POLITICS

At a meeting of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors in July 2022, former Supervisor Sheila Kuehl called for a “deep dive” into the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department’s gun permitting process.

Weeks prior, the U.S. Supreme Court had invalidated as unconstitutional a New York law requiring people to show “proper cause” for why they needed to carry a concealed firearm. Similar processes in California and nationwide were suddenly being scrapped in favor of more lenient policies.

Kuehl was among those who feared more guns in public would lead to more shootings, and wanted the sheriff’s department to proceed with caution.

“We need to be creative about how to address the very real and escalating public health emergency that is gun violence,” she said, referencing a related proposal to use permit fees to expand anti-crime initiatives.

Less than three years later, the county’s gun permitting process is under investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice, which announced last month that it had “reason to believe” the county was subjecting permit applicants to unconstitutionally long wait times.

“This Department of Justice will not stand idly by while States and localities infringe on the Second Amendment rights of ordinary, law-abiding Americans,” Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi said in a statement.

Bondi cited a pending lawsuit in which gun owners and advocacy groups sued the county over alleged wait times of 18 months. Court records show the county is in the middle of negotiating a settlement in that case.

Constitutional experts, gun enthusiasts and gun control advocates say what happens next — both in court and under the DOJ probe — could have profound implications for gun permitting in communities far beyond the sheriff’s territory.

Trump has made bolstering gun rights a national priority, Bondi has indicated similar probes could be announced against other jurisdictions, and the litigants suing the county have already signaled they are going after other local jurisdictions and law enforcement agencies next — including the Los Angeles Police Department.

How L.A. County handles this moment could help set a new standard for gun permitting, experts said, particularly in similarly big, blue-state jurisdictions that have been reluctant to issue permits in the past.

A long county battle

Kuehl’s 2022 proposal, approved by the board, ordered then-Sheriff Alex Villanueva not to change the county’s gun permitting process until state and county attorneys could weigh in, and asked the county auditor-controller to issue a report on potential improvements.

Villanueva showed little interest in complying. He had been bragging of increasing permits, and said the department was “retooling” its process to provide even more — estimating the total could jump from less than 3,200 to as many as 50,000.

Two months later, the department announced it was investigating “irregularities” in the permitting process and a “possible long-term scheme to defraud” county residents. Soon after, the Times published an investigation showing that some of Villanueva’s political supporters had received permits much more quickly than the average applicant, some with the assistance of deputies working directly for Villanueva.

Former L.A. County Sheriff Alex Villanueva testifies at the Sheriff’s Civilian Oversight Commission meeting on Jan. 12, 2024.

(Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)

No charges have been filed , and a spokesman for Villanueva denied any wrongdoing.

Around the same time in 2022, the department was seeing a “tsunami of applications” for gun permits, it said in a recent court filing.

Sheriff‘s Department data provided to the Times show applications picked up around April 2021 — which is when the Supreme Court first said it would take the New York case — and surged after the high court’s ruling in June 2022. Monthly applications, which averaged between 100 and 200 in late 2020 and early 2021, soared to more than 1,000 in late 2022 and early 2023, though they have partially come back down since.

A county auditor-controller report published in late 2022 as a result of Kuehl’s measure found 3,426 active permits and 10,300 pending applications, with an average wait time of about one year. And it warned the county could face legal trouble if it failed to expedite the process and clear the backlog.

The Sheriff’s Department has cited “a significant staffing crisis” as a reason for delays, and in response to the Justice Department probe said it processes applications “in compliance with state and local laws to promote responsible gun ownership.”

But the lawsuit brought by the California Rifle & Pistol Assn. and others argues county policies have made it “extremely difficult, if not outright impossible” to secure a permit, and that efforts to fix the issue have been insufficient.

Sheriff Robert Luna — who was elected to replace Villanueva in November 2022 — told The Times that the backlog has been reduced to about 4,000 pending applications, and that the department is “doing a lot better than we have in years.”

“Like everything else, we’re fixing a lot of problems, trying to be efficient,” he said.

In 2023 and 2024 — the first two calendar years after Luna took office — records show the department issued more than 10,000 permits, a roughly twofold increase over the number issued in 2021 and 2022. At the same time, Sheriff’s Department data show permit rejections spiked to 480 during the 2022 application surge, then fell to 438 the following year and 327 last year.

Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna talks with the media during a news conference at the Hall of Justice on Feb. 10 in Los Angeles.

(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

Between 2020 and 2022, the department had somewhere between three and six staff members working in its permit unit. In March 2023, two supervisors were added. Now, it has 13 full-time staff members and two more on temporary assignment.

Still, it is struggling to keep up with the pace of new applications, Luna acknowledged, and also can’t spare more staffing given a department-wide shortfall of some 1,400 deputies, he said.

“The amount of those requests overwhelm the staff we have,” Luna said. “It is an unfunded mandate.”

Based on an internal cost study, the department charges $216 for a permit, with $43 due up front as an application fee and the rest due only if the application is approved.

The Sheriff’s Department said it could not comment on the ongoing negotiations in the California Rifle & Pistol Assn. lawsuit.

Chuck Michel, an attorney and the association’s president, said he believes his group will “be able to work out something that protects the rights of people in L.A. County who are looking for a permit” but declined to provide specifics.

Michel also said whatever deal his group reaches was unlikely to resolve the Justice Department probe.

“I suspect the DOJ will want additional assurances, beyond whatever we agree to,” he said.

‘Slow walking’ progress?

Experts who study 2nd Amendment law say a big question for the Justice Department investigators will be whether the Sheriff’s Department or other county officials intentionally delayed the permitting process because they disagreed politically with the Supreme Court’s ruling in New York State Rifle & Pistol Assn. Inc. vs. Bruen, the ruling that has forced changes.

The Justice Department has not alluded to any such evidence existing — but Villanueva has.

A couple of days after the Justice Department announced its probe, the former sheriff commented online, writing, “Evidence suggests Sheriff Luna and the board of supervisors are slow walking the permit process deliberately to circumvent the Bruen decision.”

Asked by The Times for details on the alleged evidence, Villanueva referred back to the July 2022 board meeting and Kuehl’s measure.

He said the board “made a big effort” to slow his efforts to issue more permits while it worked to “hike the fees” as “a tool to fund anti-violence,” which he deemed “unethical.” He also blamed Luna for not staffing the permit unit well enough, even though sheriff’s officials say the unit’s staffing has increased. Officials also told The Times the fees are used “only to cover costs” and not to fund other programs.

Kuehl called Villanueva a “liar” with zero credibility.

“Nothing the supervisors did in the eight years I was there could be claimed in any way to favor the slowing down of permits. Nothing,” Kuehl said. “To be in favor of sensible gun control or regulation measures is not the same as trying to manipulate a process.”

Sheila Kuehl listens during a Board of Supervisors meeting on Nov. 22, 2022, her last day on the board.

(Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times)

Kuehl, who retired from the board in November 2022 at 81 years old, said her desire to audit the permitting process was driven in part by concerns that Villanueva was abusing the process to award permits to friends.

“We were alarmed at the loosey-goosey process that Alex was using to give out hidden gun permits like free bubble gum as a prize,” Kuehl said. “It really was not any kind of process, so we really wanted to look at what he was doing.”

Beyond the county

In announcing its county probe, the Justice Department said Bondi hoped other jurisdictions would wise up and “voluntarily” improve their processes to protect gun rights.

“But if necessary, today’s announcement will be the first of many similar investigations, lawsuits, or other actions involving other localities in California, the State of California itself, and any other states or localities that insist on unduly burdening, or effectively denying, the Second Amendment rights of their ordinary, law-abiding citizens,” the department said in a March 27 statement.

Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi speaks in the Oval Office on Feb. 5 as President Trump looks on.

(Evan Vucci / Associated Press)

Already, Washington D.C. is in the government’s sights. The day after the L.A. probe was announced, Trump issued an executive order requiring federal authorities to work with D.C. to “increase the speed and lower the cost of processing concealed carry license requests” in the nation’s capital.

Those suing L.A. County are also looking elsewhere.

On March 5, the California Rifle & Pistol Assn. sent a letter to the LAPD and the Los Angeles City Council warning that it would sue them if the LAPD did not immediately devote additional resources to bring down wait times for permits, which it said were averaging more than 18 months in the city.

On March 31, LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell responded with his own letter, writing that both requested and issued permits have “increased exponentially” in the last two years, and the department was taking steps to process more applications and bring down wait times.

McDonnell said the LAPD was lending additional officers to its permit unit, and like the county had started using a cloud-based software called Permitium, which was “already enabling the Department to process more applications.”

Still, the LAPD is clearly struggling, other officials have acknowledged, with wait times for permits approaching four years in some cases.

Deputy Chief Alan Hamilton, head of the Detective Bureau that oversees the LAPD’s permit unit, said the long waits are largely due to staffing and a stringent process that includes interviewing every applicant, processing their fingerprints, carrying out a background check and ensuring they have completed an accredited firearm safety course.

Even if the permit unit grew substantially, Hamilton said, it would be hard to reduce the current wait times because the wave of applicants who received two-year permits in the last couple of years are starting to apply for renewals.

“It’s going to slow us down even more,” Hamilton said.

At the state level

Local law enforcement officials and policymakers say they have been watching the issue closely and working to update permit policies, but it has not been easy given the rapidly shifting legal landscape.

The Supreme Court ruling, officials said, is only one consideration. There have also been other recent court rulings in gun cases in the state, and new state laws passed.

One California law — known as Senate Bill 2 — expanded the number of “sensitive places” where firearms are explicitly barred, beyond traditional locations such as schools and courtrooms to include bars and restaurants that serve alcohol, parks and playgrounds, and other public spaces such as libraries, museums and athletic facilities.

The measure was challenged in court but substantially upheld by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in September. Luna said the county is now conducting a study on the impact the measure will have on permitting, including costs and fees.

There is a bill pending in Sacramento, co-sponsored by California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta, that would bring state law in line with some of the judge’s orders for L.A. County in the California Rifle & Pistol Assn. case, including by allowing permits for out-of-state visitors.

But the proposal — Assembly Bill 1078 — would also create some new restrictions.

Michel, the gun group’s president, said state officials are focused on limiting gun rights when they should be finding solutions to unconstitutional permit backlogs and wait times.

He said one of the most obvious solutions would be to replace two-year permits with four-year permits, so that renewal applications don’t keep piling atop new applications and extending wait times.

Michel said his organization has proposed such a measure to lawmakers in Sacramento, but it has yet to gain much traction.

WASHINGTON — One night this month, Los Angeles immigration attorney Harriet Steele opened her email to a notice from the Department of Homeland Security.

“It is time for you to leave the United States,” it read.

Steele was confused — and concerned. She is a U.S. citizen born in Los Angeles, but worried the email was meant for a client.

The email, which she received at 9:41 p.m. Pacific time April 10, was a notice of termination of parole, a humanitarian form of legal entry that was significantly expanded under the Biden administration.

Under President Trump’s mass deportation agenda, his administration has targeted people who entered the country legally, in addition to those who entered illegally.

This month, the Trump administration revoked the legal status and work authorization of migrants who entered the U.S. using the Biden-era border appointment app. More than 900,000 people were paroled into the country under that program, though with asylum and other legal pathways, it’s unclear how many parole beneficiaries are affected by the Trump administration’s action.

The administration also revoked another form of parole, for more than 500,000 people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela who flew to the U.S. at their own expense. But a federal judge halted those terminations last week.

As for emails telling people to leave the country, the Department of Homeland Security said in an emailed statement that U.S. Customs and Border Protection used each immigrant’s known email address to send such notifications.

“If a non-personal email — such as an American citizen contact — was provided by the alien, notices may have been sent to unintended recipients,” the statement reads. “CBP is monitoring communications and will address any issues on a case-by-case basis.”

But Steele said she doesn’t have any clients who entered the U.S. under the parole process. She represents unaccompanied children through the pro bono law firm Public Counsel.

“The Trump administration operates, in many ways, on a mix of cruelty and incompetence,” she said. “It’s hard to know what the exact process was by which I happened to receive that email in the middle of the night, East Coast time.”

Steele said the notice was indicative of “this fear that the Trump administration is attempting to create” — both for immigrants and even for lawyers. Citing “rampant fraud and meritless claims,” the administration last month issued a memo ordering sanctions and stricter oversight of immigration attorneys.

The notice Steele received says DHS is using its discretion to terminate the parole, at most seven days from the date of the notice. It warns of potential criminal prosecution, civil fines and penalties.

“Do not attempt to remain in the United States — the federal government will find you,” the notice concludes.

That message is getting through to some people living in the country without authorization. Immigrant rights activists and attorneys say they are hearing from people who are choosing to self-deport.

Steele is not the only U.S. citizen to receive such a notice. Another immigration attorney in Massachusetts received the same email, as did a doctor in Connecticut.

The American Immigration Lawyers Assn. issued a practice alert this month warning about the termination notices. Attorneys began receiving the notices around April 8, the association said, and in some cases the notices were delivered to attorneys who had nothing to do with the person’s parole process.

“At this juncture, it is unclear how many individuals have received similar notices and what the correct next steps are,” the alert states.

President Trump was welcoming governors to the White House in February when he sought out Maine Gov. Janet Mills, demanding to know whether she would comply with his ban on transgender athletes in women’s sports.

“I’m complying with state and federal laws,” Mills replied.

Trump responded, “We are the federal law” He added: “You’d better comply. … Otherwise, you’re not getting any federal funding.”

Mills’ parting shot to Trump: “We’ll see you in court.”

Trump made good on his threat and began the process this month to strip Maine of federal education dollars because that state allows transgender students to compete on women’s teams. The dispute immediately landed in court — a fight that represents a high-stakes case study for California, which also has statutes permitting transgender athletes in women’s sports.

California education code “ensures equal rights and opportunities for every student” and “prohibits discrimination on the basis of gender identity, gender expression and sexual orientation.”

Maine is defending the primacy of local control as well as its state law — which is grounded in pro-LGBTQ+ policy. Trump, meanwhile, is opposing Maine on conservative ideological grounds using federal funding as the cudgel to prevail. Some see Maine as a precursor to what California can expect: a Trump administration attempt to halt federal education funding.

“It seems likely that the Trump administration will proceed with lawsuits against California and other states that have policies similar to those that the administration is challenging in Maine,” said Jacob Huebert, president of Liberty Justice Center, a law firm that broadly supports Trump’s agenda. “The administration’s demands are appropriate, so California should comply with them.”

Unlike the governor of Maine, California Gov. Gavin Newsom recently said it was “deeply unfair” for trans students to compete in women’s sports, but he has not acted to change California law, which he previously has supported.

Trump’s U.S. Department of Education has opened an investigation into the California Interscholastic Federation, which oversees sports at more than 1,500 high schools, explicitly threatening California funding, but has not yet moved to cut off those dollars.

California officials declined to comment about the ongoing investigation.

Although federal funding for California education is challenging to calculate and arrives through multiple channels, some tallies put the figure at $16.3 billion per year — including money for school meals, students with disabilities and early education Head Start programs. The Los Angeles Unified School District has estimated that it receives about $1.26 billion a year.

And, in the current moment, there are myriad ways for California to lose these dollars, based on Trump administration directives.

One example is the California law that prohibits schools from automatically notifying families about student gender-identity issues and shields teachers from retaliation for supporting transgender student rights.

Federal officials contend the California law illegally violates the right of parents to receive school records related to their children and have launched an investigation into the California Department of Education for enforcing it. Trump favors requiring schools to notify parents about any matters involving gender identity and their child. The California law must be nullified, the administration says.

Then there is the Trump ban on diversity, equity and inclusion programs. Every state and U.S. territory is supposed to certify the elimination of DEI by Thursday — or risk losing federal funds and being assessed financial penalties. California is among 16 states refusing to do so.

Meanwhile, California colleges and universities also face the loss of billions in grant funding over DEI penalties and over whether the Trump administration concludes that enough has been done to combat alleged campus antisemitism.

Maine is the first state to face full throttling of its the K-12 funds from the Trump administration.

This month, the U.S. Department of Education began an “administrative process” to cancel all education funding for Maine. The state’s K-12 schools have received about $358.4 million, or $2,062 per pupil annually, from the federal government, according to research from Education Data Initiative. The department also referred the Maine Department of Education to the U.S. Department of Justice for “further enforcement action.”

In addition, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees school food programs, immediately suspended a portion of its funding to the state. The withheld dollars, according to Maine, resulted in cutting off meals for young children who attend day-care programs, at-risk school-age children outside school hours and people in adult day-care programs, according to court documents. There has not yet been a cutoff of all school food aid, but Trump has said multiple times that he’s going to take back every federal dollar from the state.

Maine sued for relief based on the first wave of cuts, and a U.S. district judge granted a temporary restraining order, meaning that the funding is supposed to be restored until courts decide the case on its merits.

The Trump administration recognizes only male and female in terms of who is entitled to join a sports team, in particular a women’s team. According to court filings, a qualified participant on a women’s team is defined as “a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the large reproductive cell.” Males, by comparison, are the ones with the “small reproductive cell.”

Under the Trump administration, there is no discrimination protection based on gender identity and therefore transgender students have no right to be in sports or locker rooms provided for women. To allow transgender students in these spaces amounts to illegal sexual discrimination against women, according to the Trump administration.

The Trump administration contends Maine is violating federal antidiscrimination laws as well as protections implied by the U.S. Constitution.

Nationwide, more than half of states already had a ban on sports participation by transgender youths. However, the majority of transgender students live in states without such a ban, according to UCLA’s Williams Institute, a think tank that conducts research on sexual orientation and gender identity law and public policy.

Many jurisdictions without bans specifically permit students to participate in sports consistent with their gender identity, including California. New York State recently enacted a constitutional amendment prohibiting gender identity discrimination, which some have argued will protect transgender athletes from exclusion from women’s sports.

Is Maine an easier target?

Some critics speculate that targeting Maine first on the issue is a better strategy.

“California is a much bigger state, and that makes a difference,” said Jesse Rothstein, professor of public policy and economics at UC Berkeley. “The administration is hoping that states like Maine will buckle, that they won’t be able to afford to go without the money for the duration of a lawsuit. Picking a fight with the state of California would be a big deal.”

And from a political standpoint, he added, California has congressional districts — represented by Republicans — that rely on federal funding.

“I think that that would create political problems for the administration that they don’t face in Maine,” Rothstein said.

Nonetheless, under current court interpretation of federal law, Maine should prevail if the state can stick it out, said Rothstein and several other critics of the Trump administration.

“There’s no legal basis for withdrawing food-aid funds because you don’t like the policy around transgender students in sports,” Rothstein said.

Supporters of the Trump’s action assert his policy will win in court. They say it has been long established that states can lose federal funding if they violate a federal body of law called Title IX, which governs areas such as sexual discrimination, sexual harassment and sexual assault. Title IX protections apply to schools that receive federal funds, including athletic programs.

Using the leverage of funding to enforce antidiscrimination law “is the way Title IX works,” said Huebert, of Liberty Justice Center.

A state doesn’t have to accept federal funding, but if it does, federal rules must be followed, said Sarah Parshall Perry, vice president and legal fellow at Defending Education, which describes itself as committed to eliminating political ideologies in public education and which is broadly supportive of Trump’s education policy.

“As a matter of regulatory, statutory and constitutional law, they’re on very solid footing,” Parshall Perry said. And politically, “it polls very, very well for Republicans.”

There is, however, disagreement among conservatives about whether Trump is overreaching — intruding into a matter that should be left to more local authority.

“First and foremost, the federal government should not be in the business of funding education, free meals, etc.,” said Neil McCluskey, director of Center for Educational Freedom at Cato Institute, a libertarian thinktank. However, “if the federal government is going to fund things like education and nutrition, it is better that that funding come with few strings attached, especially when it comes to clashes of values.”

For Maine — and perhaps for California — the legal counterattack will argue that the Trump administration is overreaching in two ways: asserting authority outside its jurisdiction and violating laws that govern the process for withdrawing funding.

These two defenses have come up repeatedly in a multitude of legal actions to date against the Trump administration. California has at least a dozen lawsuits in progress to block various Trump actions.

California can base some hope on a legal parallel that dates to Trump’s first term, when he went after federal funding for so-called sanctuary cities — which opposed Trump’s immigration policies. At that time, Trump’s effort failed in the courts, noted Graeme Boushey, director of Center for the Study of Democracy at UC Irvine.

In the current situation, “the legal argument for broadly coercing a state into doing what you want isn’t really different,” Boushey said. “What concerns some observers is that the thing that’s changed is the composition of the U.S. Supreme Court, tilting more in favor of the Trump administration.”

If the Trump administration does prevail in court against Maine, “they will almost certainly pursue California, moving forward,” Boushey said. “And then there’s going to be nothing to stop them from rinse, wash, repeat this again for immigration policy, environmental deregulation — you name it.”

The FBI had been following Richard W. Miller for weeks, waiting for him to slip. He was one of them, a veteran bureau man, and now he was suspected of betraying his oath and his country. A small army of agents surveilled him day and night, trying to catch him transmitting secrets to the Soviets. They tapped his car. They tapped his phones. They tapped his desk at the bureau’s Wilshire Boulevard office.

At 48, Miller had floundered and bumbled through a 20-year career, to the dismay of his superiors, who could not muster the will to fire him. Instead, they had dumped him at the so-called Russia Squad in L.A., a counterespionage unit meant to combat Soviet spying. He did not speak Russian. It was 1984, the year Moscow boycotted the L.A. Olympics, but Southern California — which did not have a Russian Consulate — was considered a backwater in the Cold War spy game.

In this series, Christopher Goffard revisits old crimes in Los Angeles and beyond, from the famous to the forgotten, the consequential to the obscure, diving into archives and the memories of those who were there.

Still, the KGB was watching, and Miller, shambling, bitter and broke, made a tempting target. He had eight children. He had debts. He sold Amway nylons to FBI secretaries while other agents sneered. He took bribes and skimmed cash from informants. He had a weakness for women not his wife, which had led to his excommunication from the Mormon Church.

He had been suspended for flouting weight regulations, stripped of his informants and demoted to monitoring wiretaps. And, lately, he’d been having clandestine trysts with a Russian emigre with KGB ties, Svetlana Ogorodnikova, in cars and cheap hotels around Los Angeles.

An FBI surveillance photo of FBI agent Richard W. Miller, in white shirt and dark pants, with Russian emigre Svetlana Ogorodnikov. Federal agents hoped to prove he was giving her state secrets.

(Bettmann Archive)

“Lonely, friendless, despised at his office, estranged from his family, alienated even from his God,” is how Paula Hill, his ex-wife, described Miller in a memoir. “A moral man who led an immoral life, an idealist who had betrayed his ideals. No one despised Richard as much as Richard himself.”

The code name for the massive operation to catch Miller, in the summer and fall of 1984, was “Whipworm,” a reference to an intestinal parasite. The case against him seemed damning when a wiretap captured a KGB officer instructing Ogorodnikova to lure Miller to Warsaw, which was part of the Soviet Bloc.

But in late September, Miller did something that surprised everyone: He walked into his supervisor’s office and told on himself.

Yes, Miller explained, he’d been secretly seeing Ogorodnikova, but only as part of a bold, self-styled plan to infiltrate Soviet intelligence. He would be the first FBI agent to do it. He would be a hero. He would redeem his misbegotten career and go out “in a blaze of glory,” as he would put it.

The story struck the FBI as asinine — agents just did not act that way — but could it be disproved? The bureau brass doubted prosecution was possible without a confession. At one point during five days of questioning, Miller received a lecture from Richard T. Bretzing, who ran the FBI’s L.A. office and was a bishop in the Mormon Church. He told Miller to consider the “spiritual ramifications” of his behavior under church doctrines, to repent and make restitution.

“I reminded him that he had a wife and eight children who needed someone in his position to respect, and that it was his responsibility to find the courage and the decency within himself to once again develop those attributes which would earn their respect,” Bretzing wrote in a memo.

A July 1986 photo of former FBI agent Richard Miller after his second trial.

(Larry Davis / Los Angeles Times)

Miller wept, and soon after admitted that he had given Ogorodnikova a 50-page FBI document called the Positive Intelligence Reporting Guide, an internal inventory of the intelligence community’s goals.

Charged with passing secrets for $65,000 in cash and gold, Miller became the first FBI agent to be tried for espionage. His attorneys tried to exclude his confession on the grounds that he made it involuntarily, tortured by religious guilt. Testifying in January 1985, Miller claimed that his supervisor’s “spiritual lecture” chilled him with the specter of eternal separation from his loved ones.

“What first came to my mind was that I am losing my family,” Miller said. “I’m not going to the Celestial Kingdom … the equivalent of going to hell.”

Robert Bonner, the former U.S. attorney who prosecuted Miller, told The Times in a recent interview that the “spiritual lecture” may have had an effect, but the effect was to induce Miller to tell the truth.

“The question is, ‘Was that a coerced confession?’” Bonner said. “I’d say baloney. This isn’t the rubber hose.”

Bonner said that Miller’s myriad flaws made him vulnerable to enemy overtures: “He had financial problems. He had zipper problems. His issues were known to the KGB, and he was targeted. He was interested in having sex with Svetlana.”

In subsequent spy scandals, FBI agent Robert Hanssen and CIA officer Aldrich Ames did much greater damage to American interests by betraying the identity of Russians spying for America. The document Miller admitted to leaking was relatively unimportant.

“It wasn’t going to bring down the republic,” Bonner said. “It wasn’t earth-shaking as a classified document.” The KGB’s strategy was to compromise him. “One classified document, and he’s done. They have him. He’s gonna work for them.”

Hanging over the case was the question of why an agent widely regarded as incompetent was allowed to keep his job. An FBI official would testify that he tried to fire the “unkempt” Miller, but that a Mormon supervisor had protected him. Bonner’s view is that the FBI was hoping to let Miller complete his career in a position where he would not do harm.

“The easy route is not to fire them, because you’re gonna get sued,” Bonner said. L.A. was considered a small stage for spycraft, and members of the counterespionage squad “weren’t superstars like the agents in San Francisco and New York and Washington.”

So the Russia Squad seemed like a safe place to dump an agent en route to retirement. “They were trying to bury the guy,” Bonner said, “and it really came back to bite them.”

Miller’s attorney, Joel Levine, told The Times that the FBI threw the book at his client as an overreaction to its mistake in keeping him employed. “They were embarrassed,” Levine said. “The reaction to their embarrassment was to come down on him as hard as they could, to compensate for the fact that they weren’t watching him.”

Levine added: “What he was trying to do was ultimately go to his bosses and say, ‘Guess what? I was able to turn this lady around and get information from her, and now I’ll be a big hero in the bureau.’ It was a cockamamie plan, but he maintained he was serious about it. A lot of things that Richard did in his life were not well thought-out.”

Miller’s first trial ended in a mistrial, and his second trial resulted in a conviction that was overturned. The government went to court a third time, with Adam Schiff — then an assistant U.S. attorney, now a California senator — serving as lead prosecutor. Miller was convicted of espionage and received a 20-year prison term. He served about half that time and was granted early release in 1994. He moved to Utah, remarried and died a free man in his 70s.

His ex-wife, Hill, now 83, is a retired junior high school teacher living in Saratoga Springs, Utah. She said she believes that Miller was innocent of espionage, and that he really was trying to infiltrate the KGB.

In a recent interview, she described him as “a lousy agent,” “a terrible husband” and “a mediocre father,” but said she did not harbor bitterness toward him.

“He was a weak man, but he wasn’t a bad man, and he certainly wasn’t a spy,” she said. She added: “I knew he was unhappy at home. I wasn’t the little sweet coffee-tea-or-me wife. We quarreled a lot.” She was raising eight kids. “Nine, if you count Richard.”

And the Russian spy who seduced Miller? Ogorodnikova, along with her then-husband, Nikolai Ogorodnikov, pleaded guilty to espionage and received prison sentences of 18 and eight years, respectively.

Even so, she told “60 Minutes,” “I’m not a spy. I’m not Mata Hari. I’m not sexual maniac like people say about me. Do I look like I’m a sexual maniac?”

Locked up at a federal prison in Alameda County that at the time housed men and women, she met Bruce Perlowin, a convicted drug smuggler, and romance blossomed. He adored her high cheekbones and broken English. He said she was an unreconstructed communist who loved Josef Stalin and drank heavily.

“She said she was lieutenant colonel in the GRU,” Perlowin, now 74, told The Times, referring to the Soviet Union’s military intelligence agency. He said she also claimed to be the daughter of former Soviet leader Yuri Andropov. “This all could be alcoholic made-up stories. But in prison she wasn’t drinking. It was very consistent, and it never changed…. She was very mad that she got caught. She hated to lose.”

At the same time, she denied being a spy. “She would say, ‘I’m not spy.’ That was part of her adorable accent.”

Still, when they snuck off to a room to have sex for the first time in prison, he recounted, she inserted a pair of toothbrushes in the door to prevent guards from getting in. “She knew all these little tricks,” he said. “She’s saying, ‘I’m not spy,’ but how do you know this?”

They married in prison, and she went free in 1995, after 11 years in custody. They traveled the country and ultimately divorced. But Perlowin said he took care of her in her last years in Arizona, where she died of what he called an alcohol-related illness. “She was cute as a button,” he said.

A federal judge said Tuesday that the Trump administration is ignoring court orders, obstructing the legal process and acting in “bad faith” by refusing to provide information about the steps they have taken, if any, to free a mistakenly deported man from an El Salvador prison and return him to the U.S.

“For weeks, Defendants have sought refuge behind vague and unsubstantiated assertions of privilege, using them as a shield to obstruct discovery and evade compliance with this Court’s orders,” U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis wrote an the order Tuesday.

“Defendants have known, at least since last week, that this Court requires specific legal and factual showings to support any claim of privilege. Yet they have continued to rely on boilerplate assertions. That ends now,” Xinis added.

She gave the administration until 6 p.m. Wednesday to provide those details.

The Supreme Court ordered the Trump administration nearly two weeks ago to facilitate Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s return to the U.S. from a notorious Salvadoran prison, rejecting the White House’s claim that it couldn’t retrieve him after mistakenly deporting him.

Trump administration officials have pushed back, arguing that it is up to El Salvador — though the president of El Salvador has also said he lacks the power to return Abrego Garcia. The administration has also argued that information about any steps it has taken or could take to return Abrego Garcia is protected by attorney-client privilege laws, state secret laws, general “government privilege” or other secrecy rules.

But Xinis said those claims, without any facts to back them up, reflected a “willful and bad faith refusal to comply with discovery obligations.”

It’s not the first time the Trump administration has faced a scathing order from a federal judge over its approach to deportation cases.

A three-judge panel on the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals scolded the administration last week, saying its claim that it can’t do anything to free Abrego Garcia “should be shocking.” That ruling came one day after a federal judge in Washington, D.C., found probable cause to hold the Trump administration in criminal contempt of court for violating his orders to turn around planes carrying deportees to El Salvador in a different legal case.

Democrats and legal scholars say President Trump is provoking a constitutional crisis in part by ignoring court rulings, while the White House has said it’s the judges who are the problem.

Boone writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a Tuesday speech that the ongoing tariffs showdown against China is unsustainable and expects a “de-escalation” in the trade war between the world’s two largest economies.

But in a private speech in Washington for JPMorgan Chase, Bessent also cautioned that talks between the United States and China had yet to formally start. Trump placed import taxes of 145% on China, which has countered with 125% tariffs on U.S. goods. Trump has placed tariffs on several dozen countries, causing the stock market to stumble and interest rates to increase on U.S. debt as investors worry about slower economic growth and higher inflationary pressures.

Details of the speech were confirmed by two people familiar with the remarks who insisted on anonymity to discuss them.

“I do say China is going to be a slog in terms of the negotiations,” Bessent said, according to a transcript obtained by the Associated Press. “Neither side thinks the status quo is sustainable.”

The S&P 500 stock index rose after Bloomberg News initially reported Bessent’s remarks.

The Trump administration has met for talks with counterparts from Japan, India, South Korea, the European Union, Canada and Mexico, among others. But Trump has shown no public indications that he plans to pull back his baseline 10% tariff, even as he has insisted he’s looking for other nations to cut their own import taxes and remove any nontariff barriers that the administration says have hindered exports from the U.S.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters Tuesday that Trump told her “we’re doing very well” regarding a “potential trade deal with China.”

China on Monday warned other countries against making trade deals with the United States that could negatively impact the Asian nation.

Beijing “firmly opposes any party reaching a deal at the expense of China’s interests,” the Commerce Ministry said in a statement.

Leavitt said the Trump administration has received 18 proposals from other countries for trade deals with the U.S., adding that “everyone involved wants to see a trade deal happen.”

The uncertainty in the financial markets over tariffs has also been amplified by Trump calling on the Federal Reserve to cut its benchmark interest rate, with the president saying he could fire Fed Chair Jerome H. Powell if he wanted.

Leavitt said Trump believes the Fed — as it awaits the effects of tariffs — has been holding rates steady “in the name of politics, rather than in the name of what’s right for the American economy.”

Boak and Hussein write for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the secretary of Health and Human Services, on Tuesday announced a plan to ban synthetic food dyes that color everyday snack items such as Flamin’ Hot Cheetos and M&Ms.

The first step in the plan is for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to revoke authorization of citrus red No. 2 and orange B.

After that, the Department of Health and Human Services said, it will work with industry to eliminate six petroleum-based food dyes: blue 1, blue 2, green 3, red 40, yellow 5 and yellow 6.

California passed a law banning those six dyes last year, citing developmental and behavioral harms in children. The state law is set to go into effect the end of 2027.

The FDA is instead encouraging the use of so-called natural food dyes such as gardenia blue and calcium phosphate. “Red dye? Try watermelon juice or beet juice,” FDA Commissioner Marty Makary said at the media event, holding up a jar of crimson liquid.

The announcement Tuesday is meant to spur the food dye industry to cooperate in eliminating those dyes by the end of next year, according to the department.

“Let’s start in a friendly way and see if we can do this without any statutory or regulatory changes,” Makary said. “They want to do it.”

Makary noted at the event that he worked with government officials in California to develop these proposed federal changes.

Food dyes have been under scrutiny for years, as consumer advocate groups have said they contain additives harmful to humans. In January, the FDA banned red dye no. 3 — used in such common items as fruit-cocktail cherries and Nesquik’s strawberry milk — after some studies showed that the additive raised the risk of cancer in some lab animals.

In keeping with Kennedy’s mission to eliminate synthetic food dyes as soon as possible, the department announcement also calls for food companies to get rid of red no. 3 in their products sooner than the previously agreed-upon deadline. (California banned the use of red 3 in 2023; that law is also set to go into effect in 2027.)

Kennedy has blamed food additives for myriad health issues. His supporters heralded the announcement Tuesday as a major step in the secretary’s movement to “Make America Healthy Again.” A Gallup poll last year found that 28% of respondents did not have much confidence in the federal government’s ability to ensure the food supply is safe. An additional 14% had no confidence at all.

“Industry is making money to keep us sick,” Kennedy said at the announcement.

Reporting from San Francisco and Fresno — Candidates for California governor barnstormed the state on Tuesday, launching their final outreach to voters in the run-up to the June 5 primary.

Front-runner Gavin Newsom, who has led the polls and fundraising since entering the race more than three years ago, urged supporters gathered on the steps of San Francisco’s City Hall not to be complacent.

“Let’s get this done and take nothing for granted over the next seven days,” Newsom said before launching a bus tour that will take him to about two-dozen events over the next week.

Democrat Antonio Villaraigosa and Republican John Cox are battling it out for the second spot in the primary, and on Tuesday they courted voters within miles of each other in Fresno.

Villaraigosa vowed that, if elected, he wouldn’t be a big-city politician who flies over the interior of the state, rarely stopping to hear voters’ concerns. He noted he had been to the Central Valley dozens of times since exploring a bid for governor.

“I’ve been here again and again and again. I need the [Central] valley to get out of the primary,” Villaraigosa told business leaders and union members at a Teamsters local headquarters.

When asked earlier in the day why Republicans in the Central Valley should vote for him over Cox, Villaraigosa gave a pointed response.

“A vote for John Cox is a vote for Gavin Newsom,” he said, effectively saying that Cox had no chance of beating Newsom in the general election.

Cox, campaigning at the Fresno County GOP headquarters later in the day, scoffed when asked about Villaraigosa’s comment.

“A vote for me is a vote to make sure that people have better schools, they have better roads, that we don’t waste money in government, that we have a lower tax burden. A vote for me is a lower gasoline tax as well,” Cox said. “So I think Villaraigosa has it all wrong.”

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Cox, who was endorsed by President Trump in mid-May, added another $500,000 of his own money to his campaign since Saturday, bringing his total spending on his campaign to $4.9 million.

Newsom has taken heat from some liberals who argue that his campaign’s effort to boost Cox’s candidacy to ensure an easier general election could harm Democratic efforts to regain control of Congress.

He pushed back at the narrative that having a Republican at the top of the ticket on the November ballot would increase GOP voter turnout, which could help vulnerable Republican members of Congress hold onto their seats.

Newsom argued that having Democrats consolidate behind one candidate in the general election would do more to unite voters than a bitter Democrat-on-Democrat battle.

“If you have a governor’s race where you can line up the Democratic agenda and support the down-ballot ticket and unite the party, and instead of spending resources attacking one another spend those very sizable resources building a war chest … I think that’s a lot more powerful than, with all due respect, John Cox driving huge turnout,” he said. “Forgive me, I don’t see that.”

Newsom predicted $100 million would be spent against him if he and Villaraigosa emerge as the top two winners on June 5, and said the general election contest would be so ugly it would depress voter turnout among Democrats.

“We always win when our base shows up. The reason we don’t show up is often because of the negativity and the divisiveness — and the internecine warfare,” he said.

Major GOP donor Bill Oberndorf contributed $1.5 million and philanthropist Eli Broad on Tuesday donated $1,025,000 to an independent expenditure group supporting Villaraigosa’s bid, bringing the group’s total raised to nearly $20.2 million. The group has spent most of its money boosting Villaraigosa but has also aired ads attacking Newsom.

Villaraigosa was the focus of a new negative ad in the race. State Treasurer John Chiang, another Democrat running for governor, released an ad on Tuesday criticizing Villaraigosa’s work for Herbalife and Ameriquest, arguing that the companies harmed vulnerable communities.

Mehta reported from San Francisco and Willon reported from Fresno.

Coverage of California politics »

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Reporting from Washington — After an exhaustive and politically charged investigation that went on for years and cost millions of dollars, Republicans on the House Benghazi committee released a final report Tuesday that shed little new light on the U.S. response to the 2012 attacks in that Libyan city.

The 800-page report, which Democrats on the committee denounced as a sham focused on discrediting Hillary Clinton before it was even released, included no new evidence of wrongdoing by the former secretary of State. While it argues that the State Department, under her leadership, inadequately protected its staff in Benghazi, its criticism focused more broadly on the Obama administration.

The report accuses the government of incompetence at various levels, including a failure to deploy needed military assets, CIA intelligence reports that were “rife with errors” and misguided planning, even in the midst of the violence.

“Not a single wheel of a single U.S. military asset had even turned toward Libya,” Trey Gowdy of South Carolina, the committee chairman, said Tuesday at a committee news conference on Capitol Hill unveiling the report, making the case that the administration ignored dozens of warning signs that violence was imminent.

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The investigation’s findings, though, are unlikely to be a potent tool for weakening Clinton. The committee has struggled to maintain its credibility. Its all-day grilling of Clinton in Washington last fall was seen largely as a flop, as she deftly dispensed with politically tinged questioning that lacked focus nor elicited new revelations.

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s gloating on cable news that the committee would hurt Clinton’s White House chances also fueled the narrative that it was not a serious fact-finding mission.

Clinton dismissed the report in brief comments to reporters at a campaign event in Denver.

“I understand that after more than two years and $7 million spent by the Benghazi Committee under taxpayer funds, it had to today report that it had found nothing — nothing — to contradict the conclusions that the independent accountability board, or the conclusions of the prior, multiple earlier investigations carried out on a bipartisan basis in the Congress,” she said.

“I’ll leave it to others to characterize this report, but I think it’s pretty clear that it’s time to move on.”

Still, the report offers yet another troubling glimpse at what was going on in the highest levels of government as Americans were under siege in the diplomatic outpost on Sept. 11, 2012. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and State Department information officer Sean Smith were killed in an American compound by a mob of militia fighters. Two CIA contractors, Tyrone S. Woods and Glen A. Doherty, died later when the complex they were in was attacked by mortar fire.

“There is new information on what happened in Benghazi,” Gowdy said. “That information should fundamentally change the way you view what happened.”

The report revealed, for example, that the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who normally would be expected to take a leading role in responding to an attack on Americans, was not at the Pentagon but instead hosting a dinner party for foreign dignitaries at his home. It highlights the confusion among intelligence officials about which militias could be trusted in Libya, and how it was fighters loyal to deposed dictator Moammar Kadafi who ultimately aided Americans.

As the attacks were going on, the report notes, military officials were debating whether troops sent to respond should wear uniforms or civilian clothing.

By the time the special House committee began its investigation in 2014, there already had been seven U.S. government probes into the Obama administration’s handling of the Benghazi attacks. All of them found that even a flawless response to the violence would not have enabled U.S. troops to reach Benghazi in time to save the lives of the four Americans killed there.

Yet the report makes the case that if U.S. officials had been as attentive earlier to the deteriorating security situation in Libya as they were in heralding the revolution there as a foreign policy success, the American deaths might have been avoided.

“The administration was more concerned about diplomatic sensitivities with Libyans and promoting its policies as successful than it was with Americans’ safety,” said Rep. Martha Roby, a Republican committee member from Alabama.

The White House sought to play down those findings and cast the report as a politically motivated exercise.

“This is the best evidence yet that this is a Republican conspiracy, seeking political advantage out of a terrible tragedy,” White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said. “What possible goal could Republicans have by taking a look at this matter in 2016 other than trying to influence the outcome of the elections that are held in 2016?”

Some Republicans on the panel felt the report did not go far enough in indicting Clinton. Reps. Jim Jordan of Ohio and Mike Pompeo of Kansas tacked on a 48-page addendum that accused Clinton and others in the Obama administration of deliberately misleading Americans about the attack.

“Officials at the State Department, including Secretary Clinton, learned almost in real time that the attack in Benghazi was a terrorist attack,” they wrote. “With the [2012] presidential election just 56 days away, rather than tell the American people the truth and increase the risk of losing an election, the administration told one story privately and a different story publicly.”

The congressmen said the administration’s early narrative that the attack occurred at the hands of an angry mob incensed by an anti-Islamic video intentionally underplayed the role of organized terrorism in the violence.

Pompeo declared that Clinton’s handling of the situation was “morally reprehensible.” “Before the last mortar falls, they are talking about politics,” he said.

Such invective created discomfort for Gowdy, who labored to make the case that attacking Clinton was not the committee’s motivation. He pointed out that a separate, preemptive report that Democrats unveiled Monday, which concluded the investigation was a costly and time-consuming partisan exercise, was far more heavily focused on Clinton. “Their report mentions her name far more times than our report does,” he said.

Democrats, nonetheless, immediately denounced the GOP findings. Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California called them “shameful.” “Never before has such a tragedy been used to personally denigrate a secretary of State,” she said in a statement. She said the latest investigation, which was conducted over the objection of Democrats, adds nothing substantive to the findings already reached by a bipartisan review conducted by the Senate Intelligence Committee, of which she is the ranking Democrat.

“This whole exercise demeans Congress,” Feinstein said.

In the end, the biggest liability the investigation created for Clinton has nothing to do with her response to the Benghazi attacks. It is related to her email. It was the Benghazi committee’s work that led to the revelation that Clinton was routing her sensitive government email through a private server in her home.

The unorthodox setup has created more political headaches for Clinton than anything else she did during her tenure as secretary of State, raising concerns with voters that the candidate does not abide by the same rules as everyone else. The emailing practices put sensitive information at risk of breach and allowed Clinton to control which of her communications became part of the government record. They sparked a months-long FBI investigation, which has yet to conclude.

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UPDATES:

1:17 p.m.: This article was updated with comment from the White House.

11:12 a.m.: This article was updated with a comment from Hillary Clinton.

10:10 a.m.: This article was updated with comments from House Benghazi committee members.

This article was originally published at 7:28 a.m.

As the candidate, Bill Clinton took it on the chin for reports of infidelity and draft dodging. As the candidate’s independent wife, Hillary got it for being “uppity.” Now that they have survived, it’s Chelsea’s turn.

At issue is her appearance.

“Her hair is fuzzy and she has braces,” Hunter College High School student Samantha Shapiro wrote in the New York Times last month. “She has that ‘I’m in limbo between Jr. Miss and Misses at Bloomingdale’s’ look.”

Shapiro wrote to applaud Chelsea’s normality, calling her “a true pre-pubescent vision of awkwardness.” Shapiro also found Chelsea a metaphor for her father: “pleasant, a tad confused and at a bit of a crossroads.”

Others are nastier. Among the public’s mostly friendly letters to the President-elect was one from a Colorado Springs, Colo., woman saying: “America is in shock. Your daughter is uglier than Amy Carter.”

In the tabloid Weekly World News, an article titled “Why Are Democrats’ Daughters So Ugly?” allows that Chelsea may be the best of a bad-looking bunch, “but she’s no Tricia Nixon.”

Unsurprised by these digs, other children who grew up in the White House say this is the reality Chelsea, now 12, will probably endure until she’s at least 16. (So far, the Clintons have sheltered their daughter from media inquiries.)

“Certainly she’ll survive it,” Julie Nixon Eisenhower recently told KFI talk show host Hugh Hewitt. “But it’s not going to be easy.”

Observers note that Chelsea has suddenly become the world’s most-watched child, vulnerable not only to personal attacks but to all else that goes along with fishbowl living, at a developmentally tender age when children are trying to forge their own identities.

“What’s difficult is that the attention focused on Chelsea will be enormous, and, let’s face it, how can you have a normal life with the Secret Service?” asked Eisenhower, 44, who has been in the nation’s eye since 1953, when her father became vice president.

“You can’t even go to the drugstore to buy a personal item or go for a walk,” Eisenhower said. “It’s incredible.”

One way to cope is to remain above it all, she said.

“I have talked to a lot of First Family members, and how most of us cope with things is to try to keep informed. But when you know about stories that have been written about your family, you don’t read them.

“That’s called self-preservation.”

On the other hand, James (Chip) Carter said it’s hard for First Family children not to hear what’s being said about them or their parents. But the children need to learn not to take it personally, he said.

He remembers his parents telling family members: “This is written about you, but they’re really out to get us. Bill and Hillary will have to say, when (the media) are blasting Chelsea, ‘They are blasting Mommy and Daddy.’ It doesn’t have much to do with Chelsea.”

Like Chelsea, Carter and his siblings had previous public exposure as governor’s children, which helped ease their transition to Washington, he said: “It’s not exactly like coming out of the cold into the White House. She’s had people dote over her for years. . . . “

Carter said that as a young bachelor, he enjoyed living in the White House: “It was an inexpensive date. You could bring them to the White House, watch movies in the theater downstairs. There’s a bowling alley downstairs. I got to be pretty good.”

Carter, 42, a merchant banker in Atlanta, said he has been able to use the permanent label of “President’s son” to his advantage. “It has helped me in my business to a large extent. I can generate press if I want to.”

His sister Amy, 24 and living in Atlanta, will not agree to interviews, but she too uses the press to make news for causes she believes in, he said. “She’s been arrested five or six times making a stand for issues she thinks are important,” Carter said. “The last time, she was dressed as a missile lying in a shopping center in Memphis.”

Many politicians’ children seem to thrive under all the attention and access to “things one would only dream of,” said Charles Figley, a family scholar at Florida State University who has studied children of celebrities and politicians. “Flying in Air Force One. Meeting heads of state. Every imaginable celebrity or star you would want to meet. Having the ear of one of the most powerful individuals in the world for your generation. . . .”

But some do not thrive.

Two years ago, David Walters, a husband and father of four, was elected to his first public office–governor of Oklahoma. In the midst of political controversy, his oldest child, Shaun, 20, was arrested on a minor drug charge.

“It led to an enormous amount of news stories about the son of the governor,” said Bill Crain, Walters’ press secretary. “TV stations staked out his apartment, tried to catch him coming and going. They turned out in force for his arraignment.”

Shy and introverted, Shaun had never liked the limelight, Crain said. In addition, he had been on prescription medication for depression since he was 12. “He overdosed one day,” Crain said. “He was in a coma a couple of weeks before he died.”

The youth’s suicide caused much soul-searching for the governor and for the press. Walters has said he never would have run if he had had any idea of the consequences. In addition, Crain said, the state’s news media have become more sensitive about covering a politician’s family.

Several First Family children have also suffered anguish and despair. According to the report “All the Presidents’ Children” by former White House staffer Douglas Wead, the sons and daughters of American Presidents have higher-than-average rates of alcoholism, divorce and accidental death.

The oldest son of John Quincy Adams is thought to have killed himself, and sons of John Adams, William Henry Harrison and Andrew Johnson died as alcoholics, he wrote.

Nevertheless, Wead concluded that for most of the Presidents’ children, the years spent in the White House were the happiest of their lives.

What makes the difference between thriving and crashing?

About 60% of the difference has to do with the parents and their sensitivity to and time spent with their children, Figley said.

Chip Carter said first families must “fight for those moments when everything is normal.” But he added that the Clintons may find they have more quality time in the White House than in the governor’s mansion: “When you go upstairs, you are out of the fishbowl. Then it’s only you and your family, so you’re together a lot. His office is there at the house, and Chelsea will have free rein to go around.”

A child’s self-confidence contributes another 20%, Figley said, adding that it is “a lot to ask” a 12-year-old to be completely self-confident.

The rest, he said, is just “luck,” which depends on the trends of the time, the ethics of the media and whether the public believes private lives of public figures should be out of bounds.

Chelsea has a good chance of thriving, Figley added: “She has been in politics all her life and is rather sophisticated.” In addition, as an only child, she has probably been treated as a “junior adult” and may have more coping skills, he said.

“If she is (successful), she will be helpful to future generations of children who find themselves in the same situation.”

Is Kilmar Abrego Garcia a good person? I don’t know.

In 2021 his wife petitioned for, and received, an order of protection against him after she alleged domestic violence; she said last week that their marriage grew stronger after they worked through that low point and that Abrego Garcia “has always been a loving partner and father.”

The government has claimed that he is a member of a truly heinous criminal gang, MS-13. If that were true, given that he was in the United States illegally, I’d have no problem with deporting him, though perhaps not to a prison that our own State Department has condemned. We’ll get back to that.

The Trump administration, by its own admission, mistakenly deported Abrego Garcia in defiance of a court order to a Salvadoran prison. A judge had previously granted Abrego Garcia’s request not to be deported to his native El Salvador, because he feared for his safety. No one said he couldn’t be deported somewhere else.

On the other hand, is Abrego Garcia a terrorist or vicious criminal, as the administration claims? I don’t know that either. Is he even a member of MS-13? When the president sought to back up that claim, he posted a doctored image of Abrego Garcia’s hand tattoos to which the characters “MS13” had been digitally added.

The Trump administration has offered no evidence, in court or out, that Abrego Garcia is guilty of any violent crimes (save for the allegations that he abused his wife, and he never faced charges over those claims). He was originally apprehended for “loitering.” Andrew McCarthy, a former federal prosecutor and prominent conservative legal analyst, wrote for National Review that “the proceedings in the lower courts have shown that, to date, the government’s evidence tying Abrego Garcia to MS-13 is gossamer thin.”

As for the charge of being a terrorist, this is … misleading. Trump has arrogated to himself war powers to thwart what he incessantly calls an “invasion.” His administration has invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 as a way to bypass what it considers onerous legal and constitutional niceties in pursuit of deporting illegal immigrants it deems “terrorists.” So the administration can now apply that label without much, if any, factual rigor.

MS-13 and Tren de Aragua, another gang the administration has designated as a foreign terrorist organization, are terrible. But the argument that they meet anything but a politically convenient definition of terrorist organizations is weak.

Much of the political argument over Abrego Garcia is what legal scholars might call “stupid.” The Trump administration and its supporters are going full tilt to paint Abrego Garcia as a vile and dangerous terrorist. Many Democrats, outraged by Trump’s methods, prefer benign descriptions like “Kilmar Abrego Garcia is an innocent man and the father of three,” as Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) put it.

This framing — “Abrego Garcia innocent and good” vs. “Abrego Garcia guilty and bad” — is what is so stupid. None of the relevant legal and constitutional issues have anything to do with whether this individual is good (or a father). By insisting that he is an innocent man, Democrats are implying that if he were not innocent, what the Trump administration has done to him would be unobjectionable.

The relevant questions are whether the administration has the power to bypass due process — a right conferred to even illegal immigrants — and whether it has to try to remedy the mistake it made in sending Abrego Garcia to a foreign prison.

The administration has contracted with the authoritarian Salvadoran government to take “terrorists” off our hands, but Trump officials also claim that they are powerless to retrieve anybody mistakenly sent there. Judges, including the nine on the Supreme Court, think this is problematic, because it is problematic.

The idea that the government can simply assert that people on American soil, possibly including American citizens or legal residents, are criminals or terrorists runs completely counter to our legal system. The government has broad authority to deport illegal immigrants. It also has the authority to put convicted criminals in any prison it deems appropriate. It doesn’t have any authority to put people in prison without first proving — in court — that they are charging the right person and then convicting them of a crime.

If you were snatched up by ICE by mistake, you would want a chance to prove they got the wrong person. That right goes by habeas corpus, which has been a keystone of Anglo-American law and the heart of due process for centuries. The administration doesn’t seem to know this — or care.

The Constitution is designed to limit abusive government power. That is the only relevant issue here. Consider the case of Ernesto Arturo Miranda. He was a truly awful person. But so what? His case gave us the “Miranda rights” that are read to suspects upon arrest. The only way to make sure innocent people get such protections is to make sure everyone gets them.

@JonahDispatch

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court justices sounded ready on Tuesday to give parents a constitutional right to opt out of public school lessons for their children that offend their religious beliefs.

At issue are new “LGBTQ-inclusive” storybooks used for classroom reading for pre-kindergarten to 5th grade in Montgomery County, Md., a suburb of Washington where three justices reside.

In recent years, the court’s six conservatives have invoked the “free exercise of religion” to protect Catholic schools from illegal job-bias claims from teachers and to give parents an equal right to use state grants to send their children to religious schools.

During an argument on Tuesday, they strongly suggested they would extend religious liberty rights to parents with children in public schools.

“They are not asking to change what is taught in the classroom,” Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh told an attorney for the court.

“As a lifelong resident of the county, I’m mystified at how it came to this. They had promised parents they would be notified and allow to opt out” if they objected to the new storybooks, he said. “But the next day, they changed the rule.”

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Neil M. Gorsuch also live in Montgomery County, and both have been reliable supporters of religious liberty claims.

Nearly every state, including Maryland and California, has a law that allows parents to opt out of sex education classes for their children.

When the new storybooks were introduced in the fall of 2022, parents were told their young children could be removed from those lessons. But when “unsustainably high numbers” of children were absent, the school board revoked the opt-out rule.

They explained this state rule applied to older students and sex education, but not to reading lessons for elementary children.

In reaction, a group of Muslim, Catholic and Ukrainian Orthodox parents filed a suit in federal court, seeking an order that would allow their children be removed from class during the reading lessons.

They said the books conflicted with the religious and moral views they taught their children.

A federal judge and the 4th Circuit Court refused to intervene. Those judges said the “free exercise” of religion protects people from being forced to change their conduct or their beliefs, neither of which were at issue in the school case.

But the Supreme Court voted to hear the parents’ appeal in the case of Mahmoud vs. Taylor.

Representing the parents, Eric Baxter, an attorney for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, stressed they “were not objecting to books being on the shelf or in the library. No student has a right to tell the school which books to choose,” he said. “Here, the school board is imposing indoctrination on these children.”

Alan Shoenfeld, an attorney for the school board, said its goal for the new storybooks was “to foster mutual respect. The lesson is that they should treat their peers with respect.”

He cautioned the court against adding a broad new right for parents and students to object to ideas or messages that offend them.

The Becket attorneys in their legal brief described seven books they found objectionable.

One of them, “Pride Puppy,” is a picture book directed at 3- and 4-year-olds. It “describes a Pride parade and what a child might find there,” they said. “The book invites students barely old enough to tie their own shoes to search for images of ‘underwear,’ ‘leather,’ ‘lip ring,’ [drag] king’ and [drag] queen.’”

Another — “Love, Violet” — is about two young girls and their same-sex playground romance.

“Born Ready” tells the story of a biological girl named Penelope who identifies as a boy.

“Intersection Allies” is a picture book also intended for early elementary school classes.

“It invites children to ponder what it means to be ‘transgender’ or ‘non-binary’ and asks ‘what pronouns fit you?’” they said. Teachers were told “to instruct students that, at birth, doctors ‘guess about our gender,’ but ‘[w]e know ourselves best.’”

They said teachers were instructed to “disrupt the either/or thinking” of elementary students about biological sex.

After the case reached the Supreme Court, two of the seven books were dropped by the school board, including “Pride Puppy.”

WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Marco Rubio unveiled a massive overhaul of the State Department on Tuesday, with plans to reduce staff in the U.S. by 15% while closing and consolidating more than 100 bureaus worldwide as part of the Trump administration’s “America First” mandate.

The reorganization plan, announced by Rubio on social media and detailed in documents obtained by the Associated Press, is the latest effort by the White House to reimagine U.S. foreign policy and scale back the size of the federal government.

“We cannot win the battle for the 21st century with bloated bureaucracy that stifles innovation and misallocates scarce resources,” Rubio said in a department-wide email obtained by the AP. “That is why, under the leadership of President Trump and at my direction, I am announcing a reorganization of the Department so it may meet the immense challenges of the 21st Century and put America First.”

Plans include consolidating 734 bureaus and offices to 602 as well as transitioning 137 offices “to another location within the Department to increase efficiency,” according to a fact sheet obtained by the AP.

There will also be a “reimagined” office focused on foreign and humanitarian affairs to coordinate the remaining foreign assistance programs left at State after the recent dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Some of the bureaus that are expected to be cut include the Office of Global Women’s Issues and the department’s diversity and inclusion efforts, which have been cut government-wide since President Trump took office in January. State is also expected to eliminate some offices previously under the Undersecretary of State for Civilian Security, Democracy, and Human Rights, but the fact sheet says that much of their work will continue in other sections of the department.

It is unclear whether the reorganization would be implemented through an executive order or other means. Draft reorganization proposals shared within the department in recent weeks outlined an even more drastic shift of priorities than the one revealed Tuesday. The official plans came a week after the AP learned that the White House’s Office of Management and Budget proposed gutting the State Department’s budget by almost 50% and eliminating funding for the United Nations and NATO headquarters.

The budget proposal was still in a highly preliminary phase and not expected to pass muster with Congress.

Ahead of the changes at the State Department, the Trump administration has been slashing jobs and funding across agencies, from the Education Department to Health and Human Services.

On foreign policy, beyond the destruction of USAID, State has also moved to defund so-called other “soft power” institutions such as media outlets delivering objective news, often to authoritarian countries, including the Voice of America, the Middle East Broadcasting Networks, Radio Free Asia and Radio/TV Marti, which broadcasts to Cuba.

Amiri and Lee write for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth pulled the airstrike information he posted into Signal chats with his wife, brother and dozens of others from a secure communications channel used by U.S. Central Command, raising new questions as to whether the embattled Pentagon head leaked classified information over an open, unsecured network.

NBC News first reported that the launch times and bomb drop times of U.S. warplanes that were about to strike Houthi targets in Yemen — details that multiple officials have said is highly classified — were taken from secure U.S. Central Command communications. A person familiar with the second chat confirmed that to the Associated Press.

The information posted in the second chat was identical to the sensitive operations details shared in the first chat, which included members of President Trump’s National Security Council, the person said.

The person spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear of reprisal for speaking to the press.

It’s the second chat involving Hegseth to be called into question

This is the second chat group in which Hegseth posted Yemen airstrike information. The first leaked Signal chat accidentally included the editor of the Atlantic magazine and led to an inspector general investigation in the Defense Department.

Hegseth has not directly acknowledged that he set up the second chat, which had more than a dozen people on it, including his wife, his lawyer and his brother Phil Hegseth, who was hired as a senior liaison to the Pentagon for the Department of Homeland Security. Instead, the secretary blamed the disclosure of the second Signal chat on leaks from disgruntled former staff members.

Hegseth has aggressively denied that the information he posted was classified. Regardless of that, Signal is a commercially available app that is encrypted but is not a government network and not authorized to carry classified information.

“I said repeatedly, nobody is texting war plans,” Hegseth told Fox News on Tuesday. “I look at war plans every day. What was shared over Signal then and now, however you characterize it, was informal, unclassified coordinations, for media coordinations and other things. That’s what I’ve said from the beginning.”

Former Defense secretary calls it a ‘serious’ breach

Based on the specificity of the launch times, that information would have been classified, former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told the AP in a phone interview.

“It is unheard of to have a secretary of Defense committing these kind of serious security breaches,” said Panetta, who served during the Obama administration, and who was director of the Central Intelligence Agency during Obama’s first term. “Developing attack plans for defensive reasons is without question the most classified information you can have.”

The news comes as Hegseth has shaken up much of his inner circle. He is said to have become increasingly isolated and suspicious about whom he can trust, and is relying on an increasingly smaller and smaller circle of people.

In the last week, he has fired or transferred six of his inner support circle, including Hegseth aide Dan Caldwell; the chief of staff to Deputy Defense Secretary Stephen Feinberg, Colin Carroll; and Hegseth’s deputy chief of staff, Darin Selnick.

Those three were escorted out of the Pentagon as the department hunts down leaks of inside information. In his “Fox and Friends” interview Tuesday, an agitated Hegseth accused those staff members — whom he had worked with and known for years — of “attempting to leak and sabotage” the administration.

Hegseth confirmed Tuesday that chief of staff Joe Kasper would be transitioning to a new position. Former Pentagon chief spokesman Sean Parnell is also temporarily shifting to a more direct support role for Hegseth, and former Pentagon spokesman John Ullyot announced he was resigning last week, unrelated to the leaks. The Pentagon said, however, that Ullyot was asked to resign.

Copp writes for the Associated Press.

NEW YORK — A New York judge has ordered city officials to temporarily halt a plan allowing federal immigration agents to operate within the Rikers Island jail complex ahead of a hearing later this week.

In a written order Monday, Judge Mary Rosado barred the city from “taking any steps toward negotiating, signing, or implementing any Memorandum of Understanding with the federal government” before an April 25 hearing in a suit challenging the plan.

That hearing will focus on a lawsuit brought last week by the New York City Council against Mayor Eric Adams that seeks to block his recent executive order permitting U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other federal agencies to maintain office space at the jail complex.

The suit accuses Adams, a Democrat, of entering into a “corrupt quid pro quo bargain” with the Trump administration in exchange for the Justice Department dropping criminal charges against him.

Adams has repeatedly denied making any deal with the administration over the criminal case. He has said the presence of ICE and other federal agencies within the jail complex will allow them to assist in gang and drug-related investigations but that they would have no role in civil immigration enforcement.

A spokesperson for Adams said the city would not execute any agreement with the Trump administration ahead of the hearing.

Adams previously announced he would deputize his first deputy mayor, Randy Mastro, to handle all decision-making on the return of ICE to Rikers Island in order to “ensure there was never even the appearance of any conflict.”

Mastro said last week that discussions with the federal government over the plan were ongoing.

ICE agents previously had a presence at the Rikers Island facility, which is on a hard-to-reach island in the East River. But they were effectively banned from operating there in 2014 under New York City’s sanctuary laws limiting cooperation with immigration enforcement.

“The Council stands firm in our efforts to protect the rights and safety of all New Yorkers against attacks by the Trump administration and its agents,” said Julia Agos, a spokesperson for City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, who is running for mayor. “We appreciate Judge Rosado’s decision to prevent any negotiation or execution on an agreement between the administration and federal agencies until this Friday’s hearing to ensure communities are protected.”

Offenhartz writes for the Associated Press.

A number of otherwise skeptical senators took at face value the pledge by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. at Senate hearings in January to “follow the science” on issues related to the causes of disease in the U.S., helping him receive confirmation as secretary of Health and Human Services.

As he demonstrated last week at his very first news conference as the government’s top healthcare official, he was blowing smoke.

The topic was what he described as an “alarming … epidemic” of autism, supposedly documented by a new report by the Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring Network of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

His advice was to ignore what decades of scientific research have established as contributors to the reported increase in autism prevalence. These include genetic factors; the ever-broadening definition of autism itself, now known as autism spectrum disorder, or ASD; and vastly improved screening programs nationwide.

The inescapable conclusion is that Kennedy’s HHS is in the grip of a pseudoscience revolution in which misinformation and disinformation are ascendant. The cost to scientific research generally and to households caring for those with chronic conditions such as ASD is incalculable.

Kennedy’s words left much of the autism community aghast. At both his news conference and an accompanying HHS press release, “Kennedy repeated false claims that autism was a ‘preventable’ ‘epidemic’” and that the CDC report’s findings “could not be explained by improved access to screening,” stated the Autistic Self Advocacy Network. ASAN accused Kennedy of having “cherry-picked” data and having misinterpreted basic science.

“It’s not that the amount of autism in the population has changed,” the network’s statement said — “it’s that more people are getting the tools necessary to get a diagnosis.”

Observes Holden Thorp, the editor of Science, who disclosed last year that he was diagnosed with autism at the age of 53 (he’s now 60), “almost everything in the CDC report talked about better identification and better diagnosis being the source of the increase. … The main recommendation is to get people more access to services.”

I asked HHS to provide me with Kennedy’s response to these and other criticisms, but didn’t receive a response.

Kennedy’s words were so averse to understanding the truth about autism that they deserve to be set forth here in some detail. To a great extent, they’re refuted by the CDC report itself, which Kennedy referred to repeatedly at his news conference. The CDC estimated the rate of autism in the general population at about one in 31 children born in 2014. That’s a higher rate than was found even two years earlier.

But it doesn’t amount to an “epidemic” that is “running rampant,” as Kennedy said. He said “most cases now are severe,” which is untrue. In fact, the vast majority of new cases involve children without the intellectual disabilities often associated with stereotypical autistic behavior, such as sensitivities to touch and an absence of verbal skills. The prevalence of more severe cases has actually declined in recent years, according to a 2023 study from Rutgers.

Kennedy took special aim at what he called “the ideology that … the relentless autism prevalence increases are simply artifacts of better diagnoses, better recognition or changing diagnostic criteria.” He said “this epidemic denial has become a feature in the mainstream media and it’s based on an industry canard” perpetrated by “people who don’t want us to look at environmental exposures.”

Well, no. The contributions made by updated diagnostic standards and improved screening to changes in prevalence rates aren’t concoctions of the media, but findings from professional research — including the CDC report.

Kennedy scoffed at research that has established a genetic component to autism, even though such findings have been conclusive; he implied that spending on such studies is a waste of money because the research is a “dead end.”

He painted a dire picture of the lives of autistic people. “Autism destroys families,” he said. “These are kids who will never pay taxes, never hold a job, they’ll never play baseball, they’ll never write a poem, they’ll never go out on a date, many of them will never use a toilet unassisted.”

Kennedy’s fans played the “what he really meant to say” game on social media, arguing that he was referring only to the most seriously impaired. But that distinction wasn’t clearly made either in the HHS press release or at Kennedy’s news conference. Just to be plain, given Kennedy’s effort to shroud autistic people in stigma, many pay taxes. Many hold jobs. Many play baseball. Many write poetry, go on dates, don’t need help to use a toilet.

Put it all together, and Kennedy’s performance raises urgent questions about whether he understands autism at all or is just using it as a stalking horse to promote his assertion that “environmental toxins” are the root of chronic diseases.

Kennedy’s erroneous ideas about autism aren’t new. He has long favored the long-debunked claim that autism is related to childhood vaccinations. He didn’t specifically mention vaccines during his appearance, but more than once he claimed that “someone is putting environmental toxins into … our medicines.”

What medicines have most children received by their second birthday, when autism is commonly diagnosed? Vaccines, that’s what. See what he’s getting at?

Kennedy seemed impervious to the findings of scientific researchers. That was the conclusion of Peter Hotez, a leading vaccine expert whose daughter Rachel is autistic. In 2017, the National Institutes of Health asked Hotez to meet with Kennedy to move him off the hobbyhorse of a vaccine-autism link. “I couldn’t engage him,” Hotez told me. “But he was so deeply dug in about vaccines that he wasn’t interested in listening.”

What’s behind the rise in autism rates? Contrary to RFK Jr.’s claim, it’s mostly among milder cases without intellectual disability (blue line), not among severely disabled autistic people (green line), where rates are actually dropping.

(American Academic of Pediatrics)

His encounter with Kennedy was what prompted Hotez to write his 2018 book “Vaccines Did Not Cause Rachel’s Autism.”

The truth is that researchers have made great strides in unearthing the causes and characteristics of autism. They’ve identified some genetic anomalies that lead to a predisposition to the spectrum.

Scientists at the University of North Carolina, Stanford and UC Davis have found unusual prenatal growth patterns in the brain that appear to correlate with ASD diagnoses in early childhood, though it’s unclear what triggers that growth. Some have found evidence of environmental factors, chiefly experienced by women in pregnancy, though some question whether any such factors can be primary determinants of ASD.

Kennedy would have been well-advised to spend more time reading his own agency’s report before citing it at his news conference. That’s because it refuted much of what he claimed.

To begin with, the report took a more nuanced view of autism than the horrific picture he painted of autism sufferers. Throughout, it refers to ASD — “autism spectrum disorder” — rather than painting it as “autism” with a single broad brush, as he did. The report explicitly states that the change in reported prevalence of ASD “can reflect differing practices in ASD evaluation and identification,” as well as differences in the availability of services for autistic people and their families.

Among other factors, the report states that ASD diagnoses among Black, Hispanic and other ethnic groups have increased because those “previously underserved groups” have received “increased access to … identification services” in recent years. That has certainly contributed to the apparent increase in ASD prevalence overall.

Until about 10 years ago, the report notes, the highest prevalence of ASD was found among white children and those from wealthier neighborhoods, plainly those with both the incentive to track their children’s intellectual development and the best resources to obtain services. (Access to health insurance covering autism diagnosis and treatment also correlated with prevalence rates, the CDC found.) Black, Hispanic and other ethnic groups have been catching up.

The report further documented how reported rates of ASD are related to differing approaches to screening and diagnostic services among states and local communities. The reported ASD rate was 9.7 per 1,000 children in Texas, but 53.1 in California.

Why would it be so high in California? The report notes that California has trained local pediatricians to screen and refer children for assessment as early as possible — at an average of 36 months, compared with the Texas average of nearly 70 months — which “could result in higher identification of ASD, especially at early ages.” California, moreover, has established “regional centers throughout the state that provide evaluations and service coordination for persons with disabilities and their families.”

What is Kennedy’s endgame here? He portrays himself as a seeker of scientific truth, but throughout his news conference he denigrated scientists for purportedly ignoring what he said were clear signals of an autism epidemic rendering “thousands of profoundly disabled children somehow invisible.” In doing so, he overlooked decades of fruitful research efforts aimed at uncovering the causes and nature of autism.

He left the impression that research into genetic or prenatal causes will get short shrift in grants from the National Institutes of Health, which comes under his jurisdiction. Instead, he’ll favor studies aimed at identifying specific environmental toxins, although their significance is unclear. He has already indicated that he plans to revive research tying vaccines to autism, though that connection consistently has been disproved.

Perhaps most disturbing is that Kennedy showed almost no awareness of the diversity of ASD — and the contribution that it has made to humanity. “Some neurodivergent people are meticulously observant and are able to connect seemingly disparate concepts — assets in the world of science,” Thorp wrote in connection with his own diagnosis. “Neurodiversity scholars and advocates have stressed that autistic thinkers are responsible for many innovations and advances across human history.”

There’s reason to fear that Kennedy’s quest for a cause or even a cure for autism will shoulder aside other research more important for those with ASD. As Emily Hotez, Rachel Hotez’s older sister and a leading autism researcher at UCLA, noted in an article she co-wrote after the CDC report’s release, the effort to identify autism’s cause has overlooked “something far more urgent: improving the lives of autistic people and their families, here and now.”

Just days before beginning his second term as president, Donald Trump called Hollywood “a great but very troubled place.”

Then, with his usual aplomb and bombast, he named Jon Voight, Sylvester Stallone and Mel Gibson to be his “special ambassadors.” The actors would be his “eyes and ears, and I will get done what they suggest,” he wrote on his Truth Social platform.

Hollywood had “lost much business over the last four years to Foreign Countries,” said Trump, and his trio of envoys will help bring it “back — bigger, better, and stronger than ever before!”

Four months later, many of those who work in Hollywood — industry players and officials who have been actively engaged in efforts to boost production — say as far as Trump’s envoys are concerned, it has been mostly “crickets.”

While the administration has taken a protectionist stance on American manufacturing and business, implementing a slew of global tariffs, it has not made any further announcements regarding the Hollywood envoys, their roles, goals or priorities to revitalize the struggling entertainment industry here.

The ambassadors themselves have, for the most part, kept a low profile.

“We have reached out to all three and never heard back,” said Pamala Buzick Kim, co-founder of Stay in LA, a grassroots campaign aimed at spurring local film and TV production.

She said the lack of communication has left many wondering whether Trump’s envoys are “just a bumper sticker, or are they going to, actually understand what the needs and issues, are and fight for the industry as a whole here in the States?”

A spokesperson for the California Film Commission said its executive director, Colleen Bell, had a “productive” conversation with Voight, but did not elaborate on their discussion.

An individual involved with Mayor Karen Bass’ entertainment business task force formed last year, who was not authorized to speak publicly, said they were unaware of any contact with the envoys.

Others, including the Motion Picture Assn., which represents the major media companies and streamers, declined to comment on whether they have had any interaction with Trump’s ambassadors.

“I haven’t heard of anyone having any outreach from anyone from that group,” said Rep. Laura Friedman (D-Glendale), a former film producer and a longtime advocate for the entertainment industry.

Friedman announced a new push to bolster production earlier this month with members of various Hollywood unions and 10 other members of Congress. “It doesn’t seem like a serious effort to me,” she said.

The White House declined to comment.

Trump’s announcement did put a national spotlight on the homegrown film industry, which continues to struggle to rebound following a trifecta of hits: the pandemic, labor strikes and more recently, the wildfires.

More problematic, California has lost its competitive edge as film crews continue to be enticed by generous incentives — leading to an exodus of productions to hubs like Georgia and New Mexico and countries including Australia, Britain and Canada.

While Gov. Gavin Newsom has proposed raising the amount of money allocated annually to California’s film and TV tax credit program to $750 million from $330 million, the state legislature has yet to approve the measure and the industry remains under pressure.

In the first quarter of this year, on-location production dropped 22.4% compared to the same period last year, according to a report released in April by the nonprofit organization FilmLA, which tracks shoot days in the Greater Los Angeles region.

“I think part of the problem with California is they came to take this industry for granted a little bit,” Ben Affleck told the Associated Press in an interview last week while promoting his latest film, “The Accountant 2,” in Los Angeles.

Within the industry, the surprise appointment of the three actors as the president’s special emissaries was received with a mixture of shock, bemusement and eye rolls.

“When they were announced, I think we were all curious about what those three think and what they think is the issue,” said Buzick Kim. “Because I don’t know if any of them have a history of speaking out on this front.”

Indeed, it appears that no one was more taken aback by the appointment than the actors themselves.

“I got the tweet at the same time as all of you and was just as surprised. Nevertheless, I heed the call. My duty as a citizen is to give any help and insight I can,” said Gibson in a statement. “Any chance the position comes with an Ambassador’s residence?” he quipped, in reference to the loss of his Malibu properties in the wildfires.

Neither Stallone nor Voight has commented publicly. Representatives for the actors did not respond to requests for comment.

Following his appointment as ambassador, Voight’s longtime business partner Steven Paul, an independent film producer and chairman/chief executive of SP Media Group, issued a press release saying that the actor had tapped him as a “special advisor.” Along with Voight’s fellow ambassadors, “we will be working within the industry to find ways to bring runaway productions back to America while working with the government to explore a potential federal tax incentive tied to a pro-American cultural standard, among other initiatives that support independent American productions,” the statement said.

Voight, Paul and Trump had discussed a new “America First” initiative pertaining to film production over dinner in February, according to the statement.

A representative for Paul said he was not immediately available for comment.

All three Hollywood emissaries have been avid supporters of the president: Voight attended events at both inaugurations, Stallone has visited Mar-a-Lago and Gibson, who has a history of making racist and antisemitic remarks (for which he later apologized), ridiculed Kamala Harris during the election, saying she had “the IQ of a fence post.”

They all generated celebrity wattage during the 1980s (said to be Trump’s favorite decade) — Voight was nominated for an Oscar for “Runaway Train.” It was an era when mainstream action films rose to prominence in popular culture (think Stallone’s “Rambo” and Gibson’s “Lethal Weapon” franchises) that promoted the idea of American strength and masculinity.

None has been known to be particularly involved in the nuts and bolts of Hollywood production issues of tax incentives and permits.

For the past three years, Stallone has starred in the Taylor Sheridan drama “Tulsa King,” about a New York mobster who sets up shop in Oklahoma after his release from prison. Incidentally, the Paramount+ series was originally called “Kansas City Mob” and was set to film in Missouri, until it received a more than $14 million rebate to shoot episodes of the first season in Oklahoma City.

Although Trump’s announcement has largely been met with skepticism in liberal Hollywood, many see this as an opportunity to bring needed attention to an important American industry.

“I don’t know if any one of those three can move the needle but the fact that it’s being discussed at the federal level is a positive,” said Gregg Bilson, whose Sunland-based ISS Props has served the industry for three generations.

Bilson is a member of the California Production Coalition, a group that voices the concerns of the small businesses serving the film and TV industry.

While few believe the actors will roll up their sleeves on the issues — at least so far — their appointment has renewed interest in the idea of implementing federal tax credits.

“If Trump is willing to fight for all these other industries with tariffs, what’s he doing for us? What’s he doing to ensure that our jobs are protected here in the United States?” asked Rachel Cannon, an actress who starred on “Fresh Off the Boat. ” She later moved back to Oklahoma City, where she founded Prairie Surf Studios and more recently Rock Paper Cannon, a venture to bring television production to Oklahoma.

Cannon, a production advocate who helped recruit “Tulsa King” and the film “Twisters” to Oklahoma, sees a federal incentive as a path to making the American film industry more competitive with nations whose generous rebates have shifted the axis of power away from Hollywood to the U.K., Canada and other countries.

“I think what we really need to be doing is banding together and asking for a federal rebate program that can stack, because that can help subsidize these productions to stay in America. States can only offer so much that you need to have some federal support,” she said.

Friedman, who has long supported the idea of a federal film tax credit, agrees.

“L.A. still has to be that dream factory, that place where people go to make it in the movies or TV. That’s incredibly important to our local economy,” she said. “But we also have to recognize that we are losing not just to other states, but we’re losing to other nations. And we have to do something about that.”

For now, everyone is waiting to see if Trump and his chosen trio.

“I don’t know how much Trump has really drilled into the desire for that program that he said he wants to keep Hollywood here at home,” Cannon said. “I just want to make sure there’s a policy that follows up to ensure that it happens because, throwing out a press release with nothing behind it — it’s not going to help us.”

Washington bureau chief Michael Wilner contributed to this report

A growing number of Southeast Asian immigrants in Los Angeles and Orange counties whose deportation orders have been on indefinite hold for years are being detained, and in some cases, deported after showing up for routine check-ins at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement offices, according to immigrant attorneys and advocacy groups.

In recent months, a number of Cambodian, Laotian and Vietnamese immigrants have been told that deportation orders that had been stayed — in some cases for decades — are now being enforced as the Trump administration seeks to increase the number of deportations.

The immigrants being targeted are generally people who were convicted of a crime after arriving in the U.S., making them eligible for deportation after their release from jail or prison. In most cases, ICE never followed through with the deportations because the immigrants had lived in the U.S. long enough that their home countries no longer recognized them as citizens, or as is the case with Laos, the home country does not readily issue repatriation documents.

Instead, under longstanding policies, these immigrants have been allowed to remain in the U.S. with the condition that they checked in with ICE agents regularly to show they were working and staying out of trouble. The check-ins generally start out monthly, but over time become an annual visit.

According to the Asian Law Caucus, as of 2024 there were roughly 15,100 Cambodians, Laotians and Vietnamese nationals living in this situation across the U.S.

“People are very worried about their check-ins. They are dedicated to complying with their reporting requirements and want to continue to comply as they have been doing for years, but they are also afraid to report based on what they have seen on the news,” said Lee Ann Felder-Heim, a staff attorney at the Asian Law Caucus.

Connie Chung Joe, the chief executive of Asian Americans Advancing Justice Southern California, said that in the last month her organization has been made aware of at least 17 community members in Los Angeles and Orange counties who have gone in for scheduled check-ins, only to be detained or deported.

“These are folks who’ve been here for decades,” Chung Joe said. “It just breaks the community and their families apart.”

Orange County is home to the largest diaspora of Vietnamese outside of their home country, many of them refugees who fled the fall of Saigon. The county’s Little Saigon is home to more than 100,000 Vietnamese Americans. In addition, tens of thousands of Cambodians and Laotians have settled in the Los Angeles area, according to the Pew Research Center.

Many Southeast Asian refugees were brought over as children, and not all got adequate support as they coped with the upheaval, said Laura Urias, program director at Immigrant Defenders Law Center. Some fell in with gangs as they struggled to assimilate, and that’s when they got caught up in the criminal system.

Although they may have gotten in trouble as youths, Urias said, many served their time and went on to get jobs and put down roots.

In one instance, a Cambodian immigrant went in for his ICE check-in and came out with an order to produce a plane ticket to Cambodia within 60 days, she said. Urias said none of the center’s clients have been deported at this point, but that she has heard about people without legal representation who were deported after a check-in.

“It’s definitely something that we haven’t really seen before,” Urias said. “It aligns with the overall message that this administration came in with — threatening to deport as many people as possible.”

The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, did not respond to a list of questions from The Times about the reasons behind the policy shift and whether the immigrants’ home countries will accept them.

Urias said she suspects that the Trump administration’s looming tariff threats have made some countries more willing to cooperate and accept deportees.

Richard Wilner said his firm, Wilner & O’Reilly, in Orange, has seen an uptick in requests for consultations from the families of immigrants who have been detained. His firm does not take on clients who have been convicted of serious crimes such as sexual offenses and murder.

“In the past two weeks, I’ve gotten more phone calls than I have in the past 15 years or longer, because people are getting arrested,” he said.

He added that he hasn’t been able to figure out why some immigrants with delayed deportation orders are being targeted for removal and not others.

“These are people with outstanding orders of deportation, some of whom have gone on to lead remarkable lives, started families, businesses, good folks. Others have gone on to re-offend,” he said. “I don’t know what the parameters are, because not everyone is getting snatched up at check-in.”

BOSTON — Harvard University announced Monday that it was suing the Trump administration to halt a freeze on more than $2.2 billion in grants after the institution said it would defy the administration’s demands to limit activism on campus.

In a letter to Harvard this month, the White House had called for broad government and leadership reforms at the university, as well as changes to its admissions policies. It also demanded the university audit views of diversity on campus, and stop recognizing some student clubs.

Harvard President Alan Garber said the university would not bend to the government’s demands. Hours later, the government froze billions of dollars in federal funding.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass released a proposed budget on Monday that would eliminate a nearly $1-billion financial gap by cutting more than 2,700 city positions — about 1,650 of them through layoffs.

The $14-billion spending plan, which covers the 2025-26 fiscal year, would provide funding for scores of new hires at the Fire Department, three months after the Palisades fire destroyed thousands of homes and killed 12 people.

However, many other agencies would face deep spending reductions, with layoffs hitting 5% of the workforce as the city copes with rising personnel costs, soaring legal payouts and a slowdown in the local economy.

At the Los Angeles Police Department, more than 400 workers would be targeted for layoffs, all of them civilians, according to figures prepared by city budget officials. The number of police officers would continue on its gradual downward trajectory, with new hires failing to keep pace with attrition.

By July 1, 2026, the LAPD would have 8,639 officers — the lowest level since 1995, according to city budget officials.

Five years ago, the department had about 10,000 officers. Last week, the department reported that it had 8,735.

Bass, during her State of the City address on Monday, described the layoff strategy as “a decision of absolute last resort.” In recent weeks, she and other city officials have been lobbying Gov. Gavin Newsom and the state Legislature to provide a relief package that would stave off most or even all of those job cuts.

The mayor is scheduled to make another trip to Sacramento on Wednesday.

“I believe there are some solutions, like from the state, that will help us so that we don’t have to do layoffs ultimately,” Bass said last week at an event hosted by Black Lives Matter-Los Angeles.

Nearly 1,100 of the positions targeted for elimination by Bass are already vacant, city budget officials said.

The mayor’s spending plan heads to the City Council’s budget committee for several weeks of deliberations. If the council does not change course and state financial aid fails to materialize, the city would lay off an estimated 62 workers in the Animal Services Department, which has struggled to provide humane care for its animals.

More than 260 workers in the Transportation Department have been targeted for layoffs, according to city budget officials. An additional 159 layoffs are planned at the Bureau of Sanitation, which handles trash pickup and the removal of bulky items such as mattresses and couches from the curb. At the Bureau of Street Services, which oversees street repairs, the mayor’s budget recommends 130 layoffs, according to a summary prepared by city budget analysts.

On Monday, one union leader vowed to stop those cuts from happening.

“We’re going to fight every single layoff. Even one layoff is too many,” said David Green, president of Service Employees International Union Local 721, which represents more than 10,000 city workers.

Green said his union is putting together a coalition of labor leaders to head to Sacramento to voice their support for Bass’ request for state financial assistance.

Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez, who represents part of the Eastside, also voiced alarm at the planned reductions.

“It already takes us 10 years to fix the sidewalk, five years to put in a full handicapped curb, a year to fix a streetlight. We can’t afford to slow down city services any longer,” she said.

Raises scheduled for the workforce in the coming fiscal year are expected to add about $250 million in costs. Meanwhile, City Administrative Officer Matt Szabo recently called for the city to budget an additional $100 million to cover the costs of legal settlements and jury awards.

The City Council began taking steps to address the budget gap in recent weeks, voting to approve a major hike in the trash fees collected from single-family homes and apartments with up to four units. That increase is expected to generate as much as $90 million in the upcoming budget year.

The mayor’s spending plan does protect some core services. Hours at libraries and recreation centers will be maintained, according to the mayor’s budget team.

Szabo, the top municipal budget analyst, said the spending plan would provide the Fire Department with money to hire an additional 227 employees, roughly half of them firefighters. As part of that expansion, the department would create a new program for addressing homelessness, one that includes street medicine teams.

Bass’ budget calls for the city to combine several smaller agencies into a single entity. Under her proposal, the Department of Aging, the Youth Development Department and the Economic and Workforce Development Department would be merged into the Community and Investment Department.

The city would also shut down citizen commissions that focus on health, innovation and climate change.