politics

Jan. 30 (UPI) — Two Democratic lawmakers are demanding answers about why National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard was at an FBI raid at a Georgia election facility.

Gabbard was photographed outside the Fulton County Election Hub and Operations Center, just outside of Atlanta, when the FBI executed a “a court authorized law enforcement action” on Wednesday. FBI spokesperson Jenna Sellitto told The Hill that boxes loaded on trucks contained ballots.

Agents sought 2020 election records, Fulton County spokesperson Jessica Corbitt-Dominguez said.

“We don’t know why they took them, and we don’t know where they’re taking them to,” county board of commissioners Chair Robb Pitts told The Hill.

“Director Gabbard has a pivotal role in election security and protecting the integrity of our elections against interference, including operations targeting voting systems, databases, and election infrastructure,” a senior administration official told NBC News.

Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., released a statement about Gabbard’s presence at the raid.

“There are only two explanations for why the Director of National Intelligence would show up at a federal raid tied to Donald Trump‘s obsession with losing the 2020 election,” he said. “Either Director Gabbard believes there was a legitimate foreign intelligence nexus — in which case she is in clear violation of her obligation under the law to keep the intelligence committees ‘fully and currently informed’ of relevant national security concerns — or she is once again demonstrating her utter lack of fitness for the office that she holds by injecting the nonpartisan intelligence community she is supposed to be leading into a domestic political stunt designed to legitimize conspiracy theories that undermine our democracy.”

He said it shows she is unfit for the job.

“Either is a serious breach of trust that further underscores why she is totally unqualified to hold a position that demands sound judgment, apolitical independence, and a singular focus on keeping Americans safe,” he said.

Warner and Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., who both serve on their chambers’ intelligence committees, penned a letter to Gabbard expressing concern about her appearance in Georgia and demanding that she “appear before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence immediately.”

The letter said it is “deeply concerning that you participated in this domestic law enforcement action. The Intelligence Community should be focused on foreign threats and, as you yourself have testified, when those intelligence authorities are turned inwards the results can be devastating for Americans’ privacy and civil liberties.”

They said they want her to address her reasoning and role in attending the FBI operation in Fulton County, under what legal authority she or any other IC employee were involved, and an update on any intelligence she has concerning foreign interference in U.S. elections, including the 2020 election.

“Given the politically fraught nature of elections for federal office, any federal efforts associated with combatting foreign election threats necessitate public transparency, prompt updating of Congressional intelligence committees, and clear commitment to non-partisan conduct,” the letter said.

“Your recent actions raise foundational questions about the current mission of your office, and it is critical that you brief the Committees immediately as part of your obligation to keep Congress fully and currently informed.”

Two unnamed senior officials with knowledge of the matter told NBC that Gabbard’s presence in Fulton County was not requested by the Justice Department. They said Gabbard was only observing, and her presence wasn’t illegal.

“It seems to be an attempt to make herself relevant,” one official told NBC. “It’s so strange.”

On Thursday, Trump responded to a reporter’s question about her presence in Georgia.

“She’s working very hard on trying to keep the elections safe, and she’s done a very good job,” Trump said at the Kennedy Center. “You got a signed judge’s order in Georgia, and you’re going to see some interesting things happening. They’ve been trying to get there for a long time.”

If she took part in the search, her involvement would be “wrong and potentially even illegal,” said Kevin Carrol, a former CIA officer and national security lawyer, to NBC.

“It is also inappropriate for a Cabinet-level official to take part in a law enforcement operation. Among other things, the director is now potentially a fact witness in any suppression hearing or trial related to the evidence seized by the bureau,” Carroll said.

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department has opened a federal civil rights investigation into the shooting of Alex Pretti, the Minneapolis resident killed Saturday by Border Patrol officers, federal officials said Friday.

“We’re looking at everything that would shed light on what happened that day and in the days and weeks leading up to what happened,” Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said during a news conference. “That’s like any investigation that the Department of Justice and the FBI does every day. It means we’re looking at video, talking to witnesses, trying to understand what happened.”

There are thousands of instances every year when someone is shot by law enforcement, Blanche said, but not all are investigated by federal authorities.

“There has to be circumstances or facts or maybe unknown facts, but certainly circumstances, that warrant an investigation,” he added.

The Department of Homeland Security also said Friday that the Federal Bureau of Investigation will lead the federal probe.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem first disclosed the shift in which agency was leading the probe during a Fox News interview Thursday evening. Her department said earlier this week that Homeland Security Investigations, a unit within the department, would be heading the investigation.

“We will continue to follow the investigation that the FBI is leading and giving them all the information that they need to bring that to conclusion, and make sure that the American people know the truth of the situation and how we can go forward and continue to protect the American people,” Noem said, speaking to Fox host Sean Hannity.

Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin confirmed Friday that the FBI will lead the Pretti probe and that HSI will support them. Separately, Customs and Border Protection, which is part of DHS, is doing its own internal investigation into the shooting, during which two officers opened fire on Pretti.

DHS did not immediately respond to questions about when the change was made or why. The FBI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

It was also not immediately clear whether the FBI would now share information and evidence with Minnesota state investigators, who have thus far been frozen out of the federal probe.

In the same interview, Noem appeared to distance herself from statements she made shortly after the shooting, claiming Pretti had brandished a handgun and aggressively approached officers.

Multiple videos that emerged of the shooting contradicted that claim, showing the intensive care nurse had only his mobile phone in his hand as officers tackled him to the ground, with one removing a handgun from the back of Pretti’s pants as another officer began firing shots into his back.

Pretti had a state permit to legally carry a concealed firearm. At no point did he appear to reach for it, the videos showed.

“I know you realize that situation was very chaotic, and that we were being relayed information from on the ground from CBP agents and officers that were there,” Noem said during the interview with Hannity on Thursday. “We were using the best information we had at the time, seeking to be transparent with the American people and get them what we knew to be true on the ground.”

The change comes after two other videos emerged Wednesday of an earlier altercation between Pretti and federal immigration officers 11 days before his death.

The Jan. 13 videos show Pretti in a winter coat, yelling at federal vehicles and at one point appearing to spit before kicking out the taillight of one vehicle. A struggle ensues between Pretti and several officers, during which he is forced to the ground. Pretti’s winter coat comes off, and he either breaks free or the officers let him go and he scurries away.

When he turns his back to the camera, what appears to be a handgun is visible in his waistband. At no point do the videos show Pretti reaching for the gun, and it is not clear whether federal agents saw it.

Steve Schleicher, a Minneapolis-based attorney representing Pretti’s parents, said Wednesday the earlier altercation in no way justified officers fatally shooting Pretti more than a week later.

In a post on his Truth Social platform early Friday morning, President Trump suggested that the videos of the earlier incident undercut the narrative that Pretti was a peaceful protester when he was shot.

“Agitator and, perhaps, insurrectionist, Alex Pretti’s stock has gone way down with the just released video of him screaming and spitting in the face of a very calm and under control ICE Officer, and then crazily kicking in a new and very expensive government vehicle, so hard and violent, in fact, that the taillight broke off in pieces,” Trump’s post said. “It was quite a display of abuse and anger, for all to see, crazed and out of control. The ICE Officer was calm and cool, not an easy thing to be under those circumstances!”

Biesecker and Santana write for the Associated Press. AP reporters Alanna Durkin Richer and Eric Tucker contributed to this report from Washington.

NEW YORK — The Justice Department on Friday released many more records from its investigative files on Jeffrey Epstein, resuming disclosures under a law intended to reveal what the government knew about the millionaire financier’s sexual abuse of young girls and his interactions with the rich and powerful.

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said the department was releasing more than 3 million pages of documents in the latest Epstein disclosure, as well as more than 2,000 videos and 180,000 images. The files, posted to the department’s website, include some of the several million pages of records that officials said were withheld from an initial release of documents in December.

They were disclosed under the Epstein Files Transparency Act, the law enacted after months of public and political pressure that requires the government to open its files on the late financier and his accomplice, confidant and longtime girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell.

“Today’s release marks the end of a very comprehensive document identification and review process to ensure transparency to the American people and compliance with the act,” Blanche said at a news conference announcing the disclosure.

After missing a Dec. 19 deadline set by Congress to release all of the files, the Justice Department said it tasked hundreds of lawyers with reviewing the records to determine what needs to be redacted, or blacked out, to protect the identities of victims of sexual abuse.

Among the materials being withheld is information that could jeopardize any ongoing investigation or expose the identities of personal details about potential victims. All women other than Maxwell have been redacted from videos and images being released Friday, Blanche said.

The number of documents subject to review has ballooned to roughly six million, including duplicates, the department said.

The Justice Department released tens of thousands of pages of documents just before Christmas, including photographs, interview transcripts, call logs and court records. Many of them were either already public or heavily blacked out.

Those records included previously released flight logs showing that President Trump flew on Epstein’s private jet in the 1990s, before they had a falling out, and several photographs of former President Clinton. Neither Trump, a Republican, nor Clinton, a Democrat, has been publicly accused of wrongdoing in connection with Epstein, and both have said they had no knowledge he was abusing underage girls.

Also released last month were transcripts of grand jury testimony from FBI agents who described interviews they had with several girls and young women who said they were paid to perform sex acts for Epstein.

Epstein killed himself in a New York jail cell in August 2019, a month after he was indicted on federal sex trafficking charges.

In 2008 and 2009, Epstein served jail time in Florida after pleading guilty to soliciting prostitution from someone under the age of 18. At the time, investigators had gathered evidence that Epstein had sexually abused underage girls at his home in Palm Beach, but the U.S. attorney’s office agreed not to prosecute him in exchange for his guilty plea to lesser state charges.

In 2021, a federal jury in New York convicted Maxwell, a British socialite, of sex trafficking for helping recruit some of his underage victims. She is serving a 20-year prison sentence at a prison camp in Texas, after being moved there from a higher-security federal prison in Florida. She denies any wrongdoing.

U.S. prosecutors never charged anyone else in connection with Epstein’s abuse of girls, but one of his victims, Virginia Roberts Giuffre, accused him in lawsuits of having arranged for her to have sexual encounters at age 17 and 18 with numerous politicians, business titans, noted academics and others, all of whom denied her allegations.

Among the people she accused was Britain’s Prince Andrew, now known as Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor after the scandal led to him being stripped of his royal titles. Andrew denied having sex with Giuffre but settled her lawsuit for an undisclosed sum.

Giuffre died by suicide at her farm in Western Australia last year at age 41.

Tucker, Sisak and Richer write for the Associated Press. Tucker and Richer reported from Washington.

WASHINGTON — A federal judge has refused to order the pretrial release of a man charged with placing two pipe bombs near the national headquarters of the Democratic and Republican parties on the eve of a mob’s Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

U.S. District Judge Amir Ali ruled on Thursday that Brian J. Cole Jr. must remain in jail while awaiting trial. Ali upheld a decision by U.S. Magistrate Judge Matthew Sharbaugh, who ruled on Jan. 2 that no conditions of release can reasonably protect the public from the danger that Cole allegedly poses.

Cole, 30, pleaded not guilty to making and planting two pipe bombs outside the Republican National Committee and the Democratic National Committee headquarters in Washington, D.C., on the night of Jan. 5, 2021.

Cole, who lived with his parents in Woodbridge, Virginia, has been diagnosed with autism and obsessive-compulsive disorder. His attorneys say he has no criminal record.

Cole has remained jailed since his Dec. 4 arrest. Authorities said they used phone records and other evidence to identify him as a suspect in a crime that confounded the FBI for over four years.

Prosecutors said Cole confessed to trying to carry out “an extraordinary act of political violence.” Cole told investigators that he was unhappy with how leaders of both political parties responded to “questions” about the 2020 presidential election — and said “something just snapped,” according to prosecutors.

“While the defendant may have reached a psychological breaking point, his crimes were anything but impulsive,” they wrote. “Indeed, the defendant’s pipe bombs — and the fear and terror they instilled in the general public — were the product of weeks of premeditation and planning.”

Defense attorneys asked for Cole to be freed from jail and placed on home detention with electronic monitoring. They say a defense expert concluded that the devices found near the RNC and DNC headquarters were not viable explosive devices.

“In fact, there was no possibility of death, injury or destruction as the devices were harmless,” they wrote.

If convicted of both charges against him, Cole faces up to 10 years of imprisonment on one charge and up to 20 years of imprisonment on a second charge that also carries a five-year mandatory minimum prison sentence.

Kunzelman writes for the Associated Press.

After several years of suspension, political parties in Burkina Faso have been formally dissolved by the military government, which has also seized all their assets in a move analysts say is a major blow for democracy in the West African nation.

In a decree issued on Thursday, the government, led by Captain Ibrahim Traore, scrapped all laws which established and regulated political parties, accusing them of failing to comply with guidelines.

The troubled West African nation is struggling with violence from armed groups linked to ISIL (ISIS) and al-Qaeda. It is one of a growing number of West and Central African nations to have undergone coups in recent years.

Traore seized power in September 2022, eight months after an earlier military coup had already overthrown the democratically elected President Roch Marc Kabore.

Despite strong criticism by rights groups and opposition politicians of his authoritarian approach, 37-year-old Traore has successfully built up an online cult-like following among pan-Africanists, with many likening him to the late Burkinabe revolutionary leader, Thomas Sankara.

Traore’s anti-colonial and anti-imperial pronouncements are often shown in high-definition, AI-generated videos that have gained him widespread admiration across the internet.

But the decision to ban political parties does not sit well for democracy, Dakar-based analyst Beverly Ochieng of the Control Risks intelligence firm, told Al Jazeera.

“The military government will [remain] highly influential, especially after a recent decree appointing Traore in a supervisory capacity in the judiciary,” Ochieng said, referring to a December 2023 constitutional change which placed courts directly under government control.

Going forward, “there will be very limited division of powers or autonomy across the civic and political space,” Ochieng said, adding that the military government will likely keep extending its stay in power.

Why have political parties been banned?

The Burkinabe government claims the existing political parties were not following the codes which established them.

In a televised statement following a Council of Ministers meeting on Thursday, when the new decree was approved, Interior Minister Emile Zerbo said the decision was part of a broader effort to “rebuild the state” after alleged widespread abuses and dysfunction in the country’s multiparty system.

A government review, he said, had found that the multiplication of political parties had fuelled divisions and weakened social cohesion in the country.

“The government believes that the proliferation of political parties has led to excesses, fostering division among citizens and weakening the social fabric,” Zerbo said.

He did not give details of the political parties’ alleged excesses.

How did political parties operate in the past?

Before the 2022 coup, which brought the current military leadership to power, Burkina Faso had more than 100 registered political parties, with 15 represented in parliament after the 2020 general elections.

The largest was the ruling People’s Movement for Progress (MPP), which had 56 of 127 seats in parliament. It was followed by the Congress for Democracy and Progress, with 20 seats, and the New Era for Democracy with 13 seats.

But the civilian government faced months of protests as thousands took to the streets to demonstrate against growing insecurity from armed groups in large parts of the country.

In 2022, Traore took power, promising to put an end to violence by armed groups. He also promised the regional Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) bloc that his government would hold elections by 2024.

But political parties were banned from holding rallies after the 2022 coup and, a month before the 2024 deadline, Traore’s government postponed elections to 2029 after holding a national conference, which was boycotted by several political parties.

Burkina Faso, along with Mali and Niger, withdrew from ECOWAS to form the Alliance of Sahel States, a new economic and military alliance in January last year. They also withdrew from the International Criminal Court (ICC).

In July 2025, Traore’s government dissolved the Independent National Electoral Commission, saying the agency was too expensive.

Has insecurity worsened under Traore?

Landlocked Burkina Faso is currently grappling with several armed groups which have seized control of land in the country’s north, south and west, amounting to about 60 percent of the country, according to the Africa Center for Strategic Studies (ACSS).

The most active groups are the al-Qaeda-backed Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM) and Islamic State Sahel Province (ISSP), which also operate in neighbouring Mali and Niger.

The groups want to rule over territory according to strict Islamic laws and are opposed to secularism.

By December 2024, all three Alliance of Sahel States countries had cut ties with former colonial power France and instead turned to Russian fighters for security support after accusing Paris of overly meddling in their countries.

Between them, they expelled more than 5,000 French soldiers who had previously provided support in the fight against armed groups. A smaller contingent of about 2,000 Russian security personnel is now stationed across the three countries.

But violence in Burkina Faso and the larger Sahel region has worsened.

Fatalities have tripled in the three years since Traore took power to reach 17,775 – mostly civilians – by last May, compared with the three years prior, when combined recorded deaths were 6,630, the ACSS recorded.

In September, Human Rights Watch accused JNIM and ISSP of massacring civilians in northern Djibo, Gorom Gorom and other towns, and of causing the displacement of tens of thousands since 2016.

HRW has also similarly accused the Burkinabe military and an allied militia group, Volunteers for the Defense of the Homeland, of atrocities against civilians suspected of cooperating with armed groups. In attacks on northern Nondin and Soro villages in early 2024, the military killed 223 civilians, including 56 babies and children, HRW said in an April 2024 report.

Mali and Niger have similarly recorded attacks by the armed groups. Malian capital Bamako has been sealed off from fuel supplies by JNIM fighters for months.

On Wednesday night, the Nigerien military held off heavy attacks on the airport in the capital city, Niamey. No armed group has yet claimed responsibility.

Is the civic space shrinking in Burkina Faso?

Since it took power, the government in Ouagadougou has been accused by rights groups of cracking down on dissent and restricting press and civic freedoms.

All political activities were first suspended immediately after the coup.

In April 2024, the government also took aim at the media, ordering internet service providers to suspend access to the websites and other digital platforms of the BBC, Voice of America and HRW.

Meanwhile, authorities have forced dozens of government critics into military service and sent them to fight against armed groups. Several prominent journalists and judges have been arrested after speaking out against increasingly restrictive rules on press and judiciary freedom.

Abdoul Gafarou Nacro, a deputy prosecutor at the country’s High Court, was one of at least five senior members of the judiciary to be forcibly conscripted and sent to fight armed groups in August 2024 after speaking out against the military government. Nacro’s whereabouts are currently unknown.

In April 2025, three abducted journalists resurfaced in a social media video 10 days after they went missing, in one example. All three – Guezouma Sanogo, Boukari Ouoba, and Luc Pagbelguem – were wearing military fatigues in an apparent forced conscription. They have all since been released.

However, several others, including some opposition politicians, are still missing.

Until January 3, Maduro & Co. managed to construct a form of “normalcy” that was business-friendly enough to attract foreign capital, drawn in by the Special Economic Zones and by the marriage between the bolibourgeoisie and national capital that survived economic collapse in the 2010s. Chevron and other major international companies accepted doing business in Venezuela because Maduro’s illegitimacy did not prevent them from projecting returns in the short, medium, and long term. Maduro could offer this normalcy at the cost of violence and a “gentleman’s agreement”. Still, only the companies that feel sufficiently secure in what remains a high-risk bet under these conditions ultimately enter the country.

Part of this arrangement involved negotiating a degree of sanctions relief with the United States, expressed most clearly through the license granted to Chevron. Now, with Maduro effectively sidelined and Delcy Rodríguez—architect of Maduro’s economic reform—holding power, the US seeks to open and deepen its investments. On January 9, Trump met with executives from major oil companies and urged them to make large-scale investments in Venezuelan projects. Several executives replied that, under current conditions, Venezuela could not be considered a safe destination for their firms. They see no real guarantees of stability or long-term predictability in the existing economic rules of the game, because this normalcy continues to rest on the arbitrariness of the National Executive, the use of violence, and political whims. Today, power may align itself with Washington. Tomorrow, it could attempt an anti-imperialist rupture.

The supposedly “moderate” Delcy is still far from consolidated vis-à-vis anti-imperialist power brokers, such as those embodied by Diosdado Cabello or senior FANB officers. The US openly acknowledges this, signaling that it continues to keep an eye on these actors—hinting at the possibility of a second attack or leaking to the press its intention to have the CIA permanently stationed in Venezuela. Delcy, for her part, appears to be trying to neutralize the most hardline anti-imperialist sectors. She strives to maintain a hostile rhetoric—that Trump and Rubio don’t seem to care about—that does not match her actions.

However, no new law can erase the reality that, at the core of all policy, lies the arbitrary decision-making power of whoever holds authority.

Trump understands the reasons behind the reluctance of large-scale capital, which is indispensable to consolidating Washington’s new role as the steward of Venezuela’s future. He seeks to reassure investors that they are not negotiating with the Venezuelan State, but with the US government itself, and that it is his word (not Delcy’s) that underwrites these agreements. Yet Trump’s own arbitrariness, his erratic and unpredictable governing style, also adds another layer of risk to the level of investment he is demanding from these companies.

The reform of the Organic Hydrocarbons Law signals that the new regime is willing to accept whatever demands are necessary to make investments feel safe and profitable, stabilizing a legal framework meant to introduce a degree of predictability into the new normalcy Delcy is attempting to rebuild. However, no new law can erase the reality that, at the core of all policy, lies the arbitrary decision-making power of whoever holds authority. As a result, the risk never truly disappears: what is law today may cease to be so tomorrow.

What the new economy could look like

Most likely, securing terms acceptable to US capital is requiring Delcy to offer increased profit margins accompanied by special legal guarantees. It will also require a shift in how the subordination of workers to this new national economic agreement is managed. If Delcy’s trend toward rehabilitating the image of the National State includes releasing political prisoners, it may also reflect an acknowledgment that sustaining normalcy through the exploitation and repression of Venezuelan workers is no longer viable.

This possibility surfaced in her January 15 address to the National Assembly, when she proposed creating two sovereign funds financed by the foreign currency generated by the new oil arrangement. One fund would be devoted to “social protection,” aimed at improving workers’ incomes through unspecified mechanisms (salary increases or bonuses?) and strengthening health, education, food provision, and housing. The other would focus on rebuilding infrastructure and public services. This latter proposal aligns closely with Trump’s vision, which presented US capital with an arrangement centered on restoring national infrastructure to support oil operations.

Major international oil companies can extract profits without living in the country, but Venezuelan companies cannot. For them, the transition to democracy must also become a necessity.

If these plans materialize under US supervision, we could anticipate an increase in economic activity. More consumption and a greater supply of US imports, particularly since Trump (and hinted by Rubio on Wednesday) has already conditioned payment for Venezuelan oil on the exclusive purchase of American products in equivalent amounts.

It is difficult to predict how the population would react. After the Guaidó interim presidency failed to oust Maduro, Venezuelans increasingly abandoned aspirations for political change, retreating instead into private life or into their economic activities as workers or small entrepreneurs, seeking some form of long-term personal and family stability, along with sufficient margins of consumption to make life in Venezuela bearable. If the economic scenario were to change radically, would the population accept the continuation of chavismo without demanding guarantees of democratic processes in the medium or long term, so long as a new era of prosperity and consumption is secured?

Challenges for democratic politics

María Corina Machado and the opposition face a stark problem: the transition could unfold without them. A transition negotiated exclusively between the US and the ruling Rodríguez faction risks sidelining essential demands for building a healthy democracy—such as the unconditional release of all political prisoners, transitional justice processes, the dismantling of repressive forces, environmental protection in southern Venezuela, the reconstruction of democratic participation mechanisms, and the achievement of genuinely free and effective elections.

Democratic forces risk seeing citizens accept the abandonment of these demands in exchange for renewed economic prosperity, without recognizing that, in the medium and long term, these very demands are the only ones capable of guaranteeing that economic recovery and social liberalization can endure beyond the whims of the National Executive.

Rather than immediately confronting the National State, democratic demands for freedom, memory, truth, and justice should be brought into the very circuits of consumption that the PSUV has built.

Democratic actors could prevent a transition from moving forward without them by restoring, through the comanditos, a strategy of regular and sustained mobilization around an initial demand that doesn’t represent an existential threat for PSUV. The demand for the release of political prisoners is crucial here. As seen in the exchange between student leaders from the Universidad Central (UCV) and Delcy Rodríguez, this demand unexpectedly opened space for a form of dialogue, however imperfect it was.

For Delcy’s new normalcy to function, it requires forgetting and a citizenry able to consume freely without the guilt that comes from acknowledging that this new enjoyment is built upon the acceptance of impunity. A democratic political strategy must therefore aim to generate discomfort and prevent oblivion.

Following this logic, protests should innovate. Rather than immediately confronting the National State, democratic demands for freedom, memory, truth, and justice should be brought into the very circuits of consumption that the PSUV has built to benefit national capital, the bolibourgeoisie, small business owners, and resigned or apathetic workers. This means unsettling not only the political actors at the helm of this transition process, but also their economic counterparts. Major international oil companies can extract profits without living in the country, but Venezuelan companies cannot. For them, the transition to democracy must also become a necessity.

If not out of fear of the costs of authoritarianism, then their necessity should be driven by the high social price of failing to promote the national democratic reconstruction.

The Los Angeles City Council has again increased what it will pay Gibson Dunn to represent it in a contentious homelessness case, bringing the law firm’s contract to nearly $7.5 million.

In mid-May, the council approved a three-year contract capped at $900,000. The law firm then billed the city $1.8 million for two weeks of legal work, with 15 of its attorneys charging nearly $1,300 per hour.

In a closed-door meeting Wednesday, the council voted 9-4 to approve an increase of about $1.8 million from the current $5.7 million, with Councilmembers John Lee, Tim McOsker, Imelda Padilla and Monica Rodriguez opposed. It was not clear why the additional money was needed.

Rodriguez said that spending resources on outside lawyers instead of complying with the settlement terms in the case is “simply a waste of public funds.”

“In the face of a mounting homelessness crisis, it’s misguided for the City to continue pouring our scarce resources into outside counsel instead of housing the most vulnerable Angelenos,” Rodriguez said in a statement.

The contract “has expanded significantly beyond its original scope,” Lee said in a statement, later adding, “I believe the Council has a duty to demand transparency and closely scrutinize costs.”

The L.A. city attorney’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

The city reached a settlement with the nonprofit LA Alliance in 2022, agreeing to create 12,915 homeless shelter beds or other housing opportunities, while also clearing thousands of encampments.

Since then, the LA Alliance has repeatedly accused the city of failing to comply with the terms of the settlement agreement.

Gibson Dunn was retained by the city a week before a federal judge called a seven-day hearing to determine whether he should take authority over the city’s homelessness programs from Mayor Karen Bass and the City Council. Alliance lawyers said during those proceedings that they wanted Bass and two council members to testify.

The judge later declined to put Los Angeles’ homelessness programs into receivership, even as he concluded that the city failed to adhere to the settlement.

Theane Evangelis, a Gibson Dunn attorney who led the firm’s LA Alliance team, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

City Atty. Hydee Feldstein Soto has praised Gibson Dunn’s work in the LA Alliance case, saying the firm helped the city retain control over its homelessness programs while also keeping Bass and the two council members off the stand.

She commended the firm — which secured a landmark Supreme Court ruling that upheld laws prohibiting homeless people from camping in public spaces — for getting up to speed on the settlement, mastering a complex set of policy matters within a week.

Faced with lingering criticism from council members, Feldstein Soto agreed to help with the cost of the Gibson Dunn contract, committing $1 million from her office’s budget. The council has also tapped $4 million from the city’s “unappropriated balance,” an account for funds that have not yet been allocated.

On Thursday, Matthew D. Umhofer, an attorney who represents LA Alliance, called the Gibson Dunn contract increase “predictable.”

“It’s a taxpayer-funded debacle designed to help city officials avoid being held accountable for their failures on homelessness,” Umhofer said in a statement. “The amount will keep going up as long as the City is more interested in ending oversight than ending homelessness.”

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said Friday that he will nominate former Federal Reserve official Kevin Warsh to be the next chair of the Fed, a pick likely to result in sharp changes to the powerful agency that could bring it closer to the White House and reduce its longtime independence from day-to-day politics.

Warsh would replace current chair Jerome Powell when his term expires in May. Trump chose Powell to lead the Fed in 2017 but this year has relentlessly assailed him for not cutting interest rates quickly enough.

“I have known Kevin for a long period of time, and have no doubt that he will go down as one of the GREAT Fed Chairmen, maybe the best,” Trump posted on his Truth Social site. “On top of everything else, he is ‘central casting,’ and he will never let you down.”

The appointment, which requires Senate confirmation, amounts to a return trip for Warsh, 55, who was a member of the Fed’s board from 2006 to 2011. He was the youngest governor in history when he was appointed at age 35. He is currently a fellow at the right-leaning Hoover Institution and a lecturer at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

In some ways, Warsh is an unlikely choice for the Republican president because he has long been a hawk in Fed parlance, or someone who typically supports higher interest rates to control inflation. Trump has said the Fed’s key rate should be as low as 1%, far below its current level of about 3.6%, a stance few economists endorse.

During his time as governor, Warsh objected to some of the low-interest rate policies that the Fed pursued during and after the 2008-09 Great Recession. He also often expressed concern at that time that inflation would soon accelerate, even though it remained at rock-bottom levels for many years after that recession ended.

But more recently, however, in speeches and opinion columns, Warsh has said he supports lower rates.

Controlling the Fed

Warsh’s appointment would be a major step toward Trump asserting more control over the Fed, one of the few remaining independent federal agencies. While all presidents influence Fed policy through appointments, Trump’s rhetorical attacks on the central bank have raised concerns about its status as an independent institution.

The announcement comes after an extended and unusually public search that underscored the importance of the decision to Trump and the potential impact it could have on the economy. The chair of the Federal Reserve is one of the most powerful economic officials in the world, tasked with combating inflation in the United States while also supporting maximum employment. The Fed is also the nation’s top banking regulator.

The Fed’s rate decisions, over time, influence borrowing costs throughout the economy, including for mortgages, car loans and credit cards.

For now, Warsh would fill a seat on the Fed’s governing board that was temporarily occupied by Stephen Miran, a White House adviser who Trump appointed in September. Once on the board, Trump could then elevate Warsh to the chair position when Powell’s term ends in May.

Trump’s economic policies

Since Trump’s reelection, Warsh has expressed support for the president’s economic policies, despite a history as a more conventional, pro-free trade Republican.

In a January 2025 column in The Wall Street Journal, Warsh wrote that “the Trump administration’s strong deregulatory policies, if implemented, would be disinflationary. Cutbacks in government spending — inspired by the Department of Government Efficiency — would also materially reduce inflationary pressures.” Lower inflation would allow the Fed to deliver the rate cuts the president wants.

Since his first term, Trump has broken with several decades of precedent under which presidents have avoided publicly calling for rate cuts, out of respect for the Fed’s status as an independent agency.

Trump has also sought to exert more control over the Fed. In August he tried to fire Lisa Cook, one of seven governors on the Fed’s board, in an effort to secure a majority of the board. He has appointed three other members, including two in his first term.

Cook, however, sued to keep her job, and the Supreme Court, in a hearing last week, appeared inclined to let her keep her job while her suit is resolved.

Economic research has found that independent central banks have better track records of controlling inflation. Elected officials, like Trump, often demand lower interest rates to juice growth and hiring, which can fuel higher prices.

Trump had said he would appoint a Fed chair who will cut interest rates, which he says will reduce the borrowing costs of the federal government’s huge $38 trillion debt pile. Trump also wants lower rates to boost moribund home sales, which have been held back partly by higher mortgage costs. Yet the Fed doesn’t directly set longer-term interest rates for things like home and car purchases.

Potential challenges and pushback

If confirmed by the Senate, Warsh would face challenges in pushing interest rates much lower. The chair is just one member of the Fed’s 19-person rate-setting committee, with 12 of those officials voting on each rate decision. The committee is already split between those worried about persistent inflation, who’d like to keep rates unchanged, and those who think that recent upticks in unemployment point to a stumbling economy that needs lower interest rates to bolster hiring.

Financial markets could also push back. If the Fed cuts its short-term rate too aggressively and is seen as doing so for political reasons, then Wall Street investors could sell Treasury bonds out of fear that inflation would rise. Such sales would push up longer-term interest rates, including mortgage rates, and backfire on Warsh.

Trump considered appointing Warsh as Fed chair during his first term, though ultimately he went with Powell. Warsh’s father-in-law is Ronald Lauder, heir to the Estee Lauder cosmetics fortune and a longtime donor and confidant of Trump’s.

Who is Warsh?

Prior to serving on the Fed’s board in 2006, Warsh was an economic aide in George W. Bush’s Republican administration and was an investment banker at Morgan Stanley.

Warsh worked closely with then-Chair Ben Bernanke in 2008-09 during the central bank’s efforts to combat the financial crisis and the Great Recession. Bernanke later wrote in his memoirs that Warsh was “one of my closest advisers and confidants” and added that his “political and markets savvy and many contacts on Wall Street would prove invaluable.”

Warsh, however, raised concerns in 2008, as the economy tumbled into a deep recession, that further interest rate cuts by the Fed could spur inflation. Yet even after the Fed cut its rate to nearly zero, inflation stayed low.

And he objected in meetings in 2011 to the Fed’s decision to purchase $600 billion of Treasury bonds, an effort to lower long-term interest rates, though he ultimately voted in favor of the decision at Bernanke’s behest.

In recent months, Warsh has become much more critical of the Fed, calling for “regime change” and assailing Powell for engaging on issues like climate change and diversity, equity and inclusion, which Warsh said are outside the Fed’s mandate.

His more critical approach suggests that if he does ascend to the position of chair, it would amount to a sharp transition at the Fed.

In a July interview on CNBC, Warsh said Fed policy “has been broken for quite a long time.”

“The central bank that sits there today is radically different than the central bank I joined in 2006,” he added. By allowing inflation to surge in 2021-22, the Fed “brought about the greatest mistake in macroeconomic policy in 45 years, that divided the country.”

Rugaber writes for the Associated Press.

In a state that’s home to nearly 40 million people and the fourth largest economy in the world, the race for California governor has been lost in the shadow of President Trump’s combustible return to office and, thus far, the absence of a candidate charismatic enough to break out of the pack.

For the first time in recent history, there is no clear front-runner with less than five months before the June primary election.

“This is the most wide-open governor’s race we’ve seen in California in more than a quarter of a century,” said Dan Schnur, a political communications professor who teaches at USC, Pepperdine and UC Berkeley. “We’ve never seen a multicandidate field with so little clarity and such an absence of anything even resembling a front-runner.

“There’s no precedent in the modern political era for a campaign that’s this crowded,” Schnur said.

Opinion polls bear this out, with more voters saying they are undecided or coalescing behind any of the dozen prominent candidates who have announced bids.

Former Rep. Katie Porter (D-Irvine) led the field with the support of 21% of respondents in a survey of likely voters by the Public Policy Institute of California released in December. Former U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, also a Democrat, and former Fox News commentator Steve Hilton, a Republican, won the support of 14% of poll respondents. Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, also a member of the GOP, won the backing of 10%, while everyone else in the field was in the single digits, though some Democratic candidates who recently entered the race were not included.

Recent gubernatorial campaigns have been dominated by larger-than-life personalities — global superstar Arnold Schwarzenegger, eBay billionaire Meg Whitman and Jerry Brown, the scion of a storied California political family.

Gov. Gavin Newsom, who vaulted into the national spotlight after championing same-sex marriage while he was mayor of San Francisco, has become a national force in Democratic politics and is pondering a 2028 presidential run. Newsom won handily in the 2018 and 2022 races for California governor, and easily defeated a recall attempt during the COVID-19 pandemic. He is barred from running again due to term limits.

Porter cheekily alluded to California’s political power dynamic at a labor forum earlier this month.

“Look, we’ve had celebrity governors. We’ve had governors who are kids of other governors, and we’ve had governors who look hot with slicked back hair and barn jackets. You know what?” Porter said at an SEIU forum in January. “We haven’t had a governor in a skirt. I think it’s just about … time.”

Gubernatorial contests in the state routinely attract national attention. But the 2026 contest has not.

Despite California being at the center of many policies emanating from the Trump administration, notably the detention and deportation of undocumented immigrants, this year’s gubernatorial race has been overshadowed. Deadly wildfires, immigration raids, and an esoteric yet expensive battle about redrawing congressional districts are among the topics that dominated headlines in the state last year.

Additionally, the race was frozen as former Vice President Kamala Harris, Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), state Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta and billionaire real estate developer Rick Caruso weighed entering the contest. All opted against running for governor, leaving the field in flux. San José Mayor Matt Mahan’s entry into the race on Thursday — relatively late to mount a gubernatorial campaign — exemplifies the unsettled nature of the race.

“We’ve made a lot of progress in San José, but getting to the next level requires bold leadership in Sacramento that’s going to take on the status quo,” Mahan said in an interview before he announced his campaign. ”I have not heard anyone in the current field explain how they’re going to help us in San José and other cities across the state end unsheltered homelessness, implement Prop. 36 [a 2024 ballot measure that increased penalties for certain drug and theft crimes], get people into treatment, bring down the cost of housing, the cost of energy.”

A critical question is who donors decide to back in a state that is home to the most expensive media markets in the nation. Candidates have to file fundraising reports on Feb. 2, data that will indicate who is viable.

“I know from first-hand experience that there comes a day when a candidacy is no longer sustainable because of a lack of resources,” said Garry South, a veteran Democratic strategist who has worked on national and state campaigns.

“You have to pay the bills to keep the lights on, let alone having enough cash to communicate with our more than 23 million registered voters,” he added. “They don’t have much time to do it. The primary is just months away.”

The state Democratic and Republican conventions are quickly approaching. A Republican may be able to win the GOP endorsement, but it’s unlikely a Democrat will be able to secure their party’s nod because of the large number of candidates in the race.

Political observers expect some Democratic candidates who have meager financial resources and little name identification among the electorate to be pressured to drop out of the race by party leaders so that the party can consolidate support behind a viable candidate.

But others buck the orthodoxy, arguing that the candidates need to show they have a message that resonates with Californians.

“There’s a lack of excitement,” Democratic strategist Hilda Delgado said. “Right now is really about the core issues that will unify Californians and that’s why it’s important to choose a leader that is going to … give people hope. Because there’s a lot of, I don’t want to say depression, but hopelessness.”

Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney has said that he expects the United States to respect the country’s sovereignty after reports that Alberta separatists have met several times with officials of the Donald Trump administration.

The Financial Times reported that US State Department officials held meetings with the Alberta Prosperity Project (APP), a group calling for a referendum on whether the energy-rich western province should leave Canada.

Speaking in Ottawa on Thursday, Carney said he has been clear with US President Donald Trump on the issue.

“I expect the US administration to respect Canadian sovereignty,” he said, adding that after raising the issue, he wanted the two sides to focus on areas where they can work together.

Carney is himself an Albertan, raised in Edmonton, the provincial capital. The province has had an independence movement for decades.

Trump has repeatedly threatened to make Canada the “51st state” of the American Union.

Here is what we know:

Leaders of the APP have reportedly met with US State Department officials in Washington at least three times since last April. Trump entered office for a second time in January.

These meetings have prompted concern in Ottawa regarding potential US interference in Canadian domestic politics.

This follows comments by US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent last week, who described Alberta as “a natural partner for the US” and praised the province’s resource wealth and “independent” character during an interview with the right-wing broadcaster Real America’s Voice.

“Alberta has a wealth of natural resources, but they [the Canadian government] won’t let them build a pipeline to the Pacific,” he said. “I think we should let them come down into the US,” Bessent said during an interview with the right-wing broadcaster.

“There’s a rumour they may have a referendum on whether they want to stay in Canada or not.”

Asked if he knew something about the separation effort, Bessent said, “People are talking. People want sovereignty. They want what the US has got.”

After Bessent’s comments, Jeffrey Rath, a leader of the APP, said that the group was seeking another meeting with US officials next month, where they are expected to ask about a possible $500bn credit line to support Alberta if a future independence referendum – which has not yet been called – were to be held.

The developments come at a sensitive moment in US-Canada relations, with trade tensions still simmering and after a recent speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos where Carney warned that Washington was contributing to a “rupture” in the global order.

Trump has repeatedly threatened to make Canada part of the American Union. His expansionist ambitions have been further underscored by his recent push to acquire Greenland from Denmark, which, like Canada, is a NATO ally. At the start of the year, the US military also abducted Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, and has since attempted to take control of the South American nation’s massive oil industry.

How have Canadian leaders reacted to the reports?

Speaking on Thursday, British Columbia Premier David Eby described the reported behind-the-scenes meetings as “treason”.

“To go to a foreign country and to ask for assistance in breaking up Canada, there’s an old-fashioned word for that – and that word is treason,” Eby told reporters.

“It is completely inappropriate to seek to weaken Canada, to go and ask for assistance, to break up this country from a foreign power and – with respect – a president who has not been particularly respectful of Canada’s sovereignty.”

Ontario Premier Doug Ford appealed for Canadian unity on Thursday morning.

“You know, we have a referendum going on out in Alberta. The separatists in Quebec say they’re gonna call a referendum if they get elected. Like, folks, we need to stick together. It’s Team Canada. It’s nothing else,” he said.

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, however, said she won’t demonise the Albertans who are open to separation because of “legitimate grievances” with Ottawa and said she did not want to “demonise or marginalise a million of my fellow citizens”.

Smith has long been pro-Trump and visited the US president’s Mar-a-Lago estate in January 2025, at a time when most other Canadian leaders were joining hands to criticise his demand that the country become a part of the United States.

What do we know about a potential referendum in Alberta?

Anger towards Ottawa has been building in Alberta for decades, rooted largely in disputes over how the federal government manages the province’s vast oil and gas resources.

Many Albertans feel federal policies – particularly environmental regulations, carbon pricing and pipeline approvals – limit Alberta’s ability to develop and export its energy.

As a landlocked province, Alberta depends on pipelines and cooperation with other provinces to access global markets, making those federal decisions especially contentious.

Many Albertans believe the province generates significant wealth while having limited influence over national decision-making. In 2024-25, for instance, it contributed 15 percent of Canada’s gross domestic product (GDP), despite being home to only 12 percent of the population.

Alberta consistently produces more than 80 percent of Canada’s oil and 60 percent of the country’s natural gas.

Yet, many Albertans say that the federal government does not give the province its fair share from taxes collected. Canada has a system of equalisation payments, under which the federal government pays poorer provinces extra funds to ensure that they can maintain social services. While Quebec and Manitoba receive the highest payments, Alberta – as well as British Columbia and Saskatchewan – at the moment receive no equalisation payments.

Carney recently signed an agreement with Alberta, opening the door for an oil pipeline to the Pacific, though it is opposed by Eby and faces significant hurdles.

Recent Ipsos polling suggests that about three in 10 Albertans would support starting the process of leaving Canada.

But the survey also found that roughly one in five of those supporters viewed a vote to leave as largely symbolic – a way to signal political dissatisfaction rather than a firm desire for independence.

A referendum on Alberta independence could happen later this year if a group of residents can collect the nearly 178,000 signatures required to force a vote on the issue. But even if the referendum passes, Alberta would not be immediately independent.

Under the Clarity Act, the federal government would first have to determine whether the referendum question was clear and whether the result represented a clear majority. Only then would negotiations begin, covering issues such as the division of assets and debt, borders and Indigenous rights.

What is the Alberta Prosperity Project and what does it want?

The APP is a pro-independence group that is campaigning for a referendum on Alberta leaving Canada.

It argues that the province would be better off controlling its own resources, taxes and policies, and has been working to gather signatures under Alberta’s citizen-initiative rules to trigger a vote.

While it describes itself as an educational, non-partisan project, the group has drawn controversy over its claims about the economic viability of an independent Alberta.

On its website, the APP says, “Alberta sovereignty, in the context of its relationship with Canada, refers to the aspiration for Alberta to gain greater autonomy and control over provincial areas of responsibility.”

“However, a combination of economic, political, cultural and human rights factors … has resulted in many Albertans defining ‘Alberta sovereignty’ to mean Alberta becoming an independent country and taking control of all matters that fall within the jurisdiction of an independent nation,” it adds.

What else has Washington said?

White House and State Department officials told the FT that administration officials regularly meet with civil society groups and that no support or commitments were conveyed.

A  report published by Canada’s public broadcaster CBC earlier this year quoted US national security analyst Brandon Weichert as saying that Trump’s talk of Canada becoming the “51st state” was, in reality, aimed at Alberta.

Appearing on a show hosted by former Trump chief strategist Steve Bannon, Weichert suggested that a vote for independence in Alberta would prompt the US to recognise the province and guide it towards becoming a US state.

Has the Trump administration tried this elsewhere?

Yes, in Greenland.

As with Canada, Trump has repeatedly called for Greenland to be incorporated into the US. His threats to annex Greenland have prompted strong opposition from the government of the Arctic island, Denmark — which governs Greenland — and Europe.

But as with Alberta, Trump’s administration has also attempted to test separatist sentiment. In August 2025, the Danish government summoned the top US diplomat in Copenhagen after Denmark’s national broadcaster reported that three Trump allies had begun pulling together a list of Greenlanders supportive of the US president’s efforts to get it to join the United States.

Jan. 30 (UPI) — President Donald Trump on Thursday night said he was decertifying all Canada-made aircraft and threatened a 50% tariff on all planes sold to the United States, further deepening the fissure in U.S.-Canada relations created under Trump’s second term in office.

Trump made the threat in a post on his Truth Social platform, stating the threat was in response to Canada’s alleged refusal to certify several Gulfstream jet series.

“We are hereby decertifying their Bombardier Global Expresses and all Aircraft made in Canada, until such time as Gulfstream, a Great American Company, is fully certified, as it should have been many years ago,” Trump said.

“Further, Canada is effectively prohibiting the sale of Gulfstream products in Canada through this very same certification process. If, for any reason, this situation is not immediately corrected, I am going to charge Canada a 50% Tariff on any and all Aircraft sold in the United States of America.”

By law, aircraft certification, which includes safety and airworthiness determinations, is governed by the Federal Aviation Administration, and it was not clear if the president has the power to decertify already approved aircraft by presidential action.

UPI contacted the FAA for clarification and was directed to speak with the White House, which has yet to respond to questions about decertification and its process.

Bombardier, the Montreal-based aerospace company, said it has “taken note” of Trump’s social media post and is in contact with the Canadian government.

“Our aircraft, facilities and technicians are fully certified to FAA standards and renowned around the world,” Bombardier said in a statement.

Bombardier said it employs more than 3,000 people across nine facilities in the United States and creates “thousands of jobs” there through its 2,800 suppliers. It said it is also “actively investing” in expanding its U.S. operations.

Relations between the United States and Canada have precipitously dropped since Trump returned to the White House in January 2025.

Trump’s threats to annex Canada, impose unilateral tariffs and take Greenland — territory of a NATO ally — by force if needed has prompted Ottawa to pivot toward Europe and Asia.

The announcement comes on the heels of reports stating that the Trump administration has been in talks with the Alberta Prosperity Project separatist organization.

According to The Financial Times, the first to report on the development Thursday, separatist leaders in the western Canadian province met with U.S. officials in Washington three times since spring.

The APP has said that its leadership has taken “several strategic trips” to Washington, D.C., to foster discussions on Alberta’s potential as an independent nation.

Jeffry Rath, a separatist supporter who participated in the talks, said U.S. officials are “very enthusiastic about Alberta becoming an independent country,” according to the APP.

The meetings were swiftly and widely condemned in Canada.

“I expect the U.S. administration to respect Canadian sovereignty,” Prime Minister Mark Carney of Canada told reporters on Thursday.

“I’m always clear in my conversations with President Trump to that effect, and then move on to what we can do together.”

Premier David Eby of British Columbia called the meetings “treasonous activity.”

“I’m not talking about debates that we have inside the country among Canadians, about how we order ourselves, our relationships between the federal government, the provinces, referenda that might be held. I’m talking about crossing the border, soliciting the assistance of a foreign government to break up this country,” Eby said during the same press conference.

“And I don’t think we should stand for it.”

The schism between Democratic environmental ideals and California voters’ anxiety about affordability, notably gas prices, were on full display during an environmental policy forum among some of the state’s top Democratic candidates for governor on Wednesday.

The Democrats questioned the economic impact Californians could face because of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s goal to have the state transition to zero-emission vehicles, a policy that would ban the sale of new gas-powered cars and trucks by 2035. The Trump administration has attempted to negate the policy by canceling federal tax credits for the purchase of such vehicles along with invalidating California’s strict emission standards.

“It’s absolutely true that it’s not affordable today for many people to choose” an electric vehicle, said former Rep. Katie Porter of Irvine. “It’s the fact that, particularly with expiring federal subsidies and the cuts that [President] Trump has made, an electric vehicle often costs $8,000 or $10,000 more. If we want people to choose EVs, we have to close that gap.”

Both Porter and rival Democratic candidate Xavier Becerra, who served as Health and Human Services secretary under former President Biden, said that as governor they would focus on making low-emission vehicles more affordable and practical. Porter said the cost of buying a zero-emission car needs to be comparable with those that run on gas, and Becerra said California needs to have enough charging stations so drivers “don’t have to worry can they get to their destination.”

“We know our future is in clean energy and in making our environment as clean as possible,” Becerra said. “We’ve got to make it affordable for families.”

Porter and Becerra joined two other Democrats in the 2026 California governor’s race — former hedge fund founder turned environmental advocate Tom Steyer and Rep. Eric Swalwell of Dublin — at the Pasadena event hosted by California Environmental Voters, UC Berkeley’s Center for Law, Energy & the Environment, the Climate Center Action Fund and the Natural Resources Defense Council Action Fund. The Democrats largely agreed about issues such as combating climate change, accelerating the transition to clean energy and protecting California’s water resources.

The coalition invited the six candidates with greatest support in recent public opinion polls. Republicans Chad Bianco, the Riverside County sheriff, and Steve Hilton, a former Fox News commentator, did not respond to an invitation to participate in the forum, which was moderated by Sammy Roth, the writer of Climate-Colored Goggles on Substack, and Louise Bedsworth, executive director of the UC Berkeley center.

Newsom, who has acknowledged that he is considering a run for president in 2028, is serving the final year of his second term as governor and is barred from running again.

The state’s high cost of living, including high gas prices, continues to be a political vulnerability for Democrats who support California’s progressive environmental agenda.

In another controversial issue facing the state, most of the Democratic candidates on Wednesday distanced themselves from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta tunnel, a massive and controversial proposal to move water to Southern California and the Central Valley. Though it has seen various iterations, the concept dates back to Gov. Jerry Brown’s first foray as California governor more than four decades ago.

Despite Newsom’s efforts to fast-track the project, it has been stalled by environmental reviews and lawsuits. It hit another legal hurdle this month when a state appeals court rejected the state’s plan to finance the 45-mile tunnel.

Swalwell, Porter and Steyer argued that there are faster and less expensive ways to collect and deliver water to thirsty parts of California.

“We have to move much faster than the Delta tunnel could ever move in terms of solving our water problems,” Steyer said, adding that data and technology could be deployed to more efficiently deliver water to farms.

Swalwell said he does not support the project “as it’s designed now” and proposed covering “400 miles of aqueducts” with solar panels.

During Wednesday’s forum, Becerra also committed a gaffe as he discussed rooftop solar programs for Californians with a word that some consider a slur about Jewish people.

“We need to go after the shysters,” Becerra said. “We know that there are people who go out there to swindle families as they talk about rooftop solar, so we have to make sure that that doesn’t happen so they get the benefit of solar.”

The term is not viewed as derogatory as other antisemitic slurs and was routinely used in past decades, a spokesperson for the Becerra campaign noted after the event.

“Secretary Becerra never knew this word to be offensive and certainly he meant no disrespect to anyone,” said a campaign spokesperson. “He was talking about protecting the hardest-working and lowest-paid Californians who are often taken advantage of by unscrupulous actors.”

MINNEAPOLIS — U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar said Thursday she is running for governor of Minnesota, promising to take on President Trump while unifying a state that has endured a series of challenges even before the federal government’s immigration crackdown.

Klobuchar’s decision gives Democrats a high-profile candidate and proven statewide winner as their party tries to hold on to the office occupied by Gov. Tim Walz. The 2024 Democratic vice presidential nominee, Walz abandoned his campaign for a third term this month amid criticism over mismanagement of taxpayer funding for child-care programs.

“Minnesota, we’ve been through a lot,” Klobuchar said in a video announcement. “These times call for leaders who can stand up and not be rubber stamps of this administration — but who are also willing to find common ground and fix things in our state.”

Klobuchar cited Trump’s immigration crackdown in Minnesota, federal officers killing two Minnesotans, the assassination of a state legislative leader and a school shooting that killed multiple children — all within the last year. She avoided direct mention of ongoing fraud investigations into the child-care programs that Trump has made a political cudgel.

“I believe we must stand up for what’s right and fix what’s wrong,” Klobuchar said.

Klobuchar becomes the fourth sitting senator to announce plans to run for governor in 2026. The other races are in Alabama, Colorado and Tennessee.

Multiple Minnesota Republicans are campaigning in what could become a marquee contest among 36 governorships on the ballot in November. Among them are MyPillow founder and Chief Executive Mike Lindell, a 2020 election denier who is close to Trump; state House Speaker Lisa Demuth; Dr. Scott Jensen, a former state senator who was the party’s 2022 gubernatorial candidate; and state Rep. Kristin Robbins.

Immigration and fraud will be at issue

The Minnesota contest is likely to test Trump and his fellow Republicans’ uncompromising law-and-order approach and mass deportation program against Democrats’ criticisms of his administration’s tactics.

Federal agents have detained children and adults who are U.S. citizens, entered homes without warrants and engaged protesters in violent exchanges. Renee Good was shot three times and killed by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer in early January. On Saturday, federal officers fatally shot intensive care unit nurse Alex Pretti during an encounter.

Many Democrats on Capitol Hill, in turn, have voted against spending bills that fund Trump’s Department of Homeland Security. A standoff over the funding could lead to a partial government shutdown.

Trump and other Republicans also will try to saddle Klobuchar — or any other Democrat — with questions about the federal investigation into Minnesota’s child-care programs and its Somali community. Trump also has made repeated assertions of widespread fraud in state government, and his administration is conducting multiple investigations of state officials, including Walz. The Democrat has maintained that Walz’s administration has investigated, reduced and prosecuted fraud.

Demuth was quick to release a new video and a webpage that illustrate what’s likely to be another main line of her campaign: that Klobuchar cannot be trusted to end the fraud in public programs or curb the growth of government. “Minnesotans only need to look at her record to know that she simply cannot deliver the change that our state needs, and would be nothing more than a third term of Tim Walz,” Demuth said in a statement.

Klobuchar has won across Minnesota

Now in her fourth Senate term, Klobuchar is a former local prosecutor and onetime presidential candidate who positions herself as a moderate and has demonstrated the ability to win across Minnesota.

She won her 2024 reelection bid by nearly 16 percentage points and received 135,000 more votes than Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris. Harris outpaced Trump by fewer than 5 percentage points.

Klobuchar gained attention during Trump’s first term for her questioning of his judicial nominees, including now-Supreme Court Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh. At his acrimonious confirmation hearings, she asked Kavanaugh, who had been accused of sexual assault as a teenager, whether he ever had so much to drink that he didn’t remember what happened. Kavanaugh retorted, “Have you?”

The senator, who had talked publicly of her father’s alcoholism, continued her questioning. Kavanaugh, who was confirmed by a single vote, later apologized to Klobuchar. Kavanaugh has denied that the alleged assault occurred.

After Trump’s first presidency, Klobuchar was among the most outspoken lawmakers during bipartisan congressional inquiries of the insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021, when Trump supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol during certification of Democrat Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election. As Senate Rules Committee chair, she pressed Capitol Police, administration officials and others for details of what authorities knew beforehand and how rioters breached the Capitol.

“It’s our duty to have immediate responses to what happened,” she said after helping write a report focused not on Trump’s role but on better security protocols for the seat of Congress.

2020 presidential bid

Klobuchar sought the presidential nomination in 2020, running as a moderate in the same political lane as Biden. She launched her campaign standing outside in a Minnesota snowstorm to promote her “grit” and Midwestern sensibilities that have anchored her political identity.

As a candidate, Klobuchar faced stories of disgruntled Senate staffers who described her as a difficult boss but also distinguished herself on crowded debate stages as a determined pragmatist. She outlasted several better-funded candidates and ran ahead of Biden in the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary. But Biden, then a former vice president, trounced her and others in the South Carolina primaries, prompting her to drop out and join others in closing ranks behind him.

After Biden’s victory, Klobuchar would have been well positioned for a Cabinet post, perhaps even attorney general. But the Senate’s 50-50 split made it untenable for Biden to create any opening for Republicans to regain control of the chamber.

Klobuchar announced in 2021 that she had been treated for breast cancer and in 2024 announced that she was cancer-free but undergoing another round of radiation.

Barrow and Karnowski write for the Associated Press. Barrow reported from Atlanta. AP writer Maya Sweedler in Washington contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — Senate Democrats reached a deal with the White House late Thursday to prevent a partial government shutdown by moving to temporarily fund the Department of Homeland Security for two weeks, providing more time to negotiate new restrictions for federal immigration agents carrying out President Trump’s deportation campaign.

The deal follows widespread outrage over the fatal shootings of two U.S. citizens — Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti — by federal agents in Minneapolis amid an aggressive immigration crackdown led by the Trump administration.

Under the agreement, funding for the Department of Homeland Security will be extended for two weeks, while the Pentagon, the State Department, as well as the health, education, labor and transportation departments, will be funded through Sept. 30, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s office confirmed to The Times.

While the Senate could approve the deal as early as Thursday night, it is unclear when the House will vote for the package. To avert a government shutdown, both chambers need to approve the deal by midnight EST Friday.

After the agreement was reached, President Trump wrote on Truth Social that he was “working hard with Congress to ensure that we are able to fully fund the Government without delay.”

“Republicans and Democrats in Congress have come together to get the vast majority of the Government funded until September, while at the same time providing an extension to the Department of Homeland Security (including the very important Coast Guard, which we are expanding and rebuilding like never before),” Trump said.

He added: “Hopefully, both Republicans and Democrats will give a very much needed Bipartisan ‘YES’ Vote.”

The move to temporarily fund DHS is meant to give lawmakers more time to negotiate Democratic demands that include a requirement that federal immigration agents use body cameras, stop using masks during operations and a push to tighten rules around arrests and searches without judicial warrants.

The breakthrough comes after Senate Democrats — and seven Senate Republicans — blocked passage of a spending package that included additional funding for DHS through Sept. 30 but not enough guardrails to muster the 60 votes needed to pass the chamber.

“Republicans in Congress cannot allow this violent status quo to continue,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said after the vote. “We’re ready to fund 96% of the federal government today, but the DHS bill still needs a lot of work.”

Speaking on the Senate floor, Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) condemned Democrats for jeopardizing funding for other agencies as they pushed for their demands.

“It would be disastrous to shut down FEMA in the middle of a major winter storm. It’s affecting half the country, and it appears that another storm is along the way,” he said. “A shutdown would mean no paychecks for our troops once again, no money for TSA agents or air traffic controllers.”

The standoff comes after federal ICE agents shot and killed Pretti, an American citizen and nurse who attempted to help a fallen woman during an ICE operation in Minneapolis. Pretti’s death was the second fatal shooting of a U.S. citizen by federal agents in the city in less than two weeks, following the killing of Good earlier this month.

Los Angeles County will halt some payments from its $4-billion sex abuse settlement, leaving many plaintiffs on edge as prosecutors ramp up an investigation into allegations of fraud.

L.A. County agreed last spring to the record payout to settle a flood of lawsuits from people who said they’d been sexually abused by staff in government-run foster homes and juvenile camps. Many attorneys had told their clients they could expect the first tranche of money to start flowing this month.

But the county’s acting chief executive officer, Joseph M. Nicchitta, said Thursday that the county would “pause all payments” for unvetted claims after a request by Dist. Atty. Nathan Hochman. These are claims that have been flagged as requiring a “higher level of scrutiny,” according to a joint report submitted Thursday by attorneys in the settlement.

The district attorney announced he would investigate the historic settlement after reporting by The Times that found some plaintiffs who said they were paid to sue. Investigators have found “a significant number of cases where we believe there is potential fraud,” according to a spokesperson for the prosecutor’s office. The State Bar is spearheading a separate inquiry into fraud allegations.

On Jan. 9, Hochman formally requested the county pause the distribution of funds for at least six months, which he said would give his office “a reasonable opportunity to complete critical investigative steps.”

“Premature disbursement of settlement funds poses a substantial risk of interfering with the investigation by complicating witness cooperation, obscuring financial trails, and impairing my office’s ability to identify and prosecute fraudulent activity,” Hochman wrote in a letter to Andy Baum, the county’s main outside attorney working on the settlement.

Plaintiff lawyers argued the county was required to turn over money by the end of the month.

The county said it came to an agreement Thursday and plans to turn over $400 million on Friday, which would “cover claims that have already been validated,” according to a statement from Nicchitta. That money will go into a fund where it will be distributed when judges are finished vetting and deciding how much each claim is worth.

“No plaintiff was getting paid until the allocation process is completed,” said the county’s top lawyer, Dawyn Harrison. “The County is not overseeing that intensive process.”

The rest of the payments, Nicchitta said, will be on hold until the claims can “be appropriately investigated.”

“The County takes extremely seriously its obligations to provide just compensation to survivors. Preventing fraud is central to that commitment,” he said. “Fraudulent claims of sexual assault harm survivors by diluting compensation for survivors and casting public doubt over settlements as a whole.”

The uncertainty has sparked a sense of despair among those who spent the last few years wading through the darkest memories of their lives in hopes of a life-changing sum.

Andrea Proctor, 45, said the last few years have been like “digging into a scar that was healed.”

“The whole lawsuit just blew air out of me,” said Proctor, who sued in 2022 over alleged abuse at MacLaren Children’s Center, an El Monte shelter where she says she was drugged and sexually abused by staff as a teenager. “I’m just sitting out here empty.”

Proctor said she desperately needs the money to stabilize her life, the first part of which was spent careening from one crisis to the next — an instability she traces partially to the abuse she suffered as a minor.

Since a 2020 law change that extended the statute of limitations to sue over childhood sexual abuse, thousands have come forward with claims of abuse in county-run facilities dating back decades. The county resolved claims it faced last year through two massive payouts — the first settlement for $4 billion, which includes roughly 11,000 plaintiffs, and a second one last October worth $828 million, which includes about 400 victims.

Now, according to court filings made public Tuesday, the county faces an additional 5,500 claims of the same nature, leaving the prospect of a third hefty payout looming on the horizon.

“They’re telling me the ship has sailed,” said Martin Gould, a partner with Gould Grieco & Hensley, who said he wants this next flood of litigation to focus on pushing for arrests of predatory staff members still on the county’s payroll. “I don’t believe that.”

Gould says his firm, based in Chicago, represents about 70 victims in the new litigation. James Harris Law Firm, a small Seattle-based firm that specializes in big personal injury cases, has about 3,000. The Right Trial Lawyers, a firm that lists a Texas office as its headquarters, has about 700, according to an attorney affiliated with the firm.

These lawyers will be pleading their cases in front of a public — and a Board of Supervisors — at a moment when the conversation has shifted from a reckoning over systemic sexual abuse inside county facilities to concerns about the use of taxpayer money.

A series of Times investigations last fall found nine clients represented by Downtown LA Law Group, or DTLA, who said they were paid by recruiters to sue. Four said they were told to make up their claims.

All the lawsuits filed by the firm, which represents roughly a quarter of the plaintiffs in the $4-billion settlement, are now under review by Daniel Buckley, a former presiding judge of the county’s Superior Court.

DTLA has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing and said in a previous statement that it “categorically does not engage in, nor has it ever condoned, the exchange of money for client retention.”

Several DTLA clients said they were unaware of the probes by the State Bar and the district attorney, though they were told this month to expect delays in payments due, in part, to “a higher-than-expected false claim potential.”

The delays have caused extra anguish for some plaintiffs who have taken out loans against their settlement.

Proctor took out loans worth $15,000 from High Rise Financial, an L.A.-based legal funding company, which collects a larger portion of her payout with each passing year. She now owes more than $34,000, according to loan statements.

Proctor said High Rise Financial recently inquired about buying her out of the settlement payment, which the county is expected to pay out over five years. The loan company told her she could get a percentage of her settlement up front in a lump sum, with the company pocketing the rest as profit. For example, she said, she was told if she received a $300,000 payout, she could get $205,000 up front.

“Conversations were held with consumers to assess their interest in a potential financial arrangement related to a possible settlement,” High Rise said in a statement. “No agreements were sent, nor were any transactions entered into.”

Proctor’s friend Krista Hubbard, who also sued over abuse at MacLaren Children’s Center, borrowed $20,000 to help her through a period of homelessness. She now owes nearly $43,000. She said she, too, got the same offer this month from High Rise of getting bought out of her settlement.

Hubbard, who is crashing at the home of her godfather in Arkansas, said she’s considering it.

“How much longer is it going to take?” she said. “Am I going to be able to not be homeless?”

The $828-million settlement, which includes just three law firms, is running into its own roadblock with lawyers belatedly learning that roughly 30 of their clients were also set to receive money from the $4-billion settlement despite rules barring plaintiffs from receiving money from both.

The overlap has led to a dispute over which pot of money should cover payments to those plaintiffs. Those in the $828-million settlement, which has a much smaller pool of plaintiffs, are expected to get much more.

“It reeks,” said Courtney Thom, an attorney with Manly Stewart & Finaldi, who said she believed the county should have flagged long ago that there were identical clients in both settlements.

“It is not for me to fact-check for the county,” she told Judge Lawrence Riff at a court hearing Wednesday. “It is not for me to cross-reference names.”

Some of these plaintiffs had two different sexual abuse claims against the county — for example, one lawsuit alleged abuse in foster care while a second involved juvenile halls. Other clients had identical claims in both groups and mistakenly believed the two firms that represented them were compiling the information into one claim, Thom said.

Baum, the outside attorney defending the county, told Riff he wanted to ensure the clients didn’t “have their hands in two cookie jars.”

Jan. 29 (UPI) — An appeals court ruled that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem unlawfully ended immigration protections for Haiti and Venezuela.

The three judges of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against Noem, who ended the Temporary Protected Status for Venezuelans on Jan. 29, 2025. She ended TPS protection for Haitians on June 28.

The opinion, written late Wednesday by Judge Kim McLane Wardlaw, said Noem’s “unlawful actions have had real and significant consequences for the hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans and Haitians in the United States who rely on TPS.”

She said the move has hurt immigrants who came here to work.

“The record is replete with examples of hard-working, contributing members of society — who are mothers, fathers, wives, husbands, and partners of U.S. citizens, pay taxes, and have no criminal records — who have been deported or detained after losing their TPS,” Wardlaw wrote.

“The Secretary’s actions have left hundreds of thousands of people in a constant state of fear that they will be deported, detained, separated from their families, and returned to a country in which they were subjected to violence or any other number of harms,” she said.

The concurring opinion by Judge Salvador Mendoza Jr. noted that Noem and President Donald Trump had made racist remarks about the people of Venezuela and Haiti, meaning that the decision to end TPS was “preordained” and not based on need.

“The record is replete with public statements by Secretary Noem and President Donald Trump that evince a hostility toward, and desire to rid the country of, TPS holders who are Venezuelan and Haitian,” Mendoza wrote. “And these were not generalized statements about immigration policy toward Venezuela and Haiti or national security concerns to which the Executive is owed deference. Instead, these statements were overtly founded on racist stereotyping based on country of origin.”

The concurring opinion cites Noem calling Venezuelans “dirtbags” and “criminals,” and Trump saying that immigrants are “poisoning the blood” of Americans.

The ruling, though, won’t change the TPS removal for Venezuelans. The Supreme Court ruled in another case in October to allow Noem to end the TPS while the court battles continue.

TPS began as part of the Immigration Act of 1990. It allows the Department of Homeland Security secretary to grant legal status to those fleeing fighting, environmental disaster or “extraordinary and temporary conditions” that prevent a safe return. TPS can last six, 12 or 18 months, and if conditions stay dangerous, they can be extended. It allows TPS holders to work, but there is no path to citizenship.

Haiti was given TPS in 2010 after a magnitude 7 earthquake that killed about 160,000 people. It left more than 1 million without homes.

California Democrats have assumed leading roles in their party’s counter-offensive to the Trump administration’s massive immigration crackdown — seizing on a growing sense, shared by some Republicans, that the campaign has gotten so out of hand that the political winds have shifted heavily in their favor.

They stalled Department of Homeland Security funding in the Senate and pushed the impeachment of Secretary Kristi Noem in the House. They strategized against a threatened move by President Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act and challenged administration policies and street tactics in federal court. And they have shown up in Minneapolis to express outrage and demanded Department of Justice records following two fatal shootings of U.S. citizens there.

The push comes at an extremely tense moment, as Minneapolis and the nation reel from the fatal weekend shooting of Alex Pretti, and served as an impetus for a spending deal reached late Thursday between Senate Democrats and the White House to avert another partial government shutdown. The compromise would allow lawmakers to fund large parts of the federal government while giving them more time to negotiate new restrictions for immigration agents.

“This is probably one of the few windows on immigration specifically where Democrats find themselves on offense,” said Mike Madrid, a California Republican political consultant. “It is a rare and extraordinary moment.”

Both of the state’s Democratic senators, Adam Schiff and Alex Padilla, came out in staunch opposition to the latest Homeland Security funding measure in Congress, vowing to block it unless the administration scales back its street operations and reins in masked agents who have killed Americans in multiple shootings, clashed with protestors and provoked communities with aggressive tactics.

Under the agreement reached Thursday, the Department of Homeland Security will be funded for two weeks — a period of time that in theory will allow lawmakers to negotiate guardrails for the federal agency. The measure still will need to be approved by the House, though it is not clear when they will hold a vote — meaning a short shutdown still could occur even if the Senate deal is accepted.

Padilla negotiated with the White House to separate the controversial measures in question — to provide $64.4 billion for Homeland Security and $10 billion specifically for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement — from a broader spending package that also funds the Pentagon, the State Department and health, education and transportation agencies.

Senate Democrats vowed to not give more money to federal immigration agencies, including ICE and Customs and Border Protection, unless Republicans agree to require agents to wear body cameras, take off masks during operations and stop making arrests and searching homes without judicial warrants. All Senate Democrats and seven Senate Republicans blocked passage of the broader spending package earlier Thursday.

“Anything short of meaningful, enforceable reforms for Trump’s out-of-control ICE and CBP is a non-starter,” Padilla said in a statement after the earlier vote. “We need real oversight, accountability and enforcement for both the agents on the ground and the leaders giving them their orders. I will not vote for anything less.”

Neither Padilla nor Schiff immediately responded to requests for comment on the deal late Thursday.

Even if Democrats block Homeland Security funding after the two-week deal expires, immigration operations would not stop. That’s because ICE received $75 billion under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act last year — part of an unprecedented $178 billion provided to Homeland Security through the mega-bill.

Trump said Thursday he was working “in a very bipartisan way” to reach a compromise on the funding package. “Hopefully we won’t have a shutdown, we are working on that right now,” he said. “I think we are getting close. I don’t think Democrats want to see it either.”

The administration has eased its tone and admitted mistakes in its immigration enforcement campaign since Pretti’s killing, but hasn’t backed down completely or paused operations in Minneapolis, as critics demanded.

This week Padilla and Schiff joined other Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee in calling on the Justice Department to open a civil rights investigation into the fatal shooting of Renee Nicole Good by immigration agents in Minneapolis. In a letter addressed to Assistant Atty. Gen. for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon, they questioned her office’s decision to forgo an investigation, saying it reflected a trend of “ignoring the enforcement of civil rights laws in favor of carrying out President Trump’s political agenda.”

Dhillon did not respond to a request for comment. Deputy Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche said there is “currently no basis” for such an investigation.

Schiff also has been busy preparing his party for any move by Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act, which would give the president broad authority to deploy military troops into American cities. Trump has threatened to take that move, which would mark a dramatic escalation of his immigration campaign.

A spokesperson confirmed to The Times that Schiff briefed fellow Democrats during a caucus lunch Wednesday on potential strategies for combating such a move.

“President Trump and his allies have been clear and intentional in laying the groundwork to invoke the Insurrection Act without justification and could exploit the very chaos that he has fueled in places like Minneapolis as the pretext to do so,” Schiff said in a statement. “Whether he does so in connection with immigration enforcement or to intimidate voters during the midterm elections, we must not be caught flat-footed if he takes such an extreme step to deploy troops to police our streets.”

Meanwhile, Rep. Robert Garcia of Long Beach, the ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, announced he will serve as one of three Democrats leading an impeachment inquiry into Noem, whom Democrats have blasted for allowing and excusing violence by agents in Minneapolis and other cities.

Garcia called the shootings of Good and Pretti “horrific and shocking,” so much so that even some Republicans are acknowledging the “severity of what happened” — creating an opening for Noem’s impeachment.

“It’s unacceptable what’s happening right now, and Noem is at the top of this agency that’s completely rogue,” he said Thursday. “People are being killed on the streets.”

Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Fremont) went to Minneapolis this week to talk to residents and protesters about the administration’s presence in their city, which he denounced as unconstitutional and violent.

California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta has gone after a slew of Trump immigration policies both in California and across the country — including by backing a lawsuit challenging immigration deployments in the Twin Cities, and joining in a letter to U.S. Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi denouncing the administration’s attempts to “exploit the situation in Minnesota” by demanding local leaders turn over state voter data in exchange for federal agents leaving.

California’s leaders are far from alone in pressing hard for big changes.

Cardinal Joseph Tobin, the head of the Archdiocese of Newark (N.J.) and a top ally of Pope Leo XIV, sharply criticized immigration enforcement this week, calling ICE a “lawless organization” and backing the interruption of funding to the agency. On Thursday the NAACP and other prominent civil rights organizations sent a letter to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) arguing that ICE should be “fully dissolved” and that Homeland Security funding should be blocked until a slate of “immediate and enforceable restrictions” are placed on its operations.

Madrid, the Republican consultant, said California’s leaders have a clear reason to push for policies that protect immigrants, given the state is home to 1 in 4 foreign-born Americans and immigration is “tied into the fabric of California.”

And at a moment when Trump and other administration officials clearly realize “how far out of touch and how damaging” their immigration policies have become politically, he said, California’s leaders have a real opportunity to push their own agenda forward — especially if it includes clear, concrete solutions to end the recent “egregious, extra-constitutional violation of rights” that many Americans find so objectionable.

However, Madrid warned that Democrats wasted a similar opportunity after the unrest around the killing of George Floyd by calling to “defund the police,” which was politically unpopular, and could fall into a similar pitfall if they push for abolishing ICE.

“You’ve got a moment here where you can either fix [ICE], or lean into the political moment and say ‘abolish it,’” he said. “The question becomes, can Democrats run offense? Or will they do what they too often have done with this issue, which is snatch defeat from the jaws of victory?”

Venezuela’s interim President Delcy Rodriguez has signed into law a reform bill that will pave the way for increased privatisation in the South American country’s nationalised oil sector, fulfilling a key demand from her United States counterpart, Donald Trump.

On Thursday, Rodriguez held a signing ceremony with a group of state oil workers. She hailed the reform as a positive step for Venezuela’s economy.

“We’re talking about the future. We are talking about the country that we are going to give to our children,” Rodriguez said.

The ceremony came within hours of the National Assembly – dominated by members of Rodriguez’s United Socialist Party – passing the reform.

“Only good things will come after the suffering,” said Jorge Rodriguez, the assembly’s head and brother of the interim president.

Since the US military’s abduction of Venezuela’s former leader Nicolas Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores on January 3, the Trump administration has sought to pressure President Rodriguez to open the country’s oil sector to outside investment.

Trump has even warned that Rodriguez could “pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro”, should she fail to comply with his demands.

Thursday’s legislation will give private firms control over the sale and production of Venezuelan oil.

It would also require legal disputes to be resolved outside of Venezuelan courts, a change long sought by foreign companies, who argue that the judicial system in the country is dominated by the ruling socialist party.

The bill would also cap royalties collected by the government at 30 percent.

While Rodriguez signed the reform law, the Trump administration simultaneously announced it would loosen some sanctions restricting the sale of Venezuelan oil.

The Department of the Treasury said it would allow limited transactions by the country’s government and the state oil company PDVSA that were “necessary to the lifting, exportation, reexportation, sale, resale, supply, storage, marketing, purchase, delivery, or transportation of Venezuelan-origin oil, including the refining of such oil, by an established US entity”.

Previously, all of Venezuela’s oil sector was subject to sweeping US sanctions imposed in 2019, under Trump’s first term as president.

Thursday’s suite of changes is designed to make Venezuela’s oil market more appealing to outside petroleum firms, many of whom remain wary of investing in the country.

Under Maduro, Venezuela experienced waves of political repression and economic instability, and much of his government remains intact, though Maduro himself is currently awaiting trial in a New York prison.

His abduction resulted in dozens of deaths, and critics have accused the US of violating Venezuelan sovereignty.

Venezuela nationalised its oil sector in the 1970s, and in 2007, Maduro’s predecessor, Hugo Chavez, pushed the government to increase its control and expropriate foreign-held assets.

Following Maduro’s abduction, Trump administration officials have said that the US will decide to whom and under what conditions Venezuelan oil is sold, with proceeds deposited into a US-controlled bank account.

Concerns about the legality of such measures or the sovereignty of Venezuela have been waved aside by Trump and his allies, who previously asserted that Venezuelan oil should “belong” to the US.

Los Angeles police solved more than two thirds of all homicides citywide in 2025, a year that ended with the fewest number of slayings in six decades, according to statistics presented by local authorities on Thursday.

Of the 230 homicides logged in areas patrolled by the LAPD, officials said that 156, or 68%, were considered solved. By the department’s definition, a homicide can be “cleared” through an arrest or other factors, including if the killing was deemed legally justified or the suspect dies. Whether the case results in criminal charges or a conviction is not part of the department’s methodology.

Factoring in the 78 homicides from past years that were solved in 2025, the clearance rate rose to 101%, officials said.

LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell said the department’s success in solving homicides was the result of more data-driven actions against the relatively small number of individuals responsible for an outsize proportion of violent crimes, as well as collaboration with federal law enforcement and other agencies.

McDonnell pointed to an 8% reduction in the number of gunshot victims citywide, a decline he attributed to a significant increase in the number of guns seized by police. In 2025, LAPD officials recovered 8,650 firearms, 1,000 more than the previous year, he said. Gang killings still account for most of the city’s homicides, but are far below where they were in years past, officials said.

The chief said police need to remain diligent since “every life lost was one too many.” The trends for other categories of violent crime were a “mixed bag,” he said, and concerns about property crimes such as burglary and vehicle thefts remain ongoing.

He said that the declining numbers were proof that a depleted department, stretched thin by low recruitment numbers and recent protests and wildfires, was still performing admirably. At the same time, he acknowledged that the decline was likely also the result of other factors that govern the ebb and flow of crime.

Historically, experts have cast a skeptical eye on police-driven explanations for clearance rates, arguing that community attitudes and behaviors, prosecutors’ thresholds for filing homicide charges, and other variables may have more to do with solving homicides more than any particular law enforcement model.

The homicide tally marked the city’s lowest total since 1966, when the city’s population was nearly a third smaller. The downturn mirrors precipitous drops in many other large cities nationwide last year — and has sparked a range of theories about what’s going on.

LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell, right, points to statistics showing an increase in the homicide clearance rate, a measure of how often detectives are marking investigations as closed.

(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

For those who view violent crime as a public health issue, the steep decrease is rooted in powerful social forces that are far beyond the control of law enforcement. Those factors include the return of social services that declined during the pandemic, and fatigue from decades of bloodshed.

Still others say it’s simply a matter of numbers: with lighter caseloads, homicide detectives have more time to thoroughly investigate each new killing.

Sal Labarbera, a former supervisor of detectives in South Bureau homicide, called the citywide solve rates a “beautiful” achievement.

“This is how it’s supposed to be. When murders are down, reinforce the teams and solve the older cases. In the past, when homicides were down, they sometimes took detectives away from homicide investigations,” he said. “It’s especially extraordinary considering the number of sworn officers are decreasing.”

According to statistics maintained by the state Department of Justice, homicide clearance rates statewide have hovered around 60% over the past decade, with a high of 64.6% in 2019 and a low of 54.5% in 2021. In Los Angeles, the percentage of slayings that have been solved rose slightly from 2024, but was down from the 79.9% clearance rate that the department achieved in 2023.

The data presented at a news conference Thursday didn’t offer a breakdown of how last year’s solve rates differed geographically in the department’s 21 patrol areas.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has hailed several new trade agreements, pledging to further diversify Ottawa’s partners while saying he “expects” the United States to respect his country’s sovereignty.

Carney discussed the trade deals during a meeting on Thursday with provincial and territorial leaders.

“Our country is more united, ambitious and determined than it has been in decades, and it’s incumbent on all of us to seize this moment, build big things together,” Carney said, as he hailed 12 new economic and security accords reached over the last six months.

His comments come amid ongoing frictions with the administration of US President Donald Trump, which has previously pushed to make Canada a “51st state”.

Carney highlighted in particular a new agreement with China to lower trade levies. That deal prompted a rebuke last week from Trump, who threatened to impose a 100 percent tariff on Canada.

In the face of Trump’s accusations that Canada would serve as a “drop-off port” for Chinese goods, Carney clarified that Ottawa was not seeking a free-trade agreement with Beijing.

But on Thursday, he nevertheless played up the perks he said the agreement would offer to Canada’s agriculture sector.

“Part of that agreement unlocks more than $7bn in export markets for Canadian farmers, ranchers, fish harvesters and workers across our country,” Carney said.

Carney added that Ottawa would soon seek to advance “trading relationships with global giants” including India, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), and the South American trade bloc Mercosur.

“And we will work to renew our most important economic and security relationship with the United States through the joint review of the Canada-United States-Mexico agreement later this year,” he said, referring to the regional free trade agreement, which expires in July.

‘Respect Canadian sovereignty’

Carney’s pledge to diversify Canada’s portfolio of trade and security partners comes just eight days after he delivered an attention-grabbing speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

During the address, Carney warned that the “rules-based” international order was a fiction that was fading, replaced by “an era of great power rivalry”, where might makes right.

“We knew the story of the international rules-based order was partially false, that the strongest would exempt themselves when convenient, that trade rules were enforced asymmetrically,” Carney told the audience in Davos.

“We knew that international law applied with varying rigour depending on the identity of the accused or the victim.”

He ultimately called for the so-called “middle powers” of the world to rally together in these unpredictable times.

The speech was widely seen as a rebuke to Trump, who has launched an aggressive tariff campaign on global trading partners, including Canada.

In early January, Trump also abducted the leader of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro, in what critics describe as a violation of international law.

His pledge to “run” Venezuela was followed by a series of aggressive statements towards the self-governing Danish territory of Greenland, which he threatened to seize.

Those threats have sent shudders through the NATO alliance, which counts both the US and Denmark as members.

Since before the start of his second term, Trump has also pushed to expand US control into Canada, repeatedly calling the country a “state” and its prime minister a “governor”.

In response to Carney’s speech at Davos, Trump withdrew Carney’s invitation to join his so-called Board of Peace.

Carney, however, has publicly stood by his statements, dismissing US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s claims that he “aggressively” walked back his position during a private call with Trump.

In a separate exchange on Thursday, Carney was asked about reports that US officials had met with separatists seeking independence for the oil-wealthy province of Alberta.

The Financial Times reported that State Department officials have held three meetings ​with the Alberta Prosperity Project, a group that pushes for a referendum on whether the energy-producing western province should break away from Canada.

“We expect the US administration to respect Canadian sovereignty,” Carney replied.

“I’m always clear in my conversations with President Trump to that effect.”