RACE

Good morning, and welcome to L.A. on the Record — our City Hall newsletter. It’s Noah Goldberg giving you the latest on city and county government.

For a long time, Spencer Pratt refused to be put into a political box.

The reality-television-personality-turned-national-figure-turned-mayoral-candidate told the New York Times in October that he hated politics and didn’t identify with either major party. He “demurred” when asked by the Hollywood Reporter about his personal politics.

But the supporters who are beginning to line up behind Pratt have made one thing clear: MAGA has entered the Los Angeles mayoral race, just one day after “The Hills” alumnus announced he’s running.

Despite his nonpartisan statements, Pratt has become a darling of the right wing, meeting with influential Republicans across the country who have latched onto his sharp criticism of Mayor Karen Bass and Gov. Gavin Newsom over their handling of the Palisades fire.

On Thursday, Pratt, who lost his home in the fire, finally commented on his political affiliation, saying he has been a registered Republican since 2020.

“I wasn’t going to change it now just to check a different box,” he wrote on X. “This is a non-partisan race — there will be no D or R next to my name. As Mayor, I will not serve either party. I will work with anyone who wants to help the city. No labels necessary.”

The confirmation of Pratt’s political affiliation came as endorsements flowed in from across the country — and not from Democrats, for the most part.

Republican U.S. Sen. Rick Scott of Florida, who has launched a congressional investigation into the response to the Palisades fire, posted on X that he was “glad” Pratt decided to run for mayor. Scott has toured the Palisades with Pratt, and the two met in Washington, D.C., after Scott announced the investigation.

Pratt was also endorsed by Richard Grenell, who is President Trump’s Special Presidential Envoy for Special Missions.

“I endorse Spencer Pratt for Mayor of Los Angeles and will help raise money for him. Transparency is what we need. Spencer has the passion and the drive to make positive change for Los Angeles,” Grenell wrote on X.

Closer to home, Pratt picked up an endorsement from Riverside Sheriff Chad Bianco, a Trump supporter and a Republican candidate for governor.

“LA needs him, California needs him. He’s got integrity and the backbone we need,” Bianco posted on X.

Roxanne Hoge, chairman of the Republican Party of Los Angeles County, said the group welcomes into the mayoral race “every common sense voice who stands for good governance and stands for representing the people over public sector unions and developers and NGOs.”

Hoge said she has a “great affinity” for Pratt, whom she called a personal friend.

“I support his willingness to speak up and be a voice for the voiceless,” she said.

Hoge said the county organization has not endorsed in the race.

Former City Councilmember Mike Bonin, who represented Pacific Palisades until 2024, said Pratt and Trump have many similarities.

“If you look at the model of who he is as candidate, it’s similar to Trump: the reality television background; his most visible communication presence is on Twitter, just as Trump’s was. And he’s sort of developing a candidacy around frustration and blowing the system up, just like Trump did,” Bonin said.

Bonin said Pratt’s entry into the race could be “perilous” for Bass.

The mayor has also tried to tie Pratt to Trump, seeking to position herself as the anti-MAGA candidate in a deep blue city.

“Donald Trump and Spencer Pratt are cut from the same cloth — two Republican, reality star villains running with MAGA backing, spewing disinformation and misinformation to create profit and division. Good luck with that in Los Angeles,” said Doug Herman, a spokesperson for Bass’ campaign.

Candidates will be judged by the people they associate with, Bonin added.

“Show me who you walk with and I’ll tell you who you are,” said Bonin, who is executive director of the Pat Brown Institute for Public Affairs at Cal State Los Angeles.

Rick Caruso, a former Republican who registered as a Democrat when he ran against Bass in 2022, has tried to distance himself from Trump. Caruso said during his mayoral campaign that he never supported Trump for president or donated to his campaigns.

Caruso, a billionaire developer who is considering a run for either mayor or governor, said he hadn’t spoken with Pratt in months but that he was glad the social media influencer was joining the race.

“I think it’s great [that Pratt is running],” Caruso said. “I think the more people that actively get in government service the better.”

Pratt did not respond to multiple texts requesting comment. A member of his team said he is “currently embargoed from doing interviews because of other projects that were previously in play before he announced.”

A campaign staffer did not specify what the other projects were and said Pratt would be able to speak in early February.

State of play

— A YEAR OF FIRES: A year after two of the most destructive wildfires in California history erupted just hours apart, survivors marked the day in Altadena and Pacific Palisades with a mixture of anger and somber remembrance.

— ENTER PRATT: Spencer Pratt announced his candidacy for mayor of Los Angeles on the anniversary of the Palisades fire. Pratt and his wife, Heidi Montag, lost their home in the fire. Since then, the reality TV personality has become a vocal critic of Bass and Newsom.

— WATERED DOWN: LAFD Chief Jaime Moore admitted Tuesday that his department’s after-action report on the Palisades fire was watered down to shield top brass from scrutiny.

— REPORT AND REFINE: The head of the Los Angeles Fire Commission said Tuesday that a “working draft” of the after-action report was sent to the mayor’s office for “refinements” before it was published last October. She added that in her long career in civic roles, she had learned that words like “refinements” could mean troubling changes to a government report, made for the purpose of hiding facts.

— FINAL ADDRESS: In his final State of the State address, Newsom shifted from the problem-solving posture that defined his early years in office to a more declarative accounting of California’s achievements, casting the state as a counterweight to dysfunction in Washington.

— KILLINGS PLUMMET: There were 230 homicides in Los Angeles in 2025, according to the LAPD. That was a 19% drop from 2024 and the fewest the city has seen since 1966, when the population was 30% smaller.

— MAYORAL MOVES: Bass spokesperson Clara Karger is leaving the mayor’s office and heading to public affairs firm Fiona Hutton & Associates. Karger was with Bass’ team for nearly three years. Her departure comes months after Bass’ deputy mayor for communications Zach Seidl left. Seidl was replaced by Amanda Crumley.

— LA|DC|NYC: Anna Bahr, who worked as a deputy press secretary for former Mayor Eric Garcetti and then ran communications for Sen. Bernie Sanders, is headed to the Big Apple to run communications for newly elected Mayor Zohran Mamdani.

QUICK HITS

• Where is Inside Safe? The mayor’s signature program brought Angelenos inside in Skid Row and South Los Angeles this week. The program also partnered with Project Street Vet to provide veterinary care — including vaccines, medications and check ups — to nearly 30 pets belonging to Inside Safe participants, the mayor’s office said.
• On the docket next week: The City Council’s Committee on Public Works will get updates on the city’s graffiti abatement program as well as the city’s efforts to address illegal dumping and to repair pot holes.

Stay in touch

That’s it for this week! Send your questions, comments and gossip to LAontheRecord@latimes.com. Did a friend forward you this email? Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Saturday morning.

In some ways, it was just another campaign coffee: Los Angeles mayoral candidate Austin Beutner in a roomful of voters talking about his career and life accomplishments.

But this was no ordinary meet-and-greet. Beutner was standing inside a partially rebuilt house — with no doors, no windows and no drywall — in an area leveled by the Palisades fire. In the living room, about a dozen people spoke about what they had been through, from the frantic evacuation to the sight of smoldering ruins to the battle to get rebuilding permits.

Allison Holdorff Polhill, who owns the home, introduced Beutner — a former L.A. school superintendent — as the civic leader she would turn to first in a crisis.

“We were in the worst disaster that L.A. has ever experienced,” she told the group. “And we needed a leader that has experience with disasters and emergencies.”

The catastrophic Palisades fire, which destroyed thousands of homes and left 12 people dead, has redefined the L.A. mayor’s race, expanding the field of candidates and creating a political minefield for Karen Bass as she seeks a second four-year term.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass speaks at a City Hall ceremony where flags are lowered to half-staff to commemorate the one-year anniversary of the Palisades and Eaton fires.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

When the fire broke out on Jan. 7, 2025, Bass drew criticism for being in Ghana on a diplomatic mission. Once she returned, she was at odds with her fire chief and unsteady in her public appearances.

More recently, she has faced scrutiny over her handling of the recovery, as well as fire officials’ watering down of an after-action report that was supposed to identify mistakes in the firefighting effort.

The Times found that LAFD officials failed to fully pre-deploy engines to the Palisades amid forecasts of dangerously high winds and that a battalion chief ordered firefighters to leave the scene of a Jan. 1 blaze, even though it wasn’t fully extinguished. That fire rekindled a week later to become the Palisades fire.

Fernando Guerra, a political science professor at Loyola Marymount University, said he expects the disaster will be the No. 1 issue in the June 2 mayoral primary, resonating with voters well beyond Pacific Palisades.

To wage a competitive campaign, each of Bass’ challengers will need to make the fire and its aftermath “a reflection of what’s wrong with city government,” he said.

“It really does reflect on the readiness of the city, the responsiveness of the city, how is government working at the most basic level,” said Guerra, who also runs the Center for the Study of Los Angeles.

So far, Bass’ major challengers are embracing that strategy.

Beutner, who ran the L.A. Unified School District early in the pandemic, has accused Bass of failing to take responsibility for the city’s failures before and after the fire. On Monday, appearing with fire victims in Pacific Palisades, he called on the mayor to form a citizens commission to examine what went wrong.

Rae Huang, a community organizer who is challenging the mayor from the left, has expressed disappointment in what she called Bass’ “finger-pointing” — a reference to the mayor’s criticism, and ouster, of Fire Chief Kristin Crowley last year.

Then there’s reality TV star Spencer Pratt, an outspoken Bass critic, who launched a campaign rooted in his fury over the city’s handling of the fire — and the loss of his family’s home in the flames.

“I’ve waited a whole year for someone to step up and challenge Karen Bass, but I saw no fighters,” Pratt said in a social media post Wednesday. “Guess I’m gonna have to do this myself.”

Reality TV star Spencer Pratt, second from right, announced on Wedneday that he is running for mayor. He is suing the city over its handling of the Palisades fire, which destroyed his home in Pacific Palisades.

(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

Still unclear is whether two formidable public figures will jump in — L.A. County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath and real estate developer Rick Caruso, who lost to Bass in 2022. On Wednesday, Caruso said he will decide in the next couple of weeks whether he will run for mayor or governor.

Asked whether he might stay out of both races, Caruso responded: “I think that option is pretty much off the table now.”

As the city marked the one-year anniversary of the fires this week, Bass mostly kept a low profile, addressing the Pacific Palisades Democratic Club over the weekend and joining a private vigil at the Self-Realization Fellowship Lake Shrine.

While Pratt and hundreds of demonstrators were staging a “They Let Us Burn” rally in the Palisades, Bass stood solemnly outside City Hall as police officers lowered flags to half-staff. Bass spoke about grief and loss, but also the fact that more than 400 homes are being rebuilt.

“You see signs of hope everywhere,” she told the crowd.

Bass’ political team has taken a tougher approach, accusing her most outspoken critics — including Pratt, who is releasing a book later this month — of exploiting the disaster for political or even financial gain.

“For the first time ever we saw a major wildfire politicized by MAGA leaders and monetized by social influencers making tens of thousands of dollars per month and hawking books on the backs of a devastated community,” Bass campaign strategist Doug Herman said in a statement.

For much of the past year, Bass has faced criticism over the Fire Department’s deployment decisions and its failure to put out the Jan. 1 fire. She also has taken hits over the recovery, with residents saying she has not delivered on promises to waive permit fees for rebuilding homes lost in the fire.

Now, the focus has turned to a new and unsettling question: Did the city undermine its own effort to assess the Fire Department’s mistakes?

The Times reported last month that LAFD officials made changes to the after-action report that were so significant that its author, Battalion Chief Kenneth Cook, declined to endorse it.

“The fact that [Cook] is not willing to sponsor, or support, or endorse the report says a hell of a lot about the fact that there is no trust and clear leadership,” Huang said.

Bass told The Times on Wednesday that she did not work with the Fire Department on changes to the report, nor did the agency consult her about any changes.

L.A. County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath speaks at a rally in support of the county’s emergency rent relief program to help households who have lost income because of federal immigration enforcement.

(Al Seib / For The Times)

Horvath, who is running for a second four-year term as county supervisor, has also ripped the city over the report, saying wildfire victims feel “gaslit” — and deserve answers.

The supervisor, whose sprawling district includes the Palisades burn area, said she has been hearing from people asking her to run for mayor. She said she would prefer to continue in county office. But she voiced concern about the city’s future — not just its handling of the wildfire, but also the budget, the homelessness crisis and the delivery of basic services.

“I think people are hungry for a different kind of leadership,” she told The Times.

Pacific Palisades has not been a political stronghold for Bass. Although she won her 2022 race against Caruso by a 10-point margin, she trailed him by double digits in the Palisades.

Like many people across the region, the major mayoral candidates were directly impacted by the January fires or have family who lost homes — or both.

Beutner’s home was severely damaged in the Palisades fire, forcing him to live elsewhere for the past year. His mother-in-law’s home, also in the Palisades, was completely destroyed.

Bass has spoken repeatedly about her brother, whose Malibu home was destroyed in the Palisades fire. Huang’s 53-year-old cousin lost her Altadena home in the Eaton fire. Pratt, who is suing the city over the Palisades fire, said on social media that the flames consumed not just his home but also one owned by his parents.

Caruso, still a candidate-in-waiting, managed to save Palisades Village, the shopping center he opened in 2018, in part by securing his own private firefighting crew. But the inferno nevertheless destroyed the homes of his son and daughter, who are 26 and 29.

Real estate developer Rick Caruso on Wednesday unveils an installation in Pacific Palisades with three beams of light to mark the one-year anniversary of the fires.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

On the night the fire broke out, Caruso voiced his fury on live television about empty fire hydrants and the overall lack of water to douse the flames. Since then, he has offered a steady stream of criticism about the rebuilding process, including the mayor’s decision not to select a replacement for Steve Soboroff, who served 90 days as her recovery czar.

Caruso has spoken favorably in recent weeks about a few aspects of the recovery, including the reopening of classrooms and the quick removal of fire debris. He credited L.A. Unified and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, respectively, for those accomplishments — not the city.

“Frankly, the bright spots are under the leadership of other people,” he told The Times.

Beutner has been equally blunt. At last month’s campaign coffee, he said the city needs to convene a citizen panel similar to the Christopher Commission, which was formed weeks after the 1991 police beating of Rodney King. The panel assessed the LAPD’s handling of discipline, misconduct complaints, excessive force by officers and other issues.

“If you have a tragedy, you have public hearings, you have leaders who are empaneled with the money they need to ask tough questions of everybody — the mayor, her staff, the acting mayor, police, fire” and the Department of Water and Power, Beutner told the group. “What did you do, and what would you have done differently?”

Clara Karger, a spokesperson for Bass, said the city is already participating in a state investigation, which is being overseen by the Fire Safety Research Institute, into the Palisades and Eaton fires.

On top of that, she said, the fire department is commissioning an independent investigation into its response to the Jan. 1 fire that reignited into the Palisades fire. That blaze, known as the Lachman fire, was mentioned only briefly in the department’s after-action report.

“Mayor Bass wants all the information to ensure accountability and to continue implementing needed reforms, many of which are already underway from LAFD,” Karger said.

The Directors Guild of America announced its nominations Thursday for outstanding directorial achievement in theatrical feature film, offering one of the clearest snapshots yet of the Oscar race for director as guild voters begin to weigh in.

Nominated for the DGA’s top film award are Paul Thomas Anderson for “One Battle After Another,” Ryan Coogler for “Sinners,” Guillermo del Toro for “Frankenstein,” Josh Safdie for “Marty Supreme” and Chloé Zhao for “Hamnet.”

Winners will be announced at the 78th annual DGA Awards on Feb. 7 at the Beverly Hilton.

The DGA award remains one of the strongest predictors of Oscar success. Twenty of the last 23 recipients of the guild’s top directing prize have gone on to win the Academy Award for best director. Last year’s DGA winner, “Anora” director Sean Baker, went on to repeat at the Oscars.

Several of this year’s nominees are familiar figures to the guild. Anderson’s nod for “One Battle After Another” marks his third time being recognized by the DGA in the top film category, following his earlier nominations for “There Will Be Blood” and “Licorice Pizza.” Zhao, who won both the DGA Award and the Oscar for “Nomadland,” receives her second nomination for the wrenching period drama “Hamnet,” making her one of a small group of women — including Jane Campion, Kathryn Bigelow and Greta Gerwig — to be recognized more than once by the guild.

Del Toro, who won the DGA Award for “The Shape of Water,” earns his second career nomination in the category for his long-gestating “Frankenstein” adaptation, while Safdie receives his first DGA nomination for theatrical feature film for his gonzo sports drama “Marty Supreme.”

The DGA nominations often track closely with the Oscars in part because of overlapping membership: most directors in the Academy are also members of the guild. While the groups vote independently, that shared base has made the DGA one of the most reliable bellwethers in the Oscar directing race.

This year’s DGA nominations overlap significantly with the Golden Globe nominations for directing, which also included Anderson, Coogler, del Toro and Zhao. The Globes additionally recognized Jafar Panahi for “It Was Just an Accident” and Joachim Trier for “Sentimental Value,” two filmmakers who didn’t appear in the DGA lineup. The differences highlight the contrasting makeup of the Globes’ voting body of international critics and the DGA’s more industry-focused membership.

The guild also announced nominees for the Michael Apted Award for outstanding directorial achievement in a first-time theatrical feature film, a category that has increasingly served as a spotlight for emerging talent. This year’s nominees are Hasan Hadi for “The President’s Cake,” Harry Lighton for “Pillion,” Charlie Polinger for “The Plague,” Alex Russell for “Lurker” and Eva Victor for “Sorry, Baby.” Last year’s Apted Award winner, RaMell Ross, went on to earn a best picture Oscar nomination for “Nickel Boys.”

Television, documentary and other DGA nominations were announced earlier this week, recognizing directing work across drama, comedy, limited series and nonfiction programming. In dramatic series, nominees included “Severance,” “Andor,” “The Diplomat” and HBO Max’s “The Pitt,” while comedy series nominees included “The Bear,” “Hacks,” “The White Lotus” and Apple TV+’s “The Studio.”

WASHINGTON — Five years after the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol by President Trump’s supporters, the White House released a website this week attempting to revise history.

Reasserting Trump’s false claim that he had won the 2020 presidential election, the administration doubled down on his decision to issue blanket pardons for the rioters, blamed Capitol Police for escalating tensions that day, and denounced Trump’s vice president at the time, Mike Pence, for “refusing to act” in defiance of the Constitution to stop congressional certification of Trump’s loss.

It was a display of political audacity that has become the hallmark of Trump’s second act — challenging anyone to stop him from asserting raw executive authority, both at home and increasingly abroad.

Whether on foreign or domestic policy, lawmakers have struggled to respond to an administration that moves with unfettered restraint and exceptional speed. The U.S. Supreme Court has only facilitated Trump’s expansion of unitary executive power. And governments abroad accustomed to Trump’s lack of predictability now face a president whose entire philosophy toward foreign interventionism appears to have turned on a dime.

“There are political checks. They are checks, though, that have been degraded,” said William Howell, dean of the School of Government and Policy at Johns Hopkins University and author of “Trajectory of Power: The Rise of the Strongman Presidency.”

“They are checks that are looked upon not just with frustration, but an outward animosity by the president,” Howell added. “It’s a feature of his populist politics for him to say, ‘anything that stands in my way is illegitimate.’”

Unitary rule

Trump’s extraordinary use of executive authority has no comparison in recent times. The president has issued more than 220 executive actions in his first year back in office — more than the 220 orders he issued throughout his entire first term, and dwarfing the 276 actions that President Obama issued over eight years in office.

Directing the Justice Department to prosecute his political enemies, and deploying his pardon power to shield his friends and allies, Trump risks fueling the very sort of politicized system of justice he campaigned against as a presidential candidate.

And his administration has shown derision for Congress, controlled by the president’s own party, approving historically few bills and neglecting those that have passed, such as the Epstein Files Transparency Act. Trump has attempted to unilaterally rename the Defense Department and the Kennedy Center, despite straightforward laws requiring acts of Congress to do so, and has impounded funds appropriated by Congress for child care and family assistance allocated to Democratic states.

“The nature of presidential power is that it is given as much as taken,” said Andrew Rudalevige, a professor of government at Bowdoin College and author of “The New Imperial Presidency.” “You can’t have an imperial presidency without an invisible Congress. And certainly, the current Congress is setting new records for intentional invisibility.”

After Trump bulldozed the East Wing of the White House, a reporter asked his press secretary what was stopping him from knocking down the entire building. Karoline Leavitt demurred. “That’s a legal opinion that’s been held for many years,” she said, suggesting he could, in fact, demolish the rest of it.

“The institutional constraints on the unilateral presidency are weak,” said Dino Christenson, a political science professor at Washington University in St. Louis and co-author of “The Myth of the Imperial Presidency.” “The conservative majority of the [Supreme] Court has also recently chosen to back executive power.

“Arguably,” he added, “international constraints are even weaker, at least for powerful nations like the U.S.”

‘Governed by force’

Trump’s order over the weekend to depose Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, seizing him and his wife from their bedroom in a stunning military raid, was the type of rare exercise in American power that has defined past presidencies. But Trump said he was just getting started.

Beaming from the operational success in Caracas, Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One that he was considering military action against no fewer than five countries, allies and foes alike. His homeland security advisor, Stephen Miller, said that no one would even try to stop Trump from militarily taking over Greenland, an autonomous region of Denmark, a NATO ally and European Union member state.

“We live in a world,” Miller told CNN, “that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power.”

At the State Department, veteran U.S. diplomats waited anxiously for guidance from the administration on how it would justify the operation based on international law on the global stage. It never came. “At least with Iraq, Libya, Syria, there was an effort to seek legal cover,” one diplomat said, granted anonymity to speak candidly. “This is just grab-and-go.”

After the president vowed to run Venezuela going forward as a vassal state, Trump’s energy secretary said the United States would exert control over its oil production “indefinitely.”

And the Trump administration ordered the seizure of two foreign tankers on Wednesday in international waters that have violated its unilateral oil embargo against Caracas, risking precedent governing the laws of the seas that have for decades ensured international commercial flows.

It was a surprising turn for a president who had campaigned on a promise to focus on domestic policy, under a slogan of “America first.”

“So many of the claims that he was making — both in terms of his power and his politics — was about an inward turn, about standing up for America and attending to core problems that it had failed to face, whereas all these foreign entanglements were distractions to be avoided,” Howell said. “So it is striking that he has assumed this new posture of outward imperialism — land grabs, oil tankers, removing heads of state — all at once.”

Several Republican lawmakers expressed skepticism over Trump’s new posture, warning the president against entrenching the U.S. military in foreign conflicts. House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican from Louisiana, warned that U.S. military action against Denmark in Greenland “would not be appropriate” after the White House issued an explicit threat of force.

Scholars of the imperial presidency often say that public opinion — not the legislature or the courts — remains the strongest check on executive authority. Trump is ineligible for a third term in office, and has signaled in recent weeks that he recognizes that constitutional limit as unambiguous.

“I don’t think Trump is immune from the laws of political gravity,” Rudalevige said. “Despite his bluster, he is a lame duck. He has never had a Gallup approval rating above 50%, and that rating is in the 30s. His policy actions are even less popular.”

But he also said he believes the public supports him in his brash use of power, telling lawmakers there could be a “constitutional movement” to keep him in office.

“MAGA loves it,” Trump said in an interview with NBC News this week, defending his foreign policy approach. “MAGA loves what I’m doing. MAGA loves everything I do.”

“MAGA is me,” he added. “MAGA loves everything I do, and I love everything I do, too.”

What else you should be reading

The must-read: Palisades fire report was sent to mayor’s office for ‘refinements,’ Fire Commission president says
The deep dive: Michael Reagan’s death reverberates among Californians of both parties
The L.A. Times Special: One year since my childhood home burned

More to come,
Michael Wilner
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Spencer Pratt, a reality television star who lost his home in the Palisades fire and then emerged as a sharp critic of Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and Gov. Gavin Newsom, announced Wednesday that he will run for mayor.

The former star of “The Hills” has spent much of the last year firing off social media posts blaming the mayor and governor for the Palisades fire, which killed 12 people and burned more than 6,800 homes.

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Pratt made his announcement at the “They Let Us Burn” event in Pacific Palisades on the one-year anniversary of the fire.

“We’re going to expose the system. We’re going into every dark corner of L.A. politics and disinfecting the city with our light,” he said to a crowd of hundreds, many of whom cheered.

Former L.A. schools Supt. Austin Beutner, who is running against Bass, has also attacked the mayor’s performance on the fire, saying she has not accepted responsibility for the city’s failures.

Community organizer Rae Huang, who is running from Bass’ left, has offered her own critique, saying the mayor has engaged in too much finger-pointing.

Still unclear is whether real estate developer Rick Caruso — another outspoken critic of Bass on the fire — will launch a second mayoral bid. Bass defeated him in 2022 by a comfortable margin.

L.A. County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath, who represents the areas that burned in the Palisades fire and who has also criticized the city’s response to the fire, said Monday night that she is still considering her own run for L.A. mayor.

Speaking with CNN’s Elex Michaelson, Horvath said she is “listening to a lot of the people who are encouraging me to get into this race, people who are looking for a different kind of leadership.”

“You know, there are a lot of people who are asking me about running for mayor,” Horvath said. “And I think it’s because they see that we are setting up in the county a different structure of accountability, and that’s long overdue for the region.”

The Palisades fire has become a serious political liability for Bass as the mayoral race gains momentum. She was out of the country on a diplomatic mission to Ghana when the fire ignited.

Since then, she has faced criticism over a series of issues surrounding the city’s emergency response, including LAFD deployment, the fact that the Santa Ynez reservoir was empty, and the Fire Department’s failure to put out a New Year’s Day fire that eventually rekindled into the Palisades fire.

Bass, for her part, said Tuesday that she is using the full extent of her mayoral powers to “restore the Palisades community and return families home as quickly and safely as possible.”

Bass’ campaign team did not immediately respond to an inquiry about Pratt’s announcement. But earlier this week, they took direct aim at Pratt and other critics, accusing them of using the disaster for their personal benefit.

“For the first time ever we saw a major wildfire politicized by MAGA leaders and monetized by social influencers making tens of thousands of dollars per month and hawking books on the backs of a devastated community,” said Bass campaign spokesperson Doug Herman. “While some may choose to divide people and tear down the progress that’s being made, Mayor Bass will continue to work to unite people and focus on doing everything that she can to get everyone in the Palisades back in homes, business re-opened, and beloved community spaces up and running again so that the Palisades can once again thrive.

Pratt and his wife, reality television personality Heidi Montag, sued the city in January after their Palisades house burned down, arguing that the Santa Ynez reservoir should not have been offline and empty when the fire erupted.

As recently as Tuesday, Pratt posted on X saying he was “shocked that 7% of Angelenos have ‘a great deal of confidence’ in their city and state government.”

“Have they looked around?” he wrote.

In the past, Pratt has also hinted at a run for governor. On his website, he still advertises “Spencer for Governor” shirts for $20, at a more than a 50% discount.

Pratt became famous in the aughts for his role on “The Hills,” where he was known as Montag’s boyfriend-turned-husband. He has also appeared on “Celebrity Big Brother” and “The Hills: New Beginnings.”

Jan. 6 (UPI) — Vocal Trump critic George Conway officially announced his run for the House of Representatives as a Democrat in New York for the seat being vacated by Rep. Jerry Nadler.

Conway, 62, filed his paperwork to run on Dec. 22 but made his campaign official Tuesday with a video ad. He is a former Republican.

“We have a corrupt president, a mendacious president, a criminal president whose masked agents are disappearing people from our streets, who’s breaking international law, and he’s running our federal government like a mob protection racket,” Conway said in his video.

Conway is a formerly conservative lawyer who rose to widespread fame when his then-wife, Kellyanne Conway, became an adviser to President Donald Trump in his first term. Despite his wife’s position, he was an outspoken voice against the president. They divorced in 2023.

“I know how to fight these people. They are corrupt, amoral people,” Conway said. “They will stop at nothing to rig the system for themselves. I’ve been fighting Trump for years, and nothing will stop me.”

Nadler, D-N.Y., announced in September that he would retire from Congress. The 78-year-old Nadler said he wanted to make room for a younger generation. He represents New York’s 12th District, which includes Midtown and the Upper West and Upper East sides of Manhattan.

The 12th District voted for Vice President Kamala Harris by 64 points in 2024.

The field for that primary is crowded. Other candidates include Jack Schlossberg, President John F. Kennedy‘s grandson; New York State Assemblypeople Micah Lasher and Alex Bores; activists Cameron Kasky and Mathew Shurka; journalist Jami Floyd; civil rights lawyer Laura Dunn; fundraiser Alan Pardee; nonprofit founder Liam Elkind; entrepreneur Micah Bergdale; and software engineer Christopher Diep.

“We’re at a crossroads in our country, and Donald Trump is the greatest threat to the Constitution and the rule of law and democratic government that we have ever seen in our lifetime,” Conway told NBC News.

Conway only recently moved back to the district, a point his opponents have made.

“This campaign welcomes George to the race. And the city. And the party,” Bores said in a statement. “I personally would be delighted to offer George local dining tips. Tell him to give me a call when he’s in town.”

Pardee made a statement and mentioned Conway’s “years living in D.C. advancing a conservative agenda before discovering the monster he helped create.”

Floyd, who was a White House fellow under President Bill Clinton, said, “I’m not concerned about George Conway.” She said he “is a life-long conservative Republican and not even from here. So why isn’t he running in Bethesda, Md., or Alpine, N.J., where he belongs?”

Conway said he spent his legal career working in the district and that it has “been the epicenter of my life.”

“I lived in this district for decades before moving out to the suburbs,” he said. “All four of my kids were born in this district, and my life is centered around this district.”

SACRAMENTO — Congratulations, you survived 2025. What will the new year bring? Joy and prosperity for all, hopefully, but it’s hard to say.

Few in California could have predicted some of the most life-changing events of 2025 — the deadly Los Angeles area wildfires, the Trump administration’s militant, often inhumane immigration crackdown and an obscure congressional redistricting fight that could alter the balance of power in Washington.

With that in mind, California can expect one of 2026’s most consequential stories to be the turmoil in Sacramento over the entrenched state budget deficit — which will be compounded by the massive federal healthcare cuts by the Trump administration.

The good news is that, after a rain-soaked Christmas holiday, California enters the new year with reservoirs brimming, even if its coffers are not. It also just got easier to delete Facebook, X and other social media accounts that consume too much of our lives. And let’s not forget that the Los Angeles Dodgers reign as World Series champions!

Happy New Year! This is Phil Willon, the California Politics editor for the Los Angeles Times, filling in for columnist George Skelton. Along with the state budget crisis, 2026 will bring a wide-open race for governor — and the person the candidates hope to replace, Gov. Gavin Newsom, is flirting with a run for president in 2028 and has just a year left in his final term to deliver on all his promises. So buckle up and visit latimes.com early and often.

An $18-billion problem

The California Legislature returns to work Monday for the 2026 session, and a major financial headache awaits.

The Legislative Analyst’s Office estimates that the state will have an $18 billion budget shortfall in the upcoming fiscal year – $5 billion higher than what the Newsom administration predicted in June.

As Times reporter Katie King reported earlier, state revenue has been improving, but a shortfall is still expected. That’s because mandatory spending requirements under Proposition 98, which sets minimum annual funding for public schools, and Proposition 2, which specifies reserve deposits and debt payments, almost entirely offset any gains, according to the legislative analysis.

And it gets worse. The LAO said that, starting in 2027-28, California’s structural deficits are expected to grow to about $35 billion annually “due to spending growth continuing to outstrip revenue growth.”

The solution? Cut spending and/or increase revenue, the LAO report says.

But cut what, and raise money how? That’s up to Newsom and the Legislature to decide, and their difficult task will begin later this week when the governor releases his proposed budget.

Poking the billionaire

One controversial idea — outside of the legislative process — already is being kicked around.

A November ballot measure proposed by a labor organization, the Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West, would impose a one-time 5% wealth tax on billionaires that could raise $100 billion for healthcare programs. Opponents say it will drive wealthy, taxpaying, job-creating, economy-driving Californians out of the state.

The measure has yet to qualify for the November ballot but will receive ample attention regardless.

Supporters say the revenue is needed to backfill the massive federal funding cuts to healthcare that President Trump signed this summer under what’s known as the “Big Beautiful Bill,” according to a report by The Times’ Seema Mehta and Caroline Petrow-Cohen.

The California Budget & Policy Center estimates that as many as 3.4 million Californians could lose Medi-Cal coverage, more rural hospitals could close and other healthcare services would be slashed unless a new funding source is found.

Federal cuts to healthcare

If California does not backfill those federal cuts by raising taxes, or other creative means, costs for the state will still increase, according to the Legislative Analyst’s Office. That seems counterintuitive, since millions of Californians may lose coverage. But under the “Big Beautiful Bill,” cuts to federal cost sharing and a drop in health provider tax revenue will far outpace any potential cost savings for the state.

Newsom’s possible White House run will ensure that California’s budget shortfall and liberal policies it spends money on will whip up the nation’s caustic partisan divide. Near the top of the list will be California’s decision to extend state-sponsored healthcare coverage to low-income, undocumented immigrants. The expansion has cost the state billions and drawn sharp criticism from Republicans and, last year, Newsom and the Democratic-led Legislature reduced the expansion of state-sponsored healthcare to those immigrants due to the high cost.

On top of that, the monthly premiums for federally subsidized plans available on the Covered California exchange — often referred to as Obamacare — will soar by 97% on average for 2026. That’s due to decisions by the Republican-led Congress and Trump not to extend federal subsidies for that coverage. State officials estimate that roughly 400,000 Californians will drop their coverage under the program because of the higher cost. And California counties are ill prepared to step into the breach, as KFF Health News recently reported.

Needless to say, the healthcare situation will be extremely volatile in 2026, which will make the state’s upcoming high-stakes budget process even more unpredictable.

What else you should be reading

The must-read: Billionaire tax proposal sparks soul-searching for Californians
CA vs. Trump: Trump pulls back National Guard from L.A. and other cities, Newsom claims win
The L.A. Times Special: California rolls out sweeping new laws for 2026, from cellphone limits in schools to a ban on cat declawing

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California has tried all manner of design in choosing its governor.

Democrat Gray Davis, to name a recent example, had an extensive background in government and politics and a bland demeanor that suggested his first name was also a fitting adjective.

Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger, by contrast, was a novice candidate who ran for governor on a whim. His super-sized action hero persona dazzled Californians like the pyrotechnics in one of his Hollywood blockbusters.

In the end, however, their political fates were the same. Both left office humbled, burdened with lousy poll numbers and facing a well of deep voter discontent.

(Schwarzenegger, at least, departed on his own terms. He chased Davis from the Capitol in an extraordinary recall and won reelection before his approval ratings tanked during his second term.)

There are roughly a dozen major candidates for California governor in 2026 and, taken together, they lack even a small fraction of Schwarzenegger’s celebrity wattage.

Nor do any have the extensive Sacramento experience of Davis, who was a gubernatorial chief of staff under Jerry Brown before serving in the Legislature, then winning election as state controller and lieutenant governor.

That’s not, however, to disparage those running.

The contestants include a former Los Angeles mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa; two candidates who’ve won statewide office, schools Supt. Tony Thurmond and former Controller Betty Yee; two others who gained national recognition during their time in Congress, Katie Porter and Eric Swalwell; and Riverside County’s elected sheriff, Chad Bianco.

The large field offers an ample buffet from which to choose.

The rap on this particular batch of hopefuls is they’re a collective bore, which, honestly, seems a greater concern to those writing and spitballing about the race than a reflection of some great upwelling of citizens clamoring for bread and circuses.

In scores of conversations with voters over the past year, the sentiment that came through, above all, was a sense of practicality and pragmatism. (And, this being a blue bastion, no small amount of horror, fear and loathing directed at the vengeful and belligerent Trump administration.)

It’s never been more challenging and expensive to live in California, a place of great bounty that often exacts in dollars and stress what it offers in opportunity and wondrous beauty.

With a governor seemingly more focused on his personal agenda, a 2028 bid for president, than the people who put him in office, many said they’d like to replace Gavin Newsom with someone who will prioritize California and their needs above his own.

That means a focus on matters such as traffic, crime, fire prevention, housing and homelessness. In other words, pedestrian stuff that doesn’t light up social media or earn an invitation to hold forth on one of the Beltway chat shows.

“Why does it take so long to do simple things?” asked one of those voters, the Bay Area’s Michael Duncan, as he lamented his pothole-ridden, 120-mile round-trip commute between Fairfield and an environmental analyst job in Livermore.

The answer is not a simple one.

Politics are messy, like any human endeavor. Governing is a long and laborious process, requiring study, deliberation and the weighing of competing forces. Frankly, it can be rather dull.

Certainly the humdrum of legislation or bureaucratic rule-marking is nothing like the gossipy speculation about who may or may not bid to lead California as its 41st governor.

Why else was so much coverage devoted to whether Sen. Alex Padilla would jump into the gubernatorial race — he chose not to — and the possible impact his entry would have on the contest, as opposed to, say, his thinking on CEQA or FMAP?

(The former is California’s much-contested Environmental Quality Act; the latter is the formula that determines federal reimbursement for Medi-Cal, the state’s healthcare program for low-income residents.)

Just between us, political reporters tend to be like children in front of a toy shop window. Their bedroom may be cluttered with all manner of diversion and playthings, but what they really want is that shiny, as-yet unattained object — Rick Caruso! — beckoning from behind glass.

Soon enough, once a candidate has entered the race, boredom sets in and the speculation and desire for someone fresh and different starts anew. (Will Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta change his mind and run for governor?)

For their part, many voters always seem to be searching for some idealized candidate who exists only in their imagination.

Someone strong, but not dug in. Willing to compromise, but never caving to the other side. Someone with the virginal purity of a political outsider and the intrinsic capability of an insider who’s spent decades cutting deals and keeping the government wheels spinning.

They look over their choices and ask, in the words of an old song, is that all there is? (Spoiler alert: There are no white knights out there.)

Donald Trump was, foremost, a celebrity before his burst into politics. First as a denizen of New York’s tabloid culture and then as the star of TV’s faux-boardroom drama, “The Apprentice.”

His pizzazz was a large measure of his appeal, along with his manufactured image as a shrewd businessman with a kingly touch and infallible judgment.

His freewheeling political rallies and frothy social media presence were, and continue to be, a source of great glee to his fans and followers.

His performance as president has been altogether different, and far less amusing.

If the candidates for California governor fail to light up a room, that’s not such a bad thing. Fix the roads. Make housing more affordable. Help keep the place from burning to the ground.

Leave the fun and games to the professionals.

Declan Rice shrugged off a knee injury to extend Arsenal’s advantage at the top of the Premier League to six points with a come-from-behind 3-2 win at Bournemouth.

A rare Gabriel Magalhaes error gifted the Cherries an early opener through Evanilson on Saturday, but the Brazilian quickly redeemed himself to level.

Rice had been a doubt after missing Tuesday’s 4-1 demolition of Aston Villa due to knee swelling.

The England international returned to the starting lineup and doubled his tally for the season with two composed finishes either side of the hour mark.

Eli Kroupi’s fine strike gave Bournemouth hope, but Arsenal comfortably saw out the closing stage to move seven points clear of Manchester City, who host managerless Chelsea in their game in hand on Sunday.

There had been a glimmer of hope for Pep Guardiola’s men when Arsenal conceded after just 10 minutes.

Gabriel mishit his attempted cross-field pass towards Jurrien Timber and presented the ball to his compatriot Evanilson, who slotted past David Raya for his first home goal of the season.

Arsenal’s towering centre-back netted on his first start for nearly two months against Villa in midweek and showed his eye for goal once more to equalise within six minutes

Gabriel pounced to slam home Noni Madueke’s deflected cross for his 20th Premier League goal since he joined the Gunners in 2020 — seven more than any other defender.

Rice has also turned into a useful source of important goals since being pushed into a more advanced role this season.

He was perfectly picked out by Martin Odegaard to slot in from the edge of the box to put the visitors in front on 56 minutes.

Bukayo Saka came off the bench to create Arsenal’s third as Rice swept home his cut-back.

Bournemouth remain without a win, stretching back 11 games to October 26.

However, only five sides have scored more Premier League goals this season than Andoni Iraola’s men.

A stunning strike by Kropi from long range set up a nervy finale.

But Mikel Arteta’s men held firm to take another big step towards ending their 22-year wait to lift the Premier League title.

Villa beat Forest, while West Ham ’embarrassed’ at Wolves

Aston Villa beat struggling Nottingham Forest 3-1 at their home fortress to ease the pain of their midweek mauling by Arsenal, leapfrogging Manchester City into second place in the Premier League.

Ollie Watkins’s strike on the cusp of half-time gave Unai Emery’s side a deserved lead, and John McGinn scored twice in the second half, either side of a Morgan Gibbs-White goal for the visitors.

Villa’s 11-game winning streak in all competitions was brought to a shuddering halt with a 4-1 defeat at the Emirates Stadium on Tuesday, raising doubts about their ability to maintain a title charge.

But their impressive record at Villa Park remains intact – they have now won 11 straight matches there since a 3-0 defeat to Crystal Palace in August.

Villa boss Emery told Sky Sports that his players and coaching staff had held a meeting after their chastening loss to Arsenal.

“I am so happy,” he said. “We had to recover our energy and our confidence. Here, at Villa Park, the energy we create was really important.

“Forest are competitive. After the Arsenal match, we met the players and staff: how we are doing this season, how we are feeling, how we needed to keep the same consistency as before, how we needed to be together and strong.”

Villa started brightly on a bitingly cold day in Birmingham, but struggled to make their dominance count in a tepid first half.

But the in-form Watkins broke the deadlock in the closing moments of a half in which they enjoyed nearly 80 percent possession.

The England international received the ball outside the area from Morgan Rogers and slammed home for his fourth goal in three games.

McGinn doubled Villa’s lead in the 49th minute, side-footing home from a Matty Cash cross.

Villa appeared to be cruising, but Forest were back in the game in the 61st minute courtesy of a fine finish from Gibbs-White, who chipped past the diving Emi Martinez.

The home side were gifted a third goal in the 73rd minute when Forest goalkeeper John Victor inexplicably vacated his goalmouth to try to reach a long ball from Youri Tielemans, even though there were defenders nearby.

Scotland midfielder McGinn collected the ball and remained cool, sidestepping Victor and stroking the ball into the empty net with his left foot from well outside the area.

The win took Villa to 42 points, one ahead of Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City, who host managerless Chelsea on Sunday.

Forest, who have now suffered four straight league defeats, remain one place above the relegation zone, four points clear of West Ham, who were thumped 3-0 at bottom-of-the-table Wolves.

“The first half was embarrassing, and I have to apologise to the fans – this is not what we want to show,” beleaguered Hammers’ manager Nuno Espirito Santo said after.

Elsewhere, second-bottom Burnley lost 2-0 at Brighton and Hove Albion.

Terrorism and the Middle East are continuing to roil the Republican Senate contest after a letter written by former congressman Tom Campbell emerged that appeared to contradict statements Campbell and his aides had made about his dealings with a radical Muslim professor.

The professor, Sami Al-Arian, contributed to Campbell’s unsuccessful campaign in 2000 for the U.S. Senate. On Sept. 26, 2001, when he was teaching at the University of South Florida, Al-Arian gave an interview to Fox TV host Bill O’Reilly in which he conceded that he had said, “Jihad is our path. Victory to Islam. Death to Israel. Revolution. Revolution until victory. Rolling to Jerusalem.”

Those statements quickly generated a furor and the university moved to discipline Al-Arian. Campbell, by then a law professor at Stanford University, wrote a letter to Judy Genshaft, the president of the University of South Florida, protesting any punishment.

Campbell had previously conceded that he wrote a letter on Al-Arian’s behalf, but had said during a candidates’ debate Friday that he did so before Al-Arian’s interview with O’Reilly. His campaign’s website also said the letter was written before the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.

The text of the letter showed otherwise. Dated Jan. 21, 2002, it said, “ . . . I respectfully wish to convey my sincere alarm that Professor Al-Arian may be treated harshly because of the substance of his views.”

Campbell went on to write that “I have formed this fear because of the paucity of evidence supporting the purported reasons for this discipline against him. I read a transcript of the ‘O’Reilly Factor’ interview last autumn, and I did not see anything whereby Professor Al-Arian attempted to claim he was representing the views of the University of South Florida.”

Carly Fiorina, one of Campbell’s opponents in the primary race, called on him to release the letter last week. The text of the letter was first disclosed by the website of the Investigative Project on Terrorism. Campbell’s aides, who had said the candidate no longer had a copy of the original letter, then posted a link to it on the campaign website.

On Monday, Campbell said in an interview that despite the language of his letter, he had never read the full transcript of the O’Reilly interview, specifically the “Death to Israel” language. If he had seen it, he said, he never would have written the letter.

“That’s too zealous,” he said. “Unacceptable. Calling for death to a country or individual is unacceptable.”

Campbell has previously said that Al-Arian never contributed to his 2000 Senate campaign; Campbell later admitted that he had.

In 2006, Al-Arian pleaded guilty to providing aid to a terrorist group.

Campbell spokesman James Fisfis said the candidate’s memory of his dealings with Al-Arian is foggy because he did not have an original copy of the letter and because the events occurred nearly a decade ago.

“It was a long time ago,” Fisfis said. “We’re trying to piece together everything about that time period.”

A spokesman for one of Campbell’s rivals, Assemblyman Chuck DeVore (R-Irvine), said the letter is the latest in a troubling pattern.

“Whether it’s absent-mindedness or deception — the only person who knows that for sure is Tom Campbell — there’s a pattern of inaccuracy whenever Tom Campbell ventures into these subjects,” Joshua Trevino said.

“We have to double-check everything he says about his past associations with these radicals because we can’t trust him to give us the whole truth.”

The disclosures came as Campbell and Fiorina filed the paperwork Monday to make their candidacies official. DeVore planned to file his paperwork Wednesday. The winner of the primary will face three-term Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.).

seema.mehta@latimes.com

It had seemed like Arsenal were starting to wobble.

After starting December with defeat by Aston Villa, they were far from convincing as they beat Wolves, Everton and Brighton by narrow margins.

But the Gunners ground out vital results and they answered any lingering doubts over their title credentials with an emphatic 4-1 home victory over Villa on Tuesday.

It not only kept Unai Emery’s in-form side at bay in third place, it served as a powerful statement to any team hoping to derail their trophy ambitions.

Arsenal head into 2026, and the second half of the campaign, at the top of the league – five points clear of second-placed Manchester City, with Villa a further point behind.

“Arsenal doing what they did to Villa tells you where they are,” former Aston Villa striker Dion Dublin told BBC Radio 5 Live.

“It’s all going right for them because everyone is contributing – the manager, the players, the staff.”

Speaking on Match of the Day, ex-England midfielder Danny Murphy added: “Arsenal‘s performance was a big statement. It was powerful, full of quality and showed their strength in depth.”

But, with a history of letting the title slip from their grasp following three successive runners-up finishes, can Arsenal finally make it count this season and be champions for the first time since 2004?

SACRAMENTO — Lou Cannon was a good friend and a daunting competitor. And he was a national treasure.

The retired newspaper reporter and Ronald Reagan biographer died Dec. 19 at age 92 in hometown Santa Barbara from complications of a stroke.

I use the words “national treasure” hesitantly because they smack of trite hyperbole. But they truly fit.

That’s because it was Cannon who brought to light through several Reagan books innumerable broad details of the actor-turned-politician’s important and often controversial actions as America’s 40th president and California’s 33rd governor.

Bookshelves are crammed with Reagan tomes. But no author has been so thorough on a sweeping scale as Cannon. That’s because he put in the time and did the hard work of sifting through records and conducting hundreds of interviews, then painstakingly explaining it all in very readable nongovernmentese.

Cannon also covered Reagan up close as a reporter during the early years of his governorship and both his terms as president.

Reagan once asked Cannon why he was embarking on yet another book about him. “I’m going to do it until I get it right,” the writer replied, only half-jokingly, according to Cannon’s son, longtime journalist Carl Cannon.

In all, Lou Cannon authored five books on Reagan‘s tenures as governor and president.

That’s an invaluable contribution to historians and contemporary America’s sense of this oft-misunderstood and underestimated world leader.

But that’s not what mainly prompted me to write this column. I wanted to point out Cannon’s core strength. And that was his dedication to strict nonpartisanship in writing, whether it be straight news stories for the Washington Post, syndicated columns or his Reagan biographies.

I knew Cannon for 60 years, competed against him covering Reagan for at least 20 and we became friends very early based on professional respect. In none of my countless conversations with him did I ever learn whether he leaned right or left. He registered to vote as an “independent,” as do many of us political journalists.

Cannon was the type of journalist that millions of Americans — particularly conservative Republicans and MAGA loyalists — claim is rare today: An unbiased reporter who doesn’t slant stories toward one side or the other, especially left.

Actually, most straight news reporters follow that nonpartisan credo or they leave the business. Columnists? We’re supposed to be opinionated. But for some, their opinions are too often rooted more in predetermined bias than in objective facts. But that has always been true, even in the so-called “good ol’ days.”

Cannon’s sole goal was to report the news accurately with analysis and, if possible, beat his competitors to the punch. He beat us plenty, I hate to admit.

I vividly remember one such beating:

At the 1980 Republican National Convention in Detroit, Cannon scooped everyone for a full news cycle on Reagan selecting former campaign rival George Bush as his vice presidential running mate. Still pounding in my ears are the loud whoops and cheers by Cannon’s colleagues as he walked into the Post working area — next to the Los Angeles Times quarters — after Reagan formally announced Bush’s selection. It was deflating.

News sources readily opened up to Cannon, who was intense but always wore a slight smile.

I asked former Reagan speechwriter and Republican strategist Ken Khachigian what Cannon’s secret was.

“You’d get a fair shot from him,” Khachigian says. “He’d always be straight. He just wanted to get information mostly and find out what was going on.

“He had a way of talking to people that made them comfortable and he’d get a lot out of them. He wasn’t aggressive. He had a soft personality, one of his benefits. He’d put people at ease, a big advantage.”

His son, Carl Cannon, says: “If he’d been in politics, he’d have been a Democrat. But he didn’t go into politics. He went into journalism. He wasn’t partisan. He was a reporter who wanted to know what happened and why.”

Cannon began covering the state Capitol in 1965 for the San Jose Mercury News and became friends with Jud Clark, a young legislative staffer. Clark ultimately co-founded the monthly California Journal and persuaded Cannon to write for it on the side. Cannon did that for many years and when it folded, followed up by writing columns for a successor publication, the Capitol Weekly.

Cannon just loved to report and write and juggled it all in — reporting full time for the Washington Post, authoring books and writing for friends’ small publications in Sacramento.

“He would always want something new. In interviews, he didn’t want the standard stock story,” Clark says.

“Lou was curious about everything,” says Rich Ehisen, his longtime editor at Capitol Weekly. “He liked understanding what was going on and breaking things down. He told the straight story unvarnished. Never shortchanged on facts.”

Cannon was a workaholic, but he also knew how to carve out time for fun.

One summer while we covered Reagan vacationing at his beloved Santa Barbara hilltop ranch, Cannon decided he wanted to drive down to Los Angeles to see a Dodgers’ night game. But it’s risky to abandon your post while bird-dogging the president. Anything could happen. And you’d need to explain to your bosses why you weren’t there but your competitors were.

Cannon’s solution was to also get good seats for the two reporters he considered his main competitors– Steve Weisman of the New York Times and me at the L.A. Times. We’d provide each other some cover if any news broke out around the president, which it didn’t. Cannon even managed to wrangle us free dinners in a large suite overlooking the playing field.

He’ll be missed as a friend and a journalist — but not as an unrelenting competitor.

What else you should be reading

The must-read: How the Trump administration sold out public lands in 2025
The Golden State rules: After a year of insults, raids, arrests and exile, a celebration of the California immigrant
The L.A. Times Special: America tried something new in 2025. It’s not going well

Until next week,
George Skelton

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Opening day at Santa Anita might have been delayed by two days because of heavy rain, but it was worth the wait for no other reason than to watch the stretch run of the $200,000 Laffit Pincay Jr. Stakes.

And for trainer Bob Baffert, it was even better than that. Not only did Nysos and Nevada Beach run 1-2 for him Sunday in the thrilling Grade 2 Pincay, but he also captured the two Grade 1 races he entered, the La Brea with Usha and the Malibu with Goal Oriented.

It was the fourth time Baffert won three stakes on the same day at Santa Anita, including the same trio of races on opening day in 2022.

He was especially excited after the Pincay, and not just by what he saw on the track.

“You know what’s great?” Baffert said as he stood in the winner’s circle and motioned to the grandstand, which was crowded with an announced 41,962 fans, the largest opening day audience since 2016. “It’s great to see this place packed. Look, everybody came out. They’ll come out to see a good horse and everybody was on the apron for this one. And they saw a great horse race.

“It was actually fun watching.”

Particularly for Baffert, who knew as the field turned into the stretch he couldn’t lose. Nysos, the Breeders’ Cup Dirt Mile champion ridden by Flavien Prat, was on the inside of Nevada Beach, the Goodwood Stakes winner ridden by Juan Hernandez.

Nysos was the heavy 1-5 favorite, having lost only one of his seven lifetime races, but for at least a moment it looked as if he might not get past Nevada Beach, at 3 a year younger than his stablemate.

But, in a virtual rerun of the Dirt Mile, when Prat and Nysos edged past Hernandez and another Baffert 3-year-old, Citizen Bull, the older horse once again prevailed, again by a head.

“I was close,” Hernandez said. “My horse ran really good. I was in front on the stretch for a couple of jumps and then it was just back and forth between Nysos and my horse. … He was giving me everything he had.”

The Grade 2 Pincay (formerly the San Antonio) was one of six stakes races on opening day, which is traditionally held the day after Christmas. It wasn’t one of the three Grade 1 races, but the presence of Nysos made it feel like the day’s main event.

Nysos returned $2.40 after running 1 1/16 miles in 1:42.36, the fastest since the Pincay was moved to that distance in 2017.

Baffert said in the leadup to the race that Nysos likely would start next in the $20-million Saudi Cup on Feb. 14 in Riyadh, while Nevada Beach was more apt to go to the $3-million Pegasus World Cup next month at Gulfstream Park. After the Pincay, he didn’t rule out sending both to Saudi Arabia.

The only downside to Baffert’s stakes day was having to scratch Barnes and Cornucopian, the two morning-line favorites, from the Malibu. Barnes suffered a “minor setback” Saturday while Cornucopian had an incident in the paddock minutes before the race, which forced his withdrawal (he was uninjured).

No matter, though; Goal Oriented ($4.20) took over favoritism and earned his first stakes win, defeating stablemate Midland Money by a length in 1:20.97, the fastest Malibu since 2016.

“I’m just happy it turned out that we won it because it was so upsetting for a little bit,” Baffert said.

Usha ($13.20) was starting in a Grade 1 race for the first time, but she won the La Brea like a filly who has more victories in her future. She finished seven furlongs in a rapid 1:21.68 to beat 2-1 favorite Formula Rossa by 5¼ lengths.

The first of the six stakes races was the $200,000 Mathis Mile for 3-year-olds on the turf. Tempus Volat, trained by Leonard Powell, led the race but was passed in the final yard by Hiding in Honduras ($21.40), a 9-1 long shot ridden by Antonio Fresu for Jonathan Thomas. Namaron, the 1-2 favorite ridden by Prat, finished third.

There was no such drama in the second turf stakes, the $100,000 San Gabriel, in which Cabo Spirit ($14.80), trained by George Papaprodromou, took the lead shortly after the start under Mike Smith and rolled to a 1¼-length victory over Astronomer. Stay Hot, the 2-1 favorite, lost a photo for third to Mondego.

The final race of the day was the other Grade 1 event, the $300,000 American Oaks, won by another Thomas trainee, Ambaya, a 12-1 long shot. The daughter of Ghostzapper was ridden by Kazushi Kimura, who picked up the mount when Fresu injured his ankle earlier in the day.

Etc.

The two cards that were rained out over the weekend will be made up Monday and Wednesday, with free parking and admission. Both days will offer two stakes races; Monday’s highlight is the $200,000 Joe Hernandez, which includes Motorious and Sumter, who were 1-2 in the race last year, and Imagination, last month’s Breeders’ Cup Sprint runner-up who will be racing on turf for the first time.

Rain is forecast beginning Wednesday, with track officials saying they will monitor the situation before deciding on how it will affect the racing, if at all. The schedule calls for racing Thursday through Sunday before Santa Anita begins its normal schedule of Fridays through Sundays on Jan. 9.

Guardiola – who takes his side to Sunderland on New Year’s Day – held several talks with his squad during the Club World Cup in America in the summer and believes the breakthrough came there.

He said: “When we went out to Al Hilal, it wasn’t the fact we didn’t win but that we were so good there. It was then holidays so I said: “OK, go on holidays” but I was annoyed because we were good there, good with the guys training, good with the competition.

“The place we were in, Boca Raton in front of the beach, everyone was happy. We made a lot of dinners, a lot of talks, [about] what we have to do next season. What we have to do. We wanted to extend it, just to live that.

“After talking with Pep [Lijnders] and James [French], Manel [Estiarte], Hugo [Viana], Txiki [Begiristain], we turned around and said something changed. Something [you can feel].

“Energy, energy, energy. We lost it last season. We started to train better, compete better.

“It doesn’t mean you are going to win but that you are able to recognise the team. Now it is eight victories in a row. It is not easy but compete in a way we do. We have to improve, absolutely, but this mindset is better.”

Emery may deflect title talk, but his body of work at Villa and the Midas touch he displays – match-winner Watkins described his manager as a “tactical genius” – means they are now right at the heart of the conversation at the top of the table.

Villa’s acid test may just come in their next game, when they face league leaders Arsenal at Emirates Stadium on Tuesday, 30 December (20:15 GMT) but Emery has made a habit of making life difficult for his former club.

He ticks every box for an elite manager, taking Villa into the Champions League last season, only missing out on this term’s competition on the final day of the last campaign, and now taking them just three points from the top of the table and only a point behind Manchester City.

Another figure of significance is that Villa’s win means they are now 10 points clear of fifth-placed Chelsea, a position they would have accepted with gratitude after failing to win any of their first five league games.

Emery proved his pedigree when he acted to galvanise a stuttering Villa display just before the hour as they trailed to Joao Pedro’s messy 37th-minute goal, the striker touching home Reece James’ corner in a scramble.

With Villa going nowhere but the game still in the balance, Emery sent on Watkins, Amadou Onana and Jadon Sancho for Donyell Malen, John McGinn and Emiliano Buendia.

The impact was stunning, Watkins equalising inside four minutes then powering home a header for the winner.

Emery did what the best managers do – he took the big decisions that turned a game which looked to be getting away from Villa on its head.

To rebel is to defy. It is to understand that the world as it is can and should be better.

So it’s no surprise rebels were everywhere on our movie screens in 2025. Filmmakers in the U.S. and abroad depicted the lengths to which people will go to stand up against the bland (and at times violent) vision of conformity they see around them. It’s a theme that comes through most organically in these films’ costume designs.

In “Wicked: For Good,” for instance, Cynthia Erivo’s Elphaba Thropp stands apart from the glossy superficiality of the Emerald City. Paul Tazewell, an Oscar winner earlier this year for the first “Wicked,” once again wrapped Elphaba’s defiant spirit in the very fabric of her costumes. As she fights for animal rights and defies the authority of that fraud of a Wizard, the titular witch dons dresses and capes (and, yes, even a knitted cardigan that had the internet abuzz) that ground her in that land “made of dirt and rock and loam” she sings about.

Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba in “Wicked: For Good.”

(Giles Keyte / Universal Pictures)

Not that all rebels choose to stand out. In Paul Thomas Anderson’s politically urgent thriller “One Battle After Another” — costumed by four-time Oscar winner Colleen Atwood — members of the French 75 revolutionary group know better than to draw attention to themselves.

“Take Deandra [played by Regina Hall], for instance, who’s always lived off the grid,” Atwood tells The Envelope. “They have lives, but they are still somewhere on the wanted list, and some weirdo can suddenly know who they are. So they really have to blend in. They have to be not noticeable. That was a big goal with everybody’s costume in the movie, all the French 75 costumes — and Leo as well.”

That’s why DiCaprio spends much of the film in a red bathrobe, making him both incredibly hard to miss and also decidedly ordinary-looking. “Would you wear it the whole time?” Atwood remembers asking herself: “Would he get rid of it? And Paul goes, ‘Why would you take off your clothes if you’re running?’”

Leonardo DiCaprio, left, and Benicio Del Toro in “One Battle After Another.”

(Warner Bros. Pictures)

Atwood’s choice to put Benicio Del Toro in a gi and a turtleneck was similarly driven by this approach: These are all people who move through the world wanting to disrupt the system without making such disruption all that conspicuous. Here we may also add the off-the-rack suits Teddy and Don (Jesse Plemons and Aiden Delbis) wear in “Bugonia” to face their kidnapped CEO; the beret-and-turtleneck-wearing revolutionary (Richard Ayoade) in “The Phoenician Scheme”; and the stylish, delightfully unbuttoned shirts Wagner Moura wears throughout “The Secret Agent.”

Not all instances of rebellion are so obviously political. Take Harry Lighton’s deliciously kinky dom-com “Pillion,” which finds shy young Colin (Harry Melling) entering into a BDSM relationship with an enigmatic biker called Ray (Alexander Skarsgård).

“Ray’s an anomaly; he’s the rebel, you can’t place him,” costume designer Grace Snell says. When we first meet him, he is wearing a striking white leather biking outfit: “I wanted him to be like a light at night on this bike and a shiny toy for Colin.”

Harry Melling, left, and Alexander Skarsgård in “Pillion.”

(Festival de Cannes)

The leather and kink gear that Skarsgård, Melling and the rest of the “Pillion” cast wear allowed Snell to give audiences the Tom of Finland fantasy Lighton’s film clearly demands. Yet the film is about a quieter rebellion.

“Colin’s kind of testing his boundaries and understanding who he is as a gay man, and exploring what that means for him,” Snell says. It’s why he spends much of the film in uniform, as a traffic warden, as a member of a barbershop quartet, and later as the new member of Ray’s biker gang.

“Pillion” is about self-fashioning at its most elemental: how gear and uniforms, roles and positions, can help you bloom into yourself; how in losing yourself in another you can find who you want to be.

Blending such a lesson in ways political and personal is Bill Condon’s “Kiss of the Spider Woman,” also costumed by Atwood. The musical is framed by the tension between Valentin (Diego Luna), a righteous revolutionary, and Molina (Tonatiuh), a gay hairdresser, who share a prison cell under Argentina’s military regime.

Diego Luna and Jennifer Lopez in “Kiss of the Spider Woman.”

(Roadside Attractions)

Along with designer Christine L. Cantella, Atwood aimed to honor the history the film was depicting and the message it embodies. “Not only is it set in a revolutionary time, but it’s also about two people opening each other’s eyes to the world,” Atwood says, “in a way that is such a great message for today.”

Atwood and Cantella had to balance the dingy reality of the prison — where Molina finds modest beauty in his silk robes — and the movie musical he loses himself in — where Jennifer Lopez’s Aurora is dressed like a silver-screen siren throughout. Lopez’s big number, where she dons an ode to the all-white ensemble Chita Rivera wore in the original Broadway show, including a fedora to match, is all about the lure of escapist Hollywood fantasy: “Turn off the lights and turn on your mind,” she sings.

As the ending of the musical attests, there may be a way to do both, to be politically engaged and still enjoy the beauty of the world around you. For, as these varied films attest, a rebel doesn’t just voice their discontent at the status quo. They wear it proudly.

People place bets at Santa Anita Park, where purses have declined along with the number of horses racing and lack of money coming from off-site betting.

(Getty Images)

Figuring out the purse for 34 of the 35 graded stakes races at Santa Anita is, for horsemen anyway, maddeningly simple: Just look up the minimum purse required in North America.

For a Grade 1 race, that’s $300,000. It drops to $200,000 for Grade 2 races and $100,000 for Grade 3s.

Even the one local exception, the Santa Anita Derby, pays “only” $500,000 after offering $750,000 from 2021-24. The current amount is half the purse on offer for the top 3-year-old races at Gulfstream Park (Florida Derby) and Fair Grounds (Louisiana Derby), and just one-third what Oaklawn Park pays for the Arkansas Derby.

Last year the Santa Anita Derby attracted only five entries, which reduced the number of Kentucky Derby qualifying points available in the race. That almost kept Baeza, who finished second to Journalism in the Arcadia race, from qualifying for the Derby (he made it in the field only after another horse was scratched and wound up placing third).

It’s the same story for older horses, where Gulfstream offers the $3-million Pegasus World Cup next month plus turf races for $1 million and $500,000. Oaklawn Park has a half-dozen races worth at least $500,000 (two at $1.25 million), and Fair Grounds has three between $250,000 and $500,000. No Grade 3 race at any of those tracks offers less than $150,000.

All of that makes it harder for Santa Anita to attract top horses from those states, which increase purses with money from slot machines or casinos, something not available to California tracks. Santa Anita, however, has hiked its purses this meeting for maiden and allowance races.

It’s been one surprise after another lately from Lindsey Vonn. And the announcement that the 41-year-old slopes queen has qualified for the Milano Cortina Olympics in February isn’t the last of it.

It might have been her post on Instagram that stated unequivocally that this will be the end.

“I am honored to be able to represent my country one more time, in my 5th and final Olympics!” Vonn said.

Vonn’s remarkable and inspiring comeback from injuries and a seven-year hiatus from top-level competitive skiing has injected the U.S. team narrative with an irresistible story line. That her quest will culminate in the mountains of northern Italy just two months from now will make it must-watch television and social media video.

The last two weeks have thrust Vonn back onto the international stage as well as the podium, which she climbed in four of her first five races this season. That includes a spectacular win in the downhill in St. Moritz, Switzerland, on Dec. 12.

That marked her first World Cup victory since 2018. And now it’s official that Vonn will compete in her fifth Olympics where she won gold in the downhill and bronze in the super-G at the 2010 Games in Vancouver and bronze in the downhill in the 2018 Games in PyeongChang.

Much of the astonishment circles back to her age. Vonn’s win in St. Moritz made her the oldest woman to win a World Cup race — by seven years. Federica Brignone of Italy set a record a year ago when she won 10 races at age 34.

She also is the first World Cup winner with titanium implants in her right knee. And she’ll become the first quadragenerian to lead the U.S. Alpine skiiing squad seven years after she had all but retired.

In a moving column on Feb. 10, 2019, at the World Championships, The Times’ Helene Elliott wrote what essentially was a sendoff for Vonn: “She went all out to the very end, because that’s the only way Lindsey Vonn knew how to ski. She was bruised and battered as she went to the start gate on Sunday for the final race of her career, sore all over and her right eye blackened by the impact of a crash she suffered during a super-giant slalom race earlier in the week at the World Championships. Her ligaments tore and her bones sometimes broke but her competitiveness was never dimmed, never dented, never compromised.”

Well, 2026 is around the bend and Vonn is back and intact, her competitiveness never compromised still. She has not officially qualified for the Olympics in the super-G, but she’s the fastest American and No. 3 in the world, so count on that as her next headline.

“Lindsey qualifying for the 2026 Olympic team is a testament to her resilience and dedication, and the remarkable results she’s delivered on the World Cup this season,” Sophie Goldschmidt, U.S. Ski & Snowboard’s president and CEO, said in a statement. “She’s proven once again that elite performance isn’t just about past success, it’s about rising to the moment, race after race.

“We’re thrilled to cheer her on at the Olympics.”

SACRAMENTO — I’ve got a wish list for Santa and it’s topped by this urgent request: a remodeled president with at least an ounce of humanity and humility.

Maybe a Ronald Reagan type. I’m not referring here to ideology or policies. Just common decency, someone who acts presidential.

I know, forget it. That’s beyond Santa’s reach. It would require a miracle. And that’s not likely to happen with President Trump, who seems increasingly to be auditioning for the devil’s disciple.

But you’d think as we approach our nation’s 250th birthday, America could be led by a president who at minimum doesn’t publicly trash the newly deceased.

Someone who follows the basic rules of good behavior and respect for others that our mothers taught us.

For Trump, the Golden Rule seems to be only about cheapening the historic Oval Office with tasteless gilded garnishments, turning it into an extension of his Mar-a-Lago resort. That’s what you’d expect from someone who would pave over the lovely Rose Garden.

But I’ve gotten off the point: the despicable way our unhinged president treats people he deems the enemy because they’ve criticized him, as we’ve got a right and often a duty to do in a democratic America.

What our president said about Rob Reiner after the actor-director-producer and his wife Michele were brutally stabbed to death in their Brentwood home, allegedly by their son Nick, should not have shocked us coming from Trump.

After all, this is a guy who once said that the late Sen. John McCain, a Navy pilot shot down over North Vietnam, tortured, maimed and held captive for five years, was “not a war hero … I like people that weren’t captured.”

He also once mocked a disabled New York Times reporter at a campaign rally, saying: “The poor guy, you ought to see this guy.” Then Trump jerked his arms around imitating someone with palsy.

He frequently attacks female reporters for their looks.

Recently, he called all Somali immigrants “garbage. … We don’t want them in our country.” As for Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar, a onetime Somalian refugee, “she’s garbage. Her friends are garbage.”

But even with Trump’s sordid history of insults and insensitivity, what he disrespectfully said about Reiner was stunning. He implied that the Hollywood legend was killed by someone angered by Reiner’s criticism of Trump. Again, everything’s all about him, in this egotistical president’s mind.

Trump said the Reiners died “reportedly due to the anger he caused others through his massive, unyielding and incurable affliction with a mind crippling disease known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME.”

Then the next day, he doubled down, telling reporters that Reiner “was a deranged person. … I thought he was very bad for our country.”

Topping off the holiday season for Trump, he orchestrated the renaming of Washington’s classy John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts after himself. From now on, it’s to be called the Trump Kennedy Center.

What’s next? The Washington National Cathedral?

OK, next on my Santa’s wish list is a governor who spends his last year in office trying to improve California rather than his presidential prospects. Actually, he could do the latter by doing the former: making this state a better place to live and proving his ability to sensibly govern.

Too many of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s projects fall flat, collapse or are a waste of energy and dollars.

One recently announced Newsom venture particularly is questionable. He seems to be using state resources and tax money to expand his overdone war with Trump rather than helping Californians with their everyday lives.

The governor unveiled a new state-run website that tracks what his office calls Trump’s “criminal cronies.” It catalogs major criminal convictions that were followed by Trump pardons — from Jan. 6 rioters to former politicians and business tycoons.

Yeah, well, so what? I suppose some people may be interested in that. But at taxpayers’ expense? Will the information lower gas prices? Make it easier to buy a home? Pay for childcare?

Here’s just one example of a Newsom program that failed miserably:

Early in his administration the governor announced with great fanfare that he was increasing fees on telephone service to pay for upgrading California’s 911 emergency communication system. The state spent $450 million, couldn’t make the new stuff work and abandoned the project, the Sacramento Bee reported after a lengthy investigation. Now they’re apparently going to start all over.

A little hands-on supervision by the governor next time could help.

Also on my wish list: A Legislature that doesn’t hibernate through the winter and wait until late spring before starting to push bills.

They’d need to change legislative rules. But Democrats with their supermajorities could do practically anything they wanted — even work earnestly during the cold months.

Either that or just stay home.

Included in the gift package: Legislation focused more on quality and less on quantity. This year, the Legislature passed 917 bills. My guess is that 100 meaty measures would have sufficed.

There’s one more item on my Santa list that all of America needs: A new casual greeting to replace “How ya doing?”

Nobody really wants to hear how most people are doing and they probably don’t want to candidly say anyway — not in an elevator, on the sidewalk or in a restaurant.

“Bad stomach flu,” I might honestly answer. You really want to hear that while chomping on a hamburger.

So, what do we replace it with?

Maybe simply: “Good morning.” Or “Go Dodgers.”

Or “Go Trump” — far away out of earshot.

What else you should be reading

The must-read: Ronald Reagan biographer, legendary California journalist Lou Cannon dies
The TK: Newsom taps former CDC leaders critical of Trump-era health policies for new initiative
The L.A. Times Special: In a divided America, Rob Reiner was a tenacious liberal who connected with conservatives

Until next week,
George Skelton

—
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The last time Villa lifted silverware – beating Leeds 3-0 in the League Cup – Prodigy’s Firestarter had knocked Take That’s cover of How Deep Is Your Love off the No.1 spot in the charts and Wallace and Gromit’s A Close Shave had just won an Oscar.

David Beckham was yet to make his England debut while Cash, Youri Tielemans, Boubacar Kamara and Emi Buendia were not born.

It has been a long wait, with Villa losing two FA Cup finals and one League Cup final since.

Emery, a Europa League winner with Sevilla and Villarreal in previous roles, stated on his first day in charge the main goal was to win a trophy. Last season’s FA Cup semi-final defeat to eventual winners Crystal Palace still stings.

A Europa Conference League semi-final defeat by Olympiakos 18 months ago and the thrilling Champions League quarter-final exit to Paris St-Germain in April show they are getting closer.

“The semi-final in the Conference League and Champions League quarter-final, they were big nights for us, big moments in which we haven’t delivered,” captain John McGinn told reporters.

“Every time we go into a big game now, we have that determination in the back of our heads to prove this team we have built over the past five or six years is worth more than a quarter-final, worth more than a semi-final.

“The determination, I can feel it this year. I can feel we want to prove a point. I think until we do that, there will always be questions asked. As captain, you feel that probably twice as much, but when that day finally comes, you will feel it positively, twice as much.”

Dec. 19 (UPI) — enRepublican U.S. House Rep. Elise Stefanik on Friday announced she was ending her run for New York governor after 1 1/2 months and won’t seek another term in Congress.

On Nov. 7, On Nov. 7, Stefanik launched a campaign bid in an effort to challenge Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul in November 2026.

“While spending precious time with my family this Christmas season, I have made the decision to suspend my campaign for Governor and will not seek re-election to Congress,” Stefanik, 41, wrote on X. “I did not come to this decision lightly for our family.

“I am truly humbled and grateful for the historic and overwhelming support from Republicans, Conservatives, Independents, and Democrats all across the state for our campaign to Save New York.”

Stefanik is married to Matthew Manda, who works in marketing and communication, and they have a 4-year-old son.

“And while many know me as Congresswoman, my most important title is Mom,” she wrote. “I believe that being a parent is life’s greatest gift and greatest responsibility. I have thought deeply about this and I know that as a mother, I will feel profound regret if I don’t further focus on my young son’s safety, growth, and happiness – particularly at his tender age.”

Her main primary opposition was Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman, who announced his run 10 days ago.

“However, as we have seen in past elections, while we would have overwhelmingly won this primary, it is not an effective use of our time or your generous resources to spend the first half of next year in an unnecessary and protracted Republican primary, especially in a challenging state like New York,” Stefanik wrote.

The last Republican governor in New York was George Pataki, who served three terms from 1995 to 2006.

The last time a Republican presidential candidate won New York was in 1984, when incumbent Ronald Reagan defeated Democrat Walter Mondale.

Former Vice President Kamala Harris won the state by 13 points, down from former President Joe Biden‘s 23-point victory in 2000.

“Elise Stefanik has finally acknowledged reality: If you run against Governor Kathy Hochul, you are going to lose,” Hochul spokesperson Ryan Radulovacki told Politico. “As Donald Trump raises costs on New Yorkers and targets this state relentlessly, Governor Hochul has cut middle-class taxes, put money back in New Yorkers’ pockets, and fought this administration and won when New York has come under attack.”

Stefanik has represented the rural conservative upstate New York district since 2014, becoming the youngest woman ever elected to Congress at that time.

The 21st Congressional District covers the northernmost part of the state, bordering Canada to the north and Vermont to the east. Major cities include Plattsburgh, Watertown, Glens Falls, Ogdensburg and Rome.

In November 2024, she was overwhelmingly re-elected by 24 percentage points as Trump carried the conservative region by more than 20 points.

When President Trump was elected president last November, he nominated her to serve as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. But the nomination was pulled because of the narrow Republican edge in the House, with Trump saying it was “essential that we maintain EVERY Republican seat in Congress.”

Hochul would have called for a special election.

Republicans now have a 220-213 advantage with two vacancies in seats by Democrats who have died.

Stefanik rose in House leadership, serving as the fourth-ranking House Republican, a position she first attained in May 2021 by replacing Liz Cheney. She was succeeded in this specific role by Lisa McClain for the 119th Congress.

After her nomination was pulled, Speaker Mike Johnson named her chairwoman of House Republican Leadership.

She originally was a critic of Trump but became one of his most vocal allies.

Stefanik fell a little out of favor with the president after she called New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani a “jihadist.”

During a meeting with Mamdan in the White House, the president reduced to label the Democratic socialist that description. He is a Muslim and South Asian.

Trump hadn’t endorsed either candidate, including when Stefanik was in the White House’s Oval Office when he signed legislation awarding the 1980 U.S. Olympic ice hockey team the Congressional Gold Medal. The teams won the gold medal in Lake Place, which includes Stefdanik’s district.

Ed Cox, chairman of the New York Republican Party, endorsed Blackman after Stefanik’s decision. In a statement, he also said Stefanik would “remain a leader in our party and a powerful voice for our principles. We respect her decision and thank her for her efforts.”

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt served as Stefanik’s communications director from 2020-23.

“Elise Stefanik has been an incredible advocate for the people of her district in Upstate New York, and she will always be a true friend to President Trump,” she posted on X. “On a personal note, Elise is my former boss. She is a great leader, and an even better person. We love you, posted.

DETROIT — In the frantic final firefight of the 1992 presidential campaign, this battered industrial city may have been ground zero.

In the last days before today’s vote, President Bush and Bill Clinton crossed paths over and over again through a narrow band of critical Rust Belt and Great Lakes states–from New Jersey and Pennsylvania to Ohio and Wisconsin. But no state occupied more of their attention than Michigan.

Into this battlefield, the two major contenders have fired television and radio ads, mailings, surrogate speakers and repeated visits of their own–to the point where even veteran local observers have been overwhelmed. Their efforts–reinforced by Ross Perot’s national television barrage–have put the campaign on everyone’s lips.

“There’s a lot of strong feelings on it this year,” said LeAnn Kirrmann, a Republican activist from Grand Ledge, as she waited for Bush to arrive at a rally near here Sunday.

That appears to be the case across the nation, as voters render their verdict on this stormy, vituperative and often path-breaking campaign. Polls show the percentage of voters paying close attention to the campaign has soared this fall, and most experts expect a large turnout–a dramatic conclusion to a campaign that has regularly produced moments of high drama.

“It’s a mortal lock that turnout is going up,” said GOP pollster Bill McInturff.

After tightening significantly last week, national polls show Clinton again holding a comfortable lead over Bush, with Perot lagging behind. Few observers are entirely certain that a campaign that has been consistently unpredictable doesn’t hold one or two more surprises. But a Bush comeback at this stage would rank as the most dramatic reversal of fortune in the final hours of a presidential race.

In their final maneuvering, both Bush and Clinton targeted this state for contrasting reasons that underscore the length of the odds facing the President.

The widespread economic uneasiness in Michigan–symbolized by the continuing turmoil of General Motors Corp., which led to a management shake-up Monday–has always made the state an uphill climb for Bush despite its Republican leanings in recent presidential campaigns.

It remains a daunting challenge for the President now: The latest statewide tracking poll for a Detroit TV station, released Monday night, showed Clinton leading with 46%, Bush with 30% and Ross Perot at 16%.

Facing such numbers, Bush might have written off Michigan in a different year to spend his last campaign hours elsewhere. But the President has been forced to pound relentlessly at the state because there appears to be no way he can win the necessary 270 electoral votes without Michigan’s 18.

That reality defines Clinton’s stake in the state. Although Clinton–with his strong base on both coasts–can probably win today without carrying Michigan, he has invested so heavily here precisely because he knows Bush cannot.

“That’s Clinton’s great advantage,” said Democratic strategist Tad Devine. “He can focus on trying to take just one link out of Bush’s chain.”

Clinton’s intense focus on Michigan represents the reversal of a traditional Republican tactic. Because the GOP base in the South and West left Democrats so little room to maneuver in past presidential campaigns, Republicans have typically been able to dictate the battlefield in the election’s final hours.

In past years, the Republicans devoted enormous resources to a single conservative-leaning state–usually Ohio–confident that if they won there, the Democrats could not reach an Electoral College majority.

This year, though, it is Clinton who has the lead and the flexibility to choose where to fight. He has selected Michigan as his version of Ohio.

“That is a pretty fair analogy,” said David Wilhelm, Clinton’s campaign manager. “Michigan is a linchpin to our Electoral College strategy; it is a state that if we win, it destroys almost any chance that Bush will be reelected.”

With the state playing such a central role in the strategies of both candidates, their efforts here have been enormous. “Some of us,” said Don Tucker, the Democratic chairman in populous Oakland County, “have started to think Clinton and Bush are running for President of Michigan.”

When Clinton arrived in Detroit on Monday for a lunchtime airport rally, it marked his third visit to the area in five days and his sixth trip to the state in two weeks.

On Sunday, Bush roused the faithful with a scathing attack on Clinton at a rally in Auburn Hills, just north of here–his third run at the state in eight days.

Last Thursday, voters from around the state were able to ask Bush questions in a televised town meeting from Grand Rapids. The next night Clinton flew to the Detroit suburbs to hold his own televised town meeting.

When Clinton forces made their final buy of television time last week, they estimated they were placing enough commercials on the air so that each Michigan resident would see them 14 times through Election Day.

Bush, both sides figure, is on the air even more heavily–especially with a foreboding spot about Clinton’s record as governor that might be titled “Apocalypse Arkansas.” From both sides, acerbic radio advertisements blare incessantly.

As for Perot, local observers say his ad assault has been less visible than in some other states. But his promises to shake up Washington have won him a strong following.

At one point early last week, Republican polls showed Perot surging over 20% in this state. With most of Perot’s gains coming from Clinton, that tightened the Michigan race considerably.

But, as has happened throughout the country, Perot’s support has slipped here since he accused the White House last week of engineering dirty tricks that forced his withdrawal from the race in July. Initially, the voters deserting Perot disproportionately moved to Bush, but now Clinton is winning his share of those voters and consolidating his lead.

“The President is unlikely to close the gap in Michigan on Election Day,” said GOP pollster Steve Lombardo.

Even with Clinton’s lead in the polls, Democrats here remain edgy. Almost without exception, they are haunted by the memory of 1990, when then-Gov. James J. Blanchard led Republican John Engler by 10 percentage points in the final polls–and then was swept from office by a strong Republican effort to get out their vote, coupled with a poor turnout in Detroit.

Democrats are insistent that won’t happen again. Registration is up in Detroit, and Mayor Coleman A. Young has put his shoulder into the Clinton effort. One local official estimated this weekend that 65% of registered Detroit voters could come to the polls today, compared to just 54% four years ago.

Unions are pushing hard too: The UAW has been distributing to members copies of a Flint newspaper article reporting that Ross Perot owns a Mercedes-Benz and other foreign cars. In Michigan, that’s not much different than burning a flag.

Republican efforts to turn out the vote are just as intense. In Oakland County alone, GOP volunteers made more than 150,000 calls last weekend, said Jim Alexander, the county GOP chairman.

Local observers say religious conservatives and anti-abortion activists are mounting powerful drives; thousands of copies of the Christian Coalition’s voter guide on the presidential candidates were distributed at Bush’s rally in Auburn Hills on Sunday.

Beyond its impact on the Electoral College, voting in Michigan should help answer some of the key questions on which the results will pivot around the nation. Among them:

* Can Clinton reclaim the so-called Reagan Democrats–the blue-collar ethnics who deserted the party during the 1970s and 1980s over taxes, the economy and the perception that Democrats favored minorities?

Stressing such issues as welfare reform and his support for the death penalty, Clinton has aggressively courted voters in Macomb County, a Detroit suburb renowned as the breeding ground of Reagan Democrats.

Republicans have fired back with targeted mailers hitting Clinton on trust and taxes. And Perot could be a formidable competitor in Macomb County and similar neighborhoods for the votes of working-class residents disgusted with Bush and the gridlock in Washington.

* Can Bush hold suburban Republicans and independents who favor abortion rights? Four years ago, he carried the generally affluent Detroit suburb of Oakland County by 109,000 votes. But the hard-right line on social issues at the Republican Convention did not play well there, and Democrats are optimistic that Clinton’s centrist message will allow him to make significant inroads, not only in Oakland County but in similar places in New Jersey, Illinois and Pennsylvania.

* Can Clinton get the high turnout he needs from blacks after a campaign so heavily focused on wooing white swing voters in the suburbs? The answer will affect the result not only here but in other industrial states, such as Ohio and Pennsylvania, as well as Southern battlegrounds like Georgia and Louisiana.

* Will young voters show up today? One reason Clinton’s margin diminished in some national surveys last week is those polls included very few young people among their likely voters–and Clinton, the first baby boomer to top a national ticket, has been running very well with the young.

In 1988, just 36% of eligible voters age 18 to 24 actually turned out. Mike Dolan, field director for Rock the Vote, a nonpartisan national effort to register and turn out young voters, predicts as many as half of them may vote this year.

Such a spike in turnout would be a huge boost for Clinton; in this state, for example, he has courted students at rallies at both the University of Michigan and Michigan State University.

One cloud on the Democratic horizon is the possibility of rain today in Michigan and much of the Midwest. Conventional wisdom holds that rain could dampen turnout in Detroit and other urban centers and pinch Clinton’s vote.

But many on both sides believe that interest in this campaign is so high that even rain won’t cool it off. “With all of the attention to the race this year,” Alexander said, “I don’t know if even rain is going to matter.”