supreme court

SACRAMENTO — It’s hard being a global titan these days, when despite beaucoup bucks spent bending government to your will, any little ant of a state attorney general can crawl up your pant leg and bite.

Just ask David Ellison.

After, well, the world seemingly fell in line with his long-planned $110-billion merger of Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros. Discovery in recent weeks, a dozen state attorneys general, led by California’s Rob Bonta, have stymied the deal with a so-far-successful lawsuit that has put the whole thing on ice.

That has Paramount, and presumably Ellison, big mad-sad. So much so that a company lawyer this week suggested Paramount could move out of California if Bonta doesn’t back down.

For those of us in the cheap seats, the whole plot of the Paramount merger has become so convoluted and nebulous it‘s hard to follow exactly what’s going on, and what it all means.

So let’s pull back, and take a big-picture look at what’s happening and what’s at stake — legally and politically.

Legally pretty good

First, the recap: Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery have been trying to merge since 2024. European regulators, along with those in other countries, cleared the deal, with some conditions in place.

U.S. regulators also backed the deal (which was not surprising considering Paramount went out of its way to court Trump, maybe even settling a multimillion-dollar suit and canning Stephen Colbert as part of that), making it seem like it was all but done.

Then, recently, 12 state attorneys general led by Bonta sued to stop the merger on antitrust grounds and won a temporary restraining order.

So why did the states sue?

Trump’s idea of regulation seems to be to OK anything he likes, or that personally benefits him. Therefore, “the states have come in and played a really important role, since the DOJ has basically walked away from a lot of interest enforcement,” said George Hay, a professor of law and economics at Cornell University. “The states take this really seriously.”

While there have been lots of angles on this merger in the media (including concerns over foreign investments), the antitrust lawsuit is really fairly narrow — the main argument is that the merger will “kill off theaters,” Hay said, and hurt consumers and creators.

Bonta has pointed out that after the merger, the new Paramount would control about 27% of films released into theaters in the U.S., along with basic cable distribution.

David Ellison, chairman and chief executive of Paramount Skydance, speaks at a New York event in April.

(Noam Galai / Getty Images for Paramount)

On those narrow grounds, “the states have done a good job putting together a credible case, a case that a court’s likely to regard as being plausible,” said William Kovacic, a professor of law at George Washington University.

While the lawsuit is only in preliminary stages, Harry First, a professor of law emeritus at New York University and an expert in antitrust matters, said it has a “decent chance of succeeding.”

That has to worry Paramount, because a long, drawn-out court case is bad for business.

“If you go through appeals, it means that your transaction hangs suspended in the air for a couple of years,” Kovacic said. “It creates all sorts of uncertainty about the future direction of the business.”

The issues that don’t matter, but actually do

Paramount also has PR headaches involved with this deal, though they largely lie outside the scope of the legal action.

Whether or not CNN would retain its editorial independence has been a huge topic of debate. Ellison’s dad, billionaire Larry Ellison, is a huge F.O.T. (friend of Trump) with a hard-right tilt.

The younger Ellison has already been accused of destroying the integrity of “60 Minutes.” Many fear (or hope, depending on their politics) that he will do the same to CNN. But that’s not really an antitrust issue, although Ellison has tried to claim this is political persecution by liberal states.

There’s also been talk from labor unions and some politicians that the merger will hurt workers, which seems like a reasonable fear. In general, First points out, less competition leads to more power for the remaining owners to set the terms of employment.

Again, that’s not what the lawsuit is actually focused on.

Politics front and center

But both of those issues have become popular talking points, more prevalent than the actual issues in the lawsuit.

That reality is creating a political headache for some big political heads, including California Gov. Gavin Newsom and governor-in-waiting Xavier Becerra, who are increasingly receiving pressure from Paramount to make this all go away.

That thumbscrew campaign lost all subtlety this week at a Politico event in Sacramento, where Paramount’s chief legal officer Makan Delrahim said the company would consider leaving the state.

“If I was governor, I wouldn’t want to lose Hollywood from the state. I wouldn’t want to lose a major company like Paramount to another state,” Delrahim said.

Both Newsom and Becerra in recent days have indicated they would prefer some sort of settlement, avoiding a long legal battle that could kill the deal entirely.

NYU’s First sees that as “the weakness of Democrats who say they don’t like concentration and they don’t like concentration in the media and they don’t like companies getting bigger and bigger, and then they fold when the companies have political power.”

Let’s look at that power more closely, though, because if you recall, there are 11 other attorneys general in this suit, including from powerful states such as New York and Colorado.

That means “California doesn’t necessarily dictate what will happen to the case,” Hay said. “It may well be Ellison will twist Newsom’s arm to get Newsom to twist the attorney general’s arm to call off the case or take a very favorable settlement, but it doesn’t kick the other states out.”

While Bonta, at the same Politico event, said he’s had private conversations with Newsom on the issue, he also doesn’t seem interested in folding.

“In a span of weeks, Paramount agreed to halt the merger until a court decision or until June 2027, asked for a November trial, and is now back with another attempt to blackmail the state into letting an illegal deal through. Paramount has lost the plot as it continues to lose in court. It didn’t work the first time — on the eve of our July lawsuit — and it won’t work this time,” Bonta said in a recent social media post.

Don’t forget, Bonta has his own aspirations for governor, and Hay points out that AGs often see antitrust cases as “a political stepping stone” because they are popular with voters.

So what’s next?

As the lawsuit is currently written, First and other legal experts agreed this would be a hard case to settle because it doesn’t leave a lot of room for dealmaking.

That, of course, doesn’t mean a deal couldn’t be done.

But it’s unlikely Ellison will force California to crumble with so many other states in the game, no matter how many threats Paramount drops, and unlikely the merger will escape this lawsuit without concessions that the attorneys general can cite as victories.

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Stay Golden,
Anita Chabria

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The Trump administration again on Wednesday asked the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene — and fast — to save President Trump’s plan for the U.S. Postal Service to place new nationwide limits on mail voting ahead of the November midterms.

It did so after a lower court judge blocked the Postal Service plan from moving forward for a second time on Tuesday.

Solicitor Gen. D. John Sauer wrote to the high court that if it does not act quickly to lift both of the lower court’s “erroneous” rulings blocking the plan, those orders “will effectively run out the clock on the government’s ability to implement” the changes in time for the November election, “thereby causing irreparable harm to the federal government, the public, and election integrity.”

Sauer’s latest argument was filed in an emergency case already before the Supreme Court, in which the Trump administration is challenging a June decision blocking the Postal Service’s rule changes by U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani.

Talwani, an appointee of President Obama, ruled in favor of California and 22 other states that had challenged the new rules as coming far too late in the election year to be implemented without causing significant disruptions and harming voters. That decision, which was upheld by an appellate court in July, had barred the new measures from being implemented in the states that sued, but not elsewhere.

However, Sauer filed his latest argument in response to a second ruling by Talwani in a separate case Tuesday, in which she sided with the League of Women Voters and other voting rights groups to block the Postal Service plans from moving forward nationwide.

“That it is now less than 90 days before the November 3, 2026 midterm elections underscores the critical need for an injunction to prevent Defendants from changing election rules on the eve of the election,” Talwani wrote.

The court battle follows an executive order Trump issued in March, in which he called on the Postal Service and the Department of Homeland Security to ensure “citizenship verification and integrity in federal elections” by compiling their own state-by-state lists of citizens who are eligible to vote and then using those lists to restrict who may vote by mail in each state.

The order said the Postal Service “shall not transmit mail-in or absentee ballots from any individual unless those individuals have been enrolled on a State-specific list.”

The order was immediately slammed by Democratic attorneys general and independent voting rights groups as a ploy by the Trump administration to get its hands on state voter rolls, which it has failed to secure in separate legal challenges, and severely limit mail voting, which Trump has without evidence alleged is a major source of voter fraud.

California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta helped lead the states’ lawsuit challenging Trump’s order, and has praised Talwani’s orders blocking it from taking effect. Bonta has said the law is clear that states control elections, not the federal government, and that Trump’s order is an illegal and dangerous power grab ahead of a pivotal election in which the president’s party is poised to lose power.

A spokesperson for Bonta’s office said it was aware of Sauer’s filing and considering “next steps” Wednesday.

The Trump administration’s appeal to the Supreme Court is limited in scope, in that it hinges on a technical argument that the challenges to the new rules are premature — and that the Postal Service should be allowed to continue preparing for the new rules to be implemented while the legal battle over their legality continues.

Sauer reiterated that argument in his filing Wednesday, asking the high court to not only issue its order soon, but to make clear in it that not one but both of Talwani’s orders are premature.

He wrote that courts cannot block the implementation of an executive order “that merely instructs agencies to pursue a proposed policy in a manner that is consistent with law,” particularly before those agencies “actually take concrete actions that injure” the groups suing to block the order.

Therefore, Sauer wrote, it would be “prudent” for the high court to make clear that it was halting Talwani’s first order “based on the uncertainty concerning the government’s future actions, not anything specific to the individual plaintiffs” — or, in other words, on grounds that would apply to her second order, too.

He wrote that it was “critical” that the court “act promptly.”

The states have asked the high court to block Trump’s order, which they said would deny mail ballots to “many of the millions of voters who rely on mail voting — especially voters with disabilities and those in rural areas.”

The League of Women Voters hailed Talwani’s order Tuesday as a win for voters and for the U.S. Constitution, which it said makes clear the president does not have the authority to rewrite election rules.

“Millions of Americans, including seniors, military voters, voters with disabilities, rural voters, and citizens living overseas, rely on voting by mail to participate in our democracy,” said Marcia Johnson, the group’s chief of activation and justice. “Today’s decision reaffirms that the rules governing our democracy must be set by the Constitution and the law, not by executive overreach.”

When the high court will rule is unclear, though the emergency nature of the appeal calls for a prompt response.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says she is freezing her eggs as she decides her next political moves ahead of the 2028 presidential election campaign.

“This is a choice that I am making to feel more in control of my life,” Ocasio-Cortez, 36, said on Instagram about her decision regarding her reproductive options.

The New York congresswoman, a leading figure of Democrats’ progressive left flank, did not say explicitly whether she plans to have children. She said in her social media posts that she was taking a “political risk” in talking so personally about her potential family plans.

She said later on ABC “This Week” on Sunday that she has not ruled out running for president or for the U.S. Senate seat held by Democrats’ floor leader, Chuck Schumer of New York, in 2028. She explained that she wants to normalize conversations about what women face in their professional and personal lives, while also highlighting the policies of President Donald Trump’s administration.

“In this political environment, where this administration is denying reproductive care to women across the country, from abortion rights to the ability to carry out a healthy pregnancy, I think it’s important for us as leaders to have these conversations,” she said.

Trump’s administration opposes abortion rights, and the Republican president’s first-term appointees to the Supreme Court provided the margins in the 2022 ruling that struck down the Roe v. Wade decision that had established a constitutional right to terminate a pregnancy.

Separately, however, Trump in 2025 signed an executive order designed to lower the costs of in vitro fertilization.

Ocasio-Cortez sponsored a Democratic bill in 2022, when the party controlled the House, to codify abortion rights into federal law after the Supreme Court’s abortion decision.

As part of her weekend announcement, Ocasio-Cortez noted that women — in politics and other fields — face different standards and scrutiny about their family status.

“Men run for office, or frankly they interview for jobs, and people don’t think in the back of their minds, ‘OK, this guy’s running for office, how old is he? Oh, well, is he going to want to start a family?’” she said.

Barrow writes for the Associated Press.

SACRAMENTO — Say you want a new pair of running shoes, but you just can’t make up your mind. So you spend a solid week checking them out online, coming back to one pair on a particular site again and again.

When you’re finally ready to check out, you notice something upsetting — the price you saw on day one is now 20% higher. What the heck?

Welcome to the brave new world of surveillance pricing, where some companies are not just tracking your every move online but also purchasing deep-dive data into your life for a single purpose — to figure out the maximum you will pay for an item and jack up the price accordingly to squeeze every possible dollar out of every unwitting consumer.

It’s legal, and whether it’s good or bad “depends on which side of the transaction you’re on,” said Roger White, an economics professor at Whittier College.

For those of you who are really terrible at economics, we, the little people, are on the bad end of that deal.

“It is using your own personal data and your characteristics, your demographics, information about you, to set a different price based on the perceived willingness to pay, and that is causing Californians a potential chance of being gouged,” said state Assemblymember Christopher M. Ward (D-San Diego).

Ward is trying to outlaw surveillance pricing in California with his AB 2564, which seems like a no-brainer if you actually care about affordability and your constituents. But he’s having a hard time getting his bill through the Legislature. In fact, he tried last year and failed.

This year, the bill still has a chance, but the clock is ticking, the lobbyists representing big retailers and data brokers are spending, and our state elected officials seem lukewarm on the issue.

A bad problem gets worse

But if surveillance pricing seems corrupt or unethical, get ready. Because retailers are getting ready — for artificial intelligence.

Right now, most surveillance pricing is relying on established data collection. That is about to get super-charged as AI goes further and further into sweeping up bits of information on every aspect of our lives, on and offline.

Did your car break down and you have to shop at home? Are you injured or have a medical condition that makes you desperate for comfy shoes? Did you just get a raise and maybe are in the mood to spend?

The amount of data that can be definitively known about your life is huge. The amount that can be inferred is even bigger. Imagine if artificial intelligence in real time, using every bit of information it can find, is basically working to squeeze every dime out of you, every day on every purchase — groceries, clothes, plane tickets, maybe even medicines.

“AI gives them powerful tools to do that, and they can basically use information almost instantaneously to set prices,” said Darrell M. West, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a nonprofit public policy think tank.

Which makes regulating surveillance pricing now all the more important.

The big bad picture

White, the Whittier professor, sees an even bigger threat looming with surveillance pricing. He points out that income inequality in the United States has been increasing since the 1970s, and it is mostly rich people who control and own large retail endeavors.

If surveillance pricing is allowed to blossom unfettered, he’s concerned the rich will get richer by selling at higher prices, and everyone else will be paying so much to survive that the poor and middle class will suffer even further.

“This could lead to an acceleration of income inequality,” White said. “This could be a way for, sort of, the rich to benefit more,” leaving “the middle class and the poor potentially being even worse off.”

Immediate gouging, and long-term erosion of the already tenuous ability of the middle class and poorer people to survive. You’d think our state Legislature would be all over fixing this.

Other states have. In fact, about 20 states have some sort of law about “dynamic pricing,” a broader term for how retailers use data to set prices.

Just a few days ago, New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill signed A4085 (the Fair Price Protection Act), which prohibits surveillance pricing for groceries.

New Jersey, New York, Connecticut and Maryland also have laws on the issue, though some won’t take effect until next year.

And this isn’t some sort of blue-state push. MAGA Republican Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) suggested last week that he might be considering federal legislation on the issue, the same week the democratic socialist mayor of Seattle proposed curbs on it.

“There are both Republicans and Democrats who are worried about these issues because they’re getting complaints from their own constituents,” West said.

But in California, the winds are blowing in favor of the big guys. While Ward is working through one colleague at a time trying to pass the measure, the lobbying pressure against it has been significant.

Retailers and others argue it could have unintended consequences, like preventing them from offering discounts to certain customers, or having loyalty programs.

C’mon. No one is coming for your coupons.

White, the economist, points out that companies are spending millions to implement surveillance pricing, and they aren’t doing it so they can slash prices and lose money.

“They won’t say this, but you know, the reality is that millions, if not billions, of dollars in inflated profit is on the line,” said Ward. “Unfortunately, that is coming at the expense of everyday Californians who are having that ripped out of their pocketbooks without them even knowing it.”

White put it even more bluntly.

“If you’re opposed to the Assembly bill, it seems that you are siding with the businesses, and if you’re in favor of it, then it seems that you’re siding with consumer protections.”

Ward is fighting an uphill battle, but he isn’t giving up. It’s about trying to “right the universe when it comes to fair pricing for consumers,” he told me.

“We need to go back to a place of a fair marketplace where you have an honest relationship between the consumer and the business and everybody is being treated the same,” he said.

What else you should be reading

The must-read: ‘Pervert glasses’: Backlash against Meta’s smart glasses grows
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The L.A. Times Special: D.A. faces backlash after charging LAPD officer who recorded colleagues’ racist remarks

Stay Golden,
Anita Chabria

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Aug. 9 (UPI) — President Donald Trump on Sunday announced that Staff Secretary Will Scharf will be his new White House counsel, promoting another former personal lawyer within his administration.

Scharf, who was on Trump’s legal team in the presidential immunity case before the Supreme Court, will assume his new position Sept. 1, Trump said in a social media statement, replacing David Warrington, himself a former personal lawyer for Trump, who is returning to private practice.

“Will has done an amazing job in his current role as White House Staff secretary and has also served as Chairman of the National Capital Planning Commission. I know him well!” Trump said.

“Will is tough, strong and smart! He also loves our Country, and respects the Law. Will Scharf will do a great job as White House Counsel!”

As staff secretary, Scharf oversees the everyday paperwork, presidential actions, speeches, correspondence and press releases of the president, and is frequently at Trump’s side during signing ceremonies where he is seen handing him executive orders.

As the new White House counsel, Scharf will be in charge of advising Trump and White House staff on legal issues, including the interpretation of laws and their intersection with policies.

Scharf has also been serving as chairman of the National Capital Planning Commission, which approved Trump’s $400 million White House ballroom. On Friday, a federal appeals court ruled the ballroom unlawful and ordered its construction to stop, though the ruling was stayed for 14 days to give the White House time to appeal to the Supreme Court.

The announcement also comes a day after the U.S. Senate confirmed Todd Blanche, another former personal lawyer for Trump, as attorney general, replacing Pam Bondi, whom Trump fired in April.

At least seven lawyers who represented Trump personally or served on his legal teams now hold positions in his administration, including Blanche, Warrington, Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon and Solicitor General D. John Sauer.

Scharf was a member of the legal team that successfully argued before the Supreme Court that presidents enjoy broad immunity from prosecution for actions taken while in office as part of the federal election interference case brought against Trump by the Justice Department under the Biden administraiton.

Aug. 8 (UPI) — Former President Jair Bolsonaro will not be allowed to see his sons on Brazilian Father’s Day this Sunday, the country’s top court ruled.

Due to his health, Bolsonaro has been under house arrest in Brasilia since March while serving a 27-year sentence for a coup attempt.

Last month he was placed under a stricter regimen after he breached conditions of his house arrest.

The former president is not allowed to receive visits for 30 days, except by his medical and legal teams.

Bolsonaro’s defense attorneys on Wednesday asked the Supreme Court for special permission, calling it a “strictly humanitarian and family-related” visit for Father’s Day, which Brazil celebrates on the second Sunday in August.

“This is a unique date on the Brazilian calendar, and its observance, even for a brief period and under whatever conditions Your Honor may deem appropriate, would preserve family ties and an important aspect of the relationship between father and children,” the former president’s defense attorneys wrote to the Supreme Court, Gazeta do Povo reported.

But Brazil’s top court on Saturday denied Bolsonaro’s request to host sons Jair Renan, Carlos and Flavio, G1 reported. His fourth son, former Rep. Eduardo Bolsonaro, is living in the United States and was not included in the request.

Last month, Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes barred Bolsonaro from receiving any visits of a “political-electoral” nature until after Brazil’s general elections in October.

The restrictions came after Bolsonaro wrote a political letter in support of his son, Sen. Flavio Bolsonaro, despite his sentence barring him from participating in national politics.

The younger Bolsonaro, who disseminated the letter on social media, is running against President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva.

“They took away his freedom,” Flavio Bolsonaro wrote on X. “Now they want to take away even a father’s right to hug his children.”

Bolsonaro’s defense lawyers argued in court he was unaware that his son would divulge his writing on social media.

But the court disagreed.

“The letter — written and personally signed by Jair Messias Bolsonaro — was addressed ‘to the Brazilian people,’ demonstrating that it was not of a private nature but rather intended for political and electoral purposes, with dissemination to the general public, using Flavio Nantes Bolsonaro as an intermediary, or in his own words, as his ‘spokesperson,'” Moraes wrote in his decision, G1 reported.

“The text of the ‘Letter to the Brazilian People,’ therefore, clearly shows that Jair Messias Bolsonaro intended to communicate with his political supporters through his son’s social media accounts,” the justice added.

As a result of the restriction, he was also denied a visit by Argentinian President Javier Milei, who in July visited the country in support of Flavio Bolsonaro’s candidature.

Aug. 7 (UPI) — Justice Samuel Alito said Friday in a rare interview that he is committed to returning for another term at the Supreme Court.

Speculation that Alito, 76, would retire swelled in June, after NPR mistakenly reported that he planned to step down at the end of this term.

On Friday, the justice put those rumors to bed.

“Obviously I’m here for another term,” Alito told The Wall Street Journal.

“It’s not pleasant, in the sense that it’s a reminder of mortality,” he said to the newspaper about questions related to his retirement.

“It’s like, what are those vultures doing up there?” the justice added. “They are flying around. But it goes with life tenure.”

Alito’s non-retirement was reported by NPR reporter Nina Totenberg, a veteran of Supreme Court coverage, on June 30.

NPR retracted the story later that same day.

Totenberg said she heard a retirement announcement while rushing out of the courtroom and mistakenly assumed it was Alito.

She called it “the worst professional mistake of my more than 50 years in journalism.”

Alito, a staunch conservative, was appointed by President George W. Bush and joined the court in 2006.

WASHINGTON — President Trump is trying again to limit the number of people born in the country who can become American citizens, in a sign that even after his first attempt at limiting birthright citizenship was rejected by the Supreme Court, he’s ready to renew his efforts.

The president said he was signing two executive actions on immigration, including one limiting the number of people eligible for citizenship after being born in the United States. The written executive order released Thursday was narrower in scope than the previous one shot down by the Supreme Court and appeared to focus on restricting automatic citizenship to specific categories of people, including children born to adults with connections to foreign embassies or organizations as well as anyone considered an “alien enemy” of the United States.

It also aimed to restrict birthright citizenship to anyone whose parents “engaged in fraudulent activity to obtain citizenship.”

A second order seeks to curb what Trump called “birth tourism” by increasing restrictions on visitors to the U.S. who want to obtain visas to give birth while in the country.

Trump said he thought his latest actions would be constitutional.

“I thought we were going to win it at the Supreme Court. Unfortunately, we had a bad decision, very unfair decision. Our country suffers because of it and we’re ending it a different way,” Trump said.

In June, the Supreme Court rejected Trump’s previous efforts to declare that children born to people in the U.S. illegally or temporarily aren’t American citizens, and upheld a broad conception of birthright citizenship.

On the first day of Trump’s second term, he signed an executive order aimed at ending birthright citizenship, which allows anyone born in the United States to automatically become an American citizen.

Trump’s administration immediately was sued by opponents who said the executive order went against the 14th Amendment, adopted after the Civil War, which makes anyone born in the country a citizen, with very limited exceptions.

The executive order was blocked by several lower courts and never took effect.

In June, the Supreme Court struck down Trump’s order by a 6-3 vote. But the vote was too close for many immigration advocates and legal observers who felt the legal question of birthright citizenship was a long-settled issue.

Weissert and Santana write for the Associated Press.

Aug. 6 (UPI) — U.S. President Donald Trump is again aiming to limit birthright citizenship, just over a month after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutional right.

Trump on Thursday signed two executive orders, with one expanding who would not be guaranteed citizenship automatically, including “alien enemies of the United States, members of foreign terrorist organizations and large categories of people who lobby and act on behalf of foreign governments,” The Hill quoted officials as saying.

The second order would ban “birth tourism,” which occurs when a traveler enters another country to give birth there to ensure automatic citizenship. The practice is already illegal since it involves fraudulently obtaining a visa.

Birthright citizenship is guaranteed by the 14th Amendment, which was adopted following the Civil War. With limited exceptions, it makes anyone born on U.S. soil a citizen.

Four exceptions to the 14th Amendment have been recognized by courts over the years, including children born in the U.S. to foreign sovereigns and diplomats, those born on foreign ships, and children of Native American tribes. However, Native Americans have been guaranteed citizenship since 1924.

Trump, on his first day in office of this second term, signed an executive order to end birthright citizenship, but it never took effect after several lower courts blocked it. The Supreme Court on June 30 ruled 6-3 against the order.

Trump told reporters Thursday that birthright citizenship was intended for “the babies of slaves.”

“What’s happening now are people are building businesses around it; wealthy people are building businesses around birthright citizenship,” he continued. “That’s not the way it’s supposed to work. It’s a disgrace. They’re buying their way in, and we’re not going to let that happen.”

Eighty-three lawsuits filed against the Trump administration in 18 months, at a cost of more than $20 million.

California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta announced those stats this week, part of an annual report to the Legislature on how we’re spending a special fund set aside to combat President Trump’s overreach.

That doesn’t include more than 120 friend of the court briefs the Golden State has written in legal matters brought by others, or the multitude of cases in which the Trump administration has sued California and Bonta’s office is defending us.

That’s a whole lot of litigation. Is it worth it? Are we huffing and puffing for political points, or do all these lawsuits actually do something positive for the average Californian?

You get what you pay for

I’m going to sound like a bus bench ad for the legal profession, but, at this point, “the courts are standing as the only barrier to the president doing anything that the president wants to do,” Hiroshi Motomura, a professor of law at UCLA, told me.

And what the president apparently wants to do is make the poor and vulnerable poorer and more vulnerable. And don’t think there’s a middle-class exemption. In his second term, Trump has attacked healthcare coverage, special education, education in general, reproductive rights, gender rights, the environment, endangered species, immigrants and more.

“The disastrous impact of Trump’s lawlessness isn’t theoretical or hypothetical. It’s not imagined. It is real. It is hurting real people,” Bonta said. “It is hurting Californians, real families, real businesses, real communities every single day.”

You name it, if it’s not rich and connected, it’s probably under attack. President Lyndon B. Johnson launched a very different war on poverty in 1964 with social programs such as Medicare, Medicaid and Head Start. This new war on poverty seems intent on increasing it, not eradicating it.

It would be nearly impossible for the people affected by these attacks on government services to fight them on their own, said Richard Abel, a professor emeritus of law at UCLA and the author of multiple books on the Trump presidency.

“They don’t know why it’s happening,” he said. “They don’t have access to lawyers. Many of them are undocumented or afraid to mobilize the legal system.”

That leaves the states, which are often the only other entities that have a legal right to sue, because they too are being harmed by the cuts.

So yeah, our $20 million is well spent. Bonta said his legal work has protected about $207 billion in funding. But I’ll argue the true return on investment is California residents who have been protected in ways they don’t even realize.

Risks we don’t even realize

Take Massachusetts vs. Department of Agriculture, one of the cases California is involved in. This is Trump’s attempt to put new rules on USDA grants for food programs including emergency food assistance, school lunches and food stamps. It would tie compliance with his right-wing, discriminatory policies on immigration, gender ideology and diversity issues to receiving those funds.

California and other states sued and won a preliminary injunction stopping them in June — meaning most recipients kept their benefits without ever realizing they were at risk.

Then there’s New York vs. Administration for Children & Families, in which Trump goes after child welfare funds; Washington vs. Department of Education, which attacks mental health grants that help hire school psychologists and counselors; and Illinois vs. Vought, which targets California and three other states run by Democrats for cuts to transportation and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention funding for no other reason than politics, the states argue.

Food benefits, access to mental health care, lead poisoning prevention. Just a few more things most of us didn’t realize could be at risk for some of us.

In each of those cases, Bonta and the other Democratic attorneys general stopped the federal actions, even if only temporarily. Some of those cases are ongoing, but with restraining orders or injunctions in place.

Then there’s United States vs. Baass, Trump’s attempt to force Michelle Baass, the director of the California Department of Health Care Services, to turn over a bunch of applications for Medi-Cal benefits for the last five years so the federal government can go on a witch hunt for undocumented folks.

Supposedly these applications, which Baass and her agency were subpoenaed for, are needed for an immigration investigation in the Central Valley. California won in court in March, when a judge denied the federal government’s petition to enforce that subpoena.

Now, the feds are appealing to the 9th Circuit — and California continues to fight to protect the privacy and maybe even safety of the residents who just needed medical care, but could see their sensitive information, including addresses, turned over to immigration authorities if Trump had his way.

How could they possibly fight that on their own?

Then there’s a lawsuit in which Trump is trying to prevent California from continuing to give in-state tuition to Dreamers — undocumented immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as youngsters.

In battles such as that one, fought because it’s the right thing to do, Motomura sees a benefit greater than just protecting funding.

It forces us to push back against the federal government’s framing that immigration is “about invaders, you know, climbing walls,” Motomura said.

“This is about people who live in our communities,” he said. “And I think that when Bonta claims that space, he’s not just pushing back. He’s saying, ‘Let’s think about this in terms of building stronger communities,’ and I think that’s a significant shift.”

The rule of law may be battered and bruised, and even at times a bit hinky. But so far, it has held — in no small part because of Democratic attorneys general like Bonta who aren’t just filing lawsuits but have built the staffs and networks to do it effectively. It’s a much larger effort than we give it credit for, but one that has fundamentally protected our everyday lives so well that many have barely noticed the wolves at the door.

I’m sure there will be losses, wolves that crawl through windows, and we will all feel the bite of that. But 83 lawsuits will soon likely be 84, 94, whatever it takes to protect Californians.

Each one is a fight worth having, because every Californian is worth fighting for.

What else you should be reading

The must-read: From decorated U.S. Marine to arrested at Trump golf course: What we know about Jeanine John Taele
The deep dive: The obscure financial maneuver at issue in Dodgers owner probe explained
The L.A. Times Special: New park under neglected 6th Street Bridge stirs up hope, Boyle Heights gentrification fears

Stay Golden,
Anita Chabria
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Aug. 4 (UPI) — The Democratic primary for Michigan’s Senate seat between Abdul El-Sayed and Rep. Haley Stevens is just one of Tuesday’s key races to watch.

Michigan is one of five states holding primaries on Tuesday, along with Virginia, Missouri, Kansas and Washington.

El-Sayed and Stevens are running for the seat left open by retiring Sen. Gary Peters. El-Sayed has received endorsements from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., while Stevens has the endorsement of Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.

Stevens represents a more moderate wing of the Democratic Party while El-Sayed is the more progressive candidate.

Mike Rogers, a former Republican congressman, is running unopposed in the Republican primary. Rogers lost a tight race against Sen. Elissa Slotkin, D-Mich., in 2024. Rogers is endorsed by President Donald Trump.

Whitmer’s endorsement of Stevens is among the last endorsements she will make as sitting governor. She has reached her term limit, leaving the governor’s seat up for grabs.

For the Democratic Party, Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson is running against Genesee County Sheriff Chris Swanson. For the Republican Party, Rep. John James is running against businessman Perry Johnson. James is endorsed by Trump.

The Democratic Party is focused on flipping House seats in Virginia after the state’s Supreme Court struck down a congressional redistricting plan pushed by Democrats. The proposed map would have favored Democrats in 10 of 11 congressional districts.

Instead, Democrats are hoping to flip several Republican-held seats, including that of Rep. Jen Kiggans, R-Va. Elaine Luria, a former congresswoman, is running to take on Kiggans, who defeated her in 2024. She is one of four Democrats vying for the party’s nomination.

Seven Democrats are running for the opportunity to challenge Republican Rep. Rob Wittmann in the Williamsburg and suburban Richmond district. The Democratic Party has supported prosecutor Shannon Taylor’s primary campaign. Taylor was the first Democrat to be elected Henrico Commonwealth attorney in 40 years.

A Republican-led redistricting in Missouri has altered the makeup of the state’s congressional districts. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, D-Mo., who represents Kansas City, is running unopposed in a district that suddenly is more Republican-leaning than it has been in recent elections. The Republican primary to challenge Cleaver includes six candidates.

Former Rep. Cori Bush, D-Mo., is seeking a return to Congress after losing her seat to Rep. Wesley Bell, D-Mo. Bush and Bell are running in a firmly Democratic district in St. Louis. The district voted 80% for Vice President Kamala Harris in 2024.

In the state of Washington, nonpartisan primaries will see the top two vote getters on the ballot in November regardless of party. Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, D-Wash., is running for re-election against eight candidates in Washington’s District 3.

The Kansas gubernatorial election is an open race with Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly reaching her term limit this year. Three Democrats and seven Republicans are running for her seat in a state that favored Trump by 16 points in 2024.

WASHINGTON  — California and 22 other Democratic-led states urged the Supreme Court on Monday to block President Trump’s plan to take control of voting by mail through the U.S. Postal Service.

They said it is too late in the election year to impose a new set of regulations for mail ballots.

Doing so, they said, would lead to mistakes, including eligible and registered voters being told they are not on the federal government’s approved list.

“Because of the high risk of errors and the limited window for correcting mistakes, many of the millions of voters who rely on mail voting — especially voters with disabilities and those in rural areas — would likely be denied mail ballots and disenfranchised,” they told the court.

More broadly, they argued that the Constitution “entrusted the states and Congress — not the president — with the responsibility to set rules for federal elections.”

The justices are likely to act in a few days on whether to allow the Trump administration‘s plan to proceed pending the adoption of new and detailed guidelines.

Last week, Trump Solicitor Gen. D. John Sauer sent an emergency appeal to the Supreme Court contending judges in Boston moved too quickly to halt the administration’s new federal restrictions on voting by mail.

He argued judges should stand back for now, even though the midterm elections are only three months away.

Trump’s executive order required the U.S. Postal Service to use state-by-state lists of eligible voters who may send a ballot by mail.

Until now, states have had the constitutional authority to register voters for federal and state elections. And nearly a third of Americans now vote by mail.

Trump, however, has insisted that voting by mail leads to fraud, including by allowing noncitizens to vote.

Congress has refused to adopt new voting restrictions at Trump’s behest.

Instead, he issued an executive order on March 31 to enlist the Postal Service and the Department of Homeland Security to ensure “citizenship verification and integrity in federal elections.”

The order called on Homeland Security to compile state-by-state lists of citizens who are eligible to vote. And it told the postal service that it must use those lists to restrict who may vote by mail.

“The USPS shall not transmit mail-in or absentee ballots from any individual unless those individuals have been enrolled on a State-specific list,” the order said.

But a federal judge and the 1st Circuit Court in Boston ruled Trump’s new regulations may not be enforced this year, at least in the 23 Democratic-led states which sued.

On Monday, they told the court that USPS delivered nearly 100 million mail ballots to or from voters in 2024, with roughly 30% of all voters nationwide casting ballots by mail.

SACRAMENTO — Today we’re talking about California’s Proposition 39, a bid to turn Trump’s election conspiracy fantasies into California law, and a proposal so disingenuous it’s caused Democratic legislators to sue the Democratic secretary of state in an attempt to stop the misinformation surrounding it.

As these lawsuits move forward and the November election rolls closer, we’re going to hear a lot about Proposition 39 — a measure that would require in-person voters to present government-issued identification, among other provisions. I fear most if not all of this debate will revolve around the false claim that large numbers of undocumented people vote illegally in our elections.

“It’s directly a product of all of the rhetoric that Trump has been putting out there regarding election fraud and voting fraud,” said Mindy Romero, founder and director of the nonpartisan Center for Inclusive Democracy.

Romero stresses that there is not and has never been any evidence of widespread voter fraud in California, and the state already has a system that effectively checks voter eligibility.

Proposition 39 is “seeking a solution for a problem that doesn’t exist, and a solution that actually could cause additional problems,” she said. “So in and of itself, it perpetuates this false and dangerous narrative that there has been voter fraud in California.”

That lie is part of the ongoing grievance-fueled Trump campaign against non-white “replacement” Americans, meant to undermine trust in elections — you may recall he’s gone so far as to say immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country.” It’s a venal and dark vein of partisanship aimed at keeping the far-right in power even at the expense of democracy.

But also an effective lie. Because many folks don’t know exactly how their ballots are verified but do have ID, they don’t see the full impacts of Proposition 39.

The easy ID myth

I’ll tell you more about Proposition 39, but I’m starting with a story about an all-American teenager I’ll call “Sofia.” I’ve been helping Sofia,18, attempt to get her first government-issued identification. I stress attempt.

Folks, there’s been hoops, there’s been hurdles, there’s been Kafkaesque bureaucracy.

For people like Sofia that don’t have bills or jobs or even accurate student records (she’s moved a lot), scraping up enough documentation to convince the DMV you are who you say you are is tough. First, you really need a certified birth certificate.

Sofia wasn’t born in the county where she lives (it’s county recorders that keep them), which means she had to either drive hours or go through the state’s third-party online vendor to order one, at a cost of about $30. But here’s the catch — she needed proof of identity to order it.

So to get a birth certificate to get her ID, she needed ID.

Stuck in this circular nightmare, we found, after much effort, a loophole: I could appear in front of a public notary with Sofia, to testify using my ID that she was indeed Sofia. Strange, but whatever. We did it.

That wasn’t enough for the DMV. Sofia also needed two bills or other documents verifying her address. Because they will literally give a credit card to anyone, she applied to an online company, and got her first statement. One document down.

Again, scouring the DMV rules for days, we found another weird loophole: The second document can be a letter from a nonprofit with the person signing it vouching for Sofia’s identity. We got the letter, and Sofia’s Real ID was issued.

But then she had to move before it arrived. She tried to arrange mail forwarding with the postal service, but guess what? They required ID.

So the ID was lost in transit, and we are back to square one.

Who Proposition 39 really targets

That means Sofia is one of thousands of Californians, born and raised in the Golden State, who lack official identification because its not as easy to obtain it as some want you to believe.

And because she lacks it, she could be prevented from voting if Proposition 39 is passed, even though she is a legal citizen with every right to have her ballot counted, and California already has a system in place to ensure only citizens vote.

Sofia is exactly the kind of voter that Proposition 39 is actually aimed at. This is a voter suppression law, plain and simple, and it will harm women with name changes, naturalized citizens, young people, older people and virtually anyone who cares about not returning to Jim Crow-style laws that push people out of voting with subterfuge.

Proponents of the proposition would like you to believe it’s something very different from what I just described. Their fight about how we talk about this proposal has led to two lawsuits so far — one filed by the backers of Proposition 39 because they don’t like the official title the California attorney general put on it, and one filed by the leaders of the state Legislature because they argue the statements written by proponents for official voting materials aren’t truthful.

I’ll give you a taste of both of those arguments. Right now, the state is proposing to title the measure “Prohibits citizens from voting unless they present government-issued identification.”

State Assemblymember Carl DeMaio (R-San Diego), the always-Trumper behind Proposition 39, helped lead a lawsuit claiming that is inaccurate.

DeMaio issued a statement claiming Democrats are “trying to deceive voters by putting a false ballot title on it and are now even distracting voters from their tampering of the ballot title with this frivolous lawsuit.”

That frivolous lawsuit he’s complaining about is the one where the Democratic leaders of the Legislature last week sued the Democratic secretary of state and others over the language included in the state voter guide. The Democrats aren’t really angry at each other, it’s just that Secretary of State Shirley Weber is in charge of voter materials, so she’s one of the folks they’ve got to sue to make their case.

The lawsuit alleges, among other complaints, that proponents are falsely framing Proposition 39 as making it “easier to vote” when in fact it does the opposite.

“Prop. 39 requires no burdens be placed on voters,” the materials at issue read, according to the lawsuit. “No additional documents (birth certificate, marriage license, etc.) are required.”

So I take you back to Sofia. Because while Proposition 39 might not ask her to bring her birth certificate to the polls, it would ask her to bring her ID, which required her birth certificate to get.

A distinction without a difference.

“The fact that Donald Trump has endorsed it tells you everything you need to know,” wrote the lawsuits’ plaintiffs, House speaker Robert Rivas and Senate pro Tempore Monique Limón, in a statement. “As Californians and Latinos, we will not let MAGA cronies take Constitutional rights away from voters.”

That lawsuit will likely have its first hearing in court this week. But whatever a judge decides, the ballot box is where the fate of Proposition 39 rests.

Though it seems like average Californians could see through this sham, there are big bucks backing it, and money always speaks loudly.

The donors in support read like the guest list for a White House dinner. So far, they’ve raised more than $15 million. That includes $4 million from Richard Uihlein, the Illinois billionaire and Trump supporter who often funds organizations and causes that promote election conspiracies and far-right candidates.

The crypto-billionaire Winklevoss twins, Cameron and Tyler, have each donated $250,000, along with other Silicon Valley types including former RFK Jr. running mate Nicole Shanahan, who ponied up $370,000 in support of Proposition 39.

Oh, and by the way, L.A. developer and former mayoral candidate Rick Caruso has donated $25,000 to the effort.

That’s a lot of dough being poured into stopping certain Californians from voting. If they succeed, it won’t just be an inconvenience at the polls — but instead a double victory for Trump, both suppressing the vote ahead of the presidential election and legitimizing his election lies through law.

What else you should be reading

The must-read: FBI Escalates Trump’s “Voter Fraud” Crusade With Disturbing Move
The California angle: How Trump’s Endangered Species Act rollback is roiling Northern California
The L.A. Times Special: Trump running out of options to fix inflation, economic woes before election, experts say

Stay Golden,
Anita Chabria

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SAN DIEGO  — Emanuel Lexius’ market in El Cajon is typically bustling.

Not lately.

Lexius is Haitian, and so are most of the shoppers at Miche Caribbean Market. They come to stock up on familiar Haitian staples — Ti Malice vegetable oil spread, long-grain heirloom rice, Cola Couronne soda.

“People don’t want to be out,” he said, and “no one wants to be exposed.”

A wave of fear swept Haitian American communities in San Diego County and nationwide last week after the Trump administration revoked protections for Haitian immigrants living in the U.S. under temporary protected status, or TPS. The program has allowed roughly 350,000 Haitians — including thousands in San Diego and Los Angeles — to live and work in the U.S. because their home country is unsafe.

A federal district judge temporarily blocked the action for nearly five months before the Supreme Court upheld the Trump order in June. The Department of Homeland Security officially moved to remove the protections last Monday.

That has left Haitians in Southern California in a state of anxiety over whether and when they could be deported. Community leaders say the repercussions could be widespread, with people now scared to leave their homes or go to work — or at risk of losing their jobs because they no longer have work authorization.

“People who applied for a program that the U.S. government laid in place … they came to the U.S. in search of safety and protection, only for that to be pulled from under them without any support,” said Guerline Jozef, the executive director of Haitian Bridge Alliance, a local nonprofit that provides legal and social services to Haitians and other immigrant groups.

Along with Haiti, the Trump administration has moved to roll back temporary protected status for people from 13 countries, all of them majority Black or brown.

“Temporary Protected Status is exactly that — temporary,” said a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson. “For too long, TPS has been allowed to function as a de facto amnesty program despite Congress never intending it to be permanent.”

TPS was established for Haiti in 2010, after a catastrophic earthquake killed more than 200,000 people and destabilized the country. The protection was extended in 2021 amid the civil chaos that unfolded after Haiti’s president was assassinated and again in 2024 due to ongoing safety concerns. Today, armed gangs control sections of the country, presidential elections haven’t been held in a decade, and millions of people struggle with daily needs, per a recent United Nations report.

Today, the Trump administration says conditions in Haiti have improved enough for Haitians to return. But Haiti remains under a “Do not travel” advisory from the U.S. State Department, and the country has been under a state of emergency since March 2024.

Since their deportation protections ended Monday, local Haitians say they can’t go back to Haiti, pointing to safety concerns for themselves and their families.

“I had no choice but to leave Haiti,” said Galencha, a Haitian TPS holder who works in San Diego and requested his last name be withheld for fear he might be deported.

The 42-year-old, who is married with two young daughters, has lived in San Diego for seven years. He said his mother and uncle were killed in Haiti; his older brother was shot. His father is still there, but his sisters and close friends have left.

A Homeland Security spokesperson declined to comment on plans for any enforcement operations targeting Haitians but said enforcement actions are happening every day.

“Whenever we go out, it makes me feel bad,” said a 43-year-old Haitian man who lives near El Cajon. He too just lost his temporary protected status.

He arrived in the U.S. two years ago, alone, leaving behind his family. He typically waits in a Home Depot parking lot with the hope of getting picked up for a job, but it hasn’t been easy to find steady work.

Now, he and other local Haitians say they have been keeping their head on a swivel for immigration enforcement.

Even with temporary protected status, immigrants face a host of challenges to find work in the first place, said Maria Chavez, immigration legal director at the Partnership for the Advancement of New Americans. The process to qualify for a work permit and a reauthorization can take over a year with delays, she noted.

Most Haitians who have settled in San Diego since 2010 have found work in the hospitality, healthcare and construction industries — though many arrive with an entrepreneurial mindset forged in their home country, explained Jozef, from the Haitian Bridge Alliance.

“Due to the lack of a formal job market, the majority of the people have to find ways to create small businesses in Haiti,” she said. “So they come with that mindset of creating businesses.”

Right now, Haitian Bridge Alliance is focused on helping former TPS holders create a family plan — including getting their financial documents in order and creating contingency plans in case they’re deported. It’s also helping get basic needs like food to Haitians who are scared to leave home and connecting them with legal representation.

Since going back to Haiti is not an option for many Haitians in the region, now is the time for former TPS holders to pursue alternatives such as asylum or seeing if they qualify to stay in the U.S. through marriage, Chavez said.

“None of these are fast options,” she noted.

PANA and Haitian Bridge Alliance are fighting in court against the Trump administration’s termination of temporary protected status for Somalia. But Chavez says that fighting the termination for Haiti is largely off the table, since the Supreme Court has already upheld that order.

In the meantime, the end of Haitians’ temporary protections has created heartbreak throughout the community.

Husband and wife Martha and Feret Milliem own Caribbean Pleasure, a Point Loma restaurant serving Haitian cuisine in a dining room hung with Haitian flags.

The couple have lived in San Diego for nearly half a century and aren’t personally affected by the end of TPS protections — but it’s been painful to watch their community grow fearful and lose their grip on the American lives they’ve worked to build.

The impact extends to families back in Haiti, too, they add, if relatives in the U.S. who suddenly lose their legal jobs are unable to send money back to them.

“Right now, the Haitians are living under hell,” Martha said.

Fox writes for the San Diego Union-Tribune.

July 31 (UPI) — Spain said Friday that it was deploying troops to Ceuta, an autonomous Spanish principality on the coast of North Africa, to deal with an influx of tens of thousands of migrants who illegally crossed from Morocco.

Authorities requested assistance from Madrid after the security situation descended into chaos on Thursday with border integrity completely overwhelmed and at least 15 people drowned after attempting to swim to Ceuta.

“The armed forces will reinforce the Civil Guard in the exercise of its powers and any others that may be necessary to maintain security in the city of Ceuta,” said Spain’s Interior Ministry.

It added that it was coordinating with Morocco to address the flow of migrants and that both governments were committed to coming up with and implementing measures for the swift return “of all people who have entered illegally.“

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez was due to hold emergency talks with officials in Ceuta on Friday.

In a post on X, he reassured Ceuta President Juan Jesus Vivas that his administration was deploying all necessary resources and partnering with Moroccan and international authorities to “restore normalcy as soon as possible.”

Separated from the Spanish mainland by the Gibraltar Strait, just 10 miles wide, Ceuta is a key staging post in the journeys of migrants trying to reach Europe, with the influx apparently triggered by a recent Spanish Supreme Court ruling that people intercepted en route to Ceuta cannot be returned to Morocco.

The interior ministry blamed organized human traffickers using the decision to “encourage the flow of undocumented migrants.”

Implications for the other European countries, due to so-called Schengen free travel area that, once on the soil of any member nation, allows people to move around the continent passport-free, prompted France to tighten its border with Spain.

“In response to the situation observed in the Ceuta enclave, I gave instructions as of last night to immediately strengthen the controls at the Spanish border. Furthermore, I am activating the Rapid Intervention Border Force for in-depth checks,” Interior Minister Laurent Nunez announced on X on Friday morning.

It’s hard to hate on Canada. It’s like cursing a cotton ball, or raging about tapioca.

The friendliest of neighbors, the country has fought alongside the U.S. in conflicts going back to World War I, purchased many trillions of dollars worth of American goods and blessed this country with, among other gifts, ice hockey, Drake, Joni Mitchell and Alex Trebek.

While you can question the nation’s culinary sensibility — the unofficial dish, poutine, is an abomination consisting of French fries, cheese curds and hot gravy — Canada is basically a very large, very pretty country filled with a lot of very nice, extremely polite people.

But for reasons only he can fathom, President Trump has declared economic war on our amiable northern neighbor.

After more than a year of trading tit-for-tat tariffs, Trump recently escalated the conflict by slapping a new 50% tax on a variety of Canadian exports, including cement, furniture, dairy products and, most iconically, hockey sticks. The added levy, which will further burden inflation-weary U.S. consumers, is set to take effect in mid-August.

The move makes little sense from an economic or foreign policy standpoint. It’s best to regard Trump’s trade moves as a wind gauge charts a blustery storm; his on-again, off-again tariffs are not the result of some carefully thought-out policy but, rather, a measure of the president’s shifting moods and pique toward certain foreign leaders.

And they carry a not-inconsiderable price tag — California’s struggling wine industry being just one example.

For decades, the industry has been a vital and growing part of California’s agricultural economy. Recent years, however, have seen a number of setbacks.

Costs are rising. Sales are falling, as younger generations favor hard seltzers, canned cocktails or premium beers over crushed grapes. At the same time, climate change and the growing incidence of wildfire threaten the viability of some of California’s premier wine-growing regions.

A Canadian ban on alcohol imports

Then there’s the trade war with Canada, the industry’s largest export market and formerly a major customer of California wines. Until recently, the Canadian market accounted for more than a third of the state’s exports.

But last year, several provinces stopped purchasing U.S. alcohol in response to Trump’s tariffs and his threats — more slapstick than real — to annex the country and make Canada the 51st American state. While two provinces, Saskatchewan and Alberta, soon lifted their bans, the two most populous, Ontario and Quebec, have not.

As a result of this “geopolitical friction,” to use the words of University of California researchers, California wine exports to Canada fell by nearly 80% in 2025 compared with the year before. Unsurprisingly, Canadian sales of homegrown wines have soared.

Stick that in your terroir!

In response to the dramatic drop in exports, more than a dozen California members of Congress wrote last month to Quebec’s premier, Christine Fréchette, urging her to lift the retaliatory ban on U.S. wine and spirits.

“Reopening the market to American wine would restore consumer choice and signal a commitment to restoring fair and balanced trade for Québecois consumers and American wineries who have no connection to the underlying trade disputes,” the letter read.

Sen. Adam Schiff also wrote Fréchette asking her to resume the sale of California wine and U.S. spirits.

“The restriction on American wine has had damaging consequences for regional consumers, businesses, and producers who have no influence over national policies,” the California Democrat stated. “In fact, I have repeatedly voiced my opposition to and voted against the President’s harmful trade policies, including as they pertain to Canada.”

Fréchette’s response was, in a word: “Non!”

“In the context of the ongoing trade war, the premier continues to defend Quebec’s economic interests,” a spokesperson for Fréchette told CBC Radio. “This measure will remain in place as long as the United States maintains these unjustified tariffs. Our government will re-evaluate its position when the American administration reverses these measures.”

And that statement came before Trump upped the ante, along with the tariffs on Canada, which, presumably, doesn’t help matters.

Red or white?

Mike Thompson has seen the damage of Trump’s economic warfare firsthand. The St. Helena Democrat represents the heart of Wine Country and spearheaded, along with Democratic Rep. Jimmy Panetta of Carmel and Republican Rep. David Valadao of Hanford, the bipartisan overture to Quebec’s premier.

“I talked to a vintner today,” Thompson said during a drive this week through his sprawling Northern California district. “They went from an $11-million annual wine export to a $2-million annual wine export to Canada because of this.”

Thompson has introduced legislation, including a measure to reimburse wine producers for the money they’ve lost due to Trump’s tariffs, but the proposals have stalled in the House despite bipartisan support. His effort, Thompson dryly noted, “has not been warmly embraced by the administration.”

Meanwhile, the cross-border hostilities continue. Neither Trump nor Fréchette seems ready to budge, with California vintners still stuck in the middle.

So the question in Montreal and Toronto remains: What pairs best with poutine? Canadian white or red?

What else you should be reading

The must-read: Trump administration targeted California and other blue states for clean energy cuts
The deep dive: Justice Kennedy reflects on his time deciding the Constitution’s promise of liberty and equality
The L.A. Times Special: His nickname was ‘Satan.’ His political influence was immense
Until next time,
mzb
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By almost every measure, Latino communities are bearing the brunt of the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign, according to a new report.

The League of United Latin American Citizens or LULAC, a Latino civil rights organization, found that court-sanctioned racial profiling has contributed to the disproportionate targeting of Latinos regardless of their immigration status.

“The impact of mass deportation is falling on Latinos as an ethnic group, not on undocumented immigrants as a legal category,” the report read in part. “U.S. citizens, lawful permanent residents, work-authorized immigrants, and multi-generational American families are absorbing measurable harm: economic, physical, and civic.”

Although other immigrant groups have been targeted, LULAC found that Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have mostly focused on immigrants from Latin America, particularly workers with no criminal history, who are also more likely to face violence or be placed in detention centers with substandard conditions.

Citing a recent UCLA study, LULAC said from January to October, federal immigration agents arrested more than 187,000 Latinos and deported more than 126,000.

Latino arrests also jumped from under 3,900 to nearly 6,000 after Stephen Miller, White House senior advisor and chief architect of President Trump’s immigration policy, set a new goal of arresting 3,000 undocumented people a day.

In an email response to The Times, a spokesperson with the Department of Homeland Security rejected the report’s findings.

“Allegations that DHS law enforcement engages in ‘racial profiling’ are disgusting, reckless, and categorically FALSE,” the spokesperson wrote. “What makes someone a target for immigration enforcement is if they are illegally in the U.S.—NOT their skin color, race, or ethnicity.”

“Law enforcement officers use ‘reasonable suspicion’ to investigate immigration status and probable cause to make arrests consistent with the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution,” the spokesperson added. “The Supreme Court has already vindicated us on these practices.”

LULAC’s report comes amid recent court filings claiming that federal immigration agents were caught on body camera footage and in text messages using racial slurs when referring to Latinos.

Additionally, Congress recently approved nearly $70 billion in immigration enforcement funding to cover the rest of Trump’s term with at least $38 billion to go to ICE and $26 billion to Customs and Border Protection.

LULAC said in putting the report together it reviewed public data and published studies to provide a fact sheet that paints a broader picture about the impact mass deportations are having on Latinos.

“The people being removed are disproportionately working-age, employed and without criminal records — the demographic core of the workforce in construction, hospitality, agriculture, food processing, and care work,” the report read.

As of July 11, more than 65,000 people were being held in detention and about 70% of the population had no criminal convictions, according to Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a data gathering organization.

ICE detention data show that about 40% of detainees were being held for civil immigration violations including visa overstays and work visa violations.

Unless previously deported, living in the country illegally is considered a civil violation rather than a crime and carries penalties such as arrests, fines and deportation proceedings.

The indiscriminate immigration raids that terrorized Latino communities appeared to have worsened after the Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision in September, according to LULAC’s report.

The Supreme Court justices overturned a district court injunction that barred immigration agents in Los Angeles from roving around Home Depots and car washes, stopping brown-skinned, Spanish-speaking day laborers and others from arrest on immigration charges.

But once the injunction lifted, federal immigration agents descended once more on Latino communities, even stopping U.S. citizens, according to LULAC.

This month, the American Civil Liberties Union reviewed more than 1,200 enforcement incidents across eight states, identifying 155 U.S. citizens who were detained, targeted, or experienced law enforcement misconduct, and 437 incidents involving likely racial profiling. It also identified 214 children affected, including 32 Americans.

LULAC said the immigration raids had an economic impact. Citing a recent UCLA study, it said small business and Latino entrepreneurs in Los Angeles County saw foot traffic drop significantly, losing millions in potential revenue in June 2025.

A spokesperson for LULAC could not immediately be reached for comment.

WASHINGTON — President Trump and the Justice Department are asking the Supreme Court to toss an $83 million defamation verdict won by writer E. Jean Carroll after she accused him of sexual assault, saying he can’t be sued for comments he made while he was president.

It’s the second time Trump has asked the justices to nix damages awarded by a jury to Carroll, a longtime advice columnist and former TV talk show host. The Supreme Court refused in June to hear his appeal of another verdict, for $5 million, that found him liable for sexual abuse and defamation.

The latest case centers on comments Trump made during his first term as president. The Justice Department wants to invoke the Westfall Act, which shields government employees from being sued for doing their jobs.

“Absent this Court’s intervention, the sitting President is facing nearly a hundred million dollars of personal liability for conduct that was well within the scope of his federal office,” federal attorneys wrote. “That alone deserves this Court’s attention.”

The appeal was filed electronically and is expected to be formally docketed with the court Wednesday.

Trump’s lawyers, meanwhile, argued that an appeals court “engaged in procedural contortions” to avoid addressing Trump’s claims that presidential immunity protects him from the $83 million award because he made the statements in question in 2019 while he was president.

The lawyers argued that the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan ruled in a manner that “cries out for this Court’s review in this unprecedented case” and called the damages “grossly excessive.”

“This is the first case in our nation’s history in which a court has imposed damages liability on a president for his conduct in office,” the lawyers wrote.

Carroll’s lawyers have declined to comment on the latest Trump filing.

Trump has long argued he cannot be sued over comments he made about Carroll during his first term where he disavowed knowing her and attacked her motivations for going public with her story in a recent memoir. He’s also asking the Supreme Court justices to reconsider their rejection of his appeal in the $5 million verdict.

The appeal comes about two years after the Supreme Court granted Trump broad immunity from criminal prosecution as a former president.

Carroll testified twice before New York juries that Trump sexually assaulted her in spring 1996 in a dressing room at Bergdorf Goodman, a luxury retailer across the street from Trump Tower. She first went public with the claims in a 2019 memoir.

She sued Trump for defamation after he accused her of making up the allegation to help book sales, adding that he’d never met her and “she’s not my type.” He has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing.

A Manhattan jury awarded her $83 million in damages in January 2024. Lower courts have so far rejected Trump’s appeals to overturn the verdict, though the New York-based appeals court split over the decision and agreed to delay that payout until the Supreme Court weighs in.

In 2023, another jury said Carroll was entitled to $5 million after concluding that Trump had subjected her to sexual abuse in the department store encounter and for defamation for remarks he had made after his first term ended. That judgment has been paid.

The Associated Press does not identify people who say they have been sexually assaulted unless they come forward publicly, as Carroll has done.

Whitehurst and Neumeister write for the Associated Press. Neumeister reported from New York.

July 28 (UPI) — Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear sent a letter Monday to Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., telling him to address Kentuckians about his absence from Congress or resign.

Beshear is a Democrat and is considering a run for president.

McConnell, 84, has been hospitalized since June 14 for a fall. His office has released photos of McConnell and his wife, former Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao.

“As Governor of the state you serve, I am calling on you to directly and verbally address the people of Kentucky and provide proof of your capacity to serve, or resign,” Beshear wrote in a Monday letter shared with the media.

“Per our research, a vacancy in the Senate occurs when a senator dies, resigns, or is expelled by a vote of the Senate itself,” the governor wrote. “If you are unwilling to voluntarily show that you still have the capacity to serve, I will insist Leader [Sen. John] Thune [R-S.D.] fully investigate your condition, report to the American people, and begin the process if warranted.”

CNN first reported details of the letter, which was also sent to Thune.

On July 8, Beshear requested details of McConnell’s condition. McConnell’s office has said that he is recovering and working closely with doctors and medical staff. But McConnell himself hasn’t been shown in video or heard publicly via phone call. Images released of him have been met with public skepticism.

In the latest letter, Beshear said that “important events are happening in our country right now during your absence.”

“President Trump is stuck in a war of his own making and has greatly strengthened the very country he claims is a threat,” he said. “Prices continue to rise, crushing Americans who are working hard but not getting ahead. Americans’ voting rights are being eliminated by the Supreme Court and threatened by congressional action. All while you are absent and refuse to communicate clearly and directly to the people you serve.”

McConnell’s office released a statement Monday about the Senator’s health from the hospital’s Office of the Attending Physician.

“Senator McConnell continues his recovery from a fall at home in June. OAP physicians visit with the Senator every day, discussing all aspects of his rehabilitation care. Since his discharge from hospital care, he has maintained a strenuous course of physical therapy and rehabilitation, including multiple sessions a day designed to rebuild strength and reduce the risk of future falls. His bout with childhood polio continues to be a significant factor in his mobility. He is not yet medically cleared to leave the rehab facility and return to the office.”

McConnell also said in the update that he is sad to miss the annual Fancy Farm picnic in western Kentucky, an event that draws thousands to hear speeches from political candidates from around the state. The picnic is scheduled for Aug. 1.

Beshear noted the update but said it isn’t enough.

“I understand anyone’s desire for privacy, but when you run for office and serve as one of a state’s two U.S. senators, you willingly abdicate much of your personal privacy,” he said in the letter. “That’s the deal, and we all know it when we run.”

McConnell has said he will retire at the end of his term in January. He was hospitalized in February for flu-like symptoms and has fallen in the U.S. Capitol several times.

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration urged the Supreme Court on Monday to lift a judge’s order and clear the way for state-by-state lists of citizens who are eligible to vote by mail.

Solicitor Gen. D. John Sauer filed an emergency appeal and said judges in Boston had wrongly intervened too soon.

In March, Trump ordered the U.S. Postal Service to direct states to compile a list of citizens who are eligible to vote. This list would limit who may receive a mail ballot.

He also ordered the Department of Homeland Security to “compile and transmit state-specific lists of individuals who are citizens and will be 18 years of age or older at the time of an upcoming election,” Sauer said.

Lawyers for California and 22 other Democratic-led states sued, arguing the states, not the federal government, have the constitutional authority to set the rules for voting and elections.

In June, they won before a federal judge in Boston who blocked Trump’s order from going forward, at least in the 23 states which had sued. Her decision was upheld over the weekend by the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals.

In his appeal, Trump’s solicitor general focused on a procedural question, not the issue of whether the president has the legal authority to impose national rules on state-run elections.

Sauer said the U.S. Postal Service and the Department of Homeland Security had not issued final specific plans to comply with Trump’s directive.

“Courts cannot enjoin implementation of Executive Orders that leave open material issues that still need to be resolved by agencies,” he wrote.

He asked the court to lift or stay the “premature injunctions.”

Time is running short, he said.

“Absent a stay … there will not be sufficient time to obtain appellate relief before the November election,” Sauer said. “That is especially true because implementation efforts for any USPS rule or DHS policy will need to begin well before November … particularly given that absentee and mail-in voting begin (in some States) several weeks prior to Election Day.”

The justices asked for a response from the 23 Democratic states by Aug. 3.

SACRAMENTO — Last week, news broke that an artificial intelligence thingamajig broke free from the constraints of its maker, OpenAI, and committed what could be considered a string of white-collar felonies if it were human.

Because the AI thingamajig is in fact not human, the incident raised a big kerfuffle but is largely being treated as a giant oopsie we can learn from, without needing the pesky intervention of new rules or laws to stop it from happening again.

Such is the state of AI regulation in America right now.

California Rep. Jay Obernolte (R-Big Bear Lake) would like to change that. Last week, he introduced the bipartisan Frontier Act with Rep. Lori Trahan (D-Mass.). While the bill might not make either safety advocates or big tech companies entirely happy, it offers up the most comprehensive and strongest regulations of this dangerous industry that we’ve yet seen at the federal level.

Roman Yampolskiy, an AI expert and professor at University of Louisville, called the Frontier Act a “positive step because it acknowledges that frontier AI presents risks requiring dedicated oversight.”

Now, the challenge becomes passing it, and passing it in a meaningful, not-watered-down form — no easy task in a dysfunctional Congress driven by money and Donald Trump, and paralyzed by its own sycophancy to both.

If anyone has a shot, though, it’s Obernolte, who is that rarest of birds, a legislator who understands science, and his colleagues.

Obernolte represents Inland Empire areas around San Bernardino, but grew up in Fresno back in the era when the movie “War Games” was just hitting theaters.

Those of a certain age will remember how far-fetched it seemed when Matthew Broderick’s high school genius character accidentally breaks into a military AI system to play chess, but “Joshua,” the computer, takes it too far and tries to blow up the world. Now, of course, that just sounds like a regular Tuesday.

By the time he was in high school himself, Obernolte was giving that Broderick character a run for his money. An apparent computer savant, Obernolte was competing in artificial intelligence contests as a teenager, back when most of us were still playing Pong on Atari. Then he headed off to Caltech and then UCLA for advanced AI degrees. He said AI was his “first calling,” sparked when his father bought him an Apple II computer when he was 8.

He ended up dropping out of UCLA after getting his master’s because his side hustle making video games, including “NFL ’95,” turned out to be more lucrative than being a starving student. He ended up founding his own video game company, FarSight Studios, and building up a personal net worth close to $100 million.

Not bad for a kid from Fresno. In Congress, he has stuck close to the MAGA power base and was one of seven California legislators to vote against certifying the 2020 election results, a vote he took in his first days in office. He has been endorsed by Trump multiple times, and now sits on a bunch of committees and subcommittees of relevance.

For the past few years, he has pushed hard, if unsuccessfully, to create a framework for regulating AI, combining his deep understanding of the technology with his equal understanding of MAGA distaste for intervening in business.

Now, though, we’re in a moment, thanks to more than one big oopsie by technology companies. Just a few months ago, Anthropic and the Pentagon had their own tense encounter after Anthropic questioned how its AI was being used by the military. Huffy Pete Hegseth is still huffing over that one.

The public is increasingly skeptical of allowing the AI industry to govern itself, which is pushing legislators to rethink their hands-off approach, even as AI money pours like Niagara Falls into elections. Even Trump seems more inclined to consider it, signing an executive order recently that largely called for voluntary restraints on AI companies.

The introduction of the Frontier Act “shows how far the Overton window has shifted just in the past few months,” wrote Charlie Bullock, a senior research fellow with the nonpartisan Institute for Law & AI. “Not too long ago, a bipartisan bill this good and serious would have been a pipe dream. But things change quickly.”

Obernolte said the bill has been “a long time in the making,” but he hopes to package it with other legislation and is “cautiously optimistic” he can get something passed and signed by the end of the year.

As written now, the bill would allow the federal government to set minimum safety requirements and set up a framework for licensed, independent auditors to monitor compliance. That third party verification has been a key push by safety experts.

The bill would also give the government emergency powers to pause an AI model if it has a “present or impending catastrophic risk.”

It also borrows from state laws including California’s Proposition 53 that require some (not enough) transparency on the part of AI companies when things do go wrong.

To the consternation of some, the bill still contains curbs on what states can regulate on their own — basically carving out AI regulation as federal turf. This has been a huge sticking point in the fight over AI regulation because AI companies hate state laws and want them squashed. Their argument is that a patchwork of rules across states is too complicated.

“You don’t want to have 50 different state requirements for every single product that gets sold on a market, and that is particularly true of AI,” Obernolte told me.

To some extent that’s reasonable — but the problem so far has been that states such as California and New York have been the only level of government willing to try at regulation. California in particular has created some of the most comprehensive AI regulations to date and has about 30 pending bills on this issue this legislative season. The Frontier Act threads the needle on this by creating lanes where states can still pass their own laws — such as around consumer safety that would protect children or stop pornography.

But preventing catastrophic risk would largely be dependent on the federal oversight, which is great when the federal government is up to the task. Currently, we can’t even keep measles in check. So that’s a bit worrisome.

And Obernolte’s bill isn’t the only one vying for attention. Another Californian, Rep. Ted Lieu, introduced a bipartisan measure of his own with Nathaniel Moran (R-Texas). Dubbed the AI Kill Switch Act, it would give the Department of Homeland Security the authority to shut down problematic models.

Yampolskiy, the Louisville professor, said that bill had promise as well, because it’s important for companies to have a way to “rapidly disable or contain systems that exhibit dangerous or unexpected behavior.”

But, he warns, that’s just one part of the “complete solution” we need. Regulation is going to require more than one law.

For Obernolte’s part, he’s shown a willingness to work on a practical solution, not just a political one. That alone is worthy of notice. The Frontier Act is a genuine attempt to govern a nascent industry that is too powerful and unpredictable to be left to its own devices.

“I’m hoping that this is we’ve landed somewhere that everyone can understand and be happy with,” Obernolte said. “AI is not something that needs to be a partisan issue, and I don’t think it should be.”

What else you should be reading

The must-read: How Jimothy the raccoon became the internet’s latest animal obsession
The California angle: Trump Administration Admits Canceling Grants to States That Did Not Vote for Him
The L.A. Times Special: Mayor’s press team uses disappearing WhatsApp messages, avoiding scrutiny
Stay Golden,
Anita Chabria

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July 25 (UPI) — President Donald Trump‘s latest round of sweeping tariffs was hit with a lawsuit on Friday, just hours after going into effect.

Two small businesses challenged the newest levies, which apply 10% to 12.5% tariffs to more than 80 countries, justified under a provision to prevent goods made with forced labor from being imported.

The lawsuit was filed by a spice company in New York, Burlap and Barrel, and a California watch store, Collective Horology.

They are represented by the Liberty Justice Center, a legal nonprofit that won a Supreme Court case against the president’s previous round of tariffs.

Since the loss in court earlier this year, Trump has explored other legal authorities to support his tariffs and bypass congressional approval.

“Forced labor is morally indefensible, but an important objective does not give the government permission to ignore the law,” said Sara Albrecht, CEO of the Liberty Justice Center, in a statement. “The administration allowed one global tariff to expire and immediately replaced it with another under a different statute. Changing the statute doesn’t change the law. Every tariff authority has limits, and every administration must respect them.”

In the lawsuit, plaintiffs said the U.S. Trade Representative “failed to provide a reasoned, record-based explanation for its determinations.”

“This is the third time the administration has attempted to impose its global tariff policy without following the statutory limits,” said Jeffrey Schwab, senior counsel and director of litigation at the Liberty Justice Center, in a statement.

“Section 301 is a targeted, country-specific and practice-specific remedial authority,” Schwab added. “It is not a freestanding authorization to tax substantially all imports from substantially all countries at preestablished rates.”