Politics

By the time Juul’s co-creator stood before a tech audience in April 2016, ads for the e-cigarette aimed to distance the product from a toxic past: “Our company has its roots in Silicon Valley, not in fields of tobacco.”

But when James Monsees, a soon-to-be billionaire, projected a 30-year-old tobacco document on the screen behind him, he grinned. It was an internal memo from the research troves of R.J. Reynolds, the maker of Camel cigarettes. It was stamped “SECRET.”

“We also had another leg up,” Monsees said.

A review by the Los Angeles Times of more than 3,000 pages of internal Juul records, obtained by the Food and Drug Administration and released to a researcher through the Freedom of Information Act, found that the concept behind the formula that makes Juul so palatable and addictive dates back more than four decades — to Reynolds’ laboratories.

The key ingredient: nicotine salts.

Juul’s salts contain up to three times the amount of nicotine found in previous e-cigarettes. They use softening chemicals to allow people to take deeper drags without vomiting or burning their throats. And they were developed based on research conducted by the tobacco companies Juul claimed to be leaving behind.

In addition to the internal documents, The Times consulted more than a dozen tobacco researchers, policy experts and historians, and reviewed patent applications and publicly available videos of Juul’s founders discussing their product over the course of a decade. One of those videos has since been removed from YouTube.

Taken together, the evidence depicts a Silicon Valley start-up that purported to “deconstruct” Big Tobacco even as it emulated it, harvesting the industry’s technical savvy to launch a 21st century nicotine arms race.

In multiple conversations with The Times, Juul did not directly address assertions that the company embraced the very industry it sought to dismantle. A spokesperson for Juul acknowledged that the product intentionally “mimicked” the nicotine experience of a traditional cigarette, but explained that the formula was designed that way in order to satisfy the cravings of adult smokers, not children.

“We never designed our product to appeal to youth and do not want any non-nicotine users to try our products,” a spokesperson for Juul said in a statement to The Times. “We are working to urgently address underage use of vapor products, including Juul products, and earn the trust of regulators, policymakers, and other stakeholders.”

After extensive lobbying by the vaping industry and its allies, President Trump this month missed the deadline he set to ban vaping flavors, despite mounting public complaints over their attractiveness to teenagers, and it’s now unclear whether the administration will take any action. On Monday, California Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra and Los Angeles officials announced a lawsuit against Juul, alleging it engaged in deceptive practices with kid-friendly advertising and a failure to issue health warnings.

But a new generation of nicotine addicts has already been established, and health experts warn that millions of teenagers who currently vape could ultimately turn to other products like cigarettes for their fix.

“Reynolds successfully engineered this formula, but it was Juul that ultimately vaporized it — and achieved what Big Tobacco never could,” said Robert Jackler, a Stanford University researcher focused on teenage e-cigarette use. “They studied Reynolds literature, took advantage of it, and addicted a new generation of American youth.”

Making nicotine more palatable

In February 1973, a researcher at Reynolds saw a conundrum: While cigarettes had wide appeal to adults, they would never become “the ‘in’ products” among youths.

For a teenager, the physical effects of smoking were “actually quite unpleasant,” Claude E. Teague Jr., who is now deceased, wrote in a confidential internal memo.

“Realistically, if our company is to survive and prosper, over the long term, we must get our share of the youth market,” he wrote. “There is certainly nothing immoral or unethical about our company attempting to attract those smokers.”

Reynolds had known for two decades that its product caused cancer. Still, one of the company’s top researchers, Frank G. Colby, pitched a design late in 1973 that would secure “a larger segment of the youth market” by packing “more ‘enjoyment’ or ‘kicks’ (nicotine)” and softening the chemical’s harsh effect on the throats of young smokers.

By boosting nicotine, the addictive chemical, the company could generate faster and more intense addictions among the youngest clients, securing decades of business. But a key challenge was to make nicotine palatable: The chemical had been used as an insecticide since colonial times, and three drops on the tongue could be lethal, according to Robert Proctor, a cigarette historian at Stanford. People couldn’t inhale hefty doses without vomiting.

Reynolds scientists eventually found a solution: Combine the high-pH nicotine with a low-pH acid. The result was a neutralized compound called a salt — nicotine salt.

To perfect the technique, the company enlisted one of its chemists, Thomas Perfetti, a 25-year-old with a newly minted PhD.

Perfetti got to work on a six-month investigation into nicotine salts. According to his laboratory notes, he stirred round-bottom flasks of various acids, then added nicotine, watching as the ingredients condensed into thick yellow oils. All were odorless except one, he wrote, which smelled like “green apples.”

Perfetti synthesized 30 different nicotine salt concoctions, then heated them — like a smoker would — in pursuit of the “maximum release of nicotine.” He also tested the salts’ ability to dissolve into a liquid — a trait that would decades later become central to vaping products like Juul.

On Jan. 18, 1979, Perfetti scribbled his signature on a 17-page final report. The results were stamped “CONFIDENTIAL.” He was soon promoted.

Ten years later, Reynolds was granted a patent for its salts, with Perfetti’s name listed among three inventors. Perfetti would go on to receive a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Tobacco Science Research Conference.

Perfetti, who has since retired from the company, confirmed the details of his research to The Times in a LinkedIn message, but declined to comment further.

Kaelan Hollon, a spokesperson for Reynolds, told The Times that the nicotine salts research was conducted as the company aimed to “reduce the risks” of smoking while “maintaining nicotine delivery.” Although the salts were patented, they were ultimately never used in a traditional Reynolds cigarette, she added.

Premier. The early heat-not-burn cigarette was introduced by R.J. Reynolds.

(Fairfax Media)

About the same time, in 1988, Reynolds introduced one of the first-ever aerosol cigarettes: Premier. After five months, it was pulled from the market because of low sales, records show.

“It made me nauseous for the rest of the day,” one tobacco distributor told The Times in 1989, saying he was sending back thousands of dollars’ worth of the aerosol cigarettes to Reynolds.

At the time, the company was facing another obstacle to using its new research: the FDA’s mounting outrage over what health experts called its “deceptive” past. In 1998, Reynolds, along with three other companies, agreed to begin paying billions of dollars to compensate states for having knowingly propelled a smoking epidemic, which by then had led to the deaths of about 20 million Americans. According to Proctor, Reynolds’ Camel cigarettes have killed about 4 million.

Within this climate, the company was unable to combine its two technical triumphs — palatable salts and early vaping equipment.

“Reynolds succeeded in developing the technology, but never really succeeded in turning it into a transformative breakthrough,” said Matthew Myers, the president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids in Washington, D.C.

“Juul did that.”

‘Addiction is central to the business model’

In June 2005, two product design students at Stanford moseyed in front of a classroom to present their graduate thesis, titled “The Rational Future of Smoking.” It was, in a way, the birth of an industry.

As the lights dimmed, the students, Adam Bowen and Monsees, projected an image onto a screen of a man puffing an early prototype of a vape pen — a precursor to Juul.

A video of the event shows the two students pitching their audience for 17 minutes on a device called Ploom, a vaporizer that would provide “a lot more effective way of releasing nicotine.” They illustrated the stigma of traditional cigarettes — using a South Park cartoon clip that called a smoker “Dirty Lung” and “Tar Breath.” They likened their nicotine pods to sleek Nespresso cartridges that were “a big hit in Europe.”

“We can take tobacco back to being a luxury good — and not so much a sort of drug-delivery device,” said Bowen, who went on to become Juul’s co-founder and chief technology officer.

Monsees said the pair had scrutinized the research behind Reynolds’ failed Premier model before designing their own. He projected a snapshot of chemistry charts from the company’s internal records.

“They’ve realized that they’re killing off their own client base, so they sunk several billion dollars into this already,” Monsees said.

Adam Bowen, left, and James Monsees, co-founders of Juul, in 2018.

(Francois Guillot / Getty Images)

When Bowen clicked to the final slide, a video began to play: A man peering into a video camera lens gave a testimonial, gripping the vaporizer prototype in his hand.

“This product is the greatest thing I have ever encountered in my life,” he said. “I will smoke this with enthusiasm, and develop a nicotine habit that will follow me to my grave.”

The class howled with laughter and broke into applause, launching Monsees and Bowen into a decade of product development. The Ploom device entered the market and would evolve into Pax, and in 2015, Juul.

A Juul vaping system with accessory pods.

(Washington Post)

Monsees would use a TEDx talk in Brussels to explain their effort to “deconstruct” smoking, and early Juul advertisements used a catchy drum beat to assure consumers: “We threw away everything we knew about cigarettes.”

Juul records show the start-up collected research done by tobacco experts about nicotine — work on using salts to control harshness, written by a former top scientist at Reynolds, as well as methods to maximize nicotine delivery, and piles of literature on nicotine’s impact on adolescent brains.

“Certainly, the nicotine salt chemistry was one of the big breakthroughs,” Monsees said onstage at a 2018 tech start-up conference called Disrupt.

Three days before Christmas in 2015, the maker of Juul, Pax Labs, patented its own nicotine salt recipe — making reference to U.S. Patent 4,830,028A, the Reynolds salts from 1989.

On page 15 of the patent, Pax said it had “unexpectedly discovered” the “efficient transfer of nicotine to the lungs of an individual and a rapid rise of nicotine absorption in the [blood] plasma.” The company’s patent used graphics to show that its effects surpassed that of Pall Mall — a popular Reynolds cigarette — as users’ blood nicotine levels spiked dramatically, then fell by almost half within 15 minutes.

The compound would later become trademarked: JUULSALTS™.

“Addiction is central to the business model,” said David Kessler, a pediatrician who headed the FDA from 1990 to 1997, during the agency’s tobacco investigation. “With their nicotine salts, Juul has found the Holy Grail.”

In response, Juul did not directly address that accusation, but said its product offered a “public health and commercial opportunity of historic proportions” for the millions of adult smokers who die each year from cigarettes.

The patent also detailed the role of pH-neutralizing acids in the formula — including at least four of the chemical compounds that Perfetti had created in the Reynolds lab 37 years earlier.

And included in the cache of files that the FDA obtained from Juul was a copy of the confidential Reynolds nicotine salts investigation.

Monsees and Bowen did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

A Juul spokesperson said: “RJ Reynolds’ old work in the field of traditional burn cigarettes was widely known,” noting that Juul followed routine disclosure procedures, such as citing Reynolds’ patents and publications, as required by the U.S. Patent Office.

The spokesperson also said that research shows that nicotine is absorbed more slowly from Juul pods than from traditional cigarettes.

Before Juul, most vaping fluids contained 1% to 3% nicotine, the latter described as “super high” and intended for two-packs-a-day smokers, according to Jackler, the Stanford researcher. Juul offers pods that contain 5% nicotine, according to the company’s website.

Juul disputed Jackler’s characterization, saying that there were higher nicotine concentrations in other brands, and said assertions that Juul’s pods had two to three times the nicotine strength of a cigarette were “false.”

From 2016 to 2017, Juul’s sales skyrocketed by more than 640%. Its cartridges were so palatable that teenagers sometimes raced one another to finish inhaling them. Many said they didn’t know the pods contained nicotine. Each 5% cartridge contained the nicotine equivalent of about 20 cigarettes.

“Juul mimics the evil genius of the cigarette — but does it even better,” said Myers, the president of Tobacco-Free Kids. “They also pulled it off without any of the historical baggage, giving the deceptive illusion that it was safe.”

Anne Schuchat, the principal deputy director of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told Congress during a hearing in September that doctors believe nicotine salts allow the addictive chemical to “cross the blood-brain barrier and lead to potentially more effect on the developing brain in adolescents.”

In a statement to The Times, Schuchat echoed her concern and said the salts “allow particularly high levels of nicotine to be inhaled more easily and with less irritation” than ingredients in previous e-cigarettes, and could enable nicotine dependence among youth.

Anne Schuchat, the principal deputy director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, testifies before Congress on nicotine salts.

(Zach Gibson / Getty Images)

On April 24, 2018, the FDA ordered Juul to submit documents related to its product design and marketing practices following reports of rampant use among youths who may not have understood Juul’s debilitating effects on the brain.

Later that year, FDA agents arrived at Juul’s headquarters and seized additional records. The FDA has released less than 10% of the requested documents, including Perfetti’s laboratory records, to a researcher at UC San Francisco. The agency said it withheld the remaining files to protect trade secrets and other material. As such, the records provide only a glimpse into the chemical research that Juul kept on hand as the company designed its product.

Today, Juul comprises about two-thirds of the vaping market.

In 2018, the largest tobacco company in the U.S., Altria — the parent company of Philip Morris USA, which makes Marlboro cigarettes — purchased a 35% stake in Juul.

After the purchase, several of the tobacco company’s employees also started working at Juul: Altria’s former head of regulatory affairs, Joe Murillo, as well as senior scientists and sales managers.

In September, Altria’s former chief growth officer, K.C. Crosthwaite, became Juul’s CEO.

Voters in the Central American nation of Honduras are set to go to the polls for Sunday’s general election, as they weigh concerns ranging from corruption to national and economic security.

The current president, Xiomara Castro of the left-wing Liberty and Refoundation (LIBRE) party, is limited by law to one term in office.

But the race to succeed Castro is slated to be a nail-biter. Three candidates have surged to the front of the race, but none has taken a definitive lead in the polls.

They include Rixi Moncada from the LIBRE party; Nasry Asfura from the right-wing National Party; and Salvador Nasralla from the centrist Liberal Party.

The race, however, has been marred by accusations of fraud and election-tampering.

Those allegations have raised tensions in Honduras, whose political system is still recovering from the legacy of a United States-backed 2009 military coup that was followed by a period of repression and contested elections.

“Honduras is heading into these elections amid mounting political pressure on electoral authorities, public accusations of fraud from across the political spectrum, and paralysis within key electoral bodies,” said Juanita Goebertus, director of the Americas division at the advocacy group Human Rights Watch.

“These dynamics have created real uncertainty about the integrity of the process.”

Who are the candidates, what will voting look like, and what are the stakes of the election? We answer these questions and more in this brief explainer.

When is the election?

The election will take place in a single round of voting, held on November 30. The candidate with the most votes will be declared the winner and should take office on January 25, 2026.

How long is the presidential term?

Each president may serve a single four-year term in office.

Who is eligible to vote?

There are about 6.5 million Hondurans eligible to cast a ballot, including about 400,000 living abroad in the United States. That group, however, is restricted to voting on the presidential candidates.

Voting is obligatory in Honduras, but there are no penalties for those who do not participate.

Who are the candidates?

Three of the five presidential candidates have emerged as main challengers in the race.

Competing as the candidate for the left-leaning LIBRE Party is Rixi Moncada, a close confidant of President Castro who has served first as her finance minister, from 2022 to 2024, and later as her secretary of defence.

Moncada resigned that position in May to pursue her presidential bid.

If elected, she has pledged to “democratise the economy”, pushing back against efforts to privatise state services. Her platform also promises greater access to credit for small businesses and a crackdown on corporate corruption.

Another contender is Salvador Nasralla, a familiar face in Honduran politics. A candidate for the centrist Liberal Party, he is running for president for a fourth time.

A 72-year-old with a background in civil engineering, Nasralla formerly served as Castro’s vice president before resigning in April 2024.

Nasralla has said that he will streamline government functions while seeking to bring informal workers, who make up a large portion of the country’s labour force, into the formal economy.

Finally, running as the candidate for the right-leaning National Party is Nasry “Tito” Asfura.

Previously a mayor and representative for the capital of Tegucigalpa, Asfura has said he will run the country as an “administrator” and “executor”, promoting pro-business policies to attract investment.

How have foreign relations played a role in the election?

On foreign relations, Moncada is expected to continue her predecessor’s pursuit of closer ties with countries such as China and support for other left-wing figures in the region.

Both Nasralla and Asfura have said they will orient Honduras towards the US and its allies, including Israel and Taiwan.

On Wednesday, in the waning days of the presidential race, US President Donald Trump expressed his support for Asfura.

Trump also cast Honduras’s presidential race as part of his broader campaign against Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, blaming the South American leader for drug trafficking and the establishment of left-wing governments across the region.

“Democracy is on trial in the coming Elections in the beautiful country of Honduras on November 30th. Will Maduro and his Narcoterrorists take over another country like they have taken over Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela?” Trump wrote on his platform Truth Social.

“The man who is standing up for Democracy, and fighting against Maduro, is Tito Asfura.”

What do the polls say?

Though pre-election surveys have shown Moncada, Nasralla and Asfura to be in the lead, no clear frontrunner has emerged.

In September, a poll released by the firm CID Gallup found that Nasralla had 27 percent support, Moncada 26 and Asfura 24. Those percentages separating the three candidates were within the poll’s margin of error.

An additional 18 percent of respondents in that survey indicated they were undecided.

Why has election integrity been a concern?

Questions of corruption have long dogged Honduras’s fragile democracy, and this election season has brought those fears back to the fore.

During the March primaries, for instance, there were “irregularities” in the distribution of election materials, and some polling stations reported delays, long lines and thin staffing that forced the vote to stretch late into the night.

There has also been discord between the two government agencies that handle Honduras’s elections: the National Electoral Council (CNE) and the Electoral Justice Tribunal.

Congress elects the main leaders for each of the two agencies. But both the tribunal and the CNE have been targeted for investigation recently.

In October, prosecutors opened a criminal probe into CNE leader Cossette Lopez over alleged plans for an “electoral coup”.

The Joint Staff of the Armed Forces has also asked the CNE for a copy of a vote tally sheet for the presidential race on election day, prompting concerns over possible interference by the armed forces.

The Electoral Justice Tribunal, meanwhile, has faced an investigation into whether it has voted without all of its members present.

Both President Castro and members of the opposition have spoken about the potential for fraud in Sunday’s vote, heightening scrutiny on the vote.

Organisations such as Human Rights Watch and the Organization of American States (OAS) have expressed concern over the pressure facing election officials.

“What matters most now is that electoral institutions are allowed to operate independently, that the Armed Forces adhere strictly to their limited constitutional role, and that all political actors refrain from actions or statements that could inflame tensions or undermine public trust,” said Goebertus.

In defeating a measure to rescind the 310 area code overlay, telecommunications companies showed they won’t shrink from battle as the state moves to put tighter controls on area code changes, industry leaders said Friday.

The state Assembly early Friday approved a bill, AB 406, that sets additional hurdles in place before area code splits and overlays can be imposed.

But the bill, which had been approved late Thursday by the Senate, was passed only after a provision rescinding the 310 overlay on the Westside and South Bay was removed.

That change was credited to a fierce lobbying effort by telecom companies, and could serve as a preview of what’s to come as lawmakers and utilities regulators consider ways to slow the proliferation of overlays and splits statewide, including a split proposed for the San Fernando Valley.

“I was unable to get for 310 what I had my heart set on, which was the recision of the 310 overlay and 11-digit dialing,” said Assemblyman Wally Knox (D-Los Angeles), who wrote AB 406 (which became the vehicle for the legislation formerly known as AB 818).

Knox said a sustained lobbying effort by telephone industry representatives resulted in the removal of the 310 overlay and 11-digit dialing portion from the bill.

Representatives from Pacific Bell, GTE, AT&T;, MediaOne Telecommunications of California, the California Cable Television Assn. and the Cellular Carriers Assn. of California were among the 30 lobbyists arguing that the provision would diminish competition among carriers and consumer choice.

“The intensive lobbying effort should have been anticipated by everyone because the stakes were so high for the industry,” said Dennis H. Mangers, senior vice president of the California Cable Television Assn., a group whose members are seeking a foothold in the telephone business.

Even so, the arm-twisting in Sacramento stands in contrast to the role played by phone companies at public forums on the issue.

At a recent Van Nuys town hall meeting on splits and overlays, for example, no phone company representative spoke publicly–although at least one was in attendance, observing the proceedings.

Telephone company officials said Friday that they have sent representatives to numerous public hearings on the matter, but remained silent to give residents the chance to express their concerns.

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Industry lobbyists said regulatory meetings and legislative sessions are the proper forums for them to state their positions.

In Sacramento, telecom lobbyists argued that rescinding the overlay in West Los Angeles and the South Bay would be unfair because phone companies had already spent millions to compete for local customers in the region, Mangers said. He also said numbers already had been assigned in the new 424 area code overlay.

“We reminded them that it was they who encouraged communications companies to do business in California,” Mangers said. “If they passed the bill containing that provision, they would be cutting off their own policy.”

Cable company MediaOne, for example, spent $600 million to upgrade its facilities to provide digital telephone service, high-speed Internet access and cable television to Los Angeles customers, particularly those in the 310 region, officials said.

“We have definitely been lobbying in Sacramento,” said Theresa L. Cabral, MediaOne’s senior corporate counsel. “Our concern is that we have made that investment and we can’t use it.”

Pac Bell protested the bill because rolling back the 310 area code overlay would hurt customers who need numbers, said Steve Getzug, a spokesman for the company.

Pac Bell and GTE, the two largest phone companies in Los Angeles, are pushing specifically for overlays when area code relief is needed.

With an overlay, new phone lines within a specific area code are given a new area code–even if it is in the same home or building. Additionally, all users in an overlay area must dial the area code–even to a number with the same area code.

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Phone company officials say the overlay is less disruptive than actually creating a new area code through a geographic split, but critics say such splits and overlays would not be needed if regulators did a better job of allocating and conserving phone numbers.

Knox, who has emerged as the leading consumer advocate on the issue, said Friday that he will now take his fight to the PUC, which is scheduled to take up proposals for a 310 overlay and an 818 split on Wednesday.

“It is important for folks to know that the fight is not over,” he said. “The momentum we have built in the Legislature we will now take to the PUC.”

Gov. Gray Davis has not taken a position on AB 406, aides said. But if he does sign the bill, PUC officials will analyze it to determine its role in implementing new area codes and overlays, said Kyle DeVine, a PUC spokeswoman.

“Until we get direction from the commissioners,” she said, “we can’t say what we are going to do.”

The bill, which passed the Senate on a 35-0 vote, was approved in the Assembly on a vote of 79 to 1, with Assemblyman Tom McClintock (R-Northridge), dissenting. He could not be reached for comment Friday.

In its deal with Alberta, Canada will scrap emissions cap on the oil and gas sector, among other moves.

Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney has signed an agreement with Alberta’s premier that will roll back certain climate rules to spur investment in energy production, while encouraging construction of a new oil pipeline to the West Coast.

Under the agreement, which was signed on Thursday, the federal government will scrap a planned emissions cap on the oil and gas sector and drop rules on clean electricity in exchange for a commitment by Canada’s top oil-producing province to strengthen industrial carbon pricing and support a carbon capture-and-storage project.

Carney is counting on the energy sector to help the Canadian economy weather uncertainty from United States President Donald Trump’s tariffs, and is seeking to diversify from the US market, which currently takes 90 percent of Canada’s oil exports.

He has relaxed some environmental restrictions implemented by his predecessor, Justin Trudeau, while reaffirming his commitment to net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.

Alberta is also exploring the feasibility of a new crude oil pipeline to British Columbia’s northwest coast in order to increase exports to Asia, but no private-sector company has committed to building a new pipeline.

Pipeline companies and the Alberta government have repeatedly said significant federal legislative changes – including removing a federal cap on oil and gas sector emissions and ending a ban on oil tankers off British Columbia’s northern coast – would be required before a private entity would consider proposing a new pipeline.

Thursday’s agreement includes a commitment by the federal government to adjust the Oil Tanker Moratorium Act in order to facilitate oil exports to Asia.

British Columbia Premier David Eby, who opposes a new pipeline through his province, said on Wednesday the legislation should stay in place.

Other pipeline opponents are also speaking out. A coalition of Indigenous groups in British Columbia said this week it will not allow oil tankers on the northwest coast and that the pipeline project will “never happen”.

The Trans Mountain pipeline from Alberta to the British Columbia coast, which is owned by the Canadian government and is currently the only option to ship Canadian oil directly to Asian markets, tripled its capacity last year with a 34 billion Canadian dollar ($24.2bn) expansion.

The federal government and Alberta also said they would conclude an agreement on industrial carbon pricing by April 1 next year.

In addition, the two agreed to cooperate on building the Pathways Plus project, expected to be the world’s biggest carbon capture project and designed to capture emissions from Canada’s oil sands.

The federal government will also assist Alberta in building and operating nuclear power plants, strengthening its electricity grid to power AI data centres, and building transmission lines to neighbouring provinces.

Reporting from Sacramento — It was an iconic image: Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin, longtime partners and lesbian activists, embracing after being wed in San Francisco City Hall. The first same-sex couple in the country to receive a marriage license was joined by city officials and advocates choked with emotion — but not the man who set their nuptials in motion, Gavin Newsom.

Instead, the then-San Francisco mayor was purposefully absent, sitting in his office and anxiously awaiting word that the ceremony had been performed before a court could interfere.

Newsom’s decision to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples — just a month into his term — was at once slapdash and choreographed. Almost immediately it spun out of his control. What was meant to be a short-lived act of civil disobedience on Feb. 12, 2004, turned into a 29-day saga during which more than 4,000 couples wed, catapulting Newsom into the national fray.

The move drew rebukes from social conservatives and prominent Democrats, including gay rights icons and Newsom’s political mentors. The fallout rippled into the 2004 presidential election and the successful 2008 campaign for Proposition 8, which banned gay marriages in California.

Now, five years since the U.S. Supreme Court made marriage equality the law of the land, Newsom has made his decision a central selling point in his campaign for governor. In one television ad, he appears with Lyon — whose spouse died in 2008 — reminiscing with a photo album.

Would Newsom as governor take the same risks? “I hope so,” he said in an interview this month. “I’m an idealist … I embrace that.”

There was no hint that gay marriage would be anywhere on Newsom’s agenda when he ran for mayor in 2003. A county supervisor since 1997, he was seen as the conservative candidate — for San Francisco, at least.

Nationally, the issue was gaining prominence. A Massachusetts court case was laying the groundwork to force that state to legally recognize same-sex marriage. In his 2004 State of the Union, President George W. Bush lambasted “activist judges” for redefining marriage. He threatened to back a constitutional amendment to define marriage as between a man and a woman.

Newsom, who listened to the address from the House of Representatives gallery as a guest of Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), has said that was the moment he knew he had to do something.

Soon after he told his chief of staff, Steve Kawa, who is gay, that he intended to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. In a municipal quirk — as mayor of San Francisco, both a city and a county — he had authority to do so.

Kawa said his reaction was stunned silence. He and others among Newsom’s senior staff initially had reservations.

As lieutenant governor, Gavin Newsom has had few duties — and he skipped many of them »

“People felt like this could really do him harm,” said Joyce Newstat, then Newsom’s policy director. “This could really hold back his own ability to accomplish what he wanted to accomplish as mayor. It would destroy his political career.”

The hesitation was shared by prominent gay rights activists. Kate Kendell, executive director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights, said her first reaction was fear. In a call with Kawa, she said she appreciated Newsom’s support, but noted Bush’s speech. “We just barely won in Massachusetts. These wins are very fragile,” Kendell said she told the chief of staff. She ultimately came around.

In the course of days, the ceremony was carefully orchestrated. The officiant would be Mabel Teng, the assessor-recorder whose core job was to maintain marriage licenses. Newsom would not be present, to avoid accusations of injecting politics into the proceedings. And the first couple would be Martin and Lyon, who at the time had been together more than 50 years.

Newsom and his allies assumed the courts would shut them down immediately. California voters had passed Proposition 22 in 2000, which said only marriages between a man and a woman would be valid in the state.

But the courts declined to intervene for nearly a month. The image of Lyon and Martin soon gave way to the scene of a line of hopeful couples wrapped around San Francisco City Hall, undeterred by protesters.

Gay rights advocates said the pictures of relatable, ebullient couples instantly humanized the debate over marriage equality.

Newsom eventually officiated a handful of marriages, including Kawa’s and Newstat’s respective ceremonies with their partners.

Opponents of same-sex marriage said Newsom was flagrantly ignoring the will of Californians.

“Mayor Newsom lied when he swore to uphold the law,” Randy Thomasson, who runs Save California, a socially conservative group, said in an interview. “When he raised his right hand, it was almost like he was giving one finger, figuratively, to the people.”

High-stakes California governor’s race debate gets testy as personal and political attacks fly »

The California Supreme Court halted the weddings on March 11, and the court later nullified those marriages that had been performed. Newsom was chastised for not following the law as written; one justice said he had “created a mess.”

But by then Newsom had become an unlikely face for marriage equality; news stories from the time emphasized that he was straight and married. Kendell said it was precisely because Newsom did not have a reputation as an outspoken liberal that he was able to make his decision.

“This move by Newsom played against type,” she said. “People did not expect this Irish Catholic, straight … middle-of-the-road moderate to do something so audacious.”

The mayor’s growing national stature as a gay rights warrior irked some who long had worked for the cause.

“I really think he stood on the shoulders of a lot of people who had suffered and died,” said Tom Ammiano, a former supervisor and assemblyman who is gay. “It really wasn’t all about him, but he made it all about him.”

Republicans predictably made Newsom their foe, and Democrats cringed at how his move might energize social conservatives to vote against them in the 2004 presidential election.

Former Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), who is gay, said Newsom had imperiled the strategy in Massachusetts — to show that allowing same-sex marriage in one state would not be disruptive — before the right was pursued elsewhere.

“It troubled me as an example of the kind of politics that puts the interest of the political actor ahead of the cause,” Frank said.

Newsom now dismisses that criticism as “purely political arguments.”

“If they told me it was the wrong thing to do because it was the wrong thing to do, then I would’ve listened to that argument,” he said. “They never said that. They said it was too much, too soon, too fast. That’s not going to convince me.”

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), a mentor of Newsom’s, said at the time he was partly to blame for John Kerry’s presidential loss. Newsom said the criticism was “heavy,” but he understood the thinking behind it. They repaired their relationship, he said, tongue slightly in cheek, “the old-fashioned way — by never discussing it.”

Now, Feinstein said, she believes “history has proven that Gavin Newsom made the right decision, a very bold decision, which paved the way for marriage equality.”

The California Supreme Court ultimately struck down the state’s gay marriage ban in 2008, prompting a triumphant Newsom to declare that marriage equality would happen “whether you like it or not.” The backers of Proposition 8, which sought to amend the state Constitution to prohibit same-sex marriage, capitalized on those comments in a campaign ad.

That ad and Proposition 8’s success once again put Newsom on the defensive for harming the cause he had so forcefully backed. The ban set in place by Proposition 8 remained in effect until 2013, when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned it and, in a separate ruling, found that same-sex couples could marry nationwide.

Newsom said he has no regrets about his decision. But he said he sees the experience now “with a different set of eyes,” with more effort toward “thinking through the intended and the unintended.”

“On such an emotional issue — such a raw issue dividing families, not least my own, down the middle — it’s about what the system can absorb,” Newsom said. “I think about that now differently, absolutely.”

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Follow @melmason on Twitter for the latest on California politics.

Nov. 27 (UPI) — Russian President Vladimir Putin said Thursday that he was receptive to the latest U.S. plan to end the conflict in Ukraine, but insisted the country’s forces would have to give up territory.

Putin made the comments to reporters during a visit to the central Asian country of Kyrgyzstan ahead of U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff’s visit to Moscow next week. Witkoff is expected to discuss a version of the Trump administration’s 28-point peace plan that’s been criticized for allowing Russia to keep territory seized by force and barring Ukraine from joining the western NATO military alliance.

The Russian leader said the U.S. government is now taking some of its positions into account and that the U.S. plan “can be used” as the basis for future agreements, the state-run TASS news agency reported. However, the plan needed to be refined into “diplomatic language,” while other points were non-starters.

Russia currently controls about 20% of Ukraine, about 1,500 square miles, since launching its invasion nearly four years ago. Putin said Russian forces would continue their advance in the eastern Donbass region, The Moscow Times reported.

“Ukrainian forces will have to leave the territories they currently occupy, and then the fighting will stop,” he said. “If they don’t, we will achieve this by military means.”

Russia analyst Tatiana Stanovaya wrote in a post on X that Putin “feels more confident than ever about the battlefield situation and is convinced that he can wait until Kyiv finally accepts that it cannot win and must negotiate on Russia’s well-known terms.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has rejected calls for the country to cede territory and has insisted that any peace deal include security guarantees against further Russian aggression.

“The Russians are peddling the narrative around the world that Ukraine allegedly cannot defend itself,” Zelensky said in a post X Wednesday. “They are saying that Ukrainian warriors cannot defend themselves. The daily combat results of the Ukrainian army, our special forces, and deep strikes — these are all proof that Ukraine can defend its interests.”

Putin also stated that signing any agreement with Ukraine was pointless, implying that it was illegitimate because it had not held elections during the conflict, The Kyiv Independent reported.

However, the paper pointed out that Ukraine’s constitution prohibits elections from being held under martial law, which was declared at the beginning of the conflict in 2022.

Hamid Karzai begins another term as Afghanistan’s president with a long to-do list. The Obama administration has made clear to him that he must crack down on corruption, install a team of technocrats to run the country and weed out warlords and narco-traffickers. Those are all important priorities, but there is something else he should be doing as well: acting as a wartime leader.

So far, Karzai has been oddly disengaged from the war raging around him. Rarely if ever does he visit his own troops in the field, go to hospitals to comfort the wounded or honor the dead, as President Obama did so stirringly with his recent middle-of-the-night visit to Dover Air Force Base. Karzai doesn’t even give speeches to rally his people in the effort to defeat the Taliban. When he does speak out, it is usually to bemoan civilian casualties caused by the Western coalition, inadvertently helping to further a Taliban propaganda line. Most of the time, though, he prefers to shelter behind the high walls of his presidential compound in Kabul, where he can focus on backroom deal-making.

That doesn’t mean that Karzai is opposed to the war effort or soft on the Taliban. He must know that if the Taliban ever regains power, he would be one of the first victims dangling from a lamppost. But he has not embraced the war effort in the way that Franklin D. Roosevelt or Winston Churchill did — even though the war against the Taliban is every bit as important for the future of Afghanistan as the war against the Nazis and Japanese was for the future of Britain and America. He has not been, to put it mildly, a Ramon Magsaysay — the reformist Philippine defense minister and president in the 1950s who worked closely with his American advisor, Edward Lansdale, to defeat the communist Huk insurgents.

Karzai has not even been, to take a lesser and more recent example, a Nouri Maliki. The Iraqi prime minister was also oddly disengaged from the war tearing his country apart when he first took over in 2006. He came into office with no military experience and with deep-seated suspicions of an army that he associated with the Baathist regime. But as he grew more comfortable in his post, he became a formidable if sometimes impetuous frontline commander.

The highlight of his tenure came in 2008, when he personally directed Iraqi troops to clear the Sadrists out of Basra and Sadr City. Those operations were not well prepared, but they proved successful with U.S. help, and as a result, they gave a tremendous boost not only to Iraq’s stability but to Maliki’s own standing. Today, Maliki is the most popular politician in Iraq, and his critics are fretting not that he is too weak, as they were in 2006, but that he is too strong and could run roughshod over Iraq’s nascent democracy.

One factor working in Maliki’s favor was that President George W. Bush took a close personal interest in his success. In video teleconferences and personal meetings, he served as a mentor and supporter, giving Maliki the kind of lessons in leadership that only one embattled head of state can impart to another. Today, by contrast, Obama is holding Karzai at arm’s length. His administration is offering ultimatums, not mentoring, to the Afghan president.

A more productive approach would be for Obama to embrace Karzai and give him some pointers while nudging him in a more reformist direction. One of the top tips he could impart would be how to act as a wartime commander in chief who rallies public opinion behind him. Problem is, Obama himself is struggling with that job — as have most of his predecessors, including Bill Clinton and Bush. That’s no surprise because there is little that can prepare anyone for that awesome responsibility. Thus Clinton stumbled over Somalia and gays in the military before finding his footing in Bosnia and Kosovo.

Bush stumbled far worse in Iraq. Early on, he was a hands-off leader, delegating the management of the war to military and civilian subordinates who failed him and the country. Bush finally matured as a leader and earned a shot at redemption in 2006, when he approved the “surge” despite Washington’s conventional wisdom to the contrary. The kind of steeliness he showed in the face of adversity may even help to rescue his historical reputation from the damage done by Abu Ghraib and Hurricane Katrina.

Note that Bush is now unemployed except for the usual post-presidential activities of speech-giving and memoir-writing. Maybe it’s time for Obama to summon his predecessor — as Bush himself summoned his own father and Clinton on several occasions — and ask him to undertake a special mission: Give Karzai some pointers on how to be a leader in wartime. The ultimate success or failure of our war effort could turn on whether Karzai can don that mantle as successfully as he does his trademark chapan cape and karakul hat.

Reporting from Washington — The Supreme Court signaled Monday it is not anxious to revisit the abortion controversy in the year ahead, disappointing conservative activists who were cheered by the appointment of Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh.

After weeks of debate behind closed doors, a divided court turned down appeals backed by 13 conservative states that sought to defund Planned Parenthood.

The court’s action leaves in place federal court rulings in much of the country that prevent states from denying Medicaid funds to women who go to a Planned Parenthood clinic for healthcare, including medical screenings or birth control. It is already illegal in most cases to use federal money like Medicaid to pay for abortions, but some states wanted to go further, cutting off all Medicaid funding to Planned Parenthood because the organization offers the procedure using alternative revenue sources.

In dissent, Justice Clarence Thomas, joined by Justices Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Neil M. Gorsuch, accused their colleagues of allowing a “politically fraught issue” to justify “abdicating our judicial duty.”

The lower courts are divided on the Medicaid funding dispute, making the high court’s refusal to clarify the issue all the more surprising to some.

“We created the confusion. We should clear it up,” Thomas wrote in Gee vs. Planned Parenthood. “So what explains the court’s refusal to do its job here? I suspect it has something to do with the fact that some respondents in these cases are named ‘Planned Parenthood.’ ”

The brief order denying the appeals from Louisiana and Kansas suggests Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Kavanaugh were not willing to hear the cases.

The high court’s refusal to hear an appeal petition is not a ruling, and it will not prevent the justices from taking up the issue in the future or ruling against Planned Parenthood eventually.

Kavanaugh’s vote against hearing the case was noteworthy since it was his first abortion-related case, but it does not necessarily reflect how he would rule in future cases. Many legal experts predict Kavanaugh would vote to restrict or overturn the landmark Roe vs. Wade abortion ruling.

For now, however, the chief justice may have preferred to avoid controversies that result in a 5-4 split along ideological lines, particularly in the aftermath of the fierce partisan fight over Kavanaugh’s confirmation. Last month, Roberts objected to President Trump’s criticism of an “Obama judge” and issued a statement saying, “We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges.”

Even so, if the court had agreed to decide the Medicaid dispute, the justices could well have split along the usual conservative versus liberal lines, with the five Bush or Trump appointees on one side and the Clinton and Obama appointees on the other side in dissent.

In their appeals, lawyers for Kansas and Louisiana pointed to a recent split among the U.S. appeals courts. Last year, the U.S. 8th Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis, breaking with others, upheld Arkansas’ decision to cut off funding to Medicaid to Planned Parenthood clinics.

It takes four justices to hear a case, and these appeals were considered in a series of closed-door meetings since late September. But the court’s conservatives were unable to gain the needed fourth vote. Kavanaugh took his seat in the second week of October, and his supporters have assumed he would vote in favor of restricting abortion rights when given the opportunity.

Catherine Foster, president of Americans United for Life, said her group was disappointed with the court’s action. “We join the dissent in calling on the court to do its duty,” she said.

“The pro-life citizens of states like Kansas and Louisiana, through their elected representatives, have clearly expressed their will. They do not want Medicaid tax dollars used to prop up abortion businesses like Planned Parenthood,” said Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony List, an antiabortion nonprofit. “The pro-life grass roots will not stop fighting until every single tax dollar is untangled from the abortion industry.”

Planned Parenthood called the outcome a victory for patients. “As a doctor, I have seen what’s at stake when people cannot access the care they need, and when politics gets in the way of people making their own healthcare choices,” said Dr. Leana Wen, the group’s president. “We won’t stop fighting for every patient who relies on Planned Parenthood for life-saving, life-changing care.”

In the last decade, conservative states have sought to defund Planned Parenthood because it is the nation’s largest single provider of abortions. None of the Medicaid money pays for abortions, and most of the state funding bans have been blocked by federal judges.

Medicaid is jointly funded by the federal government and the states, and Congress has said its funds may not be used to pay directly for abortions, except when the woman’s life is in danger or in cases of rape or incest. But more than 2 million people go to Planned Parenthood clinics for birth control and general healthcare, including cancer screenings and pregnancy tests. And for low-income women, this healthcare can be paid for through Medicaid.

Republican lawmakers who sponsored the defund laws argue the states should not indirectly subsidize facilities that perform abortions.

But lawyers for Planned Parenthood and their patients have gone to federal courts and won rulings blocking most of the laws from taking effect. They have done so by relying on a provision in the Medicaid Act that says eligible patients may go to any doctor’s office, hospital or clinic that is “qualified to perform” the required medical services. If a federal law creates a right for individuals, plaintiffs like the Planned Parenthood patients may go to court and sue if that right is denied.

But in their appeals, lawyers for Kansas, Louisiana and 13 other states argued that Medicaid is a healthcare spending agreement, not a law that establishes rights for individuals. If so, they said, states may decide who is a qualified provider of healthcare.

The latest from Washington »

More stories from David G. Savage »

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Twitter: DavidGSavage

South Africa secured a declaration from the rest of the G20, despite United States objections.

Washington boycotted the meeting over President Donald Trump’s accusations that South Africa persecutes its white minority, a claim widely rejected.

The document calls for more funding for renewable energy, fairer critical mineral supply chains and debt relief for poorer nations.

The first G20 summit on African soil broke with tradition by releasing the document at the start.

And there was no ceremonial handover between the outgoing South African and incoming American chairs.

Also, can Britain’s Labour government satisfy both businesses and households?

Plus, the weight-loss drug booming industry.

The military has seized power in Guinea-Bissau, a day before Sunday’s presidential election results were due to be announced.

The African Union and West African regional bloc ECOWAS have condemned the coup.

Why has it happened and what are the implications?

Presenter: Dareen Abughaida

Guests:

Kabir Adamu – Managing director of Beacon Security and Intelligence

Bram Posthumus – Political and economic analyst specialising in West Africa and the Sahel region

Ovigwe Eguegu – Peace and security policy analyst at the consultancy Development Reimagined

The first Democratic primary debate was surprisingly entertaining.

In between Lincoln Chafee leading with a boast about his lack of scandals and Jim Webb cheerfully referencing the time he killed a man, there were lots of good moments. But the highlight was definitely when Bernie Sanders weighed in on Hillary Rodham Clinton’s ongoing email saga.

After responding to a question from moderator Anderson Cooper about the email scandal, Clinton finished by saying, “Tonight, I want to talk, not about my emails, but about what the American people want from the next president of the United States!”

Sanders decided to jump in.

“Let me say this. Let me say something that may not be great politics,” he said. “But I think the secretary is right. And that is that the American people are sick and tired of hearing about your damn emails!”

“Thank you,” she responded. “Me too. Me too.”

Sanders briefly pontificated on his campaign talking points before ending with “Enough of the emails” and reaching out to shake hands with his top opponent.

The crowd went wild. So did the Internet.

Our watch party at the Regent Theater also liked it:

Sanders’ campaign — which sent several fundraising emails throughout the night — wasted no time making the most of the positive response.

Will “enough about your damn emails” become a meme as enduring as Romney’s “binders full of women”? Perhaps.

And finally, a sentiment we can all agree with.

For more social media news, follow Jessica Roy on Twitter@jessica_roy

DES MOINES — Rick Santorum won the Iowa caucuses in January, with Mitt Romney a close second, but neither was the true winner this weekend when the delegates who actually will vote at the Republican National Convention were selected. That would be Ron Paul.

The congressman from Texas finished a distant third in the Iowa caucuses more than six months ago, but of the 28 delegates selected Friday and Saturday to head to the national convention, 23 are Paul supporters – and they are not bound to support the victor of the state’s first-in-the-nation voting contest.

It’s part of a quiet strategy by Paul and his backers to amass an army of supporters at the GOP gathering in August in Tampa, Fla., to push Paul’s views on liberty, states’ rights, the monetary system and foreign policy. By working arcane electoral rules and getting supporters into positions of power in local, county and state party operations, the strategy is paying dividends across the nation.

INTERACTIVE MAP: Iowa GOP caucuses

Paul has stopped actively campaigning and has conceded that Romney will be the GOP nominee. It’s unclear whether Paul’s name will be submitted for nomination; mathematically, he does not have the numbers to derail Romney. But his supporters can have an effect on the party in other ways.

“We want to have a real big voice on the platform; we want to influence the direction of the party more than anything else,” said Joel Kurtinitis, a Paul supporter who was pleased after the Saturday vote.

He was Paul’s state director in Iowa until Paul suspended his presidential bid in May, and he said that although he would love to see Paul awarded a prime speaking spot at the convention, his followers’ efforts are about more than one man.

“We’re going to hold up our values and we’re going to bring conservatism back to the mainline of the Republican Party. That’s where my hopes are at and that’s my hope for this convention more than seeing Ron Paul do X, Y and Z,” Kurtinitis said.

Romney and his campaign have treated Paul and his followers deferentially, perhaps mindful of not alienating his incredibly loyal supporters. At the Iowa GOP convention, a Romney staffer who flew in from Boston watched the proceedings but did not get involved. At the Romney table, workers distributed three fliers to conventioneers – a general brochure about his candidacy, an invitation to a rally in Davenport on Monday and a news release that touted Romney’s endorsement by Paul’s son, Rand Paul, and effusively lavished praise on the Kentucky senator who many believe is the heir apparent for Paul’s movement.

But others say the move by the Iowa GOP is a black eye for the state’s caucuses and for the presumptive GOP nominee.

“Embarrassment is the word that comes to my mind,” said Jamie Johnson, who served as Santorum’s state coalitions director in Iowa. The former senator from Pennsylvania, who narrowly won the caucuses but has endorsed Romney since ending his presidential bid in April, appears to have one solitary Iowa delegate who supported him heading to the convention.

“I believe that it seriously puts the Iowa caucuses’ first-in-the-nation status in jeopardy,” Johnson said. “It will be a major embarrassment to Gov. Romney if there is a strong Ron Paul vote from the floor on the night in which the votes are counted.”

Paul is counting on having 200 delegates on the floor who can vote for him, and a few hundred more who are bound to vote for Romney but are his supporters.

“While this total is not enough to win the nomination, it puts us in a tremendous position to grow our movement and shape the future of the GOP!” Paul wrote in an email to supporters last week. “I hope every one of you continues the fight we have advanced so well this year. I hope you will finish your local and state conventions, and, if you were selected as a national delegate, that you will head to Tampa in August to force the Republican Party to listen to the voice of liberty.

“We have never had this kind of opportunity. There will be hundreds of your fellow supporters in Tampa who will be ready and willing to push the Republican Party back to its limited government, liberty roots.”

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Political newcomer Jeff Hall has run a discreet campaign trying to unseat an incumbent on an obscure Riverside County water board. He hasn’t posted any signs, didn’t show up to a candidates forum and lists no occupation on the November ballot.

But Hall is well-known as a white supremacist.

As California director of the National Socialist Movement — the nation’s largest neo-Nazi group — Hall has helped lead demonstrations in Riverside and Los Angeles, where white supremacists waved swastika flags, chanted “white power” and gave stiff-armed Nazi salutes surrounded by hundreds of counterprotesters.

Hall’s bid for a seat on the board of directors of the Western Municipal Water District has drawn outcry from community groups dismayed that a neo-Nazi who has held racist rallies at a day laborer center and a synagogue wants to administer their water — or at least gain publicity in the quest to do so.

“It looks like he’s hoping to get a certain percentage of the vote as an anonymous anti-incumbent and then claim that some percentage of the electorate support the Nazis,” said Kevin Akin, a member of Temple Beth El in Riverside, where Hall and other neo-Nazis have demonstrated. “He apparently intended to do nothing, just to be a stealth candidate.”

Not so, said Hall, a 31-year-old plumber who in a phone interview Monday called for water conservation and affirmed his belief that all non-whites should be deported.

“I want a white nation,” he said. “I don’t hide what I am, and I don’t water that down.”

Hall has been campaigning by handing out business cards, he said, but turned down an invitation to a candidates forum because it was sponsored by the League of Women Voters and a Latino community group.

He is not the only known white supremacist running for office in Southern California this fall.

Dan Schruender, a member of the Aryan Nations, known for distributing racist fliers in Rialto, is seeking a seat on that city’s school board.

Neo-Nazis have periodically sought a platform for their views by running for local office, said Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate & Extremism at Cal State San Bernardino.

“We see this from time to time. They push things like school boards — local elections that kind of slip under the radar,” Levin said. “It gives them publicity, it gives them a foothold and it gives them an anchor to spew their bigoted opinions in other forums.”

Hate group experts say Hall’s bid for the water board is a reminder to be careful when deciding whom to vote for, because some candidates’ beliefs lie well outside the norm.

The platform of the National Socialist Movement, for instance, advocates limiting citizenship to those of “pure White blood” and deporting people of color.

It is the largest such group in the nation and has been expanding its activity in California over the last year, according to the Anti-Defamation League.

Even with its growth, it’s still quite small, said Mark Pitcavage, director of investigative research for the ADL.

“We’re talking about a couple dozen people in the most populous state in the country,” he said.

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Emily Burgueno calls them “sovereign burns.”

It’s the subversive act of simply identifying a need in the landscape or the community — maybe the community garden could use some soil revitalization, or the oak trees plagued with weevil pests could use some fumigation — and tending to it with cultural fire. No need for permission.

California has made supporting Indigenous fire stewardship a priority in recent years to help address the state’s growing wildfire crisis. But burning freely across the landscape (with perhaps only a phone call to the local land manager or fire department to give them a heads up) is still a dream, a long way off.

California outlawed cultural burning practices at statehood in 1850 and in most cases, burning freely without permits and approvals is still illegal. Even recently, Burgueno, a cultural fire practitioner and citizen of the Iipay Nation of Santa Ysabel in San Diego County, has seen local authorities arrest an elder on arson charges for using cultural fire in tending the land.

It’s a practice far older than prescribed burning, the intentional fires typically set and managed by U.S. government fire personnel.

With the tradition comes wisdom: Through joint trainings and burns, fire officials versed in prescribed fire are often delighted by the detailed knowledge of fire’s role in an ecosystem that cultural fire practitioners can nonchalantly drop — for example, the benefits of burning after bees pollinate.

While prescription burns carried out by the Forest Service often focus on large-scale management goals, cultural burns are an elegant dance, deeply in tune with the individual species on the landscape and the relationships they have with each other and fire. Burning is one of many tools tribes have to shape the ecosystem and help it flourish through the years.

“It is grounded in our creation stories, our sacred beliefs and philosophy,” Burgueno said. “It helps us understand how to be a steward of the land, which requires us to be a steward within ourselves — to have a healthy body, mind, and spirit.”

For Don Hankins, a Miwok cultural fire practitioner and a geography and environmental studies professor at Chico State, it’s this fundamental tie to culture that makes the practice unique.

The way willows grow back after fire, for example, “they’re long; they’re slender. They’re more supple than if they were not tended to with fire,” Hankins said. “As a weaver, those are really important characteristics.”

The state now sees its prohibitions, enforced with violence, as wrong and has taken significant steps in recent years to address the barriers it created to sovereign burning. In order to freely practice, tribes need access to land, permission to set fire and the capacity to oversee the burn. But the solutions, so far, are still piecemeal. They only apply to certain land under certain conditions.

Hankins, who started practicing cultural burning with his family when he was about 4, has made a practice of pushing the state and federal government out of their comfort zones. He, too, dreams of a day when a burn is defined solely by the needs of the land and its life.

“The atmospheric river is coming in, and we know that once it dumps the rain and snow … we close out the fire season — but what if we went out ahead of that storm, and we lit fires and worked through the ecosystems regardless of ownership?” he said. “That’s the long-range goal I have. In order to get fire back in balance, first we have to take some pretty bold steps.”

More recent wildfire news

At an October town meeting in Topanga, a fire official with the Los Angeles County Fire Department told residents that, during a wildfire, the department may order them to ride out the blaze in their homes. It’s part of an ongoing debate in California about what to do when an evacuation could take hours, but a fire could reach a town in minutes.

The Los Angeles City Fire Department is requesting a 15% increase in its budget to support wildfire response, my colleague Noah Goldberg reports. The request includes funding for 179 new firefighter recruits and a second hand crew specializing in wildfire response. LAFD’s union is also proposing a ballot measure for a half-cent sales tax to raise funds for new fire stations and equipment.

The U.S. Forest Service completed prescribed burns on more than 127,000 acres during the government shutdown, the Hotshot Wake Up reports, despite fears the disruption would severely limit the Forest Service’s ability to burn during optimal fall weather conditions.

A few last things in climate news

A proposed pipeline could end California’s status as a “fuel island,” connecting the golden state’s isolated gasoline and diesel markets with the rest of the country, my colleague Hayley Smith reports. The state is grappling how to balance consumer affordability with the transition to clean energy, with the upcoming closure of two major refineries.

The Department of Energy is breaking up or rebranding several key offices that support the development of clean energy technologies, Alexander C. Kaufman reports for Heatmap News. It’s unclear how the restructuring will impact the Department’s work.

During the COP30 climate conference in Brazil — which produced a last-minute incremental deal that did not directly mention fossil fuels — the South American nation recognized 10 new Indigenous territories, the BBC’s Mallory Moench and Georgina Rannard report. The hundreds of thousands of acres they span will now have their culture and environment legally protected. Although, the protections are not always enforced.

This is the latest edition of Boiling Point, a newsletter about climate change and the environment in the American West. Sign up here to get it in your inbox. And listen to our Boiling Point podcast here.

For more wildfire news, follow @nohaggerty on X and @nohaggerty.bsky.social on Bluesky.

Public prosecutor vows to appeal the verdict saying the government wants the maximum penalty.

Ousted Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has been sentenced to 21 years in prison in separate corruption cases related to allocations of land in a government project, dealing another legal blow to the country’s former exiled leader.

In a decision issued on Thursday, a court found Hasina guilty of illegally securing plots of land in a suburb of capital Dhaka for herself and her family despite their ineligibility.

Last week, Hasina was sentenced to death by hanging, after she was found guilty for crimes against humanity for ordering a deadly crackdown against a student-led uprising last year that eventually ousted her.

Hasina fled Bangladesh by helicopter on August 5, 2024, after weeks of student-led protests against her autocratic rule.

The 78-year-old former leader is currently residing in India and has defied court orders that she return to Bangladesh. New Delhi is said to be studying Dhaka’s extradition request.

Shaina Begum, the mother of a 20-year old student Sajjat Hosen Sojal, who was shot and his body burned by the police hours before the student-led uprising forced Hasina to resign and flee the country, told Al Jazeera after the verdict, “I cannot be calm until she [Hasina] is brought back and hanged in this country,”

Hundreds of families who lost loved ones in the protests wonder if the deposed prime minister will actually face justice.

The three corruption cases were brought against her by the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) over land grabs of lucrative plots in the Purbachal New Town project .

Hasina’s conduct “demonstrates a persistent corruption mindset rooted in entitlement, unchecked power, and a greedy eye for public property”, ruled judge Abdullah Al Mamun.

“Treating public land as a private asset, she directed her greedy eye toward state resources and manipulated official procedures to benefit herself and her close relatives.”

Each sentence was seven years in prison, and Mamun ruled that Hasina would need to serve them consecutively.

Her son Sajeeb Wazed and daughter Saima Wazed were each sentenced to five years in prison in one of the three cases.

Other details of the verdict were not available immediately.

Public prosecutor Khan Moinul Hasan said he would appeal, telling AFP news agency that he was “not satisfied” with the verdict and wanted the maximum sentence.

Hasina and her former ruling Awami League party have denounced the trials against her.

She did not appoint a defence lawyer, and some global human rights groups have questioned the credibility and fairness of the trial process against Hasina.

Other cases also involving alleged land grabbing are still pending, and a separate verdict is expected December 1.

Bangladesh has been going through a difficult political transition under an interim government headed by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus, and new elections are planned in February 2026.

The United Nations says up to 1,400 people were killed in crackdowns as Hasina tried to cling to power.

US President Donald Trump has called for a review of all Afghans who entered the US under the Biden administration, after two National Guard members were shot and critically wounded in Washington DC. US immigration authorities have also halted all Afghan-related applications.

SANTA CLARA, Calif. — President Bush carried his message of military victory and economic challenge to the job-blighted Silicon Valley on Friday, thanking defense workers for their contributions to the war with Iraq and pressing his tax cut plan as the cure for the region’s — and nation’s — economic ills.

“We’ve come through some hard times,” Bush told engineers and technicians at United Defense Industries, which makes combat fighting vehicles. “Remember, we’ve overcome a recession. We’ve overcome an attack on our soil. We have been in two major battles in the war against terror, one in Afghanistan, one in Iraq.”

As he gears up for his 2004 reelection campaign, Bush has been formulating a message that puts the blame for the sluggish economy and rising unemployment on outside forces and national security emergencies. But to call attention to his record on national security issues, Bush has been choosing defense-related settings for speeches on the economy.

Bush on Friday acknowledged the especially difficult circumstances in Silicon Valley, which he described as “this incredibly vibrant part of the American economy over the past years [which] is not meeting its full potential.”

The president’s visit came as the Labor Department in Washington announced a jump in the unemployment rate for April, bringing it to 6%. That tied the figure for December as the highest rate in almost nine years.

Bush noted the news and called it “a clear signal to the United States Congress we need a bold economic recovery package so people can find work.”

The president then devoted much of his speech to pushing for a tax cut of at least $550 billion, which he claimed would create 1 million jobs nationwide by 2004.

“The plan I just outlined is one that will boost the economy in the Silicon Valley,” Bush said. “It’s a plan that is bold because we need a bold plan. It’s a plan that is thoughtful because we need a thoughtful plan. Most importantly, it’s a plan that will invigorate the entrepreneur spirit, which has been so strong here, and make it more likely somebody who’s looking for a job will be able to find one.”

But Bush’s plan has run into resistance in Congress. The president initially proposed a $725-billion, 11-year tax cut plan to stimulate economic growth. House Republican leaders, responding to concerns about the mounting federal budget deficit, have reduced the plan to $550 billion. In the Senate, moderate Republicans have led the push to limit it to $350 billion.

“I know you’ll hear talk about the deficit,” Bush said. “And we’ve got a deficit because we went through a recession. A recession means the economy slowed down to the extent where we’re losing revenues to the federal treasury. We got a recession because we went to war, and I said to our troops, if we’re going to commit you into harm’s way, you deserve the best equipment, the best training, the best possible pay.”

The president also reprised the theme he laid out a day earlier in a national address from the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln off the coast of San Diego — that the military conflict with Iraq was “one victory” in the war on terrorism that began after the 2001 attacks on America.

“On September the 11th, 2001, America learned that the vast oceans no longer protect us from the threats of a new era,” Bush said. “On that day 19 months ago, we also began a relentless worldwide campaign against terrorists and those who hate freedom in order to secure our homeland and to make the world a more peaceful place. And we’re making great progress.”

The defense sector is a bright spot in Silicon Valley, one of the most beleaguered regions of the state. According to Bureau of Labor statistics, the San Jose area has lost almost 16% of its workforce since Bush took office in January 2001, a total of about 175,000 jobs.

Nationwide, 2.7 million jobs have been lost since March 2001, when the recession began.

“The economy is not growing fast enough, and you know it as well as anybody here,” Bush said.

Democrats responding to Bush’s remarks pointed to the job-loss figures. “There continues to be serious question in his leadership on economic security issues,” said Sen. Jon Corzine (D-N.J.).

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi called on Bush to extend federal unemployment benefits in response to the rising jobless rate — “a very fast way for us to inject purchasing power into the economy,” she said.

As president, Bush has been an infrequent visitor to California, which he lost to Democratic candidate Al Gore in 2000 by 14 percentage points. Bush’s trip was the sixth in his presidency and the first since Aug. 24. In contrast, Bill Clinton had visited California 17 times at this stage in his presidency.

Silicon Valley leans Democratic politically, but the choice of a defense industry plant ensured a warm and responsive crowd. The president spoke at a division of United Defense Industries, based in Arlington, Va., which makes ground combat systems such as the Bradley Fighting Vehicle, which was integral in Iraq.

Bush noted the 750-employee Santa Clara facility also makes the Hercules Tank Recovery Vehicle, which helped topple the statue of Saddam Hussein in central Baghdad.

“The guy with the sledgehammer on the statue needed a little help,” Bush said to laughter and cheers from the audience. “Thankfully, there was a Hercules close by.”

As he left Santa Clara, Bush was joined by Australian Prime Minister John Howard and his wife, who were to ride with him on Air Force One to his ranch in Crawford, Texas. Howard, who was a strong supporter of the president’s confrontation with Iraq, was to spend a night at the ranch — an honor that has been reserved for foreign leaders closest to Bush.

*

Times staff writers Joseph Menn in San Francisco and Nick Anderson in Washington contributed to this report.

Reporting from Washington — A pair of influential senators presented President Obama with a three-page blueprint for a bipartisan agreement to overhaul the nation’s immigration system, but the proposal’s viability is threatened by politics surrounding the healthcare debate.

Sens. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), in a 45-minute meeting Thursday in the Oval Office, also asked for Obama’s help in rounding up enough Republican votes to pass an immigration bill this year.

Although details of their blueprint were not released, Graham said the elements included tougher border security, a program to admit temporary immigrant workers and a biometric Social Security card that would prevent people here illegally from getting jobs.

Graham also said the proposal included “a rational plan to deal with the millions of illegal immigrants already in the United States.” He did not elaborate on what the plan would be. But in a recent interview, he suggested that onerous measures were unrealistic.

“We’re not going to mass-deport people and put them in jail, nor should we,” Graham said. “But we need a system so they don’t get an advantage over others for citizenship.”

In a statement after the Obama meeting, Graham predicted that their effort would collapse if Senate Democrats proceeded with a strategy to pass a healthcare bill through a simple majority vote — a process known as “reconciliation.” Senate leaders say they are committed to doing just that.

“I expressed, in no uncertain terms, my belief that immigration reform could come to a halt for the year if healthcare reconciliation goes forward,” said Graham, who portrayed the document handed to Obama as “a work in progress.”

Graham added: “For more than a year, healthcare has sucked most of the energy out of the room. Using reconciliation to push healthcare through will make it much harder for Congress to come together on a topic as important as immigration.”

In their own statements, Obama and Schumer sounded more upbeat.

The president said: “Today I met with Sens. Schumer and Graham and was pleased to learn of their progress in forging a proposal to fix our broken immigration system. I look forward to reviewing their promising framework, and every American should applaud their efforts to reach across party lines and find common sense answers to one of our most vexing problems.”

Immigration has gotten scant attention of late. Obama had initially promised to address the issue in his first year, but the deadline slipped as he struggled to pass a healthcare bill. Latino voters, who were a crucial piece of Obama’s winning coalition in the 2008 campaign, have grown impatient. Some advocates of an immigration overhaul warn that Latino voters will stay home in the November mid-term elections if the issue is delayed again.

In an attempt to defuse the anger, Obama met with a group of 14 immigration advocates in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, hours before his meeting with the two senators.

Afterward, some of the guests described the atmosphere in the room as tense. They said they told Obama that families were being severed by widespread deportations. In the fiscal year that ended in September, the U.S. deported 388,000 illegal immigrants, according to the Department of Homeland Security — up from 369,000 the year before.

“I don’t think the president liked hearing that the immigration system is tearing apart families. But that’s our reality,” said Ali Noorani, executive director of the National Immigration Forum, who attended the meeting.

Obama agreed to have them meet with Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano to discuss deportation policies, the White House said.

Even without the healthcare obstacle, passing an immigration bill would be difficult. Schumer has been trying to line up additional Republican co-sponsors in hopes of broadening the bill’s bipartisan support. None has signed up.

Those who attended the meeting said that Obama committed to helping find Republican votes. But he also conceded that in a polarized Senate, that was a difficult mission.

“He was very frank about the challenge of moving this or anything else in the U.S. Congress,” said John Wilhelm, president of the labor union Unite Here.

peter.nicholas@

latimes.com

Nov. 26 (UPI) — A three-judge panel on Wednesday permitted North Carolina to adopt a redrawn congressional map that is expected to favor the Republican Party.

The U.S. District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina unanimously ruled against the plaintiffs’ request for an injunction against legislation approved in October by the state’s General Assembly that critics say threaten one federal congressional district, specifically Congressional District 1, which represented by Democrat Don Davis.

In their 57-page ruling on Wednesday, the three Republican-appointed judges said the plaintiffs failed to prove that the state’s General Assembly enacted the legislation, Senate Bill 249, with the intent to “minimize or cancel out the voting potential” of Black North Carolinians as they had claimed.

The ruling comes in protracted litigation that began in 2023, when the Republican-led state sought to redraw some of the districts for electing representatives to the state Senate and federal Congress.

The plaintiffs, who include the North Carolina State Conference of the NAACP, sued that December. In October, amid litigation on the maps, the state’s General Assembly passed legislation to swap counties between Congressional District 1 and Congressional District 3.

The plaintiffs again sued the state, alleging the legislation was unconstitutional and asking the court to enjoin S.B. 249.

Earlier this month, the same three-judge panel issued a ruling approving the changes to the map put forward in 2023.

A hearing on S.B. 249 was held Nov. 19, during which the plaintiffs argued that the speed with which the General Assembly passed the 2025 plan was evidence of discriminatory intent.

But the panel of judges disagreed, stating “they have offered no reason to believe that the speed of the 2025 process indicates an intent to discriminate on the basis of race. Nor do they explain what weight we are supposed to assign to what they call ‘the near uniform outcry among North Carolina voters against the map and the process.'”

The ruling comes amid something of a gerrymandering race in the United States that began in earnest when Texas this summer — under pressure of President Donald Trump — sought a mid-decade redraw of its maps to make them more favorable to the Republican Party.

California is in the process of redrawing its maps in retaliation and other states under control of both parties have followed with similar plans.

WASHINGTON — President Trump has a lot riding on a precarious agreement with Taliban militants to end America’s longest war. But the process, which began over the weekend, is fraught with obstacles that could lengthen the conflict rather than conclude it.

The first step in the deal agreed to by the U.S. and the Taliban is a seven-day period of “reduced violence” in which neither side attacks. The period began Saturday and includes a moratorium on the roadside explosive devices, rockets and suicide bombers that have been the Taliban trademark and continued as recently as last month.

It falls short of a cease-fire, which the Taliban consistently refused to consider. But if the weeklong pause is declared a success, U.S. and Taliban leaders will sign a deal in Doha, Qatar, on Feb. 29 that begins the drawdown of American troops in exchange for Taliban vows to fight terrorism and stop attacks against the United States.

“This [reduction in violence phase] will serve as a test period of Taliban intent and control of their forces, and as a proof of concept of their commitment to the peace process,” senior State Department official Molly Phee said last week.

“It has taken a lot of work, frankly, to get to this point. But we believe we have established the conditions that can transform the trajectory of the conflict,” she added. “It is high time for the parties to begin moving off the battlefield and into a political process.”

Phee is deputy to Zalmay Khalilzad, the administration’s special representative for Afghanistan who has led more than a year of negotiations with a Taliban team that includes men once jailed in the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

As of Thursday, Taliban attacks and U.S. airstrikes had fallen off significantly and the truce was largely holding, U.S. officials said.
.

But numerous obstacles will complicate the next phase, which includes bringing the Afghan government into talks with the Taliban and other domestic organizations. The government has been kept out of negotiations until now, in part because Taliban leaders don’t recognize it.

Some critics worry that in a rush to secure an election-year troop withdrawal, Trump might agree to terms that fail to protect U.S. counterterrorism operations or hard-fought civil rights in Afghanistan. Others say conditions for withdrawing U.S. troops are as good now as they ever will be.

“This is a long shot under the best of circumstances,” said Bruce Riedel, a veteran CIA officer who specialized in the region and advised Democratic and Republican White Houses. “Trump badly wants to claim a victory.”

But Riedel said one hard part will be working directly with the Taliban without undercutting the Afghan government, which Washington has backed throughout the nearly two decades of U.S. intervention launched after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. “We are stuck in a war with no easy way out without leaving one side in the lurch,” he said.

Complicating matters even more, the Trump administration now finds itself in the odd position of entering into important deals with the Taliban without a clear partner in the Afghan government.

Official presidential election results announced last week — nearly five months after the vote — gave the victory to incumbent President Ashraf Ghani. But his chief rival, Abdullah Abdullah, has refused to recognize that outcome and declared himself the victor. Within days, the opposing camps deployed their own security forces in an increasingly tense Kabul, and regional warlords were choosing sides.

When asked about the election results, Pompeo declined to endorse Ghani.

Negotiating with the Taliban presents its own challenges. Like the rest of Afghan society, the sprawling group is riven by tribal and regional rivalries. And it has killed hundreds of Americans.

It remains to be seen what happens if attacks against Americans resume after the seven-day pause. Officials say they will deal with such attacks on a case-by-case basis. But Trump has said killing Americans is a red line. He hastily backed out of a deal with the Taliban last fall after it launched an attack that killed a U.S. soldier.

The agreement to be signed Feb. 29 calls for an initial U.S. troop withdrawal over a five-month period. The top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Austin “Scotty” Miller, has told Pentagon officials he can safely reduce the U.S. troop level from the roughly 12,000 service members now there to 8,600.

Pentagon officials have insisted that even the first round of withdrawals will be conditioned on Taliban leaders not permitting Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups on Afghan territory.

Other officials have also pressed for limiting troop withdrawals unless violence levels remain low and Taliban leaders follow through on promises to hold planned power-sharing talks with Afghan government negotiators.

Whether the U.S. insists on those conditions before making steep troop reductions will depend to a large degree on Trump, said a senior U.S. Defense official who did not want to be quoted speaking about the internal deliberations.

Critics fear that as his reelection campaign moves into full swing this summer, Trump may order troop withdrawals whether or not the looming Afghan peace talks go smoothly, in order to be seen as delivering on his promise to end an era of lengthy U.S. overseas wars.

Trump “wants to bring the force levels down. He’s made that clear. The question is whether he is willing to do it if things start to fall apart. And they usually do in Afghanistan,” a senior Defense official said.

The Pentagon plans to continue its training of Afghan army and police, even as it sharply cuts overall force levels. “A big part” of the remaining U.S. force will be focused on that training, said another U.S. Defense official, who was not authorized to speak publicly.

Miller has also developed options for continuing military operations against Al Qaeda, Islamic State and other terrorist groups, using forces stationed in the region but outside Afghanistan, if necessary.

As long as the Afghan peace talks remain on track, Pentagon officials believe counterterrorism operations can be carried out with relatively small numbers of special operations troops and airstrikes.

Douglas Lute, a retired U.S. Army general who coordinated fighting in Afghanistan late in the George W. Bush administration and under President Obama, said improved U.S. intelligence in the region and a diminished Al Qaeda threat bode well for security.

“We have intelligence access that we didn’t have before,” Lute said. “We’re much better than we were back when we were simply launching cruise missiles into the desert.”

U.S. officials have also pressed NATO members and other countries with troops in Afghanistan not to exit too hastily. There are roughly 8,000 non-U.S. foreign troops there now, and a quick exit of many of them would force steeper cutbacks in critical training programs.

It is unclear whether the agreement will include a timetable or explicit language committing Washington to a complete pullout of its troops. But it’s unlikely the Taliban would sign on to a deal that does not at least theoretically hold that out as the goal, said Laurel Miller, the former acting special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan at the State Department.

“You have to look at the U.S.-Taliban agreement as the easy part of the deal,” she said. “It’s a viable first step. Whether that first step leads to further steps is still an open question.”

She said the likely message that the administration is sending the Afghan government is: We’re leaving, so you better make the best deal you can. And if you do, we will support you with aid.

However, she added, “If the U.S. withdraws its troops, I’m deeply skeptical that the U.S. Congress is going to continue to send billions of dollars a year to prop up the Afghan government.”

Congress has appropriated nearly $137 billion in aid for Afghanistan since 2002, with about 63% earmarked for security forces and 26% for development projects, according to a report last month by the Congressional Research Service. In 2020, the White House is seeking $4.8 billion in military assistance and $400 million in economic aid.

Another wild card is Pakistan, which has backed the Taliban and benefited from the unrest in its neighbor. Although Pompeo has invested considerable time courting senior Pakistani officials, Islamabad’s support for peace talks is unclear.

Michèle Flournoy, a former undersecretary for Defense, said that while she is concerned Trump might “lose patience and pull the plug,” she believed chances for a broad agreement were the best they have been “across three administrations.”

“While we have been fighting this for 20 years, the Afghans have been fighting this for 40,” she said, referring to the civil war and Soviet intervention that predated U.S. involvement. “So there is a degree of exhaustion on both sides and a degree of stalemate.”