After Gov. Gavin Newsom announced this week that the U.S. Department of Justice may be investigating his wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, media and pundits pounced on millions in charity payments he has solicited for nonprofits, including ones she is involved in.
Those donations, known as “behested payments,” aren’t illegal in California, but, long before Newsom started asking for them, many have found them unsavory — with good cause. A behest, after all, is by definition a command or at least a strong suggestion.
Anytime a politician is commanding money, regardless of the purpose, there is at least the appearance that the giver — Meta, Google, Blue Shield for example — may expect something in return.
It may seem absurd that the Trump administration could be investigating Newsom for questionable ethics, when Trump has hawked everything from crypto-coins to sneakers from the Oval Office. But the problem Newsom now faces is that behested payments are actually skeevy, and legal or not, they make an excellent target for pummeling the presidential contender. Especially because some of the charities are tied to his wife.
“The Newsom case has blown it wide open, but this has been an issue for years,” Sean McMorris told me. He’s the transparency, ethics and accountability program manager at Common Cause, a nonpartisan organization that has been raising alarms over behested payments for more than a decade.
McMorris said that while these payments don’t violate any laws, they are “ripe for abuse” because companies and people likely aren’t ponying up cash just to be good citizens. If you or I called up PG&E and asked them to give a few million to our favorite cause, I doubt we’d have much luck, even if it involved kittens, puppies or small children in need.
The entire system, McMorris points out, “doesn’t really work unless you’re shaking down people who you know need things from you as a politician.”
Jerry Brown used behested payments to get millions for charter schools he supported. Lesser luminaries such as mayors (including Antonio Villaraigosa, Eric Garcetti and Karen Bass, just to name the last three in L.A.) have used them for all kinds of stuff from jobs programs to fixing up official residences.
And it’s far from a Democratic thing. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican, used them to pay for travel and after-school programs. Republican James Gallagher, who recently won a congressional seat, used them to fund computers for schools while he was in the state Legislature. Senate Minority Leader Brian Jones has raised millions, including helping to get $800,000 in donations to fund a replica of a historic ship for the maritime museum in his San Diego district.
Trump himself could be considered king of behested payments, with his corporate-paid ballroom and birthday bash.
Literally, folks, find me a politician with an itty-bitty bit of clout, and I’ll show you a trail of behested payments stretching through their pet projects. For that reason alone, it’s unlikely that California legislators will take any action to curb them, especially now when doing so would appear as a criticism to Newsom and Democrats in general.
And, to be fair, behested payments can do a lot of good. Newsom supercharged behested payments during the pandemic, raising hundreds of millions for programs to get Californians through that social disaster.
For that reason and others, not all experts find them terribly troubling. Jessica Levinson, a Loyola Law School professor with an expertise in election and governance issues, points out that money in politics is nothing new and at least behested payments are (mostly) required to be acknowledged. Anything over $5,000 and the politician has to report it to the California Fair Political Practices Commission, which keeps a public database.
That makes behested payments far more transparent than, say, dark money donations to a mysterious political action committee. And at least the money is going to a good cause, be it historical ships or computers for kids.
“I actually don’t think that they’re the evil mechanism that other people do,” Levinson said. “I mean, my feeling is like, let’s live in reality, right? People are going to want to give as much money to or close to powerful people as possible, and I think that we have a choice between money going to independent expenditure groups or political committees or going to nonprofits.”
So behested payments in and of themselves might not be much of a headache for Newsom. But some of the payments Newsom solicited went to nonprofits Siebel Newsom is involved with, and which have paid her a salary. That proximity is uncomfortable for many of us. There is no distinction for a behest given to a charity with direct ties to the politician, but maybe there should be.
None of that is to say the Newsoms are off the hook in a federal investigation. Newsom’s office said that along with the FBI, agents from the IRS have been knocking on doors and asking questions. All of us — probably the Newsoms included — will just have to wait to see if the fine-tooth combs of the feds pick up any dirt.
If there is any lesson to be learned at this point, it’s about ambition and hubris. Behested payments are easy money for California politicians and business as usual — everyone does it. But maybe they shouldn’t. It’s not black or white.
Newsom is learning quickly what it means to have a powerful enemy like Trump, one who has shown he will use the full power of the American government for his own purposes. One who can tip the scales and slide white to gray and gray to felony.
Federal investigators do not like to come up empty-handed, and the wink-wink nature of behested payments creates just that kind of ambiguity that provides reasonable cause for investigation — a self-inflicted vulnerability that surely has every California politician nervous.
The fish and chips in this seaside town were great but not the only attraction(Image: Manchester Family / MEN)
Despite its popularity, this bustling seaside town has somehow eluded me and my family. Its position on the west coast of Wales and nearly equidistant between its north and south means it’s not exactly the most convenient spot for a day out for most folk.
That’s not to suggest it’s overlooked by visitors. Frequently dubbed the ‘culture capital’ of Wales, the town ranks among the nation’s most-visited locations and boasts the nation’s oldest pier, which launched in 1865.
Now a truncated version of its original span, the Royal Pier is currently marketed as ‘a one stop destination for food, drinks, socialising and family fun’, featuring an arcade, a pub, a chippy, a nightclub and more.
On one flank of the pier stands Aberystwyth Castle, a Grade I listed Edwardian fortress constructed in the late 13th century. But it was the attraction at the northern tip of the promenade that captured our interest: the extraordinary Aberystwyth Cliff Railway.
Britain’s longest electric funicular cliff railway, it’s been ferrying visitors to the top of Constitution Hill since launching in 1896 and ran on a water balance system until electrification in 1921, reports WalesOnline.
The carriages are pulled to the summit at merely 4mph, driven by a motor and steel cables. And the leisurely pace ensures you have ample opportunity to absorb the breathtaking landscape below, with magnificent views of the town, Cardigan Bay and, on a clear day, 26 mountain peaks stretching across much of Wales’s length.
It’s not simply a journey up and down either, as there’s plenty to enjoy at the summit, including a modest crazy golf course, frisbee golf, a games room with pool, air hockey and 10-pin bowling, and one of the world’s largest camera obscuras, which provides a live aerial view of 1,000 square miles of land and seascape below. Having paid £1 each, we couldn’t make out much, though we were informed the vista is considerably better on a clearer day.
There’s a compact gift shop and some historical displays chronicling the heritage of the hill, once known as Luna Park (a Victorian forerunner to modern theme parks) which boasted a helter skelter and an early version of a roller coaster called a ‘switchback railway’. There’s also the well-loved Consti café serving meals, snacks and drinks — and it even has its own pick ‘n’ mix stand.
Saving ourselves for fish and chips, we enjoyed a coffee and a cider, with the weather mild enough to sit in the covered outdoor seating area. You can stroll back down if you fancy, but at just £1 extra for a return ticket (adults £8, children £7), we opted for the easier route and grabbed a standing spot at the front of the carriage for an unobstructed view.
Dogs are welcome in the carriages, though the whimpering pooch in ours appeared far from impressed with the experience. Back on solid ground, we had plenty of time to discover more of the town, which has scooped awards for both its beaches, regularly celebrated for their strikingly clear turquoise waters.
While some visitors were bold enough to take a swim, we cooled down with ice cream sundaes from Prom Diner, a much-loved spot along the seafront serving Italian-inspired luxury Welsh ice cream Mario’s.
Also situated on the main promenade, lined with charming pastel-hued buildings, is The Original Tram Company, doing a brisk trade offering the likes of crepes, waffles, donuts and drinks. Set further back from the front are rows of shops boasting some independent gems, including the delightful Bookshop By The Sea and no fewer than three outlets from independent clothing label Polly, established in the town over 30 years ago.
The seaside atmosphere fades as you venture further from the shore, where familiar high street names such as Betfred, Savers and JD, alongside banks and mobile phone shops, begin to dominate.
With a swift change of direction, it was finally time for our much-anticipated chippy tea, and we made our way back to the Royal Pier.
Tempting as it was to enjoy ‘a chipnic on the pier’ – where numerous picnic-style tables offer spectacular views – it was simply too windy for that, so we opted to grab and go.
Much as I adore a seaside vista while tucking into fish and chips, I must confess that with hordes of seagulls swooping overhead, we thought it wiser to retreat to the car to enjoy our meal in peace. Being charged 25p for a tray to eat from felt somewhat unusual.
Given the sauce and gravy we’d purchased to accompany our meal, managing without them would have been rather tricky. Nevertheless, the food was absolutely delicious and our impromptu ‘chipnic in the car’ proved to be the ideal conclusion to an action-packed day.
At first it looked like just another fight over war powers and Congress doing its job. But it feels like something bigger: the start of a real tug-of-war over what the Republican Party is going to be once Trump isn’t the center of everything.
For almost ten years now, Republican politics has been all about Trump. You rose if you stood with him, and you got sidelined if you didn’t. Loyalty often counted more than old-school conservative ideas, passing bills, or sticking to principles. But every party eventually has to answer the tough question that personality-driven movements hate: what happens when the big guy starts looking more like a problem than a winner? That question is getting harder for Republicans to dodge.
Trump didn’t just take over the party in 2016 — he remade it. The old Republican worldview of strong alliances, free trade, and steady leadership shifted toward a more populist, Trump-centered style.
It worked for a while. He won elections, fired up voters who felt ignored, and built a super-loyal base. As long as the wins kept coming, most Republicans went along. Parties get tested in the tough times, though — not the good ones. And the Iran conflict is turning into exactly that kind of test.
A lot of Republicans who backed Trump’s rise never thought they’d end up defending another big Middle East war. Trump made “no more endless wars” one of his best lines—slamming both parties for the messes in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Now the fighting with Iran has dragged on for months. Costs are adding up, gas prices sting at the pump, and nobody’s really clear on what “winning” would even mean. That’s created real quiet discomfort inside the party. The senators and reps who voted to rein in Trump’s war powers weren’t just talking procedure. They were signaling that blind loyalty isn’t automatic anymore.
Parties talk a lot about ideology, but when things get serious, survival often wins out. Some Republicans are starting to put distance between themselves and Trump — not because they hate everything he stands for, but because they don’t want their own careers sinking with one person. There’s a real difference between backing conservative policies and handing the whole party over to a single leader. More of them seem to be waking up to that.
What’s interesting is that the pushback is coming from inside the tent. Democrats opposing Trump is old news. When Republicans do it, it hits different. Senators like Rand Paul, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, and Bill Cassidy broke ranks on the Senate vote. In the House, guys like Thomas Massie, Brian Fitzpatrick, Tom Barrett, and Warren Davidson did the same. These are still small numbers. But big shifts often start small.
The bigger story might be that some Republicans are finally imagining a future without Trump dominating every headline. A younger crop is coming up—they agree with him on immigration, trade, and culture wars, but they don’t want the party to be defined only by personal loyalty to him forever. They want a Republican Party that can keep going after he’s gone—Trumpism as one important piece, not the whole thing.
History shows parties sometimes tie themselves too tightly to charismatic leaders. Sometimes it revitalizes them. Sometimes it drags them down.
Right now, some inside the GOP worry Trump might be moving from asset to liability—especially with the Iran war dragging on and polarization getting worse. Trump is still the biggest force in the party with a rock-solid base. But power and lasting control aren’t the same.
These congressional votes show that at least some Republicans are already looking ahead to the next chapter. They see the risks of hitching the whole party’s future to one man. Whether they’re right or wrong, time will tell. But the conversation inside the party has clearly moved past just Iran or war powers. It’s now about whether the Republican Party still belongs to Trump — or whether it can finally start belonging to itself again.
When Nithya Raman stepped up to a podium on the night of L.A.’s mayoral primary election, she thanked her supporters for standing up to the “powerful interests” who spent millions of dollars trying to “preserve this city’s broken and unjust status quo.”
“At a time when so many people have written Los Angeles off or have lost hope in the future of this incredible city,” the democratic socialist L.A. mayoral hopeful said, “you are proof that Angelenos are hungry for change.”
But as election results rolled in, the movement for change was underwhelming, or at least divided. Incumbent Mayor Karen Bass was in the lead, advancing to the November runoff. That left Raman locked in a battle for a second spot with Republican former reality TV star Spencer Pratt.
Bass is one of several high-profile establishment Democrats to emerge on top. In California’s gubernatorial race, centrist Xavier Becerra, a veteran of the Biden Cabinet, advanced to the runoff after being challenged from the left by billionaire green activist Tom Steyer and Democratic former U.S. Rep. Katie Porter. Steyer is now behind Steve Hilton, a Republican, and battling to make the runoff.
Still reeling from the rise of Donald Trump, Democrats in California and beyond are struggling to figure out the future direction of the party.
Some progressives, inspired by Zohran Mamdani’s New York mayoral victory, saw 2026 as an opportunity to move the city further left. But the results have been mixed in key races, with veteran Democrats like Bass and Becerra eking out leads even as polls show dissatisfaction with status quo politics in California.
“This was supposed to be a change revolution, but voters clearly said no to the revolution,” said Sara Sadhwani, a politics professor at Pomona College. “Voters want change,” she noted, “but it doesn’t appear right now that there has been an appetite for a major shift in the ideology of the city or the state.”
Xavier Becerra speaks during an election night event in downtown Los Angeles on Tuesday.
(Eric Thayer/Los Angeles Times)
Becerra emerged as the Democratic favorite late in the election and won support from many establishment party leaders. Pundits said after a wild primary that included the implosion of Democratic U.S. Rep. Eric Swalwell’s campaign amid sex assault allegations, Becerra emerged as a “safe” choice.
Some opponents attacked his moderate views and his willingness to accept campaign donations from big oil companies like Chevron. But that did not stop his rise.
Bass was also beset with challenges, being an incumbent in a city beset with problems.
For her, election night marked a “victory with an asterisk,” Sadhwani said, noting that Bass is first incumbent L.A. mayor in more than two decades to face a runoff. “It would be wrong for Karen Bass to think that this victory … is a ringing endorsement of the work she is currently doing.”
The results underscore Bass’ unpopularity as an incumbent, garnering just 35% of the vote so far. If Raman can catch up and eventually surpass Pratt in the vote count, she could pose a considerable challenge to Bass as more young voters come to the polls in November.
Mike Bonin, a former L.A. City Council member who leads the Pat Brown Institute for Public Affairs at Cal State L.A., said if Bass exceeded expectations it was because they were very low.
“Coming in first in a runoff isn’t a huge victory for an incumbent mayor,” he said. “Two-thirds of the city did not vote for her. That’s not a position of strength.”
James Adams, a political science professor at UC Davis, said that Becerra and Bass coming through indicates the centrist Democratic candidates were in a stronger short-term position than their rivals. But problems loom ahead, he said, as the longtime Democratic establishment that’s been governing California for the last 15 years failed to make notable progress in solving problems with affordable housing, homelessness, public transportation and education.
“I think the Democrats’ prospects are very bright in 2026 given the California Republicans’ dysfunctionality and a complete backlash against Donald Trump,” Adams said. “But I have much bigger concerns about the California Democrats long term, because it seems to me they’re setting a record for most consecutive years of failing to fix the state’s problems while getting reelected anyway.”
Democrats in California, he said, were suffering from being in power too long.
“Whenever one party gets into a long-term, dominant position, usually because the other party is just in the midst of self-destructing … the whole thing ends in tears, because the party that is in a dominant position, they don’t have to be that good.”
As the vote count continues in the mayor’s race, democratic socialists in Los Angeles already have some wins down-ballot.
“We are gaining momentum,” said Leslie Chang, a co-chair of the 5,000-member L.A. chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, a decentralized anti-capitalist group that advocates for rental protections and defunding the police. Over the last six years, Angelenos have elected four DSA-backed City Council members and a DSA-recommended city controller.
The DSA did not officially endorse Raman, because she entered the race after the group had issued endorsements and another DSA candidate was also running for mayor. However, three of the six DSA-backed candidates for citywide office were projected to win outright.
DSA Councilmembers Hugo Soto-Martinez and Eunisses Hernandez were reelected by such large margins they avoided runoffs. In the city attorney’s race, DSA-endorsed Marissa Roy was in the lead and the mainstream Democratic incumbent became the first city attorney ousted in a primary in nearly a century. City Controller Kenneth Mejia, a progressive anti-establishment candidate who is not a DSA member but an ally of the group, led by nearly 20 percentage points.
When Chang knocked on doors, she said, some voters asked: “Well, what’s the difference between Nithya and Karen Bass?”
A few voters told her that after reviewing Bass’ and Raman’s websites, they found their platforms similar. Chang was surprised. She thought Raman articulated a clear and novel strategy for how to get L.A. out of the housing crisis, but she said some on the left took issue with her working with housing developers to reduce red tape.
Neel Sannappa, chair of the California Democratic Party’s progressive caucus, said Raman was stymied by getting into the race late and having only a few months to campaign. It also didn’t help that a more left-wing challenger, Rae Huang, already had some momentum — not enough to win, but enough to split the left.
“Nithya does represent something real and growing in Los Angeles,” Sannappa said. “There is a hunger for more progressive, left-leaning candidates that want to make sure that we’re investing in people and not so much investing in just police … and being able to build things that are new and innovative.”
Supporters watch election results come in on their phones during Nithya Raman’s election night party at Boomtown Brewery on Tuesday.
(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)
Some have criticized Raman’s coalition-building, noting she was not endorsed by her fellow DSA-backed City Council members. Others said the MIT and Harvard graduate, who has been a councilmember for six years, performed tepidly in a May televised debate and suffered from Pratt’s attempts to tie her to the establishment.
“If you’re a part of the institution, which she is,” Sadhwani said, “then you can’t exactly claim that you’re going to bring massive change.”
Sadhwani said that California’s left, in contrast to New York’s, appears to have a charisma deficit. While Pratt and Hilton had an advantage with their television backgrounds, they also spoke “in plain terms about the real problems that the state faces.”
Part of Bass’ success can also be attributed to assembling a coalition that included the L.A. County Federation of Labor, the L.A. police officers union, the L.A. County Democratic Party and immigrant rights groups.
In the mayoral race, Sadhwani said, “the dominant political coalition still has power, money, the organization.”
“If you can garner the support of the unions, then having a broader message, maybe it’s less important,” she said. “You don’t have to work quite so hard, because the unions have the base machine.”
People attend Mayor Bass’ election party for the California 2026 primaries at the LINE Hotel on Tuesday.
(Carlin Stiehl/For The Times)
Yusef Robb, a longtime Democratic strategist who is an advisor to Bass, attributed the mayor’s lead to her campaign’s success in building a broad coalition and communicating across the political spectrum. Most voters, he said, tend to think less about ideology — and whether a Democrat was mainstream or DSA-supported — than candidates’ positions on bread and butter issues.
“Mayor’s races are first and foremost about what people see outside of their front doors, when they walk their kids to school, when they drive to work,” he said. “At the end of the day, the voters look at the field and say, ‘OK, who do I trust to keep my kids from having to skip around a tent on the way to school?’ ‘Who can I trust to hire more officers?’ … and ‘Who can I trust to fight back against ICE in court through executive action and even in the streets?’ And that’s Karen Bass.”
For Democrats in this robustly blue state, part of the challenge in figuring a path forward is that every candidate — even those already in power — pitches themselves as a bona fide progressive against the status quo.
“We have led a grassroots campaign because we want to bring change to our city,” Bass said on election night. “And that’s what we’ve been doing, and that’s what we’re going to continue to do.”
Raman also tried to tout herself as a change candidate. Articulating her platform in broad strokes rather than bread-and-butter detail, Raman said she wanted L.A. to be a place “where government actually functions and delivers every day on this city’s beautiful bighearted values, where we stand up against ICE, where we show up for our gay and trans siblings.”
But as she talked of neighborhoods “full of trees and shade … and people and good food,” she seemed low-key and equivocal. Her message was a far cry from the pressing one U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) put forward in his presidential campaigns, highlighting the millions of Americans working for “starvation wages” and a young single mother in Nevada struggling on $10.45 an hour.
Ultimately, the fight between Bass and Raman, as a struggle between mainstream and progressive Democrats, is complicated by the fact that Bass came up through the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, founding the grassroots Community Coalition in South L.A. in the 1990s.
Campaign worker Khai Dombroe prepares balloons before Nithya Raman’s election night party.
(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)
And even though Raman is a DSA member, she has tacked to the center during the campaign, distancing herself from past calls to defund the police by saying she did not want the LAPD to lose more officers.
While Raman and Bass have much in common, the most significant difference between them is on homelessness, Sannappa said. Even though Bass comes from a political tradition of not wanting to criminalize the unhoused, he said, she understood her voters include people wanting to move homeless people off the streets.
“Brass tacks is that we need people that are going to be willing to fight for mental health services,” Sannappa said.
“I think Nithya more so represents the direction where the Democratic Party is going to have to go.”
As L.A. becomes less affordable and homeownership becomes out of reach for many Angelenos, young renters have become a rising political constituency — a shift that many say will likely propel the city leftward.
Bonin said he expected the next new rising Democratic coalition in L.A. to be a labor-renter coalition. He cited Councilmember Soto-Martinez, a renter and union organizer, as probably the best avatar of that.
But as the middle-class splinters along generational lines, other political experts warn that many ordinary Angelenos feel increasingly shut out of L.A. politics.
“Once upon a time the Democratic Party was the party of the working class, and today it has become the party of the educated elites,” Sadhwani said. “Perhaps one of the gifts that Donald Trump has given to Democrats is to force them to contend with the everyday issues of voters, which they seem to have distanced themselves from.”
As many Angelenos feel worse off now than four years ago, Chang said Bass was not directly responsible for every problem. Still, she said, she could have done more to move the city in the right direction.
Delaying the wage boost tied to the 2028 Olympics, she said, was a move that failed working people at a time when many are struggling to make ends meet.
“My fear, of course, is people pivot away from corporate Democrats and they choose the MAGA Republican, because that is the most visible fight,” Chang said. “Or because they think, ‘Oh, well, a democratic socialist running on the Democratic Party line, this is just more of the same status quo.’ ”
