politics

RIVERSIDE, Calif. — A former Southern Poverty Law Center official has been charged in the Department of Justice’s broader criminal case against the Alabama-based civil rights group, a frequent target of conservative critics who claim the nonprofit is politically biased.

Heidi Beirich, a political extremism expert who left the law center about six years ago, was named in an indictment unsealed Wednesday.

Beirich, 59, of Palm Springs, is charged with wire fraud conspiracy, conspiracy to submit false statements to a federally insured bank and conspiracy to commit concealment money laundering. She was charged in the government’s existing case against the SPLC in Montgomery, Ala.

In ankle cuffs and wearing a red T-shirt, Beirich made her initial court appearance for a bond hearing in Riverside, Calif., on Wednesday afternoon. She did not enter a plea and U.S. Magistrate Judge David T. Bristow ordered her to surrender her passport and appear in court in Alabama within two weeks.

The judge released Beirich on her own recognizance after prosecutors declined to file a request for detention. Her lawyer, Michael Proctor, said in court that Beirich is a “highly, highly responsible, pro-social and trustworthy” member of society with no criminal history.

Earlier in the day, Proctor said his client is innocent of the charges and described the case as politically motivated. He accused prosecutors of trying to punish his client for her “decadeslong record of success dismantling hate groups.”

“A free and fair society does not use the justice system to silence its political opponents,” Proctor said in a statement.

Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche announced the new charges at a news briefing in Washington, but did not name Beirich. CNN was first to report on the charges against Beirich.

“This is exactly what we said would happen in a case like this,” Blanche said. “Our investigators and the U.S. Attorneys and the agents working the case will keep on working it even after the initial indictment.”

An SPLC spokesperson said the case against it and Beirich “will not shake our resolve.”

“Taking on violent hate and extremist groups is among the most dangerous work there is, and we believe it is also among the most important work we do,” the spokesperson said in a statement. “We are confident in our position and look forward to presenting the evidence and making our case in court.”

Beirich led the SPLC’s Intelligence Project, which incurred the anger of conservatives with its annual report on organizations that it classified as hate groups. Critics accused the law center of unfairly tarnishing right-wing groups with the same label that it applied to white supremacists.

Beirich co-founded the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism in 2020 after leaving the SPLC. She has testified before Congress about far-right extremism and is frequently interviewed about the subject by news outlets. Her current organization did not immediately respond to emails seeking comment Wednesday.

A superseding indictment filed in June appears to refer to Beirich as “Employee-2” and by her former title as director of the SPLC’s Intelligence Project.

The indictment alleges that between 2007 and 2023, more than $4 million in donated funds were secretly funneled to people who infiltrated or were associated with violent extremist groups. Prosecutors said some of the money was used for recruiting new members and purchasing Ku Klux Klan robes and materials for cross-burning ceremonies.

The indictment says “Employee-2” oversaw the payment of donor money to SPLC informants or “field sources,” including KKK members and white nationalists who initially approached the SPLC for help leaving the extremist organizations. The SPLC employee was in a romantic relationship with a source who infiltrated a neo-Nazi group at the direction of the law center, the indictment alleges

Proctor said Beirich “won’t be silenced or intimidated by the government’s false and politicized allegations.”

Kunzelman, Chandler and Ding write for the Associated Press. Kunzelman reported from Washington and Chandler from Montgomery, Ala. AP writers Eric Tucker, Alanna Durkin Richer and Collin Binkley in Washington and Christopher Weber in Los Angeles contributed to this report.

Aug. 12 (UPI) — Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives are escalating their criticism of Paramount Skydance’s attempt to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery, with one lawmaker accusing the Paramount CEO of “colluding” with President Donald Trump and his administration.

Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, sent Paramount CEO David Ellison, a letter Wednesday, inviting him for an interview to “answer the committee’s questions about your Donald Trump-enabled shopping spree to consolidate news organizations, movie studios, cable channels and streaming stations.”

Raskin opened his letter referring to a New York Times opinion piece by Ellison in which the CEO defended the deal and said he would stay silent “no more.”

“This is great news,” Raskin wrote. “Over the past 12 months, I have sent you four letters. You have responded to none of them.”

“I have repeatedly sought answers from you about the Paramount Skydance merger and your planned acquisition of Warner Bros.Discovery in light of troubling reports that your company is colluding with President Trump and his administration to curtail media independence, spread political censorship and suppress dissent.”

Raskin also wrote that he’s sought answers about alleged political interference in CBS News reporting and that he has “significant concerns” that the acquisition would “dangerously” consolidate power in a single conglomerate.

Paramount had not commented on the letter Wednesday afternoon. However, Makan Delrahim, during a summit this week hosted by Politico, said the company is “transparent” and responsive to lawmakers’ concerns.

As of now, Raskin cannot require Ellison’s cooperation. However, if Democrats win control of the House in the upcoming midterm elections, Raskin — who is expected to become committee chairman — could subpoena Ellison.

Raskin previously told Politico that he plans to increase oversight of the merger and that “anyone involved should be prepared to answer under oath for their roll in this brazen campaign to bend America’s free press to Donald Trump’s political, financial and personal will.”

In 2025, Paramount paid $16 million to settle a lawsuit (which many called “meritless”) brought by Trump, and Democrats have said the money could be considered a bribe to allow the Paramount-Skydance merger, which was approved shortly afterward.

However, the merger has been postponed because of an antitrust lawsuit brought by attorneys general of 12 states and the Writers Guild America. A trial is set for March.

WASHINGTON — In another major test of how far left Democratic voters in swing states are willing to go, moderate David Crowley narrowly defeated democratic socialist Francesca Hong to become the Democratic nominee for governor of Wisconsin.

The surprise result in Tuesday’s primary — in a closely watched swing state seen as a possible bellwether of Democratic sentiment — came after polls had shown Hong leading the field by double digits. With 95% of the vote counted, Crowley clinched the nomination early Wednesday by just 3,000 votes.

It was the second purple-state race between Democrats in two weeks to have an extremely narrow result, following the slim win by progressive Abdul El-Sayed in the Michigan Senate primary last week. Polling also overestimated progressive performance in that race.

In the November general election, Crowley, the Milwaukee County executive, will face Republican Rep. Tom Tiffany, who was endorsed by President Trump. If Crowley were to defeat Tiffany, he would become the first Black governor in the state’s history.

The race had been closely watched as an example of the national fissure between progressive and establishment Democrats.

“Hong’s candidacy is a sign of the broader trends in the party, with outspoken progressives and socialists emerging in some primaries and having real sway in the party,” said University of Wisconsin-Madison professor Barry Burden. “With Crowley, he has a more conciliatory approach … that probably sits better with the average independent voter or moderate in the state who’s just looking to get some problems addressed.”

Crowley and his backers had undertaken an intense late-July sprint to persuade Democrats to coalesce around him. He suspended his campaign amid low poll numbers, then rejoined the race with less than a month before election day after establishment frontrunner Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez dropped out.

“It was fast and furious very late in the campaign to try to build a movement in the party behind Crowley as the establishment candidate who is presumably more likely to win in a general election,” Burden said.

In another upper Midwest contest highlighting the choices confronting Democratic voters, progressive Lt. Gov. Penny Flanagan defeated center-left Rep. Angie Craig. Flanagan will face former television sports reporter Michele Tofoya, a Republican, in November for the seat held by Democratic Sen. Tina Smith, who is retiring.

As Democrats grapple with creating a party identity that will draw swing voters away from President Trump’s Republican Party in November and in 2028, a fierce debate has taken hold between the party’s factions — progressives who argue their approach is the key to the party’s fresh path forward, and moderates who fear that a far-left presidential candidate could cost Democrats the presidency in 2028.

Wisconsin Democratic gubernatorial candidate Francesca Hong waves to supporters on Tuesday night.

(Nam Y. Huh / Associated Press)

Progressive candidates so far have fared well in blue strongholds such as Denver, New York and Minnesota this cycle, but they have struggled in Missouri and Wisconsin.

“Democrats of all ilk are winning elections all across the country,” said strategist Hyma Moore on Wednesday on CBS News, “and it’s very specific to what that state or that district needs.”

Moore said Hong’s loss was not “a setback for progressives,” arguing that she was a weaker political candidate than Crowley regardless of her ideology.

In his victory remarks Wednesday morning, Crowley rejected the framing of an intra-party conflict.

“We may not agree on every policy, we may not use the same labels, but we all want safe communities, strong schools, affordable healthcare, good-paying jobs and a brighter future for all of our children,” Crowley said.

Hong, a member of the state Assembly, ran into controversy late in the campaign with resurfaced social media posts in which she called for defunding the police and shared her negative opinions on Thanksgiving. Although she sought to retract or revise many of those comments in televised interviews, moderates and centrists seized on these points to argue against her electability.

“She had a whole smorgasbord of positions that were perfectly designed to repel voters in the middle that Democrats have to win,” said Kate deGruyter of the centrist Democratic group Third Way, which is funneling money into an effort to discredit democratic socialism ahead of the 2028 presidential election.

The race remained exceedingly tight until early Wednesday, when the Associated Press projected Crowley as the winner. In counties where Crowley was expected to dominate, such as Milwaukee, Hong performed better than expected. While Hong won the city of Madison and areas with University of Wisconsin satellite campuses. the margin was too small to push her past Crowley, according to AP election data.

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Fremont) chose to publicly back Hong, but she was unable to secure key national endorsements from the two most prominent progressives in Congress, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).

Hong told her supporters Tuesday night, hours before she conceded, that regardless of the result, progressive politics would have to be reckoned with in Wisconsin’s electoral future.

“We have built something that will change politics forever,” she said. “I am so deeply grateful, to my core, for how hard you have all fought, and for what this fight, our movement, means for all of Wisconsin.”

Times staff writer Justine McDaniel in Washington contributed to this report.

Aug. 12 (UPI) — The U.S. Treasury Department has officially repealed a rule that required U.S. companies and individuals to report “beneficial ownership information” to the department.

The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network bureau of the Treasury Department — which is meant to safeguard the U.S. financial system from illegal activity, work against money laundering and terrorism financing and help with national security — issued a final rule Tuesday that permanently removes the requirement. The reporting rule existed in connection with the Corporate Transparency Act.

The network, called FinCEN, also announced that it would delete all previously reported information from its databases.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent called it “a victory for common sense” and said that it eliminates a “burdensome reporting requirement.” An interim final rule has been in place since March 2025.

This final rule also exempts U.S. citizens with FinCEN identification from having to update or correct their information and eliminates a requirement for foreign businesses to report U.S. citizens who helped them register to do business in the United States.

As defined by FinCEN, a beneficial owner is one who directly or indirectly owns at least 25% of a company or exercises substantial interest over the company.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., issued a statement Tuesday saying the repeal guts the Corporate Transparency Act and is a “gift to cartels, criminals and U.S. adversaries that exploit shell companies to move millions through our financial system.”

“The Trump administration has dismissed law enforcement warnings, ignored the role that shell companies play in crimes ranging from drug trafficking to fraud to sanctions evasion and gutted a statue that Secretary Rubio once championed as ‘the most significant anti-corruption and money-laundering law in decades,” Warren said.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio posted that statement about the act on social media in December 2020.

Congress passed the Corporate Transparency Act in 2021. The reporting requirement went into effect in 2024.

WASHINGTON — The Department of Justice has charged nearly a dozen people with participating in a multimillion-dollar scheme to help hundreds of Chinese nationals fraudulently obtain green cards through sham marriages to U.S. citizens, officials said Wednesday.

American citizens were paid as much as $30,000 to enter into bogus marriages with immigrants seeking lawful permanent resident status as part of the scheme orchestrated from New York, according to court papers. The defendants charged up to $100,000 per green card, bringing in tens of millions of dollars over the course of the decadelong scheme, according to officials.

Authorities say they believe the group arranged more than 1,000 sham weddings, describing it as one of the largest marriage fraud prosecutions in U.S. history.

“This scheme was not a quick, fly-by-night operation but rather a yearslong, multibillion dollar cottage industry to criminally assist people who would not, or legally could not, otherwise become citizens of the United States,” Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche told reporters.

The charges come against the backdrop of the Trump administration’s restrictions on both legal and illegal immigration that have sought to crack down on who is able to enter the country or become a citizen.

After recruiting U.S. citizens, the defendants would arrange fake weddings and in some cases stage photos of families at places such as restaurants afterward to make them look legitimate, according to officials. The defendants would then help the immigrants through the lawful permanent status application process.

“These schemes have real cost. They rob our country of its ability to know who should be and who should not be allowed in America,” Blanche said.

The 11 defendants, including people accused of officiating the sham weddings, are charged in an indictment filed in New York. It was not immediately clear Wednesday whether they had lawyers to speak on their behalf.

Richer writes for the Associated Press.

Aug. 12 (UPI) — Thousands of Canadians have signed a petition demanding the government kick the U.S. ambassador to Canada out of the country.

The petition, which had almost 60,000 signatures as of Wednesday morning, will be presented to the House of Commons this fall by Green Party leader Elizabeth May. It says that Ambassador Pete Hoekstra should be declared persona non grata and the Canadian government should request his removal from the country.

The petition accuses Hoekstra of repeatedly making public statements that undermine Canada-U.S. diplomatic relations, including characterizing the 2025 Canadian federal election as “anti-American;” normalizing the Trump administration’s threats to annex Canada as the “51st state;” and accusing Canada of interfering in U.S. domestic politics while making repeated interventions in Canadian political discourse. The petition also said Hoekstra was linked to a Michigan-based voter identification app used by the Alberta separatist Centurion Project, while claiming no knowledge of its use, and that The Alberta Prosperity Project [a separatist organization] met with U.S. State Department officials three times between April 2025 and January 2026, with Hoekstra claiming to have no knowledge of those meetings.

The petition was created by a woman from Calgary.

A representative for the U.S. Embassy in Ottawa declined to comment on the petition except to say the embassy is aware of it, the CBC reported.

In June, Hoekstra said that Canada’s annexation by the United States would be a great topic of discussion for Prime Minister Mark Carney and U.S. President Donald Trump.

Hoekstra was a member of the House of Representatives representing western Michigan from 1993 to 2011. He was the ambassador to The Netherlands, his country of birth, during Trump’s first term. He was named ambassador to Canada in April 2025.

In 2023, the Canadian government declared Chinese diplomat Zhao Wei persona non grata after he was accused of gathering information in Hong Kong about the family of Conservative Member of Parliament Michael Chong.

The following year, six diplomats and consular officials from India were expelled after the Royal Canadian Mounted Police alleged that the agents were targeting Canadian citizens. They linked the tracking to the murder of Sikh activist Hardeep Singh Nijar in Surrey, British Columbia, in 2023.

The police linked the campaign to the June 2023 murder of Sikh activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar in Surrey, B.C.

Carney and the Canadian government have worked to improve relations with China and India.

WASHINGTON — White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, the youngest person to hold the role, will leave at month’s end, President Trump announced Wednesday.

Leavitt, 28, just recently returned to the White House after taking a brief leave for the birth of her second child in May.

Leavitt, who served Trump as a press aide during his first go-around in the White House, has been one of the most visible advocates of Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement. The Republican president described her as one of his “most trusted aides” in a social media post announcing her departure.

He said Leavitt “will be departing her role at the end of the month so she can spend more time with her beautiful young children and family, a decision I totally understand and respect! Karoline will now be one of my top outside advisers, and an influential voice within the Republican Party, as we work to defy History, and conclusively win the Midterm Elections.”

Leavitt recently returned to work after taking leave following the birth of her second child, a daughter, in May. She also has a two-year-old son.

“The truth is since returning to the White House after the birth of my daughter, I have felt in my heart that I cannot be the best mom my two young children deserve while devoting the constant time, energy, and attention required of the White House Press Secretary — and that is why I have ultimately made the bittersweet decision to depart the White House and embark on a new chapter in my life,” Leavitt said in a social media post.

Trump did not outline plans for who might replace her in the high-profile role.

The White House defended reports it planned to spend nearly a $1bn on controversial construction projects.

The Trump administration has responded to controversy over construction and expansion projects at the White House by saying the work was “long-overdue and necessary” and “inextricably tied to the security of the President, the White House grounds and the certain security infrastructure assets”.

US President Donald Trump’s administration has long insisted construction is being funded by private donors and is necessary for security reasons. But on Wednesday, The Washington Post cited documents it obtained that showed the administration was planning to spend nearly $1bn on the construction work, which includes a large new ballroom to replace much of the White House’s East Wing.

White House spokesman Davis Ingle, in a statement to Al Jazeera, cited recent security incidents, including attempted attacks on the president and events around the 250th anniversary of US independence, as reasons for the work.

Ingle said the work was being done in coordination with the Secret Service and White House Military Office. He also said approximately $400m in funding for the new ballroom was coming from “President Trump and generous American patriots”.

About $875m has been put into the White House Repair and Restoration account, which typically has only several million dollars and is used for routine maintenance and upkeep. Some $500m of that money came from the Secret Service and the White House Military Office, tasked with securing the president and his family, as well as top US officials. Another $305m, according to The Post, came from private donations, while the provenance of another $70m was not indicated.

The White House reconstruction project has faced scrutiny from lawmakers, as well as courts, over concerns that vested interests, including private businesses seeking government contracts, are paying for the work in exchange for government favours. A federal judge in Washington, DC, last week ordered a halt to work specifically for the ballroom, saying it needed Congressional approval under existing law. In June, the advocacy group Public Citizen said it found corporate donors to the project had received more than $50bn in government contracts during the previous six months.

SACRAMENTO — Two state lawmakers from Los Angeles want tougher penalties for disasters caused by industrial companies after a massive fire in Boyle Heights left neighbors struggling with smoky air and the smell of rotting meat.

Assemblymember Mark González and state Sen. María Elena Durazo, both Democrats, are seeking a new law that would require any new cold storage facility to create a contingency fund for emergencies.

The fund would be used to help neighbors mitigate the fallout from a disaster.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, who is running for reelection, will appear with González and Durazo at an event Wednesday to discuss the proposed laws.

Lineage’s 500,000-square-foot food warehouse in Boyle Heights caught fire on June 17. The company blames a power company, which was working on the warehouse’s roof, for the blaze.

The company, Altus Power, has denied responsibility, stating that the cause is undetermined. The company accused Lineage of finger-pointing instead of focusing on community relief.

Noxious smoke and an influx of rats and flies attracted to rotting meat stored at the facility have tormented neighbors. The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health has cited Lineage for unsanitary and nuisance conditions related to rodent and pest control violations.

The South Coast Air Quality Management District has issued at least 20 violation notices to Lineage for public nuisance.

Lineage recently applied for building permits to replace the site, which Bass called “a slap in the face” to Boyle Heights families.

A press release ahead of Wednesday’s news conference said the proposal by lawmakers “will ensure that Lineage can’t rebuild without being accountable to the community.”

González and Durazo plan to insert proposed legislation related to the Lineage fire into existing bills, a process known as “gut and amend.”

The politicians also want to allow for stiffer fines against companies following a disaster.

Their proposed legislation also would ensure that anyone who sues over the fire doesn’t have to pay state taxes on any settlement, and that local jurisdictions are responsible for pest extermination efforts.

Greg Lehmkuhl, president and chief executive of Lineage, said in a quarterly earnings call last week that the company has committed $3.3 million to the community in the aftermath of the fire.

“Safety remains our top priority, and I’m incredibly proud of our team and how they’re handling this very challenging situation,” Lehmkuhl said on the call.

“Cursed be you, State of Israel. Cursed be you,” Hugo Chávez said memorably on state television in 2010. Over his years in power, he floated the ancient antisemitic trope of the Christ-killing people, likened Israeli leaders to Hitler, called for them to be tried at The Hague, and in 2009 broke off relations entirely in response to the Gaza attacks, calling his own diplomats’ expulsion an “honor.” He had already withdrawn Venezuela’s envoy once before in 2006 over the IDF offensive in Lebanon, and three months after the 2009 break he recognized the Palestinian Authority. 

Although Venezuela never stopped trading with Israel, Chávez’s firm anti-Israel rhetoric was central to how the Bolivarian Revolution defined itself abroad, even after his death. Now his heirs are thawing one of the coldest relationships in chavista foreign policy. 

On Tuesday, the foreign ministries of Venezuela and Israel announced they would establish a “coordination mechanism” to provide consular services to their citizens, continuing the ongoing technical cooperation born out of Israel’s response to the June 24 earthquakes. Although the agreement falls short of full diplomatic restoration, with no mention yet of exchanging ambassadors or reopening embassies, it is the first formal coordination channel between the two countries since Chávez severed relations.

Chavista groups took to the streets in Caracas on July 25 to denounce the US-sponsored talks that began on August 1, burning Israeli and US flags.

In 2017, then-Foreign Minister Delcy Rodríguez said Venezuela wanted to restore ties, and the following year Maduro welcomed then-chief Sephardic rabbi of Israel, Shlomo Moshe Amara, to Miraflores, awarding him the Libertadoras y Libertadores order—the same honor given to the Palestinian Authority’s Abu Mazen by Chávez in 2009. 

Although the government was quick to frame the collaboration as a humanitarian matter, it was also military from the jump. Six days after the quakes, a diplomatic and military mission departed to Venezuela from Israel, comprising more than 50 personnel from the Foreign Ministry, the IDF’s Home Front Command, and the National Emergency Management Authority, joined by ZAKA search-and-rescue volunteers. It was led by Brigadier General Elad Edri, chief of staff of the IDF Home Front Command, who in a July meeting presented a “Project for the Reconstruction of the Future” to Rodríguez. Delcy was then photographed alongside uniformed IDF officers, thanked the delegation on camera, and praised its members as “highly trained and professional,” ultimately asking Sa’ar to extend the mission. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu personally approved the extension.

Newly-appointed canciller Félix Plasencia sealed the agreement with Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar after weeks of talks, and a day after holding a meeting with Isaac Cohen, chief rabbi of Venezuela’s Israelite Association. He delivered a letter addressed to Delcy Rodríguez, asking her to consider restoring diplomatic ties between the countries given “the needs of the Jewish community in our country.” 

Plasencia thanked Israel for its earthquake assistance and praised the community’s historic contributions to Venezuela, warm words for a community that chavismo long conflated with the State it was cursing. In 2009, Chávez called on Venezuela’s Jews to answer for a foreign government’s war and linked Jews to the hoarding of the world’s wealth in his 2005 Christmas address. During the 2012 campaign, chavista media hammered Henrique Capriles over his Jewish ancestry, and state security raided the Hebraica Jewish school twice, in 2004 and 2007, as denounced by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.

Signaling a willingness to rebuild relations with Israel is one more entry on a long list of things that Washington wants and that Rodríguez is willing to concede.

The government has reversed course, but some of its base has not. Chavista groups took to the streets in Caracas on July 25 to denounce the US-sponsored talks that began on August 1, burning Israeli and US flags. As the news of renewed consular relations broke, the Venezuelan Movement in Solidarity with Palestine, Al Awda, rejected “normalization with the genocidal state of Israel,” warning that “diplomacy cannot serve to whitewash crimes against humanity.” 

But the base’s anger misreads the nature of the turn. After a quarter-century defining itself against empire, chavismo is not softening but practicing what former diplomat Imdat Oner calls authoritarian pragmatism: trading diplomatic goodwill for room to consolidate power at home and attract economic opportunities. Since taking the interim presidency, Delcy Rodríguez has reversed much of the confrontational diplomacy of the Chávez and Maduro years, moving closer to Washington, restoring ties with Chile, Perú, and the Dominican Republic, withdrawing from the International Criminal Court, and distancing Caracas from Iran.

Signaling a willingness to rebuild relations with Israel is one more entry on a long list of things that Washington wants and that Rodríguez is willing to concede. Chávez cursed the State of Israel “from the depths of his soul and his viscera”, but his successors have decided that the soul of their revolution is worth sacrificing for their own survival.

The chair of the California Senate’s utilities committee said Tuesday that he was “deeply troubled” by electric company executives’ recent threats to take action to protect their shareholders if they don’t get legislation in Sacramento to limit their wildfire liabilities.

In a letter to Southern California Edison and Pacific Gas & Electric, Sen. Benjamin Allen (D-Santa Monica) wrote that he was considering calling the utility executives to an oversight hearing to have them explain their plans.

Allen sent the letter after the Times reported that the two companies’ top executives promised their investors in recent conference calls that they planned to respond if they don’t get legislation for which they have been lobbying. Gov. Gavin Newsom and lawmakers are working behind closed doors on a package of wildfire bills.

“While I understand that utility investors seek predictability for their invested dollars, and stable utilities are important to the state of California, we as legislators must balance the additional interests of wildfire victims and survivors, our residents’ ability to access affordable insurance, and the need to ensure affordable utility service,” Allen wrote.

“We are certainly not interested in being threatened as we seek a balanced path that is right for California,” he added.

In response to the letter, PG&E and Edison said Tuesday night that The Times had “mischaracterized” their executives’ comments to investors.

“PG&E’s objectives remain unchanged: safely and reliably serve our customers, ensure wildfire victims are compensated quickly and fairly, and protect customer affordability,” PG&E said in a statement.

Edison declined to comment further.

Besides chairing the Senate’s Energy, Utilities and Communications Committee, Allen also is running in November’s election to be the state’s next insurance commissioner.

Newsom and lawmakers already passed legislation that cut the state’s three biggest electric companies’ liabilities for wildfires. Edison’s shareholders, for example, may pay little of the billions of dollars of damage from last year’s devastating Eaton fire — which killed 19 people and left thousands of families in Altadena homeless — under current laws championed by Newsom to protect the utilities from bankruptcy.

The utilities say more needs to be done. Among the recommendations in a report ordered by Newsom is limiting the amounts that victims can receive for pain and suffering and capping the fees of attorneys who represent them.

The commissioned report also suggested that utilities should no longer reimburse property insurers for damage from fires sparked by electrical equipment. Although this would reduce utilities’ liability for fires, insurers say it would increase premiums for homeowners.

“If the Legislature does not act, or if they act and don’t actually solve the problem, then we’re going to have to take action,” Patti Poppe, PG&E’s chief executive, said on a July 23 call with Wall Street analysts.

Poppe did not specify what her company would do, but made it clear that any action would protect shareholders’ money.

In earlier conversations with analysts, PG&E executives had “alluded to the possibility of opportunistic share repurchases should the legislative process fail to deliver a more durable wildfire liability framework,” according to a report by the bank Jeffries.

Such buybacks could raise the company’s stock price and benefit shareholders while reducing money available for the utility’s California programs.

Last month, Pedro Pizarro, chief executive of Edison International, told Wall Street analysts on a conference call that he too was prepared to make financial changes if the Legislature does not pass a comprehensive bill to cut the utilities’ financial wildfire risk before the legislative session ends Aug. 31.

Any legislation that passes without a protective framework for utilities, Pizarro said, would “influence how we prioritize and deploy future capital.”

Pizarro declined analysts’ requests to say where the company would cut back, but said the utility would continue spending aimed at keeping its grid safe and reliable.

“We’re going to evaluate the totality of the package that comes to us and figure out our response that goes along with it,” Pizarro said.

This month, state and county officials released their investigation into the Eaton fire, blaming the deadly inferno on Edison’s century-old transmission line that the company kept in place even though it hadn’t carried electricity since 1971.

Utilities have long known that idle lines could spark fires. In 2019, the Kincade fire in Sonoma County, which destroyed hundreds of homes, was ignited by an old, unused transmission line owned by PG&E.

At least seven of the 20 most destructive fires in California history have been sparked by the three biggest for-profit utilities.

A new LAPD report released Tuesday blamed poor planning and coordination for issues with the department’s response to protests that erupted on city streets last summer in opposition to the Trump administration’s immigration policies.

But apart from identifying those problems, the report concluded that police officers performed well in the face of “unprecedented” unrest that sometimes devolved into violence and vandalism.

Missing from the 62-page report — at least in the view of some longtime department observers — was any reflection about officers’ use of less-lethal weapons that left hundreds of people injured and drew strong condemnations from human rights groups.

The report largely blamed protesters for instigating violence and injuring officers, saying “agitators” intent on taking advantage of the disorder made it impossible to avoid using force.

The report said the LAPD was not prepared to deal with the protective equipment and “improvised weaponry” employed by some protesters, including people with oven mitts who picked up and lobbed tear gas canisters back in the direction of officers and others who used leaf blowers to redirect the gas.

During the department’s presentation of the report, one police commissioner, Jeff Skobin, pointed out that demonstrators and journalists who spoke at the meeting felt as though their perspectives weren’t reflected in the report whatsoever. He suggested that LAPD officials consider reaching out to journalists or press organizations as the department reevaluates its media policy.

Commission President Rasha Gerges Shields said the department could have examined whether reforms that were called for in 2020 had been implemented — and areas where the department still needed to improve.

“I just want to make sure that this isn’t just the end-all, be-all of this conversation,” she said.

In response, LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell said the report had considered past lessons learned, but the “unprecedented” nature of the protests justified the department’s actions.

“The level of violence — I have been doing this for 45 years, I have not seen that here or anywhere else in the country,” he said, noting that nearly 50 officers were injured.

The report said officers were targeted with rocks, bottles, commercial-grade fireworks and Molotov cocktails. Timely communication was a concern at times, the report said, with the department lacking a necessary number of radio wave frequencies.

When less-lethal weapons proved ineffective, the department deployed tear gas on two occasions, June 8 and 14, to disperse “violent groups” and restore order. It was the first time the department had used the measure since at least the 1970s. The decision to use gas “reflected the extreme conditions faced at the height of the unrest,” the report said. The report doesn’t specify who authorized the deployment of the gas.

But the gas also created tactical challenges, since many patrol and Metropolitan Division officers lacked protective masks, increasing their risk of exposure. The report said the chemical agents were “the only viable option to reestablish control.”

In just two weeks of protests, the report said, the department spent $17.47 million in personnel costs, including $12.14 million for overtime. Ultimately, the report concluded, the department “contained the unrest” without any loss of life or “major breaches of critical infrastructure.”

Some critics said the report failed to answer basic questions, such as how many less-lethal rounds were fired or how many officers were disciplined for misconduct.

Like past after-action reports, the review was hyper-focused on the threats faced by officers, critics said. But, they noted, it had little to say about how officers’ use of less-lethal weapons — sometimes in clear violation of the department’s own policies — that were widely documented documented on social media and in news accounts.

“If the department can’t even recognize the possibility that they might have a problem with how they police protests, after last summer, how can anyone expect them to do anything differently next time?” said Peter Bibring, a civil rights attorney who previously served as director of police practices at the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California.

According to the city attorney’s office, more than 120 claims for damages have been filed against the city in connection to police actions during pro-immigration protests as of April. The city is still facing lawsuits stemming from the 2020 protests over the police killing of George Floyd. The latest spate of civil actions could tie the city up in costly litigation for years to come.

At Tuesday’s commission meeting, the 45-minute public comment period was extended to accommodate dozens of speakers, many of whom criticized the report for whitewashing what they described as the department’s heavy-handed response to the protests.

Despite years of costly lawsuits, oversight measures and promises by leaders to rein in indiscriminate use of force during protests, officers were shown on video last year trampling demonstrators on horseback and aiming so-called less-lethal launchers at people’s heads in a violation of department policy, speakers said. None of that, observers said, was mentioned in the report.

Others argued that the report seems to cast members of the media as nuisances to be dealt with, while ignoring instances in which journalists were targeted by law enforcement.

“It’s an insult,” said Nick Stern, a British news photographer who is suing the Los Angeles County after being struck by sheriff’s deputies while covering a protest in Paramount. “Journalists only show up as logistical problems.”

Another speaker noted the inflammatory language used in the report seemed to justify the aggressive tactics by describing protesters as operating in “cells,” likening them to Al-Qaeda.

Lt. Joseph Fransen, the study’s chief author, told the Commission that he took inspiration from the federal government’s 9/11 after-action report, which dissected mistakes leading up to the terrorist attack.

“These aren’t necessarily points of failure, these are just lessons to be learned in the future,” Fransen said of his report.

Officials have promised thorough investigations of all uses of force. The department limited its use of the launchers after a federal judge issued an injunction in January, but has deployed other types of crowd control weapons in subsequent protests. The judge ruled that officers have repeatedly violated previous court orders that allow the weapon to be used only to subdue protesters who pose a threat of violence.

The report found that, on several nights, the LAPD didn’t have enough personnel to process and transport all the people who were arrested. Between June 7-16, 2025, the department made 435 protest-related arrests, including 182 on June 10 alone. Three out of every four arrest was for unlawful assembly, while 16 arrests were made for violent crimes, including assault with a deadly weapon on a police officer or attempted murder of a police officer. Most people were released on citation. Four-fifths of those arrested came from the county, while others traveled from surrounding counties or outside the state.

In less than a month, Paramount Skydance Chief Executive David Ellison has exhibited a dizzying range of emotions as the goal line for the coveted $111-billion Warner Bros. Discovery deal has moved farther away.

The tech scion initially exuded confidence that Hollywood’s biggest merger in decades was on a fast track to completion by September. Ellison and others downplayed efforts by California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta to challenge the acquisition — until Bonta and 11 other Democratic state attorneys general gained momentum in their antitrust lawsuit, which now threatens to derail Paramount’s Warner Bros. deal or, at least, make it significantly more expensive.

Ellison and his executives have vacillated from anger to acceptance. Last week, Ellison attempted a high-profile reputation reboot, extolling his love for movies and blaming politics for opposition to the deal.

The mogul has told investors the company is willing to negotiate a settlement with Bonta in hopes of completing the massive merger as soon as possible.

But Ellison also is making contingency plans to shift Paramount’s historic home base from Melrose Avenue to Tennessee — or perhaps Texas — as early as this fall.

Paramount’s board has approved Ellison’s relocation plans, according to people familiar with the situation who were not authorized to speak publicly. Ellison shared the concept with his executive leadership team in a meeting last Wednesday but said his preference was to remain in California, these people said.

The proposal includes potentially selling the 65-acre Paramount lot in Hollywood — as well as the larger Warner Bros. campus in Burbank, should Paramount prevail in the merger battle. Such sales would generate revenue to help pay merger costs, one of the knowledgeable sources said.

Paramount’s sudden relocation plan has further rattled Hollywood, which already is reeling from thousands of job losses in recent years.

Bonta, in a statement Tuesday, blasted Paramount’s latest strategy, calling it “another attempt to blackmail the state into letting an illegal deal through.”

“Paramount has lost the plot as it continues to lose in court,” Bonta said. “My office remains committed to stopping illegal consolidation and protecting a vibrant California economy for businesses that play by the rules.”

Behind Paramount’s pivot is a desperate scramble to bolster its legal case and muster funds to help finance a deal Warner shareholders approved in April.

Paramount offered to pay Warner investors $31 a share as well as so-called “ticking fees” of 25 cents per share for every quarter after Sept. 30 until the transaction closes.

That sweetener was intended as a show of confidence that Paramount’s deal would sail through its regulatory reviews, unlike a Netflix acquisition that faced more regulatory scrutiny. Netflix subsequently dropped its bid.

Paramount was banking on the swift approval of the U.S. Department of Justice, which arrived in June. President Trump is friendly with the Ellison family, and he has been eager for a shakeup at CNN, one of Warner’s properties.

“Ellison thought he had an ace in the hole with Trump [and] the DOJ, but it backfired on him because the clearance was so obviously rubber-stamping,” London-based media analyst Alice Enders said. “Now, the issues have resurfaced and it’s a costly potential delay.”

The ticking fees could add $7 million a day — or $650 million a quarter — to the $81 billion that Paramount had already anticipated paying Warner shareholders. (Paramount also agreed to absorb about $30 billion of Warner Bros. debt left over from last merger, in 2022.)

Ellison has repeatedly defended his proposed purchase, saying the tie-up does not threaten competition because Hollywood has been transformed by Netflix and other deep-pocketed tech giants.

Already, Paramount has received clearances from 65 foreign regulators, including Britain and the European Commission.

To accelerate California approvals, Paramount requested a November trial date for Bonta’s suit. Instead, U.S. District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín scheduled a March 2 trial — dealing another blow to Paramount.

Ticking fees alone could add $2.1 billion to the cost of buying Warner Bros. In addition, Paramount said that delaying the transaction until next spring will add $190 million in bridge loan financing costs.

Paramount disclosed that it had $1.6 billion in cash on hand and a revolving loan of $3.2 billion available for its use.

If the deal fails to close by June 4, Paramount would have to pay Warner Bros. a $7-billion breakup fee. That’s when Warner’s board could pull the plug on the Paramount deal.

Puck News first reported Ellison’s latest plan to quickly move Paramount’s operations as soon as October.

“This is a plan — not a threat,” said a person who was in the room when Ellison discussed his plans but who was not authorized to comment.

The relocation campaign echoes a tactic employed by software giant Oracle Corp., co-founded by Ellison’s billionaire father, Larry Ellison.

Oracle was based in Redwood City for three decades, but in late 2020, the company moved its headquarters to Austin, Texas, joining other California tech firms leaving in protest of the state’s high taxes and steep cost of living.

Then, two years ago, the elder Ellison announced that Nashville would host Oracle’s new headquarters. At the time, Oracle saw that state’s healthcare industry as a promising growth business. Oracle since has bet heavily on artificial intelligence.

In contrast, it would be difficult for Paramount to pack up its operations because it depends on producers, directors, writers and stars to make its TV shows and movies. The two studio lots also boast dozens of soundstages; century-old fortresses that would not be easily duplicated. And many Paramount executives are not eager to leave Los Angeles.

Some observers questioned Paramount’s willingness to carry out a move, which surfaced a week after David Ellison’s guest essay in the New York Times, which described his love of Hollywood and movies ever since he was a boy.

Ellison believes the proposed Warner merger is the best way to save Hollywood, saying the combination of two storied studios would strengthen not harm the film industry.

“One moment he’s promising to reinvigorate theatrical releases. The next he’s talking about uprooting two historic companies and moving them 2,000 miles away in order to avoid a lawsuit,” said Gabriel Kahn, journalism professor at USC Annenberg School for Communication.

Paramount’s corporate headquarters are in New York but after the Ellison family’s acquisition last year, the center of gravity shifted west. Ellison and other top executives live in Los Angeles.

Another corporate move wouldn’t disrupt Bonta’s lawsuit, experts say.

Instead, they suggested Paramount’s flurry of recent activities — including winning the support of two large theater chains, AMC and Regal, with promises of a robust movie pipeline post-merger — appeared to be part of a public relations and pressure campaign.

“They lost a lot of leverage now that the trial is set for March,” said Abiel Garcia, a former prosecutor and partner at the Manhattan Beach firm Kesselman Brantly Stockinger.

“And when you don’t have leverage in court, you go the political route,” he said, adding that Paramount seems to be angling for Gov. Gavin Newsom to join the fight.

Newsom, who has presidential ambitions, has been sensitive to the flight of companies from California. However, he has avoided picking a side in the messy merger squabble.

What’s more, the governor lacks authority to intervene in the lawsuit brought by Bonta and 11 other state attorneys general.

“All I know is that if I was governor, I wouldn’t want to lose Hollywood from this state, I wouldn’t want to lose a major company like Paramount to another state,” Paramount Chief Legal Officer Makan Delrahim said late Tuesday at a Politico Live conference in Sacramento. He had been asked about the stances of Newsom and his potential successor, Xavier Becerra, the Democratic gubernatorial nominee.

“I hope it settles before court,” Becerra said at the conference. “It is easier to stand in a conference room and settle than it is to stand in a courtroom.”

Delaying the trial until March has been “devastating,” Delrahim said, adding that Paramount proposed settlement terms on May 19 — but the state attorneys general instead moved forward with their suit.

“It’s costing jobs. It’s costing a lot of uncertainty for a lot of our employees, for Warner Bros. employees,” Delrahim said.

Still, Garcia and others expressed doubts about Paramount’s full-court press.

“It just feels a little over the top. It feels like a PR blitz,” Garcia said. “It suggests to me that they think their case is weaker than I even thought.”

Foreign policy rarely shifts as quickly as Venezuela’s has this year. And when it does, ideology is usually not the driver. Survival is—especially in autocratic systems. 

Since taking the interim presidency, Delcy Rodríguez has quietly reversed much of the confrontational diplomacy that defined the Maduro and Chávez era. As a consequence of the January 3 military intervention, she moved closer to Washington, re-established diplomatic ties with Chile and the Dominican Republic, and welcomed earthquake aid sent by El Salvador and Argentina. She also distanced Caracas from traditional partners such as Iran (currently in a war with the US and Cuba), withdrew Venezuela from the International Criminal Court in a step welcomed by the United States, and signaled a willingness to rebuild relations with Israel. Every one of these moves aligns with what Washington wants. 

These moves add up to more than tactical adjustments. They reveal an emerging foreign-policy strategy: authoritarian pragmatism. The goal is not political liberalization but reducing external pressure, attracting economic opportunities, and creating space for the government to consolidate power at home. 

To understand how dramatic this turn is, it helps to recall where Venezuela’s diplomacy was headed under Maduro. As a young diplomat in Caracas, I watched the country move toward an increasingly divisive and isolationist posture. I still remember sitting in Venezuela’s National Assembly in early 2015 during one of Maduro’s annual addresses. I had attended many official ceremonies before, but nothing prepared me for the bluntness of that night.

The best way to understand this shift is not as a simple turn toward the West, but as an adoption of the multi-alignment model perfected by Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

Most leaders soften their rhetoric when foreign diplomats are present. Maduro did the opposite. He divided the world into ideological camps: Western governments as imperialist powers, left-leaning Latin American states as part of a revolutionary bloc, Russia and Iran as fellow victims of Western pressure. A few ambassadors were singled out as representatives of friendly nations; the rest of us understood, without being told, that we belonged to a lower tier. At that time, Turkey wasn’t even on Maduro’s radar. 

That speech captured the essence of Maduro’s foreign-policy doctrine. For more than a decade, Chavismo locked Venezuela into a narrow circle of partners—China, Russia, Iran, and Cuba—while confrontation with the United States, Western governments, international institutions, and several regional neighbors left Caracas with fewer diplomatic options. Ideology became a cage.

Delcy’s U-turn

Delcy is now moving in a different direction. Her early signals suggest that she is less interested in defending Maduro’s ideological map than in redrawing it. Governments once treated as adversaries are again potential partners. Regional relationships that had gone cold are being restored. Caracas is talking to institutions it once dismissed as hostile.

The best way to understand this shift is not as a simple turn toward the West, but as an adoption of the multi-alignment model perfected by Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Turkey. Turkey has shown how an authoritarian government can maintain strong economic ties with China, trade extensively with Russia, remain inside NATO, negotiate directly with Washington when useful, and still preserve tight political control at home. These relationships do not have to be mutually exclusive.

It’s important to note that the model sits differently on each leader. The two leaders reached power through opposite paths—Erdoğan through repeated elections and a genuine popular mandate, Delcy through a foreign military operation that removed her predecessor. One can afford slow, strategic bets. The other cannot. But the relevant comparison is not how they arrived in office; it is what foreign policy allows them to do once there.

A government can become more useful to Washington without becoming more democratic at home. That is precisely the space Delcy appears to be trying to create. 

Delcy does not need to sever the relations with old allies like China and Russia even though Washington is demanding to reduce the influence of Russia and China from Venezuela. China no longer takes 80 percent of Venezuela’s oil exports, but Chinese state firms still operate joint ventures in the country. The interim regime can concede the first while preserving the second, keeping protocol and trade channels open without returning to the dependency that once made Caracas useful to Beijing and Moscow. It’s true that Delcy is not in Erdoğan’s position, but she is reaching for his method—accumulating enough international goodwill that the questions about democracy at home lose their urgency. 

And there is a practical reason to move quickly. Reviving Venezuela’s oil industry is slow and complex. Rebuilding PDVSA, attracting foreign investment, issuing new licenses, and resolving sanctions and sovereign debt disputes will take years. Diplomatic decisions, by contrast, are fast and inexpensive for her regime.

Consider what these moves cost her. She hosted senior US cabinet officials in Caracas, rewrote the oil and mining laws to bring American companies back, and reopened the energy sector to foreign investment. She restored relations with neighbors that had broken with Caracas over the 2024 election—Chile, Peru, and the Dominican Republic all agreed to normalization roadmaps within weeks of one another. In April, the IMF resumed dealings with Venezuela after seven years, and the World Bank followed the same day. Welcoming Israeli rescue teams in June cost little more than a press conference.

The concessions to Washington were real, but they were concessions of access, not of power. What Delcy bought with them is a government that can once again be received, financed, and invested in—and that has yet to surrender any control over the courts, the security services, or the electoral machinery.

The Turkey comparison helps explain why. On July 7–8, Erdogan hosted NATO’s annual summit in Ankara, with President Trump in attendance—the first visit by a sitting US president to Turkey in more than a decade. The summit gave Erdogan an important diplomatic moment and strengthened his position internationally. Yet political pressure on Turkey’s opposition continued. Three weeks later, Turkish police detained 55 people, including an opposition mayor, in coordinated raids across nine provinces. By early August, 29 opposition mayors were under arrest, with dozens more suspended. Erdogan’s strongest rival, Istanbul mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, has been in prison since March 2025, jailed the day he became his party’s presidential candidate. Western governments barely reacted to these autocratic practices.

As long as Delcy stays within the boundaries of the Donroe Doctrine, Washington has strong incentives to encourage this opening.

In today’s world, a government can become more useful to Washington without becoming more democratic at home. That is precisely the space Delcy appears to be trying to create. 

The emerging model is less about ideological loyalty than strategic flexibility. Caracas can cooperate with Washington on oil while maintaining ties with China. It can reopen relations with countries it previously alienated while preserving its partnerships with traditional allies. It can accept humanitarian assistance from governments once labeled enemies without altering its domestic political system.

In other words, Venezuela does not have to become less authoritarian to become more internationally flexible. That is the part of the interim regime’s strategy that deserves the most attention.

As long as Delcy stays within the boundaries of the Donroe Doctrine, Washington has strong incentives to encourage this opening. Those boundaries are narrower than they first appear, and they are not about democracy. Washington’s requirements are resource access, the exclusion of Russian, Chinese, and Iranian strategic presence from the hemisphere, and cooperation on migration and counter-narcotics. Everything else has proved negotiable. A more cooperative Venezuela creates opportunities for American businesses, investment, energy cooperation, and a more predictable bilateral relationship—something the United States could never achieve under Maduro’s siege mentality.

Venezuela may be changing how it deals with the world without changing how power is exercised at home. If this continues, the new administration’s foreign-policy shift could mark the beginning of a new phase of Chavismo—less ideological, more adaptable, and potentially more durable.

Reporting from Sacramento — A Bay Area lawmaker wants to knock down what he believes is a key barrier to California meeting its ambitious climate change goals: one of the state’s most prominent environmental laws.

Assemblyman Tim Grayson (D-Concord) has introduced legislation that aims to make it harder for lawsuits filed under the California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA, to stop construction of roads and public transit.

CEQA requires developers and public agencies to disclose a project’s environmental effects and take steps to reduce or eliminate them. But Grayson says the law can grind to a halt transportation projects that are needed to reduce the amount of cars on the road.

His legislation, Assembly Bill 1905, would make it easier for road or transit projects included in a state-approved regional growth plan to begin construction before any CEQA litigation is resolved.

Since state climate regulators will have already signed off on those road and transit projects when approving a region’s growth plan, the projects shouldn’t face multiple threats of environmental litigation, Grayson argues.

“What I’m looking at is how do we cut down on traffic congestion where we’re just spilling greenhouse gases, creating clouds of greenhouse gases and impacting the environment negatively,” Grayson said.

But Grayson’s approach is already attracting concerns from high-profile environmental organizations. Environmental groups often credit CEQA, which took effect in 1970, with preserving California’s natural beauty, and argue it is complementary — not contrary — to the more recent climate change laws.

A court should rule in a CEQA lawsuit before construction starts, said Kyle Jones, a policy advocate for Sierra Club California.

“It just seems prudent that you’ve gotten all your legal barriers out of the way,” Jones said.

California has many laws that force private developers and public agencies to examine the environmental impacts of their housing, commercial, industrial and transportation plans and projects.

In 2008, the state Legislature began requiring regional governments, including the Southern California Assn. of Governments, to draw up plans to accommodate population growth and reduce greenhouse gases with proposals for new housing and transportation primarily in already developed areas. The goal is to reduce sprawl and emissions from long commutes. Regional governments are now revising their plans to comply with the state’s new aggressive targets to cut carbon emissions by 40% of 1990 levels by 2030.

But actual growth doesn’t have to follow the plans, and individual projects can stall for many reasons, including environmental litigation. Under Grayson’s bill, however, any road, transit or other transportation project included in an approved regional climate plan would receive relief in potential CEQA lawsuits.

Currently, a court can stop construction on a project if the judge finds its required CEQA analysis failed to account for all effects on the environment. Under Grayson’s bill, a court could do so only if the project was found to have serious life or safety risks.

State lawmakers have approved this legal standard before to speed the development of a new Sacramento Kings basketball arena. Those rules weren’t tested in a lawsuit against the arena. But state and local officials have said the legal standard allowed construction to go forward without fear of litigation tying up the project and potentially costing the city the team.

In Los Angeles, Grayson’s bill could affect large road and transit projects including a Metro Gold Line extension into eastern Los Angeles County and tunnels through the Sepulveda Pass.

But Sierra Club California and the Natural Resources Defense Council are among the environmental organizations that believe the bill goes too far. State climate regulators don’t heavily scrutinize individual projects when approving regional growth plans, representatives of both groups said.

For instance, a judge might find that a transportation project’s environmental review didn’t account for all the effects the development could have on air quality, but under AB 1905 that judge couldn’t stop the project because of it, said David Pettit, a senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council. Without the threat of halting construction, agencies won’t need to take seriously any subsequent demands to improve the air surrounding the project, he said.

AB 1905 “may look good on its face, but it’s fantastically unrealistic when you look at the effects of when concrete is already in the ground,” Pettit said.

Grayson said the inspiration for his bill came from the California Transportation Commission, a state agency that advises Gov. Jerry Brown and the Legislature on transportation policy and spending. In its most recent annual report, the commission recommended an idea similar to Grayson’s bill as a way to speed up project construction.

The recently passed gas tax and other fee increases are expected to bring in more than $5 billion annually for road repairs and mass transit upgrades. Grayson said it’s important to spend that money quickly, and making it easier to defend against CEQA lawsuits is one way to do it.

“If we’re ever going to make a huge impact it is going to be now with the amount of revenue at our disposal,” he said.

liam.dillon@latimes.com

@dillonliam

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Updates on California politics

Sacramento — The two candidates for California governor came to Sacramento on Tuesday offering policy agendas that were both sweeping and vague on details, with both warning of the dangers posed by their rival’s political party.

Democrat Xavier Becerra vowed to lower healthcare costs for Californians and teased two new policies on energy and artificial intelligence. Republican Steve Hilton pledged to slash gas prices and utility bills to help remedy his dystopian view of California under Democratic rule.

The two candidates will face off in the Nov. 3 election to succeed outgoing Gov. Gavin Newsom, and took time to deliver their campaign messages at an afternoon political forum in the state capital.

Hilton pointed to the size of the state budget, the homelessness crisis, high taxes, the cost of living, the unemployment rate and the business climate to argue that 15 years of Democratic control has proved disastrous in California.

“It’s just a complete failure on every front, and it seems to have been immune to any kind of challenge because it’s very powerful. The machine is very powerful, funded by government unions, and you’ve got this alliance of the government unions and nonprofits, and the Chamber of Commerce, and all of this,” he told hundreds of people at a convention center in Sacramento.

Becerra defended California’s Democratic leadership, which controls the state Legislature, the governor’s office and every other statewide political office, as a staunch bulwark against the ruthless agenda of the Trump administration and Republican-led Congress.

“We’re a state. We’re a family. You don’t blame just one parent when things go awry with one of the children,” he said in reference to more than a decade of Democratic governance in California. “We’re all in this together. We all have to work together. I could say that one of the members of the American family in Washington, D.C., has created more chaos than any Democrat in the state of California.”

After a chaotic and competitive June primary, Tuesday marked one of the few times the two men have addressed the same audience. They appeared at a forum hosted by the news organization Politico and sponsored by Airbnb, AT&T, energy company California Resources Corp., Google and the Western States Petroleum Assn.

In a state with a pronounced Democratic tilt, Becerra, a former U.S. Health and Human Services secretary, is the front-runner in the race. Nearly 45% of the state’s voters are registered Democrats, while 25% are Republicans, according to a May report by the secretary of state’s office. Becerra has raised millions of dollars more than Hilton and benefited from well-funded independent groups that spent millions supporting his campaign.

Becerra repeatedly said he would not promise anything he could not deliver, saying that voters “want to see actual outcomes.”

“That’s also why I think you can’t do pie in the sky, inflated promises, because people want to see you deliver, and you can talk a great game, but unless you can deliver, people are going to crucify you,” he said.

He said he could not promise to build 3 million new housing units, as Newsom did eight years ago as a candidate for governor.

“That’s an inflated promise. But I will tell you, we will build, and I will tell you, there will be more Californians who own a home,” Becerra said.

Later, he told reporters he was not specifically referring to the figure Newsom had promised. “I could have said 2 million. I could have said 5 million. What I was saying is, it’s gonna be something that’s realistic,” he said.

Becerra was willing to make some big promises on healthcare.

“Am I going to promise you that I can drop the price of prescription drugs? Yes, because I did it before, and I know I can do it again. Am I telling you that I can keep Californians insured for healthcare, even though the guy in the White House stripped a trillion dollars out of the healthcare system? Yes, because I know how much money is in the healthcare system,” he said.

Pressed for specifics on how he would prevent people from losing their health insurance, Becerra hinted that the solution could be within the healthcare industry itself.

“There’s money in them there hills,” he said. “Healthcare is more expensive in California than anywhere else in the country, and healthcare is more expensive in the U.S. than it is anywhere else in the world. There is money that’s being spent that does nothing to dispense healthcare to you, and we’ve got to stop that game.”

Hilton acknowledged the long odds he faces in the November general election.

“I know I’m probably the only person in this room that actually thinks I can win this election,” he said.

Since the June primary, Hilton has been a constant presence on the campaign trail, crisscrossing the state, holding town halls and news conferences, making speeches and giving media interviews. Becerra has been far less visibly active.

Hilton argued that California is at a crossroads, pointing to residents and businesses moving out of the state.

“I’m here to say we can turn them around,” he said. “It’s an absolute crisis that we’re in if we don’t change direction.”

Hilton has vowed to cut gas prices to $3 per gallon, reduce utility bills, eliminate income taxes for Californians making under $150,000, increase the supply of starter homes and overhaul the business climate, particularly in the entertainment and agricultural industries. Just how Hilton would deliver on his agenda, given that Democrats control the California Legislature, remains unclear.

While he did not make any formal policy announcements at the summit, Becerra said there is “a lot of room to expand” on regulations and protections on AI, and he signaled support for a government-purchased stake in AI companies. “We can make it so they can prosper, but we prosper with them,” he said.

Hilton, who has released several AI-generated campaign ads, criticized Sam Altman of OpenAI and Anthropic’s Dario Amodei for doing little to earn the public’s trust on the fast-emerging technology. He also said there is space to both regulate and give AI more freedom.

“I think we’re in danger of both over- and under-regulating at the same time. I think we’re under-regulating some of the harms, for example, in relation to children and in relation to the creative community and their output, but we’re in danger of over-regulating some of the potential benefits,” including in the medical field, he said.

When asked whether the state’s voters are “stupid” for continuing to vote for Democrats, Hilton replied that they are not, but rather had not been offered a clear, positive alternative.

“There is a sense of inevitability about it, and I think that’s infected perhaps a lot of the political discourse in California,” he said. The notion that “it’s California. Democrats are always going to be in charge. What can you do?”

He said he believes he has a shot in the November election because he has a positive message, similar to that which helped propel the right-leaning Tories to a 14-year reign in the United Kingdom when he was a senior advisor to then-Prime Minister David Cameron.

Hilton labeled Becerra “unqualified” and didn’t discuss his endorsement by President Trump, which propelled his advancement to the general election.

“We’ve got everything going for us in California. We’ve got incredible assets and resources. We’ve got natural beauty, the best weather, great universities, amazing people, the incredible innovation ecosystem, the kind of startup hustle rebel spirit,” he said. “We just need, I think, a proactive, pro-business governor [who] recognizes that we’ve just ended up …, often with good intentions, frankly, in a situation where we’ve just got this massive, bloated bureaucratic government that’s stifling the spirit of California.”