushed by the administration have driven healthcare costs up or made it harder for people to access healthcare — including cuts to Obamacare subsidies and new work requirements in Medicaid, which are expected to strain hospitals around the country and led to millions of people losing healthcare coverage.
Democrats and Republicans have argued over who is to blame for rising healthcare costs, and Vance and Oz have clashed with California leaders before.
In January, Newsom filed a civil rights complaint against Oz after he posted a video accusing Armenian crime groups of carrying out widespread healthcare fraud in Los Angeles. In the video, Oz was shown driving around Van Nuys, saying about $3.5 billion worth of Medicare fraud had been perpetrated by hospice and home care businesses — and “run, quite a bit of it, by the Russian Armenian mafia.”
Newsom called Oz’s claims “baseless and racist.”
The administration previously launched investigations into potential healthcare fraud in at least five states — California, Florida, Maine, Minnesota and New York — and halted some $243 million in Medicaid payments to Minnesota over fraud concerns.
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has also acknowledged using errant figures to justify a fraud probe in New York, deepening concerns in the administration’s methods for identifying problematic activity.
Vance said the deferral of funds to California and the letters warning other states to get serious is not about political retribution, but a wake up call. He said the Trump administration wants to help states root out fraud and abuse, including with new technologies — but can’t do so if they are not “willing to help themselves” first.
“We don’t want to turn off any money. What we want to do is ensure that people are taking fraud seriously. We want to protect Medicaid, we want to protect Medicare,” Vance said. “But we can’t do that if the states that are administering those programs are allowing those programs to be fleeced by fraudsters.”
Amid an oil blockade against the island, the US blames Cuba’s communist leadership for ‘standing in the way’ of aid.
The United States has offered $100m in humanitarian assistance to Cuba on the condition that the island’s communist government agrees to “meaningful reforms”.
The sum was made public in a statement from the US State Department on Wednesday, though the administration of President Donald Trump underscored it had made the offer privately in the past.
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But the $100m comes with strings: namely, that Cuba’s government commits to Trump-approved changes.
“Today, the Department of State is publicly restating the United States’ generous offer to provide an additional $100 million in direct humanitarian assistance to the Cuban people,” the statement said.
“The decision rests with the Cuban regime to accept our offer of assistance or deny critical living-saving aid and ultimately be accountable to the Cuban people for standing in the way of critical assistance.”
The statement marks the latest chapter in an ongoing pressure campaign designed to destabilise Cuba’s communist leadership.
Since Cold War tensions in the 1960s, the US has placed a comprehensive trade embargo on the Caribbean island, in part as a reaction to the Cuban Revolution.
It has become the longest-running trade embargo in modern history, and the US has justified its continuation by pointing to systematic repression under Cuba’s communist government.
But critics have denounced the trade embargo as worsening humanitarian conditions on the island.
The crisis reached a tipping point in January, after Trump abducted Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, a close ally of Cuba.
In the following weeks, Trump cut off Venezuelan funds and oil supplies to Cuba. He then threatened economic penalties against any country that supplied Cuba with fuel, implementing a de facto oil blockade on the island.
Since then, only one Russian oil tanker has reached Cuba in late March. That month alone, the island suffered two island-wide blackouts.
Cuba relies heavily on foreign imports of oil to power its ageing energy grid. Only 40 percent of its oil supply is produced domestically, according to the International Energy Agency.
The United Nations warned earlier this year that Cuba faces the possibility of humanitarian “collapse”, with public transportation grinding to a halt, food prices soaring and public services like hospitals struggling to keep the lights on.
Trump, meanwhile, has repeatedly threatened to shift his focus to Cuba after the US-Israeli war on Iran ends, saying the island is “next” on his list of countries where he would like to see regime change.
“As we achieve a historic transformation in Venezuela, we’re also looking forward to the great change that will soon be coming to Cuba,” Trump told Latin American leaders at a summit in March.
“Cuba’s in its last moments of life as it was. It’ll have a great new life, but it’s in its last moments of life the way it is.”
Earlier this month, the US president issued a fresh wave of sanctions against the Cuban government, accusing the island of posing “an unusual and extraordinary threat to US national security and foreign policy”.
Media reports have also indicated that the Trump administration has stepped up its surveillance flights around Cuba, possibly in preparation for a surge of military assets to the Caribbean.
In Wednesday’s statement, the State Department blamed the communist system for having “only served to enrich the elites and condemn the Cuban people to poverty”.
It did not mention the US role in the humanitarian crisis on the island but instead described Cuba’s government as a hurdle to delivering much-needed aid.
“The regime refuses to allow the United States to provide this assistance to the Cuban people, who are in desperate need of assistance due to the failures of Cuba’s corrupt regime,” the State Department wrote.
It added that, should Cuba accept its terms, the $100m would be distributed through the Catholic Church and “other reliable independent humanitarian organizations”, rather than through the island’s government.
ORLANDO, Fla. — Environmental groups say that the timing of the expected closure of an immigration detention center in the middle of the Florida Everglades, likely in the next month or two, is no accident because it will come as their lawsuit challenging its existence returns to a federal judge who had previously ordered it shut down.
A federal appellate court decided last month to keep open the detention center nicknamed “Alligator Alcatraz,” for the time being, blocking a lower court decision ordering it to wind down operations. But the case was sent back to the lower court judge who now gets jurisdiction over the lawsuit as the litigation over the facility’s fate continues.
“Knowing that the same district judge who previously enjoined the operation would soon reassume oversight — the defendants are now effectively waving the white flag,” said Paul Schwiep, an attorney for the environmental groups that had sued, saying the facility’s construction hadn’t undergone a required environmental review.
When asked about the future of the state-run facility and its costs on Wednesday, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said that he hadn’t gotten any “official word” that federal authorities are going to stop sending detainees to the center.
But vendors who supply and help run the facility have been told that the closure could be as soon as next month, according to reports Tuesday by the New York Times and CBS News Miami. The Florida Department of Emergency Management, which operates the detention center, didn’t respond to an emailed inquiry on Wednesday. The Republican governor’s press secretary, Molly Best, referred questions about the facility to the state emergency management agency.
“We didn’t build any permanent facilities down there because we knew it was going to be temporary,” DeSantis said Wednesday at a news conference in Titusville, Fla.
DeSantis’ administration opened the facility in July to support the immigration crackdown by the administration of President Trump, who visited the detention center last summer. An attorney for two detainees has accused guards of severely beating and pepper-spraying detainees. Other detainees have said worms turn up in the food, toilets don’t flush and mosquitoes and other insects are everywhere.
“This monument to cruelty, waste and environmental and tribal lands abuse should have never been built,” U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a Democrat from Florida, said Tuesday.
Friends of the Everglades and the Center for Biological Diversity sued state and federal officials a short time after the facility opened, claiming the remote airstrip site in the Everglades wasn’t given a proper environmental review required by federal law before it was converted into an immigration detention center. U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams in Miami agreed and ordered in August that the facility must wind down operations within two months.
The appellate court blocked the order, saying the Florida-run facility wasn’t under federal control and didn’t need to comply with federal law requiring an environmental impact review.
But the appellate court made clear that once Florida got federal reimbursement for the facility, it would have to comply with the federal environmental law, Schwiep said.
DeSantis said Tuesday that the state expected to be reimbursed by the federal government for $608 million, which has already been approved by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration on Wednesday pursued new efforts in a sweeping initiative to root out fraud in federal health programs, including announcing a nationwide six-month freeze on some new Medicare enrollments and warning states to actively investigate Medicaid fraud or risk losing funding.
The moves are related to Vice President JD Vance’s anti-fraud task force, which has been accelerating its messaging before the November elections. The panel set up by Republican President Trump seeks to crack down on potential misuse of public money.
The most significant step Wednesday came from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services with a nationwide six-month moratorium on all new Medicare enrollments by providers of hospice and home care.
“We’ve seen systemic and deeply troubling fraud in the hospice and home health space, with bad actors exploiting some of our most vulnerable Medicare patients and stealing money from the American taxpayer,” the agency’s administrator, Dr. Mehmet Oz, said in a statement. “Today we’re shutting the door on fraud — preventing new bad actors from entering Medicare while we aggressively identify, investigate, and remove those already exploiting them.”
The Department of Health and Human Services’ internal watchdog has sent letters to state attorneys general warning them to vigorously investigate possible fraud or risk losing federal money.
People across the United States have raised concerns about rising healthcare costs and barriers to access, sometimes from the federal government’s actions. New work requirements in Medicaid, for example, are expected to strain hospitals around the country and result in millions of enrollees losing their health coverage.
Several alleged fraud schemes have been prosecuted in the hospice and home health care categories, and states have acknowledged that it is a legitimate concern. But some have pushed back on the administration’s aggressive tactics and raised concerns that the catchall efforts could needlessly punish law-abiding providers that are trying to serve patients.
What the freeze does
The administration contends the enrollment freeze and other actions it is taking will help prevent potential fraud in Medicaid and Medicare and preserve funding and resources for people most in need. Under the six-month pause, existing hospice and home health care providers will continue to operate as usual. But the Medicare and Medicaid agency said it will “intensify targeted investigations, deploy advanced data analytics, and accelerate the removal” of providers in the category that are suspected of fraudulent activity.
Such a freeze is not unprecedented, said Tricia Neumann, a senior vice president and executive director for the program on Medicare policy at the healthcare research nonprofit KFF. She said President Clinton’s Democratic administration also imposed a temporary moratorium on home health agencies.
“A brief moratorium gives the administration time to crack down on true fraud and prevent new fraudulent entities from popping up,” she said.
Maine becomes a focus
Vance, a potential 2028 White House hopeful, has used the high-profile assignment from Trump to remind Americans struggling with high costs that he is trying to claw back taxpayer dollars. Vance has promoted the task force’s work during campaign stops for Republican candidates and is expected to focus on the effort Thursday in Maine, where there are closely watched primary races on June 9.
Oz said earlier in the year that he was calling for corrective action on alleged fraud in government health programs in Maine, a request characterized by the state’s Democratic governor, Janet Mills, as a “political attack.”
Federal investigations and oversight
In recent months, the Medicare and Medicaid agency has suspended payments to hundreds of hospice and home care agencies in Los Angeles over alleged fraud and issued another six-month moratorium on suppliers of durable medical equipment, prosthetics, orthotics and certain other supplies in Medicare.
The administration also has approached at least five states with investigations into potential healthcare fraud and halted about $243 million in Medicaid payments to one of them, Minnesota, over fraud concerns. Last month, Oz announced his agency would add to that oversight by requiring all 50 states to share how they planned to revalidate some of their Medicaid providers.
In at least one case, the administration has erred in its accusations against states. In April, the Medicare and Medicaid agency acknowledged to the Associated Press that it made a significant error in figures it used to help justify a fraud inquiry in New York. The acknowledgment deepened doubts about the administration’s methods and raised a common criticism about the second Trump administration — that it tends to attack first and confirm the facts later.
Swenson and Price write for the Associated Press. Swenson reported from New York. AP writer Geoff Mulvihill in Haddonfield, N.J., contributed to this report.
Mayor of Reggio Emilia Marco Massari (R) welcomes Britain’s Kate, princess of Wales, at the town hall in Reggio Emilia, Italy, Wednesday, as part of a two-day visit to the country. Photo by Stefano Artioli/EPA
May 13 (UPI) — Kate, princess of Wales, visited Italy on Wednesday in her first official overseas trip since she announced her cancer diagnosis in 2024.
She is visiting Reggio Emilia, a city in north-central Italy that’s known for a unique child-centered approach to early childhood education. Kensington Palace said the princess is very interested in early childhood education and nurturing approaches.
Kate was greeted by crowds cheering and vying for photos of her, the BBC reported.
“Catherine is very popular here in Italy,” more so than other royals, said Paolo Rosato of the local paper, Il Resto del Carlino, to the BBC. “They see Kate as a story that follows Diana.”
Michael Cocchi, who visited from nearby Parma, brought flowers.
“I think the royal family still has an important role in British culture,” he told the BBC.
“Undoubtedly this is a huge moment for the princess,” an aide to Kate said. “There will be many highlights of 2026, but this being her first official international visit post her recovery, this is a really significant moment for her.”
Kate launched The Royal Foundation Centre for Early Childhood in 2021. It explores the impact of adult problems, including addiction and mental health issues, on early childhood.
She plans to meet with parents, children, educators and others at Reggio Emilia to learn from them.
“It’s the first time she’s out officially,” Richard Fitzwilliams, a British royal commentator, told The New York Times. “And she’s obviously grown in strength.”
King Charles III, who announced his own cancer diagnosis weeks before Kate announced hers, recently traveled to the United States, showing he can handle a rigorous trip. He announced late in 2025 that his treatments were going well.
In the two-day visit, Kate will learn about the Reggio Emilia approach to education, and she visited the Loris Malaguzzi International Center. She will visit two local schools to see the learning in action.
The city of Reggio Emilia allocates 13% of its budget to preschool services, said Marwa Mahmoud, the city’s councilor for education.
“We’ve always maintained that education — as well as health and healthcare — should not be viewed as costs,” said Marco Massari, mayor of Reggio Emilia, The Times reported. “It is right to evaluate them in terms of efficiency and waste reduction, but they are not costs – they are investments in the present and the future.”
“She actually asked to meet the teachers, the children and their parents, and participate in an everyday situation,” said Maddalena Tedeschi, president of Reggio Children, a center that researches and promotes the approach.
Kate’s aide told the BBC that the visit is part of a broader tour.
“She wants to look at other models around the world and really create a global conversation,” the aide said.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Four Memphis residents are suing U.S. and Tennessee officials, saying they have been harassed, arrested and physically mistreated for engaging in First Amendment protected activities by observing and recording law enforcement agents in their city.
A lawsuit filed Wednesday in federal court targets the Memphis Safe Task Force, comprising agents from 13 federal agencies that President Trump ordered to the city to fight crime alongside Tennessee State Troopers and the Tennessee National Guard.
Since late September, hundreds of federal, state and local law enforcement personnel tied to the task force have made traffic stops, served warrants and searched for fugitives in the majority Black city of about 610,000 people. The lawsuit says the task force has conducted over 120,000 traffic stops.
“In the professed name of crime control, Task Force agents have stopped, menaced, and arrested Memphians engaging in routine, day-to-day activities,” the lawsuit states. “In response, Memphians encountering Task Force agents in public, including Plaintiffs, have stopped to gather information about and record Task Force activities.”
Emails from the Associated Press to the U.S. Department of Justice and a spokesperson for the task force were not returned on Wednesday morning.
Federal officials including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, former Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi and White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, have visited Memphis to praise the task force. Miller in October predicted the surge in law enforcement would make the city “safer than any of you could ever possibly imagine” and that “businesses and investment are going to pour in, and Memphis will be richer than ever before.”
The task force is part of a larger effort by Trump to use National Guard troops and surge federal law enforcement in cities, particularly ones controlled by Democrats. Following troop deployments in the District of Columbia and Los Angeles, he referred to Portland, Ore., as “war-ravaged” and threatened apocalyptic force in Chicago. Speaking last year to U.S. military leaders in Virginia, Trump proposed using cities as training grounds for the armed forces.
The lawsuit accuses task force agents of systematically retaliating against the four plaintiffs and other members of the public engaged in similar observations. It claims the threats and harassment are the “direct result of federal policy” that views observing federal agents performing their duties in public as a threat of harm to those agents. The lawsuit also claims that federal and state officials have failed to train their agents not to retaliate against citizens engaged in First Amendment protected activities.
The lawsuit asks the court to declare that retaliation against the plaintiffs for observing and recording law enforcement activity is unconstitutional and to prohibit the agents from further retaliation. It also targets a Tennessee law that requires observers to stand at least 25 feet away from law enforcement officers, if they are warned to do so, or face arrest. The suit asks the court to declare unconstitutional the use of the “Halo Law” against defendants who are not interfering with agents or impeding their duties.
King Charles III waves from his State Carriage during the royal procession bringing him and Queen Camilla from Buckingham Palace to Westminster on Wednesday for the State Opening of Parliament. His Imperial State Crown, worn to deliver his King’s Speech, was transported in a separate carriage protected by the Sovereign’s Escort of the Household Cavalry. Photo by Tolga Akmen/EPA
May 13 (UPI) — King Charles III set out the British government’s legislative program at the State Opening of Parliament on Wednesday, focusing on expediting new agreements on closer U.K.-EU economic ties, tackling the cost of living, boosting defense AI and tech innovation and easing financial sector regulation.
The king’s 17-minute speech in the House of Lords referenced 37 bills in total, including legislation to renationalize British Steel, a Competition Reform Bill to fast-track reviews by the competition watchdog and a bill to help small businesses by hiking the interest suppliers can charge clients that fail to pay on time.
Charles opened his address with the geopolitical situation, saying Britain faced threats from an “increasingly dangerous and volatile world,” with the conflict in the Middle East the most recent example, and warned every “element of the nation’s energy, defense and economic security” would be challenged.
Honing in on the economy, Charles said the government would harness the power of the state “in partnership with business and enable reforms that support higher growth and a fair deal for working people.”
“My Government believes that the United Kingdom’s economic security depends on raising living standards in every part of the United Kingdom. My Ministers will support measures that maintain stability and control the cost of living. They will use public investment to shape markets and attract further private investment,” he said.
The speech pledged progress on airport expansion and highway infrastructure projects and a Northern Powerhouse Rail program to better connect the big cities in the north with each other and the rest of the country, along with reforms to the police, National Health Service and criminal justice system.
An immigration and asylum bill was also promised to help tackle the issue of migrants and asylum seekers arriving on small boats.
One issue that received no mention was cutting welfare spending, an area where the Labour administration of Prime Minister Keir Starmer has twice been forced to back down in the face of his own MPs since coming into office in 2024.
While the address is called The King’s Speech, it is purely ceremonial with the speech actually given to him by the government to read out.
It was Charles’ third time to open parliament, a historic tradition that dates back to the 16th century as a way to periodically bring together three normally separate elements of British polity: the democratically elected members of the House of Commons, the House of Lords and the Crown.
The proceedings include Buckingham Palace taking an MP “hostage” to ensure the king is returned unharmed and a “search” of the basements of the Palace of Westminister for dynamite by the King’s ceremonial Yeomen bodyguards, a throwback to the gunpowder plot to blow up the House of Lords during the State Opening of Parliament on Nov. 5, 1605.
Wednesday’s opening of parliament comes amid a leadership crisis at the top of government with scores of Starmer’s own MPs demanding he either stand aside or set a timetable for his departure after the party suffered heavy losses in local elections on Thursday.
“There’s deep uncertainty as to whether Starmer will be leading the government over the next 12 months or so. So it’s a bit of a paradox,” Craig Prescott, an expert in the constitutional and political role of the monarchy at Royal Holloway, University of London, told NBC News.
Starmer has insisted he is staying put and will lead his party into the next election, not a big stretch given his 165-seat parliamentary majority and that no MP or cabinet member has mounted a formal challenge to his leadership.
Nevertheless, Prescott described the parliament into which the king ventured on Wednesday as “febrile.”
“The politics of all this is a bit too close for comfort,” he said.
The BBC said allies of Health Secretary Wes Streeting had told it that he would formally challenge Starmer as early as Thursday. The pair held talks in Downing Street early Wednesday but there was no word on the outcome of their meeting.
Wreathes are seen amongst the statues at the Korean War Veterans Memorial during Memorial Day weekend in Washington on May 27, 2023. Memorial Day, which honors U.S. military personnel who died while in service, is held on the last Monday of May. Photo by Bonnie Cash/UPI | License Photo
Opposition lawmakers in Argentina contend a risk exists of President Javier Milei’s government providing “material collaboration” in a potential military aggression against Cuba in coordination with Washington. Photo by Matias Martin Campaya/EPA
May 13 (UPI) — A group of opposition lawmakers in Argentina filed an expansion of an impeachment request against President Javier Milei, warning of a “concrete and verifiable risk” that the country could become militarily involved in a potential U.S.-driven action against Cuba.
Under Argentina’s legislative system, an expansion of an impeachment request involves adding new facts, arguments or evidence to existing complaints against a public official, in this case the president, for evaluation by Congress’ Impeachment Committee.
The filing was submitted Monday by lawmakers from Unión por la Patria led by Congressman Juan Marino, although the news and details of its contents were publicly disclosed by the lawmakers Tuesday.
They expand on complaints already included in the impeachment proceedings facing the president in Argentina’s lower house of Congress.
According to local media outlets Clarín and Noticias Argentinas, the lawmakers contend a risk exists of Argentina providing “material collaboration” in a potential military aggression against Cuba in coordination with Washington.
“The matter of war and peace does not belong to the personal discretion of the president,” the opposition filing states, arguing that any troop deployment or military participation abroad requires congressional authorization under Argentina’s Constitution.
The lawmakers linked their concerns to recent remarks by Milei during an appearance at the Milken Institute, where he said Latin America must eliminate the “remnants of communism.”
“Today, the American dream extends from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego, and we hope it will soon also include our beloved Cuba and Venezuela,” Milei said during the event, according to videos circulated on social media.
The complaint also references the military operation known as “Lanza del Sur” — joint exercises between Argentine and U.S. forces — and Milei’s recent visit to the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln during its passage through waters near Argentina.
The lawmakers also questioned Executive Decree 264/2026, sayingit could facilitate military cooperation and troop movements without sufficient parliamentary oversight.
In a video posted on X, Marino said a risk exists that Argentina could become one of Washington’s first allies to support a potential intervention in Cuba due to the political closeness between Milei and President Donald Trump.
HAY RIESGOS DE QUE MILEI SE SUME A UNA INVASIÓN A CUBA
Les comparto parte de lo que conversamos en el programa de la Agencia Paco Urondo en Radio Con Vos. Hoy presentamos una nueva ampliación al pedido de juicio político contra Milei. No podemos tolerar que involucre a las FFAA… pic.twitter.com/N0G7INQ7eb— Juan Marino (@JuanMarinoTPR) May 11, 2026
“There is a risk that Milei could participate militarily in an invasion of Cuba,” Marino said. “He is publicly endorsing Trump’s wars, involving Argentina and carrying out military exercises with the United States without going through Congress.”
Milei already faces several impeachment requests in Congress over alleged misconduct in office. Among the most recent is a complaint filed over his public promotion of the $LIBRA cryptocurrency token, which collapsed after its launch and caused multimillion-dollar losses for investors.
The request filed this week was signed by Juan Marino, Pablo Todero, Lorena Pokoik, Sabrina Selva, Hilda Aguirre, Gabriela Pedrali and Jorge Araujo Hernández.
So far, the Argentine government has not publicly responded to the accusations.
