senate

March 16 (UPI) — Senate Republicans are trying to pass the SAVE America Act this week, as both the GOP and Democrats are gearing up to fight over the election reform bill that would require those registering to vote to show proof of citizenship with passports or birth certificates.

The Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act already has broad public support, but Democrats are strongly against it. Republicans and President Donald Trump want a prolonged fight, forcing Democrats to defend their opposition.

Republicans say it will make elections safer, but Democrats call it a “voter suppression act.”

The bill would force people registering to vote to show proof of citizenship with a passport or certified birth certificate. People who have legally changed their name, including transgender people and most married women, would have a more difficult time.

According to State Department statistics, around half of Americans have a valid passport, and a first-time applicant would have to pay $165 to get one. The University of Maryland’s Center for Democracy and Civic Engagement said that 2.6 million Americans do not have a government-issued photo ID.

A recent Harvard CAPS/Harris poll showed that 71% of voters support the SAVE Act.

House Republicans passed a version of the bill along party lines in February. But the Senate needs 60 votes to avoid a filibuster. Right now, Republicans have a 53-47 majority, and Sen. John Fetterman, I-Pa., who usually votes with the GOP, has said he’s against the bill.

On Thursday, Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said he wants to bring the bill to a vote to “put Democrats on the record.”

Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, told The Hill that Trump wants to see an epic fight, similar to the two-month battle to pass the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

“What I want to do is try to maximize the period of time in which we debate it,” Lee said.

“They faced a 32-vote cloture deficit at the time it came over from the House in March of ’64,” Lee told The Hill. “They were able to close a 32-vote cloture deficit. It took them 60 days, but they got there.”

He said taking a longer time gives lawmakers clarity.

“Debating a bill that continues to get more popular even as people are trying to slow it down and stop it and obstruct it sometimes sharpens the minds of individual lawmakers and makes them more amenable in the end to negotiation,” Lee added. “That’s what we’re looking at here.”

Trump and other conservative Senators want to force Democrats to do a talking filibuster, but Thune has said there just aren’t enough votes to do so. He said the Republicans aren’t unified enough to table potential Democratic amendments.

“The votes aren’t there, one, to nuke the filibuster and the votes aren’t there for a talking filibuster. It’s just a reality,” The Hill reported Thune said last week. “I’m the person who has to deliver sometimes the not-so-good news that the math doesn’t add up but those are the facts and there’s no getting around it.”

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said Democrats are prepared for the battle.

“We don’t yet know what Thune is doing … but we’re prepared for every possible scenario,” Schumer told reporters Sunday.

“My caucus really feels strongly that this would be a horror … one of the worst things that’s happened in the history of this country in terms of allowing people to vote,” he said.

Trump has said he will not sign any legislation until the act passes the Senate.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren has earned a rare rebuke by the Senate for — believe it or not — quoting Coretta Scott King on the Senate floor.

The Massachusetts Democrat ran afoul of the chamber’s arcane rules by reading a 30-year-old letter from Dr. Martin Luther King’s widow that dated to Sen. Jeff Sessions’ failed judicial nomination three decades ago.

The chamber is debating the Alabama Republican’s nomination for attorney general, with Democrats dropping senatorial niceties to oppose Sessions and Republicans sticking up for him.

King wrote that when acting as a federal prosecutor, Sessions used his power to “chill the free exercise of the vote by black citizens.”

Quoting King technically put Warren in violation of Senate rules for “impugning the motives” of Sessions, though senators have said far worse stuff. And Warren was reading from a letter that was written 10 years before Sessions was even elected to the Senate.

Still, top Senate Republican Mitch McConnell invoked the rules. After a few parliamentary moves, the GOP-controlled Senate voted to back him up.

Now, Warren is forbidden from speaking again on Sessions’ nomination. A vote on Sessions is expected Wednesday evening.

Democrats pointed out that McConnell didn’t object when Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) called him a liar in a 2015 dustup.

“I’m reading a letter from Coretta Scott King to the Judiciary Committee from 1986 that was admitted into the record. I’m simply reading what she wrote about what the nomination of Jeff Sessions to be a federal court judge meant and what it would mean in history for her,” Warren said.

WASHINGTON — The Senate passed a broad bill on Thursday to make U.S. housing more accessible and affordable, a rare bipartisan effort in Congress to address a growing national problem.

The bill, which passed 89 to 10, would reduce regulations, regulate corporate investors and expand how housing dollars can be used to build affordable homes and rentals. It will now head back to the House, which passed a similar bill earlier this year.

“We have a housing shortage all across America,” said Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who worked with Republicans to win overwhelming support from both parties for the legislation. “We need more housing of every kind. More housing for first-time home buyers, more housing for renters, more housing for seniors, more housing for people with disabilities, more rural housing, more urban housing, more, more, and more.”

The legislation, she said “will help drive down prices.”

Senate Banking Committee Chairman Tim Scott (R-S.C.), led the effort with Warren. He said ahead of the vote that the Senate could “do what so many people failed to do in this legislative body for the last few decades, and that is pass consequential legislation that makes it easier to become a homeowner.”

Roadblocks ahead for the legislation

Despite the overwhelming bipartisan vote in the Senate, It’s unclear whether the House will pass the legislation again — or if President Trump will sign it.

Trump has strongly backed the bill through the bipartisan negotiations, but he has also slowed its momentum with a declaration last weekend that he won’t sign any new measures unless Congress passes legislation that would require voters to show proof of citizenship and end most mail-in balloting. The Senate is expected to begin consideration of that bill next week, but it is unlikely to pass as all Democrats oppose it.

At the same time, House leaders have indicated that they are unlikely to accept the Senate version of the housing legislation and have suggested they could launch a formal conference process to negotiate a final deal between the chambers — a process that could take months.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) said ahead of the bill’s passage on Thursday that conference negotiations are a possibility, “but obviously the quickest way to do this would be to pick up the Senate bill and pass it.”

If the White House wants that to happen, he said, “they’ll probably have to make that argument to House leadership.”

Making housing more attainable

The bill would give local governments more power on housing issues, allow banks to invest more in affordable housing and lift limits on the number of units in a public housing development that can receive private financing through Section 8 funding that helps rehabilitate properties.

“You’ve got many provisions in this bill that stop treating the U.S. like one single housing market and start giving local leaders the tools they need to fix their unique regional puzzle,” said Peter Carroll with Cotality, a company that tracks housing data.

The bill aims to make homebuilding easier by streamlining some regulations that require environmental reviews and inspections. It also eliminates a limit on a grant for emergency shelter beds and street homelessness outreach.

As many affordable housing developers are leaning on manufactured and modular homes that can be transported to areas that need housing, the legislation also lifts the requirement that they have to be built on a permanent chassis, making them easier to build and design.

Housing advocacy and policy groups say they wish the bill went further by investing money in building more housing and assisting renters.

“This legislation is the product of essentially senators and House members wanting to come up with something that could pass with both Democratic and Republican votes, which means it’s inherently less ambitious,” said Yonah Freemark, a researcher at Urban Institute.

Corporate investors

One of the more contested provisions of the bill would bar institutional investors from buying single-family homes — a top priority for Trump.

The bill defines such investors as any that directly or indirectly own 350 or more single-family homes. Investors of any size would not be required to sell single-family homes bought before the date that the bill becomes a law.

They would still be allowed to buy or build single-family homes if they rent them out, but would be required to sell them to an individual homebuyer after seven years and offer that buyer “price concessions” and give tenants a 30-day “first-look” period when the time comes to sell the home.

A need for reform

The U.S. housing market has been in a slump dating back to 2022, when mortgage rates began to climb from pandemic-era lows.

Sales of previously occupied U.S. homes have been hovering close to a 4-million annual pace now going back to 2023 — well short of the 5.2-million annual pace that’s historically been the norm. They slowed last year to a 30-year low and have remained sluggish so far this year, declining in January and February versus a year earlier.

A sharp run-up in home prices, especially in the early years of this decade, and a chronic shortage of homes nationally worsened by years of below-average home construction have left many aspiring homeowners priced out of the market.

Meanwhile, while the median U.S. monthly rent has been declining for more than two years, it was still 15.2% higher in January than it was at the start of 2020, according to data from Realtor.com.

The trends have ratcheted pressure on lawmakers this year, with midterm elections looming in November, to show they’re working on ways to make homeownership and rental housing costs more affordable.

Kramon, Veiga and Jalonick write for the Associated Press. Kramon reported from Atlanta and Veiga reported from Los Angeles.

WASHINGTON — Visitors to the Capitol will now have a visible reminder of the violent attack against the building on Jan. 6, 2021, and the officers who fought and were injured defending it that day.

Steps from the Capitol’s West Front, where the worst of the violence occurred, workers quietly have installed a plaque honoring the officers, three years after it was required by law to be erected. The plaque was placed on the Senate side of the hallway because the Senate voted unanimously in January to install it after House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) had delayed putting it up. Many Republicans had balked at installing the plaque.

“On behalf of a grateful Congress, this plaque honors the extraordinary individuals who bravely protected and defended this symbol of democracy on January 6, 2021,” the plaque says. “Their heroism will never be forgotten.”

The Washington Post first reported the installation of the plaque, which was witnessed by a reporter about 4 a.m. Saturday.

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) led the effort to install it as he commemorated the fifth anniversary of the attack and insurrection and described his memories of hearing people break into the building. “We owe them eternal gratitude, and this nation is stronger because of them,” he said of the officers who were overwhelmed by thousands of President Trump’s supporters before eventually pushing them out of the building.

The mob of rioters who violently pushed past police and broke in were echoing Trump’s false claims of a stolen election after the Republican was defeated by Democrat Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election. The crowd stopped the congressional certification of Biden’s victory for several hours, sent lawmakers running for safety and vandalized the building before police regained control.

Five police officers and four protesters died as a consequence of the violence. More than 140 officers from the U.S. Capitol Police, the Metropolitan Police Department and other agencies were injured.

The fight to have the plaque installed came as Trump returned to office last year and the Republican Congress has remained loyal to him. The president, who has called Jan. 6 a “day of love,” on his first day of his new term granted pardons or commutations to nearly 1,600 people convicted or charged in the rioting.

Trump was impeached and criminally indicted for his role in the insurrection. The Senate did not convict him, and the felony charges were dropped after he was reelected in November 2024.

Congress passed a law in 2022 that set out instructions for the honorific plaque listing the names of officers “who responded to the violence that occurred.” It gave a one-year deadline for installation, but the plaque never went up.

After more than a year of silence — and a lawsuit by two of the officers who fought at the Capitol that day — Johnson said at the beginning of the year that there were technical problems with the statute and the plaque could not be erected.

Tillis went to the Senate floor shortly afterward and passed a resolution, with no objections, to place the plaque on the Senate side.

One of the officers who sued, Metropolitan Police Officer Daniel Hodges, said the lawsuit would continue. Hodges, who was crushed by the rioters in the heavy doors steps away from where the plaque is now displayed, said Saturday that the overnight installation was a “fine stopgap” but that it was not in full compliance of the law. The original statute said that all of the officers’ names should be listed, among other technical specifications.

“The weight of a judicial ruling would help secure the memorial against future tampering,” Hodges said. “Our lawsuit persists.”

Jalonick and Mascaro write for the Associated Press. AP writer Allison Robbert contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — The Republican-led Senate voted Tuesday to kill new rules that established the first federal standard for ergonomics in the workplace, and President Bush signaled he would support the regulatory rollback.

The unusually rapid Senate action, following a brief and fiery partisan debate, elated business and enraged labor. The vote to nullify the rules was 56-44. The Republican-led House could follow suit as early as today.

The rules in question, issued in the final weeks of the Clinton administration, are meant to require employers to adopt the principle of ergonomics–namely, fitting work conditions to the physical capacity of workers.

Nearly 2 million workers each year suffer from work-related conditions known as musculoskeletal disorders, caused by repetitive, awkward or stressful motions, according to estimates from the Bureau of Labor Statistics that some experts call conservative. Examples are carpal tunnel syndrome, tendinitis and herniated spinal discs–but not injuries caused by slips, trips or accidents.

While most Democrats have championed the federal ergonomics rules, the idea of federal intervention was first raised in 1990 by a Republican labor secretary, Elizabeth Hanford Dole, who served under the current president’s father.

But the new Bush administration has embraced the arguments of business interests, which view the final rules produced by Clinton’s Labor Department as unworkable and unreliable.

“These regulations would cost employers, large and small, billions of dollars annually while providing uncertain benefits,” the White House said.

“If implemented, they would require employers to establish burdensome and costly new systems intended to track, prevent and provide compensation for an extremely broad class of injuries whose cause is subject to considerable dispute.”

The administration statement confirmed what congressional Republicans have said privately for several days–that Bush would support a congressional resolution to nullify the new rules.

Tuesday’s developments gave fresh evidence of the effect of the realignment of power in Washington, with Republicans controlling Congress and the White House for the first time since the 1950s.

Former President Clinton, a Democrat, repeatedly fended off attempts by the Republican-led Congress to stop action on ergonomics.

Now, participants on both sides acknowledge that the fate of the rules, along with the resolution of many other business-labor disputes, may have been sealed when Bush was declared the victor last year over Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore.

Sen. Don Nickles (R-Okla.), the assistant majority leader, mocked the rules as “the most expensive, intrusive regulations ever promulgated, certainly by the Department of Labor and maybe by any department in history.”

Nickles said the rules would allow “federal bureaucrats” to tell moving companies, grocers or bottlers, for example, how many workers they would need to unload goods. “There is no way in the world that a lot of companies could comply with this rule,” he said.

But Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) ripped Republicans for rushing the nullification through Congress using special parliamentary tactics that allowed little debate.

“It’s a major weakening in terms of the protections for American workers,” Kennedy said. “If we are not going to protect them now, there is no one that is going to protect them. . . . We know the people that are going to be constantly hurt–working families hurt, day in, day out.”

Six of 50 Democrats, mainly Southerners, broke party ranks to vote with all 50 Republicans for the resolution repealing the rule. They were Sens. Zell Miller of Georgia, Blanche Lambert Lincoln of Arkansas, Ernest F. Hollings of South Carolina, Max Baucus of Montana and John B. Breaux and Mary Landrieu of Louisiana.

AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, irate at the six, said: “The votes of Democratic senators who gave cover to this assault on worker safety are especially dishonorable.”

Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer of California opposed the repeal.

Labor and business lobbyists worked the issue in full force.

Union officials, campaigning with the slogan “Stop the Pain: Start the Healing,” made a frantic, final push to save what they consider one of the most important accomplishments of the Clinton years. The AFL-CIO, noting that women suffer repetitive-motion injuries disproportionately, held news conferences that featured women who had suffered crippling disorders in a poultry plant, a public school and an Internet company.

Business groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Assn. of Manufacturers countered that the rules would overwhelm employers, forcing them to comply with vaguely worded standards at untold billions of dollars in expense. Employers circulated on Capitol Hill on Tuesday to tell senators and reporters how the rules would hurt them; one Virginia restaurant owner with 300 employees said it would cost him at least $53,000 a year.

The rules, issued by the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration on Nov. 14, took effect on Jan. 16, four days before Clinton left office. With exceptions for maritime, agricultural, construction and railroad industries and some other employers, most businesses in America–including those in California covered by the state’s own, less-detailed ergonomics standard–are required to comply by Oct. 16.

As a first step, employers are required to tell employees about the risks and symptoms of common musculoskeletal disorders and set up a system to receive reports of such injuries. The government has estimated that the ailments force at least 600,000 workers each year to take time off.

When employers receive verified reports of work-related musculoskeletal disorders, the rules require further steps. Some problems, according to the rules, can be solved by “quick fixes”–presumably inexpensive–such as adjusting the height of a desk or work platform.

But other problems might require more extensive response–an ergonomics safety program including, according to the rules, “management leadership,” “employee participation,” “job hazard analysis” and “hazard reduction and control measures.”

Critics were irate over a provision that would allow employees to claim that a preexisting condition is work-related if the condition is “significantly aggravated” by the workplace.

Businesses also complained about a provision that would require employers to offer light-duty work to employees with covered disorders for at least three months with full pay and benefits, or, failing that, three months off with at least 90% of their regular pay.

The Clinton administration estimated that the regulations would cost employers $4.5 billion a year to implement but would save them billions of dollars more on workers’ compensation. Business groups scoffed at those figures and said the cost could be as much as $100 billion annually.

Normally, Democrats in the evenly divided Senate are able to threaten a filibuster to block legislation they oppose. It takes 60 votes to end such a maneuver.

But Republicans, in their action Tuesday, relied on a little-known 1996 law that enables Congress to repeal major new regulations with the approval of the president. Under its terms, debate was limited to 10 hours and Democrats were unable to filibuster.

The 1996 law, known as the Congressional Review Act, has until now never been successfully invoked. One effort to nullify a health regulation failed in the Senate in September of that year.

If, as expected, Republicans prevail on ergonomics, their use of the review act may have broader implications. For one, Democrats said Republicans could be emboldened to use the act to wipe out other rules that businesses oppose. “It can be brought to bear on agriculture regulations, on energy regulations,” said Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.). “This is not just an isolated instance.”

Democrats also charge that the language of the act would prevent future efforts to make meaningful ergonomics rules unless Congress gives permission.

But Republicans said that was not so.

Labor Secretary Elaine Chao said in a letter Tuesday to Sen. James M. Jeffords (R-Vt.) that she would continue to pursue “a comprehensive approach to ergonomics” even if the current rule is killed. Chao said she remained open to crafting a new rule that would “provide employers with achievable measures that protect their employees before injuries occur.”

If Democrats expect to flip a U.S. Senate seat in Texas, they’ll need all the stars to align. This almost never happens, because politics has a way of scrambling the constellations. But on Tuesday, the first star blinked on.

I’m referring to state Rep. James Talarico’s victory over Rep. Jasmine Crockett in the Democratic primary. Most political prognosticators agree that Talarico, an eloquent young Democrat who speaks openly about his Christian faith, is their best hope in a red state that Donald Trump won by 14 points.

The second star was Crockett’s conciliatory concession — far from a foregone conclusion after a nasty primary — in which she pledged to “do my part,” adding that “Texas is primed to turn blue, and we must remain united because this is bigger than any one person.”

The third star — a vulnerable Republican opponent — has not yet appeared over the Texas sky, although forecasters say it might.

Most observers agree that scandal-plagued Atty. Gen. Ken Paxton would be beatable in the general election, while incumbent Sen. John Cornyn would present a much tougher challenge. Cornyn is the kind of steady, conventional politician who tends to win elections, and so, of course, modern voters are extremely suspicious of him.

In the GOP primary on Tuesday, Cornyn’s 42% share of the vote edged out Paxton by about a point. Unfortunately for Republicans, neither candidate garnered enough votes to avoid a May 26 runoff election.

Conventional wisdom suggests that when a majority of Republican voters choose someone other than the incumbent in the first round of voting, an even greater majority will inevitably break toward the challenger in the runoff. If that happens, Paxton would become the nominee, and Democrats would get their third star to align.

Even better for Democrats — a fourth star, so to speak — would be for this protracted runoff to become a “knife fight,” as one Texas Republican predicted, in which Paxton staggers out of the fight as the battered GOP nominee.

The only problem is that Republicans can see these stars aligning, too.

And while the Texas Senate seat matters a lot on its own, it matters even more in the context of nationwide midterm elections, in which a Texas win would help Democrats take back the Senate.

Enter the cavalry — or, more accurately, President Trump, who is now entering a second war in the span of a week, this one a civil war in the Lone Star State.

The day after the primary, Trump announced that he would be “making my Endorsement soon, and will be asking the candidate that I don’t Endorse to immediately DROP OUT OF THE RACE!”

Reports suggest Trump may endorse Cornyn in order to save the seat for Republicans. But who knows? Trump is famously unpredictable. And it’s likely he admires Paxton’s ability to survive scandals that would have caused most normal politicians to curl up in the fetal position. As they say, “game recognizes game.”

Whomever he backs, conventional wisdom also says Trump should make his endorsement “soon,” as he promised. That would save Republicans a lot of time and money. But Trump currently has enormous leverage. Right now, people are coming to him, pleading for his support.

Do you think he wants to resolve that situation quickly?

Me neither.

With Trump, you never know what you’re going to get. In 2021, he helped torpedo Republican Senate candidates David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler in Georgia, handing Democrats control of the Senate. The following year he backed football legend Herschel Walker in another Georgia Senate race, which did not exactly work out great. Democrat Raphael Warnock won and holds that seat, though Walker is now ambassador to the Bahamas so that’s something.

This is to say: Trump’s political assistance does not always assist.

It’s unclear whether Trump’s endorsement would be dispositive — and whether he could muscle the other Republican out of the primary race.

Paxton, for example, initially vowed to stay in the race, no matter what. (He later suggested he would “consider” dropping out if the Senate passes the SAVE America Act, a bill to require proof of citizenship to vote.)

There’s also this: Trump’s endorsements tend to either be made out of vengeance or to pad the totals of an already inevitable winner, so his track record is probably overrated.

Case in point: While most of his endorsed candidates won their Texas elections, his endorsed candidate for agriculture commissioner lost reelection. And according to the Texas Tribune, “at least three Trump-endorsed candidates for Congress were headed to runoffs, one of them in a distant second place.”

Another issue is that Cornyn needs more than a perfunctory endorsement: He needs a clear, full-throated endorsement.

In a 2022 Missouri Senate race, Trump endorsed “ERIC,” which was awkward because two candidates named Eric were running.

More recently, he endorsed two rival candidates in the same 2026 Arizona gubernatorial race — like betting on both teams in the Super Bowl.

This is all to say that the only thing standing between Texas Democrats and a rare celestial alignment may be the whims of the Republican Party’s one and only star.

Sure, establishment Republicans can beg Trump to quickly step in and settle the race, and maybe he will. But it’s entirely possible the president will find a way to blow up his party’s chances for holding the U.S. Senate — and there’s nothing they can do to stop him.

When you’re a star, they let you do it.

Matt K. Lewis is the author of “Filthy Rich Politicians” and “Too Dumb to Fail.”

The US House of Representatives has joined the Senate in killing a war powers resolution that would have forced Donald Trump to end his war on Iran. Although the vote was largely symbolic, Al Jazeera’s Patty Culhane says Democrats are using it to get Republicans on the record.

WASHINGTON — Senate Republicans blocked a war powers resolution Wednesday designed to withdraw U.S. forces from hostilities in Iran, as the Trump administration accelerates its military campaign in a conflict that has killed hundreds, including at least six American service members.

The motion failed in a vote of 47-53.

In addition to pulling out military resources from the Middle East, the measure — introduced by Sens. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and Tim Kaine (D-Va.) — would have required Congress’ explicit approval before future engagement with Iran, a power granted to the legislative branch in the Constitution.

The House, where Republicans also hold an advantage, is scheduled to weigh in on a similar measure Thursday. Even if both Democratic-led measures were to succeed, President Trump was widely expected to veto the legislation.

“We are doing very well on the war front, to put it mildly,” President Trump said at a White House event on Wednesday afternoon. The president, who has come under scrutiny for offering shifting explanations on the war’s endgame, said that if he was asked to scale the American military operation from one to 10, he would rate it a 15.

Democrats dispute that Trump possesses the authority to wage the ongoing operation in Iran without explicit congressional approval.

Acknowledging the measure was unlikely to succeed, they framed the vote as a strategy to force lawmakers to put their support for or opposition to the war on record.

“Today every senator — every single one — will pick a side,” Schumer said. “Do you stand with the American people who are exhausted with forever wars in the Middle East, or stand with Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth as they bumble us headfirst into another war?”

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) and most of his Republican colleagues have maintained that the president carried out a “pre-emptive” and “defensive” strike in Iran, giving him full authority to continue unilateral military operations.

Republicans saw the vote as the “last roadblock” stopping Trump from carrying out his mission against the Islamic Republic.

“I think the president has the authority that he needs to conduct the activities and operations that are currently underway there. There are a lot of controversy and questions around the war powers act, but I think the president is acting in the best interest of the nation and our national security interests,” Thune said at a news conference.

Senators largely held to party loyalties, with the exception of Kentucky Republican Rand Paul, who broke ranks to support the measure, and Pennsylvania Democrat John Fetterman, who opposed it.

The vote comes as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Wednesday that the war against Iran is “accelerating,” with American and Israeli forces expanding air operations into Iranian territory. He pointed to evidence released by U.S. Central Command of a submarine strike on an Iranian warship, and also lauded other strikes throughout the region as civilian casualties in Iran surpassed 1,000 on the fourth day of the conflict, according to rights groups.

“We’re going to continue to do well,” Trump said Wednesday. “We have the greatest military in the world by far and that was a tremendous threat to us for many years. Forty-seven years they’ve been killing our people and killing people all over the world, and we have great support.”

Republicans blocked a similar war powers vote in January after the president ordered U.S. special forces to capture and extradite Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in Caracas on drug trafficking charges.

GOP leaders argued that the outcome of that mission equated to a quick success in the Middle East, despite an uncertain timeline from the Department of Defense.

In the House, lawmakers will vote on a separate war powers effort Thursday. That bill is led by Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) and Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), the two lawmakers who authored the Epstein Files Transparency Act.

“Instead of sending billions overseas, we need to invest in jobs, healthcare, and education here,” Khanna said on X.

In addition to that proposal, moderate Democrats in the House have introduced a separate resolution that would give the administration a 30-day window to justify continued hostilities in the Middle East before requiring a formal declaration of war or authorization from Congress.

US and Israel bombard Iran as Israeli forces hammer Lebanon and the widening conflict causes energy prices to spike.

AUSTIN, Texas — James Talarico did not mention President Trump when he greeted exuberant supporters at his primary night celebration.

But the newly minted Democratic U.S. Senate nominee in Texas is now a front man for the political opposition to the Republican president, not just in his own state but around the country. With his victory over U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett, the state lawmaker from Austin will test whether a smiling message of unity and change is enough to answer voters’ frustrations amid discord at home and now a war abroad.

“We are not just trying to win an election,” Talarico told supporters in the Texas capital early Wednesday. “We are trying to fundamentally change our politics, and it’s working.”

The campaign provided “Love thy Neighbor” signs to people in the crowd.

The question for Talarico as he heads into the general election campaign is whether he can generate enthusiasm from voters who opted for Crockett because they saw her as the more aggressive fighter against Trump. Crockett conceded to Talarico on Wednesday morning, saying that “Texas is primed to turn blue and we must remain united because this is bigger than any one person.”

Talarico will need all the help he can get in a Republican-dominated state where Democrats have gone decades without winning a statewide race. He will face either U.S. Sen. John Cornyn or state Atty. Gen. Ken Paxton, who advanced to a Republican runoff on Tuesday.

Conventional political wisdom has it that Talarico was the stronger Democratic candidate in November, especially if Republicans nominate Paxton, a conservative firebrand who has weathered allegations of corruption and infidelity over the years.

Although Democrats are often choosing between moderate and progressive candidates in primaries, they faced a largely stylistic choice in Texas.

Talarico, 36, is a Presbyterian seminarian who quotes Scripture and rarely raises his voice. Crockett, 44, is an unapologetic political brawler who hammers Trump and other Republicans with acidic flourish.

Both have been reliably progressive votes in their current roles and telegenic faces across cable news and social media. Both represent generational change for a party with aging leadership. Each called for a more equitable economy and society. Each talked about bringing sporadic voters into their coalitions.

But Talarico’s broader argument is one that he could have made regardless of whether Trump was in the White House. Talarico’s campaign, he said often, is about addressing a country whose fundamental divide is not partisan but “top vs. bottom.” He regularly assails the rise in Christian nationalism. A former teacher, he has advocated for public education — and against Texas conservatives’ policies to restrict curriculum and reshape how U.S. history is taught.

“He’s just a good friend and he’s a serious advocate for the disenfranchised and a serious policymaker,” said Lea Downey Gallatin, 40, an Austin resident who became friends with Talarico when they interned together for a congressman.

Crockett promised Democrats that she could increase turnout within the party’s base, while Talarico campaigned on the theory that he could pull new people into the party’s tent.

“I can’t tell you how many have come up to me, whispering that they’re not a Democrat,” Talarico said as he campaigned in San Antonio in the closing days of the primary campaign. “I can’t tell you how many young people have said it’s the first time that they’ve ever voted, and that they are participating for the first time.”

As he strolled through the city, Talarico posed for pictures and greeted the singer of a Tejano band playing nearby. He later spoke to hundreds of people at the historic Stable Hall, a 130-year-old circular structure built for showing horses and now a converted event center. Hundreds more, unable to get into the full event, wound around the corner and along the sidewalk for blocks.

Inside, Lori Alvarez, a 39-year-old who works for a disaster relief nonprofit, said she supported Talarico because “he really listens to what we need.”

“I think he’s going to be able to make change in Washington for us,” said the married mother of three young girls.

Yet that was not what attracted so many voters to Crockett.

Troy Burroughs, a 61-year-old Navy retiree, called Crockett “rugged” and “the only one I see fighting for us.”

He added: “I like how she doesn’t back down from anybody.”

Burroughs said some voters probably saw Talarico as more electable because he is more soft-spoken. But, he said, “We’ve got to get into the gutter with these folks, because that’s where they are.”

Talarico, meanwhile, keeps fighting his own way.

“Tonight, the people of our state gave this country a little bit of hope,” he said Tuesday, “and a little bit of hope is a dangerous thing.”

Barrow, Figueroa and Beaumont write for the Associated Press. Barrow reported from Atlanta, Figueroa from Austin, Texas, and Beaumont from San Antonio.

Winner of May run-off between Republicans John Cornyn and Ken Paxton to face Democrat James Talarico.

James Talarico has topped States Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett in an expensive and fiercely contested Senate Democratic primary in the United States state of Texas.

Who Talarico will face depends on a May run-off between longtime Republican Senator John Cornyn and MAGA favourite Ken Paxton – a race expected to get increasingly nasty over the coming months and that could hinge on whether or not President Donald Trump offers an endorsement.

Texas, along with North Carolina and Arkansas, on Tuesday kicked off midterm elections with control of Congress at stake and against the backdrop of the US-Israeli war with Iran.

A jubilant Talarico told supporters in Austin before the race was called: “We are not just trying to win an election. We are trying to fundamentally change our politics. And it’s working.

“This is proof that there is something happening in Texas,” he said, adding that the state “gave this country a little bit of hope”.

Crockett’s campaign said she planned to sue over voting issues in Dallas, and she spoke only briefly on Tuesday night to warn that “people have been disenfranchised.”

Republicans head to round 2

Cornyn, meanwhile, is seeking a fifth term but is facing a tough challenge from Paxton, the state attorney general. Cornyn hopes to avoid becoming the first Republican senator in Texas history to seek re-election and not be renominated.

The GOP contest also featured Representative Wesley Hunt, who finished a distant third and conceded. But his making it a three-way race made it tougher for any candidate to reach the 50 percent vote threshold needed to win the nomination outright and avoid the May 26 run-off.

All three campaigned on their ties to Trump, who did not make an endorsement in the race. Now both Cornyn and Paxton will again fiercely compete to curry the president’s favour.

Cornyn was facing a tough enough battle that he did not hold an election night party. Instead, in comments to reporters in Austin, he sought to make the case that a run-off win by Paxton would leave “a dead weight at the top of the ticket for Republicans”.

“I’ve worked for decades to build the Republican Party, both here in Texas and nationally,” Cornyn said. “I refuse to allow a flawed, self-centered and shameless candidate like Ken Paxton to risk everything we’ve worked so hard to build over these many years.”

Addressing supporters in Dallas, Paxton made a point of saying he felt like he had during a recent trip to Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s Florida estate.

He also proclaimed: “We proved something they’ll never understand in Washington.

“Texas is not for sale,” he said.

WASHINGTON — Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem arrived at a Senate oversight hearing Tuesday ready to spar with Democrats in her first Capitol Hill appearance since federal agents fatally shot U.S. citizens Alex Pretti and Renee Good in Minneapolis.

But some of the sharpest comments from the Judiciary Committee came from fellow Republicans, who questioned her leadership, criticized her spending practices and called on her to admit that she was wrong to call Pretti and Good “domestic terrorists.”

“What we’ve seen is a disaster under your leadership, Ms. Noem, a disaster,” Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) said. “The fact is you can’t even admit to a mistake. It looks like an investigation is going to prove that Ms. Good and Mr. Pretti probably should not have been shot in the face and in the back.”

Tillis hardly questioned Noem on specifics, choosing instead to deliver a blistering, high-volume “performance evaluation,” of the Homeland Security secretary. He accused Noem and Trump advisor Stephen Miller of prioritizing deportation quotas instead of investigating the “vicious” ICE agents involved in the Minnesota shootings.

“We’re not going after the people who did that damage at the expense of running numbers that Stephen Miller wants out of the White House,” he said. “We just want numbers. We want 1,000 a day, 6,000 a day, 9,000 a day. Because numbers matter, right? No, they don’t matter. Quality matters.”

Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) also brought up Pretti and Good: “Did you determine whether there was any basis for the sensational claim, a claim that proved to be utterly false, that these two victims were engaged in domestic terrorism?” he asked.

Noem used the hearing to defend a series of decisions now under bipartisan scrutiny. She said Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers face “serious and escalating threats” due to what she called “deliberate mischaracterizations” of their work.

She called the Minneapolis deaths “tragic situations,” and said the phrase “domestic terrorists” was based on early information she received from the agents from the city. “It was a chaotic scene,” Noem said. She did not apologize for using the phrase or say it was inaccurate.

Noem stood behind President Trump’s mass deportation agenda and said ICE is focusing on the “worst of the worst.” Recent reporting by the Cato Institute found that just 5% of ICE detainees have been convicted of violent offenses, and three-fourths have no criminal convictions at all.

The hearing came amid a partial shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security, triggered last month when Senate Democrats blocked funding in a standoff over immigration enforcement practices. As tensions mount in Iran, lawmakers are increasingly concerned about the security risks of leaving the department unfunded.

In her opening statement, Noem decried the shutdown as “reckless” and “unnecessary,” and accused Democrats of putting U.S. security posture at risk.

Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) pointedly asked about a $200-million ad campaign promoting immigration enforcement — a campaign that features Noem and was awarded to a firm led by a friend. Such spending “troubles me,” he said, adding, “I just can’t agree with that, Madam Secretary. My research shows you did not bid this out.”

Noem maintained that Trump directed the messaging strategy and argued it has been “extremely effective” in deterring illegal immigration. She said she “didn’t have anything to do with picking those contractors.”

The back-and-forth became increasingly heated as Kennedy also peppered Noem for characterizing Good and Pretti as domestic terrorists.

“What got my attention was that you blamed those statements on Mr. Stephen Miller,” Kennedy said, referencing an Axios report quoting Noem.

She dodged the line of questioning, saying the sources Axios used in the report were “anonymous,” and, by her logic, not credible.

“This wasn’t anonymous. It was you,” Kennedy said. “They’re quoting you on the record saying it was Stephen.”

On numerous occasions throughout the hearing, the secretary was asked about her purchase of two luxury Gulfstream G700 jets at a combined cost of $200 million in taxpayer funds.

Reportedly designed by New York designer Peter Marino, the planes include private bedroom suites with queen-size beds, bathrooms with stand-up showers and electric bidets, and a lounge with a wet bar and wine chiller, according to images obtained by NBC.

Noem argued the purchases were authorized by Congress for executive travel and deportation operations.

In another testy exchange, Delaware Sen. Chris Coons pressed Noem over recent statements that she planned to station ICE officers at polling locations in November, to “make sure we have the right people voting, electing the right leaders.” She said her department had no such plan in place but fell short of committing to ruling it out.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) endorsed investigations into ICE shootings, though his statements were largely designed to cast Noem in a favorable light.

“I’d like to make sure if there was a bad shooting as documented as such, and people pay a price. But I will not apologize to anybody in this room to try to clean up the mess that Biden started, and you empowered,” he said.

Democrats, meanwhile, accused Noem of presiding over “thuggish” and “illegal” enforcement tactics and demanded independent investigations into several incidents throughout the U.S.

Accusing Noem of routinely making false statements about ICE shooting victims while impeding state, local, and independent investigations, Schiff cited an episode in which immigration agents shot U.S. citizen and Chicago resident Marimar Martinez. In November, a federal judge raised concerns that agents mishandled or destroyed key physical evidence in the case.

“Our internal investigations are following the same policies as they always have,” Noem responded.

“Will you take some responsibility?” Schiff said. “How is the public supposed to believe anything your agency says or finds?”

Over 180 lawmakers have co-sponsored articles of impeachment against Noem. Tillis and Alaska Republican Lisa Murkowski last month called for Noem to resign or face impeachment by Congress.

On Tuesday, Tillis said her responses to the committee amounted to stonewalling. “That’s a failure of leadership, and that is why I’ve called for your resignation,” he said.

Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) is preparing for President Trump to declare a national emergency in order to seize control of this year’s midterm elections from the states, including by bracing his Senate colleagues for a vote in which they would be forced to either co-sign on the power grab or resist it.

In the wake of reporting last week that conservative activists with connections to the White House were circulating such an order, Padilla sent a letter to his Senate colleagues Friday stating that any such order would be “wildly illegal and unconstitutional,” and would no doubt face “extremely strict scrutiny” in the courts.

“Nevertheless, if the President does escalate his unprecedented assault on our democracy by declaring an election-related emergency, I will swiftly introduce a privileged resolution [and] force a vote in the Senate to terminate the fake emergency,” wrote Padilla, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration.

Padilla wrote that such an order — which could possibly “include banning mail-in voting, eliminating major voting registration methods, voter purges, and/or new document barriers for registering to vote and voting” — would clearly go beyond Trump’s authority.

“Put simply, no President has the power under the Constitution or any law to take over elections, and no declaration or order can create one out of thin air,” Padilla wrote.

The same day Padilla sent his letter, Trump was asked whether he was considering declaring a national emergency around the midterms. “Who told you that?” he asked — before saying he was not considering such an order.

The White House referred The Times to that exchange when asked Tuesday for comment on Padilla’s letter.

If Trump did declare such an emergency, a “privileged resolution,” as Padilla proposed, would require the full Senate to vote on the record on whether or not to terminate it — forcing any Senate allies of the president to own the policy politically, along with him.

Experts say there is no evidence that U.S. elections are significantly affected or swung by widespread fraud or foreign interference, despite robust efforts by Trump and his allies for years to find it.

Nonetheless, Trump has been emphatic that such fraud is occurring, particularly in blue states such as California that allow for mail-in ballots and do not have strict voter ID laws. He and others in his administration have asserted, again without evidence, that large numbers of noncitizen residents are casting votes and that others are “harvesting” ballots out of the mail and filling them out in bulk.

Soon after taking office, Trump issued an executive order purporting to require voters to show proof of U.S. citizenship before registering and barring the counting of mail-in ballots received after election day, but it was largely blocked by the courts.

Trump’s loyalist Justice Department sued red and blue states across the country for their full voter rolls, but those efforts also have largely been blocked, including in California. The FBI also raided an elections office in Georgia that has been the focus of Trump’s baseless claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him.

Trump is also pushing for the passage of the Save America Act, a voter ID bill passed by the House, but it has stalled in the Senate.

In recent weeks, Trump has expressed frustration that his demands around voting security have not translated into changes in blue state policies ahead of the upcoming midterm elections, where his shrinking approval could translate into major gains for Democrats.

Last month, Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform, “I have searched the depths of Legal Arguments not yet articulated or vetted on this subject, and will be presenting an irrefutable one in the very near future. There will be Voter I.D. for the Midterm Elections, whether approved by Congress or not!”

Then, last week, the Washington Post reported that a draft executive order being circulated by activists with ties to Trump suggests that unproven claims of Chinese interference in the 2020 election could be used as a pretext to declare an elections emergency granting Trump sweeping authority to unilaterally institute the changes he wants to see in state-run elections.

Election experts said the Constitution is clear that states control and run elections, not with the executive branch.

Democrats have widely denounced any federal takeover of elections by Trump. And some Republicans have expressed similar concerns, including Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who chairs the Senate rules committee.

In the Wall Street Journal last year, McConnell warned against Trump or any Republican president asserting sweeping authority to control elections, in part because Democrats would then be empowered to claim similar authority if and when they retake power.

McConnell’s office referred The Times to that Journal opinion piece when asked about the circulating emergency order and Padilla’s resolution.

Padilla’s office said his resolution would be introduced in response to an emergency declaration by Trump, but hoped it wouldn’t be necessary.

“Instead of trying to evade accountability at the ballot box,” Padilla wrote, “the President should focus on the needs of Americans struggling to pay for groceries, health care, housing and other everyday needs and put these illegal and unconstitutional election orders in the trash can where they belong.”

SAN ANTONIO — A heated U.S. Senate race in Texas entered its final stretch Sunday with candidates from both parties making final pitches to voters ahead of Tuesday’s primary, the nation’s first big contest of the 2026 midterm elections.

Republican Sen. John Cornyn is trying to avoid being the first incumbent GOP senator from Texas to lose a primary, fighting challenges from Texas Atty. Gen. Ken Paxton and U.S. Rep. Wesley Hunt.

Democrats, hungry to win a Senate race in the state for the first time since 1988, see an opening, but have their own knotty race to figure out.

U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett, a rhetorical brawler and regular antagonist to President Trump, is stressing her federal experience and was scheduled to meet voters in the Dallas area with Sen. Angela Alsobrooks of Maryland. Crockett was endorsed Friday by former Vice President Kamala Harris.

State Rep. James Talarico, a soft-spoken seminarian who emphasizes his crossover appeal to Republicans, was set to hold a rally in San Antonio as part of a final tour that he describes as a movement.

But Cornyn’s precarious stature as an incumbent vulnerable in his party’s primary has been the focus of a majority of the the massive sums spent by both sides in the run-up to Tuesday’s balloting.

“Complacency is a killer,” Cornyn told voters Saturday at a seafood restaurant in the Woodlands, a Houston suburb. “It kills relationships. It kills careers.”

Senate Republican leaders in Washington, working to hold their thin majority, have worried out loud for months that Democrats could have a shot at a long out-of-reach Texas seat if Republicans nominate Paxton, who is popular with Trump voters but has had years of legal problems, which led to his impeachment three years ago. He was acquitted.

Talarico, who has raised more money than Crockett, is part of the Texas primary’s record fundraising pace. His campaign has spent $13 million on television advertising since the start of the year, the most of any single entity in the crowded field of groups spending on either side, according to the ad-tracking firm AdImpact.

Heading into Tuesday’s primary elections, the cost of advertising and reserved advertising time had topped $110 million, the most ever for a Senate primary. Most of it — more than $67 million — had been spent by Cornyn’s campaign and allied groups, much of it attacking Paxton, but also lately trying to keep Hunt from advancing.

If no candidate receives at least 50% of the vote Tuesday, the primary proceeds to a runoff between the top two vote recipients on May 26.

A late visit to Texas on Friday by Trump, who used the Port of Corpus Christi as a backdrop for a speech highlighting energy production, drew all of the top Republican candidates. And while the president said Friday he’s “pretty much” decided whom to endorse, he declined to name him.

“We have a great attorney general, Ken Paxton. Where’s Ken? Hi, Ken,” Trump said. He continued, “And we have a great senator, John Cornyn. Hi, John.”

Noting that they’re in a “little bit of a race,” Trump added: ’It’s going to be an interesting one, right? They’re both great people.”

Despite his long career in Texas politics, Paxton has painted himself as a Washington outsider and a staunch supporter of Trump.

“I’m not going up to Washington, D.C., to join the swamp club,” Paxton said at a campaign event in Fort Worth. “I will go up there and fight for you.”

Beaumont and Murphy write for the Associated Press and reported from San Antonio and Oklahoma City, respectively.

Democrats are pushing for a vote next week on a resolution to curtail President Trump’s authority to conduct strikes in Iran, a move that would reassert Congress’ role in approving the use of military might.

The effort was already underway to force a vote on a war powers resolution, but it gained fresh momentum as the U.S. and Israel bombed Iran beginning early Saturday, an action that Trump referred to in a video shortly afterward as “war.” House Democratic leaders announced this week — before the strikes — that they would begin procedures to force a floor vote on a resolution for Iran.

The resolution directs Trump to terminate the use of armed forces against Iran, unless explicitly authorized by Congress. Presidents of both parties have skirted around war powers resolutions in the past.

Passage is uncertain in the Republican-controlled House and Senate, with GOP members of both chambers expressing initial support for the bombing of Iran. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) praised the attacks Saturday and said to reporters that the administration “better well make it about getting new leadership and regime change.”

But the effort for a war powers vote has gained the support of at least two House Republicans, Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Warren Davidson of Ohio, making it possible for the measure to pass the House if enough Democrats support the measure and enough members show up for the final vote.

On the Senate side, Republican Rand Paul of Kentucky, who voted for an earlier war powers resolution, said he would “oppose another presidential war.”

House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York said Iran “is a bad actor and must be aggressively confronted for its human rights violations, nuclear ambitions, support of terrorism and the threat it poses” to allies in the region.

“However, absent exigent circumstances, the Trump administration must seek authorization for the preemptive use of military force that constitutes an act of war,” Jeffries’ statement said.

Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Fremont), a California Democrat who is co-sponsoring the resolution with Massie, urged lawmakers to reconvene in Washington on Monday to vote, calling the strikes the launch of “an illegal regime change war in Iran with American lives at risk.”

Massie on social media described the attack as “acts of war unauthorized by Congress.”

The resolution faced initial opposition from staunch pro-Israel House Democrats Jared Moskowitz of Florida and Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey.

Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York said the Senate should pass the resolution but didn’t outright oppose the strikes. He complained that the administration did not lay out its case to Congress or the public.

Trump would surely veto the resolution if passed, but substantial GOP votes for it could persuade him to limit the attacks on Iran. The Senate passed a procedural vote for a resolution against the strikes in January that culminated in the capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro, after which the White House sent Secretary of State Marco Rubio to Capitol Hill to testify to members.

The U.S. Constitution gives Congress the power to declare war, but no president since Franklin D. Roosevelt in World War II has used that formal declaration, instead relying on less expansive authorization to deploy military force. Congress passed the War Powers Resolution in 1973 to slow the Vietnam War.

However, most presidents have sought some level of buy-in and approval from Congress, which approves the budget for the Pentagon.

“The Constitution is clear: The decision to take this nation to war rests with Congress, and launching large-scale military operations — particularly in the absence of an imminent threat to the United States — raises serious legal and constitutional concerns,” Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) said in a statement. “Congress must be fully briefed, and the administration must come forward with a clear legal justification.”

Other Senate Democrats, including Tim Kaine of Virginia and Andy Kim of New Jersey, have also urged their chamber to vote on a similar measure to put checks on Trump’s use of military force in Iran.

Rubio notified the so-called Gang of Eight — the top congressional leaders in the House and Senate and on the intelligence committees — of the strikes, the White House said.

Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), the chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, defended the strikes as “pivotal and necessary.”

“The President has stated the operation’s goals clearly: thwart permanently the ayatollahs’ desire to create a nuclear weapon, degrade their ballistic missile force and their production capacity, and destroy their naval and terrorism capabilities,” Wicker said in a statement.

Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) noted in his statement: “This is not how a democracy goes to war.”

Wasson writes for Bloomberg.

Reporting from Sacramento — Toni Atkins is one of California’s most powerful lawmakers, ascending to leadership roles in the Assembly and Senate the last five years.

As Atkins’ clout has soared, so too has the consulting businesses of her spouse, Jennifer LeSar.

The clientele for LeSar’s two affordable housing and economic development firms has grown nearly fourfold since 2013, the year before Atkins became Assembly speaker, according to Atkins’ economic disclosure forms.

In 2018, the year that Atkins’ colleagues elevated her to Senate president pro tem, her spouse’s firms had contracts with 86 public agencies, developers, nonprofits and other clients, the forms indicate, which was more than in any previous year. The year before, LeSar had received a lucrative contract from a Bay Area agency without going through a competitive bidding process — a rare step allowed in emergencies, when a company offers a unique service or when the agency can justify a compelling reason to do so.

LeSar is now in a position to potentially garner even more business as Gov. Gavin Newsom and legislative leaders, including her spouse, propose increasingly bold responses to the state’s housing affordability crisis.

In the last three years, LeSar’s firms have received $1.3 million from state agencies alone, including contracts to implement one of the state’s largest low-income housing programs, which Atkins, a Democrat from San Diego, supports. Additionally, over the last 18 months, LeSar worked on a plan that calls for a package of state legislation that would rewrite major California housing policies. The Metropolitan Transportation Commission, a Bay Area public agency, is paying LeSar’s firm more than half a million dollars for the effort, through the no-bid contract.

Agency executives said LeSar’s relationship with Atkins had no bearing on their decision to hire her, and the Senate leader said she wouldn’t treat the bills any differently than any other proposals from her colleagues.

Atkins and LeSar, who has worked in affordable housing for nearly three decades, both said they are concerned about a perception of conflicts of interest and, as a result, consult with attorneys about possible intersections in their work.

“We spend a lot of time trying to make sure in our very busy days that we’re following the letter of the law,” Atkins said.

“These questions have been asked and answered before by the press and have largely been accepted as a nonissue,” LeSar said in an email response to The Times. She declined an interview request.

Rey Lopez-Calderon, executive director of the government ethics group California Common Cause, said the dramatic increase in LeSar’s clientele could raise concerns from the public that outside groups are trying to curry favor with a powerful politician by hiring her spouse.

“That’s really obviously a number that’s eyebrow raising,” Lopez-Calderon said. “It definitely runs the risk of the public thinking something shady is going on.”

Still, he said, absent evidence LeSar or Atkins used their relationship to leverage new business, there wasn’t anything illegal or unethical about LeSar’s consulting work.

Source: State Sen. Toni Atkins’ Annual Statements of Economic Interest

(Kyle Kim / Los Angeles Times)

Lawmakers have faced questions about potential conflicts involving a spouse and development issues before. In 2011, opponents of redevelopment agencies, which provided significant funding for low-income housing, criticized then-state Sen. Bob Huff about his efforts to save the program, noting that Huff’s wife was a paid consultant for a developer with a financial stake in the issue.

Political rivals have alleged Atkins’ relationship with LeSar is also a conflict, given Atkins’ outsized role in housing debates. In 2015, Atkins, then in the Assembly, proposed legislation to impose a fee on real estate transactions, such as mortgage refinancing, to fund low-income housing development. A version of the bill passed in 2017. When she first introduced the measure, Atkins requested an opinion from the Office of Legislative Counsel, which assured her that the bill presented no conflict of interest because the funding was not tied to any specific company or project. LeSar has vowed not to bid on funding directly tied to the bill.

Assembly leader Toni Atkins denies conflict of interest in funds proposal »

The couple married in 2008 after meeting while running in housing, LGBT advocacy and political circles in San Diego, where Atkins once served as a city councilwoman. Just before her election to the Legislature, Atkins worked for LeSar Development for about 18 months. While there, she wrote a report on development near transit and handled other housing work across the state. As of last month, Atkins was pictured on the business’ website, listed as an alumna of the firm. She no longer appears on a redesign of the site that became public Wednesday.

In 2011, after Atkins had been elected to the Legislature, LeSar opened a second firm, Estolano LeSar Advisors, with Cecilia Estolano, an attorney who worked in housing and economic development for the city of Los Angeles. Last year, Atkins abstained from voting on Estolano’s appointment to the powerful UC Board of Regents, which governs the state’s flagship university system.

Recent clients for the two firms, according to Atkins’ economic disclosures, have included the city and county of Los Angeles, UC Berkeley, USC, the California Endowment, the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, for-profit and nonprofit developers and the Open Society Foundations, the organization founded by billionaire George Soros.

Rick Gentry, president of the San Diego Housing Commission, praised LeSar. Among other work, he said, she guided his public housing agency in 2014 into expanding its portfolio to provide homelessness services.

“She knows as much about the industry as anyone I’ve ever met,” Gentry said.

Officials with the Metropolitan Transportation Commission cited LeSar’s experience as their reason for hiring her.

The agency was finishing an effort to plan for growth in the Bay Area through 2040 and realized that project was futile without a comprehensive attempt to deal with the nation’s worst housing affordability challenges.

“Jennifer LeSar is extremely qualified and well-positioned to take on multiple roles for this project,” wrote Vikrant Sood, a senior planner with the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, in a June 2017 memo justifying her hiring.

LeSar’s firm researched prior studies on the region’s housing problems and planned and attended the group’s meetings. The result of the effort was a proposal, known as the CASA Compact, which said the Bay Area could fix its housing problems only through a suite of state legislation.

The CASA Compact calls for new state laws to boost protections for tenants, increase apartment construction near transit and help raise more than $1 billion to build low-income housing, among other things. Bay Area legislators have introduced more than a dozen bills that align with the plan, nearly all of it affecting the entire state.

Metropolitan Transportation Commission officials said LeSar did not recommend any of the policies the region decided to pursue but, rather, packaged together the conclusions into a final report. LeSar also said she declined additional work with MTC once it became clear that the CASA Compact was going to advance state bills.

She said she sought a legal opinion in January after the agency discussed offering her a new contract to help implement the plan.

LeSar initially told The Times that her attorney had advised her that the second contract would be a potential conflict so she declined the work. But in later correspondence with The Times, she said that she had been mistaken. The attorney’s advice, LeSar said, was that the new contract wouldn’t pose a conflict, but she decided to forgo the work to avoid any appearance of a problem.

Commission officials anticipated the CASA Compact process would lead to state legislation from the beginning. Sood said in the June 2017 memo that originally justified LeSar’s hiring that CASA “will yield a package of legislative and funding solutions at the state and regional level.”

Despite that, agency officials decided to pursue LeSar directly rather than putting the initial contract out to a competitive bid, a process designed to ensure an agency receives the best services for the lowest cost and without bias. The agency said it could do so because it had a compelling reason — LeSar’s background and the ambitious nature of the project — to hire her without first seeking out other firms.

No MTC officers publicly opposed hiring LeSar. Following agency rules, then-Executive Director Steve Heminger signed off on the first $200,000 of the contract himself. The agency’s administrative committee, which is made up of Bay Area elected officials, voted unanimously and without comment in December 2017 to increase the amount to $450,000. (The contract value rose to $511,000 when it was extended again at the beginning of this year.)

Some local government officials in the Bay Area’s smaller cities oppose the CASA Compact because they believe it takes away their power. Michael Barnes, a councilman in the city of Albany — a community that borders Berkeley — said LeSar’s extensive work with the MTC over the last 18 months adds to fears that lawmakers, out of deference to Atkins, will overlook local leaders’ concerns when evaluating the legislation.

“We have very strict guidelines for our ethical behavior,” Barnes said. “For me, as someone who has lived under these guidelines as an elected official, this doesn’t seem ethical.”

LeSar’s businesses also have seen an increase in contracts with state agencies, per Atkins’ economic disclosures. Since February 2016, the two firms have received at least nine contracts from four state departments. All but one — a $5,000 contract to advise housing department employees on evaluating loan documents — were awarded through competitive bidding processes.

Much of the contract work has come from the Governor’s Office of Planning and Research, which is responsible for administering housing and planning efforts funded by the state’s cap-and-trade program, which taxes polluters. The state has provided roughly $400 million annually through Affordable Housing and Sustainable Communities program, one of the largest budget allocations for low-income development and one that Atkins has said she “led the effort” in the Legislature to fund. Estolano LeSar was hired to help applicants from disadvantaged communities write grants and provide other support for their projects.

Newsom’s office declined to comment, but Ken Alex, who was OPR director under former Gov. Jerry Brown, said he was unaware of Atkins and LeSar’s relationship.

“I have heard from staff that the work was good and would have been advised if it was not,” Alex said.

Atkins said she has sometimes voted in ways that have hurt her spouse’s business. In 2011, she supported ending the state’s redevelopment program, the property tax set aside for local governments that funded local affordable housing and economic development.

“I was part of a vote that actually almost killed her business for a period of time,” Atkins said.

Atkins said she doesn’t plan to write any of the bills recommended in the CASA Compact proposal. She said she wouldn’t abstain from voting on them or otherwise handle them differently than any other piece of legislation because the bills address broad policy matters and therefore don’t present a conflict.

But if CASA Compact measures pass, it could be a signal to outside groups that hiring LeSar could be beneficial to getting similar efforts through the Legislature, given Atkins’ substantial influence over the fate of legislation at the Capitol, said Lopez-Calderon of Common Cause.

“I definitely think that some businesses will imagine that exact scenario and act accordingly,” he said.

liam.dillon@latimes.com

@dillonliam

Feb. 27 (UPI) — Former Vice President Kamala Harris has endorsed U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D.-Texas, in the Texas Democratic primary for the U.S. Senate.

Harris recorded a robocall for Crockett in the race, which has the Texas representative facing off against Texas State Rep. James Talerico for the Democratic nomination in the race this fall Republican Sen. John Cornyn‘s seat, The Texas Tribune reported.

Cornyn, who has been in the Senate since 2002, is running for re-election but has to win a Republican primary against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and Rep. Wesley Hunt.

“Texas has the chance to send a fighter like Jasmine Crockett to the United States Senate,” Harris said in the robocall, which was first reported by the Tribune. “Jasmine has the experience and record to hold Donald Trump and his billionaire cronies accountable.”

Crockett launched her campaign for Senate on Dec. 8 and will face off against Talarico in the March 3 primary.

She launched the campaign the same day that Colin Allred, a potential primary opponent, dropped out because he felt that “a bruising Senate Democratic primary and runoff would prevent the Democratic party from going into this critical election unified” — specifically citing Crockett’s entry into the race.

Crockett also has been endorsed by Maryland Sen. Angela Alsobrooks and California Rep. Ro Khanna, according to The New York Times.

Tuesday’s primary winner will face Cornyn, Paxton or Hunt, with the election moving to a runoff in May if none of the candidates receive more than half the votes.

President Donald Trump, a Republican, has not endorsed a Republican in the race.

WASHINGTON — President Trump just can’t seem to choose among friends in the Texas Senate Republican primary.

So when he travels to the state on Friday for his first post-State of the Union trip, where he plans to promote his energy and economic policies, Trump will have all three candidates in the competitive race join him — just days before his party casts ballots in the primary race.

Sen. John Cornyn is battling for his fifth term and is being challenged by state Atty. Gen. Ken Paxton and Rep. Wesley Hunt in a primary fight that has become viciously personal. And all three men, missing the coveted endorsement from Trump, have been trying to highlight their ties to him as they ramp up their campaigning ahead of Tuesday’s vote.

For his part, Trump will be seeking to ride the message of his State of the Union address from Tuesday, where he declared a return to economic prosperity and a more secure America — two centerpiece arguments for Republicans as they campaign to keep their congressional majorities this fall.

Trump’s hesitation to endorse in the Texas Senate primary speaks to the tricky dynamics of the race.

Cornyn is unpopular with a segment of Texas’ GOP base, in part for his early dismissiveness of Trump’s 2024 comeback campaign and for his role in authoring tougher restrictions on guns after the 2022 school shooting in Uvalde, Texas. But Senate GOP leadership and allied groups see Cornyn as the stronger general election candidate, in light of a series of troubles that have shadowed Paxton.

Paxtonbeat impeachment on fraud charges in 2023, and has faced allegations of marital infidelity by his wife, state Sen. Angela Paxton.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune and South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, have urged Trump to endorse Cornyn. They and allied campaign groups argue that the seat would cost the party hundreds of millions more to defend with Paxton as the candidate.

“It is a strong possibility we cannot hold Texas if John Cornyn is not our nominee,” Scott told Fox News on Wednesday.

Hunt, a second-term Houston-area representative, was a later entry to the race, but claims a kinship with Trump, having endorsed him early in the 2024 race. Hunt campaigned regularly for Trump and earned a prime-time speaking slot at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.

If no candidate reaches 50% in Tuesday’s primary, the top two finishers will advance to a May 26 runoff.

Cornyn’s campaign and a half-dozen allied groups have poured more than $63 million into the race since last fall, chiefly trying to slow Paxton but recently attacking Hunt in an effort to keep him from making it to the runoff.

Earlier this month, Trump feinted toward weighing in on the race when he said he was taking “a serious look” at endorsing in the Texas primary. He has since reaffirmed his neutrality.

Still, you wouldn’t know it from watching TV in Texas. Cornyn has been airing ads since last year touting his support for Trump’s agenda, even though his relationship with the president has been cool at times. Paxton and Hunt both have ads airing now featuring them standing with Trump.

“I like all three of them, actually. Those are the toughest races. They’ve all supported me. They’re all good. You’re supposed to pick one, so we’ll see what happens. But I support all three,” Trump said earlier this month.

The GOP battle comes as Democrats have a contested primary of their own in Texas between state Rep. James Talarico, a self-described policy wonk who regularly quotes the Bible, and progressive favorite U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett.

Trump hasn’t been shy about wading into other contested Republican primaries in the state. Parts of Corpus Christi fall within Texas’ 34th congressional district, where former Rep. Mayra Flores is fighting to reclaim her seat against the Trump-endorsed Eric Flores. (The two are not related.) The winner of the primary will face off against Democratic Rep. Vicente Gonzalez, long a target of the GOP, whose district was redrawn to make it easier for a Republican to win.

Eric Flores will be at the Trump event at the Port of Corpus Christi, which technically is located in a neighboring district.

Elsewhere in the state, the president has also endorsed Rep. Tony Gonzales, who is fighting calls from his own party to resign from Congress after reports of an alleged affair with a former staffer who later died after she set herself on fire. Gonzales is refusing to step down and has said that there will be “opportunities for all of the details and facts to come out” and that the stories about the situation do not represent “all the facts.”

Gonzales is facing a primary challenge from Brandon Herrera, a gun manufacturer and gun rights influencer who Gonzales defeated by fewer than 400 votes in their 2024 runoff. The White House did not return a request for comment on Thursday on whether Trump stands by his endorsement of Gonzales.

Kim and Beaumont write for the Associated Press. Beaumont reported from Des Moines, Ia. AP writer Jonathan J. Cooper in Phoenix contributed to this report.

NEW YORK — Wellness influencer, author and entrepreneur Dr. Casey Means on Wednesday shared a vision for addressing the root causes of chronic disease instead of feeding into “reactive sick care” during her confirmation hearing to become the nation’s next surgeon general.

“Our nation is angry, exhausted, and hurting from preventable diseases,” the 38-year-old said in Washington before the Senate health committee Wednesday. “If we’re addressing shared root causes, we’re going to be able to stop the whack-a-mole medicine that’s not working for us and that is so costly.”

It’s a message that dovetails closely with that of Means’ ally Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his “Make America Healthy Again” movement. It also has some bipartisan support, with a wide swath of both Democrats and Republicans agreeing that the rise in chronic disease is a problem that needs solving.

But Means also faced tough questions from senators about more inflammatory topics, such as vaccines and hormonal birth control, as well as about her qualifications and potential conflicts. The Stanford-educated physician’s disillusionment with traditional medicine drove her to a career in which she has promoted a wide range of products, at times without disclosing how she could benefit financially. She has no government experience, and her license to practice as a physician is not currently active.

“I have very serious questions about the ability of Dr. Means to be the kind of surgeon general this country needs,” Vermont independent Sen. Bernie Sanders, the ranking member of the Senate health committee, said Wednesday.

Senators grill Means on vaccines, birth control

As the nation’s doctor, the surgeon general is a leader for Americans and health officials on public health issues. If confirmed, Means would be empowered to issue advisories that warn of public health threats. She also would be tasked with promoting Kennedy’s sprawling MAHA agenda, which calls for removing thousands of additives from U.S. foods, rooting out conflicts of interest at federal agencies and promoting healthier foods in school lunches and other nutrition programs.

Surgeons general also have sometimes used the office to advocate on issues related to vaccination — though the office has no role in creating vaccine policy. Though Means has largely steered clear of Kennedy’s debunked views on vaccines, senators from both parties sought clear answers from her on how she would approach the issue if confirmed.

Sen. Bill Cassidy, the Louisiana Republican who chairs the Senate health committee, asked Means whether she would encourage Americans to vaccinate against flu and measles amid outbreaks across the U.S. She declined to make such a commitment, instead emphasizing the importance of informed consent between patients and their personal physicians.

Cassidy also asked Means whether she believes that vaccines may contribute to autism, a claim that Kennedy has embraced despite overwhelming research to the contrary.

““I do accept that evidence,” she said. “I also think that science is never settled.” She said she looked forward to seeing the results of the federal health department’s effort to study environmental contributors to the disorder.

Sen. Patty Murray, a Democrat from Washington, asked Means to address past comments on a podcast in which she said birth control pills were being prescribed “like candy” and showed a “disrespect of things that create life.”

Means said she thinks oral contraceptives should be available to all women but raised concerns about what she called “horrifying side effects” that can occur in certain populations.

“Doctors do not have enough time for a thorough informed consent conversation,” she said.

Means isn’t a traditional candidate for the role

Means in her hearing said her goal is to “get more whole, healthy foods on American plates.” It’s a worldview that she got from her own unconventional path in the medical field.

After graduating from medical school at Stanford University with a doctor of medicine degree, Means dropped out of her surgical residency program at Oregon Health and Science University in 2018. She has cited her belief that the health care system was broken and exploitative as the reason for her withdrawal.

Means then turned to alternative approaches to address what she has described as widespread metabolic dysfunction driven largely by poor nutrition and an overabundance of ultraprocessed foods. Because she had completed enough postgraduate training to obtain a medical license, she did so and started her own functional medicine practice in Oregon, which later closed. She co-founded Levels, a nutrition-, sleep- and exercise-tracking app that also can give users insights from blood tests and continuous glucose monitoring.

Financial disclosures show she made hundreds of thousands of dollars promoting health and wellness products, including specialty basil seed supplements, teas and elixirs, probiotic products and a prepared meal delivery service. An Associated Press investigation found that while recommending these products, she at times failed to disclose that she could profit or benefit from the sales.

Senators on Wednesday questioned Means about several specific incidents in which they said she didn’t disclose a financial relationship while promoting a product. She said such claims were incorrect, and that she takes conflicts of interest seriously.

In an ethics filing, Means said that if she is confirmed for the post by the full Senate, she will resign from her position with Levels and forfeit or divest stock options and stock in the company. She also pledged to stop working for Rupa, a specialty lab work company for which she developed an online course. While she may continue receiving royalty payments from her book “Good Energy,” she will not promote it, the filing said.

The filing also noted she will “not acquire any direct financial interest in entities listed on the Food and Drug Administration’s prohibited holdings list.”

At least two previous surgeons general have publicly suggested Means is not fit for the job.

In an op-ed in The Hill last May, former Bush administration surgeon general Dr. Rich Carmona wrote that Means’ professional qualifications “raise significant concerns.” Later that month, President Donald Trump’s first-term surgeon general, Dr. Jerome Adams, wrote on the social platform X that the surgeon general’s traditional leadership of the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps requires a medical license.

Means is seeking to join an administration for which her brother, Calley Means, already works. As a senior adviser to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, he has helped promote the Republican administration’s message about the dangers of ultraprocessed foods.

The nomination for Trump’s first pick for surgeon general, former Fox News Channel medical contributor Janette Nesheiwat, was withdrawn after she came under criticism from the president’s allies.

Means was nominated to the role last May. Her confirmation hearing was rescheduled from last October, when she went into labor the day she was set to appear.

Swenson writes for the Associated Press.

Feb. 25 (UPI) — Dr. Casey Means is scheduled to appear before the Senate Wednesday to discuss her confirmation to become surgeon general.

Means, 38, a friend of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., wellness influencer and Make America Healthy Again advocate, was scheduled to appear in October before the Senate Health, Education Labor and Pension Committee virtually because she was pregnant with her first child. But it was postponed because she went into labor.

Her brother, Calley Means, is a lobbyist and senior adviser to the Health and Human Services Department.

She attended Stanford University for undergrad and medical school. She published a 2024 book, Good Energy, in which she described quitting her residency at Oregon Health and Science University. She had completed almost all of the five-year residency but said she was disillusioned with modern medicine. She advocates for healthy eating, limited pharmaceutical use and alternative remedies.

Her medical license lapsed in January 2024.

Because of this, she has faced questions over qualifications for the job, which would give her the authority to issue warnings and advisories for Americans.

HHS spokesperson Emily Hilliard said that Means’ “credentials, research background, and experience in public life give her the right insights to be the surgeon general who helps make sure America never again becomes the sickest nation on Earth.”

Kennedy recommended Means to President Donald Trump, who nominated her in May. Trump had withdrawn his previous nomination, former Fox News medical contributor Dr. Janette Nesheiwat.

Means has said she is for “unbiased research” in the childhood vaccine schedule. She has specifically questioned the safety of the hepatitis B vaccine being given soon after birth.

“I bet that one vaccine probably isn’t causing autism, but what about the 20 that they’re getting before 18 months?” CNN reported she said on Joe Rogan’s podcast in 2024.

There is no evidence that vaccines cause autism.

RICHMOND, Calif. — New bumper stickers reading “Jesse Jackson/Dan Boatwright” appeared recently in this heavily black and economically struggling industrial city across the bay from San Francisco.

“Can you believe that?” state Senate candidate Sunne McPeak grumbled. “It makes it appear that Jesse Jackson has endorsed Dan Boatwright. He hasn’t. And Boatwright hasn’t endorsed Jackson. It’s misleading.”

McPeak, for 10 years a Contra Costa County supervisor, is challenging Sen. Daniel E. Boatwright, a white, 16-year veteran of the Legislature, in the hottest state Senate contest in the June 7 primary election.

On the same day the Jackson/Boatwright bumper stickers showed up, McPeak, who also is white, trumpeted the endorsement of her candidacy by Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley as she walked black precincts in the 7th Senate District, which includes most of Contra Costa County.

Boatwright, widely regarded as a conservative Democrat who said he has not endorsed any candidate for President but will support the party’s nominee, denies that the bumper stickers are misleading. He asserts, while denying any contradiction, that they merely are intended “to get Jesse Jackson and me elected.”

In a tight election, the black vote–which Boatwright said makes up 15% of the Democratic registration–could be pivotal.

McPeak and Boatwright seem to share the same conservative political philosophy on many issues. Both fiercely oppose export of additional water from Northern to Southern California without ironclad guarantees that water supplies in their home base of Contra Costa County will not be degraded or diminished.

McPeak gained statewide attention in 1982 when she spearheaded a successful referendum that overturned a law that would have built the controversial Peripheral Canal, a project strongly supported by Southern California water interests and opposed by Northerners.

McPeak, 39, a former health care consultant, is the mother of two school-age children. An attorney, Boatwright, 58, is the father of three grown sons.

The Democratic winner in June will face Republican William Pollacek, a Martinez city councilman who is unopposed in the GOP primary. Although declining in numbers, Democrats still hold a big registration advantage in the district, 53.7% to 35.1% over Republicans. So the Democratic primary winner is a heavy favorite to emerge victorious in November.

The fast-growing region is a bedroom for San Francisco and includes some of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the Bay Area, as well as some of the poorest. Ethnically diverse, Anglos account for roughly 71% of the district’s population, blacks 10%, Latinos 9%, Asians 5% and others 5%. But since blacks register heavily in the Democratic Party, they represent a much larger voter bloc in Democratic primaries than they do in general elections.

Boatwright’s casual manner masks an explosive temper and the tenacity of a pit bull. He delights in characterizing himself as “tough as a cob” and still speaks in a slight drawl that lingers from his boyhood in Arkansas

In legislative skirmishes, he has been known to invoke his experience as a combat infantryman in Korea and once told a reporter: “I’ve never seen anybody around that I couldn’t lick. And if I can’t do it with my fist, I’ll still do it.”

But the tough-talking Boatwright also writes poetry. In a sentimental poem printed in a campaign brochure, Boatwright talks of soaring “like a magic machine” with Jonathan Livingston Seagull.

Boatwright unabashedly boasts of his fondness for dipping into the “pork barrel” of public projects and delivering them to his constituents, including the expansion of Mt. Diablo State Park and authorization for a new state university campus at Concord.

“See that ridge up there?” he said, pointing to an undeveloped saddle of land as he wheeled his sedan through a scenic valley en route to a meeting with constituents to discuss creating a new bay-side park. “We saved that for open space.”

Last year, Boatwright carried a major bill for his district that proposed massive rehabilitation of deteriorating levees in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. But he got into a feud with fellow Democratic Sen. Ruben S. Ayala of Chino, chairman of the Senate Water Committee, and Ayala sent the bill back to his committee, never to re-emerge.

This left Boatwright open to political attack that he had failed his constituents. But pressure continued for a levee repair bill and in December, environmentalists, farmers, Southern California water interests, Deukmejian Adminstration water officials, Ayala and Boatwright agreed to a virtually identical measure.

Boatwright’s name was attached to the new bill as its author and it became law in March.

“Boatwright needed a substantial bill to run with in his district,” observed a Senate Democratic staff source.

McPeak, still active in water affairs, contends that the compromise would never have occurred without “pressure” from herself and others.

Now, Boatwright has proposed drought-spawned legislation that would require the installation of water meters in Sacramento, one of the few major population centers in California where water rates are not tied to water usage. Boatwright maintains that 25% of water used in Sacramento is wasted and if metering forced water conservation, his downstream district would benefit. Similar measures have failed in the past.

In her quest to unseat Boatwright, who concedes that this reelection race is his toughest, McPeak goes from door to door telling voters that “the incumbent has been in the Legislature for 16 years. I think it’s time for a change. Don’t you?”

For Boatwright, it is the first time since his election to the Senate in 1980 that he is spending his Saturdays walking precincts and knocking on doors in search of votes. His support includes Senate staff employees from Sacramento who “volunteer” to walk.

McPeak decided to take on Boatwright against the advice of the Democratic Establishment, including Senate leader David A. Roberti of Los Angeles, who last year perceived Boatwright as conspiring to topple him as president pro tem of the Senate.

As a result, Roberti fired Boatwright as chairman of the Appropriations Committee, one of the Senate’s most prestigious posts. Later, Roberti softened the punishment and appointed Boatwright as a member of the committee.

Lukewarm to Candidacy

Some Senate sources have suggested that Roberti is privately only lukewarm to Boatwright’s candidacy. But in keeping with Senate’s clubby tradition of standing by their own, Roberti has publicly pledged to provide “whatever is necessary” in campaign contributions to secure Boatwright’s renomination. Although he may be a rebel at times, Boatwright still is a member of the Senate Democratic fraternity.

Boatwright, who coasted to victory in previous reelection campaigns, estimated his primary election budget at $500,000, a substantial sum for an established incumbent. McPeak estimated her spending at $300,000, with most contributions coming from residents and organizations within the county, many of them developers.

McPeak, endorsed by some labor unions who had been urged by Roberti to remain neutral in the primary, portrays herself as an outsider, striking out against the “power brokers, the bosses, the political dictators” in Sacramento who counseled her not to run.

However, delegates to a recent convention of the California Democratic Party endorsed her over Boatwright, who became the only incumbent Democrat to not receive the endorsement of his party.

Although Boatwright did not seek the endorsement, giving it to McPeak rankled him. “I resent the state Democratic Party injecting itself into my race,” he said. “They don’t know how I vote in the Senate, and they shouldn’t be telling people in my district how they should vote.”

Stirs Controversy

Virtually from his first election to the Assembly in 1972, Boatwright has stirred controversy. He has been the subject of investigations by a local district attorney, state attorney general, Fair Political Practices Commission and the FBI. In each case, no charges were filed.

Additionally, he was sued by a citizen watchdog organization for allegedly failing to accurately disclose the value of two shares of stock he owned in a Walnut Creek shopping center. He purchased them for $24,000 in 1973 but the lawsuit charged their actual value exceeded $300,000. Boatwright won in court.

Later, the Internal Revenue Service claimed that Boatwright and his former wife owed $112,800 in back taxes and penalties on income from that stock allegedly not reported in 1976. Boatwright sued the IRS and the agency dropped the action, a Boatwright aide said.

McPeak said she does not intend to hit Boatwright about the investigations but will concentrate on his legislative record.

“We won’t get into that,” she said. “We are focusing on issues that affect the future. We are talking about his voting record. . . . We think that is sufficient.”

But Boatwright is skeptical. “She can’t get me on my record,” he asserted. “She is going to have to start attacking me personally. She is going to get down and dirty. She has to.”

WASHINGTON — In a simple ceremony attended by their families and a few well-known friends, Sen. Nancy Landon Kassebaum and former Sen. Howard H. Baker Jr. were married Saturday, the first time two people who served in the Senate have ever tied the knot.

“She was beautiful, he was handsome, and they were happy,” said former Tennessee Gov. Lamar Alexander, who attended the wedding with his wife, Honey, at St. Alban’s Church in Washington.

The bride, 64, who is retiring in a few weeks after serving three Senate terms from Kansas, wore a dark purple dress just below knee length, accented by rolled pearls. Baker, 71, who served three Senate terms from Tennessee ending in 1985, wore a navy blue suit, white shirt, and navy tie with small yellow dots.

Viewed through the glass outer doors of the church, the couple clasped hands before the ceremony and then walked together down the aisle of the stone church, which is adjacent to the huge National Cathedral.

The 15-minute ceremony before 80 guests was performed by former Sen. John Danforth of Missouri, an ordained Episcopal priest, and the Rev. Martha Anne Fairchild, a Presbyterian minister from Baker’s hometown of Huntsville, Tenn.

The matron of honor was Kassebaum’s daughter, Linda Johnson. Baker’s son Darek was best man.

After sealing their marriage with a kiss and greeting guests, the newlyweds came outside in a steady, cold rain to talk to reporters. Kassebaum said she wasn’t nervous, but Baker felt a little differently.

“I’ve been nervous for days,” he said.

Aside from their families, guests at the wedding included former First Lady Barbara Bush, former Kansas Sen. Bob Dole and his wife, Elizabeth, former ambassador Robert S. Strauss and former Secretary of State Lawrence S. Eagleburger.

The couple planned a honeymoon, but wouldn’t reveal where they will go.