states

VATICAN CITY — Pope Leo XIV has called for “deep reflection” in the United States about the treatment of migrants held in detention, saying that “many people who have lived for years and years and years, never causing problems, have been deeply affected by what is going on right now.”

The Chicago-born pope was responding Tuesday to a variety of geopolitical questions from reporters outside the papal retreat at Castel Gandolfo, including what kind of spiritual rights migrants in U.S. custody should have, U.S. military attacks on suspected drug traffickers off Venezuela and the fragile ceasefire in the Middle East.

Leo underlined that scripture emphasizes the question that will be posed at the end of the world: “How did you receive the foreigner, did you receive him and welcome him, or not? I think there is a deep reflection that needs to be made about what is happening.”

He said “the spiritual rights of people who have been detained should also be considered,’’ and he called on authorities to allow pastoral workers access to the detained migrants. “Many times they’ve been separated from their families. No one knows what’s happening, but their own spiritual needs should be attended to,’’ Leo said.

Leo last month urged labor union leaders visiting from Chicago to advocate for immigrants and welcome minorities into their ranks.

Asked about the lethal attacks on suspected drug traffickers off Venezuela, the pontiff said the military action was “increasing tension,’’ noting that they were coming even closer to the coastline.

“The thing is to seek dialogue,’’ the pope said.

On the Middle East, Leo acknowledged that the first phase of the peace accord between Israel and Hamas remains “very fragile,’’ and said that the parties need to find a way forward on future governance “and how you can guarantee the rights of all peoples.’’

Asked about Israeli settler attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank, the pope described the settlement issue as “complex,’’ adding: “Israel has said one thing, then it’s done another sometimes. We need to try to work together for justice for all peoples.’’

Pope Leo will receive Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas at the Vatican on Thursday. At the end of November he will make his first trip as Pope to Turkey and Lebanon.

WASHINGTON — The hurried push to revise California’s congressional districts has drawn national attention, large sums of money, and renewed hope among Democrats that the effort may help counter a wave of Republican redistricting initiatives instigated by President Trump.

But if Democrats succeed in California, the question remains: Will it be enough to shift the balance of power in Congress?

To regain control of the House, Democrats need to flip three Republican seats in the midterm elections next year. That slim margin prompted the White House to push Republicans this summer to redraw maps in GOP states in an effort to keep Democrats in the minority.

Texas was the first to signal it would follow Trump’s edict and set off a rare mid-decade redistricting arms race that quickly roped in California, where Gov. Gavin Newsom devised Proposition 50 to tap into his state’s massive inventory of congressional seats.

Californians appear poised to approve the measure Tuesday. If they do, Democrats potentially could gain five seats in the House — an outcome that mainly would offset the Republican effort in Texas that already passed.

While Democrats and Republicans in other states also have moved to redraw their maps, it is too soon to say which party will see a net gain, or predict voter sentiment a year from now, when a lopsided election in either direction could render the remapping irrelevant.

GOP leaders in North Carolina and Missouri approved new maps that likely will yield one new GOP seat in each, Ohio Republicans could pick up two more seats in a newly redrawn map approved Friday, and GOP leaders in Indiana, Louisiana, Kansas and Florida are considering or taking steps to redraw their maps. In all, those moves could lead to at least 10 new Republican seats, according to experts tracking the redistricting efforts.

To counter that, Democrats in Virginia passed a constitutional amendment that, if approved by voters, would give lawmakers the power and option to redraw a new map ahead of next year’s election. Illinois leaders are weighing their redistricting options and New York has filed a lawsuit that seeks to redraw a GOP-held district. But concerns over legal challenges already tanked the party’s efforts in Maryland and the potential dilution of the Black vote has slowed moves in Illinois.

So far, the partisan maneuvers appear to favor Republicans.

“Democrats cannot gerrymander their way out of their gerrymandering problem. The math simply doesn’t add up,” said David Daly, a senior fellow at the nonprofit FairVote. “They don’t have enough opportunities or enough targets.”

Complex factors for Democrats

Democrats have more than just political calculus to weigh. In many states they are hampered by a mix of constitutional restrictions, legal deadlines and the reality that many of their state maps no longer can be easily redrawn for partisan gain. In California, Prop. 50 marks a departure from the state’s commitment to independent redistricting.

The hesitancy from Democrats in states such as Maryland and Illinois also underscores the tensions brewing within the party as it tries to maximize its partisan advantage and establish a House majority that could thwart Trump in his last two years in office.

“Despite deeply shared frustrations about the state of our country, mid-cycle redistricting for Maryland presents a reality where the legal risks are too high, the timeline for action is dangerous, the downside risk to Democrats is catastrophic, and the certainty of our existing map would be undermined,” Bill Ferguson, the Maryland Senate president, wrote in a letter to state lawmakers last week.

In Illinois, Black Democrats are raising concerns over the plans and pledging to oppose maps that would reduce the share of Black voters in congressional districts where they have historically prevailed.

“I can’t just think about this as a short-term fight. I have to think about the long-term consequences of doing such a thing,” said state Sen. Willie Preston, chair of the Illinois Senate Black Caucus.

Adding to those concerns is the possibility that the Supreme Court’s conservative majority could weaken a key provision of the landmark Voting Rights Act and limit lawmakers’ ability to consider race when redrawing maps. The outcome — and its effect on the 2026 midterms — will depend heavily on the timing and scope of the court’s decision.

The court has been asked to rule on the case by January, but a decision may come later. Timing is key as many states have filing deadlines for 2026 congressional races or hold their primary election during the spring and summer.

If the court strikes down the provision, known as Section 2, advocacy groups estimate Republicans could pick up at least a dozen House seats across southern states.

“I think all of these things are going to contribute to what legislatures decide to do,” said Kareem Crayton, vice president of the Brennan Center for Justice. The looming court ruling, he added, is “an extra layer of uncertainty in an already uncertain moment.”

Republican-led states press ahead

Support for Prop. 50 has brought in more than $114 million, the backing of some of the party’s biggest luminaries, including former President Obama, and momentum for national Democrats who want to regain control of Congress after the midterms.

In an email to supporters Monday, Newsom said fundraising goals had been met and asked proponents of the effort to get involved in other states.

“I will be asking for you to help others — states like Indiana, North Carolina, South Carolina and more are all trying to stop Republican mid-decade redistricting efforts. More on that soon,” Newsom wrote.

Indiana Republican Gov. Mike Braun called a special session set to begin Monday, to “protect Hoosiers from efforts in other states that seek to diminish their voice in Washington and ensure their representation in Congress is fair.”

In Kansas, the GOP president of the state Senate said last week that there were enough signatures from Republicans in the chamber to call a special session to redraw the state’s maps. Republicans in the state House would need to match the effort to move forward.

In Louisiana, Republicans in control of the Legislature voted last week to delay the state’s 2026 primary elections. The move is meant to give lawmakers more time to redraw maps in the case that the Supreme Court rules in the federal voting case.

If the justices strike down the practice of drawing districts based on race, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, has indicated the state likely would jump into the mid-decade redistricting race.

Shaniqua McClendon, head of Vote Save America, said the GOP’s broad redistricting push underscores why Democrats should follow California’s lead — even if they dislike the tactic.

“Democrats have to be serious about what’s at stake. I know they don’t like the means, but we have to think about the end,” McClendon said. “We have to be able to take back the House — it’s the only way we’ll be able to hold Trump accountable.”

In New York, a lawsuit filed last week charging that a congressional district disenfranchises Black and Latino voters would be a “Hail Mary” for Democrats hoping to improve their chances in the 2026 midterms there, said Daly, of FairVote.

Utah also could give Democrats an outside opportunity to pick up a seat, said Dave Wasserman, a congressional forecaster for the nonpartisan Cook Political Report. A court ruling this summer required Utah Republican leaders to redraw the state’s congressional map, resulting in two districts that Democrats potentially could flip.

Wasserman described the various redistricting efforts as an “arms race … Democrats are using what Republicans have done in Texas as a justification for California, and Republicans are using California as justification for their actions in other states.”

‘Political tribalism’

Some political observers said the outcome of California’s election could inspire still more political maneuvering in other states.

“I think passage of Proposition 50 in California could show other states that voters might support mid-decade redistricting when necessary, when they are under attack,” said Jeffrey Wice, a professor at New York Law School where he directs the New York Elections, Census & Redistricting Institute. “I think it would certainly provide impetus in places like New York to move forward.”

Similar to California, New York would need to ask voters to approve a constitutional amendment, but that could not take place in time for the midterms.

“It might also embolden Republican states that have been hesitant to redistrict to say, ‘Well if the voters in California support mid-decade redistricting, maybe they’ll support it here too,’” Wice said.

To Erik Nisbet, the director of the Center for Communications & Public Policy at Northwestern University, the idea that the mid-decade redistricting trend is gaining traction is part of a broader problem.

“It is a symptom of this 20-year trend in increasing polarization and political tribalism,” he said. “And, unfortunately, our tribalism is now breaking out, not only between each other, but it’s breaking out between states.”

He argued that both parties are sacrificing democratic norms and the ideas of procedural fairness as well as a representative democracy for political gain.

“I am worried about what the end result of this will be,” he said.

Ceballos reported from Washington, Mehta from Los Angeles.

President Obama is running statistically even with former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney in 12 key swing states and is slightly ahead of Texas Gov. Rick Perry and businessman Herman Cain, according to the USA Today/Gallup poll released Friday.

The poll, which looks at both national trends and at the races in what everyone considers to be the 12 battleground states that will likely determine the 2012 election, paints a picture of Obama facing a tougher road to reelection than an incumbent should.

But the president, a Democrat whose approval rating has been in the low 40-percent range in recent months, can take heart from the poll’s findings that he is running better against specific Republican candidates than he does against a generic Republican, indicating that when faced with a real choice, voters seem to prefer Obama to Romney, Perry or Cain.

According to the poll, Obama is tied among national voters with Romney at 47% and leads Perry 49% to 45%. In its first measurement of Cain, the poll found Obama ahead 48% to 46%. The poll was taken before reports surfaced that two women received financial settlements after complaining that Cain had sexually harassed them.

But overall, the results show all three GOP candidates running strongly against Obama. The national results are based on interviews with 1,056 adults taken Oct. 26-27; the poll has a margin of error of plus or minus four percentage points.

But the American electoral system is based on indirect representation rather than direct democracy. The Founding Fathers feared the unmediated passions of the mob and wanted to ensure that wiser heads would have a greater role. Hence the creation of the presidential electors who actually vote for president based on the popular vote in their home states.

Because of the electoral college, where a candidate’s support exists is often more important than just how many people back him or her. A candidate needs 270 electoral votes to win, and in 2012, Obama can pretty much count on winning enough states to give him about 196 electoral votes, while the GOP candidate starts with about 191. In the center are 12 states, worth 151 electoral votes for which both parties will spend most of their money and resources fighting. Those states, all won by Obama in 2008, are Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Wisconsin.

According to the poll, Romney is at 47% to Obama’s 46% in those 12 states. Obama does better against Perry, 49% to 44% and Cain, 48% to 45%. Those results are based on interviews with 1,334 adults, from Oct. 20 to 27. The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus three percentage points.

The polls generally show that the presidential race is extremely competitive at this point, a year before Election Day and two months before the GOP begins voting for its presidential candidate. But Republicans also have an advantage in the enthusiasm arena, according to the poll.

Overall, 47% of swing-state registered voters and 48% of all U.S. registered voters said they are extremely or very enthusiastic about voting. But Republicans were more eager both nationally and in the swing states. Nationally, Republicans were ahead 56% to 48% over Democrats. In the swing states, the GOP was ahead in the enthusiasm race 59% to 48%.

GYEONGJU, South Korea — The United States and South Korea advanced trade talks on Wednesday, addressing details of $350 billion that would be invested in the American economy, after negotiations and ceremonies that included the presentation of a gold medal and crown to President Trump.

Both were gifts from the country’s president, Lee Jae Myung, who dialed up the flattery while Washington and Seoul worked to nail down financial promises during the last stop of Trump’s Asia trip.

Although both sides said progress has been made — Trump said things were “pretty much finalized” — no agreement has been signed yet. The framework includes gradual investments, cooperation on shipbuilding and the lowering of Trump’s tariffs on South Korea’s automobile exports, according to Kim Yong-beom, Lee’s chief of staff for policy. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The announcement came after a day of adulation for the visiting American president from his hosts. There was a special lunch menu featuring U.S.-raised beef and a gold-adorned brownie. A band played Trump’s campaign anthem of “Y.M.C.A.” when he stepped off Air Force One. Lee told him that “you are indeed making America great again.”

Trump can be mercurial and demanding, but he has a soft spot for pomp and circumstance. He was particularly impressed by a choreographed display of colorful flags as he walked along the red carpet.

“That was some spectacle, and some beautiful scene,” Trump told Lee during their meeting. “It was so perfect, so flawlessly done.”

Earlier in the day, Trump even softened his rhetoric on international trade, which he normally describes in predatory terms where someone is always trying to rip off the United States.

“The best deals are deals that work for everybody,” he said during a business forum.

Trade deal with Seoul in process

Trump was visiting while South Korea is hosting the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in the historical city of Gyeongju. He previously stopped in Japan, where he bonded with the new prime minister, and Malaysia, where he attended a summit of the Assn. of Southeast Asian Nations.

The Republican president has been trying to tie up trade deals along the way, eager to show that his confrontational approach of tariffs is paying dividends for Americans who are uneasy about the job market and watching a federal government shutdown extend into its fifth week.

South Korea has been particularly tough to crack, with the sticking point being Trump’s demand for $350 billion of direct investment in the U.S.

Korean officials say putting up cash could destabilize their own economy, and they’d rather offer loans and loan guarantees instead. The country would also need a swap line to manage the flow of its currency into the U.S.

Trump, after meeting with Lee, said “we made our deal pretty much finalized.” He did not provide any details.

Oh Hyunjoo, a deputy national security director for South Korea, told reporters earlier in the week that the negotiations have been proceeding “a little bit more slowly” than expected.

“We haven’t yet been able to reach an agreement on matters such as the structure of investments, their formats and how the profits will be distributed,” she said Monday.

It’s a contrast from Trump’s experience in Japan, where the government has worked to deliver the $550 billion in investments it promised as part of an earlier trade agreement. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick announced up to $490 billion in specific commitments during a dinner with business leaders in Tokyo.

For now, South Korea is stuck with a 25% tariff on automobiles, putting automakers such as Hyundai and Kia at a disadvantage against Japanese and European competitors, which face 15%.

Lee, speaking at the business forum before Trump arrived, warned against trade barriers.

“At a time when protectionism and nationalism are on the rise and nations focus on their immediate survival, words like ‘cooperation,’ ‘coexistence’ and ‘inclusive growth’ may sound hollow,” he said. “Yet, paradoxically, it is in times of crisis like this that APEC’s role as a platform for solidarity shines brighter.”

Trump and Lee swap praise

Lee took office in June and had a warm meeting with Trump at the White House in August, when he praised Oval Office renovations and suggested building a Trump Tower in North Korea.

He took a similar approach when Trump visited on Wednesday. The gold medal presented to Trump represents the Grand Order of Mugunghwa, the country’s highest honor, and Trump is the first U.S. president to receive it.

Trump said, “It’s as beautiful as it can possibly be” and “I’d like to wear it right now.”

Next was a replica of a royal crown from the Silla Kingdom, which existed from 57 B.C. to 935 A.D. The original crown was found in a tomb in Gyeongju, the kingdom’s capital.

Besides trade disagreements, there have been other points of tension between Washington and Seoul this year. More than 300 South Koreans were detained during a U.S. immigration raid on a Hyundai plant in Georgia in September, sparking outrage and betrayal.

Lee said at the time companies would likely hesitate to make future investments unless the visa system was improved.

“If that’s not possible, then establishing a local factory in the United States will either come with severe disadvantages or become very difficult for our companies,” he said.

Asked Monday about the immigration raid, Trump said, “I was opposed to getting them out,” and he said an improved visa system would make it easier for companies to bring in skilled workers.

Trump-Xi meeting is expected Thursday

While in South Korea, Trump is also expected to hold a closely watched meeting on Thursday with Chinese leader Xi Jinping. Washington and Beijing have clashed over trade, but both sides have indicated that they’re willing to dial down tensions.

Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One on Wednesday that he expects to lower tariffs targeting China over the flow of fentanyl ingredients.

“They’ll be doing what they can do,” he said. Trump added that “China is going to be working with me.”

Trump sounded resigned to the idea that he wouldn’t get to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on this trip. The president previously floated the possibility of extending his stay in South Korea, but on Wednesday said “the schedule was very tight.”

North Korea has so far dismissed overtures from Washington and Seoul, saying it won’t resume diplomacy with the United States unless Washington drops its demand for the North’s denuclearization. North Korea said Wednesday it fired sea-to-surface cruise missiles into its western waters, in the latest display of its growing military capabilities as Trump visits South Korea.

Trump brushed off the weapons test, saying, “He’s been launching missiles for decades, right?”

The two leaders met during Trump’s first term, although their conversations did not produce any agreements about North Korea’s nuclear program.

Megerian writes for the Associated Press. AP writers Kim Tong-hyung and Hyung-jin Kim contributed to this report from Seoul and Josh Boak contributed from Tokyo.

Oct. 28 (UPI) — With the impending loss of benefits under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program potentially causing low-income Americans and their families to go hungry, 25 states have filed suit to force the federal government to release funds for the program during the federal government shutdown.

Starting Saturday, SNAP benefits will not be distributed. The program gives food aid to 40 million Americans.

In past government shutdowns, the USDA used a contingency fund to pay out SNAP benefits. Last week, the President Donald Trump administration said it won’t be using contingency funds to pay for SNAP.

“We just can’t do it without the government being open,” Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said on Oct. 21. “By Nov. 1, we are very hopeful this government reopens and we can begin moving that money out. But right now, half the states are shut down on SNAP.”

The lawsuit said this has never happened before.

“Because of USDA’s actions, SNAP benefits will be delayed for the first time since the program’s inception. … Suspending SNAP benefits in these circumstances is both contrary to law and arbitrary and capricious under the Administrative Procedure Act,” the lawsuit said.

New York Attorney General Letitia James released a statement on the suit:

“Millions of Americans are about to go hungry because the federal government has chosen to withhold food assistance it is legally obligated to provide,” James said.

“SNAP is one of our nation’s most effective tools to fight hunger, and the USDA has the money to keep it running. There is no excuse for this administration to abandon families who rely on SNAP, or food stamps, as a lifeline. The federal government must do its job to protect families.”

On Fox News, Rollins was asked if the Agriculture well had truly run dry, CNBC reported.

“100% unequivocally, USDA does not have the $9.2 billion that it would require,” Rollins said.

“There’s not just pots of $9.2 billion sitting around. And what’s particularly rich about New York saying that, or California, or any of these other blue states that have filed the lawsuit to say, ‘Oh no, we’re going to go, you guys, USDA, go find the money,'” Rollins said.

The lawsuit alleges that the USDA has the money and won’t spend it. The plaintiffs are led by the attorneys general of Massachusetts, California, Arizona and Minnesota. The states and the District of Columbia asked a judge to reply quickly to force the USDA to use the contingency funds for November.

On Tuesday, another Senate vote to reopen the government failed.

Indiana Republican Gov. Mike Braun called Monday for state lawmakers to return to Indianapolis for a special session to redraw the state’s congressional boundaries, escalating a national fight over midcycle redistricting.

President Trump has ramped up pressure on Republican governors to draw new maps that give the party an easier path to maintain control of the House in the midterms. While Republicans in Texas, Missouri and North Carolina have moved quickly to enact new districts and California Democrats are seeking to counter with their own redistricting plan, Indiana lawmakers have been far more hesitant.

Braun called for the General Assembly to convene Nov. 3 for the special session. It’s unclear whether enough of the GOP majority Senate will back new maps.

The White House held multiple meetings with Indiana lawmakers who have held out for months. The legislative leaders kept their cards close as speculation swirled over whether the state known for its more measured approach to Republican politics would answer the redistricting call.

National pressure campaign

Vice President JD Vance first met with Braun and legislative leaders in Indianapolis in August and Trump met privately with state House Speaker Todd Huston and state Senate President Pro Tem Rodric Bray in the Oval Office weeks later. Vance also spoke to state lawmakers visiting Washington that day.

Vance returned to Indianapolis on Oct. 10 to meet with the governor, as well as the Republican state House and Senate members.

Braun is a staunch ally of Trump in a state the president won by 19 percentage points in 2024. But Indiana lawmakers have avoided the national spotlight in recent years — especially after a 2022 special session that yielded a strict abortion ban. Braun previously said he did not want to call a special session until he was sure lawmakers would back a new map.

“I am calling a special legislative session to protect Hoosiers from efforts in other states that seek to diminish their voice in Washington and ensure their representation in Congress is fair,” Braun said in a statement Monday.

Typically, states redraw boundaries of congressional districts every 10 years after the census has concluded. Opponents are expected to challenge any new maps in court.

State lawmakers have the sole power to draw maps in Indiana, where Republicans hold a supermajority in both chambers. Democrats could not stop a special session by refusing to attend, as their peers in Texas briefly did.

Republican opposition to redrawing the maps again

A spokesperson for Bray said last week that the Indiana Senate lacked the votes to pass a new congressional map and she said Monday that the votes are still lacking, casting doubt on whether a special session will achieve Braun’s goals.

With only 10 Democrats in the 50-member Senate, that means more than a dozen of the 40 Republicans oppose the idea. Some state Republican lawmakers have warned that midcycle redistricting can be costly and could backfire politically.

Republicans who vote against redistricting could be forced out of office if their colleagues back primary opponents as punishment for not toeing the party line. Braun’s move to call a special session could force lawmakers who haven’t commented publicly to take a stance.

Indiana’s Republican legislative leaders praised existing boundaries after adopting them four years ago.

“I believe these maps reflect feedback from the public and will serve Hoosiers well for the next decade,” Bray said at the time.

Indiana Senate Democratic Leader Shelli Yoder decried the special session and threatened legal action over any maps passed by the Legislature.

“This is not democracy,” she said in a statement. “This is desperation.”

Redistricting balloons

Democrats only need to gain three seats to flip control of the U.S. House, and redistricting fights have erupted in multiple states.

Some Democratic states have moved to counter Republican gains with new legislative maps. The latest, Virginia, is expected to take up the issue in a special session starting this week.

Republicans outnumber Democrats in Indiana’s congressional delegation 7 to 2, limiting possibilities of squeezing out another seat. But many in the party see it as a chance for the GOP to represent all nine seats.

The GOP would likely target Indiana’s 1st Congressional District, a longtime Democratic stronghold that encompasses Gary and other cities near Chicago in the state’s northwest corner. The seat held by third-term Democratic U.S. Rep. Frank Mrvan has been seen by Republicans as a possible pickup in recent elections.

Lawmakers in Indiana redrew the borders of the district to be slightly more favorable toward Republicans in the 2022 election, but did not entirely split it up. The new maps were not challenged in court after they were approved in 2021, not even by Democrats and allies who had opposed the changes boosting GOP standing in the suburbs north of Indianapolis.

Mrvan still won reelection in 2022 and easily retained his seat in 2024.

Republicans could also zero in on Indiana’s 7th Congressional District, composed entirely of Marion County and the Democratic stronghold of Indianapolis. But that option would be more controversial, potentially slicing up the state’s largest city and diluting Black voters’ influence.

Volmert writes for the Associated Press.

For Trump followers, his offer of a 20 to 40 billion economic assistance to Argentina came as a shock. For a government that emphasizes not spending American tax payers’ money abroad the record high foreign debt defaulter and agrobusiness competitor Argentina is a puzzling choice.

However, there are profound reasons for this outcome. In what follows, I will try to explain them. The first two motives are the most obvious ones, but I promise that the following two are the ones that are not that apparent though interesting to read.

The first reason, and more obvious one, is the ideological congruence between the executives. The Argentine president Milei shares Trump’s anti woke ideology, it has always been a Trump supporter and shares with him a deep-seated rejection for leftist governments and ideologies. However, whereas Trump is an economic nationalist, Milei brands himself as an “anarcho-capitalist” that profoundly believes that the powers of free market should reign without interference in order for economies and societies to succeed.

Secondly, next Sunday Milei will face a crucial midterm election. In a last September legislative vote in the crucial Buenos Aires province (that accounts for 40% of Argentina’s population) he lost against his arch rivals, the Peronist Party. The Peronist coalition, that governed Argentina for the most part of the last 25 years, held a leftist ideology that privileged bilateral relations with China over the US and that is a staunch critic of Trump’s policies. The following Monday, the Argentine peso faced very strong devaluation pressures that ended up drying up the Central Bank’s reserves.

Third, the US grand strategy has been under a deep transformation, at least since Obama`s presidency. It has been progressively withdrawing from the Middle East while focusing more on China. It has also demanded the Europeans (and also its allies in East Asians) to up their defence spending. This relative withdrawal is somewhat compensated by an increase of attention in its own neighbourhood, the Americas. It is under this lens that we can understand the recent US military actions against the Maduro regime in Venezuela, the suspension of economic aid to leftist governed Colombia and the huge tariffs applied to also leftist governed Brazil. Being Mexico also governed by a (somewhat pragmatic) leftist party and having in Chilean President Boric a staunch critic of Trump`s policies, the US is left with very few friends in the region. Right now, the only welcoming ally from a large country in the Americas is Argentina`s Milei.

Fourth, from the Argentine side, a change in the strategic outlook in part of its elites is also paving the way for an alliance with the US. The current Argentine executive, in its quest to achieve macroeconomic stability has as its most coveted goal the dollarization of the economy. This is the endpoint of the pro market economic reforms under way. At the same time, the Milei government supports the US and Israel in a fashion unseen in Argentine history. Worldwide, there are not many countries supporting the Trump agenda as thoroughly as Argentina.

There are strong indications that the deepening of the alliance between the US and Argentina is under way. However, near future events might change this course. Next month there will be presidential elections in Chile, while Colombia and Brazil will have theirs in May and October respectively. A win by the opposition in any of these countries will devalued the strategic relevance that Argentina holds right now. Secondly, will Trump successors double in an alliance with a country that has never been considered strategic for US interests? Finally, there is the question of Milei`s political future in Argentina. Good part of his ambitions and of Argentina’s grand strategy will be risked in next elections.

SACRAMENTO — Assembly and Senate budget negotiators, intent on cutting $1.4 billion from the proposed $45-billion state budget, sharply cut proposed spending increases for state colleges and universities Friday, and slashed even deeper into Gov. George Deukmejian’s programs.

The Democrat-dominated six-member budget conference committee reduced the University of California budget by $75 million, a cut of 3.7%. The committee cut the California State University system budget by the same 3.7%, a $56.9-million trim. Despite the cuts, the budgets of both institutions would increase by nearly 3% from the current year.

The UC and CSU spending cuts were among dozens made by the committee during its third full day of work on the budget for the 1988-89 fiscal year that will begin July 1. The committee hopes to wrap up its work Monday, then send the budget out for votes by the Assembly and Senate in time for final action by the start of the new fiscal year.

In addition to the cuts already made, Democrats on the committee are considering reducing the basic public school financial aid budget of $8.4 billion by $300 million to $400 million, which would take half to three-quarters of the increase being proposed by Deukmejian.

Although the committee’s four Democrats are cutting spending in nearly every area, they continued to go after programs earmarked as high priorities by the governor with a special vengeance. They remain angry over Deukmejian’s retreat on tax increase legislation that he first proposed, then dropped because of political opposition.

On Friday, the Democrats, with the two Republicans on the committee dissenting, cut the budget of the Agricultural Labor Relations Board, run by a Deukmejian appointee, by 20%, or about $1.4 million. Moments later, they removed the $91,000-a-year salary of Department of Industrial Relations Director Ronald Rinaldi from the budget. Rinaldi is a key Deukmejian Administration adviser who oversaw the dismantling of the popular CAL/OSHA worker safety program.

On Thursday, the committee, with its two Republican members dissenting, cut the $1.6-billion state prisons budget by $100 million, and took another $17 million from the California Youth Authority. The action came on the heels of earlier votes that would completely wipe out the state Resources Agency and the Department of Commerce’s office of tourism, both controlled by Deukmejian appointees.

Assemblyman William P. Baker of Danville, one of the committee’s two Republican members, said the Democrats “are just trying to embarrass the governor” with their actions. He said most of the budget actions were shortsighted. “The prison system’s going to have 10,000 more prisoners next year. Cutting the budget $100 million doesn’t make sense. What are we going to do with the prisoners?” he asked.

Predicts Defeat

Baker’s GOP colleague, Sen. Marian Bergeson of Newport Beach, said the budget in its present form probably will not be able to get the two-thirds majority vote it will need in both the Assembly and Senate for final approval.

“We’ll have to backtrack and undo a lot of these actions. You can’t reduce the dollar amounts of some of these budgets, like the Department of Corrections, without causing irreparable damage,” Bergeson said.

But Democrats insisted that Deukmejian’s flip-flop on tax increase legislation left the Legislature with a huge hole in its budget.

“We just don’t have the revenues to support the governor’s budget. We have to cut somewhere,” said Sen. John Garamendi (D-Walnut Grove).

Assemblyman John Vasconcellos (D-Santa Clara), chairman of the committee, said Deukmejian is responsible for the cuts. He called the series of reductions “the Deukmejian destruction derby.”

Governor Drops Plan

Deukmejian had proposed raising taxes $800 million in late May to help deal with a $2-billion revenue shortage caused by changes in federal and state tax law, but then the Republican chief executive dropped the plan.

The loss of the $800 million in revenues that would have been generated by the tax bill, coupled with $600 million in an additional spending added to the budget by lawmakers, left them with a need to cut $1.4 billion. By Friday, they had reduced the budget by nearly $1 billion.

One issue the committee has yet to resolve is which set of tax revenue projections it will use as a basis for next year’s budget projections. Revenue estimates being made by the Legislature’s two nonpartisan budget advisers–the legislative analyst’s office and the Commission on State Finance–are about $370 million higher than the estimates being used for the budget by the Department of Finance.

The committee so far has been using the Department of Finance’s estimates, but if it decides to use the higher revenue projections it will substantially ease the committee’s problem of proposing a balanced budget.

In another of its dramatic reductions, the committee voted to end state support for the operations budget of the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy.

Colombia announced the move after US President Donald Trump called President Gustavo Petro an ‘illegal drug leader’.

Colombia has said it has recalled its ambassador to the United States, after US President Donald Trump threatened to cut off aid and made disparaging remarks about the Colombian president over the weekend.

The South American country’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on Monday that Ambassador Daniel Garcia-Pena had already arrived in Bogota to meet with President Gustavo Petro, whom Trump called an “illegal drug leader” on Sunday.

The growing feud between the two countries has centred on US strikes in the Caribbean on vessels that the Trump administration alleges are transporting drugs, mostly from Venezuela. Those strikes, which have killed dozens of people and are widely viewed as a violation of US and international law, have drawn strong criticism from Petro.

In a social media post on Sunday, Trump said aid to Colombia would be cut off and threatened that if Petro did not take more steps to combat the drug trafficking in the country, the US would do the task itself, “and it won’t be done nicely”.

Colombian Interior Minister Armando Benedetti said on Monday that he viewed those remarks as “a threat of invasion or military action against Colombia”.

“I can’t imagine closing down some hectares [of drug production sites] unless it’s in that way, unless it’s by invading,” he added.

The US also announced over the weekend that it had struck a vessel from Colombia on Friday, alleging that it was helmed by a left-wing rebel group involved in the transport of drugs. The Trump administration has not provided evidence regarding those claims.

Petro responded in a series of social media posts, stating that one of those killed in the attack was a Colombian fisherman named Alejandro Carranza, who did not have any ties to drug trafficking.

“US government officials have committed murder and violated our sovereignty in territorial waters,” he wrote.

Mayer, the son of former McLaren team principal Teddy Mayer and a long-time steward for the FIA before being fired by Ben Sulayem last year, said he had submitted a number of ethics complaints to the governing body about the election process.

“We strongly believe a series of ethics violations have been committed in this election process,” he said. “And we have now submitted numerous ethics complaints.

“Assuming the Ethics Committee finds validity to our complaints, who does this go to for action? The president of the FIA or the senate president – both conflicted parties. The statutes don’t provide for any other method or for any appeal. Where is the accountability? This is how institutions fail.

“I am not a revolutionary. I do want to evolve the FIA to a better place so I intend to use the processes of the FIA as much as is don’t believe they are independent or free and open.”

He also questioned the appointment of Daniel Coen as a representative for the world council from Costa Rica when the country has no motorsport events listed, which is a requirement of membership.

Mayer quoted from a report into the FIA produced by the Utrecht School of Governance, which studies public organisations in their interaction with the developments in politics and society.

Its report said the FIA score on the sports governance observer index was 45% which places it “among federations that have adopted the formal trappings of modern governance but lack robust institutional policies and safeguards”.

The report continued: “The FIA’s governance structurally concentrates power in the office of the president, and accountability remains confined within a system over which the president exercises decisive control.”

An FIA spokesperson said: “The FIA presidential election is a structured and democratic process, to ensure fairness and integrity at every stage.

“The requirements for the 2025 FIA elections, including the relevant deadlines and eligibility criteria for the presidential list and World Councils, are defined in the FIA statutes and internal regulations, which are publicly available on the FIA’s website.

“Detailed information regarding these elections has also been made available on a dedicated page on the FIA’s website since 13 June 2025 and communicated to all FIA members.

“The requirements related to the regional representation of the vice-presidents for sport, and to select them from the World Motor Sport Council in order to draw up a presidential list, are not new. These criteria applied to previous elections.

“As to be expected, preparing a candidature for a presidential list or the World Councils requires certain steps to be taken. Prospective candidates have had since the publication of the detailed information on 13 June to prepare their applications.”

Responding to the Utrecht report cited by Mayer, the FIA spokesperson said: “The report commissioned by Tim Mayer’s team finds the FIA’s governance practices to be in line with other federations, particularly those ‘that have made progress in formalising governance structures’.

“The benchmarking process outlined within the report does not find the FIA to be behind the curve. This reflects the fact that the FIA has taken several steps to strengthen its corporate governance policies.

“The FIA was not contacted to confirm any of the statements or assumptions made about its processes, policies and administration within the report.”

Oct. 17 (UPI) — More than 20 states are suing the Trump administration for rescinding $7 billion in Congress-approved funds to equip nearly 1 million homes in low-income and disadvantaged communities with solar power.

The lawsuit, filed Thursday in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington, accuses the Environmental Protection Agency of breaching grant agreements by unilaterally terminated grants that had already been awarded.

“The administration is again targeting people struggling to get by in America, this time by gutting programs that help low-income households afford electricity, Washington State Attorney General Nick Brown said in a statement.

“Congress passed a solar energy program to help make electricity costs more affordable, but the administration is ignoring the law and focused on the conspiracy theory that climate change is a hoax.

The Solar for All program was established with the passage of the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act in 2022, which included a $27 billion Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund for the EPA to administer.

Using that Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, Congress appropriated $7 billion for the EPA to make grants, loans and financial assistance available for low-income and disadvantaged communities to benefit from zero-emission technologies, including solar power.

In April 2024, the EPA announced it had selected 60 applicants to receive the grants. By August of that year, the EPA had awarded program funds to states and other grant recipients.

But in August, the EPA, under the Trump administration, ended the program and reclaimed about 90% of the funds already awarded.

The 22 states, along with the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation, are accusing the Trump administration of violating the Administrative Procedure Act, which governs how administrative agencies operate, and the Constitution’s separation of powers doctrine by canceling the program.

The plaintiffs allege that the EPA is using an “erroneous interpretation” of H.R. 1, which the Trump administration calls the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, passed by Congress in July, to justify the termination of the grants.

The states on Wednesday also filed a complaint in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims to recover damages caused by the alleged breach of the grant agreements.

Earlier this month, a coalition of solar energy companies, labor unions and homeowners sued the EPA over the termination of the grants.

For this season, the cooling vests are optional, and some drivers, such as four-time world champion Max Verstappen, do not like them because they consider them uncomfortable and flawed.

Williams driver Alex Albon said it was a “polarising subject”, between “the old-school and new-school mentality”, but that the cooling vest was “a good thing”.

Referencing the Singapore Grand Prix on 5 October, he added: “As a team we’ve done a really good job with the cooling system. It works well on our car, it’s comfortable. The first 20 laps of the race I was actually cold rather than hot, which was definitely a new thing for me.

“In a weird way I think we see it as an advantage as a team because if we’ve got drivers that are fresher at the end of the race then surely that’s performance.”

But Albon said he did not know whether the system would be necessary in Austin this weekend.

“Humidity is always a struggling factor,” Albon said. “Getting your skin to breathe with all the fireproofs that we have on our car and all these kind of things.

“When it’s dry heat, and this doesn’t feel that humid out there at the moment, it’s relatively comfortable for us.”

Mercedes driver George Russell wore the vest when he won in Singapore in hot and humid conditions on 5 October.

If the driver chooses not to wear the vest, his car must carry 500 grams of ballast to compensate for the weight of the system so he does not gain a competitive advantage.

The system, which teams can make to their individual designs, typically features a liquid such as glycol pumped through a tank of dry ice and through the driver’s fireproof top.

Issues with the system include the dry ice running out. This leads to liquid at car temperature, which is hotter than ambient temperature, being pumped through the system.

At last month’s meeting of the California Wildfire and Forest Resilience Task Force in Redlands, Director Patrick Wright remembered the group’s early days: “Candidly, when I started this job, we got an earful from Southern California.”

Gov. Gavin Newsom created the task force in 2021 and at the time, Southern California’s wildfire experts told Wright that he and other state leaders “didn’t understand Southern California was different. Its vegetation is different. Its fire risk is different.”

It’s true — the coastal chaparral native to much of Southern California is entirely different from the mixed-conifer forests of the Sierra.

More than a century of humans attempting to suppress nearly every fire meant the low-intensity burns that northern forests relied on every 5 to 20 years to promote regeneration no longer came through to clear the understory. As trees and shrubs grew in, they fueled high-intensity fires that decimated both the forest and communities.

Meanwhile in Southern California, as humans settled into the wildlands, they lit more fires. Discarded cigarettes, sparking cars, poorly managed campfires, utility equipment and arsonists lit up hundreds or thousands of acres. Here, the native chaparral is adapted to fire coming every 30 to 130 years. The more frequent fires didn’t allow them to grow, make seeds and reproduce. Instead, what’s grown in places where chaparral used to be are flammable invasive grasses.

But when I first moved to Southern California and started covering the wildfires devastating our communities, I had only heard the northern version of the story.

The fire problem in Northern California is more widely understood. “Smokey the Bear, only you can prevent forest fires — everybody kind of knows, intuitively, what a forest fire is,” said Michael O’Connell, president and chief executive of the Irvine Ranch Conservancy — and one of the people who (respectfully) gave Wright an earful.

Meanwhile, ember-driven fires in Southern California are “like someone lobbing grenades from five miles away,” he said.

Experts in both NorCal and SoCal agree on how we ought to protect ourselves once a ferocious fire breaks out: Across the board, we need to harden our homes, create defensible space and ensure we’re ready to evacuate. But how to prevent devastating fires differs.

The forest thinning and careful reintroduction of intentional “good” fire in the Sierra don’t exactly translate to the Santa Monica Mountains, for example.

The problem here in the south is more vexing: How do we reduce the number of fires we spark?

One way is with groups like Orange County Fire Watch and Arson Watch in Topanga and Malibu, which go out on days when the wind is high and try to spot fires before they start. A new effort, celebrated by the task force, to reduce ignitions along SoCal roadways by clearing flammable vegetation is also underway.

But, while NorCal has a plethora of studies affirming the effectiveness of forest thinning and burning, there is little research yet on SoCal’s proposed solutions.

“We really do, now, understand what the problem is that we’re trying to deal with,” O’Connell said. “How do you get that done? That’s more complicated.”

And the vast majority of state funding is still geared toward northern fuel management solutions — not keeping fires from sparking. (The task force also still measures progress in acres treated, a largely meaningless metric for Southern California’s chaparral.)

Yet, O’Connell is hopeful. At the task force’s first meeting in SoCal — where Wright got an earful — leaders didn’t yet have a grasp of SoCal’s wildfire problem. Now, they’re letting SoCal’s land managers and researchers lead the way.

“If it weren’t for the task force, I think we would be in big trouble, frankly,” O’Connell said. The task force leaders “have not only understood [the problem] but have accepted it and run with that.”

Here’s the latest on wildfires

Federal firefighters are in their third week without pay, as the U.S government shutdown drags on. According to the U.S. Forest Service — the largest federal firefighting force in the country — fire response personnel will continue to work through the shutdown, although prevention work, including prescribed burns and forest thinning, will be limited.

In California, Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed a bill that would increase the salaries of Cal Fire firefighters to more closely match those of local fire departments. Meanwhile, efforts championed by the state to build a series of fuel breaks in the Santa Monica Mountains are underway. Some ecologists worry about the damage the fast-moving project could do to the environment; others say the state is not moving fast enough.

Last week, federal prosecutors announced the arrest of a suspect they believed intentionally started the Palisades fire on Jan. 1. The announcement has led to calls for both the Los Angeles Fire Department, responsible for putting out the Jan. 1 fire, and California State Parks, whose land the fire started on, to be held accountable.

And the latest on climate

A turning point and a tipping point: Global energy production turned a corner in the first half of the year, with renewables such as solar and wind generating more electricity than coal for the first time. And, the Earth is reaching its first climate change tipping point: Warm water coral reefs can no longer survive, according to a report published by 160 scientists.

With the 2025 state legislative session wrapped up, some important climate bills are now law. One law extends California’s cap-and-trade program — which limits how much greenhouse gas polluters can emit and enables them to trade emission allowances at auction — from 2030 to 2045. Newsom also signed a bill to make oil drilling in Kern County easier while making offshore drilling more difficult and another to push local governments to increase electrification efforts.

Newsom vetoed a bill that would have required data centers to report how much water they use. He was “reluctant to impose rigid reporting requirements” on the centers, he wrote in a message explaining his veto, noting that “California is well positioned to support the development of this critically important digital infrastructure.”

This is the latest edition of Boiling Point, a newsletter about climate change and the environment in the American West. Sign up here to get it in your inbox. And listen to our Boiling Point podcast here.

For more wildfire news, follow @nohaggerty on X and @nohaggerty.bsky.social on Bluesky.

Oct. 15 (UPI) — U.S. border officials said Wednesday that more than a dozen undocumented migrants via Russia and former Soviet satellite states were taken into custody near Puerto Rico.

Border authorities intercepted a 41-foot sailboat carrying 13 migrants near Combate Beach on Puerto Rico’s west coast Sunday afternoon, officials said. Air and Marine Operations, part of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, tracked the vessel as it approached the shoreline with assistance from the U.S. Coast Guard and the Puerto Rican Police’s Fuerzas Unidas de Rapida Accion unit.

“This successful interdiction demonstrates the unwavering commitment and vigilance of the Michel O. Maceda Marine Unit in protecting our nation’s borders,” Christopher Hunter, director of the Caribbean Air and Marine Branch, said in a statement.

Agents found 13 people aboard that included 10 unidentified men from Uzbekistan, a woman from Kyrgyzstan and two Russian men.

None of the undocumented suspects had official papers allowing legal entry to the United States.

Agents escorted the small yacht to the Michel O. Maceda Marine Unit for inspection, and the migrants were taken into custody and transferred to Homeland Security Investigations for processing, officials noted, “in good condition.”

Officials at America’s border agency added that the operation highlights ongoing efforts by CBP and the Caribbean Border Interagency Group to prevent illegal maritime activity and strengthen border security in the Caribbean region.

People spend years paying into the Social Security system via payroll taxes. It’s a way of helping to secure somewhat of a financial safety net in your retirement years when you begin receiving benefits. Even if you’re fortunate enough not to need it, it’s a well-earned plus after decades of work and contributions.

Unfortunately, like most other income sources in America, when you receive your Social Security payments, you could potentially owe taxes on them. The good news is that most states don’t tax Social Security benefits. The bad news is that this still leaves others that do. As of October 2025, 41 states do not tax Social Security.

Image source: Getty Images.

Which states don’t tax Social Security benefits?

The following 41 states, along with Washington, D.C., currently do not tax Social Security benefits:

1. Alabama
2. Alaska
3. Arizona
4. Arkansas
5. California
6. Delaware
7. Florida
8. Georgia
9. Hawaii
10. Idaho
11. Illinois
12. Indiana
13. Iowa
14. Kansas
15. Kentucky
16. Louisiana
17. Maine
18. Maryland
19. Massachusetts
20. Michigan
21. Mississippi
22. Missouri
23. Nebraska
24. Nevada
25. New Hampshire
26. New Jersey
27. New York
28. North Carolina
29. North Dakota
30. Ohio
31. Oklahoma
32. Oregon
33. Pennsylvania
34. South Carolina
35. South Dakota
36. Tennessee
37. Texas
38. Virginia
39. Washington
40. Wisconsin
41. Wyoming

Which states tax Social Security benefits?

The following nine states do have Social Security taxes in some form:

1. Colorado
2. Connecticut
3. Minnesota
4. Montana
5. New Mexico
6. Rhode Island
7. Utah
8. Vermont
9. West Virginia

In the past five years, four states have eliminated their Social Security tax, so there’s still hope for people who live in a state with the tax. For example, West Virginians won’t have to pay taxes on benefits beginning in 2026.

You could still owe federal taxes on your Social Security check

Unfortunately, your state’s tax-free status doesn’t exempt you from federal taxes on your Social Security check. Luckily, most people won’t pay anything; however, there are still millions who will. To determine if you’ll be subjected to federal taxes on your Social Security benefits, the IRS considers your combined income, which includes the following:

For example, if your AGI is $15,000, you receive $20,000 annually from Social Security, and you have $200 in nontaxable interest, your combined income would be $25,200 ($15,000 + $10,000 + $200). After calculating your combined income, the following ranges are used to determine how much of your benefits are eligible to be taxed:

Source: IRS.

To see it in action, let’s assume you receive $20,000 annually in benefits, and 50% is eligible to be taxed. In this situation, up to $10,000 would be added to any other income you have and then taxed at your normal income tax rate. It’s helpful to know how the federal tax works, so you don’t mistakenly assume that the IRS is going to take 50% or 85% of your benefits.

Some retirees could see a larger tax deduction

The Trump administration’s “big, beautiful bill” included a provision that provides a temporary tax deduction for eligible people age 65 and older. Single filers are eligible for up to $6,000, while couples filing jointly are eligible for up to $12,000.

To qualify for the full $6,000 deduction, single filers must have a modified adjusted gross income (MAGI) below $75,000. If your MAGI is between $75,000 and $175,000, you’re eligible for a reduced deduction, with the amount depending on where your income falls in the range.

Couples filing jointly must have a MAGI below $150,000 to qualify for the full $12,000. Any couple with a MAGI between $150,000 and $250,000 is eligible for the reduced deduction.

This deduction will remain in place until 2028 and is available even if you take the standard deduction (which would otherwise prohibit you from itemizing your deductions).

The federal Office for Victims of Crime announced in the summer that millions of dollars approved for domestic violence survivors and other crime victims would be withheld from states that don’t comply with the Trump administration’s immigration policies.

California, 19 other states and the District of Columbia sued, alleging that such preconditions are illegal and would undermine public safety.

The administration then took a different tack, announcing that community organizations that receive such funding from the states — and use it to help people escape violence, access shelter and file for restraining orders against their abusers — generally may not use it to provide services to undocumented immigrants.

California and other states sued again, arguing that the requirements — which the administration says the states must enforce — are similarly illegal and dangerous. Advocates agreed, saying screening immigrant women out of such programs would be cruel.

The repeated lawsuits reflect an increasingly familiar pattern in the growing mountain of litigation between the Trump administration, California and other blue states.

Since President Trump took office in January, his administration has tried to force the states into submission on a host of policy fronts by cutting off federal funding, part of a drive to bypass Congress and vastly expand executive power. Repeatedly when those cuts have been challenged in court, the administration has shifted its approach to go after the same or similar funding from a slightly different angle — prompting more litigation.

The repeated lawsuits have added complexity and volume to an already monumental legal war between the administration and states such as California, one that began almost immediately after Trump took office and is ongoing, as the administration once again threatens major cuts amid the government shutdown.

The White House has previously dismissed California’s lawsuits as baseless and defended Trump’s right to enact his policy agenda, including by withholding funds. Asked about its shifting strategies in some of those cases, Abigail Jackson, a White House spokeswoman, said the administration “has won numerous cases regarding spending cuts at the Supreme Court and will continue to cut wasteful spending across the government in a lawful manner.”

Other administration officials have also defended its legal tactics. During a fight over frozen federal funding earlier this year, for instance, Vice President JD Vance wrote on social media that judges “aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power” — sparking concerns about a constitutional crisis.

California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta said the pattern is a result of Trump overstating his power to control federal funding and use it as a weapon against his political opponents, but also of his dangerous disregard for the rule of law and the authority of both Congress and federal judges. His office has sued the administration more than 40 times since January, many times over funding.

“It is not something that you should have to see, that a federal government, a president of the United States, is so contemptuous of the rule of law and is willing to break it and break it again, get told by a court that they’re violating the law, and then have to be told by a court again,” Bonta said.

And yet, such examples abound, he said. For example, the Justice Department’s repeated attempts to strip California of crime victim funding echoed the Department of Homeland Security’s repeated attempts recently to deny the state disaster relief and anti-terrorism funding, Bonta said.

Homeland Security officials first told states that such funding would be conditioned on their complying with immigration enforcement efforts. California and other states sued, and a federal judge rejected such preconditions as unconstitutional.

The administration then notified the states that refused to comply, including California, that they would simply receive less money — to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars — while states that cooperate with immigration enforcement would receive more.

California and other Democratic-led states sued again, arguing this week that the shifting of funds was nothing more than the administration circumventing the court’s earlier ruling against the conditioning of funds outright.

Bonta’s office cited a similar pattern in announcing Thursday that the Trump administration had backed off major cuts to AmeriCorps funding. The win came only after successive rounds of litigation by the state and others, Bonta’s office noted, including an amended complaint accusing the administration of continuing to withhold the funding despite an earlier court order barring it from doing so.

Bonta said such shifting strategies were the work of a “consistently and brazenly lawless and lawbreaking federal administration,” and that his office was “duty-bound” to fight back and will — as many times as it takes.

“It can’t be that you take an action, are held accountable, a court finds that you’ve acted unlawfully, and then you just take another unlawful action to try to restrict or withhold that same funding,” he said.

Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of UC Berkeley Law, said he agreed with Bonta that there is “a pattern of ignoring court orders or trying to circumvent them” on the part of the Trump administration.

And he provided another example: a case in which he represents University of California faculty and researchers challenging Trump administration cuts to National Science Foundation funding.

Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought talks to reporters outside the White House on Monday, accompanied by House Speaker Mike Johnson, left, Senate Majority Leader John Thune and Vice President JD Vance.

(Alex Brandon / Associated Press)

After a judge blocked the administration from terminating that funding, the Trump administration responded by declaring that the funds were “suspended” instead, Chemerinsky said.

The judge then ruled the administration was violating her order against termination, he said, as “calling them suspensions rather than terminations changed nothing.”

Mitchel Sollenberger, a political science professor at University of Michigan-Dearborn and author of several books on executive powers, said Trump aggressively flexing those powers was expected. Conservative leaders have been trying to restore executive authority ever since Congress reined in the presidency after Watergate, and Trump took an aggressive approach in his first term, too, Sollenberger said.

However, what Trump has done this term has nonetheless been stunning, Sollenberger said — the result of a sophisticated and well-planned strategy that has been given a clear runway by a Supreme Court that clearly shares a belief in an empowered executive branch.

“It’s like watching water run down, and it tries to find cracks,” Sollenberger said. “That’s what the Trump administration is doing. It’s trying to find those cracks where it can widen the gap and exercise more and more executive power.”

Bonta noted that the administration’s targeting of blue state funding began almost immediately after Trump took office, when the Office of Management and Budget issued a memo asserting that vast sums of federal funding for all sorts of programs were being frozen as the administration assessed whether the spending aligned with Trump’s policy goals.

California and other states sued to block that move and won, but the administration wasn’t swayed from the strategy, Bonta said — as evidenced by more recent events.

On Wednesday, as the government shutdown over Congress’ inability to pass a funding measure set in, Russell Vought — head of the Office of Management and Budget and architect of the Trump administration’s purse-string policies — announced on X that $8 billion in funding “to fuel the Left’s climate agenda” was being canceled. He then listed 16 blue states where projects will be cut.

Vought had broadly outlined his ideas for slashing government in Project 2025, the right-wing playbook for Trump’s second term, which Trump vigorously denied any connection to during his campaign but has since broadly implemented.

On Thursday, Trump seemed to relish the opportunity, amid the shutdown, to implement more of the plan.

“I have a meeting today with Russ Vought, he of PROJECT 2025 Fame, to determine which of the many Democrat Agencies, most of which are a political SCAM, he recommends to be cut, and whether or not those cuts will be temporary or permanent,” Trump posted online. “I can’t believe the Radical Left Democrats gave me this unprecedented opportunity.”

Bonta said Wednesday that his office had no plans to get involved in the shutdown, which he said was caused by Trump and “for Trump to figure out.” But he said he was watching the battle closely.

Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) chalked Vought’s latest cuts up to more illegal targeting of blue states such as California that oppose Trump politically, writing, “Our democracy is badly broken when a president can illegally suspend projects for Blue states in order to punish his political enemies.”

Cities and towns have also been pushing back against Trump’s use of federal funding as political leverage. On Wednesday, Los Angeles and other cities announced a lawsuit challenging the cuts to disaster funding.

L.A. City Atty. Hydee Feldstein Soto said the cuts were part of an “unprecedented weaponization” of federal funding by the Trump administration, and that she was proud to be fighting to “preserve constitutional limits on executive overreach.”

A top Trump administration official on Wednesday said the U.S. Department of Energy will cut billions of dollars in funding for energy projects in Democratic states.

“Nearly $8 billion in Green New Scam funding to fuel the Left’s climate agenda is being canceled,” said Russell Vought, director of the White House’s Office of Management and Budget, in a post on X.

“The projects are in the following states: CA, CO, CT, DE, HI, IL, MD, MA, MN, NH, NJ, NM, NY, OR, VT, WA,” Vought said.

All 16 states listed did not vote for Trump in the 2024 election.

Vought said more information about the cuts would come from the U.S. Department of Energy, which also announced this week that it will open 13 million acres of federal lands for coal mining and provide $625 million to recommission or modernize coal-fired power plants.

In a news release, the department confirmed that it had terminated more than 300 financial awards associated with 223 projects, amounting to $7.56 billion. The department did not specify the project names or locations, but said the awards had been issued by multiple offices, including the Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations and the Office Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy.

According to the DOE, the projects were canceled following a review that found they did not “adequately advance the nation’s energy needs, were not economically viable, and would not provide a positive return on investment of taxpayer dollars.” About a quarter of the awards had been issued by the Biden administration between election day in November and Trump’s inauguration in January, the agency said.

California Senator Adam Schiff said Vought’s post amounts to political retaliation.

“Our democracy is badly broken when a president can illegally suspend projects for Blue states in order to punish his political enemies,” Schiff wrote on X. “They continue to break the law, and expect us to go along. Hell no.”

Connecticut Rep. Rosa DeLauro described the move as “purely vindictive” and said it will result in higher energy prices across the country.

“Terminating critical energy projects in Democratic states weaponizes policy for political revenge and will only drive energy bills higher, increase unemployment, and eliminate jobs,” DeLauro said in a statement. “It is reckless and betrays both common sense and public trust.”

California and other states on Vought’s list have been working to advance clean energy projects such as solar power and offshore wind. Republican states working on similar efforts — such as Texas, the largest producer of wind energy in the U.S. — were not among Vought’s list of cuts, despite also receiving funding from the Department of Energy.

Vought, one of the authors of the conservative platform document Project 2025, has been actively involved in reshaping the federal government during the second Trump administration. Vought on Wednesday also announced that the U.S. Department of Transportation was freezing $18 million for two infrastructure projects in New York City “to ensure funding is not flowing based on unconstitutional [Diversity, Equity and Inclusion] principles.” The projects include a train tunnel connecting New York and New Jersey and a subway line running along Second Avenue in New York City.

His posts came on the first day of the U.S. government shutdown.

The recipients of the canceled awards will have 30 days to appeal the termination decisions, according to the DOE, which said some of the projects included in the announcement have already begun that process.

A federal judge on Tuesday temporarily halted a Trump administration plan to reduce disaster relief and anti-terrorism funding for states with so-called sanctuary policies for undocumented immigrants.

U.S. District Judge Mary S. McElroy granted the temporary restraining order curtailing the cuts at the request of California, 10 other states and the District of Columbia, which argued in a lawsuit Monday that the policy appeared to have illegally cost them hundreds of millions of dollars.

The states said they were first notified of the cuts over the weekend. McElroy made her decision during an emergency hearing on the states’ motion in Rhode Island District Court on Tuesday afternoon.

California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta cheered the decision as the state’s latest win in pushing back against what he described as a series of unlawful, funding-related power grabs by the Trump administration.

“Over and over, the courts have stopped the Trump Administration’s illegal efforts to tie unrelated grant funding to state policies,” Bonta said. “It’s a little thing called state sovereignty, but given the President’s propensity to violate the Constitution, it’s unsurprising that he’s unfamiliar with it.”

Neither the White House nor the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the funding and notified the states of the cuts, immediately responded to a request for comment Tuesday.

Sanctuary policies are not uniform and the term is imprecise, but it generally refers to policies that bar states and localities — and their local law enforcement agencies — from participating in federal immigration raids or other enforcement initiatives.

The Trump administration and other Republicans have cast such policies as undermining law and order. Democrats and progressives including in California say instead that states and cities have finite public safety resources and that engaging in immigration enforcement serves only to undermine the trust they and their law enforcement agencies need to maintain with the public in order to prevent and solve crime, including in large immigrant communities.

In their lawsuit Monday, the states said the funding being reduced was part of billions in federal dollars annually distributed to the states to “prepare for, protect against, respond to, and recover from catastrophic disasters,” and which administrations of both political parties distributed “evenhandedly” for decades before Trump.

Authorized by Congress after events such as Sept. 11 and Hurricane Katrina, the funding covers the salaries of first responders, testing of state computer networks for cyberattack vulnerabilities, mutual aid compacts between regional partners and emergency responses after disasters, the states said.

Bonta’s office said California was informed over the weekend by Homeland Security officials that it would be receiving $110 million instead of $165 million, a reduction of its budget by about a third. The states’ lawsuit said other blue states saw even more dramatic cuts, with Illinois seeing a 69% reduction and New York receiving a 79% reduction, while red states saw substantial funding increases.

Bonta on Tuesday said the administration’s reshuffling of funds based on state compliance with the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement priorities was illegal and needed to be halted — and restored to previous levels based on risk assessment — in order to keep everyone in the country safe.

“California uses the grant funding at stake in our lawsuit to protect the safety of our communities from acts of terrorism and other disasters — meaning the stakes are quite literally life and death,” he said. “This is not something to play politics with. I’m grateful to the court for seeing the urgency of this dangerous diversion of homeland security funding.”

Homeland Security officials have previously argued that the agency should be able to withhold funding from states that it believes are not upholding or are actively undermining its core mission of defending the nation from threats, including the threat it sees from illegal immigration.

Other judges have also ruled against the administration conditioning disaster and public safety funding on states and localities complying with federal immigration policies.

Joining California in Monday’s lawsuit were Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington, as well as the District of Columbia.