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Los Angeles city officials may be empowered to remove homeless encampments from hillside areas at severe risk of fire, even without the property owner’s permission, under a proposal that the City Council moved forward on Tuesday.

The proposal would allow the city to remove hazardous materials, including homeless encampments, from private property in hillside areas in “Very High Fire Severity Zones,” including in the Santa Monica and Verdugo Mountains.

By an 11-3 vote, the council directed the city attorney to draft changes to the municipal code, which the council will then vote on at a later date.

“Prevention [of fires] is the most cost-effective tool we have,” said Councilmember Monica Rodriguez, who sponsored the proposal. “When we are in imminent threat of wildfires, especially as it relates to or is exacerbated by these types of encampments, we have a duty to act.”

Rubbish fires, many related to homeless encampments, have skyrocketed over the last several years, according to Los Angeles Fire Department data. Rodriguez said there have been five wildfires in her northeast San Fernando Valley district since she took office in 2017, though none was caused by an encampment.

Between 2018 and 2024, about 33% of all fires in the city, and more than 40% of rubbish fires, involved homeless Angelenos, according to the LAFD.

Rodriguez said the city is often left flat-footed when encampments pop up on hillsides and property owners don’t help address the issue.

“If a private property owner is not responsive, it puts the rest of the hillside community under threat,” Rodriguez said in an interview.

Rodriguez’s motion said it’s often difficult for city departments, including police and fire, to get permission from property owners to enter.

“It can take weeks to determine property ownership and to obtain the necessary signoffs from property owners to access the property, causing unnecessary delays and increasing the risk for a serious fire and threats to public safety,” the motion reads.

Some council members argued that while they agreed with the intent of the proposal, some details needed to be addressed.

Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martínez — who voted against the proposal — said he was concerned that homeless people would end up getting shuffled around the city.

“What I don’t want to see is this being used as a tool to push homeless folks from one side of the street to the other side of the street,” he said before casting his vote.

Soto-Martínez said he wouldn’t vote for the proposal until the city developed a definition of what a fire hazard is.

Councilmember Ysabel Jurado also voted against the proposal, saying she wanted the council to do more research before changing the municipal code.

Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez was the third “no” vote.

Nithya Raman began her political career by defeating a well-funded incumbent with deep ties to the Democratic Party establishment.

Raman, an urban planner who was running to shake up the status quo, became the first person to oust a sitting councilmember in 17 years, stunning the Los Angeles political establishment with her defeat of David Ryu in 2020.

Now, with her surprise, last-minute entry into the mayor’s race, the 44-year-old Silver Lake resident is hoping to defeat another incumbent, Karen Bass, by expanding on the formula that led to her first upset victory.

“I was an outsider when I first ran, and I think I’ll be an outsider in this race,” Raman said after filing her candidate paperwork on Feb. 7, hours before the deadline.

But after six years at City Hall, Raman is no longer an outsider. She has her own record, which is in many ways intertwined with the mayor’s, particularly on homelessness, an issue the onetime allies have worked closely together to remedy.

As a City Council member, Raman, whose previous campaigns were backed by Democratic Socialists of America Los Angeles, has sometimes walked a political tightrope, exasperating her progressive base on issues like policing. Last week, she said that the LAPD must not shrink further — a substantial evolution from her “defund the police” declaration during her first run for council.

She has also frustrated some on the left by calling for changes to the city’s “mansion tax,” which she backed in 2022 but which she now says is getting in the way of much-needed development.

Raman shook up a mayoral race that was devoid of high-powered challengers after former L.A. schools Supt. Austin Beutner dropped out and L.A. County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath and billionaire developer Rick Caruso decided not to run.

“Nithya has shown that she can get votes. She’s going to be competitive,” said Bill Carrick, a longtime Democratic political consultant who worked on campaigns for former Mayors Eric Garcetti, James Hahn and Richard Riordan.

But her late entry will make it more difficult to get endorsements and raise money. With three months before ballots are mailed for the June 2 primary, she will have to work at double speed to build a campaign infrastructure and tap into bases that have helped her win before, from Hollywood supporters to DSA members and pro-housing advocates from the YIMBY — Yes in My Backyard — movement.

She has already missed DSA’s endorsement season. And last week, nine of her 14 City Council colleagues reiterated their endorsements of Bass, including another progressive council member, Hugo Soto-Martínez, who said he was “caught off-guard” by Raman’s “last-minute maneuver.”

Raman, who had also endorsed Bass, will have to combat hard feelings among some L.A. politicos who feel that her entry into the race is a betrayal of a mayor who helped her win reelection in 2024.

Raman has said that her decision to run was driven in part by her frustration with city leaders’ inability to get the basics right, such as fixing streetlights and paving streets.

Since launching her campaign, Raman has also joined a chorus of Angelenos criticizing Bass’ handling of the catastrophic Palisades fire, saying the city must be better prepared for major emergencies.

As the dust settles on her unexpected candidacy, political observers are assessing Raman’s prospects — both her strengths and the obstacles that stand between her and the mayor’s office.

Bass campaign spokesperson Douglas Herman declined to comment. A Raman campaign spokesperson, Jeff Millman, also declined to comment.

Ryu, who lost to Raman in 2020, said Bass should be “nervous” about her newest opponent.

To win, Ryu said, Raman must tap into the strengths that helped propel her to victory in the past, including her prowess with social media.

“She couldn’t speak in front of crowds at the beginning. She was super nervous,” Ryu said. “But oh my God, her social media team, the production value of her videos. It’s a science.”

Raman’s 2020 campaign will be hard to replicate. That year, the council race focused not just on local policy but also on national issues such as #MeToo and the police murder of George Floyd, Ryu said. Big-name politicians weighed in, with Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders endorsing Raman and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton endorsing Ryu.

The most important difference, Ryu said, is that Raman can no longer plausibly position herself as an outsider.

“Now there’s a record. It’s easy when you’re the activist fighting the system. But when you’re in there, you realize it’s a zero-sum game,” he said. “Do you want to trim trees and fix potholes or build housing? Sometimes that is the brutal reality.”

In the coming months, Raman will have to reach beyond her district, which stretches from Silver Lake to Reseda, introducing herself and her record to voters across the city. She began a media blitz in her first week as a candidate, doing interviews with NBC4, KNX News and The Times.

Her main goal should be to make it to the November runoff, said Mike Trujillo, a Democratic political consultant.

If no candidate among the roughly 40 running for mayor wins more than 50% of the vote in the June 2 primary, the top two finishers will move to the runoff.

A runoff would allow Raman a fresh start, with each candidate starting a new round of fundraising and pitching themselves to voters in a one-on-one contest.

“If it’s Nithya and Mayor Bass, they would both start at zero,” Trujillo said. “For a challenger, that is a godsend.”

That leaves political watchers doing the math of how the mayor and the councilmember could get to the runoff, and which candidates might block their way.

After Bass and Raman, the three biggest figures in the race are Spencer Pratt, Rae Huang and Adam Miller.

Pratt is a registered Republican whose house burned down in the Palisades fire. He has been sharply critical of the mayor’s handling of the fire and has gained traction with national Republicans, including allies of President Trump.

Of the more than 2 million registered voters in the city of Los Angeles, just under 15% were Republicans as of December 2025.

Mike Murphy, a Republican political consultant, thinks Pratt could get 19% to 21% of the vote, with a ceiling in the mid to high 20s.

“Not liking Karen does not make you a Republican,” Murphy said.

On the other side of the spectrum, community organizer Rae Huang has been running an unabashedly leftist campaign, calling for free buses and the abolition of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Huang has not been endorsed by DSA’s Los Angeles chapter, but she is a member of the organization.

In 2022, leftist Gina Viola won nearly 7% of the vote in the primary.

Trujillo, the Democratic consultant, said the other wild card is Adam Miller, the tech entrepreneur who has waded into the fight against homelessness. Miller could spend a significant amount of his own fortune in the race — as Caruso did against Bass in 2022.

If Pratt and Huang combine to take 25% and Miller can take somewhere in the 20% range, then Raman and Bass would have to worry about not making the runoff.

“Suddenly, you have a three-way jump ball,” Trujillo said.

Despite having more name recognition than some of her opponents, Raman will need to raise significant funds in a short time.

“My hope is that money will flow,” said Dave Rand, a land use attorney active on housing issues who supports Raman.

Rand said that developers and people in the YIMBY movement will support Raman, who has been a strong advocate for building more housing in Los Angeles.

Mott Smith, a developer and Raman supporter, said he believes fellow developers who know Raman will “gladly” contribute to her campaign.

Smith said he is concerned about Angelenos associating Raman with DSA, which could turn off more moderate voters.

“She will win if Los Angeles gets to know the pragmatic, solutions-oriented Nithya, as opposed to the cartoon image that one paints when they hear she is the latest of the DSA candidates to run for office here,” he said.

CAREFREE, Ariz. — Elizabeth H. paused recently outside the post office in this small, high-desert community, not far from where Easy Street meets Nonchalant Avenue.

She felt neither easy nor nonchalant.

“I think the climate imposed by the Trump administration is really sad and scary,” said Elizabeth, who asked to withhold her last name to avoid being attacked for the views she expressed.

“I don’t like the way that ICE is being used to bully citizens and even just people who are brown,” she continued. “And I don’t like that governors of blue states are being shut out while governors of red states are being welcomed. I just don’t think he treats us like we’re all Americans.”

For his part, Anthony D. finds little not to like about President Trump. He, too, asked not to use his last name, as did several others who agreed to talk politics.

“We finally don’t have a— in office that are destroying our country and worrying about everybody else in the world,” said Anthony, 66, a plumbing contractor and proudly blunt-spoken New York native. (Just like Trump, he pointed out.) “I mean, his tariffs are working. The negotiations are working. I just see a lot of positive coming out of that office.”

Even so, there’s something that bothers him: The way so many fellow citizens view the president and his America First agenda.

“Most people don’t like what he says, but look what he’s doing,” Anthony said as the late-morning crowd trickled into an upscale North Scottsdale shopping center. “You can hate the person, but don’t hate the message. He’s trying to do the right thing.”

Here in central Arizona, a prime battleground in November’s midterm election, there is precious little agreement about Trump, his policies and motivations.

Supporters see the president turning things around after four disastrous years of Joe Biden. Critics see him turning the country into a place they barely recognize.

There is puzzlement on both sides.

Over what others believe. Over how others can possibly believe what they believe, see the things they see and perceive Trump the way they perceive him.

And although some are eager for the midterm elections as a way to corral the president — “I don’t think they should only impeach, I think they should imprison,” Brent Bond, a 59-year-old Scottsdale artist, said of his hopes for a Democratic Congress — others fear an end to Trump’s nearly unfettered reign.

Or that nothing will change, regardless of what happens at the polls in November.

“The fact is, Trump is going to keep Trumping until he’s done,” said Elizabeth H., who’s semiretired at age 55 after a career in financial services. “My only relief is that he’s an old, old man and he’s not going to be here forever.”

Brent Bond would like to see Trump imprisoned, not just impeached.

(Mark Z. Barabak / Los Angeles Times)

Arizona’s 1st Congressional District climbs from northeastern Phoenix to the mountainous heart of the Sonoran Desert. It takes in the affluent enclaves of Scottsdale and Paradise Valley and — where the urban sprawl finally yields to cactus, palo verde and other flora — Carefree and the Old West-themed Cave Creek.

It is the whitest, wealthiest and best-educated of Arizona’s nine congressional districts, home to numerous upscale resorts, major medical campuses and a large population of retirees comfortably settled in one of many gated communities.

Affordability, as in struggling just to get by, is not a pressing issue here.

In 2020, Biden carried the district 50% to 49%. Four years later, Trump beat Kamala Harris 51% to 48%.

(The Down Ballot, which crunches election data, rated Arizona’s 1st District the median of 435 congressional districts nationwide, meaning in 2024 half were redder on the presidential level and half were bluer.)

For more than a decade, the area has been represented by Republican Dave Schweikert, a local political fixture since the 1990s.

He’s had to fight hard for reelection in recent years as the district, like the whole of Arizona, has grown more competitive. Rather than run again, Schweikert announced he would give up his seat to try for governor. The result is a free-for-all and one of the relatively few toss-up House races anywhere in the country.

A passel of candidates is running and the result will help determine whether Democrats, who need to flip three seats, will seize control of the House in November.

Despite those high stakes, however, the race doesn’t seem to have generated much voter interest, at least not yet. In dozens of interviews across the district, it was the relentless Trump who drew the most attention, admiration and exasperation.

Moe Modjeski, a supporter, allowed as how the president “is no altar boy.”

Even so, “I’ll take his policies over someone that might be nice and polite,” said the 69-year-old Scottsdale resident, a financial advisor who cited the sky-scraping stock market as one example of Trump’s success. “I mean, gas is about half the price it was a year or two ago.”

But for Liz R., who’s “never been a sky-is-falling type,” it certainly feels that way. The 75-year-old cited “everything from tariffs to ICE to destroying the healthcare system and controls for pollution.”

“I lived through the ‘60s and 70s and can’t remember a time when I feared so much for the future of our country,” said Liz, a retired medical technologist.

She’ll vote for a Democrat in November — to put a check on Trump, not because the Carefree resident has great faith in the party or its direction.

“I wish the Dems would get it together and maybe we could get more of a centrist that could unite and not get hung up on some of these social issues,” she said. “There’s a lot of economic issues, bread-and-butter issues, and I think that’s why the Republicans won [in 2024], because of the problems with immigration and inflation.”

As a border state, Arizona has long been at the forefront of the political fight over immigration. It was here lawmakers passed — and opponents spent years battling — legislation that effectively turned police into immigration officers, requiring them to demand the papers of anyone suspected of being in the country illegally

Thomas Campbell, with Keegan and Guinness, blamed blue-state politicians for any overreach by ICE agents.

(Mark Z. Barabak / Los Angeles Times)

Now that aggressive approach has become national policy, which is fine by Thomas Campbell, a retired architect and staunch Trump backer. He blamed any enforcement overreach on blue-state lawmakers.

“For some reason, the Democrats have decided they want to side with the criminals, so they don’t allow their police departments to cooperate,” said Campbell, 72, who stopped outside Paradise Valley’s town hall while running errands with his Irish setters, Guinness and Keegan. “If that wasn’t the case, there wouldn’t be any” controversy over ICE’s tactics.

Martha Cornelison agreed the border with Mexico needed to be secured and that serious lawbreakers should be deported.

But why, she wondered, are immigration agents scooping up honest taxpayers, parents with children born in the U.S. and others keeping on the straight and narrow?

“I think they’re going after the wrong people,” said the 76-year-old Scottsdale retiree as a friend, Lily, nodded in agreement. The two were sharing a bench in Scottsdale’s pueblo-inspired civic plaza, a nearby fountain burbling in the 80-degree sunshine.

“I think we need to look at our county jails, look at our city jails,” said Cornelison, who made her living selling large appliances. “How many illegal immigrants are, say, in Florence, which is our state prison? Send them back. Don’t go after Mr. Gonzalez who’s doing my lawn. Empty out our prisons.”

Back at the North Scottsdale shopping center, Denise F. was walking Chase, her Shih Tzu, past a parking lot brimming with Teslas, Mercedes and Cadillac SUVs.

The 73-year-old voted for Trump because she couldn’t abide Harris. But she’s disgusted with the president.

“I don’t like the division in the country. I think Trump thinks he’s a king,” said Denise, a retired banker. “He’s poking the bear with Venezuela and Greenland, Iran” — she poked the air as she named each country — “to see who he can engage in a possible war, which is not the way I think the United States should be.”

As Denise was finishing up, Anthony D., her friend and neighbor, strolled up and joined the conversation, offering his laudatory view of the president. “Trump’s a businessman and he’s running the country like a business,” Anthony said, as Denise looked on impassively.

“How did I do?” he asked after saying his piece.

“Great,” Denise replied amiably and the two walked off together, Chase between them.

The landmark Bangladesh election held last week was ⁠triggered by a Gen Z-led uprising in 2024, yet a youth-led National Citizen Party (NCP) – born out of the uprising – managed to secure only six parliamentary seats out of the 297, the results of which are available.

The results, officially declared on Saturday, showed that voters overwhelmingly chose the long-established Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), which comfortably defeated a Jamaat-e-Islami-led alliance, of which the NCP is a key partner.

Tarique Rahman of the BNP, which has already governed the country three times, most recently from 2001 to 2006, is set to become prime minister following one of the most consequential elections in the country’s history.

Many young Bangladeshis who voted for the first time described the election as historic, but falling short of their expectations.

“As Generation Z, we didn’t get the expected representation and results after shedding so much blood and losing lives,” student Afsana Hossain Himi told Al Jazeera.

“Still, we are very hopeful. We have representatives from the younger generation, and we hope they will do something good,” she said, referring to the six NCP winners.

Many young Bangladeshis felt the NCP failed to build up a big enough support base in time for ‌the vote.

“They did not live up to the hopes and dreams people had after the 2024 uprising,” 23-year-old university student Sohanur Rahman said. “The NCP’s alignment with Jamaat felt like a betrayal, and many young voters like us chose not to support them.”

NCP spokesperson Asif Mahmud said the ⁠party would rebuild itself in opposition and focus on local government elections due in a year.

‘A new beginning’

The South Asian country of 173 million people has one of the world’s youngest populations, with approximately 44 percent of its vote bank – 56 million – between the ages of 18 and 37.

The election outcome is widely seen as a chance to restore stability after months of upheaval that followed the 2024 uprising, which toppled Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. Security forces at the time, acting on her orders, killed more than 1,400 people, according to the United Nations. Hasina has since been handed a death sentence in absentia for the crackdown.

Hasina, currently living in exile in New Delhi, and Rahman’s mother, Khaleda Zia, have for decades towered over the country’s political landscape. Rahman’s father, Ziaur Rahman, a key figure in Bangladesh’s independence struggle, also led the nation from 1977 until his assassination in 1981.

Rahman, who is likely to be sworn in on Tuesday, has pledged that his administration will prioritise the rule of law.

“Our position is clear. Peace and order must be maintained at any cost. No wrongdoing or unlawful activity will be tolerated,” he said at a news conference on Saturday. “Regardless of party, religion, race, or differing opinions, under no circumstances will attacks by the strong against the weak be accepted. Justice will be our guiding principle.”

Shakil Ahmed, a government and politics professor at Jahangirnagar University, said ⁠the Jamaat-NCP alliance pushed away young voters who had wanted a new political class after the fall of Hasina.

“Many saw it as a retreat into old politics rather than a break from it,” Ahmed said. “This decision divided the youth vote and strengthened support for the BNP under Tarique Rahman, which appeared more organised and capable of governing.”

However, for student Farhan Ullash, the vote felt like a long-awaited break with the past.

“After all, the election was a kind of dream for us, a new beginning for Bangladesh,” he said. “I know already BNP is going to make the government. I hope they will listen to us.”

Feb. 12 (UPI) — The Department of Homeland Security likely will shut down early Saturday after Senate Democrats blocked a funding bill Thursday.

The Senate voted 52-47 to approve House Resolution 7147, which would have funded the department through Sept. 30. The House narrowly approved the measure Wednesday.

Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., was the only Senate Democrat to vote in favor of the funding measure, which failed to muster the 60 votes needed to overcome the Senate’s filibuster rule.

Senate Republican leader John Thune of South Dakota voted against the measure to keep open a procedural mechanism that would enable the Senate to quickly revisit the measure in a floor vote.

During floor debate, Thune said the House and Senate three weeks ago reached a bipartisan agreement that would fund Homeland Security for the remainder of the 2026 fiscal year that started Oct. 1 and ends Sept. 30.

That agreement included requiring federal immigration enforcement officers to wear body cams and cease enforcement sweeps in favor of more targeted operations.

“It included funding for de-escalation training for ICE, and it included additional oversight for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol spending,” Thune said.

“And then Democrats reneged on the agreement,” he added. “And so, we are here.”

After defeating the funding measure, Senate Democrats in a statement “demanded Republicans get serious and work with Democrats to pass common sense reforms and rein in ICE and end the violence” that has occurred in Minneapolis.

“They need to sit down. They need to negotiate in good faith, produce legislation that actually reins in ICE and stops the violence,” Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said Thursday.

After the measure failed Thursday, Sen. Katie Britt, R-Ala., proposed extending the current short-term extension of the agency’s 2025 funding that expires at the end of the day Friday.

Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., opposed that effort, which effectively ended it.

The Department of Homeland Security shutdown would affect the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, Science and Technology Directorate, Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers, and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, which processes visa applications.

It also would affect the Coast Guard, Secret Service, Transportation Security Administration, Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

ICE and the CBP would not shut down, though, as both were funded for three years via the One Big Beautiful Bill Act of 2025 and will continue enforcing federal immigration laws.

The head of the powerful Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO, blasted Nithya Raman on Wednesday, calling the city council member an “opportunist” for launching a campaign to unseat Mayor Karen Bass after previously signaling her support for Bass.

Federation president Yvonne Wheeler said in a statement that her organization, which represents an estimated 800,000 workers, will “use every tool” in its arsenal to get Bass reelected.

“With Donald Trump’s ongoing war against the people of Los Angeles, our working families and immigrant communities, now is not the time for distractions from a political opportunist — especially one who backed the Mayor’s re-election campaign just weeks ago,” Wheeler said.

Raman, whose district stretches from Silver Lake to Reseda, was announced as one of the mayor’s endorsers on Jan. 27 in a campaign press release listing Bass’ San Fernando Valley supporters. Two days later, she appeared in a second campaign press release as one of Bass’ female endorsers.

Raman launched her own last-minute mayoral bid on Saturday, saying that City Hall is unable to “manage the basics.”

The primary election is June 2, followed by a November runoff if no candidate secures a majority of the vote.

Raman’s campaign team did not immediately respond to Wheeler’s assertions after being contacted by The Times.

In her statement, Wheeler described Bass as a “lifelong progressive” while suggesting that Raman, whose council campaigns were backed by the Democratic Socialists of America and several other progressive groups, falls short on that front.

“You can’t truly be progressive unless you are a true champion of working people,” she said. “Karen Bass is the only candidate in this race who meets that criteria.”

The federation represents about 300 labor organizations in L.A. County, including unions representing teachers, social workers, construction trades and entertainment industry workers. In previous city elections, the group has spent big on its favored candidates, paying for campaign materials, door-to-door canvassers and other expenses.

Raman broke with the labor federation and her colleagues in September, voting against the $2.6-billion expansion of the Los Angeles Convention Center.

Before that vote, labor unions said the upgrade would generate much-needed construction jobs at a time when housing production has been down. Raman and Councilmember Katy Yaroslavsky warned the project was too financially risky and would saddle the city with significant budget shortfalls starting in 2031 — after Bass is out of office.

“What I fear is that we’re going to have a beautiful new Convention Center surrounded by far more homelessness than we have today, which will drive away tourists, which will prevent people from coming here and holding their events here,” Raman said at the time.

Bass supported the project, as did a majority of the council.

Raman also drew the ire of some construction union leaders last month by drafting a last-minute proposal to ask voters to change Measure ULA, a tax on property sales of $5.3 million and up. Raman, who described herself as a supporter of Measure ULA, brought her proposal to the council floor one day before the deadline to take action.

Raman, who backed Measure ULA in 2022, said she now believes it has had unintended consequences, putting a major damper on real estate development and inhibiting the production of much-needed housing.

Is Mike Johnson stupid?

The five-term Louisiana congressman earned a law degree and maneuvered his way to become speaker of the House. That requires a certain mental aptitude.

However, wanting that job, which entails bowing and scraping to President Trump while herding an unruly GOP conference with an eyelash-thin majority, does tend to land on the stupid side of the scale.

But maybe Johnson isn’t stupid. Maybe he’s just willfully ignorant, or uninformed. Perhaps he simply doesn’t know any better.

How else to explain his persistent claim there’s something sinister and nefarious about the way California casts and counts its election ballots?

Just last week, Johnson once again repeated one of the sophistries the president uses to dump all over the country’s elections system and explain away his oft-verified loss in the 2020 presidential campaign.

With an apparent eye toward rigging the 2026 midterm election, Trump suggested Republicans should “take over the voting” in at least “15 places,” which, presumably, would all be Democratic strongholds. Johnson — bowing, scraping — echoed Trump’s phony claims of corruption to justify the president’s latest treachery.

“In some of the states, like in California, for example. I mean, they hold the elections open for weeks after election day,” Johnson told reporters. “We had three House Republican candidates who were ahead on election day in the last election cycle, and every time a new tranche of ballots came in, they just magically whittled away until their leads were lost. … It looks on its face to be fraudulent.”

Fact check: There was no hocus-pocus. No “holding open” of elections to allow for manipulation of the result. No voting or any other kind of fraud.

California does take awhile to count its ballots and finalize its elections. If people want a quicker count, then push lawmakers in Sacramento to spend more on the consistently underfunded election offices that tally the results in California’s 58 counties.

That said, there are plenty of reasons — none involving any kind of partisan chicanery — that explain why California elections seems to drag on and vote totals shift as ballots are steadily counted.

For starters, there are a lot of ballots to count. Over the last several decades, California has worked to encourage as many eligible citizens as possible to invest in the state and its future by engaging at election time and voting.

That’s a good thing. Participatory democracy, and all that.

More than 16 million Californians cast ballots in the last presidential election. That number exceeds the population of all but 10 states.

Once votes are cast, California takes great care to make sure they’re legitimate and counted properly. (Which is exactly what Trump and Johnson want, right? Right?)

That diligence takes time. It may require looking up an individual’s address or verifying his or her signature. Or routing a ballot dropped off at the wrong polling location to its appropriate county for processing.

In recent years, California has shifted to conducting its elections predominantly by mail. That’s further extended the counting process. The state allows those ballots to arrive and be counted up to seven days after the election, so long as they are postmarked on or before election day. Once received, each mail ballot has to be verified and processed before it can be counted. That prolongs the process.

County elections officials have 30 days to tally each valid ballot and conduct a required postelection audit. That’s been the time frame under state law for quite some time.

What’s changed in recent years is that California has had several closely fought congressional contests — a result of more competitive districts drawn by an independent redistricting commission — and the nation has had to wait (and sometimes wait and wait and wait) for the results to know the balance of power in a narrowly divided Congress.

“For that reason, we get an outsized amount of criticism for our long vote count, because everyone’s impatient,” said Kim Alexander, president of the nonpartisan California Voter Foundation.

As for why the vote in congressional races has tended to shift in Democrats’ favor, there’s a simple, non-diabolical explanation.

Republican voters have generally preferred to cast their ballots in person, on election day. Democrats are more likely to mail their ballots, meaning they arrive — and get counted — later. As those votes were tallied, several close contests in 2024 moved in Democrats’ direction.

(In 2022, in Riverside County, Democratic challenger Will Rollins led Republican Rep. Ken Calvert for several days after the election before a batch of Republican votes erased Rollins’ lead and secured Calvert’s reelection. You didn’t hear Democrats raise a stink.)

There are plenty of reasons to bash California, if one is so inclined.

The exorbitant cost of housing. Nightmarish traffic. High rates of poverty and homelessness.

But on the plus side, a comprehensive study — the 2024 Cost of Voting Index, published in the Election Law Journal — ranked California seventh in the nation in the ease of casting a ballot. That’s something to be proud of.

As for Johnson, the evidence suggests the speaker is neither dumb nor uninformed when it comes to California and its elections. Rather, he’s scheming and cynical, sowing unwarranted and corrosive doubts about election integrity to mollify Trump and thwart a free and fair election in November.

Which is much worse than plain old stupidity.

Voting is fundamental to democracy, but here in the U.S. people don’t vote very much. In December, Miami held a runoff election for mayor, and all of 37,000 voters turned out. This was 2,000 fewer people than voted in comparable off-cycle elections in Apizaco, a small city in the mountains of central Mexico. It was no blip: The median turnout in U.S. city elections is 26% of the voting age population. In Mexico, by contrast, turnout rarely dips below 50%, and unglamorous small-town elections attract higher numbers, often more than 70% of the citizenry.

Nevertheless, the United States disdains Mexico as a pale shadow of its own democracy. Mexican elections are written off as corrupt, violent and unrepresentative. This was part-true for much of the last century, when versions of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional ruled without interruption for 71 years. Mexicans were “oriented” to vote by party managers, fined if they didn’t, violently dissuaded from voting for dissidents, disenfranchised with stuffed ballot boxes. Impressive turnouts were coerced. Even today, decades after the arrival of a competitive democracy, the violence persists. Thirty-four candidates were murdered in the 2024 elections.

Yet Mexicans also vote in impressive numbers because they have always cared profoundly about representative politics, and particularly at a local level. Many of those large turnouts in authoritarian Mexico were crowds of everyday people struggling to elect legitimate authorities in the teeth of a rigged system. Those struggles meant that sometimes they won.

Historical outcomes are revealing. More than 200 years of elections in Mexico have given results significantly more diverse and representative than those of the United States. In 2024 Mexicans elected the first female president in North American history, climate scientist Claudia Sheinbaum. In 1829 Mexicans elected the first Black president in North American history, mule driver Vicente Guerrero. In 1856 they elected lawyer Benito Juárez as the only Indigenous president in North American history.

The United States was born committed to rule by freely elected representatives. “We the people” is a good start to a piece of political writing and a good start to a country. When the French sociologist Aléxis de Tocqueville visited New England in the 1820s he was struck by how the citizens of small towns argued out their differences and came up with solutions together. The federal republic was a scaling up of those habits. The sum of those people’s beliefs, institutions and bloody-mindedness, Tocqueville wrote, was democracy in America.

The peoples of the United Mexican States, founded in 1824 after gaining independence from Spain, shared those ambitions. Mexico was likewise a federal republic, its rulers elected, its powers divided among executive, legislature and judiciary. As in the U.S., the female half of the population was excluded. But Mexico’s founders were ahead of ours in one sine qua non of genuine democracy: racial equality. In the Federalist Papers, Alexander Hamilton claimed that “to all general purposes we have uniformly been one people; each individual citizen everywhere enjoying the same national rights, privileges, and protection.” That was a self-evident untruth, because Black and Indigenous peoples were not included.

In Mexico, people of color had some standing from the founding onward. Mexican history has its own wrenching tragedies of race: the slavery of West Africans, the ethnocides of the North, the systematic impoverishment of peoples like the Maya of Chiapas, a eugenic hunger for white migration. But from the colonial outset Black people were acknowledged to be fully human, their enslavers’ abuses punished, their lynching unknown. Many Indigenous peoples preserved their language, lands and governments over centuries. Asians joined them; the first Japanese ambassador arrived in 1614. Mexico was the world’s first great melting pot.

So the founders of the United Mexican States made no formal distinction among the multitudes they contained. Their leaders in the War of Independence abolished slavery. Their post-independence congress mandated “the equality of civil rights to all free inhabitants of the empire, whatever their origin.” The 1824 Constitution extended the vote to every adult male. All would be free, all equal under law and all voters with a stake in the outcome.

In 1917 Mexicans passed the most progressive constitution in the world following their own revolution. It mandated an eight-hour working day, a minimum wage, equal salaries for men and women, and paid maternity leave. While women didn’t get the vote until the 1950s, they exercised notable power behind the scenes; even the most conservative parties had female organizers and supporters. Progressive social policies inspired leaders across the hemisphere, including Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Three core beliefs inspire Mexicans to vote. They believe that face-to-face freedom, embedded in the power and autonomy of the municipio libre, the free county, is sacrosanct. And they believe that to preserve communal freedom, whether from federal abuse or oligarchs, requires two things, sufragio efectivo y no reelección; in historian John Womack’s translation, “a real vote and no boss rule.”

Historically enough Mexicans — of all political stripes, from conservatives to anarchists — cared about those three beliefs to fight in elections tooth and nail.

Alongside the belief that voting is a duty comes clear-eyed rejection of boss rule. While Mexican Mayor Daleys are historically ubiquitous — they sparked the Mexican Revolution — there are none of the national dynasties that beset U.S. politics. The great dictator Porfirio Díaz left his ambitious nephew struggling to make army captain for eighteen years. Dynastic power befits monarchies, not democracies, and Mexicans know it.

Neither do Mexican politicians enjoy the unfettered power of their American counterparts to buy elections. Parties are publicly funded, under a system designed to promote fairness. Each party gets a certain amount from the state: 30% of that amount is the same for all, the remaining 70% proportional to their success in the previous elections. Private donations are transparent, regulated and capped at a very low level, on paper at least. The system unduly favors incumbents, and illegal, off-books funding is rife. Yet the need for sizable contributions to be covert keeps election results out of the hands of the likes of Elon Musk. A national watchdog and a diverse and competent press ensure it.

Sheinbaum spent $18 million winning her presidential election. In losing New York City’s mayoral election, Andrew Cuomo spent three times as much. A single oligarch, Michael Bloomberg, chipped in $13 million. Mexican elections are sometimes bought and sold, but never with the obscene unconcern prevalent in the U.S. since the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling.

Republics that endure rely on egalitarian beliefs, hard-nosed pragmatism, unwritten rules of decency and written rules of institutions — and unrelenting struggle against all who break those rules. Democracy relies on people of all races being recognized as fully human and guaranteed access to the ballot. It then relies on those people turning up to vote whenever given the chance. Mexicans have repeatedly demonstrated how deeply they know that across their history, against sometimes heavy odds. Their government documents come stamped with the revolutionary slogan sufragio efectivo y no reelección, a real vote and no boss rule, as a reminder. We could use one ourselves.

Paul Gillingham, a professor of history at Northwestern University, is the author of “Mexico: A 500-Year History.”

Feb. 6 (Asia Today) — Jung Cheong-rae, leader of South Korea’s Democratic Party of Korea, said Thursday he has asked for a full caucus meeting to address controversy over a possible merger with the Rebuilding Korea Party, as senior lawmakers warned the debate is fueling internal divisions.

Jung met with third-term lawmakers at the National Assembly and said he requested the party’s floor leader to convene an all-member meeting as soon as possible. He described the talks as a listening process aimed at gauging whether a merger could aid the party ahead of local elections.

“We are at a critical juncture,” Jung said, adding that the proposal was made to explore any potential electoral benefit and to gather views through intensive discussion.

Senior lawmakers pushed back, calling on party leaders to bring the issue to a swift conclusion. Rep. So Byeong-hoon, who heads the group of third-term members, said the merger debate has become a “black hole” consuming the party’s agenda.

“Prolonging this controversy does not help the party,” So said, urging Jung and the party’s supreme council to resolve the matter promptly and ease concerns among voters and party members.

Rep. Wi Seong-gon, the group’s secretary, echoed the call for decisive leadership, saying swift decision-making is needed to prevent further internal strife.

Lawmakers also sought to defuse controversy over a leaked document outlining a potential merger roadmap, describing it as a routine internal working paper rather than a leadership directive. Wi said preparing such documents is part of normal party operations, while So cautioned against linking routine materials to the party leadership.

The Democratic Party leadership is expected to discuss the seniors’ demands at an upcoming supreme council meeting this weekend.

— Reported by Asia Today; translated by UPI

© Asia Today. Unauthorized reproduction or redistribution prohibited.

Original Korean report: https://www.asiatoday.co.kr/kn/view.php?key=20260206010002526

SEOUL, Feb. 6 (UPI) — U.S. President Donald Trump gave his “total endorsement” of Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi ahead of a snap election in her country on Sunday and announced plans to meet with her at the White House on March 19.

Takaichi “deserves powerful recognition for the job she and her Coalition are doing,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform Thursday. “Therefore, as President of the United States of America, it is my Honor to give a Complete and Total Endorsement of her, and what her highly respected Coalition is representing.”

“SHE WILL NOT LET THE PEOPLE OF JAPAN DOWN!” he added.

Takaichi dissolved the lower house of parliament on Jan. 23, triggering a snap election set for Sunday. The 64-year-old hardline conservative leader and her ruling Liberal Democratic Party, or LDP, appear headed for a strong showing, according to a poll released Monday by the Asahi Shimbun daily.

The survey suggested the LDP is on track to secure an outright majority in the 465-member chamber. Along with its junior partner, the Japan Innovation Party, the coalition could capture around 300 seats, the poll indicated — well above the razor-thin majority it currently holds.

Such a result would strengthen Takaichi’s hand as she seeks to cement her leadership within the party and press ahead with her policy agenda.

In the 12-day campaign period ahead of the election, Takaichi has focused on economic measures to help households squeezed by rising prices.

She has floated the idea of temporarily suspending the consumption tax on food and expanding fiscal stimulus, while calling for increased public investment in strategic industries such as semiconductors and artificial intelligence as part of a broader growth strategy. Debate has also touched on foreign workers, tourism management and Tokyo’s security posture amid heightened tensions with China.

Takaichi is Japan’s first female prime minister. She took office late last year after winning a leadership contest within the LDP following the resignation of former Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, whose approval ratings had cratered amid high inflation and a wide-ranging slush fund scandal.

A former heavy metal drummer, Takaichi has brought a populist flair to Japan’s typically staid political establishment. Her social media savvy has made her a surprising favorite among younger voters, as her personal approval ratings run far ahead of the broader LDP.

Direct endorsements by sitting U.S. presidents in foreign elections are unusual, although Trump has previously voiced support for conservative leaders abroad, including Argentine President Javier Milei last year. On Thursday, he also endorsed Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban in an April vote.

Trump and Takaichi met in October during his visit to Japan, just a week after she took office. The two reached agreements on trade and rare earth minerals, with Takaichi heralding a “new golden era” in bilateral ties.

Trump’s endorsement comes amid an ongoing rift between Tokyo and Beijing over comments Takaichi made in November, when she said a Chinese attempt to blockade or seize Taiwan could trigger a military response under Japan’s security laws.

During a phone call with Trump on Wednesday, Chinese President Xi Jinping said Taiwan was “the most pressing issue” in their relationship, reiterating Beijing’s claim that the self-governing democratic island is “China’s territory.”

Japan’s Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Kei Sato confirmed Friday that Trump had extended the March 19 invitation.

“Amid a turbulent international environment, we will reaffirm the unshakable unity between Japan and the United States with President Trump, further advance cooperation in diplomacy, economic and security fields, and open a new chapter in the alliance,” Sato said at a regular press briefing. “We will make thorough preparations to ensure the visit is meaningful.”

Los Angeles City Councilmember Curren Price was taken to a hospital by paramedics on Wednesday after fainting during a Black History Month event at City Hall.

Price, 75, was taken by ambulance at Los Angeles General Medical Center, where he was in stable condition, Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson said.

Price is “in stable condition, is in recovery and doing well,” Harris-Dawson told the audience at Wednesday’s council meeting. “But out of abundance of caution, he obviously won’t be with us in council today.”

The incident took place on the third floor bridge linking City Hall and City Hall East, which is currently displaying an exhibit of prominent Black women community leaders, according to Price spokesperson Angelina Valencia-Dumarot. Price spoke at a ceremony celebrating the exhibit, which had scores of attendees, before feeling faint and needing to lean on one of his aides for help, she said.

It was not the first such medical incident to involve Price at a public event. Last year, Price fainted while appearing at a groundbreaking for the upgrade of the Los Angeles Convention Center, which is located in his district.

At the time, a Price staffer said he was suffering from dehydration. He missed a month of council meetings after that event.

On Wednesday, Valencia-Dumarot said her boss was getting “the care that he needs” at the hospital.

“His wife is with him, his family is with him, and we’re all just wishing him well and sending our prayers,” she said.

The medical incident comes a roughly week after a judge ruled that a corruption case against Price can proceed to trial. Price has been charged with embezzlement, perjury and having a conflict of interest, by casting votes on real estate projects whose developers had hired his wife.

Price’s lawyer said there is no evidence that the council member was aware of the conflicts. All of the projects were approved with overwhelming support, and Price’s vote made no difference in the final result, the attorney said.

WASHINGTON — President Trump’s repeated calls to “nationalize” elections drew swift resistance from California officials this week, who said they are ready to fight should the federal government attempt to assert control over the state’s voting system.

“We would win that on Day One,” California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta told The Times. “We would go into court and we would get a restraining order within hours, because the U.S. Constitution says that states predominantly determine the time, place and manner of elections, not the president.”

“We’re prepared to do whatever we have to do in California,” said California Secretary of State Shirley Weber, whose office recently fought off a Justice Department lawsuit demanding California’s voter rolls and other sensitive voter information.

Both Bonta and Weber said their offices are closely watching for any federal action that could affect voting in California, including efforts to seize election records, as the FBI recently did in Georgia, or target the counting of mailed ballots, which Trump has baselessly alleged are a major source of fraud.

Weber said California plays an outsized role in the nation and is “the place that people want to beat,” including through illegitimate court challenges to undermine the state’s vote after elections, but California has fought off such challenges in the past and is ready to do it again.

“There’s a cadre of attorneys that are already, that are always prepared during our elections to hit the courts to defend anything that we’re doing,” she said. “Our election teams, they do cross the T’s, dot the I’s. They are on it.”

“We have attorneys ready to be deployed wherever there’s an issue,” Bonta said, noting that his office is in touch with local election officials to ensure a rapid response if necessary.

The standoff reflects an extraordinary deterioration of trust and cooperation in elections that has existed between state and federal officials for generations — and follows a remarkable doubling down by Trump after his initial remarks about taking over the elections raised alarm.

Trump has long alleged, without evidence and despite multiple independent reviews concluding the opposite, that the 2020 election was stolen from him. He has alleged, again without evidence, that millions of fraudulent votes were cast, including by non-citizen voters, and that blue states looked the other way to gain political advantage.

Last week, the Justice Department acted on those claims by raiding the Fulton County, Ga., elections hub and seizing 2020 ballots. The department also has sued states, including California, for their voter rolls, and is defending a Trump executive order purporting to end mail voting and add new proof of citizenship requirements for registering to vote, which California and other states have sued to block.

On Monday, Trump further escalated his pressure campaign by saying on former FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino’s podcast that Republicans should “take over the voting in at least 15 places,” alleging that voting irregularities in what he called “crooked states” are hurting his party. “The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting.”

On Tuesday morning, Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, appeared to try to walk back Trump’s comments, saying he had been referring to the Save Act, a measure being pushed by Republicans in Congress to codify Trump’s proof-of-citizenship requirements. However, Trump doubled down later that day, telling reporters that if states “can’t count the votes legally and honestly, then somebody else should take over.”

Bonta said Trump’s comments were a serious escalation, not just bluster: “We always knew they were going to come after us on something, so this is just an affirmation of that — and maybe they are getting a step closer.”

Bonta said he will especially be monitoring races in the state’s swing congressional districts, which could play a role in determining control of Congress and therefore be a target of legal challenges.

“The strategy of going after California isn’t rational unless you’re going after a couple of congressional seats that you think will make a difference in the balance of power in the House,” Bonta said.

California Democrats in Congress have stressed that the state’s elections are safe and reliable, but also started to express unease about upcoming election interference by the administration.

Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Fremont) said on Meet the Press last week that he believes the administration will try to use “every tool in their toolbox to try and interfere,” but that the American people will “overcome it by having a battalion of lawyers at the polls.”

California Sen. Adam Schiff this week said recent actions by the Trump administration — including the Fulton County raid, where Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard put Trump on the phone with agents — were “wrong” and set off “alarm bells about their willingness to interfere in the next election.”

Democrats have called on their Republican colleagues to help push back against such interference.

“When he says that we should nationalize the elections and Republicans should take over, and you don’t make a peep? What is going on here?” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Tuesday. “This is the path that has ruined many a democracy, and our democracy is deep and strong, but it requires — and allows — resistance to these things. Verbal resistance, electoral resistance. Where are you?”

Some Republicans have voiced their disagreement with Trump. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) said Tuesday that he is “supportive of only citizens voting and showing ID at polling places,” but is “not in favor of federalizing elections,” which he called “a constitutional issue.”

“I’m a big believer in decentralized and distributed power. And I think it’s harder to hack 50 election systems than it is to hack one,” he said.

However, other Republican leaders have commiserated with Trump over his qualms with state-run elections. House Majority Leader Mike Johnson (R-La.), for example, took aim at California’s system for counting mail-in ballots in the days following elections, questioning why such counting led to Republican leads in House races being “magically whittled away until their leads were lost.”

“It looks on its face to be fraudulent. Can I prove that? No, because it happened so far upstream,” Johnson said. “But we need more confidence in the American people in the election system.”

Elections experts expressed dismay over Johnson’s comments, calling them baseless and illogical. The fact that candidates who are leading in votes can fall behind as more votes are counted is not magic but math, they said — with Democrats agreeing.

“Speaker Johnson seems to be confused, so let me break it down. California’s elections are safe and secure. The point of an election is to make sure *every* eligible vote cast is counted, not to count fast,” Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) wrote on X. “We don’t just quit while we’re ahead. It’s called a democracy.”

Democrats have also expressed concern that the administration could use the U.S. Postal Service to interfere with counting mail-in ballots. They have specifically raised questions about a rule issued by the postal service last December that deems mail postmarked on the day it is processed by USPS, rather than the day it is received — which would impact mail-in ballots in places such as California, where ballots must be postmarked by Election Day to be counted.

“Election officials are already concerned and warning that this change could ultimately lead to higher mailed ballots being rejected,” Senate Democrats wrote to U.S. Postal Service Postmaster General David Steiner last month.

Some experts and state officials said voters should make a plan to vote early, and consider dropping their ballots in state ballot drop boxes or delivering them directly to voting centers.

The Los Angeles City Council on Tuesday signed off on a plan to give financial relief to Palisades fire victims who are seeking to rebuild, endorsing it nearly 10 months after Mayor Karen Bass first announced it.

On a 15-0 vote, the council instructed the city’s lawyers to draft an ordinance that would spare the owners of homes, duplexes, condominium units, apartment complexes and commercial buildings from having to pay the permit fees that are typically charged by the Department of Building and Safety during the recovery.

Forfeiting those fees is expected to cost as much as $90 million over three years, according to Matt Szabo, the city’s top budget analyst.

The vote came at a time of heightened anxiety over the pace of the city’s decisions on the recovery among fire victims. Bart Young, whose home was destroyed in the fire, told council members his insurance company will cover only half the cost of rebuilding.

“I’m living on Social Security. I’ve lost everything,” he said. “I’m not asking for special treatment. I’m asking for something fair and with some compassion.”

The ordinance must come back for another council vote later this year. Councilmember Traci Park, who pushed for the financial relief, described the vote as a “meaningful step forward in the recovery process.”

“Waiving these fees isn’t the end of a long road, but it removes a real barrier for families trying to rebuild — and it brings us closer to getting people home,” she said in a statement.

Bass announced her support for the permit fee waivers in April as part of her State of the City address. Soon afterward, she signed a pair of emergency orders instructing city building officials to suspend those fees while the council works out the details of a new permit relief program.

That effort stalled, with some on the council saying they feared the relief program would pull funding away from core city services. In October, the council’s budget committee took steps to scale back the relief program.

That move sparked outrage among Palisades fire victims, who demanded that the council reverse course. Last month, Szabo reworked the numbers, concluding that the city was financially capable of covering all types of buildings, not just single-family homes and duplexes.

Fire victims have spent several months voicing frustration over the pace of the recovery and the city’s role in that effort.

Last week, the council declined to put a measure on the June 2 ballot that would spare fire victims from paying the city’s so-called mansion tax — which is levied on property sales of $5.3 million and up — if they choose to put their burned-out properties on the market.

Bass and other elected officials have not released a package of consulting reports on the recovery that were due to the city in mid-November from AECOM, the global engineering firm.

AECOM is on track to receive $5 million to produce reports on the rebuilding of city infrastructure, fire protection and traffic management during the recovery. The council voted in December to instruct city agencies to produce those reports within 30 days.

Bass spokesperson Paige Sterling said the AECOM reports are being reviewed by the city attorney’s office and will be released by the end of next week. The mayor, for her part, said Monday that the city has “expedited the entire rebuilding process without compromising safety.”

More than 480 rebuilding projects are currently under construction in the Palisades, out of about 5,600, the mayor’s team said. Permits have been issued for more than 800 separate addresses, according to the city’s online tracker.

The council’s vote coincides with growing antagonism between the Trump administration and state and local elected officials over the recovery.

Last week, President Trump signed an executive order saying wildfire victims should not have to deal with “unnecessary, duplicative, or obstructive” permitting requirements when rebuilding their homes. On Tuesday, the county supervisors authorized their lawyers to take legal action to block the order if necessary.

Lee Zeldin, Trump’s administrator for the federal Environmental Protection Agency, is scheduled to meet Wednesday with Bass and LA. County Supervisor Kathryn Barger in Pacific Palisades to discuss the pace of the recovery. He is also set to hold a news conference with Palisades residents to discuss the roadblocks they are facing in the rebuilding effort.

WASHINGTON — Former President Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton finalized an agreement with House Republicans on Tuesday to testify in a House investigation into Jeffrey Epstein this month, bowing to the threat of a contempt of Congress vote against them.

Hillary Clinton will testify before the House Oversight Committee on Feb. 26 and Bill Clinton will appear Feb. 27. It will mark the first time that lawmakers have compelled a former president to testify.

The arrangement comes after months of negotiating between the two sides as Republicans sought to make the Clintons, both Democrats, a focal point in a House committee’s investigation into Epstein, a convicted sex offender who killed himself in a New York jail cell in 2019, and Ghislaine Maxwell, his former girlfriend.

“We look forward to now questioning the Clintons as part of our investigation into the horrific crimes of Epstein and Maxwell, to deliver transparency and accountability for the American people and for survivors,” Rep. James Comer, the chair of the House Oversight Committee, said in a statement.

The negotiation with the Clintons

For months, the Clintons resisted subpoenas from the committee, but House Republicans — with support from a few Democrats — had advanced criminal contempt of Congress charges to a potential vote this week. It threatened the Clintons with the potential for substantial fines and even prison time if they had been convicted.

House Speaker Mike Johnson said Tuesday that any efforts to hold them in contempt of Congress were “on pause.”

Even as the Clintons bowed to the pressure, the negotiating between GOP lawmakers and attorneys for the Clintons was marked by distrust as they wrangled over the details of the deposition. They agreed to have the closed-door depositions transcribed and recorded on video, Comer said.

The belligerence is likely to only grow as Republicans relish the opportunity to grill longtime political foes under oath.

Comer told the Associated Press that Republicans, in their inquiry with the Clintons, were “trying to figure out how Jeffrey Epstein was able to surround himself with all these rich and powerful people.”

Comer, a Kentucky Republican, also said that the Clintons had expressed a desire to make the proceedings public, but that he would insist on closed-door testimony with a later release of a transcript of the interviews. He added that he was open to holding a later public hearing if the Clintons wanted it.

How Clinton knew Epstein

Clinton, like a number of other high-powered men including President Trump, had a well-documented relationship with Epstein in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Neither Trump nor Clinton has been credibly accused of wrongdoing in their interactions with the late financier.

Both Clintons have said they had no knowledge that Epstein was sexually abusing underage girls before prosecutors brought charges against him.

The Clintons argued that the subpoenas for their testimony were invalid and offered to submit sworn declarations on their limited knowledge of Epstein’s crimes. But as Comer threatened to proceed with contempt of Congress charges, they began looking for an offramp.

Both Clintons have remained highly critical of how Comer has handled the Epstein investigation and argue that he is more focused on bringing them in for testimony rather than holding the Trump administration accountable for how it has handled the release of its files on Epstein.

However, as Comer advanced the contempt charges out of the House Oversight Committee last month, he found a number of Democrats willing to help. A younger generation of more progressive Democrats showed they had few connections with the Clintons, who led the Democratic Party for decades, and were more eager to show voters that they would stand for transparency in the Epstein investigation.

Nine Democrats out of 21 on the Oversight panel voted to advance charges against Bill Clinton, and three Democrats joined with Republicans to support the charges against Hillary Clinton. As the vote loomed this week, House Democratic leaders also made it clear that they would not expend much political capital to rally votes against the contempt resolutions.

That left the Clintons with little choice but to agree to testify or face one of the most severe punishments Congress can give.

Groves writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — The Republican chair of a House Committee rejected an offer Monday from former President Clinton to conduct a transcribed interview for a House investigation into convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, pushing the threat to hold both Clintons in contempt of Congress closer toward a vote.

The impasse comes as the full House is headed toward potential votes this week on criminal contempt of Congress charges against the Clintons. If passed, the charges threaten Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton with substantial fines and even incarceration if they are convicted.

Rep. James Comer, the chair of the House Oversight Committee, said on social media that he would insist on both Clintons sitting for a sworn deposition before the committee in order to fulfill the panel’s subpoenas. A letter from the committee to attorneys for the Clintons indicates that they had offered for Bill Clinton to conduct a transcribed interview on “matters related to the investigations and prosecutions of Jeffrey Epstein” and for Hillary Clinton to submit a sworn declaration.

“The Clintons do not get to dictate the terms of lawful subpoenas,” Comer, a Kentucky Republican, said.

The Republican-controlled Oversight panel had advanced criminal contempt of Congress charges last month. Nine of the committee’s 21 Democrats joined Republicans in support of the charges against Bill Clinton as they argued for full transparency in the Epstein investigation. Three Democrats also supported the charges against Hillary Clinton.

Bill Clinton’s relationship with Epstein has re-emerged as a focal point for Republicans amid the push for a reckoning over Epstein, who killed himself in 2019 in a New York jail cell as he faced sex trafficking charges.

Clinton, like a bevy of other high-powered men, had a well-documented relationship with Epstein in the late 1990s and early 2000s. He has not been accused of wrongdoing in his interactions with the late financier.

After Bill and Hillary Clinton were both subpoenaed in August by the House Oversight Committee, their attorney had tried to argue against the validity of the subpoena. However, as Comer threatened to begin contempt of Congress proceedings, they started negotiating toward a compromise.

Still, the Clintons remained highly critical of Comer’s decision, saying that he was bringing politics into the investigation while failing to hold the Trump administration accountable for delays in producing the Department of Justice’s case files on Epstein.

Groves writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — House Speaker Mike Johnson said Sunday that it will be a few days before a government funding package comes up for a vote, all but ensuring the partial federal shutdown will drag into the week as Democrats and Republicans debate reining in the Trump administration’s divisive immigration enforcement operations.

Johnson signaled he is relying on help from President Trump to ensure passage. Trump struck a deal with Democratic senators to separate out funding for the Department of Homeland Security from a broader package after public outrage over two shooting deaths during protests in Minneapolis against the immigration crackdown there. The measure approved Friday by the Senate would fund Homeland Security for two weeks, setting up a deadline for Congress to debate and vote on new restrictions on Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations.

“The president is leading this,” Johnson (R-La.) said on “Fox News Sunday.”

“It’s his play call to do it this way,” the speaker said, adding that the Republican president has “already conceded that he wants to turn down the volume” on federal immigration operations.

Johnson faces a daunting challenge ahead, trying to muscle the funding legislation through the House while Democrats are refusing to provide the votes for speedy passage. They are demanding restraints on ICE that go beyond $20 million for body cameras that already is in the bill. They want to require that federal immigration agents unmask and identify themselves and are pressing for an end to roving patrols, amid other changes.

Democrats dig in on ICE changes

“What is clear is that the Department of Homeland Security needs to be dramatically reformed,” House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.”

Jeffries said the administration needs to begin negotiations now, not over the next two weeks, on changes to immigration enforcement operations.

“Masks should come off,” he said. “Judicial warrants should absolutely be required consistent with the Constitution, in our view, before DHS agents or ICE agents are breaking into the homes of the American people or ripping people out of their cars.”

It’s all forcing Johnson to rely on his slim House GOP majority — which will narrow further after a Democrat was elected to a vacant House seat in a Texas special election Saturday — in a series of procedural votes, starting in committee Monday and pushing a potential House floor vote on the package until at least Tuesday, he said.

House Democrats planned a private caucus call Sunday evening to assess the next steps.

Partial government shutdown drags on

Meanwhile, a number of other federal agencies are snared in the funding standoff as the government went into a partial shutdown over the weekend.

Defense, health, transportation and housing are among those that were given shutdown guidance by the administration, though many operations are deemed essential and services are not necessarily interrupted. Workers could go without pay if the impasse drags on. Some could be furloughed.

This is the second time in a matter of months that federal operations have been disrupted as Congress digs in, using the annual funding process as leverage to extract policy changes. In the fall, Democrats sparked what became the longest federal shutdown in history, 43 days, as they protested the expiration of health insurance tax breaks.

That shutdown ended with a promise to vote on proposals to extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits. But the legislation did not advance and Democrats were unable to achieve their goal of keeping the subsidies in place. As a result, insurance premiums have soared in the new year for millions of people.

Trump wants quick end to shutdown

This time, the administration has signaled its interest in more quickly resolving the shutdown.

Johnson said he was in the Oval Office last week when Trump, along with border advisor Tom Homan, spoke with Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York to work out the deal.

“I think we’re on the path to get agreement,” Johnson said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

Body cameras for immigration agents, which are already provided for in the package, and an end to the roving patrols are areas of potential agreement, Johnson said.

But he said taking the masks off and putting names on agents’ uniforms could lead to problems for law enforcement officers as they are being targeted by the protesters and their personal information posted online.

“I don’t think the president would approve it — and he shouldn’t,” Johnson said on Fox.

Democrats, however, said the immigration operations are out of control, and it is an emergency situation that must end in Minneapolis and other cities.

Growing numbers of lawmakers are calling for Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to be fired or impeached.

“What is happening in Minnesota right now is a dystopia,” said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), who led efforts to hold the line for more changes.

“ICE is making this country less safe, not more safe today,” Murphy said on “Fox News Sunday.”

“Our focus over the next two weeks has to be reining in a lawless and immoral immigration agency.”

Mascaro writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — A budget impasse in Congress is poised to halt large swaths of federal operations early Saturday as lawmakers in Capitol Hill turn to the next flashpoint in negotiations to reopen the government: whether to impose new limits on federal immigration authorities carrying out President Trump’s deportation campaign.

Over the next two weeks, Democrats and Republicans will weigh competing demands on how the Department of Homeland Security should carry out arrests, detention and deportations after the fatal shootings of two U.S. citizens by federal immigration agents this month in Minnesota.

Seeking to rein in the federal agency, Senate Democrats late on Thursday were able to strike a deal with the White House that would temporarily fund the Department of Homeland Security but fund the Pentagon, the State Department, as well as the health, education, labor and transportation agencies through Sept. 30.

The agreement is intended to give lawmakers more time to address Democratic demands to curb ICE tactics while averting a partial government shutdown.

The Senate finalized the deal Friday evening on a 71-29 vote, hours before a midnight deadline to avert a government shutdown. Passage of the deal was delayed by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who objected to parts of the package.

The House expected to take up the legislation as early as Monday. The partial government shutdown will occur until the measure clears the House and Trump signs it into law.

The president supports the deal, which came after Senate Democrats said they would not vote to fund Homeland Security unless reforms for the agency were approved. Among the demands: banning federal agents from wearing masks, requiring use of body cameras and requiring use of judicial warrants prior to searching homes and making arrests.

Democrats have also demanded that local and state law enforcement officials be given the ability to conduct independent investigations in cases where federal agents are accused of wrongdoing.

The deal, however, does not include any of those reforms; it includes only the promise of more time to negotiate with no guarantee that the new restrictions will be agreed to.

Both of California’s Democratic senators, Adam Schiff and Alex Padilla, voted against the Senate deal. They both opposed giving more funding to Homeland Security without reforms in a vote Thursday.

Schiff voted no because he said he promised to not “give another dime for ICE until we saw real reforms — and not just promised reforms but statutory requirements.”

“I want to see those reforms before I am prepared to support any more funding for these agencies,” Schiff said in a video message posted on X, and added that he did not see the White House acting in “good faith. “I want it in writing and statute.”

After voting against the measure, Padilla said in a statement: “I’ve been clear from the beginning: No more money for ICE and CBP without real oversight and accountability.”

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) told reporters Friday morning that Democrats will find out whether two weeks is enough time to reach a compromise.

“We will evaluate whether that is sufficient time,” Jeffries said. “But there is urgency to dealing with this issue because ICE as we have seen is out of control.”

Meanwhile, the absence of reforms in the Senate deal has already drawn concerns from some progressives, who argue the deal falls short of what is needed to rein in federal immigration enforcement.

“First of all, I’m actually disappointed that Senate leadership is not right now demanding more,” Rep. Robert Garcia, a top-ranking House Democrat from Long Beach, told reporters Friday. “This idea that we’re somehow going to continue to fund this agency and somehow just extend the pain, I think is absolutely wrong.”

Garcia said it was “outrageous” that the Senate deal would extend funding for Homeland Security for two weeks without any new requirements.

“This idea that we’re somehow not demanding immediately the removal of masks and body cameras and all the other reforms while eliminating this agency that’s causing harm, I think, is outrageous,” Garcia said.

Democratic Rep. Judy Chu of Pasadena said in a statement that she had not yet decided whether to support the Senate deal once it reaches the House floor.

But, Chu added: “I cannot support legislation that increases funding to this agency while delivering no accountability measures.”

Rep. Kevin Calvert (R-Corona) said in a statement that it is “critical” for lawmakers to pass the bipartisan spending package, in part because it included funding for the U.S. military.

“As Chairman of the [House] Defense Appropriation Subcommittee, I’m especially concerned about the negative impacts of a shutdown at a time when we have a buildup of American military assets in the Middle East,” Calvert said.

Calvert added that Homeland Security operations will continue even in the shutdown because lawmakers provided an influx of funding for the agency in last year’s “One Big Beautiful Bill.” But he said he worried that any lapse in funding would affect other operations by the agency, including disaster funding and security assistance for major events, such as the upcoming World Cup.

“We need to get these priorities funded,” he said.

Other Republican lawmakers have already signaled the possible hurdles Democrats will face as they try to rein in ICE.

Graham held up consideration of the Senate deal, in part because he wanted the Senate to vote to criminalize local and state officials in sanctuary cities — a term that has no strict definition but that generally describes local jurisdictions that limit cooperation with federal immigration authorities.

“You can convince me that ICE can be better, but I don’t think I will ever convince you to abandon sanctuary cities because you’re wedded to it on the Democratic side,” Graham said.

Graham also delayed passage of the deal because it included a repeal of a law that would have allowed senators — including himself — to sue the government if federal investigators gained access to their phones without notifying them. The law required senators to be notified if that were to happen and sue for up to $50,000 in damages per incident.

“We’ll fix the $500,000 — count me in — but you took the notification out,” Graham said. “I am demanding a vote on the floor of the United States Senate.”

Other Senate Republicans also expressed concern with Democrats’ demands, even as Trump seemed to try appease them.

Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) said the demand for federal agents to remove their masks during operations was a “clear and obvious attempt to intimidate and put our federal agents in harm’s way.”

“When enforcement becomes dangerous for enforcers, enforcement does not survive,” Schmitt said in a Senate floor speech. “What emerges is not reform, it is amnesty by default.”

Despite the GOP opposition, most Senate Republicans were poised to join Democrats on Friday and vote for the deal. But there is no certainty that they will join the minority party when negotiations resume in the coming weeks.

Recent history suggests that bipartisan support at the outset does not guarantee a lasting deal, particularly when unresolved policy disputes remain. The last government shutdown tied to a debate over healthcare exposed how quickly negotiations can collapse when no agreement is reached.

In November, a small group of Democrats voted with Republicans to end the longest government shutdown in U.S. history with the promise of negotiating an extension to healthcare tax credits that were set to expire in the new year.

Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), a former House speaker, reminded the public on Friday that Democrats were unable to get Republican support for extending the tax credits, resulting in increasing healthcare costs for millions of Americans.

“House Democrats passed a bipartisan fix, yet Senate Republicans continue to block this critical relief for millions of Americans,” Pelosi wrote in a post on X.

Times staff writer Seema Mehta contributed to this report.

A Los Angeles County judge ruled Wednesday that a corruption case against L.A. City Councilman Curren Price can move forward to trial, ensuring the misconduct scandal will hang over the veteran politician’s final year in office.

L.A. County Superior Court Judge Shelly Torrealba determined that prosecutors had provided enough evidence to move forward on four counts of voting on matters in which Price had a conflict of interest, four counts of embezzlement and four counts of perjury.

Price, who is set to leave the City Council after reaching his term limit at the end of the year, declined to comment after the hearing.

The councilman, who has represented South L.A. for more than a decade, was charged in June 2023. Prosecutors allege Price repeatedly voted to approve sales of land to developers or funding for agencies who had done business with his wife, Del Richardson, and her consulting company. Some of the votes involved funding and grants for the L.A. County Metropolitan Transportation Authority and the city housing authority.

Price, 75, is also accused of perjury for failing to include Richardson’s income on disclosure forms and embezzlement for including her on his city health insurance plan before they were legally married. He is due back in court in March, Torrealba said.

Richardson was named as a “suspect” in the district attorney’s office’s initial investigation in 2022, according to documents made public last year, but she was never charged with a crime. She has been among a group of Price’s supporters who have been in court for the past week. The two wore matching burgundy suits during Wednesday’s hearing.

Much of the weeklong proceeding centered around whether Price knew of potential conflicts of interest before casting votes, or intended to hide his financial stakes in them from the public. Delphi Smith, a former staffer for the councilman, and Price’s deputy chief of staff Maritza Alcaraz took the stand to explain the process they used to flag problematic council votes for Price and insisted they made their best efforts to highlight agenda items linked to vendors or agencies who had worked with Richardson.

“If the Councilman voted on something that was a potential conflict, he did so without knowing,” Alcaraz testified Wednesday.

L.A. County Deputy Dist. Atty. Casey Higgins, however, said Price is ultimately responsible for disclosing conflicts of interest and argued blaming his subordinates was not a defense to corruption charges.

“It’s not only hiding. It’s trying to create a wall around himself, to create this plausible deniability,” Higgins said. “It’s this ostrich with his head in the sand approach.”

Higgins said Alcaraz and Smith were “trying to jump in front of the bus” and that it was impossible to believe that Price had no knowledge of the conflicts. The dealings allegedly took place between 2019 and 2021 — after a 2019 Times investigation revealed he voted on decisions involving at least 10 companies in the same years they were listed as providing at least $10,000 in income to Richardson’s firm.

Price’s defense attorney, Michael Schafler, has argued there is no evidence that Price knew of the conflicts, and claimed payments to Richardson had no influence on Price’s voting decisions. All of the votes referenced in the criminal complaint passed with overwhelming support, and Price’s vote made no difference in the final result.

“There’s been no evidence presented that Mr. Price acted with any wrongful intent. No testimony from any witness … who said Mr. Price acted with willful intent,” Schafler said Wednesday. “I’ve never seen a public corruption case like that in my life.”

There were enormous sums of money on the line in each vote referenced in the criminal complaint. Richardson took in more than a half-million from October 2019 to June 2020 from the city housing authority before Price voted in favor of millions in grant funding for the agency, according to an amended complaint filed against Price last year.

Prosecutors also alleged Price wrote a motion to give $30 million to the L.A. County Metropolitan Transportation Authority during a time frame when Richardson was paid upward of $200,000 by the agency.

After Torrealba’s ruling, Schafler said he was “disappointed” but thought the evidence presented over the past week revealed that “the prosecution’s case has a lot of gaps, a lot of holes, it’s based largely on speculation.”

Some of Price’s City Council colleagues have said Price’s alleged crimes were tantamount to paperwork errors, and should have been handled by the city’s Ethics Commission.

While questioning former employees of Price and Richardson, Higgins sought to paint a more nefarious picture. He repeatedly scrutinized the way that Price’s staff and a former employee of Del Richardson & Associates compiled a list of the firm’s projects that could represent conflicts and communicated about them.

Much of the conflict information was placed on a flash drive and given to Smith in person by Martisa Garcia, an employee of Richardson, Higgins said. Updates to the file were then made over the phone, and not discussed via e-mail, according to Higgins. When Smith and Alcaraz discussed votes in which Price might have to recuse himself, they did so on personal phones rather than city-issued devices, according to evidence Higgins put forth.

Higgins suggested Price’s staff was trying to hide the conflicts of interest.

“Was the thumb drive used to avoid public records requests?” Higgins asked Alcaraz, who curtly replied “No.”

Generally speaking, California Public Records Act requests for an elected official’s communications will only capture what is contained on government devices, not personal phones or e-mails. A spokeswoman for Price, Angelina Valenica, said there was no “intent to avoid PRA requirements” on the part of Price’s staff.

“The Councilmember was not involved in the handling, transport or storage of this information,” she said. “He relied on and trusted his staff to handle the matter appropriately and to seek guidance as necessary.”

While it’s unlikely Price will stand trial before his term runs out, the case could loom large over the race to replace him. A field of seven candidates is running for his council seat, including Price’s deputy chief of staff, Jose Ugarte, who has faced allegations that he failed to disclose consulting income that are similar to the basis of the perjury charges against his boss.

Chris Martin, a candidate and civil rights attorney with Black Lives Matter Los Angeles, said Wednesday that if the allegations are true, Price and his staff need to step down.

“It’s a serious breach of public trust. It’s important that we have leaders in the 9th District who will walk with integrity,” Martin said. “It also seems like he’s got a major issue with his staff enabling him. They should all resign.”

FBI searches Fulton County election office in Georgia over 2020 election concerns linked to Trump-Biden contest.

The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is executing a search warrant at a Fulton County election office in Georgia related to the 2020 United States election, an agency spokesperson said.

An FBI spokesperson said agents were “executing a court-authorised law enforcement action” at the county’s main election office in Union City, just south of Atlanta. The spokesperson declined to provide any further information, citing an ongoing matter.

FBI agents were spotted entering the Fulton County Election Hub and Operation Center, said Fox News, which first reported the search of a new facility that state officials opened in 2023.

The probe concerns the 2020 election, in which Republican Donald Trump, the current US president, lost to the former US president, Democrat Joe Biden, the official said.

The search comes as the FBI, under the leadership of Director Kash Patel, has moved quickly to pursue the political grievances of Trump, including by working with the Justice Department to investigate multiple perceived adversaries of the commander-in-chief.

The Justice Department had no immediate comment.

Find the votes

Trump has long insisted that the 2020 election was stolen even though judges across the country and his own attorney general said they found no evidence of widespread fraud that tipped the contest in Biden’s favour.

Representatives for Fulton County’s election office referred queries to the county’s external affairs office, which did not immediately return a call seeking comment.

The Democratic-leaning county, home to Atlanta, backed Biden by a wide margin in the 2020 election, helping him win the state and the presidency.

Trump unsuccessfully sought to overturn the result, pressuring the state’s top election official to “find” him enough votes to claim victory.

Earlier this month, Trump asked a state court for $6.2m in legal fees, saying he spent it fighting criminal charges of election interference filed by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis.

In August 2023, Willis obtained an indictment against Trump and 18 others, accusing them of participating in a wide-ranging scheme to illegally try to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.

That case was dismissed in November after courts barred Willis and her office from pursuing it because of an “appearance of impropriety” stemming from a romantic relationship she had with a prosecutor she had appointed to lead the case.

Whoever is nominated from the two Kurdish parties still needs the approval from the Shia and Sunni blocs in the parliament.

Iraq’s parliament has postponed the election for the country’s next president to allow for more consultations between the two Kurdish parties to agree on a candidate.

The Iraqi News Agency (INA) said the parliamentary vote scheduled for Tuesday was delayed at the request of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK).

Iraq follows a sectarian quota system, according to which the post of the prime minister goes to a Shia, the parliament’s speaker is a Sunni, and the largely ceremonial presidency goes to a Kurd.

Usually, in an agreement between the two main Kurdish parties, a PUK member holds the presidency. In contrast, the president and regional leader of the semi-autonomous Kurdish region are selected from the KDP.

However, in this instance, the KDP announced its own candidate, Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein, for the election.

Reporting from the capital, Baghdad, Al Jazeera’s Mahmoud Abdelwahed said whoever is nominated from the two Kurdish parties still needs the approval from the Shia and Sunni blocs in the parliament.

After the election, the new president will have 15 days to appoint a prime minister, who is widely expected to be the former leader, Nouri al-Maliki.

Al-Maliki, 75, has already served as Iraq’s prime minister for two terms from 2006 to 2014 before he quit under pressure from the United States. He is seen as being close to Iran.

On Saturday, the Coordination Framework, an alliance of Shia parties which holds a parliamentary majority, endorsed Maliki. The next day, the US Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned against a pro-Iranian government in Iraq.

An Iraqi source close to the Coordination Framework told the AFP news agency that Washington had conveyed to it that it “holds a negative view of previous governments led by former Prime Minister Maliki”.

In a letter, US representatives said that while the selection of the prime minister is an Iraqi decision, “the United States will make its own sovereign decisions regarding the next government in line with American interests”.

Another Iraqi source confirmed the letter, adding that the Shia alliance had still moved forward with its choice, confident that Maliki could allay Washington’s concerns.

Iraq has long been a proxy battleground between the US and Iran, with successive governments negotiating a delicate balance between the two foes.