POLITICS

ST. PAUL, Minn. — Former Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman laid in state in the Minnesota Capitol rotunda on Friday while the man charged with killing her and her husband, and wounding a state senator and his wife, made a brief court appearance in a suicide prevention suit.

Hortman, a Democrat, is the first woman and one of fewer than 20 Minnesotans accorded the honor. She laid in state with her husband, Mark, and their golden retriever, Gilbert. Her husband was also killed in the June 14 attack, and Gilbert was seriously wounded and had to be euthanized. It was the first time a couple has laid in state at the Capitol, and the first time for a dog.

The Hortmans’ caskets and the dog’s urn were arranged in the center of the rotunda, under the Capitol dome, with law enforcement officers keeping watch on either side.

The Capitol was open for the public to pay their respects from noon to 5 p.m. Friday. House TV was livestreaming the viewing. A private funeral is set for 10:30 a.m. Saturday. The service will be livestreamed on the Department of Public Safety’s YouTube channel.

Former Vice President Kamala Harris will fly to Minnesota for the funeral but won’t have a speaking role, according to her personal office. Harris expressed her condolences this past week to Hortman’s adult children, and spoke with Gov. Tim Walz, her 2024 running mate, who extended an invitation on behalf of the Hortman family, her office said.

His hearing takes a twist

The man accused of killing the Hortmans and wounding another Democratic lawmaker and his wife made a short court appearance Friday to face charges for what the chief federal prosecutor for Minnesota has called “a political assassination.” Vance Boelter, 57, of Green Isle, surrendered near his home the night of June 15 after what authorities have called the largest search in Minnesota history.

An unshaven Boelter was brought in wearing just a green padded suicide prevention suit and orange slippers. Federal defender Manny Atwal asked Magistrate Judge Douglas Micko to continue the hearing until next Thursday. She said Boelter has been sleep deprived while on suicide watch in the Sherburne County Jail, and that it has been difficult to communicate with him as a result.

“Your honor, I haven’t really slept in about 12 to 14 days,” Boelter told the judge. And he denied being suicidal. “I’ve never been suicidal and I am not suicidal now.”

Atwal told the court that Boelter had been in what’s known as a “Gumby suit,” without undergarments, ever since his transfer to the jail after his first court appearance on June 16. She said the lights are on in his area 24 hours a day, doors slam frequently, the inmate in the next cell spreads feces on the walls, and the smell drifts to Boelter’s cell.

The attorney said transferring him to segregation instead, and giving him a normal jail uniform, would let him get some sleep, restore some dignity, and let him communicate better. The judge agreed.

Prosecutors did not object to the delay and said they also had concerns about the jail conditions.

The acting U.S. attorney for Minnesota, Joseph Thompson, told reporters afterward that he did not think Boelter had attempted to kill himself.

The case continues

Boelter did not enter a plea. Prosecutors need to secure a grand jury indictment first, before his arraignment, which is when a plea is normally entered.

According to the federal complaint, police video shows Boelter outside the Hortmans’ home and captures the sound of gunfire. And it says security video shows Boelter approaching the front doors of two other lawmakers’ homes dressed as a police officer.

His lawyers have declined to comment on the charges, which could carry the federal death penalty. Thompson said last week that no decision has been made. Minnesota abolished its death penalty in 1911. The Death Penalty Information Center says a federal death penalty case hasn’t been prosecuted in Minnesota in the modern era, as best as it can tell.

Boelter also faces separate murder and attempted murder charges in state court that could carry life without parole, assuming that county prosecutors get their own indictment for first-degree murder. But federal authorities intend to use their power to try Boelter first.

Other victims and alleged targets

Authorities say Boelter shot and wounded Democratic state Sen. John Hoffman, and his wife, Yvette, at their home in Champlin before shooting and killing the Hortmans in their home in the northern Minneapolis suburb of Brooklyn Park, a few miles away.

Federal prosecutors allege Boelter also stopped at the homes of two other Democratic lawmakers. Prosecutors also say he listed dozens of other Democrats as potential targets, including officials in other states. Friends described Boelter as an evangelical Christian with politically conservative views. But prosecutors have declined so far to speculate on a motive.

Boelter’s wife speaks out

Boelter’s wife, Jenny, issued a statement through her own lawyers Thursday saying she and her children are “absolutely shocked, heartbroken and completely blindsided,” and expressing sympathy for the Hortman and Hoffman families. She is not in custody and has not been charged.

“This violence does not align at all with our beliefs as a family,” her statement said. “It is a betrayal of everything we hold true as tenets of our Christian faith. We are appalled and horrified by what occurred and our hearts are incredibly heavy for the victims of this unfathomable tragedy.”

An FBI agent’s affidavit described the Boelters as “preppers,” people who prepare for major or catastrophic incidents. Investigators seized 48 guns from his home, according to search warrant documents.

While the FBI agent’s affidavit said law enforcement stopped Boelter’s wife as she traveled with her four children north of the Twin Cities in Onamia on the day of the shootings, she said in her statement that she was not pulled over. She said that after she got a call from authorities, she immediately drove to meet them at a nearby gas station and has fully cooperated with investigators.

“We thank law enforcement for apprehending Vance and protecting others from further harm,” she said.

Karnowski writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Friday put off ruling on a second Black majority congressional district in Louisiana, instead ordering new arguments in the fall.

The case is being closely watched because at arguments in March several of the court’s conservative justices suggested they could vote to throw out the map and make it harder, if not impossible, to bring redistricting lawsuits under the Voting Rights Act.

The case involves the interplay between race and politics in drawing political boundaries in front of a conservative-led court that has been skeptical of considerations of race in public life.

Justice Clarence Thomas noted in a brief dissent from Friday’s order that he would have decided the case now and imposed limits on “race-based redistricting.”

The order keeps alive a fight over political power stemming from the 2020 census halfway to the next one. Two maps were blocked by lower courts, and the Supreme Court intervened twice. Last year, the justices ordered the new map to be used in the 2024 elections, while the legal case proceeded.

The call for new arguments probably means that the district currently represented by Democratic Rep. Cleo Fields probably will remain intact for the 2026 elections because the high court has separately been reluctant to upend districts as elections draw near.

The state has changed its election process to replace its so-called jungle primary with partisan primary elections in the spring, followed by a November showdown between the party nominees.

The change means candidates can start gathering signatures in September to get on the primary ballot for 2026.

The state’s Republican-dominated legislature drew a new congressional map in 2022 to account for population shifts reflected in the 2020 census. But the changes effectively maintained the status quo of five Republican-leaning majority white districts and one Democratic-leaning majority Black district in a state in which Black people make up a third of the population.

Civil rights advocates won a lower-court ruling that the districts likely discriminated against Black voters.

The Supreme Court put the ruling on hold while it took a similar case from Alabama. The justices allowed both states to use congressional maps in the 2022 elections even though both had been ruled likely discriminatory by federal judges.

The high court eventually affirmed the ruling from Alabama, which led to a new map and a second district that could elect a Black lawmaker. The justices returned the Louisiana case to federal court, with the expectation that new maps would be in place for the 2024 elections.

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals gave lawmakers in Louisiana a deadline of early 2024 to draw a new map or face the possibility of a court-imposed map.

The state complied and drew a new map, with two Black majority districts.

But white Louisiana voters claimed in their separate lawsuit challenging the new districts that race was the predominant factor driving the new map. A three-judge court agreed.

Louisiana appealed that ruling to the Supreme Court.

SACRAMENTO — California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed on Friday a budget that pares back a number of progressive priorities, including a landmark healthcare expansion for low-income adult immigrants without legal status, to close a $12-billion deficit.

It’s the third year in a row the nation’s most populous state has been forced to slash funding or stop some of the programs championed by Democratic leaders. Lawmakers passed the budget earlier in the day following an agreement of a $321-billion spending plan between Newsom and Democratic leaders.

But the whole budget will be void if lawmakers don’t send him legislation to make it easier to build housing by Monday.

The budget avoids some of the most devastating cuts to essential safety net programs, state leaders said. They mostly relied on using state savings, borrowing from special funds and delaying payments to plug the budget hole.

“It’s balanced, it maintains substantial reserves, and it’s focused on supporting Californians,” Newsom said in a statement about the budget.

California also faces potential federal cuts to healthcare programs and broad economic uncertainty that could force even deeper cuts. Newsom in May estimated that federal policies — including on tariffs and immigration enforcement — could reduce state tax revenue by $16 billion.

“We’ve had to make some tough decisions,” Senate President Pro Tempore Mike McGuire said Friday. “I know we’re not going to please everyone, but we’re doing this without any new taxes on everyday Californians.”

Republican lawmakers said they were left out of budget negotiations. They also criticized Democrats for not doing enough to address future deficits, which could range between $17 billion to $24 billion annually.

“We’re increasing borrowing, we’re taking away from the rainy day fund, and we’re not reducing our spending,” said Republican state Sen. Tony Strickland prior to the vote. “And this budget also does nothing about affordability in California.”

Here’s a look at spending in key areas:

Healthcare

Under the budget deal, California will stop enrolling new adult patients without legal status in its state-funded healthcare program for low-income people starting 2026. The state will also implement a $30 monthly premium July 2027 for immigrants remaining on the program, including some with legal status. The premiums would apply to adults under 60 years old.

The changes to the program, known as Medi-Cal, are a scaled-back version of Newsom’s proposal in May. Still, it’s a major blow to an ambitious program started last year to help the state inch closer to a goal of universal healthcare.

Democratic state Sen. María Elena Durazo broke with her party and voted “no” on the healthcare changes, calling them a betrayal of immigrant communities.

The deal also removes $78 million in funding for mental health phone lines, including a program that served 100,000 people annually. It will eliminate funding that helps pay for dental services for low-income people in 2026 and delay implementation of legislation requiring health insurance to cover fertility services by six months to 2026.

But lawmakers also successfully pushed back on several proposed cuts from Newsom that they called “draconian.”

The deal secures funding for a program providing in-home domestic and personal care services for some low-income residents and Californians with disabilities. It also avoids cuts to Planned Parenthood.

Environment

Lawmakers agreed to let the state tap $1 billion from its cap-and-trade program to fund state firefighting efforts. The cap-and-trade program is a market-based system aimed at reducing carbon emissions. Companies have to buy credits to pollute, and that money goes into a fund lawmakers are supposed to tap for climate-related spending.

Newsom wanted to reauthorize the program through 2045, with a guarantee that $1 billion would annually go to the state’s long-delayed high-speed rail project. The budget doesn’t make that commitment, as lawmakers wanted to hash out spending plans outside of the budget process. The rail project currently receives 25% of the cap-and-trade proceeds, which is roughly $1 billion annually depending on the year.

Legislative leaders also approved funding to help transition part-time firefighters into full-time positions. Many state firefighters only work nine months each year, which lawmakers said harms the state’s ability to prevent and fight wildfires. The deal includes $10 million to increase the daily wage for incarcerated firefighters, who earn $5.80 to $10.24 a day currently.

Public safety

The budget agreement will provide $80 million to help implement a tough-on-crime initiative voters overwhelmingly approved last year. The measure makes shoplifting a felony for repeat offenders, increases penalties for some drug charges and gives judges the authority to order people with multiple drug charges into treatment.

Most of the fund, $50 million, will help counties build more behavioral health beds. Probation officers will get $15 million for pretrial services and courts will receive $20 million to support increased caseloads.

Advocates of the measure — including sheriffs, district attorneys and probation officers — said that’s not enough money. Some have estimated it would take around $400 million for the first year of the program.

Other priorities

Newsom and lawmakers agreed to raise the state’s film tax credit from $330 million to $750 million annually to boost Hollywood. The program, a priority for Newsom, will start this year and expire in 2030.

The budget provides $10 million to help support immigration legal services, including deportation defense.

But cities and counties won’t see new funding to help them address homelessness next year, which local leaders said could lead to the loss of thousands of shelter beds.

The budget also doesn’t act on Newsom’s proposal to streamline a project to create a massive underground tunnel to reroute a big part of the state’s water supply.

Nguyễn writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department on Friday fired at least three prosecutors involved in U.S. Capitol riot criminal cases, the latest moves by the Trump administration targeting attorneys connected to the massive prosecution of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack, according to two people familiar with the matter.

Those dismissed include two attorneys who worked as supervisors overseeing the Jan. 6 prosecutions in the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington as well as a line attorney who prosecuted cases stemming from the Capitol riot and insurrection, the people said. They spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss personnel matters.

A letter received by one of the prosecutors was signed by Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi. The letter did not provide a reason for their removal, effective immediately, citing only “Article II of the United States Constitution and the laws of the United States,” according to a copy seen by the Associated Press.

A Justice Department spokesperson declined to comment Friday evening.

The terminations marked yet another escalation of the moves that have raised alarm over the Trump administration’s disregard for civil service protections for career lawyers and the erosion of the Justice Department’s independence from the White House. Top leaders at the Justice Department have also fired employees who worked on the prosecutions of President Trump and demoted a slew of career supervisors in what has been seen as an effort to purge the agency of lawyers seen as insufficiently loyal.

Trump’s sweeping pardons of the Jan. 6 rioters have led to worries about actions being taken against attorneys involved in the massive prosecution of the more than 1,500 Trump supporters who stormed the Capitol as lawmakers met to certify Joe Biden’s election victory. Trump pardoned or commuted the sentences of all of them on his first day back in the White House, releasing from prison people convicted of seditious conspiracy and violent assaults on police.

During his time as interim U.S. attorney in Washington, Ed Martin in February demoted several prosecutors involved in the Jan. 6 cases, including the attorney who served as chief of the Capitol Siege Section. Others demoted include two lawyers who helped secure seditious conspiracy convictions against Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes and former Proud Boys national chairman Enrique Tarrio.

In January, then-acting Deputy Atty. Gen. Emil Bove ordered the firings of about two dozen prosecutors who had been hired for temporary assignments to support the Jan. 6 cases but were moved into permanent roles after Trump’s 2024 presidential win. Bove said he would not “tolerate subversive personnel actions by the previous administration.”

Trump, the only felon to ever occupy the White House, was impeached on a charge of inciting insurrection in the attack on the Capitol. He was also indicted on felony charges related to Jan. 6, but that case was dropped after Trump was elected in November.

Richer writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — Democratic efforts in the Senate to prevent President Trump from escalating his military confrontation with Iran fell short Friday, with Republicans blocking a resolution that marked Congress’ first attempt to reassert its war powers after U.S. strikes on Iranian nuclear sites.

The resolution, sponsored by Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia, aimed to affirm that Trump should seek authorization from Congress before launching more military action against Iran. Asked Friday whether he would bomb Iranian nuclear sites again if he deemed necessary, Trump said, “Sure, without question.”

The measure was defeated in a 53-47 vote in the Republican-held Senate. One Democrat, Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, joined Republicans in opposition, while Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky was the only Republican to vote in favor.

Most Republicans have said Iran posed an imminent threat that required decisive action from Trump, and they backed his decision to bomb three Iranian nuclear sites last weekend without seeking congressional approval.

“Of course, we can debate the scope and strategy of our military engagements,” said Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.). “But we must not shackle our president in the middle of a crisis when lives are on the line.”

Democrats cast doubt on that justification, arguing that the president should have come to Congress first. They also said the president did not update them adequately, with Congress’ first briefings taking place Thursday.

“The idea is this: We shouldn’t send our sons and daughters into war unless there’s a political consensus that this is a good idea, this is a national interest,” Kaine said in a Thursday interview with the Associated Press. The resolution, Kaine said, wasn’t aimed at restricting the president’s ability to defend against a threat, but that “if it’s offense, let’s really make sure we’re making the right decision.”

In a statement after Friday’s vote, Kaine said he was “disappointed that many of my colleagues are not willing to stand up and say Congress” should be a part of a decision to go to war.

Democrats’ argument for backing the resolution centered on the War Powers Resolution, passed in the early 1970s, which requires the president “in every possible instance” to “consult with Congress before introducing United States Armed Forces.”

Speaking on the Senate floor ahead of Friday’s vote, Paul said he would back the resolution, saying that “despite the tactical success of our strikes, they may end up proving to be a strategic failure.”

“It is unclear if this intervention will fully curtail Iran’s nuclear aspirations,” said Paul.

Trump is just the latest in a line of presidents to test the limits of the resolution — though he’s done so at a time when he’s often bristling at the nation’s checks and balances.

Trump on Monday sent a letter to Congress — as required by the War Powers Resolution — that said strikes on Iran over the weekend were “limited in scope and purpose” and “designed to minimize casualties, deter future attacks and limit the risk of escalation.”

But after classified briefings with top White House officials this week, some lawmakers remain skeptical about how imminent the threat was.

“There was no imminent threat to the United States,” said Rep. Jim Himes, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, after Friday’s classified briefing.

“There’s always an Iranian threat to the world. But, I have not seen anything to suggest that the threat from the Iranians was radically different last Saturday than it was two Saturdays ago,” Himes said.

Meanwhile, nearly all Republicans applauded Trump’s decision to strike Iran. And for GOP senators, supporting the resolution would have meant rebuking the president at the same time they’re working to pass his major legislative package.

Kaine proposed a similar resolution in 2020 aimed at limiting Trump’s authority to launch military operations against Iran. Among the eight Republicans who joined Democrats in approving that resolution was Indiana Sen. Todd Young.

After Thursday’s classified briefing for the Senate, Young said he was “confident that Iran was prepared to pose a significant threat” and that, given Trump’s stated goal of no further escalation, “I do not believe this resolution is necessary at this time.”

“Should the Administration’s posture change or events dictate the consideration of additional American military action, Congress should be consulted so we can best support those efforts and weigh in on behalf of our constituents,” Young said in a statement.

Trump has said that a ceasefire between Israel and Iran is now in place. But he and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei have verbally sparred in recent days, with the Iranian leader warning the U.S. not to launch future strikes on Iran.

White House officials have said they expect to restart talks soon with Iran, though nothing has been scheduled.

Cappelletti writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Leah Askarinam contributed to this report.

An Army veteran who grew up in Van Nuys and was awarded a Purple Heart self-deported to South Korea this week as he was threatened with being detained and deported by federal immigration forces.

On Monday, veteran Sae Joon Park, who legally immigrated from South Korea when he was seven years old, grew up in Koreatown and the San Fernando Valley and held a green card, flew back to his homeland under threat of deportation at the age of 55. He said he is being forced to leave because of drug convictions nearly two decades ago that he said were a response to the PTSD he suffered after being shot during military action in Panama.

“It’s unbelievable. I’m still in disbelief that this has actually happened,” Park said in a phone interview from Incheon early Wednesday morning. “I know I made my mistakes … but it’s not like I was a violent criminal. It’s not like I’m going around robbing people at gunpoint or hurting anyone. It was self-induced because of the problems I had.”

Sae Joon Park, an Army veteran with a Purple Heart.

(From Sae Joon Park)

Asked to comment on Park, Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said Park has an “extensive criminal history” and has been given a final removal order, with the option to self-deport.

Park said he suffered from PTSD and addiction in the aftermath of being wounded when he was part of the U.S. forces that invaded Panama in 1989 to depose the nation’s de facto leader, Gen. Manuel Noriega.

But now Park, a legal immigrant, is targeted by federal authorities in President Trump’s recent immigration raids that have prompted widespread protests in Los Angeles and across the nation. Federal authorities have arrested more than 1,600 immigrants for deportation in Southern California between June 6 and 22, according to DHS.

A noncitizen is eligible for naturalization if they served honorably in the U.S. military for at least a year. Park served less than a year before he was wounded and honorably discharged.

Since 2002, over 158,000 immigrant service members have become U.S. citizens.

As of 2021, the Department of Veteran Affairs and DHS are responsible for tracking deported veterans to make sure they still have access to VA benefits.

Park’s parents divorced when he was a toddler, and his mother immigrated from South Korea to the United States. He followed her a year later. They first lived in Koreatown, moved to Panorama City and then Van Nuys. He graduated from Notre Dame High School in Sherman Oaks in 1988.

Struggling at first to learn English and acclimate with his classmates, he eventually became part of the Southern California skateboarding and surfing scene of the 1980s, which is when television editor Josh Belson met him. They have been close friends ever since.

“He’s always got a smile, a very kind of vivacious energy about him,” said Belson, who attended a nearby high school when they met. “He was the kind of person you wanted to be around.”

After graduating, Park said he wasn’t ready to attend college, so he joined the military.

“The Army provided not only turning me into a man, but also providing me with the GI Bill, so you can go to college later, and they’ll pay for it. And the fact that I did believe in the country, the United States,” he said. “So I felt like I was doing something honorable. I was very proud when I joined the military.”

Park’s platoon was deployed to Panama in late 1989, where he said they experienced a firefight the first night there. The following day, he said he was carrying an M-16 when they raided the house of one of the “witches” Noriega allegedly followed. He said they saw a voodoo worship room with body parts and a cross painted in blood on the floor.

While there, he heard gunfire from the backyard and returned fire. He was shot twice, in his spine and lower left back. The bullet to his spine was partially deflected by his dog tag, which Park believes is the reason he wasn’t paralyzed. A military ambulance was delayed because of the firefight, but a Vietnam veteran who lived nearby rescued him, Park said.

“I just remember I’m just lying in my own pool of blood and just leaking out badly. So he actually went home, got his pickup truck, put me in the back of his pickup truck with two soldiers, and drove me to the hospital,” Park said.

He was then evacuated to an Army hospital in San Antonio. A four-star general awarded him a Purple Heart at his bedside. Then-President George W. Bush visited wounded soldiers there.

Park spent about two weeks there, and then went home for a month or so, until he could walk. His experience resulted in mental issues he didn’t recognize, he said.

“My biggest issue at the time, more than my injuries, was — I didn’t know what it was at the time, nobody did, because there was no such thing as PTSD at the time,” he said. Eventually, “I realized I was suffering from PTSD badly, nightmares every night, severe. I couldn’t hear loud noises, and at that time in L.A., you would hear gunshots every night you left the house, so I was paranoid at all times. And being a man and being a tough guy, I couldn’t share this with anyone.”

Park started self-medicating with marijuana, which he said helped him sleep. But he started doing harder drugs, eventually crack cocaine. He moved to Hawaii after his mother and stepfather’s L.A. store burned during the 1992 riots, and married. After Park and his wife separated, he moved to New York City, where his addiction worsened.

“It got really bad. It just got out of control — every day, every night, all day — just smoking, everything,” Park said.

One night, in the late 2000s, he was meeting his drug dealer at a Taco Bell in Queens when police surrounded his car, and the dealer fled while leaving a large quantity of crack in his glove compartment, Park said.

A judge sent Park to rehab twice, but he said he was not ready to get sober.

“I just couldn’t. I was an addict. It was so hard for me to stay clean. I’d be good for 30 days and relapse,” he said. “I’d be good for 20 days and relapse. It was such a struggle. Finally, the judge told me, ‘Mr. Park, the next time you come into my courtroom with the dirty urine, you’re gonna go to prison.’ So I got scared.”

So Park didn’t return to court, drove to Los Angeles and then returned to Hawaii, skipping bail, which is an aggravated felony.

“I did not know at the time jumping bail was an aggravated felony charge, and combined with my drug use, that’s deportable for someone like me with my green card,” he said.

U.S. Marshals were sent looking for Park, and he said once he heard about this, he turned himself in in August 2009, because he didn’t want to be arrested in front of his two children.

He served two years in prison and said immigration officials detained him for six months after he was released as he fought deportation orders. He was eventually released under “deferred action,” an act of prosecutorial discretion by DHS to put off deportation.

Every year since, Park was required to check in with federal officials and show that he was employed and sober. Meanwhile, he had sole custody of his two children, who are now 28 and 25. He was also caring for his 85-year-old mother, who is in the early stages of dementia.

During his most recent check-in, Park was about to be handcuffed and detained, but immigration agents placed an ankle monitor on him and gave him three weeks to get his affairs in order and self-deport. He is not allowed to return to the United States for 10 years. He worries he will miss his mother’s passing and his daughter’s wedding.

“That’s the biggest part. But … it could be a lot worse too. I look at it that way also,” Park said. “So I’m grateful I made it out of the United States, I guess, without getting detained.”

“I always just assumed a green card, legal residency, is just like having citizenship,” he added. “I just never felt like I had to go get citizenship. And that’s just being honest. As a kid growing up in the United States, I’ve always just thought, hey, I’m a green card holder, a legal resident, I’m just like a citizen.”

His condition has spiraled since then.

“Alright. I’m losing it. Can’t stop crying. I think PTSD kicking in strong,” Park texted Belson on Thursday. “Just want to get back to my family and take care of my mother … I’m a mess.”

Times staff writer Nathan Solis contributed to this report.

As many as 3.4 million Californians could lose their state Medi-Cal health insurance under the budget bill making its way through the U.S. Senate, Gov. Gavin Newsom said Friday.

Newsom said the proposed cuts to healthcare in the “one big, beautiful bill,” a cornerstone of President Trump’s second-term agenda, could force the closure of struggling rural hospitals, reduce government food assistance for those in need and drive up premiums for people who rely on Covered California, the state’s Affordable Care Act health insurance marketplace.

“This is devastating,” Newsom said. “I know that word is often overused in this line of work, but this is, in many ways, an understatement of how reckless and cruel and damaging this is.”

Medicaid provides health insurance for about 1 in 5 Americans and generally uses income, rather than employment, as a condition for enrollment.

Roughly 15 million Californians, more than a third of the state, are on Medi-Cal, the state’s version of Medicaid, with some of the highest percentages in rural counties that supported Trump in the November election. More than half of California children receive healthcare coverage through Medi-Cal.

The Senate is still debating its version of the bill. But the current version would require many Medicaid recipients to prove every six months that they work, volunteer or attend school at least 80 hours per month. States would be required to set up their work eligibility verification systems by the end of 2026, just after the midterm elections. States that do not set up those systems could lose federal Medicaid funding.

Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters last month that the aim of the policy was to encourage poor Americans to contribute and “return the dignity of work to young men who need to be out working instead of playing video games all day.”

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated this month that the requirements would cut about $344 billion in Medicaid spending over a decade and leave 4.8 million more people uninsured.

Health policy experts warn that work requirements can lead to people who are eligible, but can’t prove it, losing their benefits.

Newsom said 5.1 million people in California would need to go through the work verification progress and about one-third would “likely” meet the requirements.

The other two-thirds would “go through the labyrinth of manual verification,” Newsom said.

He said 3 million people in California could lose coverage through the new Medicaid work requirements, and 400,000 more could lose their insurance if they were required to re-verify their eligibility every six months. Newsom said that the state’s estimate was based on the number of people who dropped off Medicaid in New Hampshire and Arkansas after those states briefly implemented their own work requirements.

Last year, California became the first state in the nation to offer healthcare to low-income undocumented immigrants. The expansion, approved by Newsom and the Democratic-led Legislature, has cost the state billions and drawn sharp criticism from Republicans.

Assembly Minority Leader James Gallagher (R-Yuba City), who has previously called on Newsom to walk back that coverage, said on social media Friday that Newsom and Democratic legislative leaders had “obliterated” the healthcare system.

Newsom’s budget proposal in May proposed substantial cuts to the healthcare program for undocumented immigrants, including freezing new enrollment in 2026, requiring adults to pay $100 monthly premiums and cutting full dental coverage.

Lawmakers ultimately agreed to require undocumented immigrant adults ages 19 to 59 to pay $30 monthly premiums beginning July 2027. Their plan adopts Newsom’s enrollment cap but gives people three months to reapply if their coverage lapses instead of immediately cutting off their eligibility. Democrats agreed to cut full dental coverage for adult immigrants who are undocumented, but delayed the change until July 1, 2026.

In Congress, the GOP bill could also pose a serious threat to 16 struggling hospitals in 14 rural counties, which received a $300-million lifeline in interest-free loans in 2023, Newsom said.

He said the Republican members of Congress in California who supported the bill and represent rural parts of California, including Central Valley Rep. David Valadao (R-Hanford) and Rep. Kevin Kiley (R-Rocklin), are “gutting an already vulnerable system.”

Some senators are pushing to change a requirement that would require states to freeze and cut by half the tax they impose on Medicaid providers, slashing a key source of funding for rural hospitals.

Michelle Baass, the director of the California Department of Health Care Services, said that change could be “fatal for the many rural and critical-access hospitals that are already financially strained.”

Newsom said in aggregate, the cuts could threaten California’s progress in reducing the share of residents without health insurance, which stands at about 6.4%.

For 22 days, immigration enforcement officials have conducted sweeps in communities across the Los Angeles region, arresting an estimated 722 people between June 1 and June 10 alone.

For families and immigrant advocacy groups, determining the location of detainees has been difficult.

“In some cases it’s been 72 hours where we have not been able to identify where their family member is and when we do, sometimes they’re in the [Adelanto Detention Center],” said Flor Melendrez, executive director of CLEAN Carwash Worker Center, a nonprofit labor advocacy group.

“Sometimes it’s too late and [the detainee is] calling from the Ciudad Juárez or Tijuana, where they have already been deported, and that’s within 72 hours.”

CLEAN has focused on representing workers in the car wash industry for 18 years, but in the last three weeks the group has shifted to helping families find workers who were taken during a raid and guide them toward supportive and legal services.

“When the children are asking if we are going to bring their parent back home and we have no way to even respond [with] where they are, it’s heartbreaking,” Melendrez said.

Here are the immediate steps you should take if your relative is arrested and detained by immigrant enforcement officials:

Reach out to these organizations for help

If your loved one was detained by immigration enforcement agents, reach out to immigrant advocacy groups that can provide referrals, information, resources (such as food and financial assistance) and, in some cases, direct support.

A network of local rapid response hotlines has been established to document immigration enforcement activity and help connect those affected to legal services and other types of support, according to the California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice.

The following local rapid response hotline numbers are provided by the California Immigrant Policy Center and the ACLU Southern California:

Gather important documents and personal information

After or before you’ve made the call for help, gather these important documents that pertain to the detained family member:

• Birth certificate
• Medical records
• Past visa applications
• Receipt and approval notices for any immigration applications the person has previously submitted

You’ll also need to gather the following personal information that will be used either by you or your legal representation to locate your detained loved one:

1. A-Number, also known as “alien registration number,” which is assigned by the Department of Homeland Security to noncitizens who apply to live and work in the U.S. The seven- to nine-digit number can be found on a green card, work permit or other immigration document.
2. Country of birth
3. Personal information including full name and birthday

Your options when searching for legal representation

There is a coalition of organizations and pro bono attorneys working to support individuals who have been detained, but it can be challenging to get immediate help because there is an overwhelming need.

Because of the high demand for legal help, Public Counsel, a nonprofit public interest law firm, is currently prioritizing cases based on extreme need and often can only take a bond case or help with locating a detained person.

Public Counsel warned that families who have not been affected by immigration enforcement but need help with their immigration status should look for a lawyer now and begin the immigration process in case they are detained in the future.

Your options for legal help include:

• Immigrant Defenders Law Center, (213) 833-8283
• Public Counsel, (213) 385-2977
• Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles, (800) 399-4529
• Lalama Immigration Law, (833) 838-8472
• Esperanza Immigrant Rights Project, (213) 251-3505
• Immigration Center for Women and Children (L.A. office), (213) 614-1165
• El Rescate, (213) 387-3284
• Central American Resource Center of Los Angeles, (213) 385-7800
• USC Gould School of Law Immigration Clinic, (213) 821-9627
• International Institute of Los Angeles, (323) 264-6217

You can also search for an immigration lawyer through the American Immigration Lawyers Association online locator tool.

How to spot a fake immigration attorney:

Scammers try to confuse immigrants into thinking they’re an attorney by calling themselves a notario, notary public, accountant or consultant, according to the Federal Trade Commission.

In Latin American countries, a notario or notary public is an attorney or has legal training, but that’s not the case in the United States.

How to protect yourself from the scam:

• Do not hire an immigration consultant or a notary. Only lawyers, accredited representatives and recognized organizations can give you legal advice or represent you in immigration court. Immigration consultants — who may call themselves immigration experts, notarios, notaries public or paralegals — cannot do so, according to California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta’s office.
• Do not give your original important documents to anyone, unless you see proof that the government requires the original document, according to the FTC.

You can verify whether a lawyer is legitimate by searching for them on the State Bar of California website and determining if they have an active law license.

How to locate your detained family member

If your relative is arrested in Los Angeles, they will likely be taken to the federal detention center in downtown Los Angeles — sometimes called “B-18” — which is located at 320 Aliso St., according to Public Counsel.

Call the detention center at (213) 830-4900 or (213) 830-7911 and provide the operator with your relative’s A-Number, according to Public Counsel.

You can also try locating your relative by using the Department of Homeland Security’s ICE Detainee Locator System online or call (866) 347-2423, but be warned that immigration officials often won’t provide detainee information over the phone and might not update their online data regularly.

Whether you use the ICE online locator or call, you’ll need to provide the detainee’s A-Number and country of birth, or their full name and both country and date of birth.

If you cannot locate your family member through this process, you can contact the ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations field office closest to where the person was picked up.

There are three field offices in California:

1. Los Angeles Field Office: 300 North Los Angeles St., Room 7631, Los Angeles, CA 90012; (213) 830-7911. This office’s area of responsibility includes Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, Ventura, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties.
2. San Diego Field Office: 880 Front Street, #2242, San Diego, CA 92101; (619) 436-0410. This office’s area of responsibility includes San Diego and Imperial counties.
3. San Francisco Field Office: 630 Sansome Street, Room 590, San Francisco, CA 94111; (415) 365-8800. This office’s area of responsibility includes Northern California, Hawaii, Guam, Saipan.

Another option for locating your detained relative is contacting their country’s consulate.

Here is a list of local consulate offices and contact numbers.

Several organizations are offering free delivery of groceries and necessities to families affected by recent immigration enforcement.

Follow the organization’s websites and social media accounts for up-to-date information on resource availability:

• The YMCA is providing confidential delivery of groceries and other essentials to affected families. Contact [email protected] or call (323) 244-9077 for support.
• InnerCity Struggle is an East Los Angeles organization that assists with groceries and rental assistance. Call (323) 780-7605.
• No Us Without You offers food to undocumented community members. You can fill out their eligibility form for assistance online.
• Comunidades Indigenas En Liderazgo (CIELO) is delivering food to Indigenous families it serves and those in the community who are afraid to go out for fear of being caught up in ICE raids. To see if you qualify for assistance, fill out their online contact form.
• Raíces Con Voz is a grassroots organization in Boyle Heights that is providing grocery and essential items to those in the community who feel they are unable to leave their homes due to recent ICE activity. For assistance, send the group a direct message on Instagram.
• World Harvest Charities and Family Services’ Cart With a Heart program is providing families who are sheltering in place with grocery carts full of fresh produce, protein, pantry supplies and more. For assistance, call (213) 746-2227.
• La Puente Mutual Aid delivers essentials to community members without asking for a name or address of the person in need, for free. Email [email protected] with a code name, your neighborhood, a safe drop spot and items needed.
• The El Monte Business Alliance is offering food assistance and baby products to those in need through their new program El Monte Cares. For help, call (800) 622-4302.
• Immigo Immigration Services delivers necessary items to families in need. Call (818) 730-0140 for assistance.

Veteran Los Angeles political consultant Rick Taylor said he was pulled aside by U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents while returning from a trip abroad, asked if he was from California and then separated from his family and put in a holding room with several Latino travelers for nearly an hour.

“I know how the system works and have pretty good connections and I was still freaking out,” said Taylor, 71. “I could only imagine how I would be feeling if I didn’t understand the language and I didn’t know anyone.”

Taylor said he was at a loss to explain why he was singled out for extra questioning, but he speculated that perhaps it was because of the Obama-Biden T-shirt packed in his suitcase.

Taylor was returning from a weeklong vacation in Turks and Caicos with his wife and daughter, who were in a separate customs line, when a CBP agent asked, “Are you from California?” He said he answered, “Yeah, I live in Los Angeles.”

The man who ran campaigns for L.A.’s last Republican mayor and for current Democratic Sen. Alex Padilla when he was a budding Los Angeles City Council candidate in the 1990s found himself escorted to a waiting room and separated from his family.

There, Taylor said he waited 45 minutes without being released, alleging he was unjustly marked for detention and intimidated by CBP agents.

“I have no idea why I was targeted,” said Taylor, a consultant with the campaign to reelect L.A. City Councilwoman Traci Park. “They don’t talk to you. They don’t give you a reason. You’re just left confused, angry and worried.”

The story was first reported by Westside Current.

Former Los Angeles County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky said the incident brought to mind Sen. Alex Padilla, who was arrested and handcuffed June 12 while trying to ask a question during a Los Angeles press conference by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.

“My former chief of staff and political consultant, Rick Taylor, was detained at Miami International Airport by federal authorities after returning from an international vacation,” he said in an email. “As Senator Alex Padilla said a couple of weeks ago, ‘if it could happen to me, it could happen to anyone.’ This Federal government operation is OUT OF CONTROL! Where will it end?!”

A representative from the Customs and Border Protection in Florida said an inquiry made by the Los Angeles Times and received late Friday afternoon will likely be answered next week.

“If Mr. Taylor feels the need to, he is more than welcome to file a complaint online on our website and someone will reach out to him to try and get to the bottom of things,” CBP Public Affairs Specialist Alan Regalado said in an email.

Taylor, a partner at Dakota Communications, a strategic communications and marketing firm, said he was more concerned about traveling and returning to the U.S. with his wife, a U.S. citizen and native of Vietnam.

He said he reached out to a Trump administration member before leaving on vacation, asking if he could contact that individual in case his wife was detained.

The family flew American Airlines and landed in Miami on June 20, where he planned to visit friends before returning to Los Angeles on Tuesday.

In a twist, Taylor’s wife and daughter, both Global Entry cardholders, breezed through security while Taylor, who does not have Global Entry, was detained, he said.

He said after the agent confirmed he was a Los Angeles resident, he placed a small orange tag on his passport and was told to follow a green line. That led him to another agent and his eventual holding room.

Taylor described “95% of the population” inside the room as Latino and largely Spanish-speaking.

“I was one of three white dudes in the room,” he said. “I just kept wondering, ‘What I am doing here?’”

He said the lack of communication was “very intimidating,” though he was allowed to keep his phone and did send text message updates to his family.

“I have traveled a fair amount internationally and have never been pulled aside,” he said.

About 45 minutes into his holding, Taylor said an agent asked him to collect his luggage and hand it over for inspection.

He said he was released shortly after.

“The agents have succeeded in making me reassess travel,” Taylor said. “I would tell others to really think twice about traveling internationally while you have this administration in charge.”

The images are jarring. Across the country, federal law enforcement officers in plain clothes and wearing ski masks and balaclavas are seizing and detaining protesters, students and even elected officials. These scenes evoke images of government thugs in violent regimes disappearing opponents.

This is not how policing should look in a democratic society. Which is why everyone — regardless of political affiliation or stance on immigration enforcement — should support bills being introduced in Congress to address this growing problem. Three pieces of legislation — under consideration or expected soon — would prohibit masking by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, including one Thursday from Reps. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.) and Adriano Espaillat (D-N.Y.) and one expected Friday from Sens. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) and Adam Schiff (D-Calif.). These are obvious, common-sense measures that shouldn’t need to be codified into law — but given the reality today, and what’s being done on streets across the country, they clearly do.

In the United States, those tasked with enforcing the law are public servants, answerable to the people through their elected representatives. Wearing uniforms and insignia, and publicly identifying themselves, are what make clear an officer’s authority and enable public accountability.

That is why U.S. policing agencies generally have policies requiring officers to wear a badge or other identifier that includes their name or another unique mark, like a badge number. That is why — not so long ago — one of us wrote a letter on behalf of the Justice Department to the police chief in Ferguson, Mo., to ensure that officers were readily identifiable during protests. This letter was sent by the federal government, in the middle of the federal civil rights investigation of the Ferguson Police Department, because ensuring this “basic component of transparency and accountability” was deemed too important to hold off raising until the end of the investigation. Exceptions have long been made for scenarios such as undercover work — but it has long been understood that, as a general rule, American law enforcement officers will identify themselves and show their faces.

This foundational democratic norm is now at risk. In February, masked ICE officers in riot gear raided an apartment complex in Denver, one of the first times Americans saw agents hide their faces on the job. In March, the practice came to widespread attention when Tufts University doctoral student Rumeysa Ozturk was snatched by plainclothes ICE officers, one of them masked, while walking down a street in Somerville, Mass. Throughout the spring, bystanders captured videos of masked or plainclothes ICE enforcement actions from coast to coast, in small towns and big cities.

ICE says it allows this so officers can protect themselves from being recognized and harassed or even assaulted. ICE’s arguments just won’t wash. Its claims about how many officers have been assaulted are subject to serious question. Even if they were not, though, masked law enforcement is simply unacceptable.

At the most basic level, masked, anonymous officers present a safety concern for both the individuals being arrested and the agents. People are understandably far more likely to disregard instructions or even fight back when they think they’re being abducted by someone who is not a law enforcement officer. If the goal is to obtain compliance, masks are counterproductive. It’s far safer to encourage cooperation by appealing to one’s authority as a law enforcement officer — which almost always works.

Related, there is a very real and growing threat of law enforcement impersonation. There has been a disturbing uptick in reported incidents of “ICE impersonations,” in which private individuals dress as ICE or law enforcement officials to exploit the trust and authority invested in law enforcement. Just this month, the assailant in the recent assassination of a Minnesota lawmaker was posing as a police officer. Other examples are abounding across the country. As Princeton University noted in a recent advisory, when law enforcement officers are not clearly identifying themselves, it becomes even easier for impostors to pose as law enforcement. Replicas of ICE jackets have become a bestseller on Amazon.

Most fundamentally, masked detentions undermine law enforcement legitimacy. Government agencies’ legitimacy is essential for effective policing, and legitimacy requires transparency and accountability. When officers hide their identities, it sends the clear message that they do not value those principles, and in fact view them as a threat.

Federal law currently requires certain clear accountability measures by federal immigration enforcement officials, including that officers must identify themselves as officers and state that the person under arrest is, in fact, under arrest as well as the reason. That should sound familiar and be a relief to those of us who are grateful not to live in a secret police state.

But those words are cold comfort if you are confronted by someone in street clothes and a ski mask — with no way to know if they are who they say or whom to hold accountable if they violate your rights.

ICE officials cannot be allowed to continue to enforce our laws while concealing their identities. Transparency and accountability are what separate democracy from authoritarianism and legitimate law enforcement from the secret police in antidemocratic regimes. The images we are seeing are unrecognizable for the United States, and should not be tolerable for anyone.

Barry Friedman is a professor of law at New York University and author of “Unwarranted: Policing Without Permission.” Christy Lopez is a professor from practice at Georgetown University School of Law. She led the police practices unit in the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice from 2010-2017.

DUBAI — President Trump said on Friday that he expects Iran to open itself to international inspection to verify that it doesn’t restart its nuclear program.

Asked during a White House news conference if he would demand during expected talks with Iran that the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog, or some other organization be authorized to conduct inspections, Trump responded that the Islamic Republic would have to cooperate with the group “or somebody that we respect, including ourselves.”

Earlier, Iran’s top diplomat said that the possibility of new negotiations with the United States on his country’s nuclear program has been “complicated” by the American attack on three of the sites, which he conceded caused “serious damage.”

The U.S. was one of the parties to the 2015 nuclear deal in which Iran agreed to limits on its uranium enrichment program in exchange for sanctions relief and other benefits.

Nuclear talks

That deal unraveled after Trump unilaterally pulled out the U.S. during his first term. Trump has suggested he’s interested in new talks with Iran and said the two sides would meet next week.

In an interview on Iranian state television broadcast late Thursday, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi left open the possibility that his country would again enter talks on its nuclear program, but suggested it wouldn’t be anytime soon.

“No agreement has been made for resuming the negotiations,” he said. “No time has been set, no promise has been made, and we haven’t even talked about restarting the talks.”

The American decision to intervene militarily “made it more complicated and more difficult” for talks on Iran’s nuclear program, Araghchi said.

Friday prayers

Many imams, during Friday prayers, stressed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s message from Thursday that the war had been a victory for Iran.

Cleric Hamzeh Khalili, who is also the deputy chief justice of Iran, vowed during a prayer service in Tehran that the courts would prosecute people accused of spying for Israel “in a special way.”

During the war with Israel, Iran hanged several people whom it already had in custody on espionage charges, sparking fears from activists that it could conduct a wave of executions after the conflict ended. Authorities reportedly have detained dozens in various cities on the charge of cooperating with Israel.

Israel relentlessly attacked Iran beginning on June 13, targeting its nuclear sites, defense systems, high-ranking military officials and atomic scientists.

In 12 days of strikes, Israel said that it killed around 30 Iranian commanders and 11 nuclear scientists, while hitting eight nuclear-related facilities and more than 720 military infrastructure sites. More than 1,000 people were killed, including at least 417 civilians, according to the Washington-based Human Rights Activists group.

Iran fired more than 550 ballistic missiles at Israel, most of which were intercepted, but those that got through caused damage in many areas and killed 28 people.

Israeli military spokesperson Brig. Gen. Effie Defrin said Friday that in some areas, it had exceeded its operational goals, but needed to remain vigilant.

“We are under no illusion, the enemy has not changed its intentions,” he said.

The U.S. stepped in on Sunday to hit three of Iran’s nuclear sites with bunker busters dropped by B-2 bombers — explosives designed to penetrate deep into the ground to damage the heavily fortified targets. Iran, in retaliation, fired missiles at a U.S. base in Qatar on Monday, but caused no known casualties.

Trump and Khamenei claims

Trump said that the American attacks “completely and fully obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program. However, Khamenei on Thursday accused the U.S. president of exaggerating the damage, saying the strikes didn’t “achieve anything significant.”

In response, Trump told reporters Friday that the sites were “bombed to hell.” He even directed a message to the supreme leader: “Look, you’re a man of great faith. A man who’s highly respected in his country. You have to tell the truth. You got beat to hell.”

A senior Israeli military official said Friday that their intelligence shows that Israel’s strikes on various targets neutralized Iran’s ability to enrich uranium to 90% for “a prolonged period.” It was unclear whether that contradicted a preliminary U.S. report that suggested the program had been set back months.

There has been speculation that Iran moved much of its highly-enriched uranium before the strikes, something that it told the IAEA that it planned to do.

Even if that turns out to be true, IAEA Director-General Rafael Mariano Grossi told Radio France International that the damage done to the Fordo site, which was built into a mountain, “is very, very, very considerable.”

Among other things, he said, centrifuges are “quite precise machines,” and it’s “not possible” that the concussion from multiple 30,000-pound bombs wouldn’t have caused “important physical damage.”

“These centrifuges are no longer operational,” he said.

Araghchi himself acknowledged “the level of damage is high, and it’s serious damage.”

He added that Iran hadn’t yet decided whether to allow in IAEA inspectors to assess the damage, but they would be kept out “for the time being.”

Rising and Amiri write for the Associated Press. AP writers Aamer Madhani in Washington, Julia Frankel and Sam Mednick in Jerusalem contributed to this story.

NASHVILLE — Attorneys for Kilmar Abrego Garcia asked a federal judge in Tennessee on Friday to delay his release from jail because of “contradictory statements” by President Trump’s administration over whether he’ll be deported upon release.

A federal judge in Nashville has been preparing to release Abrego Garcia to await trial on human smuggling charges. But she’s been holding off over concerns that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement would swiftly detain him and try to deport him again.

Abrego Garcia’s attorneys are now asking the judge to continue to detain him following statements by Trump administration officials “because we cannot put any faith in any representation made on this issue by” the Justice Department.

“The irony of this request is not lost on anyone,” the attorneys wrote.

Abrego Garcia, a construction worker who had been living in Maryland, became a flashpoint over Trump’s hard-line immigration policies when he was mistakenly deported to his native El Salvador in March. Facing mounting pressure and a Supreme Court order, Trump’s Republican administration returned him this month to face the smuggling charges, which his attorneys have called “preposterous.”

In a response to the request by Abrego Garcia’s attorneys on Friday, acting U.S. Atty. Rob McGuire agreed to delaying Abrego Garcia’s release. He reiterated his stance that Abrego Garcia should remain in jail before trial and that he lacks jurisdiction over ICE, stating that he has no way to prevent Abrego Garcia’s deportation.

Justice Department spokesman Chad Gilmartin told the Associated Press on Thursday that the department intends to try Abrego Garcia on the smuggling charges before it moves to deport him, stating that Abrego Garcia “has been charged with horrific crimes, including trafficking children, and will not walk free in our country again.”

Hours earlier, Justice Department attorney Jonathan Guynn told a federal judge in Maryland that the U.S. government plans to deport Abrego Garcia to a “third country” that isn’t El Salvador. Guynn said there was no timeline for the deportation plans.

Abrego Garcia’s attorneys wrote in their filing on Friday that Guynn’s statements were the “first time the government has represented, to anyone, that it intended not to deport Mr. Abrego back to El Salvador following a trial on these charges, but to deport him to a third country immediately.”

The filing by Abrego Garcia’s lawyers also cited a post on X on Thursday from White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson: “Abrego Garcia was returned to the United States to face trial for the egregious charges against him,” Jackson stated. “He will face the full force of the American justice system — including serving time in American prison for the crimes he’s committed.”

Abrego Garcia’s attorneys wrote Friday the Trump administration brought Abrego Garcia back “only to convict him in the court of public opinion.”

“In a just world, he would not seek to prolong his detention further,” his attorneys wrote. “And yet the government — a government that has, at all levels, told the American people that it is bringing Mr. Abrego back home to the United States to face ‘American justice’ — apparently has little interest in actually bringing this case to trial.”

Abrego Garcia’s attorneys have asked the judge to delay his release until a July 16 court hearing, which will consider a request by prosecutors to revoke Abrego Garcia’s release order while he awaits trial.

Abrego Garcia pleaded not guilty on June 13 to smuggling charges that his attorneys have characterized as an attempt to justify his mistaken expulsion to a notorious prison in El Salvador.

When the Trump administration deported Abrego Garcia in March, it violated a U.S. immigration judge’s order in 2019 that barred his expulsion to his native country. The immigration judge had found that Abrego Garcia faced a credible threat from gangs that had terrorized him and his family.

The human smuggling charges pending against Abrego Garcia stem from a 2022 traffic stop for speeding in Tennessee, during which Abrego Garcia was driving a vehicle with nine passengers without luggage.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Barbara Holmes in Nashville wrote in a ruling Sunday that federal prosecutors failed to show that Abrego Garcia was a flight risk or a danger to the community.

During a court hearing Wednesday, Holmes set specific conditions for Abrego Garcia’s release that included him living with his brother, a U.S. citizen, in Maryland. But she held off on releasing him over concerns that prosecutors can’t prevent U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement from deporting him.

Finley and Loller write for the Associated Press. Finley reported from Norfolk, Va.

GUATEMALA CITY — Guatemala President Bernardo Arévalo said Friday he has not signed an agreement with the United States to take asylum seekers from other countries, pushing back against comments from U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.

Noem and Arévalo met Thursday in Guatemala and the two governments publicly signed a joint security agreement that would allow U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers to work in the capital’s airport, training local agents how to screen for terrorism suspects.

But Noem said she had also been given a signed document she called a safe-third-country agreement. She said she reached a similar deal in Honduras and said they were important outcomes of her trip.

Asked about Noem’s comments Friday during a news conference, Arévalo said that nothing new was signed related to immigration and that Guatemala was still operating under an agreement reached with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio in February. That agreement stipulated that Guatemala would continue accepting the deportation of its own citizens, but also citizens of other Central American nations as a transit point on their way home.

Arévalo said that when Rubio visited, safe third country was discussed because Guatemala had signed such an agreement during President Trump’s first term in office. But “we made it clear that our path was different,” Arévalo said.

He did add that Guatemala was willing to provide asylum to Nicaraguans who have been unable to return to their country because of the political situation there out of “solidarity.”

The president’s communications office said Noem had been given the ratification of the agreement reached through diplomatic notes weeks earlier.

During Trump’s first term, the U.S. signed such safe-third-country agreements with Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala. They effectively allowed the U.S. to declare some asylum seekers ineligible to apply for U.S. protection and permitted the U.S. government to send them to those countries deemed “safe.”

Perez writes for the Associated Press.

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Environmental groups filed a federal lawsuit Friday to block a migrant detention center being built on an airstrip in the heart of the Florida Everglades.

The lawsuit seeks to halt the project until it undergoes a stringent environmental review as required by federal law. There is also supposed to be a chance for public comment, according to the lawsuit filed in Miami federal court.

The center dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz” by Gov. Ron DeSantis is set to begin processing people who entered the U.S. illegally as soon as next week, the governor said Friday on “Fox and Friends.”

The state is plowing ahead with building a compound of heavy-duty tents, trailers and other temporary buildings at the Miami-Dade County-owned airfield in the Big Cypress National Preserve, about 45 miles west of downtown Miami.

The lawsuit names several federal and state agencies as defendants.

Payne and Anderson write for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced Friday that the USNS Harvey Milk will be renamed after a World War II sailor who received the Medal of Honor, stripping the ship of the name of a slain gay rights activist who served during the Korean War.

In a video posted to social media, Hegseth said he was “taking the politics out of ship naming.”

The ship’s new name will honor Navy Chief Petty Officer Oscar V. Peterson, who was awarded the highest military decoration posthumously for his actions during the 1942 Battle of the Coral Sea in the Pacific.

The decision is the latest move by Hegseth to wipe away names of ships and military bases that were given by President Joe Biden’s Democratic administration, which in many cases chose to honor service members who were women, minorities, from the LBGTQ community and more.

It follows earlier actions by Hegseth and President Donald Trump, a Republican, to purge all programs, policies, books and social media mentions of references to diversity, equity and inclusion in the military and elsewhere.

Hegseth’s announcement comes during Pride Month — the same timing as the Pentagon’s campaign to force transgender troops out of the U.S. military.

“We’re not renaming the ship to anything political. This is not about political activists,” said Hegseth, who earlier this month ordered Navy Secretary John Phelan to put together a small team to rename the USNS Harvey Milk replenishment oiler.

He said Peterson’s “spirit of self-sacrifice and concern for his crewmates was in keeping with the finest traditions of the Navy.”

When Hegseth announced the decision to rename the ship, officials defended it as an effort to align with Trump and Hegseth’s objectives to “re-establish the warrior culture.”

Peterson served on the USS Neosho, which also was an oiler. The ship was damaged during the Battle of the Coral Sea, and even though Peterson was injured, he managed to close the bulkhead stop valves to keep the ship operational. He died of his wounds.

The Navy in 1943 named an escort ship after Peterson. The USS Peterson served for more than two decades and was decommissioned in June 1965.

The USNS Harvey Milk was named in 2016 by then-Navy Secretary Ray Mabus, who said at the time that the John Lewis-class of oilers would be named after leaders who fought for civil and human rights.

Harvey Milk, who was portrayed by Sean Penn in an Oscar-winning 2008 movie, served for four years in the Navy before he was forced out for being gay. He later became one of the first openly gay candidates elected to public office, in San Francisco. He was assassinated in 1978 by a disgruntled former city supervisor.

Baldor writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — Citing the explosion of online porn, the Supreme Court ruled Friday that states may enforce age verification laws in hopes of screening out children and young teens.

By a 6-3 vote, the justices rejected a free-speech claim from the adult entertainment industry.

“The power to require age verification is within a State’s authority to prevent children from accessing sexually explicit content,” said Justice Clarence Thomas for the court.

The free-speech advocates who challenged the law said it would infringe the rights of adults because they could be forced to disclose their identity.

But the court disagreed.

The Texas law “advances the State’s important interest in shielding children from sexually explicit content. And, it is appropriately tailored because it permits users to verify their ages through the established methods of providing government-issued identification and sharing transactional data,” Thomas said.

The court’s three liberals dissented.

Under the Texas law, a website must use “reasonable age verification methods” to confirm visitors are at least 18 years old if more than one-third of its content is “sexual material harmful to minors.”
.
More than 21 other Republican-led states have adopted similar laws in recent years.

In defense of the Texas law, Atty. Gen. Ken Paxton said that prior to the internet, the court had upheld laws that required bookstores or magazine stands to “check the age of their customers before selling them pornography.”

He argued that moving their business online should not give pornographers a 1st Amendment right “to provide access to nearly inexhaustible amounts of obscenity to any child with a smartphone.”

State officials also said porn online is increasingly violent and degrading.

“The average child is exposed to internet pornography while still in elementary school,” wrote state attorneys for Ohio and Indiana. “Pornography websites receive more traffic in the U.S. than social media platforms Instagram, TikTok, Netflix, and Pinterest combined.”

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court has limited the power of federal district judges to hand down orders that apply nationwide.

By 6-3 vote, the justices said Friday that judges may not issue orders that apply to people beyond those who sued.

“Federal courts do not exercise general oversight of the Executive Branch,” said Justice Amy Coney Barrett. And while judges can give full relief to plaintiffs, including groups of people, their injunctions should not be “broader than necessary” to shield those people.

The court’s three liberals dissented.

In her dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said the Trump administration is trying to defend a blatantly unconstitutional order repealing birthright citizenship.

“The gamesmanship in this request is apparent and the Government makes no attempt to hide it. Yet, shamefully, this Court plays along,” she said.

The procedural ruling is a victory for President Trump and a setback for advocates who seek to block his executive orders.

It prevents a single district judge in Boston or San Francisco from blocking Trump’s policies from taking effect nationwide.

However, it does not decide on the constitutionality of Trump’s plan to limit birthright citizenship.

Three federal district judges—in Maryland, Massachusetts and Washington—issued nationwide orders declaring Trump’s plan unconstitutional.

The 14th Amendment, adopted in 1868, says “All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”

On his first day in office, Trump issued an executive order disagreeing with the traditional understanding and asserting the Constitution does not “extend citizenship universally to everyone born within the United States.”

He said it would be U.S. policy to not recognize citizenship for newborns if the child’s mother or father was “not a United States citizen or lawful permanent resident at the time of said person’s birth.”

But in quick succession, judges declared Trump’s order may not be enforced across the nation. They said his proposed restrictions violated the federal law and Supreme Court precedent as well as the plain words of the 14th Amendment.

Rather than challenge those rulings directly, Trump’s lawyers sent an emergency appeal to the Supreme Court with “a modest request.”

Rather than rule on birthright citizenship, they urged the justices to rein in the practice of district judges handing down nationwide orders.

They have “reached epidemic proportions since the start of the current administration,” they said.

Wilbur Ross became rich investing in faltering businesses like steel mills and coal mines, finding a fortune in blue-collar industries that others dismissed as beyond saving.

But before he was scooping up Rust Belt factories, the banker was sizing up another troubled asset: Donald Trump. More than two decades ago, Ross represented bondholders who were gunning for Trump after he failed to pay back the high-interest loans he had taken out to build his casino empire.

When Ross arrived in Atlantic City, N.J., for negotiations in 1990, he found a throng of journalists and curious onlookers eager to catch a glimpse of Trump, according to “The Vulture Investors,” by Hilary Rosenberg. For the quiet Ross, the scene inspired a revelation: Trump’s flashy image had resilience.

Ross embarked on a strategy that helped Trump avoid a personal bankruptcy that could have derailed his unlikely trajectory from real-estate mogul to reality television star to president-elect.

Consider it another investment that has paid off for Ross, whom Trump recently tapped to lead the Department of Commerce. A private equity billionaire who once led a secret Wall Street fraternity, Ross is among the rich, loyal insiders Trump picked for a Cabinet that is shaping up as the wealthiest in history.

If confirmed by the Senate, the 79-year-old veteran investor will spearhead trade policy and business development in the new administration.

Trump rejected criticism that Ross was too out of touch to serve, saying during a rally last week in Cincinnati that Ross was chosen because “this guy knows how to make money, folks.”

Trump added, “I put on a killer.”

Ross, however, once spared Trump.

The future president-elect at one time owned a quarter of Atlantic City’s casino market. But Trump was heavily in debt, and he started missing bond payments on his — and Atlantic City’s — largest casino, the Taj Mahal, in 1990.

Donald Trump celebrates the grand opening of the Taj Mahal in 1990. The Atlantic City casino was in financial trouble later that year.

(Mike Derer / Associated Press )

Ross, then an investment banker working for Rothschild Inc., helped bondholders negotiate with Trump, whose finances were unraveling. The final deal reduced Trump’s ownership stake in the Taj but left him in charge, and bondholders were unhappy when Ross presented the plan.

“Why did we make a deal with him?” one asked, according to Rosenberg’s book.

Ross insisted that Trump was worth saving.

“The Trump name is still very much an asset,” he said.

Trump himself proved to be less of a sure bet. Though the agreement allowed Trump to soldier on in Atlantic City, his casinos landed in bankruptcy court twice more.

The president-elect respects Ross’ deal-making skills, said Jason Miller, the communications director for Trump’s transition team.

“He’s seen Mr. Ross up close and personal,” Miller said. “He knows that he can depend on him.”

Ross grew up in New Jersey and attended a Jesuit prep school in New York before earning degrees from Yale and the Harvard Business School. He spent two decades at Rothschild working on bankruptcies before starting his own private equity firm, WL Ross & Co., in 2000.

A Palm Beach, Fla., resident who owns an art collection valued at nine figures and is worth an estimated $2.5 billion according to Forbes, Ross earned a reputation as a so-called vulture investor for finding profits in dying businesses. Ross described himself differently in an interview with New York magazine: “We’re a phoenix that rebuilds itself from the ashes.”

At the Commerce Department, Ross would oversee a portfolio containing responsibilities as diverse as weather research and promoting minority-owned businesses. However, with Trump in the White House, foreign trade likely will be the issue that gets the most of Ross’ attention. Trump has promised to remake free-trade deals.

Follow live coverage of the presidential transition on Trail Guide »

President-elect Donald Trump, left, with Commerce secretary pick Wilbur Ross, whose estimated worth is $2.5 billion.

(Carolyn Kaster / Associated Press)

The department has wide latitude to determine when other countries are violating trade rules, experts said, allowing U.S. officials to slap tariffs on imports or find loopholes in international agreements.

The Trump administration won’t rush toward tariffs but wants to renegotiate some deals, Ross told CNBC after he was tapped by Trump.

“We’ve been doing a lot of dumb trade,” he said, echoing Trump’s campaign-trail rhetoric.

Trump’s pronouncement that companies that leave the U.S. will face a 35% tariff on goods they want to sell domestically has been met with a tepid response from his fellow Republicans. GOP leaders on Capitol Hill suggested this week that they would not go along with such a proposal, though they emphasized that they would wait to hear exactly what Trump had in mind.

“Take a deep breath. He’s not sworn in yet,” House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield) told reporters. “Let’s not predetermine what the outcome of this stuff is.”

Even Trump’s vice president-elect, Mike Pence, deflected when asked repeatedly on MSNBC whether he agrees with the proposed tariff.

“What we don’t want to do is for companies to say it cost — it costs this much to manufacture it overseas and sell it in the United States and it costs this much in taxes and regulations and other burdens to manufacture here,” Pence said Tuesday on “Morning Joe.”

Ross, though, helped formulate Trump’s economic policies, which include tax cuts, reduced regulations on energy production and privately financed infrastructure spending spurred by tax credits.

Peter Navarro, a UC Irvine professor who worked with Ross on the proposals as a Trump adviser, praised Ross for his “precision, compassion, humility and subtle humor.”

“Donald Trump continues to choose very well for America,” Navarro said.

A report from Moody’s, however, predicted that Trump’s plans would lead to a recession, while the Tax Foundation projected that deficits would increase, conclusions that Navarro and Ross have dismissed.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) slammed Trump’s choice of Ross. Democrats have no power to block his eventual nomination.

“Choosing a practiced corporate raider to head the Commerce Department reflects Republicans’ disdain for hard-working Americans struggling to make ends meet,” she said in a statement. “With sprawling conflicts of interest and a troubling record on worker safety, Democrats have serious concerns that Wilbur Ross’ corporate interests will trump the concerns of American families, entrepreneurs and our economic security.”

Her reference to worker safety was particularly damning. Ross’ private equity fund bought financially troubled coal operations several years ago, and in West Virginia, one of them, the Sago mine, suffered a collapse that killed a dozen people in 2006.

Miller defended Ross’ response to the blast, noting that Ross raised money to help families of the victims and invested in better mining safety.

Ross’ record with steel companies is less controversial. Under the banner of the International Steel Group, he acquired mills on the verge of being shuttered when their owners fell into bankruptcy. The company became the largest producer of steel in the country, and Ross sold the operations for $4.5 billion two years after he entered the industry.

Despite his Wall Street background, Ross had a good relationship with labor. Leo Gerard, president of the United Steelworkers, said that his exchanges with Ross weren’t “peaches and cream,” but he was open to workers’ concerns.

“Lots of these folks are bottom-feeders. They come in, and they strip the assets,” Gerard said of other investors. “Wilbur went the other way.”

[email protected]

Twitter: @chrismegerian

ALSO:

Trump to preside over the richest Cabinet in U.S. history

Trump says he saved American jobs, but he hasn’t shown how he can turn the victory into policy

Step by step, Trump is assembling an administration far more conservative than his campaign

My young family and I were in Israel when the military and the Mossad began their offensive operations against Iran on Friday, June 13, commencing what President Trump has since called the “12-Day War.” Although the Mossad’s intelligence and the Israel Defense Forces’ rapid establishment of air superiority inside Iran proved to be nothing less than extraordinary, my wife and I lived on pins and needles for those first few days of the war. We had to be ready day or night, at a moment’s notice, to drop everything, grab our 6-month-old baby and race to the house’s “safe room” (that is, bomb shelter).

Trust me: This is not a fun way to live — especially not with an infant. Meanwhile, too many of Iran’s ballistic missiles — considerably more lethal than the rockets typically fired into Israel from Gaza and Lebanon — were evading Israeli air defense. They were finding their targets. Too many homes were being destroyed, and too many people, tragically, were being killed. Though a proud Jew and Zionist, and even the author of a recent book on Israel’s fate, I decided to do what any American parent of an infant would do in such a situation: get us home.

I am a Floridian, and I heard about a program the state of Florida had launched to evacuate American citizens from the war zone. We first took a bus to the Jordanian border. We next got to Amman, where we spent the night. We then flew to Cyprus, a hub for those fleeing (and returning to) Israel, where we also spent a night. And finally, we flew from Cyprus to Tampa, where Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis surprised our group by meeting us at the airport.

The day after my family got home to Florida, the world changed in an instant: Trump ordered Operation Midnight Hammer, delivering a devastating — perhaps fatal — blow to the Iranian regime’s three most prized nuclear facilities, Fordo, Natanz and Isfahan. In his brief remarks at the White House following the strikes, Trump repeatedly linked the national interests and fates of the United States and Israel. Despite months of tendentious leaks, palace intrigue and the often-parroted media reports of a rift between Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, that bilateral relationship is clearly stronger than ever.

Looking back at both the pre-strike debate and the post-strike fallout, the more interesting question — especially given the hostility toward Trump’s move from certain high-profile talking heads within the broader MAGA fold — is perhaps this: Is Midnight Hammer an aberration from Trump’s “America First” foreign policy doctrine, or is it entirely consistent with it?

As the definitive essay on the topic, a 2019 Foreign Policy magazine article — appropriately titled “The Trump Doctrine” — from former Trump administration national security official and current State Department Director of Policy Planning Michael Anton put it, Trump’s conception of “America First” means that he has “no inborn inclination to isolationism or interventionism, and he is not simply a dove or a hawk.” By contrast, Trump’s foreign policy instinct is “Jacksonian”: It is a strand of pragmatic conservative realism that is intuitively skeptical. The mindset echoes George Washington’s famous farewell address, which warned against getting overly involved overseas, but it also remains able, willing and eager to lash out and strike if necessary to defend core American national interests.

In short, Trump has no interest in reprising the Bush-era moralistic nation-building enterprise, but he also has no interest in burying America’s head in the sand and pretending that we simply have no interest in events abroad. It was Trump himself, after all, who both withdrew from President Obama’s flawed nuclear deal with the Iranian terror regime and eliminated Islamic State founder Abu Bakr Baghdadi and Qasem Soleimani, the Iranian general who commanded the Quds Force.

There are indeed some fools, ignoramuses and scoundrels on the right who keep trying to mislead their MAGA-friendly audiences by imputing to “America First” views that do not put America first and are not held by the president himself. But they are losing that battle: According to a recent CBS News poll, an astounding 94% of self-identified MAGA Republicans support Operation Midnight Hammer. It certainly seems that in voting for Trump, these Americans favored stopping the world’s No. 1 state sponsor of terrorism — a regime whose raison d’être is eliminating the “little Satan” of Israel and the “big Satan” of the United States — from acquiring the world’s most dangerous weapons.

After decades of debate about the Iranian nuclear program and months of pearl-clutching about the alleged imminence of World War III, the United States has devastated the illicit nuclear weapons program of a terrorist regime that chants “death to America” on a daily basis — without a single American casualty, without any extended American troop presence on the ground and with a quick post-strike ceasefire to boot. To achieve a decades-long-sought foreign policy objective in this fashion is nothing less than astonishing. Operation Midnight Hammer is one of the greatest acts of presidential statesmanship and leadership in modern American history.

It’s also “America First” in action. And looking back at the entire ordeal years from now, I strongly suspect it will also make everything my family went through in evacuating the Middle East more than worth it.

Josh Hammer’s latest book is “Israel and Civilization: The Fate of the Jewish Nation and the Destiny of the West.” This article was produced in collaboration with Creators Syndicate. @josh_hammer

Zohran Mamdani is a stylish, millennial, African-born Muslim with a Hollywood pedigree who just won the Democratic primary in the New York City mayor’s race.

If he sounds like Donald Trump’s worst nightmare, he just might be. But he’s also a lot like him.

They’re both charismatic leaders who have bucked their parties, tapped into the current political ethos that eschews traditional loyalties and by doing so, made themselves popular enough with fed-up voters to win elections when — to many in the political elite — they seem exactly like the kind of candidate who shouldn’t be able to get their grandmother’s vote.

“Working-class people want somebody who really takes on the status quo, who pushes an economic populist agenda and convinces them that something’s going to change,” Lorena Gonzalez told me.

She’s the head of the California Labor Federation, which represents unions, and even she’s fed up with Democrats.

“There are days that I’m like, why am I still in this party?” she said. “When I see them cozy up to tech, when I see this abundance issue that streamlines worker protections, when I see this fascination with billionaires and this acquiescing to not taxing billionaires and not doing anything about rent control, you know, there’s a point where I’m like, come on, grow some balls, go decide who you’re for.”

Or, as Trump put it in a social media post after Mamdani’s win, “Yes, this is a big moment in the History of our Country!”

Trump is right, words that I don’t often say — Mamdani’s victory may signal something deeper than a lone mayor’s race on the East Coast. People — both on the left and the right — crave authenticity, and want someone to believe in, be it an orange-hued boomer or a brown-skinned hipster.

The Democrats, as political strategist Mike Madrid put it, are having their own Tea Party moment, when populist anger eats the old guard, as it did beginning in 2007 when the far-right of the Republican party began its now-successful takeover. Trump was never the impetus of the party’s swing to the fringe, he just capitalized on it.

“This is just a populist revolt of the Democratic Party against the establishment base,” Madrid said.

There’s been ad nauseam amounts of pontificating about the current state of the Democratic party. Should it go more centrist? Should it embrace the progressive end? But the truth is the voters have already decided. They do indeed want lower grocery prices, as Trump promised but failed to deliver. But they also want democracy to not crumble. And they want to buy a house, and maybe not have their neighbors deported. But really, in that order.

And they don’t trust many, if not most, of the current Democrats in office to deliver. Like Republicans before them, they want outsiders (Mamdani, 33, is serving in the state Assembly), or at least someone who can sound like one.

Gonzalez spends a lot of time talking to voters and she said left and right, Democrat and Republican, they see few differences remaining between the two parties, and are tired of voting for career politicians who haven’t delivered on economic issues.

Mamdani, whose mother is the film director Mira Nair (and who once rapped under the name Young Cardamom), campaigned on “a New York you can afford.” That included freezing payments on rent-controlled apartments, building new affordable housing with union labor, making both transit and child care free and — you guessed it — cheaper groceries. Whether he delivers or not, those were messages that a broad swath of New Yorkers, struggling like all of us with the cost of living, wanted to hear.

And he delivered them not just with credibility, but with an entertainment value that nods to his mom’s influence: hamming it up Bollywood style for the South Asian aunties, walking the length of Manhattan to talk with people, jumping in the Atlantic ocean in a suit with a skinny tie.

Charisma and chutzpah.

Which, of course, is how Trump made his own rise, promising, with showman verve, to be the voice of the toiling voiceless who increasingly are in danger of becoming the working poor. Yes, he is a con man who is clearly for the rich. But still, he knows how to deliver a line to his base: “They’re eating the cats. They’re eating the dogs.”

That may be the biggest lesson for California, where we will soon be voting for a new governor from a crowded field — of establishment candidates. Even Kamala Harris, maybe especially Harris, fits that insider image, and certainly Gavin Newsom, despite zigzagging from centrist to pugilist, can’t forward his presidential ambitions as anything but old-guard.

“What makes someone like Zohran so compelling, is even if you don’t agree with him on everything, which few voters do, you understand that he believes it and that you know where he’s coming from,” said Amanda Litman, the co-founder and executive director of Run for Something, a PAC that recruits young progressives to run for office.

“I think that’s the distinction between him and say someone like Gavin Newsom, which is, like, does Gavin believe what he says? Does he buy his own bull—? It’s sort of unclear,” Litman added.

The anger of voters is strikingly clear, though, especially for ones who have for so long been loyal to Democrats. A new Pew analysis out this week found that about 20% of the Republican base is now nonwhite, nearly doubling what it was in 2016. Republicans have made gains with Black voters, Asian voters and Trump drew nearly half of Latino voters. Ouch.

“One of the real challenges for the Democrats is two central pieces of the orthodoxy has been that they are the party of the working class and that they are the party of nonwhite voters,” Madrid said. “Both of those are increasingly proving untrue, and the question then becomes, well, how do you get them back? The way you get them back is by having some sort of economic populist policy framework.”

Litman said that the way to capture voters is by running new candidates, the kind who don’t come with history — and baggage. In the 36 hours after Mamdani was elected, her organization had 1,100 people sign up to learn more about how to run for office themselves, she said. It’s the biggest spike since the inauguration, and it shows that voters aren’t disinterested in democracy, but alienated from the existing options.

“The establishment is not unbeatable. They’re only unchallenged,” Litman said. “And I think the more that the Democratic Party establishment, as much as it exists, can understand that the people and the playbooks that got us here will not be the people and playbooks that get us out of it, the better off we’ll be.”

So maybe there are more Mamdani’s out there, waiting to lead the way. If Democrats are looking for advice, Trump may have offered the best I’ve seen in a while — highlighting the insider/outsider Democrats who have, like Mamdani, made their name by rattling the establishment.

“I have an idea for the Democrats to bring them back into ‘play,’” he wrote on social media. “After years of being left out in the cold, including suffering one of the Greatest Losses in History, the 2024 Presidential Election, the Democrats should nominate Low IQ Candidate, Jasmine Crockett, for President, and AOC+3 should be, respectively, Vice President, and three High Level Members of the Cabinet — Added together with our future Communist Mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani and our Country is really SCREWED!”

Or not.

Wouldn’t that be a slate?