POLITICS

The railroad tunnel in which John Doe #135 was found had spooky graffiti and a dark mystique, the kind of place kids dared each other to walk through at night. People called it the Manson Tunnel — the cult leader and his disciples had lived nearby at the Spahn Movie Ranch — and someone had spray-painted HOLY TERROR over the entrance.

By June 1990, occult-inspired mayhem had become a common theme in the Los Angeles mediasphere. The serial killer known as the Night Stalker, a professed Satanist, had been sentenced to death a year before, and the McMartin Preschool molestation case, with its wild claims of ritual abuse of children, was still slogging through the courts.

So when venturesome local teenagers discovered a young man’s body in the pitch-black tunnel above Chatsworth Park, the LAPD considered the possibility of occult motives. The victim was soon identified as Ronald Baker, a 21-year-old UCLA student majoring in astrophysics. He had been killed on June 21, a day considered holy by occultists, at a site where they were known to congregate.

Ronald Baker in an undated photo.

(Courtesy of Patty Elliott)

Baker was skinny and physically unimposing, with a mop of curly blond hair. He had been to the tunnel before, and was known to meditate in the area. He had 18 stab wounds, and his throat had been slashed. On his necklace: a pentagram pendant. In the bedroom of his Van Nuys apartment: witchcraft books, a pentagram-decorated candle and a flier for Mystic’s Circle, a group devoted to “shamanism” and “magick.”

Headline writers leaned into the angle. “Student killed on solstice may have been sacrificed,” read the Daily News. “Slain man frequently visited site of occultists,” declared The Times.

Baker, detectives learned, had been a sweet-tempered practitioner of Wicca, a form of nature worship that shunned violence. He was shy, introverted and “adamantly against Satanism,” a friend said. But as one detective speculated to reporters, “We don’t know if at some point he graduated from the light to the dark side of that.”

Investigators examine the scene where Ronald Baker’s body was found.

(Los Angeles Police Department )

People said he had no enemies. He loved “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” singalongs, and worked a candle-making booth at Renaissance faires. He had written his sister a birthday card in Elizabethan English.

Had he gone into the hills to meditate and stumbled across practitioners of more malignant magic? He was known as a light drinker, but toxicology results showed he was heavily drunk when he died.

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

Had someone he trusted lured him to the tunnel? How was his death connected to the raspy-voiced man who placed calls to Baker’s father around that time, demanding a $100,000 ransom in exchange for his son’s life?

U.S. Army photo of Nathan Blalock.

(U.S. Army)

Baker’s housemates, Duncan Martinez and Nathan Blalock, both military veterans in their early 20s, had been the last known people to see him alive, and served as each other’s alibis. They said they had dropped him off at a Van Nuys bus stop, and that he had planned to join his Mystic’s Circle friends for the solstice.

There had been no sign of animosity between the roommates, and Baker considered Martinez, an ex-Marine, one of his best friends. They had met working at Sears, years earlier.

Martinez helped to carry Baker’s casket and spoke movingly at his memorial service at Woodland Hills United Methodist Church. His friend was “never real physically strong, like a lot of the guys I know,” Martinez said, but was the “friendliest, sweetest guy.”

His voice filled with emotion. “He would talk to anybody and be there for anybody at the drop of a dime,” Martinez continued. “And I just hope that it’s something I can get over, because I love him. It’s just hard to think of a time without Ron.”

But something about the roommates’ story strained logic. When Baker’s father had alerted them to the ransom calls, the roommates said they had looked for him at Chatsworth Park, knowing it was one of Baker’s favorite haunts. Why would they assume a kidnapper had taken him there?

Duncan Martinez in an LAPD interview room.

(Los Angeles Police Department)

There was another troubling detail: Martinez had cashed a $109 check he said Baker had given him, but a handwriting expert determined that Baker’s signature was forged.

Martinez agreed to a polygraph test, described his friend’s murder as “a pretty unsensible crime” and insisted he had nothing to do with it. “I’ve never known anybody to carry a grudge or even dislike Ron for more than a minute, you know,” Martinez said.

The test showed deception, and he fled the state. He was gone for nearly 18 months.

He turned up in Utah, where he was arrested on a warrant for lying on a passport application. He had been hoping to reinvent himself as “Jonathan Wayne Miller,” an identity he had stolen from a toddler who died after accidentally drinking Drano in 1974, said LAPD Det. Rick Jackson, now retired. Jackson said Martinez sliced the child’s death certificate out of a Massachusetts state archive, hoping to disguise his fraud.

In February 1992, after being assured his statement could not be used against him, Martinez finally talked. He said it had been Blalock’s idea. They had been watching an old episode of “Dragnet” about a botched kidnapping. Martinez was an ex-Marine, and Blalock was ex-Army. With their military know-how, they believed they could do a better job.

They lured Baker to the park with a case of beer and the promise of meeting girls, and Blalock stabbed him with a Marine Corps Ka-Bar knife Martinez had lent him. Baker begged Martinez for help, and Martinez responded by telling his knife-wielding friend to finish the job.

“I told him to make sure that it was over, because I didn’t want Ron to suffer,” Martinez said. “I believe Nathan slit his throat a couple of times.” He admitted to disguising his voice while making ransom calls to Baker’s father.

But he never provided a location to deliver the ransom money. The scheme seemed as harebrained as it was cruel, and Martinez offered little to lend clarity. He sounded as clueless as anyone else, or pretended to be. “You know, it doesn’t completely click with me either,” he said.

“They ruined their lives, and all of the families’ lives, with the stupidest crime,” Patty Baker Elliott, the victim’s elder sister, told The Times in a recent interview.

Ronald and Patty Baker at her college graduation in the 1980s.

(Courtesy of Baker family)

In the end, the occult trappings were a red herring, apparently intended to throw police off the scent of the real culprits and the real motive.

The killers “set this thing up for the summer solstice, because they knew he wanted to be out, hopefully celebrating the solstice,” Jackson said in a recent interview. “What are the chances, of all the days, this is the one they choose to do it on?”

Jackson, one of the two chief detectives on the case, recounts the investigation in his book “Black Tunnel White Magic: A Murder, a Detective’s Obsession, and ‘90s Los Angeles at the Brink,” which he wrote with author and journalist Matthew McGough.

Blalock was charged with murder. To the frustration of detectives, who believed him equally guilty, Martinez remained free. His statements, given under a grant of immunity, could not be used against him.

Det. Rick Jackson in the LAPD’s Robbery Homicide Division squad room.

(Los Angeles Police Department )

“I almost blame Duncan more, because he was in the position, as Ron’s best friend, to stop this whole thing and say, ‘Wait a minute, Nathan, what the hell are we talking about here?’” Jackson said. “He didn’t, and he let it go through, and what happened, happened.”

Martinez might have escaped justice, but he blundered. Arrested for burglarizing a Utah sporting goods store, he claimed a man had coerced him into stealing a mountain bike by threatening to expose his role in the California murder.

As a Salt Lake City detective recorded him, Martinez put himself at the scene of his roommate’s death while downplaying his guilt — an admission made with no promise of immunity, and therefore enough to charge him.

“That’s the first time we could legally put him in the tunnel,” Jackson said.

Jurors found both men guilty of first-degree murder, and they were sentenced to life without the possibility of parole.

In June 2020, Baker’s sister was startled to come across a news site reporting that Gov. Gavin Newsom had intervened to commute Martinez’s sentence, making him eligible for parole. No one had told her. The governor’s office said at the time that Martinez had “committed himself to self-improvement” during his quarter-century in prison.

The news was no less a shock to Jackson, who thought the language of the commutation minimized Martinez’s role in concocting the kidnapping plan that led to the murder. He said he regarded Martinez as a “pathological liar,” and one of the most manipulative people he’d met in his long career.

Martinez had not only failed to help Baker, but had urged Blalock to “finish him off” and then posed as a consoling friend to the grieving family. The victim’s sister remembers how skillfully Martinez counterfeited compassion.

“He hugged everybody and talked to everybody at the service,” she said. “He cried. He got choked up and cried during his eulogy.”

A prosecutor intended to argue against Martinez’s release at the parole hearing, but then-newly elected L.A. Dist. Atty. George Gascon instituted a policy forbidding his office from sending advocates. The victim’s sister spoke of her loss. Jackson spoke of Martinez’s gift for deception.

“It was like spitting into the wind,” Jackson said.

The parole board sided with Martinez, and he left prison in April 2021. Blalock remains behind bars.

Rick Jackson and Matthew McGough, authors of “Black Tunnel White Magic.”

(JJ Geiger)

For 35 years now, the retired detective has been reflecting on the case, and the senselessness at its core. Jackson came to think of it as a “folie à deux” murder, a term that means “madness of two” and refers to criminal duos whose members probably would not have done it solo. He regarded it as “my blue-collar Leopold and Loeb case,” comparing it to the wealthy Chicago teenagers who murdered a boy in 1924 with the motive of committing the perfect crime.

An old cop show about a kidnapping had provoked the two young vets to start bouncing ideas off each other, until a plan took shape to try it themselves. They weighed possible targets. The student they shared an apartment with, the Wiccan pacifist without enemies, somehow seemed a convenient one.

“You have to understand their personalities, especially together,” Jackson said. “It’s kind of like, ‘I’m gonna one-up you, and make it even better.’ One of them would say, ‘Yeah, we could do this instead.’ And, ‘Yeah, that sounds cool, but I think we should do this, too.’”

In his ongoing war on “woke,” President Trump has instructed the National Park Service to scrub any language he would deem negative, unpatriotic or smacking of “improper partisan ideology” from signs and presentations visitors encounter at national parks and historic sites.

Instead, his administration has ordered the national parks and hundreds of other monuments and museums supervised by the Department of the Interior to ensure that all of their signage reminds Americans of our “extraordinary heritage, consistent progress toward becoming a more perfect Union, and unmatched record of advancing liberty, prosperity and human flourishing.”

Those marching orders, which went into effect late last week, have left Trump opponents and free speech advocates gasping in disbelief, wondering how park employees are supposed to put a sunny spin on monuments acknowledging slavery and Jim Crow laws. And how they’ll square the story of Japanese Americans shipped off to incarceration camps during World War II with an “unmatched record of advancing liberty.”

At Manzanar National Historic Site, a dusty encampment in the high desert of eastern California, one of 10 camps where more than 120,000 Japanese American civilians were imprisoned during the early 1940s, employees put up a required notice describing the changes last week.

Like all such notices across the country, it includes a QR code visitors can use to report any signs they see that are “negative about either past or living Americans or that fail to emphasize the beauty, grandeur, and abundance of landscapes”.

An identical sign is up at the Cesar E. Chavez National Monument in Kern County, a tribute to the struggle to ensure better wages and safer working conditions for immigrant farm laborers. Such signs are going up across the sprawling system, which includes Fort Sumter National Monument, where Confederates fired the first shots of the Civil War; Ford’s Theater National Historic Site in Washington, D.C., where Abraham Lincoln was assassinated; and the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Park.

So, nothing negative about John Wilkes Booth or James Earl Ray?

In response to an email requesting comment, a National Park Service spokesperson did not address questions about specific parks or monuments, saying only that changes would be made “where appropriate.”

The whole thing is “flabbergasting,” said Dennis Arguelles, Southern California director for the nonprofit National Parks Conservation Assn. “These stories may not be flattering to American heritage, but they’re an integral part of our history.

“If we lose these stories, then we’re in danger of repeating some of these mistakes,” Arguelles said.

Trump titled his March 27 executive order requiring federal sign writers to look on the bright side “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.” He specifically instructed the Interior Department to scrutinize any signs put up since January 2020 — the beginning of the Biden administration — for language that perpetuates “a false reconstruction” of American history.

Trump called out signs that “undermine the remarkable achievements of the United States by casting its founding principles and historical milestones in a negative light.”

He specifically cited the National Historical Park in Philadelphia and the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, D.C., as bowing to what he described as the previous administration’s zeal to cast “our Nation’s unparalleled legacy of advancing liberty, individual rights, and human happiness” as “inherently racist, sexist, oppressive, or otherwise irredeemably flawed.”

His solution? Order federal employees and historians to rewrite the “revisionist” history with language that exudes patriotism.

“It all seems pretty Orwellian,” said Kimbrough Moore, a rock climber and Yosemite National Park guide book author. After news of the impending changes began circulating in park circles, he posted on Instagram a sign he saw in the toilet at the Porcupine Flat campground in the middle of the park.

Across from the ubiquitous sign in all park bathrooms that says, “Please DO NOT put trash in toilets, it is extremely difficult to remove,” someone added a placard that reads, “Please DO NOT put trash in the White House. It is extremely difficult to remove.”

Predictably, the post went viral, proving what would-be censors have known for centuries: Policing language is a messy business and can be hard to control in a free society.

“Even the pooper can be a venue for resistance,” Moore wrote.

Reporting from Washington — For those outside Washington, government institutions seem equally dysfunctional. Inside the Beltway, however, the Senate occupies a somewhat special place.

The upper chamber is often revered – especially by its own members — as a more thoughtful, deliberate and collaborative body, where respect for minority viewpoints is baked into cherished rules and precedents.

But one by one, those long-standing traditions that have served as a check against extreme legislation or appointments are being tossed aside amid growing partisanship and a closely divided government.

Rather than nudging senators to compromise, the rules are now a being used in a procedural arms race that threatens to erode the very culture and practice that made the Senate different than the majority-rules House.

“This is the latest manifestation of a changing and declining Senate,” said Thomas Mann, a congressional scholar at the Brookings Institution and the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies.

Trump made promises to blue-collar voters. Democrats plan to make sure he follows through »

“The polarization between the parties and the intensity of sentiment outside the Senate has already led to changes in norms and practices,” he said. “Our system is not well structured to operate in a period of intense polarization.”

The latest example came Wednesday when GOP lawmakers took the extraordinary step of changing committee rules to advance two of President Trump’s Cabinet nominees without any Democrats in attendance.

Democrats, revealing their own willingness to defy Senate niceties, had boycotted the votes on Steven Mnuchin as Treasury secretary and Rep. Tom Price as head of Health and Human Services as they sought more answers on the nominees’ records.

Now Trump would like to see other Senate rules scrapped to the ensure approval of his Supreme Court nominee, Neil M. Gorsuch, whom Democrats had vowed to block even before his name was revealed.

Democrats are still stinging over Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s refusal for most of last year to grant a vote for President Obama’s nominee, Judge Merrick Garland, to fill the seat of the late Justice Antonin Scalia.

Supreme Court nominations have rarely been subjected to filibusters, but Democrats are talking about taking such a move against Gorsuch. In response, Republicans are considering changing Senate rules so only 51 votes are needed to end the delaying tactic, rather than the current 60. The move is seen as so severe it’s been dubbed the “nuclear option.”

“I would say, ‘If you can, Mitch, go nuclear,’ because that would be an absolute shame if a man of this quality was caught up in the web,” Trump said Wednesday.

Democrats opened the door themselves in 2013 when they used the nuclear option to push through several of Obama’s judicial and executive nominations, which Republicans had been filibustering.

The final frontier in this procedural war could be ending the use of filibusters on ordinary legislation. That would means that bills — which typically require 60 votes to advance in the Senate — could be moved with a 51-vote simple majority. With Republicans currently holding 52 seats, it would relegate Democrats to bystanders in the Senate.

“What is the Senate if that’s gone?” asked one Senate aide. “It’s just the House.”

The Senate has long been a frustrating place. Its slow pace and cumbersome rules are nothing like the more rambunctious House, where the majority can quickly pass a legislative agenda.

But the founders designed the bicameral system with that unique difference — one chamber to swiftly answer the will of the people, the other for a more measured second look before sending bills on to the White House.

Only in the 20th century did senators create an option for ending a filibuster as a way to cut off prolonged debate.

It all sounds pretty archaic to an increasingly frustrated public that is reeling in an intensely partisan environment.

Trump’s election has only accelerated the pressure to end the civilities of the past. On the Republican side, tea party activists pressured Republicans to jam Obama’s agenda, even if that meant shutting down the government.

Now Democratic voters are marching in the streets to stop Trump, pressuring their party leaders to confront just as aggressively what many fear is a dangerous agenda.

“What we’re seeing now is that the base is more motivated than any of us have ever seen,” said Mark Stanley, spokesman for Demand Progress, a 2-million-member progressive group whose activists will be calling and emailing Democratic senators to oppose Gorsuch. It recently turned out 3,000 people at a Democratic senator’s town hall meeting in Rhode Island to protest his vote for Trump’s CIA director nominee.

“Especially in these unprecedented times we’re in, Democrats have to stick by their principles and do what their constituents are really asking for,” Stanley said.

Though both parties have contributed to the gridlock in the Senate, it was McConnell’s willingness to utilize the filibuster as an ordinary weapon in the Obama era — rather than the occasional cudgel — that is largely seen as having fueled today’s standoff.

McConnell has made it clear that Trump’s Supreme Court nominee will be confirmed even if Democrats mount a filibuster — all but declaring he will use the nuclear option to do so.

Trump and the GOP are charging forward with Obamacare repeal, but few are eager to follow »

Such a move would probably poison legislative operations in the Senate for the foreseeable future.

The prospect has so alarmed some Democrats that they may be willing to hold their nose and vote for Gorsuch to preserve the filibuster. Others are not so sure.

Sen. Angus King, an independent from Maine who caucuses with Democrats, acknowledges that when he arrived in the Senate in 2013, he, too, was so quickly frustrated by the obstruction that he was willing to consider rules changes.

But the former governor vividly remembers a private meeting of the Democratic caucus when one of the older senators advised the newer arrivals about the importance of the Senate as the cooling body and urged them to think about the long-term ramifications of their actions.

“One of the things that surprise me about this place is that people do things and they expect it’s not going to have results four or five years from now,” King said. “I’ve come to realize the 60-vote majority requires some kind of bipartisan support which ultimately makes legislation better.”

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@LisaMascaro

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DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Iran’s supreme leader on Wednesday rejected U.S. calls for surrender in the face of more Israeli strikes and warned that any military involvement by the Americans would cause “irreparable damage to them.”

The second public appearance by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei since the Israeli strikes began six days ago came as Israel lifted some restrictions on daily life, suggesting that the missile threat from Iran was easing.

Khamenei spoke a day after President Trump demanded in a social media post that Iran surrender without conditions and warned Khamenei that the U.S. knows where he is but has no plans to kill him, “at least not for now.”

Trump initially distanced himself from Israel’s surprise attack on Friday that triggered the conflict, but in recent days he has hinted at greater American involvement, saying he wants something “much bigger” than a ceasefire. The U.S. has also sent more military aircraft and warships to the region.

‘Nobody knows what I’m going to do’

Speaking to reporters at the White House Wednesday, Trump would not say whether he has decided to order a U.S. strike on Iran, a move that Tehran warned anew would be greeted with stiff retaliation if it happens.

“I may do it, I may not do it,” Trump said in an exchange with reporters at the White House. “I mean, nobody knows what I’m going to do.”

Trump added that it’s not “too late” for Iran to give up its nuclear program as he continues to weigh direct U.S. involvement in Israel’s military operations aimed at crushing Tehran’s nuclear program.

“Nothing’s too late,” Trump said. “I can tell you this. Iran’s got a lot of trouble.”

“Nothing is finished until it is finished,” Trump added. But “the next week is going to be very big — maybe less than a week.”

Trump also offered a terse response to Khamenei’s refusal to heed to his call for Iran to submit to an unconditional surrender.

“I say good luck,” Trump said.

‘The Iranian nation is not one to surrender’

Khamenei dismissed the “threatening and absurd statements” by Trump.

“Wise individuals who know Iran, its people and its history never speak to this nation with the language of threats, because the Iranian nation is not one to surrender,” he said in a low-resolution video, his voice echoing. “Americans should know that any military involvement by the U.S. will undoubtedly result in irreparable damage to them.”

Iran released Khamenei’s statement before the video was aired, perhaps as a security measure. His location is not known, and it was impossible to discern from the tight shot, which showed only beige curtains, an Iranian flag and a portrait of Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Khamenei’s immediate predecessor, who died in 1989.

An Iranian diplomat had warned earlier Wednesday that U.S. intervention would risk “all-out war.”

Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei did not elaborate, but thousands of American troops are based in nearby countries within range of Iran’s weapons. The U.S. has threatened a massive response to any attack.

Another Iranian official said the country would keep enriching uranium for peaceful purposes, apparently ruling out Trump’s demands that Iran give up its disputed nuclear program.

Strikes in and around Tehran

The latest Israeli strikes hit one facility used to make uranium centrifuges and another that made missile components, the Israeli military said. Military officials said their defenses intercepted 10 missiles overnight as Iran’s retaliatory barrages diminished. The U.N. nuclear watchdog agency said Israel struck two centrifuge production facilities in and near Tehran.

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said the military also struck the headquarters of Iran’s internal security forces on Wednesday, without specifying the agency or location. The strike marks a shift toward targeting Iran’s domestic security apparatus, which has long cracked down on dissent and suppressed protests.

Israel’s air campaign has struck several nuclear and military sites, killing top generals and nuclear scientists. A Washington-based Iranian human rights group said at least 585 people, including 239 civilians, have been killed and more than 1,300 wounded.

Iran has fired some 400 missiles and hundreds of drones in retaliatory strikes, killing at least 24 people in Israel and wounding hundreds. Some have hit apartment buildings in central Israel, causing heavy damage, and air-raid sirens have repeatedly forced Israelis to run for shelter.

Iran has fired fewer missiles as the conflict has worn on. It has not explained the decline, but Israel has targeted launchers and other infrastructure related to the missiles.

By Wednesday, Israel eased some of the restrictions that it had imposed on daily life when Iran launched its retaliatory attack, allowing gatherings of up to 30 people and letting workplaces reopen as long as there is a shelter nearby.

Schools are closed, and many businesses remain shuttered, but Israel’s decision to reverse its ban on gatherings and office work for all but essential employees signals the Israeli military’s confidence that its attacks have limited Iran’s missile capabilities.

Casualties mount in Iran

The Washington-based group Human Rights Activists said it had identified 239 of those killed in Israeli strikes as civilians and 126 as security personnel.

The group, which also provided detailed casualty figures during 2022 protests over the death of Mahsa Amini, crosschecks local reports against a network of sources it has developed in Iran.

Iran has not been publishing regular death tolls during the conflict and has minimized casualties in the past. Its last update, issued Monday, put the toll at 224 people killed and 1,277 others wounded.

Shops have been closed across Tehran, including in its famed Grand Bazaar, as people wait in gas lines and pack roads leading out of the city to escape the onslaught.

A major explosion was heard around 5 a.m. Wednesday in Tehran. That followed other explosions earlier in the predawn darkness. Authorities in Iran offered no acknowledgement of the attacks, which have become increasingly common as the Israeli airstrikes have intensified.

At least one strike appeared to target Tehran’s eastern neighborhood of Hakimiyeh, where the paramilitary Revolutionary Guard has an academy.

Iran says it will keep enriching uranium

Israel says it launched the strikes to prevent Iran from building a nuclear weapon, after talks between the United States and Iran over a diplomatic resolution made little visible progress over two months but were still ongoing. Trump has said Israel’s campaign came after a 60-day window he set for the talks.

Iran has long insisted its nuclear program is peaceful, though it is the only non-nuclear-armed state to enrich uranium up to 60%, a short, technical step away from weapons-grade levels of 90%. U.S. intelligence agencies have said they did not believe Iran was actively pursuing the bomb.

Israel is the only country in the Middle East with nuclear weapons, but has never publicly acknowledged them.

Iran’s ambassador to Geneva, Ali Bahreini, told reporters that Iran “will continue to produce the enriched uranium as far as we need for peaceful purposes.”

He rejected any talk of a setback to Iran’s nuclear research and development from the Israeli strikes, saying, “Our scientists will continue their work.”

Israel welcomes first repatriation flights

Israelis began returning on flights for the first time since the country’s international airport shut down at the start of the conflict.

Two flights from Larnaca, Cyprus, landed Wednesday at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion International Airport, said Lisa Dvir, an airport spokesperson.

Israel closed its airspace to commercial flights because of the ballistic missile attacks, leaving tens of thousands of Israelis stranded abroad.

Krauss, Gambrell and Frankel write for the Associated Press. Frankel reported from Jerusalem. Associated Press writers Amir Vahdat and Nasser Karimi in Iran, and Jamey Keaten in Geneva, contributed.

NEW ORLEANS — The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested 84 people unlawfully in the country during a raid at a southwestern Louisiana racetrack, the agency announced Tuesday.

ICE said that it raided the Delta Downs Racetrack, Hotel and Casino in Calcasieu Parish on Monday and that the FBI and U.S. Border Patrol were among the agencies carrying out the operation.

Authorities had “received intelligence” that businesses operating at the racetrack’s stables employed “unauthorized workers,” who were targeted in the raid, ICE said.

Of the dozens of workers detained during the raid, “at least two” had prior criminal records, according to the agency.

Those arrested included a 36-year-old Mexican national who ICE said was previously charged with driving under the influence, cocaine possession and illegal reentry.

The agency’s news release also highlighted a 40-year-old Mexican national who it said was arrested previously for aggravated battery with a dangerous weapon and sexual battery, among other charges.

“These enforcement operations aim to disrupt illegal employment networks that threaten the integrity of our labor systems, put American jobs at risk and create pathways for exploitation within critical sectors of our economy,” said Steven Stavinoha, U.S. Customs and Border Protection director of field operations in New Orleans, in a written statement.

“Our Company complies fully with federal labor laws, and to our knowledge, no Delta Downs team members were involved in this matter,” said David Strow, a spokesperson for Boyd Gaming Corp., which owns the racetrack, in an emailed statement. “We will cooperate with law enforcement as requested.”

Brook writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — Nearly six months after Joe Biden left the White House, Senate Republicans are still scrutinizing his presidency, kicking off the first in what’s expected to be a series of congressional hearings this year on his mental fitness in office.

Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee brought in three witnesses Wednesday — none of whom served in Biden’s administration — to scrutinize his time in office, arguing that the former president, his staff and the media must be held accountable. Democrats boycotted the hearing and criticized Republicans for “armchair-diagnosing” Biden when the committee could be looking into serious matters.

Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, who co-chaired the hearing, said that they will aim to “shine a light on exactly what went on in the White House during Biden’s presidency.”

“We simply cannot ignore what transpired because President Biden is no longer in office,” Cornyn said.

A spokesperson for Biden declined to comment on the hearing.

It was the first in what could be several hearings about Biden in the coming months. Over in the House, the Oversight Committee has subpoenaed several of Biden’s former staff members, along with his White House doctor, ordering him to testify at a June 27 hearing “as part of the investigation into the cover-up of President Joe Biden’s cognitive decline.”

Questions about Biden’s age and fitness erupted in the summer after his disastrous performance in a debate against Republican challenger Donald Trump, which ultimately led to the Democrat’s withdrawal from the race.

Even after Trump won back the presidency in November, Republicans have continued to hammer on Biden’s age, citing in part new reporting about Biden that was published this year.

Trump now alleges that Biden administration officials may have forged the former president’s signature and taken sweeping actions without his knowledge, though he provided no evidence of that happening. Trump has ordered lawyers at the White House and the Justice Department to investigate.

Republicans played clips during the hearing Wednesday of Democrats defending Biden. In the montage, the Democrats talk about how Biden was mentally sharp when he was in office.

“Most Democrats on this committee have chosen to all but boycott the hearing and have failed to call a single witness,” Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) said. “They have chosen to ignore this issue, like they ignored President Biden’s decline.”

Sen. Dick Durbin, the committee’s top Democrat, criticized Republicans for holding a hearing on the last president at a time when there are “numerous critical challenges facing the nation that are under our jurisdiction.”

“Apparently armchair-diagnosing former President Biden is more important than the issues of grave concern,” said Durbin of Illinois.

After his opening remarks, Durbin played a video montage of his own — but with clips of Trump speaking that he said reflected the “cognitive ability” of the current president. Durbin left the hearing after his opening remarks.

Three witnesses testified: former White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer, former White House official Theodore Wold and University of Virginia law professor John Harrison. Spicer and Wold both served under Trump.

Much of the focus was on Biden’s alleged use of an autopen. Trump has repeated long-standing allegations that the Biden White House relied on an autopen to sign presidential pardons, executive orders and other key documents, claiming that its use cast doubt on their validity.

Sen. Katie Britt (R-Ala.) also questioned Spicer on “what mechanisms should we put in place” to hold the media accountable “for not actually following what is clearly in front of them.”

Cappelletti writes for the Associated Press.

President Trump has endorsed David Ellison’s takeover of Paramount Global — an $8-billion merger that has been complicated by his $20-billion lawsuit over CBS’ “60 Minutes.”

On Wednesday, Trump was asked about the hold-up in the federal review of Skydance’s takeover of the storied entertainment company. The question came as reporters clustered around the president on the White House lawn to watch the installation of a flagpole.

The Paramount-Skydance deal has been pending at the Federal Communications Commission since late last fall.

Trump said he hoped the deal goes through.

“Ellison is great. He’ll do a great job with it,” Trump said.

Then he appeared to connect the merger-review delay to his lawsuit against CBS and its parent Paramount over last fall’s “60 Minutes” interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris.

Trump has maintained since last October that the Harris interview was edited to burnish her chances in the November election. CBS has denied the allegations, saying the edits were routine. The raw footage showed Harris was accurately quoted, but Trump’s team said he suffered “mental anguish” from the broadcast.

“They interviewed Kamala. Her answer was horrendous,” Trump said Wednesday. “I would say it was election-threatening. I would say election-threatening because it was so incompetent.”

1st Amendment experts have called Trump’s case frivolous, but Paramount wants to avoid waging an extensive legal fight. Paramount’s leaders have pursued a settlement to help clear a path for the company’s sale to Skydance — a deal that needs the approval of the FCC.

The mediation process to resolve the lawsuit, filed in a Texas court, has become protracted.

“They are working on a settlement,” Trump said Wednesday. He mentioned that two high-level CBS executives — the head of CBS News and the executive producer of “60 Minutes” — had abruptly departed as the merger review dragged on.

“They’re all getting fired,” he said.

Late last week, Trump’s legal team filed court documents asking for a deadline extension in the discovery process, disclosing the two sides were working to reach a resolution.

Earlier this month, Ellison met Trump briefly while the two men were sitting ringside at a UFC fight in New Jersey, according to video footage shared online. Skydance declined to discuss Ellison’s interaction with Trump.

It marked the second time this year that Ellison chatted with the president at a UFC match. The first was in April.

It’s been nearly a year since Paramount’s controlling shareholder Shari Redstone and fellow Paramount directors approved the two-phased $8-billion deal that will hand the company to the son of tech billionaire Larry Ellison, who is a Trump supporter. The deal will also see the Ellison family buy the Redstone investment vehicle, National Amusements Inc.

Santa Monica-based Skydance intends to consolidate the company that boasts the Melrose Avenue Paramount film studio, Paramount+ streaming service, CBS and cable channels including Comedy Central, Showtime and BET.

Skydance operations and personnel will be folded into Paramount.

The deal faces one final regulatory hurdle: FCC Chairman Brendan Carr’s consent to transfer 29 CBS television station licenses to the Ellisons from the Redstones. This week, the Senate approved Trump’s second Republican appointment to the panel, Olivia Trusty.

WASHINGTON — The go-broke dates for Medicare and Social Security trust funds have moved up as rising health care costs and new legislation affecting Social Security benefits have contributed to earlier projected depletion dates, according to an annual report released Wednesday.

The go-broke date — or the date at which the programs will no longer have enough funds to pay full benefits — was pushed up to 2033 for Medicare’s hospital insurance trust fund, according to the new report from the programs’ trustees. Last year’s report put the go-broke date at 2036.

Meanwhile, Social Security’s trust funds — which cover old age and disability recipients — will be unable to pay full benefits beginning in 2034, instead of last year’s estimate of 2035. After that point, Social Security would only be able to pay 81% of benefits.

The trustees say the latest findings show the urgency of needed changes to the programs, which have faced dire financial projections for decades. But making changes to the programs has long been politically unpopular, and lawmakers have repeatedly kicked Social Security and Medicare’s troubling math to the next generation.

President Trump and other Republicans have vowed not to make any cuts to Medicare or Social Security, even as they seek to shrink the federal government’s expenditures.

Social Security Administration Commissioner Frank Bisignano, sworn into his role in May, said in a statement that “the financial status of the trust funds remains a top priority for the Trump Administration.”

“Current-law projections indicate that Medicare still faces a substantial financial shortfall that needs to be addressed with further legislation. Such legislation should be enacted sooner rather than later to minimize the impact on beneficiaries, providers, and taxpayers,” the trustees state in the report.

The trustees are made up of six people — the Treasury Secretary serves as managing trustee, alongside the secretaries of Labor, Health and Human Services, and the commissioner of Social Security. Two other presidentially-appointed and Senate-confirmed trustees serve as public representatives, however those roles have been vacant since July 2015.

About 68 million people are enrolled in Medicare, the federal government’s health insurance that covers those 65 and older, as well as people with severe disabilities or illnesses.

Wednesday’s report shows a worsening situation for the Medicare hospital insurance trust fund compared to last year. But the forecasted go-broke date of 2033 is still later than the dates of 2031, 2028 and 2026 predicted just a few years ago.

Once the fund’s reserves become depleted, Medicare would be able to cover only 89% of costs for patients’ hospital visits, hospice care and nursing home stays or home health care that follow hospital visits.

The report said expenses last year for Medicare’s hospital insurance trust fund came in higher than expected.

Income exceeded expenditures by nearly $29 billion last year for the hospital insurance trust fund, the report stated. Trustees expect that surplus to continue through 2027. Deficits then will follow until the fund becomes depleted in 2033.

The report states that the Social Security Social Security Fairness Act, enacted in January, which repealed the Windfall Elimination and Government Pension Offset provisions of the Social Security Act and increased Social Security benefit levels for some workers, had an impact on the depletion date of SSA’s trust funds.

Romina Boccia, a director of Budget and Entitlement Policy at the libertarian CATO Institute called the repeal of the provisions “a political giveaway masquerading as reform. Instead of tackling Social Security’s structural imbalances, Congress chose to increase benefits for a vocal minority—accelerating trust fund insolvency.”

“It’s a clear sign that populist pressure now outweighs fiscal responsibility and economic sanity on both sides of the aisle,” She said.

Pair that with a Republican reconciliation bill that increases tax giveaways while refusing to rein in even the most dubious Medicaid expansions, and the message is unmistakable: Washington is still in giveaway mode.

AARP CEO Myechia Minter-Jordan said “Congress must act to protect and strengthen the Social Security that Americans have earned and paid into throughout their working lives.” “More than 69 million Americans rely on Social Security today and as America’s population ages, the stability of this vital program only becomes more important.”

Social Security benefits were last reformed roughly 40 years ago, when the federal government raised the eligibility age for the program from 65 to 67. The eligibility age has never changed for Medicare, with people eligible for the medical coverage when they turn 65.

Nancy Altman, president of Social Security Works, an advocacy group for the popular public benefit program said in a statement that “there are two options for action: Bringing more money into Social Security, or reducing benefits. Any politician who doesn’t support increasing Social Security’s revenue is, by default, supporting benefit cuts.”

Congressional Budget Office reporting has stated that the biggest drivers of debt rising in relation to GDP are increasing interest costs and spending for Medicare and Social Security. An aging population drives those numbers.

Several legislative proposals have been put forward to address Social Security’s impending insolvency.

Hussein writes for the Associated Press. AP reporters Amanda Seitz and Tom Murphy in Indianapolis contributed to this report.

California Democrats are denouncing the Trump administration’s decision to terminate $3.7 billion in funding for two dozen clean energy projects, including three in the Golden State.

The 24 awards recently canceled by the U.S. Department of Energy were issued by the Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations under the Biden administration and primarily focused on carbon capture and sequestration and decarbonization initiatives. Trump officials said the projects do not “advance the energy needs of the American people” and would not generate a positive return on investment for taxpayers.

“While the previous administration failed to conduct a thorough financial review before signing away billions of taxpayer dollars, the Trump administration is doing our due diligence to ensure we are utilizing taxpayer dollars to strengthen our national security, bolster affordable, reliable energy sources and advance projects that generate the highest possible return on investment,” DOE Secretary Chris Wright wrote in his announcement about the terminations.

One of the largest cuts was a $500-million award for the National Cement Company of California, whose first-of-its-kind Net-Zero Project in Lebec was geared toward developing carbon-neutral cement. Cement production is notoriously emission-intensive, accounting for as much as 8% of planet-warming greenhouse gases due to both the high heat needed in the process and its byproducts.

National Cement Company officials said the project would capture up to 1 million tons of CO2 per year — effectively the entire emissions profile of its cement plant near the border of Los Angeles and Kern counties — but also would act as a roadmap for the cement industry as a whole.

“As we understand the new priorities of the U.S. Department of Energy, we want to emphasize that this project will expand domestic manufacturing capacity for a critical industrial sector, while also integrating new technologies to keep American cement competitive,” the company said in an email. It is now exploring options to keep the project alive.

The funding cuts arrive amid sweeping changes driven by Trump’s orders to rein in federal spending and “unleash American energy.” The president has removed barriers for fossil fuel companies, such as regulations that limit greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, and called for increased oil and gas drilling and natural resources mining.

California, meanwhile, has set some of the nation’s most ambitious decarbonization goals, including its aim to reach carbon neutrality by 2045. Environmental experts, including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, say capturing and storing carbon will be essential for slowing global warming, in addition to efforts to reduce overall carbon emissions.

In a letter to Wright dated Tuesday, California Sens. Adam Schiff and Alex Padilla said the terminations “run counter to our shared interest in boosting energy production, innovation, and economic vitality.” They urged Wright to reinstate the projects.

“The United States cannot afford to halt our progress and hinder American companies’ efforts to move beyond outdated technologies if we hope to remain competitive and truly energy dominant around the globe,” the senators wrote. “These irrational cancellations will increase energy prices, hamper innovation, and set us backwards as we strive toward a clean energy future.”

The cement project wasn’t the only one canceled in California. The DOE also terminated a $270-million award for an air-cooled carbon capture and sequestration facility at the Sutter Energy Center, a natural gas power plant in Yuba City. Carbon sequestration is the process of capturing CO2 and preventing it from entering the atmosphere by storing it underground, in aquifers or other geologic formations.

The Sutter project was projected to reduce emissions from the plant by up to 95% and capture and store up to 1.75 million metric tons of CO2 each year, according to its federal project page.

The federal government also canceled $75 million for a project at the Gallo Glass Company in Modesto, which would have demonstrated the viability of replacing gas-powered furnaces with a hybrid electric melter, reducing natural gas use by as much as 70%, the federal database shows.

Schiff and Padilla said all of the awards were provided through legally binding contract agreements between the recipients and the federal government, and so cannot be canceled “on a political whim.”

For its part, the DOE said it arrived at its decisions following a thorough and individualized financial review of each project, which found that they “did not meet the economic, national security or energy security standards necessary to sustain DOE’s investment.”

However, the terminations also appear to run counter to the administration’s own public commitments. The White House on Earth Day said Trump seeks to promote energy innovation “by supporting cutting-edge technologies like carbon capture and storage, nuclear energy, and next-generation geothermal.”

The DOE eliminated funding for projects across the country, including in Texas, Mississippi, Kentucky, Wyoming, Louisiana, Texas, Alabama, Ohio, New York, Illinois, Massachusetts, Texas, Washington, Arizona and Nevada.

But the cancellations in California mark yet another affront to the climate conscious state, which has in recent weeks also seen the Trump administration overturn its ability to set strict tailpipe emission standards and eventually ban the sale of new gas-powered gars. The state is suing the administration over that decision.

Reporting from Washington — President Trump stepped up his attack on federal environmental protections Tuesday, issuing an order directing his administration to begin the long process of rolling back sweeping clean water rules that were enacted by his predecessor.

The order directing the Environmental Protection Agency to set about dismantling the Waters of the United States rule takes aim at one of President Obama’s signature environmental legacies, a far-reaching anti-pollution effort that expanded the authority of regulators over the nation’s waterways and wetlands.

The contentious rule had been fought for years by farmers, ranchers, real estate developers and others, who complained it invited heavy-handed bureaucrats to burden their businesses with onerous restrictions and fines for minor violations.

Obama’s EPA argued that such claims were exaggerated and misrepresented the realities of the enforcement process of a rule that promised to create substantially cleaner waterways, and with them healthier habitats for threatened species of wildlife.

The directive to undo the clean water initiative is expected to be closely followed by another aimed at unraveling the Obama administration’s ambitious plan to fight climate change by curbing power plant emissions.

“It is such a horrible, horrible rule,” Trump said as he signed the directive Tuesday aimed at the water rules. “It has such a nice name, but everything about it is bad.” He declared the rule, championed by environmental groups to give the EPA broad authority over nearly two-thirds of the waterways in the nation, “one of the worst examples of federal regulation” and “a massive power grab.”

While the executive orders are a clear sign of the new administration’s distaste for some of the highest profile federal environmental rules, they also reflect the challenge it faces in erasing them. Both the climate and the clean water rules were enacted only after a long and tedious process of public hearings, scientific analysis and bureaucratic review. That entire process must be revisited before they can be weakened. It could take years.

And environmental groups will be mobilized to fight every step of the way. “These wetland protections help ensure that over 100 million Americans have access to clean and safe drinking water,” California billionaire climate activist Tom Steyer said in a statement. “Access to safe drinking water is a human right, and Trump’s order is a direct violation of this right.”

The executive orders are compounded by the administration’s release of a budget blueprint that includes deep cuts at the EPA. Even if the process of changing the environmental rules is slow, the Trump administration will aim to hasten their demise by hollowing out the agencies charged with enforcing them.

At the same time, it is working with Congress to immediately kill some environmental protections under an obscure authority that applies to regulations enacted within the final months of the previous administration. A rule intended to limit water pollution from coal mining has already been killed by Congress, which is now weighing whether to jettison rules that force gas drilling operations on federal land to capture more of the toxic methane they emit.

Trump vowed Tuesday that he would continue to undermine the Obama-era environmental protections wherever he sees the opportunity, arguing they have cost jobs. “So many jobs we have delayed for so many years,” Trump said. “It is unfair to everybody.”

Many industries take issue with that interpretation. Tuesday’s order, for example, was met with a swift rebuke from sport fishing and hunting groups. They said the clean water rule has been a boon to the economy, sustaining hundreds of thousands of jobs in their industry.

“Sports men and women will do everything within their power to compel the administration to change course and to use the Clean Water Act to improve, not worsen, the nation’s waterways,” a statement from a half-dozen of the organizations said.

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WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that states may ban hormone treatments for transgender teens, rejecting the claim that such gender-based discrimination is unconstitutional.

In a 6-3 decision, the justices said states are generally free to decide on proper standards of medical care, particularly when health experts are divided.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts, writing for the court, said the state decides on medical regulations. “We leave questions regarding its policy to the people, their elected representatives, and the democratic process,” he said.

In dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said the law “plainly discriminates on the basis of sex… By retreating from meaningful judicial review exactly where it matters most, the Court abandons transgender children and their families to political whims. In sadness, I dissent.” Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson agreed.

The ruling upholds laws in Tennessee and 23 other Republican-led states, all of them adopted in the past four years.

Tennessee lawmakers said the number of minors being diagnosed with gender dysphoria had “exploded” in recent years, leading to a “surge in unproven and risky medical interventions for these underage patients.”

California and other Democratic-led states do not prohibit doctors from prescribing puberty blockers or hormones for those under age 18 who are diagnosed with gender dysphoria.

While the court’s ruling in the Tennessee case should not directly affect California’s law, the Trump administration seeks to prevent the use of federal funds to pay for gender affirming care.

This could affect patients who rely on Medicaid and also restrict hospitals and other medical clinics from providing hormones and other medical treatments for minors.

Wednesday’s decision highlights the sharp turn in the past year on trans rights and “gender affirming” care.

Solicitor Gen. Elizabeth Prelogar, representing the Biden administration, had appealed to the Supreme Court in November, 2023, and urged the justices to strike down the red state laws.

She spoke of a broad consensus in favor of gender affirming care. It was unconstitutional, she argued, for states to ban “evidence-based treatments supported by the overwhelming consensus of the medical community.”

But Republican lawmakers voiced doubt about the long-term effect of these hormone treatments for adolescents.

Their skepticism was reinforced by the Cass Report from Britain, which concluded there were not long-term studies or reliable evidence in support of the treatments.

In his first day in office, President Trump issued an executive order condemning “gender ideology extremism.”

He said his administration would “recognize two sexes, male and female. These sexes are not changeable and are grounded in fundamental and incontrovertible reality.”

His administration later said its ban on gender affirming care for minors would extend to medical facilities receiving federal funds.

Eric Bauman, a gruff and tireless political operative who led two of California’s most powerful Democratic organizations before resigning amid misconduct allegations, died Monday.

His family said in a statement that Bauman died at UCLA West Valley Medical Center after a long illness. He was 66.

Born in the Bronx to an Army doctor and a registered nurse, Bauman went to military school and moved to Hollywood just before he turned 18. He became a nurse and met his husband, also a nurse, in a hospital cafeteria during an overnight shift in the early 1980s.

Motivated in part by the AIDS crisis, Bauman became active in the Stonewall Democratic Club Los Angeles, a progressive political group, and was elected president of the organization in 1994.

Bauman grew L.A. County Democratic Party into a political force as chairman from 2000 to 2017 and expanded the number of Democrats winning elections at every level of government, from water boards to the U.S. House of Representatives.

“I turned the L.A. Democratic Party from a $50,000-a-year organization into a $1.5 million-a-year organization,” he told a reporter in 2011.

With a Bronx affect and a gold signet ring on his pinkie finger that he twisted when he was under pressure, Bauman built a reputation as an old-school party boss who would give you the bad news straight. Democrats compared him to Ray Liotta, and some called him the “Godfather of Democratic politics.”

“People come up to me on the street all the time and think I’m Joe Pesci,” he told the Times in 2017. “I try to work with that.”

Bauman ran for state Democratic Party chair in 2017. After a bruising election that exposed the fractures between the progressive and establishment wings of the party, Bauman was elected by a mere 62 votes.

He was the first openly gay and first Jewish person to chair the party.

“I don’t wear a button that says, ‘Look at me, I’m gay,’” Bauman said in a 2009 interview with the UCLA Film and Television Archive. But, he said, “I never fail to recognize my partner from any podium. It is in my bio. It is a part of who I am.”

The high point of his tenure was the 2018 midterm elections, when California Democrats flipped seven seats in the U.S. House of Representatives and won back a veto-proof supermajority in the state Legislature.

Bauman said he wanted to overturn California’s voter-approved “jungle primary” system, which allows the top two vote-getters to advance to the general election, regardless of party. Bauman argued that Democrats should pick their own nominees, rather than spending millions of dollars fighting in the primaries.

In late 2018, The Times reported that Bauman had made crude sexual comments and had engaged in unwanted touching or physical intimidation in professional settings, citing 10 party staff members and political activists.

Bauman resigned, saying he planned to seek treatment for health issues and alcohol use. The state Democratic Party fired top staffers in the wake of the allegations and eventually paid more than $380,000 to settle a sexual misconduct lawsuit brought by three of his accusers. A party spokeswoman did not respond to requests for a statement on Bauman’s death Tuesday.

After his resignation, Bauman disappeared from public life for several years. More recently, he began hosting a radio show called “The UnCommon Sense Democrat” on the Inland Empire’s KCAA-AM 1050.

In the mid-2000s, when Republicans still represented many outlying areas of Los Angeles County, Bauman set up a “red zone program” at the L.A. County Democratic Party that funneled money and volunteers to Democrats running for seats in GOP strongholds.

The investments were a gamble, but they built relationships and better candidates — and sometimes, a long shot candidate actually won, said former state lawmaker Miguel Santiago, who first got involved with the party in the early 2000s.

“He was really hungry for Democratic wins,” Santiago said. “There was no seat that that guy left on the table, whether it was a community college seat, a school board race, a water board race.”

Bauman also worked to strengthen ties with organized labor, now the California Democratic Party’s most powerful ally, and build voter registration and turnout.

State Assemblymember Mark Gonzalez, who chaired the county party after Bauman, said he spent countless hours as a young volunteer entering information about newly registered voters into the party database.

The data came from a booth that the Democratic Party set up outside citizenship ceremonies where newly eligible voters could register to vote as Democrats, he said. Bauman sent a signed card to each person, congratulating them and welcoming them to the party.

“That touched people, and it showed them that they matter,” Gonzalez said.

Bauman also worked for Gov. Gray Davis and insurance commissioner John Garamendi and as a consultant to several Assembly speakers, including Anthony Rendon of Los Angeles and Toni Atkins of San Diego.

He is survived by his husband and partner of 42 years, Michael Andraychak, and his father and sister, Richard and Roya Bauman.

Decades ago, Pete Wilson did something unusual. The U.S. senator came home to run for California governor.

The path to power typically goes the opposite direction, with governors trading the statehouse for the (perceived) influence and prestige of being one of just 100 members of a club that fancies itself — not so humbly or precisely — as “the world’s greatest deliberative body.”

Wilson bucked that sentiment.

“It is a much more difficult role,” he said of being governor, and one he came to much prefer over his position on Capitol Hill.

It turns out that Wilson, a Republican who narrowly prevailed in a fierce 1990 contest against Democrat Dianne Feinstein, was onto something.

Since, then five other lawmakers have left the Senate to become their state’s governor. Several more tried and failed.

Although it’s still more common for a governor to run for Senate than vice versa, in 2026 as many as three sitting U.S. senators may run for governor, the most in at least 90 years, according to the nonpartisan Cook Political Report.

Clearly, the U.S. Senate has lost some of its luster.

There have always been those who found the place, with its pretentious airs, dilatory pacing and stultifying rules of order, a frustrating environment to work in, much less thrive.

The late Wendell Ford, who served a term as Kentucky governor before spending the next 24 years in the Senate, used to say “the unhappiest members of the Senate were the former governors,” recalled Charlie Cook, founder of the eponymous political newsletter. “They were used to getting things done.”

And that, as Cook noted, “was when the Senate did a lot more than it does now.”

What’s more, the Senate used to be a more dignified, less partisan place — especially when compared with the fractious House. An apocryphal story has George Washington breakfasting with Thomas Jefferson and referring to the Senate as a saucer intended to cool the passions of the intemperate lower chamber. (It helps to picture a teacup filled with scalding brew.)

These days, both chambers are bubbling cauldrons of animosity and partisan backbiting.

Worse, there’s not a whole lot of advising going in the Senate, which reflexively consents to pretty much whatever it is that President Trump asks of the prostrated Republican majority.

“The Senate has become an employment agency where we just have vote after vote after vote to confirm nominees that are are going to pass, generally, 53 to 47, with very rare exceptions,” said Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet, a Democrat who’s running to be governor of his home state.

Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet, a Democrat, is the front-runner in his bid to be the state’s next governor.

(Mark Schiefelbein / Associated Press)

The other announced gubernatorial hopeful is Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville, a Republican who’s made no secret of his distaste for Washington after a single term. Tennessee’s Marsha Blackburn, a fellow Republican fresh off reelection, is also expected to run for governor in her state.

Bennet arrived in the Senate 16 years ago and since then, he said, it’s been “really a one-way ratchet down.”

“You think about the fact that we’re really down to a couple [of] bills a year,” he said this week between votes on Capitol Hill. “One is a continuing resolution that isn’t even a real appropriations bill … it’s just cementing the budget decisions that were made last year, and then the defense bill.”

Despite all that, Bennet said he’s not running for governor “because I’m worn out. It’s not because I’m frustrated or bored or irritated or aggravated” with life in the Senate, “though the Senate can be a very aggravating place to work.” Rather, working beneath the golden dome in Denver would offer a better opportunity “to push back and to fight Trumpism,” he said, by offering voters a practical and affirmative Democratic alternative.

Try that as one of 47 straitjacketed senators.

When Wilson took office in January 1991, he succeeded the term-limited George Deukmejian, a fellow Republican.

He immediately faced a massive budget deficit, which he closed through a package of tax hikes and spending cuts facilitated by his negotiating partner, Democratic Assembly Speaker Willie Brown. Their agreement managed to antagonize Democrats and Republicans alike.

Wilson didn’t much care.

After serving in the Legislature, as San Diego mayor and a U.S. senator, he often said being California governor was the best job he ever had. There are legislators to wrangle, agencies to oversee, natural disasters to address, interest groups to fend off — all while trying to stay in the good graces of millions of often cranky, impatient voters.

“Not everybody enjoys it,” Wilson said when asked about the prospect of Kamala Harris serving as governor, “and not everyone is good at it.”

Harris, who served four years in the Senate before ascending to the vice presidency, has given herself the summer to decide whether to run for governor, try again for the White House or retire from politics altogether.

California’s next governor will probably have to take some “very painful steps,” Wilson said, given the dicey economic outlook and the likelihood of federal budget cuts and other hostile moves by the Trump administration. That will make a lot of people unhappy, including many of Harris’ fellow Democrats.

How would she feel about returning to Sacramento’s small stage, wrestling with intractable issues such as the budget and homelessness, and dealing with the inevitable political heat? We won’t know until and unless Harris runs.

It has been five years since May 25, 2020, when George Floyd gasped for air beneath the knee of a Minneapolis police officer on the corner of 38th Street and Chicago Avenue. Five years since 17-year-old Darnella Frazier stood on the curb outside Cup Foods, raised her phone, and bore witness to nine minutes and 29 seconds that would galvanize a global movement against racial inequality.

Frazier’s video didn’t just show what happened. It insisted the world stop and see.

Today, that legacy lives on in the hands of a different community, facing different threats but wielding the same tools. Across the United States, Latino organizers are lifting their phones not to go viral but to go on record. They are livestreaming Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids, filming family separations, documenting protests outside detention centers. Their footage is not content. It is evidence. It is warning. It is resistance.

Here in Los Angeles, where I teach journalism, several images have seared themselves into public memory. One viral video shows a shackled father stepping into a white, unmarked van — his daughter sobbing behind the camera, pleading with him not to sign any official documents. He turns, gestures for her to calm down, then blows her a kiss. Across town, LAPD officers on horseback charged at peaceful protesters.

In Spokane, Wash., residents formed a spontaneous human chain around their undocumented neighbors mid-raid, their bodies and cameras forming a barricade of defiance. In San Diego, white allies yelled “Shame!” as they chased a car of uniformed National Guard troops out of their neighborhood.

The impact of smartphone witnessing has been both immediate and unmistakable — visceral at street level, seismic in statehouses. On the ground, the videos have fueled the “No Kings” movement, which organized protests in all 50 states last weekend. Legislators are responding too — with sparks flying in the halls of the Capitol. As President Trump ramps up immigration enforcement, Democratic-led states are digging in, tightening state laws that limit cooperation with federal agents.

Local TV news coverage has incorporated witnesses’ smartphone video, helping it reach a wider audience.

What’s unfolding now is not new — it is newly visible. Latino organizers are drawing from a playbook sharpened in 2020, one rooted in a longer lineage of Black media survival strategies forged during slavery and Jim Crow.

In 2020, I wrote about how Black Americans have used various media formats to fight for racial and economic equality — from slave narratives to smartphones. I argued that Frederick Douglass and Ida B. Wells were doing the same work as Darnella Frazier: using journalism as a tool for witnessing and activism. In 2025, Latinos who are filming the state in moments of overreach — archiving injustice in real time — are adapting, extending and carrying forward Black witnesses’ work.

Moreover, Latinos are using smartphones for digital cartography much as Black people mapped freedom during the eras of slavery and Jim Crow. The People Over Papers map, for example, reflects an older lineage: the resistance tactics of Black Maroons — enslaved Africans who fled to swamps and borderlands, forming secret networks to evade capture and warn others.

These early communities shared intelligence, tracked patrols and mapped out covert paths to safety. People Over Papers channels that same logic — only now the hideouts are ICE-free zones, mutual aid hubs and sanctuary spaces. The map is crowdsourced. The borders are digital. The danger is still very real.

Likewise, the Stop ICE Raids Alerts Network revives a civil-rights-era blueprint. During the 1960s, activists used Wide Area Telephone Service lines and radio to share protest routes, police activity and safety updates. Black DJs often masked dispatches as traffic or weather reports — “congestion on the south side” meant police roadblocks, “storm warnings” signaled incoming violence. Today, that infrastructure lives again through WhatsApp chains, encrypted group texts and story posts. The platforms have changed. The mission has not.

Layered across both systems is the DNA of “The Negro Motorist Green Book,” the guide that once helped Black travelers navigate Jim Crow America by identifying safe towns, gas stations and lodging. People Over Papers and Stop ICE Raids are digital descendants of that legacy: survival through shared knowledge, protection through mapped resistance.

The Latino community’s use of smartphones in this moment is not for spectacle. It’s for self-defense. In cities like Chicago, Los Angeles and El Paso, what begins as a whisper — “ICE is in the neighborhood” — now races through Telegram, WhatsApp and Instagram. A knock becomes a livestream. A raid becomes a receipt. A video becomes a shield.

For undocumented families, the risk is real. To film is to expose oneself. To go live is to become a target. But many do it anyway. Because silence can be fatal. Because invisibility protects no one. Because if the story is not captured, it can be denied.

Five years after Floyd’s final breath, the burden of proof still falls heaviest on the most vulnerable. America demands footage before outrage. Tape before reform. Visual confirmation before compassion. And still, justice is never guaranteed.

But 2020 taught us that smartphones, in the right hands, can fracture the status quo. In 2025, that lesson is echoing again, this time through the lens of Latino mobile journalists. Their footage is unflinching. Urgent. Righteous. It connects the dots: between ICE raids and over-policing, between a border cage and a city jail, between a knee on a neck and a door kicked in at dawn.

These are not isolated events. They are chapters in the same story of government repression.

And because the cameras are still rolling — and people are still recording — those stories are being told anew.

Five years ago, we were forced to see the unbearable. Now, we are being shown the undeniable.

Allissa V. Richardson, an associate professor of journalism and communication at USC, is the author of “Bearing Witness While Black: African Americans, Smartphones, and the New Protest #Journalism.” This article was produced in partnership with the Conversation.

After nearly a week of protests in Los Angeles against recent federal immigration enforcement sweeps in the city, President Trump doubled down on his administration’s efforts to detain and deport immigrants without documentation, claiming they are a key voting bloc in Democratic cities.

In a Truth Social post on Sunday, Trump said Los Angeles and “other such cities, are the core of the Democrat Power Center, where they use illegal aliens to expand their voter base, cheat in elections, and grow the welfare state, robbing good paying jobs and benefits from hardworking American citizens.”

But according to Los Angeles County election officials, that’s simply not true.

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“That claim is false and unsupported, and only serves to create unsubstantiated concern and confusion about the electoral process,” the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder’s office said in a statement.

In reality, the county has safeguards in place to ensure only eligible voters cast ballots and that all votes are accurately counted, said Mike Sanchez, spokesperson for the county’s Registrar-Recorder’s office.

How do people become registered voters in California?

In the state of California there are five requirements a person must meet to register to vote, according to the California Secretary of State. To register an individual must be:

1. A U.S. citizen.
2. A resident of California.
3. At least 18 years or older on or before Election Day.
4. Not currently serving a state or federal prison term for the conviction of a felony.
5. Not currently found mentally incompetent to vote by a court.

When a person meets the eligibility criteria, they can register to vote which includes attesting under penalty of perjury that they meet all eligibility requirements, including being a U.S. citizen and a resident of California, said Sanchez.

“This sworn statement is a legal declaration and serves as the foundation of the voter registration process,” Sanchez said.

Voting as a noncitizen is a felony that can lead to a year in jail or deportation, said Hasen.

Though there are some cities in the United States where noncitizens can participate in local elections, for example in communities in Vermont and Maryland, participation is limited to voting in school board or city council elections.

In California, San Francisco is the only city where noncitizens can vote and it is limited to the school board.

How does Los Angeles County verify who is voting in federal elections?

Once a voter registers, their personal information is verified through the State Voter Registration database, which is done by cross-checking state Department of Motor Vehicle records or the last four digits of the person’s Social Security number, Sanchez said.

When the verification process is complete, a voter does not have to show their identification when voting in person. If verification has not occurred, the voter must show identification the first time they vote. Acceptable forms of identification include a driver’s license, state-issued I.D or passport; the California Secretary of State has a complete online list of what identifying documents to take to the polling place.

Once polling places open for voters within the county, the voter must sign a roster in the presence of election workers, who attest to their identity and eligibility.

“Elections officials also conduct regular voter roll maintenance, checking against several data points including death records from the California Department of Public Health, Social Security Administration, Department of Motor Vehicles, and the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation,” the California Secretary of State told The Times in a statement.

For vote-by-mail ballots, the signature on the return envelope is compared to the one on file in the voter registration record, Sanchez said. If the signature does not match or is missing, the voter is contacted and given a chance to correct it.

“Only verified ballots are accepted and counted,” he said.

Where do the claims about undocumented immigrants voting originate?

The claim that immigrants lacking documentation vote in large numbers — and for Democrats — has been repeated for years.

It has seeds in the once-fringe racist conspiracy theory called the “great replacement.” According to a poll by the Associated Press and and NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, 1 in 3 Americans now believe “an effort is underway to replace U.S.-born Americans with immigrants for electoral gains.”

The theory has gained momentum under Trump.

In 2016, Trump won the Electoral College and the presidency, but not the popular vote. That went to Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, who received about 2.9 million more votes.

Trump then claimed, without evidence, that he would have won the popular vote if 3 to 5 million immigrants living in the country illegally hadn’t voted.

“About 3 million votes was the margin by which he lost the popular vote which is why I think he chose that 3 million number to try to explain away his popular vote loss,” Hasen said.

After losing his reelection bid in 2020 to Joe Biden, when voting by mail was a focus, Trump refocused on immigrants lacking authorization in the 2024 campaign and was ultimately voted back into the White House.

“In 2024, when I think Trump and the Republicans concluded that the attacks on absentee ballots were actually hurting them because people don’t want to show up in person to vote, the shift went back to immigration,” Hasen said.

Voter fraud claims echo whomever is trying to dictate the political narrative, according to Hasen.

Researchers have found, repeatedly through decades of investigation, that fraud conducted by voters at the polls is virtually nonexistent and does not happen “on a scale even close to that necessary to “rig” an election, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. Many instances of reported fraud were due to clerical errors or human errors.

“I think one of the things we’ve seen is people on the losing end of elections tend to be more likely to believe that there’s cheating,” Hasen said. “But Donald Trump has really supercharged things to the point where we’re way beyond what we normally see in terms of partisan divisions.”

But Trump is not alone in fueling that theory recently. Last year as he campaigned for Trump, billionaire Elon Musk repeated those claims on his social media platform, X.

“If the Democratic party gains enough voters to win an election by importing them and giving them free stuff, then they will do so,” he posted in September.

So is the number of undocumented immigrants in Los Angeles growing?

Yes, but likely not at the rate it once was, said Manuel Paster, professor of sociology and American studies at USC.

California’s immigrant population — including those without authorization — increased by 5% (about 500,000) from 2010 to 2023, compared to 14% (1.27 million) from 2000 to 2010, and by 37% (2.4 million) rise in the 1990s, according to the Public Policy Institute of California.

Between 2019 and 2022, the population of undocumented immigrants in most states across the nation steadily climbed. California’s however, decreased, according to the Pew Research Center.

These days, most new immigrants are going to Florida, Texas and the South rather than high-cost California, Pastor said.

“Los Angeles, more than 70% of our undocumented immigrants have been in the country for longer than a decade,” he said. “They’re more likely to be long established employees, parents, parts of faith institutions.”

WASHINGTON — For a president seeking reelection, Friday’s news of a surge in jobs could not have arrived at a more opportune moment–and President Clinton was quick to take advantage.

“We have the most solid American economy in a generation,” Clinton told reporters hours after the Labor Department reported that unemployment had fallen in June to a six-year low. “The American economy has created 10 million jobs since the beginning of this administration.”

It is a message the White House is certain to repeat often in the coming weeks for one politically powerful reason: Voters judge a president not only as commander in chief but in a very real sense as chairman of the board, the steward of their economic well-being.

While Clinton’s Republican challenger, Bob Dole, has spent most of the campaign so far castigating his opponent over such matters as war and peace, personal character and ethics, it is the public’s verdict on the economy that frequently determines election winners.

And at this point, barring some sudden change, “based on what I see right now with inflation and growth, my prediction puts Bill Clinton between 52% and 53%” in a two-way contest, said Helmut Norpoth, a political scientist at the State University of New York at Stony Brook who has looked at the role of the economy in elections dating back to 1872.

Michael Lewis-Beck, a professor at the University of Iowa and author of a book on forecasting presidential elections, concurs.

The economic figures would indicate that “the election isn’t going to be a landslide, but it wouldn’t be a squeaker either,” he said.

Battle Continues

The timing of Friday’s unemployment report may be particularly auspicious for Clinton because the incumbent usually wins reelection when unemployment is falling at midyear, Lewis-Beck says. The economic performance in the fall is not so important because voters’ perceptions of the economy seem to lag behind the actual statistics by several months, analysts say.

Yet for all that, the crucial battle over the economy may not be over yet. Dole can take at least some comfort in evidence that voters have been less than euphoric about the state of the economy and divided over whether the president or his Republican challenger would do a better job in the head office.

On the campaign trail, Dole seeks to reinforce public doubts by lamenting a “Clinton crunch” and claiming that tax increases and over-regulation have cut into the national prosperity. He and his aides argue that many Americans have been frustrated by stagnant incomes and that the pace of economic growth has trailed that of earlier decades.

The Republican candidate was silent on the economy Friday–he and his advisors have been working on an economic plan to put forward, but they have yet to announce one.

Speaking for Dole, his press secretary, Nelson Warfield, said in a statement: “Even as more people found jobs last month, a stunning 70% of Americans agreed the country is on the wrong track,” a reference to recent public opinion polls. “If people are finding jobs but are still unhappy about where the nation is headed, Bill Clinton is in serious danger of unemployment himself.”

Changing Times

The latest economic figures are a notable contrast with those released this week four years ago, when Clinton was the challenger against Republican incumbent George Bush and the June unemployment report showed an increase in the jobless rate, from 7.5% to 7.8%.

Bush, deeply worried about the economic numbers, called on the Federal Reserve that very day to reduce interest rates. The Fed immediately cut the “federal funds” rate (which banks charge each other for overnight loans) from 3.75% to 3.25%. That may have helped end the recession, but it did not save Bush’s job.

This year many analysts believe that the Republicans will have difficulty selling the notion that Clinton has failed in his financial duties during his term in office, because the economy has performed relatively well in some of the ways that households care most about. Employment is high. Inflation is low. Not surprisingly, consumer confidence has registered at solid levels in recent surveys.

Remember the Misery Index? That infamous duo of unemployment and consumer inflation, which added up to almost 22% in 1980, is now below 9% and has been hovering at the lowest levels since the late 1960s.

Not only is unemployment low, but inflation remains stable and subdued around 3%, little changed from the day Clinton took office.

Interest rates have varied. The key 30-year Treasury bond, which stood at 7.6% in late 1992, plunged from 7.88% to 5.95% during 1995 before beginning to rise again earlier this year as the economy expanded. The bond yield jumped from 6.93% Wednesday to 7.19% Friday.

In addition, the federal budget deficit has shrunk by half since Clinton took office.

Contrary Messages

To this day, many conservatives remain angry that Clinton endorsed a deficit-reduction plan in 1993 that increased top income-tax rates for the affluent. Others, however, credit the program with helping to cut the deficit while preserving economic growth.

Even public anxiety over layoffs and corporate downsizing, so ballyhooed in prominent media reports, appears exaggerated, according to polling experts.

“If a Republican were running on this record, you’d hear nothing from the Republican side but, ‘Look what a good job we did,’ ” said Harvard University economist Benjamin Friedman. “I think the economy should definitely be a plus–and a large plus–for Clinton.”

Not surprisingly, a contrary message emerges from the Dole camp. Its assessment: Meager gains in productivity and a trend of subpar economic growth under Clinton have harmed progress in living standards. “Now it’s time to do something about it,” said John B. Taylor, a Stanford University economist who is advising Dole.

Some of the public opinion polls, such as surveys of consumer confidence, do not capture the undercurrents of unease that many Americans feel about the long-term performance of the economy, Taylor added. “I think most of those concerns reflect the slower long-term growth,” he said.

Yet many economists question whether the pejorative label, “Clinton crunch,” gives a true picture of long-term or even short-term trends in the economy.

The U.S. economy expanded at an average annual pace of 1.6% during the years of Bush’s presidency, according to David Wyss, an economist at DRI-McGraw Hill in Lexington, Mass. Under Clinton, Wyss said, the tempo picked up to 2.3%.

Gauging the Mood

Productivity gains–a key driver of living standards–have dipped during Clinton’s term, a matter of concern to economists, although the timing of economic slumps and recoveries complicates any comparisons of different periods.

Eager to put the Clinton statistics under a harsh light, a clutch of GOP advisors has been pressing Dole to unveil a bold plan of across-the-board tax cuts as a way to highlight his devotion to rising living standards. But the candidate has yet to sign off on a final plan.

“And, frankly, with the economy purring along fairly well right now, it’s a hard case to make to the American public that we need a major revolution,” Wyss said.

Certainly, the voters of 1996 view conditions to be more robust than they did four years ago.

In a May Gallup Poll, only 12% of voters considered the economy to be the nation’s most important problem, and just 13% cited jobs as the worst problem. Four years earlier, 29% cited the economy and 21% pointed to jobs.

Similarly, consumers are much more upbeat today. A June index of consumer confidence by the Conference Board came in at a solid 97.6. The same index had plunged to 61.2 four years earlier.

What is more, there is scant evidence that Americans are gripped with the rising terror of losing their jobs, for all the attention to layoff announcements this year. The number of Americans reporting such anxiety–slightly more than a third, according to Gallup polls–is significant but is about the same as it was four years ago.

To some analysts, this means that the media exaggerated the degree of worker anxiety earlier this year, when news coverage zeroed in on the GOP presidential campaign of Patrick J. Buchanan and his focus on the vulnerability of U.S. workers in a world of free trade and corporate downsizing.

“The public didn’t buy into it even when they were hearing most about economic anxiety, and on the whole that’s still true,” maintained Everett C. Ladd, director of the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research at the University of Connecticut.

Still, Dole may find reason for hope in voter attitudes about which candidate would be better for the economy.

In late June, a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll found that 37% of Americans felt Clinton would do a better job dealing with the economy, while an almost equal 34% chose Dole. Those findings were similar to the most recent Los Angeles Times Poll, in April.

In fact, one scholarly prognosticator of elections, Ray C. Fair of Yale University, gives Dole the edge in November, in part because of the less-than-spectacular pace of economic growth, though the race appears “so narrow as to be essentially a dead heat.”

It should be noted, however, that forecasting how the economy will influence an election is hardly an exact science. To cite one recent whopper, Fair, Lewis-Beck and others picked Bush in 1992.

Questions of forecasting aside, there may be an irony here: No president can exercise much immediate influence over the $7.5-trillion U.S. economy. On top of that, Clinton has served in a time when his party does not control Congress, further reducing his powers.

“The president has very limited importance in the short run about what happens with the economy,” said Jeremy J. Siegel, an economist at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School.

“I think he’s been lucky the economy has done well. Some of that good fortune is going to rub off on him.”

* MARKET JITTERS: Stocks, bonds hit amid fears of further upheaval Monday. D1

* PENT-UP DEMAND: Southland housing market takes rate boost in stride. D1

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Measuring the Misery

The misery index–the sum of the unemployment rate and inflation rate–is lower this election year than in any since 1968. In the table, the unemployment rate is an annual average, and the inflation rate is the yearly change in the consumer price index.

*–*

Unemployment Inflation Misery Presidential rate rate index result 1996* 5.6% 2.9% 8.5% ??? 1992 7.4% 3.0% 10.4% Incumbent lost 1988 5.5% 4.1% 9.6% Incumbent’s party won 1984 7.5% 4.3% 11.8% Incumbent won 1980 7.1% 13.5% 20.6% Incumbent lost 1976 7.7% 5.8% 13.5% Incumbent lost 1972 5.6% 3.2% 8.8% Incumbent won 1968 3.6% 4.2% 7.8% Incumbent’s party lost 1964 5.2% 1.3% 6.5% Incumbent won 1960 5.5% 1.7% 7.2% Incumbent’s party lost

*–*

* 1996 unemployment as of May, CPI change for 12 months ending in May

Source: Labor Department

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court’s favorite target again this year was the California-based U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which saw 15 of 16 rulings overturned on review.

For decades, the high court’s conservatives have trained a skeptical eye on the historically liberal appeals court and regularly reversed its rulings, particularly on criminal law and the death penalty.

But by some estimates, this year saw the most Supreme Court reversals of 9th Circuit decisions since 1985. And the range of issues was broad, including immigration, religion, voting rights, property rights and class-action lawsuits.

In four years, President Trump appointed 10 judges to the appeals court, a sprawling Western jurisdiction that includes nine states and two U.S. territories. Presidents Obama and George W. Bush each named seven judges to the 9th Circuit in their eight years in the White House.

Trump’s 9th Circuit picks appeared to have played a significant role this year by pressing for internal review of rulings they didn’t like and joining sharp dissents that drew the interest of the Supreme Court.

“The more people who join the dissents, the more it gets the attention of the conservatives,” said one 9th Circuit judge, speaking on the condition of not being identified by name.

“This year was different,” another judge said. “This year was really different.”

When two owners of fruit-growing operations sued over a 1975 California state regulation that allowed union organizers to enter their property to speak to workers, they lost before a federal judge and the 9th Circuit.

Judge Richard A. Paez of Los Angeles, a Clinton appointee, said in a 2-1 decision that the state rule did not authorize “physical taking” of farmers’ property, as the lawsuit claimed, but rather temporary access to it.

Judge Sandra S. Ikuta of Los Angeles, a George W. Bush appointee, wrote a dissent arguing that the ruling was wrong and should be overturned. She said the state rule takes “an easement from the property owners” and gives it to union organizers, who are free to enter when they choose. In a dissent from the full court’s refusal to reconsider the panel’s decision, seven other 9th Circuit judges, six of them Trump appointees, agreed.

When the Supreme Court ruled 6 to 3 for the property owners last month, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. cited Ikuta’s dissent. “The access regulation appropriates a right to invade the growers’ property,” he wrote in Cedar Point vs. Hassid. The high court was split along ideological grounds.

The same divide was on display in the justices’ 6-3 decision shielding big donors to conservative charities and nonprofits from having their names disclosed to the California attorney general.

The 9th Circuit, in a 3-0 decision, had upheld the state’s policy of checking donors as an anti-fraud measure, but Ikuta wrote a dissent, joined by four Republican appointees, two of them nominated by Trump. The dissent said the full appeals court should “correct this error.” She argued that experience had shown that conservative donors have suffered “harassment and abuse” when their names have been disclosed.

The Supreme Court agreed to review the ruling, and Roberts cited Ikuta’s dissent in his opinion reversing the 9th Circuit in Americans for Prosperity Foundation vs. Bonta.

“There is still a large cohort of liberal judges” on the 9th Circuit, said Ed Whelan, a conservative legal analyst in Washington, “but there are now many conservative appointees who are vigilant in calling them out.”

In total, 47 judges sit on the 9th Circuit — 24 appointed by Republicans going back to President Nixon, and 23 named by Democrats starting with President Carter.

Many of those judges work part time. Of the full-time jurists, 16 are Democratic and 13 are Republican appointees.

The size of the circuit — the nation’s largest — partly explains why its cases are often subject to Supreme Court review.

“The 9th Circuit is so vastly larger than any other circuit that it is inevitable they are going to take more 9th Circuit cases,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of UC Berkeley’s law school.

Although this year’s 9th Circuit reversal rate was unusually high, the high court in fact overturned 80% of all the cases it reviewed, Chemerinsky noted.

Moreover, only a tiny percentage of appellate decisions are reviewed by the Supreme Court. Typically, the 9th Circuit hands down about 13,000 rulings a year.

Chemerinsky noted the Supreme Court overturned several 9th Circuit cases on immigration and habeas corpus, the legal vehicle for releasing someone from detention. “The 9th Circuit is historically more liberal on immigration and habeas cases,” he said.

Some reversals occurred in cases that were not ideological, however: The high court overturned a 9th Circuit decision by Republican appointees on what constitutes a robocall.

Though the Supreme Court split along ideological lines on property rights, voting rights and conservative donor cases from the 9th Circuit, the justices were unanimous in reversing the 9th Circuit in several immigration cases.

On June 1, they overturned a unique 9th Circuit rule set by the late liberal Judge Stephen Reinhardt. Over nearly 20 years, he had written that the testimony of a person seeking asylum based on a fear of persecution must be “deemed credible” unless an immigration judge made an “explicit” finding that they were not to be believed.

In one of his last opinions, Reinhardt approved of asylum for Ming Dai, a Chinese citizen who arrived in the U.S. on a tourist visa and applied for refugee status for himself and his family. He said they were fleeing China’s forced abortion policy.

Only later did immigration authorities learn that his wife and daughter had returned to China because they had good jobs and schooling there, but the husband had no job to return to.

An immigration judge had set out the full story and denied the asylum application, only to be be reversed in a 2-1 ruling by a 9th Circuit panel. The panel cited Reinhardt’s rule and noted that although evidence emerged casting doubt on Dai’s claims, there had been no “explicit” finding by an immigration judge so his story had to be accepted.

“Over the years, our circuit has manufactured misguided rules regarding the credibility of political asylum seekers,” Senior Judge Stephen S. Trott wrote in dissent. Later, 11 other appellate judges joined dissents arguing for scrapping this rule.

Last fall, Trump administration lawyers cited those dissents and urged the Supreme Court to hear the case. They noted the importance of the 9th Circuit in asylum cases. Because of its liberal reputation, “the 9th Circuit actually entertains more petitions for review than all of the other circuits combined,” the lawyers said.

In overturning the appeals court in a 9-0 ruling, Justice Neil M. Gorsuch began by noting that “at least 12 members of the 9th Circuit have objected to this judge-made rule.”

Justice Sonia Sotomayor delivered another 9-0 ruling holding that an immigrant arrested for an “unlawful entry” after having been deported years ago may not contest the basis of his original deportation. The 9th Circuit had said such a defendant may argue his deportation was “fundamentally unfair,” but “the statute does not permit such an exception,” Sotomayor said in U.S. vs. Palomar-Santiago.

The high court’s furthest-reaching immigration ruling did not originate with the 9th Circuit, but it nonetheless overturned a 9th Circuit decision.

At issue was whether the more than 400,000 immigrants who had been living and working in the U.S. under temporary protected status were eligible for long-term green cards. The Philadelphia-based 3rd Circuit said no, rejecting a green card for a Salvadoran couple who had entered the country illegally in the 1990s and had lived and worked in New Jersey ever since.

The 9th Circuit had taken the opposite view; Trump lawyers cited this split as a reason the high court should take up the New Jersey case. On June 7, Justice Elena Kagan spoke for the high court in ruling that the 3rd Circuit was right and the 9th Circuit wrong. To obtain lawful permanent status, the immigration law first “requires a lawful admission,” she said in Sanchez vs. Majorkas.

The 9th Circuit’s sole affirmance came in a significant case: By a 9-0 vote in NCAA vs. Alston, the justices agreed with the 9th Circuit that college sports authorities could be sued under antitrust laws for conspiring to make billions of dollars while insisting the star athletes go unpaid.

Assemblyman Jack Scott lost a son when a host accidentally shot him in the head during a dinner party. Ken LaCorte lost a sister when a robber shot her and her boyfriend.

Senseless tragedies by any measure, but what sets Scott and LaCorte apart are the roles the killings have played in each man’s life.

For Scott the Democrat, the 1993 slaying of his son Adam, a 27-year-old attorney, has transformed him into one of the Legislature’s most ardent gun-control 0advocates. For LaCorte the Republican, the murder of his sister Cathy in 1973 and his fight to keep her killer behind bars has led him to campaign publicly to abolish parole and probation for violent offenders.

Each impassioned by tragedy, Scott and LaCorte are now vying for the 44th Assembly District seat, which stretches from the northeast San Fernando Valley to La Canada Flintridge and Pasadena.

A key Republican strategist said his party is in the process of evaluating whether to target the race, noting that results from recent GOP polls show it shaping up to be more competitive than predicted.

“It’s Jack Scott 35% and Ken LaCorte 27%, which for a perceived popular incumbent is nowhere near where it should be,” the strategist said. “I don’t think this is going to be a cakewalk for Jack Scott.”

Scott said his own polls show him leading by 21 points. Scott said he is confident that if the Republicans decide to dump money into LaCorte’s campaign, the Democrats will be there to help him out as well.

“You can count on me to run hard until election day,” Scott said. “I always run hard. I don’t let up.”

Though traditionally a Republican seat, the 44th Assembly District was claimed by Democrats when Scott wrested it away in 1996 from incumbent Bill Hoge. Recent voter records show that Democrats outnumber Republicans 45% to 39%.

As a result, Dick Rosengarten, publisher of the political newsletter Calpeek, predicts Scott will win the seat, not only because Democrats have an edge, but because of the prominent role Scott has played in the fight to impose stricter controls on guns.

“The Republicans are going to have to wait for Scott to get termed out,” Rosengarten said. “The one caveat is if Democrats don’t turn out on election day.”

Republicans are hoping the presidential scandal will keep Democratic voters home.

Getting Republican voters out in the area is also important for freshman Rep. James E. Rogan (R-Glendale), a member of the House Judiciary Committee and a key player in the impeachment debate, who is waging a tough campaign for reelection.

“It benefits the Republicans to get involved in one of the Assembly races out there,” said Allan Hoffenblum, a Republican consultant and publisher of the nonpartisan California Target Book. “They need a strong Assembly race to get out the Republican vote. To not get involved could hurt Jim Rogan.”

LaCorte and Scott are running on platforms that differ on education reform, guns and abortion. Scott is an abortion rights advocate, while LaCorte opposes abortion except in cases of incest, rape or threat to the life of the mother.

Scott was disappointed by Gov. Pete Wilson’s decision last month to veto legislation aimed at strengthening California’s ban on military-style assault weapons.

LaCorte, who says he favors outlawing all forms of automatic weapons, said he believed the legislation went too far and supported Wilson’s veto. LaCorte said he supports reasonable restrictions on guns and a crackdown on felons with handguns. He is a member of the National Rifle Assn., which has taken out newspaper ads against Scott.

“I keep a firearm to protect my children . . . locked in a steel box under my bed,” LaCorte said. “A lot of legislation is aimed at people like me.”

Scott has sponsored legislation aimed at tightening security at plants that manufacture the inexpensive Saturday night specials, many of which are concentrated in Southern California.

“More people die from gunfire in California than automobile crashes,” Scott said. “We can’t eliminate [gun-related deaths], but we can reduce them.”

Besides contrasting stands on key issues, the two men also possess distinct personal styles. LaCorte is a 33-year-old father of two young sons; Scott is a 65-year-old grandfather of eight.

A former Pasadena City College president, Scott has gained a reputation in the Legislature for being lucid, organized and having a flair for oratory colored by his Southern accent. In his first term, Scott pushed through 25 pieces of legislation, including increasing highway patrols in the Sunland/Tujunga area and upgrading the Altadena sheriff’s substation.

As chair of the committee that handles education funding, Scott is quick to point out his support for measures to reduce class sizes and lengthen the school year. He also sponsored a bill making it easier to fire community college teachers by changing the standard for dismissal from “incompetence” to “unsatisfactory performance.”

If reelected, Scott, who has raised slightly more than $317,000, said he will continue to push for school funding and to devise ways to hold low-performing schools accountable.

LaCorte has proposed that report cards be issued on individual schools, covering classroom sizes, teachers’ pay, standard test scores and how much money is spent in classrooms. If elected, he said he will work to reduce taxes on small businesses and expand to nonsexual offenders Megan’s Law, which allows police to alert neighbors to molesters in their midst.

A medical supply dealer who has previously worked for a political consulting firm, LaCorte has raised nearly $126,000 and lists the Howard Jarvis Taxpayer Assn. and Susan Carpenter McMillan, a television commentator and spokeswoman for the Woman’s Coalition, as endorsements.

LaCorte made headlines earlier this year for posting the names of dozens of Los Angeles County’s most dangerous sex offenders, a list he culled from the Megan’s Law CD-ROM and posted on the Internet. Last month he also began distributing a booklet listing the names of hundreds of registered sex offenders in the San Gabriel Valley and parts of the northeast San Fernando Valley.

LaCorte, who has described Scott as an extreme liberal, alleged in a campaign brochure that his opponent’s voting record has been soft on crime and anti-business. Scott brushes such charges aside.

“If he’s trying to paint me as soft on crime, he’s going to have a hard time doing it,” said Scott, who has received endorsements from every major law enforcement agency in the state.

WASHINGTON — On the morning of Nov. 22, 1971, Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s usually stern expression dissolved into a satisfied smile when she read the New York Post’s banner headline: “High Court Outlaws Sex Discrimination.”

As plaintiff’s lawyer in a case before the Supreme Court, Ginsburg had succeeded in writing a new chapter in the history of women’s rights by asserting a simple philosophy that she learned from her mother: Women and men are equal.

That idea, which Ginsburg applied in case after case, made her the principle architect of a legal strategy that achieved many of the early legal gains for women. As a result, today’s women live in a world that bears the stamp of her personality, training and experience.

To be sure, despite three decades of progress for women, the Supreme Court still will be struggling with gender issues when Ginsburg–if confirmed by the Senate, as expected–takes her seat on the nine-member panel next fall. Men and women still do not fully agree on what that seemingly simple idea of equality should mean when it is applied to gender.

Further, many modern feminists have criticized Ginsburg’s approach even as they acknowledge what she achieved. Her line of argument, they have contended, has served in some ways to perpetuate discrimination against women. By emphasizing equality of men and women under the law instead of recognizing their differences, they have argued, Ginsburg inadvertently affirmed a system in which women must adhere to male standards to succeed, as she has done.

Nonetheless, her life story has shaped the lives of every woman in America. And the careful, one-deliberate-step-at-a-time approach to a complex and controversial issue that is revealed in the fine print of her arguments on the women’s rights cases casts valuable light on how she is likely to approach her work on the Supreme Court.

Certainly, Ginsburg was well-prepared to succeed in a man’s world. Nurtured by a mother who valued her daughter as much as any son, she graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Cornell in 1954.

Yet like so many bright women of her era, Ginsburg had been encouraged to venture down a path of scholarship and achievement that inevitably would lead to disappointment. After graduating from Columbia Law School in 1959, she could not get a job practicing law because the law firms she contacted in New York City thought married women were mostly interested in having babies.

“It was a classic case of discrimination,” said Kathleen Peratis, a New York City attorney who worked with Ginsburg on litigation in the 1970s.

While teaching civil procedure at Rutgers and doing volunteer work as counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, Ginsburg began to see a new kind of legal complaint being filed around the country and sensed a changing mood among American women.

A teacher was challenging a school’s right to remove her from the classroom when she got pregnant; a woman worker was objecting that her employer provided health insurance only to men, and parents were complaining when their school-age daughters were excluded from publicly funded education programs that were offered to boys.

In those complaints, Ginsburg saw a compelling legal strategy that would win equal rights for women. She would help to challenge a variety of laws based on gender stereotypes, arguing that they violated the right of equal protection under the law provided in the 14th Amendment of the Constitution.

In essence, Ginsburg decided to duplicate what she described as “the orderly, step-by-step campaign” of the civil rights litigation that led to Brown vs. Board of Education in 1954, which overturned the “separate but equal” principle. But she would substitute gender for race.

To understand just how novel Ginsburg’s approach was, it helps to remember that gender issues were never even mentioned in her constitutional law classes. Nor did she have the benefit of the vast fund of information that is now available on types of sex bias.

Law school courses on women’s rights issues did not begin appearing regularly on the curriculum until later. When Ginsburg set out to teach such a course at Rutgers, she found that reading the available literature “proved not to be a burdensome venture.”

Until 1971, the courts had held that because men and women had different responsibilities in our society, they could be treated differently under the law. This so-called “separate spheres” doctrine held that men were, by nature, the breadwinners and women the homemakers.

The turning point came when Ginsburg argued the case of Sally Reed of Idaho, who sought to be appointed administrator of the estate of a son who committed suicide at age 19. Her estranged husband, Cecil, also applied as administrator under an Idaho law that said: “As between persons equally entitled to administer a decedent’s estate, males must be preferred to females.”

By arguing that the Idaho law violated the 14th Amendment, Ginsburg persuaded the Supreme Court for the first time to declare that gender stereotyping was inconsistent with the equal protection principle. Ginsburg viewed Reed vs. Reed as the “awakening” of the court to gender issues.

But despite the enormous impact of the decision, Ginsburg had couched her arguments in such fine lines that Chief Justice Warren E. Burger’s opinion on behalf of a unanimous court did not explicitly acknowledge a break with precedent.

A close friend, Herma Hill Kay, now dean of UC Berkeley’s Boalt Hall School of Law, recalls that while Ginsburg was pleased by her victory, “she did not paint the town red.” It was still not clear to her whether women would prevail in similar cases involving other restrictions.

Kay noted that Ginsburg’s legal legacy for women was built on an accumulation of small gains, not one decisive victory. During the 1970s, as head of the ACLU Women’s Rights Project, she litigated a total of 20 cases that succeeded in establishing heightened constitutional scrutiny over gender-based distinctions written into federal, state and local laws.

In one case, the court ignored a warning from the solicitor general that thousands of laws would be jeopardized under the scheme advocated by Ginsburg. In fact, the Justice Department submitted a list to the court of more than 800 laws that contained gender references.

“The list proved extraordinarily helpful,” Ginsburg later recalled. “First, it provided a ready answer to those who claimed that with Title VII (of the 1964 Civil Rights Act) and the Equal Pay Act on the books, no more law-sanctioned sex discrimination existed. Second, it provided a stimulus for a next set of constitutional challenges.”

Ginsburg succeeded in challenging laws on jury service, military benefits and Social Security benefits, among other things. She was so successful, in fact, that she predicted at one point that women would achieve the full equality they sought under the law by 1978.

In the case of Frontiero vs. Richardson, an equal pay case that Ginsburg won, 8 to 1, the court stopped short of declaring that gender restrictions deserved “strict scrutiny” similar to those based on race. When only four justices supported strict scrutiny, it was assumed the court was waiting to see whether the proposed Equal Rights Amendment would be ratified by the states.

ERA later foundered amid a conservative backlash, and the court never permitted strict scrutiny of gender differences. As a result, while many gender-based laws have been eliminated, Ginsburg still sees the battle for women’s rights as “a story in the making.”

By precipitating a sea change in the historical balance between the sexes, Ginsburg won the admiration of many young women who aspired to break out of their traditional roles but also inspired the enmity of millions of other men and women who preferred the status quo.

Barbara Allen Babcock, law professor at Stanford University, remembered that some people viewed her as “something of a crank.”

As the years have passed, many of Ginsburg’s own allies also have begun to second-guess her approach to women’s rights. Some are critical of her for pressing cases that were either too trivial or dealt essentially with discrimination against men.

The case of Stephen Wiesenfeld, for example, involved a man who had played the role of homemaker while his wife worked. When the wife died in childbirth, Wiesenfeld was denied the Social Security benefits to which a widowed homemaker would have been entitled. The court struck down the Social Security regulation preventing him from getting benefits.

Ginsburg often chose cases in which gender stereotypes hurt men, according to her defenders, because she thought these cases would be more likely to persuade nine men sitting on the Supreme Court of her basic point: that gender stereotypes hurt both men and women.

Perhaps the most trivial-sounding case Ginsburg brought to the court was Craig vs. Boren, which challenged an Oklahoma law allowing girls to drink 3.2% beer at age 18 while boys had to wait until they were 21. “It’s hard to see that as a burning social issue,” said Deborah Rhode, a Stanford law professor and author of the book “Justice and Gender.”

Although Rhode is an admirer of the Supreme Court nominee, she noted that many younger women legal experts think Ginsburg should have challenged laws that were of more importance to women. She said that the cases chosen by Ginsburg “left us with a limited doctrinal legacy.”

But the most fundamental criticism heard of Ginsburg’s work is that she encouraged the court to preserve discriminatory laws applying to child bearing and other activities that mark differences between men and women through her arguments that men and women are equal. For example, the court has refused to outlaw the all-male military draft.

“Formal equality has not produced real equality,” Rhode noted. “Men remain the standard of analysis.”

Ginsburg’s critics also assert that formal equality has succeeded in opening doors only for the well-educated, comfortably situated women who are willing and able to play by men’s rules. Rhode said that it has been of less value to low-paid women.

In the face of such criticism, Ginsburg is uncharacteristically apologetic.

In a speech to the University of Chicago Legal Forum in 1989, she explained that in 1970 she “was hardly so bold or so prescient as to essay articulation of a comprehensive theoretical vision of a world in which men did not define women’s place. The endeavor was less lofty, more immediately and practically oriented.”

Ginsburg said that her approach was the only way to shake the notion that men and women naturally operate in different spheres.

Likewise, Ginsburg has angered feminists by criticizing the court’s 1973 Roe vs. Wade ruling, which established the right to an abortion.

In a speech earlier this year at New York University, she lamented that the lawyers challenged a Texas anti-abortion law on privacy grounds instead of challenging it under the equal protection clause. The Constitution does not explicitly mention a right to privacy.

Ginsburg’s views on abortion and her adherence to the concept of strict equality between men and women have fostered a widely held perception of her among younger feminists that she is old-fashioned and out-of-date.

“They call us equality feminists; we feel like dinosaurs,” quipped Peratis.

Still, most feminists are hoping that as a justice, Ginsburg will do what she failed to accomplish as an lawyer: persuade the court to declare gender bias a matter for strict scrutiny.

Reporting from Alexandria, Va. — Landini Brothers is an old-fashioned Italian joint that lacks the sleek aesthetic of the power lunch spots in Washington, and makes no apologies for it. The walls are stone, the ceilings are low and a sign behind the bar declares: “Unattended children will be given an espresso and a free puppy.”

But it’s one of the best places to catch top Republican operatives in action, thanks to one attribute the trendy eateries near the White House cannot claim: proximity to the GOP’s political hub. Within several blocks of the restaurant’s King Street location are more than two dozen Republican media, polling and public relations firms.

Tucked away discreetly in the quaint row houses of Old Town Alexandria, the political shops are largely invisible to passersby. But they are mightily influential in shaping the party’s message and strategy. Many helped produce and place the ads that battered Democratic candidates in November’s midterm election. Several of the secretive nonprofit organizations that paid for those ads are also based in Alexandria.

Together, they’ve turned King Street into a small-town version of K Street, Washington’s famed corridor of lobbying and law firms.

“We used to always joke that if they wanted to wipe out Republican Party, all they had to do was [destroy] Old Town,” said GOP ad maker Jim Innocenzi, whose office is a block south of King Street.

The glut of Republican consultants leads to sidewalk chit-chat and tactical confabs in local restaurants. The tavern Jackson 20 — named for President Andrew Jackson, whose image is on the $20 bill — is said to have the best breakfast. Landini Brothers and the Majestic Cafe are lunch favorites. (Recently spotted dining together at the latter: veteran pollster Tony Fabrizio and Phil Musser, who runs the political action committee of former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, a possible 2012 presidential candidate.) The Morrison House — dubbed “MoHo” by some — is the place for after-work libations.

“It’s not like we all get together in some bunker in the morning,” joked Craig Shirley, an author of books about Ronald Reagan’s presidential campaigns whose public relations firm, Shirley & Banister, is in a 1740-era townhouse off King. “It’s nice because it’s a heck of a lot cheaper than K Street and you can be on Capitol Hill in the same amount of time.”

The first major Republican firms arrived in the 1980s, drawn by affordable rent, lower taxes and the easy commute for Virginia residents. Today, Old Town is home to such groups as the American Conservative Union and L. Brent Bozell’s Media Research Center. It’s also attracted onetime K Street denizens such as former GOP national Chairman Ed Gillespie, who opened a consulting firm on Prince Street after leaving the White House in 2009.

A few blocks away, above the boutiques on King Street, are 60 Plus and the Center for Individual Freedom, two of the conservative non-profit groups that spent millions on political ads targeting Democrats this past fall.

“I think for a lot of conservatives there’s something about being outside Washington, even though it’s not very far outside,” said Greg Mueller, whose Alexandria-based CRC Public Relations has represented clients such as the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, a group that attacked Democratic Sen. John F. Kerry’s Vietnam War record during the 2004 presidential campaign.

Still, Alexandria — seven miles from downtown Washington and just across the Potomac — is a somewhat incongruous base for conservatives. The town voted overwhelmingly for Barack Obama in 2008 and is known for its liberal politics.

“We’re very open and everyone is welcome, even Republicans,” said Brian Moran, chairman of the Virginia Democratic Party, who lives in Alexandria and whose brother, James, represents the area in Congress. “But I do hope they entered short-term leases, because the Democrats will be back in charge in 2012.”

A walking tour of Old Town provides a window onto the extensive GOP network that has taken root. Start off with a cappuccino at Landini Brothers at 115 King, then stroll west, past the 1724 home of city founder William Ramsay, now the Alexandria Visitors Center.

At 515 King, three floors above a SunTrust Bank branch, is the small, unmarked office of 60 Plus, which bills itself as a conservative version of AARP. The organization plowed at least $7 million into defeating Democratic House candidates in 2010, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. There’s no sign on the door, but a large photo of former President George W. Bush and 60 Plus Chairman Jim Martin can be glimpsed through the window.

Farther west on King, above the fabric store Calico Corners, is the office of GOP media buyer Kyle Roberts, who handled the presidential campaign account of Sen. John McCain and running mate Sarah Palin in 2008. At the same location are Scott Howell, a Dallas-based ad maker, and political consultant Blaise Hazelwood, former political director of the Republican National Committee.

Proceed west to Alfred Street. A half-block north, in a stately townhouse, is the polling firm run by Whit Ayres, who moved here from Atlanta in 2003 to be closer to the GOP political center.

“If a client comes to town to look at polling firms, you’re more likely to get an interview if you’re along the tracks they’re walking,” Ayres said.

Another block west along King are two row houses owned by Tony Fabrizio, who was chief pollster and strategist for Bob Dole’s 1996 presidential bid. His unmarked office is at 915 King above Ten Thousand Villages, a store featuring fair trade crafts from countries such as Uganda and India. He shares the second floor with Multi Media Services, a media-buying firm that has placed ads for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Republican National Committee.

Next door, above a spa that offers massages and Botox treatments, is the Center for Individual Freedom, an organization formed in 1998 by a former tobacco lobbyist. Fabrizio is listed in public records as its chairman. In the recent midterm election, the center spent at least $2.5 million on negative ads against about 10 Democratic members of Congress.

There’s no sign or nameplate for the center, just an unmarked buzzer next to a locked wooden door.

Take a right on North Patrick Street and left on Cameron Street to find the American Conservative Union, housed in a modest gray row house with peeling green shutters. Several blocks south, a large brick complex at 325 S. Patrick Street houses the Parents Television Council and Media Research Center, conservative watchdog groups founded by Bozell, nephew of the late arch-conservative William F. Buckley Jr.

The tour is not complete without a drive past 66 Canal Center Plaza, a modern office building along the Potomac. Suite 555 houses a battery of Republican political shops. There’s Americans for Job Security, a pro-business group that ran at least $9 million worth of ads against Democrats in 2010, and Crossroads Media, which placed many of those and similar spots.

Crossroads’ founder, Michael Dubke, is a partner with GOP strategist Carl Forti in another firm in Suite 555, the public affairs consultancy Black Rock Group. Forti is also political director of the nonprofit groups American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS — not to be confused with Crossroads Media — which together raised more than $70 million for conservative candidates last year.

Forti said he picked the location because the rent is cheaper than in Washington and it’s close to his Mount Vernon, Va., home.

Ad maker Steve Murphy, who runs one of the few Democratic political shops in Alexandria, has another theory: “What I’ve noticed over the years is that Democratic firms want to be in the District of Columbia, where they are proud to associate themselves with the federal government, and Republican firms want to be in northern Virginia, where they are proud to disassociate themselves from the federal government. It really is a political cultural thing.”

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Tom Hamburger in the Washington bureau contributed to this report.