WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court’s conservative majority sounded ready Wednesday to rule that the Trump administration may end the temporary protection that has been granted to more than 1.3 million immigrants from troubled countries.
Congress in 1990 authorized Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, for noncitizens who could not safely return home because their native country was wracked by war, violence or natural disasters. If those people passed a strict background check, they could stay and work legally in this country.
But President Trump came to office believing too many immigrants had been granted permission to enter and stay indefinitely.
Last year, his Department of Homeland Security moved to cancel the temporary humanitarian protection for immigrants from 13 countries, including Venezuela, Haiti, Syria, Honduras and Nicaragua. Court challenges on behalf of Haitians and Syrians were consolidated into a single case, Mullin vs. Doe, which the justices heard Wednesday.
Immigrant-rights advocates challenged those decisions as political and unjustified, and they won orders from federal judges that blocked the cancellations.
But Trump’s lawyers filed an emergency appeal at the Supreme Court arguing the judges had overstepped their authority. They pointed to a provision in the 1990 law that bars “judicial review” of the government’s decision to end temporary protection for a particular country.
The justices ruled for the administration and set aside the lower court rulings in a series of 6-3 orders.
Faced with criticism over its brief and unexplained orders, the justices agreed to hear arguments on the TPS issue on the last day of oral arguments for this term.
But the ideological divide appeared to be unchanged.
Solicitor Gen. D. John Sauer said Congress had prohibited “judicial micromanagement” of these decisions, and none of six conservatives disagreed.
UCLA law professor Ahilan T. Arulanantham, representing several thousand Syrians, said the Homeland Security secretary had failed to consult the State Department, which says it is unsafe to travel there.
He said the government “reads the statute like it’s a blank check … to give the secretary the power to expel people who have done nothing wrong.”
Chicago attorney Geoffrey Pipoply, representing more than 350,000 Haitians, said the cancellations were driven by “the president’s racial animus toward non-white immigrants.”
The court’s three liberals argued the administration failed to follow the procedural steps required under the law. But that argument failed to gain traction.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett and her husband adopted two children from Haiti who are citizens. Like most of the conservatives, she asked few questions during the argument.
April 29 (UPI) — The U.S. Supreme Court ruled against Louisiana’s newly drawn congressional map Wednesday, saying it relied too heavily on race.
The 6-3 decision eliminates one of the two predominantly Black congressional districts established by redistricting from the 2020 census.
Supporters of the redrawn map said it abided by Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which prevents lawmakers from packing racial minorities in a limited number of districts or spreading them across too many to diminish their voting power.
“When §2 of the Act is properly interpreted, it imposes liability only when circumstances give rise to a strong inference that intentional discrimination occurred,” he wrote.
The ruling weakens the landmark Voting Rights Act passed in 1965 to limit racial discrimination in voting. The Supreme Court dealt the act a blow in 2013 when it struck a core provision providing oversight to states with a history of voting discrimination.
With the new ruling by the high court, Republican lawmakers will have an easier time redrawing state maps to more closely align with their party.
Justice Elena Kagan, one of the three dissenters, said such intentional discrimination is hard to prove and that Wednesday’s decision serves to “eviscerate the law.”
“Under the Court’s new view of Section 2, a State can, without legal consequence, systematically dilute minority citizens’ voting power,” she wrote.
It’s unlikely the Supreme Court’s ruling will have an impact on midterm elections later this year as early voting in congressional primaries begin May 16.
Britain’s King Charles III delivers an address to a joint meeting of Congress at the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday. The king and Queen Camilla are on a four-day state visit to the U.S. with stops in Washington and New York. Photo by Bonnie Cash/UPI | License Photo
My colleagues Gustavo Arellano and Mark Z. Barabak joined me to decide who the winner was, or if there was a winner at all.
Arellano: The real MVP in this debate? State Supt. Tony Thurmond.
He brought up his family story — child of a Panamanian immigrant who lost his parents young, someone familiar with “government cheese” as sustenance growing up — in a way that didn’t sound forced or pedantic.
He usually stayed within the time limits that were barely enforced by moderators. And he kept knocking down Chad Bianco again and again, drawing applause when he brought up the Riverside County sheriff’s takeover of hundreds of thousands of ballots.
Thurmond is the only gubernatorial candidate currently holding a statewide position, a former Richmond City Council member and Assembly member. “Elect someone with a lived experience,” he told the audience in his closing statement.
So why has Thurmond polled so low again and again to the point that he keeps not getting invited to debates and therefore not getting in front of California voters?
California has never elected a Black governor — in fact, the state is notorious for not voting in Tom Bradley in 1982 even though polls showed him leading George Deukmejian all the way to Election Day (the phenomenon of voters telling pollsters what they think they want to hear instead of what they actually feel is now known as the Bradley Effect).
As California’s Black population keeps shrinking, it would’ve been wonderful to see Thurmond do better than he has.
Chabria: Gustavo is spot on with his take on Thurmond. He came across as polished, capable and knowledgeable. But also, he’s just too far down in the polls for any kind of comeback.
In my mind, though, Xavier Becerra was the clear winner. No, he didn’t blow the other candidates away.
But he landed more than one punch that will almost certainly be on social media feeds for weeks to come, especially when he went at Republican Steve Hilton. Early on, he called President Trump “Hilton’s daddy.” Later, he quipped at Hilton, “We don’t need a talking head for Fox News to tell us how the government works.”
The debate was chaotic in more than one moment, but Becerra managed to get more than his share of airtime and use it wisely. Tom Steyer, the other Democratic front-runner, mired himself in wonk-talk. He wanted to get deep into policy, and got lost in complicated issues such as oil refineries.
Steyer didn’t have a single memorable line, though his closing statement did redeem him somewhat. He called himself the “change maker,” and promised, “if you want change, there is only one person on this stage they are afraid of” — they being tech titans, oil companies and other gods of industry.
It was the same for Katie Porter and Matt Mahan, who didn’t do anything wrong, but also, didn’t break out.
But those back-and-forths of Becerra and Hilton are priceless because they’re quick and shareable. I won’t be surprised to see voters drift Becerra’s way, even if only a bit.
Barabak: No runs, no hits, no errors. Seven men — and one woman — left standing.
I didn’t see, or hear, anything that seems very likely to drastically shake up or dramatically reorder the governor’s race. No breakout performance that will launch any of the candidates into clear-cut front-runner status. No major gaffes to leave any of the contestants sprawled on the killing floor.
So to that extent, I would score Becerra as the evening’s (modest) winner. He’s clearly having a moment, surging from political near-death to the top tier in polls. (Though, let’s be clear, it’s still a muddle, with several candidates bunched in the 15%-20% support range.)
There have been suggestions Becerra needs to show a bit more fight and he did so Tuesday, in particular taking on Hilton. Some of his jabs seemed a bit forced and stagy. (That line about Trump as “Hilton’s daddy.”)
Better, as Anita noted, was the jab from the former congressman, state attorney general and Biden cabinet secretary about a Fox “talking head” explaining how government works.
I found Porter to be crisp and authoritative on policy; Steyer to be repetitive (I’m the only change agent on this stage, look how much money is being spent to stop me — though it’s a small fraction of the sum he’s sunk into his vanity-cruise campaign); Mahan and Antonio Villaraigosa to be largely afterthoughts, and Bianco to have all the warmth and appeal of the grouchy old man telling kids in the neighborhood to get off his damn lawn!
The Riverside County sheriff seemed not to be running for governor of California, but rather mayor of MAGA-ville, a strategy apparently intended to nab one of two spots in the June primary, allowing him to go on to crushing defeat in November.
I agree that perhaps the night’s most surprising performance came from Thurmond. The state schools superintendent is mired in bare single digits in polls and only just made the debate stage after being left out of last week’s meetup in San Francisco.
His chances of being California’s next governor are somewhere between zero and nil, which is why he escaped serious scrutiny. That said, he made the most of the 90 minutes on stage, laying out his compelling up-from-poverty life story and seeming to relish taking on Bianco in particular.
Too little, too late. But Thurmond certainly acquitted himself well.
A member of the Bulgarian Falun Dafa association attends a protest in front of the Chinese embassy in Sofia, Bulgaria, in July 2023. The protest marked the 24th anniversary of the start of a massive campaign against Falun Dafa in July 1999, when the Chinese Communist regime began the repression and persecution of Falun Gong and its followers in China. File Photo by Vassil Donev/EPA
WASHINGTON, April 28 (UPI) —Supreme Court justices appeared divided Tuesday morning about whether a U.S. tech company can be held liable for aiding the Chinese government’s alleged torture of a spiritual minority.
The case is centers on whether practitioners in China of the Falun Gong religion — also called Falun Dafa — can sue California-based tech company Cisco Systems for aiding and abetting violations of the 18th-century Alien Tort Statute and the Torture Victim Protection Act, which was enacted in 1992.
Cisco attorney Kannon Shanmugam called for barring aiding and abetting liability. He argued that allowing liability to be implied would harm the government’s separation of power.
Much of Tuesday’s debate hinged on whether the statute’s 200-year-old “law of nations” wording was applicable to the relatively more modern concept of human rights abuses, as well as whether the first Congress meant for the victim protection act to include second liability for aiding and abetting torture.
The case marks the latest attempt to define the scope of the statue, which for over two centuries has allowed foreigners to bring lawsuits in U.S. courts for serious violations of international law.
More than 20 years ago, Cisco developed and sold to the Chinese government a surveillance system, which the government used to find, interrogate and allegedly torture Falun Gong practitioners.
During arguments for Cisco Systems Inc. vs. Doe I, some justices emphasized Cisco’s awareness of their technology’s role in persecution, while others said that including liability for aiding torture in the alien tort statue contradicted with historical precedent and had foreign policy risks.
But no clear majority converged around either position in the conservative majority court.
“We’ve maybe misled Congress into thinking, ‘Oh, we don’t need to do anything about these human rights things, the courts are taking care of it,'” Justice Brett Kavanaugh said.
“I’m concerned at a separation of powers level that we’re not really allowing suits to go forward, but Congress thinks we are because of a lack of clarity in our case law.”
Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Sotomayor appeared more supportive of those who brought forward the original lawsuit — several Chinese nationals and one U.S. citizen.
Addressing the wording of the Torture Victim Protection Act, Sotomayor told Shanmugam: “I’m not sure how you get to your position that ‘subjects to’ can’t mean aiding and abetting because command liability doesn’t necessarily require subjecting someone to the torture.”
“It makes someone who’s in a command position who knows of the torture and permits it to happen … aiding and abetting. We’ve defined aiding and abetting as an active step in permitting and encouraging the substantive act.”
The Alien Tort Statute grants federal district courts original jurisdiction over any civil action in which an alien sues for a tort “committed in violation of the law of nations or of a treaty of the United States.”
“What’s the point of previous [Supreme Court] decisions that determined U.S. corporations could be defendants?” said Sophia Cope, senior staff attorney at Electronic Frontier Foundation, who helped write an amicus brief in support of the Falun Gong members.
“Excluding second liability from the ATS would be a huge loophole for companies to sell services which are used for human rights violations.”
By rejecting judicially created aiding and abetting liability, the court would close the last major loophole that the plaintiffs’ lawyers have “exploited” to keep cases with such claims under the ATS and TVPA alive, said Cory Andrews, vice-president of litigation at the Washington Legal Foundation. The foundation submitted a brief in support of Cisco in February.
“It would reaffirm that the ATS is a narrow 1789 statute, not a modern vehicle for global human-rights enforcement,” Andrews said.
The case had its origins 15 years ago. In 2011, the plaintiffs — 13 Chinese nationals and one U.S. citizen — filed the original suit in the District Court for the Northern District of California, claiming they were targeted using Cisco’s technology and then detained and tortured.
The district court dismissed the claims, but it was brought to the Supreme Court after a panel of federal judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit agreed in 2023 that the plaintiffs had met a legal threshold to continue with the lawsuit.
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court will hear arguments this week over whether the Trump administration may revoke temporary protected status for about 350,000 Haitian and 6,100 Syrian immigrants.
TPS allows people who are already in the United States to legally reside and work here if they are unable to safely return to their home country because of a sudden emergency such as war or a natural disaster. The humanitarian program, enacted by Congress in 1990, has since been used by Republican and Democratic administrations alike.
Since President Trump returned to office last year, his administration has terminated such protections for immigrants from 13 countries. Court challenges on behalf of Haitians and Syrians have been consolidated into a single case, Mullin vs. Doe, which the justices will hear Wednesday.
The high court’s ruling could eventually have sweeping repercussions for all 1.3 million immigrants from the 17 countries that were designated for TPS at the start of this administration. That’s because the federal government is arguing that decisions regarding the program are almost entirely immune from review by courts.
“Temporary means temporary and the final word will not be from activist judges legislating from the bench,” a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson, who did not provide their name, wrote in response to a request for comment.
Lower courts have repeatedly deemed the administration’s actions improper.
“We’re seeing clear gamesmanship from government to insulate all TPS decision-making from any oversight,” said Emi MacLean, a senior staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California, who is counsel in the case for Syrians and in other cases challenging five of the terminations. “They’ve created a farce of a process to justify the ends that they sought, which was to strip humanitarian protections from over a million people.”
In the Trump administration’s appeal, Solicitor Gen. D. John Sauer argued that Congress gave the Homeland Security secretary the power to grant or end the temporary protected status for troubled countries and barred judges from intervening.
He pointed to a provision that says: “There is no judicial review of any determination of the [secretary] with respect to the designation, or termination or extension of a designation, of a foreign state.”
Citing this hands-off provision, Trump’s lawyers won brief emergency orders last year that allowed the administration to strip legal protections from about 600,000 Venezuelans. In that case, then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem had quickly reversed an extension granted by the Biden administration three days before Trump was sworn in.
The circumstances surrounding the Syria and Haiti cases are different. Advocates for the immigrants argue that the administration failed to conduct the required process to properly evaluate each country’s conditions.
They point to emails in July from a Homeland Security official to a State Department official. The Homeland Security official listed TPS designations coming up for review — Syria, South Sudan, Myanmar and Ethiopia. In response, the State Department official wrote: “I confirm that State has no foreign policy concerns with ending these TPS designations.”
State Department travel advisories for both countries warn people against traveling to either because of the risk of terrorism, kidnapping and widespread violence. U.S. citizens are advised to prepare a will.
For Syria, the advisory cites active armed conflict since 2011. For Haiti, it says the country has been under a national state of emergency since March 2024.
But Federal Register notices announcing the terminations said country conditions had sufficiently improved. The notice for Syria, for example, says “the Secretary has determined that, while some sporadic and episodic violence occurs in Syria, the situation no longer meets the criteria for an ongoing armed conflict that poses a serious threat to the personal safety of returning Syrian nationals.”
If the government loses, Homeland Security officials would have to reevaluate the TPS decisions in consultation with the State Department and make a decision based entirely on the country conditions themselves.
The government could start over, in that case, and still find that TPS is no longer warranted — if the process bears that out.
In a friend-of-the-court brief led by immigration law scholars at Georgetown and Temple universities, they explained that before TPS existed, similar forms of humanitarian relief were determined by the executive branch “without reference to any statutory criteria or constraints, and with little if any explanation for why nationals of certain countries received protection while others did not.”
With TPS in 1990, Congress sought to end that “unfettered discretion,” they wrote. Instead, the statute requires the Homeland Security secretary to terminate TPS if the review finds that conditions justifying the designation no longer exist. Otherwise, the law states, it “is extended.”
“The point of the TPS statute was to depoliticize humanitarian decisions,” said MacLean, the ACLU attorney. “Secretary Noem in all of her TPS decisions has completely undermined that fundamental goal.”
Ahilan Arulanantham, who is arguing for the Syria case on Wednesday, added that if the government wins, “it also means they could probably grant TPS to countries that don’t deserve it.” Arulanantham, co-director of the Center for Immigration Law and Policy at UCLA, has represented the National TPS Alliance in separate litigation during this administration and Trump’s first.
Top Homeland Security and State Department officials from the George W. Bush, Obama, Trump and Biden administrations filed a brief arguing that the Trump administration’s terminations of TPS for Syria and Haiti were “not based on evidence and sharply departed from past inter-agency practices.”
Haiti was originally designated for TPS in 2010 after a massive earthquake devastated the country and redesignated because of subsequent natural disasters and gang violence. In November, Noem announced that she would terminate TPS for Haiti, effective Feb. 3. She wrote in the Federal Register that “there are no extraordinary and temporary conditions in Haiti” that prevent Haitians from safely returning.
But even if there were, she continued, “termination of Temporary Protected Status of Haiti is still required because it is contrary to the national interest of the United States.”
The Homeland Security spokesperson said TPS for Haiti “was never intended to be a de facto amnesty program, yet that’s how previous administrations have used it for decades.”
Syria, meanwhile, “has been a hotbed of terrorism and extremism for nearly two decades,” the spokesperson wrote, “and it is contrary to our national interest to allow Syrians to remain in our country.”
In the Federal Register notice for Syria, Noem added that maintaining its TPS designation would “complicate the administration’s broader diplomatic engagement with Syria’s transitional government” by undermining peace-building efforts.
The Supreme Court will take up the question of whether the Homeland Security secretary can use national interest as a reason to revoke TPS. Attorneys for the TPS holders believe any decision to revoke TPS must come down to the country conditions alone.
Syria and Haiti are among the countries for which the Trump administration has also paused processing all immigration benefits. If their TPS protections expire, those immigrants would become vulnerable to detention and deportation even if they are eligible for other forms of relief.
U.S. Solicitor Gen. D. John Sauer argued that Congress gave the Homeland Security secretary the power to grant or end the temporary protected status for troubled countries and barred judges from intervening.
(Aaron Schwartz / Getty Images)
Attorneys for the TPS holders say the terminations were also driven by racial animus. They point to various statements by Trump over the years, including his false claim that Haitians were eating the pets of people in Springfield, Ohio, that they “probably have AIDS” and that Haiti is among the “shithole countries” from which he would permanently pause migration.
Among those affected is a 35-year-old Haitian woman who has lived in the U.S. since 2000 and is raising her four U.S. citizen children in a Southern state. The woman requested to be identified by her middle and last initials, B.B., out of concern for her immigration case.
After graduating high school, B.B. got into nursing school but couldn’t attend because she didn’t qualify for financial aid. She said later getting TPS allowed her to become a certified nursing assistant, and she now works as a medical coordinator while owning a nail salon and three real estate properties.
Though B.B.’s TPS remains active because of the court proceedings, her driver’s license expired Feb. 3 and she has since had to rely on friends and rideshares to get around while repeatedly requesting a renewal.
She said she worries most about her children. If she were deported back to Haiti, she said, she would leave them in the U.S. for their own safety.
“It’s like planning your death,” she said. “I’m 35 and I already have a will — not because I’m going to die but because of the situation.”
On a call with reporters, attorneys and advocates, a Syrian man said he earned his master’s degree in the U.S. and now works in the healthcare industry. The man, who was identified by a pseudonym, said he and his wife are afraid of what their future will look like.
“TPS gave us something we had not had in years: a place to settle and a moment to grieve,” he said, later adding that “telling Syrians to go back right now is not a policy — it’s abandonment.”
Among the public, there is broad support for TPS and other humanitarian programs. According to a poll conducted last month by the firm Equis Research, 68% of Latino and 65% of non-Latino voters support fighting to give back legal protection to those who have lost their temporary protected status or asylum protections as a result of the current administration’s actions.
Earlier this month, the House voted in favor of a bill that would require new Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin to redesignate Haiti for TPS. Among those who crossed the political aisle to support it were 10 Republicans and Rep. Kevin Kiley, an independent from Rocklin, Calif., who caucuses with Republicans. The measure faces an uphill battle in the Senate.
In an interview with The Times, Kiley said his vote was about common sense and being humane.
“It’s particularly dangerous for people that would be returning where the gangs that are ravaging the country are just lying in wait outside the airport in Port-au-Prince,” he said, referring to the Haitian capital.
And because most won’t return willingly, Kiley added, “really all you’d be doing is removing work authorization from 350,000-some people who are going to mostly remain in the country, who will not be able to work anymore and may end up being more reliant on public assistance in states where they’re eligible.”
At the same time, Kiley said, the TPS system hasn’t worked as intended because most so-called temporary designations drag on.
“The system needs to be reformed,” he said. “But that’s all separate and apart from what we do with the folks who were already given this designation.”
Times staff writer David G. Savage in Washington contributed to this report.
WASHINGTON — A divided Supreme Court heard arguments Monday on whether the police use of phone tracking data violates the Constitution’s protection against “unreasonable searches.”
Most of the justices sounded wary of barring investigators from obtaining precise location history from Google or cellphone providers if it helps find a murderer or a bank robber.
“I’m trying to figure out why this was bad police work,” Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh told an attorney representing the defendant, Odell Chatrie.
He said a police detective in Virginia was seeking clues to find a bank robber and sought a “geofence warrant” from a judge that told Google to turn over data from phones that were near the bank during the hour of the robbery.
“In the end, he got three names,” Kavanaugh said, including Chatrie, who pleaded guilty. He said these searches have proved to be practical for finding criminals.
But other justices said the court should not rule broadly to endorse digital searches of vast data bases held by private companies.
What about emails or Google photos, asked Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Neil M. Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett.
All three said this information deserves more privacy protection than location data.
In the past, the court has said the 4th Amendment protects against government searches that intrude upon a “reasonable expectation of privacy.” The two sides in this case differ on whether a digital search of location data violates privacy rights.
Gorsuch said he was generally skeptical of broad searches if the government had no particular suspect.
Is it OK to search “all the rooms in a hotel for a gun or all the storage units or all bank deposit boxes for the pearl necklace that has been stolen?” he asked.
Eric Feigin, a deputy solicitor general, said the government probably could not obtain a search warrant for all storage units or hotel rooms, but a Google search is different because it is a software filter.
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. proposed a narrow ruling.
Perhaps unwittingly, Chatrie had agreed to have Google store his location history data. Roberts said he could have turned off the public location data, and for that reason, he may have lost his right to appeal.
“If you don’t want the government to have your location history, you just flip that off,” he said.
Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. agreed. Chatrie “voluntarily disclosed to Google the information about where he was going to be,” he said.
Eight years ago, Roberts wrote an opinion for a 5-4 majority that said investigators needed a search warrant before they could obtain 127 days of cell tower records that helped convict a Michigan man of several store robberies.
Four of the court’s liberal justices joined that majority, but only two of them — Sotomayor and Elena Kagan — remain on the court.
Since then, Kavanaugh, Barrett and Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson have joined the court.
The National Assn. of Criminal Defense Lawyers and other civil liberties groups backed Chatrie’s challenge to the government’s use of geofence warrants.
Chatrie had “a reasonable expectation of privacy in his location history given both its sensitive and revealing nature and the fact that it was stored in his password-protected account,” Washington attorney Adam Unikowski told the court. “There was not probable cause to search the virtual private papers of every single person within the geofence merely because of their proximity to the crime.”
Feigin, the Justice Department attorney, said a ruling for Chatrie “would impede the investigation of kidnappings, robberies, shootings and other crimes.”
He agreed, however, that email should be protected because it involves personal communication.
The justices will hand down a ruling in Chatrie vs. U.S. by the end of June.
SACRAMENTO — Xavier Becerra seems like the type of steady, trustworthy fellow you’d like your daughter to marry. But she’s attracted to a charming party animal.
Then the flashy dude does something really stupid and repulsive. Daughter is jarred into her senses and decides to size up the unexciting but reliable guy.
That’s how I’m seeing the suddenly captivating contest to succeed termed-out Gov. Gavin Newsom.
OK, it’s not a perfect analogy. Becerra is 68, been happily married for 37 years and the couple have three grown children. But the principle’s the same: He’s the safe choice. The hot other character merely fooled lots of people for a while.
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“People are looking for something stable,” Becerra answered when I asked. “Everybody likes pizzazz and glitter. Then all of a sudden their hero falls from grace. And they look for who they can trust.”
Dan Schnur, who teaches political communications at USC, UC Berkeley and Pepperdine, says: “Democrats had a near-death experience with Swalwell. They don’t seem to be in the mood to take more risks.”
Schnur calls Becerra “this year’s version of Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign.” He’s the safe choice. “Sometimes being ‘none of the above’ is good enough.”
Since Swalwell’s collapse, the once-floundering Becerra has had a meteoric rise in the polls.
A survey conducted for the state Democratic Party showed Becerra rising by 10 points from single digits to tying Tom Steyer, a billionaire hedge fund founder turned climate warrior. Close behind was former Orange County Rep. Katie Porter.
Steyer and Porter are both liberals in their ideology and personalities. Neither are flamethrowers, but they‘re fiery. In contrast, Becerra also is an ideological liberal, but with a low-key demeanor that might cause one to mistake him for a political moderate.
San José Mayor Matt Mahan is clearly a Democratic centrist. But in this era of intense polarization, moderation may be a hard sale. At least, it has been so far for Mahan.
Among those six Democratic and Republican candidates, Becerra boasts by far the most outstanding political resume.
He was U.S. secretary of Health and Human Services under President Biden. Before that as state attorney general, California’s mild-mannered “top cop” showed his aggressiveness by suing the first Trump administration 123 times and winning the vast majority of cases. He also served 12 terms in Congress from Los Angeles and became part of the Democratic leadership. And he served one term in the state Assembly.
“He talked in very vague generalities,” the former political operative says, but adds: “In the middle of the other candidates’ drama and emotional outbursts, he seemed very calm and safe.”
Some pundits and pols have been calling on Becerra to show more fire. But that’s not him. He’s guarded and understated. It’s how he’s wired. If he attempted a personality change, it probably wouldn’t work. There’s a risk of it seeming contrived and phony.
But Becerra should be more specific on issues. Exactly how would he make life better for Californians?
His basic answer when asked how he’d solve a given problem pestering California is essentially: Trust me. I’ll meet with all sides and figure it out.
That’s not just a cop-out. It’s his pragmatic modus operandi.
That reserved style prompted this shot during the debate from Porter, who tends toward specificity:
“Mr. Becerra, you have all these lovely plans. But there are never any numbers, any revenue plan, any details. … The how, the why and how much, it’s all missing.”
Becerra responded with some rare emotion: “That’s very rich to hear from someone who’s never had to actually run a government.” The former Cabinet secretary said he’d balanced four federal HHS budgets that were larger than the California state budget.
I asked Becerra about some issues last week. Here’s partly what he said:
Housing costs: Expedite building by streamlining more regulations. “We’ll continue to have rules, but let’s make them smart rules.”
Gas prices: Keep more refineries from closing. “Let them know they can operate and produce and not lose money. That’s an easy one.”
High-speed rail: ”We’re going to build the bullet train, but not this bullet train. It’s too expensive. Sit everybody down and come out with a position.”
Banning new gas cars by 2035: Is Newsom’s goal realistic? “Seeing what I see, no. We can’t make it by ‘35, but we can make it.”
But let’s be honest. Elections usually turn more on likability than policy positions.
“Decency may be a quality that goes a long way” in the governor’s race, says longtime Democratic strategist Darry Sragow. “In part that’s because of the Swalwell revelations and also because of Trump, who’s not decent. Decency may be what people are looking for.”
But Democrats are riled up by Trump and they’re also demanding backbone and fight.
Many are eyeing Becerra as someone perhaps worth partnering up with. A bit more passion from him could help sustain their interest.
WASHINGTON — Reporters assigned to travel aboard Air Force Two were told to prepare for an early morning departure on Tuesday for Islamabad until an unexplained delay — followed by a detour by Vice President JD Vance to the White House — revealed clues that something was wrong.
Iranian diplomats had not yet responded to U.S. proposals intended to form the basis of a new round of talks. Some were questioning whether they would attend at all. Had he departed as planned, Vance risked a humiliation, spending hours flying to Pakistan only to be stood up on arrival.
A crisis meeting at the White House led President Trump to announce an indefinite extension to a ceasefire deadline that had been set as a pressure tactic. Now, unable to bring the Iranians to heel, that pressure was suddenly off.
It was an early lesson for Vance in the many ways high-stakes diplomacy can veer off-course.
“There are obvious risks for Vance,” said Chester Crocker, who served as an assistant secretary of State in the Reagan administration, “being associated with failure or with a dubious deal.”
Trump’s aides are clear on the stakes in negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program and an end to the war. Control of the Strait of Hormuz could determine global oil prices for years. Any final deal will shape whether Americans ultimately conclude the fight was worth it — and could sway the outcome of the midterm elections.
But for America’s lead negotiator, the stakes are also personal.
Vance, a diplomatic novice, has found himself at the helm of an effort rife with political risk that has stymied seasoned diplomats ahead of an anticipated run for president.
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The potential payoff is substantial, placing Vance at the center of an international stage with the power to end a historically unpopular war.
But he also may be forced to attach his name to a nuclear deal that provides Tehran access to billions of dollars in sanctions relief, in exchange for limits on its nuclear work that will ultimately expire over time, under conditional monitoring access for international inspectors — an agreement with striking echoes to a 2015 nuclear deal negotiated by a Democratic administration that was disparaged by his party for over a decade.
Vance is negotiating not on his own terms, but on behalf of a mercurial president whose decisions will ultimately determine whether an agreement can be reached. And the Iranians know that Trump’s days in office are numbered, with Vance, a war skeptic, possibly in line to succeed him.
One U.S. official familiar with the negotiations said the vice president is “a pragmatist,” realistic about the prospects of a deal.
“What he has to gain is an image that he can operate effectively on the world stage on a fraught issue. Even if he will give credit to the president, he will be seen as capable of resolving really hard, security-related problems,” said Dennis Ross, a veteran diplomat on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict who served in the George H.W. Bush, Clinton and Obama administrations. “What he has to lose is that he was given the role and did not succeed.”
Failure could raise doubts about his statecraft. But even success at the negotiating table could result in an agreement that turns off Republican voters he may need in a 2028 presidential bid.
“Vance is put in an impossible position,” said Arne Westad, a professor of history at Yale.
“Any deal with the current Iranian regime will be seen as problematic by many Republicans,” Westad said. “If he fails to secure a deal, he will be attacked by those who want an end to the U.S. war — and be seen as ineffective by the president.”
Reputation ‘on the line’
Trump has publicly acknowledged that Vance, a Marine Corps veteran who has consistently opposed U.S. military engagements in the Middle East, had reservations over launching the Iran war in the first place. “He was, I would say, philosophically a little bit different than me,” the president told reporters in March. “I think he was maybe less enthusiastic.”
For that reason, according to Iranian state media reports, Vance was seen by Tehran as their preferred interlocutor in negotiations. Iranian officials expressed gratitude when, during fevered talks ahead of the initial announcement of a ceasefire, they learned that Steve Witkoff, the president’s roving negotiator, had recommended that the vice president be included in the delegation — an exceptional gesture that marked Washington’s highest-level engagement with the Islamic Republic in history.
Republican strategists said Vance’s participation is a demonstration that Trump trusts him, an essential trait for any future Republican presidential nominee and aspiring heir to the MAGA movement.
“It’s rare that a vice president has been put in the position of directly negotiating with a foreign adversary,” said Terry Nelson, a longtime Republican media strategist. “We are engaging a very senior political leader in negotiations with a country that has killed U.S. soldiers and sown chaos in the region. I do think it’s an indication of our resolution and seriousness.”
Whit Ayres, a veteran Republican pollster who has consulted Republican senators and governors for more than three decades, said the vice president’s appointment as lead negotiator “elevates Vance as Trump’s heir-apparent even more than before.”
“Whether that becomes a plus or a minus depends on the outcome of the negotiations,” Ayres added, “and Trump’s ultimate standing with the Republican electorate, both of which are unknowns.”
Talks are currently deadlocked over long-standing demands from Tehran that its leadership has held since the early 2000s, when previously undisclosed nuclear activities first triggered international alarm over Iran’s expanding program.
Iran has periodically accepted temporary limits on its nuclear work — pausing uranium enrichment during talks and, under the 2015 deal, committing to a prolonged cap on enrichment at levels beyond any clear civilian need. But it has always insisted on a “right to enrich” on its own soil, rejecting U.S. attempts to permanently end the program as a foreign attempt to thwart Iran’s scientific progress.
Returning from the first round of ceasefire negotiations, Vance dismissed that position, articulated to him in Islamabad by the speaker of Iran’s Parliament.
“He said, ‘We refuse to give up the right to enrichment,’” Vance said. “And I thought to myself, you know what, my wife has the right to skydive, but she doesn’t jump out of an airplane, because she and I have an agreement that she’s not going to do that, because I don’t want my wife jumping out of an airplane.”
Echoes of a broken deal
The 2015 deal known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action — negotiated by veteran, nonpolitical U.S. diplomats and nuclear scientists over two years of near-constant negotiations — removed roughly 98% of Iran’s nuclear stockpile from the country, while keeping the country’s nuclear infrastructure largely in place, save for the decommissioning of a heavy-water plutonium reactor that could have provided Tehran with a second path to a nuclear bomb.
Under the agreement, Iran consented to limit its use of advanced centrifuges for 10 years, and to restrict uranium enrichment to below weapons-grade levels for 15 years. Inspectors from the U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Agency were granted unprecedented access to monitor the program, though some of these enhanced inspection measures were set to expire after roughly two decades.
In exchange, Iran regained access to tens of billions of dollars of its frozen assets, and settled a long-standing legal dispute with Washington that led the Obama administration to transfer $400 million in cash to Tehran. The episode prompted scandal on the political right, which accused Democrats of fueling terrorism through the funding of Iran’s proxy militias.
Now, after just two weeks of negotiations, the Trump administration is already acknowledging that a final deal with Iran would rely on a familiar formula: temporary caps on Iran’s nuclear work in exchange for substantial sanctions relief. Trump withdrew from the JCPOA in 2018.
Iran comes to the talks with added leverage today, able and willing to disrupt the flow of 20% of the world’s energy through the Strait of Hormuz. And the United States is negotiating alone, without its former partners in the “P5+1” — Russia, China, France, the United Kingdom and Germany — at its side.
Anna Kelly, principal deputy press secretary at the White House, told The Times that “after Democrats like Joe Biden and Barack Hussein Obama weakened our country on the world stage, President Trump has effectively restored American strength with the help of Vice President Vance, who is doing a great job leading the United States in negotiations with Iran.”
“The president and his entire national security team have an incredible track record in making good deals for our country, and the American people can rest assured that the United States will not enter any agreement that does not put our national security interests first,” Kelly said.
Matt Gorman, a longtime Republican strategist and chief communications officer at Targeted Victory, said the JCPOA was viewed particularly critically because it “was negotiated in peacetime.”
“Vance would essentially be ending a war, if successful, and that allows him to make a very different argument,” Gorman said.
The vice president is currently polling as the front-runner for the 2028 Republican presidential nomination, ahead of Marco Rubio, who — despite serving as Trump’s secretary of State and national security advisor — is not directly involved in the Iran talks.
Vance’s role at the negotiating table could help position him as a peacemaker, Crocker noted, distinguishing him from advocates of the war entering the presidential primaries.
But Vance “has been tasked by a president incapable of staying on message, with limited stores of credibility with adversaries as well as allies and a disregard for the complexities of the issues,” said Barbara Bodine, former U.S. ambassador to Yemen. “His task? A credible end to the war without clear objectives.”
“At best, this will be a faux-gilded JCPOA 2.0. Victory will be declared to no applause. On the line is not just Vance’s own reputation, but a demerit in his run for the 2028 presidency,” Bodine added. “The Iran portfolio was no gift.”
April 22 (UPI) — A judge in rural Virginia on Wednesday blocked the results of Tuesday’s state referendum, barring lawmakers, at least temporarily, from implementing a new congressional map that favored Democrats in November’s midterm elections.
The five-page ruling by Judge Jack Hurley of the Tazewell County Circuit Court sided with the Republican National Committee, which was challenging the results of Tuesday’s special election.
On Tuesday, 51.4% of the more than 3 million Virginians who voted approved amending the state’s Constitution to permit a mid-decade congressional district map redraw, according to unofficial results from the Virginia Department of Elections.
The new map is expected to favor Democrats to win 10 of the state’s 11 congressional districts. The Democrats currently hold six of the state’s 11 congressional seats and Republicans hold five.
Hurley agreed with each of the RNC’s claims, including that the legislation supporting the map redraw violated General Assembly rules and that the question voters were asked — “Should the Constitution of Virginia be amended to allow the General Assembly to temporarily adopt new congressional districts to restore fairness in the upcoming elections” — was “a flagrantly misleading question to the voters, and because the ballot language did not accurately describe the proposed amendment as it was passed by the General Assembly.”
The order declares that all votes from the referendum are “ineffective,” and the state is enjoined from certifying them and instituting the new congressional district map.
“This ruling is a major victory for Virginians,” RNC Chair Joe Gruters said in a statement.
“Democrats attempted to force an unconstitutional scheme to tilt congressional maps in their favor, but the court recognized it for what it is — a blatant power grab.”
Virginia said it will immediately appeal the ruling.
“As I said last night, Virginia voters have spoken, and an activist judge should not have veto power over the people’s vote,” Virginia’s Democratic attorney general, Jay Jones, said in a statement.
“We look forward to defending the outcome of last night’s election in court.”
Virginia Democrats first moved for a mid-decade congressional map redraw in the fall after Texas, under pressure from President Donald Trump, approved a map expected to favor Republicans, kicking off a gerrymandering arms race. Four Republican-led states have approved new maps compared with two Democratic-led states, though several other states under majority leadership of each party are seeking to do likewise.
Trump — who has repeatedly warned Republicans that losing the House in November could lead to his impeachment — has taken several executive actions, including tightening voting regulations, that could affect November’s midterms and that Democrats and critics argue are unlawful measures that could help Republicans maintain their narrow House majority.
He has also repeatedly cast doubt on election legitimacy.
On Wednesday, Trump made unfounded claims that the Virginia referendum was “RIGGED,” citing mail-in voting, a common voting practice that the president has targeted as a vehicle for election fraud, though Trump himself has voted by mail in Florida.
“The Democrats eked out another Crooked Victory,” he said in a statement on his Truth Social media platform before Hurley’s ruling. “Let’s see if the Courts will fix this travesty of ‘Justice.'”
Hurley previously ruled to block the Democrats’ redistricting plan twice, though the Supreme Court of Virginia allowed the referendum to move forward amid litigation.
Democratic-led states California and Virginia pursued their redraws through voter-approved ballot measures, while GOP-led Texas, Missouri, Ohio and North Carolina passed actions through their Republican-controlled state institutions, without voter-approved measures.
