WASHINGTON — A grand jury has indicted New York Atty. Gen. Letitia James on a fraud charge in the latest Justice Department case against a perceived enemy of President Trump, a person familiar with the matter told the Associated Press on Thursday.
James was indicted in the Eastern District of Virginia on one count after a mortgage fraud investigation, said the person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the matter.
James’ office had no immediate comment Thursday.
The indictment, two weeks after a separate criminal case charging former FBI Director James Comey with lying to Congress, is the latest indication of the Trump administration’s norm-busting determination to use the law enforcement powers of the Justice Department to pursue the president’s political foes and public figures who once investigated him.
The James case remained under seal Thursday, making it impossible to assess what evidence prosecutors have. But as was the case with the Comey charges, the prosecution followed a strikingly unconventional case.
The Trump administration two weeks ago pushed out Erik Siebert, the veteran prosecutor who had overseen the investigation for months but had resisted pressure to file a case, and replaced him with Lindsey Halligan, a White House aide who was once Trump’s personal lawyer but who has never worked as a federal prosecutor.
Halligan presented the case to the grand jury herself, as she did in the case against Comey, according to the person familiar with the matter.
Trump has been advocating charging James for months, posting on social media without citing any evidence that she’s “guilty as hell” and telling reporters at the White House, “It looks to me like she’s really guilty of something, but I really don’t know.”
James, a second-term Democrat, has denied wrongdoing. She has said that she made an error while filling out a form related to a home purchase but quickly rectified it and didn’t deceive the lender.
Her lawyer has accused the Justice Department of concocting a bogus criminal case to settle Trump’s personal vendetta against James, who last year won a staggering judgment against Trump and his companies in a lawsuit alleging he lied to banks and others about the value of his assets.
The Justice Department has also been investigating mortgage-related allegations against Federal Reserve board member Lisa Cook, using the probe to demand her ouster, and Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), whose lawyer called the allegations against him “transparently false, stale, and long debunked.”
But James is a particularly personal target. As attorney general, she sued the Republican president and his administration dozens of times and oversaw a lawsuit accusing him of defrauding banks by dramatically overstating the value of his real estate holdings on financial statements.
An appeals court overturned the fine, which had ballooned to more than $500 million with interest, but upheld a lower court’s finding that Trump had committed fraud.
Richer, Sisak and Tucker write for the Associated Press.
PARADISE, Calif. — When Jen Goodlin visited Paradise six months after the 2018 Camp fire, she thought she was saying goodbye.
A town native, Goodlin was living in Colorado with her husband and four children. She wanted to witness the devastation that wiped out 10,700 homes, including the small white cottage where she grew up, and turned the dense forest of her youth into a bleak landscape. But once she arrived, she was surprised at her reaction. She could envision so much more than the burned trees and abandoned businesses around her.
Here, she saw, her family could live on a big piece of land as they’d always wanted. Her husband thought she was crazy, but they ran the numbers, bought a 1.2-acre vacant lot and put a trailer on the property. A few years later, they moved into a new, four-bedroom house.
“It took the fire to bring me home,” said Goodlin, 43, who now runs a local wildfire recovery nonprofit.
Jen Goodlin, executive director of the Rebuild Paradise Foundation, in Paradise, Calif., in June 2024.
(Nic Coury / Associated Press)
Young families like Goodlin’s are coming to Paradise, shifting the town’s demographics away from the retirees who once lived there. Attracted by cheap land — lots cost less than a mid-range car— newcomers can build a larger home on larger parcels for less than buying a house in Chico, a city of 100,000 people 15 miles away.
Though Paradise’s current population is less than half of what it was, the local Little League already has more kids than before the fire.
Nearly a decade of megafire in California has brought profound changes to recovering communities. Paradise has become younger. Some rebuilt areas have become wealthier. Renters and people on fixed incomes have found themselves pushed to more urban locales. Both devastated neighborhoods and fire survivors face an unpredictable future that, given the recent intensity of wildfires in California, many more areas will have to face.
Reminders of fire are inescapable in Paradise, from the roadside signposts that designate evacuation routes to the alarm that blares at noon on the 15th of every month, a test of the system that will tell everyone if they need to flee once again. At the same time, the activity in the town belies the desolation implied by building data that show only 30% of destroyed homes have been replaced. Dog walkers and parents with small children play in refurbished parks. At lunchtime, construction workers in reflective vests gather around taco trucks.
A deer treks over an empty lot as homes continue to be built throughout Paradise years after the Camp fire.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
Local boosters tout that for every year after the fire, Paradise has been one of the fastest-growing communities in California. Another half-dozen homes are being rebuilt each month, according to a Times data analysis.
But as shown in Paradise, the statistics tell only part of the story. The Times found that of the nearly 22,500 homes lost in the Camp fire and California’s four other most destructive wildfires from 2017 to 2020, just 8,400, or 38%, have been rebuilt.
Given the time that has already passed, it’s unlikely that some places — the forests below the northern Sierra Nevada, parts of the Santa Monica Mountains, pieces of old Shasta County mining towns — ever will have the same number of homes as before. In Paradise, it’s essentially guaranteed. Many returning homeowners purchased their neighbors’ burned out lots to build a larger house or simply expand the size of their property.
Instead of simply repopulating these areas, there has been a subtle shift toward living in more urban communities, especially for renters or homeowners who couldn’t afford to rebuild. In Butte County, disaster relief dollars from both the Camp fire and North Complex fire, which destroyed 1,500 homes in even more rural areas two years later, have been funneled toward affordable housing projects largely in Chico and smaller nearby cities untouched by the blazes. Not one such development has been proposed in the North Complex burn scar.
The rationale is straightforward: More people can be housed more safely and sustainably in cities than in mountainous, fire-prone tracts with little public infrastructure. The urban developments also provide access to grocery stores, public transit and other amenities that give them a higher chance of winning state financing competitions and being completed.
Local officials welcome the investments but feel uneasy about what’s happening. Katie Simmons, deputy chief administrative officer overseeing recovery efforts for Butte County, said many rural fire survivors don’t want to move to the city. She called the new developments “displacement housing” that doesn’t address the needs of those in remote areas who continue to “flounder in disaster-caused homelessness.”
As time wears on, fewer and fewer people find themselves in positions to return, sometimes despite extraordinary efforts to allow them to do so.
Palm trees rising over the vacant lot in November 2020 where Journey’s End Trailer Park once stood in Santa Rosa.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
In Santa Rosa, the 2017 Tubbs fire wiped out Journey’s End, a 162-space mobile home park next to a hospital and the 101 Freeway. A partnership between the landowner, the city and for- and nonprofit developers led to plans for more than 400 apartments on the site, including full replacement of 162 units for low-income seniors.
But it wasn’t until summer 2023 that the first apartments opened. Journey’s End residents, so long as they qualified under the age and income restrictions, could return if they wanted.
Few did. About three dozen expressed interest, 12 initially moved in, six of whom remain.
A lot of her former neighbors from the mobile home park died waiting, said Pat Crisco, 75, one of the Journey’s End residents who came back. Others didn’t want to live in apartments. More had settled elsewhere and didn’t want to uproot themselves again, she said.
Pat Crisco is a former resident of the Journey’s End mobile home park that burned in the Tubbs fire. Crisco is now living in the affordable housing apartment development that was built on the site.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
The stray cats Crisco used to feed at Journey’s End are gone and when the hot wind blows outside her apartment building she gets the “heebie jeebies.” But she feels great about her decision to return. The location is close to the bus, her doctors and grocery stores.
“This is brand spanking new,” Crisco said. “And everything is very convenient.”
Before the Tubbs fire, Santa Rosa’s Coffey Park subdivision was middle-class, with its tract homes routinely going for around $500,000. Nearly all the 1,300 houses lost have been rebuilt. Residents were astounded recently when they began selling at more than $1 million.
Jeff Okrepkie, 46, a Coffey Park renter who used his insurance payout as a down payment for a new home on his old street, said it’s undeniable that the neighborhood is more upscale now, with amenities hard to find elsewhere.
“This is the cliche, Americana, suburban single-family-detached homes,” Okrepkie said. “It’s 1980s-style lots, 1980s-style streets with 2020s-style houses.”
Jeff Okrepkie outside his rebuilt home, second from left, in the Coffey Park neighborhood of Santa Rosa.
(Eric Risberg / Associated Press)
What’s happening in Paradise and Santa Rosa provide continually evolving answers to weighty questions: When has a community recovered? And what does recovery even mean?
That’s why local leaders are pushing for a new sewer system as part of an expanded town center to attract restaurants and business that would make more young families want to live there. The lack of one limited the commercial district in the past.
For Paradise officials, recovery is when the community can sustain itself once again.
“It looks like it’s going to serve us for 25 years,” said Colette Curtis, the town’s recovery and economic development director, of the PG&E settlement.
Some residents of communities reshaped by fire have found themselves both drawn and repelled by the place they call home.
Roger and Lindy Brown lived in Paradise with their daughter before the fire and their home burned. Their daughter went to Chico State, and Roger and Lindy moved to Oregon. Roger and Lindy moved back to a rebuilt home near their old one a couple of years ago.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
Roger and Lindy Brown had lived in Paradise for 12 years when the Camp fire struck. After the blaze, the Browns rented an apartment in Chico so their daughter could finish her last year at Paradise High School, which held classes in a mall and then a warehouse in Chico.
Roger, 60, worked in heating and air conditioning and had to return to the town often. He couldn’t take seeing the burned-out trees, cars and homes. The couple took their insurance money and moved to a small town in Oregon. From a distance, the upkeep on their vacant lot proved to be too much so they sold that too.
But Paradise pulled at them, especially Lindy, 66. Their daughter never left, attending Chico State, where she recently graduated. Some of their friends had rebuilt. To her, Oregon felt lonely. Paradise, she said, was their community.
Tom and Diane Boatright built back their home in the second-fastest time after the Camp fire using a modular homebuilding company.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
Last year, Roger and Lindy bought a house in Paradise, a newly built, blue, two-bedroom with a white picket fence. The home had all they wanted. Solar power. A large lot. Apple, cherry and peach trees in the back. And they were overwhelmed with the thought of starting from scratch.
They’ve kept a Little Free Library on their lawn stocked with books. In the spring, they traded their extra peaches for eggs from their neighbor’s chickens.
On a recent weekday afternoon, Roger and Lindy stood in their frontyard admiring the finishing touches on their only major construction project. They were replacing some of the landscaping with gravel, a decision that made their home more fire-resistant and cut their insurance costs in half.
Roger still felt unsure about returning. Before the fire, he would go to breakfast with the town’s classic car club every Saturday. The 1971 Chevy Nova Roger had restored was lost in the blaze and the car club was no more.
“It’s never going to be the Paradise it was,” Roger said to Lindy.
His wife turned to him. “It doesn’t have to be,” she said.
Nobody seems to like this stock or the company right now. Just take a step back and look past all the bearish rhetoric at what’s really going on.
Do you like low-cost stocks? If so, you’re not alone. So does legendary stock-picker and Berkshire Hathaway(BRK.A 0.20%)(BRK.B 0.24%) CEO Warren Buffett. His company is currently holding about four dozen value stocks, which collectively account for one-third of the conglomerate’s total market cap.
One of these names is absurdly cheap right now, and could make you measurably richer at some point in the foreseeable future. That stock? The Kraft Heinz Company(KHC -0.15%).
Surprised? Just hear me out.
Yes, that Kraft Heinz
Anyone keeping tabs on Kraft Heinz for the past few years might be more than a little shocked at the suggestion. While hopes were high for the merger of then-separate Kraft and Heinz that Warren Buffett helped orchestrate back in 2015, by 2017 it was clear the pairing was a bust. Buffett eventually conceded in 2019 that “we [Berkshire Hathaway] overpaid for Kraft,” although the assessment still understated the ultimate problem. Delivering that ugly truth is the fact that KHC stock — including Berkshire’s 325.6 million shares — continued to fall well after that confession, recently hitting a multiyear low that’s more than 70% below 2017’s peak.
What went wrong? A handful of things. Chief among them is that these two companies should have never been combined in the first place.
Corporate culture is a real thing. That’s arguably even more the case for older, bigger, and more complex companies like Heinz as well as Kraft, each of which also managed in-house departments like advertising and product development. Although Heinz’s then-CEO Bernardo Hees thought he had the right plan in place to successfully meld the two companies into one when he took the helm in 2015, in retrospect he clearly didn’t.
Hees was replaced by Miguel Patricio in 2019, who was replaced by Carlos Abrams-Rivera in 2023, neither of whom was able to rekindle the magic of either iconic brand. (That being said, in their defense it’s worth pointing out that both companies were struggling with relevancy and marketability prior to the merger. It may have been a lost cause no matter who was in charge.)
Fast-forward to today… or, at least earlier this month. After 10 torturous years, Kraft Heinz announced in early September that it would be splitting back into two separate publicly traded entities in an effort to unwind the disastrous merger.
It’s not quite a reversion back to pre-merger Kraft and Heinz. One of the companies will own Heinz, Philadelphia cream cheese, and Kraft macaroni and cheese. The other will own Oscar Mayer, Kraft singles cheese slices, and Lunchables. But this divvying up allows for at least a bit more focus than is currently possible. That can only help.
Shrinking its way to success
Not everyone agrees this is what the struggling combined company needs at this time. In fact, given the stock’s stumble following the announcement, most interested parties aren’t enthusiastic about the split. Buffett is reportedly disappointed as well, implying he thinks what’s not working can still be fixed without breaking the company up. Or if nothing else, as independent food industry analyst Nicholas Fereday noted, “The very fact they’re splitting up doesn’t change any of it and explain how they’re going to inject energy, excitement and clarity.”
And maybe these criticisms are fair.
Consider this, however: After more than five (and really, seven) years of poor performance, what could have been fixed arguably should have been and would have been fixed by now. If nothing else, separating the complex food behemoth into two better-focused players certainly can’t make matters any worse — once the disruption stemming from the split is in the rearview mirror anyway.
Image source: Motley Fool.
That’s the crux of the argument for stepping into a position of this beaten-down stock while its forward-looking dividend yield stands at 6.2% and the stock is priced at only about 10 times this year’s and next year’s projected per-share earnings. Most of any risk is already reflected here, leaving only upside even if that upside is modest for now.
Bolstering this bullish thesis is what’s likely to happen once Kraft Heinz becomes two companies and two stocks. Although it’s only speculation at this point, Mizuho Securities’ managing director John Baumgartner writes: “Asset sales (notably Oscar Mayer) could prune material underperformers and enhance portfolio growth prospects. We believe strategic acquirers exist, and that asset sales can prove accretive for shareholders.”
That being said, it’s worth adding that the sweeping bearishness surrounding this ticker now also makes it something of a contrarian prospect. That won’t keep it moving higher forever, but it could get it moving in that direction.
Not your typical buy-and-hold investment
It’s admittedly unusual to tout the breakup of a food giant as a means of unlocking value. Technology and industrial companies? Yes. But consumer staples? Not so much. It’s an industry that’s historically benefited from scale rather than been crimped by it.
The marketplace is changing, though. So are consumers. People are generally eating more pre-prepared and processed food these days, or eating more restaurant-prepared meals; the made-at-home meal space that Kraft Heinz operates in is a shrinking no-man’s land. And to the extent the company’s products are still relevant, technology and consumers’ interest in exploring brands other than the ones they grew up with are making it possible for smaller players to compete with giants like Kraft Heinz.
So, perhaps a breakup followed by the sale of some of both new companies’ brands to smaller, nimbler food companies is what’s needed to unlock the value that’s buried deep within Kraft Heinz.
Just don’t lose perspective on the kind of trade you’d be taking on. The Kraft Heinz Company is anything but a foundational holding for anyone’s portfolio. There’s no certainty here, but there’s sure to be plenty of volatility as long as splits, sales, and spinoffs are being considered.
Dutch Bros stock might’ve doubled in the last year, but I think it’ll keep rising through 2030 and beyond.
While no one can be certain what stocks may or may not “pop” in any five-year window, investors can tilt the odds in their favor by looking for businesses with a long list of potential market-beating catalysts.
I believe the upstart handcrafted beverages chain Dutch Bros(BROS -0.53%) perfectly exemplifies this notion.
Dutch Bros is home to several promising catalysts that could drive its stock price higher between now and 2030.
Although I’m willing to predict that the up-and-coming company could help make investors richer by 2030, Dutch Bros’ current business developments paint an even brighter picture beyond that point.
Image source: Dutch Bros.
Dutch Bros’ numerous catalysts
Dutch Bros’ share price has more than doubled in just the last year alone.
Despite this run, I believe there are five specific reasons why the company has ample room to rise and help make investors richer by 2030.
Dutch Bros is more than just coffee
Far from a traditional hot coffee chain, Dutch Bros generates 87% of its sales from ice or blended drinks. It also receives roughly one-quarter of its sales from its Rebel energy drinks.
This is a powerful differentiator for Dutch Bros, as it caters directly to its youngest and most important (for the long term) customers — Gen Z — who strongly prefer iced, blended, and energy drinks over hot coffee.
Industry experts project the coffee industry to grow 7% by 2030, whereas the energy drink category should grow more than 40% by 2032. This shift toward energy drinks should keep the company front and center on the beverage scene, thanks to its outsized allocation to energy drinks.
Immense store count expansion potential
Dutch Bros has 1,043 locations, but recently announced its stretch goal of 2,029 stores by 2029. While doubling its store count in four years may sound like a reach, the company is on pace to open around 160 in 2025 and plans to grow its new shop count by a mid-teens percentage annually for the next few years.
If management meets this bold goal and maintains its steady cash generation, I would feel terrific about my prediction being accurate.
Best yet, the Dutch Bros growth story doesn’t stop here. Over the long term, the company believes it can reach more than 7,000 locations. Currently operating in just 18 states (but entering five new ones in 2025), Dutch Bros’ growth story should persist well beyond 2030.
With its newest 2024 shops delivering annual unit volumes similar to those built in 2022 or earlier, I’m confident in management’s ability to continue expanding geographically in a profitable manner.
Cash flows are now positive
Perhaps the biggest reason I’m optimistic about Dutch Bros’ ability to enrich our portfolios is that it recently reached breakeven on a free cash flow (FCF) basis.
Despite the company’s rapid store count growth (which creates heavy capital expenditures), Dutch Bros has reached positive FCF. Said another way, management can now fund its growth ambitions in-house rather than through debt or shareholder dilution from issuing new shares.
Additionally, if Dutch Bros wasn’t spending heavily on capex (just a thought experiment), it would already be a bona fide cash machine, generating 18 cents of cash from operations for every $1 in sales.
Mobile ordering is still young
While the company’s expansion plans may take center stage in its growth story, Dutch Bros’ recent rollout of mobile ordering at all locations could prove to be a promising growth catalyst on its own.
Customers are rapidly adopting mobile orders, but these orders still only account for 11.5% of the company’s total transactions. Every additional order that switches from being placed in the drive-thru lane to mobile offers throughput improvement for Dutch Bros.
During the company’s second-quarter earnings call, Chief Executive Officer Christine Barone explained that mobile ordering has already delivered an order frequency lift, while also being a popular option in the morning.
Whereas customers may have previously gone without a beverage if their time was limited, the grab-and-go feasibility provided by mobile ordering could help add a number of once-missed sales.
Food options
Dutch Bros currently generates less than 2% of its sales from food. While Starbucks has shown that adding food to a beverages-focused business isn’t the easiest feat to pull off, the fact remains that leading coffee chains generate one-fourth of their sales from food.
Currently, Dutch Bros is piloting a food program that could be fully rolled out by 2026 and is already seeing incremental growth in its morning orders. If the company inches anywhere closer to the industry average of 25% of sales from food, it could be a boon for Dutch Bros’s same-store sales.
Dutch Bros’ valuation
While there is a lot to like about Dutch Bros, its price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio of 199 undoubtedly scares many investors away.
However, this may not be the best valuation to assess the company with. Revisiting the cash from operations figures examined earlier, and comparing them to the company’s market capitalization, Dutch Bros stock trades at 47 times CFO.
Yes, this is still a premium valuation, but for a company with a reasonable chance to double its store count over the next four years, it isn’t excessive in my opinion.
Although the company still has to execute, numerous catalysts indicate that Dutch Bros can help make investors rich by (and more importantly, beyond) 2030.
A mix of stories grace the front pages of Saturday’s papers. “Britain will bake in 36C heat” declares the Daily Express as it reports on the “heat dome” engulfing Europe. The paper says sweltering temperatures on Monday could make it “the hottest June day ever” and the highest in three years. In contrast, Emma Raducanu is pictured alongside as “all smiles in the Wimbledon sun”.
The NHS’s new boss has criticised the health service for viewing patients as “an inconvenience” and “built mechanisms to keep them away”, the Daily Telegraph reports. In an interview with the paper, Sir Jim Mackey says the NHS is too often “deaf to criticism” and has “made it really hard” for patients to get the care they need. Also looming on the front page is a photograph of newly married couple Amazon tycoon Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez in her wedding gown. The pair’s opulent £154bn ceremony in Italy took place on the Venetian island of San Giorgio Maggiore on Friday.
The Times follows with their NHS story on patients having a greater say on how much hospitals are paid by rating their treatment experiences. In plans to “rewire” the health service, pay for doctors and nurses will be linked to patient satisfaction and a hospital’s ability to bring down waiting lists, the paper reports. An interview with Sir Rod Stewart is also previewed with the singer offering his political assessment, saying “we’re fed up with the Tories”.
The Financial Times leads with Sir Keir Starmer’s “welfare climbdown” as it says the PM has “blown a £4.25bn hole” in his budget after retreating on cuts to disability benefits and pensioner subsidies. The paper warns the move could raise the likelihood of further tax hikes and risks damaging the government’s credibility with investors. Elsewhere, the “A-listers and hecklers” who flocked to Bezos’s Venice wedding extravaganza also earns a prime photo spot.
Supermarkets will be required to promote fruits and vegetables instead of junk food under new plans, the i Paper says. It reports that Labour ministers are drawing up proposals to push shoppers to make healthier choices and stores will need to report on how successful they are at persuading customers to “swap potatoes for sweet potatoes”.
The Daily Mail promotes their Stop The SAS Betrayal campaign with new backing from a former royal aide and SAS officer. The paper is calling for Northern Ireland veterans who served during the Troubles to be protected from “legal which hunts”. Sharing the top spot is a smiling Raducanu, with the Mail teasing the “tantalising clues” that reveal the tennis star has found a “love match” with a Wimbledon champion.
An exclusive in the Sun says police are under fire for wasting time investigating “non-crime hate incidents”, including the case of a man singing the Flower of Scotland anthem at an English railway station. The paper sums up the affair as a “tartan barmy”.
The Daily Mirror spotlights the “heartbreaking tribute” by Daniel Anjorin’s father, after the schoolboy’s killer was jailed for 40 years. Dr Ebenezer Anjorin remembers his son as a “kind and generous spirit that touched everyone who knew him”.
Finally, the Daily Star features Luke Littler’s “Darty in the USA” as the darts player says he is ready to “crack America” with his “arrows heroics” across the pond.
