The five-term Louisiana congressman earned a law degree and maneuvered his way to become speaker of the House. That requires a certain mental aptitude.
But maybe Johnson isn’t stupid. Maybe he’s just willfully ignorant, or uninformed. Perhaps he simply doesn’t know any better.
How else to explain his persistent claim there’s something sinister and nefarious about the way California casts and counts its election ballots?
Just last week, Johnson once again repeated one of the sophistries the president uses to dump all over the country’s elections system and explain away his oft-verified loss in the 2020 presidential campaign.
With an apparent eye toward rigging the 2026 midterm election, Trump suggested Republicans should “take over the voting” in at least “15 places,” which, presumably, would all be Democratic strongholds. Johnson — bowing, scraping — echoed Trump’s phony claims of corruption to justify the president’s latest treachery.
“In some of the states, like in California, for example. I mean, they hold the elections open for weeks after election day,” Johnson told reporters. “We had three House Republican candidates who were ahead on election day in the last election cycle, and every time a new tranche of ballots came in, they just magically whittled away until their leads were lost. … It looks on its face to be fraudulent.”
Fact check: There was no hocus-pocus. No “holding open” of elections to allow for manipulation of the result. No voting or any other kind of fraud.
California does take awhile to count its ballots and finalize its elections. If people want a quicker count, then push lawmakers in Sacramento to spend more on the consistently underfunded election offices that tally the results in California’s 58 counties.
That said, there are plenty of reasons — none involving any kind of partisan chicanery — that explain why California elections seems to drag on and vote totals shift as ballots are steadily counted.
For starters, there are a lot of ballots to count. Over the last several decades, California has worked to encourage as many eligible citizens as possible to invest in the state and its future by engaging at election time and voting.
That’s a good thing. Participatory democracy, and all that.
Once votes are cast, California takes great care to make sure they’re legitimate and counted properly. (Which is exactly what Trump and Johnson want, right? Right?)
That diligence takes time. It may require looking up an individual’s address or verifying his or her signature. Or routing a ballot dropped off at the wrong polling location to its appropriate county for processing.
In recent years, California has shifted to conducting its elections predominantly by mail. That’s further extended the counting process. The state allows those ballots to arrive and be counted up to seven days after the election, so long as they are postmarked on or before election day. Once received, each mail ballot has to be verified and processed before it can be counted. That prolongs the process.
County elections officials have 30 days to tally each valid ballot and conduct a required postelection audit. That’s been the time frame under state law for quite some time.
“For that reason, we get an outsized amount of criticism for our long vote count, because everyone’s impatient,” said Kim Alexander, president of the nonpartisan California Voter Foundation.
As for why the vote in congressional races has tended to shift in Democrats’ favor, there’s a simple, non-diabolical explanation.
Republican voters have generally preferred to cast their ballots in person, on election day. Democrats are more likely to mail their ballots, meaning they arrive — and get counted — later. As those votes were tallied, several close contests in 2024 moved in Democrats’ direction.
There are plenty of reasons to bash California, if one is so inclined.
The exorbitant cost of housing. Nightmarish traffic. High rates of poverty and homelessness.
But on the plus side, a comprehensive study — the 2024 Cost of Voting Index, published in the Election Law Journal — ranked California seventh in the nation in the ease of casting a ballot. That’s something to be proud of.
As for Johnson, the evidence suggests the speaker is neither dumb nor uninformed when it comes to California and its elections. Rather, he’s scheming and cynical, sowing unwarranted and corrosive doubts about election integrity to mollify Trump and thwart a free and fair election in November.
SACRAMENTO — Gov. Gavin Newsom is heading to a conference of world leaders in Germany later this week as part of his ongoing effort to use the global stage to urge investment in California’s climate-related initiatives and challenge President Trump’s isolationist policies.
Newsom will appear at the Munich Security Conference to talk about trade and jobs and tell foreign leaders that “California is a stable and reliable partner,” he said Tuesday during an unrelated event.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio is leading the official U.S. delegation to the conference, while Democratic leaders Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York are also expected, according to news reports.
The three-day event focuses on the intersections of trade, economics, security and foreign policy, and is expected to draw business leaders and heads of state.
Vice President JD Vance’s appearance at last year’s gathering caused a stir after he argued that European’s immigration policies are too relaxed and European nations are too reliant on the United States.
Ahead of the gathering, conference organizers released a report Monday that found that the “world has entered a period of wrecking-ball politics. Sweeping destruction — rather than careful reforms and policy corrections — is the order of the day.”
Newsom told reporters that he will appear on several panels, and suggested he will focus in part on staying competitive with China when it comes to new technologies and job growth.
“China is cleaning our clock as it relates to low-carbon green growth. They are cleaning our clock in terms of not just electric vehicles, because it’s not about electric power, it’s about economic power,” he said.
“It’s about exports, manufacturing, jobs — and this country is walking away,” he continued. “We are walking away from science and we are walking away from common sense.”
“Gavin Newscum is traveling to another international conference to whine about climate policies instead of doing his job as the governor of California?” said White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers, using President Trump’s derogatory nickname for the governor. “Nothing new to see here.”
Newsom is in his last year as California governor and is considering running for president in 2028. He last month traveled to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, where he criticized world leaders for not challenging Trump’s aggressive posture when it comes to his threats to acquire Greenland, as well as his tariffs.
Newsom also attended the U.N. climate policy summit in Belém, Brazil, in November.
Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) has endorsed Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Dublin) for California governor, the Swalwell campaign and a Schiff spokesperson said Monday.
Schiff, one of the state’s most prominent Democrats, previously served with Swalwell on the House Intelligence Committee, where they riled Republicans by investigating President Trump during his first term.
They also both worked to impeach Trump during his first term, with Schiff serving as the lead manager of Trump’s first impeachment and Swalwell as a manager of Trump’s second impeachment.
Schiff, in a statement, said Swalwell “has the vision and strength to take on our state’s biggest challenges and make real progress, from lowering costs for families to protecting our democracy from Donald Trump.”
“Congressman Swalwell and I worked together to investigate Trump during his first presidency, and Eric played a leadership role in the impeachment trial after the President incited a violent mob to attack the capitol on January 6th,” Schiff said. “What I saw then, and what I know now, is that Eric is fully prepared to get things done and deliver for the Golden State, even as he will fight to protect our values, rights and freedoms.”
Swalwell announced in November his bid to replace Gov. Gavin Newsom, who is termed out next year — entering a crowded field of candidates without a clear front-runner.
Both Swalwell and Schiff have been targeted by Trump and the Trump administration with allegations of committing mortgage fraud. They have both denied those accusations — calling them part of a political retribution campaign against Trump’s critics and chief political opponents.
Swalwell has sued Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte over the accusations, accusing him of of criminally misusing government databases to target Trump’s political opponents.
LONDON — A prince, an ambassador, senior diplomats, top politicians and other government officials. All brought down by the Jeffrey Epstein files. And all in Europe, rather than the United States.
The huge trove of Epstein documents released by the U.S. Department of Justice has sent shock waves through Europe’s political, economic and social elites — dominating headlines, ending careers and spurring political and criminal investigations.
Former U.K. Ambassador to the United States Peter Mandelson was fired and could go to prison. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer faces a leadership crisis over the Mandelson appointment, and on Sunday, his chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, resigned over having advised Starmer to appoint Mandelson.
Senior figures have fallen in Norway, Sweden and Slovakia. And, even before the latest batch of files, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, brother of King Charles III, lost his honors, princely title and taxpayer-funded mansion.
Apart from the former Prince Andrew, none of them faces claims of sexual wrongdoing. They have been toppled for maintaining friendly relationships with Epstein after he became a convicted sex offender.
“Epstein collected powerful people the way others collect frequent flier points,” said Mark Stephens, a specialist in international and human rights law at Howard Kennedy in London. “But the receipts are now in public, and some might wish they’d traveled less.”
The documents were published after a public frenzy over Epstein became a crisis for President Trump’s administration and led to a rare bipartisan effort to force the government to open its investigative files. But in the U.S., the long-sought publication has not brought the same public reckoning with Epstein’s associates — at least so far.
Rob Ford, a professor of political science at the University of Manchester, said that in Britain, “if you’re in those files, it’s immediately a big story.”
“It suggests to me we have a more functional media, we have a more functional accountability structure, that there is still a degree of shame in politics, in terms of people will say: ‘This is just not acceptable, this is just not done,’” he said.
British repercussions
U.K. figures felled by their ties to Epstein include the former Prince Andrew and his ex-wife Sarah Ferguson, whose charity shut down last week. The former prince paid millions to settle a lawsuit with late Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre, who said she was forced to have sex with Andrew beginning when she was 17, and he is facing pressure to testify in the U.S.
Like others now ensnared, veteran politician Mandelson long downplayed his relationship with Epstein, despite calling him “my best pal” in 2003. The new files reveal contact continued for years after the financier’s 2008 prison term for sexual offenses involving a minor. In a July 2009 message, Mandelson appeared to refer to Epstein’s release from prison as “liberation day.”
Starmer fired Mandelson in September over earlier revelations about his Epstein ties. Now British police are investigating whether Mandelson committed misconduct in public office by passing on sensitive government information to Epstein.
Starmer has apologized to Epstein’s victims and pledged to release public documents that will show Mandelson lied when he was being vetted for the ambassador’s job. That may not be enough to stop furious lawmakers trying to eject the prime minister from office over his failure of judgment, and it has already claimed his top advisor in McSweeney.
American associates
Experts caution that Britain shouldn’t be too quick to pat itself on the back over its rapid reckoning with Mandelson. The U.S. has a better record than the U.K. when it comes to declassifying and publishing information.
But Alex Thomas, executive director of the Institute for Government think tank, said that “there is something about parliamentary democracy,” with its need for a prime minister to retain the confidence of Parliament to stay in office, “that I think does help drive accountability.”
A few high-profile Americans have faced repercussions over their friendly ties with Epstein. Most prominent is former U.S. Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers, who went on leave from academic positions at Harvard University late last year.
Brad Karp quit last month as chair of top U.S. law firm Paul Weiss after revelations in the latest batch of documents, and the National Football League said it would investigate Epstein’s relationship with New York Giants co-owner Steve Tisch, who exchanged sometimes crude emails with Epstein about potential dates with adult women.
Other U.S. Epstein associates have not yet faced severe sanction, including former Trump strategist Stephen K. Bannon, who exchanged hundreds of texts with Epstein; Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who accepted an invitation to visit Epstein’s private island; and tech billionaire Elon Musk, who discussed visiting the island in emails, but says he never made the trip.
Former President Clinton has been compelled by Republicans to testify before Congress about his friendship with Epstein, and Trump has repeatedly faced scrutiny over his own long friendship with the financier. A New York Times review identified more than 5,300 files in the Epstein documents containing over 38,000 references to Trump, his family or his properties. Neither Trump nor Clinton has ever been accused of wrongdoing by Epstein’s victims.
European investigations
The Epstein files reveal the global network of royals, political leaders, billionaires, bankers and academics that the wealthy financier built around him.
Across Europe, officials have had to resign or face censure after the Epstein files revealed relationships that were more extensive than previously disclosed.
Joanna Rubinstein, a Swedish United Nations official, quit after the revelation of a 2012 visit to Epstein’s Caribbean island. Miroslav Lajcak, national security advisor to Slovakia’s prime minister, quit over his communications with Epstein, which included the pair discussing “gorgeous” girls.
Latvia, Lithuania and Poland have set up wide-ranging official investigations into the documents. Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk said a team would scour the files for potential Polish victims and any links between Epstein and Russian secret services.
Epstein took an interest in European politics, in one email exchange with billionaire Peter Thiel calling Britain’s 2016 vote to leave the European Union “just the beginning” and part of a return to “tribalism.”
Grégoire Roos, director of the Europe program at the think tank Chatham House, said the files uncover Epstein’s “far-reaching” network of contacts in Europe, “and the level of access among not just those who were already in power, but those who were getting there.”
“It will be interesting to see whether in the correspondence he had an influence in policymaking,” Roos said.
Norwegian revelations
Few countries have been as roiled by the Epstein revelations as Norway, a Scandinavian nation with a population of less than 6 million.
The country’s economic crimes unit has opened a corruption investigation into former Prime Minister Thorbjorn Jagland — who also once headed the committee that hands out the Nobel Peace Prize — over his ties with Epstein. His lawyer said Jagland would cooperate with the probe.
Also ensnared are high-profile Norwegian diplomat couple Terje Rod-Larsen and Mona Juul, key players in the 1990s Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts. Juul has been suspended as Norway’s ambassador to Jordan after revelations including the fact that Epstein left the couple’s children $10 million in a will drawn up shortly before his death by suicide in a New York prison in 2019.
Norwegians’ respect for their royal family has been dented by new details about Epstein’s friendship with Crown Princess Mette-Marit, who is married to the heir to the throne, Prince Haakon. The files include jokey exchanges and emails planning visits to Epstein properties, teeth-whitening appointments and shopping trips.
The princess apologized Friday “to all of you whom I have disappointed.”
The disclosures came as her son from a previous relationship, Marius Borg Hoiby, stands trial in Oslo on rape charges, which he denies.
Lawless writes for the Associated Press. AP writers David B. Caruso in New York and Danica Kirka in London contributed to this report.
President Trump’s administration can continue to detain immigrants without bond, marking a major legal victory for the federal immigration agenda and countering a slew of recent lower court decisions across the country that argued the practice is illegal.
A panel of judges on the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Friday evening that the Department of Homeland Security’s decision to deny bond hearings to immigrants arrested across the country is consistent with the Constitution and federal immigration law.
Specifically, Circuit Judge Edith H. Jones wrote in the 2-1 majority opinion that the government correctly interpreted the Immigration and Nationality Act by asserting that “unadmitted aliens apprehended anywhere in the United States are ineligible for release on bond, regardless of how long they have resided inside the United States.”
Under past administrations, most noncitizens with no criminal record who were arrested away from the border had an opportunity to request a bond hearing while their cases wound through immigration court. Historically, bond was often granted to those without criminal convictions who were not flight risks, and mandatory detention was limited to recent border crossers.
“That prior Administrations decided to use less than their full enforcement authority under” the law “does not mean they lacked the authority to do more,” Jones wrote.
The plaintiffs in the two separate cases filed last year against the Trump administration were both Mexican nationals who had lived in the United States for more than 10 years and weren’t flight risks, their attorneys argued. Neither man had a criminal record, and both were jailed for months last year before a lower Texas court granted them bond in October.
The Trump White House reversed that policy in favor of mandatory detention in July, reversing almost 30 years of precedent under both Democrat and Republican administrations.
Friday’s ruling also bucks a November district court decision in California, which granted detained immigrants with no criminal history the opportunity to request a bond hearing and had implications for noncitizens held in detention nationwide.
Circuit Judge Dana M. Douglas wrote the lone dissent in Friday’s decision.
The elected members of Congress who passed the Immigration and Nationality Act “would be surprised to learn it had also required the detention without bond of two million people,” Douglas wrote, adding that many of the people detained are “the spouses, mothers, fathers, and grandparents of American citizens.”
She went on to argue that the federal government was overriding the lawmaking process with the Department of Homeland Security’s new immigration detention policy that denies detained immigrants bond.
“Because I would reject the government’s invitation to rubber stamp its proposed legislation by executive fiat, I dissent,” Douglas wrote.
Douglas’ opinion echoed widespread tensions between the Trump administration and federal judges around the country, who have increasingly accused the administration of flouting court orders.
U.S. Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi celebrated the decision as “a significant blow against activist judges who have been undermining our efforts to make America safe again at every turn.”
“We will continue vindicating President Trump’s law and order agenda in courtrooms across the country,” Bondi wrote on the social media platform X.
In recent weeks, Marin County Registrar Natalie Adona has been largely focused on the many mundane tasks of local elections administrators in the months before a midterm: finalizing voting locations, ordering supplies, facilitating candidate filings.
But in the wake of unprecedented efforts by the Trump administration to intervene in state-run elections, Adona said she has also been preparing her staff for far less ordinary scenarios — such as federal officials showing up and demanding ballots, as they recently did in Georgia, or immigration agents staging around polling stations on election day, as some in President Trump’s orbit have suggested.
“Part of my job is making sure that the plans are developed and then tested and then socialized with the staff so if those situations were to ever come up, we would not be figuring it out right then and there. We would know what to do,” Adona said. “Doing those sort of exercises and that level of planning in a way is kind of grounding, and makes things feel less chaotic.”
Natalie Adona faced harassment from election deniers and COVID anti-maskers when she served as the registrar of voters in Nevada County. She now serves Marin County and is preparing her staff for potential scenarios this upcoming election, including what to do if immigration agents are present.
(Jess Lynn Goss / For The Times)
Across California, local elections administrators say they have been running similar exercises to prepare for once unthinkable threats — not from local rabble-rousers, remote cyberattackers or foreign adversaries, but their own federal government.
State officials, too, are writing new contingency plans for unprecedented intrusions by Trump and other administration officials, who in recent days have repeated baseless 2020 election conspiracies, raided and taken ballots from a local election center in Fulton County, Ga., pushed both litigation and legislation that would radically alter local voting rules, and called for Republicans to seize control of elections nationwide.
California’s local and state officials — many of whom are Democrats — are walking a fine line, telling their constituents that elections remain fair and safe, but also that Trump’s talk of federal intervention must be taken seriously.
Their concerns are vastly different than the concerns voiced by Trump and other Republicans, who for years have alleged without evidence that U.S. elections are compromised by widespread fraud involving noncitizen voters, including in California.
But they have nonetheless added to a long-simmering sense of fear and doubt among voters — who this year have the potential to radically alter the nation’s political trajectory by flipping control of Congress to Democrats.
An election worker moves ballots to be sorted at the Orange County Registrar of Voters in Santa Ana on Nov. 5, 2024.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
Trump has said he will accept Republican losses only if the elections are “honest.” A White House spokesperson said Trump is pushing for stricter rules for voting and voter registration because he “cares deeply about the safety and security of our elections.”
Rick Hasen, an election law expert and director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project at UCLA Law, said some of what Trump says about elections “is nonsensical and some is bluster,” but recent actions — especially the election center raid in Georgia — have brought home the reality of his threats.
“Some worry that this is a test run for trying to seize ballot boxes in 2026 and prevent a fair count of the votes, and given Trump’s track record, I don’t think that is something we can dismiss out of hand,” Hasen said. “States need to be making contingency plans to make sure that those kinds of things don’t happen.”
The White House dismissed such concerns, pointing to isolated incidents of noncitizens being charged with illegally voting, and to examples of duplicate registrations, voters remaining on rolls after death and people stealing ballots to vote multiple times.
“These so-called experts are ignoring the plentiful examples of noncitizens charged with voter fraud and of ineligible voters on voter rolls,” said Abigail Jackson, the White House spokesperson.
Experts said fraudulent votes are rare, most registration and roll issues do not translate into fraudulent votes being cast, and there is no evidence such issues swing elections.
A swirl of activity
Early in his term, Trump issued an executive order calling for voters nationwide to be required to show proof of U.S. citizenship, and for states to be required to disregard mail ballots received after election day. California and other states sued, and courts have so far blocked the order.
President Trump walks behind former chairperson of the Republican National Committee Michael Whatley as he prepares to speak during a political rally in Rocky Mount, N.C., on Dec. 19.
(Andrew Caballero-Reynolds / AFP via Getty Images)
Longtime Trump advisor and ally Stephen K. Bannon suggested U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents will be dispatched to polling locations in November, reprising old fears about voter intimidation. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said she couldn’t rule that out, despite it being illegal.
Democrats have raised concerns about the U.S. Postal Service mishandling mail ballots in the upcoming elections, following rule changes for how such mail is processed. Republicans have continued pushing the SAVE America Act, which would create new proof of citizenship requirements for voters. The U.S. Supreme Court is considering multiple voting rights cases, including one out of Louisiana that challenges Voting Rights Act protections for Black representation.
Charles H. Stewart, director of the MIT Election Data + Science Lab, said the series of events has created an “environment where chaos is being threatened,” and where “people who are concerned about the state of democracy are alarmed and very concerned,” and rightfully so.
But he said there are also “a number of guardrails” in place — what he called “the kind of mundane mechanics that are involved in running elections” — that will help prevent harm.
California prepares
California leaders have been vociferous in their defense of state elections, and said they’re prepared to fight any attempted takeover.
“The President regularly spews outright lies when it comes to elections in this country, particularly ones he and his party lose,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a statement. “We will continue to correct those lies, rebuild much-needed trust in our democratic institutions and civic duties, and defend the U.S. Constitution’s grant to the states authority over elections.”
California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta and Secretary of State Shirley Weber take questions after announcing a lawsuit to protect voter rights in 2024.
(Damian Dovarganes / Associated Press)
California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta said in an interview that his office “would go into court and we would get a restraining order within hours” if the Trump administration tries to intervene in California elections, “because the U.S. Constitution says that states predominantly determine the time, place and manner of elections, not the president.”
Weber told The Times that the state has “a cadre of attorneys” standing by to defend its election system, but also “absolutely amazing” county elections officials who “take their job very seriously” and serve as the first line of defense against any disruptions, from the Trump administration or otherwise.
Dean Logan, Los Angeles County’s chief elections official, said his office has been doing “contingency planning and tabletop exercises” for traditional disruptions, such as wildfires and earthquakes, and novel ones, such as federal immigration agents massing near voting locations and last-minute policy changes by the U.S. Postal Service or the courts.
“Those are the things that keep us up at night,” he said.
Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder Dean Logan said the county no longer has ballots from the 2020 election.
(Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)
Logan said he is not currently concerned about the FBI raiding L.A. County elections offices because, while Fulton County still had its 2020 ballots on hand due to ongoing litigation, that is not the case for L.A. County, which is “beyond the retention period” for holding, and no longer has, its 2020 ballots.
However, Logan said he does consider what happened in Georgia a warning that the Trump administration “will utilize the federal government to go in and be disruptive in an elections operation.”
“What we don’t know is, would they do that during the conduct of an election, before an election is certified?” Logan said.
Kristin Connelly, chief elections officer for Contra Costa County, said she’s been working hard to make sure voters have confidence in the election process, including by giving speeches to concerned voters, expanding the county’s certified election observer program, and, in the lead-up to the 2024 election, running a grant-funded awareness campaign around election security.
Connelly — who joined local elections officials nationwide in challenging Trump’s executive order on elections in court — said she also has been running tabletop exercises and coordinating with local law enforcement, all with the goal of ensuring her constituents can vote.
“How the federal government is behaving is different from how it used to behave, but at the end of the day, what we have to do is run a mistake-free, perfect election, and to open our offices and operation to everybody — especially the people who ask hard questions,” she said.
Lessons from the past
Several officials in California said that as they prepare, they have been buoyed by lessons from the past.
Before being hired by the deep-blue county of Marin in May, Adona was the elected voting chief in rural Nevada County in the Sierra foothills.
In 2022, Adona affirmed that Trump’s 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden was legitimate and enforced a pandemic mask mandate in her office. That enraged a coalition of anti-mask, anti-vaccine, pro-Trump protesters, who pushed their way into the locked election office.
Protesters confronted Adona and her staffers, with one worker getting pushed down. They stationed themselves in the hallway, leaving Adona’s staff too terrified to leave their office to use the hallway bathroom, as local, state and federal authorities declined to step in.
“At this point, and for months afterwards, I felt isolated and depressed. I had panic attacks every few days. I felt that no one had our back. I focused all my attention on my staff’s safety, because they were clearly nervous about the unknown,” Adona said during subsequent testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
In part because she knows what can go wrong, Adona said her focus now is on preparing her new staff for whatever may come, while following the news out of Georgia and trying to maintain a cool head.
“I would rather have a plan and not use it than need a plan and not have one,” she said.
Clint Curtis, the clerk and registrar of voters in Shasta County — which ditched its voting machines in 2023 amid unfounded fraud allegations by Trump — said his biggest task ahead of the midterms is to increase both ballot security and transparency.
Since being appointed to lead the county office last spring, the conservative Republican from Florida has added more cameras and more space for election observers — which, during the recent special election on Proposition 50, California’s redistricting measure, included observers from Bonta’s and Weber’s offices.
He has also reduced the number of ballot drop boxes in the vast county from more than a dozen to four. Curtis told The Times he did not trust the security of ballots in the hands of “these little old ladies running all over the county” to pick them up, and noted there are dozens of other county locations where they can be dropped off. He said he invited Justice Department officials to observe voting on Proposition 50, though they didn’t show, and welcomes them again for the midterms.
“If they can make voting safer for everybody, I’m perfectly fine with that,” he said. “It always makes me nervous when people don’t want to cooperate. Whatcha hiding? It should be: ‘Come on in.’”
Election workers inspect ballots after extracting them from envelopes on election night at the Los Angeles County Ballot Processing Center on Nov. 5, 2024, in the City of Industry.
(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
Weber, 77 and the daughter of an Arkansas sharecropper whose family fled Southern racism and threats of violence to reach California, said that while many people in the U.S. are confronting intense fear and doubt about the election for the first time, and understandably so, that is simply not the case for her or many other Black people.
“African Americans have always been under attack for voting, and not allowed to vote, and had new rules created for them about literacy and poll taxes and all those other kinds of things, and many folks lost their lives just trying to register to vote,” Weber said.
Weber said she still recalls her mother, who had never voted in Arkansas, setting up a polling location in their home in South L.A. each election when Weber was young, and today draws courage from those memories.
“I tell folks there’s no alternative to it. You have to fight for this right to vote. And you have to be aware of the fact that all these strategies that people are trying to use [to suppress voting] are not new strategies. They’re old strategies,” Weber said. “And we just have to be smarter and fight harder.”
WASHINGTON — Ever since a racist video was posted on President Trump’s social media account, the White House has offered shifting responses.
First it dismissed “fake outrage” by those denouncing it as racist, then it deleted the post and blamed a staff member.
Trump later told reporters Friday that “I didn’t make a mistake.” The Republican president claimed that before the video was posted, he did not see the part that depicted former President Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama as apes.
The chair of the Congressional Black Caucus was unsparing in her criticism when she spoke to the Associated Press.
“It’s very clear that there was an intent to harm people, to hurt people, with this video,” Rep. Yvette Clarke (D-N.Y.) said.
The AP interviewed Clarke, who leads the group of more than 60 Black House and Senate members, hours after the video was deleted Friday.
Here is an interview transcript, edited for length and clarity.
What was your reaction when you saw that the post?
We’re dealing with a bigoted and racist regime. … Every week we are, as the American people, put in a position where we have to respond to something very cruel or something extremely off-putting that this administration does. It’s a part of their MO at this point.
Do you buy the White House explanation that this was an aide’s mistake?
They don’t tell the truth. If there wasn’t a climate, a toxic and racist climate within the White House, we wouldn’t see this type of behavior regardless of who it’s coming from…. Here we are, in the year 2026, celebrating the 250th anniversary of the United States of America, the 100th anniversary of the commemoration of Black history, and this is what comes out of the White House on a Friday morning. It’s beneath all of us.
Has there been any contact between the White House and the Congressional Black Caucus on this? Could there be any good-faith exchange?
There has been no outreach from the White House. We certainly didn’t expect there to be. The outreach has to happen prior to these type of juvenile antics.
Republican criticism built more quickly Friday than it has during previous Trump controversies. What do you make of that?
It’s not lost on them, our communities that we represent, that elections are coming up. So it’s not lost on my colleagues, either. If they want to align themselves with this type of really profane imagery, this type of bigoted and racist attack on a former sitting president and his wife, they are throwing their lot in with an individual who has shown himself to be a disgrace.
It’s not common for President Trump to retract anything. What does that indicate to you that he did?
I think it’s more of a political expediency than it is any moral compass. … As my mother would say, “Too late. Mercy’s gone.”
What more do you hope to see from the White House about this?
My hope is that we can contain the harm that they’re doing. There are Black children who are listening to their president … seeing what he’s posting on Truth Social, [and] it will have an impact on how they view leadership of their own country. … I think that this administration has an opportunity to change course. They always do. We leave room for that. But, unfortunately, Donald Trump is hardwired this way.
Is there anything else you’d like to add?
As a democracy, we have to stand up together against this type of racism, this type of bigotry, this kind of hatred that is coming from the president of the United States and those who surround him. … It’s very clear that there was an intent to harm people, to hurt people, with this video. Otherwise, it wouldn’t have stayed up for 12 hours.
Barrow and Zhang write for the Associated Press and reported from Atlanta and Washington, respectively.
WASHINGTON — The White House’s TrumpRx website went live Thursday with a promise to instantly deliver prescription drugs at “the lowest price anywhere in the world.”
“This launch represents the largest reduction in prescription drug prices in history by many, many times, and it’s not even close,” President Trump said at a news conference announcing the launch of the platform.
Drug policy experts say the jury is still out on whether the platform will provide the significant savings Trump promises, though it will probably help people who need drugs not commonly covered by insurance.
Senate Democrats, meanwhile, called the site a “vanity project” and questioned whether the program presents a possible conflict of interest involving the pharmaceutical industry and the Trump family.
What is TrumpRx, really?
The new platform, trumprx.gov, is designed to help uninsured Americans find discounted prices for high-cost, brand-name prescriptions, including fertility, obesity and diabetes treatments.
The site does not directly sell drugs. Instead, consumers browse a list of discounted medicines, and select one for purchase. From there, they either receive a coupon accepted at certain pharmacies or are routed directly to a drug manufacturer’s website to purchase the prescription.
The White House said the reduced prices are possible after the administration negotiated voluntary “most favored nation” agreements with 16 major drugmakers including Pfizer, Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk.
Under these deals, manufacturers have agreed to set certain U.S. drug prices no higher than those paid in other wealthy nations in exchange for three-year tariff exemptions. However, the full legal and financial details of the deals have not been made public, leaving lawmakers to speculate how TrumpRx’s pricing model works.
What does it accomplish?
Though the White House has framed TrumpRx as a historic reset for prescription drug costs, economists said the platform offers limited new savings.
But it does move the needle on the issue of drug pricing transparency, away from the hidden mechanisms behind how prescription drugs are priced, rebated and distributed, according to Geoffrey Joyce, director of health policy at the USC Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics.
“This has been a murky world, a terrible, obscure, opaque marketplace where drug prices have been inconsistently priced to different consumers,” Joyce said, “So this is a little step in the right direction, but it’s mostly performative from my perspective, which is kind of Trump in a nutshell.”
Still, for the uninsured or people seeking “lifestyle drugs” — like those for fertility or weight loss that insurers have historically declined to cover — TrumpRx could become a useful option, Joyce said.
“It’s kind of a win for Trump and a win for Pfizer,” Joyce said. “They get to say, ‘Look what we’re doing. We’re lowering prices. We’re keeping Trump happy, but it’s on our low-volume drugs, and drugs that we were discounting big time anyway.’”
Where does it fall short?
Early analyses by drug policy experts suggest many of the discounted medications listed on the TrumpRx site were already on offer through other drug databases before the platform launched.
For example, Pfizer’s Duavee menopause treatment is listed at $30.30 on TrumpRx, but it is also available for the same price at some pharmacies via GoodRx.
Weight management drug Wegovy starts at $199 on TrumpRx. Manufacturers were already selling the same discounted rates through its NovoCare Pharmacy program before the portal’s launch.
“[TrumpRx] uses data from GoodRx, an existing price-search database for prescription drugs,” said Darius N. Lakdawalla, a senior health policy researcher at USC. “It seems to provide prices that are essentially the same as the lowest price GoodRx reports on its website.”
Compared to GoodRx, TrumpRx covers a modest subset of drugs: 43 in all.
“Uninsured consumers, who do not use or know about GoodRx and need one of the specific drugs covered by the site, might benefit from TrumpRx. That seems like a very specific set of people,” Lakdawalla said.
Where do Democrats stand?
Democrats slammed the program this week, saying it would not provide substantial discounts for patients, and called for greater transparency around the administration’s dealings with drugmakers. To date, the administration has not disclosed the terms of the pricing agreements with manufacturers such as Pfizer and AstraZeneca.
In the lead-up to the TrumpRx launch, Democratic members of Congress questioned its usefulness and urged federal health regulators to delay its debut.
“This is just another Donald Trump pet project to rebrand something that already exists, take credit for it, and do nothing to actually lower healthcare prices,” Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) said Friday. “Democrats will continue fighting to lower healthcare costs and push Republicans to stop giving handouts to billionaires at the expense of working-class Americans.”
Three other Democratic senators — Dick Durbin, Elizabeth Warren and Peter Welch — raised another concern in a Jan. 29 letter to Thomas March Bell, inspector general for the Department of Health and Human Services.
The three senators pointed to potential conflicts of interest between TrumpRx and an online dispensing company, BlinkRx.
Months before, he became a partner at 1789 Capital, a venture capital firm that holds a significant stake in BlinkRx and led the startup’s $140-million funding round in 2024. After his appointment, BlinkRx launched a service to help pharmaceutical companies build direct-to-patient sales platforms quickly.
“The timing of the BlinkRx announcement so closely following the administration’s outreach to the largest drug companies, and the involvement of President Trump’s immediate family, raises questions about potential coordination, influence and self-dealing,” according to an October 2025 statement by Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
Both BlinkRx and Donald Trump Jr. have denied any coordination.
What’s next?
The rollout of TrumpRx fits into a suite of White House programs designed to address rising costs, an area of vulnerability for Republicans ahead of the November midterms.
The White House issued a statement Friday urging support for the president’s healthcare initiative, dubbed “the great healthcare plan,” which it said will further reduce drug prices and lower insurance premiums.
For the roughly 8% of Americans without health insurance, TrumpRx’s website promises that more high-cost, brand-name drugs will be discounted on the platform in the future.
“It’s possible the benefits will become broader in the future,” Lakdawalla said. “I would say that the jury remains out on its long-run structure and its long-run pricing effects.”
President Trump told the New York Post that music artist Bad Bunny was a “terrible choice” to headline the 2026 Super Bowl halftime show and that the NFL’s selection of the Puerto Rican singer and rapper sows “hatred.”
Department of Homeland Security adviser Corey Lewandowski suggested that Bad Bunny loathes the U.S. “It’s so shameful that they’ve decided to pick somebody who just seems to hate America so much to represent them at the halftime game,” he told conservative podcaster Benny Johnson.
Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) said on Monday that Bad Bunny disseminates “anti-American propaganda.”
The upshot: Bad Bunny (aka Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio) is an enemy of the state. An outsider who doesn’t possess American values. A Super Bowl wrecker.
Bad Bunny took home multiple trophies from the 68th Grammy Awards last weekend in Los Angeles, including for album of the year. Very American, sir.
(Matt Winkelmeyer / Getty Images for the Recording Academy)
Heated debate around who is worthy to perform the halftime show is an American tradition (Prince, yes. The Red Hot Chili Peppers, no). But now, unsurprisingly, politics are part of that debate, so the mere fact that Bad Bunny is brown and Latino and sings in Spanish is seen by some as an affront to the right. Clearly the “Woke Bowl” is disrespecting the tough-on-immigration president, and in Español, no less.
But Bad Bunny is an American citizen, as are most people born in Puerto Rico after 1898, thanks to the Jones-Shafroth Act of 1917. Bad Bunny, born in 1994, made the deadline with 96 years to spare. If the fear is that foreigners are coming here to take our jobs and ruin beloved American traditions, there are plenty of nonnative artists to grouse about.
For decades, outsiders have foisted their foreign music upon us at the Super Bowl between commercials for Doritos and Budweiser.
The United Kingdom’s Phil Collins played the 2000 Super Bowl XXXIV Halftime Show, as did Enrique Iglesias, who is from Spain. The Irishmen of U2 stole jobs away from Americans when they played the 2002 Super Bowl. The following year it was sneaky Canadian Shania Twain and a sus character from England referred to only as Sting.
Then came bad hombre after bad hombre from the UK: Paul McCartney, the Rolling Stones, the Who, Coldplay. And don’t even get me started on Shakira, gyrating her Colombian self into 2020’s Super Bowl LIV Halftime Show, or the following year, the Weeknd using his sweet voice to distract from the fact he’s Canadian.
Remember all the anti-immigrant furor around those aforementioned performances? Of course not — because there was none. And this year, if the delicately reunited U.K. duo Oasis was to pull things together for 2026 and play the Super Bowl, it most certainly wouldn’t inspire the same kind of vitriol.
The right remembers that Bad Bunny criticized the Trump administration for its handling of Puerto Rico’s hurricane recovery, and that that he has spoken out against ICE’s inhumane treatment of immigrants. But calling Bad Bunny a dissenter is too direct, too Stalinist. It’s better to cast doubt upon the singer’s loyalty to America via thinly veiled racist rhetoric.
Turning Point USA, the right-wing group founded by Charlie Kirk and helmed by his wife, Erika Kirk, following his assassination, has organized its own counter-concert called the “All-American Halftime Show”. It will star rap-rocker Kid Rock and country artists Brantley Gilbert, Lee Brice and Gabby Barrett. The show is counter-programmed to compete with the Super Bowl halftime show, airing on X and conservative networks such as TBN and OAN around the same time as Bad Bunny’s set.
When the “alternative” show’s lineup was announced this week, Kid Rock took a jab at Bad Bunny in a statement: “He’s said he’s having a dance party, wearing a dress, and singing in Spanish? Cool. We plan to play great songs for folks who love America.”
Kid Rock isn’t known to wear dresses on stage, as Bad Bunny has done, but it’s unclear which songs of his he’ll play in the name of “loving America.”
Turning Point spokesman Andrew Kolvet said the show will reflect conservative values such as “faith, family, and freedom,” so Kid Rock likely won’t perform his 2001 track “Cool, Daddy Cool,” where he sings “Young ladies, young ladies, I like ‘em underage see / Some say that’s statutory, but I say it’s mandatory.” It’s also unlikely he’ll bust out his 2007 song “Lowlife (Living the Highlife)”: “I make Black music for the white man / Keep cocaine upon my nightstand.”
One thing is certain: He’ll continue to sing Trump’s praises, in English.
WASHINGTON — President Trump shared a short video clip on social media late Thursday depicting former President Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama as apes, drawing immediate public backlash that the White House characterized as “fake outrage.”
The image, which Trump posted on his official Truth Social account around midnight, was included toward the end of a one-minute video clip that promoted a conspiracy theory about voting irregularities in the 2020 presidential election. In it, the Obamas are portrayed as apes as “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” plays in the background.
The White House said the clip was taken from “an internet meme video,” in which Trump is depicted as a lion and several high-profile Democrats — including former President Biden, former Vice President Kamala Harris, U.S. Sen. Adam Schiff and California Gov. Gavin Newsom — are rendered as giraffes, turtles, antelopes and other animals. The clip, which was shared by a social media account in October, is captioned: “President Trump: King of the Jungle.”
Only the image of the Obamas is included in the clip shared by Trump.
“Please stop the fake outrage and report on something today that actually matters to the American public,” Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said in a statement Friday.
The post, however, quickly drew fierce criticism from Democrats, some Republicans and civil rights organizations. The imagery was condemned for echoing long-standing racist tropes that have historically been used to demean Black Americans.
“Trump posting this video — especially during Black History Month — is a stark reminder of how Trump and his followers truly view people,” the NAACP wrote on X. “And we’ll remember that in November.”
Newsom, a Democrat, said it was “disgusting behavior by the president” to amplify such an image.
“Every single Republican must denounce this. Now,” Newsom wrote on X.
Sen. Tim Scott, a Black South Carolina Republican who is the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said the image was “the most racist thing I’ve seen out of this White House.”
NEW YORK — The Trump administration on Thursday launched TrumpRx, a website it says will help patients buy prescription drugs directly at a discounted rate at a time when healthcare and the cost of living are growing concerns for Americans.
“You’re going to save a fortune,” President Trump said at the site’s unveiling. “And this is also so good for overall healthcare.”
The government-hosted website is not a platform for buying medications. Instead, it’s set up as a facilitator, pointing Americans to drugmakers’ direct-to-consumer websites, where they can make purchases. It also provides coupons to use at pharmacies. The site launches with over 40 medications, including weight-loss drugs such as Ozempic and Wegovy.
The site is part of a larger effort by the Trump administration to show it’s tackling the challenges of high costs. Affordability has emerged as a political vulnerability for Trump and his Republican allies going into November’s midterm elections, as Americans remain worried about the cost of housing, groceries, utilities and other staples of middle-class identity.
Trump stressed that the lower prices were made possible by his pressuring of pharmaceutical companies on prices, saying he demanded that they charge the same costs in the U.S. as in other nations. He said prescription drug costs will increase in foreign countries as a result.
“We’re tired of subsidizing the world,” Trump said at the evening event on the White House campus that lasted roughly 20 minutes.
The administration is touting substantial discounts, though it’s unclear just how much impact the changes will have for family budgets. The site includes the disclaimer that prices “may be even lower” for people with insurance, as it lists the “out-of-pocket price.” Also, some consumers might be able to use available generics that cost less than brand-name medications.
Still, Dr. Mehmet Oz, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, hyped the website as being transformative. He said the lower prices for Ozempic and Wegovy would cause the country to collectively lose 100 million pounds this year. He suggested that lower prices for the fertility drug Gonal-F would trigger pregnancies nationwide.
“We’re going to have a lot of Trump babies with these costs,” Oz said.
The president first teased TrumpRx in September while announcing the first of his more than 15 deals with pharmaceutical companies to lower drug prices to match the lowest price offered in other developed nations. He said in December the website would provide “massive discounts to all consumers” — though it’s unclear whether the prices available on drugmakers’ websites will routinely be any lower than what many consumers could get through their insurance coverage.
The website’s Thursday release came after it faced multiple delays, for reasons the administration hasn’t publicly shared. Last fall, Oz told Trump the site would share prices for consumers before the end of the year. An expected launch in late January was also pushed back.
The president has spent the past several months seeking to spotlight his efforts to lower drug prices for Americans. He’s done that through deals with major pharmaceutical companies, including some of the biggest drugmakers like Pfizer, Eli Lilly and Merck, which have agreed to lower prices of their Medicaid drugs to so-called “most favored nations” pricing. As part of the deals, many of the companies’ new drugs are also to be launched at discounted rates for consumer markets through TrumpRx.
Many of the details of Trump’s deals with manufacturers remain unclear, and drug prices for patients in the U.S. can depend on many factors, including the competition a treatment faces and insurance coverage. Most people have coverage through work, the individual insurance market or government programs like Medicaid and Medicare, which shield them from much of the cost.
Trump’s administration also has negotiated lower prices for several prescription drugs for Medicare enrollees, through a direct negotiation program created by a 2022 law.
BUENOS AIRES — Argentina and the United States said they reached an expansive trade deal Thursday, boosting President Javier Milei as he moves to open up the South American nation’s notoriously protectionist economy and reflecting the close alliance between the radical libertarian and President Trump.
Argentina’s foreign minister, Pablo Quirno, posted a selfie on social media showing him and several diplomats beaming after emerging from a meeting in Washington where he said they’d signed the pact.
“Congratulations to our team and thanks to the U.S. Trade Representative’s team for building this great agreement together,” Quirno wrote. The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative also confirmed the deal.
The countries announced a framework for the agreement in November, saying Argentina would ease restrictions on a range of American imports, including cattle, dairy products, medicines, chemicals, machinery, medical devices and vehicles. Those were key concessions for Argentina, where local industries long protected by steep tariffs have expressed concern about their ability to compete with American manufacturers.
The U.S., for its part, would remove reciprocal tariffs on imports of “certain unavailable natural resources” and ingredients for pharmaceutical goods from Argentina, according to the framework.
At the time, the White House reached similar frameworks with Ecuador, Guatemala and El Salvador — part of what it described as an effort to improve the ability of American firms to sell industrial and agricultural products in Latin American countries and bring down food prices for U.S. consumers.
Officials did not immediately offer details about the final version of the U.S.-Argentina deal signed Thursday.
The agreement marks the latest development in the close alliance between Trump and Milei, who has reshaped Argentine foreign policy to align with the U.S., earned Trump’s praise for stabilizing his nation’s crisis-prone economy and traveled to the U.S. more than a dozen times in the last two years. Milei is scheduled to appear at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate next week to speak at a gala.
Trump supported Milei’s fiscal program last year with a $20-billion credit line that succeeded in calming markets and boosting Milei’s prospects in a crucial midterm election in October. The U.S. Treasury also directly purchased U.S. dollar-denominated Argentine bonds that ratings agencies were classifying as “junk” at the time and snapped up the volatile local currency that Argentines were dumping in droves.
The extraordinary intervention drew backlash from across the U.S. political spectrum.
Trump’s MAGA base questioned the need to bail out a far-flung country that’s not only of little importance to the U.S. but also directly competes with its exports of corn, wheat, meat and oil.
Democratic lawmakers expressed outrage that Trump was staking taxpayer money on a political gift to an ideological soulmate.
That criticism has continued, with U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, the top Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee, on Thursday appealing to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to end the $20-billion lifeline.
In a letter, she wrote that even though the Treasury promised its credit line for Argentina “was for an acute, short-term, and urgent purpose, it appears … to have left open the possibility of continued use.”
Debre writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Josh Boak in Washington contributed to this report.
MINNEAPOLIS — A Minneapolis man was arrested Thursday on suspicion of cyberstalking and threatening to kill or assault Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers involved in the crackdown in Minnesota.
Federal prosecutors said in a statement that Kyle Wagner, 37, of Minneapolis, was charged by complaint, and that a decision to seek an indictment, which is necessary to take the case to trial, would be made soon.
Court records in Detroit, where the case was filed, did not list an attorney who could speak on Wagner’s behalf. The complaint was filed Tuesday and unsealed Thursday.
Atty. Gen. Pamela Bondi alleged in a statement that Wagner doxed and threatened law enforcement officers, claimed an affiliation with antifa and “encouraged bloodshed in the streets.”
And at the White House on Thursday, press secretary Karoline Leavitt held up Weber’s photo at the daily briefing and said such conduct by “left-wing agitators” won’t go unpunished.
“And if people are illegally obstructing our federal law enforcement operations, if they are targeting, doxing, harassing and vilifying ICE agents, they are going to be held accountable like this individual here who, again, is a self-proclaimed member of antifa. He is a domestic terrorist, and he will be held accountable in the United States,” Leavitt told reporters.
President Trump announced in September that he would designate antifa a “major terrorist organization.” Antifa, short for “anti-fascists,” is an umbrella term for far-left-leaning militant groups and is not a singular entity. It consists of groups that resist fascists and neo-Nazis, especially at demonstrations.
When Trump administration border policy advisor Tom Homan announced Wednesday that about 700 federal officers deployed to Minnesota would be withdrawn immediately, he said a larger pullout would occur only after there’s more cooperation and protesters stop interfering with federal personnel.
According to prosecutors, Wagner repeatedly posted on Facebook and Instagram encouraging his followers to “forcibly confront, assault, impede, oppose, and resist federal officers” whom he referred to as the “gestapo” and “murderers.”
The complaint alleges Wagner posted a video last month that directly threatened ICE officers with an obscenity-laden rant. “I’ve already bled for this city, I’ve already fought for this city, this is nothing new, we’re ready this time,” he said, concluding that he was “coming for” ICE.
The complaint further alleges that Wagner advocated for physical confrontation in another post, stating: “Anywhere we have an opportunity to get our hands on them, we need to put our hands on them.”
It also details how Wagner used his Instagram account to dox a person identified only as a “pro-ICE individual” by publishing a phone number, birth month and year, and address in the Detroit suburb of Oak Park. The complaint says Wagner later admitted that he doxed the victim’s parents’ house.
Federal prosecutors didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on why the case was filed in Michigan instead of Minnesota. The alleged doxing was the only Michigan connection listed in the complaint.
The U.S. attorney’s office in Minnesota has been hit by the resignations of several prosecutors in recent weeks amid frustrations with the surge and its handling of the shooting deaths of two people by government officers. One lawyer, who told a judge that her job “sucks,” was removed from her post.
Trump’s chief federal prosecutor for Minnesota, Dan Rosen, told a federal appeals court in a recent filing that his office is facing a “flood of new litigation” and is struggling to keep up just with immigration cases, while his division that handles civil cases is down 50%.
Rosen wrote that his office has canceled other civil enforcement work “and is operating in a reactive mode.” He also said his attorneys are “appearing daily for hearings on contempt motions. The Court is setting deadlines within hours, including weekends and holidays. Paralegals are continuously working overtime. Lawyers are continuously working overtime.”
Karnowski writes for the Associated Press. AP reporters Eric Tucker and Nathan Ellgren in Washington contributed to this report.
WASHINGTON — Senate Republican Leader John Thune warned Thursday that Congress is not close to an agreement to fund the Department of Homeland Security, signaling that another short-term extension may be the only way to avoid a shutdown as Democrats demand “nonnegotiable” ICE reforms ahead of the Feb. 13 deadline.
The Republicans are increasingly looking to punt the full funding package a second time if negotiations collapse. Speaking on the Senate floor Thursday, Thune said that such a move would not include any reforms lawmakers had previously negotiated, including body cameras for immigration agents.
“As of right now, we aren’t anywhere close to having any sort of an agreement that would enable us to fund the Department of Homeland Security,” he said. “If [Democrats] are coming to the table demanding a blank check or refusing to consider any measures but their own, they’re likely to end up with nothing.”
He spoke hours after House and Senate Democrats announced they were aligned behind a list of 10 demands they say must be passed before approving the Homeland Security funding package through September.
Democrats are pressing for statutory limits on immigration raids, new judicial warrant requirements, body-worn cameras, identification rules for agents and enhanced oversight of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection — reforms they say are necessary to rein in what House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) called an agency “out of control.”
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Democrats are planning to propose the legislation as soon as possible.
“We want our Republican colleagues to finally get serious about this, because this is turning America inside out in a way we haven’t seen in a very long time,” Schumer said.
The coordinated demands signal unity among House and Senate Democrats after a rocky week on Capitol Hill. In a slim vote, 21 House Democrats joined Republicans on Tuesday to end a partial government shutdown by temporarily extending Homeland Security funding through Feb. 13.
The two-week stopgap, called a “continuing resolution,” was meant to leave time for the two parties to debate how to rein in ICE after the fatal shootings of two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis.
But that truce has quickly unraveled. Republican leaders have little appetite for the full slate of reforms. Some have indicated openness to narrower changes, such as expanding body camera programs and training, but reject mask bans and the removal of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has already ruled out warrant requirements, which would limit immigration agents from entering private property without a court order. In remarks to reporters Wednesday, he also hinted at some interest in attaching voter ID and anti-sanctuary city policies to negotiations.
“It will be part of the discussion over the next couple of weeks, and we’ll see how that shakes out. But I suspect that some of the changes — the procedural modifications with ICE, Immigration and Customs Enforcement — will be codified,” he said.
Johnson was confident the two sides could make a deal without further delays, adding that negotiations are largely between “the White House, Schumer and Senate Democrats.”
President Trump has privately supported the short-term extension to cool tensions while publicly defending immigration agents and expressing skepticism toward Democrats’ reform push, according to House leadership.
White House border policy advisor Tom Homan also announced a drawdown of 700 federal agents from Minneapolis this week as what officials framed as a goodwill gesture amid negotiations.
Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said Thursday that the administration is willing to consider some of the demands Democrats have made, but said some of their requests are not “grounded in any common sense and they are nonstarters for this administration.”
Leavitt did not specify which reforms the administration was willing to consider. She did, however, say the president is committed to keeping the government open and supporting “immigration enforcement efforts in this country.”
The White House did not respond when asked if the president would support a short-term spending measure should negotiations stall.
Republicans continue to warn that a failure to reach a deal would jeopardize disaster response funding, airport security operations, maritime patrols, and increased security assistance for major national events, including the upcoming World Cup in Los Angeles.
“If we don’t do it by the middle of next week, we should consider a continuing resolution for the rest of the year and just put this all behind us,” said Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.), chair of the House Freedom Caucus.
Democrats, however, remain adamant that verbal assurances are no longer enough.
“These are just some of the commonsense proposals that the American people clearly would like to see in terms of the dramatic changes that are needed at the Department of Homeland Security before there is a full-year appropriations bill,” Jeffries said.
Times staff writer Ana Ceballos in Washington contributed to this report.
NEW YORK — The Trump administration on Thursday will launch TrumpRx, a website it says will help patients buy prescription drugs directly from manufacturers at a discounted rate at a time when health care and the cost of living are growing concerns for Americans.
The government-hosted website is not expected to be a platform for buying medication but instead set up as a facilitator, pointing Americans to drugmakers’ direct-to-consumer websites where they can make purchases.
The site’s unveiling, set for Thursday evening, was announced by White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, who in a post on X called it “a state of the art website for Americans consumers to purchase low cost prescription drugs.”
She said President Trump will make the announcement alongside Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz and Joe Gebbia, director of Trump’s National Design Studio.
The president first teased TrumpRx in September while announcing the first of his more than 15 deals with pharmaceutical companies to lower drug prices to match the lowest price offered in other developed nations. He said in December the website would provide “massive discounts to all consumers” — though it’s unclear whether the prices available on drugmakers’ websites will routinely be any lower than what many consumers could get through their insurance coverage.
The website’s expected Thursday release comes after it faced multiple delays, for reasons the administration hasn’t publicly shared. Last fall, Oz told Trump the site would share prices for consumers before the end of the year. An expected launch in late January was also pushed back.
The president has spent the past several months seeking to spotlight his efforts to lower drug prices for Americans. He’s done that through deals with major pharmaceutical companies, including some of the biggest drugmakers like Pfizer, Eli Lilly and Merck, which have agreed to lower prices of their Medicaid drugs to so-called “most favored nations” pricing. As part of the deals, many of the companies’ new drugs will also be launched at discounted rates for consumer markets through TrumpRx.
Many of the details of Trump’s deals with manufacturers remain unclear, and drug prices for patients in the U.S. can depend on many factors, including the competition a treatment faces and insurance coverage. Most people have coverage through work, the individual insurance market or government programs like Medicaid and Medicare, which shield them from much of the cost.
Trump’s administration also has negotiated lower prices for several prescription drugs for Medicare enrollees, through a direct negotiation program created by a 2022 law.
WASHINGTON — Democratic Sen. Elissa Slotkin of Michigan is refusing to voluntarily comply with a Justice Department investigation into a video she organized urging U.S. military members to resist “illegal orders” — escalating a dispute that President Trump has publicly pushed.
In letters first obtained by the Associated Press, Slotkin’s lawyer informed U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro that the senator would not agree to a voluntary interview about the video. Slotkin’s legal team also requested that Pirro preserve all documents related to the matter for “anticipated litigation.”
Slotkin’s lawyer separately wrote to Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi, declining to sit for an FBI interview about the video and urging her to immediately terminate any inquiry.
The refusal marks a potential turning point in the standoff, shifting the burden onto the Justice Department to decide whether it will escalate an investigation into sitting members of Congress or retreat from an inquiry now being openly challenged.
“I did this to go on offense,” Slotkin said in an interview Wednesday. “And to put them in a position where they’re tap dancing. To put them in a position where they have to own their choices of using a U.S. attorney’s office to come after a senator.”
‘It’s not gonna stop unless I fight back’
Last November, Slotkin joined five other Democratic lawmakers — all of whom previously served in the military or at intelligence agencies — in posting a 90-second video urging U.S. service members to follow established military protocols and reject orders they believe to be unlawful.
The lawmakers said Trump’s Republican administration was “pitting our uniformed military and intelligence community professionals against American citizens” and called on troops to “stand up for our laws.”
The video sparked a firestorm in Republican circles and soon drew the attention of Trump, who accused the lawmakers of sedition and said their actions were “punishable by death.”
The Pentagon later announced it had opened an investigation into Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly, a former Navy pilot who appeared in the video. The FBI then contacted the lawmakers seeking interviews, signaling a broader Justice Department inquiry.
Slotkin said multiple legal advisers initially urged caution.
“Maybe if you keep quiet, this will all go away over Christmas,” Slotkin said she was told.
But in January, the matter flared again, with the lawmakers saying they were contacted by the U.S. attorney’s office for the District of Columbia.
Meanwhile, security threats mounted. Slotkin said her farm in Michigan received a bomb threat, her brother was assigned a police detail due to threats and her parents were swatted in the middle of the night.
Her father, who died in January after a long battle with cancer, “could barely walk and he’s dealing with the cops in his home,” she said.
Slotkin said a “switch went off” in her and she became angry: “And I said, ‘It’s not gonna stop unless I fight back.’”
Democratic senators draw a line
The requests from the FBI and the Justice Department have been voluntary. Slotkin said that her legal team had communicated with prosecutors but that officials “keep asking for a personal interview.”
Slotkin’s lawyer, Preet Bharara, in the letter to Pirro declined the interview request and asked that she “immediately terminate any open investigation and cease any further inquiry concerning the video.” In the other letter, Bharara urged Bondi to use her authority to direct Pirro to close the inquiry.
Bharara wrote that Slotkin’s constitutional rights had been infringed and said litigation is being considered.
“All options are most definitely on the table,” Slotkin said. Asked whether she would comply with a subpoena, she paused before responding: “I’d take a hard look at it.”
Bharara, who’s representing Slotkin in the case, is a former U.S. attorney in New York who was fired by Trump in 2017 during his first administration. He’s also representing Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff of California in a separate case involving the Justice Department.
Kelly has similarly pushed back, suing the Pentagon last month over attempts to punish him for the video. On Tuesday, a federal judge said that he knows of no U.S. Supreme Court precedent to justify the Pentagon’s censuring of Kelly as he weighed whether to intervene.
Slotkin said she’s in contact with the other lawmakers who appeared in the video, but she wouldn’t say what their plans were in the investigations.
A rising profile
Trump has frequently and consistently targeted his political opponents. In some cases, those attacks have had the unintended consequence of elevating their national standing.
In Kelly’s case, he raised more than $12.5 million in the final months of 2025 following the “illegal orders” video controversy, according to campaign finance filings.
Slotkin, like Kelly, has been mentioned among Democrats who could emerge as presidential contenders in 2028.
She previously represented one of the nation’s most competitive House districts before winning a Senate seat in Michigan in 2024, even as Trump carried the state.
Slotkin delivered the Democratic response to Trump’s address to Congress last year and has since urged her party to confront him more aggressively, saying Democrats had lost their “alpha energy” and calling on them to “go nuclear” against Trump’s redistricting push.
“If I’m encouraging other people to take risk, how can I not then accept risk myself?” Slotkin said. “I think you’ve got to show people that we’re not going to lay down and take it.”
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that California this fall may use its new election map, which is expected to send five more Democrats to Congress.
With no dissents, the justices rejected emergency appeals from California Republicans and President Trump’s lawyers, who claimed the map was a racial gerrymander to benefit Latinos, not a partisan effort to bolster Democrats.
Trump’s lawyers supported the California Republicans and filed a Supreme Court brief asserting that “California’s recent redistricting is tainted by an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.”
They pointed to statements from Paul Mitchell, who led the effort to redraw the districts, that he hoped to “bolster” Latino representatives in the Central Valley.
In response, the state’s attorneys told the court the GOP claims defied the public’s understanding of the mid-decade redistricting and contradicted the facts regarding the racial and ethnic makeup of the districts.
Gov. Gavin Newsom proposed re-drawing the state’s 52 congressional districts to “fight back against Trump’s power grab in Texas.”
He said that if Texas was going to redraw its districts to benefit Republicans so as to keep control of the House of Representatives, California should do the same to benefit Democrats.
The voters approved the change in November.
While the new map has five more Democratic-leaning districts, the state’s attorneys said it did not increase the number with a Latino majority.
“Before Proposition 50, there were 16 Latino-majority districts. After Proposition 50, there is the same number. The average Latino share of the voting-age population also declined in those 16 districts,” they wrote.
It would be “strange for California to undertake a mid-decade restricting effort with the predominant purpose of benefiting Latino voters and then enact a new map that contains an identical number of Latino-majority districts,” they said.
Trump’s lawyers pointed to the 13th Congressional District in Merced County and said its lines were drawn to benefit Latinos.
The state’s attorneys said that too was incorrect. “The Latino voting-age population [in District 13] decreased after Proposition 50’s enactment,” they said.
Three judges in Los Angeles heard evidence from both sides and upheld the new map in a 2-1 decision.
“We find that the evidence of any racial motivation driving redistricting is exceptionally weak, while the evidence of partisan motivations is overwhelming,” said U.S. District Judges Josephine Staton and Wesley Hsu.
In the past, the Supreme Court has said the Constitution does not bar state lawmakers from drawing election districts for political or partisan reasons, but it does forbid doing so based on the race of the voters.
In December, the court ruled for Texas Republicans and overturned a 2-1 decision that had blocked the use of its new election map. The court’s conservatives agreed with Texas lawmakers who said they acted out of partisan motives, not with the aim of denying representation to Latino and Black voters.
“The impetus for the adoption of the Texas map (like the map subsequently adopted in California) was partisan advantage pure and simple,” Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. wrote in a concurring opinion.
California’s lawyers quoted Alito in supporting their map.
ATLANTA — Georgia’s Fulton County has gone to federal court seeking the return of all ballots and other documents from the 2020 election that were seized by the FBI last week from a warehouse near Atlanta.
Its motion also asks for the unsealing of a law enforcement agent’s sworn statement that was presented to the judge who approved the search warrant, the county chairman, Robb Pitts, said Wednesday. The filing on behalf of Pitts and the county election board is not being made public because the case is under seal, he said.
The Jan. 28 search at Fulton County’s main election facility in Union City sought records related to the 2020 election. Many Democrats have criticized what they see as the use of the FBI and the Justice Department to pursue President Trump’s political foes.
The Republican president and his allies have fixated on the heavily Democratic county, the state’s most populous, since the Republican narrowly lost the election in Georgia to Democrat Joe Biden that year. Trump has long insisted without evidence that widespread voter fraud in the county cost him victory in the state.
“The president himself and his allies, they refuse to accept the fact that they lost,” Pitts said. “And even if he had won Georgia, he would still have lost the presidency.”
Pitts defended the county’s election practices and said Fulton has conducted 17 elections since 2020 without any issues.
“This case is not only about Fulton County. This is about elections across Georgia and across the nation,” Pitts said, citing comments by Trump earlier this week on a podcast where he called for Republicans to “take over” and “nationalize” elections. White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt has said the president was referring to legislative efforts.
A warrant cover sheet provided to the county includes a list of items that the agents were seeking related to the 2020 general election: all ballots, tabulator tapes from the scanners that tally the votes, electronic ballot images created when the ballots were counted and then recounted, and all voter rolls.
The FBI drove away with hundreds of boxes of ballots and other documents. County officials say they were not told why the federal government wanted the documents.
“What they’re doing with the ballots that they have now, we don’t know, but if they’re counted fairly and honestly, the results will be the same,” Pitts said.
Andrew Bailey, the FBI’s co-deputy director, and Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, were seen on-site, at the time. Democrat in Congress have questioned the propriety of Gabbard’s presence because the search was a law enforcement, not intelligence, action.
In a letter to top Democrats on the House and Senate Intelligence committees Monday, she said Trump asked her to be there “under my broad statutory authority to coordinate, integrate, and analyze intelligence related to election security.”
Netflix Inc. Co-Chief Executive Ted Sarandos pledged to maintain a 45-day theatrical window for Warner Bros. films during a Senate subcommittee hearing Tuesday.
Sarandos also tried to dampen concerns about potential job losses and U.S. production declines related to the companies’ proposed multibillion-dollar deal.
During a two-hour hearing before the Senate Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights, Sarandos told lawmakers the proposed merger would not run afoul of antitrust concerns and would, instead, “strengthen the American entertainment industry.”
About 80% of HBO Max subscribers also have Netflix subscriptions, which he said showed the two services were “complementary.” Netflix also plans to increase its film and television production spending to $26 billion this year, with a majority of that happening in the U.S., he said.
“We are doubling down, even as much of the industry has pulled back,” Sarandos said, according to a written transcript of his opening remarks. “With this deal, we’re going to increase, not reduce, production investments going forward, supported by a stronger combined business and balance sheet.”
Sarandos was joined at the hearing by Warner Bros. Discovery Chief Revenue and Strategy Officer Bruce Campbell.
When asked by Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) whether senators should expect a “round of layoffs” or consumer price increases as a result of the deal, Campbell said no. He pointed to Netflix’s lack of comparable film and TV studios, or the distribution infrastructure that Warner Bros. has.
“We believe, based on our discussions with them in the negotiation process, that they’re not only going to keep those operations intact, in fact, they’re going to invest in those operations and invest in continued production, including on our lots in Burbank and elsewhere,” Campbell said.
Paramount Chief Executive David Ellison was also invited to appear as a witness, but declined because he did not believe it would be useful or helpful since the company’s bid for Warner had been rejected, Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) said during the hearing. Ellison did, however, meet with him and other senators privately to answer questions, Booker said.
Sarandos also tried to assuage concerns about the deal’s potential effect on theatrical distribution.
“I know I’ve earned some skepticism over there over the years on this because I was talking a lot about Netflix’s business model, which was different from that,” he said. “We didn’t own a theatrical distributor before. We do now, and a great one.”
When asked if the 45-day window would be “self-enforced,” Sarandos agreed, saying that was an industry standard. He did, however, note the general caveat that “routinely, movies that underperform, the window moves a little bit” but is still referred to as a 45-day window.
And in a sign of the growing role politics has played in the perception of the deal, Sarandos tried to sidestep questions from Republican senators about perceived “woke” content on the streaming platform, as well as inquiries from Booker about President Trump’s involvement in the merger. Trump previously said he “would be involved” in his administration’s decision to approve any deal.
The hearing comes just two months after Netflix prevailed in a hotly contested bidding war for Warner Bros. The $72-billion deal would dramatically reshape the Hollywood landscape and give the streamer control over Warner Bros.’ storied Burbank film and TV studios, its lot, HBO and HBO Max.
Netflix also agreed to take on more than $10 billion in Warner Bros. debt, pushing the enterprise value of the transaction to $82.7 billion.
But Paramount has continued to pursue the company, fighting to acquire all of Warner Bros. Discovery, including its cable networks.
The company, led by Ellison, has made a direct appeal to Warner shareholders to tender their shares in support of a Paramount deal. A deadline for that offer was recently extended to Feb. 20.
Paramount has also filed proxy materials to ask Warner shareholders to reject the Netflix deal at an upcoming shareholders meeting.
WASHINGTON — Speaker Mike Johnson’s ability to carry out President Trump’s “play call” for funding the government will be put to the test on Tuesday as the House votes on a bill to end the partial shutdown.
Johnson will need near-unanimous support from his Republican conference to proceed to a final vote, but he and other GOP leaders sounded confident during a Tuesday morning press conference that they will succeed. Johnson can afford to lose only one Republican on party line votes with perfect attendance, but some lawmakers had threatened to tank the effort if their priorities are not included. Trump weighed in with a social media post, telling them, “There can be NO CHANGES at this time.”
“We will work together in good faith to address the issues that have been raised, but we cannot have another long, pointless, and destructive Shutdown that will hurt our Country so badly — One that will not benefit Republicans or Democrats. I hope everyone will vote, YES!,” Trump wrote on his social media site.
The measure would end the partial government shutdown that began Saturday, funding most of the federal government through Sept. 30 and the Department of Homeland Security for two weeks as lawmakers negotiate potential changes for the agency that enforces the nation’s immigration laws — U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE.
“The Republicans are going to do the responsible thing,” Johnson said.
Running Trump’s ‘play call’
The House had previously approved a final package of spending bills for this fiscal year ending Sept. 30, but the Senate broke up that package so that more negotiations could take place for the Homeland Security funding bill. Democrats are demanding changes in response to events in Minneapolis, where two American citizens were shot and killed by federal agents.
Johnson said on Fox News Channel’s “Fox News Sunday” it was Trump’s “play call to do it this way. He had already conceded he wants to turn down the volume, so to speak.” But GOP leaders sounded as if they still had work to do in convincing the rank-and-file to join them as House lawmakers returned to the Capitol on Monday after a week back in their congressional districts.
“We always work till the midnight hour to get the votes,” said House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La. “You never start the process with everybody on board. You work through it, and you could say that about every major bill we’ve passed.”
The funding package passed the Senate on Friday. Trump says he’ll sign it immediately if it passes the House. Some Democrats are expected to vote for the final bill but not for the initial procedural measure setting the terms for the House debate, making it the tougher test for Johnson and the White House.
Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries has made clear that Democrats wouldn’t help Republicans out of their procedural jam, even though Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer helped negotiate the funding bill.
Jeffries, of New York, noted that the procedural vote covers a variety of issues that most Democrats oppose, including resolutions to hold former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in contempt of Congress over the Jeffrey Epstein investigation.
“If they have some massive mandate,” Jeffries said of Republicans, “then go pass your rule, which includes toxic bills that we don’t support.”
Key differences from the last shutdown
The path to the current partial shutdown differs from the fall impasse, which affected more agencies and lasted a record 43 days.
Then, the debate was over extending temporary coronavirus pandemic-era subsidies for those who get health coverage through the Affordable Care Act. Democrats were unsuccessful in getting those subsidies included as part of a package to end the shutdown.
Congress has made important progress since then, passing six of the 12 annual appropriations bills that fund federal agencies and programs. That includes important programs such as nutrition assistance and fully operating national parks and historic sites. They are funded through Sept. 30.
But the remaining unpassed bills represent roughly three-quarters of federal spending, including the Defense Department. Service members and federal workers could miss paychecks depending upon the length of the current funding lapse.
Voting bill becomes last-minute obstacle
Some House Republicans have demanded that the funding package include legislation requiring voters to show proof of citizenship before they are eligible to participate in elections. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., had said the legislation, known as the SAVE Act, must be included in the appropriations package.
But Luna appeared to drop her objections late Monday, writing on social media that she had spoken with Trump about a “pathway forward” for the voting bill in the Senate that would keep the government open. Luna and Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., met with Trump at the White House.
The Brennan Center for Justice, a think tank focused on democracy and voting rights issues, said the voting bill’s passage would mean that Americans would need to produce a passport or birth certificate to register to vote and that at least 21 million voters lack ready access to those papers.
“If House Republicans add the SAVE Act to the bipartisan appropriations package it will lead to another prolonged Trump government shutdown,” said Schumer, of New York. “Let’s be clear, the SAVE Act is not about securing our elections. It is about suppressing voters.”
Johnson, of Louisiana, has operated with a thin majority throughout his tenure as speaker. But with Saturday’s special election in Texas, the Republican majority stands at a threadbare 218-214, shrinking the GOP’s ability to withstand defections.
Freking writes for the Associated Press. AP video journalist Nathan Ellgren and writer Lisa Mascaro contributed to this report.
Making his first major post-arrest television interview Monday on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!,” Don Lemon detailed the moments surrounding his incarceration and his experience as a journalist becoming the center of a news story.
“There’s a lot that I cannot say,” Lemon told Kimmel. “But what I will say is that I’m not a protester. I went there to be a journalist. I went there to chronicle and document and record what was happening … I do think that there is a difference between a protester and a journalist.”
The appearance arrived less than a week after the former CNN anchor — now an independent journalist who hosts a YouTube show — was arrested by federal agents in Los Angeles following his coverage of an anti-ICE protest at a Minnesota church earlier this month. Lemon, 59, was released without bond Friday and is expected to plead not guilty, according to his attorneys.
On Monday’s show, Kimmel began the conversation by asking Lemon how he was feeling: “I don’t know — that’s an honest answer,” Lemon said. “I’m OK. I’m not going to let them steal my joy, but this is very serious. These are federal criminal charges.”
Lemon was arrested — along with three others in attendance at the protest — at the direction of Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi, who said on X that it was in connection to what she described as a “coordinated attack” on the church, located in St. Paul. Lemon is charged with conspiracy to deprive the church congregants of their rights and interfering by force with someone’s First Amendment rights. Lemon has denied participating in the protest at the church — assembled to decry that an Immigration and Customs Enforcement field officer apparently serves as a pastor there — saying he was present in a journalistic capacity.
Playfully acknowledging that he hasn’t been a favorite of President Trump’s since his time on CNN, Lemon said he hadn’t been concerned about his possible arrest — even with a re-post by Trump calling for it — until it gained steam by members of Trump’s cabinet, including Bondi and Todd Blanche, the U.S. deputy attorney general. Lemon said that after retaining a lawyer and volunteering to turn himself in to handle the matter without fanfare, he “never heard back from them.”
“That is customary in a situation like this, that someone would be allowed to turn themselves in,” Lemon said. “People who are who are accused of much worse things than I am accused of doing, they are allowed the courtesy. I mean, Donald Trump was allowed the courtesy to turn himself in …”
Lemon went on to detail the moments leading up to his arrest Thursday, which came after a night of covering a Grammys event for the Black Music Collective and attending a post-party celebration.
“I got back to the hotel, I walked in with my swag bag from the thing … and I pressed the elevator button and all of a sudden I feel myself being jostled, people trying to grab me and put me in handcuffs,” he recounted. “And I said, ‘What are you doing here?’ And they said, ‘We came to arrest you.’ I said, ‘Who are you?’ Then finally they identified themselves. And I said, ‘If you are who you are, then where’s the warrant?’ And they didn’t have a warrant, so they had to wait for the someone from outside, an FBI guy, to come in to show me a warrant on a cell phone … They took me outside FBI guys were out there. It had to be maybe a dozen people, which is a waste, Jimmy, of resources … They want to embarrass you. They want to intimidate you. They want to instill fear.”
He said he hadn’t realized how much attention his arrest had generated until he saw CNN broadcasting the story on a TV monitor where he was being held.
“I could see ‘Former CNN anchor Don Lemon arrested in Los Angeles,’” he said. “I said to the guy, ‘Is that happening a lot?’ He goes, ‘You’ve been on all morning, yeah. And he says, ‘This is a big deal.’”
During the conversation, Kimmel criticized what he felt was a lack of attention to the recent search by FBI agents of the home of a Washington Post reporter who covers the federal government. Lemon, who parted ways with CNN in 2023, attributed it to a fear among the leaders of corporate press enterprises.
“Corporate media has been neutered right now. They are afraid, and that’s the reason I’m so happy with what I do, because I’m closer to the ground,” he said. “This is not time for folly. It’s not time for false equivalence, and putting people on television and on news programs, giving them a platform, who come on just to lie. …. Some things are objectively bad and I think its important in this time to point that out.”
Lemon hitting the late-night circuit intensifies its spotlight as a free-speech battleground. The Trump era has prompted more pointed and passionate takes from most of the major hosts that, in turn, have captured the attention and ire of the president, who has provoked threats against them and their broadcasters.
Last year, CBS announced it was canceling “The Late Show” after a three-decade run — a decision the company attributed to financial reasons and not, as many have speculated, because of host Stephen Colbert’s criticism of a settlement between the Trump administration and Paramount, the parent company of CBS, over a 2024 “60 Minutes” interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris.
More recently, Kimmel faced a brief suspension last fall over comments regarding the killing of right-wing activist and influencer Charlie Kirk (ABC ultimately reinstated Kimmel following public backlash.) In fact, Lemon referenced that situation prior to his arrest, when a judge dismissed prosectors’ initial charging effort: “This is not a victory lap for me because it’s not over. They’re gonna try again,” Lemon told his followers on his YouTube show after the judge’s ruling. “Go ahead, make me into the new Jimmy Kimmel, if you want.”
Last Friday, addressing a crowd outside the courthouse upon his release, Lemon said, “There is no more important time than right now, this very moment, for a free and independent media that shines a light on the truth and holds those in power accountable. I will not stop now, I will not stop ever.”
WASHINGTON — President Trump said Monday that the federal government should “nationalize” elections, repeating — without evidence — his long-running claim that U.S. elections are beset by widespread fraud.
Speaking on a podcast hosted by former FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino, Trump said Republicans should “take over the voting in at least 15 places,” alleging that voting irregularities in what he called “crooked states” are hurting the GOP.
“The Republican ought to nationalize the voting,” Trump said.
The proposal would clash with the Constitution’s long-standing framework that grants states primary authority over election administration, and underscored Trump’s continued efforts to upend voting rules ahead of this year’s midterm elections.
Trump, for example, lamented that Republicans have not been “tougher” on the issue, again asserting without evidence that he lost the 2020 election because undocumented immigrants voted illegally for Democrats.
“If we don’t get them out, Republicans will never win another election,” Trump said. “These people were brought to our country to vote and they vote illegally, and it is amazing that the Republicans are not tougher on it.”
In his remarks, the president suggested that “some interesting things” may come out of Georgia in the near future. Trump did not divulge more details, but was probably teasing what may come after the FBI served a search warrant at the election headquarters of Fulton County, Ga.
Days after FBI agents descended on the election center, the New York Times reported that Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard was with agents at the scene when she called Trump on her cellphone. Trump thanked them for their work, according to the report, an unusual interaction between the president and investigators tied to a politically sensitive inquiry.
In the days leading up to the Georgia search, Trump suggested in a speech during the World Economic Summit in Davos, Switzerland, that criminal charges were imminent in connection to what he called a “rigged” 2020 election.
Georgia has been central to Trump’s 2020 claims. That’s where Trump called Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger on January 2021, asking him to “find” 11,780 votes to overturn the state’s results. Raffensperger refused, affirming that a series of reviews confirmed that Democrat Joe Biden had won the state.
Since returning to office a year ago, Trump has continued to aggressively pushed changes to election rules.
“Because our Constitution assigns responsibility for election regulation to the States and to Congress, this Court holds that the President lacks the authority to direct such changes,” Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly of the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia wrote in October.
In Congress, several Republican lawmakers have backed legislation to require people provide proof of citizenship before they register to vote.
Some conservatives are using the elections bill as bargaining chip amid negotiations over a spending package that would end a partial government shutdown that began early Saturday.
“ONLY AMERICAN CITIZENS SHOULD BE VOTING IN AMERICAN ELECTIONS. This is common sense not rocket science,” Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) wrote on X on Monday as negotiations were continuing.
