vote

Sacramento

Frustrated by his fellow Republicans in the state Senate, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger finally is starting to come around — coming around to the recognition that California’s daunting budget hurdle is destructive and dopey.

California is one of only three states — the others being Arkansas and Rhode Island — that require a supermajority legislative vote for passage of a budget. California mandates a two-thirds majority, an inanity given that a 60% vote in elections is considered a landslide.

Republicans — almost always comprising the legislative minority in California — have staunchly defended the two-thirds requirement, contending that it’s what makes them relevant. But too often it makes the entire Legislature look ridiculous.

Every state but California has enacted a budget for the fiscal year that began July 1. California has missed the deadline for 17 of the last 21 years. If the stalemate continues, it “could raise credit concerns,” the bond-rating agency Standard & Poor’s warned Friday.

Because no budget has been passed, some companies that do business with the state are being stiffed. The state has withheld more than $3 billion in payments to vendors, hospitals, nursing homes, hospices, child-care centers, community colleges. . . .

Call it tyranny by the minority in the Legislature.

Schwarzenegger isn’t exactly calling it that, nor calling for the two-thirds vote to be scuttled. But he did take a significant step in that direction last week at a money-strapped adult healthcare center in Santa Maria. There, the governor praised one Republican — local Sen. Abel Maldonado — for being an “extraordinary leader” and breaking party ranks to vote for the budget. Schwarzenegger also tried to generate public pressure on the 14 other GOP senators to follow suit.

The governor was asked why Sacramento can’t ever seem to get its budget work done on time.

“Yes, we have had this mess, as you know, for decades,” Schwarzenegger replied. “I think that everyone now has come to the conclusion — all the leaders — that we must work, as soon as the budget is over, on a system that allows us to have a budget on time.

“If that means we should go and shoot for, as some suggested, a simple majority to pass the budget rather than a two-thirds vote, maybe that’s the solution.”

Schwarzenegger also mentioned an idea that he said former President Clinton gave him. In Arkansas, when Clinton was governor, he and the Legislature agreed on a program priority list. When the state fell short of money, the lowest priority programs automatically were cut.

“It’s all laid out . . . so there’s no fight over it,” Schwarzenegger said.

There would be in California, I suspect. The Legislature is in session much longer, and there are many interest groups with squeaky wheels.

Gubernatorial spokesman Adam Mendelsohn downplayed Schwarzenegger’s seeming tilt toward a simple-majority budget vote.

“He’s just encouraging debate,” Mendelsohn said. “He’s saying everything’s up for debate. . . . It’s frustrating for him to watch the Legislature fail to do its job.”

Actually, the Assembly did pass a $146-billion bipartisan budget with Republican support. It’s only in the Senate that the spending proposal has been blocked by Republicans demanding deeper cuts.

Senate GOP leader Dick Ackerman of Irvine echoes most Republicans in contending that eliminating the two-thirds vote requirement could lead to a taxpayers’ disaster if Democrats controlled both the legislative and executive branches, as they did when Gray Davis was governor.

“Think back,” he says, “if we hadn’t had the two-thirds vote to stop tax increases.”

That typical thinking assumes the two-thirds vote requirement for a tax hike also would be scrubbed. It should be. Lawmakers illogically are allowed to cut taxes with a majority vote but need two-thirds to raise them. The state can go bankrupt just as fast lowering taxes as it can increasing spending, and proved that during the Davis days.

But for the sake of punctual budgets, let’s forget the tax vote. Keep it at two-thirds and merely lower the budget vote.

That gets the support of the Legislature’s most fiscally conservative member, veteran Sen. Tom McClintock (R-Thousand Oaks).

Let the majority party rule and be accountable for the consequences, McClintock says. Give ‘em the rope to hang themselves. And with a two-thirds vote still required for tax hikes, he notes, “spending can’t run away.”

The budget two-thirds vote was enacted in 1933 during the Depression. The idea was to hold down spending. It never really worked.

A decade ago, a bipartisan citizens budget commission found that “the vast majority of states that have simple-majority requirements have weathered their budgetary crises more effectively than California. None of these states have produced deficit spending remotely close to California’s.”

The panel concluded: “There is no evidence [the two-thirds vote] does anything to slow the increase in state spending. Instead, it encourages horse trading [and] pork-barrel legislation. . . . Stories abound of ‘buying’ votes to reach the two-thirds.”

McClintock agrees. Normally, he says, “there are a few morally flexible members of the minority party who are bought off with promises of all sorts of lard for their districts.”

This summer, the Senate GOP has been trying to sell its budget votes for legislation crimping Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown’s ability to block public works projects that don’t control greenhouse gases. This is shaping up as the grand compromise on the budget. Schwarzenegger and McClintock both consider it a good cause, but neither think it should have held up the budget.

“I don’t believe in tying unrelated subjects to any measure,” McClintock says.

But that’s the sort of tawdry horse trading that comes with a nutty two-thirds vote rule — a rule too often abused, as Schwarzenegger is finding.

—

george.skelton@latimes.com

BRUSSELS — The European Parliament voted Thursday to approve a trade deal between Washington and Brussels but with amendments added to protect European interests should the United States fail to hold up its end of the bargain.

The deal was negotiated last July in Turnberry, Scotland, by President Trump and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. It set a 15% tariff on most goods in an effort to stave off far higher import duties on both sides that might have sent shock waves through economies around the globe.

New language now says that the deal can be suspended if Washington “undermined the objectives of the deal, discriminated against EU economic operators, threatened member states’ territorial integrity, foreign and defence policies, or engaged in economic coercion.”

That clause was forged because of the tensions over Greenland, said Bernd Lange, a German lawmaker and head of the EU’s parliamentary trade committee.

Trump drew widespread condemnation across the 27-nation bloc by threatening to take control of Greenland, a semiautonomous territory of Denmark. He has backed away from the threat, at least for now.

“If this would happen again, then immediately the tariffs would be installed,” he said at a news conference after lawmakers voted. He said the protective modifications were “weatherproofing” the Turnberry deal.

The deal will now be further negotiated by EU trade representatives Maroš Šefčovič and his U.S. counterpart Jamieson Greer, who are meeting Friday on the sidelines of the World Trade Organization meeting in Yaoundé, Cameroon.

“We need the EU-U.S. deal in force on both sides — delivering real certainty for EU businesses and showing that genuine partnership gets results,” Šefčovič said after the vote in Brussels.

There were formally two votes to introduce clauses to the deal. One passed 417-154 and the other 437-144 with dozens of abstentions each.

The U.S. Ambassador to the EU Andrew Pudzer said the vote would provide “stability and predictability” for U.S. and EU businesses and drive economic growth. “We encourage all parties to think to the future and the importance of unleashing opportunities for businesses on both sides of the Atlantic,” he said.

Malte Lohan, CEO of American Chamber of Commerce to the European Union, said the vote is “the right signal for businesses that have been stuck in limbo over the past year” and “a necessary step towards a more predictable transatlantic marketplace.”

Croatian lawmaker Željana Zovko said that despite the trade spat between Brussels and Washington, trade across the Atlantic had grown over the past year. “This resilience proves the trans-Atlantic trade works, and if it works, we should strengthen it, not hold it back.”

McNeil writes for the Associated Press.

Warner Bros. Discovery shareholders will soon render a verdict on Hollywood’s biggest merger in nearly a decade.

Warner has set an April 23 special meeting of stockholders to vote on the company’s proposed sale, for $31-a-share, to the Larry Ellison family’s Paramount Skydance.

The $111-billion deal is expected to reshape the entertainment industry by combining two historic film studios, dozens of prominent TV networks, including CBS, HBO, HGTV and Comedy Central, streaming services and prominent news organizations, CNN and CBS News. The tie-up would give Paramount such beloved characters as Batman, Wile E. Coyote, and Harry Potter, television shows including “Hacks,” and “The Pitt,” and a rich vault of movies that includes “Casablanca,” and “One Battle After Another.”

The $31-a-share offer represents a 63% increase over Paramount Chairman David Ellison’s initial $19-a-share proposal for the company in mid-September, and a staggering 150% premium over Warner’s stock’s trading levels prior to news of Ellison’s interest.

“This transaction is the culmination of the Board’s robust process to unlock the full value of our world-class portfolio,” Warner Bros. Discovery Chief Executive David Zaslav said Thursday in a statement. “We are working closely with Paramount to close the transaction and deliver its benefits to all stakeholders.”

Paramount hopes to finalize the takeover by September. It has been working to secure the blessing of government regulators in the U.S. and abroad.

Should those regulatory deliberations stretch beyond September, Paramount will pay shareholders a so-called “ticking fee” — an extra 25 cents a share for every 90-day-period until the deal closes.

The transaction will leave the combined company with nearly $80-billion in debt, a sum that experts say will lead to significant cost cuts.

Paramount Skydance Chairman and CEO David Ellison attends President Trump’s State of the Union address three days before clinching his hard-fought Warner Bros. Discovery deal.

(Mark Schiefelbein / Associated Press)

For weeks it appeared that Netflix would scoop up Warner Bros.

Netflix initially won the bidding war in early December with a $27.75 offer for the studios and streaming services, including HBO Max. But Ellison refused to throw in the towel. He and his team continued to lobby shareholders, politicians and Warner board members, insisting their deal for the entire company, including the cable channels, was superior and they had a more certain path to win regulatory approval.

The Ellison family is close to President Trump. This week, Trump named Larry Ellison to a proposed White House council on technology issues, including artificial intelligence.

Warner’s board, under pressure, reopened the bidding in late February to allow Paramount to make its case. Warner board members ultimately concluded that Paramount’s bid topped the one from Netflix and the streamer bowed out. Paramount paid a $2.8-billion termination fee to Netflix and signed the merger agreement on Feb. 27.

Warner’s board is advising its shareholders to approve the Paramount deal. Failure to cast a vote will be the same as a no-vote, according to the company’s proxy.

Warner’s largest shareholders include the Vanguard Group, BlackRock, Inc. and State Street Corp.

Zaslav has significant stock and options holdings, worth about $517 million at the deal’s close, according to the proxy.

The regulatory filing also disclosed that a mysterious bidder had surfaced at the auction’s 11th hour.

A firm called Nobelis Capital, Pte., reportedly based in Singapore, alerted Warner on Feb. 18 that it was willing to pay $32.50 a share in cash.

The firm said it had placed $7.5 billion into an escrow account. However, Warner’s bankers “could not find the purported deposit at J.P. Morgan,” according to the proxy. And there was no evidence that Nobelis had any assets or any “equity or debt financing” lined up, Warner said, adding that it “took no further action with respect to the Nobelis proposal.”

The feud between California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta and Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco has escalated after Bonta asked a court to stop Bianco’s investigation into alleged election fraud.

In a 70-page petition filed with the Fourth Appellate District Monday, Bonta wrote that “the Sheriff’s misguided investigation threatens to sow distrust and jeopardize public confidence” in upcoming elections. The investigation, which he also called “sweeping and unprecedented,” is an abuse of the criminal process, he wrote.

Bianco, who is a leading Republican candidate for governor, last month seized more than 650,000 ballots cast in Riverside County in the November election for Proposition 50, which temporarily redrew the state’s congressional districts to favor Democrats.

The sheriff has said that his investigators are looking into allegations by a local citizens group that “did their own audit” and found that the county’s tally was falsely inflated by more than 45,000 votes — a claim that local election officials have emphatically rejected.

Bianco has described his probe as a “fact-finding mission” to determine if votes were fraudulently counted. He has accused the attorney general, a Democrat, of improperly interfering with what he says is a lawful criminal investigation.

In Riverside County, the proposition passed by more than 82,000 votes. Statewide, it passed with about 64% of the vote and a margin of more than 3.3 million ballots.

“Well, well, well, the political corruption in California just gets bigger and bigger,” Bianco said in a social media video Monday night in response to Bonta’s petition.

“Why in the world would Rob Bonta want that count stopped unless he was afraid of what that count would uncover?” he added. “We have an extremely politically biased appeals court, so this is going to be interesting.”

Political observers have said that Bianco, an outspoken supporter of President Trump, appears to be vying for attention from Trump, who has called on the federal government to “nationalize” state-run elections, remains fixated on his 2020 election loss and has falsely claimed widespread fraud.

Kim Nalder, a political science professor and director of the Project for an Informed Electorate at Sacramento State, said that Bianco’s investigation appears to be “an electoral ploy.”

“At this stage in the election, most voters haven’t really tuned into the gubernatorial race, and there are a ton of candidates,” she said. “People who don’t know his background will know now. This is clear signaling.”

The sheriff has denied the probe has anything to do with his campaign.

A poll released last week by UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies and co-sponsored by The Times showed Bianco and conservative commentator Steve Hilton leading the crowded field of gubernatorial candidates by slim margins, with the Democratic vote split among multiple candidates in a left-leaning state.

Bonta’s office said in a statement Monday evening that it was asking the court to pause the investigation “while we work to understand its basis.”

Bonta’s petition revealed that — in addition to warrants issued on Feb. 9 and 23 — the sheriff obtained a third warrant from the Riverside County Superior Court on March 19 to restart a paused recount of the ballots. The warrants now are under seal.

Bonta’s office called the warrants and the affidavits supporting them legally deficient because “the Sheriff has not identified any particular crime that may have been committed by anyone — a necessary predicate to obtain a criminal search warrant.”
Bonta had earlier questioned whether Bianco had concealed important information from the magistrate judge who approved the warrants.

In his petition, Bonta wrote that the sheriff’s department had planned to assign “12 employees working four days a week, five to seven hours each day” to count the votes.

David Becker, executive director of the Center for Election Innovation & Research and a former senior trial attorney overseeing voting enforcement for the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, agreed with Bonta’s assessment that the sheriff’s probe is a legally deficient “fishing expedition.” He questioned how Bianco got a judge to sign off on three warrants.

“You can’t use a warrant as a PR tool, as something to help your political campaign,” Becker said. “You have to meet certain standards in order to obtain a warrant, because a warrant is extraordinary. A warrant is saying we believe there is probable cause to seize evidence, and we need it now.”

Bianco said in a news conference Friday that a Riverside County Superior Court judge had ordered the appointment of a special master to oversee the count. His investigators had already begun counting, but the tally would start over under the court’s guidance, Bianco said.

“This isn’t about counting yes and no votes,” Bianco said in his social media video Monday. “This is simply counting the total ballots and comparing that total with the number of votes. … Plain and simple. Common sense.”

Chad Bianco, the Riverside County sheriff and a leading Republican candidate for governor, has seized more than 650,000 ballots from last November’s election as part of an investigation that he called a “fact-finding mission” to determine if they were fraudulently counted.

Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta, the state’s top law enforcement official, has sharply criticized the probe, which he called “unprecedented in both scope and scale.”

In a March 4 letter to the sheriff, Bonta said the seizure of the ballots “sets a dangerous precedent and will only sow distrust in our elections.” He threatened to seek legal recourse if Bianco does not halt his investigation.

Bianco said Friday that his investigators are looking into allegations by a local citizens group that “did their own audit” and found that the county’s tally was falsely inflated by more than 45,000 votes — a claim that local election officials have emphatically rejected.

Here is what we know.

Why were ballots taken?

According to Bonta’s office, Bianco’s department on Feb. 26 took about 1,000 boxes of ballot materials in Riverside County related to the November election for Proposition 50, which temporarily redrew the state’s congressional districts to favor Democrats in response to partisan redistricting in Republican states, including Texas.

Bianco said that it’s his “constitutional duty” to investigate a potential crime and that he is not trying to change the election results.

The investigation includes all of the ballots cast in the county, where Proposition 50 passed with 56% of the vote, a margin of more than 82,000 ballots. Statewide, it passed with 64% of the vote, a margin of more than 3.3 million ballots.

Bianco said he had been contacted by “a group of citizen volunteers” that said it performed an audit finding that 45,896 more ballots were counted than were cast. He did not name the group, but the allegations match those made by a group called the Riverside Election Integrity Team.

In a February presentation to the Riverside County Board of Supervisors, Registrar of Voters Art Tinoco disputed the group’s allegations and said they were based on a misunderstanding of raw data that had not been fully processed.

The actual discrepancy, Tinoco said, was 103 votes — a variance of 0.016%.

How did the sheriff get the ballots?

Bianco said his department served the registrar with a warrant “approved and signed by a judge” on Feb. 9.

According to Bonta’s office, an additional warrant was issued on Feb. 23. Bianco said the warrants are now sealed.

In the March 4 letter to Bianco, the attorney general said he had “serious concerns” about whether the sheriff had probable cause to seize the election materials.

Bonta questioned whether Bianco had concealed information from the magistrate judge who approved the warrants, including details from the registrar’s analysis of the citizen group’s allegations.

An official from Bonta’s office told The Times that the attorney general “found out in the middle of the week that [Bianco] was going to execute the warrants on a Friday.” Bonta’s office asked the sheriff to slow down and share information about the investigation, but “instead of waiting, he actually moved it up” and seized the ballots sooner than planned, said the official, who would only speak on background.

Bianco said a Riverside County Superior Court judge ordered the appointment of a special master to oversee the ballot count. His investigators had already begun counting, but the tally would start over under the court’s guidance, Bianco said.

The ballots would have soon been destroyed

California law requires county officials to keep election materials — including ballots and voter identification envelopes — for 22 months for elections involving a federal office and for six months for all other contests.

The materials must be sealed and then destroyed at the end of the retention period.

The Proposition 50 election took place on Nov. 4, so the ballots are scheduled to be destroyed in May.

Why investigate now?

Political observers say that Bianco — a leading gubernatorial candidate — appears to be vying for attention from President Trump and his supporters.

Kim Nalder, a political science professor and director of the Project for an Informed Electorate at Sacramento State, said the investigation appears to be “an electoral ploy.”

“At this stage in the election, most voters haven’t really tuned into the gubernatorial race, and there are a ton of candidates,” she said. “People who don’t know his background will know now. This is clear signaling.”

Trump has repeatedly called on the federal government to “nationalize” state-run elections. He remains fixated on his 2020 election loss and has falsely claimed widespread fraud.

In January, the FBI raided the elections office in Fulton County, Ga., seizing 2020 presidential election records. And this month, the Republican leader of Arizona’s state Senate said he had handed over 2020 election records to the FBI, complying with a federal grand jury subpoena for records related to a controversial audit of the election in Maricopa County.

Bianco is an outspoken Trump supporter.

A poll released last week by UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies and co-sponsored by The Times showed Bianco and conservative commentator Steve Hilton leading the crowded field of gubernatorial candidates by slim margins, with the Democratic vote split among multiple candidates in a left-leaning state.

The top two vote getters, regardless of party, will advance to the November election.

Bianco said the investigation was “not a recount” for Proposition 50 and had nothing to do with his campaign for governor.

SACRAMENTO — Every two years, elite athletes compete in the Olympics, biennial plants — like carrots and onions — produce seeds and people across America look on with consternation and mounting impatience as California counts its election ballots.

The prolonged tally has become as much a part of electioneering in the Golden State as wall-to-wall advertising, high-flown promises and overstuffed mailboxes groaning beneath the weight of endless campaign fliers.

The tabulation — which can last weeks past election day — is the product, in large part, of a commendable objective: Encouraging as many people as possible to vote.

California, which mails a ballot to every eligible voter, ranks near the top of states in the ease of its elections. That’s something to be celebrated. Voting is a way to help steer the direction of our state and nation and invest, as an active participant, in its future.

Yay, participatory democracy!

Unfortunately, the lag time between election day and the final results has led to all sorts of wild, unfounded claims, peddled mainly by Republicans seeking to curry favor with the sore-losing President Trump by parroting his conspiratorial gabbling.

“They hold the elections open for weeks after election day,” House Speaker Mike Johnson said recently, falsely suggesting that chicanery cost the GOP three House seats in California in 2024. “It looks on its face to be fraudulent.”

That’s a lot of, um, hooey.

There is no rampant cheating or election fraud in California. Period. Full stop.

Still, those sorts of phony statements have deeply diminished faith in our elections and our increasingly rickety democracy.

So — what if it were possible to preserve California’s friendly voting system while, at the same time, speeding up the tabulation of its many millions of ballots?

Kim Alexander believes it’s possible to do both.

“We need to stop explaining why it’s taking so long and start figuring out how to [produce election results] in a more satisfying way,” she said. “There are a lot of things that we could do better and do differently. It just takes some creative thinking and some will.”

Simply put, “The longer it takes to count ballots, the more voter confidence erodes.”

Alexander, head of the nonpartisan California Voter Foundation, has spent more than three decades working to make the state’s elections more efficient, more transparent and more accountable.

Her interest in politics and election mechanics came about while growing up in Culver City, where her father served as a councilman and mayor.

As a 7-year-old, stationed in the garage, it was Alexander’s job to track the returns in her dad’s first campaign, toting up the numbers at an election night party while her mom, posted in the kitchen, called the city clerk for updates. Even at that young age, Alexander learned the importance of a fair and efficient tabulation process.

Over the years, she watched as her father’s political career was stymied by a Democratic gerrymander, which blocked any hopes he had of being elected to Congress or the Legislature as a moderate Republican. She saw firsthand the influence of money in politics. (Her father told her of turning away donations that came with strings attached.) That helped turn her into a political reformer.

After working as a legislative staffer and serving a stint at Common Cause, the good-government lobbying group, Alexander took over the California Voter Foundation in 1994.

As a political noncombatant, Alexander won’t say how it feels, and whether these days she’s more or less optimistic, watching as reckless attacks on our elections come from inside the White House. “I like to describe myself as a realist with high goals,” is all she’d allow.

There are good reasons why it takes California so long to count its ballots.

First off, there are a lot of them; more than 16 million residents voted in the last presidential election, more than the population of all but 10 states. Voting by mail has exploded in popularity and it takes longer to count those ballots, as many don’t arrive until after election day. Also, there are a number of safeguards to prevent fraud and ensure an accurate count. “We’re checking all the signatures,” Alexander said. “We’re making sure nobody votes twice.”

Simply explaining those facts can help build trust, she said. However, that won’t speed up the state’s vote counting. Here, Alexander suggested, are some things that can:

— Increase funding for California’s 58 counties to expand equipment, staff and the space needed to process ballots. In recent years, the state has been asking local election officials to do more and more without reimbursing their costs.

— Educate voters and encourage them to turn their ballots in earlier. Along those lines, a system called “sign, scan and go” allows voters to return their mail ballots in person at a designated polling place. A pilot program in Placer County found that that shaved three to four days off processing time. The system could be implemented statewide.

— Better manage California’s voter database, doing so from the top down in Sacramento, rather than having counties oversee their data and feed it into the system. That bottom-up approach creates delays and a lag time in processing ballots.

— Create “ballot swap” days to speed delivery of out-of-county ballots where they belong, also saving time. (Under California law, voters can return their ballot anywhere in the state, but it must be routed to their home county to be tabulated. That process can now take more than a week.)

The problem, apart from perennial budget pressures, is that interest in election mechanics — a technical and arcane subject if ever there was one — is episodic and fleeting. It’s like worrying about a leaky roof when the temperature is 95 degrees outside and the sun is blazing.

But even without voters clamoring to address California’s slow-poke vote count, lawmakers should act.

Gov. Gavin Newsom recently rose to defend the state’s “safe and secure elections” against one of Trump’s many unwarranted attacks. If he wants to burnish his credentials for a 2028 presidential run — which Newsom very much does — one way would be to speed up delivery of its election results.

That way the rest of the country won’t be asking again in November: What the heck’s with California?

The Los Angeles chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America will not endorse a candidate for mayor.

After City Councilmember Nithya Raman decided at the last minute to run against her former ally Mayor Karen Bass, the group called a vote on whether to reopen the endorsement process, which it had closed without supporting a candidate.

DSA-LA backed Raman’s two successful city council runs, but she has been at odds with the group on some issues.

Also in the mix was another mayoral candidate, community organizer Rae Huang, whose positions align more closely with those of the group.

The two candidates were present for Saturday’s vote at Immanuel Presbyterian Church in Koreatown, though neither spoke.

The left-wing organization, which has about 5,000 members, is known for running strong ground game campaigns that include canvassing, door-knocking and phone banking. In addition to Raman, three other DSA-backed politicians now sit on the 15-member City Council.

Before the vote, DSA-LA members argued for and against reopening the endorsement process.

“The worst thing we can do right now for our movement is to say, ‘Well, actually, we’re not going to endorse Rae or Nithya. We’re going to do a third thing, which is to issue no endorsement.’ Who is the audience for this message?” said Leslie Chang, a co-chair of DSA-LA.

DSA-LA member Anna Gross argued that neither candidate was ideal, with Huang, who has little political experience, being a long shot and Raman hesitating to fully embrace the group.

“I do want a democratic socialist mayor, but as it stands, we have one candidate who is not going to win … and a candidate who will not openly identify as a democratic socialist,” Gross said.

Of the 488 members who voted Saturday, about 55% supported reopening the endorsement process, falling short of the required two-thirds majority.

If the process had been reopened, the group would have then voted on whether to endorse Raman, Huang or neither.

Huang’s earlier attempt to get the endorsement while the window was still open had failed because she did not obtain enough valid member signatures to qualify.

If the race is not decided in the June 2 primary, DSA-LA can still endorse a candidate in the runoff.

Besides Bass, Raman and Huang, the field of 14 candidates includes conservative reality TV star Spencer Pratt and tech entrepreneur Adam Miller.

Some members believed that a mayoral endorsement would take resources away from the slate of six local candidates they have already endorsed.

In city council races, DSA-LA is backing incumbents Hugo Soto-Martínez and Eunisses Hernandez; Faizah Malik, who is running against incumbent Traci Park on the Westside; and Estuardo Mazariegos for an open South L.A. seat.

The group is also backing Marissa Roy, who is challenging City Atty. Hydee Feldstein Soto, and Rocío Rivas, an incumbent L.A. Unified school board member.

WASHINGTON — Republicans launched an unprecedented effort on Tuesday to hold the Senate floor and talk for days about a bill that they know won’t pass — an attempt to capture public attention on legislation requiring stricter voter registration rules as President Trump pressures Congress to act before November’s midterm elections.

The talkathon could last a week or longer, potentially through the weekend, as Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) tries to navigate Trump’s insistence on the issue and Democrats’ united opposition. Trump has urged Thune to scrap the legislative filibuster, which triggers a 60-vote threshold in the 100-member Senate, or find another workaround to pass the bill, but Thune has repeatedly said he doesn’t have the votes to do that.

Instead, Republicans intend to make a long, noisy show of support for the legislation, which would require Americans to prove they are U.S. citizens before they register to vote and to show identification at the polls, among other things. It’s a risky strategy, with no guarantee it will be enough for Trump, who has said he won’t sign other bills until the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act — also known as the SAVE America Act or the SAVE Act — is passed.

The floor debate is expected to eventually end with a failed vote. Republicans need 60 votes to advance the bill to a final vote, but they hold 53 seats, and all 45 Democrats and both independents, who caucus with the Democrats, oppose it.

The debate will “put Democrats on the record,” Thune said. He added that “how it ends remains to be seen.”

The Senate voted 51 to 48 Tuesday to begin the debate, with Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski the only Republican voting against moving forward on the bill.

In a social media post on Tuesday morning, Trump issued a warning to any Republican who doesn’t support the bill: “I WILL NEVER (EVER!) ENDORSE ANYONE WHO VOTES AGAINST ‘SAVE AMERICA!!!’”

Creating strict voter registration rules

Trump says, without evidence, that Democrats can only win in the midterms if they cheat and explicitly said Republicans need the SAVE America Act to win in November. The House passed the legislation earlier this year, but the Senate turned to other issues as it became evident that Republicans didn’t have the votes to pass it.

But Trump made clear he wasn’t satisfied and pushed the Senate to act. The Republican president has said he won’t sign other legislation, including a bipartisan housing bill backed by the White House, until the voting bill passes.

The bill contains a slew of provisions that Trump and his most loyal supporters have pushed as part of a broad effort to assert federal control over elections. It would require voters nationwide to provide proof of citizenship when they register and to show accepted voter identification when casting a ballot.

It would also create new penalties for election workers who register voters without proof of citizenship and require states to hand voter data over to the Department of Homeland Security so federal officials could screen for voters who are in the country illegally.

Trump also wants new provisions added to the bill, including a ban on most mail-in ballots.

“It’ll guarantee the midterms,” Trump said of the bill last week. “If you don’t get it, big trouble.”

Democratic opposition to the bill is firm

Democrats and many groups that champion voter access say there is little evidence of noncitizens voting and say the bill would disenfranchise millions of voters — including Republicans — by creating new burdens to prove citizenship.

It is already illegal to vote if you are not a U.S. citizen, but the bill would lay out strict new rules for paperwork that most people would have to present in person to register to vote. Opponents of the measure say those documents are not always readily available for many people and argue that it would kill voter registration efforts and unfairly penalize young people who are registering to vote for the first time, married women who change their last name and people who cannot travel to present their documents, among other groups.

While Republicans have focused on the bill’s new requirements to show identification when they show up to vote, Democrats say they are most concerned that the legislation would allow the federal government to take voters off the rolls.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said that Democrats are not opposed to voter identification but “this is about purging the voter rolls in a massive way, so you never even get the chance to show a voter ID when you showed up to vote.”

Expect a show on the Senate floor

Trump, backed by Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, has pushed for a talking filibuster, which would force Democrats to talk for days or weeks to delay passage of the bill. But Thune and the larger GOP conference rejected that idea, arguing that it would end in failure after giving Democrats a stage and the opportunity to offer endless amendments, potentially adding their priorities to the bill.

Republicans are instead taking over the floor with their own speeches, proceeding under regular order but operating outside the normal time limits that are customary when debating legislation. Democrats are expected to answer with their own procedural hijinks, potentially forcing Republicans to come to the floor at all hours for votes, meaning they will need to stay close to the Senate for the duration.

Lee said last week that it’s unclear how it will all play out. He said he thinks Trump “understands that we need to put in an aggressive effort here.”

“And a lot of that,” he said, “is going to have to be determined in real time as we go about it.”

The extent of Trump’s satisfaction with the process, Lee said, “will depend on whether, in his view, we gave it everything we have.”

On Monday night, Lee was rallying voters in Trump’s base on X.

“Once we’re on this bill,” he wrote, “we must stay on it until it’s passed into law.”

Jalonick writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Lisa Mascaro contributed to this report.

March 16 (UPI) — The board of trustees for the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., is set to attend a meeting Monday to determine whether to shutter the facility to carry out renovations that some critics worry could result in a structural overhaul akin to the White House’s East Wing.

The agenda for Monday’s meeting, obtained by The New York Times, indicates the board will vote on whether to begin renovations starting July 6. President Donald Trump announced last month that he wants to close the Kennedy Center for two years for construction amid artist cancellations and boycotts over his cultural agenda.

Trump said the decision to close the facility came after a yearlong review in consultation with contractors, musical experts, arts institutions, and advisers and consultants. He had initially considered a partial project that would permit shows to continue, but decided the best option for the venue was a temporary closure.

Rep. Joyce Beatty, D-Ohio, an ex officio member of the board who sued to have access about the details of renovations, said she believes Trump wants to shutter the Kennedy Center in response to dozens of individuals and cultural organizations who have canceled appearances there in response to Trump trying to rename the center after himself. Beatty said the documents she received about the renovations were “inadequate.”

She said “the documents prove that there is absolutely no basis to shutter this precious living memorial and beloved institution,” she said in a statement. “It certainly looks like President Trump is shutting down the center because he is embarrassed that ticket sales are down and artists are fleeing since his illegal renaming.”

Beatty’s lawyers said she was concerned Trump might use his hand-selected board to push through wholesale changes at the Kennedy Center to design a facility more to his liking. In October, Trump had the East Wing of the White House demolished to make room for a $250 million ballroom.

In a post on Truth Social on Friday, Trump shared renderings of what he expected the so-called Trump-Kennedy Center to look like after the renovations. He said he’s not planning to rip out the facade.

“I’ll be using the steels. So we’re using the structure, we’re using some of the marble, and some of the marble comes down,” he said.

A Washington Post analysis of the renderings show very few changes to the exterior of the building, including altered cornices, updated roof and some windows, painted columns, new signage and landscaping changes.

The group Hands Off the Arts has held weekly protests outside the Kennedy Center over the changes. A participant, drag queen Tara Hoot, said “there’s no need for it to close.”

“The carpet’s brand new, right? They already have some things planned in the works to redo the Kennedy Center and parts of it, maintenance, so there’s no reason to close it,” Hoot said, according to WUSA-TV in Washington, D.C.

“There are jobs, lots of jobs, and people are going to lose their jobs. The economy is terrible right now. Why do we want more people to lose their jobs?”

ABOUT THE BEST THING to be said about this year’s special election campaign is that it will soon be over. No one will really win, except for the political consultants who will walk away with pockets full of cash for raising and spending more than $200 million of other people’s money, and no one will really lose, at least not literally, because there are no candidates on the statewide ballot. The safest prediction is that, on the day after the election, California politics will be just as dysfunctional as today.

So why are we having this election? And why should anyone vote? The immediate answer to the first question is clear enough: Because Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger wanted it. The answer to the second question is that not voting would leave government to the special interests that finance these initiatives. The choices offered on the ballot require voter decisions, not a boycott.

All eight propositions on the ballot were put there by initiative petitions circulated by paid signature gatherers. The governor embraced four of them as elements of his reform of state government, including Proposition 76 to restrict state spending and Proposition 77 to take the job of drawing legislative and congressional districts away from the Legislature and give it to a panel of retired judges.

Schwarzenegger called a special election this year even though all the proposed reforms easily could have waited until the regular primary election in June. A majority of voters opposed this election, in part because of the estimated $50-million cost to the state and in part out of sheer exhaustion — six statewide elections, including primaries, in the last four years. No one is quite certain why Schwarzenegger insisted on this, although he claimed his reforms were too urgent to wait six months.

The irony is that, according to opinion polls, the more the governor campaigned for his measures, the less voters liked them. So if he called this election primarily to give his 2006 gubernatorial campaign a head start, he may be disappointed. One recent poll showed his approval rating at a meager 33%.

As for reforming state government, only Proposition 77 promises to bring about fundamental, beneficial change in how state government operates, ultimately resulting in a more moderate Legislature that is not deadlocked in partisan battle the way it is now. Propositions 74 and 75 offer some hope for modest improvements in education and Sacramento politics.

But it’s not just the governor’s misguided intentions that make this election objectionable. It has carried abuse of the ballot initiative to an unprecedented extreme (at least until the next election). All the measures were written by a variety of special interests and put on the ballot because those interests were able to spend the necessary money. If they all pass, the state’s overburdened Constitution will be weighed down by even more details about what state government can or cannot do.

This would all be unbearably depressing were it not for one fact: The people of California do want change in Sacramento.

That’s why they kicked out Gray Davis and elected Schwarzenegger in the 2003 special election. And that’s why, even as they question the wisdom of this special election, they remain supportive of the initiative process. The perfect initiative has yet to be written. (Although the two-sentence proposition proposed by San Francisco State professor Jules Tygiel in these pages last Sunday comes pretty close: “There shall be no further initiatives. All previous initiatives may be modified by a majority vote of the Legislature.”) But initiatives do succeed in forcing debate, if often clumsy or distorted, on important issues.

What Californians do not want is political gridlock. They want strong leaders who can get results without resorting to the ballot, much as Schwarzenegger did in working with the Legislature in 2004. It’s alarming that now Schwarzenegger is promising to produce even more ballot measures next year regardless of Tuesday’s outcome.

For all its faults, Tuesday’s election presents voters with choices. These choices may be unsatisfying. But by staying home, voters would only further exclude themselves from the governing process. See you at the polls on Tuesday.

TOPEKA, Kan. — A Kansas town known for its prisons is allowing a shuttered private prison to reopen and house immigrants detained for living in the U.S. illegally after a nearly yearlong legal fight amid a massive national push for new detention centers.

The City Commission in Leavenworth on Tuesday approved a permit to private prison operator CoreCivic. Members voted 4 to 1 to approve a three-year permit with conditions that set minimum staffing levels, ban the housing of minors and provide for a city oversight committee.

“If they don’t follow those guidelines, we can pull the permit,” Mayor Nancy Bauder said before the vote.

The 1,104-bed Midwest Regional Reception Center is 10 miles west of the Kansas City International Airport. CoreCivic, one of the nation’s largest private prison operators, said the center will generate $60 million annually once it’s fully open.

Leavenworth, Kan., sued CoreCivic after it tried to reopen the shuttered prison without city officials signing off on the deal.

The legal battle played out in state and federal courts, with the Department of Justice siding with CoreCivic in legal filings. The department argued that the city was engaged in an “aggressive and unlawful effort” to “interfere with federal immigration enforcement.”

It appears to be the only such legal battle nationally to delay a private prison from opening amid President Trump’s push for mass deportations. The city argued that requiring a permit would prevent future problems, while CoreCivic maintained that it didn’t need a permit and the process would take too long.

Leavenworth was an unlikely foe because the GOP-leaning city’s name alone evokes a shorthand for serving hard time. Prisons employ hundreds of workers locally at two military facilities, the nation’s first federal penitentiary, a Kansas correctional facility and a county jail, all within six miles of City Hall.

CoreCivic stopped housing pretrial detainees for the U.S. Marshals Service in its Leavenworth facility in 2021 after then-President Joe Biden called on the Justice Department to curb the use of private prisons. The American Civil Liberties Union and federal public defenders said inmates’ rights had been violated and there were stabbings, suicides and even one homicide.

The city’s lawsuit described detainees locked in showers as punishment and accused CoreCivic of impeding city police force investigations of sexual assaults and other violent crimes.

Almost four dozen people spoke in opposition to the permit before the commission’s vote. Bauder admonished the crowd several times for being too noisy, and police removed a protester who yelled vulgar comments.

“We, we the people of Leavenworth, are not fooled and we don’t care about their money,” David Benitez, a city resident, told the commission.

Some backers of the permit cited the potential boost to the local economy. Two CoreCivic employees argued for approval, and one of them, Charles Johnson, of Kansas City, Kan., said his job gave him purpose and allowed his family to get off of state assistance.

“The people I work alongside are caring, professional and committed to doing things the right way,” he said, his comments drawing boos from critics outside the commission’s meeting room.

City Commissioner Holly Pittman said because the city “stood firm,” it could negotiate conditions on the permit. She said denying it would risk a potentially expensive lawsuit.

“I will not gamble the financial stability of this city,” she said before voting yes. “Let me be clear: Approval does not mean endorsement.”

Hollingsworth and Hanna write for the Associated Press. Hollingsworth reported from Mission, Kan.

As anxiety mounts among California Democrats about the potential of a Republican being elected governor, the state party will spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on polling to assess the viability of the sprawling field of candidates hoping to replace termed-out Gov. Gavin Newsom, according to plans released Tuesday.

The move comes after nearly every Democratic candidate refused party leaders’ call last week to withdraw from the race to avoid splitting the vote in the June primary — an outcome that could lead to a Republican being elected to statewide office for the first time in two decades.

“Candidates have filed, and now they’ve got the opportunity to showcase their viability, their path to win. I want to simply ensure that everybody has information to fully understand the current state of the race,” said Rusty Hicks, the leader of the California Democratic Party.

As campaign season ramps up, the series of six polls will allow “candidates, supporters, the media, voters, anyone and everyone to have a clear understanding of what is or is not happening in this particular race,” he said.

The filing deadline to appear on the June 2 ballot was Friday. Three days earlier, Hicks released an open letter urging candidates who did not have a path to victory to withdraw from the race. Of the nine prominent Democrats who had announced runs for governor, only one heeded his call: former state Assembly Majority Leader Ian Calderon.

That means the eight other candidates’ names will appear on the ballot, regardless of whether they decide to later drop out. And that creates the possibility of a Republican winning the race because of how California elections are decided.

The state has a voter-approved top-two primary system, under which the two candidates who receive the most votes in the June primary advance to the November general election, regardless of party.

Two prominent Republicans will appear on the ballot: former conservative commentator Steve Hilton and Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco. Even though Democratic voters outnumber Republicans nearly 2 to 1, and the state’s electorate last elevated Republicans to statewide office in 2006, it is mathematically possible for Democrats to splinter the vote, allowing the two GOP candidates to advance.

Under such a scenario, not only would Republicans be guaranteed the leadership of the nation’s most-populous state, but Democratic voter turnout also would probably be depressed in November, potentially affecting down-ballot races such as those that could determine control of Congress.

Hicks’ call last week prompted concerns among candidates of color, including former U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra and state Supt. of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond, that the effort was aimed at every nonwhite candidate in the race.

The state party chairman responded that his letter was not aimed at any specific candidate.

“It’s not something I lose sleep over,” Hicks said when asked about the racial claims. But he added that the voter surveys will be conducted by Los Angeles-based Evitarus, the state’s only Black- and Latino-led full-service polling firm, and will oversample historically underrepresented communities: Latino, Black and Asian American voters.

Hicks said the polling will cost “multiple six figures” but did not specify the exact amount.

The first poll will be released on March 24, and then five additional surveys will come out every seven to 10 days until voters start receiving mail ballots in early May.

“We’re putting this forward to ensure everyone is armed with the information they need to clearly have an eyes-wide-open assessment of where the state of the race currently is between now and when ballots land in the mailboxes of voters,” Hicks said.

If Democrats expect to flip a U.S. Senate seat in Texas, they’ll need all the stars to align. This almost never happens, because politics has a way of scrambling the constellations. But on Tuesday, the first star blinked on.

I’m referring to state Rep. James Talarico’s victory over Rep. Jasmine Crockett in the Democratic primary. Most political prognosticators agree that Talarico, an eloquent young Democrat who speaks openly about his Christian faith, is their best hope in a red state that Donald Trump won by 14 points.

The second star was Crockett’s conciliatory concession — far from a foregone conclusion after a nasty primary — in which she pledged to “do my part,” adding that “Texas is primed to turn blue, and we must remain united because this is bigger than any one person.”

The third star — a vulnerable Republican opponent — has not yet appeared over the Texas sky, although forecasters say it might.

Most observers agree that scandal-plagued Atty. Gen. Ken Paxton would be beatable in the general election, while incumbent Sen. John Cornyn would present a much tougher challenge. Cornyn is the kind of steady, conventional politician who tends to win elections, and so, of course, modern voters are extremely suspicious of him.

In the GOP primary on Tuesday, Cornyn’s 42% share of the vote edged out Paxton by about a point. Unfortunately for Republicans, neither candidate garnered enough votes to avoid a May 26 runoff election.

Conventional wisdom suggests that when a majority of Republican voters choose someone other than the incumbent in the first round of voting, an even greater majority will inevitably break toward the challenger in the runoff. If that happens, Paxton would become the nominee, and Democrats would get their third star to align.

Even better for Democrats — a fourth star, so to speak — would be for this protracted runoff to become a “knife fight,” as one Texas Republican predicted, in which Paxton staggers out of the fight as the battered GOP nominee.

The only problem is that Republicans can see these stars aligning, too.

And while the Texas Senate seat matters a lot on its own, it matters even more in the context of nationwide midterm elections, in which a Texas win would help Democrats take back the Senate.

Enter the cavalry — or, more accurately, President Trump, who is now entering a second war in the span of a week, this one a civil war in the Lone Star State.

The day after the primary, Trump announced that he would be “making my Endorsement soon, and will be asking the candidate that I don’t Endorse to immediately DROP OUT OF THE RACE!”

Reports suggest Trump may endorse Cornyn in order to save the seat for Republicans. But who knows? Trump is famously unpredictable. And it’s likely he admires Paxton’s ability to survive scandals that would have caused most normal politicians to curl up in the fetal position. As they say, “game recognizes game.”

Whomever he backs, conventional wisdom also says Trump should make his endorsement “soon,” as he promised. That would save Republicans a lot of time and money. But Trump currently has enormous leverage. Right now, people are coming to him, pleading for his support.

Do you think he wants to resolve that situation quickly?

Me neither.

With Trump, you never know what you’re going to get. In 2021, he helped torpedo Republican Senate candidates David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler in Georgia, handing Democrats control of the Senate. The following year he backed football legend Herschel Walker in another Georgia Senate race, which did not exactly work out great. Democrat Raphael Warnock won and holds that seat, though Walker is now ambassador to the Bahamas so that’s something.

This is to say: Trump’s political assistance does not always assist.

It’s unclear whether Trump’s endorsement would be dispositive — and whether he could muscle the other Republican out of the primary race.

Paxton, for example, initially vowed to stay in the race, no matter what. (He later suggested he would “consider” dropping out if the Senate passes the SAVE America Act, a bill to require proof of citizenship to vote.)

There’s also this: Trump’s endorsements tend to either be made out of vengeance or to pad the totals of an already inevitable winner, so his track record is probably overrated.

Case in point: While most of his endorsed candidates won their Texas elections, his endorsed candidate for agriculture commissioner lost reelection. And according to the Texas Tribune, “at least three Trump-endorsed candidates for Congress were headed to runoffs, one of them in a distant second place.”

Another issue is that Cornyn needs more than a perfunctory endorsement: He needs a clear, full-throated endorsement.

In a 2022 Missouri Senate race, Trump endorsed “ERIC,” which was awkward because two candidates named Eric were running.

More recently, he endorsed two rival candidates in the same 2026 Arizona gubernatorial race — like betting on both teams in the Super Bowl.

This is all to say that the only thing standing between Texas Democrats and a rare celestial alignment may be the whims of the Republican Party’s one and only star.

Sure, establishment Republicans can beg Trump to quickly step in and settle the race, and maybe he will. But it’s entirely possible the president will find a way to blow up his party’s chances for holding the U.S. Senate — and there’s nothing they can do to stop him.

When you’re a star, they let you do it.

Matt K. Lewis is the author of “Filthy Rich Politicians” and “Too Dumb to Fail.”

The US House of Representatives has joined the Senate in killing a war powers resolution that would have forced Donald Trump to end his war on Iran. Although the vote was largely symbolic, Al Jazeera’s Patty Culhane says Democrats are using it to get Republicans on the record.

WASHINGTON — A federal panel reviewing President Trump’s plans to build a ballroom at the White House has set April 2 for a final vote on the project, the chairman said as the agency prepared to give additional consideration to the construction plans.

Will Scharf, chairman of the National Capital Planning Commission and a top aide to the Republican president, made the announcement Thursday at the start of the panel’s March meeting.

The panel will hear additional details about the project from the White House as well as its own staff, and had been expected to vote on Thursday.

But Scharf announced that the vote was switched to April to give every member of the public who wants to comment a chance to do so. More than 100 people had signed up to comment at Thursday’s meeting, which was being conducted online as a result.

The panel has also been flooded with scores of written comments about Trump’s plans to build a 90,000-square-foot addition where the East Wing of the White House once stood. Trump has said it will cost about $400 million and be paid for with private money. Trump had the East Wing demolished in October.

Scharf said the meeting was being conducted online to ease the public testimony portion, which he said was likely to extend into Friday given the number of people who had signed up to speak.

“They are taking time out of what I presume are busy schedules to join us,” he said. “One way or the other, we are going to make sure that members of the public have the opportunity to be heard on this project.”

Critics of the project have argued that Trump should not have demolished the East Wing until the National Capital Planning Commission and a separate panel, the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, had reviewed and voted on his plans. The fine arts panel approved the project last month.

The National Trust for Historic Preservation, a private, nonprofit group, asked a federal judge to temporarily halt construction until the White House submitted the plans both to federal panels and to Congress for approval, and allowed the public to comment.

U.S. District Judge Richard Leon rejected the request last week, and the trust has said it plans to file an amended lawsuit.

Superville writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — Senate Republicans blocked a war powers resolution Wednesday designed to withdraw U.S. forces from hostilities in Iran, as the Trump administration accelerates its military campaign in a conflict that has killed hundreds, including at least six American service members.

The motion failed in a vote of 47-53.

In addition to pulling out military resources from the Middle East, the measure — introduced by Sens. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and Tim Kaine (D-Va.) — would have required Congress’ explicit approval before future engagement with Iran, a power granted to the legislative branch in the Constitution.

The House, where Republicans also hold an advantage, is scheduled to weigh in on a similar measure Thursday. Even if both Democratic-led measures were to succeed, President Trump was widely expected to veto the legislation.

“We are doing very well on the war front, to put it mildly,” President Trump said at a White House event on Wednesday afternoon. The president, who has come under scrutiny for offering shifting explanations on the war’s endgame, said that if he was asked to scale the American military operation from one to 10, he would rate it a 15.

Democrats dispute that Trump possesses the authority to wage the ongoing operation in Iran without explicit congressional approval.

Acknowledging the measure was unlikely to succeed, they framed the vote as a strategy to force lawmakers to put their support for or opposition to the war on record.

“Today every senator — every single one — will pick a side,” Schumer said. “Do you stand with the American people who are exhausted with forever wars in the Middle East, or stand with Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth as they bumble us headfirst into another war?”

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) and most of his Republican colleagues have maintained that the president carried out a “pre-emptive” and “defensive” strike in Iran, giving him full authority to continue unilateral military operations.

Republicans saw the vote as the “last roadblock” stopping Trump from carrying out his mission against the Islamic Republic.

“I think the president has the authority that he needs to conduct the activities and operations that are currently underway there. There are a lot of controversy and questions around the war powers act, but I think the president is acting in the best interest of the nation and our national security interests,” Thune said at a news conference.

Senators largely held to party loyalties, with the exception of Kentucky Republican Rand Paul, who broke ranks to support the measure, and Pennsylvania Democrat John Fetterman, who opposed it.

The vote comes as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Wednesday that the war against Iran is “accelerating,” with American and Israeli forces expanding air operations into Iranian territory. He pointed to evidence released by U.S. Central Command of a submarine strike on an Iranian warship, and also lauded other strikes throughout the region as civilian casualties in Iran surpassed 1,000 on the fourth day of the conflict, according to rights groups.

“We’re going to continue to do well,” Trump said Wednesday. “We have the greatest military in the world by far and that was a tremendous threat to us for many years. Forty-seven years they’ve been killing our people and killing people all over the world, and we have great support.”

Republicans blocked a similar war powers vote in January after the president ordered U.S. special forces to capture and extradite Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in Caracas on drug trafficking charges.

GOP leaders argued that the outcome of that mission equated to a quick success in the Middle East, despite an uncertain timeline from the Department of Defense.

In the House, lawmakers will vote on a separate war powers effort Thursday. That bill is led by Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) and Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), the two lawmakers who authored the Epstein Files Transparency Act.

“Instead of sending billions overseas, we need to invest in jobs, healthcare, and education here,” Khanna said on X.

In addition to that proposal, moderate Democrats in the House have introduced a separate resolution that would give the administration a 30-day window to justify continued hostilities in the Middle East before requiring a formal declaration of war or authorization from Congress.

Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) is preparing for President Trump to declare a national emergency in order to seize control of this year’s midterm elections from the states, including by bracing his Senate colleagues for a vote in which they would be forced to either co-sign on the power grab or resist it.

In the wake of reporting last week that conservative activists with connections to the White House were circulating such an order, Padilla sent a letter to his Senate colleagues Friday stating that any such order would be “wildly illegal and unconstitutional,” and would no doubt face “extremely strict scrutiny” in the courts.

“Nevertheless, if the President does escalate his unprecedented assault on our democracy by declaring an election-related emergency, I will swiftly introduce a privileged resolution [and] force a vote in the Senate to terminate the fake emergency,” wrote Padilla, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration.

Padilla wrote that such an order — which could possibly “include banning mail-in voting, eliminating major voting registration methods, voter purges, and/or new document barriers for registering to vote and voting” — would clearly go beyond Trump’s authority.

“Put simply, no President has the power under the Constitution or any law to take over elections, and no declaration or order can create one out of thin air,” Padilla wrote.

The same day Padilla sent his letter, Trump was asked whether he was considering declaring a national emergency around the midterms. “Who told you that?” he asked — before saying he was not considering such an order.

The White House referred The Times to that exchange when asked Tuesday for comment on Padilla’s letter.

If Trump did declare such an emergency, a “privileged resolution,” as Padilla proposed, would require the full Senate to vote on the record on whether or not to terminate it — forcing any Senate allies of the president to own the policy politically, along with him.

Experts say there is no evidence that U.S. elections are significantly affected or swung by widespread fraud or foreign interference, despite robust efforts by Trump and his allies for years to find it.

Nonetheless, Trump has been emphatic that such fraud is occurring, particularly in blue states such as California that allow for mail-in ballots and do not have strict voter ID laws. He and others in his administration have asserted, again without evidence, that large numbers of noncitizen residents are casting votes and that others are “harvesting” ballots out of the mail and filling them out in bulk.

Soon after taking office, Trump issued an executive order purporting to require voters to show proof of U.S. citizenship before registering and barring the counting of mail-in ballots received after election day, but it was largely blocked by the courts.

Trump’s loyalist Justice Department sued red and blue states across the country for their full voter rolls, but those efforts also have largely been blocked, including in California. The FBI also raided an elections office in Georgia that has been the focus of Trump’s baseless claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him.

Trump is also pushing for the passage of the Save America Act, a voter ID bill passed by the House, but it has stalled in the Senate.

In recent weeks, Trump has expressed frustration that his demands around voting security have not translated into changes in blue state policies ahead of the upcoming midterm elections, where his shrinking approval could translate into major gains for Democrats.

Last month, Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform, “I have searched the depths of Legal Arguments not yet articulated or vetted on this subject, and will be presenting an irrefutable one in the very near future. There will be Voter I.D. for the Midterm Elections, whether approved by Congress or not!”

Then, last week, the Washington Post reported that a draft executive order being circulated by activists with ties to Trump suggests that unproven claims of Chinese interference in the 2020 election could be used as a pretext to declare an elections emergency granting Trump sweeping authority to unilaterally institute the changes he wants to see in state-run elections.

Election experts said the Constitution is clear that states control and run elections, not with the executive branch.

Democrats have widely denounced any federal takeover of elections by Trump. And some Republicans have expressed similar concerns, including Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who chairs the Senate rules committee.

In the Wall Street Journal last year, McConnell warned against Trump or any Republican president asserting sweeping authority to control elections, in part because Democrats would then be empowered to claim similar authority if and when they retake power.

McConnell’s office referred The Times to that Journal opinion piece when asked about the circulating emergency order and Padilla’s resolution.

Padilla’s office said his resolution would be introduced in response to an emergency declaration by Trump, but hoped it wouldn’t be necessary.

“Instead of trying to evade accountability at the ballot box,” Padilla wrote, “the President should focus on the needs of Americans struggling to pay for groceries, health care, housing and other everyday needs and put these illegal and unconstitutional election orders in the trash can where they belong.”

Donald Trump has never been one to play by the rules.

Whether it’s stiffing contractors as a real estate developer, defying court orders he doesn’t like as president or leveraging the Oval Office to vastly inflate his family’s fortune, Trump’s guiding principle can be distilled to a simple, unswerving calculation: What’s in it for me?

Trump is no student of history. He’s famously allergic to books. But he knows enough to know that midterm elections like the one in November have, with few exceptions, been ugly for the party holding the presidency.

With control of the House — and Trump’s virtually unchecked authority — dangling by a gossamer thread, he reckoned correctly that Republicans were all but certain to lose power this fall unless something unusual happened.

So he effectively broke the rules.

Normally, the redrawing of the country’s congressional districts takes place once every 10 years, following the census and accounting for population changes over the previous decade. Instead, Trump prevailed upon the Republican governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, to throw out the state’s political map and refashion congressional lines to wipe out Democrats and boost GOP chances of winning as many as five additional House seats.

The intention was to create a bit of breathing room, as Democrats need a gain of just three seats to seize control of the House.

In relatively short order, California’s Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, responded with his own partisan gerrymander. He rallied voters to pass a tit-for-tat ballot measure, Proposition 50, which revised the state’s political map to wipe out Republicans and boost Democratic prospects of winning as many as five additional seats.

Then came the deluge.

In more than a dozen states, lawmakers looked at ways to tinker with their congressional maps to lift their candidates, stick it to the other party and gain House seats in November.

Some of those efforts continue, including in Virginia where, as in California, voters are being asked to amend the state Constitution to let majority Democrats redraw political lines ahead of the midterm. A special election is set for April 21.

But as the first ballots of 2026 are cast on Tuesday — in Arkansas, North Carolina and Texas — the broad contours of the House map have become clearer, along with the result of all those partisan machinations. The likely upshot is a nationwide partisan shift of fewer than a handful of seats.

The independent, nonpartisan Cook Political Report, which has a sterling decades-long record of election forecasting, said the most probable outcome is a wash. “At the end of the day,” said Erin Covey, who analyzes House races for the Cook Report, “this doesn’t really benefit either party in a real way.”

Well.

That was a lot of wasted time and energy.

Let’s take a quick spin through the map and the math, knowing that, of course, there are no election guarantees.

In Texas, for instance, new House districts were drawn assuming Latinos would back Republican candidates by the same large percentage they supported Trump in 2024. But that’s become much less certain, given the backlash against his draconian immigration enforcement policies; numerous polls show a significant falloff in Latino support for the president, which could hurt GOP candidates up and down the ballot.

But suppose Texas Republicans gain five seats as hoped for and California Democrats pick up the five seats they’ve hand-crafted. The result would be no net change.

Elsewhere, under the best case for each party, a gain of four Democratic House seats in Virginia would be offset by a gain of four Republican House seats in Florida.

That leaves a smattering of partisan gains here and there. A combined pickup of four or so Republican seats in Ohio, North Carolina and Missouri could be mostly offset by Democratic gains of a seat apiece in New York, Maryland and Utah.

(The latter is not a result of legislative high jinks, but rather a judge throwing out the gerrymandered map passed by Utah Republicans, who ignored a voter-approved ballot measure intended to prevent such heavy-handed partisanship. A newly created district, contained entirely within Democratic-leaning Salt Lake County, seems certain to go Democrats’ way in November.)

In short, it’s easy to characterize the political exertions of Trump, Abbott, Newsom and others as so much sound and fury producing, at bottom, little to nothing.

But that’s not necessarily so.

The campaign surrounding Proposition 50 delivered a huge political boost to Newsom, shoring up his standing with Democrats, significantly raising his profile across the country and, not least for his 2028 presidential hopes, helping the governor build a significant nationwide fundraising base.

In crimson-colored Indiana, Republicans refused to buckle under tremendous pressure from Trump, Vice President JD Vance and other party leaders, rejecting an effort to redraw the state’s congressional map and give the GOP a hold on all nine House seats. That showed even Trump’s Svengali-like hold on his party has its limits.

But the biggest impact is also the most corrosive.

By redrawing political lines to predetermine the outcome of House races, politicians rendered many of their voters irrelevant and obsolete. Millions of Democrats in Texas, Republicans in California and partisans in other states have been effectively disenfranchised, their voices rendered mute. Their ballots spindled and nullified.

In short, the politicians — starting with Trump — extended a big middle finger to a large portion of the American electorate.

Is it any wonder, then, so many voters hold politicians and our political system in contempt?