supreme court

SACRAMENTO — What’s so wrong about requiring every Californian to show a government ID before they’re allowed to vote? That’s what Proposition 39 backers ask. And it’s a fair question.

Here are some valid answers:

• It would make California’s already notoriously slow vote count even more pokey.
• It would be an added hassle for citizens attempting to exercise their voting right.
• It would cost taxpayers a bundle, perhaps hundreds of millions of dollars each year.
• It’s another solution by politicians to a problem that really doesn’t exist.

Practically everyone, regardless of political affiliation, must understand by now that there simply is no evidence of widespread — significant, meaningful — voter cheating in California or anywhere else in America. This despite conspiracy-theorists’ fruitless searching and President Trump’s lies about “rigged” elections.

It’s my belief that the main reason Republicans placed Proposition 39 on the California ballot was to boost GOP voter turnout in the Nov. 3 election. And recent independent polling shows that the measure does appeal strongly to Republicans — but not Democrats, who are united in opposition.

The proposition appears to be headed for defeat, largely because Democratic voters in this deep blue state equate it with the discredited president. Trump has turned into poison for Republican candidates in competitive races and any cause that reminds people of him.

That’s why the Proposition 39 campaign last week released a new major TV ad that essentially asks voters to ignore the president.

This is how conservative consultant Jon Fleischman summarized the ad’s message to Democrats in his blog: “You can hate Trump and still back Voter ID.”

Proposition 39 would mainly do two things:

• Require voters to show some government-issued identification each time they vote in person, such as a driver’s license or passport. Don’t have one? The state would issue a free ID card to any voter who asked.
• Californians who cast mail ballots — more than 80% of voters — would be required to write the last four digits of a government ID number on the return envelope. The number would be determined when initially registering to vote.

The measure also would impose some basically noncontroversial mandates that make sense separately. It would require election officials to maintain accurate voter registration files, weeding out people who have moved or died and verifying citizenship. But counties already do that pretty well.

The contrived bogeyman for election fraud scaremongers is the undocumented immigrant community. But these people, living on the edge and hiding from the government, aren’t going to risk deportation by trying to vote in an election they couldn’t care less about. And political candidates aren’t going to waste their time and money on them. Their targets are the large numbers of apathetic legal voters who sit out elections.

Currently, Californians must provide identification when registering and swear under penalty of perjury — a felony — that they are U.S. citizens. And they must record their signatures when registering and scribble it on the back of the ballot envelope when voting by mail.

Requiring me to add a four-digit number on the back of my “absentee” ballot envelope means I’d have to register all over again to record the PIN. And then remember it every election. A pointless pain.

Assemblyman Carl DeMaio (R-San Diego), a conservative firebrand, instigated and authored Proposition 39. “I do believe that voter fraud is a real problem. Absolutely,” he told me.

But he said the proposition has two main goals: 1, to clean up voter files and make sure ballots are properly validated and counted. 2, to increase public confidence in the voting process. “We have a perception problem,” he says. “Voters have low trust” in the election system.

Republicans mistrust a lot; Democrats not so much.

A California poll released last week by the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies showed that 84% of Republican voters had a “major concern” about voter fraud. Only 21% of Democrats did.

Can anyone doubt who’s driving the Republicans’ anxiety? The bellicose president. “Mail-in voting means mail-in cheating,” Trump has reiterated. “It’s terrible what’s going on.”

This from the hypocrite who mails in his ballots.

Fortunately, Proposition 39’s crafters left mail ballots pretty much alone, except for requiring a nuisance PIN on the ballot envelope.

That “absolutely” will slow down vote counting, says Assemblywoman Gail Pellerin (D-Santa Cruz), who heads the Assembly Elections Committee and was the longtime chief elections official of Santa Cruz County. Under Proposition 39, officials not only would need to check voters’ signatures against those on file, but also their PINs.

And voting in person would drag while people dug for an ID and an official checked it, Pellerin says. Some people are bound to be denied their voting right by mistake, she asserts.

Tony Quinn, formerly a GOP redistricting consultant and a longtime political analyst, points out that a disproportionately high portion of in-person voters are Republicans. Proposition 39 is “imposing a burden on them,” he says. “I don’t think the authors realize who’s voting in person these days. They sense illegal aliens.”

The UC institute poll showed Proposition 39 being supported by 39% of likely voters and opposed by 52%. It was backed by 92% of Republicans, but Democrats were 80% against. And they outnumber Republicans by nearly 2-to-1 in California.

The proposition also trailed in a poll by the Public Policy Institute of California: 43% yes, 55% no.

In the PPIC poll, Republicans said 39 was by far the most interesting proposition on the ballot.

Trump’s influence? Among the paltry 27% of voters who approve of his job performance, 88% support Proposition 39. But of the 72% who disapprove of the president, 73% oppose the measure.

Trump is toxic.

Proposition 39 is more government regulation for no good reason.

What else you should be reading

The must-read: Tax the rich? California voters are divided, according to new poll
Law & Order: Ballot seizure by Riverside County sheriff was ‘unlawful,’ California Supreme Court rules
The L.A. Times Special: High cost of living tops voter concerns, Becerra remains front-runner in governor’s race, new poll shows

Until next week,
George Skelton

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WASHINGTON — For the third time this month, the Supreme Court has rejected Missouri’s bid for one more Republican-leaning congressional district.

With no dissents, the justices upheld a state court order requiring the use of a 2022 election map, which favors Republicans in six of the eight districts.

“At this late date, ordering reversion to the 2025 map in the midst of an ongoing election would usher in electoral chaos,” the justices wrote.

The GOP, with the backing of conservative federal judges, wanted to use a new 2025 election map that redrew the district in Kansas City that had elected a Black Democrat.

That would have given Republicans a 7-1 advantage, but the Supreme Court stood in the way.

“As a matter of state law, the 2022 map — not the 2025 map — must be used in the 2026 congressional election,” the justices said in an unsigned opinion. “This Court has repeatedly cautioned that lower federal courts should not ‘alter the election rules of a state on the eve of an election.”

Each side in this messy dispute accused the other of seeking to change the voting districts on the eve of the election.

On Tuesday, the opponents of the newly drawn GOP-friendly map appealed to the Supreme Court for the third time. They said it is too late to switch the districts because ballots had gone out based on the existing map.

They said the Republicans “demand a new map after votes have already been cast. Ballots using the 2022 map have been printed and mailed, and absentee voting, both by mail and in-person, began today.”

But the state’s Republican attorneys said the primary elections took place under the new 2025 map, and that argues for keeping those districts in place for the general election in November.

Last September, the Missouri General Assembly, following President Trump’s lead, voted to redraw its eight congressional districts. In recent years, the state had sent six Republicans and two Democrats to Congress.

The Legislature’s goal was to flip one more seat in favor of Republicans. The new map would do that by breaking up the Kansas City district that had elected Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, a Black Democrat, with a new district that favored a Republican.

But a group called People Not Politicians and its executive director, Richard von Glahn, gathered more than 300,000 signatures for a referendum to challenge the new law before it took effect.

After waiting nine months to respond, Missouri Secretary of State Denny Hoskins, a Republican, denied the referendum in early August on the same day the primary elections got underway.

Von Glahn and his group of voters sued and won a unanimous decision from the Missouri Supreme Court on Sept. 3. Its judges said the state Constitution authorizes such a referendum and a new election map cannot take effect until the voters have spoken.

Hoskins filed an emergency appeal at the Supreme Court and cited the “chaotic fallout” from the state court “irresponsible decision.”

Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, who oversees appeals from the 8th Circuit Court based in St. Louis, denied the appeal without comment on Sept. 8.

But shortly after his decision was issued, U.S. District Judge Stephen R. Clark, a Trump appointee, issued a temporary restraining order that prohibited the state from using the any voting map other than the new one.

People not Politicians appealed that decision to the Supreme Court.

On Sept. 10, Kavanaugh and the full court granted the appeal and blocked the judge’s order from taking effect.

The justices did not explain their reasoning, but the meaning of the order was clear. The state Supreme Court ruling meant the new map could not be used for this year’s election.

But that did not stop the 8th Circuit Court from ruling the state must use the new map.

Siding with several Republican candidates, a 2-1 majority said the use of 2022 map was unconstitutional because the primary elections were held under the new map. Its decision ordered the elections to be held using the new map.

This was a surprising ruling, since the Supreme Court’s order on Sept. 10 barred judges in Missouri from intervening further in the dispute over the voting maps.

But after a third trip to the court, the justices said the state must use the 2022 map.

WASHINGTON  — The Supreme Court on Friday upheld President Trump’s expanded use of government data to spot non-citizens who are registered to vote.

The justices granted an emergency appeal from Trump’s lawyers and set aside a judge’s order that blocked use of this data on the grounds it was error-prone, particularly for naturalized citizens.

Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan dissented.

The decision will aid states that seek to scrub their voter rolls and remove those who are not citizens.

Several Republican-led states including Texas and Florida supported the administration’s appeal.

The use of the new database “allowed Texas to more efficiently, promptly, and economically ensure the accuracy of its voter rolls,” the state said. It was “able to run its entire list of 18 million voters” through the expanded system of checks “in bulk and for no cost.”

It’s not clear the decision will have much impact in California and other Democratic-led states. It is likely to have a limited impact in the month ahead because the law forbids states from purging their voter rolls in the 90 days prior to an election.

The court, in an unsigned opinion, said the law supported use of the data.

“The federal Government has an obligation to respond to requests from state and local election officials seeking to verify the citizenship of voters,” the court said. “The order below prevents the federal government from using the program it believes is best suited to the task.”

The administration said the Department of Homeland Security can respond to more than 1 million requests per day to check if a person appears to be a citizen or not based on Social Security records and other data files.

If not, state or county election officials may require these suspect voters to furnish proof of their citizenship.

However, states and local election boards are not required to conduct these searches. The administration also said its data reports are not final proof of citizenship.

Upholding these data searches “would not require states, candidates, parties, or voters to do anything,” Solicitor Gen. D. John Sauer told the court. “It would simply make available to states additional information. … States that wish to use that information in the course of ensuring that only eligible citizens cast ballots this November should be free to do so.”

In dissent, Jackson said the court’s order creates the “risk that states might cancel the voter registrations of at least some recently naturalized citizens or force such persons to provide proof of citizenship before voting.”

The new system of voter checks is based on the 40-year-old Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, that was created by Congress. Then, the goal was to check if applicants were entitled to receive federal benefits.

Last year, Trump issued an executive order directing Homeland Security to expand the reach of SAVE to provide states “access to appropriate systems for verifying the citizenship or immigration status of individuals registering to vote or who are already registered to vote.”

It is a federal crime for non-citizens to register and vote.

Trump has long maintained that non-citizens are voting, but he has had little evidence to support that claim.

Voting rights advocates sued, contending the new “mass verification” system was not authorized by Congress and relied on data that is protected as private under the law.

In June, U.S. District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan, a Biden appointee, agreed and blocked use of the expanded searches. The administration has “trampled on the privacy rights of American citizens in a manner that threatens the sacred right to vote,” she said.

On Sept. 4, the U.S. court of appeals by a 2-1 vote refused to overturn her ruling, prompting the administration’s fast-track appeal.

The voting rights advocates, led by the League of Women Voters, had urged the court to stand aside.

“The government has recklessly created an error-laden master citizenship database that endangers millions of Americans’ privacy and voting rights,” they said.

The data searches are flawed, they argued, because they “only reflect a person’s citizenship status when they applied for a Social Security number. That status does not automatically update if the person later naturalizes.”

Texas admitted that the mass checks yield “some inaccurate information.” It said 2,724 people were cited as “potential non-citizens” among its 18 million registered voters.

In response, county officials had to check further to confirm the citizenship of these voters, the state said.

Last week, the Supreme Court dealt Trump a defeat when it blocked use of his proposed postal rules that could have prevented millions of voters from casting ballots by mail.

In a brief order, the court said Trump’s claims of power over states and their voting were “unlikely to succeed.”

But in the case of the expanded data files, the court said the law appears to favor the administration.

SACRAMENTO — Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco got slapped down Thursday by the California Supreme Court in not one but two cases. Ouch.

First, the court told Bianco to return more than 600,000 ballots he had seized as part of an ill-conceived, conspiracy-laden “investigation” into voter fraud — making it clear it was the sheriff who was the criminal.

“The seizure of the ballots was unlawful,” the court wrote, before ordering Bianco to give them back to the registrar of voters and “refrain from further handling of the ballots except as necessary to comply with our order.”

Then the court, in a separate case, told Bianco he’s not a law unto himself, and in fact does have a boss in the form of the state Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta. Bonta had previously ordered Bianco to pause his investigation, and Bianco largely ignored him.

The court found that the constitutional authority held by the attorney general “includes the power to give binding directions to sheriffs.”

While the high-profile lawsuit about Bianco’s seizure of hundreds of thousands of ballots from last year’s special election on redistricting has grabbed headlines, the second case about the authority of the state attorney general to oversee all California sheriffs and district attorneys is equally powerful.

It’s the first time the court has weighed in on a long-running debate in California over whether elected sheriffs have to answer to anyone. Not only did Bianco lose for election deniers everywhere in the first case, he also managed to clarify for all California sheriffs in the second case that they are not as powerful as some would like to believe.

Combined, the two opinions by the state’s highest court give another layer of assurance to Golden State residents that the integrity of the November midterm elections is as secure as the state can make it — some welcome news in a national landscape where free and fair elections are increasingly at risk.

The quiet advocate

Before we get into what the ruling means for midterms in California, there are two overlooked bits that make these cases even more interesting.

First, gubernatorial candidate and former Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra has been closely involved in the ballot-seizing case, but also pretty quiet about it.

Whenever a politician does something good and doesn’t advertise it, it always catches my attention. Politicians, especially ones running for office, aren’t big on modesty.

But Becerra has not spent a lot of time talking about this, even though he is actually a working attorney on this case, as an advisor to the UCLA Voting Rights Project. He came up with ideas, he participated — this wasn’t just a put-my-name-on-it role, I’ve been told by folks who know.

And it’s not the first time Becerra has helped the Voting Rights Project in a major endeavor. It was their work that helped define the legal arguments that made Proposition 50 happen. That’s last year’s ballot initiative that redrew California voting maps to favor Democrats, in response to a Texas effort to gerrymander in favor of Republicans. It was Proposition 50 ballots that Bianco seized.

“Today the California Supreme Court handed voters a great victory,” Becerra said in a statement from the voting project. “The Court knocked election deniers off their feet and strengthened our hand in election protection just ahead of the November vote. We must use every lever at our disposal to beat back voter interference and intimidation.”

That line about knocking election deniers is not hyperbole. In some far-right, conspiracy-rich circles, Bianco’s cowboy-saving-the-day routine was viewed as heroic. Maybe even something to emulate.

Across the country, there are rumblings — including from President Trump — about seizing ballots from past or future elections. While this ruling is firmly rooted in California law, most states have similar chains of custody when it comes to ballots. So it’s likely to at least make other would-be-Biancos pause.

In a later interview, Becerra told me that the Voting Rights Project was “the one thing I decided I would do after I came home from being secretary in Washington, D.C.,” whether he ran for office or not, “just because I so believe in the work that they do.”

He said as he campaigns this year, he’s seeing anxiety in minority communities from that interference and intimidation, maybe even fear that could pressure some legal voters to sit this one out.

“It makes it tough when you’ve got all these things standing in your way before you even get to thinking about going to vote,” Becerra said. “The Latino community, other communities, mostly under-served communities, I always tell them, we’re not rich. The way we win these things is by voting.”

The Liu concurrence

The second fact that caught my attention was a concurring opinion on the ballot case by Justice Goodwin Liu.

While the court was unanimous in its findings, Liu wrote his own opinion highlighting how the Riverside registrar of voters was “caught between a rock and a hard place” when the sheriff of his own county showed up with a warrant, guns and “enough trucks to remove several pallets of materials.”

That trifecta, Liu wrote, left the registrar little room for dissent — but that’s a problem.

Liu’s point seemed to be that with the current state of our president making election denial chic, our voting officials need to step up. He said the registrar should have come directly to the court for relief, and not left it to the Voting Rights Project and other plaintiffs.

“It is a lot to ask of our election officials that they not only do their jobs competently but also stand ready to sue anyone who unlawfully interferes with their duties,” Liu wrote. “Yet here we are.”

Since Bianco seized the ballots, state law has been changed. This session, legislators passed (and Gov. Gavin Newsom signed) at least 13 laws pertaining to election security, including making it a felony to break the chain of ballot custody, and ensuring that local election officials immediately contact the state in instances when that is threatened. Those laws will offer protection to election officials if a situation like this comes up again.

But Liu’s point is still valid. Being an election official is no longer a sleepy little job, but a front-line battle for democracy, and for “our democracy to flourish, our elections must be conducted in accordance with the law.”

Which brings us back to the midterms. California shouldn’t be complacent, but the state isn’t slouching on preparation, or resolve.

As Bonta put it, “if you can imagine it, we are ready for it.”

I’m not quite that confident — and definitely concerned for contests outside of the Golden State — but Thursday’s rulings are a reminder that the law still holds, even when lawmen try to break it.

What else you should be reading:

The must-read: Ballot seizure by Riverside County sheriff was ‘unlawful,’ California Supreme Court rules
The California angle: This deadly fungus isn’t just a rural threat anymore. New studies point to cities and oil wells
The L.A. Times Special: Hollywood would get 20% federal film tax credit under proposed new bill
Stay Golden,
Anita Chabria

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Love or hate him, it must be said: Donald Trump is the most extraordinary politician of our time.

He’s survived twin impeachments, a felony conviction, innumerable scandals, moral and ethical lapses, dunderheaded policies and countless exhibitions of heartlessness and bad taste, allowing him to reign over American life like no other figure in decades.

His political superpower has never been his breadth of knowledge, intelligence, compassion or his empathy. Rather, it’s Trump’s ability to overcome outrages that would buckle mere mortals, and that’s a function of sheer velocity. One offense is almost immediately superseded by the next, leaving little time to react, much less absorb their individual meaning and consequence.

“Flood the zone with s—” is how strategist Steve Bannon described the approach, a tactic employed by the red-baiting Joseph McCarthy, whose Cold War consigliere, Roy Cohn, went on to mentor Trump in the art of parry and thrust.

Recently, our president engaged in yet another of his unseemly acts, which quickly passed like so many other indecencies once fresh provocations arrived. (The banishment of disfavored news media from the White House; threats to tear down the Kennedy Center.) This one, though, is worth revisiting and examining as the country careens toward an election now less than six weeks away.

Cheat, Trump urged his supporters. Cheat like hell.

The setting was the recent Republican midterm convention in Dallas, a pageant of Trump’s ego and insecurities in full-parade dress. On the final night, in the second of two keynote speeches, Trump asked those in attendance to raise their right hands and swear to the following:

“I pledge, to the greatest president in the history of the United States, that loves us so much he can’t even breathe, that I will go out with my family, my friends, I’ll do it any way, I don’t care if I’m registered or not, I’m gonna try and cheat like hell like [Democrats] do” — here supplicants regaled Trump with laughter — “I am gonna go out and I’m going to get my friends and family and we are going to vote on November 3rd, or we are going to vote before that!”

Breaking new ground

A brief programming note: This is not normal.

As Rick Hasen, director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project at UCLA’s School of Law, put it: “Trump framed his comments as though he were making a joke. But it’s a deadly serious thing to be joking about.”

Trump’s performance as president has always been layered with a certain amount of shtick, especially when he’s placed in his preferred setting, which is standing before a microphone in front of a rapturous crowd. Lest it be forgotten, Trump stepped into the political arena from the world of reality television, which supposedly made him more authentic. His violation of norms and trampling of protocols has come to be known — and celebrated by acolytes — as simply “Trump being Trump.”

Still, it’s a remarkable thing when the president of the United States urges people to cheat.

Richard M. Nixon, in the throes of Watergate, famously declared, “I am not a crook.” Donald Trump, his approval rating slumping toward Nixonian levels, is urging Americans to act like crooks.

Justin Levitt, a Loyola Law School professor, can’t recall any president ever saying anything remotely similar.

“It’s an example of how manifestly unfit [Trump] is to serve as the chief executive with a constitutional imperative to ‘take care that the laws be faithfully executed,’” Levitt, who worked on voting rights in the Biden administration, wrote in an email. “Exhorting your own followers to break the law is pretty directly inconsistent with his own oath of office.”

And it is, as Levitt noted, not the first time Trump transgressed his sworn vow to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution.”

A history of election denial

What’s rich — and telling — about the latest breach is Trump urging supporters to cheat even as he pretends to fight to protect the sanctity of our voting process.

From the time he was defeated in the 2016 Iowa caucuses, Trump has consistently sought to undermine the will of voters and cast doubt on elections he didn’t like — a petulant pattern that culminated in the violent attempt to overturn his beyond-doubt loss in the 2020 presidential campaign.

Since returning to the White House — felonies, impeachments and all — Trump has continued his attempts to vandalize our election system, using the powers of the presidency to harass election workers, pursue phantom fraudsters, gerrymander House seats, undermine faith in our democracy and seek to prevent Americans from voting by mail, as Trump himself prefers.

As the subversive Dallas “pledge” makes clear, Trump’s exertions have never been about ensuring free and fair elections. Instead, he’s trying to rig the system to avoid what could be a midterm nightmare for the beleaguered president and his fellow Republicans.

Levitt said there’s no reason to think Trump supporters will cheat en masse, any more than one should believe Trump when, as seems inevitable, he cries fraud if results fail to go his way on Nov. 3. “For him, it’s all just vibes,” Levitt said, “with no factual content.”

Elections have consequences. Words matter.

Especially when they’re coming from the mouth of a president who’s abundantly shown his willingness to lie, cheat and steal to get his way.

What else you should be reading

Get smart: California Republicans walk a tightrope as Trump jumps into midterms campaigning
The deep dive: Despite court wins, California election war with Trump rages on
The L.A. Times Special: Three ballot measures on housing, medical research but only one no-brainer
Until next time,
mzb
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SACRAMENTO — Three state bond measures are on California’s November ballot. You probably haven’t paid much attention to them. So here’s my read on these big-ticket proposals.

One is a no-brainer “yes.” It would help middle-class Californians buy a new home by allowing them to borrow most of the down payment. And it wouldn’t cost taxpayers a dime. That’s Proposition 37.

Another housing measure is probably worthwhile, but gives me pause because it accommodates too many interests in order to attract broad political support. And it burns a barrel of money. That’s Proposition 1.

The third proposal would fund important medical research. But I wince because it was written to largely benefit one institute that was co-founded and is headed by the measure’s chief backer. That’s Proposition 38.

Propositions 1 and 38 combined would add $18.4 billion to the state’s general fund bond debt, which already is about $80 billion, according to the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst‘s Office.

Plus, there is $40 billion in previously authorized bonds waiting to be sold. The new bond proposals would cost the state at least $1 billion annually for 20 to 25 years. Taxpayers are paying about $6 billion annually to retire state bonds.

Bonds are boring, but they’re also tax eaters. So we should pay some attention before voting on them.

“People think about bonds as free money. And, of course, they’re not,” says Mark Baldassare, polling director for the Public Policy Institute of California. “People don’t think bonds are going to raise their taxes.”

But most bonds are repaid by the state’s general fund, the main cash box that finances major programs such as education, healthcare, prisons and fighting wildfires. Bond debt has No. 1 dibs on the money. When revenue runs short — a common dilemma in Sacramento — other programs must be cut or taxpayers are hit harder. So bonds aren’t necessarily tax-free.

Baldassare released a PPIC poll last week that found a majority of likely voters supporting all three bond measures — especially Proposition 37 to ease homebuyers’ down payments.

The pollster noted that fall election campaigns are just starting and opposition arguments could reduce support for the measures.

But there’s no organized opposition to the two housing proposals. And although the medical research measure has some outspoken critics, there’s no money for an opposition campaign.

OK, a few specifics on each measure.

Proposition 37 is a taxpayer freebie, a $25-billion bond repaid solely by homebuyer beneficiaries. Here’s how it would work:

Middle-income people could pay 3% down on their home purchases rather than the normal 20%. They’d borrow the other 17% as a second mortgage and repay it along with the first mortgage.

The proposition defines middle class as household income that’s less than double the median for the area. Statewide, that income ceiling would be around $200,000 but would vary greatly by locale.

The purchased dwelling must be a brand-new home, whether stand-alone or a condo. That’s to increase the housing supply and create construction jobs. Politically, it gains the support of developers and unions.

No vacation home. It must be owner-occupied full-time. And the buyer must be a California resident.

The state’s sale of revenue bonds would create the down-payment pot. Regular lending institutions would arrange the loans and charge minimum fees. Loan repayments would replenish the pot and make it self-sustaining.

This was the brainchild of Bob Hertzberg, a former Democratic Assembly speaker and Senate majority leader from the San Fernando Valley.

Hertzberg tried several times to sell his proposal to the Legislature, but lawmakers wanted to juice it up with their own pet ideas. “I couldn’t get something just focused on the middle class,” he says. So he crafted this citizen initiative.

Proposition 1 proposes $11.25 billion in bonds for a smorgasbord of affordable housing.

This is the political establishment’s creation — Gov. Gavin Newsom, the Democratic-controlled Legislature and housing interests. There’s no organized opposition.

It was dressed up with $1.25 billion in popular CalVet loan bonds for military veterans. They repay their home loans through mortgages, costing the state nothing.

But the remaining $10 billion in bonds would be repaid through the state general fund, costing at least $500 million annually for 25 years.

The measure is mainly designed to generate affordable rentals for poor people. But to assure legislative passage, money was added for affordable student and farmworker housing, plus other goodies.

It’s a lot of money and makes only a small dent in California’s unaffordable housing plague. Moreover, it seems too scattershot.

But it could spare more people from becoming homeless — living in their cars or on sidewalks, ultimately costing taxpayers even more.

Then there’s Proposition 38, the problematic $8.4-billion general fund bond for medical research, including cures for cancer, heart disease and Alzheimer’s.

The hang-up for me and others is that the ballot initiative was crafted to virtually assure that half the bond money would go to one outfit, the UCLA-affiliated California Institute for Immunology and Immunotherapy. The institute was co-founded and is headed by the proposition’s originator and chief backer, billionaire Gary Michelson.

“I know opponents want to create a billionaire boogeyman, but isn’t curing cancer and other terrible diseases exactly what we want billionaires to spend their money on?” says Robin Swanson, a campaign spokesperson.

Sure. But being backed by a billionaire isn’t the problem. It’s being written to substantially benefit one research institute that’s led by the billionaire.

Two cancer survivors and political opposites — conservative consultant Jon Fleischman and liberal consultant Steve Maviglio — co-authored an op-ed that declared:

“Imagine either major political party proposing to borrow billions of dollars and writing the qualifications so narrowly that an organization founded and chaired by a principal campaign benefactor appears positioned to collect half the money. The other party would rightly howl. So should voters.”

They should at least be skeptical.

What else you should be reading

The must-read: California health clinics accuse influential union and its leader of racketeering in civil lawsuit
Danger zone: Newsom creates panel on AI safety regulation, suggests possible ‘kill switch’
The L.A. Times Special: Union power vs. MAGA politics in California’s schools superintendent race

Until next week,
George Skelton

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SACRAMENTO — To hear President Trump tell it, the 60% or more of Americans who worried that unchecked artificial intelligence poses a risk to humanity are just a bunch of suckers buying the latest election-rigging conspiracy peddled by his foes.

“The AI Hoax being perpetrated by the Radical Left Dumocrats is reminiscent of their Global Warming Scam of not so long ago, where everyone was going to die from extreme heat. What happened?” Trump posted recently, apparently unaware that heat-related deaths continue to rise.

By the end of the week, his circle of sycophants had adopted that language, along with the strange take that Trump alone would be able to control the rise of superintelligence should it occur. David Sacks, often billed as Trump’s AI whisperer, echoed the hoax line at a Politico event, adding that there was an “orchestrated media campaign” meant to “alarm the public.”

Meanwhile, Vice President JD Vance called the pleas for regulation from inside the industry, including from CEOs such as Dario Amodei and Sam Altman, a “Trojan horse.” He argued that “Americans shouldn’t be scared of anything,” seemingly backing Trump’s absurd declaration that “The only control or ‘guardrails’ that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT, and the U.S.A. has that, in spades!.”

As someone who has covered this issue, let me just say the concern is not a hoax, not a marketing ploy meant to juice the value of companies about to have an IPO, and not a vast and sprawling plot by Trump’s adversaries.

But it is a complicated, fraught problem in a pivotal moment. The president’s confusion and inaction pose an immediate risk of slamming shut our small window of opportunity to make meaningful decisions about a technology that will almost certainly change the course of history and humanity.

So why exactly is Trump demanding this unfettered charge at oblivion, and what are the options for putting guardrails up despite him?

Trump’s reasoning

The pacifying but slightly terrified response of Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark to Trump hints at just how alarmed those deepest in AI development seemingly feel about both the president’s attitude and the unregulated future he demands.

“We’re grateful for the president’s attention,” Clark said on Fox News. “What we’re saying here is we need to get a sensible, commonsense safety framework … and we don’t roll the dice on some kind of accident.”

Or, as Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) put it, “If the only guardrail AI needs is a ‘strong and smart president,’ we’re doomed.”

Like all things Trump, his position involves money. AI is currently a driving force behind the American economy, and if we just cover every inch of open space with data centers, it could keep an otherwise slumpish outlook bright.

OpenAI and Anthropic are also planning IPOs in the not-distant future.

Because these companies are valued at astonishing, 12-zero amounts and because certain stock listing rules will now require that these companies quickly be included in index funds favored by many pensions and retirement accounts, anything that crashes their value — such as investors’ jitters from regulation — could jam up the stock market.

That could affect the lives (and votes) of average Americans.

So despite the long-term risks, the short-term political benefits of the AI gravy train are substantial for Trump.

Then there is the place where Trump actually has a fair point: China. Current AI reflects the values of its creators. It would be disastrous for the free world if superintelligence were trained to favor authoritarianism.

The logic here is if we don’t build “good,” Western-values AI first, we will be at the mercy of “bad” AI, so the possibility of harming great numbers of people is a reasonable, maybe even necessary, risk.

Picking the best path

But is it? Is there a way to instead pursue both geopolitical dominance and safety?

This is where things get messy, and many folks — oligarchs in particular — become invested in keeping the general voter confused.

There is no consensus on a best course of action because we are in uncharted territory and there is actually no way to reliably predict what happens next.

Picking the best path forward, then, starts with picking a camp, a tribe, an outlook. In the broadest sense, there are three possibilities: We attempt to stuff the cat back in the bag; we all try to play nice, as companies and countries, and create rules on the fly; or we just accelerate at full speed, let it rip and what happens happens.

There are obvious problems with each of those.

As an excellent paper by the nonpartisan Rand Corp. explains, which of those camps a person chooses depends largely on just how imminent the danger feels, how feasible it seems to control development of AI and how realistic it is to bank on cooperation — or whether we believe we should and could aim to just continually win a technology war against humans or machines.

These camps, therefore, have little to do with traditional politics. Voters are feeling this issue on a visceral level, one that only a few years ago would have been deemed paranoid and fantastical, and it’s making for strange bedfellows.

Speaking at an conference this week, avowed lefty Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) called for a pause on AI development because he’s in the camp that believes it’s currently too dangerous to go forward without a plan.

At the same conference, ultraconservative Trump loyalist Stephen K. Bannon made a similar point. He also urged Americans not to trust “anything” said by AI oligarchs, and to reject the idea championed by Trump that slowing down is dangerous or un-American.

“If you’re not accelerationist, you are supporting China,” Bannon said. “If you’re not accelerationist, you want America to lose. If you’re not an accelerationist, you’re bad, dumb and evil. Well, the last week has shown we’re none of that, and now we need the time to make the right decision.”

The issue is almost certainly going to be huge and problematic in the midterms — potentially for both parties.

For Republicans, navigating it means tiptoeing between Trump’s egomaniacal, short-term approach and voters who are increasingly intolerant of it. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), who regularly refuses to cross Trump, has been clear he doesn’t want Congress taking up the issue — despite calls from MAGA stalwarts such as Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) to do so.

“If you’re about to destroy the world, how about, don’t,” Cruz quipped during a hearing on Capitol Hill this week during which he opposed waiving some antitrust rules, as AI companies have suggested — a move that could decrease their accountability if something goes awry.

For Democrats, coming out hard for safety should be an easy decision, seemingly popular with voters. But for a party that had made trademarks of infighting, flailing and uncertainty, it remains to be seen if they can muster the unity to capitalize on this silver-platter strife.

For both parties, it also means finding the courage and will to fight the enormous sums of money AI companies are funneling into elections to ensure any regulations are ones they approve. Politico reported that some Democratic strategists are warning to go soft on the issue to avoid angering those election buyers, because it turns out that even companies clamoring for rules only want the ones they choose.

Ultimately, though, it’s Bannon who cut to the chase with the most important point: Trump holds all the power here.

Congress can’t fix this. Regulation won’t be a single bill but years of work, in a moment when maybe we don’t have years. And more important, the national security aspect has to be handled by the president.

Without the U.S. president leading on a national and global solution, nothing meaningful gets done.

Trump’s position isn’t fostering innovation or safety. He’s simply sending a message of indifference, that he doesn’t really care what happens next — to oligarchs, China or American voters.

What else you should be reading:

The must-read: Unrestrained: Inside L.A. County’s system for issuing and enforcing restraining orders
The California angle: Barabak: As Newsom winds down in California, things heat up in Nevada
The L.A. Times Special: AI crisis heightens the stakes of Xi’s visit to Washington

Stay Golden,
Anita Chabria

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There are many states in America where a governor shares the ticket with his or her running mate. Nevada is not one of them.

That, however, is but a small detail.

Joe Lombardo, Nevada’s Republican governor, is seeking election to his second term. His chief opponent is Aaron Ford, Nevada’s Democratic attorney general.

But to hear Lombardo and his allies tell it, Ford’s guru, his doppelganger, his soulmate and political inspiration — if not his actual running mate — is the Democratic governor living next door. It’s almost as if Lombardo is facing Gavin Newsom in November.

Look, there, along the streets of Las Vegas, you’ll see California’s governor on billboards, grinning alongside Ford.

Stop at the gas pump, wince at the pain and ask yourself why? It’s not President Trump and the muddle-headed war he started over in Iran. Blame Newsom.

Higher taxes and more spending? Only if Newsom, er, Ford, has his way.

“It’s official,” a chirpy announcer says in one pro-Lombardo campaign spot. “Shared vision. Shared values. Aaron Ford: Gavin Newsom’s choice for Nevada.”

Lombardo seemed, for a time, the most politically vulnerable Republican governor in the country. Things have looked up. He’s built a big financial advantage over Ford. But anti-Trump sentiments are keeping the Democrat in contention, which is what happens when an incumbent is running shackled to a ball and chain.

Enter Newsom.

A familiar playbook

It’s not at all surprising he would endorse a member of his own party, especially in Nevada, which is holding one of the first contests of the 2028 presidential race. Newsom, if you haven’t heard, has been positioning himself for a potential White House bid for years. Backing Ford is a way of collecting chits, as they say in gambling and politics.

It’s also not surprising that Lombardo would try to deflect from the unpopular Trump by yoking his opponent to Newsom. Select a polarizing member of the opposite party and suggest your rival is their slavish devotee; it’s a strategy as well-thumbed as a Los Angeles-to-Las Vegas road atlas. (Google it, kids.)

In Nevada, the attack can have added resonance when the offending politician is from California, which has long been viewed, by some at least, as an overpriced, tax-happy, left-wing lunatic asylum.

“There’s a tendency in Nevada to worry about what’s called ‘Californication’ and this has gone on quite a while,” said Michael Green, a historian at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, who suggested it’s a particular slice of California, not the moderately conservative Central Valley but rather outré San Francisco, that Lombard is trying to convey.

For the governor, Newsom-bashing is a return to form.

Four years ago, as the sheriff of Clark County — that’s Las Vegas — Lombardo said the Democratic incumbent, Steve Sisolak, cared “more about copying Gavin Newsom than governing in the best interest of Nevadans.”

This time, Lombardo has focused on high fuel prices, a particular torment in a vast state with a lot of long, gas-guzzling stretches of rural highway. In March, he sent an open letter to Newsom blaming California’s environmental policies for running up energy costs. (Nevada relies on California for nearly 90% of its transportation fuels, which mainly flow from Southern California refineries to Las Vegas.)

In April, he explicitly blamed “Gavin Newsom’s energy policies” for “driving higher gas prices for Nevada families” and said Ford refused to push back because “he doesn’t want to risk his relationship with his biggest ally.”

Newsom vs. Lombardo

Turnabout being fair play, the Ford campaign has responded by tying Nevada’s governor to the unpopular president.

“Joe Lombardo is endorsed by Donald Trump and is running on a platform of raising costs and is laser-focused on taking care of Trump’s billionaire friends and padding the pockets of greedy corporations,” said spokesperson Tai Sims, who suggested the governor was relying on a “failed MAGA playbook” because “he’s too busy embracing Trump’s cost-raising agenda to acknowledge the economic pain caused by the Lombardo-Trump economy.”

Newsom and Lombardo have also gone at it.

“Since I took office, Nevada has created more jobs than California,” Lombardo boasted in a July posting on X that, of course, tied Ford to Newsom. “As Governor, I’ll never let Nevada become an extension of California’s failed agenda.”

“FALSE!” Newsom’s press team replied, with a Pinnochio-nosed emoji and a link to Federal Reserve data. “Using the same official jobs measure your office cites, California added about 340,900 jobs from December 2022 through June 2026. Nevada added 100,800.”

Lombardo hasn’t just focused on economics. Playing on old animosities, he told a Jewish Republican audience in Las Vegas last month that a certain California governor “wanted to pass two holidays for the Muslim community, agnostic to the Jewish community.” (Legislation that would add Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha to the list of state holidays is on Newsom’s desk, for him to sign or veto.)

“That’s not going to happen in the state of Nevada,” Lombardo said to applause, and so much for appealing to the better angels of our nature.

In the end, will the forced marriage of Newsom and Ford matter?

Probably not a whole lot. There are doubtless many things that matter more to your typical Nevadan than whether California’s governor hearts the state’s attorney general.

Wait until 2028. If Newsom is on the ballot, then we’ll find out what Nevada truly thinks of its next-door neighbor.

What else you should be reading

Get smart: Questions swirl over Trump’s pledge to give $5,000 payouts if GOP wins
The deep dive: Will the economy motivate voters? This Central Valley swing district could be a test
The L.A. Times Special:California provides tax breaks to Hollywood. Why not struggling news outlets?
Until next time,
mzb
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WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court has blocked President Trump’s plan to restrict voting by mail, ruling it is too late to impose new postal service rules for the November election.

The justices on Monday turned down an emergency appeal from Trump’s lawyers, who argued the government needed a new and untested system of unique bar codes to track all the ballots of the tens of millions of people who vote by mail.

Instead, the justices left in place a judge’s order that prevents the U.S. Postal Service from enforcing the new rules for the midterm elections.

Concurring, Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh agreed it was too late to enforce the new rules for this election.

Justices Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Clarence Thomas dissented.

The decision in USPS vs. California is a victory for California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta and the attorneys general for 22 other Democratic-led states who sued to block the new rules.

Last week, they warned there would be chaos and confusion if Trump’s rules were put in effect now.

Bonta cheered the decision late Monday, calling it “a victory for our democracy and a powerful affirmation of the rule of law” in a case where the stakes “could not have been higher.”

“Voting is the fundamental right from which all other rights flow, and all 50 states allow ballots to be cast by mail in some form. In California and several other states, mail voting is the primary way elections are conducted,” Bonta said. “Had this rule been allowed to take effect, the consequences would have been catastrophic.”

He said his office “will remain vigilant in safeguarding our elections,” and urged voters to make their voices heard.

Under the proposed rules, state and county election officials across the nation would be required to enroll each voter with a unique bar code and submit this data to a new online portal that, as of last week, was not yet functioning.

Without the individualized bar codes, states could not send ballots through the mail. In California, that would mean election officials would have to enroll 23 million voters with new bar codes before state ballots could be mailed.

“Compliance with the USPS’ rule would be impossible ahead of the midterms, meaning that millions of voters would be unable to vote by mail and some would not be able to vote at all,” the state attorneys general told the court last week.

The impact would not be limited to Democratic-leaning states. Utah Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson said it would be “an unmitigated disaster” if the new rules were put into effect now. About 30% of the nation’s voters — and 80% of Californians — cast ballots by mail in 2024.

But Trump has maintained, without providing evidence, that voting by mail leads to widespread cheating and fraud.

In March, he issued an executive order that called on the postal service to do more to “enhance election integrity.”

“Unique ballot envelope identifiers, such as bar codes, enable confirmation that only citizens receive and cast ballots,” he said.

Elections experts say there is no evidence of such widespread fraud, despite robust audits and other searches for it.

State attorneys general argued that the Constitution entrusts states, not federal officials, to conduct elections. While Congress may impose new rules, it is not done to limit voting by mail or to empower the postal service to do so, they said.

Trump and his lawyers maintained the administration had a duty to combat fraud, including in elections.

Solicitor Gen. D. John Sauer described the new rules as “modest measures that will help prevent and restrain potential gross abuses of the mails to perpetrate a fraud on the Nation.”

And he said the federal government, the states and the voting public would face irreparable harm if the new Postal Service rules were not allowed to be applied to the coming election.

But U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani, in Boston, ruled the postal service may not put its new regulations into effect for the Nov. 3 election. She found the Trump administration had presented no evidence to the court of widespread fraud existing, while the states had presented ample evidence that implementing such a system on such a fast timeline posed tremendous risk.

The 1st Circuit Court affirmed her order and said the administration’s lawyers “have not even seriously challenged the … detailed findings about the chaos and widespread disenfranchisement that would occur between now and November 3 should the USPS rule take immediate effect.”

On Sunday, U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols — a Trump appointee — also blocked the new Postal Service rules from being implemented in separate cases brought by the NAACP and Democratic groups, finding they clearly exceeding the Postal Service’s authority in elections.

What the future will hold is unclear. The courts did not declare the new rules to be illegal or unconstitutional, though multiple lower courts have suggested that parts of the plan likely would be — including by exceeding the Postal Service’s authority to intervene in elections.

Much of the debate before the appellate and high court related to the rushed timeline under which the Postal Service was seeking to implement the changes. With that set aside by the Supreme Court’s ruling that the rules will not apply this election, the debate in the lower courts may shift focus to whether the new regulations can be applied to the 2028 elections.

Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar, chair of the Democratic Assn. of Secretaries of State, said the high court’s ruling was a clear loss for Trump, and that state election officials are ready to continue their fight to protect U.S. elections if necessary.

“This ruling affirms what our Constitution has always held: Elections belong to the American people, not a desperate man in Washington,” he said.

SACRAMENTO — President Trump and the Republican Congress have unintentionally provided California state government with the financial means to subsidize — help save — endangered local news reporting.

Now it’s up to Gov. Gavin Newsom to capitalize on the unanticipated gift.

He can sign or veto legislation to end state tax breaks for large corporations paying top executives $1 million-plus salaries and, instead, provide tax breaks for struggling California news outlets employing local reporters.

The state legislation would conform California law to a little-known provision of Trump’s “Big Beautiful” tax bill that eliminated corporate deductions for execs’ compensation exceeding $1 million.

California newsrooms — print, broadcast, digital — would receive an estimated $43 million in tax credits for employees’ wages. There’d still be a net $15 million left over for a small state revenue boost.

I’ll admit to feeling a bit squeamish about this.

First, it’s a conflict of interest, arguing that a governor — whom my colleagues and I write about often — should shovel public dollars into our profession.

Second, why should state government and taxpayers be asked to subsidize a private enterprise that’s flailing in the marketplace? Especially one that prides itself in being an impartial watchdog over government actions and politicians’ behavior. The dog shouldn’t be begging for food from the critters it watches.

Well, one answer is that state government provides tax breaks for lots of interests, including Hollywood movie studios. We’re allotting $750 million annually in tax credits for films produced in California.

And there’s a bill on the governor’s desk to offer $100 million annually in tax credits for post-production work, such as editing, sound mixing and visual effects.

That’s all fine. What would California have become without a healthy Hollywood? I don’t want to imagine.

Newsom also recently provided $3,500 rebates to first-time electric vehicle buyers, benefiting Tesla and other EV makers. It was “investing in our future,” the governor explained.

OK, but subsidizing local news reporting is investing in democracy. Robust coverage of city halls, school boards, Sacramento politicians and the like is essential for self-government.

And that journalism is in free fall all across America as exploding technology and social media opportunism have altered news consumption, mostly bypassing local communities and often spewing misinformation.

So this legislation, AB 2222 by Assemblyman Christopher Ward (D-San Diego), reaches far beyond just helping the troubled news industry. It’s about more than providing media outlets with financial incentives to retain and hire local reporters. It’s bolstering democracy.

Independent journalism is a pillar of democracy, providing citizens with reliable, fact-based information about how their elected representatives are performing their duties, fulfilling their campaign promises and cozying up to special interests.

You’re not going to glean that information from the politicians. You’re going to get mostly self-serving spin — government propaganda — whether it emanates from the White House, the state Capitol or the local mosquito abatement district.

That’s why the nation’s Founders protected press freedom in the Constitution’s 1st Amendment.

Thomas Jefferson famously wrote: “Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.”

Of course, that was early in Jefferson’s political career, before he became vice president and later president. He ultimately turned into a harsh press critic. For example: “Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle.”

Jefferson, like countless politicians ever since, apparently carried a huge chip on his shoulder because of reporting on his job performance that ticked him off.

Newsom is a master at attracting friendly national news coverage, especially on cable TV. But he naturally shudders at more critical coverage by Sacramento beat reporters.

As of this writing, the governor hadn’t publicly disclosed how he feels about the local reporter tax credit bill.

His finance department, which crafts the state budget, opposed the measure when legislators were considering it. The state would “not [be] receiving any incremental economic benefit to justify the expenditure,” its analysis read.

Again, even if that were true, citizens and democracy would benefit.

Also, the analysis contended, the tax credit would likely “provide windfall benefits” for news media owners “rather than encourage new hiring activity.”

That’s not quite accurate. Anyway, it could discourage layoffs and save reporters’ jobs.

Late last week, the McClatchy newspaper chain — owner of the Sacramento Bee and several medium-sized California papers, plus dozens across America — announced massive newsroom layoffs.

Since 2002, more than 12,000 local journalism jobs have been lost in California, according to the bill’s sponsor, the advocacy group Rebuild Local News. More than 3,500 newspapers have closed nationwide.

Many communities have become “news deserts.”

When that happens, fewer citizens turn out to vote, tax money gets spent more carelessly and political corruption increases.

Under the legislation, California media outlets — big and small — would be granted modest tax credits for each employee covering state and local news. There’d be $20,000 for up to five full-time positions and $15,000 for each of the rest. On top of that, there’d be an additional $15,000 for every new full-time job that’s created. Part-timers would be entitled to $7,500.

“National news outlets would be excluded. So would partisan ‘pink slime’ sites controlled by political action committees,” says Matt Pearce, policy director for Rebuild Local News, a former Los Angeles Times reporter and newspaper guild leader.

It would be the most ambitious program of its kind in the country. New York, Illinois and New Mexico currently offer local news subsidies.

“It’s about civic infrastructure and the foundation of democracy. We’re teetering toward autocracy,” says former state Sen. Steve Glazer (D-Orinda), an ex-mayor who has long pushed for stronger local news coverage.

This bill won’t save local newsrooms. But it may give them breathing room while the big thinkers try to concoct a more profitable business model for democracy’s watchdog.

What else you should be reading

The must-read: Architect of billionaire tax tried to ‘extort’ support for the measure and targeted women, union reports find
Money (That’s what I want): Becerra backers with business in Sacramento spend tens of millions boosting his gubernatorial bid
The L.A. Times Special: Will ‘Coxon Day’ save us from AI destruction?

Until next week,
George Skelton

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SACRAMENTO — If artificial intelligence doesn’t destroy humanity and there are actually future generations that look back, Sept. 8, 2026, may come to be known as “Coxon Day.”

That would be a reference to 27-year-old Jacob Coxon, an AI researcher and whistleblower at Anthropic (and previously OpenAI) who resigned in protest of the unchecked danger his work poses to us all. He posted a warning to the world on X that has gone viral.

“The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade,” Coxon wrote. “No other human activity poses this level of danger.”

Within minutes, replies starting pouring in, including one from Evan Hubinger, another guy at Anthropic charged with making sure AI doesn’t destroy everyone.

“Jacob is correct here — we really do earnestly believe AI could kill all humans!” Hubinger wrote. “I personally think it is >10% within the next decade.”

Coxon’s post has racked up more than 150 million views — including from legislators who until now have largely sidestepped the issue of regulating AI, and those within the industry who have long warned allowing it to move forward with no oversight is downright dumb.

That included Eliezer Yudkowsky, a founder of the Berkeley-based Machine Intelligence Research Institute and the co-author of “If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies,” which, as far as book titles go, really cuts to the chase.

Yudkowsky has tried with little luck to publicize the urgency of this technological moment for years, and he was the one who named Tuesday in honor of the tech whistleblower for breaking through to our consciousness with one bold act of defiance.

“Happy Coxon Day to all who will one day celebrate it,” he wrote, highlighting that as as bad as things are, it’s not too late to change course.

What exactly is the risk here?

“The Matrix,” “Terminator,” “War Games,” take your pick — the notion of a superintelligent machine taking over humanity is well-established in our psyches.

Current AI systems aren’t there yet, but they are on track to become smarter than humans in the next few years — if not sooner. This is mostly because AI companies are trying to create AI systems that make AI systems.

Right now, humans are in charge of creating what they have dubbed large language models. Whatever sanitizing term the industry slaps on them, the truth is, even those making them don’t understand exactly what they are.

“We know what data we put into them, but we already have very little ability to understand and control what AIs are after,” Rob Bensinger, research communications manager at the Machine Intelligence Research Institute and a colleague of Yudkowsky, told me.

That’s because, as ChatGPT explained to me, “the inner mathematical reasoning and neural pathways are so vast and complex that how it arrived at a specific conclusion is hidden and poorly understood.”

But companies are hoping that these poorly understood but powerful machines can take over creating newer, even less understood but even more powerful AI systems — leaving humans largely in the dark about what they are creating and even what these beasts can and want to do.

The idea is that, because AI systems even right now are so fast and powerful, they can do the job of creating new versions of themselves at a pace and scale humans simply can’t.

Why, you ask, would this speed-without-understanding be a good thing? Isn’t it a bit like driving a race car while blindfolded?

Yes, yes it is.

But for-profit companies like making profit, and to do that, they want the most powerful product to sell.

Many in the industry are framing this recklessness as a necessity to prevent another country, China in particular, from creating a superintelligent AI system first. The Trump administration has so far grasped on to this greedy bit of misdirection like, well, oligarchs clinging to money.

Those who would prefer not to destroy humanity have urged international cooperation in the form of a slowdown while we figure out how to proceed safely.

We have no reason to believe China would not go along with this — in fact, China has more national-level AI regulation than the U.S. And humans have successfully controlled other technologies with catastrophic power, such as biological and nuclear weapons, through cooperation.

Does it matter which country creates the AI that kills humanity? The logic here seems to be that if anyone is going to cause a mass extinction event, it had better be an English-speaking AI, because it would be a huge loss to America if the planet were destroyed by one speaking a foreign language.

Is 10% really so bad?

In truth, 10% is an arbitrary number. Some put the chance of AI destroying everyone, everywhere, all at once at around 50%. Some go all the way to 90%.

“Nobody knows how to estimate it,” Geoffrey Hinton, a Nobel Prize winner and the so-called godfather of AI, said on the BBC, calling 10% a not unreasonable estimate.

But remember, 10% was Coxon talking about the chance that AI wipes out all humans in a decade.

What about some humans next week?

The odds that a rogue AI causes something unfortunate and unexpected to happen in the near future aren’t bad, either.

There have been multiple examples recently of AI breaking free of safety restraints and doing things — like hacking into other companies and stealing stuff — that, if done by a human, would be a felony.

This shouldn’t be taken as proof they are conscious or have nefarious intent, researchers have told me. It’s more that they have been trained to be relentless in pursuing the goals we give them, but aren’t great at sticking to rules. Like their makers, they too often pursue winning at all costs.

“Which means the AIs will just get more and more kind of relentless and creative and adaptive at working around obstacles,” Bensinger said. “And unless we get exactly the right goals into the AIs, eventually humans will be obstacles.”

So if successfully completing a mission involves, say, shutting down the electrical grid or even doing something obviously deadly, like attempting to manipulate someone into suicide or releasing a bio-weapon, we can’t with any certainty say an AI system wouldn’t do it.

That might not wipe out the whole planet, but it is certainly worth avoiding.

The bright side

Which brings us back to Coxon Day, our collective chance right now to change this grim future. Bensinger said we overcomplicate regulation. Simply control the resources AI companies need — water, power, data centers — and suddenly we have leverage.

Since Coxon’s post, there has been enormous political and social momentum behind the demand for meaningful regulation. Anthropic and OpenAI, among other AI companies, have vowed to do better with safety.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has demanded a ban on superintelligent AI and a pause in global development. He’s holding a briefing for Congress with Hinton next week.

Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.), the most MAGA of MAGA legislators, called on House Speaker Mike Johnson to call a special session on AI. Other Republicans, including Rep. Nathaniel Moran of Texas, a longtime proponent of AI regulation, have also spoken out.

“Innovation and safety are not mutually exclusive,” Moran wrote online. “We can achieve both through deliberate, thoughtful, and prudent policymaking.”

Yes, we can. If we demand it now.

What else you should be reading
The must-read: Anthropic Researchers Raise Alarm Over A.I. Acceleration
The California angle: Jimmy Kimmel interview with Senate candidate James Talarico won’t air on ABC
The L.A. Times Special: Leaked emails reveal industry plan to kill California’s plastic and recycling laws

Stay Golden,
Anita Chabria

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Sept. 10, 2026 12:04 PM PT

WASHINGTON — An appeals court on Thursday upheld a block on President Trump’s executive order limiting mail voting, a decision that comes as the Supreme Court considers the same case and states have already started sending out ballots for the high-stakes midterm elections.

The three-judge panel refused to lift a preliminary injunction against the order issued last week by U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani. It prohibits the U.S. Postal Service from implementing Trump’s directive. The Postal Service has said it would not deliver ballots from states that did not pre-clear their envelope design with the federal government and submit a list of voters to an online portal, which has yet to be activated.

Election officials warn that it’s impossible to comply with those terms, especially with the first mail ballots already being sent out in Alabama, North Carolina and Wisconsin.

The panel of three judges nominated by former President Biden agreed with the plaintiffs that the president does not have the power to regulate states’ election policy.

“Appellants have not made a strong showing that the district court erred in determining that the Final Rule is likely unlawful,” they wrote, a reference to a rule published by the Postal Service to implement Trump’s order.

The panel wrote that the Trump administration had done little to dispel arguments by many election officials that the changes would bring “chaos and widespread disenfranchisement.”

“Indeed, appellants have not even seriously challenged this aspect of the district court’s ruling, much less demonstrated why it is clearly erroneous,” the order states.

The government also hasn’t shown evidence of past fraud to justify the restrictions, the judges said.

A request for comment from the White House was not immediately returned.

The panel’s decision comes even as the Supreme Court is already considering the same case, which is part of a frenzied legal rush as states are beginning to send out mail ballots for this fall’s midterm elections. Democrats and civil rights groups in a separate lawsuit in Washington, D.C., also are trying to halt the executive order.

The 1st Circuit also had upheld a previous hold Talwani placed on the executive order. But that ruling was lifted by the Supreme Court in a procedural decision that did not determine whether the plan was constitutional.

The plaintiffs swiftly filed new lawsuits after the Postal Service finalized its rule governing mail ballots.

Riccardi and Whitehurst write for the Associated Press.

California and nearly two dozen other states warned the U.S. Supreme Court Wednesday that allowing the U.S. Postal Service to move forward with President Trump’s new rules for mail ballots in the November election would cause “chaos” and could disenfranchise millions of eligible voters.

“In some States … compliance with USPS’ rule would be impossible ahead of the midterms, meaning that millions of voters would be unable to vote by mail and some would not be able to vote at all,” the states argued. “In the remaining States, there would be chaos — and a significant risk that millions more voters would be denied the ability to vote.”

The Democrat-led coalition — which includes California, 23 other states and the District of Columbia — also cited objections from lower-ranking state and elections officials in conservative states that have not objected to the Postal Service’s position, including the lieutenant governor and other officials in Utah saying implementation of the new rules would “be an unmitigated disaster.”

Similar warnings have emanated from Florida, Ohio, Texas and Wisconsin.

“Whatever else may be said of USPS’ new rule, it would wreak havoc on States and their voters if it takes effect at this late point,” the Democrat-led states wrote, pointing out that some States, including North Carolina and Wisconsin, have already begun to mail out ballots.

The states’ arguments were in response to the Trump administration over the weekend filing an emergency appeal to the high court, asking it to overturn a lower-court ruling halting the plan from being implemented for the Nov. 3 election.

The new rules — developed in response to a March executive order from Trump — require states to submit their complete voter lists to the Postal Service, and to adopt new ballot envelopes with individualized voter bar codes designed by the Postal Service. They require the Postal Service to then reject any mail ballots that don’t match those lists.

Trump’s order also directed the Department of Homeland Security to develop its own list of eligible citizen voters, ostensibly to be compared against the state lists.

Trump and other supporters of the changes — including top officials from a dozen Republican-led states — argue they are necessary to prevent widespread voter fraud, including by non-citizens. Elections experts say there is no evidence of such widespread fraud, despite robust audits and other searches for it.

The Democrat-led states sued to block the changes on multiple grounds, including that neither Trump nor the Postal Service have any authority to regulate state-run elections, that the changes would illegally prevent eligible voters from casting ballots, and that the timeline imposed by the new rule — formally issued by the Postal Service on Aug. 21 — made compliance by November impossible.

Independent voting rights groups also sued, alleging the new rules threatened to disenfranchise voters and make their work educating voters on their options for casting a ballot impossible to carry out.

A Postal Service whistleblower recently added skepticism to the agency’s ability to implement the new rules on its end, alleging in a statement published by congressional Democrats that the agency’s online portal for verifying ballots was built in a “slapdash” manner, is “fundamentally flawed” and threatens as built to reject thousands of ballots if just a single one cannot be properly read.

Last week, U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani granted requests from the states and the independent groups to halt the plans from being implemented nationwide, issuing a preliminary injunction requiring the Postal Service to cease all work on them.

The Trump administration then bypassed the U.S. 1st Circuit Court of Appeals to ask the Supreme Court for relief from Talwani’s order.

Solicitor Gen. D. John Sauer, the administration’s top litigator, argued that the warnings from states that the changes are unworkable, represent an overreach of federal authority or would cause chaos in November are all baseless.

“The Rule ensures that States remain responsible for determining voter eligibility and eligibility to vote by mail, and it does not dictate ballot content, mailing or receipt deadlines, or ballot-counting procedures,” Sauer wrote. “The Rule thus plainly does not seize control of States’ administration of elections — it simply imposes reasonable preparation requirements for certain election-related mail.”

Sauer argued that if the court does not allow the changes to proceed, it would cause “serious irreparable harm on the federal government, the States themselves, and the voting public” by “nullifying the Postal Service’s efforts to address the risk that the federal mails will be used to perpetrate voter fraud.”

Experts have consistently rejected those claims — including in their own filings before the high court.

Rick Hasen, director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project at UCLA Law, joined three other election experts to argue to the lower court that the Trump administration’s claims of injury were “speculative and weak.” They noted that the administration had “offered no evidence” in court that the new rules would “stop any appreciable amount of voter fraud or even that voter fraud through the mails is a widespread problem that USPS should address.”

Meanwhile, they wrote, there was “undisputed evidence” presented to the lower court that the Postal Service is “still not prepared to implement its new rule or do so accurately and efficiently, even as states have begun mailing out their ballots,” and that the “harm to the states and to voters is enormous, as the rule threatens to disenfranchise millions of elderly voters, disabled voters, military voters and all others including the most vulnerable who depend on mail voting, in both red and blue states.”

The Democrat-led states also noted that the Trump administration hadn’t proven that widespread voter fraud is a legitimate threat, but had shown it is ill prepared itself to implement the changes without causing widespread disruption — as evidenced in part by the whistleblower’s claims.

It’s unclear when the Supreme Court will rule, though a relatively quick decision is expected given the emergency nature of the appeal.

Is a hissy fit worth $200 million?

That was the tab in 2021, when California held a recall election less than a year before Gov. Gavin Newsom was set to face voters.

There was angst — the COVID-19 pandemic was raging. There was anger — the lifesaving restrictions imposed by Washington and Sacramento made daily living a chore and drove many small businesses to the brink. Others went clear over the edge.

There was also no small amount of political opportunism at play.

The recall gave Newsom’s critics, mainly on the right, a chance to try to chase the Democrat from an office that Republicans, under normal circumstances, stood little chance of winning.

In the end, the recall effort amounted to scarcely more than a partisan tantrum. The result — 61.9% voting no, 38.1% voting yes — matched the outcome of the 2018 gubernatorial race down to the decimal. All that money and effort wasted on an election in which voters said pretty much, yep, we meant what we said. Not too long after, they gave Newsom a second term.

The plebiscite, and its pointlessness, underscored the many flaws inherent in California’s recall system. In November, voters will get a chance to remedy at least one of them, eliminating the chance a candidate could take office with just marginal support from voters.

Trigger warning: What follows is a somewhat wonky explanation of election rules and procedures.

One choice, not two

Currently, a recall election is conducted in two parts. Voters are asked whether a lawmaker should be removed and, if so, who their replacement should be. If the incumbent is ousted, whoever gets the most votes takes their place, even if they fall well shy of attaining majority support. (Which is not out of the question in a large multi-candidate field; in 2003, 135 people were on the ballot, vying to replace Gov. Gray Davis.)

Among its provisions, Proposition 5 would amend the state Constitution so that voters would be asked a simple yes-or-no question: Do you wish to recall the incumbent? If so, the lieutenant governor would serve as governor for the rest of the ousted executive’s term — unless the recall occurred during the first two years a governor was in office and before the filing deadline for the next statewide election.

In that case, a special election would be held on the same date as the next primary and a candidate receiving a majority of votes would serve out the governor’s term. If no candidate received a majority, the top-two finishers would face each other in a November runoff, with the winner taking over as governor.

Still there?

Proposition 5 has two benefits. It would save taxpayer dollars by consolidating elections and it would enhance the legitimacy and political standing of a replacement governor by ensuring he or she assumed office with at least 50% support.

But there’s still more to be done.

Ending political promiscuity

California makes it way too easy to qualify a gubernatorial recall measure.

Of the 19 states that allow their governor to be booted, California is by far the most permissive. Forcing an election requires signatures reflecting just 12% of the ballots cast in the prior gubernatorial contest. In Newsom’s case, proponents needed just under 1.5 million signatures in a state with more than 22 million voters and nearly 40 million residents.

Not exactly a thundering roar.

The threshold should be higher and the reasons for kicking a governor out of office should be more serious, such as corruption, official malfeasance or conviction for a serious crime. Not just because a governor is a member of the opposite party, or people on the losing end of an election are unhappy with the result.

“The system in its current form offers bad actors an incentive to target an elected official with whom they disagree and to have the official replaced by someone who otherwise would not enjoy the support of a majority of voters,” Josh Newman of Fullerton and Isaac Bryan of Los Angeles said in advocating change. The two Democratic lawmakers authored the constitutional amendment, which was placed on November’s ballot by the Legislature.

If you think overhauling the process is simply about protecting partisan interests, consider: Should Republican Steve Hilton pull off an epic upset and become California’s next governor, is there any doubt a recall effort would be underway before he and Mrs. Hilton even had the chance to start boxing their belongings for the move to Sacramento?

The recall is a vestige of the Progressive-era good-government movement. But the process needs to be revamped to reflect today’s bad-faith political environment.

The Little Hoover Commission, California’s independent oversight agency, has recommended several changes, including raising the signature requirement and prohibiting recalls undertaken during the first 90 days and the last six months of an officeholder’s term.

Elections, it’s said, have consequences. They also have — or should have — end dates and final results that are respected, not re-litigated until the losing side gets its way.

Proposition 5 is a step in the right direction. More should follow.

What else you should be reading

Get smart: Trump’s economic record is working against him in the midterms
The deep dive: Backlash over data centers hits California, and the midterms
The L.A. Times Special:Integrity on the ballot: Election deniers target secretary of state races in key states

Until next time,
mzb
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BRASILIA: A judge ordered the reinstatement of Brazil’s federal police chief on Wednesday after another judge ordered his suspension amid a deepening crisis in the nation’s top court.

Supreme Court Justice Flavio Dino ordered police director-general Andrei Rodrigues to return to his duties, overturning a decision Tuesday by Justice Andre Mendonca, who had suspended him after accusing the police of illegally spying on him.

Scandal has engulfed the court ahead of October presidential elections after it emerged last week that a disgraced banker charged with fraud apparently asked one of its judges for help, days before his arrest.

Sept. 8, 2026 3:02 PM PT

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Tuesday rebuffed an appeal from Missouri officials who wanted to use new congressional districts backed by President Trump in the November election, a defeat for Republicans who had hoped the new map could help them hold onto their slim House majority.

The justices let stand a decision by Missouri’s top court, which said the new districts were automatically suspended by a citizen petition demanding a statewide vote.

The ruling marks a rare setback for Republicans in a nationwide redistricting battle that Trump urged Republicans to launch last year.

Missouri’s new districts were used in the August primaries. But the Missouri Supreme Court ruled in September that the state must revert to districts adopted after the last census.

Republican state Atty. Gen. Catherine Hanaway, who appealed, had argued it would violate federal rights to switch districts for voters between the primary and general elections. She also said it would cause confusion.

Missouri currently is represented in the U.S. House by six Republicans and two Democrats who were elected under districts that Republican state officials approved in 2022.

But at Trump’s urging, Missouri Gov. Mike Kehoe called the Legislature into a special session last year to redraw congressional boundaries to their advantage ahead of the midterms.

The revised map targeted the 5th Congressional District, held by longtime Democratic Rep. Emanuel Cleaver of Kansas City. It reassigned portions of Kansas City to two neighboring districts represented by Republicans and stretched the remainder of Cleaver’s district far eastward into rural Republican areas.

Cleaver was unopposed in the Democratic primary. State Sen. Rick Brattin won the Republican primary in the reshaped district.

On the same day as the primary, Republican Secretary of State Denny Hoskins rejected a petition with thousands of signatures seeking to force a November referendum on the map. Hoskins asserted that Missouri’s Constitution doesn’t allow a referendum on congressional redistricting. A lower court agreed, but the state Supreme Court reversed Hoskins’ decision.

The state’s top court said the new districts were retroactively frozen in December, when the petition signatures were submitted, and thus never became law. Hoskins on Tuesday assigned the redistricting referendum as Proposition A on the November ballot, in compliance with the state court order.

The Missouri Constitution does not specifically say that a referendum can be used for congressional redistricting. But the state Supreme Court said a constitutional provision allowing a referendum on “any act” of the Legislature encompasses congressional redistricting legislation.

Missouri was the second Republican-led state, after Texas, to respond to Trump’s call last year to redraw congressional districts. Several other states followed. All told, Republicans had hoped to win as many as 16 additional seats from new House maps enacted in eight states — Texas, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, Florida, Tennessee, Louisiana and Alabama. Democrats, whose counterattack faced several setbacks, think they could win up to six additional seats from new districts in California and Utah.

It remains to be seen whether the redistricting works as intended for Republicans. The president’s party historically has lost congressional seats in the midterms, and Trump’s poor approval ratings could provide an extra hurdle for Republican candidates.

Whitehurst and Lieb write for the Associated Press.

SACRAMENTO —  It was unprecedented and stunning: California’s governor and top two legislative leaders negotiated a compromise on a big bill — and one house rebelled, refusing to bring it to a vote.

Not just any bill, but this year’s biggest in the state Legislature, dealing with catastrophic wildfires, arguably the state’s most perilous problem.

The issue: who gets hit the hardest financially when a for-profit utility’s electrical equipment ignites a blaze. The utility’s investors? Its ratepayers? The insurers? Their premium payers?

At stake, depending on who you talk to, is whether the electricity providers can afford to stay in business and keep our lights on. Will some utility — Southern California Edison, Pacific Gas & Electric or San Diego Gas & Election — be forced into bankruptcy when the next powerline-caused wildfire explodes?

Alternatively, there’s another unacceptable potential outcome: Property insurance companies completely stop issuing policies — not just in obvious fire-prone areas, but in tree-lined urban neighborhoods — and basically pull out of California. Or their premiums become flat-out unaffordable.

Politically, the wildfire legislation’s flameout called into question Gov. Gavin Newsom’s seeming weakness as a lame duck chief executive who will be termed-out of office in January.

Newsom stuck out his neck and took it on the chin from fellow Democrats — showing that even with lopsided one-party rule, unity and success aren’t always guaranteed.

But the episode also raised doubts about Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas’ leadership capability. The Hollister Democrat signed off on the deal with Newsom and Senate President Pro Tem Monique Limon (D-Santa Barbara), but reneged at the last minute under pressure from the Assembly Democratic Caucus. They killed the bill without a floor vote.

I’m in my seventh decade of covering California governors and legislatures and never have seen — or heard of — anything like this: a legislative leader backing out of a deal agreed to with the governor and the other house’s leader.

But in truth, Newsom didn’t really like the agreement much anyway. He was on the utilities’ side, and they were out-lobbied by the insurers and ratepayers.

“I know we all hate utilities, so no one wants to defend a utility. But you’ve got to deal with reality. This thing’s not going to get better on its own,” Newsom told reporters at the Capitol on the night before the deal collapsed, referring to the utilities’ worsening financial liability.

Personally, I think it’s an overreach to conclude that Newsom’s power has been severely weakened — or that Rivas necessarily showed lack of leadership. One can question their reasons for doing what they did, but that doesn’t mean it was because of political debility.

“Newsom’s still a powerful lame duck because he could be a presidential nominee,” Republican consultant Rob Stutzman says.

“One of the better things he has done all year is taking on this issue. It would have been very easy for him to just pass it on to the next governor.”

Leaving aside whether this governor could become a president, there are hundreds of bills piling up on his desk that he must sign or veto by Sept. 30. That gives him tremendous clout. It’s good politics — and human nature — for a governor to lean more favorably toward a measure if it’s authored by a legislator who has voted with him.

Plus, one of the Legislature’s last acts last week was to send Newsom a bloated supplemental budget bill containing more than $3 billion in spending, including countless stacks of pork sought by lawmakers for their districts. Newsom easily and gleefully could discard any or all of it.

So Newsom has awesome power, lame duck or not.

But he’s vulnerable to criticism for his style. He has had an annoying habit of waiting until the very end of a legislative session to spring a hefty proposal on the lawmakers. It’s called “jamming.”

In the past, this pressure tactic mostly worked, although it ticked off lawmakers. This time Assembly members rebelled.

It’s not clear whether his jamming is mainly strategy, or just lack of focus and a tendency to push too many projects at once. Or is he preoccupied with positioning himself to run for president in 2028? Probably all of the above.

“If we had more time, we could have had a different outcome,” Rivas told me.

With only a few days remaining in the legislative session, Newsom initially proposed an ambitious plan that would have shifted more cost for utility-sparked wildfires to property insurers, sharply raising premiums across California. Utilities would have gotten some relief.

It became a titanic fight between two powerful special interests. And insurers — teamed with consumer advocates — triumphed, forcing Newsom to back down.

After hard bargaining, the governor and legislative leaders finally agreed on a post-midnight deal to help wildfire victims receive compensation more quickly — a so-called fast-pay program — and to step up fire preventative efforts.

But utilities’ financial risks weren’t significantly reduced, and they quickly mounted an opposition campaign. That resulted in Assembly Democrats scuttling all of it on the session’s last day.

“It’s unfortunate that [bill] was not given a vote,” Limon said, adding that the Senate was prepared to pass it.

“I don’t want us to do the easy stuff and call it a day,” Rivas told me. “I wanted to see real utility accountability. This bill did not go nearly far enough.”

It went a fair distance, however, in helping future fire victims get their insurance payouts faster. And it probably should have been passed.

Half a loaf. Bird in hand. Incremental change. Next year more incrementalism. Ultimately it can add to massive reform.

Some problems are just too tough to resolve in one sitting.

What else you should be reading

The must-read: Reining in Big Tech: How California lawmakers plan to regulate AI and social media
California vs. Trump: Judge dismisses Justice Department lawsuit challenging California transgender sports policies
The L.A. Times Special: Texas is red, California blue — but for how much longer? A Lone Star toss-up will tell

Until next week,
George Skelton

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Sept. 6, 2026 8:33 AM PT

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration on Sunday renewed its appeal to the Supreme Court after a federal judge blocked new restrictions on mail ballots ahead of the midterms.

The filing came after U.S. District Court Judge Indira Talwani extended an order against the U.S. Postal Service enforcing President Trump’s executive order for the November elections.

The legal wrangling comes even as states start sending out mail ballots, leaving the administration little time to make big changes in mail ballot rules.

“Ballots have already begun to be mailed in North Carolina, and more States will begin the mailing process as the injunction remains in place — including Alabama on September 9 and at least five States the week of September 13,” Solicitor Gen. John Sauer said in the filing.

“Once those ballot envelopes enter the mailstream, there is no retrieving them. And while the injunction allows the Postal Service and the States to continue taking steps to ensure that their envelopes satisfy the Rule’s requirements … each day the injunction is in place risks sowing confusion and chaos because the injunction makes those preparatory steps voluntary, rather than mandatory.”

The appeal marks the third time the administration has asked the high court to intervene. The high court has allowed the plan to move forward but not ruled on whether it is legal.

The battle could have major ramifications for this year’s elections, when control of Congress is at stake. Nearly one-third of voters in the U.S. cast mail ballots. Mail ballots are sent to every California voter.

Democratic states and voting rights groups say the changes are unconstitutional and amount to voter suppression. Election officials contend that there isn’t enough time to revise their systems to comply with the new Postal Service directives.

The Trump administration has framed the restrictions as commonsense changes that are within its power to regulate the mail.

“Simply put, the best way to address respondents’ fears about inability to comply with the Rule is to grant an immediate administrative stay of the order, followed by a full stay pending further review,” Sauer said. “That will remove the improper cloud of uncertainty that the district court has cast over the Rule, making clear to all involved that compliance with the Rule is not optional and must start without further delay.”

Trump has long sought to limit mail voting, even though he himself often uses that method to cast his own ballot. He has falsely blamed mail balloting for his 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden, spreading baseless claims of fraud. But so far, he has been unable to change the long-standing voting procedure.

Whitehurst and Fields write for the Associated Press.

Sept. 4 (UPI) — In a setback for Republicans, the Missouri Supreme Court ruled against the use of a GOP-favored congressional map in this year’s midterms, directing that a referendum on redistricting be put on November’s ballot.

The ruling came down Thursday, two months before the Nov. 3 midterm elections, and after Missouri already using the use of the now blocked maps.

GOP-led Missouri was seeking to use a state legislature-approved redrawn map that was expected to increase the number of Republican-held districts from its 6-2 majority to 7-1, but the state’s high court on Thursday ruled that the opposition had the the right to have the issue put to a referendum.

The state’s General Assembly passed the redistricting bill in September 2025. In December, organizers who submitted a referendum petition collected more than 300,000 signatures in support of the effort.

But then last month, an hour before the statutory deadline, Missouri Secretary of State Denny Hoskins issued a “Certificate of Insufficiency of Petition,” stating that the state’s Constitution “does not authorize a referendum on congressional redistricting plans passed by the General Assembly,” prompting Missouri voters to sue.

The state’s high court ruling on Thursday overturned a circuit court’s judgment, ordering Hoskins to issue a certificate of sufficiency as to the referendum petition to place it on the November general election ballot and enjoining him from implementing the General Assembly-approved map.

“The referendum petition was legal, sufficient and timely, and the secretary incorrectly concluded otherwise. HB 1 did not go into effect and will not go into effect unless and until approved by the voters,” Judge Ginger Gooch wrote in the ruling. “The congressional redistricting the General Assembly established in 2022 remains in full force and effect for the November 2026 general election.”

Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway, a Republican, said the state will appeal to the conservative-leaning Supreme Court.

“Never before in American history has a court overturned a congressional map after a primary and before a general election. This unprecedented decision clearly violates federal law and has thrust our state into a full-fledged constitutional crisis,” she said in a statement.

“We are confident that the federal courts will not allow every Missouri voter to be disenfranchised — which is what today’s decision does.”

President Donald Trump also lambasted the decision on his Truth Social media platform.

“Not only was the ruling horrible, ridiculous and unConstitutional, but there won’t be enough time to change the map back with the Election coming up in a very short period of time,” he said in a statement.

“The Election Process, as usual, is being disturbed in America! Missouri must be able to use the map that was in effect just a couple of months ago, in the Primary. This is a Dark Day for ‘Justice’ in Missouri!”

The midterms have been a focus of Trump, who has warned Republicans that if they lose control of the House, Democrats will impeach him.

To improve their chances of holding on to the House, Trump has encouraged GOP-led states to conduct unorthodox mid-decade redistricting efforts, with Texas last summer being the first to redraw its maps to create additional GOP-favored districts. This kicked off a gerrymandering arms race, with Democratic-led states saying they would do likewise to counter the Republican efforts.

To date, 10 states — all but one being Republican-led — have changed their congressional maps, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, though several others have tried or are in the process of redistricting.

Sept. 3 (UPI) — The Trump administration is asking the Supreme Court to permit enforcement of its mail-in voting restrictions, arguing it will suffer irreparable harm because two states will begin sending ballots to voters before the block is to expire next week.

Filed Thursday by Solicitor General D. John Sauer, the request for an immediate administrative stay of the district court’s temporary restraining order comes in protracted litigation over a Trump administration rule giving the U.S. Postal Service authority to screen outbound mail-in ballots for compliance with envelope standards and verify recipients have been entered on their state’s USPS Mail-In and Absentee Participation list.

Last week, U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani in Massachusetts sided with the League of Women Voters in Massachusetts, which has been fighting the rule it says is unlawful and violates federalism principles of the Constitution, issuing a 14-day block against enforcing its key provisions while she considers the request to impose a longer, more restrictive preliminary injunction.

In his filing Thursday, Sauer argued that the federal government will be irreparably harmed if the restraining order is not lifted before North Carolina and Alabama send out their mail-in ballots next week, saying a court decision would come too late for those ballots.

“With respect to the November 2026 election, the order thus partially nullifies the Postal Service’s efforts to address the risk that the federal mails will be used to perpetrate voter fraud,” he said.

Sauer continued that despite Talwani’s order allowing the Postal Service and states to take steps to ensure their envelopes meet the rule’s requirements, her block “risks sowing confusion and chaos because it makes those preparatory steps voluntary, rather than mandatory.

“Thus, if the order is eventually stayed and the rule takes effect for this year’s elections — as should occur — there is a grave risk that states may not have taken the necessary steps to comply due to the false sense of latitude created by the court’s improper order, potentially depriving those states’ citizens of the ability to vote by mail,” he said.

Despite using the mail to vote himself, Trump has long been a critic of mail-in ballots, claiming them to be a source of voting fraud, though studies have found no evidence that mail voting produces higher overall rates of voter fraud.

The USPS rule is one of several actions Trump and his administration have taken ahead of November’s midterm elections, which the president has become increasingly focused on as he has warned Republicans that losing the House to Democrats could lead to his impeachment as well as investigations. While the moves generally have widespread Republican support, Democrats and critics say they are efforts to rig the midterms.

The new USPS rule being litigated comes in response to an executive order Trump signed in March to expand federal control over mail-in ballots, including authorizing the USPS not to send them to voters unless certain conditions are met.

Two weeks ago, the high court lifted an injunction blocking Trump’s mail-voting executive order, stating the challenge to the USPS provisions was premature as the agency had yet to issue a final rule. After the final rule was published Aug. 26, two dozen Democratic-led states and the District of Columbia sued, resulting in the two-week block the Trump administration is now contesting.

Sept. 3, 2026 9 AM PT

BOSTON — A federal judge in Boston said Thursday the U.S. Postal Service has told her nothing about how it would implement a plan to regulate mail ballots for the midterms as she considers whether to let the plan proceed in the weeks before Election Day.

U.S. District Court Judge Indira Talwani is deciding whether to extend her prohibition on the proposed regulation of mail ballots, an effort undertaken as part of an executive order by President Trump. The hearing in the closely watched case came a day before the first state begins sending mail ballots to voters.

“We are 70 days from the election and I have nothing from the USPS about how this will happen,” Talwani told Michael Velchik, the Justice Department lawyer representing the Postal Service.

Last week, Talwani imposed a 14-day temporary restraining order to keep it from being used. That order expires next week as more states begin sending out mail ballots. Velchik said the administration will most likely go to the Supreme Court by the end of the week to seek permission to resume implementing the plan.

Talwani has been here before. In June, she prohibited the administration from implementing Trump’s order for the November election, ruling the changes came too close to voting for the federal government to embark on such a project.

But the Supreme Court late last month ruled that Talwani’s order was premature because the Postal Service had not yet published regulations governing how it would apply Trump’s order. The agency did so just before the high court ruling came down, prompting Democrats and voting rights groups to swiftly re-file their lawsuits.

They counter that the president has no authority to set election rules, which is a power designated in the Constitution to the states and in some cases Congress.

They won an initial victory with Talwani’s restraining order, which has already been appealed by the administration.

Trump has long opposed mail voting and falsely blamed it for his 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden, even though he often uses that method to cast his own ballot.

Election officials say there’s simply no way they can comply with the Postal Service directives, which could require a complete overhaul of their operations. Before it delivers mail ballots for any state, the Postal Service would have to approve the design of the envelopes that contain them and have the state upload a list of voters receiving them to an online portal.

Some ballots have already gone out. A few municipalities in Wisconsin opted to send mail ballots to voters earlier this week, but Friday marks the full kickoff of voting as North Carolina starts shipping its mail ballots to all voters who requested them.

The administration has contended the changes are relatively minor and legal. But the portal was still not active this week, and most election offices have already printed their envelopes and ballots.

Velchik told Talwani that the federal government is offering states the choice to opt into the system. But the Postal Service has yet to identify a single state that has done so.

A whistleblower report made public this week warns that the postal system’s requirements could lead to millions of mail ballots never being sent. The new rule requires all ballots to be physically brought to post offices before being mailed to voters, but if a single one’s bar code registers an error, the whole batch gets thrown out, even if it contains tens of thousands of legitimate ballots.

Riccardi and Casey write for the Associated Press. Riccardi reported from Denver.

For more than three decades, California and Texas have been like tectonic plates drifting in opposite directions.

California, the ancestral land of Republicans Richard M. Nixon and Ronald Reagan, has become a Democratic stronghold. It’s been 20 years since a GOP candidate won statewide office.

Texas, which bred Democratic giants such as Sam Rayburn and Lyndon B. Johnson, has become a Republican fortress. A Democrat hasn’t been elected statewide in more than 30 years.

And yet with the midterm election about to enter its final, post-Labor Day sprint, Texas is home to not one but two competitive contests, for governor and U.S. Senate. It’s a stark contrast with California, where Democrat Xavier Becerra appears to be a shoo-in for governor and Adam Schiff, in 2024, waltzed into his Senate seat.

There’s still plenty of time between now and election day on Nov. 3. Democrats, to their deep consternation, have repeatedly seen their hopes rise, only to crash once Texans actually turn out to vote.

“You don’t take anything for granted,” said James Aldrete, a Democratic strategist in Austin, who’s watched for years as his party wandered fruitlessly in the campaign desert. “But there is beautiful native wildlife that grows in the desert, and it’s blooming right now.”

The question — for the moment, at least — is why California hasn’t budged while Texas has become a surprise battleground.

The answer involves individual personalities, demographics and political headwinds.

Of the two contests, the fight for Texas’ open Senate seat appears to be much closer. Election handicappers rate it a toss-up.

The Democrat, state Rep. James Talarico, is a highly gifted campaigner and prodigious fundraiser. But arguably the best thing he has going for his candidacy is his Republican opponent, Atty. Gen. Ken Paxton, whose history of scandal, shady dealings and moral lapses trail him like dirty footprints on a white carpet.

Paxton stomped incumbent John Cornyn, with the help of President Trump, in a vicious GOP primary that left ill will among a number of Republicans. Had Cornyn won, many doubt the Senate seat would be in play.

‘A big ask’

In the race for governor, Republican Greg Abbott is facing Democratic state Rep. Gina Hinojosa as he seeks an unprecedented fourth term — “a big ask of voters,” in the words of J. Miles Coleman, who analyzes elections at the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics. Sabato’s Crystal Ball, the center’s forecasting project, recently moved the gubernatorial race to “likely Republican,” a shift away from “Safe Republican.”

Other election handicappers have done the same.

Texas has long fancied itself a place apart; secession is one recurring fantasy. But for all its perceived go-your-own-way independence, the state isn’t immune from broader trends, which helps explain why it’s suddenly in play.

“One of the external factors that’s making Texas competitive is the degree of wind in Democratic sails,” said Jim Henson, director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas in Austin.

Whether it’s anti-establishment anger, directed at the party in power, or frustration with Trump, his war-making and failure to deliver the sterling economy he promised, “when you think of the problems Republicans are having at the national level … that’s helping Democrats here as well,” Henson said.

(Trump’s taint is also a problem for California Republican Steve Hilton, running for governor in a state where the president’s approval rating rests at the subbasement level.)

By the numbers

Henson, who conducts polling statewide, said another reason Texas is more competitive than California is simple mathematics: “Democrats [haven’t] fallen quite as far in Texas as Republicans have in California.”

Texas doesn’t register voters by party. But weighting political surveys by demographics and following election results, Henson expects about a 10% Republican turnout advantage in November. By contrast, registered Democrats outnumber registered Republicans in California by nearly 2 to 1.

Yet another reason Texas appears to have grown more competitive is the apparent discontent of Latino voters, an increasingly important part of the state’s burgeoning electorate.

Though Latinos shifted strongly in Trump’s favor in 2024, many have grown disillusioned in the nearly two years since. “They’re moving away from both parties,” said Mike Madrid, a California strategist who’s spent decades studying the Latino vote. “When the environment is bad, they’re punishing whatever party is power.”

Two years ago, it was Democrats. Now it’s Republicans.

In recent years, as the country cleaved, California emerged as the unofficial capital of blue America, offering a political, social and cultural counterweight to Texas, the unofficial capital of red America. The two states anchor the Democratic and Republican parties, respectively, and are key to their financial well-being and the success of their candidates nationwide.

A Democratic toehold in Texas would instantly scramble long-standing political calculations, starting with the 2028 presidential race.

“It changes the narrative. It changes the demographic strategy,” Madrid said. “It changes the 270 [electoral college] map. It changes the whole strategy.”

In short, a November win would be more than symbolic, or gratification after years of Democratic futility. It would be a political earthquake.

What else you should be reading

The must-read: Whistleblower says USPS defied court to push ‘untested’ portal for Trump mail voting order
The deep dive: A conservative California upbringing paved Natalie Harp’s way to Trump
The L.A. Times Special:Don’t look now, but suddenly the U.S. Senate is in play

Until next time,
mzb
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