Politics

A handful of opposition abstentions allowed Carney and minority Liberals to advance a deficit-boosting budget aimed at countering US tariffs.

Prime Minister Mark Carney’s minority government narrowly survived a confidence vote on Monday as Canadian lawmakers endorsed a motion to begin debating his first federal budget – a result that avoids the prospect of a second election in less than a year.

The House of Commons voted 170-168 to advance study of the fiscal plan. While further votes are expected in the coming months, the slim victory signals that the budget is likely to be approved eventually.

Tonight, the House of Commons has voted to pass Budget 2025.

It’s time to work together to deliver on this plan — to protect our communities, empower Canadians with new opportunities, and build Canada strong.

— Mark Carney (@MarkJCarney) November 18, 2025

“It’s time to work together to deliver on this plan – to protect our communities, empower Canadians with new opportunities, and build Canada strong,” Carney said on X, arguing that his spending blueprint would help fortify the economy against escalating United States tariffs.

Carney has repeatedly cast the budget as a “generational” chance to reinforce Canada’s economic resilience and to reduce reliance on trade with the US.

The proposal includes a near doubling of Canada’s deficit to 78.3 billion Canadian dollars ($55.5bn) with major outlays aimed at countering US trade measures and supporting defence and housing initiatives. The prime minister has insisted that higher deficit spending is essential to cushion the impact of US President Donald Trump’s tariffs. While most bilateral trade remains tariff-free under an existing North American trade agreement, US levies on automobiles, steel and aluminium have struck significant sectors of the Canadian economy.

According to Carney, a former central banker, internal forecasts show that “US tariffs and the associated uncertainty will cost Canadians around 1.8 percent of our GDP [gross domestic product]”.

The Liberals, a few seats short of a majority in the 343-seat House of Commons, relied on abstentions from several opposition members who were reluctant to trigger early elections. Recent polling suggested Carney’s Liberals would remain in power if Canadians were sent back to the polls.

Carney was elected to a full term in April after campaigning on a promise to challenge Washington’s protectionist turn. Meanwhile, the Conservative Party, the official opposition, has been wrestling with internal divisions since its defeat, and leader Pierre Poilievre faces a formal review of his performance early next year.

Poilievre has sharply criticised the government’s spending plans, branding the fiscal package a “credit card budget”.

The left-leaning New Democratic Party (NDP) has also expressed concerns, arguing that the proposal fails to adequately address unemployment, the housing crisis and the cost-of-living pressures faced by many Canadian families.

NDP interim leader Don Davies said the party accepted that blocking the budget would push the country back into an unwanted election cycle, explaining why two of its MPs ultimately abstained.

It was “clear that Canadians do not want an election right now … while we still face an existential threat from the Trump administration”, he said.

“Parliamentarians decided to put Canada first”, Finance Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne said.

Polling before Monday’s vote suggested Canadians broadly shared this view. A November survey by the analytics firm Leger found that one in five respondents supported immediate elections while half said they were satisfied with Carney’s leadership.

Political assassinations have long punctuated Mexico’s democratic trajectory, often surfacing at moments when institutional fragility becomes impossible to ignore. The murder of Uruapan’s mayor is therefore not an unprecedented shock but the latest manifestation of a recurring pattern in which local political authority collapses under the weight of criminal power. The country has witnessed similar moments in past electoral cycles, in rural municipalities, and along contested economic corridors. What is different today is the increasing regularity and visibility of these attacks, signalling not just isolated episodes of violence but a systemic erosion of governance. The killing of Carlos Manzo crystallises a truth that communities in Michoacán, Guerrero, Guanajuato, Sinaloa, Zacatecas and beyond have recognised for years: insecurity has metastasised into a political condition.

Michoacán has long been a barometer for national security. The state’s geography, agricultural wealth, and fragmented political networks have made it a battleground for groups competing for control. Yet the recent escalation in places like Uruapan signals a worrying transformation. Local reports of extortion, blockades, and increasingly public displays of force reflect criminal organisations behaving as de facto authorities. Entire communities have adapted to a logic of survival shaped by invisible borders, curfews, and negotiated coexistence with whoever wields power at any given moment. The assassination of public figures in such an environment is not simply a political act but a show of ownership over territory, demonstrating that the real lines of authority do not run through government offices but through armed structures with the capacity to enforce their will.

What is unfolding today is not an isolated deterioration but a worsening trend that has become more explicit during the last two federal administrations. The promise that security would be reimagined through social policy and a rejection of past militarised models never materialised into real control of territory or a coherent strategy for dismantling criminal governance. While the language changed, the underlying problem deepened. The country saw more regions where the state operates only partially or symbolically, where elections proceeded under intimidation, and where local authorities lacked the means or autonomy to resist the pressures around them. The result is an increasingly fragmented political geography in which criminal groups influence candidate selection, determine which campaigns can operate, and regulate economic flows at the community level.

Under Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the narrative of moral regeneration through social investment was presented as a long-term answer to entrenched violence. Yet the gap between discourse and reality widened every year. Homicides remained persistently high, disappearances continued to haunt families, and entire municipalities came under the shadow of armed groups. The federal government’s insistence that security indicators were improving often clashed with the everyday experience of citizens navigating threats, extortion, and territorial disputes. Even as official statistics were reinterpreted to show progress, the lived reality in regions such as Michoacán, Guerrero, Zacatecas, and Guanajuato suggested that criminal organisations had consolidated their presence more deeply than before.

It is against this backdrop that Claudia Sheinbaum assumed the presidency, carrying forward a security model that was already failing. Her early months in office reveal how far the government still is from containing the expanding insecurity. Despite official claims of reduced violence, these figures jar with how people actually experience their lives. A majority of citizens continue to feel unsafe, and communities in high-risk states report no perceptible change. Her reliance on social prevention ignores how firmly criminal networks have embedded themselves in local political and economic systems. In several regions, armed groups continue to operate openly, even during federal visits, reinforcing the perception that national security strategy is more rhetorical than practical. The dissonance between optimistic messaging and deteriorating public trust reveals a government that has yet to confront the structural nature of the problem. In doing so, it risks turning its security agenda into little more than political theatre rather than a meaningful plan to reassert state authority.

Federal responses, while immediate and visible, reveal a deep structural weakness. Large-scale deployments, announcements of multi-sector investment packages and public proclamations of institutional coordination have become the standard repertoire of crisis management. These interventions create the appearance of control but rarely alter the conditions that allow criminal groups to flourish. The persistent challenges of corruption, politicised policing, fragmented prosecutorial capacity and limited municipal autonomy remain largely unresolved. Without addressing these deficits, security operations risk becoming cyclical performances rather than durable solutions.

National security trends further complicate the picture. Although certain aggregate indicators suggest stabilisation or marginal declines, the broader trajectory reflects a shift towards diversified criminal governance. Extortion, territorial control, interference in municipal administration and the permeation of legitimate industries reflect forms of violence that escape simple statistical capture. Thus, a focus on homicide figures alone obscures the structural deterioration of Mexico’s security landscape. The issue is not merely how many people are killed or disappeared, but how violence shapes political participation, economic activity and civic behaviour.

The deterioration of security in Mexico is inseparable from the erosion of its democratic foundations. Criminal groups no longer just threaten individuals — they infiltrate political processes, influence elections, and shape economic life. Municipalities under their sway become more than battlegrounds; they become laboratories of parallel governance. Political pluralism suffers when competition is skewed by coercion; the meaningful choice of leaders erodes when citizens know that certain voices are too dangerous to raise. Freedom of expression, too, is undermined. Journalists, activists, and community leaders operate in climates where challenging criminal-political alliances can entail serious risks. Self-censorship becomes a survival strategy, and public debate narrows under the weight of unspoken fear. When participation becomes dangerous, political representation becomes illusory.

This is not how democratic life is supposed to function. Institutions — from city halls to courts — ought to guarantee protection, justice, and participation. Yet in many places, the real source of power lies outside constitutional structures, in the hands of groups that command both arms and economic influence. This isn’t a temporary crisis; it is a systemic breakdown: when violence is structural, the response must be institutional.

Civil society responses illustrate both the potential and the limits of civic resistance. The mobilisation of Generation Z represents an important shift: a young, digitally connected cohort demanding accountability, transparency and meaningful security reform. These demonstrations are grounded in lived experience. For many young people, insecurity is not an abstract policy concern but an organising principle of daily life. Their protests reflect a rejection of narratives that normalise violence, minimise institutional failure or reduce insecurity to political rhetoric. Yet their activism also highlights a worrying reality: younger generations increasingly turn to extra-institutional forms of political expression because formal channels appear unresponsive.

The erosion of freedom is not only visible in the public sphere but in private life. Decisions that should be routine — attending a festival, organising a community meeting, even taking certain roads — have become political acts shaped by calculations of risk. This gradual internalisation of fear constitutes a subtle but profound form of democratic regression. When citizens adapt their behaviour to avoid harm, the space for free expression, open debate and community participation contracts. Democracy loses not through abrupt authoritarian shifts but through the slow, everyday retreat of civic life.

Addressing this crisis requires an institutional response that moves beyond episodic militarisation. Prosecutorial structures must be capable of pursuing cases that reveal networks rather than producing symbolic arrests. Municipal police forces must be professionalised, insulated from political interference and equipped with oversight mechanisms. Transparency must also be central in any reform. Citizens need access to clear, verifiable information about investigations, budget allocations, and the performance of security institutions. Without this, trust will remain a casualty of rhetorical solutions. Economic regulation must prevent criminal control of supply chains, especially in high-value sectors. Without reform of these foundational elements, any security strategy will be short-lived and vulnerable to the next surge in criminal activity.

At the national level, political leadership must recognise that security, democracy and economic development are interdependent. Reducing violence without strengthening democratic institutions will merely shift the form that insecurity takes. Conversely, institutional reforms that ignore security realities will remain aspirational. The state must rebuild public trust not through proclamations but through transparent evidence of institutional effectiveness.

International cooperation can play a supporting role, particularly in intelligence and financial tracing, but it cannot substitute for domestic institution-building. Sovereignty requires the capacity to govern effectively; reliance on external actors to fill institutional gaps risks reinforcing perceptions of state weakness.

Mexico stands at a juncture where insecurity threatens more than physical safety. It challenges the very conditions that make democratic life possible. The murder of Uruapan’s mayor is therefore not simply another entry in a long record of violence but a sign of cumulative democratic decay. If unchecked, this trajectory will entrench parallel systems of governance in which criminal groups continue to expand their authority while formal institutions recede.

The country’s future depends on rejecting this drift. A more honest political narrative is needed — one that acknowledges institutional failure, confronts criminal power directly and recognises that democracy cannot coexist indefinitely with pervasive fear. The question is whether political leaders will choose the difficult path of structural reform or continue to rely on reactive measures that mask, rather than resolve, the crisis.

Mexico cannot allow political assassination to become an unremarkable feature of its democratic life. Public institutions must assert their authority not through spectacle but through competence. Reversing the current trajectory will require political courage, institutional reconstruction and a renewed commitment to pluralism and freedom. The alternative is stark: a political landscape where democracy is reduced to procedures while real power is negotiated through violence, and where the politics of fear become the politics of the state.

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department engaged in a “disturbing pattern of profound investigative missteps” in the process of securing an indictment against former FBI Director James Comey, a federal judge ruled Monday in directing prosecutors to provide defense lawyers with all grand jury materials from the case.

Those problems, wrote Magistrate Judge William Fitzpatrick, include “fundamental misstatements of the law” by a prosecutor to the grand jury that indicted Comey in September, the use of potentially privileged communications during the investigation and unexplained irregularities in the transcript of the grand jury proceedings.

“The Court recognizes that the relief sought by the defense is rarely granted,” Fitzpatrick wrote “However, the record points to a disturbing pattern of profound investigative missteps, missteps that led an FBI agent and a prosecutor to potentially undermine the integrity of the grand jury proceeding.”

The 24-page opinion is the most blistering assessment yet by a judge of the Justice Department’s actions leading up to the Comey indictment. It underscores how procedural missteps and prosecutorial inexperience have combined to imperil the prosecution pushed by President Trump for reasons separate and apart from the substance of the disputed allegations against Comey.

The Comey case and a separate prosecution of New York Atty, Gen. Letitia James have heightened concerns that the Justice Department is being weaponized in pursuit of Trump’s political opponents. Both defendants have filed multiple motions to dismiss the cases against them before trial, arguing that the prosecutions are improperly vindictive and that the prosecutor who filed the charges, Lindsey Halligan, was illegally appointed.

A different judge is set to decide by Thanksgiving on the challenges by Comey and James to Halligan’s appointment.

Though grand jury proceedings are presumptively secret, Comey’s lawyers had sought records from the process out of concern that irregularities may have tainted the case. The sole prosecutor who defense lawyers say presented the case to the grand jury was Halligan, a former White House aide with no prior prosecutorial experience who was appointed just days before the indictment to the job of interim U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia.

In his order Monday, Fitzpatrick said that after reviewing the grand jury transcript himself, he had come away deeply concerned about the integrity of the case.

“Here, the procedural and substantive irregularities that occurred before the grand jury, and the manner in which evidence presented to the grand jury was collected and used, may rise to the level of government misconduct resulting in prejudice to Mr. Comey,” Fitzpatrick said.

The Justice Department responded to the ruling by asking that it be put on hold to give prosecutors time to file objections. The government said it believed Fitzpatrick “may have misinterpreted” some facts in issuing his ruling.

Fitzpatrick listed, among nearly a dozen irregularities in his ruling, two comments that a prosecutor — presumably, Halligan — made to the grand jury that he said represented “fundamental misstatements of the law.”

The actual statements are blacked out, but Fitzpatrick said the prosecutor seems to have ignored the fact that a grand jury may not draw a negative inference about a person who exercises his right not to testify in front of it. He said she also appeared to suggest to grand jurors that they did not need to rely only on what was presented to them and could instead be assured that there was additional evidence that would be presented at trial.

The judge also drew attention to the jumbled manner in which the indictment was obtained and indicated that a transcript and recording of the proceedings do not provide a full account of what occurred. Halligan initially sought a three-count indictment of Comey, but after the grand jury rejected one of the three proposed counts and found probable cause to indict on the other two counts, a second two-count indictment was prepared and signed.

But Fitzpatrick said it was not clear to him in reviewing the record that the indictment that Halligan presented in court at the conclusion of the process had been presented to the grand jury for its deliberation.

“Either way, this unusual series of events, still not fully explained by the prosecutor’s declaration, calls into question the presumption of regularity generally associated with grand jury proceedings, and provides another genuine issue the defense may raise to challenge the manner in which the government obtained the indictment,” he wrote.

The two-count indictment charges Comey with lying to Congress in September 2020 when he suggested under questioning that he had not authorized FBI leaks of information to the news media. His lawyers say the question he was responding to was vague and confusing but the answer he gave to the Senate Judiciary Committee was true.

The line of questioning from Sen. Ted Cruz appeared to focus on whether Comey had authorized his former deputy director, Andrew McCabe, to speak with the news media. But since the indictment, prosecutors have made clear that their indictment centers on allegations that Comey permitted a separate person — a close friend and Columbia University law professor, Dan Richman — to serve as an anonymous source in interactions with reporters.

The FBI executed search warrants in 2019 and 2020 to access messages between Richman and Comey as part of a media leaks investigation that did not result in charges. But Fitzpatrick said he was concerned that communications between the men that might have been protected by attorney-client privilege — Richman was at one point functioning as a lawyer for Comey — were exposed to the grand jury without Comey having had an opportunity to object.

Tucker writes for the Associated Press.

Syria’s Asaad al-Shaibani meets with Chinese counterpart Wang Yi as Damascus pushes to bolster international ties.

Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani has pledged to deepen collaboration on “counterterrorism” with China on his first visit to Beijing since the toppling of former President Bashar al-Assad last year.

Al-Shaibani and Chinese counterpart Wang Yi agreed on Monday that they would work together on combating “terrorism” and on security matters, with the top Syrian diplomat promising that Damascus would not allow its territory to be used for any actions against Chinese interests, according to Syrian state news agency SANA.

China, a former backer of al-Assad, said that it hoped Syria would take “effective measures” to fulfil its commitment, “thereby removing security obstacles to the stable development of China-Syria relations”, according to a Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs statement.

The fate of the Uighur fighters who had gone to Syria after war erupted in 2011 to fight al-Assad’s forces, with many joining the Uighur-dominated Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP) based in Idlib province, was expected to be on al-Shaibani’s agenda in Beijing.

A source from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates in Damascus denied a report by news agency AFP that cited unidentified sources as saying the Syrian government planned to hand over 400 fighters who had fled persecution in China “in batches”.

The “report regarding the Syrian government’s intention to hand over fighters to China is without foundation”, said the source in a brief statement to SANA.

During the meeting in Beijing, al-Shaibani also gave his country’s support for the one China principle, establishing formal diplomatic ties with the Chinese government, rather than with Taiwan, as the sole legal representative of the territory.

Wang, for his part, stated that China viewed the Golan Heights as Syrian territory. Israel occupied a portion of the territory in 1967 and subsequently annexed it in violation of international law.

Since al-Assad’s fall in December 2024, Israel has been expanding its occupation into southern Syria, including a United Nations-monitored buffer zone established by a 1974 ceasefire agreement.

On Monday, Damascus and Beijing expressed interest in expanding collaboration on economic development, Syria’s reconstruction, and raising living standards, highlighting the role of the China-Arab Cooperation Forum as a basis for bilateral collaboration, said SANA.

Al-Shaibani’s visit to China comes as Damascus pushes to rebuild its diplomatic ties around the world, with some stunning successes, including securing sanction relief from the West and major Gulf investments, giving the country a much-needed economic lifeline.

Earlier this month, President Ahmed al-Sharaa became the first-ever Syrian leader to visit the White House since the country’s independence in 1946. Syria also joined a US-led international coalition to fight ISIL (ISIS).

In October, al-Sharaa told Russia’s President Vladimir Putin during a visit to Moscow that he sought to “restore and redefine ties” between the two countries.

However, there was no mention after that meeting of whether Moscow would hand over al-Assad, who fled to Russia after his government fell due to an offensive by armed opposition groups led by al-Sharaa.

Since the collapse of the al-Assad government, Russia has retained a presence at its air and naval bases on the Syrian coast. Moscow was one of al-Assad’s top backers and provided air support for government forces during the war.

But al-Shraa’s government appears to be prepared to forge relations with allies of the former regime, as highlighted by al-Shaibani’s talks in Beijing on Monday.

A magistrate judge in the United States has issued a stern rebuke to the administration of President Donald Trump, criticising its handling of the indictment against a former director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), James Comey.

On Monday, Judge William Fitzpatrick of Alexandria, Virginia, made the unusual decision to order the release of all grand jury materials related to the indictment.

Normally, grand jury materials are kept secret to protect witnesses, defendants and jurors in cases of grave federal crimes.

But in Comey’s case, Fitzpatrick ruled there was “a reasonable basis to question whether the government’s conduct was willful or in reckless disregard of the law”, and that greater transparency was therefore required.

He cited several irregularities in the case, ranging from how evidence was obtained to alleged misstatements from prosecutors that could have swayed the grand jury.

“The procedural and substantive irregularities that occurred before the grand jury, and the manner in which evidence presented to the grand jury was collected and used, may rise to the level of government misconduct,” Fitzpatrick wrote in his 24-page decision.

Fitzpatrick clarified that his decision does not render the grand jury materials public. But they will be provided to Comey’s defence team, as the former FBI director seeks to have the indictment tossed.

“The Court recognizes that the relief sought by the defense is rarely granted,” Fitzpatrick wrote, underscoring the unusual nature of the proceedings.

“However, the record points to a disturbing pattern of profound investigative missteps.”

Scrutiny of US Attorney Halligan

The decision is the latest stumble for interim US Attorney Lindsey Halligan, a former personal lawyer to Trump whom he then appointed as a top federal prosecutor.

A specialist in insurance law with no prosecutorial background, Halligan was tapped earlier this year to replace acting US Attorney Erik Siebert in the Eastern District of Virginia.

Trump has indicated he fired Siebert over disagreements about Justice Department investigations.

According to media reports, Siebert had refrained from seeking indictments against prominent Trump critics, such as Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, citing insufficient evidence.

But that appears to have frustrated the president. Trump went so far as to call for Comey’s and James’s prosecutions on social media, as well as that of Democratic Senator Adam Schiff.

“They’re all guilty as hell, but nothing is going to be done,” Trump wrote in a post addressed to Attorney General Pam Bondi. “We can’t delay any longer, it’s killing our reputation and credibility.”

Halligan took up her post as acting US attorney on September 22. By September 25, she had filed her first major indictment, against Comey.

It charged Comey with making a “false, fictitious, and fraudulent statement” to the US Senate, thereby obstructing a congressional inquiry.

A second indictment, against James, was issued on October 9. And a third came on October 16, targeting former national security adviser John Bolton, another prominent Trump critic.

All three individuals have denied wrongdoing and have sought to have their cases dismissed. Each has also accused President Trump of using the legal system for political retribution against perceived adversaries.

Monday’s court ruling is not the first time Halligan’s indictments have come under scrutiny, though.

Just last week, US District Judge Cameron McGowan Currie heard petitions from James and Comey questioning whether Halligan’s appointment as US attorney was legal.

As she weighed the petitions last Thursday, she questioned why there was a gap in the grand jury record for Comey’s indictment, where no court reporter appeared to be present.

Inside Fitzpatrick’s ruling

Fitzpatrick raised the same issue in his ruling on Monday. He questioned whether the transcript and audio recording of the grand jury deliberations were, in fact, complete.

He pointed out that the grand jury in Comey’s case was originally presented with a three-count indictment, which it rejected. Those deliberations started at about 4:28pm local time.

But by 6:40pm, the grand jury had allegedly weighed a second indictment and found that there was probable cause for two of the three counts.

Fitzpatrick said that the span of time between those two points was not “sufficient” to “draft the second indictment, sign the second indictment, present it to the grand jury, provide legal instructions to the grand jury, and give them an opportunity to deliberate”.

Either the court record was incomplete, Fitzpatrick said, or the grand jury weighed an indictment that had not been fully presented in court.

The judge also acknowledged questions about how evidence had been obtained in the Comey case.

The Trump administration was facing a five-year statute of limitations in the Comey case, expiring on September 30. The indictment pertains to statements Comey made before the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2020.

To quickly find evidence for the indictment, Fitzpatrick said that federal prosecutors appear to have used warrants that were issued for a different case.

Those warrants, however, were limited to an investigation into Daniel Richman, an associate of Comey who was probed for the alleged theft of government property and the unlawful gathering of national security information.

No charges were filed in the Richman case, and the investigation was closed in 2021.

“The Richman materials sat dormant with the FBI until the summer of 2025, when the Bureau chose to rummage through them again,” Fitzpatrick said.

He said the federal government’s use of the warrants could violate the Fourth Amendment of the US Constitution, which prohibits the unreasonable search and seizure of evidence. He described the Justice Department’s actions as “cavalier” and asserted that no precautions were taken to protect privileged information.

“Inexplicably, the government elected not to seek a new warrant for the 2025 search, even though the 2025 investigation was focused on a different person, was exploring a fundamentally different legal theory, and was predicated on an entirely different set of criminal offenses,” Fitzpatrick wrote.

He speculated that prosecutors may not have sought a new warrant because the delay would have allowed the statute of limitations to expire on the Comey case.

“The Court recognizes that a failure to seek a new warrant under these circumstances is highly unusual,” he said.

Fitzpatrick also raised concerns that statements federal prosecutors made to the grand jury may have been misleading.

Many of those statements were redacted in Fitzpatrick’s ruling. But he described them as “fundamental misstatements of the law that could compromise the grand jury process”.

One statement, he said, “may have reasonably set an expectation in the minds of the grand jury that rather than the government bear the burden to prove Mr. Comey’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt at trial, the burden shifts to Mr. Comey to explain away the government’s evidence”.

Another appeared to suggest that the grand jury “did not have to rely only on the record before them to determine probable cause” — and that more evidence would be presented later on.

Calling for the release of the grand jury records on Monday was an “extraordinary remedy” for these issues, Fitzpatrick conceded.

But it was necessary, given “the prospect that government misconduct may have tainted the grand jury proceedings”, he ultimately decided.

The Trump administration is calling its new immigration sweep in North Carolina’s largest city “Operation Charlotte’s Web.”

But the granddaughter of E.B. White, the author of the classic 1952 children’s tale “Charlotte’s Web,” said the wave of immigration arrests goes against what her grandfather and his beloved book stood for.

“He believed in the rule of law and due process,” Martha White said in a statement. “He certainly didn’t believe in masked men, in unmarked cars, raiding people’s homes and workplaces without IDs or summons.”

White, whose grandfather died in 1985, works as his literary executor. She pointed out that in “Charlotte’s Web,” the spider who is the main character devoted her life on the farm to securing the freedom of a pig named Wilbur.

The Trump administration and Republican leaders have seized on a number of catchy phrases while carrying out mass deportation efforts — naming their holding facilities Alligator Alcatraz in Florida, Speedway Slammer in Indiana and Cornhusker Clink in Nebraska.

Gregory Bovino, a Border Patrol official now on the ground in Charlotte, was the face of the “Operation At Large” in Los Angeles and “Operation Midway Blitz” in Chicago, two enforcement surges earlier this year. As the Charlotte operation got underway, Bovino quoted from “Charlotte’s Web” in a social media post: “We take to the breeze, we go as we please.”

SACRAMENTO — The U.S. Department of Justice sued California on Monday to block newly passed laws that prohibit law enforcement officials, including federal immigration agents, from wearing masks and that require them to identify themselves.

The laws, passed by the California Legislature and signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom, came in the wake of the Trump administration’s immigration raids in California, when masked, unidentified federal officers jumped out of vehicles this summer as part of the president’s mass deportation program.

Atty. Gen. Pamela Bondi said the laws were unconsitutional and endanger federal officers.

“California’s anti-law enforcement policies discriminate against the federal government and are designed to create risk for our agents,” Bondi said in a statement. “These laws cannot stand.”

The governor recently signed Senate Bill 627, which bans federal officers from wearing masks during enforcement duties, and Senate Bill 805, which requires federal officers without a uniform to visibly display their name or badge number during operations. Both measures were introduced as a response to the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration raids that are often conducted by masked agents in plainclothes and unmarked cars.

The lawsuit, which names the state of California, Gov. Gavin Newsom and state Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta as defendants, asserts the laws are unconstitutional as only the federal government has the authority to control its agents and any requirements about their uniforms. It further argued that federal agents need to conceal their identities at times due to the nature of their work.

“Given the personal threats and violence that agents face, federal law enforcement agencies allow their officers to choose whether to wear masks to protect their identities and provide an extra layer of security,” the lawsuit states. “Denying federal agencies and officers that choice would chill federal law enforcement and deter applicants for law enforcement positions.”

Federal agents will not comply with either law, the lawsuit states.

“The Federal Government would be harmed if forced to comply with either Act, and also faces harm from the real threat of criminal liability for noncompliance,” the lawsuit states. “Accordingly, the challenged laws are invalid under the Supremacy Clause and their application to the Federal Government should be preliminarily and permanently enjoined.”

Newsom previously said it was unacceptable for “secret police” to grab people off the streets, and that the new laws were needed to help the public differentiate between imposters and legitimate federal law officers.

The governor, however, acknowledged the legislation could use more clarifications about safety gear and other exemptions. He directed lawmakers to work on a follow-up bill next year.

In a Monday statement, Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco), who introduced SB 627, said the FBI recently warned that “secret police tactics” are undermining public safety.

“Despite what these would-be authoritarians claim, no one is above the law,” said Wiener. “We’ll see you in court.”

Cook’s lawyer says the criminal referrals against her ‘fail on even the most cursory look at the facts’.

United States Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook’s lawyer has offered the first detailed defence of mortgage applications that gave rise to President Donald Trump’s move to fire her, saying apparent discrepancies in loan documents were either accurate at the time or an “inadvertent notation” that couldn’t constitute fraud given other disclosures to her lenders.

Cook has denied wrongdoing, but until Monday, neither she nor her legal team had responded in any detail to the fraud accusations first made in August by Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) Director William Pulte.

She has challenged her removal in court, and the US Supreme Court has for now blocked Trump’s firing attempt and will hear arguments in the case in January.

A Department of Justice spokesperson said the department “does not comment on current or prospective litigation, including matters that may be an investigation”.

In a letter to US Attorney General Pam Bondi seen by the Reuters news agency, Cook’s lawyer Abbe Lowell said the criminal referrals Pulte made against her “fail on even the most cursory look at the facts”.

The two separate criminal referrals Pulte made fail to establish any evidence that Cook intentionally deceived her lenders when she obtained mortgage loans for three properties in Michigan, Georgia and Massachusetts, the letter said.

Lowell also accused Pulte of selectively targeting Trump’s political enemies while ignoring similar allegations against Republican officials, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Lowell said other recent conduct by Pulte “undercut his criminal referrals concerning Governor Cook”. That behaviour includes the recent dismissal of the FHFA’s acting inspector general and several internal watchdogs at Fannie Mae, one of the mortgage-finance giants under FHFA control.

The letter also cited a recent article by Reuters that said the White House ousted FHFA acting Inspector General Joe Allen right after he tried to provide key discovery material to federal prosecutors in the Eastern District of Virginia who are pursuing an indictment against New York Attorney General Letitia James.

James was charged with bank fraud and lying to her lender also after Pulte made a referral to the Justice Department. She has pleaded not guilty, and she is seeking a dismissal of the case on multiple grounds, including vindictive and selective prosecution.

Cook’s case is being handled in part by Ed Martin, the Justice Department’s pardon attorney, whom Bondi named as a special assistant US attorney to assist with mortgage fraud probes into public figures.

The case is still being investigated, and no criminal charges have been brought. The department is also separately investigating Democratic California Senator Adam Schiff, also at Pulte’s request.

California is once again fighting in federal court for a Jewish family’s right to have a precious Impressionist painting returned to them by a Spanish museum nearly 90 years after it was looted by the Nazis.

The state is also defending its own authority to legally require art and other stolen treasures to be returned to other victims with ties to the state, even in disputes that stretch far beyond its borders.

The state has repeatedly weighed in on the case since the Cassirer family first filed it while living in San Diego in 2005. Last year, it passed a new law designed to bolster the legal rights of the Cassirers and other families in California to recover valuable property stolen from them in acts of genocide or political persecution.

On Monday, California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta’s office filed a motion to intervene in the Cassirer case directly in order to defend that law. The Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection Foundation — which is owned by Spain and holds the Camille Pissarro masterpiece — has claimed that the law is unconstitutional and should therefore be ignored.

Bonta, in a statement to The Times, said the law is “about fairness, moral — and legal — responsibility, and doing what’s right,” and the state will defend it in court.

“There is nothing that can undo the horrors and loss experienced by individuals during the Holocaust. But there is something we can do — that California has done — to return what was stolen back to survivors and their families and bring them some measure of justice and healing,” Bonta said. “As Attorney General, my job is to defend the laws of California, and I intend to do so here.”

Bonta said his office “has supported the Cassirers’ quest for justice for two decades,” and “will continue to fight with them for the rightful return of this invaluable family heirloom.”

Thaddeus J. Stauber, an attorney for the museum, did not did not answer questions from The Times. Bonta’s office said Stauber did not oppose its intervening in the case.

Sam Dubbin, the Cassirers’ longtime attorney, thanked Bonta’s office for “intervening in this case again to defend California’s interests in protecting the integrity of the art market and the rights of stolen property victims.”

“California law has always provided strong protections for the victims of stolen property and stolen art in particular, which the Legislature has consistently reinforced,” Dubbin said.

The state bucked the powerful U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals by passing the law last year. The appellate court found in a ruling in January 2024 that the painting was lawfully owned by the Spanish museum.

Bonta’s latest move ratchets up the intrigue surrounding the 20-year-old case, which is being watched around the globe for its potential implications in the high-stakes world of looted art litigation.

The painting in question — Pissarro’s “Rue Saint-Honoré in the Afternoon. Effect of Rain” — is estimated to be worth tens of millions of dollars. Both sides acknowledge it was stolen from Lilly Cassirer Neubauer by the Nazis in 1939, after she agreed in desperation to surrender it to a Nazi appraiser in exchange for a visa to flee Germany at the dawn of World War II.

The attention surrounding the case, and its potential to set new precedent in international law, likely makes the painting even more valuable.

After World War II, Lilly received compensation for the painting from the German government, but the family never relinquished its right to the masterpiece — which at the time was considered lost. What she was paid was a fraction of the current estimated worth.

In the decades that followed, Lilly’s grandson Claude Cassirer — who had also survived the Holocaust — moved with his family to San Diego.

In 2000, Claude made the shocking discovery that the painting was not lost to time after all, but part of a vast art collection that Spain had acquired from the late Baron Hans Heinrich von Thyssen-Bornemisza, the scion of a German industrialist family with ties to Hitler’s regime. Spain restored an early 19th-century palace near the Prado Museum in Madrid in order to house the collection as the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza.

Claude asked the museum to return the painting to his family. It refused. He sued in U.S. federal court in 2005. The case has been moving through the courts ever since.

California passed its new law in response to the 9th Circuit ruling last year, which held that state law at the time required it to apply an archaic Spanish law. That measure dictates that the title to stolen goods passes legitimately to a new owner over time, if that owner wasn’t aware the goods were stolen when they acquired them — which the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection has argued makes its ownership of the painting legally sound.

In September 2024, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the new law during a small gathering with the families of Holocaust survivors at the Holocaust Museum LA. Lilly’s great-grandson and Claude’s son David Cassirer, who now lives in Colorado, was there, praising the state’s lawmakers for “taking a definitive stand in favor of the true owners of stolen art.”

In March, the Supreme Court in a brief order ruled that the 9th Circuit must reconsider its ruling in light of California’s new law.

In September, the Thyssen-Bournemisza Collection filed a motion asking the appellate court to rule in its favor once more. It put forward multiple arguments, but among them was that California’s new law was “constitutionally indefensible” and deprived the museum of its due process rights.

“Under binding Supreme Court precedent, a State may not, by legislative fiat, reopen time-barred claims and transfer property whose ownership is already vested,” the museum argued.

It said the U.S., under federal law, “does not seek to impose its property laws or the property laws of its own states on other foreign sovereigns, but rather expressly acknowledges that different legal traditions and systems must be taken into account to facilitate just and fair solutions with regard to Nazi-looted art cases.”

It said California’s law takes an “aggressive approach” that “disrupts the federal government’s efforts to maintain uniformity and amicable relations with foreign nations,” and “stands as an obstacle to the accomplishment and execution of federal policy.”

David Cassirer, the lead plaintiff in the case since Claude’s death in 2010, argued the opposite in his own filing to the court.

Cassirer argued that California’s new law requires an outcome in his favor — which he said would also happen to be in line with “moral commitments made by the United States and governments worldwide, including Spain, to Nazi victims and their families.”

“It is undisputed that California substantive law mandates the award of title here to the Cassirer family, as Lilly’s heirs, of which Plaintiff David Cassirer is the last surviving member,” Cassirer’s attorneys wrote.

They wrote that California law holds that “a thief cannot convey good title to stolen works of art,” and therefore requires the return of the painting to Cassirer.

Assemblymember Jesse Gabriel (D-Encino), who sponsored the bill in the legislature, praised Bonta for stepping in to defend the law — which he called “part of a decades long quest for justice and is rooted in the belief that California must stand on the right side of history.”

Richardson is the second interim official US President Donald Trump has appointed to lead FEMA since the start of his second term.

David Richardson, the acting head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), is stepping down, according to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

Monday’s announcement ends a troubled tenure. It comes just six months after Richardson took the job and while the Atlantic hurricane season is still under way.

Richardson, a former Marine Corps officer, is the second FEMA head to leave or be fired since May. He departs amid criticism that he kept a low profile during the deadly Texas floods in July that killed 130 people and baffled staff in June when he said he was unaware the country had a hurricane season.

A DHS spokesperson gave no reasons for why the FEMA chief was departing. The Washington Post was the first to report that Richardson was leaving.

The DHS spokesperson said in a statement that FEMA chief of staff Karen Evans will replace Richardson, and that FEMA and DHS appreciate Richardson’s service.

Richardson’s predecessor, Cameron Hamilton, was fired in May, after pushing back against efforts under President Donald Trump to dismantle the agency.

President Trump has said he wants to greatly reduce the size of FEMA — the federal agency responsible for preparing for and responding to natural disasters — saying state governments can handle many of its functions.

FEMA plays a central role in the US response to major disasters, including hurricanes. The Atlantic hurricane season is due to end this month.

Richardson kept a low public profile compared with FEMA leaders under previous presidents, appearing rarely in public. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has served as the face of the administration’s response to natural disasters during Trump’s second term.

Richardson’s abrupt departure is an ignominious end for an official who told staff when he first arrived in May that he would “run right over” anyone who resists changes and that all decisions must now go through him.

“I, and I alone in FEMA, speak for FEMA,” he said at the time.

FEMA has lost about 2,500 employees since January through buyouts, firings and other incentives for staff to quit, reducing its overall size to about 23,350, according to a September Government Accountability Office report.

The cuts are part of Trump’s broader push to cut the cost and size of the federal civilian workforce.

SANTIAGO, Chile — A hard-right former lawmaker and admirer of President Trump held the upper hand as Chile headed to a polarizing presidential runoff against a member of Chile’s Communist Party representing the incumbent government.

José Antonio Kast, an ultraconservative lawyer opposed to abortion and same-sex marriage, appears to be in pole position after nearly 70% of votes went to right-wing candidates in Sunday’s first round. Many Chileans worry about organized crime, illegal immigration and unemployment in one of Latin America’s safest and most prosperous nations.

The father of nine, who pushed his traditional Catholic beliefs and nostalgia for aspects of Chile’s brutal dictatorship into the political mainstream after founding his own Republican Party in 2019, came in second with nearly 24% of the vote. He campaigned on plans to crack down on gang violence, build a giant border wall and deport tens of thousands of immigrants.

Jeannette Jara, a former labor minister in President Gabriel Boric’s left-wing government, eked out a narrower-than-expected lead with 27% of the vote. She wants to expand Chile’s social safety net and tackle money laundering and drug trafficking to stem organized crime.

Neither contender received more than 50% of the overall vote count, sending the poll to a second round of voting on Dec. 14.

‘Voters are upset’

The mood was ebullient at Kast’s campaign headquarters early Monday, where young Chileans wrapped in national flags drank beer and rolled cigarettes as workers took down the stage where Kast had pledged a radical transformation in the country’s security.

“We needed a safe candidate, someone with a firm hand to bring economic growth, attract investment, create jobs, strengthen the police and give them support,” said Ignacio Rojas, 20. “Chile isn’t safe anymore, and he’ll change that.”

The results seemed set to extend a growing regional shift across Latin America, as popular discontent with the economy simmers and right-wing challengers take over from leftist politicians who shot to power in the wake of the pandemic but largely failed to deliver on their lofty promises of social change and more equitable distribution of wealth.

“Economies are not growing, there are no new jobs, and people remember that 10 years ago they used to pay lower prices for almost everything,” said Patricio Navia, a Chilean analyst and professor at New York University.

“Voters are upset with governments all over the region,” he added.

Conservatives led the pack in Chile’s eight-candidate field, with populist businessman and celebrity economist Franco Parisi surprising pundits by securing 20% of the votes and third place, reflecting the power of his anti-establishment message.

He also ran a tough law and order campaign, vowing to plant land mines along Chile’s porous northern border to prevent people from crossing.

Another 14% of the votes went to Johannes Kaiser, a libertarian congressman and a former YouTube provocateur who campaigned as an even more radical alternative to Kast.

Chile’s traditional center-right coalition landed in fifth place, with establishment candidate Evelyn Matthei winning 12.5% of the vote.

Conservative runners-up endorse Kast

Not all of the divided right is guaranteed to go to Kast, whose conservative moral values have previously alienated voters concerned about the rollback of hard-won rights for women and LGBTQ+ community. His promise to cut up to $6 billion in public spending within his first 18 months has also been criticized by traditional conservative politicians as unrealistic. He has lost two presidential races before.

But it’s also unlikely that many voters who supported Kaiser’s plans to deport migrants who entered the country illegally to prison in El Salvador, or Matthei’s plans to consider bringing back the death penalty, would vote for a lifelong member of Chile’s hard-line Communist Party, which supports autocratic governments in Venezuela and Cuba.

There were no other left-wing front-runners, as all six parties in Chile’s governing coalition threw their weight behind Jara.

After learning of the election results late Sunday, Matthei rushed to Kast’s party headquarters to profess her support for her right-wing rival. “Chile needs a sharp change of direction,” she said.

Kaiser also promised to back Kast, saying his libertarian party would “ensure that a sound doctrine and defense of freedom are not abandoned.”

Parisi was coy after the results came out, saying, “We don’t give anyone a blank check.”

“The burden of proof lies with both candidates,” said the political outsider, whose voters eschew elites on the left and right. “They have to win people over.”

The region is trending right

Economic travails and fervent anti-incumbent sentiment appear to have fueled a gradual pendulum swing away from the left-wing leaders who were ascendant across the region just a few years ago.

In Argentina, radical libertarian President Javier Milei, elected in late 2023 on a vow to break with years of left-leaning populism, has doubled down on his close bond with Trump and reshaped Argentina’s foreign policy in line with the U.S.

Elections during the last year in Ecuador, El Salvador and Panama have kept right-wing leaders in office, while in Bolivia, restive voters outraged over a currency crisis punished the Movement Toward Socialism party and elected a conservative opposition candidate for the first time in nearly 20 years last month.

Gains for the right could buoy the U.S. as it competes for regional influence with China, some analysts say, with a new crop of leaders keen for American investment. Chile is the world’s largest copper producer and home to vast reserves of other minerals key to the global energy transition.

Like many hopeful leftists four years ago, Boric, a young former student activist elected on the heels of Chile’s 2019 mass protests over widening inequality, saw his ambitions to raise taxes on the rich and adopt one of the world’s most progressive constitutions run into major legislative opposition.

Analysts warned that Kast could face the same fate if he caved to his most radical allies or pushed morally conservative measures. Although early legislative election results indicated that right-wing parties would hold a majority in the 155-member lower house of Congress, left-wing parties appeared to hold a slight edge in the Senate on Monday.

“There is a path forward for Kast,” Navia said. But “if he tries to govern as a radical right-winger, he will hit a wall, just like outgoing President Gabriel Boric did.”

Debre writes for the Associated Press.

Nov. 17 (UPI) — Another board member of the conservative Heritage Foundation resigned after the organization’s president, Kevin Roberts, posted video defending Tucker Carlson‘s interview with anti-Semitic commentator Nick Fuentes.

Board member Robert P. George wrote Monday on Facebook that “I have resigned from the board of the Heritage Foundation. I could not remain without a full retraction of the video released by Kevin Roberts, speaking for and in the name of Heritage, on October 30th.”

In the video, Roberts refused to distance himself from the two-hour interview, which was posted two weeks ago on YouTube, and has 6.2 million views. Counting other platforms, including X, it has been seen by more than 20 million.

George, who had been a Heritage trustee since 2019, said: “Although Kevin publicly apologized for some of what he said in the video, he could not offer a full retraction of its content. So, we reached an impasse.”

Fuentes, 27, has expressed admiration for Adolf Hitler, claiming the Holocaust was “exaggerated.” He has also said “organized Jewry” is leading to white culture’s disappearance, and that white people are “justified” in being racist, and said “a lot of women want to be raped.”

A spokesman for the Heritage Foundation confirmed the resignation in a statement to Politico, thanked him for his service and calling him a “good man.”

George, the McCormick professor of jurisprudence at Princeton University, also called Roberts a “good man.”

“He made what he acknowledged was a serious mistake,” George said. “Being human myself, I have plenty of experience in making mistakes. What divided us was a difference of opinion about what was required to rectify the mistake.”

The Foundation defended Roberts in a statement through a spokesperson.

“Under the leadership of Dr. Roberts, Heritage remains resolute in building an America where freedom, opportunity, prosperity, and civil society flourish,” the spokesperson said. “We are strong, growing, and more determined than ever to fight for our Republic.”

Roberts, in the Oct. 30 video, blasted the “venomous coalition” that has faulted Fuentes and Carlson, with the latter described as a “close friend.”

“The Heritage Foundation didn’t become the intellectual backbone of the conservative movement by canceling our own people or policing the consciences of Christians, and we won’t start doing that now,” Roberts said.

“Their attempt to cancel [Carlson] will fail,” he added. “I disagree with and even abhor things that Nick Fuentes says, but canceling him is not the answer either.”

One day later, Roberts also posted on X, elaborating on his remarks.

“Our task is to confront and challenge those poisonous ideas at every turn to prevent them from taking America to a very dark place,” Roberts wrote. “Join us — not to cancel — but to guide, challenge, and strengthen the conversation, and be confident as I am that our best ideas at the heart of western civilization will prevail.

“For those, especially young men, who are enticed by Fuentes and his acolytes online — there is a better way.”

Some staff members at a two-hour meeting on Wednesday called for Roberts’ resignation, with one attendee saying he had caused “enormous damage” to the foundation, according to the video obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

At least five members of the foundation’s anti-Semitism task force also have resigned, CBS News reported.

The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank that dates to the mid-1970s and came to larger prominence for its influence on the Reagan administration, helped to spearhead Project 2025, which has been used as a guide for President Donald Trump‘s second term in the White House.

Trump, who hosted Fuentes and rapper Kanye West at his Mar-a-Lago home in 2024, on Sunday told reporters that you can’t tell Carlson “who to interview.”

Carlson hosts platforms on his platform. The Tucker Carlson Network. He has worked for CNN, PS, MSNBC (now called MSNOW) and Fox News, the latter of which he was fired from in April 2023.

George said he wished the Foundation “the very best.”

“My hope for Heritage is that it will be unbending and unflinching in its fidelity to its founding vision, upholding the moral principles of the Judeo-Christian tradition and the civic principles of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States,” he wrote.

“I pray that Heritage’s research and advocacy will be guided by the conviction that each and every member of the human family, irrespective of race, ethnicity, religion, or anything else, as a creature fashioned in the very image of God, is ‘created equal’ and ‘endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights.'”

Fuentes and Vice President JD Vance have been at odds since Fuentes asked his audience “Do we really expect that the guy who has an Indian wife and named their kid Vivek is going to support white identity?”,

In 2024 on CBS’s Face the Nation, Vance called him a “total loser” and said there is “no room” for him in the Make America Great Again movement.

Hundreds of National Guard troops deployed to Chicago and Portland, Ore., are being sent home, and those who will remain will continue to stay off the streets amid court battles over their deployment by the Trump administration, a defense official said Monday.

The withdrawal of soldiers — sent from California and Texas — is part of a larger change to troop deployments after President Trump began his immigration crackdown in various cities with Democratic leadership. The official requested anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the issue.

U.S. Northern Command said in a statement Sunday it was “shifting and/or rightsizing” units in Portland, Los Angeles and Chicago. Although it said there would be a “constant, enduring, and long-term presence in each city.”

In the coming days, 200 California National Guard troops currently deployed to Oregon will be sent home, and about 100 will remain in the Portland area doing training, the official said. The military also plans to cut in half the number of Oregon National Guard troops on deployment there from 200 soldiers to 100, the official said.

About 200 Texas National Guard troops in Chicago also are being sent home and about 200 soldiers will be on standby at Fort Bliss, an Army base that stretches across parts of Texas and New Mexico, the official said.

About 300 Illinois National Guard troops will remain in the Chicago area, also doing training, but they currently are not legally allowed to conduct operations with the Department of Homeland Security, the official said.

The official said the upcoming holiday season may have played a role in the change in deployments.

Diana Crofts-Pelayo, a spokesperson for California Gov. Gavin Newsom, said Trump “never should have illegally deployed our troops in the first place.”

“We’re glad they’re finally coming home,” she wrote in an email. “It’s long overdue!”

Separately, the Trump administration has stepped up immigration enforcement in Charlotte, North Carolina, expanding an aggressive campaign that’s been spearheaded by U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

National Guard deployments have been one of the most controversial initiatives of Trump’s second term, demonstrating an expanded willingness to use the military to accomplish domestic goals.

Troops, including active-duty Marines, were deployed to Los Angeles during immigration protests earlier this year.

The National Guard was also sent to Washington, D.C., where they were part of a broader federal intervention that Trump claimed was necessary because of crime problems.

The deployments later expanded to Portland and Chicago.

Although they don’t play a law enforcement role, members of the National Guard have been tasked with protecting federal facilities, particularly those run by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

About 100 troops who have been in Los Angeles will remain on deployment, the defense official said.

Watson writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Chris Megerian in Washington contributed to this report.

San Francisco, United States – Just weeks ago, Brandon Praileau, a pastor from Norfolk, Virginia, was speaking to families in his community about a federally funded programme that would help them install rooftop solar units in their homes. The government funds would take care of their installation costs, and once installed, lower the burden of rising electricity costs, a pressing concern.

Then, Praileau heard the federal government had scrapped the $7bn Solar For All programme through which his project and other solar projects across the country were to be funded, leaving them stranded.

It is one of several federally funded renewable energy projects that have been scrapped or will end early, veering off the country’s planned shift to renewable energy, also making it harder to meet climate goals.

Praileau, Virginia programme director for Solar United Neighbors, had been helping roll out the project that received $156m in federal funds to support 7,500 low- and middle-income families with solar installation. Praileau say he was “mind blown” by the sudden withdrawal.

The federal government will also end the 30 percent tax credit for solar rooftop installation in homes this December. For businesses, these tax credits will only be available if they start construction of factories, malls or other businesses, for which the solar installations are meant, by June 2026.

The Department of Energy also withdrew $13bn in funding from a range of other renewable energy projects, including upgrading power grids, carbon-neutral cement production, and battery energy storage. The administration also ended several funding initiatives for wind energy.

President Trump has said, “We’re not going to be approving windmills unless something happens that’s an emergency.”

This could lead to a $114bn loss in delays or cancellation of wind energy projects, according to an April 2025 report by BloombergNEF.

In Florida, intake forms for 10,000 low- and middle-income households to enrol for federal subsidies to get solar units installed on their rooftops were ready when the $156m project was scrapped in August.

A resident of Miami-Dade County had told volunteers who were helping her fill in the forms to enrol for the grant that she was “scared to use power. I am scared to put on air conditioning”, because the steep rise in power costs in the state had put it out of reach for her.

Power costs in the state are up 60 percent for some residents since 2019, Heaven Campbell, Florida programme director of Solar United Neighbors, which was working on implementing the project, told Al Jazeera.

Other states have also seen varying power cost hikes due to hurricanes and the war in Ukraine, which made Russian natural gas more expensive.

Florida Power and Light, the utilities provider, has also currently made a case to increase rates further to raise nearly $10bn over the next four years, according to Florida’s Office of Public Counsel.

Solar United’s staff has tried to educate residents that not using power could get them disconnected, and reconnecting comes with a fee.

Early ending of the tax credit will mean “consumers are stuck at the mercy of utilities”, and their rising rates, says Bernadette Del Chiaro, senior vice president for California at the Environmental Working Group.

‘Rain shadow impact’

With the solar rooftop tax credits set to expire in December, there has been a scramble to install, and some solar installers say they are having to turn away customers.

“We will see the rain shadow impact of this in 2026,” Del Chiaro says, referring to a sharp drop in business and jobs that the industry is steeling itself for next year.

“This is a big plunge on the solar coaster,” says Barry Cinnamon, chief executive of Cinnamon Energy Systems, a San Francisco-based solar installation company.

Ed Murray, president of the California Solar and Storage Association, told Al Jazeera he expects the elimination of tax credits to double the payback time for installation and other costs associated with the solar units to up to 12 years.

It would also lead to job losses for thousands of skilled workers in the sector, Murray said, even as the air quality is likely to worsen and the state is expected to fail to meet its climate goals.

In its announcement withdrawing from these projects, the Department of Energy notification said the projects “advance the previous Administration’s wasteful Green New Scam agenda”.

In the statement, Energy Secretary Chris Wright said that, “By returning these funds to the American taxpayer, the Trump administration is affirming its commitment to advancing more affordable, reliable and secure American energy and being more responsible stewards of taxpayer dollars.”

Critics of solar projects have said they drive up costs for households still on the power grid because solar customers pay less to utilities but still use that power when needed.

The Trump administration has, instead, supported oil and gas production through several measures, including plans to open up the entire Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) for oil and gas leasing recently. It has also eased permitting for drilling on federal lands.

Rising costs

The Biden administration had funded renewable energy projects under what it called the Green New Deal, a programme to accelerate economic growth and job creation while having a positive climate impact.

But even as these projects began rolling out, power costs have risen sharply in many states, including Virginia.

A recent study by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory found that the rise in power costs had outpaced inflation in 26 states and listed a range of factors for it, including the Ukraine war and extreme weather factors such as wildfires and hurricanes that have damaged an already ageing electric poles and grid.

For instance, prices in California have risen more than 34 percent since 2019, the study says, in part because the record-breaking wildfires forced utilities to replace and strengthen their power lines. Federal funding of $630m to strengthen grids in California was among the projects scrapped by the Department of Energy.

“A majority of the projects that were scrapped were mid-implementation,” says Ryan Schleeter, communications director of The Climate Center, a California-based think tank.

Federal incentives also meant that more than 20 percent of the cars sold in the state over the last two years had been electric vehicles (EVs). These allowed middle-income families to buy EVs, Schleeter says. With incentives having ended on September 30, “the central challenge will be how to be equitable,” he says.

Susan Stephenson, executive director of California Power and Light, which supports places of worship to have renewable energy, says several places of worship that had planned to move to solar energy or install EV charging stations are now struggling to find installers and have seen costs going up beyond their initial budget due to federal cuts.

In Virginia, Praileau says power costs came up as one of the greatest concerns in his interactions with his congregants. The state has among the most data centres in the country, and Praileau believes that could be a reason for rising costs.

Voter dissatisfaction over rising power costs has been among the top issues in the governor’s elections in the state that went to the polls on November 4. One of the promises that Abigail Spanberger, the Democrat candidate who won, had made was to reduce power costs by increasing energy production and getting data centres to pay a higher share of power costs.

Praileau hopes the solar project, the cuts to which are already being litigated, can also be revived by the new governor. In Florida, too, there is ongoing litigation on the federal funding cuts.

Several states, including California, have announced their own rollbacks on renewable energy incentives.

But with funding withdrawals hurting residents, Steve Larson, a former executive director of the California Public Utilities Commission, expects more litigation to restore programmes and mastering “techniques of delay”, for federal cuts in grants and to allow renewable energy projects to keep going.

SACRAMENTO — So far, gubernatorial candidate Xavier Becerra has escaped the bright spotlight focused on Gov. Gavin Newsom in the money pilfering scandal involving their former top aides. But that could change.

It seems only a matter of time before one of Becerra’s campaign rivals seizes the federal fraud case for attack fodder. I can hear it already: “If the man who wants to be governor can’t protect his own political funds, he shouldn’t be trusted to safeguard your tax money.”

That might not be fair, but this is big-time politics. And the word “fair” isn’t in the political dictionary.

Neither Becerra nor Newsom is implicated in any wrongdoing.

Newsom has drawn heavy media attention because his former chief of staff, Dana Williamson, is the central figure in the criminal case. Newsom also has made himself into a national political celebrity and the leader in early polling for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination. That makes him prime news copy.

Becerra is low-profile by comparison, although he has achieved a very successful and respectable career: U.S. Health and Human Services secretary under President Biden, California attorney general and 12-term congressman.

It was Becerra’s dormant state political account that allegedly got pilfered of $225,000 while he was health secretary.

Federal prosecutors allege that Williamson, former Becerra chief of staff Sean McCluskie and Sacramento lobbyist Greg Campbell illegally diverted money to McCluskie’s wife, funneling the loot through shell companies for bogus consulting services.

McCluskie and Campbell both pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit fraud and have been cooperating with the federal government.

Williamson, who allegedly fleeced Becerra’s political kitty when she owned a government relations firm before joining Newsom’s staff, pleaded not guilty to bank and tax fraud charges. Besides raiding Becerra’s account, she’s accused of falsifying documents involving a COVID small-business loan and claiming $1 million in personal luxuries as business expenses on her income taxes.

After news of the case broke last week with Williamson’s arrest, Newsom’s office said the governor suspended her last November after she informed him of the federal investigation.

There also was a sophomoric attempt by a Newsom spokesperson to link the federal case to the combative relationship between President Trump and the California governor. It’s true Trump has been targeting his “enemies.” But this three-year FBI probe began under the Biden administration.

Becerra issued a statement saying that the “formal accusations of impropriety by a long-serving trusted advisor are a gut punch.” He also said he had been cooperating with the U.S. Justice Department‘s investigation.

The federal indictment alleges that McCluskie and Williamson misled Becerra about how monthly withdrawals from his political account were to be used.

The account stash of nearly $2 million was raised for a 2022 attorney general reelection campaign that never occurred because by then Becerra was health secretary. But the money could be used in some future state race, such as for governor.

Political operatives I talked with were stunned that $225,000 could be siphoned out of a politician’s campaign account without him noticing.

“Did the account have no one watching it except the consultants who were pilfering from it?” asked veteran Democratic consultant Garry South. “Those of us who have run campaigns are scratching our heads. I can’t imagine how this would happen.”

I asked the Becerra campaign.

A spokesperson replied that the health secretary had authorized payments for “campaign management” after being misled by trusted advisors.

Also, the spokesperson added, Becerra was counseled by a Health and Human Services attorney to distance himself from any “campaign or political activity” prohibited by the federal Hatch Act and ethics rules. So he delegated responsibility for managing the account to advisors.

And he got snookered and ripped off.

Will it tarnish Becerra’s image and hurt his campaign for governor? We don’t know yet. But probably not that much, if any. His only sin, after all, was trusting the wrong people and following an attorney’s advice.

Even big scandals don’t seem to damage politicians in this era — Trump being the unfathomable best example.

It could crimp Becerra’s fundraising if potential donors wonder where their money is actually going and whether anyone credible will be watching it.

The gubernatorial race is still wide open without a real front-runner. No candidate is captivating the voters.

A late October poll by the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies showed paltry numbers for all candidates. Former Orange County Rep. Katie Porter led Democrats with 11% support among registered voters. Becerra was second with 8%. A whopping 44% of those surveyed were undecided.

Riverside County Sheriff Chad Blanco, a Republican, was first overall with 13%. But no Republican need apply for this job. California hasn’t elected a GOP candidate to a statewide office since 2006.

Becerra has as good a shot at winning as any current candidate. He was the leading Democrat among Latinos at 12%.

But he’ll need a better answer for why he may have allowed $225,000 in donated political contributions to be grabbed and illegally spent by people he trusted.

DES MOINES, Iowa — Pessimism about the country’s future has risen in cities since last year, but rural America is more optimistic about what’s ahead for the U.S., according to a new survey from the American Communities Project.

And despite President Trump’s insistence that crime is out of control in big cities, residents of the nation’s largest metropolitan centers are less likely to list crime and gun violence among the chief concerns facing their communities than they were a couple years ago.

Optimism about the future is also down from last year in areas with large Hispanic communities.

These are some of the snapshots from the new ACP/Ipsos survey, which offers a nuanced look at local concerns by breaking the nation’s counties into community types, using data points like race, income, age and religious affiliation. The survey evaluated moods and priorities across the 15 different community types, such as heavily Hispanic areas, big cities and different kinds of rural communities.

The common denominator across the communities? A gnawing worry about daily household costs.

“Concerns about inflation are across the board,” said Dante Chinni, founder and director of ACP. “One thing that truly unites the country is economic angst.”

Rising optimism in rural areas, despite economic anxiety

Rural residents are feeling more upbeat about the country’s trajectory — even though most aren’t seeing Trump’s promised economic revival.

The $15 price tag on a variety pack of Halloween candy at the Kroger supermarket last month struck Carl Gruber. Disabled and receiving federal food aid, the 42-year-old from Newark, Ohio, had hardly been oblivious to lingering, high supermarket prices.

But Gruber, whose wife also is unable to work, is hopeful about the nation’s future, primarily in the belief that prices will moderate as Trump suggests.

“Right now, the president is trying to get companies who moved their businesses out of the country to move them back,” said Gruber, a Trump voter whose support has wavered over the federal shutdown that delayed his monthly food benefit. “So, maybe we’ll start to see prices come down.”

About 6 in 10 residents of Rural Middle America — Newark’s classification in the survey — say they are hopeful about the country’s future over the next few years, up from 43% in the 2024 ACP survey. Other communities, like heavily evangelical areas or working-class rural regions, have also seen an uptick in optimism.

Kimmie Pace, a 33-year-old unemployed mother of four from a small town in northwest Georgia, said, “I have anxiety every time I go to the grocery store.”

But she, too, is hopeful in Trump. “Trump’s in charge, and I trust him, even if we’re not seeing the benefits yet,” she said.

Big-city residents are worried about the future

By contrast, the share of big-city residents who say they are hopeful about the nation’s future has shrunk, from 55% last year to 45% in the new survey.

Robert Engel of San Antonio — Texas’ booming, second most-populous city — is worried about what’s next for the U.S., though less for his generation than the next. The 61-year-old federal worker, whose employment was not interrupted by the government shutdown nor Trump’s effort to reduce the federal workforce, is near retirement and feels financially stable.

A stable job market, health care availability and a fair economic environment for his adult children are his main priorities.

Recently, the inflation outlook has worsened under Trump. Consumer prices in September increased at an annual rate of 3%, up from 2.3% in April, when the president first began to roll out substantial tariff increases that burdened the economy with uncertainty.

Engel’s less-hopeful outlook for the country is broader. “It’s not just the economy, but the state of democracy and polarization,” Engel said. “It’s a real worry. I try to be cautiously optimistic, but it’s very, very hard.”

Crime, gun violence are less a concern in urban America

Trump had threatened to deploy the National Guard to Chicago, New York, Seattle, Baltimore, San Francisco and Portland, Ore., to fight what he said was runaway, urban crime.

Yet data shows most violent crime in those places, and around the country, has declined in recent years. That tracks with the poll, which found that residents of America’s Big Cities and Middle Suburbs are less likely to list crime or gun violence among the top issues facing their communities than they were in 2023.

For Angel Gamboa, a retired municipal worker in Austin, Tex., Trump’s claims don’t ring true in the city of roughly 1 million people.

“I don’t want to say it’s overblown, because crime is a serious subject,” Gamboa said. “But I feel like there’s an agenda to scare Americans, and it’s so unnecessary.”

Instead, residents of Big Cities are more likely to say immigration and health care are important issues for their communities.

Big Cities are one of the community types where residents are most likely to say they’ve seen changes in immigration recently, with 65% saying they’ve seen a change in their community related to immigration over the past 12 months, compared with only about 4 in 10 residents of communities labeled in the survey as Evangelical Hubs or Rural Middle America.

Gamboa says he has witnessed changes, notably outside an Austin Home Depot, where day laborers regularly would gather in the mornings to find work.

Not anymore, he said.

“Immigrants were not showing up there to commit crimes,” Gamboa said. “They were showing up to help their families. But when ICE was in the parking lot, that’s all it took to scatter people who were just trying to find a job.”

Hispanic communities are less hopeful about the future

After Hispanic voters moved sharply toward Trump in the 2024 election, the poll shows that residents of heavily Hispanic areas are feeling worse about the future of their communities than they were before Trump was elected.

Carmen Maldonado describes her community of Kissimmee, Fla., a fast-growing, majority-Hispanic city of about 80,000 residents about 22 miles south of Orlando, as “seriously troubled.”

The 61-year-old retired, active-duty National Guard member isn’t alone. The survey found that 58% of residents of such communities are hopeful about the future of their community, down from 78% last year.

“It’s not just hopelessness, but fear,” said Maldonado, who says people in her community — even her fellow native Puerto Ricans, who are American citizens — are anxious about the Trump administration’s aggressive pursuit of Latino immigrants.

Just over a year ago, Trump made substantial inroads with Hispanic voters in the 2024 presidential election.

Beyond just the future of their communities, Hispanic respondents are also substantially less likely to say they’re hopeful about the future of their children or the next generation: 55% this year, down from 69% in July 2024.

Maldonado worries that the Trump administration’s policies have stoked anti-Hispanic attitudes and that they will last for her adult child’s lifetime and beyond.

“My hopelessness comes from the fact that we are a large part of what makes up the United States,” she said, “and sometimes I cry thinking about these families.”

Beaumont, Parwani and Thomson-Deveaux write for the Associated Press. Parwani and Thomson-DeVeaux reported from Washington. The American Communities Project/Ipsos Fragmentation Study of 5,489 American adults aged 18 or older was conducted from Aug. 18 – Sept. 4, 2025, using the Ipsos probability-based online panel and RDD telephone interviews. The margin of sampling error for adults overall is plus or minus 1.8 percentage points.

After a surge in Border Patrol activity in North Carolina’s largest city over the weekend, including dozens of arrests, Gov. Josh Stein said the effort is “stoking fear,” not making Charlotte safer.

The Trump administration has made the Democratic city of about 950,000 people its latest target for an immigration enforcement surge it says will combat crime, despite fierce objections from local leaders and downtrending crime rates. Charlotte residents reported encounters with federal immigration agents near churches, apartment complexes and stores.

“We’ve seen masked, heavily armed agents in paramilitary garb driving unmarked cars, targeting American citizens based on their skin color, racially profiling, and picking up random people in parking lots and off of our sidewalks,” Stein said in a video statement late Sunday. “This is not making us safer. It’s stoking fear and dividing our community.”

Stein acknowledged that it was a stressful time, but he called on residents to stay peaceful. If people see something wrong, he said they should record it and report it to local law enforcement.

The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees CBP, has said it was focusing on North Carolina because of so-called sanctuary policies, which limit cooperation between local authorities and immigration agents.

Several county jails house immigrant arrestees and honor detainers, which allow jails to hold detainees for immigration officers to pick them up. But Mecklenburg County, where Charlotte is located, does not. Also, the city’s police department does not help with immigration enforcement. DHS alleged that about 1,400 detainers across North Carolina had not been honored, putting the public at risk.

Gregory Bovino, who led hundreds of U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents in a similar effort in Chicago, documented some of the more than 80 arrests he said agents had made in social media posts on Sunday. He posted pictures of people the Trump administration commonly dubs “criminal illegal aliens,” meaning people living in the U.S. without legal permission who allegedly have criminal records. That included one of a man with an alleged history of drunk driving convictions.

The activity has prompted fear and questions, including where detainees would be held, how long the operation would last and what agents’ tactics — criticized elsewhere as aggressive and racist — would look like in North Carolina.

However, some welcomed the effort, including Mecklenburg County Republican Party Chairman Kyle Kirby, who said in a post Saturday that the county GOP “stands with the rule of law — and with every Charlottean’s safety first.”

Bovino’s operations in Chicago and Los Angeles triggered lawsuits over the use of force, including widespread deployment of chemical agents. Democratic leaders in both cities accused agents of inflaming community tensions. Federal agents fatally shot one suburban Chicago man during a traffic stop.

Bovino, head of a Border Patrol sector in El Centro, California, and other Trump administration officials have called their tactics appropriate for growing threats on agents.

Tareen, Witte and Dale write for the Associated Press. Tareen and Dale reported from Chicago. Witte reported from Annapolis, Md.

WASHINGTON  — The Supreme Court agreed Monday to hear a Trump administration appeal that argues migrants have no right to seek asylum at the southern border.

Rather, the government says border agents may block asylum seekers from stepping on to U.S. soil and turn away their claims without a hearing.

The new case seeks to clarify the immigration laws and resolve an issue that has divided past administrations and the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Under federal law, migrants who faces persecution in their home countries may apply for asylum and receive a screening hearing if they are “physically present in the United States” or if such a person “arrives in the United States.”

Since 2016, however, the Obama, Biden and Trump administrations responded to surges at the border by adopting temporary rules which required migrants to wait on the Mexican side before they could apply for asylum.

But in May, a divided 9th Circuit Court ruled those restrictions were illegal if they prevented migrants from applying for asylum.

“To ‘arrive’ means ‘to reach a destination,’” wrote Judge Michelle Friedland, citing a dictionary definition. “A person who presents herself to an official at the border has ‘arrived.’”

She said this interpretation “does not radically expand the right to asylum.” By contrast, the “government’s reading would reflect a radical reconstruction of the right to apply for asylum because it would give the executive branch vast discretion to prevent people from applying by blocking them at the border.”

“We therefore conclude that a non-citizen stopped by U.S. officials at the border is eligible to apply for asylum,” she wrote.

The 2-1 decision upheld a federal judge in San Diego who ruled for migrants who had filed a class-action suit and said they were wrongly denied an asylum hearing.

But Solicitor Gen. D. John Sauer urged the Supreme Court to review and reverse the appellate ruling, noting 15 judges of the 9th Circuit joined dissents that called the decision “radical” and “clearly wrong.”

In football, a “running back does not ‘arrive in’ the end zone when he is stopped at the one-yard line,” Sauer wrote.

He said federal immigration law “does not grant aliens throughout the world a right to enter the United States so that they can seek asylum.” From abroad, they may “seek admission as refugees,” he said, but the government may enforce its laws by “blocking illegal immigrants from stepping on U.S. soil.”

Immigrants rights lawyers advised the court to turn away the appeal because the government is no longer using the “metering” system that required migrants to wait for a hearing.

Since June 2024, they said the government has restricted inspections and processing of these non-citizens under a different provision of law that authorizes the president to “suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of alien” if he believes they would be “detrimental to the interests of the United States.”

The government also routinely sends back migrants who illegally cross the border.

But the solicitor general said the asylum provision should be clarified.

The justices voted to hear the case of Noem vs. Al Otro Lado early next year and decide “whether an alien who is stopped on the Mexican side of the U.S.-Mexico border ‘arrives in the United States’ within the meaning” of federal immigration law.

SACRAMENTO — So far, gubernatorial candidate Xavier Becerra has escaped the bright spotlight focused on Gov. Gavin Newsom in the money pilfering scandal involving their former top aides. But that could change.

It seems only a matter of time before one of Becerra’s campaign rivals seizes the federal fraud case for attack fodder. I can hear it already: “If the man who wants to be governor can’t protect his own political funds, he shouldn’t be trusted to safeguard your tax money.”

That might not be fair, but this is big-time politics. And the word “fair” isn’t in the political dictionary.

Neither Becerra nor Newsom is implicated in any wrongdoing.

Newsom has drawn heavy media attention because his former chief of staff, Dana Williamson, is the central figure in the criminal case. Newsom also has made himself into a national political celebrity and the leader in early polling for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination. That makes him prime news copy.

Becerra is low-profile by comparison, although he has achieved a very successful and respectable career: U.S. Health and Human Services secretary under President Biden, California attorney general and 12-term congressman.

It was Becerra’s dormant state political account that allegedly got pilfered of $225,000 while he was health secretary.

Federal prosecutors allege that Williamson, former Becerra chief of staff Sean McCluskie and Sacramento lobbyist Greg Campbell illegally diverted money to McCluskie’s wife, funneling the loot through shell companies for bogus consulting services.

McCluskie and Campbell both pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit fraud and have been cooperating with the federal government.

Williamson, who allegedly fleeced Becerra’s political kitty when she owned a government relations firm before joining Newsom’s staff, pleaded not guilty to bank and tax fraud charges. Besides raiding Becerra’s account, she’s accused of falsifying documents involving a COVID small-business loan and claiming $1 million in personal luxuries as business expenses on her income taxes.

After news of the case broke last week with Williamson’s arrest, Newsom’s office said the governor suspended her last November after she informed him of the federal investigation.

There also was a sophomoric attempt by a Newsom spokesperson to link the federal case to the combative relationship between President Trump and the California governor. It’s true Trump has been targeting his “enemies.” But this three-year FBI probe began under the Biden administration.

Becerra issued a statement saying that the “formal accusations of impropriety by a long-serving trusted advisor are a gut punch.” He also said he had been cooperating with the U.S. Justice Department‘s investigation.

The federal indictment alleges that McCluskie and Williamson misled Becerra about how monthly withdrawals from his political account were to be used.

The account stash of nearly $2 million was raised for a 2022 attorney general reelection campaign that never occurred because by then Becerra was health secretary. But the money could be used in some future state race, such as for governor.

Political operatives I talked with were stunned that $225,000 could be siphoned out of a politician’s campaign account without him noticing.

“Did the account have no one watching it except the consultants who were pilfering from it?” asked veteran Democratic consultant Garry South. “Those of us who have run campaigns are scratching our heads. I can’t imagine how this would happen.”

I asked the Becerra campaign.

A spokesperson replied that the health secretary had authorized payments for “campaign management” after being misled by trusted advisors.

Also, the spokesperson added, Becerra was counseled by a Health and Human Services attorney to distance himself from any “campaign or political activity” prohibited by the federal Hatch Act and ethics rules. So he delegated responsibility for managing the account to advisors.

And he got snookered and ripped off.

Will it tarnish Becerra’s image and hurt his campaign for governor? We don’t know yet. But probably not that much, if any. His only sin, after all, was trusting the wrong people and following an attorney’s advice.

Even big scandals don’t seem to damage politicians in this era — Trump being the unfathomable best example.

It could crimp Becerra’s fundraising if potential donors wonder where their money is actually going and whether anyone credible will be watching it.

The gubernatorial race is still wide open without a real front-runner. No candidate is captivating the voters.

A late October poll by the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies showed paltry numbers for all candidates. Former Orange County Rep. Katie Porter led Democrats with 11% support among registered voters. Becerra was second with 8%. A whopping 44% of those surveyed were undecided.

Riverside County Sheriff Chad Blanco, a Republican, was first overall with 13%. But no Republican need apply for this job. California hasn’t elected a GOP candidate to a statewide office since 2006.

Becerra has as good a shot at winning as any current candidate. He was the leading Democrat among Latinos at 12%.

What else you should be reading

The must-read: Front-runner or flash in the pan? Sizing up Newsom, 2028
CA vs. Trump: At Brazilian climate summit, Newsom positions California as a stand-in for the U.S.
The L.A. Times Special: Indictment of ex-Newsom aide hints at feds’ probe into state’s earlier investigation of video game giant

Until next week,
George Skelton

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