politics

Reporting from Sacramento — California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Monday pardoned seven former felons, including two Cambodian refugees the Trump administration wants to deport, in his first acts of clemency since the Democrat took office in January.

Newsom adopted a policy of his predecessor, former Gov. Jerry Brown, to use his state constitutional authority to issue pardons to shield immigrants targeted by federal immigration officials.

The pardons are an unmistakable rebuke to President Trump, whose fiery anti-immigrant rhetoric and demands for a giant wall along the U.S.-Mexico border have been central to the escalating political feud between Newsom and the White House.

Newsom took another shot at Trump just hours before announcing the pardons while speaking to members of the Asian Pacific Islander American Public Affairs Assn., a national nonprofit, nonpartisan advocacy organization based in Sacramento. Newsom compared Trump to the anti-immigrant “demagogues” in San Francisco who championed the federal Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 — the nation’s first immigration ban on a specific group of people.

“I’m constantly trying to understand the moment we’re living in, the xenophobia, the nativism that marks the populism of this moment,” Newsom said. “Any of us who are students of history know that it’s not without precedent. It’s not novel. It’s hardly new. It’s very familiar.”

Trump restricts asylum further but faces legal and financial limits »

One of the Cambodian refugees pardoned by Newsom, Hay Hov of Oakland, was taken into custody by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials in March. He has since been released.

Hov, a naturalized citizen who arrived in the United States in 1985 as a legal refugee when he was 6, was convicted of solicitation to commit murder and participation in a criminal street gang in 2001, when he was 21, according to the Newsom administration.

The other refugee, Kang Hen of San Francisco, like Hov, fled to the Bay Area with his family to escape the Cambodian genocide in the 1980s. Hen was convicted of grand theft in 1994 when he was 18. Hen, who has a 4-year-old son and a partner with kidney and heart problems, was taken into custody by ICE in April.

Both Hov and Hen are being processed for deportation to Cambodia. The pardons do not automatically end a deportation effort but remove the underlying criminal offense that triggered the federal removal actions.

The pardons come as the federal government continues a crackdown on the Cambodian community that began in 2017 when Trump forced Cambodia to agree to take back more deportees. Many of the Cambodians facing deportation were refugees from the brutal Khmer Rouge regime that killed thousands, and came to the United States legally as children. They have few memories or ties to the country. But because they committed crimes, even if convicted decades ago, they can be deported.

In the 2016 fiscal year, ICE reported removing 74 Cambodians. In 2017, 29 Cambodians were removed. In 2018, that number has jumped to 110 thus far.

ICE reported that, as of March 26, there were 1,784 non-detained Cambodians nationals in the United States with a final order of removal. Of those, 1,294 had criminal records.

All seven of the people Newsom pardoned on Monday had completed their prison sentences.

“By granting these pardons to people who are transforming their lives, the Governor is seeking to remove barriers to employment and public service, restore civic rights and responsibilities and prevent unjust collateral consequences of conviction,” the governor’s office said in a statement released Monday afternoon.

The other five people pardoned committed offenses that varied from selling or possessing drugs to forgery.

Brown granted a historic 1,332 pardons and 283 commutations during his last two terms as governor. However, the California Supreme Court rejected 10 grants of clemency issued by Brown, the first time the high court has blocked a pardon or commutation in more than 50 years.

The court did not issue an explanation for the action. Under the California Constitution, the governor cannot grant a pardon or commute a sentence of anyone convicted of two separate felonies without the approval of the state Supreme Court.

None of the people whom Newsom pardoned on Monday had multiple felonies, according to a governor’s office spokesperson.

phil.willon@latimes.com

Twitter: @philwillon

A guy who owns a beach resort on the coast of Florida, where hundreds of miles of overdeveloped shores are threatened by increasingly severe storms driven by global warming, is trying to tell Californians how best to manage our coast.

Guess who.

It’s not that we needed the help. If there’s any thought to adding an eighth wonder of the world to the current lineup of seven, I’d nominate the 1,100-mile treasure that kisses Oregon on one end and Mexico on the other. And it’s not by accident that coastal habitats are aggressively protected and most of the shoreline is free of mega resorts and architectural clutter.

A half century ago, Californians rose up against the threat of over-development. By the will of the people, the coast was enshrined in state law as a precious public asset accessible to the many, not a private playground fenced off for the few.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Coastal Act, and just as we begin the party, President Trump and his minions are scheming to pump some crude oil into the punch bowl.

And here’s how:

Going back to the 1970s, under the Coastal Zone Management Act, California has gotten high marks from the feds for the way in which its coastal regulatory agencies work with D.C. to manage federal projects. But now the state is under attack, which could mean that millions in federal dollars will be clawed back and the state’s voice muted.

So what horrible sins have we committed?

Sit down and take a deep breath.

We’re being accused of “environmental extremism.”

It’s just been far too many years of paying attention to water quality and vehicle and industrial emissions and all the rest. Imagine how that comes across to a president who wouldn’t admit to climate change if his putter melted in his hands or Mar-a-Lago became a swim-up hotel.

As penance for our crimes, U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick (the one who labeled us environmental extremists) ordered the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, to conduct “a full, formal review” of the state’s coastal management program.

“California has repeatedly and unfoundedly obstructed spaceport development,” Lutnick declared, referencing a dispute over how many rockets Elon Musk’s Space X can launch from the U.S. military’s Vandenberg base. (Per the California Coastal Commission, many of the launches are for private interests rather than military purposes, and even the federal government has noted that the thunderous sonic booms take a toll on sea life and humans.)

We’re also allegedly blind to basic economics and the preferences of the Trump administration when it comes to “offshore oil production, maintenance of pipelines and desalination.” And we need to fall into line in “removing regulatory barriers that hinder U.S. technological and economic leadership while responsibly stewarding coastal resources.”

Where to begin?

I thought California had the world’s fourth-largest economy, with technology as a primary driver. In fact, it’s just been reported that we drew 10 times more venture capital than any other state this year, with AI leading the way. If one or two other states matched our output, imagine the boasting Trump could do, legitimately, about the economy.

And while the administration seems intent on tapping more offshore oil, it’s toppling the nation’s offshore wind projects while the planet suffers through blistering, deadly heat waves directly related to greenhouse gas emissions from the burning of fossil fuels.

If the president’s blowtorch buddies want to call us “environmental extremists” for not burying our heads in the sand, it’s a badge of honor.

And another thing.

If Trump is so intent on keeping the world’s oil supply flowing, maybe he shouldn’t have bungled his way into a senseless war that has handed Iran the keys to the global gas pump, spiking prices for everyone.

By the way, it’s not as if the primary coastal regulatory agency in the state — the California Coastal Commission — has said nothing but “no” over the years to oil projects and desalination plants.

“When you look at the Coastal Act, it doesn’t prohibit offshore oil and gas production and we approved a lot of it,” said Susan Hansch, who retired from a top administrative position in 2021 after 47 years at the Coastal Commission. “It just has to be done correctly.”

The commission has also approved multiple desalination plants, but four years ago rejected one proposed for Huntington Beach, despite support for it from Gov. Gavin Newsom. I thought the rejection was the right call, because the proposal struck me as a private boondoggle, with no designated customer for the water and a slurry of environmental hazards.

A Falcon 9 rocket is launched from Vandenberg Space Force Base on Jan. 25.

(2nd Lt. Andrew Taller / U.S. Space Force)

Not that the Coastal Commission has been infallible over the years. It has worked many a critic into a lather, with complaints that the agency has stood in the way of housing development during the state’s mounting shortage, and that its permitting process is the equivalent of a years-long root canal.

Former Gov. Jerry Brown, who signed the Coastal Act into law in 1976, once called the commissioners “bureaucratic thugs.”

And Trump has feuded with the agency over, among other things, a 70-foot-tall flagpole erected on his Rancho Palos Verdes golf course without a permit. Last year, Trump envoy Ric Grenell said the Coastal Commission was a “disaster” and must “absolutely be defunded,” calling commissioners unelected and “crazy woke left.”

Getting rid of the commission, he said, “is going to make California better.”

I don’t think so.

Ten years ago, I had the privilege of traveling the length of the state and meeting some of the heroes of the coast going back to the 1960s.

They were there when the devastating Santa Barbara oil spill blackened beaches, turned the shoreline into a wildlife graveyard, and galvanized grassroots defense of the coast.

When plans by PG&E to build a nuclear power plant at heavenly Bodega Head triggered an uprising.

When a massive Sonoma Coast residential development pitch sparked fears that beach access would be lost.

In 1972, ordinary Californians circulated petitions, knocked on doors, and rode bicycles down the coast, rallying support for Proposition 20, which aimed to regulate coastal development. It passed despite a massive opposition campaign from corporate, industrial and real estate interests.

That victory led, four years later, to the Coastal Act and creation of the Coastal Commission, whose job was to balance sensible development, habitat protection and conservation, and equitable public access.

Richard Charter, an Ocean Foundation senior fellow, told me in Bodega a decade ago that the California coast is “a public miracle” that was protected by ordinary people who saw it as “a global treasure.”

The Coastal Act has led to the creation of 2,500 public beach access points in the state, and its greatest achievements include wetlands not plowed, habitats not destroyed, and the preservation of countless mesmerizing vistas where land meets sea and California leaves you in speechless, grateful awe.

At Tuesday’s Coastal Commission meeting, Jennifer Savage of the Surfrider Foundation stepped to the microphone and said to commissioners:

“Surfrider sees this federal review as a politically motivated attempt to strip California of the coastal protections that our communities and our marine ecosystems depend on, and Surfrider stands with you, and we will fight this every step of the way.”

If you’d like to join that fight, you can speak in person or remotely when NOAA hosts public hearings Aug. 10-12 in Santa Monica. You can find more details on the Surfrider Foundation website.

One of the early leaders of the Coastal Commission, the late Peter Douglas, anticipated these trials and uttered a phrase I’ve repeated many times over the years. In the year of the 50th anniversary of the Coastal Act, it’s worth repeating once more, and you should think of it as a a clarion call:

“The coast is never saved,” Douglas said. “It’s always being saved.”

steve.lopez@latimes.com

July 10 (UPI) — Maine Democrats are hoping to convene by the end of July to find a Senate nominee to replace Graham Platner, it was reported on Friday.

Party leadership has been scrambling to replace Platner since he was accused by a former partner of sexually assaulting her while he was drunk.

Platner dropped out of the race on Wednesday under intense pressure from politicians and groups that had previously endorsed him.

Now, Democrats are hoping to choose delegates within a week, and hold a state convention to pick a replacement the following weekend, The New York Times reported.

The party has not finalized plans, including a date or location for the convention, The Times reported.

Whoever they chose will run against Republican Sen. Susan Collins, the five-term incumbent.

Platner has denied the accusations.

“It’s not the false allegations, though, that have brought us to where we are,” he said in announcing his departure from the race. “It’s the fact that they’re being used by the political establishment to put structural pressure on us.”

On Monday, a woman who once dated Platner said he forced her to have sex with him five years ago.

“I remember him grabbing my pelvis and being really forceful of me,” Jenny Racicot, 41, told Politico. “I remember the specific moment where I thought to myself, like, ‘This is no longer my choice.'”

Raciot added Platner was “very drunk and wouldn’t take no for an answer,” the New York Post reported.

Maine Democrats are hoping to have a nominee by July 27, according to The Times.

July 10 (UPI) — Canada and the state of Michigan on Friday announced that a long-planned new bridge linking Ontario and Detroit will open at the end of July, 14 years after construction started.

The $4.4 billion Gordie Howe International Bridge between the two cities is set to open on July 27 and is set to offer improved transit on what leaders from Canada and Michigan called one of the busiest transportation corridors in North America.

The mile-and-a-half-long bridge includes new ports of entry on either side, with Canada and the United States establishing a 15-year economic development fund that has been tied to profits from crossing tolls.

President Donald Trump earlier this year threatened to prevent the bridge from opening over disagreements with previously existing trade agreements, his administration’s tariff regime and objections to Canada making trade deals with China.

“The Gordie Howe International Bridge has always been a great deal for our state,” Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer said in a statement.

“Thousands of Michigan workers built this critical bridge, which will speed up auto production, lower costs, ease traffic, strengthen agriculture and give people on both sides of the border better-paying jobs and brighter futures,” she said. “This bridge is a testament to the enduring partnership between Michigan and Canada.”

The bridge project originated with the state’s then-Republican Gov. Rick Snyder agreeing to the six-line bridge because it would alleviate congestion accommodate future travel and create new transportation capabilities between U.S. and Canadian manufacturing regions.

Canada’s minister for housing and infrastructure, Gregor Robinson, hailed the completion and impending opening of the bridge as “strengthening one of the world’s most important trade corridors.”

“This nation-building project is a testament to what Canada can accomplish when we come together with a shared vision,” Robinson said in a statement.

“The Gordie Howe International Bridge will create new opportunities, strengthen our economy and bring economic benefits on both sides of the boarder for generations,” he said.

PORTLAND, Maine — Graham Platner on Friday submitted his paperwork to formally withdraw from Maine’s U.S. Senate race, officially ending an upstart yet troubled campaign, the dissolution of which threatens Democrats’ pursuit of chamber control.

Platner’s paperwork was received by the Maine secretary of state’s office and reflected shortly thereafter in its online withdrawal list.

In a letter to the secretary of state’s office, which Platner also posted on social media, he wrote that the Mainers who had nominated him “voted for a new kind of politics” that is “representative of people down here in the real world — not billionaires, oligarchs, or the political establishment.”

It was the same outsider chord that had been a trademark of his tumultuous campaign, in which Platner drew backing from progressive leaders including Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and U.S. Rep. Ro Khanna of California. Both are among many who have since withdrawn their endorsements.

“I seek to further the movement we have built together and the future we believe in,” he went on, without elaborating.

Maine is considered a key state for control of the narrowly divided Senate, and Democrats were desperate for a candidate capable of defeating Republican Sen. Susan Collins.

The formal withdrawal comes two days after Platner said he would quit the race, facing an allegation of sexual assault that he has denied. Maine Democrats are seeking a new nominee, and several candidates have already begun jockeying for position.

State law includes a provision for Democrats to replace Platner before the general election, but the replacement must by named by July 27.

Just before Platner’s Wednesday announcement, more than 100 state Democratic Party committee members signed off on holding a nominating convention, in the event of his withdrawal, to choose the nominee. The state party has not publicly released details of when the convention will be held. Officials with the party did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday.

Several Democrats have announced plans to run for the Senate nomination this week. They include three candidates who lost the June primary for governor — former Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention director Nirav Shah, Secretary of State Shenna Bellows and former Maine Senate President Troy Jackson.

Others who have announced runs include Maine Beer Co. co-founder Dan Kleban; former 2nd Congressional District candidates Jordan Wood and Paige Loud; and former Maine Senate candidates David Costello and Andrea LaFlamme. State Rep. Valli Geiger has also expressed interest in the post but has not formally announced.

Kinnard and Whittle write for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — The Senate is often a stuffy and self-serving institution enlivened mainly by the unintended gaffe, but senior Republicans Bob Dole of Kansas and Alan K. Simpson of Wyoming are standout exceptions.

As Gerald R. Ford’s vice presidential candidate in 1976, Dole delivered tart one-liners and showed a slashing political style that was partly blamed for the defeat of the ticket. After the campaign, Dole reflected on his image and admitted that he had been “going after the jugular–my own.”

“Many people come in and say, ‘I hated you in ‘76,’ ” Dole reflected. “These are generally Democrats. But that was my job; go out and feed them the raw meat. Now they say, ‘Boy, you’ve really changed.’ ”

As the Senate Republican leader and a likely presidential candidate, Dole restrains himself.

“I don’t say you soften, but you understand that certain things work, certain things don’t work,” he said. “I think sometimes you have to say, ‘Don’t say it, let it pass.’ I’ve probably missed some great lines that way.”

His forte is one-liners. He has the delivery of an expert fly-caster and a poker player’s deadpan.

“You don’t hurt people,” Dole said. “Even though people might laugh, and hurt, they think, ‘That was kind of mean.’ And I haven’t done many roasts; they get pretty tough.”

Dole’s material is topical, drawing from events around him.

“I was speaking at the Outlaw Inn at a Republican meeting in Kalispell, Mont.,” Dole said. “I thought, ‘There’s got to be a joke there somewhere.’

“My question (to a Republican audience) was: ‘Why are we having this meeting in Democratic headquarters?”

Simpson’s mere appearance inspires jokes–he is 6-foot-7, nearly bald and rail-thin–and he first developed his humor as a shield against pain.

“Humor for me came from the fact I weighed 185 pounds in the seventh grade and was 5-7 or so,” he said. “I had knock-knees and . . . I couldn’t outrun anybody or outfight anybody or outdo anybody.

“That’s where you’ve got two choices–go and suck your thumb, or learn humor.”

He still debunks his physique. His shiny pate is “the solar panel for a sex machine.”

“Humor is very good for me,” he said. “Especially when you begin to think you are the great potentate of powers and prowess, the high this, the chairman of that. It’s good to look at yourself in the mirror in the morning and say, ‘Al, you are full of it.’ ”

He is frequently ribald in private, but careful not to hurt.

“There’s a fine line between good humor and smart-ass, and I sometimes cross it,” he said. “You know when you’re doing something unseemly. There is a misuse of humor around town, like roasts.

“There’s nothing funny about how close you can get to sticking it in some guy. I’ve watched those roasts. The guy goes home and he’s in pain.

“I don’t like ethnic humor. Somebody will come up, say with some story about some minority and I don’t laugh.

“I know that if I laugh . . . or use that kind of humor, that means I have a seed of that stuff cooking in me.”

Satirist Mark Russell has used political humor for years, and the wit of Rep. Morris K. Udall (D-Ariz.) has entertained the nation for a generation. They admire the two senators.

“At his height in ‘76, when he had the hatchet man label, a reporter asked him what he thought of his image of a gut fighter,” Russell joked. “Dole smiled and kicked him in the gut.

“But he’s mellowed. It isn’t as damaging now; he is reflective.

‘Healthy Cynicism’

“Simpson epitomizes the Western disdain for ‘inside-the-beltway’ (Washington know-it-alls),” Russell said. “As did (former Interior Secretary James G.) Watt. But Watt was mean-spirited. Simpson has a healthy cynicism.”

Udall has watched Dole grow as a person and a humorist.

“People like a presidential candidate or majority leader to have a sense of humor and resent it if he is too cruel. He’s taken that to heart.”

Udall compares Simpson to “an old Abe Lincoln around a cracker barrel, always, ‘Let me tell you a story.’

“In the South and West, before television and radio, you had to be an entertainer. You had to go into town and exhort, to inspire folks, but do it in an interesting way and get a few laughs. He’s in this political tradition.

The Wit and Wisdom of Dole and Simpson

Sen. Bob Dole

“On election night in 1976, even at the point where we were 80 electoral votes behind, I went to bed and slept like a baby. Every two hours, I woke up and cried.”

After a congressional battle over banking legislation: “Not that I am unpopular with bankers, but just before I left home tonight, mine came by and picked up his toaster and set of dishes.”

“I was seated next to (Secretary of State) George Shultz and asked him what he thought about the Caribbean Basin. He said, ‘It’s OK, but personally, I like a shower better.’ ”

Of former Interior Secretary James G. Watt: “What can you say about a man whose dream is to have a parking lot named in his honor?”

Sen. Alan K. Simpson

Of former Sen. Howard Baker: “He dresses so loosely, he has to stay inside on trash pickup day.”

On a dubious nominee for appointive office: “He filled out an application form and in the blank where it said, church preference, he wrote, ‘red brick.’ ”

“They were doing a movie on Congress and when they got to the part where the congressman refused the bribe, they had to use a stunt man.”

“The rich are indeed different. Among the Republicans in Beverly Hills, the Internal Revenue Service is known as a terrorist organization.”

“I have come to know the difference between a horse race and a political race. In a horse race, the entire horse runs.”

John H. Rousselot, the conservative Republican who represented part of the San Gabriel Valley in Congress for 14 years, was an officer of the John Birch Society and who tried to buy Charles H. Keating Jr.’s failed Lincoln Savings and Loan Assn., died Sunday. He was 75.

Rousselot, of Mission Viejo, died at Irvine Medical Center of congestive heart failure, said his son, Craig. He said his father had suffered a heart attack a year ago.

A glad-hander and energetic campaigner, Rousselot was controversial and colorful as he surfed the changing waves of political power as public relations expert, legislator or lobbyist.

He first gained office in 1960 when he ousted incumbent Democratic Rep. George Kasem in the 25th District. But he was so outspoken in defending the right-wing Birch Society, which he had just joined, that he failed to win reelection. In 1970, he was returned to Washington for half a dozen two-year terms in the 26th District, which included his native San Marino.

The congressman’s elective status ended in 1982 after redistricting threw him into a new 30th District, stretching from Bell Gardens to Azusa. Too long out of office and tainted by his association with Keating, Rousselot failed in a 1992 comeback campaign for the 25th District.

In Congress, Rousselot became active on the Banking and Currency Committee, and later the Economic and Budget and Ways and Means committees, where he staunchly opposed spending and tax increases, proposed cuts in the food stamp program, and worked for deregulation of the savings and loan industry. He also advocated U.S. military occupation of Cuba two years before the Cuban missile crisis.

As then-Atty. Gen. Robert F. Kennedy and others criticized the Birch Society in the early 1960s, freshman Congressman Rousselot defended the group: “They are calm, firm, dedicated people who are merely trying to inform themselves about communism.”

If Kennedy read the group’s “blue book,” Rousselot told The Times in 1961, he’d know that “one of the main purposes of each chapter is to keep its members and guests who attend fully informed as to the nature, purpose and intent of the Communist conspiracy in this country.”

First turned out of Congress in 1963, Rousselot was named regional director of the Birch Society — heading the group in California, Oregon, Washington, Arizona, Nevada and Idaho from an office in San Marino. He also served as national Birch Society public relations chairman. In both positions, he continued to insist that the organization’s purpose was to educate rather than advocate or indoctrinate.

But Rousselot resigned from the Birch Society with characteristic drama on April 17, 1979, when he was contemplating running for the U.S. Senate [he didn’t], “to demonstrate to the citizens of California that I am my own man, controlled by no organization or individual.” He also said that he had become disillusioned because Birch Society founder Robert Welch had besmirched President Eisenhower as a Communist agent and Winston Churchill as a traitor.

After Rousselot left Congress, he was in the Reagan White House as special assistant for business matters, then served as Western states coordinator for Reagan’s 1984 reelection campaign.

From 1985 to 1988, Rousselot was president of the National Council of Savings Institutions, a Washington-based lobbying group for banks and savings and loans. In addition to deregulation he worked to enable savings institutions to expand their business beyond mortgage lending.

In 1989, after lobbying for Keating, Rousselot was named the final chairman and chief executive of Lincoln Savings and Loan. With four others, he tried to buy the institution shortly before it was shut down by federal regulators who said that its assets were dissipated. Critics alleged that the attempted purchase was a scheme to delay the federal shutdown in the largest thrift collapse in U.S. history.

“I did nothing illegal, improper or unwarranted,” Rousselot told The Times a few years later.

Nevertheless, in 1993 his former association with the scandal-plagued thrift forced Gov. Pete Wilson to withdraw his appointment to the California Board of Prison Terms when legislators refused to confirm him.

John Harbin Rousselot was born Nov. 1, 1927, in San Marino and majored in political science and business administration at Principia College in Elsah, Ill.

In the 1950s, he established a public relations firm in Los Angeles and became president of the California Young Republicans.

From 1958 to 1960, when he resigned to run for Congress, he was national director of public information for the Federal Housing Administration.

Twice divorced, Rousselot is survived by his son, Craig of Irvine; two daughters, Robin Edwards of Lake Forest and Wendy Sirugo of San Dimas; a brother, Norman of Sonora, Texas; and five granddaughters.

A public memorial service will be planned at a later date.

The government of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo has been accused of human rights abuses against critics.

Nicaragua’s government has stripped masses of lawyers of their licences to practise, in what critics see as yet another attack on the country’s critics.

On Friday, a United Nations expert called the government’s actions a “purge of the legal profession”, aimed at eroding the country’s final shreds of democratic checks and balances.

Nicaragua’s husband-wife co-presidents, Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo, have led a government that has increasingly carried out an all-out crackdown on dissent.

That effort intensified after mass social protests in 2018 that the government violently repressed.

Since then, the government has imprisoned adversaries, religious leaders, journalists and others, forcing thousands to flee the country. It has also stripped hundreds of their Nicaraguan citizenship and possessions.

Since 2018, it has also shut down more than 5,000 nongovernmental organisations, largely religious groups, but also local rotary clubs and scouting organisations.

In recent days, lawyers noticed that their licences to practise law in Nicaragua were removed without explanation from the Supreme Court of Justice’s registry, according to Reed Brody, an American human rights lawyer and member of a UN panel of experts on the Central American country.

Other lawyers also confirmed their certifications were revoked.

There was no official notification by the government, and Nicaragua’s government did not respond to a request for comment by The Associated Press news agency.

Brody said the full scope of the revocation was not immediately clear, but it “would certainly appear to be at least hundreds, if not thousands of lawyers” who were affected.

“This follows the pattern that we’ve been seeing for years. First, they closed the NGOs, the universities, the independent media. You know, they’ve gone after the churches, and now it seems the legal profession,” Brody said. “Anyone who might stand between the government and citizens.”

Brody said he knew of at least 20 lawyers who had been affected.

Juan Diego Barberena, a lawyer and human rights defender exiled in Costa Rica since 2022, was among those stripped of his official certification and said he knew of at least 25 more colleagues like him.

On Thursday, Barberena tried to access his legal accreditation on the government’s database and said his name and licence number were wiped clean from the system.

“This is a means of exercising totalitarian control over the legal profession,” Barberena said. “This means that the dictatorship can decide who gets to practise and who doesn’t.”

The move echoes other steps the government has taken in recent years.

Many Nicaraguan exiles who were stripped of their citizenship and rendered “stateless” have reported similar stories. They or their family members would search for their birth certificates and other legal documents in official databases, only to be told they do not exist.

But Barberena and Brody said the move this week by authorities went a step further, noting that those erased from the system were not just dissenters. Some were simply Nicaraguans living abroad.

Others practised criminal or family law that didn’t touch on politics, while some were government sympathisers, Barberena said.

Brody framed it as a move to whittle away at any last remaining shred of independence in a judicial system already firmly under control of Ortega and Murillo.

“On one hand, it’s an arbitrary measure to punish political dissent,” Barberena said. “On the other, it’s the dictatorship looking medium-term and wanting to prevent lawyers, experts and academics from participating in the future of the country’s institutions.”

The Trump administration has signed off on a company’s plan to convert an oil and gas pipeline to pump groundwater from the Mojave Desert to thirsty California cities for the first time, a lucrative venture that critics say threatens natural springs and wildlife.

The federal Bureau of Land Management released documents Thursday saying that Cadiz Inc.’s plan to repurpose 162 miles of the pipeline to transport water “will not significantly affect” the environment.

“We’re excited to achieve this pivotal milestone. After many years of planning and environmental review, the project has now reached the construction stage,” said Susan Kennedy, chair and chief executive of Cadiz.

Environmental advocates and leaders of Native tribes, who have been fighting the project, criticized the decision.

“This groundwater mining proposal would drain the desert and rob the Mojave of its rare springs and wildlife habitat,” said Chance Wilcox, California desert associate director of the National Parks Conservation Assn. “It’s indefensible that the Trump administration would once again try to revive the pointless Cadiz project, by defying decades of scientific warnings and refusing to conduct an environmental review of the groundwater mining.”

The application for the federal authorization was filed by the Fenner Gap Mutual Water Co. The documents say the company plans to build seven pump stations, three of them located on federal land managed by the agency.

The 30-inch steel pipeline runs underground from Cadiz’s desert property, near the town of Amboy, northward to the town of Mojave.

The BLM said in its authorization that repurposing the pipeline for water “would comply with all applicable statutes and regulations.” The agency said it has “reasonably determined that the impacts of groundwater withdrawal associated with Cadiz’s groundwater extraction project are outside the scope of analysis.”

Cadiz’s attempts to export water from its property 200 miles east of Los Angeles have drawn controversy for decades.

In 2019, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed legislation that requires the project to undergo scientific study and gain approval from the State Lands Commission before it can take water from the Mojave and sell it to California cities.

Activists opposing the company’s plans include civil rights leader Dolores Huerta.

“Cadiz spells destruction for water, sacred lands, and the desert economy,” Huerta said in a statement. “It is exactly this type of greed and injustice that I have dedicated my life to oppose.”

Leaders of nearby tribes have also objected to Cadiz’s plans to pump from the desert aquifer near the Mojave Trails National Monument and Mojave National Preserve.

“It is the living heart of the desert,” said Daniel Leivas, chairman of the Chemehuevi Indian Tribe. “To drain it would be to drain the life out of the entire desert. No profit is worth such desecration.”

Chairman Timothy Williams of the Fort Mojave Indian Tribe said the company’s plan “to pump and sell 25 times more groundwater each year than the aquifer can replenish would desecrate our traditional territories.”

“Pumping more groundwater than is sustainably replenished is not only negligent, but dangerous to the American Desert Southwest,” he said in the joint statement with other opponents of the project.

For years, while pursuing its plan to sell water far away, the company has been using wells on its property to irrigate nearly 2,000 acres of farmland growing lemons, grapes and other crops. It has drilled more wells in anticipation of being able to export water once the government approved its pipeline.

The company intends to pipe water to communities in San Bernardino County and says it’s “expected to provide one of the lowest-cost sources of new water in the drought-plagued Southwest.” It says the federal permit “marks a key milestone as we finalize project financing with prospective investors.”

Cadiz bought the 220-mile pipeline from El Paso Natural Gas in 2020. Once construction is completed, the company says the pipeline will be able to transport up to 25,000 acre-feet of water per year — about 5% of what Los Angeles uses each year.

The Los Angeles-based corporation is also seeking to build a new pipeline along a railroad right-of-way to transport water to the south.

Environmental groups have repeatedly filed lawsuits challenging the project.

Ileene Anderson, a senior scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity, called the Trump administration’s decision “a green light for environmental destruction.”

She said six of the proposed pumping stations slated to be built are in the habitat of desert tortoises, a species in decline.

“We’ve successfully fended off this project before and we’ll continue to fight to stop this zombie from coming back,” Anderson said.

In 2021, the Biden administration reversed a Trump administration decision that had cleared the way for Cadiz to pipe water across public land. In 2022, a federal judge scrapped the pipeline permit that the Trump administration had issued.

But during President Trump’s second term, the company has again made headway on its plans. In February, Cadiz announced that the federal Environmental Protection Agency had invited it to submit an application for a $194-million low-interest loan for the northern pipeline project.

The company said in May that it reached an agreement with the federal Bureau of Reclamation to provide funding for a review of its potential role in “augmenting water supplies” along the shrinking Colorado River.

The company has also been lobbying the Trump administration. The group Public Citizen said in a recent report that Cadiz, through its nonprofit Fenner Gap Mutual Water Co., enlisted former Interior Secretary David Bernhardt’s new lobbying firm, the Bernhardt Group, and has spent at least $330,000 on lobbying in 2025 and 2026.

Records show lobbyist Luke Johnson has repeatedly accompanied Kennedy at meetings with Interior Department officials.

“The extensive influence of David Bernhardt’s boutique lobbying firm on the agency he formerly led highlights how insider firms staffed with former Trump officials have grown in recent years,” said Alan Zibel, a research director with Public Citizen. He said Bernhardt and his lobbyists “have learned how to master influence-peddling in the anything-goes era of Trump 2.0.”

Earlier this month, an Arizona water agency announced it signed an initial “memorandum of understanding” agreement to buy up to 10,000 acre-feet of water per year from Cadiz’s Mojave Groundwater Bank. The Central Arizona Irrigation and Drainage District provides water to farmlands in Pinal County, where growers are dealing with water cutbacks.

The company said that for this to happen, it would need to build pipelines and reach deals to exchange water across state lines.

Members of California’s congressional delegation have raised concerns. In a recent letter to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, California Sens. Adam Schiff and Alex Padilla called for a thorough environmental review, saying that federal agencies and peer-reviewed scientific analyses have “warned of the significant and irreversible impacts that Cadiz’s project could have on federal lands and surrounding communities.”

Rep. Raul Ruiz (D-Indio) said in a letter to Burgum that he is concerned about the company’s long-standing effort to extract and export groundwater.

“The area I represent cannot afford to absorb the long-term costs of a commercially driven groundwater export scheme,” Ruiz said.

MINNEAPOLIS — Somali and Muslim communities in Minnesota are once again condemning a social media post by President Trump, alleging it communicates “anti-Muslim bigotry” toward children.

Trump posted a 14-second video clip showing children singing in graduation outfits, with girls also wearing hijabs. The children had sashes that read “kindergarten” on one side and “graduate” on the other. The video posted Monday appears to be from a Somali TV Minnesota news clip filming a ceremony at a charter school in St. Paul.

Included in Trump’s TruthSocial post is a screenshot of a caption from an X account that first posted the video in June. The caption said, “Public school in St. Paul, Minnesota. Every girl is in a hijab … in kindergarten.”

The post drew statements from the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the Somali American Partnership and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.

“By using his global platform to amplify anti-Muslim bigotry and target Muslim children at this elementary school, President Trump is putting lives at risk,” said a statement from the national and Minnesota chapter of CAIR.

Trump and other Republican leaders have repeatedly been accused of making xenophobic and racist attacks against Muslim Americans in recent months. Trump has specifically singled out the Somali community in Minnesota numerous times, calling them “garbage” in December.

“Somali Americans are an integral part of Minnesota’s past, present, and future,” the Somali American Partnership said in a statement. “Our children deserve to be recognized for their potential — not used to fuel fear, division, or anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant narratives.

“Those with public platforms have a responsibility to protect children, not endanger them.”

In a statement on X, Walz accused Trump of “attacking a group of kindergarteners because of the clothes they wore to school.”

The Somali American Partnership, a collection of Minnesota-based nonprofit organizations that assist the Somali community, plans to hold a news conference Wednesday to address “the growing climate of anti-Somali and anti-Muslim rhetoric.”

Members of the Muslim community in Minnesota have expressed fear for their safety numerous times in recent months, citing such rhetoric. In May, community members tied the rhetoric to a disturbance at a mosque in Lakeville, days after three people were killed at a San Diego mosque.

Last fall, Jaylani Hussein, the executive director of the Minnesota chapter of CAIR, said there had been more than 40 instances of vandalism, arson or other disturbances at mosques in the last three years, higher than any other state. Damage totaled more than $3 million, Hussein said.

He said at the time that Islamophobic comments directed at Muslim institutions in Minnesota were “completely on a new level.”

Hughes writes for the Minnesota Star Tribune.

On Friday, a group of retired judges stepped off a tour bus in a ritzy Michigan suburb after three days of barnstorming through corn fields, cities and coal towns in Ohio and Pennsylvania. They carried with them a message.

In courthouses and public squares, they marked the nation’s 250th anniversary with a dire warning: The rule of law in America is in grave danger. They delivered a similar message at a library in Grosse Pointe just outside Detroit — the last stop on an extraordinary tour to defend judicial independence and bolster trust in courts.

Americans’ confidence in the court system and democracy has dipped in recent years. The country is more polarized, and President Trump has repeatedly cast doubt on the fairness of the judicial system.

Some judges on the tour said in phone interviews this week that the United States was at a precipice.

“Looking back in history, we have teetered,” former Ohio Supreme Court Justice Michael Donnelly said. “This is a moment where we can decide to reinstill those beliefs that we are a country of laws and not of men.”

Judges step off the bench

The four-day tour through the Rust Belt is a sharp departure for a typically reserved and insular branch of government. Federal judges in particular largely limit their comments to the courtroom and written decisions, focusing on the facts of individual cases.

But that restraint is loosening amid a barrage of attacks by Trump and other White House officials, the administration’s rampant defiance of U.S. district court orders and its expansive view of executive power. Trump has called a district judge who ruled against one of his immigration moves “crooked” and suggested with no evidence that Supreme Court justices who struck down his tariffs were motivated by foreign interests.

More federal judges have recently begun talking about receiving death threats and profane messages, though they have not blamed Trump or any other officials. Some have blasted administration policies in sharply worded opinions that strayed beyond the legal dispute before them. Even U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. has weighed in.

In an appearance in March, Roberts said personal criticism of federal judges was dangerous and had to stop. The rare rebuke from the head of the nation’s top court came two days after Trump’s remark about a “crooked” judge, though Roberts didn’t mention Trump or anyone else by name.

The U.S. Marshals Service reported 564 threats against federal judges in the government fiscal year that ended in September, up from 509 the year before.

“I don’t want to say we have moved into an era of lawlessness, but it sometimes feels that way,” said former U.S. District Court Judge Victoria Roberts, who joined the bus tour in Michigan.

Timothy Lewis, another former federal judge on the tour, said his concerns about the politicization of the judicial branch reached a tipping point a decade ago, when Senate Republicans thwarted President Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court. Today, the rule of law is facing an “existential threat” from an ongoing breakdown of norms, according to Lewis, who spent seven years on the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

“I have fundamental concerns,” he said, “about where we are headed as a nation.”

Their route has been varied

The tour started Tuesday in the western Pennsylvania town of Greensburg — once the hub of a thriving coal industry that now lures visitors from nearby Pittsburgh for highland recreation and a historic downtown.

Judges mingled with customers at a coffee shop before speaking at the domed, ornate Westmoreland County Courthouse. Then it was off to Washington, also in western Pennsylvania. The town of 13,000 people, where about 15% of the population is Black, was a key stop on the Underground Railroad and a regional base for the civil rights movement.

From there, the bus headed west for events Wednesday in Columbus, Ohio, and the city of Wooster in Amish country. The judges stopped at a Cracker Barrel restaurant on the way. They spent Thursday in Cleveland before circling Lake Erie north to Michigan.

The two groups that planned the tour — dubbed “Justice in Motion” — say they were inspired by a similar campaign in Poland in 2021 after that country’s governing party took control of key judicial institutions.

Independent Polish judges visited scores of towns to promote the rule of law and teach voters about the country’s constitution. The U.S. tour also aims to educate people.

An effort to combat misinformation about what they do

Maureen O’Connor, a former chief justice of the Ohio Supreme Court, said judges risk ceding the narrative about their roles and motives to “voices of misinformation” if they don’t speak up.

A letter she received years ago, and still keeps, reminds her of that danger. The writer accused O’Connor, a Republican, of betraying her party when she repeatedly struck down Republican-drawn legislative maps as illegal gerrymanders. “There was just a basic misunderstanding of what my role was as a judge,” O’Connor said.

O’Connor is among roughly 30 judges, including two former federal judges and two current federal judges, who participated in the tour. One of the federal judges was nominated by a Democrat, the other three by Republicans. The state judges, some of whom are also still on the bench, represented both parties.

They were joined by former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett, former Ohio attorneys general and a few lawyers. The event was put together by the Democracy Rising Collaborative and Keep Our Republic, nonpartisan advocacy groups.

Organizers say they chose stops that would get the judges in front of as many people as possible to build connections and trust. The judges embraced that mission.

“The lifeblood of the judiciary is public confidence,” Donnelly, the former Ohio Supreme Court justice, said. “If you lose that, it’s very difficult to get it back.”

Thanawala writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — Crews are again draining the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool as President Trump’s problem-plagued efforts to revamp the waterway pushes well past his initial goal of having it ready by July 4 to mark the nation’s 250th birthday.

The president at first suggested his renovations would last a century. But within weeks of the project originally reaching completion last month, the water was beset by an algae bloom and pieces of the new coating appeared to be peeling off the bottom.

Trump has blamed the peeling on vandals, though critics allege it’s from shoddy repair work.

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, whose agency oversees the National Park Service, told conservative podcaster Katie Miller in an interview released earlier this week that the new round of draining was planned. He also said that the water might still contain debris from an extensive Independence Day fireworks display over the National Mall.

“Drain the water, clean up the fireworks stuff,” Burgum told Miller, who is the wife of deputy White House chief of staff Stephen Miller. “Repair the vandalism that was done. Fill it back up again.”

The work on the Reflecting Pool is just one of a number of projects Trump has spearheaded across the nation’s capital. Most prominently, he demolished the White House’s East Wing to build a $400-million ballroom and plans to build a towering arch between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery.

He initially announced his intentions to beautify the Reflecting Pool this spring, saying he wanted it completed before the nation’s 250th birthday celebrations.

Water was drained and Trump directed that the bottom be painted what he called “American flag blue.” In May, the president posted on his social media site of the pool: “The goal is to have it done, at this higher level, prior to July 4th — We are ahead of schedule!”

But problems began quickly after the initial work was finished. Trump blamed vandals, and court documents later showed that the National Park Service reported to the U.S. Park Police a June 9 incident in which a sharp knife or razor cut the pool’s new liner.

On Thursday, former Olympic canoe racer David Hearn pleaded not guilty in D.C. Superior Court to deliberately damaging the Reflecting Pool. Hearn has said he reached inside the pool to examine the peeled sealant and let go of a chunk when he was told to by a park worker.

His attorneys and other Trump administration critics have derided the case as an abuse of prosecutorial power and maintain he is being scapegoated for the poor job done fixing up the Reflecting Pool.

At least three other people have been charged in the same court with misdemeanors for allegedly removing pieces of paint from the Reflecting Pool, according to online court records. All three pleaded not guilty during their initial court appearances Wednesday.

The pool was closed for the Independence Day celebration, which featured what Trump said was the largest fireworks display in the world. The president had said that the pool would have to be drained anew as part of the new round of repairs.

Burgum has also said that the Trump administration won’t seek bids for the new rounds of repairs. He told CNN’s “State of the Union” last weekend: “We’ll use the same company because they did a fantastic job.”

Ohio-based Green Water Solutions, also known as Greenwater Services, was given a $1.7-million contract to install a water-purification system in the Reflecting Pool, while Virginia-based Atlantic Industrial Coatings was awarded $14.7 million to repaint and waterproof the pool’s concrete floor.

Democratic senators and House members are investigating the pool project, including seeking answers about how much taxpayer funding is involved.

Weissert writes for the Associated Press.

The dismissals leave the federal election body vacant as Trump presses for broader changes to US voting rules.

President Donald Trump has removed the last remaining members of an independent federal commission that helps support United States elections, leaving the bipartisan body with no sitting commissioners.

The White House confirmed the news on Friday, with only months to spare before November’s midterm elections.

“The President, and head of the Executive Branch, reserves the right to remove individuals that may not be totally aligned with the important task of securing America’s elections,” the White House said in a statement.

It added that the administration had been “working across all agencies and local partners to safeguard elections from fraud and abuse” in the run-up to the midterms.

The decision concerns the Election Assistance Commission (ECA), an independence office created by Congress in 2002 to support state and local election officials. Among its duties are creating non-binding election guidelines, certifying voting systems and maintaining the national mail voter registration form.

Four commissioners typically helm the agency. But on Thursday, the two Democratic appointees — Thomas Hicks and Benjamin Hovland — were fired by email, according to the news agency Reuters.

The lone remaining Republican, Christy McCormick, resigned. A fourth commissioner, Republican appointee Donald Palmer, had already left in April.

The commission is required by law to be made up evenly of Democrats and Republicans, and it was put in place to help after the disputed 2000 presidential election.

Trump’s decision to fire the remaining commissioners has further raised concerns that he may seek to intervene in the upcoming midterm elections, which will decide control of Congress for the rest of his term.

Under the US Constitution, election administration is the responsibility of the state, not the federal government.

The Election Assistance Commission had previously declined to implement part of Trump’s March 2025 executive order that called upon it to require proof of citizenship on the national mail voter registration form.

A federal judge later blocked that part of that executive order, ruling the president had exceeded his authority. Trump has appealed the ruling.

Voters are already required to affirm their citizenship before voting, as non-citizen voting is illegal in the US. Instances of non-citizen voting are rare.

The firings are the latest in a broader effort by the president to reshape how elections are conducted.

The Trump administration has pushed to tighten vote-by-mail rules and threatened to withhold some federal funding from states that refuse to adopt new election requirements. Many of those efforts have been challenged in court.

Earlier this week, the administration also sent out letters warning election officials that they could face prosecution if they fail to remove noncitizens from voter rolls.

Trump has defended the actions as necessary to protect election integrity. He has repeatedly claimed that his loss to Democrat Joe Biden in the 2020 election was the result of fraud, a claim not backed by evidence.

The latest firings come after the US Supreme Court last month expanded the president’s power to fire members of independent agencies, even without cause.

The court ruled six to three in Trump’s favour, arguing that “neither Congress nor the courts may saddle” the president with executive-branch leaders he does not approve of.

The president is allowed by law to appoint replacements to the commission. It is not yet clear whether Trump plans to nominate replacements or leave the seats vacant.

WASHINGTON — President Trump dismissed all remaining members of the bipartisan U.S. Elections Assistance Commission this week, his latest move to assert control over national elections in the final months before midterm voting.

The White House defended the move as justified by a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision handing the president greater authority to reshape independent government agencies, including by replacing appointed leaders.

Democrats and some independent elections experts blasted it as politically motivated, counter to the interests of voters and foolhardy with the November election so close.

“Purging commissioners just months before the midterm elections and further gutting support for our state and local elections officials is a blatant part of his plan to politicize our elections and enable more unlawful and dangerous election interference,” said Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), the top Democrat on the Senate Rules Committee, which oversees federal elections.

Padilla alleged the dismissals are an attempt by Trump “to dismantle yet another independent guardrail of our democracy designed to keep elections fair and secure.”

A White House official framed the dismissals in starkly different terms, saying the departing commissioners were “not totally aligned with the important task of securing America’s elections and ensuring every legal vote is counted.” It did not say when the president planned to appoint new commissioners.

The four-member commission was created by Congress in 2002 as part of the Help America Vote Act to help states improve their voting systems and voter access. By law, no more than two commissioners may belong to the same political party.

Historically, it has provided voluntary guidance and best practices for voting systems, and served as a sort of clearinghouse for election performance around the country — so that states and localities can learn from each other.

Since 2018, the panel has also disbursed more than $1 billion in election security grants, according to a report by the Bipartisan Policy Center. Those grants are then used to protect IT systems from foreign and domestic cyberattacks, update voting systems, ensure the accuracy of voter rolls and protect the integrity of ballots after they are cast.

Without leadership, the panel cannot take any official action until new members are nominated and confirmed by the Senate.

Benjamin W. Hovland, one of the Democratic commissioners removed by Trump, told NBC News that taking away a key federal agency designed to help state and local election administrators will have a negative effect on already strained elections officials.

“When you’re asking more and more of people without giving them the necessary resources, you know, mistakes happen,” he said.

California Secretary of State Shirley Weber, in a statement to The Times, said Trump was “injecting unnecessary chaos, confusion and instability into the very systems that Americans rely on to make their voices heard,” but that California “will not be intimidated or deterred” from maintaining elections “in which everyone can fairly and securely participate.”

Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office said on X that “Newsom’s election protection efforts become more important by the day” — a reference to his recent push for state legislation that would make it a felony in California for anyone to seize ballots before a vote has been certified.

Newsom had said Thursday that Trump’s efforts to seize control over elections represented a “five-alarm fire” that must be confronted.

“We will lose this country unless we are vigilant about what’s going on in terms of election security,” he said.

Trump’s dismantling of the commission comes as he wages a much broader campaign to rewrite voting rules. He has sought to place new restrictions on mail ballots, to enhance voter ID and proof of citizenship requirements for voters, to subject state voter rolls to federal oversight and purges, and to assert federal control over how and whether the U.S. Postal Service delivers mail ballots.

Much of that agenda, pushed through executive orders and other administrative actions, has been stymied by the courts, while stalling out in Congress, where it lacks support.

Whether Trump’s move to dismantle and reconstitute the commission will prove an effective path to instituting his election agenda — or will face its own court challenges — remains unclear, experts said.

Rick Hasen, an election law expert and director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project at UCLA Law, wrote that Trump could try to illegally direct the commission to “do his bidding” by amending the federal voter registration form to require proof of citizenship.

“If he tries anything like this, it will be high profile and very important litigation that will end up at the Supreme Court on the emergency docket over the summer,” Hasen wrote.

Michael Waldman, president and chief executive of the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law, said in a statement that Trump’s terminations were “deeply concerning” in light of his “relentless efforts to try to interfere in elections.”

But he also said that the “guardrails” Congress put on the commission remain intact, require it to be made up of a bipartisan group and preclude Trump from directing it to enforce his voting agenda.

Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) said Trump’s firing of the commissioners was part of a broader effort by the president to “sow distrust in our voting system so he can contest the results if they are not to his liking.”

Kim Alexander, president of the California Voter Foundation, said the very name of the commission makes it clear that it was “designed to assist states and localities, not dictate what states and localities must do” with elections. She said California has “the most robust standards” for elections in the country, which won’t change with the removal of the commissioners.

Still, she said word of the firings rocketed around a conference of county elections officials in San Diego on Thursday — with some wondering whether the dismissals would threaten federal funding for election administration moving forward, and others lamenting the loss of the current commissioners’ deep experience.

Dean Logan, head of the L.A. County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk’s office, said in a statement to The Times that “any sudden change to the support structure for elections in the middle of an election cycle is concerning,” but that California “has a strong local and state foundation for election administration and voting systems support, and that will minimize any potential disruption caused by this action.”

In recent months, Trump has leveraged federal agencies to overhaul the nation’s voting rules in ways no previous president has attempted. He has repeatedly pressured Republican lawmakers to pass a federal law that would require voters to provide proof of citizenship when they register, show identification when casting a ballot and force states to send voter data to the Department of Homeland Security.

Republican leaders have said the proposed SAVE America Act does not have enough votes to pass in the Senate. The GOP resistance has angered Trump, who on Friday said he was refusing to sign a bipartisan housing bill in protest.

The housing bill, which Trump called a “yawn” this month, would become law at midnight Friday without Trump’s signature.

WASHINGTON — President Trump will let the bipartisan housing bill approved by Congress become law without his signature, saying Friday that he was refusing to put his name on it because of the little progress made in passing a strict voter ID bill that he has been pushing.

“I will not sign the Housing Bill, which has been fully approved by Congress and sent to the White House, in PROTEST over the fact that the United States Senate is not capable of passing THE SAVE AMERICA ACT,” Trump posted on social media.

Trump had 10 days until the Friday deadline to sign the bill, issue a veto, or allow the measure to take effect without his signature. He has chosen to let the measure become law without his express approval, undercutting his administration’s claims that he considers it a priority to combat inflation.

Trump’s rejection of the bipartisan housing legislation exacerbates tensions with his own party in a midterm election year and cuts short their efforts to address a key voter concern about rising costs. His post comes more than a week after he canceled plans to sign the bipartisan legislation, announcing he was using it as leverage in his push for a strict voter ID bill.

The 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act aims to lower the cost of housing and spur more home construction. It’s the broadest federal effort in decades to address America’s housing affordability problems, as state and local regulations have made it difficult to build in many of the communities that are also sources of job growth and economic opportunity. White House economists estimated earlier this year a national shortage of 10 million homes and the bill could help to close a portion of that gap.

But Trump called the bill “a yawn” and “so unimportant” compared to legislation that would require proof of citizenship for all voters.

He surprised Republican lawmakers on June 24, when, shortly before a planned signing ceremony at the Capitol, he announced he would not approve the bill until lawmakers first passed the voting legislation.

That bill, the SAVE America Act, doesn’t have enough Republican support to pass.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said after submitting the housing bill to the White House that he told Trump he should get the “fattest black marker you have, and sign your name really big on that.”

“I hope he does sign it,” Johnson told reporters at the time. “If he doesn’t, it’s still law. We’ll still celebrate it.”

He said he also understood Trump was trying to make a point that the elections bill is the top priority. “And I think he’s making it very effectively,” Johnson said.

Still, Trump’s decision not to sign the bill gave Democrats an opening to criticize him on the issue of affordability.

“His priorities couldn’t be clearer: higher cost for families and more power for himself,” Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said on X.

The housing bill passed the Senate on an 85-5 vote and the House approved it with an 358-32 vote.

That legislation seeks to cut federal housing rules, slim-down environmental reviews, make it faster to build homes and limit the ability of corporations to buy single-family homes.

The bill does not address all of the causes of the country’s housing woes, including a shortage of construction workers, climbing insurance costs and wages that have not risen fast enough for renters and buyers.

But the bill has drawn support from the real estate industry and housing advocates.

The U.S. housing market has been a driver of recent affordability challenges as skyrocketing prices have kept aspiring buyers out of the market. The National Association of Realtors said Thursday that the median sales price increased 1.8% in June from a year earlier to $440,600, an all-time high on data going back to 1999.

Price and Boak write for the Associated Press. AP reporter Kevin Freking contributed to this report.

We have seen several scenes of relatives of victims of the earthquakes telling soldiers they are not helping, or even forcing them and police officers to return or destroy the goods and money they were caught looting in the ruins. Rather than the return of freedom of speech with Maduro’s capture, what we have witnessed in La Guaira is the crisp, absolute ire of someone who already lost everything, someone who is living the ultimate experience of struggling to find the body of a loved one to bury them in a cemetery instead of smelling them decompose under the rubble of a building.  

But we hadn’t seen something like this: a woman who lost a daughter and a home walking through a security detail and screaming in the face of Nicolás Maduro Guerra, a local lawmaker and son of the imprisoned dictator.

PROVO, Utah — Lawyers for the man accused of killing conservative activist Charlie Kirk planned to call a final witness Friday as they try to raise doubts about the prosecution’s case before it can go to trial.

A Utah judge is deciding whether prosecutors have enough evidence to put Tyler Robinson on trial on a charge of aggravated murder. Kirk, 31, was killed as he spoke to a crowd of thousands at Utah Valley University on Sept. 10.

One of Robinson’s attorneys, Michael Burt, tried to inject uncertainty into the case Thursday by challenging the reliability of ballistics tests on a bullet fragment recovered from Kirk’s body.

Authorities sought to tie the fragment to the suspected murder weapon, but the results were inconclusive.

“Saying anything but inconclusive was inappropriate,” said Samantha Karner with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

Earlier in the week, Robinson’s team questioned the reliability of DNA evidence that investigators said linked Robinson to the scene. Experts say the science behind DNA testing is sound.

Robinson has not entered a plea. He turned himself in a day after the fatal shooting of Kirk, a close ally of President Trump credited with helping galvanize young voters for the Republican in the 2024 election.

At the request of Kirk’s family, State District Judge Tony Graf said he would allow to be shown inside the courtroom an altered version of campus surveillance video that prosecutors said shows Robinson crawling out to a rooftop “sniper’s perch” before shooting Kirk.

The unaltered video was previously shown. The altered version includes footage that zooms in on a figure that prosecutors said was Robinson and red marks that were added to the video.

The weeklong preliminary hearing ends Friday, but a decision won’t come until after Sept. 1, when Graf scheduled oral arguments in the matter.

Prosecutors on Thursday aired portions of a recorded interview with Robinson’s roommate, Lance Twiggs. The day after Kirk was shot in the neck, Robinson allegedly told Twiggs “he wishes he hadn’t done it,” a recording played in court revealed.

Later that same day — and only about an hour before turning himself in — Robinson posted “it was me at UVU yesterday,” in a chat room on the Discord social media platform, according to investigators and messages shown by prosecutors.

Defense attorneys unsuccessfully fought the public release of the statements from Twiggs and the chat room messages. They argued prosecutors would characterize the material as a confession, undermining Robinson’s right to a fair trial.

Prosecutors contend the shooting endangered others at Kirk’s campus event — an aggravating circumstance that could make the crime punishable by death under Utah law. Robinson also faces possible sentence enhancements based on claims by prosecutors that he targeted Kirk because of his political views.

Twiggs said in the April interview with prosecutors and investigators that Robinson sometimes talked about politics, including Trump. But Twiggs said he never heard Robinson talk about Kirk before the shooting. The defendant also did not talk much about gender issues or LGBTQ rights, Twiggs said.

The weeklong preliminary hearing has attracted intense media coverage and spectators who have angled for one of the 14 seats in the courtroom that are reserved for the public.

People have lined up early — sometimes sleeping there overnight — in hopes of getting in.

Schoenbaum and Brown write for the Associated Press. Brown reported from Billings, Montana.

The housing legislation will become US law at midnight with or without President Donald Trump’s signature.

United States President Donald Trump says he will not sign a bipartisan housing affordability bill in protest at the Senate not passing the controversial SAVE America Act voting legislation.

In a post on Truth Social on Friday, Trump said he would not support signing the unrelated housing bill, which would speed up environmental reviews for construction projects, expedite development, and limit the number of single-family homes institutional investors can buy.

The bill will become law with or without the president’s signature. Once a bill reaches the president’s desk, the officeholder has 10 days to either sign it into law or veto the legislation. If he does neither, it becomes law at midnight.

House Speaker Mike Johnson said the president is unlikely to issue a last-minute veto.

The housing legislation, known as the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, which Trump called a “yawn” on June 29, was a rare moment of bipartisan agreement in a starkly divided US Congress. It passed the Senate by a vote of 85-5 and the House by a vote of 358-2.

The provisions included in the legislation are popular. A Bipartisan Policy Center poll suggested that 70 percent of Americans support banning institutional investors that own more than 350 homes from buying additional single-family homes.

The legislation would also establish incentive programmes for communities to build more housing and encourage the development of modular homes. It also includes provisions that would make it easier for communities to convert underutilised land into residential housing.

Housing remains a major pressure on Americans, with 79 percent saying the cost of housing is either “an extremely important” or “very important” issue, according to the Bipartisan Policy Center.

The US median home price hit a record $440,600 in June, while mortgage rates remain elevated. The average 30-year fixed mortgage rate is currently at 6.49 percent.

Voting act pressures

Trump cancelled the original signing ceremony for the housing legislation on June 24 in an effort to pressure Republicans to pass the SAVE America Act. Among its provisions, the bill would require proof of citizenship to register to vote and create a national voter database using state records.

It would also impose new limitations on mail-in voting, even though roughly one-quarter of Republicans voted by mail in the 2024 presidential election, according to an MIT survey.

A version of the voting legislation passed the House but failed to clear the Senate’s 60-vote filibuster threshold.

Under current election law, states administer elections, not the federal government.

The White House did not respond to Al Jazeera’s request for comment.

Fox News declined to broadcast an ad Sunday about the violence that law-enforcement members faced as they tried to stop the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, according to the creators of the political commercial.

“We couldn’t have fathomed in our wildest imaginations that even a Fox News would reject an ad that simply condemns the insurrection, and condemns people who support the insurrection,” said Ben Meiselas, one of the co-founders of MeidasTouch, the liberal Political Action Committee that created the 60-second ad. “What Fox has really become is a fascist echo chamber gatekeeper for their base.”

Broadcast and cable networks have discretion in refusing to air ads by political campaigns and advocacy groups. A Fox News spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment on Saturday.

Meiselas and his two brothers, Brett and Jordan, said they placed the ad buy as they have in the past, but were informed over the phone on Friday that the cable network would not air the ad and were not given a reason. Fox News has never before refused to air one of their ads without offering suggestions for edits, they said.

The commercial features law-enforcement officers testifying in Congress and speaking to the media about their experiences during the insurrection, including getting sprayed with bear mace, engaging in hand-to-hand combat and being called “traitors.”

“It’s been very difficult seeing elected officials and other individuals whitewash the events of that day or downplay what happened,” DC Metropolitan Police Officer Michael Fanone says in a clip from a CNN interview as images of House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and other GOP elected officials are shown on screen.

The ad ends with block letters that say” “The GOP Betrayed America. We Will Never Forget.”

The ad has gone viral on social media, racking up more than 1 million views on Twitter.

Fox News is the target of multibillion-dollar defamation lawsuits by voting system and software makers over its coverage of the integrity of the 2020 presidential election. Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic accused Fox News of irresponsibly broadcasting falsehoods that their technology and equipment were used to rig the election. The fraud claims are among the factors that led to the insurrection as lawmakers were voting to certify the election results.

Fanone, who suffered a heart attack after rioters beat him with a flagpole and repeatedly stunned with him with his Taser gun on Jan. 6, is among the law-enforcement members who have been vocal critics of Republican lawmakers who blocked the creation of a commission to study what happened that day.

The House of Representatives approved a plan to create a bipartisan commission to investigate the insurrection on a 252-175 vote; but in the Senate, it received 54 votes in late May, six shy of the number required to bring the proposal up for debate.

A spokeswoman for President Biden on Thursday ruled out creating a presidential commission to study the matter, aligning the White House with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in the belief that such an inquiry needed to be instigated by Congress.

MeidasTouch booked nearly $185,000 of air time to play the ad on Fox News between June 6 and 15, starting with Chris Wallace’s Sunday show and continuing for seven days on “Fox and Friends” as well as two spots on daytime programs and one more on Wallace’s show next weekend.

Brett Meiselas noted that many shows on the network routinely talk about “cancel culture.”

“The fact they want to cancel and censor the voices of law enforcement who bravely guarded the Capitol. It’s the height of hypocrisy, and it’s un-American,” he said.

MeidasTouch is a liberal political action committee formed in 2020 by the three brothers, who have notable ties to Hollywood. Their father is a prominent attorney who represents musicians including Lady Gaga.

Ben Meiselas is a lawyer whose clients include former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick. Brett Meiselas was an editor on Ellen DeGeneres’ talk show. Jordan Meiselas, a former marketer, is now working full time on the PAC.

The PAC made anti-Trump videos during the 2020 presidential race and supported Democrats during the special Georgia Senate races earlier this year. The PAC did not receive as much attention as anti-Trump groups such as the Lincoln Project; it spent about $4.2 million last year.

President Trump has ousted members of a bipartisan federal election commission that resisted his efforts to require would-be voters to document their U.S. citizenship before registering.

The White House on Friday confirmed the executive action against members of the Election Assistance Commission, which distributes federal grants to states, oversees the testing of voting systems and maintains the national voter registration forms.

It’s the latest move in the Republican president’s effort to expand White House influence over how U.S. elections are conducted and comes after a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling that gave the president new personnel authority to fire members of independent agency boards.

“The President, and head of the Executive Branch, reserves the right to remove individuals that may not be totally aligned with the important task of securing America’s elections and ensuring every legal vote is counted. The Slaughter decision gives the President precedence to do so,” said a White House statement to AP.

The president removed the commission’s two Democratic members, Thomas Hicks and Benjamin Hovland. The panel’s Republican member, Christy McCormick resigned. Former Republican commissioner Donald Palmer already had left his post voluntarily earlier this year.

The changes were first reported by VoteBeat, a news outlet that covers elections and voting across the U.S.

While the White House statement did not offer a specific reason for Trump’s action, the commission has previously declined to change the national voter registration form to require documentation of an applicant’s U.S. citizenship, as Trump’s urged in a sweeping March 2025 executive order on U.S. elections. A federal judge blocked the order, ruling it exceeds the president’s authority since the U.S. Constitution grants authority over elections management and oversight to Congress and the states. The administration has indicated it will appeal.

It was not clear whether Trump planned to nominate new members immediately or leave the positions vacant — a move that, months ahead of midterm elections, could prevent the agency from distributing new grants to state or local elections offices and, at the least, complicate its role in overseeing testing and certification of voting systems around the country.

“The Administration from the start has been working across all agencies and local partners to safeguard elections from fraud and abuse, and investing in a strong infrastructure to sustain that mission especially in the midterm elections,” the White House said.

Congress created the four-member commission as part of the Help America Vote Act, a bipartisan law signed by Republican President George W. Bush in 2002. The act requires the commission to include two Democrats and two Republicans, nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate. Hicks and McCormick were appointed by President Barack Obama. Trump appointed Hovland during his first presidency.

According to VoteBeat, Hicks and Hovland were notified of their removal by an email signed by Morgan DeWitt Snow, the deputy director of presidential personnel in the Executive Office of the President.

Barrow writes for the Associated Press.

July 10 (UPI) — A bipartisan housing bill that swept the House and Senate is set to become law at midnight Friday if President Donald Trump doesn’t veto it, and he said Friday morning on social media that he won’t sign it.

The 21st Century Road to Housing Act was passed on June 29 by a wide margin of Democrats and Republicans in both chambers of Congress, but the president canceled a signing ceremony at the last minute and said he wouldn’t sign it until Congress passed Trump’s pet project, the SAVE America Act, which they don’t have the support to do.

On Friday, he posted on Truth Social that he refuses to sign it.

“I will not sign the Housing Bill, which has been fully approved by Congress and sent to the White House, in PROTEST over the fact that the United States Senate is not capable of passing THE SAVE AMERICA ACT, which is polling at 97% with the Republican Party, and very high with the non-politician Dumocrats,” he wrote.

He didn’t mention a veto, but it’s still a possibility.

“The Act states, quite simply, that to Vote a person must show PHOTO VOTER I.D., PROOF OF CITIZENSHIP, AND THAT THERE WILL BE NO MORE CROOKED, CORRUPT, & DESTABILIZING MAIL-IN BALLOTS (EXCEPTIONS for Military, Disabled, Illness, and Travel!). THE SAVE AMERICA ACT’S non-passage is CRAZY, and a serious threat to any politician who votes against it! If the Dumocrats, or any RINO (or worse!) working with them, do not allow a positive Vote on SAVE AMERICA, TERMINATE THE FILIBUSTER, and pass this, and every other Bill that true Republicans have ever dreamt of (In addition to the upcoming Budget BOMB and the 1929 catastrophic style DEBT CEILING BILL!). The Dumocrats will TERMINATE THE FILIBUSTER, if and when they ever get the chance to do so, in their very first hour – And I will no longer be able to call them Dumocrats again! The title of DUMB will revert to the Republicans who allowed this horrible calamity to happen to our Party, and our Nation, itself! MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!” he wrote.

If the president vetoes the bill, Congress will likely have the votes to override it. It would need a two-thirds majority to pass the override in the House and Senate.

“This is the exact kind of bill they want to point to and say Republicans are working on issues that their voters care about, and Democrats would want the same,” Julian Zelizer, a history and public affairs professor at Princeton University, told The Washington Post. “That’s not the signal that the administration is sending.”

Since the bill passed and Trump refused to sign it, he has called it “a yawn.”

“To me, compared to the SAVE America Act, everything is a big yawn,” he said.

The SAVE Act is an election bill that would require voters to prove they are citizens when registering to vote. Critics argue that it would disenfranchise too many voters because of the types of proof it would require.

The housing bill includes measures that modernize building standards, encourage renovating older homes, encourage communities to build more housing with funding and grant programs, local governments to reform restrictive zoning policies around building housing and effectively ban private equity from buying up single-family homes. Critics of the bill say it doesn’t go far enough, but they acknowledge it’s a good first step.

It’s the first bipartisan measure that’s passed this Congress.

Some Democrats have been publicly pushing the president to sign the bill.

“It’s been sitting on President Trump’s desk long enough. Sign the bill,” Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., posted on X.

Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., said on X, “Republicans and Democrats worked together to pass a bill to build more housing and stop hedge funds from buying up single-family homes, but Trump is holding it hostage. He needs to stop playing games and sign the bill so more Americans can finally afford homes.”