PORTLAND, Maine — The Democratic primary to take on Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine was shaken up Wednesday by the decision of one candidate to drop out and join a different race with similarly high stakes.
In a move that could have implications for the closely divided U.S. House as well as the Senate, Jordan Wood, a onetime chief of staff to former Rep. Katie Porter, withdrew from the Senate race to instead seek the congressional seat representing Maine’s 2nd District, where incumbent Democratic Rep. Jared Golden recently announced he will not seek another term.
That leaves Gov. Janet Mills, a party mainstay, and Graham Platner, an oyster farmer who has gained attention for his progressive views and provocative online posts, as the top Democratic challengers to Collins.
Wood’s announcement sets up a potential Democratic congressional primary in the key 2nd District with former Secretary of State Matt Dunlap. The leading Republican candidate for the House seat is former Gov. Paul LePage.
“After many conversations with my family and voters in Maine’s 2nd Congressional District, I’ve decided to step up and to be the fighter for the district where I was born and raised,” Wood said in a statement Wednesday.
Maine’s upcoming 2nd District and Senate races are both highly competitive and could help shape the balance of power in Congress. Collins is the sole Republican senator in New England, and toppling her has long been a goal of the Democratic Party. Republicans, meanwhile, have prioritized winning back the 2nd District, where President Trump is popular.
Dunlap announced his bid for the 2nd District weeks before Golden’s announcement that he is vacating. Dunlap said in a statement Wednesday that Wood entering the race “doesn’t change our campaign or our commitment” and that he’s “in this to fight for the people of Maine.”
LePage served as governor from 2011 to 2019. He announced his bid for Congress months ago. Brent Littlefield, a LePage spokesperson, said in a statement that Wood is too liberal for the 2nd District.
“Mainers will pick a job creator, Paul LePage, who will grow the economy and push back on high prices,” Littlefield said.
Two other one-time Democratic candidates for the Senate seat, brewery owner Dan Kleban and former Air Force civilian contractor Daira Smith-Rodriguez, recently dropped out and endorsed Mills. A handful of other Democratic hopefuls remain, though only Mills and Platner are campaigning aggressively.
NEW YORK — John F. Kennedy’s grandson Jack Schlossberg is running for the U.S. House next year, announcing Tuesday that he’s seeking a congressional seat in New York City that will be vacated by longtime Democratic Rep. Jerry Nadler.
Schlossberg, 32, is a sardonic social media personality with a large following and storied political roots. In a video, he said the district covering a core chunk of Manhattan “should have a representative who can harness the creativity, energy and drive of this district and translate that into political power in Washington.”
Nadler, who is serving his 17th term in Congress, announced in September that he will not run for reelection next year after decades in office, suggesting to The New York Times that a younger Democratic lawmaker in his seat “can maybe do better, can maybe help us more.”
Several possible successors have emerged for the solidly Democratic district, including Micah Lasher, a former aide to Nadler and current New York state lawmaker with deep experience in government. The district stretches from Union Square to the top of Central Park, including the wealthy Upper East Side and Upper West Side neighborhoods.
In his campaign video, Schlossberg took aim at President Trump and Republican governance in Washington, saying “It’s a crisis at every level.”
“We deserve better, and we can do better, and it starts with the Democratic Party winning back control of the House of Representatives,” he said.
Schlossberg has cultivated his online presence with frequent posts weighing in on national political issues, including taking aim at his cousin Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Trump administration’s health and human services secretary who’s been a vocal vaccine skeptic.
Last month, Schlossberg posted on Instagram an image of a Halloween costume for “MAHA Man,” in reference to Kennedy’s Make America Healthy Again message and described it as including such things as measles.
A group of Venezuelans hold signs against U.S. military intervention during a protest outside the U.S. Embassy in Caracas, Venezuela, on October 27. The embassy has been closed since 2019, when Nicolas Maduro announced the break of diplomatic relations with the United States. File Photo by Ronald Rena/EPA
Nov. 12 (UPI) — President Nicolás Maduro announced activation of a “higher phase” of the Independence Plan 200, a program of joint civilian-military exercises designed to test Venezuela’s ability to respond to external threats.
The deployment includes the Bolivarian National Armed Forces, or FANB, the Bolivarian Militia and police units across all states, with a focus on Apure, Cojedes, Carabobo and the capital region, TeleSURTV reported.
The measure, announced Tuesday by Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino, aims to “strengthen territorial defense and enhance operational readiness” amid rising geopolitical tensions in the Caribbean.
Activation of this “higher phase” coincides with the arrival of the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford in the region under the U.S. Southern Command.
The U.S. Department of Defense said the deployment is part of an operation aimed at “disrupting narcotics trafficking and dismantling transnational criminal organizations” operating in the region. However, the Venezuelan government has interpreted the move as a “provocation.”
According to Venezuela’s Defense Ministry, the new stage of the Independence Plan 200 includes command, control and communications exercises, along with simultaneous air, land, naval and river operations, the newspaper Ámbito reported.
The government described it as an “advanced phase” of the plan launched in September, aimed at ensuring “active resistance and permanent defense” against what it calls pressure and maneuvers by the United States.
Alongside the heightened military alert, the government enacted the Law of the Command for the Comprehensive Defense of the Nation, approved days earlier by the National Assembly.
The law establishes a network of comprehensive defense commands at the national, regional and municipal levels to coordinate the armed forces, civilian institutions and citizens in the “protection of sovereignty and peace.”
Maduro signed the law at the Miraflores Palace on Wednesday, invoking Article 326 of the Constitution, which defines the people’s shared responsibility in national defense. The president said he was prepared to confront any threat and ordered the immediate creation of the new commands.
“The order must be activated so that the comprehensive defense commands are established, structured and begin their work, to be prepared, if we as a republic and as a people are called to take up armed struggle to defend this sacred legacy of the liberators, to be ready to win, to triumph through patriotism and courage,” Maduro said, according to a report by NTN24.
These groups will be led by the Strategic Operational Command of the Armed Forces, which will oversee the integration, planning, coordination, supervision and control of the country’s defense organizations in support of military operations nationwide.
The government sees the legislation as a step toward strengthening its civilian-military defense doctrine, while analysts and opposition figures warn it could expand the militarization of the country and the political role of the armed forces.
WASHINGTON — The House is scheduled to be back in session Wednesday with a vote expected in the evening on a spending package that, if approved and signed by President Trump, will end the longest government shutdown in U.S. history.
The legislation, which the Senate passed Monday night, is expected to narrowly pass the House, where Republicans hold a slim majority. House Democrats are largely anticipated to oppose the deal, which does not include a core demand: an extension to Affordable Care Act healthcare tax credits that are set to expire at the end of the year.
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said he believes the deal is poised to pass by the end of the day.
“We believe the long national nightmare will be over tonight,” Johnson told reporters in Washington. “It was completely and utterly foolish and pointless.”
House Democrats were scheduled to meet ahead of the floor vote to discuss their vote. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said Tuesday night that there is a “strong expectation” that Democrats will be “strongly opposed” to the shutdown deal when it comes to final vote.
If the tax credits lapse, premiums will more than double on average for more than 20 million Americans who use the healthcare marketplace, according to independent analysts at the research firm KFF.
The spending bill, if approved, will fund the government through Jan. 30 and reinstate federal workers who were laid off during the shutdown. It will also guarantee back pay for federal employees who were furloughed or who were working without pay during the budget impasse.
Passage of the bill would mark a crucial moment on the 43rd day of the shutdown, which left thousands of federal workers without pay, millions of Americans uncertain on whether they would receive food assistance and travelers facing delays at airports across the country.
A vote is expected to begin after 4 p.m. EST — after Johnson swears in Adelita Grijalva (D-Ariz.), who was elected seven weeks ago. Once sworn in, Grijalva is set to become the final vote needed to force a floor vote on a petition demanding the Trump administration release files connected to Jeffrey Epstein.
The swearing-in ceremony will soon lay the groundwork for a House vote that Trump has long tried to avoid. It would come as the Epstein saga was reignited on Wednesday morning when Democrats on the House Oversight Committee released new emails in which the late sex trafficker said Trump “knew about the girls” that he was victimizing.
The emails are part of a trove of documents from Epstein’s estate released to the committee.
He’s loud, he’s obnoxious and, in a very short time, he’s broken unprecedented ground with his smash-face, turn-it-to-11 approach to the vice presidency. Unlike most White House understudies, who effectively disappear like a protected witness, Vance has become the highest-profile, most pugnacious politician in America who is not named Donald J. Trump.
It’s quite the contrast with his predecessor.
Kamala Harris made her own kind of history, as the first woman, first Black person and first Asian American to serve as vice president. As such, she entered office bearing great — and vastly unrealistic — expectations about her prominence and the public role she would play in the Biden administration. When Harris acted the way that vice presidents normally do — subservient, self-effacing, careful never to poach the spotlight from the chief executive — it was seen as a failing.
Why is that? Because that’s how President Trump wants it.
“Rule No.1 about the vice presidency is that vice presidents are only as active as their presidents want them to be,” said Jody Baumgartner, an East Carolina University expert on the office. “They themselves are irrelevant.”
Consider Trump’s first vice president, Mike Pence, who had the presence and pizzazz of day-old mashed potatoes.
“He was not a very powerful vice president, but that’s because Donald Trump didn’t want him to be,” said Christopher Devine, a University of Dayton professor who’s published four books on the vice presidency. “He wanted him to have very little influence and to be more of a background figure, to kind of reassure quietly the conservatives of the party that Trump was on the right track. With JD Vance, I think he wants him to be a very active, visible figure.”
There were other circumstances that kept Harris under wraps, particularly in the early part of Biden’s presidency.
One was the COVID-19 lockdown. “It meant she wasn’t traveling. She wasn’t doing public events,” said Joel K. Goldstein, another author and expert on the vice presidency. “A lot of stuff was being done virtually and so that tended to be constraining.”
The Democrats’ narrow control of the Senate also required Harris to stick close to Washington so she could cast a number of tie-breaking votes. (Under the Constitution, the vice president provides the deciding vote when the Senate is equally divided. Harris set a record in the third year of her vice presidency for casting the most tie-breakers in history.)
The personality of their bosses also explains why Harris and Vance approached the vice presidency in different ways.
Biden had spent nearly half a century in Washington, as a senator and vice president under Barack Obama. He was, foremost, a creature of the legislative process and saw Harris, who’d served nearly two decades in elected office, as a (junior) partner in governing.
Ohio’s senator had served barely 18 months in his one and only political position when Trump chose Vance as his running mate. He’d “really made his mark as a media and cultural figure,” Devine noted, with Vance’s memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy,” regarded as a kind of Rosetta Stone for the anger and resentment that fueled the MAGA movement.
Trump “wanted someone who was going to be aggressive in advancing the MAGA narrative,” Devine said, “being very present in media, including in some newer media spaces, on podcasts, social media. Vance was someone who could hammer home Trump’s message every day.”
The contrast continued once Harris and Vance took office.
Trump has treated Vance as a sort of heat-seeking rhetorical missile, turning him loose against his critics and acting as though the presidential campaign never ended.
Vance seems gladly submissive. Harris, who was her own boss for nearly two decades, had a hard time adjusting as Biden’s No. 2.
“Vance is very effective at playing the role of backup singer who gets to have a solo from time to time,” said Jamal Simmons, who spent a year as Harris’ vice presidential communications chief. “I don’t think Kamala Harris was ever as comfortable in the role as Vance has proven himself to be.”
Will Vance’s pugilistic approach pay off in 2028? It’s way too soon to say. Turning the conventions of the vice presidency to a shambles, the way Trump did with the presidency, has delighted many in the Republican base. But polls show Vance, like Trump, is deeply unpopular with a great number of voters.
As for Harris, all she can do is look on from her exile in Brentwood, pondering what might have been.
Jose Antonio Kast, the Republican Party’s candidate for the Chilean presidency, speaks during a campaign closing event in Santiago, Chile, on Tuesday. Photo by Ailen Diaz/EPA
SANTIAGO, Chile, Nov. 12 (UPI) — Chileans are preparing to vote in Sunday’s presidential election with eight candidates and marked by uncertainty.
For the first time in more than a decade, voting will be compulsory, greatly expanding the electorate and potentially reshaping a race that, according to recent polls, remains tight between the government’s candidate, the communist Jeannette Jara, and far-right leader José Antonio Kast.
Chilean President Gabriel Boric is not eligible for re-election because the constitution prohibits consecutive four-year terms.
An expected surge in voter turnout — after years of sustained abstention — adds an unpredictable element to the outcome and will test the parties’ ability to mobilize a broader and more diverse electorate.
René Jara, a political science professor at the University of Santiago, told UPI it will be an unprecedented election. As the first with compulsory voting in many years for more than 15 million registered voters, “there could be quite a few surprises,” he said.
“The expansion of the potential electorate hides several forms of silent voting, representing voices that in the past did not regularly take part in elections.”
Chilean law prohibits the publication of polls during the 15 days before an election. According to the latest surveys, Jara was leading in voter preference, but not by enough to avoid a runoff.
Her level of support also most likely would fall short of securing victory in the second round, scheduled for Dec. 14.
The same polls indicate that any opposition candidate who advances to the runoff most likely would win the presidency.
The right enters the election with three strong contenders. Kast, leader of the Republican Party, appears to have the best chance to win. Evelyn Matthei, a former minister under President Sebastián Piñera, represents the traditional right, and libertarian Johannes Kaiser has emerged as one of the race’s biggest surprises.
According to projections, Jara would lose to Kast in a runoff by about 12 points (36% to 48%), by 10 points to Matthei (33% to 46%), and by five points to Kaiser.
“This election is significant because of the fragmentation of Chile’s right wing. Traditionally, it was a bloc that faced elections in a unified way,” political scientist Hernán Campos, of Diego Portales University’s School of Political Science, told UPI.
He said that since the 2017 presidential election, and especially after 2021, increasingly extreme tendencies have taken root within the opposition.
Although Chile’s pre-election polling ban has prevents measuring public opinion after the close of the campaigns and the candidates’ performance in the final debates, Campos said he believes it is highly likely that the right will win the presidency.
He also sees the possibility that this bloc could secure a majority in the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate.
“This would open the door for them to carry out deeper reforms that could transform aspects of Chile’s institutions and public policy orientations that have defined the country’s political life over the past 20 years,” Campos said.
Public debate during the campaign centered on three main issues: security, migration and the economy.
Pressure to curb crime and control the northern border has co-existed with concern over employment, inflation and pensions, while deeper issues such as gender equality, low birth rates and historical memory continue to divide the country.
In this context, the return of compulsory voting could reshape Chile’s political landscape by bringing back to the polls voters who have long been absent from the democratic process.
Donald Trump “spent hours at my house” and “knew about the girls,” Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced financier accused of orchestrating sex trafficking of young girls, wrote in private emails House Democrats released Wednesday.
“Of course he knew about the girls,” Epstein said of Trump in an email to author and journalist Michael Wolff in early 2019, when Trump was nearing the end of his first term as President.
After months of political bickering over the well-connected sex offender’s documents, dubbed “the Epstein files,” Democrats on the House Oversight Committee publicly released some of Epstein’s emails to Wolff and Epstein’s longtime associate Ghislaine Maxwell, who was convicted of sex trafficking after Epstein’s death.
The emails are just a small part of a collection of 23,000 documents Epstein’s estate released to the committee and are sure to revive questions about what the president knew about Epstein’s sexual misconduct with girls and young women.
Trump has denied knowing anything about Epstein’s crimes and no investigation has tied Trump to them.
“The more Donald Trump tries to cover up the Epstein files, the more we uncover,” California Democrat Robert Garcia (D-Long Beach) said in a statement as he released the documents.
“These latest emails and correspondence raise glaring questions about what else the White House is hiding and the nature of the relationship between Epstein and the President,” Garcia added. “The Department of Justice must fully release the Epstein files to the public immediately. The Oversight Committee will continue pushing for answers and will not stop until we get justice for the victims.”
Epstein, 66, died by suicide in a New York jail in August 2019, weeks after he was arrested and federally charged with sex trafficking and conspiracy to commit sex trafficking of minors. A watchdog report released last year found that negligence, misconduct and other failures at the jail contributed to his death.
More than a decade earlier, Epstein evaded federal criminal charges when he struck a plea deal in a south Florida case related to accusations that he molested dozens of girls.
As part of the agreement, Epstein pleaded guilty to state charges, including soliciting prostitution. He registered as a sex offender and served 13 months in jail but was allowed to leave six days a week to work at his office.
Valerie Valentine bought a triplex in South Los Angeles two weeks ago, and already she wonders whether she made a terrible investment.
Bills are immediately adding up for the small-time landlord, from $1,000 to get the water turned on to $6,000 in annual property taxes. She worries that the amount she collects in rent will not be enough to cover her expenses.
With the city on the verge of making the first major change to its rent stabilization ordinance since 1985, potentially capping annual rent increases at 3%, landlords such as Valentine fear that Los Angeles will become a hostile environment for them.
“It’s draconian,” said Valentine, who also owns a four-unit building in the Inland Empire. “Lowering the amount we can raise rent is a slap in the face. They are favoring one side of the aisle more than the other.”
On the other side, renters, who far outnumber landlords in the city, have turned out in force to City Council hearings to support the proposed 3% cap for units built before 1978, which house 42% of the city’s residents.
The current cap for rent-stabilized units is between 3% and 8%, depending on inflation, going up to 10% if landlords pay for utilities.
One tenant, Cindy Moran, 31, has lived in a rent-stabilized one-bedroom apartment in Exposition Park with her parents since she was born. They are now fighting eviction, she said, with their landlord stating that he wants to move into the property.
Moran believes he is trying to turn the site into 120 units of affordable housing. She fears they will not be able to find another apartment as affordable as the $700 a month they pay.
“I meet people every day who pay $2,000 for a one bedroom. They can’t afford a 10% increase,” Moran said. “We need to think about the most vulnerable right now.”
The proposed update to the city’s rent stabilization ordinance, which has been on the books since 1979, would be a massive shift in favor of tenants. It comes as many parts of the country are struggling with a housing affordability crisis, and after democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani won the New York City mayor’s election on a pledge to “freeze the rent.”
Most Angelenos are renters, and more than half are rent-burdened, meaning they spend more than 30% of their income on rent, according to the Los Angeles Housing Department. One in 10 Angelenos pays 90% of their income toward rent, the department said in a report this year.
Last week, the City Council’s Housing and Homelessness Committee passed the 3% proposal, written by Councilmember Nithya Raman, in a 3-2 vote. It goes before the full council Wednesday.
Under Raman’s proposal, the annual rent increase would max out at 3%, or 60% of the consumer price index, whichever is lower.
If there’s one thing everyone in LA can agree on, it’s that the rent is too high.
While we’ve updated some policies, the City of Los Angeles has not updated the actual formula that caps rent increases since the Rent Stabilization Ordinance was created over 40 years ago. pic.twitter.com/q5FvyzcGiz
The new floor on annual rent increases, now at 3%, would be 0%. That means that in years where there is no inflation, landlords would not be able to raise the rent at all.
“There is a need to reform it,” said Shane Phillips, housing initiative manager at UCLA’s Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies, who wrote a 2019 report calling for reforms to the rent stabilization ordinance. He believes the cap should be around 5%, tied directly to inflation.
“I think this swings the pendulum too far in the other direction,” he said.
On top of making it harder for small landlords to turn a profit, some fear that Raman’s proposal would chill development in a city that desperately needs more housing.
Los Angeles City Councilmember Nithya Raman wrote the proposed rent cap that was passed by the Housing and Homelessness Committee in a 3-2 vote. It goes before the full council Wednesday.
(Carlin Stiehl / Los Angeles Times)
In L.A., a new building constructed on the site of one that was rent-stabilized is subject to the rent stabilization ordinance, unless 20% of the new units are affordable for lower-income households.
A lower cap on rent increases may cause developers to forgo building on those lots, said Zachary Pitts, the Los Angeles director of YIMBY Action, which advocates for more affordable housing.
“Such unintended consequences could undermine the City’s housing goals at a time when increasing supply is critical to affordability and homelessness prevention,” he said in a statement.
Raman said she “will work to ensure new production is not impacted by these changes.”
“Only increased supply can help reduce costs for everyone in this city,” she said in a statement.
The current cap on rent increases has helped Jenny Colon stay in her rent-stabilized apartment, a two-bedroom in North Hills, for more than 30 years. She was paying $981 a month but is moving out because of a dispute with her landlord. Her new apartment, outside the city, costs $1,600 a month.
“A low percentage of rent increase every year does really create a very steady and safe housing situation,” said Colon, who supports Raman’s proposal.
But some say that lowering the allowable rent increase could have a downside for tenants, as falling revenues could lead landlords to spend less on maintaining their buildings.
“Certain small mom and pop owners just won’t have that kind of money,” said Paul Jesman, a real estate agent and landlord. “They’re going to push this roof replacement to next year because they don’t have the money for it.”
Landlords also may be more motivated to evict long-term tenants who fall behind on payments, so they can charge market rates to new tenants, said Phillips of UCLA.
City law allows landlords to charge market rates to a new tenant, though the cap on increases kicks in for the tenant after that.
The city’s Housing Department had recommended a floor of 2% and a ceiling of 5%, both tied to the consumer price index. City Councilmember Bob Blumenfield put forward a motion to the Housing and Homelessness Committee that aligned with that recommendation, but he was the only vote in favor of it.
A majority of California cities with rent-stabilized apartments set a ceiling of between 3% and 5%, the Housing Department said.
Raman argued that the department’s recommendations did not go far enough to deal with rents that have “skyrocketed.”
“I think what is before us is an opportunity to adjust costs for renters, that to me is long overdue,” she said.
WASHINGTON — For more than a year, detainees at a California immigrant detention center said, they were summoned from their dorms to a lieutenant’s office late at night. Hours frequently passed, they said, before they were sent back to their dorms.
What they allege happened in the office became the subject of federal complaints, which accuse Lt. Quin, then an administrative manager, of harassing, threatening and coercing immigrants into sexual acts at the Golden State Annex in McFarland. A person with that nameworked in a higher-ranking post, as chief of security, at the Alexandria Staging Facility in Louisiana until August — the same month The Times sent questions to the company that operates the facilities.
The Department of Homeland Security said it could not substantiate the allegations. According to an attorney for one of the detainees, the California Attorney General’s office opened an investigation into the matter.
Immigrant advocates point to the case as one of many allegations of abuse in U.S. immigration facilities, within a system which they say fails to properly investigate.
In three complaints reviewed by The Times that were filed under the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA), to a watchdog agency and with DHS, detainees accused Quin of sexual assault, harassment and other misconduct. The complainants initially knew the lieutenant only as “Lt. Quinn,” and he is referred to as such in the federal complaints, though the correct spelling is “Quin.”
The complaints also allege other facility staff knew about and facilitated abuse, perpetuating a culture of impunity.
The Golden State Annex, a U.S. Immigration & Customs Enforcement detention facility, in McFarland last year.
The California and Louisiana facilities are both operated by the Florida-based private prison giant, the GEO Group.
A Dec. 10, 2024, post on Instagram Threads appears to allude to issues Quin faced in California. The post pictures him standing in front of a GEO Group flag and states: “Permit me to reintroduce myself … You will respect my authority. They tried to hinder me, but God intervened.”
Asked about the accusations, Tricia McLaughlin, the assistant Homeland Security public affairs secretary, said in a statement that allegations of misconduct by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement employees or contractors are treated seriously and investigated thoroughly.
“These complaints were filed in 2024 — well before current DHS leadership and the necessary reforms they implemented,” McLaughlin wrote. “The investigation into this matter has concluded, and ICE — through its own investigation reviewed by [the DHS office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties] — could not substantiate any complaint of sexual assault or rape.”
The GEO Group did not respond to requests for comment.
Advocates for the detainees say they are undeterred and will continue to seek justice for people they say have been wronged.
Advocates also say the potential for abuse at detention facilities will grow as the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown brings such facilities to record population levels. The population of detained immigrants surpassed a high of 61,000 in August, according to TRAC, a nonpartisan research organization.
The allegations against Quin by a 28-year-old detainee are detailed in his FTCA complaint, a precursor to a lawsuit, filed in January with DHS. The complaint seeks $10 million for physical and emotional damages.
The Times generally does not identify alleged victims of sexual abuse and is referring to him by his middle initial, E.
McLaughlin’s response did not address the FTCA complaint that details E’s sexual assault allegations.
Reached by phone, Quin told The Times, “I don’t speak with the media,” and referred a reporter to the Golden State Annex. After being read the allegations against him and asked to respond, he hung up.
E alleged abuse in interviews with The Times, and in a recorded interview with an attorney, which formed the basis for the FTCA complaint.
In the complaint, he said that beginning in May 2023, Quin would call him into a room, where no cameras or staff were present, to say he had been given a citation or that guards had complained about him.
One day, the complaint alleges, Quin rubbed his own genitals over his pants and began making sexual comments. E told Quin he felt uncomfortable and wanted to go back to his dorm. But Quin smirked, dragged his chair closer and grabbed E in the crotch, the complaint says.
After E pushed Quin away and threatened to defend himself physically, the complaint alleges, Quin made his own threat: to call a “code black” — an emergency — that would summon guards and leave E facing charges of assaulting a federal officer.
Instead, E said, Quin called for an escort to take him back to his dorm.
After that, the late-night summons — sometimes at midnight or 2 a.m. — increased, E said in his complaint. Each time, Quin continued to rub his genitals over his clothes, according to the complaint.
The complaint alleges Quin repeatedly offered to help with E’s immigration case in exchange for sexual favors. Then Quin found out E is bisexual and E alleged Quin threatened to tell his family during a visit. Afraid of his family finding out about his sexuality, E said in the complaint, he finally acquiesced to letting Quin touch his genitals and perform oral sex on him.
“I just, I ended up doing it,” E said in a recorded interview with his attorney.
Afterward, the complaint says, Quin told E that he would make sure to help him, and that no one would find out.
The complaint alleges that Quin brought E contraband gifts, including a phone, and, around Christmas, a water bottle full of alcohol.
“I feel dirty,” E said in the recorded interview. “I feel ashamed of myself, you know? I feel like my dignity was just nowhere.”
E said in his complaint that a staff member told him in December 2023 that a guard had reported Quin to the warden after noticing E had been out of his dorm for a long time; the guard had reviewed security cameras showing Quin giving E the bottle of alcohol.
E said the staffer told him that Quin was temporarily suspended from interacting with detainees, and the late-night summons stopped for a while.
Lee Ann Felder-Heim, staff attorney with the Asian Law Caucus, which filed a complaint with the federal government alleging mistreatment of detainees at the Golden State Annex in McFarland.
(Maria del Rio / For The Times)
A second, earlier complaint alleging mistreatment at the McFarland facility was filed on E’s behalf in August 2024 by the Asian Law Caucus with the DHS Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties (CRCL).
That complaint alleges that other GEO Group staff targeted him with sexually harassing and degrading comments. It does not address E’s sexual assault allegations, because E said he was initially too afraid to talk about them.
Once, when E was lying on his stomach in his cell, a guard commented loudly to other staff that he was waiting for a visit from Quin; the guard made a motion of putting her finger through a hole, insinuating that E sought to engage in sexual intercourse, the complaint states.
The broader issue isn’t one person, “but rather a system of impunity and abuse,” said Lee Ann Felder-Heim, a staff attorney at the Asian Law Caucus. “The reports make it clear that other staff were aware of what was going on and actually were assisting in making it happen.”
In addition to detailing E’s own experiences, the complaint also details abuse and harassment of five other detainees. One detainee is transgender, a fact that would play a role in how federal officials investigated the complaint.
In February and March, CRCL sent Felder-Heim letters saying it had closed the investigation into the alleged sexual abuse and harassment, citing, as justification, Trump’s First-Day executive order concerning “gender ideology extremism.” The order prohibits using federal funds to “promote gender ideology,” so Felder-Heim said it appears the investigation was shut down because one of the complainants is transgender.
She called the investigation process flawed and “wholly inadequate.”
E filed a third complaint with another oversight body, the Office of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman. To his knowledge, no investigation was initiated.
In March, the Trump administration shut down three internal oversight bodies: CRCL, OIDO and the Citizenship and Immigration Services (CIS) Ombudsman. Civil rights groups sued the following month, prompting the agency to resurrect the offices.
But staffing at the offices was decimated, according to sworn court declarations by DHS officials. CRCL has gone from having 147 positions to 22; OIDO from about 118 to about 10; and the CIS Ombudsman from 46 to about 10.
“All legally required functions of CRCL continue to be performed, but in an efficient and cost-effective manner and without hindering the Department’s mission of securing the homeland,” said McLaughlin, the DHS spokeswoman.
Michelle Brané, who was the immigrant detention ombudsman under the Biden administration, said the civil rights office generally had first dibs on complaints about sexual assault. She recalled the complaint about Quin but said her office didn’t investigate it because the civil rights office already was.
Brané said the decrease in oversight amid increased detention will inevitably exacerbate issues such as allegations of sexual assault. Worse conditions also make it harder to hire quality staff, she said.
Around the same time that E was held at Golden State Annex, a gay couple from Colombia reported in April 2024 to the OIDO that Quin had sexually harassed them.
D.T., 26, and C.B., 25, were separated upon arrival at Golden State Annex. D.T. began to experience severe anxiety attacks, they said in the Asian Law Caucus complaint and in an interview with The Times. The couple asked to be placed in the same dormitory.
Before granting their request, Quin asked what they would give him in return, the couple recounted in the complaint. Afterward, the complaint alleges, he frequently invited them to his office, saying they owed him.
“We never accepted going to his office, because we knew what it was for,” C.B. told the Times.
In their complaint, they allege that Quin asked D.T. if he wanted to have sex and told C.B., “You belong to me.”
The couple became aware that Quin had also harassed other detainees and gave preferential treatment to those who they believed accepted his requests for sexual favors, according to the complaint; one detainee told them that he had grabbed Quin’s hand and placed it on his penis to avoid being taken to solitary confinement for starting a fight.
D.T. said in an interview with The Times that he believes “below him are many people who never said anything.”
In a Dec. 2, 2024, internal facility grievance from Golden State Annex reviewed by The Times, another detainee alleges that Quin retaliated against him for speaking out against misconduct.
In the grievance and in an interview with The Times, the detainee said he spoke up after, on several occasions, watching another man walk to Quin’s office late at night and come back to the dorm hours later. He also said in the grievance that Quin brought in marijuana, cellphones and other contraband.
Another witness, Gustavo Flores, 33, said Quin recognized him as a former Golden State Annex detainee when he was briefly transferred to the Alexandria facility, just before his deportation to El Salvador in May.
Quin pulled Flores aside and offered to uncuff him and get him lunch in exchange for cleaning the lobby; after he finished, Quin brought him into his office, where he peppered Flores with questions about Golden State Annex, Flores said.
Flores said he asked about certain staffers and detainees. He told Flores people wanted to sue him, calling them “crybabies.”
“He’s telling me everything, like, ‘Oh yeah, I know what goes on over there,’” Flores said.
When E tried to end the sexual encounters, his complaint says, Quin threatened to have him sent to a detention facility in Texas or have his deportation expedited.
In October 2024, E was transferred to the Mesa Verde ICE Processing Center in Bakersfield.
Heliodoro Moreno, E’s attorney, said the California Attorney General’s Office confirmed to him in February that it was investigating. An investigator interviewed E in April and again in May, he said, and the investigation remains open.
California Department of Justice spokesperson Nina Sheridan declined to comment on a potential investigation. But in a statement she said the office remains vigilant of “ongoing, troubling conditions” at detention facilities throughout California.
“We are especially concerned that conditions at these facilities are only set to worsen as the Trump Administration continues to ramp up its inhumane campaign of mass deportation,” she wrote.
E, who had a pending claim for a special status known as withholding of removal, dropped his case in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. Moreno said his client wished to no longer be detained.
“It’s very unfortunate that he’s in these circumstances,” Moreno said. His client was forced to forgo his appellate rights and leave “without really getting a conclusion to receiving justice for what happened to him.”
BELÉM, Brazil — The expansive halls of the Amazon’s newly built climate summit hub echoed with the hum of air conditioners and the footsteps of delegates from around the world — scientists, diplomats, Indigenous leaders and energy executives, all converging for two frenetic weeks of negotiations.
Then Gov. Gavin Newsom rounded the corner, flanked by staff and security. They moved in tandem through the corridors on Tuesday as media swarmed and cellphone cameras rose into the air.
“Hero!” one woman shouted. “Stay safe — we need you,” another attendee said. Others didn’t hide their confusion at who the man with slicked-back graying hair causing such a commotion was.
“I’m here because I don’t want the United States of America to be a footnote at this conference,” Newsom said when he reached a packed news conference on his first day at the United Nations climate policy summit known as COP30.
In less than a year, the United States has shifted from rallying nations on combating climate change to rejecting the science altogether under President Trump, whose brash governing style spawned in part from his reality-show roots.
Newsom has engineered his own evolution when coping with Trump — moving from sharp but reasoned criticism to name-calling and theatrical attacks on the president and his Republican allies. Newsom’s approach adds fire to America’s political spectacle — part governance, part made-for-TV drama. But on climate, it’s not all performance.
California’s carbon market and zero-emission mandates have given the state outsize influence at summits such as COP30, where its policies are seen as both durable and exportable. The state has invested billions in renewables, battery storage and electrifying buildings and vehicles and has cut greenhouse gas emissions by 21% since 2000 — even as its economy grew 81%.
“Absolutely,” he said when asked whether the state is in effect standing in for the United States at climate talks. “And I think the world sees us in that light, as a stable partner, a historic partner … in the absence of American leadership. And not just absence of leadership, the doubling down of stupid in terms of global leadership on clean energy.”
Newsom has honed a combative presence online — trading barbs with Trump and leaning into satire, especially on social media, tactics that mirror the president’s. Critics have argued that it’s contributing to a lowering of the bar when it comes to political discourse, but Newsom said he doesn’t see it that way.
“I’m trying to call that out,” Newsom said, adding that in a normal political climate, leaders should model civility and respect. “But right now, we have an invasive species — in the vernacular of climate — by the name of Donald Trump, and we got to call that out.”
At home, Newsom recently scored a political win with Proposition 50, the ballot measure he championed to counter Trump’s effort to redraw congressional maps in Republican-led states. On his way to Brazil, he celebrated the victory with a swing through Houston, where a rally featuring Texas Democrats looked more like a presidential campaign stop than a policy event — one of several moments in recent months that have invited speculation about a White House run that he insists he hasn’t launched.
Those questions followed him to Brazil. It was the first topic posed from a cluster of Brazilian journalists in Sao Paulo, Brazil’s largest city and financial hub, where Newsom had flown to speak Monday with climate investors in what he conceded sounded more like a campaign speech.
“I think it has to,” said Newson, his talking points scribbled on yellow index cards still in his pocket from an earlier meeting. “I think people have to understand what’s going on, because otherwise you’re wasting everyone’s time.”
In a low-lit luxury hotel adorned with Brazilian artwork and deep-seated chairs, Newsom showcased the well-practiced pivot of a politician avoiding questions about his future. His most direct answer about his presidential prospects came in a recent interview with “CBS News Sunday Morning,” on which Newsom was asked whether he would give serious thought after the 2026 midterm elections to a White House bid. Newsom responded: “Yeah, I’d be lying otherwise.”
He laughed when asked by The Times how often he has fielded questions about his plans in 2028 in recent days, and quickly deflected.
“It’s not about me,” he said before fishing a malaria pill out of his suit pocket and chasing it with borrowed coffee from a nearby carafe. “It’s about this moment and people’s anxiety and concern about this moment.”
Ann Carlson, a UCLA environmental law professor, said Newsom’s appearance in Brazil is symbolically important as the federal government targets Californa’s decades-old authority to enforce its own environmental standards.
“California has continued to signal that it will play a leadership role,” she said.
The Trump administration confirmed to The Times that no high-level federal representative will attend COP30.
“President Trump will not jeopardize our country’s economic and national security to pursue vague climate goals that are killing other countries,” White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers said.
For his own part, Trump told world leaders at the United Nations in September that climate change is a “hoax” and “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world.”
Since Trump returned to office for a second term, he’s canceled funding for major clean energy projects such as California’s hydrogen hub and moved to revoke the state’s long-held authority to set stricter vehicle emissions standards than those of the federal government. He’s also withdrawn from the Paris climate agreement, a seminal treaty signed a decade ago in which world leaders established the goal of limiting global warming to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels and preferably below 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit). That move is seen as pivotal in preventing the worst effects of climate change.
Leaders from Chile and Colombia called Trump a liar for rejecting climate science, while Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva broadly warned that extremist forces are fabricating fake news and “condemning future generations to life on a planet altered forever by global warming.”
Terry Tamminen, former California Environmental Protection Agency secretary under Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, contended that with the Trump administration’s absence, Newsom’s attendance at COP30 thrusts even more spotlight on the governor.
“If the governor of Delaware goes, it may not matter,” Tamminen said. “But if our governor goes, it does. It sends a message to the world that we’re still in this.”
The U.S. Climate Alliance, a bipartisan coalition of state leaders, said three governors from the United States attended COP30-related events in Brazil: Newsom, Wisconsin’s Tony Evers and New Mexico’s Michelle Lujan Grisham.
Despite the warm reception Newsom has received in Belém, environmentalists in California have recently questioned his commitment.
In September, Newsom signed a package of bills that extended the state’s signature cap-and-trade program through 2045. That program, rebranded as cap-and-invest, limits greenhouse gas emissions and raises billions of dollars for the state’s climate priorities. But, at the same time, he also gave final approval to a bill that will allow oil and gas companies to drill as many as 2,000 new wells per year through 2036 in Kern County. Environmentalists called that backsliding; Newsom called it realism, given the impending refinery closures in the state that threaten to drive up gas prices.
“It’s not an ideological exercise,” he said. “It’s a very pragmatic one.”
Leah Stokes, a UC Santa Barbara political scientist, called his record “pretty complex.”
“In many ways, he is one of the leaders,” she said. “But some of the decisions that he’s made, especially recently, don’t move us in as good a direction on climate.”
Newsom is expected to return to the climate summit Wednesday before traveling deeper into the Amazon, where he plans to visit reforestation projects. The governor said he wanted to see firsthand the region often referred to as “the lungs of the world.”
“It’s not just to admire the absorption of carbon from the rainforest,” Newsom said. “But to absorb a deeper spiritual connection to this issue that connects all of us. … I think that really matters in a world that can use a little more of that.”
Nov. 12 (UPI) — U.S. President Donald Trump signaled his intention to push ahead with a $1 billion lawsuit against the BBC, saying he had an obligation due to the “fraudulent” way it had edited a speech he made right before the Capitol Hill riots in 2021.
Speaking to Fox News on Tuesday night, Trump said he had to take legal action because the public service broadcaster “butchered up” the speech he gave to supporters outside the White House on Jan. 6 and had deceived viewers.
The speech formed part of a documentary, Trump: A Second Chance, that went out on the BBC network just before the Nov. 4 U.S. elections, although the BBC maintains that it was not available to view outside of the United Kingdom.
“They defrauded the public and they’ve admitted it. They actually changed my Jan. 6 speech which was a beautiful speech, which was a very calming speech, and made it sound radical. It was very dishonest,” Trump said.
Trump said he had a duty to go ahead and file a defamation lawsuit against the BBC because he “can’t allow people to do that,” in the same way he had been forced to pursue CBS over an interview with Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris that aired four weeks before the election on Nov. 4.
CBS settled Trump’s $20 billion claim out of court for $16 million in July.
The BBC has acknowledged receipt of a letter from Trump’s legal team demanding a “full and fair retraction” of the documentary, an immediate apology, and that the BBC “appropriately compensate President Trump for the harm caused.”
It said the BBC must comply by 5 p.m. EST on Friday, to which the corporation has said it would respond “directly in due course.”
The director-general and the head of news both resigned Sunday after it was revealed the corporation’s Panorama program spliced together two sections of Trump’s speech 53 minutes apart without telling viewers it had done so.
The edited version made it sound as if Trump was inciting his supporters to march on the Capitol and “fight” when what he actually said was that they should all walk down to the Capitol “peacefully and patriotically” and “we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women.”
No complaint was raised at the time the documentary aired but the incident has reignited a furious domestic debate about the BBC’s editorial impartiality and the internal culture of the institution which is funded by a $229 annual license that households with a TV must pay.
If the BBC chose to fight the case, which Trump’s lawyer intends to file in the state of Florida, significant obstacles mean long odds on Trump’s chances of prevailing.
For his lawsuit to succeed, his team would have to convince a court that Trump had “suffered overwhelming financial and reputational harm” as a result of the program, as stated in the letter to the BBC.
BBC Chairman Samir Shah has already apologized for what he said was an “error of judgment.”
“We accept that the way the speech was edited did give the impression of a direct call for violent action. The BBC would like to apologize for that error of judgment,” Shah told a parliamentary committee Monday.
However, while that could go against the corporation, as an apparent admission of liability, the case would still have to overcome major challenges.
Legal expert Joshua Rozenberg KC called for the BBC to go further and “draft a retraction and apology in terms that the president’s lawyer finds acceptable” and for the retraction to feature as prominently as the original broadcast.
Writing on his blog post Tuesday, Rozenburg said the BBC would have to pay compensation but suggested that, based on previous legal claims brought by Trump, it would be an out-of-court settlement.
“It won’t be cheap. But it will be cheaper than a billion dollars,” he said.
As the USS Gerald Ford aircraft carrier sails to the Caribbean, the U.S. military continues striking drug-carrying boats off the Venezuelan coast and the Trump administration debates what to do about Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro, one thing seems certain: Venezuela and the western hemisphere would all be better off if Maduro packed his bags and spent his remaining years in exile.
This is certainly what Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado is working toward. This year’s Nobel Prize laureate has spent much of her time recently in the U.S. lobbying policymakers to squeeze Maduro into vacating power. Constantly at risk of detention in her own country, Machado is granting interviews and dialing into conferences to advocate for regime change. Her talking points are clearly tailored for the Trump administration: Maduro is the head of a drug cartel that is poisoning Americans; his dictatorship rests on weak pillars; and the forces of democracy inside Venezuela are fully prepared to seize the mantle once Maduro is gone. “We are ready to take over government,” Machado told Bloomberg News in an October interview.
But as the old saying goes, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. While there’s no disputing that Maduro is a despot and a fraud who steals elections, U.S. policymakers can’t simply take what Machado is saying for granted. Washington learned this the hard way in the lead-up to the war in Iraq, when an opposition leader named Ahmed Chalabi sold U.S. policymakers a bill of goods about how painless rebuilding a post-Saddam Hussein Iraq would be. We all know how the story turned out — the United States stumbled into an occupation that sucked up U.S. resources, unleashed unpredicted regional consequences and proved more difficult than its proponents originally claimed.
To be fair, Machado is no Chalabi. The latter was a fraudster; the former is the head of an opposition movement whose candidate, Edmundo González Urrutia, won two-thirds of the vote during the 2024 Venezuelan presidential election (Maduro claimed victory anyway and forced González into exile). But just because her motives are good doesn’t mean we shouldn’t question her assertions.
Would regime change in Caracas produce the Western-style democracy Machado and her supporters anticipate? None of us can rule it out. But the Trump administration can’t bank on this as the outcome of a post-Maduro future. Other scenarios are just as likely, if not more so — and some of them could lead to greater violence for Venezuelans and more problems for U.S. policy in Latin America.
The big problem with regime change is you can never be entirely sure what will happen after the incumbent leader is removed. Such operations are by their very nature dangerous and destabilizing; political orders are deliberately shattered, the haves become have-nots, and constituencies used to holding the reins of power suddenly find themselves as outsiders. When Hussein was deposed in Iraq, the military officers, Ba’ath Party loyalists and regime-tied sycophants who ruled the roost for nearly a quarter-century were forced to make do with an entirely new situation. The Sunni-dominated structure was overturned, and members of the Shia majority, previously oppressed, were now eagerly taking their place at the top of the system. This, combined with the U.S. decision to bar anyone associated with the old regime from serving in state positions, fed the ingredients for a large-scale insurgency that challenged the new government, precipitated a civil war and killed tens of thousands of Iraqis.
Regime change can also create total absences of authority, as it did in Libya after the 2011 U.S.-NATO intervention there. Much like Maduro today, Moammar Kadafi was a reviled figure whose demise was supposed to pave the way for a democratic utopia in North Africa. The reality was anything but. Instead, Kadafi’s removal sparked conflict between Libya’s major tribal alliances, competing governments and the proliferation of terrorist groups in a country just south of the European Union. Fifteen years later, Libya remains a basket case of militias, warlords and weak institutions.
Unlike Iraq and Libya, Venezuela has experience in democratic governance. It held relatively free and fair elections in the past and doesn’t suffer from the types of sectarian rifts associated with states in the Middle East.
Still, this is cold comfort for those expecting a democratic transition. Indeed, for such a transition to be successful, the Venezuelan army would have to be on board with it, either by sitting on the sidelines as Maduro’s regime collapses, actively arresting Maduro and his top associates, or agreeing to switch its support to the new authorities. But again, this is a tall order, particularly for an army whose leadership is a core facet of the Maduro regime’s survival, has grown used to making obscene amounts of money from illegal activity under the table and whose members are implicated in human rights abuses. The very same elites who profited handsomely from the old system would have to cooperate with the new one. This doesn’t appear likely, especially if their piece of the pie will shrink the moment Maduro leaves.
Finally, while regime change might sound like a good remedy to the problem that is Venezuela, it might just compound the difficulties over time. Although Maduro’s regime’s remit is already limited, its complete dissolution could usher in a free-for-all between elements of the former government, drug trafficking organizations and established armed groups like the Colombian National Liberation Army, which have long treated Venezuela as a base of operations. Any post-Maduro government would have difficulty managing all of this at the same time it attempts to restructure the Venezuelan economy and rebuild its institutions. The Trump administration would then be facing the prospect of Venezuela serving as an even bigger source of drugs and migration, the very outcome the White House is working to prevent.
In the end, María Corina Machado could prove to be right. But she is selling a best-case assumption. The U.S. shouldn’t buy it. Democracy after Maduro is possible but is hardly the only possible result — and it’s certainly not the most likely.
Daniel R. DePetris is a fellow at Defense Priorities.
A young Cleveland attorney who worked his way through law school as a clerk with the Ohio Lottery and went on to become the agency’s legal counsel is the leading choice for the job of running California’s lottery, a state official involved in the selection process indicated Tuesday.
M. Mark Michalko, 31, is favored for the job of California lottery director, according to state Lottery Commissioner Laverta Montgomery, who interviewed candidates for the position.
The appointment will be made by Gov. George Deukmejian, but Montgomery said, “I think the governor and I are agreed on the top candidate.” Montgomery’s comments came after a Lottery Commission meeting in Compton, where she is city manager.
Asked the identity of the candidate, Montgomery hesitated, then replied, “I think Mr. Michalko is a very good candidate.”
Later she said:
“I just felt that he was knowledgeable and that he would present a very good image. . . . He knows the (legal) pitfalls.”
Asked about Michalko’s relative youth, Montgomery replied:
“But it’s a young industry. . . . We can’t go by age.”
Deukemjian said in Sacramento on Tuesday that he expects to make an announcement regarding the appointment of a director “around the end of the week.” However, he did not name the candidate, and a press aide later refused to confirm that Michalko is the top choice.
“I can’t confirm,” said assistant press secretary Kevin Brett. “Our policy is. . . we do not discuss appointments until the appointment is made.”
Michalko, who is considered an expert in computerized “on-line” lottery gaming, began his career with the Ohio Lottery Commission in 1977 as a 23-year-old graduate of Cleveland’s John Carroll University, according to the commission’s public information director, Anne Bloomberg. He worked as a legal aide researching contracts and other legal matters while attending Cleveland Marshall School of Law.
He became the commission’s chief counsel shortly after graduating from law school in 1980.
Michalko turns 31 years old today.
He is a native of Garfield Heights, Ohio, and his wife, Kim, is an official with a downtown Cleveland department store.
During the last year, Michalko has been devising a new specifications form for gaming manufacturers vying for Ohio’s multimillion-dollar lottery contract.
The specifications form, according to Bloomberg, has become a model for lotteries around the nation and “is unique in that it finally puts lotteries in the driver’s seat as opposed to vendors.”
Bloomberg said Michalko’s work with the form and his knowledge of on-line gaming systems were among the reasons he gained the attention of California lottery officials.
According to Bloomberg, Michalko’s salary is in the $25,000 to $30,000 range, less than half the salary to be paid California’s lottery chief. Some out-of-state lottery officials considered the California salary too low to apply for the director’s job.
Deukmejian was angered and embarrassed in March, when his first choice as lottery director, Thomas O’Heir, assistant director of the Massachusetts lottery, turned down the job at the last minute because the $73,780 annual salary was inadequate.
Deukmejian then appointed Commission Chairman Howard E. Varner as interim director, and the search for an executive officer was renewed.
The state lottery initiative, approved by voters last November, called for appointment of five commissioners and a lottery director within 30 days and sale of tickets by March 21. The commissioners were not appointed until six weeks after the deadline, however, and ticket sales are not expected until September.
The Lottery Commission, meeting with only three members Tuesday, took several steps toward beginning California’s first lottery game. With Commissioner John Price in Europe and Varner serving as interim chairman, the commission unanimously voted to:
– Approve the final draft of a “request for proposals for instant game tickets”–a document to be used by suppliers of instant “scratch-off” lottery tickets to submit bids to the commission by May 17.
The commission is expected to award the contract, which could be worth almost $50 million, in early June. Some estimate that as many as 1.9 billion tickets will be needed for the first year of the lottery, including tickets given away as prizes, as well as those that go unsold.
– Approve application forms and procedures for lottery ticket retailers. Prospective retailers will be charged a $30 application fee, plus $20 for each retail location. The commission estimates that about 20,000 retail outlets will be needed for instant game tickets.
– Approve a draft of bid specifications for advertising firms seeking to promote the lottery.
The advertising contract could total $15 million during the first year of sales. The commission approved a staff recommendation that 1.5% of gross lottery sales–estimated at $1 billion the first year–be earmarked for advertising and promotions.
The lottery initiative calls for about 3.5% of gross sales to go toward “advertising, promotion, public relations, incentives and other aspects of communications” for at least the first year of the lottery.
It has been widely speculated that this clause in the initiative could mean a $35-million bonanza to an advertising firm. Varner maintained after the meeting, however, that more than half of the 3.5% could legally go toward incentives, public relations and other non-advertising uses.
– Approve a minor change of language in the advertising bid specifications in order to stress requirements that prospective contractors submit plans to subcontract with small businesses or firms run by minorities or women.
Times staff writer Richard C. Paddock in Sacramento contributed to this story.
Speaking of the 2,500 American “detainees,” President Bush said, “Anything that compels individuals to do something against their will would, of course, concern me.” I have to laugh and then cry. It never seems to bother Bush when he wants to compel several million women to be “detained” by a fetus.
If we had a sane planetary population policy, we would not need to be in the Persian Gulf. What we are watching is the start of the real wars, not for politics or ideology, but for real things–food and energy, natural resources and living space. We are fighting like bums over a bottle of wine, but today we are billions armed with chemical and nuclear weapons.
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court’s justices, citing the right to bear arms in the 2nd Amendment, sounded ready Wednesday to strike down laws in New York and California that deny most gun owners permits to carry concealed guns in public.
Most of the justices said people who live in “high-crime areas” and fear for their safety should be allowed to carry a gun for self-defense. And they said this applies equally to people who live in cities as well as in rural areas.
“Think about people who work late at night in Manhattan,” said Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. “It might be somebody who cleans offices. It might be a doorman at an apartment. It might be a nurse or an orderly [or] somebody who washes dishes” who is “scared to death” to head home. “How is it consistent with the core right to self-defense” to deny that person the right to have a gun with them? he asked.
In defense of New York’s law, state Solicitor General Barbara Underwood argued for limiting the number of guns in densely populated areas. Too many guns in too many hands would increase the danger of gun violence, she said.
But Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh disputed that view and said people there may have a greater need to protect themselves with a gun.
“How many muggings take place in the forest?” Roberts asked her.
Kavanaugh said the 2nd Amendment protects a right to have a gun for self-defense, which suggests the decision to be armed should rest with the gun owner, not a state or local licensing official.
“Why isn’t it good enough to say I live in a violent area and I want to be able to defend myself?” he asked.
During their comments and questions, the court’s six conservative justices made clear they are highly skeptical of laws that authorize state or local officials to deny gun permits to law-abiding residents.
Only the court’s three liberal justices spoke in defense of these laws and said there has been a long history of regulating guns in public.
Still, a gun rights ruling in the New York case could be limited. The justices, both conservative and liberal, said cities and local governments would not be prevented from enforcing bans on guns in “sensitive places,” and that could include subways, football stadiums and university campuses.
“Can’t we just say Times Square on New Year’s Eve is a sensitive place?” said Justice Amy Coney Barrett.
Washington attorney Paul Clement, who was representing the gun owners, avoided a clear answer on where guns could be excluded, but he agreed the city would retain that authority to restrict guns in certain places.
At issue on Wednesday in the case of New York State Rifle & Pistol Assn. vs. Bruen were the laws in New York as well as similar measures in California and six other states that limit who may obtain a license to carry a concealed handgun in public.
Typically gun owners are required to show they have a “special need” or “good cause” to be armed, not simply a general fear for their safety. In New York City and Los Angeles, these permits are rarely granted.
UCLA law professor Adam Winkler, who has written widely on the 2nd Amendment, said the outcome could force local officials to shift their focus to declaring certain places off-limits to guns.
“New York may be forced to allow more people to carry but can still broadly define sensitive places to make it hard practically to carry in New York City,” he said.
The ruling will also have a direct effect in California as well. “If New York’s law is struck down, the precedent will lead to overturning California’s carry laws too,” he said.
Gun control advocates heard little to cheer from the argument.
“We are on high alert about the dangerous consequences of a potential ruling in favor of gun extremists,” said Hannah Shearer, litigation director for the Giffords Law Center. “But the court still has an opportunity to reject the unprecedented and historically inaccurate view that the 2nd Amendment precludes meaningful gun safety regulations in public.”
But Eric Tirschwell, executive director of Everytown Law, pointed to the justices’ comments about restricting guns in sensitive places.
“Even the court’s most conservative justices have hesitations about granting the gun lobby its ultimate goal in this case — the unrestricted right to carry guns in all public places,” he said.
The case heard Wednesday and the likely outcome highlight the change in the makeup of the court.
In the last decade, the justices had turned down several challenges to the gun-permitting laws, including in California. But with the arrival of Justices Kavanaugh and Barrett, the court appears to have a new majority to bolster individual rights under the 2nd Amendment.
The case began when Robert Nash and Brandon Koch, who live near Albany, N.Y., applied for general concealed-carry permits but were turned down by a county judge because they did not “face any special or unique danger.” They were, however, licensed to carry guns for hunting or target shooting.
They sued along with the New York State Rifle & Pistol Assn., alleging the restrictions violated their rights under the 2nd Amendment to bear arms for self-defense.
Reporting from Washington — President Trump is expected to move quickly to nominate a replacement for retiring Justice Anthony M. Kennedy’s soon-to-be-vacant Supreme Court seat, and two leading candidates are veteran Washington, D.C., appellate Judge Brett Kavanaugh and Judge Amy Coney Barrett, a former Notre Dame law professor and recent Trump appointee to the 7th Circuit in Chicago.
They emerged from a list of more than two dozen potential nominees put together by the conservative Federalist Society and Heritage Foundation.
The list was Trump’s idea and it has proven effective, said Leonard Leo, a Federalist Society official who is advising the White House. It told Republican voters that he was serious about appointing only reliable conservatives to the high court, he said.
Unlike in decades past, when presidents and their top lawyers scrambled to find a qualified nominee when a vacancy suddenly arose, the Federalist Society list is the result of careful screening. A team of lawyers read and analyzed everything written or said by the candidates.
Their unofficial motto is “No more Souters,” a reference to now-retired Justice David H. Souter, who was nominated by President George H.W. Bush in 1990. Souter was a little-known judge from New Hampshire, but the White House team assured Republicans he was a conservative.
They were wrong. Souter was careful and cautious as a judge and devoted to precedent. But his leanings were moderate to liberal. In 1992, Souter along with Justices Anthony M. Kennedy and Sandra Day O’Connor joined to uphold the right to abortion announced two decades earlier in Roe vs. Wade.
Conservatives are determined never to make the same mistake again.
Kavanaugh, 53, grew up in Washington and is the favorite of many conservative lawyers here. He went to Yale Law School and clerked at the Supreme Court for Kennedy alongside Neil M. Gorsuch, who joined the court last year as Trump’s first appointment. Kavanaugh was a top deputy to independent counsel Kenneth Starr in the long investigation of President Clinton, and he drafted the Starr Report that led to Clinton’s impeachment. He also joined the legal team that represented George W. Bush in the fight over the recount in the 2000 presidential election.
Kavanaugh worked in the White House counsel’s office for Bush and later served as his staff secretary.
In 2003, Bush nominated him to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, but Democrats initially blocked his confirmation. Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) called him a “very bright legal foot soldier” who has been in the middle of every partisan legal battle. But Kavanaugh finally won confirmation in 2006.
Since then, Kavanaugh has written hundreds of opinions, and he is known for always staking out a conservative position.
“He is much more conservative in his approach to law than Justice Kennedy,” said Justin Walker, a University of Louisville law professor who clerked for Kavanaugh at the appeals court and Kennedy at the Supreme Court. “There is no guesswork with Judge Kavanaugh. He is extremely predictable.”
Walker cited, as an example, Kavanaugh’s support for the right to own a semiautomatic rifle under the 2nd Amendment. In 2008, the Supreme Court struck down a District of Columbia ordinance that prohibited residents from having a handgun at home. The same plaintiff later claimed the right to possess a semiautomatic weapon, but lost by a 2-1 vote in the D.C. Circuit, Walker noted. Kavanaugh wrote a lengthy dissent arguing that the 2nd Amendment included the right to have such a weapon.
The Supreme Court, however, has rejected appeals raising that issue, which has the effect of upholding laws and ordinances that banned such assault weapons.
Last fall, Kavanaugh was involved in a quick-moving dispute over whether a migrant teenager in Texas could be released from immigration custody to obtain an abortion. A federal judge cleared the way, but Kavanaugh wrote a 2-1 decision siding with Trump administration lawyers and blocking the abortion for up to 10 more days. The full appeals court intervened and overturned his ruling. In dissent, he faulted his more liberal colleagues as wrongly creating a “new right for unlawful immigrant minors in U.S. government detention to obtain abortion on demand.”
Like many judges, he has avoided any direct comments in his legal opinions about Roe vs. Wade, the landmark abortion ruling that will loom large over upcoming confirmation hearings.
In contrast to Kavanaugh, Barrett, 46, is a newcomer with a sparse record as a judge. She is a product of the University of Notre Dame and South Bend, Ind. She went law school at Notre Dame and spent a few years in Washington as a law clerk for D.C. Circuit Judge Laurence Silberman and Justice Antonin Scalia. She returned in 2002 to teach law at Notre Dame.
Barrett was narrowly confirmed by the Senate in November, and now commutes a few days a week from South Bend to downtown Chicago.
She has, however, written and spoken frequently about the importance of her Catholic faith and in her belief that life begins at conception. In a 2003 scholarly article, she suggested Roe vs. Wade was an “erroneous decision.”
During her Senate hearing, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said she had read Barrett’s writings, adding that the “dogma lives loudly within you, and that’s a concern.”
That comment triggered a sharp backlash from Barrett’s defenders and others, who said the nominee was being criticized for her faith.
But if Barrett is the nominee, Democrats and liberal activists are certain to focus on her views about abortion and the role they might play if the court is asked to overturn Roe.
SYDNEY, Australia — When Vice President Dan Quayle made a campaign-style foray into a crowd Friday outside Melbourne’s Flinders Street train station, most of the surprised Australians chatted, giggled and posed for pictures.
But one older Melbourne office worker skipped the small talk.
“What about the wheat?” he asked Quayle, referring to subsidized American grain exports that are hurting Australian farmers.
Quayle shot back, “(We’re) gonna keep on exporting.”
For the vice president, the incident was a quick reminder of some of the frictions that the United States faces with even its closest friends and allies, problems that are an outgrowth of the easing of the Cold War with the Soviet Union.
One of Most Loyal Allies
Australia, the first stop on Quayle’s current four-nation Asia-Pacific tour, has been and still is one of the United States’ most loyal allies. Americans still tend to regard Australia as one of the last outposts of good-natured simplicity, an image reinforced by the popularity of the movie “Crocodile Dundee.”
Australia’s close defense links to the United States date from World War II. And the importance of these ties for today’s U.S. role in the South Pacific has become even greater since Washington and New Zealand became estranged over a nuclear issue.
Prime Minister David Lange of New Zealand underscored the depth of that estrangement this week when he remarked that as far as he was concerned, the ANZUS alliance linking New Zealand, Australia and the United States–in limbo now for nearly four years–is a “dead letter.”
Precisely because of close Australian-U.S. ties, this country was chosen as a safe initial stop on the vice president’s first swing through the Pacific region. Quayle, 42, had been to Asia only once before, a brief visit to Japan 10 years ago when he was a member of the House of Representatives.
Can’t Be Taken for Granted
One of the foreign policy advisers traveling on the vice president’s plane told reporters that U.S. relations with Australia are “in outrageously good shape.” Yet Quayle discovered after arriving here that, as the Bush Administration begins to formulate a new foreign policy, even Australia can no longer be taken completely for granted.
Australian officials have complained strongly and repeatedly to Quayle this week about U.S. economic policies that they believe are hurting Australia.
On foreign policy issues, too, Australia demonstrated that it is willing to stake out its own independent positions.
For example, Quayle, repeating recent Bush Administration pronouncements, told Prime Minister Bob Hawke that the United States is thinking of sending military supplies and equipment to the non-Communist opposition forces in Cambodia led by Prince Sihanouk. Hawke responded that Australia believes the focus in Cambodia should be on diplomatic solutions rather than on military initiatives.
One U.S. official traveling with Quayle portrayed Australia’s growing independence as part of a larger trend, in which the Bush Administration will face new frictions with old U.S. friends and allies.
“We seem to be on the verge of an era of a decline in confrontations with the Soviet Union,” this official said, declining to be quoted by name. “As these confrontations decline, economic strains with our friends and allies increase.”
The thrust of Quayle’s effort in Australia has been twofold: first, to try to rekindle memories of the glory days of friendship between the two countries during World War II, and second, to warn Australians that it is too early to stop worrying about the Soviet Union.
“When are the Soviets going to move their troops out of the northern territories of Japan?” the vice president asked in a speech at the National Press Club in Canberra.
“When are the Soviets going to stop providing ever more and modern arms to North Korea? And when will the Soviets actually decrease rather than increase their military aid to Hanoi in order to promote peace in Southeast Asia?”
Quayle has repeatedly portrayed himself as the representative of a new generation of Americans who grew up after World War II but have learned the lessons of its history.
“I hope to convey to you our dedication to a continuing strong American role in the Pacific region,” he said. “. . . I represent a generation that has had more opportunities than any other generation in history.”
The job of his generation, Quayle went on, is to ensure “that those opportunities are preserved and handed down to other generations.”
Coral Sea Commemoration
Quayle came to Australia as President Bush’s representative at annual ceremonies to commemorate the Battle of the Coral Sea, a naval engagement in May, 1942, in which U.S. and Australian forces combined to stop Japanese forces as they moved southward through the Pacific. The battle is generally credited here with saving Australia from a Japanese invasion.
Bush himself came to Australia as vice president in 1982 to head the American delegation during Coral Sea week.
Almost from the moment of his arrival here Wednesday, Quayle has been peppered by questions and complaints about the U.S. Export Enhancement Program, under which the Department of Agriculture provides special subsidies to private American grain companies to help stimulate exports.
The American program began in 1985 after being pushed through Congress by farm interests and with the strong support of then-Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.). Its effect has been to stimulate American wheat sales to such countries as the Soviet Union and China.
Wheat Production Down
“Australia’s share of these markets has been seriously eroded,” complained Clinton Condon, chairman of the Australian Wheat Board. He said that since the start of the U.S. subsidy program, Australian wheat production has dropped from more than 18 million tons a year to about 13 million tons.
Hawke assured Quayle that the economic dispute will not jeopardize close defense ties between Australia and the United States, which represent essentially what remains of the ANZUS pact. The ANZUS treaty, signed in 1951, commits Australia, New Zealand and the United States to act together to combat an armed attack against any one of the three.
In 1985, New Zealand announced it would no longer permit nuclear-powered or nuclear-armed warships to make port calls in its harbors. The United States objected on grounds that it does not want to say publicly whether or not any American ships carry nuclear weapons.
Because of the nuclear dispute, the United States scaled back defense cooperation with New Zealand. When Lange, the New Zealand prime minister, visited the United States last week, no member of the Bush Administration would meet with him.
Washington’s estrangement from New Zealand has increased the importance of Australia, which effectively serves as a bridge by maintaining defense ties with both New Zealand and the United States.
In Australia this week, Quayle hinted strongly that U.S. officials would like New Zealand’s voters to defeat Lange and his Labor Party government in elections scheduled next year.
“We hope that the people of New Zealand understand our friendship toward them, and we hope that there will be a change in policy sooner rather than later,” Quayle said. Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney met with a New Zealand opposition leader in Washington last week.
Australian officials sought to sidestep the U.S.-New Zealand dispute and, at the same time, keep pressure on Quayle to do something about American wheat subsidies.
On Thursday, the vice president told an audience in Canberra that he did not believe U.S. trade policies are hurting Australia. Michael Duffy, Australia’s minister for trade negotiations, retorted that “if Mr. Quayle, after a fulsome briefing by the prime minister, can’t grasp the situation, there is little hope for him.”
After three days in Australia, Quayle seemed tired of hearing about the problems of the country’s wheat farmers. “I’ve gotten the message,” he said with a sigh.
Australia’s High Court says government acted within its rights when it passed a law revoking 99-year lease for planned Russian embassy site.
Published On 12 Nov 202512 Nov 2025
Share
Russia has lost a legal fight to build a new embassy near Australia’s Parliament, with the nation’s top court ruling that Canberra acted within its rights when it cancelled the lease for the site.
Australia passed legislation in 2023 to mothball the planned embassy building after officials deemed it to pose a security threat.
Recommended Stories
list of 4 itemsend of list
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said at the time that his government decided to revoke the lease over the “specific risk” posed by the site, located about 300 metres (328 yards) from Parliament House.
Russia, which blasted the move as “Russophobic hysteria”, challenged the legislation in court, arguing that it was not valid under the Australian Constitution.
In a unanimous ruling on Wednesday, the High Court found that the cancellation of the lease had been a “valid exercise of the legislative power” to enact laws related to the acquisition of property.
The court, however, ruled that Russia was entitled to compensation after paying about $2m for the 99-year lease in 2008.
The court previously rejected a bid by Moscow to stop its officials from being evicted from the site.
The government introduced new legislation on June 15 to end the Russian lease on the land after intelligence agencies warned the location was a risk to national security.
In a statement following the ruling, Attorney General Michelle Rowland said, “Australia will always stand up for our values and we will stand up for our national security.”
“The government welcomes the High Court’s decision that found the government acted lawfully in terminating the Russian Embassy’s lease,” Rowland said in a statement.
“The government will closely consider the next steps in light of the court’s decision,” Rowland added.
The Russian embassy said it was studying the judgement, according to Australian broadcaster ABC News.
“The Russian side will carefully study the text of the court ruling, which sets a precedent,” an embassy official said in a statement.
Relations between Australia and Russia have been strained for years.
Ties deteriorated sharply after the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, which multiple investigations blamed on pro-Russian separatists, and then plunged further after Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
#BREAKING: The lease was granted to Russia in 2008, but was withdrawn when parliament passed a new law citing ASIO advice that the planned embassy could pose a threat to national security. https://t.co/6S6bf37h7m
WASHINGTON — The defeat of Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) was a victory for Republicans on Capitol Hill, who had grown increasingly frustrated by his aggressive opposition to many of President Bush’s legislative initiatives and judicial nominations.
After election results seesawed through the evening, Republican John Thune, a three-term former congressman, emerged as the victor early today.
The most closely watched, bitterly contested Senate race in the country, the South Dakota campaign was also the most expensive. Together, Thune and Daschle spent an estimated $35 million to $40 million to bombard South Dakotans for months with nonstop attack ads and campaign mailers.
The South Dakota fight reflected the bitter partisanship and stark divisions that characterized the 2004 elections. Daschle warned that Thune would act as a rubber stamp for Bush and the Republican leadership and, as a junior senator, would be unable to deliver federal money and vital projects to South Dakota. Thune attacked Daschle as a pillar of Washington’s Democratic elite, a man out of touch with his roots.
Not since 1952, when Majority Leader Ernest McFarland (D-Ariz.) lost to conservative Republican Barry Goldwater, has the leader of a party in the Senate been defeated in a bid for reelection.
Normally, congressional leaders come from safe districts, and the opposing party does not target them. But in this polarized campaign year, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) outraged Democrats by personally campaigning for Thune in South Dakota.
Still, Democrats hoped that Daschle’s stature in the Senate and his reputation among South Dakota voters for delivering federal largess to the rural, sparsely populated state would ensure his survival.
“People in that state, in South Dakota, know that Tom Daschle delivers for them,” Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) told CNN. “Why would anyone in South Dakota … want to give up having someone who is Democratic leader in the U.S. Senate?”
But Daschle was running in a heavily Republican state that voted solidly Tuesday for Bush. And Republicans used Daschle’s stature against him, presenting him as a symbol of gridlock in Washington and of the efforts of liberal Democrats to block Bush’s tax-cutting agenda.
“I’ve always described Daschle as the Darth Vader of the U.S. Senate, from the perspective of conservatives like me,” said Stephen Moore, president of the Club for Growth, a Washington-based conservative group that poured money into Thune’s campaign.
Conservatives first targeted Daschle during the 2002 South Dakota Senate race, when he wasn’t even a candidate, Moore said in an interview Tuesday. In that race, Thune lost by just 524 votes to Democratic Sen. Tim Johnson, the state’s junior senator, but Daschle was a frequent Thune target.
Conservatives said Daschle was two people: “the Tom Daschle who was the prairie populist when he was in South Dakota, and the Tom Daschle who was the darling of Hollywood and the East Coast elites in Washington,” Moore said.
The argument gradually gained ground with many South Dakotans, said Burdett Loomis, a political scientist at the University of Kansas.
“The argument of Republicans [against Daschle] has taken its toll over the years. There is that assessment that he is out of step,” Loomis said.
Although Daschle made a point of visiting every county in his sprawling state, Loomis said, “he can take that drive and visit every county every year and it simply may not be enough when you’re the leader of the party.”
Daniel Pfeiffer, Daschle’s spokesman, said the senator had fought hard against the relentless attacks aimed at him.
“For three years, they have spared no expense to beat Tom Daschle,” Pfeiffer said. “Tom has had to fight day in and day out to beat back those attacks on his record and his character. And here we are, the polls haven’t yet closed, and he’s still standing. It is a testament to Daschle’s long and deep support in this state.”
California’s famous chronicler Carey McWilliams once wrote that some see “this highly improbable state” as more illusion than reality. Perhaps that explains its residents’ perpetual efforts to shake things up and break away — either from the national government or each other.
Since 1849, more than 200 efforts have imagined a political do-over to the idea of California as a single, sprawling American state. Every attempt has failed.
“All major social and political movements in this country take time and inevitably have to overcome failures and setbacks before they are ultimately successful,” Louis Marinelli, the latest provocateur with secessionist dreams, told The Times in an email.
What may be most striking is that anyone would assume there’s a shared state identity, when Californians more often have tried to go their separate ways.
State lawmakers sent their first breakup plan to Congress in 1859, but it was squashed by the onset of the Civil War. The equally unlucky, but colorful, Yreka Rebellion of 1941 saw a handful of Northern California counties join grumpy southern Oregonians to propose a new state called “Jefferson.” They threw a big party in Siskiyou County’s biggest town, Yreka, on Dec. 4, 1941.
Three days later, after the infamous attack on Pearl Harbor, secession fever subsided.
(Anthony Russo / For The Times )
As the song says, breaking up is hard to do. There was a 1965 failed legislative effort to create the nation’s 51st state with a dividing line at the Tehachapi Mountains that span Los Angeles and Kern counties, revisited and dismissed in 1978. And then, the early 1990s plan for an advisory ballot measure to gauge voter interest in splitting California into three states.
“I can’t guarantee a perfect world, but I know that divided, more homogeneous Californias will be better than the gridlocks we have now,” Stan Statham, then a Republican state assemblyman, said in a 1993 Times story. Alas, his proposal died in the state Senate.
A 2009 plan would’ve carved California into separate coastal and inland U.S. states, presumably one favored by Democrats and one by Republicans. The idea was recycled in 2011 by state Sen. Jeff Stone (R-Temecula) while he was a Riverside County supervisor.
Few efforts garnered as much attention, or derision, as the 2014 campaign by Silicon Valley entrepreneur Tim Draper to create six states out of California, with names like “Silicon Valley” and “West California.”
No secession effort has answered the practical questions — how to negotiate water rights, divvy up the existing state’s assets, pay for border security, just for starters. Still, it often sparks valuable public policy discussions.
How sustainable is it when the Bay Area’s per capita income is more than double that in the Central Valley? Why is poverty pocketed in a handful of regions? Does California, home to much of America’s recent job growth, get what it deserves from the federal government?
Those concerns may trigger bouts of secessionist fever, but few would dispute that they’re also a good start on a to-do list for California’s state and national leaders as 2017 comes into view.
