AUSTIN, Texas — Denis Bouanga had two goals and an assist on Sunday night to help LAFC beat Austin FC 4-1 and sweep the best-of-three series in the first round of the MLS Cup playoffs.
LAFC, which won Game 1 2-1, plays at second-seeded Vancouver in the one-game Western Conference semifinals.
Son Heung-min added a goal and an assist for No. 3 seed LAFC. Jeremy Ebobisse replaced Son in the 88th minute and capped the scoring in the third minute of stoppage time.
Son, on the counter-attack, hesitated to freeze defender Ilie Sánchez at the top of the area and then exploded toward the left end line and blasted a shot from the corner of the six-yard box inside the back post to open the scoring in the 21st. About four minutes later, Son fed Bouanga for a finish — the 30-year-old’s 100th goal across all competitions for LAFC — into a wide-open net to make it 2-0.
Bouanga cut inside to evade defender Brendan Hines-Ike — who fell to the ground — and then flicked a shot into the net from the left center of the area in the 44th minute.
Bouanga is the only active player — and is one of just nine in history — with at least 10 career goals in the MLS Cup playoffs.
LAFC’s Hugo Lloris — who was second in MLS with 12 shutouts in the regular season — had three saves, including a diving stop on a penalty kick by Myrto Uzuni in the 39th minute after a hand ball in the area by Bouanga.
Ryan Porteous was shown a yellow card for a foul in the area and Dani Pereira converted from the spot in the sixth minute of stoppage time to make it 3-1 at halftime.
CJ Fodrey appeared to have cut sixth-seeded Austin’s deficit to 3-2 in the 71st minute but an offsides call nullified the would-be goal.
WASHINGTON — It has been four months since Elon Musk, President Trump’s bureaucratic demolition man, abandoned Washington in a flurry of recriminations and chaos.
But the Trump administration’s crusade to dismantle much of the federal government never ended. It’s merely under new management: the less colorful but more methodical Russell Vought, director of Trump’s Office of Management and Budget.
Vought has become the backroom architect of Trump’s aggressive strategy — slashing the federal workforce, freezing billions in congressionally approved spending in actions his critics often call illegal.
Now Vought has proposed using the current government shutdown as an opportunity to fire thousands of bureaucrats permanently instead of merely furloughing them temporarily. If any do return to work, he has suggested that the government need not give them back pay — contrary to a law Trump signed in 2019.
Those threats may prove merely to be pressure tactics as Trump tries to persuade Democrats to accept spending cuts on Medicaid, Obamacare and other programs.
But the shutdown battle is the current phase of a much larger one. Vought’s long-term goals, he says, are to “bend or break the bureaucracy to the presidential will” and “deconstruct the administrative state.”
He’s still only partway done.
“I’d estimate that Vought has implemented maybe 10% or 15% of his program,” said Donald F. Kettl, former dean of the public policy school at the University of Maryland. “There may be as much as 90% to go. If this were a baseball game, we’d be in the top of the second inning.”
Along the way, Vought (pronounced “vote”) has chipped relentlessly at Congress’ ability to control the use of federal funds, massively expanding the power of the president.
“He has waged the most serious attack on separation of powers in American history,” said Elaine Kamarck, an expert on federal management at the Brookings Institution.
He’s done that mainly by using OMB, the White House office that oversees spending, to control the day-to-day purse strings of federal agencies — and deliberately keeping Congress in the dark along the way.
“If Congress has given us authority that is too broad, then we’re going to use that authority aggressively,” Vought said last month.
Federal judges have ruled some of the administration’s actions illegal, but they have allowed others to stand. Vought’s proposal to use the shutdown to fire thousands of bureaucrats hasn’t been tested in court.
Vought developed his aggressive approach during two decades as a conservative budget expert, culminating in his appointment as director of OMB in Trump’s first term.
In 2019, he stretched the limits of presidential power by helping Trump get around a congressional ban on funding for a border wall, by declaring an emergency and transferring military funds. He froze congressionally mandated aid for Ukraine, the action that led to Trump’s first impeachment.
Even so, Vought complained that Trump had been needlessly restrained by cautious first-term aides.
“The lawyers come in and say, ‘It’s not legal. You can’t do that,’” he said in 2023. “I don’t want President Trump having to lose a moment of time having fights in the Oval Office over whether something is legal.”
Vought is a proponent of the “unitary executive” theory, the argument that the president should have unfettered control over every tentacle of the executive branch, including independent agencies such as the Federal Reserve.
When Congress designates money for federal programs, he has argued, “It’s a ceiling. It is not a floor. It’s not the notion that you have to spend every dollar.”
Most legal experts disagree; a 1974 law prohibits the president from unilaterally withholding money Congress has appropriated.
Vought told conservative activists in 2023 that if Trump returned to power, he would deliberately seek to inflict “trauma” on federal employees.
“We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected,” he said. “When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work.”
When Vought returned to OMB for Trump’s second term, he appeared to be in Musk’s shadow. But once the flamboyant Tesla chief executive flamed out, the OMB director got to work to make DOGE’s work the foundation for lasting changes.
He extended many of DOGE’s funding cuts by slowing down OMB’s approval of disbursements — turning them into de facto freezes.
He helped persuade Republicans in Congress to cancel $9 billion in previously approved foreign aid and public broadcasting support, a process known as “rescission.”
To cancel an additional $4.9 billion, he revived a rarely used gambit called a “pocket rescission,” freezing the funds until they expired.
Along the way, he quietly stopped providing Congress with information on spending, leaving legislators in the dark on whether programs were being axed.
DOGE and OMB eliminated jobs so quickly that the federal government stopped publishing its ongoing tally of federal employees. (Any number would only be approximate; some layoffs are tied up in court, and thousands of employees who opted for voluntary retirement are technically still on the payroll.)
The result was a significant erosion of Congress’ “power of the purse,” which has historically included not only approving money but also monitoring how it was spent.
Even some Republican members of Congress seethed. “They would like a blank check … and I don’t think that’s appropriate,” said former Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).
But the GOP majorities in both the House and Senate, pleased to see spending cut by any means, let Vought have his way. Even McConnell voted to approve the $9-billion rescission request.
Vought’s newest innovation, the mid-shutdown layoffs, would be another big step toward reducing Congress’ role.
“The result would be a dramatic, instantaneous shift in the separation of powers,” Kettl said. “The Trump team could kill programs unilaterally without the inconvenience of going to Congress.”
Some of the consequences could be catastrophic, Kettl and other scholars warned. Kamarck calls them “time bombs.”
“One or more of these decisions is going to blow up in Trump’s face,” she said.
“FEMA won’t be capable of reacting to the next hurricane. The National Weather Service won’t have the forecasters it needs to analyze the data from weather balloons.”
Even before the government shutdown, she noted, the FAA was grappling with a shortage of air traffic controllers. This week the FAA slowed takeoffs at several airports in response to growing shortages, including at air traffic control centers in Atlanta, Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth.
In theory, a future Congress could undo many of Vought’s actions, especially if Democrats win control of the House or, less likely, the Senate.
But rebuilding agencies that have been radically shrunken would take much longer than cutting them down, the scholars said.
“Much of this will be difficult to reverse when Democrats come back into fashion,” Kamarck said.
Indeed, that’s part of Vought’s plan.
“We want to make sure that the bureaucracy can’t reconstitute itself later in future administrations,” he said in April in a podcast with Charlie Kirk, the conservative activist who was slain on Sept. 10.
He’s pleased with the progress he’s made, he told reporters in July.
Oct. 10 (UPI) — The United States has sanctioned more than 50 people, entities and vessels accused of facilitating the sale of Iranian oil and liquefied petroleum gas, as the Trump administration continues to tighten its financial vise on Tehran.
The sanctions target nearly two dozen shipping vessels, a China-based crude oil terminal and a Chinese so-called teapot refinery that the Treasury accuses of moving hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of LPG for Iran.
The Treasury said that Shandong Jincheng Petrochemical Group, an independent teapot refinery in Shandong Province, has purchased millions of barrels of Iranian oil since 2023, receiving the shipments worth hundreds of millions of dollars via Iran’s shadow fleet of vessels.
The China-based Rizhao Shihua Crude Oil Terminal was also blacklisted for accepting more than a dozen of those shadow fleet ships.
“The Treasury Department is degrading Iran’s cash flow by dismantling key elements of Iran’s energy export machine,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a statement.
“Under President [Donald] Trump, this administration is disrupting the regime’s ability to fund terrorist groups that threaten the United States.”
The sanctions continue the Trump administration’s maximum pressure campaign that failed during his first term to bring Iran to the negotiating table on a new deal.
The punitive policy was initially launched in 2018, when Trump withdrew the United States from a landmark multinational Obama-era accord aimed at preventing Iran from securing a nuclear weapon as part of efforts to cobble together one of his own.
The maximum pressure campaign of sanctions and other measures was employed in an effort to compel Iran to resume negotiations on a new deal.
Instead, Iran continued to advance its nuclear program.
The previous Biden administration attempted to restart negotiations with Iran on reinstating the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, but those prospects were dashed when Iran-backed Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
The second iteration of the maximum pressure campaign was launched on Feb. 4 with Trump’s signing of National Security Presidential Memorandum 2, which seeks to “impose maximum pressure on the Iranian regime to end its nuclear threat, curtail its ballistic missile program and stop its support for terrorist groups.”
The policy’s second iteration is a broader focus on China’s aid to Iran, secondary sanctions and a targeting of Tehran’s shadow fleet
The sanctions announced Thursday coincided with the Treasury also sanctioning a network of individuals and companies assisting Iran with evading U.S. sanctions.
It also blacklisted 44 individuals and firms accused of being involved in Iran’s nuclear program and weapons procurement network earlier this month.
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court granted an unusually quick hearing on President Trump’s sweeping tariffs on Tuesday, putting a policy at the center of his economic agenda squarely before the nation’s highest court.
The tariffs will remain in place in the lead-up to arguments set for November, a lightning-fast timetable by the Supreme Court’s typical standards.
The court agreed to take up an appeal from the Trump administration after lower courts found most of his tariffs illegal.
The small businesses and states that challenged them also agreed to the accelerated timetable. They say Trump’s import taxes on goods from nearly every country in the world have nearly driven their businesses to bankruptcy.
Two lower courts have agreed that Trump didn’t have the power to impose tariffs on nearly every country on earth under an emergency powers law, though a 7-4 appeals court has left them in place for now.
The Trump administration asked the justices to intervene quickly, arguing the law gives him the power to regulate imports and striking down the tariffs would put the country on “the brink of economic catastrophe.”
The case will come before a court that has been reluctant to check Trump’s extraordinary flex of executive power. One big question is whether the justices’ own expansive view of presidential authority allows for Trump’s tariffs without the explicit approval of Congress, which the Constitution endows with the power to levy tariffs. Three of the justices on the conservative-majority court were nominated by Trump in his first term.
While the tariffs and their erratic rollout have raised fears of higher prices and slower economic growth, Trump has also used them to pressure other countries into accepting new trade deals. Revenue from tariffs totaled $159 billion by late August, more than double what it was at the same point a year earlier.
Solicitor General D. John Sauer has argued that the lower court rulings are already affecting those trade negotiations. If the tariffs are struck down, the U.S. Treasury might take a hit by having to refund some of the import taxes it’s collected, Trump administration officials have said. A ruling against them could even the nation’s ability to reduce the flow of fentanyl and efforts to end Russia’s war against Ukraine, Sauer argued.
The administration did win over four appeals court judges who found the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act lets the president regulate importation during emergencies without explicit limitations. In recent decades, Congress has ceded some tariff authority to the president and Trump has made the most of the power vacuum.
The case involves two sets of import taxes, both of which Trump justified by declaring a national emergency: the tariffs first announced in April and the ones from February on imports from Canada, China and Mexico.
It doesn’t include his levies on foreign steel, aluminum and autos, or the tariffs Trump imposed on China in his first term that were kept by Democratic President Biden.
Trump can impose tariffs under other laws, but those have more limitations on the speed and severity with which he could act.
BANGKOK — President Donald Trump on Thursday imposed once unthinkably high U.S. taxes on imports from dozens of countries, part of his campaign to turn one of the world’s most open economies into a fortress bristling with barriers to trade.
The taxes — tariffs — that took effect at midnight apply to products from 66 countries, the European Union, Taiwan and the Falkland Islands.
Trump believes the tariffs will protect U.S. industry from foreign competition, encourage companies to build factories and hire workers in the United States and raise revenue to pay for the massive tax cuts he signed into law July 4.
“Growth is going to be unprecedented,” Trump said Wednesday.
But mainstream economists and policy analysts warn that tariffs are paid by importers in the United States who will try to pass along the cost through higher prices to their customers, businesses and consumers alike; make the economy less efficient and innovative by shielding domestic companies from foreign competition; and threaten U.S. relationships with longstanding allies and trading partners.
Indeed, the economic damage is already starting show.
Here’s what to know:
Hefty tariffs have taken effect — but many could have been higher
The levies that took effect Thursday are a revised version of what Trump called ” reciprocal tariffs ” announced on April 2. Those earlier threats included import taxes of up to 50% on goods from countries that have a trade surplus with the United States, along with 10% “baseline’’ taxes on almost everyone else. The move triggered sell-offs in financial markets, and Trump backtracked to give countries a chance to negotiate.
Some of them did, caving in to Trump’s demands to accept high tariffs to ward off even higher ones. The United Kingdom agreed to 10% tariffs and the European Union, South Korea and Japan accepted U.S. tariffs of 15%. Those are well above the low single-digit rates they paid last year, but down from the 30% Trump had ordered for the EU and the 25% he ordered for Japan in April.
Thailand, Pakistan, South Korea, Vietnam, Indonesia and the Philippines cut deals with Trump, settling for rates of around 20%.
Indonesia views its 19% tariff deal as a leg up against exporters in other countries that will have to pay slightly more, said Fithra Faisal Hastiadi, a spokesperson in the Indonesian president’s office. “We were competing against Vietnam, India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and China … and they are all subject to higher reciprocal tariffs,” Hastiadi said. “We believe we will stay competitive.”
Trump dictated terms to countries that didn’t reach a deal
For countries that didn’t or couldn’t reach a deal, Trump dictated terms himself, plastering tariffs ranging from 10% on the Falkland Islands to 41% on Syria. Countries in Africa and Asia are mostly facing lower rates than the ones Trump decreed in April. Tiny Lesotho in southern Africa, for instance, ended up with a 15% tariff instead of the 50% Trump originally announced.
India also has no broad trade agreement with Trump. On Wednesday, Trump he signed an executive order placing an extra 25% tariff for its purchases of Russian oil, bringing combined U.S. tariffs to 50%. India has stood firm, saying it began importing oil from Russia because traditional supplies were diverted to Europe after the outbreak of the Ukraine conflict.
Impoverished Laos and war-torn Myanmar face 40% rates. Trump whacked Brazil with a 50% import tax largely because he’s unhappy with its treatment of former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro. South Africa said the steep 30% rate Trump has ordered on the exporter of precious gems and metals has put 30,000 jobs at risk and left the country scrambling to find new markets outside the United States.
Even wealthy Switzerland is under the gun. Swiss officials were visiting Washington this week to try to stave off a whopping 39% tariff on U.S. imports of its chocolate, watches and other products.
Overall, the average U.S. tariff rate has risen from around 2.5% before Trump returned to the White House to 18.6% — the highest since 1933 — the Budget Lab at Yale University reported Thursday.
Canada and Mexico have their own arrangements as China talks continue
Goods that comply with the 2020 United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement that Trump negotiated during his first term are excluded from the tariffs.
So, even though U.S. neighbor and ally Canada was hit by a 35% tariff after it defied Trump — a staunch supporter of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — by saying it would recognize a Palestinian state, most of its exports to the U.S. remain duty free.
Canada’s central bank says 100% of energy exports and 95% of other exports are compliant with the agreement since regional rules mean Canadian and Mexico companies can claim preferential treatment.
The slice of Mexican exports not covered by the USMCA is subject to a 25% tariff, down from an earlier rate of 30%, during a 90-day negotiating period that began last week.
Meanwhile, Trump has yet to announce whether he will extend an Aug. 12 deadline for reaching a trade agreement with China that would forestall earlier threats of tariffs of up to 245%.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the president is deciding about another 90-day delay to allow time to work out details of an agreement setting tariffs on most products at 50%, including extra import duties related to illicit trade in fentanyl.
Higher import taxes on small parcels from China have hurt smaller factories and layoffs have accelerated, leaving some 200 million workers reliant on “flexible work” — the gig economy — for their livelihoods, the government estimates.
Still, China has shown that it has leverage to resist Trump’s threats: It can withhold exports of rare earth minerals that companies need for everything from wind turbines to electric vehicle batteries.
Considerable uncertainty remains
Details of the deals reached in a frenzy of negotiations leading up to Trump’s August deadline have not been published — and are already subject to disagreement.
Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, for instance, told reporters that Japan is asking the U.S. government to immediately correct tariffs that are not consistent with their agreement.
“The uncertainty about whether Trump was bluffing with his tariff threats and simply using those threats as a negotiating tool has been resolved,” said Eswar Prasad, professor of trade policy and economics at Cornell University. “But the uncertainty about the tariffs themselves, including the rates and what countries and products will be covered, is still unresolved in any durable way and remains subject to Trump’s whims.
“Even the deals that have ostensibly been negotiated lack clarity about their details and are far from settled.’’
Trump also is threatening new tariffs — including levies of 200% or more on pharmaceuticals and 100% on computer chips.
Trump’s trade agenda also is under attack in court, adding to the uncertainty.
A specialized trade court in New York ruled in May that Trump overstepped his authority in imposing April 2 tariffs and earlier ones on Canada, China and Mexico. An appeals court, which allowed the government to continue collecting tariffs while the case moves through the judicial system, now has the case, which is expected to eventually go to the Supreme Court.
In a hearing last week, the judges sounded skeptical about the Trump administration’s authority to declare a national emergency to justify the tariffs.
Kurtenbach and Wiseman write for the Associated Press. Wiseman reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Niniek Karmini in Jakarta, Aniruddha Ghosal in Hanoi contributed.
Aug. 7 (UPI) — President Donald Trump‘s sweeping new tariffs on dozens of nations went into effect early Thursday following months of delays and threats from the American leader.
“IT”S MIDNIGHT!!! BILLIONS OF DOLLARS IN TARIFFS ARE NOW LOWING INTO THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,” Trump said on his Truth Social platform announcing the levies were now in effect.
The American president has long relied on tariffs as a punishment, a negotiating tool and a measure to right what he views as negative trade imbalances that the United States has with other countries.
He has described these deficits as an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to the United States’ national security and economy.
Under the executive order he signed last week, most countries’ imports to the United States will be subjected to a baseline 10% tariff, which went into effect at midnight Wednesday. Other governments, such as South Korea, the European Union, Britain and Japan, will have more complicated and different tariff rates as they rushed to make deals with the Trump administration ahead of last month’s deadline.
Brazil, for instance is facing a total 50% tariff after Trump slapped a 40% levy against it over the prosecution of his ally, former far-right President Jair Bolsonaro.
He also raised tariffs to 50% on India on Wednesday over the country’s continued purchase of Russian oil.
Canada, the United States’ closest partner, was hit with a 35% tariff, up from 25%.
On Wednesday, Trump also announced he would be imposing a 100% tariff on semiconductor chips.
According to the nonpartisan Yale Budget Lab think tank, U.S. consumers will face an overall average effective tariff rate of 17.3% — the highest since 1935, during the Great Depression.
The think tanks states that the average per-household income loss will be $2,400 this year. Textiles and clothing will be disproportionally affected by the tariffs, with consumers expected to face 40% higher costs for shoes and 38% higher prices for apparel.
Meanwhile, the nonpartisan Tax Foundation states that Trump’s tariffs could raise $2.1 trillion in revenue over the next 10 years, but will reduce total revenue raised by $1.6 trillion and reduce GDP by 0.8%.
Despite what analysts say, the Trump administration has been bullish on the tariffs, saying they will generate billions for the United States.
During a press conference at the White House with Apple CEO Tim Cook on Wednesday, Trump said, “I think we’ll be taking in hundreds of billions of dollars in tariffs.”
“We have a great country. We have a country that is going to be very rich. It’s a country that we’re very proud of, but it’s going to be very rich,” Trump said.
Trump initially announced the so-called reciprocal tariffs in April but then paused them for all countries but China for 90 days to allow time for the governments to hash out deals with the United States. In July, he delayed them again until Aug. 1. Then a day before the tariffs were to go into effect, he pushed their deadline a week.
HOPLAND, Calif. — On a sun-kissed hillside in remote Northern California, I watched in awe as a crackling fire I’d helped ignite engulfed a hillside covered in tall, golden grass. Then the wind shifted slightly, and the dense gray smoke that had been billowing harmlessly up the slope turned and engulfed me.
Within seconds, I was blind and coughing. The most intense heat I’d ever felt seemed like it would sear the only exposed skin on my body: my face. As the flames inched closer, to within a few feet, I backed up until I was trapped against a tall fence with nowhere left to go.
Alone in that situation, I would have panicked. But I was with Len Nielson, chief of prescribed burns for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, who stayed as cool as the other side of the pillow.
Like a pilot calmly instructing passengers to fasten their seat belts, Nielson suggested I wrap the fire-resistant “shroud” hanging from my bright yellow helmet around my face. Then he told me to take a few steps to the left.
And, just like that, we were out of the choking smoke and into the gentle morning sunlight. The temperature seemed to have dropped a few hundred degrees.
“It became uncomfortable, but it was tolerable, right?” Nielson asked with a reassuring grin. “Prescribed fires are a lot about trust.”
Dripping gasoline onto dry grass and deliberately setting it ablaze in the California countryside felt wildly reckless, especially for someone whose job involves interviewing survivors of the state’s all too frequent, catastrophic wildfires. But “good fire,” as Nielson called it, is essential for reducing the fuel available for bad fire, the kind that makes the headlines. The principle is as ancient as it is simple.
Before European settlers arrived in California and insisted on suppressing fire at every turn, the landscape burned regularly. Sometimes lightning ignited the flames; sometimes it was Indigenous people using fire as an obvious, and remarkably effective, tool to clear unwanted vegetation from their fields. Whatever the cause, it was common for much of the land in California to burn about once a decade.
“So it was relatively calm,” Nielson said, as the flames we’d set danced and swirled just a few feet behind him. “There wasn’t this big fuel load, so there wasn’t a chance of it becoming really intense.”
With that in mind, the state set an ambitious goal in the early 2020s to deliberately burn at least 400,000 acres of wilderness each year. The majority of that would have to be managed by the federal government, since agencies including the U.S. Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management and the National Park Service own nearly half of the state’s total land. And they own more than half of the state’s forests.
Cal Fire crew members set a prescribed burn near Hopland in Mendocino County.
(Josh Edelson / For The Times)
But California officials worry their ambitious goals are likely to be thwarted by deep cuts to those federal agencies by Elon Musk’s budget-whacking White House advisory team, dubbed the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. In recent months, the Forest Service has lost about 10% of its workforce to mass layoffs and firings. While firefighters were exempt from the DOGE-ordered staffing cuts, employees who handle the logistics and clear the myriad regulatory hurdles to secure permission for prescribed burns were not.
“To me, it’s an objective fact that these cuts mean California will be less safe from wildfire,” said Wade Crowfoot, California’s secretary of natural resources. He recalled how President Trump, in his first term, erroneously blamed the state’s wildfires on state officials who, Trump said, had failed to adequately “rake” the forests.
“Fifty-seven percent of our forests are owned and managed by the federal government,” Crowfoot said. If anybody failed, it was the president, he argued.
Larry Moore, a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees the Forest Service, said the job cuts won’t affect the agency’s fire prevention efforts.
The Forest Service “continues to ensure it has the strongest and most prepared wildland firefighting force in the world,” Moore wrote in an email. The agency’s leaders are “committed to preserving essential safety positions and will ensure that critical services remain uninterrupted.”
Cal Fire crew members plot out the direction and scope of a prescribed burn in Mendocino County.
(Josh Edelson / For The Times)
Nevertheless, last month, Gov. Gavin Newsom added $72 million to the state’s forest management budget to bridge some of the gap expected to be left by federal agencies. But wildfire experts say that’s just a drop in the bucket. Doing prescribed burns safely takes a lot of boots on the ground and behind-the-scenes cajoling to make sure local residents, and regulators, are on board.
Because people get pretty testy when you accidentally smoke out an elementary school or old folks home, burn plans have to clear substantial hurdles presented by the California Environmental Quality Act and air quality regulators.
It took three years to get all the required permissions for the 50-acre Hopland burn in Mendocino County, where vineyard owners worried their world-class grapes might get a little too “smoky” for most wine lovers. When the big day finally arrived in early June, more than 60 firefighters showed up with multiple fire engines, at least one bulldozer and a firefighting helicopter on standby in case anything went wrong.
But this was no school project. A fire that began in the surrounding hills a couple of years ago threatened to trap people in the center, so the area being burned was along the only two roads that could be used to escape.
“We’re trying to create a buffer to get out, if we need to,” said John Bailey, the center’s director. “But we’re also trying to create a buffer to prevent wildfire from coming into the center.”
Smoke emanates from a prescribed burn in Mendocino County.(Josh Edelson / For The Times)
As the firefighters pulled on their protective yellow jackets and pants, and filled their drip torches with a mixture of diesel and gasoline, Nielson bent down and grabbed a fistful of the yellow grass. Running it through his fingers, he showed it to his deputies and they all shook their heads in disappointment — too moist.
Thick marine-layer clouds filled the sky at 7 a.m, keeping the relative humidity too high for a good scorching. In many years of covering wildfires, it was the first time I had seen firefighters looking bored and disappointed because nothing would burn.
By 8:45 a.m., the clouds cleared, the sun came out, and the grass in Nielson’s fist began to crinkle and snap. It was time to go to work.
The fire that would fill the sky and drift north that afternoon, blanketing the town of Ukiah with the familiar orange haze of fire season, began with a single firefighter walking along the edge of a cleared dirt path. As he moved, he made little dots of flame with his drip torch, drawing a line like a kid working the edges of a picture in a coloring book.
Additional firefighters worked the other edges of the field until it was encircled by strips of burned black grass. That way, no matter which direction the fire went when they set the center of the field alight, the flames would not — in most circumstances — escape the relatively small test patch.
On the uphill edge of the patch, along the top of a ridge, firefighters in full protective gear leaned against a wooden fence with their backs to the smoke and flames climbing the hill behind them. They’d all done this before, and they trusted those black strips of pre-burned grass to stop the fire before it got to them.
Their job was to keep their eyes on the downward slope on the other side of the ridge, which wasn’t supposed to burn. If they saw any embers drift past them into the “green” zone, they would immediately move to extinguish those flames.
Nielson and I were standing along the fence, too. In addition to the circle of pre-burned grass protecting us, we were on a dirt path about four feet wide. For someone with experience, that was an enormous buffer. I was the only one who even flinched when the smoke and flames came our way.
Afterward, when I confessed how panicked I had felt, Nielson said it happens to a lot of people the first time they are engulfed in smoke. It’s particularly dangerous in grass fires, because they move so fast. People can get completely disoriented, run the wrong way and “get cooked,” he said.
Grass fires are particularly dangerous, because they move so fast, says Cal Fire Staff Chief Len Nielson. People can get disoriented in the smoke, run the wrong way and “get cooked.”
(Josh Edelson / For The Times)
But that test patch was just the warmup act. Nielson and his crew were checking to make sure the fire would behave the way they expected — pushed in the right direction by the gentle breeze and following the slope uphill.
“If you’re wondering where fire will go and how fast it will move, think of water,” he said. Water barely moves on flat ground, but it picks up speed when it goes downhill. If it gets into a steep section, where the walls close in like a funnel, it becomes a waterfall.
“Fire does the same thing, but it’s a gas, so it goes the opposite direction,” Nielson said.
With that and a few other pointers — we watched as three guys drew a line of fire around the base of a big, beautiful oak tree in the middle of the hillside to shield it from what was about to happen — Nielson led me to the bottom of the hill and handed me a drip torch.
Once everybody was in position, and all of the safety measures had been put in place, he wanted me to help set the “head fire,” a 6-foot wall of flame that would roar up the hill and consume dozens of acres in a matter of minutes.
“It’s gonna get a little warm right here,” Nielson said, “but it’s gonna get warm for only a second.”
As I leaned in with the torch and set the grass ablaze, the heat was overwhelming. While everyone else working the fire seemed nonchalant, I was tentative and terrified. My right hand stretched forward to make the dots and dashes where Nielson instructed, but my butt was sticking as far back into the road as it could get.
I asked Nielson how hot he thought the flames in front of us were. “I used to know that,” he said with a shrug. “I want to say it’s probably between 800 and 1,200 degrees.”
With the hillside still burning, I peeled off all of the protective gear, hopped in a car and followed the smoke north along the 101 Freeway. By lunchtime, Ukiah, a town of 16,000 that bills itself as the gateway to the redwoods, was shrouded in haze.
Everybody smelled the smoke, but prescribed burns are becoming so common in the region, nobody seemed alarmed.
“Do it!” said Judy Hyler, as she and two friends walked out of Stan’s Maple Cafe. A veteran of the rampant destruction of wildfires from years past, she didn’t hesitate when asked how she felt about the effort. “I would rather it be prescribed, controlled and managed than what we’ve seen before.”
Panel of judges finds the president overstepped his authority by imposing across-the-board duties on imports from trading partners.
A United States trade court has ruled that President Donald Trump exceeded his authority when he imposed blanket tariffs on imports from US trading partners, issuing a permanent injunction that immediately halts the tariffs and demands a government response within 10 days.
The Court of International Trade, based in New York, said the US Constitution grants Congress exclusive authority to regulate commerce with other countries that is not overridden by the president’s emergency powers to safeguard the US economy.
“The court does not pass upon the wisdom or likely effectiveness of the President’s use of tariffs as leverage,” a three-judge panel wrote on Wednesday. “That use is impermissible not because it is unwise or ineffective, but because [federal law] does not allow it.”
The ruling, if it stands, could derail Trump’s global trade strategy to use steep tariffs to wring concessions from trading partners. It creates deep uncertainty around multiple simultaneous negotiations with the European Union, China and many other countries.
The court struck down Trump’s tariff orders issued since January under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), a statute meant for addressing rare and extraordinary national emergencies. Tariffs introduced under other laws, such as those targeting specific industries like steel, autos and aluminium, were not addressed in this ruling.
The Trump administration swiftly filed an appeal, disputing the court’s jurisdiction. A White House spokesperson insisted trade imbalances posed a national crisis. “It is not for unelected judges to decide how to properly address a national emergency,” said Kush Desai, the White House deputy press secretary, defending Trump’s executive actions as necessary to protect US industry and security.
Al Jazeera’s Mike Hanna, reporting from Washington, noted the court’s impartiality. “This particular court cannot be accused of being an activist one, as Trump and his followers have accused other courts that have ruled against him,” Hanna said. “One of the judges was appointed by Trump himself, another by former President Barack Obama and the third by the former Republican President Ronald Reagan.”
The Court of International Trade handles matters relating to customs and trade law. Its rulings can be challenged in the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit and eventually taken to the Supreme Court.
Financial analyst Robert Scott told Al Jazeera the tariffs failed to deliver tangible results even in Trump’s first term. “Most of those tariffs did not see the US trade position improve,” he said. “US trade deficits continued to grow and China’s exports to the world kept rising. They simply rerouted goods through other countries.”
The ruling came in a pair of lawsuits, one filed by the nonpartisan Liberty Justice Center on behalf of five small US businesses that import goods from countries targeted by the duties, and the other by 12 US states.
The companies, which range from a New York wine and spirits importer to a Virginia-based maker of educational kits and musical instruments, have said the tariffs will hurt their ability to do business.
“There is no question here of narrowly tailored relief; if the challenged Tariff Orders are unlawful as to Plaintiffs they are unlawful as to all,” the judges wrote in their decision.
At least five other legal challenges to the tariffs are pending.
The ruling from a three-judge panel at the New York-based Court of International Trade came after several lawsuits arguing Trump has exceeded his authority, left U.S. trade policy dependent on his whims and unleashed economic chaos.
The White House did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment. The Trump administration is expected to appeal.
At least seven lawsuits are challenging the levies, the centerpiece of Trump’s trade policy.
Tariffs must typically be approved by Congress, but Trump has says he has the power to act because the country’s trade deficits amount to a national emergency. He imposed tariffs on most of the countries in the world at one point, sending markets reeling.
Even if it did, they say, the trade deficit does not meet the law’s requirement that an emergency be triggered only by an “unusual and extraordinary threat.” The U.S. has run a trade deficit with the rest of the world for 49 consecutive years.
Trump’s tendency to levy extremely high import taxes and then retreat has created what’s known as the “TACO” trade, an acronym coined by the Financial Times’ Robert Armstrong that stands for “Trump Always Chickens Out.” Markets generally sell off when Trump makes his tariff threats and then recover after he backs down.
Trump was visibly offended when asked about the phrase Wednesday and rejected the idea that he’s “chickening out,” saying that the reporter’s inquiry was “nasty.”
“You call that chickening out?” Trump said. “It’s called negotiation,” adding that he sets a “ridiculous high number and I go down a little bit, you know, a little bit” until the figure is more reasonable.
Trump defended his approach of jacking up tariff rates to 145% on Chinese goods, only to pull back to 30% for 90 days of negotiations. He similarly last week threatened to impose a 50% tax on goods from the European Union starting in June, only to delay the tariff hike until July 9 so that negotiations can occur while the baseline 10% tariff continues to be charged. Similar dramas have played out over autos, electronics and the universal tariffs that Trump announced on April 2 that were based in part on individual trade deficits with other countries.
Trump imposed tariffs on most of the countries in the world in an effort to reverse America’s massive and longstanding trade deficits. He earlier plastered levies on imports from Canada, China and Mexico to combat the illegal flow of immigrants and the synthetic opioids across the U.S. border.
His administration argues that courts approved then-President Richard Nixon’s emergency use of tariffs in 1971, and that only Congress, and not the courts, can determine the “political” question of whether the president’s rationale for declaring an emergency complies with the law.
Trump’s Liberation Day tariffs shook global financial markets and led many economists to downgrade the outlook for U.S. economic growth. So far, though, the tariffs appear to have had little impact on the world’s largest economy.
A lawsuit was filed by a group of small businesses, including a wine importer, V.O.S. Selections, whose owner has said the tariffs are having a major impact and his company may not survive.
A dozen states also filed suit, led by Oregon. “This ruling reaffirms that our laws matter, and that trade decisions can’t be made on the president’s whim,” Atty. Gen. Dan Rayfield said.
Whitehurst and Boak write for the Associated Press. A.P. writers Zeke Miller and Paul Wiseman contributed to this report.
WASHINGTON — House Republican leadership is pressing ahead toward a vote on landmark legislation that would codify President Trump’s agenda this week, the first major push to pass Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” since he resumed office.
The bill would overhaul the tax code and extend many of the tax cuts passed during Trump’s first term, while increasing spending on defense and border security — costly policies that would be offset by new work requirements and conditions on Medicaid, cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, and the phasing out of green energy tax credits.
Success is far from guaranteed for House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), who is navigating negotiations with fiscal conservatives and coastal moderates within his caucus to secure enough votes within his razor-thin majority. But the bill did take one procedural step forward Sunday night, clearing the bill through the House Budget Committee in a rare weekend vote.
Four members of that committee voted “present,” and have not committed to ultimately vote in favor of the bill. Those four alone — Freedom Caucus members Rep. Chip Roy of Texas, Andrew Clyde of Georgia, Josh Brecheen of Oklahoma and Ralph Norman of South Carolina — are enough to sink the bill in a final floor vote.
More moderate Republican lawmakers from states like California, New York and New Jersey, where residents face higher state and local taxes than in much of the rest of the country, are pushing for an increase in the state and local tax deduction cap, known as SALT, to be included in the bill — a provision that is opposed by the Freedom Caucus. They also are pushing back against efforts to wind down green energy tax credits that are popular with their constituents.
The Congressional Budget Office issued a preliminary estimate that new conditions to Medicaid coverage built into the bill would result in at least 7.6 million people losing health insurance by 2034. The CBO has yet to release a full assessment of the bill’s effect on the debt and deficit.
Johnson has said that the bill will go to the House Rules Committee on Tuesday or Wednesday. He then aims to put the bill to a vote on the House floor on Thursday.
The White House has been involved in the negotiations in recent days.
“Passing this bill is what voters sent Republicans to Washington to accomplish,” Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said Monday. “That’s why it’s essential that every Republican in the House and Senate unites behind President Trump to pass this popular and transformative legislative package.”
Even if Johnson succeeds in passing the legislation, the bill will then move to a Senate filled with Republicans who have expressed skepticism of the House legislation.
“Not only myself, but a number of us in the Senate have been very clear: We have to reduce the deficit,” Republican Sen. John Curtis of Utah said in an interview with CNN. Asked if he wants serious changes to the House bill, Curtis said, “Yes.”
Earlier in the week, Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri said the House bill represented “real Medicaid benefit cuts” that he would not vote for.
“I can’t support that,” Hawley said. “No Republican should support that. We’re the party of the working class. We need to act like it.”
In a statement on social media Monday, Johnson called the bill a “once in a generation opportunity to help restore our economy to greatness.”
“The One Big Beautiful Bill Act will bring the historic relief and prosperity President Trump and Congressional Republicans promised the American people,” he said.
WASHINGTON — The California attorney general’s office said Tuesday it will seek a preliminary injunction in its case challenging President Trump’s tariff policy, a move that could result in a court order freezing sweeping import duties on worldwide products that have rocked the global economy and U.S. markets since last month.
The case, filed last month in the Northern District of California, argues that Trump lacks authority under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to impose the tariffs he announced April 2 on nearly all U.S. trading partners, as well as those levied against China, Mexico and Canada due to the fentanyl trade, a set of tariffs that used the same national security rationale.
A hearing in the case is scheduled for next week, and a decision on the preliminary injunction could come from the San Francisco federal court as soon as mid-June, an official with the attorney general’s office told The Times.
Trump announced a new baseline for global tariffs on April 2 and a series of country-specific tariff rates that sent banks and financial institutions into a panic. The White House has retreated on several of the harshest elements of the policy, but tariffs remain far higher on most trading partners, inflicting continuing harm on California, the state’s lawyers argue.
“Uncertainty and unpredictability are bad for business, bad for the economy, and bad for California,” Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta said in a statement. “California is set to experience an outsized share of losses due to our larger economy, workforce, and exposure to trade. We are pulling out all the stops and will today ask the court to immediately halt these illegal tariffs while California argues its case.”
In a filing in another case, the attorney general’s office submitted an amicus brief supporting an effort by other states to halt the tariffs in the Court of International Trade, which could issue a ruling on the matter even earlier.
“President Trump has overstepped his authority, and now families, businesses, and our ports are literally paying the price,” said Gov. Gavin Newsom. “As the largest economy in the nation, California has the most to lose from President Trump’s weak and reckless policies.”
