politics

BRUSSELS — The European Parliament voted Thursday to approve a trade deal between Washington and Brussels but with amendments added to protect European interests should the United States fail to hold up its end of the bargain.

The deal was negotiated last July in Turnberry, Scotland, by President Trump and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. It set a 15% tariff on most goods in an effort to stave off far higher import duties on both sides that might have sent shock waves through economies around the globe.

New language now says that the deal can be suspended if Washington “undermined the objectives of the deal, discriminated against EU economic operators, threatened member states’ territorial integrity, foreign and defence policies, or engaged in economic coercion.”

That clause was forged because of the tensions over Greenland, said Bernd Lange, a German lawmaker and head of the EU’s parliamentary trade committee.

Trump drew widespread condemnation across the 27-nation bloc by threatening to take control of Greenland, a semiautonomous territory of Denmark. He has backed away from the threat, at least for now.

“If this would happen again, then immediately the tariffs would be installed,” he said at a news conference after lawmakers voted. He said the protective modifications were “weatherproofing” the Turnberry deal.

The deal will now be further negotiated by EU trade representatives Maroš Šefčovič and his U.S. counterpart Jamieson Greer, who are meeting Friday on the sidelines of the World Trade Organization meeting in Yaoundé, Cameroon.

“We need the EU-U.S. deal in force on both sides — delivering real certainty for EU businesses and showing that genuine partnership gets results,” Šefčovič said after the vote in Brussels.

There were formally two votes to introduce clauses to the deal. One passed 417-154 and the other 437-144 with dozens of abstentions each.

The U.S. Ambassador to the EU Andrew Pudzer said the vote would provide “stability and predictability” for U.S. and EU businesses and drive economic growth. “We encourage all parties to think to the future and the importance of unleashing opportunities for businesses on both sides of the Atlantic,” he said.

Malte Lohan, CEO of American Chamber of Commerce to the European Union, said the vote is “the right signal for businesses that have been stuck in limbo over the past year” and “a necessary step towards a more predictable transatlantic marketplace.”

Croatian lawmaker Željana Zovko said that despite the trade spat between Brussels and Washington, trade across the Atlantic had grown over the past year. “This resilience proves the trans-Atlantic trade works, and if it works, we should strengthen it, not hold it back.”

McNeil writes for the Associated Press.

If I had a nickel for every time an editor has sent me an SFGate story and asked me to match it, I’d be at least a couple dollars richer. The San Francisco-based news website provides solid coverage of California public lands, especially our national parks.

So when my colleague Jaclyn Cosgrove told me the National Park Service had reportedly blacklisted SFGate, I wasn’t exactly shocked.

Recent SFGate stories have revealed efforts to limit which public lands employees can share information with the public, quoted critics of the Department of the Interior’s decision to end reservation systems at popular parks and detailed a litany of items that were previously offered at the parks but are now being reviewed for possible removal, thanks to an executive order to “restore truth and sanity” to American history, including books about Indigenous culture and educational materials for children.

But over the past month, the National Park Service essentially stopped responding to inquiries sent by SFGate reporters on dozens of subjects, national parks bureau chief Ashley Harrell wrote last week. The outlet spoke with sources, reviewed internal communications and learned that an Interior Department spokesperson had instructed the National Park Service to ignore SFGate reporters, Harrell wrote. The blacklisting was apparently prompted by a Feb. 10 article on the Interior Department’s efforts to centralize control of park service communications.

I emailed the National Park Service to learn more. “Unfortunately, SFGate has distorted the facts and has caused confusion with their reporting with the mainstream media,” a spokesperson replied. “This has caused the Department to spend countless hours correcting their false narrative with other media outlets.”

Although the statement came from a park service email address, the wording is identical to a statement provided to SFGate by an Interior Department spokesperson.

I’ve also noticed changes in how the park service handles media requests over the past year or so. Some L.A. Times inquiries — about a coyote swimming to Alcatraz and a man charged with BASE jumping in Yosemite, for instance — received prompt replies.

But others — like questions about whether the park service is relying more heavily on seasonal employees amid a decline in permanent staff — went unreturned. And some — like an inquiry for a previous edition of a Boiling Point newsletter about an interpretive exhibit under scrutiny at Death Valley National Park — were fielded by a spokesperson for the Interior Department , rather than the park itself.

I’m not alone. When our wildlife and outdoors reporter Lila Seidman wrote about a wildfire that ripped through Joshua Tree National Park during last year’s government shutdown, she received responses from the Interior Department, but emails to the park service went unreturned.

Jack Dolan, an investigative reporter who often covers public lands, said he hasn’t received meaningful responses from the National Park Service since early last year.

And Cosgrove, who writes The Wild newsletter, said that park rangers remain friendly and helpful, but any communication involves a demand for all questions in writing.

Park service sources and advocates describe all this as part of a broader effort to centralize communications from sub-agencies to the Department of the Interior. Since last year, roughly 230 communications employees have been moved from the National Park Service to the Department of the Interior — part of a broader push in which more than 5,700 employees at the 11 agencies the Interior Department oversees were shifted from the agencies to the department, according to figures provided by the National Parks Conservation Assn., a nonprofit that advocates for the park system.

What’s more, the Interior Department must now approve many park service communications that were once left up to the parks themselves, said John Garder, senior director of budget and appropriations for the National Parks Conservation Assn. That includes exhibits, news releases, website updates and even social media posts, said a source within the park service who asked to remain anonymous over fears of retaliation.

The consolidation “creates significant inefficiencies and removes a layer of accountability to the parks themselves,” Garder said. “It makes it difficult for parks to act nimbly using their professional discretion to make decisions about informing the public about developments in the park,” like a closed road, wildlife hazard or natural disaster.

In an email to The Times, the park service accused National Parks Conservation Assn. employees of donating to Democratic political campaigns and pointed out the nonprofit’s X account follows progressive politicians and groups. “Our parks are nonpartisan, but the NPCA isn’t and they are using you to further raise money off of our parks while never giving those funds to our parks,” a spokesperson wrote in an emailed statement.

National Parks Conservation Assn.’s X account follows over 55,000 users of the platform, including both Democratic and Republican lawmakers and organizations. Garder also noted that the association’s longstanding role has been to advocate for national parks, rather than to raise money directly for them.

The park service email confirmed that officials are “modernizing” the Department of the Interior so that it “will share one voice when communicating the priorities of the Department.”

“The unification of the communication functions will allow for a more collaborative, creative and hands-on approach to Department communications,” the statement said, “and will modernize the federal government by providing a product that is not only better for the American taxpayer but also showcases the state-of-the-art communications capabilities of the United States of America.”

I asked whether I should attribute the statement to a spokesperson for the park service or the Interior Department. The spokesperson replied that I could attribute it to either.

A quick announcement

If you’re a Southern California local, you are probably familiar with PBS SoCal. On April 22, the public media organization is premiering the seventh season of the award-winning program “Earth Focus,” which will be followed by the eighth season in May. We’re excited for the eighth season in particular, because we collaborated with the PBS SoCal team on a few stories about the complexities of rebuilding Los Angeles. You can stream the show for free at pbssocal.org/earthfocus.

More recent land news

Karen Budd-Falen, the third highest-ranking official at the Department of the Interior, has been granted an ethics waiver to work on grazing issues despite potential conflicts of interests that prompted her to recuse herself from such matters during the first Trump presidency, according to Chris D’Angelo of Public Domain.

A pair of Republican senators have officially moved to overturn the management plan for Utah’s Grand Staircase–Escalante National Monument, casting uncertainty on its future and raising new questions about the future of public lands management, Caroline Llanes of Rocky Mountain Community Radio reports.

The Trump administration is aggressively expanding the border wall through ecologically sensitive public lands, with a portion planned for Big Bend National Park emerging as a political flash point, Arelis R. Hernández, Jake Spring, John Muyskens and Thomas Simonetti write in this Washington Post deep dive.

The Interior Department has officially pulled back more than 80% of its regulations tied to implementing the National Environmental Policy Act in a bid to streamline the environmental review process for major projects on federal public lands. Conservation groups say the changes will block public input and violate federal law, according to Hannah Northey and Scott Streater of E&E News by Politico.

The Trump administration is taking the final steps to undo the Public Lands Rule, which elevated conservation to an official use of Bureau of Land Management lands, Streater also reports. The rule allowed conservation groups to obtain leases for restoration work, similar to how the Bureau of Land Management awards leases to private contractors for extraction and development, points out Sage Marshall of Field & Stream.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Forest Service is expected to soon release an updated proposal for the rescission of the Roadless Rule, which blocked new road building and commercial logging on some 58 million acres of backcountry. The rollback would strike a big blow to hunting and fishing opportunities, according to a report from Trout Unlimited.

A few last things in climate news

Amid a global energy crisis that’s seen oil prices skyrocket, California has been particularly hard-hit due to a dearth of refineries and higher taxes and fees, all of which have left politicians, consumer groups and business interests arguing over who’s to blame, write Ivan Penn and Kurtis Lee for the New York Times.

In the latest maneuver in its campaign against renewable energy, the Trump administration will pay a French company $1 billion to walk away from two U.S. offshore wind leases, according to Jennifer McDermott of the Associated Press.

Southern California’s most destructive wildfires, wettest holiday season and hottest March heat wave have all taken place in the last 15 months, and there’s one clear through line connecting them all, scientists told my colleague Clara Harter.

Mosquitoes have gone year-round in Los Angeles, but business owners have indicated they’re not willing to pay to expand a promising effort to help control their numbers, my buddy Lila Seidman reports.

This is the latest edition of Boiling Point, a newsletter about climate change and the environment in the American West. Sign up here to get it in your inbox. And listen to our Boiling Point podcast here.

For more land news, follow @phila_lex on X and alex-wigglesworth.bsky.social on Bluesky.

March 26 (UPI) — The flow of humanitarian aid to Cuba has increased in recent days with shipments of food, medicine and fuel from governments, regional allies and an international flotilla of activists amid a crisis marked by widespread blackouts and shortages of basic supplies.

However, alongside the arrival of that assistance, a debate has also grown inside and outside the island over its real impact, distribution and motives of some of those behind it.

Mexico provided the most significant shipments, with more than 1,200 tons of food transported on two Navy vessels in mid-March, followed by new cargo announced days later.

Meanwhile, Caribbean countries are preparing additional packages with powdered milk, infant formula, nonperishable food, medical supplies and energy equipment, such as solar panels and batteries. China sent 60,000 tons of rice.

Fuel shipments confirmed by Russian authorities, in an attempt to ease the energy crisis affecting the island, have not arrived and seem to be in limbo because of the U.S. embargo.

Cuba faces a structural deficit in electricity generation — because of a massive shortage of oil — that has led the system to operate under severe pressure, producing barely half of the electricity needed to cover total demand.

The gap between supply and consumption has forced authorities to implement widespread outages to avoid a total collapse, especially during peak hours, causing prolonged blackouts across the country that affect hospitals, transportation, cold chains and daily life.

Seeking to assist, the international flotilla “Nuestra América” arrived in Havana starting Friday. Organizers said they transported more than 20 tons of essential supplies.

The initiative brought together more than 650 participants from 33 countries, including doctors, activists, political figures, artists and digital content creators. Most participants arrived by air, while a vessel arrived Tuesday in Havana. President Miguel Díaz-Canel personally received those aboard.

Organizers of relief missions say Cuba is on the verge of an “imminent humanitarian collapse” and attribute the situation to United States policy, including sanctions and restrictions linked to oil trade.

But inside the island, some Cubans express doubts about the destination of that aid.

“These people come here to benefit the regime in Cuba,” said Berta Solórzano, a resident of Old Havana, in statements reported by Radio Martí.

Activist Yanaisy Curvelo, mother of a political prisoner, expressed an even more direct view:

“They believe in dictators, that’s why it works like this. …. None of those donations go to the people, everything goes to the stores — in MLC [a digital currency created by the Cuban government] or dollars.”

Near the port of Havana, where the relief ship Granma 2.0 docked, a resident identified as Manuel Soria said, “What they came here for is to support the dictatorship of the Castro regime. If it comes under these conditions, then they should not come anymore because we have not seen any help. We have not benefited, what we are is hungrier every day.”

Opposition figure Manuel Cuesta Morúa questioned the convoy’s approach.

“Instead of talking about the conditions and circumstances and the real situation of the country, they decide and dedicate themselves to reviving their utopia,” he said.

He also used a metaphor to describe the situation: “The most powerful image I have was given by [Cuban American] activist [Manolo De Los Santos] Ramallo is that this is like the Titanic. It is like someone playing music on the deck of the ship while it’s sinking.”

Doubts are not limited to opposition sectors. Cuban researcher Elaine Acosta, affiliated with Florida International University in Miami, described the convoy in statements to El País as a political maneuver more linked to elites than to citizen needs, and she warned about the risk of aid diversion.

Egyptian filmmaker Basel Ramsis Labib, with historical ties to Cuba and experience in flotillas to Gaza, questioned the initiative and described it as “ridiculous.”

“Cuba is not Gaza,” he wrote, adding that anyone who wants to help can send medicine and food directly, without incurring the high logistical costs of a flotilla.

He said those resources could have been allocated more efficiently to the population and criticized what he described as a component of “egocentrism” and a search for political visibility.

He also questioned the symbolic nature of the initiative, including the name “Granma 2.0,” and warned that some attitudes are “insulting” in the face of food shortages, fuel scarcity and the energy crisis.

“The Cuban people need gasoline, medicine, food and serious reform,” he said.

The controversy was amplified by the participation of international figures and scenes that some considered disconnected from the crisis context.

Irish hip hop group Kneecap performed a concert in Cuba during a blackout, which generated criticism on social media over the contrast between the event and the country’s energy situation.

Another focus of criticism was American political commentator Hasan Piker, who participated in the convoy and said he sought to raise awareness about the effects of United States policy on Cuba. During his visit, he described the country as “incredible” and highlighted the resilience of its population.

His statements were criticized and compared to a disconnect between that discourse and his behavior. Piker came under scrutiny for staying at a luxury hotel and wearing expensive clothing and accessories, prompting comparisons with living standards on the island.

Former Spanish Vice President Pablo Iglesias also became part of the controversy after defending the humanitarian mission from Havana in a video recorded from a five-star hotel, according to posts and analysis shared on social media.

In that message, he said the situation is “difficult, but not as it is presented from outside.”

The reaction included direct criticism from Cuba. Journalist Ariel Maceo Téllez questioned the legitimacy of such interventions and said Cubans understand their reality better than foreign observers.

In his message, he denounced the coexistence of widespread shortages and the development of luxury tourism infrastructure, noting that many Cubans cannot access those places.

Humanitarian aid to Cuba has increased in volume and visibility, but its impact is conditioned by internal distribution capacity, state control and the persistent energy crisis.

The Cuban Observatory of Human Rights said in its 2025 report that 89% of the population lives in extreme poverty and that 71% has been forced to skip meals due to food shortages.

The real impact of the aid will depend on its ability to effectively reach the population in a scenario of increasingly widespread needs.

Perhaps it was predictable that reality TV would become a pipeline into American politics. After all, political theater was the ultimate unscripted spectacle before reality TV became a genre unto itself.

Consider the raw drama of the first televised presidential debate, where a sweaty Richard Nixon and confident John F. Kennedy traded barbs. Or Anita Hill’s should-have-been-damning testimony against then-Supreme Court justice candidate Clarence Thomas during Senate Judiciary Committee hearings in 1991. Or President George W. Bush’s 2003 “mission accomplished” speech from a carrier off the coast of California, mere weeks into a war in Iraq that lasted years.

Modern programmed reality TV isn’t political theater, but it has become a springboard into modern politics for some stars of the genre. From President Trump to Dr. Oz, Caitlyn Jenner to Sean Duffy, campaigns and political offices are littered with the names of former cast members from reality series. Here’s a list of the most memorable jumps from trash TV to the smoldering dumpster of 21st century politics.

Donald Trump, president of the United States, ’The Apprentice’

Before he was a two-time president of the United States, Trump was one of America’s most recognizable make-believe bosses thanks to his 14-season run on NBC’s reality competition “The Apprentice,” created by reality TV kingmaker Mark Burnett. With his practiced executive scowl and scripted boardroom catchphrase, “You’re fired!,” the show burnished his image as a decisive billionaire dealmaker, even as his real-life business results were far less impressive. Off camera, Trump’s businesses filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection six times between 1991 and 2014. Never mind. It was his knack for showmanship, and his undying need for attention, that proved the perfect entry into post-decorum politics. How does pretending to be in charge on a middling reality competition qualify anyone to safely and successfully run the most powerful nation on Earth? It doesn’t. Sleep tight.

Sean Duffy, Transportation secretary, ’The Real World’ and ‘Road Rules: All Stars’

Sean Duffy first appeared on MTV’s “The Real World: Boston,” where he was introduced as a flirtatious, conservative lumberjack/student hybrid. In short, he was a casting director’s dream. He later joined “Road Rules: All Stars,” where he met his future wife Rachel Campos-Duffy. Trading hot tub confessionals for courtrooms, Duffy became a Wisconsin district attorney and then a congressman. By 2025, he’d risen to secretary of Transportation under Trump, completing a career arc from staged arguments with pretend roommates to heated exchanges with the press about the effects of a government shutdown on airport safety. Dude.

Markwayne Mullin, Homeland Security secretary, MMA fighter

After a fiery confirmation hearing, Mullin is now Trump’s second secretary of Homeland Security in the 2.0 administration, following the disastrous tenure of wannabe reality show star Kristi Noem. Mullin was not a reality star per se, but in his role as a professional mixed martial arts (MMA) fighter he performed in cages for live, streaming and pay-per-view cable audiences. As an early 2000s champ in the sport, Mullin boasted an undefeated 5-0 record and the Oklahoma chapter of the National Wrestling Hall of Fame inducted him in 2016. How do these MMA skills, or his former life running the family plumbing business qualify him to protect the national security of this great nation? It’s unclear, but his fighting instincts have already resulted in a viral moment out of a 2023 Senate hearing, when he challenged Teamsters President Sean O’Brien to a physical fight, offering to “finish it here.” Now he’ll be running the DHS. What could go wrong?

Omarosa Manigault Newman, former assistant to Trump and director of communications for the office of public liaison, ‘The Apprentice’

Newman became one of reality television’s more memorable villains thanks to her run on “The Apprentice,” where her Machiavellian ways and unapologetic ambition revolted viewers and impressed her fake boss. She would eventually parlay that dubious notoriety into more than one role in the first Trump White House. Her tenure was brief, ending in a high-profile departure and her accusation that Trump is a “racist, a bigot and a misogynist.” She then wrote a book, “Unhinged: An Insider‘s Account of the Trump White House.” Perhaps she’ll adapt her written account into a reality show, only to reignite her fame and win the White House. From there? She’d hire Trump, of course, then swiftly end his run on the show with two simple words: “You’re Fired!”

Spencer Pratt, Los Angeles mayoral candidate, ‘The Hills’

Best known as one-half of reality TV’s most polarizing couple on “The Hills,” Pratt built a reputation as a needling instigator, often leaning into the role of villain with annoying enthusiasm. After stints on other reality shows such as “Big Brother U.K.,” he began speaking out about local California issues, including wildfire recovery and environmental policy. Earlier this year Pratt, a Republican, announced that he would be running for mayor of Los Angeles in the upcoming mayoral election, challenging incumbent Karen Bass. Does he really want to govern the Left Coast, or is his candidacy a ploy for a new reality show? Let’s hope it’s the latter.

Caitlyn Jenner, California gubernatorial candidate, ‘Keeping Up With the Kardashians’

An Olympic gold medalist long before reality TV fame, Jenner reentered public consciousness through a show about nothing. The hit series relaunched her into the spotlight as a member of one of America’s most visible families. Using that fame, she ran as a Republican in 2021 in California’s gubernatorial recall election, positioning herself as a political outsider. Her campaign leaned heavily on her life story — from her athletic achievement to her personal reinvention — but she failed to keep up with the competition.

Clay Aiken, U.S. congressional candidate, ‘American Idol’

Aiken rose to fame as the earnest, vocally gifted runner-up on “American Idol” circa 2003. His polite demeanor, impressive vocal range and dramatic rendition of “Bridge Over Troubled Water” earned him a devoted fanbase known as the “Claymates.” Aiken went on to have a semi-successful music career before running for Congress in North Carolina as a Democrat in 2014. Aiken made the mistake of leaning into his strengths as a thoughtful, policy-oriented candidate rather than relying on his past achievement as a vapid reality show contestant. He lost, of course.

Jim Bob Duggar, Arkansas state House representative and state Senate candidate, ’19 Kids and Counting’

As the patriarch of TLC’s “19 Kids and Counting,” Jim Bob Duggar became synonymous with a conservative Christian lifestyle when the show aired in 2008; it garnered high ratings and ran for 10 seasons. He espoused many of the same ideals as an elected official in the Arkansas House of Representatives from 1999 to 2003, before leaving the political stage for reality TV. But the show was canceled in 2015 when the Duggars’ eldest son, Josh, admitted to molesting several girls, some of whom were his sisters. A conviction on child pornography charges followed. (More recently, his brother Joseph was charged with child sex abuse.) Jim Bob Duggar attempted a political comeback in 2021 when he ran for a vacated seat in the Arkansas state Senate, leaning on what he believed was his reputation as an upstanding family man. Reality bit back, and he lost.

Mehmet Oz, U.S. Senate candidate and administrator of Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, ‘The Dr. Oz Show’

Like so many questionable figures Americans came to trust in the 2000s, Dr. Oz got his start as a frequent guest on “The Oprah Winfrey Show.” He went on to launch “The Dr. Oz Show,” where he dispensed health advice to millions of viewers. His blend of seemingly measured medical guidance and on-camera charisma appealed to viewers who were tired of looking at egg-headed doctors, like the kind who practice real medicine off screen. He announced his candidacy for the U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania as a Republican in 2021, focusing on an anti-establishment platform. He lost the general election to Democrat John Fetterman, but the doctor is still in. Trump appointed him administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.

Sarah Palin, former Alaska governor and vice presidential nominee, ‘Sarah Palin’s Alaska’

File this under “Folks who tried to reinvent themselves on reality TV after tanking in politics.” Sarah Palin served as the ninth governor of Alaska before being selected as Sen. John McCain‘s running mate ahead of the 2008 presidential election. After losing to Barack Obama and Joe Biden, she veered away from politics, a decision that probably had nothing to do with an ethics scandal dubbed Troopergate that involved Palin. Burnett saw an opportunity, producing the 2010 TLC reality series “Sarah Palin’s Alaska.” It followed the Palin family engaging in activities such as fishing, prospecting for gold and camping in the region. In short, it looked like a tourism ad for Alaska and was canceled after one season. It also failed to kickstart her political career. She lost her 2022 bid for Alaska’s U.S. House seat, failing in both a special election and her general election comeback attempt. Apparently it isn’t Sarah Palin’s Alaska, after all.

When Estuardo Mazariegos was 22, he was pulled over by Los Angeles police officers who found a gun and ammunition in the back seat of his Nissan Sentra.

The gun, he said, was not his. He was holding onto it for a friend, he said, but he got hit with a felony gun possession charge, later pleading it down to a misdemeanor.

Seventeen years later, Mazariegos is running for Los Angeles City Council — and he believes his gun conviction makes him a better candidate.

“I think it’s a strength. It’s not a liability,” said Mazariegos, who was born in Guatemala and grew up in Hollywood and South L.A. “I feel like it creates more of a connection with me and the community, because there’s so many people that are justice-impacted.”

But the gun charge could also be an issue for Mazariegos in his race against five other candidates to represent Council District 9, which covers part of South L.A. He was also convicted of shoplifting when he was 19.

The district is the poorest the city, and the council race is expected to be one of the most competitive city contests this June, with the current council member, Curren Price, terming out.

Mazariegos is head of the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment Los Angeles, a grassroots advocacy organization. The 40-year-old is backed by the L.A. chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America and supports leftist policies like reducing funding to the LAPD to spend more on other programs.

Jose Ugarte, a District 9 candidate who was a longtime Price staffer, believes his opponent’s criminal history is a red flag.

“Getting arrested and convicted for multiple crimes, including carrying a concealed loaded gun, should disqualify Estuardo in this race,” Ugarte said in a statement. “Instead, the Democratic Socialists of L.A. are propping up his candidacy and hiding his criminal past from voters who deserve to know the truth.”

DSA-LA co-chair Leslie Chang said her group is “proud” to stand with Mazariegos.

Mazariegos’ supporters say he hasn’t hidden his past.

Georgia Flowers-Lee, a vice president with United Teachers Los Angeles, said Mazariegos discussed his gun conviction and the circumstances surrounding it during his interviews with the union, which ended up endorsing him.

“He was up front, honest about the challenges and honest about the gun charge,” she said. “Walked us through what had happened and where it led and how and why he ended up pleading it out,” she said.

Flowers-Lee, who lives in the district, said that young men of color like Mazariegos are overpoliced.

“I do not see this as a disqualifier. And let’s talk about redemption,” she said.

Wednesday night, Mazariegos released a campaign video featuring him discussing gun violence and his conviction with childhood friends. He said it was a turning point in his life.

“That was the moment where I was like, it’s either now or never,” he said. “Either I leave this s— behind, or it’s going to eat me up. I’m never going back to that lifestyle. I’m going to dedicate myself to the people.”

Mazariegos said he never carried a gun, except for that one day, but many of his friends did.

“Guns were a very common thing. It was almost like having a bike,” he said.

Mazariegos said that in 2009, he was driving home from the San Fernando Valley in the early morning, after dropping friends off, when he was pulled over by the LAPD. He said the officers gave no reason for stopping him, but they made him get out of his car and searched it without a warrant, finding the gun.

He was a permanent resident at the time, after moving from Guatemala at a young age, and was advised by his attorney to plead guilty to a misdemeanor charge of carrying a concealed weapon in a vehicle, to avoid possible deportation, he said.

He was sentenced to 24 months of probation and one day in jail, court records show.

Growing up in Hollywood and Hyde Park, among other parts of the city, Mazariegos was intimately familiar with gun and gang violence.

His friend, Oscar Michael Morales, was shot to death in 2001 at age 14. He remembers Morales’ mother cleaning the blood off the sidewalk the next day.

His gun conviction helps him connect with residents of Council District 9, Mazariegos said, and he frequently discusses it while door-knocking.

Ugarte, meanwhile, is paying off $25,000 in fines to the city Ethics Commission for failing to disclose years of outside income while he was working for Price.

Price himself has been criminally charged with four counts of voting on matters in which he had a conflict of interest, five counts of embezzlement and three counts of perjury. Prosecutors allege he voted to approve deals with developers or agencies that had done business with his wife.

Voter fraud conspiracies are like methamphetamine running through MAGA veins, stirring up equal parts passion and paranoia.

President Trump, of course, is the king pusher of this particular addiction, pathologically certain he won the 2020 presidential election (he did not). In his second term, and in advance of the November election, Trump has supercharged voter fraud lies; installed election deniers in key positions; and is attempting through the so-called SAVE America Act to disenfranchise poor and female voters.

Here in California, the seductive power of Trump’s crusade can be seen in Riverside County, where gubernatorial candidate and Sheriff Chad Bianco is definitely not pursuing a vote fraud investigation for political reasons.

“From the very, very beginning, Chad Bianco didn’t say this was political,” Bianco told me, referring to himself in the third person. “Chad Bianco said we have an allegation of fraud with numbers that don’t add up, and no one has an exact reason why. So we have to find out the exact reason why. It’s plain and simple. Plain and simple.”

If you’re clueless as to what Bianco is talking about, let me give you the short version. A citizens group of election “auditors” claimed that in the last election over Proposition 50 in November, there were about 45,800 more ballots counted than cast.

The Riverside County Registrar of Voters, Art Tinoco, a highly respected election official, gave a long presentation explaining why that number was not accurate. He said that the actual difference in ballots cast and counted is only 103, within the acceptable margin of error for the 1.4 million voters in his area.

But unhappy with that answer, the group apparently took their concerns to Bianco, who decided to use his powers of criminal investigation to circumvent the many established avenues for vote audits through his own county and the California secretary of state (though he hasn’t revealed publicly exactly what led to the investigation).

Using a secret, sealed warrant — so none of us actually know what he’s alleging — he seized more than half a million ballots. The court has apparently appointed a special master to count those ballots, though Bianco at first said his deputies would do their own counting. But we don’t know who that special master is, or even if he or she has yet been appointed.

Here’s what we do know, and why it counts as a danger not just to Riverside, but also to American democracy writ large, when a politically ambitious lawman decides to run elections himself.

The fraud fiasco

So where did the citizen-auditors get their 45,800 number? Like many California counties, Riverside tallies ballots as they come in. So for the 11 days voting was happening (and for the mail-in ballots that came later) someone was making a handwritten note for every ballot that the county received.

Yes, I said handwritten, for more than 600,000 ballots going through 2,500 workers and volunteers. It’s often inaccurate and not every ballot is going to end up being a good one — some lack signatures, for example.

Tinoco, the registrar, called these handwritten logs “raw data” that also are missing ballots from other sources that increases the final tally, such as people who register on the day they vote. So no one who understands elections expects this number to be accurate or final.

Once all these ballots are checked to make sure they should be counted, they are sent to an entirely separate system, which reads them electronically and provides the election results.

When the number of vetted ballots is compared with the number of ballots that are counted by the second system, the difference is 103, Tinoco said.

So no fraud, only human frailty with the difficult business of counting by hand.

Matt Barreto, a UCLA political science professor and director of its Voting Rights Project, said Bianco’s actions were similar to what happened in Fulton County, Ga., where the FBI seized ballots after Trump’s debunked claims of fraud — despite plain and simple explanations from election officials.

“In both cases, Georgia and Riverside, independent elections offices had already verified the accuracy of the ballot count, and in both cases the results had been certified by the Secretary of State,” Barreto said. “It is worrisome that a very partisan law enforcement officer is questioning the integrity of an election, perhaps because he did not support the results.”

The investigation

Bianco has been investigating the 45,000 claim for months, but it came to a head in recent weeks, in no small part thanks to a news conference he held. Bianco’s office, as first reported by the Riverside Record, served a warrant on the election office one day before Tinoco made his presentation to the Board of Supervisors in early February.

Since then, the California secretary of state, which handles elections, and the state Department of Justice have both tried to intervene to stop Bianco from taking ballots or doing his own recount, Pillow Guy-style. But they’ve had little luck.

Secretary of State Shirley Weber called the allegations “unsubstantiated” and questioned the legality — and common sense — of having deputies hand count ballots. Now, her office is trying to make sure folks trained in elections are involved in whatever happens next.

“The sheriff’s assertion that his deputies know how to count is admirable,” Weber said. “The fact remains that he and his deputies are not elections officials.”

Separately, California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta has gone to the courts to try to keep Bianco from spiriting away the ballots. Bonta’s office went straight to the California Court of Appeals to ask it to force the sheriff to comply with their requests to take no further action and supply the Justice Department with the probable cause evidence used to obtain the search warrant — basically tell them exactly what proof he’s using to claim a crime might have been committed.

The appeals court declined to intervene until Bonta went to the lower Riverside County Superior Court. But in the meantime, Bianco went back to his judge and asked for another secret, sealed warrant — which he got.

The bigger problem

And that brings us to why we should all be concerned about Riverside County.

First, why all the secrecy? Shouldn’t elections and everything about them be transparent, so we all can feel confident any investigation is on the up and up?

I asked Bianco why the warrants are sealed, and he told me I didn’t understand investigations.

“In an ongoing investigation, we never unseal the warrants,” Bianco said. “No, I can’t say never. I can’t say never. Why are you coming at me like I’m the bad person here, instead of like a rational person?”

When I asked him why a sheriff needed to be involved, rather than allowing the state officials who handle elections to investigate, he told me this was a crime investigation just like any other — domestic abuse or murder, for example.

“It’s called fraud,” he said. “Let me ask you this: Do we just let, do we let doctors investigate themselves for medical malpractice?”

The implication there is that election officials are in a conspiracy to commit an actual crime — fraud — and can’t be trusted. That jumps the shark from maybe election staff counting sloppy in their handwritten tallies of ballots received, to a — yes, folks, here it is — a conspiracy of Democrats, from those volunteers up to the highest state officials.

That is a political vendetta, straight from Trump, and has little to do with tracking down crime — which, by the way, Bianco’s office is not great at. It has some of the lowest clearance rates in the state.

“Oh, please,” Bianco said regarding my questions on whether this was, in fact, political. “I’m the sheriff of Riverside County, and my investigators are responsible for crime. I have nothing to do with this investigation.”

His news conference would beg to differ.

And now we have a precedent for a politics-driven sheriff seizing ballots, maybe to make headlines, maybe to please Trump, maybe both. What happens if other Republican sheriffs across the country decide to do some ballot seizing of their own in swing states or contested races come November?

Is it all fair game now for whoever can physically take the ballots to be the arbitrator of results?

“The political corruption in California just gets bigger and bigger,” Bianco said on social media recently.

On that, we can agree.

What else you should be reading

The must-read: Landmark L.A. jury verdict finds Instagram, YouTube were designed to addict kids
The deep dive: ‘He’s an election skeptic. And he’s in charge of elections in Shasta County
The L.A. Times Special: Court denies AG’s petition to block Republican sheriff’s investigation of 650,000 ballots

Stay Golden,
Anita Chabria

P.S. Here’s Bianco on social media not long ago, once again definitely not espousing partisan voter conspiracies.

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His cancer surgery over the weekend reminds us that Chief Justice William Rehnquist, appointed to the Supreme Court by President Nixon, is not going to be on the court forever.

Neither is John Paul Stevens — a Ford appointee and, like Rehnquist, a World War II veteran. Nor is the third most senior justice, Sandra Day O’Connor, who has now served through six presidential terms.

Their successors will control national policy on the most sensitive and profound political questions of our day –abortion, race, religion and gay marriage. And that means that the most important domestic issue confronting a President Bush or a President Kerry will be his appointments to the Supreme Court.

The court’s current lineup hasn’t changed since 1994 — the longest period without a new justice since the Marshall court of the early 1800s. In the last century, by my calculations, justices on average retired when they were 71 years old after about 14 years on the court.

In 2005, Rehnquist will be 81 and will have served on the court for 33 years. Stevens will be 85 and will have served for 30 years. O’Connor will be 75 and will have served for 24 years. Others are not far behind: Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a Clinton appointee, will be 72, with 12 years’ service. Justice Antonin Scalia and Justice Anthony Kennedy will be 69, with 19 and 17 years respectively. Only Justice Clarence Thomas will be below the age of 65.

Even one new justice could profoundly affect a court that is closely divided on important social issues. And two new justices could shift national policy dramatically.

Slim 5-4 majorities stand behind the decisions that have struck down prohibitions on partial-birth abortion, approved affirmative action programs in colleges and universities, allowed the use of vouchers at private religious schools and restricted use of the death penalty.

Only a one-vote margin has supported restricting Congress’ regulatory power in favor of the states, which affects anti-discrimination, criminal and environmental laws.

A 5-4 majority last term agreed that the nation was at war after the Sept. 11 attacks and that the president and Congress could authorize the detention of “enemy combatants” in the war on terror.

A 6-3 margin defends the basic right to abortion first recognized in Roe vs. Wade and the expansion of gay rights in Lawrence vs. Texas that has spurred efforts for a constitutional amendment to prohibit same-sex marriage.

With a closely divided Senate a certainty, Supreme Court confirmation hearings in the next four years could make the outrages of the Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas hearings look tame. And the filibuster, used by Democrats to block Bush’s lower-court nominees, may be only the beginning of procedural shenanigans.

Just how bloody a battle might be, however, depends on which justice resigns and which candidate wins. A Bush nominee replacing the reliably conservative Rehnquist wouldn’t change the court’s status quo or draw a massive fight. If John Kerry wins, however, his choice to replace Rehnquist would mean major change and, most likely, a knock-down, drag-out struggle.

A more politicized nomination and confirmation process is the Supreme Court’s own doing. Over the last half-century, it has arrogated power — weakening the role of states and even Congress — when it comes to many political and moral questions. The only way for interest groups and citizens to change policy on abortion, affirmative action or gay rights is to change the justices on the Supreme Court.

Despite bruising confirmation proceedings, however, history shows that it is the president who still makes the decisive choice when it comes to the court. In the last century, the Senate has confirmed 89% of the president’s nominees to the Supreme Court. Twelve of the last 14 nominees have taken their seats on the court.

Both candidates are well aware of the stakes, and both are certainly readying nominees. Kerry has said he would nominate a jurist who would protect abortion rights. According to the New York Times, Bush told donors that he expected to replace one justice shortly after his reelection and that he might be replacing as many as four in a second term. His role models for nominees, he has said, are Scalia and Thomas.

But either candidate could be surprised. Republican President Eisenhower chose Chief Justice Earl Warren and Justice William Brennan, whose late-blooming activist tendencies caused him to consider their appointments the biggest mistakes of his presidency. The first President Bush appointed David H. Souter, who has evolved toward the liberal end of the spectrum.

WASHINGTON — Most Americans believe recent U.S. military action against Iran has gone too far, and many are worried about affording gasoline, according to a new AP-NORC poll.

As the war launched by the U.S. and Israel continues in its fourth week, the survey from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research indicates that while President Trump’s approval rating is holding steady, the conflict could be swiftly turning into a major political liability for his Republican administration.

While Trump is deploying more warships and troops to the Middle East, about 59% of Americans say U.S. military action in Iran has been excessive.

Meanwhile, 45% are “extremely” or “very” concerned about being able to afford gas in the next few months, up from 30% in an AP-NORC poll conducted shortly after Trump won reelection with promises that he would improve the economy and lower the cost of living.

There is significant support for at least one of the president’s objectives, which is preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. About two-thirds of Americans say that should be an “extremely” or “very” important foreign policy goal for the U.S. However, they are just as likely to say it’s important to keep U.S. oil and gas prices from rising — a juxtaposition that could be difficult for the White House to manage.

About 4 in 10 U.S. adults continue to approve of Trump’s performance as president, which is unchanged from last month. His approval on foreign policy, while slightly lower than his overall approval, also largely held steady.

Trump has left unclear his next steps on Iran. Despite escalating threats, he’s also suggested diplomatic talks could resolve the fighting. Americans remain broadly apprehensive about Trump’s ability to make the right decisions on the use of military force outside the U.S., and they mostly oppose more aggressive steps, such as deploying ground forces.

Republicans and Democrats prioritize keeping gas prices low

Keeping the price at the pump down is the rare goal that unites Americans in both major political parties.

About three-quarters of Republicans and about two-thirds of Democrats say it’s highly important to prevent U.S. oil and gas prices from going up.

However, concern about the current situation isn’t evenly felt. Only about 3 in 10 Republicans said they’re “extremely” or “very” worried about affording gas in the next few months, as opposed to about 6 in 10 Democrats.

Trump’s focus on Iran’s nuclear program also appears more compelling to Republicans than to Democrats. About two-thirds of Americans say the U.S. should prioritize keeping Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, but about 8 in 10 Republicans say this is at least “very” important, compared with about half of Democrats.

The war has exacerbated political debates over the role that Israel should play in U.S. foreign policy, especially since Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was a leading voice for attacking Iran. Only about 4 in 10 U.S. adults say preventing Iran from threatening Israel should be a high priority.

Toppling Iran’s leaders is viewed as slightly less important. Only about 3 in 10 say it’s at least “very” important for the U.S. to replace Iran’s government with one that’s friendlier to U.S. interests.

Most Americans say U.S. action has gone too far in Iran

As Trump provides mixed messages on whether the Iran war will end soon, about 9 in 10 Democrats and about 6 in 10 independents say the Iran attacks have “gone too far.”

Republicans are more divided. About half of Republicans say the U.S. military action has been “about right,” but relatively few want to see it go further. Only about 2 in 10 Republicans say the U.S. military action has not gone far enough, while about one-quarter say it’s gone too far.

Recent AP-NORC polling has found that about 6 in 10 Americans say Trump has “gone too far” on a range of issues, including his approach to tariffs and presidential power. That number, which is broadly reflective of his overall approval, signals that while Trump’s actions in Iran are unpopular, it’s still comparable to other controversial moves he’s taken as president.

Further entrenching the U.S. in the war could change that, depending on what happens next. About 6 in 10 Americans “somewhat” or “strongly” oppose deploying U.S. troops on the ground to fight Iran, including about 8 in 10 Democrats and roughly half of Republicans. Just under half of Americans oppose airstrikes targeting Iranian leaders and airstrikes against military targets in Iran, while about 3 in 10 are in favor and about 3 in 10 don’t have an opinion.

Many Americans distrust Trump on use of military force abroad

About half of U.S. adults have “only a little” trust or “none at all” in Trump when it comes to making the right decisions about the use of military force outside the U.S., in line with an AP-NORC poll from February.

About 34% of U.S. adults approve of the way Trump is handling foreign policy, similar to 36% in February. That measure has been consistent in recent months despite a cascade of actions, including confrontations over Greenland and an attack on Venezuela, that have generated controversy at home and abroad.

It’s also very similar to Trump’s approval on Iran in the new poll, which found that 35% of Americans have a positive view of his handling of that issue.

Sanders and Catalini write for the Associated Press. The AP-NORC poll of 1,150 adults was conducted March 19-23 using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for adults overall is plus or minus 4 percentage points.

NEW YORK — Wellness influencer Dr. Casey Means’ nomination to be U.S. surgeon general is stalled a month after senators of both major political parties grilled her on vaccines and other health topics during a tense confirmation hearing, deepening doubts about her ability to secure the votes she needs for the role.

The nomination has languished despite ongoing efforts from the White House and Make America Healthy Again activists, revealing how intractable rifts over health policy can be even when Congress has shown deference to President Trump. It’s become the latest snag in Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s agenda after two legal setbacks last week.

Means, a 38-year-old Stanford-educated physician who became disillusioned with traditional medicine and did not finish her surgical residency program, has faced scrutiny for her lack of experience and potential conflicts. Another sticking point has been her close alignment with Kennedy, whose efforts to dramatically pull back vaccine recommendations have been slammed by lawmakers and medical groups.

To advance to a full Senate vote, Means likely needs every Republican on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee to support her nomination. But after last month’s hearing, two of them — Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine — told reporters they still had questions for her.

Murkowski told reporters Tuesday that “I’m just in the same spot” when it comes to those hesitations. Collins and Republican committee chairman Sen. Bill Cassidy, a physician from Louisiana who interrogated Means about vaccines during the hearing, didn’t respond to multiple inquiries about the delay.

White House spokesman Kush Desai said in a statement that the Trump administration has been having “productive conversations with the Senate” to advance Means. He added that her “elite academic credentials, research background and advocacy on America’s chronic disease epidemic will make her a critical asset for President Trump’s push to Make America Healthy Again.”

Kennedy spokesman Andrew Nixon reinforced the Republican administration’s support for Means and praised her message calling for healthier lifestyle choices rather than “sick care.”

Contentious hearing set the stage for a tough path to confirmation

Means promotes ideas popular with the MAHA movement, including that Americans are overmedicalized and that diet and lifestyle changes should be at the center of efforts to end widespread chronic disease.

But she’s been criticized for having an inactive medical license, for sometimes failing to disclose financial relationships with brands she promotes and for some of her past health-related comments.

Senators asked her during her hearing about how she would speak to the public about vaccines.

Murkowski and Cassidy pressed Means about her past doubts about the birth dose of the hepatitis B vaccine, which the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stopped recommending for all children late last year in a move later temporarily blocked by a federal judge. Means called the hepatitis B vaccine important and lifesaving but said parents should make their own decisions with their doctors.

Cassidy also asked Means whether she would advise Americans to vaccinate against the flu and measles amid outbreaks across the country. She didn’t make that commitment, instead emphasizing the importance of informed consent.

Collins asked Means about her past advocacy for the therapeutic use of psychedelic mushrooms. Means, who has spoken positively of her own experience with the drugs, said she wouldn’t recommend psychedelics for the American public.

Kennedy’s supporters put pressure on hesitant senators

Once it appeared Murkowski and Collins were undecided, MAHA activists orchestrated a push to support Means’ bid by surging phone calls to the two senators.

“Please call both of them. Call them time after time. Get your friends to call them,” Tony Lyons, head of the Kennedy-aligned group MAHA Action, told supporters earlier this month.

Others have loudly opposed Means’ nomination. Dr. Jerome Adams, Trump’s first-term surgeon general, has repeatedly called her unqualified for her lack of an active medical license. He said in an interview that Republicans in Congress and in the Trump administration have told him they disapprove of the pick but see it as Kennedy’s choice.

“What I keep hearing from folks is, ‘This is what Bobby wants,’” he said.

While surgeons general aren’t mandated by law to have an active medical license, they are required to be part of the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, a group of health professionals that says members should have up-to-date licenses.

Means said during her confirmation hearing that she had voluntarily made her Oregon medical license inactive, and that Adm. Brian Christine, who runs the Commissioned Corps, had testified that she was eligible to serve.

Even if Means advances out of committee, she might have difficulty securing confirmation by the full 100-member Senate. Republican Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, who isn’t seeking another term, told the Associated Press that he’s leaning against voting for Means.

“Her resume already puts me on alert — and then I don’t think she did herself any favors in the hearing,” Tillis said.

Means’ confirmation delay is unusually long

At nearly 300 days since her nomination in May, Means’ confirmation process has taken almost twice as long as the average presidential pick in Trump’s second term, according to data from the nonprofit Partnership for Public Service. The group found that in the first 400 days, the average time between nomination and confirmation for Trump’s nominees was 157 days.

Sometimes the process has gone far more quickly. Markwayne Mullin, the new Department of Homeland Security secretary sworn in Tuesday, had his confirmation hearing, floor vote and swearing-in all within a weeklong period.

One reason for Means’ drawn-out nomination is the birth of her son, which happened last October on the day of her initially scheduled confirmation hearing.

But Chris Piper, manager of public policy and stakeholder engagement at the Partnership for Public Service, said the length of time that has passed since Means’ rescheduled confirmation hearing also is unusual. He said candidates are often voted out of committee within a week of their hearing.

“A monthlong delay following a hearing is atypical for most nominations, particularly at this level of position,” he said.

Swenson writes for the Associated Press. AP writers Joey Cappelletti and Stephen Groves in Washington contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — The Transportation Security Administration may have to shut down operations at some airports as travelers are experiencing record wait times, the agency’s acting head said Wednesday, as the latest offer to end a funding impasse and put restraints on President Trump’s mass deportation agenda met fierce resistance in Congress.

The TSA’s Ha Nguyen McNeill described the mounting hardships facing unpaid airport workers — bills and eviction notices piling up and even plasma donations to make ends meet — and warned that lawmakers must ensure “this never happens again.”

“This is a dire situation,” she testified at a House hearing, warning of potential airport closures. “At this point, we have to look at all options on the table. And that does require us to, at some point, make very difficult choices as to which airports we might try to keep open and which ones we might have to shut down as our callout rates increase.”

Yet on the 40th day of the standoff involving the Department of Homeland Security, there was no easy way out in sight. Neither Republican senators, who made the latest offer, nor Democrats, who are demanding more changes in immigration enforcement, appeared closer to a compromise.

Trump, who initially appeared to have given his nod to the deal, has declined to lend it his full support or put his political weight behind making sure it is approved.

Top officials at agencies under the Homeland Security umbrella spoke for more than three hours before the House Homeland Security Committee about the potential risks of security lapses unless the partial government shutdown comes to an end.

A deal teeters on collapse

Homeland Security has gone without routine funding since mid-February. Democrats are insisting on changes to the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement and mass deportation operations after the killings of two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis by federal officers during protests.

The latest proposal would fund most of Homeland Security except for the enforcement and removal operations of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement that have been central to the debate. The plan would cover other aspects of ICE as well as Customs and Border Protection.

Although the offer added some new restraints on immigration officers, including the use of body cameras, it excluded other policies that Democrats have demanded.

Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York said they needed to see real changes. House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York pressed for “bold” changes at ICE.

Republican leaders said Democrats are putting the country at risk.

“They know this is crazy,” said House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.).

But conservative Republicans also panned the proposal, demanding full funding for immigration operations and skeptical of the promise from GOP leaders that they would address Trump’s proof-of-citizenship voting bill in a subsequent legislative package.

Airport lines grow as TSA workers endure hardships

McNeill, the acting TSA administrator, told lawmakers that multiple airports are experiencing greater than 40% callout rates and more than 480 transportation security officers have quit during the shutdown.

She cited the growing financial strain on the TSA workforce.

“Some are sleeping in their cars, selling their blood and plasma, and taking on second jobs to make ends meet, all while being expected to perform at the highest level when in uniform to protect the traveling public,” she said.

McNeil also said TSA officers working at the nation’s airports have experienced a more than 500% increase in the frequency of assaults since the shutdown began.

“This is unacceptable and it will not be tolerated,” she said.

The top executive overseeing Houston’s airport said security lines that left travelers waiting four hours or more could get longer if the political impasse was not soon settled.

Lines that twist and turn across multiple floors at George Bush Intercontinental Airport have been the result of TSA being able to staff only one-third to half the usual number of checkpoint lines, said Jim Szczesniak, aviation director for Houston’s airport system.

Trump’s decision to send ICE agents to the airports risks inflaming the situation, lawmakers have said. Video of federal officers detaining a crying woman at San Francisco International Airport drew outrage Monday from local officials, although it was unrelated to Trump’s order to deploy immigration officers.

FEMA also at risk

The Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Disaster Relief Fund is “rapidly depleting,” Victoria Barton, a FEMA external affairs official, told lawmakers.

FEMA is able to continue its disaster response and recovery work as long as that fund has money, and about 10,000 of its disaster workers continue to be paid through it.

Mascaro and Freking write for the Associated Press. AP writers Wyatte Grantham-Philips in New York, Rio Yamat in Las Vegas, Russ Bynum in Houston and Gabriela Aoun Angueira in San Diego contributed to this report.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum praises services from Cuban doctors, who often work in underserved rural areas.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has confirmed that her country will continue receiving Cuban medical workers, as part of a longstanding programme meant to build goodwill between the island and other Latin American countries.

Her remarks on Wednesday come as the United States pressures Latin American countries to sever their ties to Cuba’s medical programme.

Sheinbaum, however, told reporters during a news conference that the agreement was a benefit to Mexico. Thousands of Cuban medical workers have deployed there since 2022 to work largely in poor, rural areas.

“We have a very good agreement that’s also been a great help to us. It’s a bilateral agreement that’s been very beneficial for Mexico,” said Sheinbaum.

“It’s hard to get Mexican doctors and specialists to go out to many rural areas where we need medical specialists, and the Cubans are willing to work there.”

In February, the US passed a law that opens the door to sanctions on countries that continue to participate in the programme.

It called for the US secretary of state to issue a report within 90 days about which countries continue to pay the government of Cuba for the “coerced and trafficked labour of Cuban medical professionals”.

The move comes amid a wider push to further isolate Cuba and topple the government in Havana, a longtime target of US ire. So far, countries including the Bahamas, Honduras, Guatemala, Jamaica and Guyana have ended their participation in the Cuban medical exchange programme.

Cuba has long depicted the decades-old programme as a means of signalling solidarity with other countries. It has also become an important source of foreign revenue for the island nation, which has been under a restrictive US economic embargo since 1960.

The administration of US President Donald Trump, however, has depicted the programme as akin to forced labour.

“Basically, it’s human trafficking,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters in February.

“I mean, they’re barely even being paid. Their freedom of movement is tightly restricted. And we want these countries to understand that’s what they’re participating in.”

Experts at the United Nations have also raised similar concerns, including about the confiscation of passports, which the Cuban government justifies as a means of preventing trained doctors from fleeing the country after their state-sponsored studies.

The pressure on the Cuban medical missions is part of a broader push under Trump’s second term to seek regime change on the island.

By threatening tariffs on Cuba’s trading partners, Trump has largely cut the island off from accessing the foreign oil necessary to power its electrical grid.

Trump has also said that he hopes to “take” Cuba and install a new government that will be more pliant to US demands.

The Mexican government has tried to balance its friendly relations with Cuba with the US’s demands.

In the absence of energy shipments, Sheinbaum’s government has sent vessels with humanitarian aid to the island.

REDDING — At a Board of Supervisors meeting in rural Shasta County last month, Clint Curtis dropped a bombshell: A sheriff way down in Riverside was going to confiscate all the ballots from a recent election.

Curtis, the county registrar of voters, was the first to announce the planned ballot seizure. Even the sheriff himself, Chad Bianco, had not publicly revealed his intentions.

Later, as Bianco’s move grabbed headlines — he is a leading Republican candidate for governor — Curtis’ behind-the-scenes maneuvering remained largely unknown. The registrar had worked with the Riverside County citizens group whose fraud allegations had sparked Bianco’s investigation, even traveling 600 miles south to speak on their behalf.

Shasta County Clerk and Registrar of Voters Clint Curtis poses last month in the new election observation room at the elections office in Redding.

In his short time in Shasta County, Curtis, whose claims about rigged voting machines stretch back to the early 2000s, has solidified his position as a torchbearer of the election denialism movement, vowing to take his message about untrustworthy machines and potential fraud across California and beyond.

Critics here say he has steadily disenfranchised voters. He has eliminated nine of the vast county’s 13 ballot drop boxes, telling The Times he did not trust ballots in the hands of “little old ladies running all over” to collect them. And he has advocated for a local ballot initiative that would limit elections to one day, eliminate most voting by mail and require voter ID as well as a hand count of ballots.

Curtis also has accused his predecessors in the registrar’s office, without evidence, of election fraud and has called for federal authorities to raid the office he now runs.

“Do I think ballots were stuffed? Yes. Have I contacted the DOJ? Yes,” Curtis said at the Feb. 24 Shasta County supervisors’ meeting just before announcing Bianco’s planned ballot seizure.

Curtis, a 67-year-old attorney, was appointed by the Shasta County supervisors last April. He lived in Florida then, had no previous ties to the area and had never run an election.

He got the job based largely on two stated qualifications: He wanted to hand-count votes. And he had worked with Mike Lindell, the MyPillow chief executive and pro-Trump conspiracy theorist.

In his public job interview, Curtis promised to grill local elections staffers to “find out what they know.”

Now Curtis is running for election himself, trying to keep his job in this Northern California county where a majority of the supervisors were so swept up in President Trump’s discredited election fraud claims that they ditched their Dominion voting machines in 2023 and opted to hand-count ballots (quickly prompting a new state law that banned them from doing so).

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Curtis says he is running to make elections more transparent by questioning the status quo and hanging cameras everywhere to capture election workers’ every move.

“Republicans love me,” Curtis told The Times. “The Democrats are pretty good. And then I have these crazy socialist people that just hate me.”

Beliefs aside, Curtis has quickly become a colorful local character.

He took a lie detector test to attest that he didn’t rig the November election. He chose as his number two a heavy metal guitarist from San Francisco — stage name “Turmoil” — who is a progressive Democrat.

And last September, surveillance cameras captured him pushing an antique metal safe through the Shasta County elections office on a Saturday while his wife assisted with a pulling harness. Curtis wore blue jeans — and no shirt.

He said he moved the safe, which contained odds and ends, on a hot day to make more room for election observers.

Curtis first gained national attention for election skepticism in December 2004, in testimony before Congress.

He had been working as a computer programmer in Florida and was brought in as an expert witness by Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee, who were reeling over President George W. Bush’s defeat of John Kerry a few weeks earlier and furious about an error with an electronic voting machine that gave Bush extra votes in Ohio.

Curtis claimed that he had written “a prototype” of software that would allow cheaters to alter votes using “invisible buttons” on touch-screen balloting machines. His claims were largely dismissed. But he continues to tout his congressional testimony to cast himself as an expert on election malfeasance.

A woman passes by a “Greetings From Redding” mural on Feb. 25.

After testifying, he unsuccessfully ran for office multiple times in Florida. He refused to concede after one loss, alleging the machines were rigged.

In Shasta County, he saw a chance for redemption.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Board of Supervisors gained a hard-right majority supported by anti-vaxxers, secessionists, members of a local militia and pro-Trump election deniers.

In 2022, someone hung a trail camera — the kind hunters use to track wildlife — behind the elections office to monitor the staff. Some observers yelled at staffers and got in the face of Cathy Darling Allen, the longtime registrar, who installed a 7-foot metal fence to keep them at bay.

Joanna Francescut, who worked in the elections office for 17 years, is running to be county registrar.

Darling Allen clashed with the supervisors as they pushed to hand-count votes, a process she argued would be slow, expensive and prone to error. She retired in 2024, citing health reasons.

Her successor resigned after less than a year. The supervisors appointed Curtis in a 3-2 vote, passing over Joanna Francescut, who had worked in the elections office since 2008 and was Darling Allen’s number two.

Days later, Curtis fired Francescut. She is now running against him in the June 2 election.

David Becker, executive director of the Center for Election Innovation & Research and a former senior trial attorney overseeing voting enforcement for the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, called Curtis a “nationally known conspiracy theorist.”

“I can’t imagine bringing in someone who is neither an election administrator nor a Californian for a job like that and basically chasing out experienced election officials whose work had withstood scrutiny for decades,” Becker said. “The voters of Shasta County, unfortunately, are paying the price.”

Curtis has accused Francescut and other elections staffers of stuffing ballots to sabotage conservative Republicans.

“I want to laugh because it’s that ridiculous,” Francescut, 43, said of the allegations.

“People that work in this field, they’re doing this work because they care about elections,” she said. “They want the community to be better. They want what both sides want — transparent and accurate elections.”

During her 17-year tenure, the elections office got little public attention. But “once 2020 hit, people went from completely trusting us to, the day after election day, calling and yelling at our staff so much that we couldn’t get the work done to count ballots,” she said.

Curtis was a favorite of then-board chairman Kevin Crye, a hard-right supervisor who enlisted Lindell to support the county’s crusade against Dominion. Crye had survived a 2024 recall effort by just 50 votes.

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1. Carl Bott, co-owner of KCNR 96.5 FM, interviews Joanna Francescut on Feb. 25, 2026, in Redding, Calif. 2. Joanna Francescut’s campaign manager, Mary Williams, wears an orange button that reads “Vote for Jo for County Clerk” as Francescut waits in the offices of talk radio station KCNR.

Citing that close margin, Curtis said he believed recent elections were rigged because Republicans were not winning by large enough margins in a county where registered Republicans greatly outnumber Democrats.

In a letter to the U.S. Justice Department, Curtis said he had learned of lax security and potential ballot stuffing in 2024, the year of the attempted recall against Crye. Curtis sent a copy of the letter to Trump and requested a federal investigation because “the destruction of these ballots is nearing.”

In 2019 and 2024, a Shasta County grand jury investigated local election procedures and found no wrongdoing.

“How does it make me feel? Really angry,” Darling Allen, who is advising Francescut’s campaign, said of Curtis’ allegations. “It calls into question the integrity and character of every single person who worked in the elections department.”

To replace Francescut, Curtis hired Brent Turner, the guitarist from San Francisco. He is a longtime election reform activist who has pushed for nonproprietary open-source voting systems with software code that can be examined by anyone.

Turner described their partnership as: “Republican and Democrat team up to fight outdated software for elections. Oh, my!”

“We have to have the adult conversation in the United States that if the systems are loose enough to allow people — in this case, we’re talking about even people internal to the system — to cheat, they might cheat,” Turner said.

Last October, Secretary of State Shirley Weber wrote to Curtis, asking him to detail planned changes to voting procedures. He responded with a 15-page letter.

Election observers, he wrote, were “treated like invaders … corralled behind spiked fences.” And drivers who picked up ballots from drop boxes sometimes left them in their vehicles. Under his watch, he wrote, “no detours or even bathroom breaks are allowed.”

A woman exits the Cottonwood Post Office in Shasta County.

Curtis told Weber that someone had carved death threats on his vehicle and left “antifa” business cards on his windshield wipers.

Weber’s communications team said in an email that her office “continues to monitor new election processes proposed by Shasta (or any county) County to ensure they do not violate state law.”

In his letter to Weber, Curtis promised to take a lie detector test after each election. Answering pre-written questions he had submitted, Curtis said in a January polygraph test that he did not change the results of the November election and believed a predecessor had rigged previous contests, according to a summary obtained by The Times.

The examiner wrote that he “was likely telling the truth.”

Inside the elections office, Curtis created a large room, decked out with American flags, for citizens to observe the vote-counting process.

More than a dozen large TV monitors display close-up video, also streamed online, of election workers’ hands inserting ballots into machines. On June 2, those workers will sit beneath iPhones hung overhead to record them while observers are positioned on barstools a few inches behind them.

The new public observation room at the Shasta County elections office is decorated with American flags.

Curtis has been traveling across California to tout his methods. He told The Times he has spoken about his video setup in Kern and San Joaquin counties and discussed it with candidates for state office.

And he advised the Riverside County citizens group that claimed to have found an overcount of 45,896 ballots in the November election for Proposition 50, which redrew the state’s congressional districts to favor Democrats.

Art Tinoco, the Riverside County registrar of voters, has refuted that number — saying it was based on a misunderstanding of raw data that had not been fully processed.

After Bianco last week announced that his office had seized more than 650,000 ballots, Curtis appeared on the social media broadcast of a right-wing election integrity advocate who called him “the stealth behind the scenes in making that happen.”

Curtis smiled and repeated what he has been espousing since the early 2000s: “You can’t really trust a computer.”

March 25 (UPI) — Ha Nguyen McNeill, acting administrator for Transportation Security Administration, said Wednesday that TSA agents are struggling during the shutdown.

She made the comments during a hearing before the House Committee on Homeland Security amid funding issues for the Department of Homeland Security.

“Officers are reportedly sleeping in their cars at airports to save gas money, selling their blood and plasma, and taking on second and third jobs to make ends meet, all while expected to perform at the highest level when in uniform to protect the traveling public,” she said in her opening statement to the committee.

“Many have received eviction notices, lost their childcare, missed bill payments and been charged late fees, damaged their credit, defaulted on loans, and have been unable to even qualify for a loan to help ease the financial burden during the shutdown.”

According to TSAcareer.com, the starting base salary for officers is $34,454. The average is $46,000-$55,000 with locality adjustments.

Officials from TSA, the Coast Guard, the Federal Emergency Management Administration and the Cybersecurity Infrastructure and Security Agency said their readiness has been severely hurt by the partial government shutdown.

McNeill testified that 480 officers have quit the TSA since their pay stopped Feb. 14 and that the agency will not be able to replace them before visitors begin arriving for the World Cup in June.

She said officers spend four to six months in training before working at checkpoints, while the World Cup games begin in 80 days.

“Even if TSA were to hire new officers upon conclusion of the DHS shutdown, those officers would not be able to work on the checkpoints until well after the World Cup has concluded,” she said. “We are facing a potential perfect storm of severe staffing shortages and an influx of millions of passengers at our airports.”

On Tuesday, Senate Republicans said President Donald Trump was on board with their plan to reopen the Department of Homeland Security.

On Wednesday, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said he will “expeditiously move” to write the reconciliation process for the new Republican-led measure that will bypass the filibuster even without the 60 votes needed.

“The purpose of the second reconciliation bill is to make sure there is adequate funding to secure our homeland and to support our men and women in the military who are fighting so bravely,” Graham said in a statement.

Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said on the Senate floor that “this morning, Democrats sent Republicans our counteroffer on legislation to reopen DHS, pay TSA workers, while at the same time, rein in [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] with common sense guardrails.”

“Our offer is a reasonable, good-faith proposal that contains some of the very same asks Democrats have been talking about now for months,” he said.

Schumer also noted that the ICE reforms are not new or surprise demands.

WASHINGTON — President Trump will travel to Beijing for a rescheduled summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping on May 14 and 15, the White House announced on Wednesday.

Trump had been scheduled to travel to China later this month but previously announced he was delaying the trip so he could be in Washington to help steward the U.S. and Israeli war against Iran. The Republican president had announced a rescheduled trip even though the war in Iran continues and the U.S. is pressing Tehran to accept a ceasefire proposal.

The president and First Lady Melania Trump also plan to host Xi and his wife, Peng Liyuan, for a White House visit later this year, press secretary Karoline Leavitt said.

Leavitt, when asked if the new dates for Trump’s trip could suggest he believes the Iran war could end soon, offered an optimistic tone that the conflict could reach an endgame before he travels.

“We’ve always estimated four to six weeks,” Leavitt responded. “So you could do the math on that.”

The United States and Israel launched the attacks against Iran on Feb. 28.

The China trip had been planned for months but began to unravel as Trump pressured Beijing and other world powers to use their military might to protect the Strait of Hormuz, a critical waterway for the flow of oil. The strait has been effectively closed as Iran targets energy infrastructure and traffic through it.

Trump said last week while meeting with Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin in the Oval Office that he would be going to China in five or six weeks’ time instead of at the end of the month. He said he would be “resetting” his visit with Xi.

“We’re working with China — they were fine with it,” Trump said then. “I look forward to seeing President Xi. He looks forward to seeing me, I think.”

Trump’s visit to China is seen as an opportunity to build on a fragile trade truce between the two superpowers, but it has become tangled in his effort to find an endgame to the war in Iran. Soon after pressing China and other nations to send warships to secure access to Middle Eastern oil, Trump indicated last week that his travel plans depended on Beijing’s response, though he added then that the U.S. didn’t need help from the allies that rebuffed his request.

Madhani writes for the Associated Press.

ORLANDO, Fla. — Florida Democrats, beaten down by years of Republican domination in what was once the consummate battleground state, claimed new optimism Wednesday after a special election victory in President Trump’s home district.

Emily Gregory will represent the district that includes Mar-a-Lago, the president’s resort in Palm Beach, as a state representative.

Democrats are also hopeful that Brian Nathan will win a state senate seat in the Tampa area; the Associated Press has not yet called that race but he currently has a narrow lead that is within the state’s automatic recount range.

Gregory’s victory is the latest flip of a Republican-held seat since Trump’s second presidency began, giving Democrats fresh confidence in a midterm election year with control of Congress and many statehouses — including Florida’s — up for grabs in November.

“The pendulum swings in both directions,” Florida Democratic chairwoman Nikki Fried told reporters. “Last night it swung hard in the state of Florida.”

She added, “If we can win in Donald Trump’s backyard, we can win anywhere.”

For Gregory, a 40-year-old political newcomer who owns a fitness company, it has been a stunning introduction to the national spotlight.

“I believed in myself the whole time,” Gregory said, describing her political “naiveté” about the district and its Republican leanings as an asset.

She told the AP she did not make her contest about the president specifically, but focused heavily on constituents’ concerns involving the economy and everyday costs — from fast-rising insurance in the hurricane-prone district to groceries and gas.

She described herself as a lifelong “proud Florida Democrat” but said she did not run to be a face of the party or lead the opposition movement to Trump. She said she will go to Tallahassee focused on proposals to limit insurance rate hikes, expand healthcare access and lift “huge, crushing burdens on the average Florida family.”

“I just see myself as very embedded in my community, very representative of District 87,” she said. “And I’m so humbled and proud to be their representative.”

Trump endorsed Gregory’s opponent, Jon Maples, and cast a mail ballot in the contest. The president reiterated his support for Maples on the eve of the election with a social media post saying the Republican candidate was backed “by so many of my Palm Beach County friends.”

As of midday on Wednesday, Trump had not mentioned the outcome of the race.

Fried praised Gregory and Nathan, a 45-year-old veteran and union worker, as quality candidates who could capitalize on the broader political environment.

“The type of person and connection on the issues matters,” Fried said.

Gregory flipped a seat that her Republican predecessor had won by 19 percentage points. Fried said Trump carried the district by 11 points in 2024.

Republicans still dominate the Florida Legislature, and they have been considered heavy favorites to hold the governor’s office in November, four years after Gov. Ron DeSantis won a blowout reelection campaign.

But Fried insisted the trends suggest a competitive landscape. She noted that Tuesday’s victories followed two congressional special elections in 2025 when Florida Democrats lost but dramatically narrowed the usual margins in heavily Republican districts.

“You’ve seen tremendous overspending by Republicans,” Fried said of the current cycle. “It’s not working.”

A spokesman for Republican U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds, whom Trump has endorsed for Florida governor, took at least some notice of the latest results.

“We constantly assess how we execute our strategy — that’s just good campaigns,” said Ryan Smith, Donalds’ chief campaign strategist. “What won’t change is our mission: President Trump endorsed Byron Donalds to deliver real results and defend the Florida Dream, and that’s what voters can expect to see from us.”

Gregory, meanwhile, said she’s ready to get to work for her constituents — even the most famous one who did not vote for her.

“I should have a constituent service office available soon, and I would love to have a conversation,” she said when asked what her message to the president would be. “He’s welcome to call me, as I am his new state representative.”

Barrow and Schneider write for the Associated Press. Barrow reported from Atlanta.

GRAPEVINE, Texas — Conservatives are holding one of their largest annual gatherings at a perilous political moment for President Trump and with open division on the right over the war he launched in Iran.

While Trump maintains broad support among conservatives, the war in Iran is more than a wrinkle for activists drawn to his “America First” campaign pledge against getting involved in foreign conflicts. A new AP-NORC poll shows about 59% of Americans think the military action in Iran is excessive. The debate will be a subtext — and likely flare publicly — as thousands of activists, influencers and Republican lawmakers gather at the Conservative Political Action Conference that begins Wednesday outside Dallas.

The event also comes a day after a Democrat flipped the Florida state legislative seat that’s home to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate.

The gathering will be a contrast to the celebratory meeting one year ago when Trump, newly returned to office, vowed to “forge a new and lasting political majority” and Elon Musk wielded a chain saw to symbolize how the Republican administration was slashing the government workforce and red tape.

This year, neither Trump nor Vice President JD Vance has been publicly announced as speaking to the gathering. But among those who are slated to speak are big names in the MAGA movement who have voiced conflicting views on the Iran war.

“This is obviously going to be a hot topic,” said John Gizzi, a CPAC veteran and columnist for the conservative media outlet Newsmax, who noted the possibility of greater U.S. involvement over an uncertain length of time.

Some featured speakers are divided over Iran and Israel

Among the featured speakers scheduled at the four-day event is longtime Trump ally Steve Bannon. Bannon said during his “War Room” podcast this month that should the war become “a hard slog,” it could cost the GOP conservative voters ahead of the midterms.

“We are going to bleed support,” Bannon said.

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who supports the war, also is on the agenda at the Gaylord Texan Resort and Convention Center.

“I think President Trump was exactly right to act to protect Americans,” Cruz said last week in a CBS News interview.

Former Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz’s scheduled speaking slot is a reminder of the disagreement among some conservatives about the U.S. military alliance with Israel against Iran.

Gaetz, host of a show on the conservative One America News Network, has said the U.S. has been too cozy with Israel as popular conservative personalities such as Tucker Carlson have challenged conservatives’ longtime bond with the country, prompting criticism from GOP groups, including pro-Israel Republicans, of antisemitism.

Others scheduled to speak include Trump border czar Tom Homan and former Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Whatley, who is running for the U.S. Senate in North Carolina.

Trump’s standing is strong among his base

A year after Trump presided over the group’s jubilant conference upon his return to office, he is in a much different place.

At war while worries about jobs and household costs linger, his approval is down. His signature domestic policy, aimed at tightening voting rules ahead of November’s midterm elections, has stalled in a Congress his party controls, while the House Republican majority is in jeopardy and the party’s hold on the Senate is less certain than a year ago.

Despite the dividing lines, Trump enjoys enduring approval from his party’s right flank. Eighty-six percent of conservatives said they approved of the president’s job performance in a February AP-NORC poll.

And while Trump’s supporters remain devoted, some within the most conservative circles say division over Iran could signal trouble for Republicans in November.

Texas Rep. Steve Toth, who plans to attend CPAC, suggested that Trump’s support remains robust among conservatives but that Republican messaging on the war could be stronger.

“From MAGA people, for the most part, I don’t hear frustration with the president,” said Toth, who beat incumbent Republican Rep. Dan Crenshaw in Texas’ March 3 primary. “I don’t know that we’re doing a great job at communicating the full ramifications.”

Texas’ GOP Senate primary is a lingering issue

Another stark reminder of the contrast with last year is Texas’ unresolved Senate primary, a particular political headache for Trump.

Texas Attorney Gen. Ken Paxton, who is challenging four-term GOP Sen. John Cornyn, not only is attending the event but also has one of the event’s premier speaking roles, the Ronald Reagan Dinner on Friday evening. Cornyn is not attending the Texas conference.

Trump said three weeks ago he would soon endorse one of them after Paxton finished narrowly behind Cornyn in the March 3 primary, though neither received a majority to avoid a May 26 runoff.

Trump implored whoever didn’t get the endorsement to drop out, writing in a social media post that the bitter contest “cannot, for the good of the Party, and our Country, itself, be allowed to go on any longer.”

The deadline for candidates to remove their names from the May 26 runoff ballot passed last week, as Paxton and Cornyn were launching stepped-up attack ads targeting one another.

Beaumont and Catalini write for the Associated Press. Catalini reported from Morrisville, Pa. AP writer Amelia Thomson DeVeaux in Washington contributed to this report.

March 25 (UPI) — A 2023 Justice Department disclosure to Congress revealed that President Donald Trump had documents so secretive that only six people had received copies among classified documents he kept at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida after he left office.

The disclosure was part of former special counsel Jack Smith’s report on his investigation into Trump, which has not been made public. Elements of the report, though, were distributed to the House and Senate judiciary committees and subsequently made public this week as part of their own probes.

The disclosure detailed the types of documents Trump took with him to his home in Palm Beach after leaving office in 2020. Smith was appointed by former President Joe Biden to investigate the mishandled classified documents, resulting in 41 criminal counts against Trump. Trump-appointed U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon dismissed the case in 2024 and recently ruled that Smith’s full report can’t be released publicly.

Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, sent a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi on Tuesday questioning why the Justice Department is “fighting tooth and nail to gag Special Counsel Jack Smith and bury his report.” He said the Justice Department’s disclosure sent to the committee earlier this month included “cherry-picked” documents related to the investigation.

“You have, quite amazingly, missed the fact that some of the documents you provided include damning evidence about your boss’s conduct and may well violate the gag order your DOJ and Donald Trump demanded from Judge Aileen Cannon,” the letter read.

Raskin’s letter said that the Justice Department disclosure included information that Trump held documents at Mar-a-Lago that only six people in the government had access to and that other documents related to his business interests.

The disclosure also indicated that White House chief of staff Susie Wiles — then the CEO of Trump’s super PAC — said she observed Trump showing off a classified map to fellow passengers on his private plane.

“This glimpse into the trove of evidence behind the coverup release a president of the United States who may have sold out our national security to enrich himself,” Raskin wrote.

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration has offered Iran a 15-point ceasefire plan aimed at temporarily halting the war in the Middle East, as the Pentagon simultaneously orders thousands of Marines, paratroopers and a warship to the region.

The plan presented to Iranian leadership Tuesday broadly included a 30-day ceasefire and sanctions relief for Iran in exchange for a laundry list of U.S. demands, according to the Associated Press and other outlets.

But Iran dismissed the proposal Wednesday, criticizing the White House’s terms as “excessive” and out of step with reality, according to Iranian state-run media.

Those terms included limitations on Tehran’s missile stockpiles, and the permanent end to its nuclear program, its support for regional militias including Hezbollah, and of its blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, various outlets reported, citing Pakistani officials mediating the negotiations.

Several of those provisions have long been considered nonstarters for Iran, which sees its missile stockade and regional alliances as central to national security.

Iranian officials responded with defiance and skepticism.

“Iran will end the war when it decides to do so and when its own conditions are met,” an Iranian official told state media. “Not when Trump envisions its conclusion.”

The official outlined the Islamic Republic’s terms for ending the conflict, which included a halt to “aggression and assassinations,” an end to fighting on all fronts, enforceable guarantees that hostilities will not resume, compensation for war damages and a formal recognition of Iran’s sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has stated that Iran is not interested in a ceasefire but rather a comprehensive “end of war” on all fronts, including the lifting of sanctions and guarantees to allow Iran to pursue peaceful nuclear enrichment for energy and medical applications.

Iranian officials told state media that they believed the Trump administration’s diplomatic efforts were deceptive.

“You have reached a stage where you are negotiating with yourselves,” Iranian military spokesman Ebrahim Zolfaqari said in a televised address Wednesday. “Do not call your defeat an agreement.

Since the start of the conflict, Iranian leaders have voiced suspicion of any diplomatic talks with the Trump administration, pointing to prewar diplomatic efforts as evidence they were “tricked.” The Islamic Republic says it made clear in those talks that it had no interest in developing nuclear weapons, but Trump launched his military campaign nonetheless.

There have been conflicting media reports over Tehran’s exact position. Statements from Iranian officials and state-linked outlets have left open the possibility that elements of the proposal are still under review, while some reports frame the response as an outright refusal.

The Iranian response also conflicts with President Trump’s insistence that negotiations were progressing.

“We have had very, very strong talks,” he said Sunday in Florida. “We have points, major points of agreement. I would say almost all points of agreement will at some point very, very soon meet.”

Compounding the issue, Israel — which continues to carry out routine bombing campaigns over Iran — has stayed out of the talks.

Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke about the peace deal in a phone call Tuesday. In a televised address, Netanyahu said that Trump “believes there is an opportunity” to realize U.S.-Israeli war objectives in an agreement “that will safeguard our vital interests.”

“At the same time, we continue to strike both in Iran and in Lebanon,” Netanyahu said. “We will safeguard our vital interests in any scenario.”

The negotiations are being facilitated by Pakistan, with support from Egypt and Turkey — countries that have pushed to contain a conflict that has killed more than 2,400 people, further destabilized the embattled region and disrupted global oil markets.

As Washington pursued a diplomatic end to the conflict, the Pentagon deployed an additional 2,000 troops from the 82nd Airborne Division to the Mideast. An additional 5,000 Marines and thousands of sailors are already en route to the region, where 50,000 more Marines are currently stationed.

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) told reporters on Wednesday that the deployment “sends a signal to Iran that they need to get their act together,” but denied any coming escalations by the American side. Johnson instead said that he believes “Operation Epic Fury is almost done.”

Now in its fourth week, the operation began with a series of intensive airstrikes that killed Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, and dozens of other high-ranking officials. Since then, the U.S. and Israel have carried out over 9,000 strikes targeting Iranian military infrastructure and nuclear program.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told reporters in the Oval Office Tuesday that while the president’s diplomatic envoys seek a peace deal, his department of war will continue to “negotiate with bombs.”

“The president has made it clear that you will not have a nuclear weapon. The War Department agrees,” Hegseth told reporters Tuesday in the Oval Office. “Our job is to ensure that, and so we’re keeping our hand on that throttle.”

Iranian retaliatory strikes have hit Gulf infrastructure and halted energy production and shipping in the region, spurring global fears of an enduring supply crunch. Meanwhile, Israel has expanded operations in Iran and sought to expand its borders into Lebanon.

Oil prices, which had surged above $120 per barrel earlier in the conflict, fell sharply this week on hopes that a ceasefire could ease supply woes.

In a statement Wednesday, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres demanded an end to the fighting, which he said “has broken past limits even leaders thought imaginable.”

He specifically called on the U.S. and Israel to end the war, as “human suffering deepens, civilian casualties mount, and the global economic impact is increasingly devastating.”

Times staff writers Ana Ceballos, in Washington, D.C., and Nabih Bulos, in Beirut, contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court made it harder for music and movie makers to sue for online piracy, ruling Wednesday that internet providers are usually not liable for copyright infringement even if they know their users are downloading copyrighted works.

In a 9-0 decision, the justices threw out Sony’s lawsuit and a $1-billion verdict against Cox Cable for copyright infringement.

Lower courts upheld a jury’s verdict against Cox’s internet service for contributing to music piracy, which the company did little to stop.

Sony’s lawyers pointed to hundreds of thousands of instances of Cox customers sharing copyrighted works. Put on notice, Cox did little stop it, they said.

But the high court said that is not enough to establish liability for copyright infringement.

“Under our precedents, a company is not liable as a copyright infringer for merely providing a service to the general public with knowledge that it will be used by some to infringe copyrights,” Justice Clarence Thomas wrote for the court.

Two decades ago, the court sided with the music and motion picture producers and ruled against Grokster and Napster on the grounds their software was intended to share copyrighted music and movies.

But on Wednesday, the court said “contributory” copyright infringement did not extend to internet service providers based on the actions of some of their users

“Cox provided Internet service to its subscribers, but it did not intend for that service to be used to commit copyright infringement,” Thomas said. “Cox neither induced its users’ infringement nor provided a service tailored to infringement.”

In its defense, Cox argued that internet service providers could be bankrupted by huge lawsuits for copyright infringement, which they said they did not cause and could not prevent.

A woman in Indiana who put off dental surgery because she doesn’t know if she can afford the copay. A Florida couple with young children who are depleting their savings. A grandmother in Idaho who plans to sell her car to pay the rent.

They are among about 50,000 Transportation Security Administration officers expecting to receive another $0 paycheck this week. A dispute in Congress over funding the Department of Homeland Security has held up their salaries since mid-February. With monthly bills coming due, many of these federal employees, who screen passengers and luggage at airports across the U.S., are making difficult choices about how to make ends meet.

High absentee rates at some major airports have produced long lines and frustrated passengers at understaffed security checkpoints. Union leaders and federal officials say empty gas tanks, child care expenses and the threat of eviction keep more screeners from showing up the longer the shutdown continues. At last count, more than 455 had quit instead of weathering the ongoing uncertainty, according to DHS.

“Stop asking me about the long lines. Ask me if somebody’s gonna eat today,” Hydrick Thomas, president of the national American Federation of Government Employees union council that represents TSA employees, told reporters Tuesday.

Indiana TSA agent turns to food pantry for groceries

Before starting her shift at Indianapolis International Airport on Monday, Taylor Desert stopped at a food bank for meat, eggs, vegetables and dairy products.

“I never thought I would be in a position where, working for the federal government, I would need to go to a food bank to supplement my groceries,” she said as she loaded bags into her car.

Desert, who has been a TSA officer for seven years, said her last full paycheck came on Feb. 14, the day the shutdown started.

She had some savings to draw on despite a record 43-day shutdown last fall but put some personal plans on pause.

For example, Desert needs to get her wisdom teeth removed but says the TSA isn’t approving time off during the shutdown. She also worries about costs from the surgery not covered by insurance.

Wednesday was the 39th day of the DHS funding lapse. If it goes another 21 days, Desert said she would seek another job.

“I don’t want to have to spend my entire savings just to afford to keep living,” she said.

Florida TSA couple worry about their young children

Oksana Kelly, 38, and her husband, Deron, 37, both work as TSA agents at Orlando International Airport. They have two young children and don’t know how they will keep supporting their family without any income coming in.

Kelly said they’re dipping into savings for now, but it’s running dry. If the shutdown persists, they will ask relatives for help or take out a loan, which she worries would put them deeper in debt.

Her husband has worked as a DoorDash delivery driver in his spare time since the shutdown in October and November. He’s considered resigning from the TSA to put the couple on more stable financial footing.

“It’s very mentally exhausting,” said Kelly, who is an organizer for the labor union representing TSA workers across central and northern Florida. “How do we even decide between being able to feed our kids or come to work?”

Kelly said strangers might criticize the couple for “putting all eggs in one basket” since both choose to work for the TSA for the past decade.

“All we want is to pay our bills and get the pay we deserve,” she said.

A veteran officer in Idaho fears homelessness

Rebecca Wolf cries every day. She tries to hide it from her grandchildren, ages 11 and 6.

“They don’t understand why grandma’s crying,” Wolf said. “I try not to cry in front of them, but sometimes it’s just too much.”

The 53-year-old TSA officer and union leader in Boise, Idaho, joined the agency soon after its creation in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks. She was homeless at the time but turned her situation around with steady work and the benefits of federal employment.

Now, Wolf can’t help but dwell on where she was 24 years ago. “I don’t want to be in that position again,” she said.

Her Feb. 28 paycheck amounted to $13.53, sending her “into a spiral right away.”

With no savings to fall back on, she is preparing to sell her car to cover her rent due in a week. She calls nonprofits daily seeking rental assistance, but hasn’t had any luck.

Supporting six family members — four children and two grandchildren — has always been challenging, but the repeated shutdowns have made it nearly unsustainable.

Wolf, who serves as president of AFGE TSA Local 1127, is hesitant to walk away from both the job that turned her life around and her role advocating for fellow officers.

“I worked hard to get to where I am now, and the thought I might lose it all scares me,” she said, her voice breaking as she tried to stifle the sound of weeping.

Massachusetts agent digs into savings to get by

Mike Gayzagian, a TSA officer at Boston’s Logan International Airport, says long stretches without pay have become enough of a “new normal” that he’s prepared for them.

The 56-year-old says he has a financial cushion of about six months to tap but that his situation is “an exception to the rule.”

“The majority live paycheck to paycheck and don’t have those kinds of reserves available,” said Gayzagian, who is president of his local TSA union chapter.

It shouldn’t be this way for federal workers, he said.

“The financial situation adds an additional burden to what is already a stressful job,” Gayzagian said. “I didn’t go into public service to make a lot of money. I went into public service because it has a certain stability and reliability and predictability that other jobs don’t have.”

A father in Utah leaves TSA

Robert Echeverria quit his job as a TSA agent at Utah’s Salt Lake City International Airport about two weeks into the current shutdown.

The 45-year-old, who has a wife and three children, counted five government shutdowns in the nine years he worked for the agency. The toughest was last year’s record shutdown that ended in mid-November around the start of the holiday season.

Echeverria said his family skipped Christmas and took months to recover financially. He began looking for a new job in February when it became clear Congress was headed for another budget battle.

“Emotionally I was already distraught,” Echeverria said last week. “We were barely recovering from the last shutdown.”

He now works for the department that manages the airports in Utah’s capital. Leaving federal service “was a hard decision for me,” Echeverria said.

“I really believed in the mission of the TSA,” he said. “We took an oath, and it was a way for me to give back to the country that gave me so much.”

He’s still based at Salt Lake City International, where his 20-year-old daughter works as a TSA agent, and says that seeing his former colleagues struggling is difficult.

“They all feel betrayed by their government because they’re showing up to work,” Echeverria said. “They’re there, but they feel that the government doesn’t care for them,” he said.

Marcelo, Lamy and Yamat write for the Associated Press. Marcelo reported from New York, Lamy reported from Indianapolis and Yamat reported from Las Vegas.

As the United States-Israeli war on Iran rages on, schools across Israel have been closed, cultural venues shuttered and large gatherings cancelled under police orders.

Dissent against the war, if there is much at all, has little chance of being aired.

A few demonstrations against the war, such as those staged by the Israeli-Arab activist group Zazim, still flicker through central cities, but they do so under heavy supervision, with officers warning crowds to disperse when sirens sound or when assemblies grow beyond what commanders deem safe.

The effect is a public sphere constrained less by decree than by the constant threat hanging overhead.

“Kids aren’t going to school, while employers are insisting their parents go to work,” Zazim’s co-founder and executive director, Raluca Ganea, says. Everyone is too overwhelmed by the daily grind to voice any dissatisfaction, she adds.

“We’re enduring multiple missile attacks daily, which means people aren’t sleeping. It’s like a manual for tyrants. It’s how you suppress protest or opposition and it’s working so far,” she added.

“We’ve attempted a couple of protests, but people are just too tired to engage,” Ganea says of Zazim’s efforts to resist the war. “It’s not so much that people are telling you that you can’t so much as protesting becomes impossible when a missile attack could happen at any time.”

Support for the war on Iran has remained strong in Israel, a fact borne out by polls. But as exhaustion grows and resentment builds over having their fates decided by often distant leaders such as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US President Donald Trump, who have shown little investment in their welfare, the societal fractures that came to define the war on Gaza are almost inevitable, she warns.

“It’s depressing,” she says. “The only response people have is to feel helpless when their fate is in the hands of people like Trump and Netanyahu, who really don’t care about them.”

Those who have put their heads above the parapet to object openly to the war are shunned anyway, as 19-year-old Itamar Greenberg knows only too well. People spit at him in the street.

“It comes in waves,” he says of the criticism he faces for his opposition to the war on Iran on the streets of his hometown, near Tel Aviv. “Sometimes they follow me, shouting ‘traitor’ or ‘terrorist’.”

Itamar is clear enough that he isn’t a terrorist, though he seems ready to accept the label of traitor if it means halting the war on Iran.

“At my university, everywhere, they say my opposition to the war on Iran is somehow crossing a red line. For instance, because of the [danger to the Israeli] hostages, some people could understand opposition to the genocide on Gaza, but opposing the war on Iran, the great evil, is somehow too much,” he says.

Rising censorship

Across Israel, journalists and activists like Itamar describe a pervasive atmosphere of self-policing and censorship that, they say, has left people less informed about the consequences of the war than the citizens in Iran, whom many in their media encourage them to pity.

In a country largely unified against a threat that, for generations, politicians have told them is existential, criticism, dissent or opposition is, for the majority, beyond the pale.

This way of thinking is baked into Israeli society. The systems employed by the country’s military censor today to curtail media reporting predate the establishment of Israel in 1948.

Furthermore, new wartime restrictions on what can and cannot be broadcast of the Iranian missile barrages targeting Israel, where they land and what damage they have done – introduced on March 5 – mean these largely go entirely unreported, Israeli journalists say.

Reporting on the new media restrictions in mid-March, the Israeli magazine +972 documented one instance when journalists were permitted to report on debris that had hit an educational facility, but did not mention the actual strike by an Iranian missile, which had successfully hit its intended target nearby. Nor were they allowed to examine the site.

In another case reported by +972, journalists photographing damage to a residential block said they were approached by a man they believed to be linked to a security agency. He asked police to stop reporters from recording the real target of the attack, which was located behind them. The police officer replied that the journalists would not have noticed that site at all had it not been pointed out, since the visible destruction was concentrated on the civilian building.

The censorship, which had been growing more relaxed in recent years, had been tightened once more during the current war, Meron Rapoport, an editor at +972’s sister paper, Hebrew language Local Call, told Al Jazeera, “We don’t really know what is being or with what explosives,” he said, “The IDF [Israeli army] announcements always refer to strikes being on ‘uninhabited areas,’ which is peculiar, because there aren’t that many uninhabited areas in Tel Aviv. It’s a very compact city.”

Indeed, Iran has launched multiple missiles at Tel Aviv, some of which have resulted in damage and injuries – either by the missiles themselves or by debris falling following interception. Most recently, on Tuesday, missiles triggered air raid sirens in the city, where gaping holes were ripped through a multistorey apartment building.

Israel’s Magen David Adom emergency medical service said: “Six people were lightly injured at four different sites.”

“It’s curious,” Rapoport says. “Israeli commentators are always saying how the Iranian public has no real idea how badly they’re being hit. The irony is that they probably have a better idea of how hard Israel is being hit than most Israelis.”

Behind a network of fake YouTube newscasts spreading propaganda in favor of Venezuela’s acting president, Delcy Rodríguez, lies a hidden digital structure made up of dozens of websites and social media accounts. It is a much larger and still-active operation than initially believed, designed to distribute content as if it came from independent regional outlets.

In two previous reports, Cazadores de Fake News named this influence operation “Hispan Online.” The first revealed part of the network of YouTube channels whose videos appeared as ads on Venezuelan screens, pushing narratives favorable to the Rodríguez administration. The second report confirmed that the “anchors” were not journalists, but more than 20 actors living in Argentina who were hired through an intermediary agency. The videos racked up millions of views.

The channels mimic Spanish-language news outlets, presenting their content as if it were multiple spontaneous local coverages. So far, Cazadores has identified: Hispan Online (the most prolific producer and the network’s central amplification node), Nación Argentina, Colombia Actual, Panorama Colombiano, La Perspectiva Global, México en Datos, Informe Mexicano, United Data News, Continental Report, Nación Digital MX, Chile en Datos, Argentina en Perspectiva, EC En Análisis, and El Informe Europeo. All of them are part of the network identified so far as the YouTube arm of the operation.

But Venezuelans exposed to those videos are largely unaware that the operation extends far beyond YouTube. At least 30 websites were created as part of it, publishing more than 11,000 articles in just one month. Each site links to Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube accounts bearing the same names as the fake newscasts.

Domain records for some of these websites identify QSocial, an Argentine political communications firm, as the registrant of several of them. A separate investigation by La Nación points in the same direction.

YouTube channels as the tip of the iceberg

The propaganda videos promoted through YouTube ads amassed millions of views, but the 14 channels that initially hosted them hardly resembled real news outlets. Most displayed little more than a logo, and their videos were often not publicly listed.

Some channels, however, included short descriptions and, in some cases, a website address—such as colombiaactual.co for “Colombia Actual” and nacionargentina.info for “Nación Argentina.”

Ongoing monitoring of F. G. Medios S.A. (the company that paid for the YouTube ads) through Google’s Ads Transparency Center led to the identification of 30 distinct YouTube channels. Together, they published at least 90 videos and amassed more than 47.5 million views. Following the pattern of the web addresses, additional associated sites were expected: Manual searches confirmed 30 corresponding websites.

At least five of these sites embedded YouTube playlists or windows featuring the same fake “journalists” seen in the ads.

All 30 domains with known registration dates were created within just nine days, between February 17 and 25, 2026. Fourteen were registered on February 20 alone. This pattern mirrors the creation of the YouTube channels, which appeared between February 18 and early March. The clustering of dates is one of several technical indicators of coordination in this influence operation.

The sites also share a common technical architecture. All run on WordPress, use Cloudflare servers, were registered via Dattatec or DonWeb, use themes developed by Ansar, and have the same Jetpack plugin installed. Articles across all sites are published by the same three WordPress users: “administrador,” “periodista 1,” and “periodista 2.”

This is not a network of independently built websites. It is a single model replicated 30 times and operated by the same group. In total, the network includes more than 90 social media accounts: 30 YouTube channels, 32 Instagram accounts, and 29 Facebook pages. As of publication, most have minimal activity and almost no followers—but the infrastructure is in place and regularly updated.

Venezuela content stands out

With 30 active websites identified, the next step was to analyze their content. Reviewing each article manually was not feasible at that scale.

To do so, Cazadores de Fake News developed a tool—with assistance from generative AI—capable of automatically downloading all articles published across the 30 sites, including full text and images. The result was a database of 11,391 articles produced in just one month.

While most articles are not about Venezuela, it is the most frequently referenced country. With 1,912 pieces, Venezuela accounts for 16.79% of all content, ahead of Brazil (14.30%), Colombia (8.83%), Mexico (8.79%), and Argentina (8.12%). The rest covers other countries, helping each site appear as a regional outlet with its own editorial agenda.

Much of the Venezuela-related content mirrors the narratives promoted in the YouTube ads: favorable coverage of Delcy Rodríguez and her brother Jorge Rodríguez (who presides the Venezuelan parliament), reporting on the new amnesty and hydrocarbons laws, and stories highlighting positive economic projections and the oil sector.

The analysis also revealed another pattern: the same article often appeared across multiple sites with different headlines and slight rewrites tailored to each country, but with nearly identical core narratives. It is a form of serial production, where one base story is rewritten and redistributed to simulate independent local coverage.

One example is coverage of joint ventures between PDVSA and US oil companies. Articles published on March 16–17 across republicahoy.do, pulsonacional.mx, and panoramabrasil.info repeat identical figures (250,000 barrels per day, 22% of national output) while adapting their framing. The Dominican version adds references to Caribbean fuel prices. The Mexican version mentions the Dos Bocas refinery and the Energy Ministry. The Brazilian version refers to the Palácio do Planalto and investment opportunities for Brazil.

The texts share repeated transitional phrases—“in this context,” “on the other hand,” “diante deste cenário”—and identical section structures. The Brazilian version also contains errors suggesting automated translation, such as “empresas americana” instead of “americanas” and leaving “barriles” untranslated.

Although headlines and wording vary, these articles share one constant: they use exactly the same featured images. By comparing images across all 11,391 articles, the tool identified hundreds of such clusters. Contents largely consist of one base story, adapted and republished across multiple sites with the same photo.

This is the first time Cazadores de Fake News has documented evidence suggesting the use of automation or generative AI to sustain an influence operation of this scale targeting Venezuelan audiences. Producing more than 11,000 articles in one month, localized by country and language, would have been unfeasible for a small team of human writers.

The websites have so far attracted little traffic. But the infrastructure is active, content continues to be published, and the material already looks credible enough to be mistaken for real journalism.

The trail leads to QSocial

Despite the scale of the operation (30 websites, three social media platforms, and thousands of articles) those who registered the domains left traces. At least five domains lacked privacy protection, exposing registrant names and emails.

Three “.com” domains—brasilemdados24.com, ecuadorenanalisis.com, and panamaestrategico.com—list “QSN Big Data” as the registrant, linked to the email [email protected].

Two Dominican domains—diariocaribedigital.do and republicahoy.do—were registered on February 20 at the exact same second. Their records list “QSocial” as the registrant. These are different names pointing to the same corporate ecosystem.

QSN Big Data and QSocial are names used by the same Argentine political communications firm, which has also operated as QSocialNow. According to a March 23 investigation by La Nación, the company—led by former Chubut governor Martín Buzzi—produced the fake newscast videos. The outlet reported that the videos were recorded at the company’s offices in Buenos Aires, where actors were recruited through a casting process.

The firm also has a documented history within Venezuela’s propaganda ecosystem. After the July 2024 presidential election, it produced a poll under the name QSocialNow backing a decision from Venezuela’s Supreme Tribunal to declare Nicolás Maduro the winner, despite widespread independent evidence of electoral fraud.

All domains in the network were registered through the same Argentine provider, within the same time frame, and using the same servers. However, this investigation could not determine whether QSocial itself entered the domain registration data or whether it was done by a third party.

Cazadores de Fake News and Argentine fact-checking outlet Chequeado contacted QSocial for comment. The company had not responded at the time of publication (March 24).

An unprecedented operation in Venezuela

Although QSocial director Martín Buzzi denied involvement to La Nación, the technical records documented in this investigation and the newspaper’s sources point to the same company. Who commissioned the operation and how it was financed remain unanswered questions.

It is also unclear whether the thousands of articles about Argentina, Mexico, Brazil, and other countries are merely camouflage for the pro-Rodríguez campaign or part of parallel influence operations using the same infrastructure.

There is no recent precedent in Venezuela for an influence operation of this scale deployed in such a short period.

Before Google, Meta, or the operators themselves took down most of the YouTube channels and 15 Instagram accounts, the propaganda videos had already surpassed 47.5 million views. At the time of publication, all Facebook accounts and the 30 websites remain active.