Eighth in a series of stories profiling top high school football players by position. Today, Wesley Ace, Gardena Serra defensive back.
Wesley Ace has no complaints when people underestimate his football ability.
“A couple coaches just walk by,” he said of recruiters showing up at practices and bypassing him.
At 5 feet 9 and 180 pounds, the Gardena Serra High cornerback is used to the skepticism because of his size.
“It’s all good,” he said. “My film speaks for itself. If you’re a baller, you’re a baller.”
And Ace is a fast baller, having run the 100 meters last spring in 10.51 seconds at the school that produced state 100-meter champion Rodrick Pleasant. Ace also has video of him running down the speedy Deshonne Redeaux last season to prevent a touchdown against Oaks Christian. Redeaux is a freshman at USC this season.
Playing the nickel position in Serra’s 4-2-5 defensive alignment, Ace contributed 52 tackles. He’s an aggressive tackler. He’s far stronger than people think, bench-pressing 275 pounds.
He’s been playing tackle football only since eighth grade.
“My whole life, I’ve been playing baseball,” he said.
Then he got bored and switched to football.
“I had to get stronger, faster and learn the rules of the game,” he said.
His first position was defensive end. The coach must have wanted someone to be a pest going after quarterbacks with his lack of size.
“I was so fast, big guys that age couldn’t keep in front of me,” he said.
Ace learned to play defensive back and was most effective last season covering slot receivers. This season he’ll get a chance to show what he can do against taller players as a cornerback. He’s confident his speed and strength will make it a smooth adjustment.
“As a defensive back, you’re going to mess up eventually,” he said. “Speed allows you to recover and get back.”
His father, Wesley Sr., was a standout defensive back at Westchester and San Diego State who never encouraged his son to play football because of head injury concerns. He’s been training him while serving as an assistant principal in the Los Angeles Unified School District.
“My dad always says be everything but big,” Ace said.
Don’t be surprised to see Serra taking advantage of Ace’s speed by letting him return kickoffs and make some plays on offense. Regardless, he finds a way to contribute on defense with his quickness, instincts and fearless attitude. He committed to San José State during the summer.
“For sure, I play with a chip on my shoulder,” he said.
Wednesday: Gabriel Goroyan, Westlake kicker.
Defensive backs to watch
Isala Aisa Wily-Ava, St. John Bosco, 6-2, 195, Sr.: Washington commit has been starting so long he might have grey hair
Wesley Ace, Gardena Serra, 5-9, 180, Sr.: San José State commit ran 10.51 seconds for 100 meters
Myles Baker, Sierra Canyon, 6-2, 205, Sr.: UCLA commit is built like the Rock of Gibraltar
Jordan Hicks, Mission Viejo, 6-1, 180, Jr.: Ambitious, confident and decisive on any field
Jaden Walk-Green, Corona Centennial, 6-0, 195 Sr.: Washington commit had 10 interceptions last season
JuJu Johnson, Long Beach Poly, 5-11, 175, Sr.: UCLA commit is most improved player anywhere
Danny Lang, Mater Dei, 6-1, 165, Sr.: USC commit thrives on hand-to-hand combat with receivers
Jaxson Rex, San Clemente, 6-1, 190, Sr.: Put him anywhere on the field and BYU commit would excel
Gavin Williams, Damien, 6-1, 185, Sr.: USC commit will set highest standard at safety this season
Donte Wright, Long Beach Poly, 6-2, 180, Sr.: Miami commit is physical cornerback with speed
Fifth in a series of stories profiling top high school football players by position. Today, Vincent Shields, Murrieta Valley offensive lineman.
For those who love dogs, offensive tackle Vincent Shields of Murrieta Valley High needs to be on your must-invite list. His mother and father run a dog training business. There are five dogs living at their home. All the female dogs are named after Disney characters. Vincent swears dogs can be trained to do anything, like open the refrigerator.
He just got a golden retriever puppy named Nala, the wife of Simba from “The Lion King.” The question is will Shields train her to rush the passer so he can practice his blocking techniques against someone with agility and a hunger to do anything for biscuits?
“That would be a good challenge,” he said.
The football journey of the 6-foot-6, 285-pound junior involves a change of positions, a change in eating habits and a recognition he has found his calling.
“He’s a freak athlete,” former Murrieta Valley offensive line coach Alex Rosenblum said. “That kid has had an amazing offseason.”
Teammates share a laugh with Vincent Shields as he engages in a power lifting exercise.
(Sandy Huffaker / For The Times)
By the end of the summer, Shields was nearing 20 scholarship offers after just one season as an offensive lineman. That’s what happens when college recruiters discover someone with size, good footwork and the ability to improve.
He started at right tackle last season for a school that has been producing outstanding linemen.
“We love to run the ball,” Shields said.
He was a defensive end as a freshman before Rosenblum convinced him to become a blocker. It opened a path that Shields has embraced.
“He told me at the end of my freshman year, ‘You’re going to start and if you make a mistake, it’s OK. Everything is a learning experience.’ I made mistakes and he was supportive,” Shields said.
He has been receiving private instruction to understand his role of blocking specific defenders and adjusting when linebackers blitz. All that was thrown at him as a sophomore, so it was no surprise he had some offside penalties. A year later, there’s no telling how dominant he can become.
“It takes a different person to play O-line,” he said. “It’s violent and that takes a special person. Not everyone is meant for the mental part and physical part. Are you going to take another man against his will and drive him down the field?”
Murrieta Valley offensive tackle Vincent Shields, center, does exercises during practice.
(Sandy Huffaker / For The Times)
Shields said he has been playing tackle football since he was 11. He was primarily a linebacker to take advantage of his athleticism. Then he started to grow and eat and eat.
Those were the days he loved French fries, chips, hamburgers and anything fried. He once ordered three 4×4 burgers from In-N-Out, which is four beef patties and four slices of cheese. He used to order from Chick-fil-A two chicken sandwiches, four chicken strips and 10 chicken nuggets.
Then he learned about nutrition and choices. He’s been eating steak and grilled chicken lately.
“I’ve done a good job shedding the bad weight,” he said.
His father, a former Marine, likes to cook, so everyone is watching Shields’ eating habits. He’s 17 with an appetite like a dog.
And speaking of dogs, the family has Shields’ golden retriever, a Rottweiler named Fancy, a giant schnauzer named Goose and two Belgian Malinois named Hero and Baymax.
That’s enough dogs to form a starting offensive line. But one of them has to beat out Shields, who intends to cause a whole lot of trouble blocking opponents over the next two seasons.
“I can’t wait,” he said. “You’re going to see a jump and a lot of people are going to wonder how it happened.”
Fourth in a series of stories profiling top high school football players by position. Today, Luke Gazzaniga, Santa Margarita tight end.
You’re unlikely to feel sympathy for 6-foot-4, 235-pound tight end Luke Gazzaniga, a senior at Santa Margarita High who enjoys the idea of running over tacklers after catching a pass or sending an opponent crashing to the ground with a bone-crushing block.
Except understand that he’s the smallest brother in his family. The others are 6-7 and 6-5, so imagine the little brother in the front yard doing the Oklahoma drill, a legendary one-on-one football drill from years ago that tested toughness via collisions.
“We’d literally just run at each other,” he said.
Some brothers play video games or collect baseball cards. The Gazzanigas were into seeing who would be the last one standing.
“It was fun,” Luke said. “I was quick when I was a little kid. I wouldn’t go down. I’ve had to fight for myself. I had to find my way to win.”
Their father, David, who played football at Dartmouth and became an orthopedic surgeon, welcomed the competition. If any of the boys came into the house before a game was over, Dad’s response was, “Suck it up and go back.”
“He taught us how to be tough,” Luke said.
You can sense the enjoyment Luke has on a football field. After he catches a pass, he looks up and gets excited if there’s a defender nearby.
“I love seeing people there,” he said. “I’m letting them know if you’re going to try to tackle me, it’s going to hurt you more than me. I’m glad someone thinks they can tackle me.”
Future Hall of Fame tight end Rob Gronkowski has been the player he’s most admired, and Gazzaniga has been able to see pro players up close because his father worked as a physician with the Chargers. Luke got to hang out in the training room and on the field.
“They’re impressively big and impressively fast,” he said. “People were huge.”
42 seconds left in first quarter. Santa Margarita 19, De La Salle. Luke Gazzaniga TD. About the only thing the Eagles need to work on are PATs. 1 for 3. pic.twitter.com/WA6IY0blgI
During Santa Margarita’s run to the Southern Section Division 1 and Open Division state titles last season, Gazzaniga became an important offensive weapon over the middle, even though he suffered an ankle injury and missed six weeks. He caught 20 passes for 332 yards and four touchdowns.
“God gave me the blessing to catch anything,” he said.
Santa Margarita coach Carson Palmer used to take advantage of throwing to the tight end when playing at USC and in the NFL, and there’s no doubt Gazzaniga feels comfortable in the Eagles’ offensive schemes. Tight ends continue to gain attention at the highest levels.
“It’s a super important position,” Gazzaniga said. “People love looking at receivers and forget the tight end is almost the glue between passing and running. The Rams use three tight ends and there’s a bunch of big personnel types all over the league. I can envision myself being there one day and making an impact.”
Gazzaniga is committed to Kansas. He comes from a family of athletes. Two older sisters played water polo at USC, with Rachel now a candidate to play for the U.S. Olympic team in 2028. Brother John is a quarterback at Alabama. His mother is an avid mountain climber. John used to throw bullet passes to Luke growing up, which helped prepare him for any and all quarterbacks.
Thanksgiving always has produced an interesting dynamic with five tall, energetic kids circling for a turkey leg.
“It’s hard to know how much we eat,” Luke said.
Saturday: Vincent Shields, Murrieta Valley offensive lineman.
Tight ends to watch
Luke Gazzaniga, Santa Margarita, 6-4, 235, Sr.: Kansas commit makes big catches in traffic
JJ Haley, Corona del Mar, 6-3, 200, Jr.: The next top tight end from the tight end school
Max Markofski, Mission Viejo, 6-4, 230, Sr.: Arizona commit is known for his receiving skills
Hudson Ploog, Orange Lutheran, 6-5, 235, Sr. Nevada Las Vegas commit is like a sixth offensive lineman to clear defenders
Jaylin Smalls, Rancho Cucamonga, 6-4, 230, Jr.: This is the season he begins to show his talents
Third in a series of stories profiling top high school football players by position. Today, Austin Miller, Bellflower receiver.
Dozens of college football recruiters traveling in their rental cars to powerhouse St. John Bosco have learned there’s a new must-stop place on the way to Bellflower.
“Don’t come through Bellflower and not come through Bellflower,” is the motto of Bellflower High, where the emergence of 6-foot-5, 200-pound sophomore receiver Austin Miller is proving to be as attractive as a stop at In-N-Out.
“Bosco is a great program, but we don’t take a backseat to anyone,” said the 15-year-old Austin , whose father, Keith, is the head coach. “We’re here to put Bellflower on the map.”
Videographers covering Bellflower games know Austin is capable of dong something spectacular at any moment because of his speed, size, athleticism and jumping ability. He caught 35 passes for 609 yards and eight touchdowns as a freshman. He rushed for 885 yards and 13 touchdowns. He had four sacks and 35 tackles.
Imagine the highlight films coming this season with added strength and a maturing body.
He’s been fed hundreds of footballs from a Jugs machine to develop hands that don’t drop passes. He has the size and physicality of a tight end, which creates mismatches with smaller cornerbacks. He has no sympathy.
“As a receiver being bigger than everybody, you play to your advantage,” he said.
Because he has been playing multiple sports since he was young, versatility is his superpower, allowing him to catch passes, block, sack quarterbacks from the edge or play any position his father needs him to play.
Just hearing him describe the importance of blocking as a receiver shows the effect having a coach as a father has had on him.
“My dad taught me staying low, driving through your hips and making sure you block for your teammates like they block for you,” he said. “For receivers, sometimes you watch the play instead of doing your job. The biggest thing is putting your man in the dirt. Being bigger receiver, taking contact and delivering contact is a big thing for me.”
Austin is one of those rare teenagers who looks and acts like someone destined to reach the highest level possible because of his physical gifts and mental outlook. He committed to Ohio State in June even though he has three seasons left of high school football. His goals are high, and he feels the Buckeyes are the perfect landing place to fulfill his dreams.
Austin Miller, a 15-year-old sophomore receiver, is helping bring attention to Bellflower’s football program.
(Eric Sondheimer / Los Angeles Times)
His parents wanted nothing to do with the flavor of the month, holdbacks. It has become so common that most assume a top freshman or sophomore are holdbacks, which means repeating a grade or two to look for a competitive advantage in high school.
Austin welcomes competition of any and all ages, seeing it as a worthy challenge and a path that will only make him better. He certainly more than held his own as a 14-year-old playing against some 19-year-olds.
To understand his journey, you have to go back years and visualize the scene from his days as an 11-year-old.
“We’d wake up, go to football practice, go to basketball practice, go to baseball practice, then work out more,” he said.
Keith Miller wanted the chance to become a head coach after being an assistant to his brother, Jason, who’s coached at Bellflower, Verbum Dei and Leuzinger among his stops. With Austin and his talented friends serving as the early believers, Miller is trying to build a program from the ground up.
“The college coaches say they respect what we are doing,” Austin said. “We don’t take a back seat to any school.”
There’s also a little bit of pride in father and son proving that talent isn’t just found at top private schools. When a public school kid gains similar attention, it makes him a community hero for life.
Austin is certainly headed on that path. He’s embraced the idea that you can be the youngest on a field and still be one of the best through hard work, dedication, preparation and a belief in yourself.
Friday: Luke Gazzaniga, Santa Margarita tight end.
Receivers to watch
Nico Bland, Orange Lutheran, 6-1, 185, Sr.: Arizona State commit led Lancers with 57 catches
Charles Davis, Westlake, 6-5, 205, Sr.: Cal commit has size and speed
Coach Jim Harbaugh said roughly 15 starters won’t play in the Chargers’ preseason opener against the Houston Texans, and there are several spots on the depth chart that still need to be decided.
“The preseason games will give us a window of insight into where everybody is,” Harbaugh said.
Here are five position groups to monitor when the Chargers face the Texans on Thursday at 5 p.m. PDT (CBS, NFL+).
Left guard battle
Chargers offensive lineman Trey Pipkins (79) works out with his teammates during drills in June.
(Alex Gallardo / Associated Press)
Who will line up to the left of center Tyler Biadasz remains to be determined.
Slaughter appears to be in the lead, with Awosika and Taylor behind.
“Jake Slaughter had a great weekend,” Harbaugh said Tuesday. “If we were right up to the minute right now, [I] really liked [Slaughter’s] tape from the weekend — and his confidence. Like, he’s getting it.”
It’s a given that Biadasz will start at center, Cole Strange at right guard, Joe Alt at right tackle and Rashawn Slater at left tackle.
But the Chargers need someone to seize control of the left guard spot sooner rather than later.
“No one has eliminated themselves from the tournament,” offensive coordinator Mike McDaniel said.
The list might be narrowed by Friday morning.
Tight end trio?
Chargers tight end Charlie Kolar takes part in drills at minicamp in June.
(Eric Thayer / Los Angeles Times)
Unlike the left guard competition, the Chargers believe they have a three-headed monster at tight end with Charlie Kolar, David Njoku and Oronde Gadsden.
“They’re all great dudes,” Njoku said of the tight end room. “Everyone has their own thing … I think we complement each other and push each other to strive for greatness.”
Each has seen a good amount of reps in various packages throughout training camp, and all should see the field quite a bit during the regular season.
Perhaps the Chargers’ first preseason game — and who plays first, most or not at all during it — will indicate a pecking order.
Third safety
Chargers safety Genesis Smith goes through drills during rookie minicamp in May.
(William Liang / Associated Press)
Derwin James Jr. and Elijah Molden have their starting safety spots locked up. However, James is a Swiss Army Knife who often plays nickel, meaning the Chargers need a solidified third safety.
Who will be that guy?
“The standard is the standard,” James said of the defensive backs. “I feel like everyone’s going out there competing. We got a lot of depth. We got a lot of guys who can make a lot of plays. When their numbers [are] called, guys are stepping up. So, it’s good to see.”
It appears to be a three-way race between rookie Genesis Smith, Tony Jefferson and RJ Mickens.
Cutting corners
Chargers safety Derwin James Jr. (3) and cornerback Rodney Shelley run a drill during training camp on Aug. 1.
(William Liang / Associated Press)
Tarheeb Still is the Chargers’ No. 1 outside cornerback with Donte Jackson and Cam Hart following.
“I feel very comfortable and very confident,” Still said. “I think that’s just a credit to my coaches [and] my teammates. … I feel really good about where I’m at personally, and where the team and the defense is.”
But after that trio is a deep mix of options competing for spots on the 53-man roster.
Avery Smith and Rodney Shelley have impressed as undrafted rookies like Nikko Reed and Eric Rogers did in 2025. And Deane Leonard is probably a lock to stay in L.A. as a special-teamer.
So Thursday’s game will be pivotal, as teams rarely keep eight-plus cornerbacks; the Chargers kept seven last season.
“We always encourage each other,” Jackson said of the room. “No selfish demeanors on this team.”
Herbert insurance
Chargers quarterback Trey Lance throws during offseason workouts in May.
(William Liang / Associated Press)
Harbaugh said backup signal-callers DJ Uiagalelei and Trey Lance will each play one half against the Texans as they battle to be Justin Herbert’s primary replacement.
“Both have really acquitted themselves well,” Harbaugh said. “From what I’ve seen in practice, it’s going to be pretty close. They’re both good.”
Uiagalelei and Lance, once a pair of big-named prospects, have had their share of highs and lows throughout training camp. Each could use a good, live outing.
It is a crucial time for Africa in terms of how it interacts with the rest of the world. Africa is no longer viewed as a place of humanitarian interest or of mere charity. Instead, Africa is increasingly seen as a prize, as a place that contains large populations and is a place where great and emerging powers struggle to win influence. With fifty-five states, more than one billion people, and the youngest population of any continent, Africa’s future will determine the politics of the world for decades to come. However, this potential strategic significance exists in an uneasy context of instability, dependency, and weak governance. The key question this paper seeks to address is whether Africa will remain a subject of outside influence and internal problems, or be able to turn its potential into real strategic power.
A Continent in Transition: Crisis, Change and Transformation
The transition of Africa is evident in its economic output. According to the IMF, it should come as no surprise that sub-Saharan Africa will grow at about 4.3% in 2026 and that the region will be one of the fastest growing in the world, even beating out developed nations facing the challenges of monetary tightening and shrinking populations. It is estimated that nations such as Ethiopia, Guinea, Uganda, Rwanda, and Benin will have growth rates of 7% or more because of mining, construction, industrial parks, and infrastructure spending. Africa’s aggregate nominal GDP will reach around 3.3 trillion dollars in 2026.
This data indicates true evolution; however, these very reports indicate that growth in Africa is uneven since economies relying on resources and importing oil experience worsening trade accounts and increasing cost of living. The contradiction within Africa’s transition process is that while there is economic momentum, there is also economic fragility, which means that growth indicators do not mean development per se.
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Shifting Security Landscapes and the Crisis of Regional Stability
One does not have to look further than the Sahel region to see just how critical this problem of stability becomes. Military coups seized control in Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger; in these regions, the Alliance of Sahel States was formed and left the Economic Community of West African States. According to the information available from Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, the level of violence in central Sahel increased dramatically from 2018 to 2024.
Humanitarian organizations working within the United Nations reported approximately nine thousand three hundred casualties in Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger in 2025. While the withdrawal of French troops and UN peacekeepers was not completed by an improvement of local armies, the Russia-based Africa Corps, a successor to the Wagner Group, became the main security partner of junta regimes with varied success. Extremist organizations such as Jama’at Nusrat al Islam wal Muslimin and the Islamic State Sahel Province expanded their operations and started to use more often armed drones in their actions with a possibility of destabilization spreading to the countries of the Gulf of Guinea coast.
Economic Crossroads: Resources, Growth and Strategic Dependency
The development of the economy in Africa has a direct connection with the natural resources present in the continent, including the minerals used in the process of energy transition in the world such as copper, cobalt, manganese, and lithium. China has been the largest trading partner of Africa for the past sixteen years, and the expected value of the total trade between these two regions in 2025 is three hundred and forty-eight billion dollars, which is an increase by eighteen percent compared to the preceding year.
The main countries contributing to the largest share of trade include South Africa, Nigeria, Democratic Republic of Congo, Angola, and Egypt. China is involved in the continent’s economy not only in traditional sectors like natural resources but also in renewables, digitalization, and low carbon technology, as China plans to invest over fifty billion dollars in the continent by 2027 under the Beijing Action Plan. According to Boston University Global Development Policy Center, Africa’s exports to China are mostly raw material and the trade deficit with China is approximately equal to three percent of regional GDP.
Diplomatic Repositioning in an Emerging Multipolar World
The states of Africa are increasingly seeking to assert their independence in a multipolar world. With the admission of the AU to the G20 in 2023, the continent has secured a place among the major powers of the world permanently. Some of the African states have sought membership to BRICS, a power bloc which included Egypt and Ethiopia in addition to the founders and some other new members, making it another power bloc which its supporters argue is an alternative to the Western dominated groupings.
This diplomatic maneuver by the continent represents the larger strategy that the Africans follow in terms of strategic non alignment where they seek relations with all the major centers of power, including the US, China, Russia, Europe, and the Gulf countries. The Africans have used this diplomatic clout to their advantage in securing better deals on debt, trade, and security cooperation. But this diplomatic repositioning itself faces limitations because of the divide among the African states and lack of ability to capitalize on it.
Domestic Politics, Governance and the Crisis of Legitimacy
Underlying the security crossroads and the economic crossroads is a more fundamental crisis of political legitimacy. Since 2020, there have been coups across the Sahel and Central Africa as a manifestation of public discontent with corruption, poor service delivery, and the inability of the civilian government to ensure security. While military regimes in Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, and Guinea partly justify their takeover of power by invoking issues of sovereignty and anti-colonial rhetoric – an argument that struck a chord with a lot of people while the indicators of good governance in those countries continued to decline rather than improve.
In other cases, disputed elections, the manipulation of constitutions to prolong the rule of presidents, and the constriction of civic space challenge the viability of the democratic institutions that were put in place after the opening up period of the 1990s. At the same time, a number of countries such as Ghana, Kenya, and Zambia have shown the potential for power transitions and active civil societies, which means that the crisis of legitimacy in Africa is not consistent.
External Powers and the Contest for African Influence
Today’s contest for influence in Africa is characterized by a larger and broader coalition of players than has been seen since the attainment of independence. The United States has attempted to make a comeback through efforts aimed at the development of critical minerals and infrastructure, in response to the increasing influence of China and Russia in the region, although the future of favorable trade policies like the African Growth and Opportunity Act appears to be in doubt due to changes in American trade policy.
The influence of Russia has primarily been gained through security collaboration and disinformation, rather than economic investment. Russian interests lie in forming partnerships without having to be conditional upon the governance of the partner country. Countries from the Gulf region, such as the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar, have invested heavily in ports, agriculture, and renewable energy, especially in the Horn of Africa. The influence of Turkey has been formed in the form of business and military connections, especially in the Sahel and East Africa regions. With so many external partners involved in Africa, there is an increase in the chance that the continent becomes a battleground for great powers, rather than a partner in determining the outcome.
From Strategic Importance to Strategic Agency
The concept of strategic importance and strategic capability is essential to understand the strategic positioning of Africa at present times. Strategic importance is bestowed upon a country by external actors due to the recognition of the natural resources and markets of the region. Strategic capability on the other hand involves the setting of terms by African institutions and states rather than mere reactions to the interests of external forces.
In this regard, the African Continental Free Trade Area, which seeks to create a common market of over one point three billion people is an attempt to exercise such a strategic capability through reduction of dependency on external trade partners and increased intra-African trade which currently constitutes only a limited portion of total trade in the continent. Credibility of organizations like the African Union and Economic Community of West African States in conflict and coup mediation will determine whether African diplomacy will be conducted through collective institutions or ad hoc decisions made by individual African nations.
Now which direction will Africa take?
The geopolitical position of Africa in international politics is that of a paradoxical nature. The African continent can be characterized by both immense economic potential and security crises, both rising diplomatic power and an area of contestation between foreign forces, both a land of resilient democracy and an example of authoritarianism. The statistical information provided above gives evidence of a rising continent, despite the existing weaknesses. Whether or not Africa becomes a strategic player on its own or stays an object of contestation in the new multipolar world will depend solely on decision-making of the African continent. Whether the African continent will follow the path of development or the road of stagnation depends on how Africa will deal with the issues of governance, regional integration and economic diversification.
INDIANAPOLIS — The Republican leader of the Indiana Senate announced Friday that he would give up his position after six GOP incumbents who opposed President Trump on his congressional redistricting push in the state lost their primaries.
Indiana Senate President Pro Tem Rodric Bray drew the ire of Trump in December when he voted against the redistricting plan after saying for weeks that it didn’t have enough support to pass. The rejection came after intense lobbying from Trump, Vice President JD Vance, national conservative groups and others.
Bray, who has held his leadership position since 2018, said in a statement Friday that he would not seek reelection to the post when Senate Republicans choose their leaders in November. His current Senate term runs through 2028 and he will remain in office, albeit not as the Republican Senate leader.
Trump reacted to the news in a social media post by saying Bray had “foolishly led” the state Senate, noting the May primary defeats of those who defied him on the redistricting plan.
Bray did not mention Trump or the redistricting fight in his statement announcing his position to step down from the leadership position. Bray said holding the job “has been among the most significant honors of my life, but it’s time for the Senate to choose another leader.”
By not extending his contract a summer ago, they made it clear: They were ready to move on. And they have. They found their way to a front-line center and got a whole lot younger. And get this: They got better. In the long run and probably in a sprint too.
Maybe it seems sacrilegious to suggest they’ve improved by parting ways with the greatest player of all time and trading for a fifth-year pro who missed all but five games last season with the Utah Jazz after suffering a torn labrum.
Maybe you’re finding it hard to get fired up about the new guy with no playoff experience. And you’re used to the Lakers collecting the biggest names — not guys whose games are unfamiliar. Giannis, say. Not … Walker.
But please, stop and consider the tankathon Utah has been running; the last thing the Jazz wanted was Kessler on the court winning games for them.
You also still might be experiencing sticker shock on the Lakers’ behalf. They’re getting Kessler on a $130-million, four-year deal after completing a sign-and-trade that sent out a 2031 first-rounder, 2033 first-rounder and first-round pick swaps in 2028 and 2030.
But position, position, position is to the NBA what location, location, location is to real estate — and if this fit proves as fun as Doncic seems to believe, then Kessler’s contract is going to feel like a real fair trade on the hot center market.
Because, defensively, the Lakers’ new 7-foot-2 center is a shot-blocking, space-eating deterrent in the post. That’s invaluable when you’re going with Doncic and Austin Reaves on the perimeter.
Offensively, Kessler has good hands and good handoff timing. You can call for him to screen all day. He has a radar for the rim, sixth in the NBA in dunks per game in 2024-25.
And Kessler is a blessing on the glass, the king of second chances. His 4.6 offensive rebounds per game in 2024-25 led the NBA.
Also: LeBron is going to turn 42 this season; Kessler is 25.
Walker Kessler was a big presence in the paint for the Jazz before he got hurt last season.
(Frank Franklin II / Associated Press)
Age and experience count for a lot in life. But increasingly, today’s NBA is proving a young man’s game — and check ball, the Lakers are now in it.
Out went Deandre Ayton (28 years old), Rui Hachimura (28), Luke Kennard (30) and Marcus Smart (32). Jaxson Hayes (26) too, the only departing rotation player younger than 28.
In come Quentin Grimes (26), Sandro Mamukelashvili (27), Collin Sexton (27), Ziaire Williams (24), Jaden Hardy (24) and rookie summer league sensation Cameron Carr (21). Also, Kevon Looney, who will be Kessler’s backup big, and Matisse Thybulle, a proven defender on the wing, who are 30 and 29, respectively, and the only additions not younger than Doncic (27) and Reaves (28).
Still, I get it. You’re not wowed by the incoming group.
Were you wowed when the Dodgers acquired Max Muncy, Justin Turner or Chris Taylor? Probably not. But those guys went on to help the club win World Series titles.
Were the Dallas Mavericks banking on lob threat Derrick Jones Jr. — on a minimum contract — being a catalyst for their run to the 2024 NBA Finals? Do Lakers fans remember Doncic’s 17 assists to guys like Dante Exum, Tim Hardaway Jr. and Grant Williams in a 2023 victory over LeBron and Anthony Davis?
Doncic is manning the Lakers’ elevator now; it’s his job to lift his teammates to new heights. He can do it. He better do it.
Because the margins can be major, but they don’t account for most of the Lakers’ offseason grade this summer.
So give them a B+.
Not an A. No, because not every assignment has been completed.
There’s the minor matter of a starting five. The Lakers don’t appear to have one of those just yet.
They might yet add Jonathan Kuminga at forward. Or perhaps someone already rostered — hello, 22-year-old, skyscraping Adou Thiero — is waiting to wow us all in that role?
Normally, not having an answer to the most basic of questions at this point in the summer would fail you.
But this year is different.
Filling the hole at center was weighted so heavily among the Lakers’ priorities — and landing Kessler earned them so much extra credit — it bumps their grade almost all the way up.
Of course, this was only the introductory course.
The real tests for this fresh new roster — down an all-time talent but so much more solid in the center — come when the season begins. Or, really, when the postseason does.
And expecting that opponents won’t have an easy time coming up with answers for Doncic and his new dominant defensive center, the Lakers are now set up to score well there too.
French soccer superstar Kylian Mbappé took to social media Monday to respond to racist remarks a Paraguayan senator made following her country’s 1-0 loss to France in a World Cup knockout round game over the weekend.
Mbappé called Celeste Amarilla, a 61-year-old senator from Paraguay’s Liberal Radical Party, “a despicable woman and unworthy” of her position.
And he was just getting started.
“You do not represent Paraguay, that country which has sweated passion and honor throughout the competition,” Mbappé wrote on X. “Through your recklessness and your brazen racism, the entire world has already forgotten the journey and the historic effort that your players accomplished during this World Cup, making way for an incompetent woman who gives the worst possible image of her country.
“I will never allow people like her the freedom to spread their hatred and racism across the world.”
The 27-year-old French captain scored the only goal of Saturday’s round of 16 game on a penalty kick in the 70th minute. Mbappé is tied with Argentina’s Lionel Messi and Norway’s Erling Haaland with a tournament-high seven goals. He also has 19 overall World Cup goals, one behind Messi for the all-time record.
Amarilla apparently wasn’t impressed, taking to both Instagram and X to make comments about Mbappé ‘s cultural background, appearance, education and more. She did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Times.
The Paraguayan government said in a statement Monday that it “deplores and rejects” the senator’s remarks.
“These statements are contrary to the values and principles that inspire peaceful coexistence and respect for human dignity, which our country promotes,” it said, adding that Amarilla’s words “in no way represent the position of the Government of the Republic of Paraguay or of the Paraguayan people.”
The French Football Federation said in a statement that Amarilla’s comments were racist, as well as “utterly despicable and unacceptable” and “criminal and reprehensible.”
“These remarks are abhorrent, unworthy, and all the more unacceptable given that they come from a political figure. In the face of racism, we will not remain silent,” France’s sports minister Marina Ferrari wrote on X. “By targeting Kylian Mbappé, the senator is attacking everything our captain embodies and everything our country stands for: liberty, equality, and fraternity.”
France plays Morocco in the World Cup quarterfinals Thursday in Foxborough, Mass.
As Dodgers third baseman Max Muncy moved fluidly through a chopper at the edge of Camelback Ranch’s infield grass and made a running throw to first, his offseason work started to snap into place.
He wasn’t thinking about the angle he took to the ball, or how to get into the right position to throw — or anything, really. He was just moving instinctively.
“That’s how I like to field it in my work, is not necessarily traditionally,” Muncy told The Times on Thursday. “I like to field it one-handed, sometimes off the wrong foot, sometimes off balance, and that’s what works for me really, really well. I just couldn’t get that into the game. And finally getting those first couple of balls [this spring] to go that way just made everything click in my head and gave me the freedom to know that I can do it when it matters.”
Muncy has put together an impressive all-around first half. His .871 OPS through Thursday leads NL third basemen. He’s on pace for his highest slugging percentage (.513) in five years. But he’s most proud of the work he’s put in on the defensive side.
“I felt like I would show flashes of this, but never the consistency,” Muncy said. “And so to be able to just do it on the consistent daily basis that I’ve been doing this year, that’s easily what I’m most proud of.”
Now, with that well-rounded body of work, he’s in position to claim the third All-Star selection of his career and first since 2021.
Muncy entered Stage 2 of All-Star fan voting this week as the favorite to claim the starting nod at third base, up against fellow finalist Alec Bohm. But voting totals reset, adding some unpredictability to the process. The All-Star starters are set to be revealed Saturday at 4:30 p.m. on Fox.
“In total, the player, the defense, the hitting, the slugging, I think this is the best version of Max,” manager Dave Roberts said. “I’m so happy that he’s leading the All-Star voting.”
Not only is this shaping up to be Muncy’s best offensive season since 2021, it’s the best defensive season of his career, regardless of position.
Entering this weekend’s series against the Padres, he had a fielding run value of plus-five runs, tied with the Giants’ Matt Chapman for the highest mark among third basemen, according to Statcast.
“He’s always been a hitter,” first-base/infield coach Chris Woodward told The Times. “And I think he took it upon himself to say, ‘I’m going to prove to everybody that I’m a really good defensive player,’ which he has been in his time here, but he’s just never had the opportunity to play one position.”
Though Muncy is in his 11th major-league season, and has played all around the infield for most of it, 2022 marked his first season making the majority of his appearances at third base. And 2023 was his first season moving there full time.
He was also limited by injuries in that span. For years, he still felt the effects of the elbow injury he suffered toward the end of 2021. And he strained his right oblique in each of the last two seasons.
“Third base was just a new position for me, and it just took time to learn it,” Muncy said. “And so just trying to get my work to translate into the game is a tough thing to do, and that’s kind of the secret to every aspect of baseball.”
Each infield position is unique, with its own quirks in footwork, angles and timing. Each has plays — like a slow-roller up the third baseline that requires a quick throw across the diamond — that no other position will encounter.
“When a righty gets around the ball, it comes off the bat a lot different than when a lefty gets around the ball,” Muncy said. “And it’s weird how that works, and it’s hard to explain, but that’s just the way it is.”
For much of Muncy’s baseball life he played on the right side of the infield, fielding pull-side contact from left-handed hitters and opposite-field contact from right-handed hitters. That was second nature.
“You have to completely flip that,” Muncy said of playing third base, “and understand which way it’s going to bounce, how it’s going to bounce, how it’s going to get to you. It just took years of experience to finally get to that point.”
Dodgers shortstop Mookie Betts, left, and third baseman Max Muncy congratulate each other coming off the field after a defensive play against the Baltimore Orioles on June 19.
(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)
Woodward has always been impressed by Muncy’s agility, surprised when the Dodgers first promoted him in 2018 (as he returned to the big-leagues for the first time since being released by the A’s the previous spring) and by how he moved at second base, despite an atypical build for a middle infielder.
Now, after an offseason with a new diet and training program, he may have leveled up that part of his game — even at 35 years old.
“In the past it was a good first step, and he couldn’t sustain his speed,” Woodward said. “And this year I think he can sustain the speed through the ball.”
Said Muncy: “I’m still beating the age curve for now.”
Woodward also noted how good Muncy is at staying on top of the mental side of the game, knowing how specific pitches to different types of hitters should change his positioning. That, along with regular communication, are some of the details that make the Dodgers infield look like it’s moving as a unit — or, as Woodward put it, an “NFL defense” because of the way they swarm to the ball.
The Dodgers’ infield defense as a whole has improved even from last season (No. 6 in fielding run value) to sit in the No. 3 spot in the majors (plus-17 runs) a little past the halfway point of the season.
Muncy unlocking even more potential in the hot corner is a big part of the Dodgers raising their defensive ceiling. That’s helped the Dodgers, who own the best record in the majors, create separation in the standings. But it’ll be even more vital in the postseason, when the margin for error is at its thinnest.
In All-Star voting, defense won’t be the determining factor. Muncy’s increased power at the plate is the far flashier aspect of his case to start the Midsummer Classic. But a well-rounded resume doesn’t hurt.
Muncy can picture it: his three children — Sophie Kate, who turns 5 this month, Wyatt James, 3, and Macie Grace, who was born in January — taking in All-Star weekend in Philadelphia, watching their dad represent the National League.
“Being able to have my kids experience the whole ordeal with me would mean everything to me,” Muncy said. “My oldest is kind of old enough now to remember these types of things, and so I think it’d be really special to just share that moment with them.”
June 24 (UPI) — Global aquaculture production reached a record high, while Chile maintained its position as the leading supplier of salmon to the United States and one of the sector’s top exporting powers, according to a report by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.
According to the report The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture, global fisheries and aquaculture production reached 235 million tons in 2024. For the first time, aquaculture production surpassed 100 million tons of aquatic animals, 89% of which is destined for human consumption and provides at least one-fifth of the animal protein consumed by 3.1 billion people.
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations said Latin America and the Caribbean account for 15% of global aquatic product exports despite representing 9% of worldwide production, with a total of 13 million tons.
The region exported $27 billion worth of aquatic products, driven mainly by Chilean salmon, anchoveta from Peru and Chile, and Ecuadorian shrimp.
In this context, Chile ranks first in aquaculture production in Latin America, is the largest supplier of salmon to the United States and the world’s fifth-largest exporter of aquatic animal products.
Together with Norway, Chile accounts for nearly half of the value of global salmon and trout exports.
“The growth aquaculture has experienced in recent decades has not been accidental. Behind this progress lies significant work in research, innovation and technological development,” Valeska San Martín, an academic at the Coastal Research Center of the University of Atacama and a researcher at the Millennium Institute in Coastal Socio-Ecology, told UPI.
She said these advances have enabled the development of better feed for farmed species, more efficient genetic selection programs, increasingly precise environmental monitoring systems and automated tools that optimize feeding and health management.
“All of this has helped increase productivity and improve the efficient use of resources while at the same time reducing part of the costs associated with production,” she said.
San Martín added that Chile has been one of the most important players in global aquaculture development and is recognized by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations as one of the world’s 10 leading aquaculture producers.
“In 2024, it led global exports of frozen salmon and trout fillets, processed mussels, fishmeal and various algae-derived products, reaching more than 100 international markets, particularly the United States, Japan, Brazil, China and Europe,” she said.
Growth prospects remain positive, according to SalmonChile, the industry association representing salmon producers.
“Chilean salmon exports maintained a positive trend in 2026. During the first quarter, they reached $1.991 billion, representing growth of 8% in value and 19% in volume compared with the same period a year earlier,” the organization told UPI.
SalmonChile added that the record achieved by global aquaculture in 2024 confirms the growing prominence of aquaculture products in international trade and consolidates Chile’s position as one of the world’s leading salmon-producing powers.
A new sales tax that would generate $345 million annually for the Los Angeles Fire Department will go before voters later this year, the City Council decided Tuesday, as a stubborn warehouse blaze burned for a seventh day on the city’s eastern edge.
The council voted 14-0 to put the half-cent sales tax hike on the Nov. 3 ballot, with supporters saying the additional funds would go toward more firefighters, new fire stations and new equipment, such as firetrucks and helicopters.
The vote came nearly 18 months after the outbreak of the Palisades fire, which destroyed thousands of homes in Pacific Palisades, Malibu and other coastal areas, leaving 12 people dead. But it more immediately coincided with the city’s fight to extinguish the blaze at the Boyle Heights cold storage facility, which has spread smoke across the region over the last week.
The campaign for the sales tax hike is being spearheaded by United Firefighters of Los Angeles City Local 112, the union that represents nearly 3,400 firefighters. Appearing before the council, union leaders pointed to the Boyle Heights fire as the latest sign that the city needs more money for emergency response.
“This is our plan to undo decades of under-investment in the department,” said Ryan Quigley, a 23-year firefighter/paramedic who also serves as the union’s secretary.
Mayor Karen Bass, through a spokesperson, said she is grateful to the union for bringing the tax proposal forward.
“[The mayor] has championed this measure from the very beginning,” the spokesperson, Paige Sterling, said in a statement.
The firefighters union began gathering signatures for the tax earlier this year, submitting them to the city clerk last month. Since then, backers have voiced confidence that it would pass, given the growing concern across the city about urban wildfires.
Still, the path to victory could be complicated by recent events.
Last month, Los Angeles County voters narrowly passed a different half-cent sales tax hike that’s expected to raise $1 billion annually to pay for healthcare. That measure, which received just above the 50% needed for passage, pushed the tax rate within the city of Los Angeles to 10.25 cents for every dollar of spending.
If voters approve the fire tax increase as well, the rate will jump to 10.75 cents per dollar.
The firefighters union also will be campaigning in a year when one of its recent leaders, Adam Walker, has been charged with one count each of grand theft and forgery. He has been accused of stealing more than $82,000 from a charity for injured firefighters to pay for his online gambling, his mortgage and other personal expenses.
Union President Doug Coates said Walker left his position two years ago. The union, he said, intends to make clear to voters that “the money is going to the right thing.”
So far, no one has emerged as an opponent of the tax increase. The Central City Assn., a downtown-based business group, is supporting the fire tax.
Susan Shelley, spokesperson for the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn., said her organization has not taken a position on the proposal. Still, she argued that sales taxes in general are “extremely regressive,” hitting the hardest for Angelenos who can afford it the least.
“Our view is that the city budget should be prioritized to fund the fire department from the first dollar, not the last dollar,” Shelley said. “And that there shouldn’t be a need for a tax increase.”
The sales tax hike, if approved by voters, would represent the most significant public investment in the fire department since 2000, when voters passed a $532-million bond measure to pay for new facilities. Backers said the tax increase would help the department speed up emergency response times, while also building new fire stations and repairing existing ones.
The firefighters union began work on the tax proposal more than two years ago, before the inferno that erupted on Jan. 7, 2025, and carved a lethal path through Pacific Palisades and other communities. Still, the push for more funding gained greater attention in the wake of the fire.
While the flames were still raging, then-Fire Chief Kristin Crowley went on local and national television to accuse city leaders of failing to give her department the resources it needed. The media blitz shocked some at City Hall, who believed Crowley should have waited until the emergency was over before publicly assigning blame.
Crowley and the union said city leaders had forced the department to scale back its operations amid a budget crunch. Bass and the city’s policy analysts pointed out that fire department spending grew that year, largely because of pay increases given to firefighters.
Bass ultimately ousted Crowley, saying the chief failed to properly deploy firefighters amid warnings of dangerous Santa Ana winds. Crowley, who was demoted to another position, filed a lawsuit against the city, saying the mayor engaged in a retaliation campaign.
The fire that broke out last week at the Lineage Logistics cold storage facility has helped to rekindle calls for additional fire department funding.
Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez, whose Eastside district has been enveloped in smoke in recent days, told her colleagues Tuesday that climate change and corporate negligence are making such emergencies “more frequent and more severe.”
“Whether it’s the devastating fires that hit Altadena and the Palisades last year, or the Boyle Heights warehouse fire currently affecting air quality and public health across the whole city, every one of our districts is feeling the impacts,” she said, before voting to put the tax on the ballot.
Councilmember Traci Park, who represents the Palisades, said the fires in the Palisades and Boyle Heights have “exposed Los Angeles’ urgent need to modernize LAFD for the realities and demands of a modern century.”
Fire Chief Jaime Moore, in an interview Monday, said he asked Bass to declare a state of emergency last week so that his department could obtain additional resources to fight the Boyle Heights fire, including firefighters, firetrucks, drone pilots and hazardous materials teams.
“I had firefighters work Wednesday afternoon, Thursday, Friday, Saturday. I talked to my incident commander, and he goes, ‘Chief, these guys are getting their butts kicked.’ And that’s when I said, ‘I’m gonna reach out to the mayor, and I’m gonna see what I can do to get the state of emergency declared.’”
Supporters of the sales tax increase contend the department lacks the personnel to serve a city of nearly 4 million people. According to the union, L.A. has nearly 3,400 firefighters, roughly the same number as 50 years ago.
If voters pass the sales tax hike, the city would have the funds to bring the department up to 5,000 firefighters by 2050, union officials said.
WASHINGTON — Cameron Hamilton, President Trump’s nominee to lead the Federal Emergency Management Agency, pledged to senators Wednesday to be “fair and reasonable” in assessing requests for disaster aid as he seeks to run an agency roiled by the administration’s threats to dismantle it.
Hamilton appeared before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs at a hearing where lawmakers assessed a group of 10 nominees for administration posts.
“My focus will be to ensure that FEMA is objective, is fair and reasonable, follows the law, and is consistent” in how it reviews disaster declaration requests, Hamilton told Michigan Sen. Gary Peters, the top Democrat on the committee. Peters had asked about partisanship in granting major disaster declarations.
Hamilton had a brief tenure as FEMA’s temporary leader early last year but was ousted after defending the agency’s existence. At a House hearing in May 2025, he said he did not “believe it is in the best interest of the American people to eliminate” FEMA. He was fired the next day.
His nomination comes as the Republican administration has increasingly signaled it is backing away from promises to dismantle an agency that the president has heavily criticized.
If confirmed, he would be FEMA’s first permanent administrator in Trump’s second term. He will need to lead FEMA through what is expected to be a busy summer disaster season, while answering to Trump, who is likely to expect major changes after a council he appointed recommended sweeping moves at the agency that is part of the Department of Homeland Security.
Hamilton distanced himself from some FEMA controversies
Nominees did not give opening statements, but Hamilton received the bulk of lawmakers’ questions while appearing with four others in the first half of the hearing.
His answers suggested a departure from some of the more aggressive policies considered and enacted during Kristi Noem’s turbulent leadership at DHS. FEMA’s workforce has been worn down by mass staff departures, policies that hamstrung operations and a protracted DHS shutdown.
Hamilton expressed faith in the FEMA staff and praised the recent opening of 350 positions to counteract some of the cuts. He said that if confirmed by the Senate, he would do what he could to speed up disaster declaration decisions and reimbursements to states, tribes and territories.
“We owe you answers, I think, much faster,” he told Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo), adding that many FEMA processes needed to be simplified.
Hamilton disavowed a recommendation he included in an April 2025 memo to quadruple the threshold of financial damages a state needed to prove to receive FEMA public assistance. He also noted the importance of resilience funding, despite halting billions in resilience grants during his previous tenure.
Republican and Democratic senators at the hearing expressed support for FEMA’s mission, despite Trump’s early threats to eliminate it. “I think what your agency does is hugely important,” Hawley told Hamilton.
But multiple Democrats echoed Peters’ concern that Trump was approving far more disaster declaration requests from Republican states than Democratic ones.
Of the state disaster declaration requests Trump answered through the end of May, he approved about 82% from states that voted for him in the last election and 44% from states that voted for Democrat Kamala Harris, according to an analysis of public FEMA data by Andrew Rumbach, senior fellow at the nonpartisan think tank Urban Institute.
Hamilton, a former Navy SEAL, has never worked as a state or local emergency manager and has publicly criticized FEMA in the past. He has held positions at DHS and the State Department related to emergency response.
No senator questioned Hamilton’s suitability for the position.
Federal law requires the FEMA administrator to have “a demonstrated ability in and knowledge of emergency management and homeland security” and at least five years of “executive leadership and management experience.”
Criticism over hearing format
Peters criticized the committee chairman, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), for scheduling so many nominees at once, saying that made it more difficult for senators to properly screen them.
“The lineup today severely limits our ability to have transparency for the American public,” Peters said. He noted that Hamilton was among two nominees whose FBI background investigations were not yet complete, and that two others had not submitted their financial disclosure reports.
Others who appeared included Trump’s pick for deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget, Hal Duncan, and administrator of the Transportation Security Administration, David Cummins.
Paul said the committee would only vote on the nominees when their financial and background checks were complete.
A former top officer of the Los Angeles Fire Department’s labor union was arrested Wednesday and charged with grand theft and forgery for allegedly stealing more than $82,000 from a charity for injured firefighters.
Prosecutors from the state attorney general’s office announced the charges against Adam Walker, former secretary of the United Firefighters of Los Angeles City, at a news conference.
Walker “abused a position of trust for personal gain,” Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta said alongside Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Nathan Hochman.
Walker opened a foundation bank account and transferred funds to his personal accounts, Bonta said, attempting to conceal those transfers with fake reimbursement records and forging receipts to mislead auditors. He used the funds for personal expenses, including online gambling, Bonta said.
Walker has been under scrutiny since 2024, when the local union’s parent organization, the International Assn. of Fire Fighters, suspended him from his union position and accused him of improperly depositing more than $75,000 of the charity’s funds into his personal accounts from December 2022 to January 2024. The IAFF accused him of using $5,000 for personal expenses.
Walker, who continued to work as a firefighter, told The Times last year that those allegations were false. He said the account he drew from was not for the charity, the UFLAC Fire Foundation, but was set up for two golf tournaments to raise money for a disabled former firefighter. He said all of the deposits were reimbursements for his legitimate out-of-pocket expenses for the tournaments.
“Not one penny of the money was foundation money,” he said. He said he understood that the deposits “look bad” but were a reflection of his “poor bookkeeping” and not any wrongdoing.
The Washington D.C.-based IAFF also suspended Walker from his positions as chairman and director of the foundation, which aids injured firefighters and their families, provides scholarships and is helping firefighters who lost their homes in the January fires.
WASHINGTON — Republicans are warning the White House that a critical surveillance authority is likely to lapse this week amid bipartisan backlash over President Trump’s pick to lead the nation’s intelligence community.
Sen. Tom Cotton, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and Sen. Chuck Grassley, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, sounded the alarm over the weekend after a failed procedural vote to extend the program.
The senators in a letter urged Secretary of State Marco Rubio to prepare “for a potential significant gap in foreign intelligence collection” if the authority expires. Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, set to lapse June 12, allows agencies including the CIA, National Security Agency and FBI to collect communications from foreign targets overseas without a warrant.
Efforts to secure a long-term extension of the program already faced hurdles because of bipartisan concerns that the program can incidentally collect Americans’ communications. Privacy advocates and some lawmakers have been pushing to create a new warrant requirement before those communications can be searched.
Senate leaders from both parties appeared to be nearing agreement on a long-term extension. But the effort collapsed after Trump selected federal housing finance regulator Bill Pulte to serve as acting director of national intelligence.
“I know how important this tool is. Why the president would throw this live hand grenade of Bill Pulte in 10 days before this is due to expire, I’m not sure,” Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said on ABC’s “This Week.”
Pulte pick upends bipartisan deal
Early Friday morning, after senators spent the night debating separate immigration legislation, seven Republicans joined nearly all Democrats in blocking a long-term extension of the surveillance authority.
Democrats and several Republicans registered their opposition to Trump’s selection of Pulte, arguing the federal housing finance regulator lacks the experience needed to oversee the nation’s 18 intelligence agencies.
“The naming of Pulte to that position, although the timing arguably wasn’t the best, I still don’t think it ought to derail something that’s this important,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune said.
Thune has expressed concern over Pulte’s pick, saying the nation’s top intelligence post should not be “weaponized” and that the job should be filled by “professionals.” Cotton, who rarely strays from supporting Trump and a leading advocate for the surveillance authority, declined to endorse Pulte, saying only that he had “no observations on the matter.”
“He’s not qualified for the long-term position,” Republican Sen. James Lankford, another member of the Intelligence Committee, told “Fox News Sunday.” “That’s been clear on this. He has no national security background.
Both Republican and Democratic senators skeptical of Pulte pointed to his record at the Federal Housing Finance Agency. In the role, he’s been linked with criminal referrals over allegations of mortgage fraud by public officials Trump sought to punish, including New York Attorney General Letitia James, a Democrat; Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif.; and Lisa Cook, a board member of the Federal Reserve.
Republicans will need to garner some Democratic support to pass any extension of the surveillance authority in the Senate. But a breakthrough appears difficult so long as Pulte remains in the position, which Trump said last week would only be temporary.
“I don’t see any path to convincing enough Democrats,” Warner said on CNN’s “State of the Union” when asked if renewal was possible with Pulte in the position.
The current reauthorization debate is hardly the first time that lawmakers have grappled with the fate of the surveillance program, particularly after a flurry of revelations about government misuse of the vast trove of intelligence it collects.
The topic in recent years has scrambled predictable partisan alliances, with Democratic critics of the Trump administration uniting with skeptics of government power on the right in voicing concerns about Section 702’s renewal.
In 2024, for instance, those divisions nearly caused the program to lapse. The Senate barely missed its midnight deadline that year before approving by a 60-34 margin legislation to reauthorize Section 702 that was subsequently signed by then-President Joe Biden.
A spokesperson at the Justice Department did not immediately return messages seeking comment Monday about the national security concerns that would be created if the program lapses. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence referred inquiries to the White House, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“America faces real threats from foreign adversaries, terrorists, cyber actors, and hostile intelligence services,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said on social media Sunday. “Section 702 remains one of our nation’s most effective tools for identifying and disrupting those threats before they reach our shores.”
Cotton and Grassley said they believed Democratic leaders would not support another short-term extension of the surveillance authority and urged Rubio to prepare contingency plans. They said Trump should consider an executive order to prevent a disruption in intelligence collection.
Cotton and Warner had said they were close on a bipartisan deal on a long-term extension and could still move quickly should a change occur before Friday. Still, the bill would likely need to go through the House — and the two chambers so far have disagreed on a separate issue regarding central banking digital currency.
“If we go dark next week, right before the World Cup FIFA games, and the 250th anniversary, that would be the most grossly irresponsible thing I’ve seen Congress do in my 22 years in office,” Texas Republican Rep. Michael McCaul said on ABC’s “This Week.”
Cappelletti, Jalonick and Tucker write for the Associated Press.
When Nithya Raman stepped up to a podium on the night of L.A.’s mayoral primary election, she thanked her supporters for standing up to the “powerful interests” who spent millions of dollars trying to “preserve this city’s broken and unjust status quo.”
“At a time when so many people have written Los Angeles off or have lost hope in the future of this incredible city,” the democratic socialist L.A. mayoral hopeful said, “you are proof that Angelenos are hungry for change.”
But as election results rolled in, the movement for change was underwhelming, or at least divided. Incumbent Mayor Karen Bass was in the lead, advancing to the November runoff. That left Raman locked in a battle for a second spot with Republican former reality TV star Spencer Pratt.
Bass is one of several high-profile establishment Democrats to emerge on top. In California’s gubernatorial race, centrist Xavier Becerra, a veteran of the Biden Cabinet, advanced to the runoff after being challenged from the left by billionaire green activist Tom Steyer and Democratic former U.S. Rep. Katie Porter. Steyer is now behind Steve Hilton, a Republican, and battling to make the runoff.
Still reeling from the rise of Donald Trump, Democrats in California and beyond are struggling to figure out the future direction of the party.
Some progressives, inspired by Zohran Mamdani’s New York mayoral victory, saw 2026 as an opportunity to move the city further left. But the results have been mixed in key races, with veteran Democrats like Bass and Becerra eking out leads even as polls show dissatisfaction with status quo politics in California.
“This was supposed to be a change revolution, but voters clearly said no to the revolution,” said Sara Sadhwani, a politics professor at Pomona College. “Voters want change,” she noted, “but it doesn’t appear right now that there has been an appetite for a major shift in the ideology of the city or the state.”
Xavier Becerra speaks during an election night event in downtown Los Angeles on Tuesday.
(Eric Thayer/Los Angeles Times)
Becerra emerged as the Democratic favorite late in the election and won support from many establishment party leaders. Pundits said after a wild primary that included the implosion of Democratic U.S. Rep. Eric Swalwell’s campaign amid sex assault allegations, Becerra emerged as a “safe” choice.
Some opponents attacked his moderate views and his willingness to accept campaign donations from big oil companies like Chevron. But that did not stop his rise.
Bass was also beset with challenges, being an incumbent in a city beset with problems.
For her, election night marked a “victory with an asterisk,” Sadhwani said, noting that Bass is first incumbent L.A. mayor in more than two decades to face a runoff. “It would be wrong for Karen Bass to think that this victory … is a ringing endorsement of the work she is currently doing.”
The results underscore Bass’ unpopularity as an incumbent, garnering just 35% of the vote so far. If Raman can catch up and eventually surpass Pratt in the vote count, she could pose a considerable challenge to Bass as more young voters come to the polls in November.
Mike Bonin, a former L.A. City Council member who leads the Pat Brown Institute for Public Affairs at Cal State L.A., said if Bass exceeded expectations it was because they were very low.
“Coming in first in a runoff isn’t a huge victory for an incumbent mayor,” he said. “Two-thirds of the city did not vote for her. That’s not a position of strength.”
James Adams, a political science professor at UC Davis, said that Becerra and Bass coming through indicates the centrist Democratic candidates were in a stronger short-term position than their rivals. But problems loom ahead, he said, as the longtime Democratic establishment that’s been governing California for the last 15 years failed to make notable progress in solving problems with affordable housing, homelessness, public transportation and education.
“I think the Democrats’ prospects are very bright in 2026 given the California Republicans’ dysfunctionality and a complete backlash against Donald Trump,” Adams said. “But I have much bigger concerns about the California Democrats long term, because it seems to me they’re setting a record for most consecutive years of failing to fix the state’s problems while getting reelected anyway.”
Democrats in California, he said, were suffering from being in power too long.
“Whenever one party gets into a long-term, dominant position, usually because the other party is just in the midst of self-destructing … the whole thing ends in tears, because the party that is in a dominant position, they don’t have to be that good.”
As the vote count continues in the mayor’s race, democratic socialists in Los Angeles already have some wins down-ballot.
“We are gaining momentum,” said Leslie Chang, a co-chair of the 5,000-member L.A. chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, a decentralized anti-capitalist group that advocates for rental protections and defunding the police. Over the last six years, Angelenos have elected four DSA-backed City Council members and a DSA-recommended city controller.
The DSA did not officially endorse Raman, because she entered the race after the group had issued endorsements and another DSA candidate was also running for mayor. However, three of the six DSA-backed candidates for citywide office were projected to win outright.
DSA Councilmembers Hugo Soto-Martinez and Eunisses Hernandez were reelected by such large margins they avoided runoffs. In the city attorney’s race, DSA-endorsed Marissa Roy was in the lead and the mainstream Democratic incumbent became the first city attorney ousted in a primary in nearly a century. City Controller Kenneth Mejia, a progressive anti-establishment candidate who is not a DSA member but an ally of the group, led by nearly 20 percentage points.
When Chang knocked on doors, she said, some voters asked: “Well, what’s the difference between Nithya and Karen Bass?”
A few voters told her that after reviewing Bass’ and Raman’s websites, they found their platforms similar. Chang was surprised. She thought Raman articulated a clear and novel strategy for how to get L.A. out of the housing crisis, but she said some on the left took issue with her working with housing developers to reduce red tape.
Neel Sannappa, chair of the California Democratic Party’s progressive caucus, said Raman was stymied by getting into the race late and having only a few months to campaign. It also didn’t help that a more left-wing challenger, Rae Huang, already had some momentum — not enough to win, but enough to split the left.
“Nithya does represent something real and growing in Los Angeles,” Sannappa said. “There is a hunger for more progressive, left-leaning candidates that want to make sure that we’re investing in people and not so much investing in just police … and being able to build things that are new and innovative.”
Supporters watch election results come in on their phones during Nithya Raman’s election night party at Boomtown Brewery on Tuesday.
(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)
Some have criticized Raman’s coalition-building, noting she was not endorsed by her fellow DSA-backed City Council members. Others said the MIT and Harvard graduate, who has been a councilmember for six years, performed tepidly in a May televised debate and suffered from Pratt’s attempts to tie her to the establishment.
“If you’re a part of the institution, which she is,” Sadhwani said, “then you can’t exactly claim that you’re going to bring massive change.”
Sadhwani said that California’s left, in contrast to New York’s, appears to have a charisma deficit. While Pratt and Hilton had an advantage with their television backgrounds, they also spoke “in plain terms about the real problems that the state faces.”
Part of Bass’ success can also be attributed to assembling a coalition that included the L.A. County Federation of Labor, the L.A. police officers union, the L.A. County Democratic Party and immigrant rights groups.
In the mayoral race, Sadhwani said, “the dominant political coalition still has power, money, the organization.”
“If you can garner the support of the unions, then having a broader message, maybe it’s less important,” she said. “You don’t have to work quite so hard, because the unions have the base machine.”
People attend Mayor Bass’ election party for the California 2026 primaries at the LINE Hotel on Tuesday.
(Carlin Stiehl/For The Times)
Yusef Robb, a longtime Democratic strategist who is an advisor to Bass, attributed the mayor’s lead to her campaign’s success in building a broad coalition and communicating across the political spectrum. Most voters, he said, tend to think less about ideology — and whether a Democrat was mainstream or DSA-supported — than candidates’ positions on bread and butter issues.
“Mayor’s races are first and foremost about what people see outside of their front doors, when they walk their kids to school, when they drive to work,” he said. “At the end of the day, the voters look at the field and say, ‘OK, who do I trust to keep my kids from having to skip around a tent on the way to school?’ ‘Who can I trust to hire more officers?’ … and ‘Who can I trust to fight back against ICE in court through executive action and even in the streets?’ And that’s Karen Bass.”
For Democrats in this robustly blue state, part of the challenge in figuring a path forward is that every candidate — even those already in power — pitches themselves as a bona fide progressive against the status quo.
“We have led a grassroots campaign because we want to bring change to our city,” Bass said on election night. “And that’s what we’ve been doing, and that’s what we’re going to continue to do.”
Raman also tried to tout herself as a change candidate. Articulating her platform in broad strokes rather than bread-and-butter detail, Raman said she wanted L.A. to be a place “where government actually functions and delivers every day on this city’s beautiful bighearted values, where we stand up against ICE, where we show up for our gay and trans siblings.”
But as she talked of neighborhoods “full of trees and shade … and people and good food,” she seemed low-key and equivocal. Her message was a far cry from the pressing one U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) put forward in his presidential campaigns, highlighting the millions of Americans working for “starvation wages” and a young single mother in Nevada struggling on $10.45 an hour.
Ultimately, the fight between Bass and Raman, as a struggle between mainstream and progressive Democrats, is complicated by the fact that Bass came up through the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, founding the grassroots Community Coalition in South L.A. in the 1990s.
Campaign worker Khai Dombroe prepares balloons before Nithya Raman’s election night party.
(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)
And even though Raman is a DSA member, she has tacked to the center during the campaign, distancing herself from past calls to defund the police by saying she did not want the LAPD to lose more officers.
While Raman and Bass have much in common, the most significant difference between them is on homelessness, Sannappa said. Even though Bass comes from a political tradition of not wanting to criminalize the unhoused, he said, she understood her voters include people wanting to move homeless people off the streets.
“Brass tacks is that we need people that are going to be willing to fight for mental health services,” Sannappa said.
“I think Nithya more so represents the direction where the Democratic Party is going to have to go.”
As L.A. becomes less affordable and homeownership becomes out of reach for many Angelenos, young renters have become a rising political constituency — a shift that many say will likely propel the city leftward.
Bonin said he expected the next new rising Democratic coalition in L.A. to be a labor-renter coalition. He cited Councilmember Soto-Martinez, a renter and union organizer, as probably the best avatar of that.
But as the middle-class splinters along generational lines, other political experts warn that many ordinary Angelenos feel increasingly shut out of L.A. politics.
“Once upon a time the Democratic Party was the party of the working class, and today it has become the party of the educated elites,” Sadhwani said. “Perhaps one of the gifts that Donald Trump has given to Democrats is to force them to contend with the everyday issues of voters, which they seem to have distanced themselves from.”
As many Angelenos feel worse off now than four years ago, Chang said Bass was not directly responsible for every problem. Still, she said, she could have done more to move the city in the right direction.
Delaying the wage boost tied to the 2028 Olympics, she said, was a move that failed working people at a time when many are struggling to make ends meet.
“My fear, of course, is people pivot away from corporate Democrats and they choose the MAGA Republican, because that is the most visible fight,” Chang said. “Or because they think, ‘Oh, well, a democratic socialist running on the Democratic Party line, this is just more of the same status quo.’ ”
WASHINGTON — President Trump said Thursday that federal housing finance regulator Bill Pulte, his pick for acting director of national intelligence, would not be his “permanent” choice for the critical security post.
The Republican president’s disclosure that he was ruling out installing Pulte in the position full time came after bipartisan pushback on Capitol Hill in recent days over Pulte’s lack of national security experience. The position requires Senate confirmation, something that lawmakers indicated was unlikely if Pulte were the nominee.
“He’s not going to be permanent because, you know, I don’t think he’d want to be permanent,” Trump said while taking questions in the Oval Office after an event on coal. He called Pulte a “very smart guy” and said he may look at past elections that Trump claims, without credible evidence, were “rigged” against him.
Trump said other candidates were under consideration for nomination to the post. “We’re interviewing people right now,” he said.
Pulte, a grandson of the founder of PulteGroup, has been a source of controversy within the administration for his work as director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency and his oversight of the mortgage companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
Pulte has used his position to pursue Trump’s perceived political rivals for alleged mortgage fraud and has verbally attacked Jerome H. Powell, whose term as the Federal Reserve chairman recently ended after months of Trump and Pulte attacking him for not slashing the central bank’s benchmark rates. The federal housing finance regulator has also pitched a 50-year mortgage, an idea that backfired as it meant that the process of building wealth through homeownership would be slowed.
Both Republican and Democratic senators expressed concerns about Pulte and his lack of national security credentials in occupying a role coordinating 18 federal agencies involved in domestic and foreign security issues. Trump’s initial director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, resigned last month, citing her husband’s recent cancer diagnosis.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, a Republican from South Dakota, said the national intelligence director job shouldn’t be “weaponized” and should be led by “professionals.”
Republican Sens. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and John Cornyn of Texas, who are each leaving the chamber after this year’s elections, also expressed concerns about Pulte.
Democratic senators view Pulte as a risk even if he is serving only temporarily as the director of national intelligence while keeping his position at the FHFA.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) sent Trump a letter on Thursday calling on him to rescind Pulte’s national security appointment.
“Americans cannot trust him to protect our nation and refrain from misusing the sensitive information he will have access to,” Warren wrote, saying that giving Pulte the job on an acting basis was a risk because Trump’s own words suggested the federal agency could be used “to promote election denial theories.”
At a hearing on Wednesday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent confirmed reports that he had threatened to fight Pulte in September, a sign of the friction that the federal housing finance director had generated inside the administration.
But as a frequent traveler on Air Force One, Pulte has a close relationship with Trump.
“He’s a person who’s got high integrity,” Trump said Thursday about Pulte.
In a few days, Los Angeles voters will be casting ballots for city attorney — and in a few months, they could be voting to sharply diminish the city attorney’s authority.
The city’s Charter Reform Commission has proposed splitting the city attorney’s office into two parts — an elected city prosecutor, charged with handling criminal misdemeanors, and a mayor-appointed and City Council-confirmed city attorney who would represent the city in civil cases and advise the mayor, city council and city departments.
The City Council is reviewing the recommendation as part of sweeping changes to city government, including expanding the council from 15 to 25 seats, which could go before voters in the Nov. 3 general election.
The proposed changes to the city attorney’ office, however, come in the midst of a heated primary campaign, where incumbent Hydee Feldstein Soto is up against three challengers, including a state deputy attorney general and a deputy district attorney.
Both of those challengers say plans to bifurcate the city attorney’s office are rooted in longstanding conflicts between Feldstein Soto and the City Council.
And last year, City Council took a 12-0 vote to direct Feldstein Soto to withdraw an effort to halt a federal judge’s order prohibiting LAPD officers from targeting journalists with crowd control weapons.
“When I first heard about this idea, I thought it was probably the greatest indictment of the current city attorney that I’ve heard yet,” said John McKinney, a Los Angeles County deputy district attorney who is running for city attorney in Tuesday’s primary.
McKinney opposes the bifurcation, saying it will cause overlap and confusion. “If she was doing a good job … we wouldn’t even be having this discussion,” he said.
Marissa Roy, another candidate in the race, hasn’t taken a position on bifurcation but said Feldstein Soto’s actions triggered the proposed change.
“The only reason that bifurcation, or splitting the city attorney’s office, is even going to be going before voters is because we’ve had an incumbent city attorney who has gone so rogue to politicize the role,” said Roy, a deputy state attorney general.
Roy said accused Feldstein Soto of inappropriately blocking an affordable housing project in Venice. And in her office’s role of drafting ordinance language, Roy said, Feldstein Soto has returned to city council ordinance language that isn’t “faithful to the intent of the drafter.”
Feldstein Soto said the proposal to bifurcate the office has nothing to do with her performance.
“This issue comes up every single time charter reform comes up,” Feldstein Soto said. “To me this is all political opportunism.”
Feldstein Soto has opposed the split, and former city attorneys have also come out against it, saying an appointed position threatens the independence of the city attorney’s office, takes away from voters the right to elect a city attorney and could cost taxpayers money in order to split the office.
In a March letter to the Charter Reform Commission, Feldstein Soto said an attorney “serving at the pleasure” of the mayor and city council would face an “innate, human pressure to harmonize legal advice with the political goals of the appointing officials.”
“I have been able to provide honest, accurate legal advice to the Mayor, City Council, Controller and departments — even when that advice is unwelcome — precisely because I am an independently elected officeholder with an ultimate duty to the public,” she wrote. “An appointed City Attorney, serving at the pleasure of the Mayor and City Council, faces enormous political pressure on all of these issues, behind closed doors, cloaked in privilege without an independent voice.”
Burt Pines, a former city attorney who served from 1973 to 1981, deeply opposes the bifurcation proposal, citing the threat to independence as the largest issue at stake. As city attorney, he said, he was empowered to tell city officials when a proposed action was unlawful and refuse to support it.
“You want to be able to call the shots as you see them, true to the law,” Pines said in an interview.
Advocates say other cities have bifurcated offices, and splitting it could reduce conflict and provide a clear delineation of roles.
After consulting with experts and good governance groups, the commission agreed the benefits of bifurcation outweighed the negatives, and it passed unanimously by the commission.
“It was easy to get consensus on this,” said Raymond Meza, chair of the commission. The commission’s proposal calls for the city attorney to be nominated by the mayor, and confirmed by the City Council.
In its report, the commission said that “the current structure creates conflicts when the same office advises the city and prosecutes cases. Separation provides clearer roles, reduces conflicts, and allows each function to be performed effectively.”
Other cities have different models for the city attorney’s office: Long Beach has a similar model with bifurcated duties, while New York City has legal representation split up several ways. The San Francisco City Attorney provides legal representation for the city and county of San Francisco, and the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office handles criminal cases in the city and county.
Mike Bonin, executive director of the Pat Brown Institute, said he has seen the question of splitting the office come up with at least three different city attorneys to varying degrees.
“Given that the city attorney is an elected position, there’s always going to be somebody who doesn’t like them,” Bonin, a former city council member, said. “You need to divorce the question from the occupant and focus on the role — the charter is not about a particular person, the charter is about the function of the office.”
JOHANNESBURG — The government in South Africa and Afrikaner advocacy groups on Wednesday rejected the position of the Trump administration that there’s a humanitarian emergency affecting white people in South Africa.
The argument served as the rationale for raising the U.S. refugee cap, but only for white Afrikaners. The Trump administration said Tuesday that it will admit an additional 10,000 white South Africans into the U.S. as refugees this year, increasing its annual cap, but blocking people from other countries from entering through the program.
President Trump’s announcement on the Federal Register that he was increasing the refugee cap because of “an unforeseen emergency refugee situation.” He blamed the South African government for “recent increases in the incitement of racially motivated violence,” but Trump gave no specific information.
The South African government’s international relations department said Wednesday that accusations of systemic persecution of white Afrikaners are unfounded, pointing out that some beneficiaries of an immigration program have chosen to return to South Africa.
“This reality is further corroborated by the actions of individuals who, despite having availed themselves of this preferential immigration program, have since resolved to return home,” spokesman Chrispin Phiri said.
Afrikaner trade union, Solidariteit, argued that refugee status isn’t a viable solution for Afrikaners, who should thrive in South Africa instead. Spokesman Jaco Kleynhans said that the organization hadn’t discussed any “unforeseen emergency refugee situation” with the Trump administration, but respects the autonomy of U.S. refugee policy toward Afrikaners.
The union “is in no way aware of anything that the Trump administration could be referring to,” Kleynhans said.
AfriForum, a lobbying organization for the country’s white Afrikaner minority with more than 300,000 members, said it “does not have information” regarding the specific assertion that there’s an emergency refugee situation.
The organization’s CEO, Kallie Kriel, said the group’s focus is “fighting to create the circumstances in South Africa where there is no need for Afrikaners to leave.”
Trump suspended the U.S. refugee program on his first day in office and, since then, has turned it into a vehicle to allow Afrikaners — a group of white South Africans descended mainly from Dutch settlers — into the United States. Advocates say the decision to focus a decades-old program on one group has left people around the world fleeing war and strife stranded and with few options.
Refugee groups have questioned why white South Africans are being prioritized ahead of people from countries facing war and natural disasters. Vetting for refugee status in the U.S. often takes years.
The Trump administration’s preference for white Afrikaner refugee admissions, according to Dr. Bryony Fox, a social justice researcher at Stellenbosch University, raises questions about selective humanitarianism, inconsistent refugee protection and favoring privileged groups, while ignoring other refugee populations experiencing severe hardships.
“This risks politicizing refugee protection in a way that may ultimately weaken the legitimacy and universality of the refugee regime itself,” she said.
