politics

BEIRUT —  Iran’s top security official, Ali Larijani, has been killed in an Israeli airstrike, a move that represents a palpable hit to an Iranian leadership that has shown little interest in compromise after almost three weeks of war with the U.S. and Israel.

Killing Larijani, who led Iran as de facto wartime leader after Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei died on the first day of the war, eliminates a veteran official seen as the consummate insider despite not having the religious credentials for the Islamic Republic’s highest offices. Israel, in an announcement Tuesday, said the attack occurred the night before.

For all his bellicose comments since the war began, Larijani was also seen as a pragmatist, and observers say his death might strengthen the resolve of what’s left of Iran’s leadership, rather than induce a willingness to compromise.

His post as secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council gave Larijani control of the country’s top security body, where he tasked government forces with subduing anti-regime protests in January. Thousands of Iranians were killed.

Also killed in the Israeli strikes was Gen. Gholamreza Soleimani, the head of the Basij, the volunteer auxiliary wing of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and an integral part of the state’s ability to keep order.

“Larijani and the Basij commander were eliminated overnight and joined the head of the annihilation program, Khamenei, and all the eliminated members of the axis of evil, in the depths of hell,” Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said in a statement Tuesday.

Israeli officials have employed “axis of evil” to refer to Iran and its allies, including the militant groups Hamas and Hezbollah.

Larijani had served as parliamentary speaker for 12 years and became the point man on nuclear negotiations as well as relations with allies such as China and Russia. He often acted as the government’s representative in the media.

Iranian officials confirmed that Larijani and Soleimani had been killed. They said Larijani’s son, the head of his office and several guards were also killed in the strikes.

Soon after Katz’s announcement, Iranian authorities released an undated note said to have been written by Larijani in which he honored Iranian sailors killed in a U.S. attack. The image of the note was also posted to Larijani’s account on X.

There was no explanation why the note was released and whether it is signified Larijani was still alive.

“We are undermining this regime in the hope of giving the Iranian people an opportunity to remove it,” said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Netanyahu and President Trump have repeatedly called on ordinary Iranians to topple the government.

Though assassinating Larijani counts as yet another intelligence coup for Israel and the U.S., both may come to regret the loss of a figure who, despite his defiant rhetoric since the war began Feb. 28, was considered by some analysts as a realist.

His killing adds to the evisceration of Iran’s upper echelons, raising the question of who is left to negotiate an end to the war, or have enough influence to make Iran’s deep state accept compromise.

Some observers say that’s the point.

“Why did the Israelis take out Larijani in this moment? Because Netanyahu is focused on blocking Trump’s pathways for a ceasefire and follow-up negotiations with Iran,” said Ellie Geranmayeh, a senior policy fellow at the European Council for Foreign Relations, adding that “Larijani would have been the man to get that job done.”

Khamenei’s assassination, Geranmayeh said, had already empowered more hard-line figures in government, and Larijani’s death “could act as an accelerator to that path.”

“Israel seems to be turning its attention to targeting those that could push for a political solution to the current crisis,” she said.

Larijani’s death would add to the murkiness surrounding Iran’s leadership. After Khamenei was killed and it remained unclear who would replace him, Trump added to the uncertainty by saying that the country’s new leader would need his approval, but also that the U.S. had killed many of the leaders whom he would have deemed acceptable.

After Khamenei’s son, Mojtaba Khamenei, was named the new supreme leader, Trump expressed his displeasure but repeatedly dodged questions about what the transition under the younger Khamenei would mean for the U.S. war effort.

After the elder Khamenei’s death, Larijani emerged as a high-profile voice for Iran, saying that Trump must “pay the price” for the U.S. strikes on the country.

In response, Trump acted as if he didn’t know who Larijani was.

“I have no idea what he’s talking about, who he is. I couldn’t care less,” Trump told CBS News.

Benjamin Radd, a political scientist and senior fellow at the UCLA Burkle Center for International Relations, said Larijani was perceived to be “the last of the competent bunch” within the Iranian leadership — an intellectual who had a complex understanding of the geopolitical reality on the ground, who had negotiated with the U.S. in the past, and who was “adept at maneuvering” all the various parts of the Iranian power structure.

Radd said Larijani “lost that mantle of being the pragmatist” when he strongly backed the deadly January crackdown on protesters, for which he was “more responsible than anyone else.”

He “absolutely was responsible for a tremendous amount of carnage and death and destruction,” Radd said.

And yet, with his death, “all of that diplomatic, institutional experience” that he did have “is gone” from the Iranian leadership, Radd said.

Those left in power, he said, are “generally not the sharpest people, they’re not the people who understand the subtleties of diplomacy, of what negotiating with the U.S. is like.”

Bulos reported from Beirut and Rector from Colorado.

The US defence secretary designated the AI company a ‘supply chain risk’ after it refused to remove guardrails on its technology.

The administration of United States President Donald Trump has said in a court filing that the Pentagon’s blacklisting of Anthropic was justified and lawful, opposing the artificial intelligence company’s high-stakes lawsuit challenging the decision.

The administration made its comments in a court filing on Tuesday.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth designated Anthropic, the maker of popular AI assistant Claude, a national security supply chain risk on March 3 after the company refused to remove guardrails against its technology being used for autonomous weapons and domestic surveillance.

The Trump administration’s filing says Anthropic is unlikely to succeed in its claims that the US government’s action violated speech protections under the US Constitution’s First Amendment, asserting that the dispute stems from contract negotiations and national security concerns, not retaliation.

“It was only when Anthropic refused to release the restrictions on the use of its products — which refusal is conduct, not protected speech — that the President directed all federal agencies to terminate their business relationships with Anthropic,” the administration’s legal filing said. The filing, from the US Justice Department, said that “no one has purported to restrict Anthropic’s expressive activity”.

Anthropic’s lawsuit in California federal court asks a judge to block the Pentagon’s decision while the case plays out. Some legal experts say the company appears to have a strong case that the government overreached.

In a statement, Anthropic said it was reviewing the government’s filing. The company said that “seeking judicial review does not change our longstanding commitment to harnessing AI to protect our national security, but this is a necessary step to protect our business, our customers, and our partners.”

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Supply chain risk

Trump has backed Hegseth’s move, which excludes Anthropic from a limited set of military contracts. But it could damage the company’s reputation and cause billions of dollars in losses this year, according to its executives.

The designation came after months of negotiations between the Pentagon and Anthropic reached an impasse, prompting Trump and Hegseth to denounce the company and accuse it of endangering American lives with its use restrictions.

Anthropic has disputed those claims and said AI is not yet safe enough to be used in autonomous weapons. The company said it opposes domestic surveillance as a matter of principle.

In its March 9 lawsuit, Anthropic said that the “unprecedented and unlawful” designation violated its free speech and due process rights, while running afoul of a law requiring federal agencies to follow specific procedures when making decisions.

The Pentagon separately designated Anthropic a supply chain risk under a different law that could expand the order to the entire government.

Anthropic is challenging that move in a second lawsuit in a Washington, DC, appeals court.

WASHINGTON — Joe Kent, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, abruptly resigned Tuesday, becoming the most senior national security official to break publicly with the Trump administration over its military campaign against Iran.

In a statement posted on social media, Kent said he “cannot in good conscience” continue serving in the administration, contending that Iran had “posed no imminent threat to our nation” and that the United States had been drawn into the conflict through “pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby.”

“I cannot support sending the next generation off to fight and die in a war that serves no benefit to the American people nor justifies the cost of American lives,” Kent wrote in a letter addressed to President Trump. “I pray that you will reflect upon what we are doing in Iran, and who we are doing it for.”

Trump, speaking in the Oval Office, dismissed Kent’s concerns, telling reporters that he had long believed the counterterrorism director — whom he nominated to the post in February 2025 — was “very weak on security.” The president insisted that Iran has been a threat to the U.S. “for a long time,” and said that it was a “good thing” Kent is leaving.

The resignation came at an uncertain moment for the administration. The war, which has repeatedly been sold to Americans as “short term” and contained, is now in its third week, with fraying alliances, renewed missile and drone fire on gulf Arab nations from Iran, new Israeli strikes on Iran and Lebanon, mounting casualties and no clear exit strategy.

“If we left right now it would take 10 years for them to rebuild,” Trump told reporters. “We’re not ready to leave yet, but we’ll be leaving in the near future. We’ll be leaving pretty much in the very near future.”

The uncertainty was compounded Tuesday by Israel’s killing of Ali Larijani, the head of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, as well as Gholamreza Soleimani, the head of the Basij, Iran’s militia force.

Trump made reference to the Iranian officials killed without naming them, saying one was “their actual top” and the other was responsible for the killing of 32,000 Iranian protesters in recent weeks.

“It’s an evil group,” he said.

Effect of Larijani’s killing

Iranian officials confirmed the deaths of Larijani and Soleimani via state media Tuesday. In addition to killing the Basij leader, Israel reported striking more than 10 Basij posts, part of an effort to destroy the Islamic Republic’s ability to contain internal unrest and protests.

Benjamin Radd, a political scientist and senior fellow at the UCLA Burkle Center for International Relations, said Larijani’s killing would greatly diminish the Iranian diplomatic and institutional experience, as he was perceived to be “the last of the competent bunch” in power.

Those remaining in power are “generally not the sharpest people, they’re not the people who understand the subtleties of diplomacy, of what negotiating with the U.S. is like,” which clears a path for “a country run by a military junta” comprising Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps leaders, Radd said.

“We’re really going to be moving more toward a military-style dictatorship — behind a clerical robe, if you will,” he said.

The battlefield developments have done little to reassure Washington’s closest allies, most of which have declined to join the fight despite Trump’s recent pleas to allied nations to send warships to help reopen the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial oil route that has been threatened by Iran’s war efforts.

In a social media post Tuesday, Trump said the United States had been informed by most of its allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization that they “don’t want to get involved” in the expanding Middle East war — and he claimed the American military no longer needs or wants their help.

“In fact, speaking as President of the United States of America, by far the Most Powerful Country Anywhere in the World, WE DO NOT NEED THE HELP OF ANYONE!” Trump wrote.

Trump cannot unilaterally remove the U.S. from NATO. In 2023, Sens. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) — who is now Trump’s secretary of State — successfully pushed a measure barring any president from removing the U.S. from the treaty organization without approval from the Senate or an act of Congress.

“The Senate should maintain oversight on whether or not our nation withdraws from NATO. We must ensure we are protecting our national interests and protecting the security of our democratic allies,” Rubio said at the time.

Some experts viewed Trump’s latest remarks about not needing NATO allies as a result of him having misplayed his hand at the start of the conflict with Iran, which has attempted to widen the war by targeting Gulf Cooperation Council nations in the region.

When Trump started demanding that many other nations join the U.S. in the war effort, or at least in safeguarding the Strait of Hormuz, it was “an attempt on Trump’s side to widen the war the other way,” Radd said, based in part on the fact that other nations, including China and in Europe, are much more reliant on oil from the region than the U.S.

However, it was a “clumsy” move by Trump given his alienation of NATO allies in the past, including during a major speech in Davos, Switzerland, in January, in which the president was “basically shaming and criticizing NATO and European states,” Radd said.

Calling on allies to “step up” after ridiculing them was “ham-handed,” Radd said.

Intelligence official’s departure

In Washington, Kent’s resignation exposed new divisions over the administration’s handling of the war.

On Capitol Hill, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) told reporters that he did not know where Kent was “getting his information” to conclude that Iran posed no imminent threat to the U.S. He said Trump administration officials in classified briefings have asserted that “they had exquisite intelligence and they understood that this was a serious moment for us.”

“The president felt that he had to strike first to prevent mass casualties,” Johnson said.

Several Democrats called on Kent to appear before Congress and tell the American people more about why the administration dragged the U.S. into war in Iran.

“If even officials like Joe Kent do not believe Iran posed an imminent threat, why are we sending more Americans to die in this war?” Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Fremont) wrote on X.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Kent’s letter contained “many false claims,” including that Iran posed no imminent threat to the U.S.

“This is the same false claim that Democrats and some in the liberal media have been repeating over and over,” Leavitt wrote on X. “As President Trump has clearly and explicitly stated, he had strong and compelling evidence that Iran was going to attack the United States first.”

She said that evidence, which has never been detailed publicly, “was compiled from many sources and factors,” and that Trump “would never make the decision to deploy military assets against a foreign adversary in a vacuum.”

Leavitt then repeated past justifications for the attack, including that Iran sponsors terrorism abroad and that it was building out its missile capabilities as “a shield” for protection as it continued to develop nuclear capabilities.

The press secretary previously said that Trump had a “feeling” that Iran was going to attack the U.S. or its assets. The president has alleged, without evidence, that Iran was within weeks of having a nuclear weapon.

Leavitt said the added assertion by Kent that Trump decided to attack Iran “based on the influence of others, even foreign countries, is both insulting and laughable.”

Kent, a former political candidate with connections to right-wing extremists, was confirmed in July as head of the National Counterterrorism Center, which analyzes and detects terrorist threats. Before joining the Trump administration, Kent ran two unsuccessful campaigns for Congress in Washington state. He also served in the military, serving 11 deployments as a Green Beret, followed by work at the CIA.

Democrats strongly opposed Kent’s confirmation in the Senate, in part because they were concerned about his ties to far-right figures and promotion of conspiracy theories. During his 2022 congressional campaign, Kent paid Graham Jorgensen, a member of the far-right military group the Proud Boys, for consulting work. He also worked closely with Joey Gibson, the founder of the Christian nationalist group Patriot Prayer, and attracted support from a variety of far-right figures.

During his Senate confirmation hearing, Kent refused to distance himself from a conspiracy theory that federal agents instigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack at the U.S. Capitol, as well as false claims that Trump, a Republican, won the 2020 election over Democrat Joe Biden.

Democrats grilled Kent on his participation in a group chat on Signal where Trump’s national security team discussed sensitive military plans.

Republicans, meanwhile, were drawn to Kent’s experience in the military and intelligence.

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), the GOP chair of the Intelligence Committee, said in a floor speech that Kent had “dedicated his career to fighting terrorism and keeping Americans safe.” On Tuesday, Cotton said that he disagreed with Kent’s “misguided assessment” on Iran.

“Iran’s vast missile arsenal and support for terrorism posed a grave and growing threat to America. Indeed, the ayatollahs have maimed and killed thousands of Americans,” Cotton said. “President Trump recognized this threat and made the right call to eliminate it.”

Other conservatives — including former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and commentator Candace Owens — called Kent an “American hero.”

Ilan Goldenberg, a former Biden administration official who dealt with the Middle East, wrote on X that while he disagrees with the Iran war, Kent claiming that Israel pressured Trump into the conflict is “ugly stuff that plays on the worst antisemitic tropes.”

“Donald Trump is the President of the United States and he is the one ultimately responsible for sending American troops into harms way,” he said.

An acclaimed author and historian of the libertarian movement fell to his death last week, his employer confirmed.

The body of Brian Doherty, 57, senior editor of the libertarian magazine Reason, was found Thursday “after a fall” in the Battery Yates park portion of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, the publication wrote.

The National Parks Service law enforcement agency confirmed it responded to an incident at Battery Yates on Thursday “involving a male visitor who reportedly fell from the cliffside into the water.”

“The individual was recovered and pronounced dead,” said Scott Carr, parks service spokesperson, in an email. “We do not have any further information to share at this time.”

The Golden Gate Bridge is seen from the Fort Baker Marina in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area in San Francisco. Doherty was found in the Battery Yates park portion of the recreation area.

(Los Angeles Times)

Doherty was the author of several books, with Reason saying his most notable work was the 2007 study “Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern American Libertarian Movement.”

“Doherty has rescued libertarianism from its own obscurity,” the Wall Street Journal wrote of the work, “eloquently capturing the appeal of the ‘pure idea.’”

Libertarianism’s role in gun control and the courts was the subject of his works, and Doherty had no shortage of admirers.

Loren Dean, chair of the Libertarian Party of California, said it was Doherty’s work at Reason that brought him into the liberty movement.

“Brian Doherty was the best kind of libertarian: one who holds true to the principles of liberty as they are,” Dean said in an email. “He was a tireless champion of both gun rights and police reform who wrote books on both [former U.S. Rep.] Ron Paul and Burning Man; his work did not sit on either the ‘left’ or ‘right’ side of the authoritarian box, but delightfully outside that tired frame, where libertarian principles truly sing.”

Doherty began working at Reason in 1994, according to the publication’s obituary, left the company and returned in 2000 at the behest of Nick Gillespie, then editor-in-chief.

“What I liked most about Brian was his abiding interest in things happening on the margins of American culture, politics, and thought, and his deep appreciation for the prodigious bounty that markets deliver reliably and without moralizing,” Gillespie wrote in his farewell to Doherty, who had many opinion pieces published in The Times.

Far from just heady subjects, Doherty covered “both libertarian and whimsical” subcultures, according to the obituary, including New Hampshire’s Free State Project and the Seasteaders, a growing community of individuals dedicated to living on the seas.

The Seasteading Institute tweeted its condolences and noted the group had “appreciated his coverage of seasteading over the years.”

Doherty was a native of Queens, majored in journalism at the University of Florida and joined the college’s libertarian group in 1987, according to Reason’s obituary.

He moved to Los Angeles in the mid-1990s and joined a group known as the Cacophony Society, a gang who “inspired or created phenomenon ranging from the novel/movie Fight Club to urban exploration, billboard alteration, the Yes Men, flash mobs, and ‘Santa Rampages,’” according to the obituary.

One of those projects translated into the formation of the annual Burning Man festival, the obituary stated. Doherty later chronicled the famed artsy, hippie-like festival in his book “This Is Burning Man.”

“Libertarians talk a lot about freedom and responsibility. Brian embodied both,” Reason Editor-in-Chief Katherine Mangu-Ward said in his obituary. “His weird, colorful life — filled with comics and festivals and music and books — was a model of life lived freely and openly.”

WASHINGTON — Republicans launched an unprecedented effort on Tuesday to hold the Senate floor and talk for days about a bill that they know won’t pass — an attempt to capture public attention on legislation requiring stricter voter registration rules as President Trump pressures Congress to act before November’s midterm elections.

The talkathon could last a week or longer, potentially through the weekend, as Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) tries to navigate Trump’s insistence on the issue and Democrats’ united opposition. Trump has urged Thune to scrap the legislative filibuster, which triggers a 60-vote threshold in the 100-member Senate, or find another workaround to pass the bill, but Thune has repeatedly said he doesn’t have the votes to do that.

Instead, Republicans intend to make a long, noisy show of support for the legislation, which would require Americans to prove they are U.S. citizens before they register to vote and to show identification at the polls, among other things. It’s a risky strategy, with no guarantee it will be enough for Trump, who has said he won’t sign other bills until the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act — also known as the SAVE America Act or the SAVE Act — is passed.

The floor debate is expected to eventually end with a failed vote. Republicans need 60 votes to advance the bill to a final vote, but they hold 53 seats, and all 45 Democrats and both independents, who caucus with the Democrats, oppose it.

The debate will “put Democrats on the record,” Thune said. He added that “how it ends remains to be seen.”

The Senate voted 51 to 48 Tuesday to begin the debate, with Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski the only Republican voting against moving forward on the bill.

In a social media post on Tuesday morning, Trump issued a warning to any Republican who doesn’t support the bill: “I WILL NEVER (EVER!) ENDORSE ANYONE WHO VOTES AGAINST ‘SAVE AMERICA!!!’”

Creating strict voter registration rules

Trump says, without evidence, that Democrats can only win in the midterms if they cheat and explicitly said Republicans need the SAVE America Act to win in November. The House passed the legislation earlier this year, but the Senate turned to other issues as it became evident that Republicans didn’t have the votes to pass it.

But Trump made clear he wasn’t satisfied and pushed the Senate to act. The Republican president has said he won’t sign other legislation, including a bipartisan housing bill backed by the White House, until the voting bill passes.

The bill contains a slew of provisions that Trump and his most loyal supporters have pushed as part of a broad effort to assert federal control over elections. It would require voters nationwide to provide proof of citizenship when they register and to show accepted voter identification when casting a ballot.

It would also create new penalties for election workers who register voters without proof of citizenship and require states to hand voter data over to the Department of Homeland Security so federal officials could screen for voters who are in the country illegally.

Trump also wants new provisions added to the bill, including a ban on most mail-in ballots.

“It’ll guarantee the midterms,” Trump said of the bill last week. “If you don’t get it, big trouble.”

Democratic opposition to the bill is firm

Democrats and many groups that champion voter access say there is little evidence of noncitizens voting and say the bill would disenfranchise millions of voters — including Republicans — by creating new burdens to prove citizenship.

It is already illegal to vote if you are not a U.S. citizen, but the bill would lay out strict new rules for paperwork that most people would have to present in person to register to vote. Opponents of the measure say those documents are not always readily available for many people and argue that it would kill voter registration efforts and unfairly penalize young people who are registering to vote for the first time, married women who change their last name and people who cannot travel to present their documents, among other groups.

While Republicans have focused on the bill’s new requirements to show identification when they show up to vote, Democrats say they are most concerned that the legislation would allow the federal government to take voters off the rolls.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said that Democrats are not opposed to voter identification but “this is about purging the voter rolls in a massive way, so you never even get the chance to show a voter ID when you showed up to vote.”

Expect a show on the Senate floor

Trump, backed by Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, has pushed for a talking filibuster, which would force Democrats to talk for days or weeks to delay passage of the bill. But Thune and the larger GOP conference rejected that idea, arguing that it would end in failure after giving Democrats a stage and the opportunity to offer endless amendments, potentially adding their priorities to the bill.

Republicans are instead taking over the floor with their own speeches, proceeding under regular order but operating outside the normal time limits that are customary when debating legislation. Democrats are expected to answer with their own procedural hijinks, potentially forcing Republicans to come to the floor at all hours for votes, meaning they will need to stay close to the Senate for the duration.

Lee said last week that it’s unclear how it will all play out. He said he thinks Trump “understands that we need to put in an aggressive effort here.”

“And a lot of that,” he said, “is going to have to be determined in real time as we go about it.”

The extent of Trump’s satisfaction with the process, Lee said, “will depend on whether, in his view, we gave it everything we have.”

On Monday night, Lee was rallying voters in Trump’s base on X.

“Once we’re on this bill,” he wrote, “we must stay on it until it’s passed into law.”

Jalonick writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Lisa Mascaro contributed to this report.

The United Farm Workers said it would not participate in celebrations of its founder Cesar Chavez amid what the labor union described as “troubling allegations” against the iconic Chicano figure.

The union, in a statement released Tuesday, did not detail the accusations against Chavez but said they were concerning enough for the organization to take action. But several events around the country honoring Chavez including events in Tucson, Houston, Corpus Christi, San Antonio and San Bernardino have been canceled in recent weeks, with little explanation given by organizers.

The claims against Chavez “are incompatible with our organization’s values. Some of the reports are family issues, and not our story to tell or our place to comment on. Far more troubling are allegations involving abuse of young women or minors. Allegations that very young women or girls may have been victimized are crushing. We have not received any direct reports, and we do not have any firsthand knowledge of these allegations,” the union said.

Canceling events, the union said, would “provide space for people who may have been victimized to find support and to share their stories if that is what they choose.”

Chavez is a towering national figure credited with organizing and raising the lives of migrant farmworkers in California and beyond and giving voice to the struggles of Mexican Americans.

Bursting into national prominence in the mid-1960s in the San Joaquin Valley, Chavez galvanized public support on behalf of them after organizing community groups across Central and Southern California. For decades, agricultural laborers had lived in substandard housing and were paid terrible wages. Efforts to organize migrant laborers were usually crushed violently by farmers and local law enforcement.

Chavez and his associates joined a grape pickers’ strike in 1965 launched by Filipino organizers centered around Delano, the heart of California’s table grape crop. Those early years were marked by bitter and sometimes brutal incidents involving picketing farmworkers who screamed “Huelga!” — “Strike!”—and growers who vowed never to give in to Chavez and his movement.

Sen. Robert Kennedy and Cesar Chavez as Chavez ended a 25-day fast.

(Bettmann Archive)

That eventually transformed into a boycott that earned international attention. Chavez, drawing on his Catholic faith, fasted for 25 days in 1968 to draw attention to the violence swirling around the effort, ending it by sharing bread with then-presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy. Two years later, the UFW was able to secure contracts for more than 10,000 grape pickers.

Those successes made Chavez an almost mythic figure. The UFW flag — a stylized black Aztec eagle against a red background — became synonymous with the Chicano movement that was emerging at the same time. Posters and murals featuring Chavez’s beatific face sprouted in the Southwest and beyond. He traveled across the United States espousing his philosophy of nonviolence, union and dignity for farmworkers.

A 1983 poll of Latinos by The Times found Chavez to be the most admired leader.

But Chavez’s legacy became increasingly tarnished as the years went on. Labor victories became fewer and fewer. His fierce criticism of illegal immigration — Chavez argued that they undercut his unionization efforts — put him at odds with immigration activists. A 2006 Times investigation detailed how dozens of former associates and workers left the UFW because of what they described as Chavez’s increasingly autocratic ways.

Cesar Chavez talks to striking Salinas Valley farmworkers.

(Sakuma / Associated Press )

When the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors decided to change the name of Brooklyn Avenue in East Los Angeles and Boyle Heights to Cesar Chavez Avenue after the labor leader’s death in 1993, many in the community opposed it, citing the economic burden businesses would undergo to update their addresses and the erasure of the community’s history on the street.

Yet his standing among Latinos nationwide was such that schools, streets and parks were renamed in his honor in the years after his death. In 2012, President Obama went to tiny Keene, Calif. — where Chavez had set up both his home and the operational headquarters of the United Farm Workers — to dedicate the César E. Chávez National Monument.

It’s unclear the source of the new allegations or when they might become public. But there has been rumbling for weeks among activists that something about Chavez was coming.

A Corpus Christi march was called off last week after labor leader Dolores Huerta withdrew, the San Antonio Express-News reported.

Huerta is not commenting on the issue at this time, said Eric Olvera, spokesperson for Huerta.

The news comes two weeks before Cesar Chavez Day, observed March 31.

Local organizers in Los Angeles haven’t announced whether they will cancel their events.

The UFW was vague about the claims but suggested they were serious enough for extreme action.

“These allegations have been profoundly shocking. We need some time to get this right, including to ensure robust, trauma-informed services are available to those who may need it.

“We understand this will be tremendously painful for many and we encourage our community to seek mental health support if they experience distress.”

Tuesday morning, the Cesar Chavez Foundation said in a statement that it had “become aware of disturbing allegations that Cesar Chavez engaged in inappropriate sexual behavior with women and minors during his time as President of the United Farm Workers of America.”

The foundation said it was working with leaders in the farmworker movement to be responsive to these allegations and support the people who might have been harmed.

“In partnership with the UFW, we are establishing a safe and confidential process for those who wish to share their experiences of historic harm, and, if they choose to, participate in efforts toward repair and reconciliation,” the statement said. “In addition, we are investing time and resources to ensure the Foundation promotes and strengthens a workplace culture that is safe and welcoming for all.”

In the 48 hours before the UFW and Cesar Chavez Foundation made their statements, La Unión del Pueblo Entero, a community-based union and nonprofit in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas, which was founded by Huerta and Chavez, erased the names and affiliation with the leaders from its website.

The new allegations could have implications beyond Chavez’s place in history. If he has been accused of sexual abuse, a legal expert said it could spark legal claims against the union he ran for so long.

In California, Assembly Bill 250 opened a two-year window to file sex assault claims beyond a previous statute of limitations. The Catholic Church, Scouting and public school districts, as a result, have been hit hard with lawsuits.

“It is [a] matter [of] who knew what and when,” said John Manly, a sexual abuse attorney, adding that Chavez’s leadership role could create liability for the UFW.

WASHINGTON — President Trump has once again mocked Gov. Gavin Newsom’s dyslexia as “disqualifying” for leadership, marking at least the fourth time in a week that the president has targeted the California Democrat for being open about his diagnosis.

In remarks Monday in the Oval Office, Trump said Newsom was “dumb” and should never be allowed to be president because he has “admitted that he has learning disabilities, dyslexia.”

“That’s how crazy it’s gotten with a low-IQ person,” Trump said. “Honestly, I’m all for people with learning disabilities but not for my president. … And I know it’s highly controversial to say such a horrible thing.”

But in the course of his needling, Trump mistakenly elevated his political rival to the rank of commander in chief — repeatedly referring to Newsom as “the president of the United States.” Newsom took the opportunity to turn the tables on the president.

“I, GAVIN C. NEWSOM, AM OFFICIALLY PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES (THANK YOU DONALD!)” he wrote on X Monday.

The clash is the latest in a storied contest of chest-beating between Trump and Newsom, who have made sport of bad-mouthing one another across campaign rallies, interviews and social media.

A model stealth bomber sits in front of President Trump during an executive order signing in the Oval Office Monday.

(Aaron Schwartz / Bloomberg via Getty Images)

The president has frequently cast Newsom as a symbol of the liberal governance he opposes, while the governor has leaned into the confrontations, often using them to elevate his national profile and position himself as a leading Democratic counterweight. His sparring with the president appears to be part of an aggressive strategy to amplify his own messaging as he weighs a potential run for president in 2028. This time, Newsom used the spotlight to support young people with dyslexia.

“To every kid with a learning disability: don’t let anyone — not even the President of the United States — bully you,” Newsom wrote on X. “Dyslexia isn’t a weakness. It’s your strength.”

The insults first materialized when a video went viral of Newsom speaking at a book tour appearance with Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens during which he discussed his lifelong struggle with the learning disability. Since then, the president has repeatedly poked at the vulnerability.

Trump has brought up the governor’s dyslexia at least four times in the last week. He mentioned it at a political rally in Kentucky last week, where he equated dyslexia with a “mental lack of ability,” and again during a Fox News Radio interview on Friday, in which he reiterated that “presidents can’t have a learning disability.” In a post on Truth Social, Trump labeled Newsom’s admission a “politically suicidal act,” calling him “dumb” and “A Cognitive Mess!”

After the Kentucky rally, Newsom responded to Trump.

“I spoke about my dyslexia, I know that’s hard for a brain-dead moron who bombs children and protects pedophiles to understand,” he said.

Dyslexia affects as much as 20% of the population, according to the Yale Center for Dyslexia and Creativity. Despite affecting a such a wide portion of the population, the condition is widely misunderstood, according to dyslexia researcher Dr. Helen Taylor of the University of Cambridge.

“In some ways, Trump’s awful comments are just a cruder version of assumptions that already run through our culture,” she said. “If anything, [it’s] the opposite. There is evidence of an overrepresentation of people with dyslexia in business leadership roles.”

According to Taylor, there is a link between dyslexia and “enhanced abilities” in areas such as discovery, invention and creativity.

“The same cognitive trade-offs that can make routine tasks like reading more difficult support strengths in navigating complexity and guiding groups toward better future outcomes,” she said.

Newsom often describes his early experiences with dyslexia as a source of insecurity when he was growing up. In his memoir, the governor writes about his mother, Tessa Newsom, attempting to help him with homework. The lessons ended with him “running out of the room screaming that I didn’t know what was wrong with my brain.”

Back when Newsom was a boy in the 1970s, dyslexia was recognized but still not fully understood. He recalls a day when his mother grew so concerned that she took a deep breath and told him, “It’s OK to be average, Gavin.”

“I understood even back then that this, too, came from her deep reservoir of love for me,” Newsom writes in his book “Young Man in a Hurry.” “But I don’t recall crueler words ever said about me.”

The challenges from his learning disorder persist in his work at the state Capitol. Newsom finds reading off a teleprompter challenging. His aides describe days of painstaking preparation before major addresses to live audiences. Late edits to a speech, and the resulting changes to the words on the screen, threaten to throw off his delivery.

All memos in the governor’s office are written in 12 point Century Gothic font with specific spacing between lines, formatting that his aides say helps him with his disability.

The governor reads his daily briefings a few times in the morning, underlines sentences and writes down notes to retain the information on yellow cards he keeps in his suit pockets.

The ritual, he has said, helps him compensate for his dyslexia and feel confident communicating. But it also adds to the public perception of Newsom as a smooth-talking, and at times rehearsed, politician. His excessive preparation has become a trait he considers a “super power.”

His effort to thoroughly absorb reading material and desire to understand issues before he speaks about them means he’s often well-prepared. In his perception, the learning disorder has brought out his grit and resilience, and helped him hone other skills, such as quickly reading a crowd.

It has also sharpened his memory.

At a news conference revealing his budget proposal in 2020, a reporter asked the governor what he would do to address 500,000 housing units that had been approved by developers in California, but hadn’t been constructed.

Without missing a beat, Newsom directed the journalist to the exact page in his 246-page budget that touched on the issue.

“While people with dyslexia are slow readers, they often, paradoxically, are very fast and creative thinkers with strong reasoning abilities,” according to the Yale Center for Dyslexia and Creativity.

The governor’s wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, discussed the president’s attacks Tuesday in a video on X in which she emphasized that “learning differences do not determine someone’s potential.” She listed a number of qualities she considered disqualifying for the presidency, including being a convicted felon, bankrupting businesses, having numerous associations with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, and sending “masked extremists to terrorize Black and brown communities and rip kids away from their families.”

“Everything that Donald Trump represents is frankly beyond disqualifying,” she said. “Day in and day out, Trump says things that make him unfit for office. He degrades our vulnerable communities, our institutions, even the Constitution itself.”

Two of the Newsoms’ four children have also been diagnosed with dyslexia.

Quinton reported from Washington, D.C., and Luna from Sacramento.

Live Nation, the ticketing giant that reached a tentative settlement with the Department of Justice last week, remains under fire.

A coalition of more than 30 states that had joined the original lawsuit filed in 2024 is refusing to accept the $200-million settlement, causing the trial to resume this week in Manhattan’s Federal Court.

The settlement with the Justice Department requires Beverly Hills-based Live Nation to open Ticketmaster to rival ticket sellers, force the company to open select venues to competing promoters and cap service fees at 15%. California is one of the key states still involved in the trial.

But those steps fall short, critics say.

“It’s clear that Live Nation has manipulated the market and made itself untouchable by competitors, hurting artists, hurting fans, hurting venues, all the while, raking in the cash,” said California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta at the Capitol Forum conference last week. “Not because it’s a better service or product, because it acted illegally and created a monopoly.”

U.S. senators have also chimed in. Minnesota’s Amy Klobuchar recently introduced the Antitrust Accountability and Transparency Act to strengthen the review of antitrust settlements. Klobuchar said in a release that it’s “clear the American people got the raw end of the deal.”

And Connecticut’s Richard Blumenthal released a report that provides new details into the inner workings of Ticketmaster and urges attorneys general across the nation to reject the settlement.

Blumenthal said that the Trump administration’s settlement with Live Nation will keep consumers vulnerable to Ticketmaster’s “anticompetitive practices” and ultimately push “concert tickets farther out of reach for fans.”

The senator’s report, entitled “So Casually Cruel: How Ticketmaster’s Monopoly Supercharges Prices and Fees,” examined over 100,000 documents and Ticketmaster’s revenue data. The report argues that the company leveraged its market control to make tickets available on the resale market before they were available to the general public in an effort to hike prices and boost profits.

“The ticketing market is broken,” Blumenthal said in a statement.

In its own statement, Ticketmaster said Blumenthal’s report “misrepresents how the live events industry works” and that the problem lies in the secondary ticketing industry.

“This is why we’ve long called for industry resale reform, including price caps, while also developing tools to empower artists and protect fans,” Ticketmaster said in a statement.

Recently, Ticketmaster has backed ticketing bills like AB-1349 and advocated to Congress for an industry-wide resale cap.

Sens. Blumenthal and Klobuchar are among many industry experts who say the settlement doesn’t adequately address anticompetitive practices and falls short of protecting consumers from high ticket prices.

Under Klobuchar’s new bill, courts could have 90 days to review public comments and government responses.

“When the government prosecutes antitrust violations, the goal should be to uphold the law, lower prices, and protect consumers and small businesses,” Klobuchar said in the statement.

Lindsay Owens, the executive director of the economic policy nonprofit Groundwork Collaborative, said the settlement will end up being “incredibly costly for concertgoers, performers, and independent venues.”

“California and 35 other states are standing up for Americans who are sick and tired of being ripped off and having to scrimp and save to enjoy a night out,” Owens said in a statement.

This ongoing trial is one of several major legal battles the ticketing giant is facing. The company is also being sued by the Federal Trade Commission and is dealing with a handful of class-action lawsuits from groups of concertgoers.

Times staff writer Meg James contributed to this report.

March 17 (UPI) — President Donald Trump told reporters Tuesday that he has delayed his trip to China for “five or six weeks” to focus on the war against Iran.

Trump told the Financial Times Sunday that he would postpone the trip if Chinese President Xi Jinping wouldn’t help secure the Strait of Hormuz.

“It’s only appropriate that people who are the beneficiaries of the Strait will help to make sure that nothing bad happens there,” Trump said. He said that 90% of China’s oil comes from the Middle East.

“We’re resetting the meeting, and it looks like it’ll take place in about five weeks,” Trump said. “We’re working with China. They were fine with it.”

The trip was scheduled for March 31 to April 2 and focused on trade.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Monday that “we will see whether the visit takes place as scheduled,” adding that if the trip were delayed, “it wouldn’t be delayed because the president’s demanded that China police the Straits of Hormuz,” NBC News reported.

After Bessent’s comments, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told Fox News that the president’s “utmost responsibility right now as commander in chief is to ensure the continued success of Operation Epic Fury, as he’s doing 24/7 here at the White House and here at home.”

Official Chinese customs data show that in 2025, China got less than half of its oil from the Middle East. Russia supplied just under one-fifth of China’s oil, and sanctioned Iranian oil accounted for 11.5 %.

WASHINGTON — Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi was subpoenaed Tuesday to answer questions from Congress about the Justice Department’s sex trafficking investigation of Jeffrey Epstein and the agency’s handling of millions of files related to the disgraced financier.

Bondi was ordered to appear for a deposition on April 14 by the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform after a vote earlier this month that five Republicans supported.

The Justice Department’s failure to fend off the subpoena from the Republican-led committee underscores widespread discontent among President Trump’s own base over Bondi’s management of the review and release of a trove of documents from the criminal investigation into Epstein.

“The Committee has questions regarding the Department of Justice’s handling of the investigation into Jeffrey Epstein and his associates and its compliance with the Epstein Files Transparency Act,” Rep. James Comer, the Republican chairman, said in a letter to Bondi.

“As Attorney General, you are directly responsible for overseeing the Department’s collection, review, and determinations regarding the release of files pursuant to the Epstein Files Transparency Act, and the Committee therefore believes that you possess valuable insight into these efforts,” he wrote.

The department on Tuesday called the subpoena “completely unnecessary.” Bondi and Deputy Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche were expected to provide a private briefing Wednesday to members of the committee.

“Lawmakers have been invited to view the unredacted files for themselves at the Department of Justice, and the Attorney General has always made herself available to speak directly with members of Congress,” the department said in a statement. The agency said it looks forward to “continuing to provide policymakers with the facts.”

The Trump administration has faced constant political headaches since the rollout of the files began in December, with critics accusing the department of hiding certain documents and over-redacting files. In other cases, victims have slammed the department for sloppy redactions that revealed their sensitive information.

The Justice Department has fiercely defended its handling of the Epstein files, saying it worked as quickly and diligently as possible to review and release millions of documents required under the law. The department has denied any accusations that it used redactions to protect certain people or improperly withheld certain materials. And it has said it immediately worked to fix any redaction errors raised by victims.

Richer writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — President Trump’s sweeping act of clemency for rioters who stormed the U.S. Capitol also should apply to a man charged with planting pipe bombs near the national headquarters of the Democratic and Republican parties on the eve of the Jan. 6, 2021, riot, the suspect’s attorneys argue in a bid to get his case dismissed.

In a court filing Monday, defense attorneys assert that Trump’s blanket pardons extend to the charges against Brian J. Cole Jr. because his alleged conduct on Jan. 5, 2021, is “inextricably tethered” to what happened at the Capitol the next day. They’re asking U.S. District Judge Amir Ali to throw out the case before trial.

Justice Department prosecutors didn’t immediately respond in writing to the defense’s request. In a previous court filing, prosecutors said Cole, under questioning by FBI agents, denied that his actions were related to the Jan. 6 proceedings at the Capitol.

On his first day back in the White House last year, Trump pardoned, commuted prison sentences and ordered the dismissal of all 1,500-plus people charged in the attack by a mob of his supporters.

Nearly a year later, Cole was arrested on charges that he placed two pipe bombs outside both the Republican and the Democratic national committees’ headquarters in Washington the night before the riot. The devices didn’t detonate before law enforcement officers discovered them Jan. 6.

Cole’s attorneys said the Justice Department’s framing of the case has explicitly linked Cole’s alleged conduct on Jan. 5 to the events of Jan. 6, when rioters disrupted the joint session of Congress for certifying Joe Biden’s electoral victory over Trump.

“That is not happenstance sequencing in time. It is the government’s theory of Mr. Cole’s alleged motive and context,” defense lawyers wrote. “According to the government, the timing was chosen because of what was scheduled to occur at the Capitol on January 6.”

They also argued that prosecutors’ theory of a possible motive places Cole’s alleged conduct “in the same political controversy that animated the January 6 crowd.”

In court filings, prosecutors have said that Cole confessed to investigators after his Dec. 4 arrest. He told FBI agents that he felt “bewildered” by conspiracy theories related to the 2020 presidential election and “something just snapped” after “watching everything, just everything getting worse,” prosecutors said.

Cole has remained jailed since his arrest. His attorneys have appealed Ali’s refusal to order Cole’s pretrial release from custody. The judge hasn’t set a trial date yet.

Cole, 30, of Woodbridge, Virginia, has been diagnosed with autism and obsessive-compulsive disorder. His attorneys say he has no criminal record.

Authorities said they used phone records and other evidence to identify him as a suspect in a crime that confounded the FBI for more than four years.

Kunzelman writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — An advocacy group hoping to expand support for child and elder care is planning to spend $50 million to back Democrats in congressional races, tying the costs of caregiving to the nation’s affordability debate.

The Campaign for a Family Friendly Economy, created a decade ago, aims to make caregiver issues more salient in elections. The announcement comes as the cost of child care continues to rise and as waiting lists for federal child-care subsidies, which support working families in poverty, continue to grow.

Sondra Goldschein, executive director of the campaign and its political action committee, said child care and elder care are important to the affordability conversation, especially as child-care costs exceed what families pay for housing. Then there is the pressure on the “sandwich generation,” composed of middle-aged people who are caring simultaneously for their own children and parents.

“When child care can cost more than your rent or a mortgage, or you have to sacrifice a paycheck in order to be able to take care of a loved one,” that can motivate how people vote, said Goldschein. “Each election cycle, we see candidates recognizing that more and more.”

She hopes the message will resonate as families face a slew of rising costs, including climbing gas prices driven by a war in Iran that is unpopular with many voters.

The campaign plans to pour support for Democrats into Senate races in North Carolina, Georgia, Michigan, Maine and Ohio and into House races in Iowa and Pennsylvania. It is also slated to dispatch volunteers to talk with voters about caregiving.

The National Republican Congressional Committee did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Republicans have begun to back child care as an issue crucial to growing the workforce, but their proposals tend to be less dramatic than those offered by Democrats. Last year, through President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill, Republicans made an estimated 4 million more families eligible for a child-care tax credit. The law also increased child-care aid for military families and tax credits for employers who provide child care to their workers.

Before 2020, many candidates rarely spoke about child care. But the COVID-19 pandemic laid bare the child-care industry’s precarity and necessity. Preschools and child-care centers were pressed to stay open so parents in front-line jobs — such as those in healthcare — could return to work.

Then-President Biden successfully persuaded Congress in 2021 to pass $39 billion in aid for child care, allowing states to offer support to more families and subsidizing wages for child-care workers. Later that year, Biden sought to create nationwide universal pre-kindergarten and to vastly expand child-care subsidies for families so that none would pay more than 7% of their household income for care. But the proposal narrowly failed in Congress. Since then, the pandemic aid has dried up and families are feeling the pinch of rising costs.

Now, several candidates have centered their campaigns around child-care affordability. New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist who won election after pledging to make the city more affordable for middle-class residents, ran on universal child care. Democratic Gov. Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey and Gov. Abigail Spanberger of Virginia won elections after pledging to expand child-care subsidies.

Candidates this election cycle are running on universal child-care pledges. They include Democrats Janeese Lewis George, who is running for mayor in Washington, D.C., and Francesca Hong, a gubernatorial candidate in Wisconsin. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, who is up for reelection this year, has pledged to support Mamdani’s ambitions and eventually to expand universal child care statewide.

Neither the White House nor the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees federal child-care programs, responded to requests for comment. In his 2024 campaign, during an address to the Economic Club of New York, Trump said increasing foreign tariffs would “take care” of the expense of child care. That plan, thus far, has not materialized.

In Trump’s current term, the administration has largely focused on cracking down on fraud, after a viral video alleged Somali-run child-care centers in Minneapolis were billing the government for children they weren’t caring for.

While there have been prosecutions stemming from child-care subsidy fraud, the Minneapolis video’s central claims were disproven by state inspectors. Nonetheless, the Trump administration attempted to freeze child-care funding for Minnesota and five other Democratic-led states until a court ordered the funding to be released.

Balingit writes for the Associated Press.

Defence official tells Congress that 47 alleged drug-trafficking vessels have been struck since campaign began.

The United States military has confirmed that at least 157 people have been killed in lethal strikes against alleged drug-trafficking boats off Latin America, described as a campaign of extrajudicial killings by legal experts.

Senior defence official Joseph Humire said that 47 “narco-trafficking vessels” have been struck in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific since the campaign began in September, in a written statement to members of the US Congress.

Asked by lawmakers on Tuesday whether the quantity of drugs entering the US has gone down, Humire stated that the movement of drug-trafficking vessels had decreased by 20 percent in the Caribbean.

“We’ve measured the decrease in the movement of the vessels,” said Humire.

“But that’s a no in terms of the drugs actually getting into the US,” Representative Adam Smith responded.

Experts have expressed scepticism that the strikes are having any significant impact on the drug trade, and legal scholars have said that the campaign is a clear violation of international law and is blurring the distinction between armed conflict and criminal activity. Under international law, military force is permitted for the former, but not the latter.

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) is holding hearings on the strikes, and advocates hope that the hearings could open the door to possible legal accountability for those responsible.

The Pentagon has shared videos on social media showing strikes on the vessels, but has provided few details about those killed or evidence of their status as drug vessels.

The administration of US President Donald Trump has embraced a militarised approach to combatting drug trafficking that has allowed the US to expand its military footprint across the region.

The US has stepped up collaboration with friendly governments such as Ecuador and threatened military strikes against countries like Mexico and Colombia if they do not do more to accommodate US demands.

ORLANDO, Fla. — College Republicans have sued the University of Florida’s president on free speech grounds over the school’s decision to deactivate its chapter after being notified that at least one member engaged in an antisemitic act.

The University of Florida College Republicans filed the lawsuit Monday in federal court against interim president Donald Landry, asking a judge to stop the enforcement of the school’s decision and to restore access to facilities on the Gainesville campus.

“The University of Florida punitively deactivated and shut down the UFCR, in response to alleged viewpoints expressed by a member of UFCR, and in an effort to silence the club and chill its future speech,” the group said in its lawsuit.

UF spokeswoman Cynthia Roldan Hernandez said in an email that the university doesn’t comment on pending litigation.

Officials at the University of Florida said over the weekend that they had been informed by the Florida Federation of College Republicans that the federation had disbanded the Gainesville campus’ chapter after determining that some members had “engaged in a pattern of conduct that violated its rules and values, including a recent antisemitic gesture.”

When the Florida Federation of College Republicans is ready, the university will assist with reactivating the campus chapter under new student leadership, UF officials said in a statement.

The deactivation wasn’t based on any university policy or rule, and it was only based on a member’s expression of a viewpoint “which was alleged to be antisemitic,” the lawsuit said.

The university also didn’t provide the College Republicans with adequate notice and didn’t give the chapter an opportunity to explain its side of the story, according to the lawsuit.

The deactivation effort at the University of Florida campus marks the second time this month that a public university in Florida has taken action against a Republican group accused of being involved in racist or antisemitic behavior.

Earlier this month, Florida International University in Miami launched an investigation into a group chat started by an official with the Miami-Dade chapter of the Republican Party that included violently racist slurs, antisemitic comments and misogynistic language. The chat involved students and several top conservative leaders at Florida International University.

Last fall, New York’s Republican State Committee suspended a Young Republican organization following the release of a group chat that included jokes about rape and flippant commentary on gas chambers.

Schneider writes for the Associated Press.

March 17 (UPI) — A magnitude 5.8 earthquake struck eastern Cuba early Tuesday, hours after the island’s national power grid collapsed, leaving nearly the entire country without electricity and compounding an already severe economic and social crisis.

The U.S. Geological Survey reported the quake at magnitude 5.8, while Cuba’s National Seismological Research Center measured it at 6.0. The epicenter was located off the coast of Guantánamo province and was widely felt across eastern Cuba.

State local newspaper Granma reported no fatalities or significant material damage.

The tremor followed the total disconnection of Cuba’s National Electric System shortly before 2 p.m. Monday, the sixth nationwide blackout in roughly 18 months. The Ministry of Energy and Mines said on X that the causes remain under investigation.

The outage left nearly 10 million people without electricity, disrupting water pumping, telecommunications and Internet service. Residents relied on candles, torches and battery-powered radios, according to a report by Mexican broadcaster TV Azteca.

The ministry said the failure affected the entire country, including Havana. The U.S. Embassy in Cuba issued a security alert saying no information was available on when power would be restored.

Energy Minister Vicente de la O Levy said on X that authorities are following established protocols and working to restore electricity to the country’s largest generating units.

Independent outlet Diario de Cuba reported that the government has yet to explain the collapse, which coincided with renewed protests in Havana and growing signs of public discontent.

Officials initially said service was being partially restored through localized “microsystems” in several provinces, prioritizing essential facilities while attempting to restart major thermoelectric plants. Full recovery could take time, especially due to fuel shortages that have limited distributed generation since January.

Frequent blackouts have slowed industrial activity and strained public services nationwide. Recent demonstrations in several cities have resulted in arrests.

Official figures show the Cuban economy has contracted more than 15% since 2020. Much of the state-run industrial sector remains idle and essential services have deteriorated sharply.

Independent experts estimate that fully restoring the power system would require between $8 billion and $10 billion, sums widely seen as beyond the reach of the Cuban economy.

Days after President Miguel Díaz-Canel acknowledged talks with the United States to address longstanding disputes, the government announced measures to allow greater entry of private capital, including from U.S. companies and Cuban expatriates in Miami.

In an interview with state-run Canal Caribe, Vice Prime Minister Óscar Pérez-Oliva Fraga said investors could own private companies on the island and access the financial sector. He confirmed that Cuban emigrants may become partners or owners of private businesses without living in Cuba and may associate with local firms under the Foreign Investment Law.

They also would be allowed to enter the national financial system, open foreign currency accounts and create cooperation and investment funds with authorization from the Central Bank.

Pérez-Oliva Fraga said the measures respond to demands from the diaspora and aim to expand its role in economic development as the government seeks to attract foreign capital and diversify the private sector.

He said “Cuba’s doors are open” to foreign investment, including U.S. companies, while again blaming the U.S. embargo for the island’s energy crisis and fuel shortages.

On Monday, President Donald Trump said he would have “the honor of taking Cuba,” describing the country as weakened after decades of rule by what he called violent leaders.

“You know, all my life I’ve heard about the United States and Cuba. When will the United States have the honor of taking Cuba? That would be a great honor,” Trump said from the Oval Office, according to CNN.

“Taking Cuba in some way, yes, taking Cuba. I mean, whether you free it or take it, I think I can do whatever I want with it,” he added.

His comments came as senior administration officials have repeatedly said a conflict with Iran could end within days and after Trump suggested that Cuba could be next on his agenda.

SACRAMENTO — As gas prices surge in California and nationally due to the war in Iran, two Democrats running for California governor are calling for the state to temporarily suspend its fuel tax or ease refinery regulations in an effort to lower costs.

Standing in front of a gas pump in a video posted to social media, San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan said the costs are “becoming an emergency for working families, and I think we ought to act like it.”

The moderate Democrat called on state lawmakers to suspend California’s gas tax, which at 61 cents per gallon is the highest in the nation.

Former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa also called for an “immediate moratorium” on regulations that he blamed for “overburdening” California refineries and working families.

“These failed policies are not only hurting tens of millions of Californians, they are terrible for the environment because they have forced California to depend on imported foreign oil from the Middle East,” Villaraigosa said in a statement.

The cost of living in California, including the price at the pump, remains a pivotal issue for voters in the state, and has become central to the moderate-leaning campaigns of Mahan and Villaraigosa as they attempt to distinguish themselves in the tightly contested race for governor.

According to AAA, the average price for a gallon of regular gasoline in California on Monday was $5.52, the highest in the nation and more than 50 cents higher than any other state. The national average was $3.71, up from the previous month’s average of $2.92.

Gasoline prices in California are often among the highest in the country for a number of reasons, including environmental rules that require a unique blend of cleaner-burning fuel.

The state also relies mostly on crude oil imported from other countries including Brazil, Iraq and Guyana and processed at in-state refineries. In 2025, 61% of oil processed at California refineries was imported, compared with 23% that was produced in the state, according to data from the California Energy Commission.

A greater reliance on foreign oil has made California more susceptible to price spikes during global conflicts and other disruptions.

Republicans have long supported suspending the gas tax and cutting regulations in order to lower prices at the pump.

Steve Hilton, a GOP candidate for governor and former Fox News host, outlined a plan to lower California gas prices to $3 per gallon by slashing regulations including the low-carbon fuel standard, the rule that requires cleaner-burning gas in order to reduce tailpipe emissions.

The other major Republican in the race, Riverside Sheriff Chad Bianco, supports suspending the gas tax, according to his website.

The current price spike echoes 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine and disrupted global oil markets.

As prices eventually fell around the rest of the country that year, they remained high for months in California, leading Gov. Gavin Newsom to wage war against oil and gas companies. He accused them of price-gouging drivers and backed laws requiring companies to report their profit margins and keep a supply of fuel on hand to prevent shortages and price spikes.

The governor backed off his battle with the oil companies last year after two refineries announced plans to close. In September, he signed legislation to permit 2,000 new oil wells in Kern County, reflecting an acknowledgement that his war on oil companies threatened to send California’s gas market spiraling.

Republican state lawmakers in 2022 pushed for a temporary suspension of California’s excise tax on gasoline, arguing that it would provide immediate relief to California drivers. That effort was rebuffed by Newsom and Democratic lawmakers, but they later approved $9.5 billion in tax refunds to Californians, providing as much as $1,050 to families as financial relief from record-high gasoline prices and other rising costs.

In 2017, the Democratic-controlled Legislature passed Senate Bill 1, which then-Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law, levying the state’s first gas tax increase in 23 years to fix California’s roads and bridges in disrepair. Under the law, the tax increases each year on July 1 based on the growth in the California Consumer Price Index.

California voters remain conflicted on the state’s regulation of the oil industry, according to an August survey by the Public Policy Institute of California. It found that more than 60% of adults support goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and generate electricity from renewable energy sources.

But majorities also said the costs of gasoline and utility bills is a major problem for them personally, according to the poll.

Mahan and Villaraigosa are the only two Democrats who have publicly called to roll back regulations on the state’s oil and gas market, illustrating the political murkiness at the nexus of California’s climate and affordability challenges.

Still, Democratic lawmakers – who hold supermajorities in the state Senate and Assembly – continue to shut down proposals to pause the gas tax, arguing that the state would lose out on much-needed money for roads.

“If anyone has a proposal about how to backfill (transportation) revenues, I’m up for that conversation, but so far, it’s just a bulls— political talking point,” said Assemblymember Cottie Petrie-Norris (D-Irvine).

Petrie-Norris chairs the Assembly Utilities and Energy Committee and has helped lead legislative efforts to stabilize California’s fuels market without retreating from goals to achieve carbon neutrality.

”When I ask people, ‘Do you want affordable gas, clean air or safe roads?’ they say yes. So they want us to do all three of these things,” she said. “We’ve got to be honest with Californians about trade-offs so that we can have real conversations.”

Mahan pushed back on the importance of collecting gas tax revenue.

“The truth is we have the highest taxes in the country and a $350-billion budget, and we ought to be able to pave our roads and enable working families to put food on the table,” he said in an interview. “I just reject the notion that the sky is going to fall if we provide temporary relief to working families who are being pushed to the brink by a war that they didn’t ask for.”

The San José mayor said the state should suspend the fuel tax “for the duration of the war” in Iran “or as long as gas prices are over $5 a gallon” in the state. He also called for “massive regulatory overhaul that brings down costs across the board,” including rules on refineries.

If elected governor, Villaraigosa said he would “reform and overhaul” the California Air Resources Board, which enacts many of the state’s environmental laws — including the low carbon fuel standard and cap-and-invest program.

“We can no longer allow bureaucrats who live in a bubble — with no accountability for the harm they are causing our economy and our people — to have so much power over the lives of every Californian,” Villaraigosa said in a statement.

As the U.S. wades even deeper into the conflict with Iran, some Democratic and progressive political figures are trying to figure out how to connect the public’s wariness about war with concerns about affordability and the widespread reaction against President Trump’s xenophobic immigration policies.

If you’re looking for a template to do it well, one can be found in the words and actions of a political figure who recently passed away: the Rev. Jesse Jackson.

For while attention after his death has rightfully focused on Jackson’s long involvement with the civil rights movement, the more telling lesson for this moment is how his presidential campaigns connected a concern for addressing domestic disenfranchisement with a resolute stance against U.S. military adventures — a message that built on and echoed the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s landmark 1967 speech against the Vietnam War, economic exploitation and racial injustice.

Jackson’s candidacies in 1984 and 1988 emerged at a moment when the social compacts forged by the labor, civil rights and women’s movements of the 20th century were being systematically undone. Deindustrialization was hollowing out working-class communities. Reaganism was consolidating power around tax cuts for the wealthy, deregulation and attacks on unions. A new corporate consensus was hardening — one that increasingly shaped both major parties — prioritizing financial elites while disciplining labor and shrinking the public sphere.

Sound familiar?

Jackson refused to accept that such a right-wing and corporate realignment was inevitable. His Rainbow Coalition was far more ambitious than a candidate-centered campaign. It was an attempt to build an organized, multiracial, cross-class political front capable of contesting the direction of the country itself.

The Rainbow brought together constituencies that conventional political wisdom said could not unite — Black voters in the South, industrial workers in the Midwest, family farmers in crisis, Latino and Native organizers, Arab American activists, peace advocates, labor insurgents and progressive whites.

Jackson’s platform did not treat these groups as symbolic additions to a coalition; it linked their material interests. Farmers facing foreclosure were not an afterthought — the farm crisis was up front. Deindustrialized workers were not rhetorical props — trade, jobs and industrial policy were central. Civil rights were braided together with economic justice.

And crucially, Jackson insisted, as King had, that economic populism could not be separated from anti-militarism.

At the height of the Cold War, amid Reagan’s military buildup and interventionist doctrine, Jackson argued that bloated Pentagon budgets were not abstract line items. They were resources diverted from schools, healthcare, housing and jobs. He connected the violence of abandonment at home to the violence of intervention abroad — and his campaign called for redirecting military spending toward human needs and for diplomacy over escalation.

When Jackson thundered that we should “choose the human race over the nuclear race,” this was not a simple turn of phrase. It was integral to the Rainbow’s moral and economic logic. A government that prioritizes war over welfare, weapons over workers, cannot sustain democratic life.

That clarity feels especially salient today, as the United States continues to pursue military interventions and proxy conflicts whose legality and human cost are deeply contested. Once again, defense budgets swell while public goods strain. Once again, dissent against war is treated as disloyalty. Jackson rejected that false choice decades ago. He understood that militarism abroad reinforces inequality and immorality at home.

Jackson’s 1988 campaign captured millions of votes, won primaries and caucuses across the country and forced issues into the Democratic Party that party elites preferred to sideline. He demonstrated that a progressive program grounded in the lived experiences of ordinary people — rural collapse, urban disinvestment, plant closures, racial injustice and war — could assemble a national constituency.

Unfortunately, after Jackson’s last campaign, the Rainbow’s experiment in independent organizational life was folded too tightly into the mainstream Democratic Party. While that seemed a strategy to achieve a broader front, it meant that the progressive anchor was unmoored — and the effort dissolved before it could truly mature.

But the lessons of that era may be more relevant than ever.

Today, we again confront an ever-ascendant rightward turn buttressed by concentrated corporate power and normalized militarism. As in Jackson’s day, some leaders seek to deflect our attention, blaming economic challenges on the proximate “other” — in his era, Black women taking welfare, in our era, immigrants taking jobs — rather than those with power.

Jackson understood that defeating reactionary politics required isolating it — not only morally, but structurally — by assembling a coalition larger than the right’s base and rooted in shared material demands. He understood that hope had to be organized and that peace had to be part of prosperity. His campaigns showed that racial justice, labor rights, rural survival, gender equality and anti-war politics were not competing claims but interlocking ones.

Protest has surged in the United States, particularly after the excesses in Minnesota. But protest alone does not prevent consolidation. Nor do narrow electoral bargains that leave the underlying corporate and military consensus intact.

At a time when both parties remain deeply entangled with corporate and defense interests, remembering the promise of the Rainbow is not nostalgia. It is instruction.

Rishi Awatramani is a postdoctoral scholar in sociology at USC, where Manuel Pastor is a professor of sociology and the director of the Equity Research Institute.

A group of California trial lawyers is backing a package of bills aimed at policing their industry by ramping up the penalties for attorneys who recruit clients illegally or prioritize the desires of hedge fund investors.

The Consumer Attorneys of California, a prominent trade group, said it is supporting two bills this session meant to crack down on the “small number of bad actors engaged in illegal conduct that threatens to undermine public trust” in the state’s legal bar.

The group said the bills, introduced Monday by Assemblymembers Ash Kalra (D-San José) and Rick Chavez Zbur (D-Los Angeles), were a response to recent Times investigations involving California lawyers. The Times found nine clients within L.A. County’s $4-billion sex-abuse settlement who said they were paid to sue and, in some cases, fabricate claims that became part of the historic payout. Another story examined opaque investor financing arrangements used by some firms.

“We’re not trying to insulate ourselves from accountability,” said Douglas Saeltzer, president of the attorney group, in an interview. “There needs to be consequences.”

The bill introduced by Zbur would disbar any attorney who is convicted of illegally soliciting clients. Kalra’s bill would ban private equity firms and hedge funds from dictating case strategy after giving money to a law firm.

Plaintiff’s attorneys say the legislative push is an attempt to clean up their profession’s image. It comes amid efforts by companies and governments frequently targeted by lawsuits to rein in a barrage of litigation.

Uber is pushing a measure for the November ballot that would limit how much lawyers can collect in fees for car crash cases, encouraging Californians to “stop the billboard lawyer scam.” A coalition of California counties has simultaneously begun circulating language to lawmakers that would limit attorneys’ ability to sue over older sex-abuse cases, pointing to recent allegations of fraud.

Zbur’s legislation, Assembly Bill 2039, would require the State Bar strip the license of any attorney with a felony conviction for a practice known as capping, in which law firms directly solicit or procure clients to sign up for lawsuits. Currently, attorneys convicted of capping can face suspension or probation, but are eligible to keep their license.

Under the bill, the attorney also would be disbarred for a misdemeanor capping conviction if the lawyer “acted knowingly and for financial gain.”

“It really is making very clear that if you’re engaging in this kind of capping, then there’s going to be a consequence,” Zbur said.

All clients who said they were paid to sue L.A. County over sex abuse were represented by Downtown LA Law Group, one of Southern California’s largest personal injury firms. The firm, also known as DTLA, is under investigation by the district attorney, the State Bar and L.A. County.

DTLA has denied any wrongdoing and said its lawyers “operate with unwavering integrity, prioritizing client welfare.”

Zbur’s bill also would provide whistleblower protections to people who report on attorney misconduct and tighten the rules around client loans. California is one of the few states where lawyers can lend money directly to clients.

Other states have barred the practice, concerned that direct loans give an attorney too much leverage over their clients.

The second bill introduced Monday, AB 2305, is aimed at the rising trend of private equity firms and hedge funds lending money to law firms and profiting from the payouts. The Times reported in December that investors were financing some of the flood of sex-abuse litigation against L.A. County.

Supporters of litigation finance say it gives attorneys the funding they need to take on deep-pocketed corporations and represent victims who can’t afford to sue on their own. Critics say investors can secretly sway case strategy, putting their profit before the best interests of a client.

“These Wall Street investors are salivating,” Kalra said. “This is just gonna clearly say, ‘No, no more. We’re not gonna allow these types of investments to influence the practice of law.’”

Kalra’s bill would bar investors from weighing in on litigation, such as who the firm should take on as a client and when they should settle a case. Any contracts that allow investor influence would be void under the law.

It’s unclear how the restrictions would be enforced. It’s often difficult to tell when an investor is financing a firm’s caseload, much less whether they’re exerting influence on a case.

Lawyers already are barred under the State Bar’s rules from allowing a third party to dictate case strategy and are barred in many cases from sharing legal fees with a nonlawyer.

“We’re finding that’s not enough,” Kalra said. “We actually need clear statutory safeguards.”

All eyes are on the Strait of Hormuz.

The longer it remains closed, the greater the damage to the global economy.

Iran continues to block tankers from shipping close to 20 percent of the world’s oil supply.

That is roughly twice the disruption the world suffered during the energy shock of the 1970s.

Big oil shocks have historically led to considerable economic turmoil, high inflation, stagnation and recession.

Oil and gas prices are already surging, and economies are expected to slow.

From American consumers to Chinese factories and European households, people across the world are already feeling the effect.

SACRAMENTO — A corporate tax policy that costs California billions in lost tax revenue each year could be coming to an end as the state struggles to backfill federal cuts and resolve a looming budget deficit.

The proposed legislation, Assembly Bill 1790, would repeal the so-called “water’s edge” tax break, a filing option that allows multinational corporations to exclude the income of their foreign subsidiaries from state taxation.

“The tax bills of the wealthiest, most powerful corporations in the world are at all-time lows,” Assemblymember Damon Connolly (D-San Rafael), one of the primary sponsors of the bill, told The Times. “Meanwhile, we’re struggling to fund programs that feed children — I think everyone understands that now is the time for long-term budget solutions.”

Republican Sen. Roger Niello, vice chair of the Senate Budget and Fiscal Review Committee, said the bill to repeal water’s edge won’t receive support from GOP lawmakers. He said the legislation would lead to double taxation, meaning the same income would be taxed twice by different countries, and compared taxing corporations’ foreign profits to enacting tariffs.

“California already has the reputation of being not particularly business friendly,” said Niello (R-Fair Oaks). “This would really just compound that.”

A spokesperson for Gov. Gavin Newsom did not respond to a request for comment about the governor’s views on the proposal. Newsom, however, has largely shunned new tax increase proposals.

Legislation to increase taxes requires a two-thirds approval vote instead of a simple majority. Democrats in California hold a supermajority in both the Assembly and Senate, meaning the bill could still pass without Republican support, but it would require backing from the progressive and moderate wings of the party.

Kayla Kitson, a senior analyst at the California Budget and Policy Center, said the measure has a decent chance of winning support among moderate Democrats due to the state’s budgetary woes.

“The stakes are really high this year,” she said. “With any tax policy, it’s certainly hard to get folks beyond the progressive community on board, but there are a lot of discussions happening behind closed doors given the challenges that the state knows it’s going to have to deal with in the next few years.”

When filing taxes, a multinational corporation in the United States can currently choose between two methods. Worldwide reporting takes into account all of the corporation’s global profits or losses, while the water’s edge option allows the U.S.-based parent company to exclude the income of foreign subsidiaries. This can help corporations that own profitable foreign companies pay less taxes in the United States.

California is scrambling for solutions as the state is facing an estimated $18-billion budget deficit and fallout from federal cuts that slashed healthcare. A Republican-backed tax and spending bill signed last year by President Trump shifted federal funding away from safety net programs and toward tax cuts and immigration enforcement.

Carl Davis, a research director for the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, said the idea is picking up momentum nationwide, with states like Maryland, Minnesota and New Hampshire also considering a repeal in recent years, due to a growing awareness about profit shifting — a loophole in the water’s edge tax break that some corporations use to reduce their tax burdens by shifting profits made in a high-tax country into tax havens.

“Folks are outraged when they hear that these companies are pretending that they are earning their profits in the Caymans or in Switzerland and are skipping out on paying U.S. taxes as a result,” he said. “That feels insulting to a lot of people who are paying the taxes they owe every day.”

During an informational hearing at the Legislature last month, Rowan Isaaks, an economist with the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office, said the state does not know the extent to which corporations use profit shifting, which makes it impossible to determine exactly how much revenue California would gain by eliminating the water’s edge tax exemption. But he estimated it would bring in “single digit billions” for the state each year.

“While there would be revenue gains, the Legislature also faces a trade-off between broadening the tax base but also managing additional uncertainty,” said Isaaks, explaining it could increase budget volatility because foreign income is more sensitive to global economic conditions.

Issaks added that the Legislative Analyst’s Office has found no strong evidence that companies would flee California if the water’s edge tax break was repealed.

Jennifer Barton, director of the legislative services bureau for the California Franchise Tax Board, told legislators that mandating worldwide reporting wouldn’t be difficult for the state from an administrative standpoint, only requiring some additional outreach or educational efforts.

California Tax Foundation visiting fellow Jared Walczak said that the water’s edge option exists for a reason and that it would be unfair to mandate worldwide reporting. “The vast majority of the activity abroad is true economic activity abroad,” he told lawmakers. “Companies don’t just exist in the United States; they have sales, they have manufacturing, they do things abroad.”

A survey last year from the nonpartisan Pew Research Center found 63% of adult Americans believe large corporations or businesses should pay more in taxes, while 19% want corporate taxes to be lower and 17% believe corporate tax policy should remain the same.

Tech companies appear to be particularly aggressive with profit shifting. Six U.S. multinational corporations — Apple, Cisco, EBay, Facebook, Google and Microsoft — may have underpaid their U.S. corporate income taxes by $277 billion over varying periods from 2009 through 2022, according to a report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

Repealing the water’s edge tax break isn’t the only tax-related proposal being considered as the state seeks to increase revenue. The Billionaire Tax Act is a controversial proposed state ballot initiative that would levy a one-time, 5% tax on the state’s billionaires to help offset federal cuts. Newsom is among its critics.

Davis believes it will continue to be a hot topic regardless of the bill’s outcome this year.

“There is very good reason to think this [repeal] is going to happen at some point,” he said. “This is a debate that is certainly not going away.”

“Right is right, wrong is wrong, and Trump’s wrong.” Former Marine Brian McGinnis, whose hand was broken by police and a congressman earlier this month in a protest at the US Capitol, says Donald Trump is “wrong” when it comes to the joint US-Israeli war on Iran.

“Reckless war of choice.” US House of Representatives Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries criticised Donald Trump for what he called a failure to adequately prepare for the consequences of launching a war on Iran.