supreme court

WASHINGTON, May 14 (UPI) — Every day at 4 a.m., Cesar wakes up to sell burritos on the streets of Los Angeles. He spends a few hours preparing food in his apartment kitchen and later sets up a small canopy tent with a grill, several coolers and a large sign, made by his sister, advertising “burritos for sale.”

He has done this for the last three weeks, after finding out just over a month ago that he was terminated from his human relations job. He lost the job because of renewal delays to his status under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program.

Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill, said Tuesday that 32,000 people have lost their DACA status largely as a result of delays. The Department of Homeland Security has not released data on the number of people waiting for renewals.

More than 500,000 people rely on DACA, according to the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services. The program requires recipients to renew their status every two years.

“At first, when I was let go, I was feeling devastated, defeated,” said Cesar, who came to the United States when he was 4 and who did not want his last name used for fear of government retribution. “But, after going through those feelings, I knew I couldn’t just sit there.”

Cesar is one of many DACA recipients who have lost their jobs in recent months due to renewal delays, largely caused by increased vetting procedures. The program requires recipients to renew their status every two years.

The Obama-era immigration program provides work authorization to those who qualify, as well as protection from deportation. When their status expires, DACA recipients lose both protections. Many, like Cesar, now have been terminated from their jobs as a result and fear deportation.

Cesar applied for his renewal in early December, nearly six months ago. Like many others, he has received no communication since from USCIS. Previously, renewal applications took one to two months on average, according to the Department of Homeland Security. Last year, the median processing time was 15 days, according to DHS data.

“In its 14 years, we have certainly seen the DACA program face a whole host of attacks,” said Anabel Mendoza, a spokesperson from United We Dream, a youth-led immigrant network. “But what we’re seeing now is truly the most dangerous moment in DACA’s history.

More than 700 people attended a Zoom event hosted by United We Dream last week to help DACA recipients navigate the instability created by these delays. There was a distinct sense of anxiety among the attendees.

Participants flooded the chat feature of the call with anecdotes of losing solid jobs and questions on whether DACA recipients qualified for paid leave or unemployment.

One attendee wrote that, although he would prefer not to use unemployment, he had been waiting five months to receive his renewal. Like many others, he was worried about his ability to pay off significant bills and loans after losing his job.

One person even questioned whether they could sue the current administration.

Another asked whether they could now be deported, with many worrying whether they may even be detained at their immigration appointments.

The two central benefits of DACA, historically, have been legal protection from deportation and work authorization. However, a recent ruling by the Board of Immigration Appeals, an arm of the Department of Justice, said that judges can no longer stop deportation proceedings simply based on the plaintiff having DACA status. This marked a significant shift in immigration policy.

Organizers at the event stressed that DACA still protects recipients from deportation, but judges now have to consider DACA cases more closely. They later acknowledged that many DACA recipients were detained and deported by ICE last year, even before the ruling.

Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons confirmed in April that 343 people with DACA status were detained between January and November 2025, while 176 were deported.

Former DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said in a statement in February that most of these people had “criminal histories.” However she did not specify their crimes or whether they had been arrested, charged or convicted.

“It is part of a broader pattern of really trying to undermine DACA and erode the very protections that the program was meant to uphold,” Mendoza said.

This was a sentiment echoed by Maria Fernanda Madrigal, a mother of three who recently lost her job as an immigration attorney after losing her work permit because of the delays.

In an interview, she questioned whether the delays were an intentional strategy by the Trump administration. She explained that the renewal process had previously been very straightforward for many of her clients — sometimes taking just a week.

“I’m still trying to figure out what the goal is,” Madrigal said. “Because it’s hard, do they want us to leave?”

She highlighted Trump’s attempted termination of the DACA program in 2017 during his first term. The Supreme Court blocked him and preserved the program in 2020.

Now, she wonders whether it may be easier for her and her family to leave the United States. She explained that, unlike their parents, “a lot of us [DACA recipients] have degrees and careers, so we know that we’ll be able to build lives somewhere else.”

Madrigal now keeps the doors of her house locked at all times out of fear of being detained while she awaits her renewal. She said she and her husband have had discussions about whether their small children should share a bed with them.

“If I’m ever detained, these are the moments that I’m going to want, right? I’m going to look back and say I wish I would have cuddled with them a little longer,” Madrigal said.

As Cesar’s new business continues to grow, he faces similar fears, worrying whether he might be “taken away at any moment.”

“I know a lot of people say we’re resilient and we’ll figure it out. And that’s very true,” Madrigal said. “But, I think the main thing that our people understand is, even though we might be able to stick together and get over this, we shouldn’t have to.”

Three political ads meant to break through our collective indifference caught my eye this week, as we come down to the wire on the June 2 primary election.

Each one says less about the candidates involved, and more about this moment in politics and where the races for California governor and L.A. mayor may be headed. Each ad also hints at deeper issues that haven’t quite reached the water-cooler conversation level, but maybe should.

Becerra blunder

The first ad that grabbed my attention was a quick-turn by San José Mayor and gubernatorial candidate Matt Mahan (still stuck in single-digit polling numbers), who jumped on Xavier Becerra’s first major mess-up.

Becerra chastised KTLA interviewer — on camera — not to give him too many hard questions because, “This is not a gotcha piece, right?”

That left a lot of folks wondering about his temperament and transparency, something rival Katie Porter knows a bit about.

The video went viral, and Mahan mashed it up with now-infamous clips of Porter walking out of a different interview earlier in the campaign cycle.

The result was a fast, funny, pointed jab that made both Becerra and Porter look prickly and unaccountable. For Porter, that damage was done long ago. But this moment for Becerra, the very-slim-margin front-runner, could have sticking power.

New polls, which likely don’t account for the impact of this gaffe, have Becerra edging up in a lead over Tom Steyer or maybe just tied. If Becerra is leading, it’s not by much, and he’s not a shoo-in by any means.

The bigger issue is that there are many hard questions that Becerra will likely need to answer if he does make the general election — questions he’s largely been dodging with pat answers.

This week, one of the lobbyists charged in a scheme that allegedly stole more than $200,000 from one of Becerra’s old campaign accounts will appear in court again.

She’s apparently been working on a plea deal, so it’s likely either that will be formalized, or the case will move forward to a trial. Becerra is not accused of any wrongdoing and told my colleague Dakota Smith that he had testified before the grand jury in the case.

But Becerra has also said he was aware that up to $10,000 a month was being paid out of a dormant campaign account to manage that money, since his role as the Health and Human Services Secretary made it illegal for him to be involved directly.

The question that seems relevant in this age of fraud-and-waste panic is who pays $10,000 a month to have someone watch over a dormant account and doesn’t think that’s excessive? Becerra may have been an innocent victim, but $120,000 a year is a lot of money to pay someone to babysit a largely unused stack of cash.

If Becerra does make it through to the primary and faces Hilton or potentially Steyer, both successful businessmen, expect this lack of financial acumen to be an issue — a hard question that is fair to ask of the person who wants to run the fourth largest economy in the world.

Steyer backers

Speaking of money, the second ad (or sort-of ad) that caught my attention is tied to Steyer, the billionaire who has spent more than $100 million of his own money in this race.

The Sacramento Bee reported that Steyer’s campaign has been paying influencers to post support of him online. The account mentioned in the Bee’s report seems to have removed those videos, but others have archived some of them.

These posts are meant to decidedly not feel like advertisements, but just organic support from Steyer supporters. Steyer’s is far from the first campaign to do this and won’t be the last.

Trump, Kamala Harris, Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA — all of them have courted influencers, paid or unpaid, to reach voters, especially young ones. California is one of the few states with a law that tries to regulate some of this type of content, but it’s not a strong law.

While there may be nothing shocking in Steyer’s digital strategy, it should alarm us on the larger level of having a healthy democracy. We’ve largely forgotten the black hole of delusion that millions of Americans fell into during the pandemic era from online misinformation brokers. Remember QAnon?

Influence campaigns are shockingly powerful, and growing in sophistication by the minute. While Steyer’s efforts may be run-of-the-mill, it’s an area of political communication that demands greater transparency and regulation.

Pratt problems

Which brings us to Spencer Pratt, and the ad (ads, really) that caught everyone’s attention — the AI-generated mini-movies that blatantly steal the “Batman” and “Star Wars” intellectual property and which have earned so much viral attention that the mayor’s race can now fairly say it’s got national reach.

Pratt did not make these ads, but he’s reposted them, and millions have watched. Though it may seem obvious they are made by artificial intelligence, they are not identified as such.

Pratt has portrayed himself as angry with what he’s sees as Bass’ failure after the Palisades and Eaton fires — a fair criticism that many share. He’s made his own ads highlighting how his family is forced to now live in an Airstream trailer, though TMZ reported Wednesday that Pratt has actually been camping out at the Hotel Bel-Air, where rooms were starting at $1,420 a night this week. (Pratt disputes this reporting and said Wednesday that he doesn’t live anywhere.)

Though parody is protected speech, one of the AI videos Pratt has promoted ends with a crowd, including a child, pelting L.A. Mayor Karen Bass, Gov. Gavin Newsom and Kamala Harris with fruit until they flee.

Jeb Bush, the former governor of Florida, posted online that it was “maybe the best political ad of the year.”

I disagree. While a certain segment of conservative white male voters might find it hilarious to pelt women of color until they run in fear, I’m pretty sure there are some messages in that missive that aren’t getting the scrutiny they deserve.

The links between hate speech and political violence are well documented. Outrage and action are tied, but now increasingly removed from reality. How AI — especially AI depicting political rivals as unhinged, evil villains — will affect voters, and democracy in general, isn’t yet understood.

I doubt these ads on behalf of Pratt will change the minds of many voters, but they do change politics.

And not for the better.

What else you should be reading

The must-read: Ex-gubernatorial candidate Stephen Cloobeck interfered with witness in girlfriend’s case, authorities say
The deep dive: How a fast food taco showed us who Steve Hilton really is
The L.A. Times Special: A bombshell fraud case takes the spotlight in California’s high-stakes race for governor

Stay Golden,
Anita Chabria

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May 13 (UPI) — The South Carolina Supreme Court on Wednesday overturned the double murder convictions for former lawyer Alex Murdaugh for the slayings of his wife and son.

The court ordered a new trial for the 2021 deaths of Margaret Murdaugh and Paul Murdaugh. Alex Murdaugh was convicted in 2023 of the two murders — along with two counts of possession of a weapon during a violent crime — and sentenced to life in prison without the chance of parole.

In a 5-0 ruling Wednesday, though, the state’s highest court said the murder trial had been improperly influenced by county clerk Becky Hill. The justices said she “placed her fingers on the scales of justice, thereby denying Murdaugh his right to a fair trial by an impartial jury.”

“Although we are aware of the time, money and effort expended for this lengthy trial, we have no choice but to reverse the denial of Murdaugh’s motion for a new trial due to Hill’s improper external influences on the jury and remand for a new trial.”

Hill pleaded guilty last year to charges she lied to the court about showing sealed court documents to a photographer, NBC News reported. She was sentenced to one year of probation.

South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson said in a statement to CNN that he plans to retry Alex Murdaugh.

“While we respectfully disagree with the Court’s decision, my Office will aggressively seek to retry Alex Murdaugh for the murders of Maggie and Paul as soon as possible,” he said.

“No one is above the law and, as always, we will continue to fight for justice.”

Murdaugh’s lawyers welcomed the state supreme court’s decision.

“We look forward to a new trial conducted consistent with the Constitution and the guidance this court has provided,” they said.

May 12 (UPI) — Missouri’s Supreme Court has approved the state’s new congressional maps, handing a win to the Trump administration as it seeks to create additional Republican-favored seats ahead of November’s midterm elections.

The high court ruled unanimously Tuesday in three cases that challenged the map, stating in a joint opinion affecting two cases that the redraw does not violate the state’s Constitution, and rejected a referendum-related challenge against the bill that permitted the unorthodox mid-decade redraw.

“Today’s Missouri Supreme Court rulings are a HUGE victory for voters,” Missouri Gov. Mike Kehoe, a Republican, said in a social media statement Tuesday.

“Missourians are more alike than we are different, and our Missouri Values — rooted in common sense, hard work and personal responsibility — are stronger and far more aligned across both sides of the aisle than the extreme left-wing agendas pushed in states like New York, California and Illinois.

“The Missouri First Map ensures those values are represented fairly and accurately at every level of government.”

Missouri began the effort to redraw its congressional map last summer amid President Donald Trump‘s push for Republican-led states to create more GOP-favored seats for November’s midterm elections. The map, which Kehoe signed in September, redraws Democrat Rep. Emanuel Cleaver’s Kansas City-area district to include more rural, Republican-leaning areas, potentially whittling Missouri’s Democratic delegation in the U.S. House of Representatives from two seats to one.

Trump has repeatedly voiced concern about potential impeachment proceedings if Republicans lose the House. Creating additional Republican-leaning seats increases the GOP’s chances of maintaining control of the chamber, making impeachment less likely while limiting Democrats’ ability to conduct investigations into the Trump administration or stymie his agenda.

Texas was the first state to move on mid-decade redistricting, kicking off a gerrymandering arms race in which Democratic-led states sought to counter with their own maps and Republican-led states responded with additional redraws.

Fifteen states have moved to redistrict, with eight — seven Republican-led and one Democratic-led — having implemented new congressional maps, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Democratic-led Virginia also approved a new map, but the state Supreme Court overturned it last week.

The Missouri Supreme Court decisions on Tuesday resolve months of litigation in a trio of separate cases filed by Missouri voters against the redistricting.

In consolidating two cases that similarly challenged the constitutionality of the map’s redraw, the justices unanimously ruled that the appellants failed to show that it unlawfully slip the Kansas City-area district.

The other unanimous ruling sided against Missouri voters seeking to have the issue put to a ballot referendum.

Opponents to the maps criticized the court following its ruling, highlighting the fact that it was issued the same day arguments in the case were presented.

“While one might be inclined to hope that these justices managed to grapple with a highly complex, nuanced and consequential issue in just six hours, it seems clear the justices were not interested in the day’s proceedings and simply had their opinion already finalized, even before this morning’s argument,” Marina Jenkins, executive director of the National Redistricting Foundation, said in a statement.

“With this decision, the Missouri Supreme Court has shown Missourians the lack of seriousness with which it takes cases that pertain to protecting their right to vote — a complete and dangerous abdication of the judiciary’s role.”

The Campaign Legal Center, the American Civil Liberties Union Voting Rights Project and the ACLU of Missouri similarly criticized the ruling.

“Mere hours after argument was held, the court released its decisions siding against voters in every respect,” the groups said in a joint statement.

“We are extremely disappointed in these rulings, and in their failure to protect Missourians’ right to fair maps. This state — and our democracy — are worse off for this outcome.”

May 12 (UPI) — The South Carolina Senate voted Tuesday against a measure to extend its legislative session to redraw the state’s congressional map. President Donald Trump has pressured lawmakers to move forward with redistricting to give Republicans an advantage.

Five Republicans joined Democrats in voting against the resolution, which would have extended the session by a week, NBC News reported. This would have given the Senate more time to vote on a plan that would break up the state’s only Black-majority district. The legislative session ends Thursday, and the state’s primaries are June 9.

The redistricting push by Trump comes after a U.S. Supreme Court decision in late April that badly weakened a key part of the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965, one that had helped ensure minority groups could elect their choice of candidates.

State Sen. Shane Massey, a Republican and Senate majority leader, spoke out about the efforts before the vote, saying it’s a show of weakness to use redistricting to quash minority votes, Greenville News reported.

“My conscience is clear on this one,” Massey said. “I know what the right thing to do is.”

Massey said he’d received a call from Trump in recent days about pushing forward redistricting. On Monday night, Trump posted on social media that he was watching the vote closely.

“South Carolina Republicans: BE BOLD AND COURAGEOUS, just like the Republicans of the Great State of Tennessee were last week!” he wrote.

Last Thursday, the Tennessee state legislature passed a redistricting map that eliminated the state’s last Democrat-leaning, Black-majority district. Other Southern states have also been moving in this direction.

Senate Minority Leader Brad Hutto said the vote sends a message that the state rejects a White House power grab, Greenville News reported.

“The people of this state expect us to focus on real issues affecting their daily lives, not carry out an outside political agenda,” he said.

Later Tuesday, Republican candidates for governor in South Carolina criticized the members of their party who voted against the resolution.

Rep. Nancy Mace, who’s been endorsed by Trump for the governor position, posted on social media that the state needs “a Governor who the statehouse will fear and listen to.”

“You know I’d whip every single ‘NO’ vote into shape if I was Governor,” she posted.

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court is leaving access to a widely used abortion pill untouched until at least Thursday, while the justices consider whether to allow restrictions on the drug, mifepristone, to take effect.

Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr.’s order Monday allows women seeking abortions to continue obtaining the pill at pharmacies or through the mail, without an in-person visit to a doctor. It prevents restrictions on mifepristone imposed by a federal appeals court from taking effect for the time being.

The court is dealing with its latest abortion controversy four years after its conservative majority overturned Roe vs. Wade and allowed more than a dozen states to effectively ban abortion outright.

The case before the court stems from a lawsuit Louisiana filed to roll back the Food and Drug Administration’s rules on how mifepristone can be prescribed. The state claims the policy undermines the ban there, and it questions the safety of the drug, which was first approved in 2000 and has repeatedly been deemed safe and effective by FDA scientists.

Lower courts concluded that Louisiana is likely to prevail, and a three-judge panel of the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that mail access and telehealth visits should be suspended while the case plays out.

The drug is most often used for abortion in combination with another drug, misoprostol. Medication abortions accounted for nearly two-thirds of all abortions in the U.S. in 2023, the last year for which statistics are available.

The current dispute is similar to one that reached the court three years ago.

Lower courts then also sought to restrict access to mifepristone, in a case brought by physicians who oppose abortion. They filed suit in the months after the court overturned Roe.

The Supreme Court blocked the 5th Circuit ruling from taking effect over the dissenting votes of Alito and Justice Clarence Thomas. Then, in 2024, the high court unanimously dismissed the doctors’ suit, reasoning they did not have the legal right, or standing, to sue.

In the current dispute, mainstream medical groups, the pharmaceutical industry and Democratic members of Congress have weighed in cautioning the court against limiting access to the drug. Pharmaceutical companies said a ruling for abortion opponents would upend the drug approval process.

The FDA has eased a number of restrictions initially placed on the drug, including who can prescribe it, how it is dispensed and what kinds of safety complications must be reported.

Despite those determinations, abortion opponents have been challenging the safety of mifepristone for more than 25 years. They have filed a series of petitions and lawsuits against the agency, generally alleging that it violated federal law by overlooking safety issues with the pill.

President Trump’s administration has been unusually quiet at the Supreme Court. It declined to file a written brief recommending what the court should do, even though federal regulations are at issue.

The case puts Trump’s Republican administration in a difficult place. Trump has relied on the political support of antiabortion groups but has also seen ballot question and poll results that show Americans generally support abortion rights.

Both sides took the silence as an implicit endorsement of the appellate ruling. Alito is both the justice in charge of handling emergency appeals from Louisiana and the author of the 2022 decision that declared abortion is not a constitutional right and returned the issue to the states.

Sherman, Mulvihill and Perrone write for the Associated Press. Mulvihill reported from Haddonfield, N.J.

WASHINGTON — Democrats on Monday filed an emergency appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court seeking to halt a Virginia ruling invalidating a ballot measure that would have given their party an additional four winnable U.S. House seats.

The move came after the Virginia Supreme Court on Friday struck down a constitutional amendment that voters narrowly passed just last month. The 4-3 state court decision found that the Democratic-controlled legislature improperly began the process of placing the amendment on the ballot after early voting had begun in Virginia’s general election last fall.

Democrats argued unsuccessfully that the U.S. Supreme Court has held that, even if early voting is underway, an election does not happen until election day itself.

The appeal is the latest twist in the nation’s mid-decade redistricting competition. It was kicked off last year by President Trump urging Republican-controlled states to redraw their lines and was supercharged by a recent Supreme Court ruling severely weakening the Voting Rights Act.

“The Court overrode the will of the people who ratified the amendment by ordering the Commonwealth to conduct its election with the congressional districts that the people rejected,” wrote lawyers for Virginia Democrats and Democratic state Atty. Gen. Jay Jones. “The irreparable harm resulting from the Supreme Court of Virginia’s decision is profound and immediate.”

The filing is a sign of Democratic desperation after the Virginia decision. Democrats are still favorites to recapture the U.S. House of Representatives, but their GOP rivals have claimed to have gained more than a dozen seats through redistricting. The voter-approved Virginia map would have partly offset that.

Democrats are taking a legal long shot in asking the justices to reverse the Virginia court’s ruling. The Supreme Court tries to avoid second-guessing state courts’ interpretations of their own constitutions. In 2023, it turned down a request by North Carolina Republicans to overrule a state Supreme Court decision that blocked the GOP’s congressional map.

Politically, the appeal could help a party struggling to compete with Republicans in the unusual mid-decade redrawing of congressional boundaries by providing fodder for election-year messaging about a partisan Supreme Court. The court recently allowed Louisiana Republicans to proceed with redistricting after the justices struck down a majority Black district as an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.

Democrats have been set on their heels because, days after the Virginia ballot measure passed, the Supreme Court’s conservatives reversed decades of rulings and in effect neutered the Voting Rights Act, paving the way for Southern states to eliminate some majority Black districts and further pad Republican margins in Congress.

The Virginia amendment had been launched long before that ruling. It was intended as a response to Republican gains in Texas, Missouri, North Carolina and Ohio, and to blunt a new map in Florida that just became law. Once the Virginia amendment passed, it briefly turned the nationwide redistricting scramble into a draw between the two parties.

That was unraveled by the Virginia Supreme Court’s decision. The justices are appointed by the legislature, which has flipped between the two parties in recent decades, and the body is generally not seen as having a clear ideological bent.

Whitehurst writes for the Associated Press.

SACRAMENTO —  Here’s what the Democratic candidates for governor aren’t telling us: While promising the moon, they’ve avoided saying how they would keep paying for all of Sacramento’s current costly programs.

Termed-out Gov. Gavin Newsom and the Democratic-controlled Legislature have dug the state into a deep financial hole, and it faces severe deficit spending through the next governor’s first term.

The only honest solution is an unpopular mix of program cuts and tax increases, plus a focused, earnest and unlikely effort at making government more cost-effective and efficient.

The worst option would be the easy one that got Sacramento into its current mess: gimmicky budgeting that includes excessive borrowing, program delays rather than outright eliminations and fudged numbers.

Nonpartisan Legislative Analyst Gabriel Petek recently estimated “the state faces structural deficits running from $20 billion to $35 billion annually.”

He warned the state’s financial commitments funded by its revenue “[are] not sustainable” and added that mopping up the red ink “will likely require at least some — if not significant — spending reductions.”

The analyst pointed out that since 2019, under Newsom, state general fund spending has risen by $100 billion to $248 billion in the governor’s latest budget proposal in January. About 70% of the growth went to maintaining existing services and 30% was for expanding or creating new programs.

“In retrospect,” Petek continued, “the state could not afford to sustain its existing services while funding … expansions and new programs.”

Last week, the analyst reported some good news coupled with bad. He estimated a $25-billion boost in unanticipated revenue, driven by artificial intelligence enthusiasm and “the related stock market boom.” But, he added, “these surging revenues likely are not sustainable.”

The analyst said the stock market appears to be “in a speculative bubble, rivaled only by the dot-com boom” (that led to the Great Recession) “and the Roaring ‘20s” (that ushered in the Great Depression).

“The state should be prepared for revenues to be tens of billions lower within one or two years.”

Newsom will get another crack at legitimately balancing a budget on Thursday when he revises his spending proposal for the next fiscal year.

You can’t really blame the governor’s wannabe Democratic successors for dodging this fiscal thicket. Program cuts and higher taxes don’t attract voters. Moreover, the subject is weedy and boring. For that reason, I suspect, moderators didn’t even delve into it during three recent televised gubernatorial debates.

Regardless, budget-crafting is a governor’s most sacred duty and the source of much of their power. It would help voters to know where the candidates stand. Right now, they’re in hiding.

Former state Senate leader Don Perata, a Democrat, posted this last week about the chronic deficits:

“Apparently, candidates find this untroubling or maybe someone else’s worry. None … even mentioned it during those juvenile television ‘debates’ and the hundreds of millions spent on campaign commercials.”

Instead, various contenders have been promising voters a Santa’s sleigh of goodies: state-run single-payer healthcare, free childcare, partial no-tuition college, suspension of the gas tax, no state income tax for people earning under $100,000 and generous subsidies for Hollywood filmmaking.

Billionaire hedge fund founder Tom Steyer and former Orange County congresswoman Katie Porter have been touting single-payer healthcare, an idea pushed by politically potent nurses unions and Democratic progressives. Private insurance would be eliminated and, under most proposals, so would the popular Medicare. The state would manage all medical insurance — more efficiently and at less consumer expense, advocates insist.

But this concept seems far beyond the state’s financial reach and operational capability. Its cost could exceed twice the current state budget. And I shudder to think of our state bureaucracy trying to handle healthcare for 39 million people. First, get the DMV working right and the botched bullet train rolling.

For many years, underdog gubernatorial candidate Antonio Villaraigosa — a former Los Angeles mayor — has called the single-payer notion “snake oil.” In a CNN debate last week, he termed it “pie in the sky.”

Centrist San José Mayor Matt Mahan chimed in, asserting: “The candidates who are fighting for single-payer don’t know how to pay for it, and they’re not being honest about it.”

Practically everyone jumped on new Democratic frontrunner Xavier Becerra — former state attorney general and U.S. health secretary — for seemingly being unable to specify whether he’s for or against single-payer.

“I’ve been consistent for over 30 years,” he said, trying to explain that he favors Medicare-for-all as “the most efficient way that we can do healthcare.”

It was a silly waste of debate time. They were arguing over oranges and lemons — both citrus, but different. Becerra should have just made clear that he’s opposed to single-payer and supports a separate version of universal healthcare: Medicare-type coverage with a supplemental private insurance option for all Californians. If that’s indeed what he favors.

Mahan bragged that he’s “the only candidate in this race who is calling for a suspension of the gas tax.” It’s a highlighted Republican talking point. But no other Democratic candidate advocates suspending the tax because it’s a screwy idea.

The roughly 60-cent-per-gallon state gas tax pays for filling potholes and more serious road repairs and improvements. Moreover, the next governor won’t take office until January. Suspending the tax then — even if the Legislature approved — wouldn’t reduce today’s soaring pump prices.

My take on the debates:

Becerra survived. He’s refreshingly calm but needs to be more crisp.

Steyer was articulate and may have attracted Bernie Sanders fans.

Porter is a talented debater, but seemed overly defensive about her past hot temper.

Mahan was fine, but he just got off the bench and it’s late in the game.

Villaraigosa was straightforward as usual, and finally had a broad audience.

All should bone up on budget-balancing and tell us their thinking.

What else you should be reading

The must-read: How MAGA Sheriff Chad Bianco is shaking up the 2026 California gubernatorial primary
The other must-read: Tom Steyer tries to sell voters on his own personal change
The L.A. Times Special: Abortion access just took another blow. California wasn’t spared

Until next week,
George Skelton

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May 8 (UPI) — President Donald Trump threatened to raise tariffs to “much higher levels” on the European Union if it doesn’t agree to a trade deal by July 4.

“I had a great call with The President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen. We discussed many topics, including that we are completely united that Iran can never have a Nuclear Weapon. We agreed that a regime that kills its own people cannot control a bomb that can kill millions. I’ve been waiting patiently for the EU to fulfill their side of the Historic Trade Deal we agreed in Turnberry, Scotland, the largest Trade Deal, ever! A promise was made that the EU would deliver their side of the Deal and, as per Agreement, cut their Tariffs to ZERO! I agreed to give her until our Country’s 250th Birthday or, unfortunately, their Tariffs would immediately jump to much higher levels,” the president said Thursday afternoon on Truth Social.

The threat came after The EU has struggled to agree on the terms of the Turnberry Accord, which was for the United States to lower tariffs on EU products and for the EU to remove tariffs on U.S. industrial goods and invest billions in U.S. industries, including energy.

Von Der Leyen said on X that the bloc is still committed to the deal.

“I had a very good call with @POTUS. We discussed the situation in the Middle East and our close coordination with regional partners. We are united that Iran must never possess a nuclear weapon. Recent events have clearly shown that the risks to regional stability and global security are too great.

“We also discussed the EU-U.S. trade deal. We remain fully committed, on both sides, to its implementation. Good progress is being made towards tariff reduction by early July.”

Last week, Trump threatened to raise tariffs on European autos to 25%. It’s unclear if his renewed threat is specifically for vehicles or if it encompasses all EU exports.

Complicating matters is that Trump’s current method of levying tariffs was blocked Thursday by the U.S. Court of International Trade.

In February, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the administration’s tariffs issued under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977. Trump then added a 10% across-the-board tariff and then later upped it to 15%.

U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said in an interview with Politico Thursday that the EU is moving slowly.

“With the tariffs, they’ve at least started a process. They’re working it through,” Greer said. “It’s a pain. I understand it’s slow. We’re not patient. But there are other things where they haven’t even started a process.”

“We’re 95% compliant for nine months … and they’ve been 0% compliant during that time. What am I supposed to do?” he said.

WASHINGTON  — Louisiana’s state attorneys on Thursday urged the Supreme Court to stand aside for now and to uphold an appeals court ruling that would stop the mailing of abortion pills nationwide.

They blamed former President Biden for undermining the state’s strict bans on abortion and the Trump administration for slow-walking a study on the federal regulations that permit sending the pills through the mail.

The justices are likely to act soon on emergency appeals filed by two makers of mifepristone. They argued the pills have been shown to be safe and effective for ending an early pregnancy.

But last week, the conservative 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans ruled for Louisiana and revived an earlier regulation that would require women to obtain the pills in person from a doctor.

The three-judge panel also took the unusual step for putting its order into effect immediately. On Monday, Justice Samuel A. Alito, who oversees the 5th Circuit, issued an administrative stay that will keep the case on hold through Monday.

The justices have to decide whether Louisiana had standing to sue over the federal drug regulations, and if so, whether judges have the authority to overrule the Food and Drug Administration.

Two years ago, the Supreme Court by a 9-0 vote dismissed a similar challenge to the abortion pills that came from the 5th Circuit. And Chief Justice John G. Roberts has said in the past that judges should usually defer to the federal agency that is responsible fo regulating drugs.

In response to anti-abortion advocates, Trump’s Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. agreed to have the FDA review the safety record of mifepristone.

It was approved in 2000 as safe and effective for ending early pregnancies. And in the past decade, the agency had relaxed earlier restrictions, including a requirement that pregnant women visit a doctor’s office to obtain the pills.

But the FDA said last month its review is far from complete.

In October, Louisiana Atty. Gen. Liz Murrill decided to bypass the FDA review and went to federal court seeking a ruling that would prevent the pills being sent by mail.

A federal judge refused to decide on the issue while the FDA was undertaking its review. But the 5th Circuit chose to act now. The Louisiana state attorney put the focus on the Biden administration.

When the Supreme Court was considering the Dobbs case, which overruled Roe vs. Wade and the right to abortion, “the Biden Administration was preparing a plan that predictably would undermine that decision,” she wrote in Thursday’s response.

“Although Louisiana law generally prohibits abortion and the dispensing of mifepristone to pregnant women, out-of-state prescribers—freed from the in-person dispensing requirement — are causing approximately 1,000 illegal abortions in Louisiana each month by mailing FDA-approved mifepristone into the state,” she said.

The Trump administration has yet to tell the court of its views on this case.

In the ancient days of 2022, when the Supreme Court sledgehammered abortion rights with the Dobbs decision, the (Republican) party line was that the issue had returned to where it belonged: the states.

Fast forward to 2026 and it would now seem that the antiabortion crowd, faced with the aggressive pro-choice response of states such as California and lethargy on the part of the Trump administration to do more toward implementing a national ban, is no longer satisfied with that outcome.

They are now out to stomp on California, and a handful of other reproductive health sanctuaries, to ensure that what happens inside our borders fits their ideology.

“It’s strategic, it’s targeted,” Mini Timmaraju, president and chief executive of Reproductive Freedom for All, told me. “Even if you’re in a ‘blue state,’ you’re not safe.”

The U.S. Supreme Court will decide next week whether to take up the abortion issue again, in a case that could end medication-only procedures as we know them.

That would force women into a less-safe regimen with a lower success rate that would almost certainly lead to more complications — and therefore more controversy. Even in California, which would not be spared by what the court could do, and whose policies are central to the case.

Let’s break it down.

Union members, immigrant rights supporters and anti-Israel demonstrators participate in a May Day rally and march in Washington, D.C., on Friday.

(Robyn Stevens Brody / Sipa USA via Associated Press)

Rogue California

After the Dobbs decision, 11 states passed near-total bans on abortions.

Six other states put early time limits on the procedures, and others passed bans in the second trimester, leaving women in much of the South and the Great Plains with no access to in-person care for hundreds or even thousands of miles.

In many of those places, those bans include making it illegal to receive abortion-inducing medications in the mail from states such as California. But that’s a hard law to enforce unless you go around opening lady-mail.

In recent years, the number of U.S. abortions arranged through telehealth and mailed medication has skyrocketed to more than a quarter of all procedures, though the often illegal nature of this route probably means the number is higher but underreported.

To protect the doctors and providers who are prescribing and sending these medications, California and other states have passed numerous laws to make it easier and safer — from allowing the prescriber to remain anonymous to shield laws that ensure those providers can’t be penalized or extradited to other states for prosecution, though some states are trying.

Earlier this year, Louisiana (a state with a full ban) tried to extradite a California doctor with no luck. Gov. Gavin Newsom gleefully denied that request, promising to “never be complicit with Trump’s war on women.”

U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican from Louisiana, speaks during the annual March For Life at the National Mall in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 23.

(Graeme Sloan / Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Rogue Louisiana

In the Supreme Court case, Louisiana is thinking bigger — and expressing antiabortionists’ frustration with the Trump administration. The state is suing Trump’s Food and Drug Administration because it allows mifepristone, one of two medications used in abortions, to be prescribed via telehealth.

“Patients and these states with bans and extreme restrictions have relied on providers in blue states, abortion access states, to really help provide care,” Timmaraju said. “And this is a way to stop that.”

Antiabortion groups had hoped (and pushed) Trump to simply have the FDA remove its approvals of mifepristone, but Trump ain’t that dumb. Despite all his promises on the campaign trail, the administration would prefer to kick the can instead of the hornet’s nest on this one, especially before the midterms — since most Americans support abortion rights. So the FDA has said it’s “studying” mifepristone, which could take awhile.

Louisiana is claiming it had to spend $90,000 in taxpayer money to help two women who sought medical treatment after medication abortions (though it has not said they received the medication in the mail).

That’s a real harm, it argues, and gives them standing to sue the FDA to stop mifepristone from being prescribed by telehealth at all, claiming the FDA hasn’t done its due diligence to ensure that’s safe and it makes them really sad that they can’t stop women from ordering it.

The FDA has remained “completely silent on this point because the Trump administration doesn’t want to get involved,” said Mary Ziegler, a UC Davis law professor and expert on reproductive law.

“It’s totally one of the signs that the antiabortion movement is in an open rebellion, and is using the federal courts to express that because the political branches have been pretty non-responsive,” she said.

The Contemplation of Justice statue is seen outside the U.S. Supreme Court building on Monday in Washington.

(Andrew Harnik / Getty Images)

The Supreme Court lifted a stay Monday imposed by the 5th Circuit that stopped mifepristone from being tele-prescribed. So it’s available until at least May 11.

After that, who knows. It’s up to a court that has proven it’s no friend to reproductive rights.

It’s an issue with real consequence for Trump. If the court takes the case, the midterms must contend with abortion. If they don’t, the pressure on Trump to do so sometime intensifies. But its also an issue with real consequence for Californians.

Consequences in California

In California, there are 22 counties without an abortion clinic, Ziegler points out. In the far north of the state, women without access to telehealth abortions would be little better off than those in Louisiana if mifepristone by mail is stopped.

Instead, women would probably be forced to use the second medication, misoprostol, alone. This single-drug regimen has a lower effectiveness rate than the combined drugs, meaning more women will have to seek out secondary care — often in places where even in-person care is hard to come by. That could lead to more real harm, and therefore more high-profile cases of botched abortions to fuel a further ban on misoprostol.

Steve Hilton takes an interview after the California gubernatorial debate at Skirball Cultural Center on Wednesday.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

And then there’s the fact that Newsom won’t be governor for much longer, and it will be up to the next chief executive to protect in-state providers from extradition. The top Republican contender, Steve Hilton, has previously said he would allow Louisiana to grab our California doctor if he were in charge.

Those kinds of threats have a chilling effect, both Ziegler and Timmaraju said. If enough providers are scared of the consequences of providing telehealth — or any — abortions, a ban becomes self-imposed.

Even in California.

What else you should be reading

The must-read: Immigration crackdown souring Orange County’s view of Trump, poll finds
The deep dive: ‘How the Fight Over Israel Is Playing Out Inside MAGA
The L.A. Times Special: Who won the California governor debate on CNN? Here’s what our columnists say

Stay Golden,
Anita Chabria

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COLUMBIA, S.C. — An election-year redistricting movement has spread to South Carolina as Republicans attempt to redraw majority-Black congressional districts that have suddenly become susceptible because of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling upending protections for minority voters.

Urged on by President Trump, South Carolina Republicans are attempting to redraw a district long held by a Black Democratic lawmaker in their quest for a clean sweep of the state’s seven congressional seats.

Lawmakers already are meeting in special sessions in Alabama and Tennessee in a bid to change their U.S. House districts. And Louisiana lawmakers are making plans for new congressional districts after the Supreme Court last week struck down the state’s current map.

The stakes are high for minority voters who stand to lose their preferred representatives and for any Republican lawmakers reluctant to follow Trump’s wishes. In Republican primary elections Tuesday, Trump-endorsed challengers defeated at least five of the seven Indiana state lawmakers targeted by Trump’s allies for refusing to support a congressional redistricting effort last year.

The Supreme Court’s recent ruling said Louisiana relied too heavily on race when creating a second Black-majority House district as it attempted to comply with the Voting Rights Act. The ruling significantly altered a decades-old understanding of the law, giving Republicans grounds to try to eliminate majority-Black districts that have elected Democrats.

The ruling revved up an already intense national redistricting battle ahead of a November midterm election that will determine control of the closely divided House.

Since Trump prodded Texas to redraw its U.S. House districts last year, a total of eight states have adopted new congressional districts. From that, Republicans think they could gain as many as 13 seats while Democrats think they could gain up to 10 seats. But some of the new districts could be competitive in November, meaning the parties may not get all they sought.

South Carolina to test its will for redistricting

Democratic U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn has represented South Carolina’s 6th Congressional District since it was redrawn to favor minority voters in 1992. He’s running for an 18th term. But it could get harder for him to win reelection if Republicans redraw his district.

Leaders in the state House and Senate said a redistricting effort needs to start with a two-thirds vote in each chamber. The issue could come up as soon as Wednesday. But if only a few Republicans aren’t on board, it can’t succeed.

Senate Majority Leader Shane Massey has warned that redistricting could backfire because of thin political margins, resulting in a second Democrat in the U.S. House. Massey told reporters Tuesday that he had a cordial conversation with Trump about redistricting, each laying out their concerns.

The state’s primaries are June 9 and early voting starts in three weeks.

Alabama looks at setting a new primary

The state House on Wednesday could debate legislation that would allow Alabama to hold a special congressional primary, if the Supreme Court clears the way for the state to change its U.S. House districts.

In light of the court’s ruling on Louisiana’s districts, Alabama officials have asked courts to set aside a judicial order to use a U.S. House map that includes two districts with a substantial number of Black voters. Republicans instead want to use a map passed in 2023 by the Legislature that could help the GOP win at least one of those two seats currently held by Democrats.

Alabama’s primaries are scheduled for May 19. If the Supreme Court grants the state’s request after or too close to the primary, the legislation under consideration would ignore the results of that primary and direct the governor to schedule a new primary under the revised districts.

Democrats denounced the legislation as a Republican power grab that harkens back to the state’s shameful history of denying Black residents equal rights and representation.

Republicans are “working to secure an electoral victory by taking Alabama back to the Jim Crow era, and we won’t go back,” Democratic U.S. Rep. Terri Sewell told a crowd gathered outside the Alabama Statehouse.

Tennessee plan targets Memphis district

Republican Gov. Bill Lee called Tennessee lawmakers into a special session to consider a plan urged by Trump that could break up the state’s lone Democratic-held U.S. House district, centered on the majority-Black city of Memphis. Republicans didn’t say much about the plan Tuesday.

But as the state Senate began work Tuesday, shouts of “shame, shame, shame” could be heard inside the chamber from protesters gathered in the hallways. On the chamber floor, state Sen. Raumesh Akbari, a Black Democrat from Memphis, called the redistricting “an act of hate.”

Martin Luther King III sent a letter to Tennessee legislative leaders expressing “grave concern” about the plan to divide Memphis, saying the move could undermine the work for voting rights carried out by his father, Martin Luther King Jr.

The candidate qualifying period in Tennessee ended in March, and the primary election is scheduled for Aug. 6.

Thousands had already voted in Louisiana

After last week’s Supreme Court decision, Republican Gov. Mike Landry postponed the state’s May 16 congressional primary to allow time for lawmakers to approve new U.S. House districts. State Sen. Caleb Kleinpeter, a Republican, said a redistricting committee he leads plans to hold a public hearing Friday.

Louisiana voters had already sent in more than 41,000 absentee ballots by last Thursday, when Landry suspended the House primaries, according to the Secretary of State’s Office. That’s about a third of all the absentee ballots sent out to voters. Around 19,000 were from registered Democrats, 17,000 from registered Republicans and the remainder belonged to neither party.

Democrats and civil rights groups have filed several lawsuits challenging the suspension of Louisiana’s congressional primary.

Collins, Loller, Chandler and Lieb write for the Associated Press. Chandler reported from Montgomery, Ala., Loller from Nashville and Lieb from Jefferson City, Mo. AP writer Jack Brook contributed to this report from New Orleans.

WASHINGTON  — The Supreme Court often resembles a feuding family where the same heated arguments go on for years.

The justices disagree over race, religion, abortion, guns and the environment, and more recently, presidential power and LGBTQ+ rights. And while they try to maintain a cordial working relationship, they don’t claim to be good friends.

“We are stuck with one another whether we like it or not,” Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote last year in her book, “Listening to the Law.”

And like it or not, the testy exchanges and simmering anger have been increasing, driven by the sharp ideological divide.

The three liberals had known since October the conservative majority was preparing to elevate partisan power over racial fairness.

By retreating from part of the Voting Rights Act, the court’s opinion last week by Justice Samuel A. Alito will allow Republicans across the South to dismantle voting districts that favor Black Democrats.

Justice Elena Kagan, who first came to the court as a law clerk for Justice Thurgood Marshall, denounced the “demolition” of a historic civil rights law.

In dissent, she quoted Marshall’s warning that if all the voting districts in the South have white majorities, Black citizens will be left with a “right to cast meaningless ballots.”

But Alito and Chief Justice John G. Roberts joined the court 20 years ago believing the government may not make decisions based on race.

Their first major ruling was a 5-4 decision that struck down voluntary school integration policies in Seattle and Louisville. It was illegal to encourage some students to transfer based on their race, Roberts said.

When faced with a redistricting case from Texas, Roberts described it as the “sordid business … [of] divvying us up by race.”

With President Trump’s three appointees on the court, the conservatives had a solid majority to change the law on race. Three years ago, they struck down college affirmative action policies.

Watching closely were states such as Alabama and Louisiana.

They had been sued by voting rights advocates, and both had been required to draw a second congressional district with a Black majority.

Their state attorneys appealed to the Supreme Court, arguing these race-based districts were unconstitutional.

In a decision that surprised both sides, Alabama lost by a 5-4 vote in 2023.

Roberts said the Voting Rights Act as interpreted by past decisions suggests Alabama must draw a second congressional district that may well elect a Black candidate. The three liberals agreed entirely and Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh cast a tentative fifth vote.

Alito and Justice Clarence Thomas filed strong dissents, joined by Barrett and Justice Neil M. Gorsuch.

Last year, the justices agreed to decide a nearly identical appeal from Louisiana, and this time Roberts joined the conservative majority and assigned the opinion to Alito.

He argued the Voting Rights Act gave “minority voters” an equal right to vote but not a right to “elect a preferred candidate.”

The decision dealt a double blow to Black Democrats because an earlier 5-4 opinion by Roberts freed state lawmakers to draw voting districts for partisan advantage.

That ruling, combined with Wednesday’s decision, will bolster Republicans trying to maintain their narrow hold on Congress.

As if to highlight that point, the court’s six Republican appointees were guests of President Trump at Tuesday’s White House dinner for King Charles.

Just a few days before, Trump had slammed the court in another social media post.

“The Radical Left Democrats don’t need to ‘Pack the Court’. It’s already Packed,” he wrote. “Certain ‘Republican’ Justices have just gone weak, stupid, and bad.” They had struck down his sweeping tariffs, he said, “they probably will … rule against our Country on Birthright Citizenship.”

That didn’t stop him from inviting them to the White House, nor did the partisan appearances dissuade them from attending.

Alito is enjoying his moment of acclaim as the voice of the conservative legal movement.

In March, the Federalist Society held a day-long conference in Philadelphia to celebrate the “Jurisprudence of Justice Alito.”

He is the subject of two new books. One, by journalist Mollie Hemingway, calls him “the justice who reshaped the Supreme Court and restored the Constitution.”

The other, by author Peter S. Canellos, is “Revenge for the Sixties: Sam Alito and the Triumph of the Conservative Legal Movement.”

Alito attended Princeton during the Vietnam War and was put off “by very privileged people behaving irresponsibly,” as he later described his classmates.

He then went to the Yale Law School and, like Thomas, left with a lasting disdain for the left-leaning faculty and students.

Alito has a book of his own scheduled to be released in October. It is called “So Ordered: An Originalist’s View of the Constitution, the Court and Our Country.”

Last month, rumors and speculation had it that Alito and perhaps Thomas planned to retire this year so Trump and the Senate Republicans could quickly fill their seats.

At age 76, Alito is at the peak of his influence and has no interest in stepping down, and he and Thomas confirmed to news organizations they had no plans to retire this year.

For 20 years, Alito has cast reliably conservative votes at the Supreme Court and regularly argued for moving the law farther to the right.

Most famously, he wrote the court’s 5-4 opinion in the Dobbs case that overturned Roe vs. Wade and the constitutional right to abortion.

Roberts issued a partial dissent, arguing the court should uphold Mississippi’s 16-week limit on abortions and stop there.

Alito has called religion a “disfavored right,” and there too a change is underway.

In the decades before his arrival, the court had handed down steady rulings barring taxpayer funds for religious schools or religious ceremonies or symbols in public schools or city parks.

Then, the court viewed these official “endorsements” of religion as violations of the 1st Amendment’s ban on an “establishment” of religion or the principle of church-state separation.

Those decisions have faded into the background, however.

Instead, Alito, Roberts and the four other conservatives see today’s threat as one of discrimination against religion, not official favoritism for religion.

They ruled church schools and their students may not be denied state aid because of religion. Similarly, Catholic charities and other religious groups may not be excluded from publicly funded programs because they refuse to accept same-sex parents, the justices said.

They upheld a football coach’s right to pray on the field. And they ruled for a wedding cake maker in Colorado and other business owners who refused to serve same-sex couples in violation of a state civil rights law.

Religious liberty has now replaced separation of church and state as the winning formula at the Supreme Court.

The next test on that front may come from Louisiana, which calls for the posting of the Ten Commandments in public school classes.

In the past, the court had ruled such religious displays violated the 1st Amendment, but it is not clear that the current majority will agree.

The court’s oral arguments for this term ended last week. Many of them were dominated by questions from liberal Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

A statistical tally by Adam Feldman for Scotusblog found that Jackson, the newest justice, had spoken twice as many words as the most talkative of the conservative justices.

Her arrival shifted the “center of verbal energy” to the liberal side, Feldman wrote. While Jackson “sits in a class of her own,” Sotomayor also presses the argument on the liberal side.

The court now has about eight weeks to hand down the decisions in 35 remaining cases. Usually, May and June can be a trying time because of intense disagreements over the opinions in close cases.

But for the liberal justices, it also may be a time mostly for writing dissents.

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court took a first step on Monday to consider anti-abortion challenges to medication that has been commonly used to end early pregnancies for 25 years.

The justices moved quickly to put on hold an appeals court ruling that would block the mailing of abortion pills nationwide. Justice Samuel A. Alito issued a temporary “administrative stay” until May 11.

Three years ago, the court blocked a similar challenge to abortion pills, ruling that anti-abortion doctors had no grounds to sue over medication they did not use or prescribe.

Last year, Louisiana’s state lawyers sued and argued their state ban on abortions is thwarted if women can receive abortion pills through the mail after consulting a doctor online.

They questioned the federal regulation that permits doctors to prescribe the medication without seeing patients in person.

On Friday evening, the conservative U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans jolted abortion rights advocates, first by ruling this claim is likely to succeed and then by putting their order into effect immediately.

Judge Kyle Duncan, a President Trump appointee, said the Food and Drug Administration had “failed to adequately study whether remotely prescribing mifepristone is safe.”

Moreover, women may suffer “irreparable harm” if these mail-order prescriptions are allowed to continue, he said.

If upheld, the order would go far beyond Louisiana and make it illegal for women in California and other states to obtain the pills through a pharmacy or by mail if they did not see a doctor first.

The legal dispute may put the Trump administration in an uncomfortable spot. In response to the abortion critics, the FDA agreed to review the safety of prescribing these commonly used pills without a required trip to a doctor’s office.

Its review is not likely to be completed until after the November elections.

The 5th Circuit judges said they were not prepared to wait for the outcome of that review.

On Saturday, two makers of mifepristone — Danco Laboratories and GenBioPro — filed emergency appeals asking the justices to block the 5th Circuit’s order.

“Never before has a federal court” rejected a long-standing drug approval by the FDA, they said, and restricted its distribution based on claims the agency had rejected.

The justices asked for a response from Louisiana by Thursday.

Mifepristone was approved in 2000 as a safe and effective way to an early pregnancy. It is typically used in combination with a second drug — misoprostol — which is not affected by the court’s decision.

If mifepristone becomes unavailable, women may use misoprostol alone, abortion rights advocates say.

In recent years, the majority of abortions in this country result from the use of medication.

Alito is responsible for emergency appeals from the 5th Circuit, and Monday’s order does not signal what the court will decide.

“This ruling is not final — keep watching,” said Nancy Northup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights. “Getting abortion pills through telehealth has been a lifeline for women since Roe v. Wade was overturned. Louisiana’s attempt to restrict access is political and not based in science or medicine. Americans deserve access to this critical drug that has been FDA approved for 25 years.”

Carol Tobias, president of National Right to Life, agreed the court’s order did not resolve anything.

“It is a temporary procedural step that leaves unresolved the very real concerns about the safety of these drugs and the decision under the Biden administration’s FDA to recklessly remove longstanding safeguards,” she said.

California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta joined with 21 other state attorneys in urging the court to block the 5th Circuit’s decision.

“Telehealth has made it easier for women — especially in rural, low-income, and underserved communities — to access mifepristone and obtain reproductive health care,” he said. “We should be guided by science, not politics. The in-person dispensing requirement was eliminated because it was medically unnecessary, and there is still no basis for reinstating it.”

SACRAMENTO — Across America, 53 women have served as state governors. But not one in California. What gives? Aren’t we supposed to be enlightened out here in this cutting-edge state?

In fact, 14 women currently are governors in all sorts of states — north, south, flyover and Pacific coast. Big, midsize and small. Red, blue and purple.

We stand out with a huge black mark.

Voters have a chance to erase the ugly spot this year with Katie Porter in position to possibly be elected California’s first female governor.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying Porter should be elected just because she’s a woman.

What I’m saying is that this is an opportunity to elect a perfectly qualified woman. If a male opponent is considered better suited for the job, fine. But first, let’s give her a good hard look and listen to her ideas. Maybe she’s too liberal — or not liberal enough. Perhaps too feisty and brusque than some unfairly find acceptable in a woman.

Independent polling shows that Porter basically isn’t getting any more support from women voters than she is from men.

I queried my best source on such matters: my daughter, Karen Skelton, a longtime political operative who has served stints in the Clinton and Biden White Houses. Why aren’t more women rallying around Porter?

“There was a time when women were excited to support women just because they were women, fueled by the historic prospect of electing ‘the first,’” she said. “But if anything has been proven in the last two presidential elections where women ran, it’s that identity politics does not work….

“It has to be more than her identity as a woman to get her elected.”

Yep. In my view, Democrat Hillary Clinton wasn’t very likable in 2016 and ran a lousy campaign. In 2024, Vice President Kamala Harris also lacked popularity. And she was dealt a losing hand by aging President Biden when he took too long to step aside.

Harris, a former U.S. senator with a long history of electoral success in California, would have been the heavy favorite to become the state’s first female governor if she had run. But she declined, opting for a possible third presidential bid in 2028.

Porter, 52, is a UC Irvine consumer law professor and former Orange County congresswoman who increased her statewide name familiarity by running unsuccessfully for the Senate in 2024.

Running for governor, she has been forthright and specific on what she’d try to achieve in Sacramento. She’d probably shake up the place.

One goal that should appeal to young families is free childcare. How’d she pay for that, I asked.

“Well, how do we afford public schools, roads, everything else, right?” the single mother of three answered, implying it’s about priorities. “The reason we don’t fund childcare, but we do fund other things, is because we expect women and mothers to do childcare for free or for pennies.”

She was scurrying along leading the Democrat pack last fall until tripping over two videos that displayed a hot temper.

In one, she threatened to walk out of a TV interview when a female reporter repeatedly asked how she expected to gain the votes of President Trump’s supporters. An irritated Porter said she didn’t need their votes, and she was right — but also rude.

In the other video — an oldie — then-Rep. Porter was shown yelling at a young female aide to “get out of my f— shot” during a videoconference with a Cabinet secretary.

Porter says she apologized to the staffer that day and they worked together for years afterward. And following a recent televised debate, Porter says, the former aide texted her congratulations and added that if she still lived in California, she’d vote for her.

The TV reporter, Julie Watts of CBS, was a moderator of a campaign debate last week and tossed some prickly questions at Porter and the other candidates.

“I was very calm and answered all the questions,” Porter notes. “I showed people I can do better” than the TV interview she has apologized for many times.

Porter has never completely recovered from the harmful videos. But she’s running close to two other Democrats — billionaire Tom Steyer and former U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra — in the June 2 primary.

“If a man had done the same thing, we wouldn’t be talking about it,” asserts Valerie McGinty, founder and president of Fund Her, an organization dedicated to electing women.

Several women agreed.

Assemblymember Cottie Petrie-Norris (D-Irvine), who has endorsed Porter, points to the late beloved, oft-profane legislative leader John Burton of San Francisco as an example of a double standard.

“Not a woman in American politics could get away with titling their autobiography ‘I Yell Because I Care,’” she says. On the book’s jacket cover, Burton is pictured speaking to a crowd with two raised middle fingers.

“People expect women to be strong but not too harsh,” Petrie-Norris says.

OK, but why do women get elected governor in other states, but not in California?

Mindy Romero, director of the Center for Inclusive Democracy at USC, says the vast amounts of money and human resources needed to win in humongous California make it especially difficult for women. They usually haven’t been included in the political pipeline long enough, she says, to build a hefty donor base, acquire elective office experience and gain statewide name recognition.

Three women have dropped out of the current race because they weren’t gaining ground. But it’s hard to argue it was because of any gender hurdles.

Previously, three women won their party nominations for governor but lost in November: Democrats Dianne Feinstein and Kathleen Brown in 1990 and 1994, respectively, and Republican Meg Whitman in 2010. None lost because of any double standard. It just wasn’t their year politically.

But California has elected three female U.S. senators — Democrats Feinstein, Barbara Boxer and Harris.

And nearly half the state Legislative seats are held by women.

It’s conceivable this year that California finally enters the 20th century — let alone the 21st — by electing our first female governor.

What else you should be reading

The must-read: Coded messages, ‘red boxing’ and other allegations in California’s testy race for governor
Money (That’s what I want): Billionaire-tax backers say they have enough signatures to qualify for ballot
The L.A. Times Special: Voter guide to the 2026 California primary election

Until next week,
George Skelton

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May 2 (UPI) — A company that makes the abortion drug mifepristone on Saturday asked the U.S. Supreme Court to immediately pause a ruling that prevents doctors from prescribing it during telehealth visits.

Late Friday, a three judge panel on the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously ruled in favor of the state of Louisiana in a case asking the court to block doctors from prescribing the drug in telehealth visits.

Louisiana in the last four years has moved to prevent women in the state from obtaining abortion care legislators there were among the first to ban abortion after the repeal of Roe v. Wade, and later blocked doctors from prescribing the medical abortion pill in virtual telehealth visits.

The company, which is not the only drugmaker planning to file an appeal, said that patients will be stuck in limbo because of the lack of clarity it leaves for legal use of the drug, NBC News and Politico reported.

Roughly half of all abortions in the United States are performed using medications.

“Danco has been free to rely on procedures set by the FDA to distribute its product,” lawyers for the company said in a filing with the court.

“The Fifth Circuit’s decision immediately ends that,” the lawyers said. “A stay should issue to prevent the disruption and confusion that will result if the decision below were to remain operative.”

In addition to Danco, Politico reported that GenBioPro, which also manufactures the drug, has indicated that it will also file an appeal with the court.

Mifepristone was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 2000 for medical termination of pregnancy and, until the COVID-19 pandemic, could only be prescribed during in-person appointments.

Early in the pandemic and the country locked down in an effort to stem the spread of the virus, doctors sued the FDA to allow them to prescribe mifepristone during telehealth visits.

The FDA temporarily changed the rule, but in 2023 adopted it permanently as some states started to restrict access to abortion and abortion services after the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade.

Pharmaceutical companies and patient advocates warned that the restriction circumvents the FDA’s regulatory authority, which is based on evidence and data, and that it may offer a path for people to challenge other medications based on personal interest or opinion.

In the case of Danco, it also immediately filed the appeal because it is the only product it makes and “without a valid legal framework for distributing that product, Danco will lose its only source of revenue and may be unable to continue operating.”

May 1 (UPI) — A federal appeals court on Friday night issued a ruling that enacts a nationwide block on the prescription of the abortion pills in telehealth appointments and mailing them to patients.

A three-judge panel on the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the state of Louisiana, which had used to end a Food and Drug Administration rule that allows doctors to prescribe mifepristone without having an in-person visit, ABC News, Politico and The New York Times reported.

Mifepristone was first approved by the FDA in 2000 for medical termination of pregnancy, and until the COVID-19 global pandemic required that the drug be prescribed to patients during in-person doctor’s appointments.

After enacting a strict abortion ban in 2022, Louisiana then moved to reclassify mifepristone as a controlled substance and criminalized its possession, effectively making it illegal in the state.

Although Louisiana had made it illegal to prescribe or possess in the state, people could obtain prescriptions from out-of-state doctors have virtual telehealth visits, with the mails mailed to people’s homes.

As the COVID-19 pandemic spread across the country in spring 2020 and forced much of in-person life to stop, doctors sued the FDA for an exception to the in-person requirement to prescribe mifepristone.

The agency in 2021 announced that it would exercise “enforcement discretion” because of the COVID-19 public health emergency.

After Roe v. Wade was struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court, several states across the country moved to outlaw most abortions, but mifepristone continued to be available through telehealth appointments and the mail.

Louisiana told the court that it needed relief because of an alleged influx of abortion pills to the state, making the argument that mail-delivered abortion pills endanger the safety of women there.

“We are alarmed by this Court’s decision to ignore the FDA’s rigorous science and decades of safe use of mifepristone in a case pursued by extremist abortion opponents,” Evan Masingill, CEO of GenBioPort, which manufacturers the drug, told Politico in a statement.

“We remain committed to taking any actions necessary to make mifepristone available and remain accessible to as many people as possible,” Masingill said.

BATON ROUGE, La. — Louisiana’s congressional primaries won’t be going forward as scheduled in May, as a result of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that struck down a majority-Black congressional district, the state’s top elected officials said Thursday.

Gov. Jeff Landry and Atty. Gen. Liz Murrill, both Republicans, said in a joint statement that Wednesday’s high court ruling effectively prohibits the state from carrying out the primaries under the current districts. Early voting had been scheduled to begin Saturday in advance of the May 16 primary.

“The State is currently enjoined from carrying out congressional elections under the current map,” Landry and Murrill said in the statement posted to social media. “We are working together with the Legislature and the Secretary of State’s office to develop a path forward.”

That path is likely to lead to a new U.S. House map benefiting Republican candidates in Louisiana.

President Trump, in a series of social media posts Thursday, praised Landry for moving quickly to revise the state’s congressional districts and urged Republican Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee to do likewise in light of the Supreme Court’s decision.

While civil rights activists denounced the potential for diminished minority representation in Congress, top Republicans cited the Supreme Court’s decision as justification to spur an already intense national redistricting battle among states before the November elections.

“I think all states who have unconstitutional maps should look at that very carefully, and I think they should do it before the midterm,” House Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters in Washington.

Questions persist about election postponement

Louisiana’s election suspension was denounced by some Democrats and questioned by some legal experts.

“This is going to cause mass confusion among voters — Democrats, Republicans, white, Black, everybody,” said Louisiana state Sen. Royce Duplessis, a Democrat who represents the New Orleans area. “What they’re effectively doing is changing the rules of the game in the middle of the game. It’s rigging the system.”

Although Louisiana officials may legally be able to move the primary, it’s not accurate to assert that it was blocked by the Supreme Court’s decision, said Ruth Greenwood, director of the Election Law Clinic at Harvard Law School.

State Rep. Kyle Green, a former assistant state attorney general who is chair of the House Democratic caucus, also cast doubt on the legal justification for postponing the congressional primary.

“The Court’s decision does not halt the election process on its own,” Green said. “And any attempt to suspend or disrupt an ongoing election at this stage would raise serious constitutional concerns.”

Delaying an election is unusual but not unprecedented.

During the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, several states pushed back elections because of health concerns. Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards, who led Louisiana at the time, postponed Louisiana’s April 4 presidential primary three weeks before it was supposed to occur — then delayed it again until July 11.

Louisiana could join a national redistricting wave

Louisiana currently is represented in the U.S. House by four Republicans and two Democrats. A revised map could give Republicans a chance to pick up at least one more seat in the November midterms — adding to Republican gains elsewhere from redistricting.

Voting districts typically are redrawn once a decade, after each census. But Trump last year urged Texas Republicans to redraw House districts to give the GOP an edge in the midterms. California Democrats reciprocated, and redistricting efforts soon cascaded across states.

On Wednesday, Florida became the latest state to redraw its U.S. House districts, adopting a new map backed by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis that could give the GOP a chance at winning several additional seats.

The Florida vote occurred just hours after the U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative majority issued a ruling that significantly weakened minority protections under the federal Voting Rights Act. The court said Louisiana officials had relied too heavily on race when drawing a congressional district that is represented by Democrat Cleo Fields.

Trump wants Tennessee to also take up redistricting in response to the court’s ruling. The president posted on social media that he had spoken with Lee, who he said would work hard for a new map that could help Republicans gain an additional seat. Democrats currently hold only one of the state’s nine House seats — a district centered in Memphis, which is majority-Black.

Tennessee House Speaker Cameron Sexton, a Republican, said he is in conversations with the White House and others while reviewing the court’s decision.

Louisiana has a history of redistricting challenges

After the 2020 census, Louisiana officials had drawn House voting district boundaries that maintained one Black-majority district and five mostly white districts, in a state with a population that is about one-third Black.

A federal judge later struck down the map for violating the Voting Rights Act. And the following year the Supreme Court found that Alabama had to create its own second majority-Black congressional district.

In response, Louisiana’s Legislature and governor adopted a new House map in 2024 that created a second Black-majority district. But that map also was subsequently challenged in court, leading to the most recent Supreme Court ruling.

After the ruling, Landry called U.S. House candidates on Wednesday and told them that primaries would probably be stalled, according to Misti Cordell, a Republican running in a crowded race to fill U.S. Rep. Julia Letlow’s vacated seat.

“It’s an inconvenience for a candidate for sure, but you know they want to do it right versus having to go through all this again,” Cordell said. She added that she appreciated the heads-up before she and other candidates began “spending their war chest” during the final weeks leading up to election day.

Republican state lawmakers are reviewing which pending bills could be used to alter primaries and reconfigure congressional maps, said Louisiana state Rep. Beau Beaullieu, chair of the House committee overseeing redistricting efforts.

Cline, Brook and Lieb write for the Associated Press. Brook reported from New Orleans and Lieb reported from Jefferson City, Mo. AP reporter Travis Loller contributed to this report from Nashville.

WASHINGTON  — The Supreme Court’s conservative majority on Wednesday sharply limited a part of the Voting Rights Act that has forced states to draw voting districts to help elect Black or Latino representatives to Congress as well as state and local boards.

In a 6-3 decision in Louisiana vs. Callais, the court ruled that creating these majority-minority districts may amount to racial discrimination that violates the 14th Amendment.

When weighing what the Voting Rights Act requires, “we start with the general rule that the Constitution almost never permits the federal government or a state to discriminate on the basis of race,” Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. wrote for the court.

Alito said states may draw election districts for partisan advantage but may not use race as a basis for redistricting.

The ruling in a Louisiana case appears to clear the way for Republican-led states across the South to redraw their election maps and eliminate voting districts that favor Black or Latino candidates for Congress, state legislatures and county boards.

UCLA law professor Rick Hasen said, “It is hard to overstate what an earthquake this will be for American politics,” adding that the decision makes the Voting Rights Act a “much weaker, and potentially toothless law.”

Hasen said it’s unclear how the decision will affect the November election because in many states early voting has already started and primaries have already taken place.

But the ruling’s long-term consequences for minority representation in Congress, state legislatures and local government are almost “certainly” going to be felt in 2028, Hasen said.

Republican leaders in states across the South have already signaled they intend to move quickly to redraw congressional maps in the wake of the ruling.

Alabama Atty. Gen. Steve Marshall said the state will “act as quickly as possible” to ensure its congressional maps “reflect the will of the people, not a racial quota system the Constitution forbids.” Marshall called the decision a recognition of how much the South has changed since the civil rights era.

“The court rightly acknowledged that the South has made extraordinary progress, and that laws designed for a different era do not reflect the present reality,” he said in a statement.

Florida was already in motion before the ruling came down. But Gov. Ron DeSantis celebrated the decision and said it was all the more reason for state lawmakers to redraw its congressional maps, in a manner that could give Republicans up to four more seats in Congress.

The proposed congressional maps, drawn by DeSantis’ office, were first unveiled to Fox News on Monday. On Wednesday, both chambers approved the maps, and readied them for DeSantis’ final approval.

In Mississippi, Gov. Tate Reeves had already called lawmakers into a special session at the end of May in anticipation of a court ruling on the Voting Rights Act. In a post on X, Reeves underscored the ideological underpinnings to the ruling’s potential implications.

“First Dobbs. Now Callais. Just Mississippi and Louisiana down here saving our country!” Reeves wrote.

Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) speaks at a news conference outside the U.S. Capitol after the Supreme Court ruling.

(Tom Williams / CQ-Roll Call / Getty Images)

At issue was how to ensure equal representation for Black and Latino citizens.

About one-third of Louisiana’s voters are Black, but the state seeks an election map that will elect white Republicans to five of its six seats in the House of Representatives.

Lower courts said that map violated the Voting Rights Act because it denied fair representation to Black residents.

The state had one Black-majority district, in New Orleans.

Two years ago, judges upheld the creation of a second Black-majority district that stretched from Shreveport to Baton Rouge on the grounds that it was required under the law.

The state’s Republican leaders appealed and argued that race was the motivating factor in drawing the second district.

Alito and the conservatives agreed and called that district an “unconstitutional racial gerrymander.”

The three liberals dissented. The consequences of the ruling “are likely to be far-reaching and grave,” said Justice Elena Kagan, adding that it will allow “racial vote dilution in its most classic form.”

She said the decision means “a state can, without legal consequence, systematically dilute minority citizens’ voting power. Of course, the majority does not announce today’s holding that way. Its opinion is understated, even antiseptic.”

But she said states across the South may draw electoral districts that deprive Black voters of equal representation. Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson agreed.

The decision was the latest example of a partisan political dispute in which the court’s six Republican appointees vote in favor of the Republican state plan, while the three Democratic appointees dissent.

The ruling is likely to have its greatest impact in the Southern states, where white Republicans are in control and Black Democrats are in the minority.

The court’s divide over redistricting is similar to the long dispute over affirmative action.

For decades, university officials said they needed to consider the race of applicants to achieve diversity and equal representation.

But in 2023, the court by a 6-3 vote struck down college affirmative action policies at Harvard and the University of North Carolina and ruled race may not be used to judge applicants.

The historic Voting Rights Act of 1965 succeeded in clearing the way for Black citizens to register and vote across the South, but it took longer for Black candidates to win elections.

The dispute was highlighted in a 1980 case from Mobile, Ala. Its three commissioners were elected to six-year terms, and each of them ran countywide.

Even though one-third of the county’s voters were Black, white candidates always won.

The Supreme Court upheld this arrangement as legal and constitutional. In dissent, Justice Thurgood Marshall said Black residents were left with the right to cast meaningless ballots.

In response, Congress amended the Voting Rights Act in 1982 to say states must give minorities an opportunity to elect representatives of their choice.

Four years later, the Supreme Court interpreted that to mean that states had a duty to draw voting districts that would elect a Black or Latino candidate if these minorities had a sufficiently large number of voters in a particular area.

In recent years, the court’s conservatives, led by Justice Clarence Thomas, have chafed at the rule on the grounds it sometimes required states to use race as a factor for drawing election districts.

Alito’s opinion adopted that view and said states are not required or permitted to use race as a basis for drawing districts.

Hours after the ruling came out, President Trump met with reporters in the Oval Office and said he had not yet seen the decision. He was visibly excited, however, when a reporter explained the decision favored Republicans.

“I love it!” he said. “This is very good.”

Former President Obama said in a statement that the court’s decision “effectively guts a key pillar of the Voting Rights Act, freeing state legislatures to gerrymander legislative districts to systematically dilute and weaken the voting power of racial minorities — so long as they do it under the guise of ‘partisanship’ rather than explicit racial bias.”

The Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, in Los Angeles, also denounced the decision.

“The Supreme Court’s decision blesses racially discriminatory gerrymandering, and dismantles the legal protections for minority voters,” said Nina Perales, the group’s vice president for litigation. It “openly invites states to dilute minority voting strength, and undermines our democracy.”

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court’s conservative majority sounded ready Wednesday to rule that the Trump administration may end the temporary protection that has been granted to more than 1.3 million immigrants from troubled countries.

Congress in 1990 authorized Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, for noncitizens who could not safely return home because their native country was wracked by war, violence or natural disasters. If those people passed a strict background check, they could stay and work legally in this country.

But President Trump came to office believing too many immigrants had been granted permission to enter and stay indefinitely.

Last year, his Department of Homeland Security moved to cancel the temporary humanitarian protection for immigrants from 13 countries, including Venezuela, Haiti, Syria, Honduras and Nicaragua. Court challenges on behalf of Haitians and Syrians were consolidated into a single case, Mullin vs. Doe, which the justices heard Wednesday.

Immigrant-rights advocates challenged those decisions as political and unjustified, and they won orders from federal judges that blocked the cancellations.

But Trump’s lawyers filed an emergency appeal at the Supreme Court arguing the judges had overstepped their authority. They pointed to a provision in the 1990 law that bars “judicial review” of the government’s decision to end temporary protection for a particular country.

The justices ruled for the administration and set aside the lower court rulings in a series of 6-3 orders.

Faced with criticism over its brief and unexplained orders, the justices agreed to hear arguments on the TPS issue on the last day of oral arguments for this term.

But the ideological divide appeared to be unchanged.

Solicitor Gen. D. John Sauer said Congress had prohibited “judicial micromanagement” of these decisions, and none of six conservatives disagreed.

UCLA law professor Ahilan T. Arulanantham, representing several thousand Syrians, said the Homeland Security secretary had failed to consult the State Department, which says it is unsafe to travel there.

He said the government “reads the statute like it’s a blank check … to give the secretary the power to expel people who have done nothing wrong.”

Chicago attorney Geoffrey Pipoply, representing more than 350,000 Haitians, said the cancellations were driven by “the president’s racial animus toward non-white immigrants.”

The court’s three liberals argued the administration failed to follow the procedural steps required under the law. But that argument failed to gain traction.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett and her husband adopted two children from Haiti who are citizens. Like most of the conservatives, she asked few questions during the argument.

April 29 (UPI) — The U.S. Supreme Court ruled against Louisiana’s newly drawn congressional map Wednesday, saying it relied too heavily on race.

The 6-3 decision eliminates one of the two predominantly Black congressional districts established by redistricting from the 2020 census.

Supporters of the redrawn map said it abided by Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which prevents lawmakers from packing racial minorities in a limited number of districts or spreading them across too many to diminish their voting power.

Justice Samuel Alito, writing for the majority, described Louisiana’s map as “unconstitutional gerrymander.”

“When §2 of the Act is properly interpreted, it imposes liability only when circumstances give rise to a strong inference that intentional discrimination occurred,” he wrote.

The ruling weakens the landmark Voting Rights Act passed in 1965 to limit racial discrimination in voting. The Supreme Court dealt the act a blow in 2013 when it struck a core provision providing oversight to states with a history of voting discrimination.

With the new ruling by the high court, Republican lawmakers will have an easier time redrawing state maps to more closely align with their party.

Justice Elena Kagan, one of the three dissenters, said such intentional discrimination is hard to prove and that Wednesday’s decision serves to “eviscerate the law.”

“Under the Court’s new view of Section 2, a State can, without legal consequence, systematically dilute minority citizens’ voting power,” she wrote.

It’s unlikely the Supreme Court’s ruling will have an impact on midterm elections later this year as early voting in congressional primaries begin May 16.

Eight candidates for California governor shared a stage for 90 minutes Tuesday night, their second of three scheduled debates before the June 2 primary.

My colleagues Gustavo Arellano and Mark Z. Barabak joined me to decide who the winner was, or if there was a winner at all.

Arellano: The real MVP in this debate? State Supt. Tony Thurmond.

He brought up his family story — child of a Panamanian immigrant who lost his parents young, someone familiar with “government cheese” as sustenance growing up — in a way that didn’t sound forced or pedantic.

He usually stayed within the time limits that were barely enforced by moderators. And he kept knocking down Chad Bianco again and again, drawing applause when he brought up the Riverside County sheriff’s takeover of hundreds of thousands of ballots.

Thurmond is the only gubernatorial candidate currently holding a statewide position, a former Richmond City Council member and Assembly member. “Elect someone with a lived experience,” he told the audience in his closing statement.

So why has Thurmond polled so low again and again to the point that he keeps not getting invited to debates and therefore not getting in front of California voters?

California has never elected a Black governor — in fact, the state is notorious for not voting in Tom Bradley in 1982 even though polls showed him leading George Deukmejian all the way to Election Day (the phenomenon of voters telling pollsters what they think they want to hear instead of what they actually feel is now known as the Bradley Effect).

As California’s Black population keeps shrinking, it would’ve been wonderful to see Thurmond do better than he has.

Chabria: Gustavo is spot on with his take on Thurmond. He came across as polished, capable and knowledgeable. But also, he’s just too far down in the polls for any kind of comeback.

In my mind, though, Xavier Becerra was the clear winner. No, he didn’t blow the other candidates away.

But he landed more than one punch that will almost certainly be on social media feeds for weeks to come, especially when he went at Republican Steve Hilton. Early on, he called President Trump “Hilton’s daddy.” Later, he quipped at Hilton, “We don’t need a talking head for Fox News to tell us how the government works.”

The debate was chaotic in more than one moment, but Becerra managed to get more than his share of airtime and use it wisely. Tom Steyer, the other Democratic front-runner, mired himself in wonk-talk. He wanted to get deep into policy, and got lost in complicated issues such as oil refineries.

Steyer didn’t have a single memorable line, though his closing statement did redeem him somewhat. He called himself the “change maker,” and promised, “if you want change, there is only one person on this stage they are afraid of” — they being tech titans, oil companies and other gods of industry.

It was the same for Katie Porter and Matt Mahan, who didn’t do anything wrong, but also, didn’t break out.

But those back-and-forths of Becerra and Hilton are priceless because they’re quick and shareable. I won’t be surprised to see voters drift Becerra’s way, even if only a bit.

Barabak: No runs, no hits, no errors. Seven men — and one woman — left standing.

I didn’t see, or hear, anything that seems very likely to drastically shake up or dramatically reorder the governor’s race. No breakout performance that will launch any of the candidates into clear-cut front-runner status. No major gaffes to leave any of the contestants sprawled on the killing floor.

So to that extent, I would score Becerra as the evening’s (modest) winner. He’s clearly having a moment, surging from political near-death to the top tier in polls. (Though, let’s be clear, it’s still a muddle, with several candidates bunched in the 15%-20% support range.)

There have been suggestions Becerra needs to show a bit more fight and he did so Tuesday, in particular taking on Hilton. Some of his jabs seemed a bit forced and stagy. (That line about Trump as “Hilton’s daddy.”)

Better, as Anita noted, was the jab from the former congressman, state attorney general and Biden cabinet secretary about a Fox “talking head” explaining how government works.

I found Porter to be crisp and authoritative on policy; Steyer to be repetitive (I’m the only change agent on this stage, look how much money is being spent to stop me — though it’s a small fraction of the sum he’s sunk into his vanity-cruise campaign); Mahan and Antonio Villaraigosa to be largely afterthoughts, and Bianco to have all the warmth and appeal of the grouchy old man telling kids in the neighborhood to get off his damn lawn!

The Riverside County sheriff seemed not to be running for governor of California, but rather mayor of MAGA-ville, a strategy apparently intended to nab one of two spots in the June primary, allowing him to go on to crushing defeat in November.

I agree that perhaps the night’s most surprising performance came from Thurmond. The state schools superintendent is mired in bare single digits in polls and only just made the debate stage after being left out of last week’s meetup in San Francisco.

His chances of being California’s next governor are somewhere between zero and nil, which is why he escaped serious scrutiny. That said, he made the most of the 90 minutes on stage, laying out his compelling up-from-poverty life story and seeming to relish taking on Bianco in particular.

Too little, too late. But Thurmond certainly acquitted himself well.

What else you should be reading
The must-read: ‘This is like the Russian mafia’: L.A. judge elections see unusual drama
The deep dive: Gavin Newsom wants to break up with Elon Musk. Tesla is making that difficult.
The L.A. Times Special: John Seymour, Anaheim mayor and U.S. senator, dies at 88

Stay Golden,

Anita Chabria

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