POLITICS

WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Dick Cheney on Monday fired Air Force Chief of Staff Michael J. Dugan, saying that the four-star general displayed “poor judgment at a very sensitive time” by revealing possible targets of air strikes in Iraq in the event of war.

President Bush and Gen. Colin L. Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, concurred in the dismissal, which came in a 10-minute meeting with Dugan in Cheney’s Pentagon office early Monday.

Dugan was fired for comments published in The Times and Washington Post on Sunday, in which he said that–if war comes–the U.S. military intends to conduct a massive air campaign against Iraq, specifically targeting Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, his family and his palace guard.

“Given the extreme delicacy and sensitivity of the current situation, it’s incumbent upon senior officials to be discreet and tactful in their public statements, and I found those qualities lacking” in Dugan’s remarks, Cheney said in a news conference Monday.

The defense secretary said Dugan’s comments put at risk the lives of the more than 150,000 U.S. troops in the region and jeopardized the five-week-old Persian Gulf operation by revealing classified details of U.S. war planning.

Cheney said he will nominate Gen. Merrill A. McPeak, currently commander of Pacific Air Forces, to be the next chief of staff.

As for Dugan, who had been in the post only since July, Cheney said: “He will be retired.”

The only other member of the Joint Chiefs to have been fired was Adm. Louis E. Denfeld, sacked in October, 1949, by President Harry S. Truman. Denfeld, ironically, had irritated the President and his fellow chiefs for raising questions about the value of air power in modern warfare.

Cheney cited a number of critical sins that Dugan committed in the interviews with three journalists conducted over several hours aboard his aircraft on a trip to Saudi Arabia last week.

“We never talk about future operations, such as the selection of specific targets for potential air strikes. We never talk about the targeting of specific individuals who are officials of other governments. Taking such action might be a violation of the standing presidential executive order” banning assassinations, Cheney said.

He also chastised Dugan for underestimating Iraqi military capabilities, for revealing classified information about the size and disposition of U.S. forces in Saudi Arabia and for demeaning the role of the other U.S. military services by citing air power as the “only option” available for defeating the 1-million-member Iraqi army.

Cheney also was disturbed with Dugan for “treating (U.S.) casualties cavalierly,” an aide said. He apparently was referring to a comment from a senior Dugan aide on the trip who called the expected loss of American lives in such a military operation a “manageable risk.”

Powell reportedly was furious when he saw the Post story on Sunday morning and called Cheney at home at 7 a.m. to point it out. Cheney then sought The Times’ version to see if Dugan’s remarks were accurately reported. The two articles were similar, and the quotations in common were exactly the same. Cheney was “very upset,” but did not make up his mind to fire Dugan until Sunday night, a knowledgeable defense official said.

An aide to Cheney said the defense secretary believes Dugan’s comments “showed egregious judgment” and could not be tolerated. “He became the self-appointed spokesman for (Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, who is directing the U.S. operation in Saudi Arabia) and the chiefs. He revealed classified information. He talked about operational plans that are fundamentally not his choice. He raised sensitive matters of diplomacy relating to other nations. He set a poor standard of military leadership, that a military commander would not take seriously the people we’re up against,” this official said.

“Based on all these things, the secretary just lost confidence in him,” the aide said.

Powell contacted Dugan in Florida and asked if he had been accurately quoted. Dugan assured him that he had been. Powell told him to report to Cheney’s office at 8 a.m. Monday but did not tell the Air Force chief that the decision had been made to dismiss him.

Dugan did not know when he entered Cheney’s Pentagon office that he was about to be fired, an Air Force official said.

In his news conference, Cheney did not dispute the truth of any of Dugan’s assertions, which included a statement that the Joint Chiefs have concluded that the United States would never have sufficient ground forces in Saudi Arabia to drive Iraqi troops out of Kuwait and would therefore be dependent on air power to sway any potential battle.

Dugan also revealed for the first time that the United States has deployed 420 combat aircraft to the Arabian Peninsula–nearly as much striking power as the fleet dedicated to defending Europe against the Soviet Union. Previous estimates of air power in the Persian Gulf region were about half that.

The Air Force chief also disclosed for the first time that the United States had recently purchased advanced Israeli cruise missiles and deployed them aboard B-52 bombers stationed within striking distance of Baghdad. In addition, he said that the Pentagon has consulted with Israeli intelligence agencies to determine the best targets in Iraq.

The most troubling matter, senior Pentagon officials said, was Dugan’s discussion of the possible targeting of Hussein, his family, his inner circle and even his mistress. Cheney suggested that such action “might” violate Executive Order 12333, issued in December, 1981, which specifically prohibits assassinations.

“I think it’s inappropriate . . . for U.S. officials to talk about targeting specific foreign individuals,” Cheney said in the news conference. “I think it is potentially a violation of the standing presidential Executive Order.”

However, the ban on assassinations was modified last year to allow for the killing of senior enemy military commanders as part of a “decapitation” strategy. Hussein is commander in chief of Iraqi military forces–as Bush is commander of all U.S. forces–and thus would be a legal target for military action, Pentagon officials said Monday.

But it clearly would violate U.S. law and policy to target Hussein’s wife, his children or his girlfriend, officials noted.

Cheney, pressed on a variety of Dugan’s assertions, said he could not confirm or deny them without violating the security considerations for which he dismissed Dugan.

The defense secretary also noted that Dugan is “not even in the chain of command,” which runs from Bush to Cheney to Powell to Schwarzkopf, commander of the U.S. Central Command, which covers the Middle East.

Under the current military structure, the members of the Joint Chiefs are advisers to the chairman and provide forces, equipment and support to theater commanders, known inside the Pentagon as the “war-fighting CINCs” or regional commanders in chief.

Cheney praised Dugan’s record of 32 years of Air Force service and said that he regretted firing him. “But under the circumstances, I felt it was necessary,” the secretary said. Dugan’s comments, Cheney noted, “did not in my mind reveal an adequate understanding of the situation and what is expected of him as chief of staff of the Air Force and as a member of the Joint Chiefs.”

The abrupt dismissal undoubtedly will reverberate throughout the Pentagon and the entire U.S. military, which has not enjoyed good relations with the press for two generations.

“You won’t be talking to any generals any time soon,” one senior Army officer told a reporter Monday.

Cheney denied that he was sending a message to military officers to avoid reporters. But he said that he expected his subordinates “to exercise discretion in what they say. . . . That sort of wide-ranging speculation about those matters that were discussed in the interviews that were granted by the general is what I felt was inappropriate.”

Air Force Secretary Donald B. Rice, who had recommended Dugan for the job and who concurred in Cheney’s decision to relieve him, said in a prepared statement: “I regret the circumstances that made it necessary for Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney to take this action. Gen. Dugan is a superb officer. His leadership and innovation will be missed by every man and woman in the Air Force.”

Dugan, 53, jumped over a number of senior Air Force officers when he was chosen for the chief of staff job earlier this year. He is a fighter and attack plane pilot with more than 4,500 flying hours and 300 combat missions in Vietnam.

A graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., Dugan rose rapidly through the Air Force, serving chiefly in fighter squadron commands. His last post before becoming chief of staff in July was as commander of U.S. Air Forces in Europe.

His last Washington assignment was in 1988 and early 1989, when he served as deputy Air Force chief of staff for plans and operations.

Among his decorations are the Distinguished Service Medal, Silver Star, Legion of Merit with two oak leaf clusters, Purple Heart, Distinguished Flying Cross, Air Medal and the Republic of Vietnam Gallantry Cross with Palm.

Dugan has six children, three of them Air Force officers. When the articles appeared Sunday, he was in Florida attending a ceremony for his son Michael’s graduation from F-16 pilot training school.

Sen. John S. McCain (R-Ariz.), a former Navy bomber pilot who was shot down and taken prisoner in Vietnam, said the American system of civilian control of the military dictated Cheney’s firing of Dugan. “I think that clearly Cheney has the authority, and indeed the responsibility, to discipline anyone who violated policy,” he said.

McCain said he was especially troubled by Dugan’s comment that in any bombing campaign “the cutting edge would be in downtown Baghdad. This wouldn’t be a Vietnam-style operation, nibbling around the edges. . . . The way to hurt you is at home, not out in the woods somewhere.”

McCain said he did not think the American public would accept that tactic, even if it were justifiable on purely military grounds.

“His comments are at best not cognizant of the sensitivity of those remarks and the reaction that would be fueled by them,” McCain said. “It’s too bad, because I’m sure the guy was highly qualified for the job. But it comes down to the fact that the civilian leaders have a right to choose whom they want.”

Sens. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.) and John W. Warner (R-Va.), chairman and ranking minority member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in a joint statement that they believe Dugan’s firing to be justified.

“The recent public statements attributed to Gen. Dugan were inappropriate,” they said.

THOSE WHO WENT TOO FAR The following is a list of some U.S. military leaders who have been cashiered or disciplined for their comments. GEN. MICHAEL J. DUGAN, Air Force chief of staff

Fired on Sept. 17, 1990

By: Defense Secretary Dick Cheney

For: Publicly discussing possible targets of U.S. air strikes in Iraq if President Bush ordered use of military force against Saddam Hussein.

MAJ. GEN. JOHN K. SINGLAUB, U.S. chief of staff in South Korea

Fired May 21, 1977

By: President Jimmy Carter

For: Publicly opposing Carter’s plan to withdraw U.S. ground forces from Korea. He contended that the move would lead to war.

GEN. DOUGLAS MacARTHUR, Commander, U.S. , U.N. forces in Korean War

Fired on April 11, 1951

By: President Harry S. Truman

For: Making public his disagreement with Truman over methods to win the war, including his desire to bomb supply centers in Manchuria.

ADM. LOUIS E. DENFELD, Chief of naval operations

Fired in October, 1949

By: President Harry S. Truman

For: Speaking out on Capitol Hill against Navy budget cuts and questioning the value of air power.

GEN. WINFIELD SCOTT, General in chief, U.S. Army

Suspended for a year in 1810

By: Court-martial

For: Calling his superior officer, Gen. James Wilkinson, as great a traitor as Aaron Burr.

(Southland Edition) THOSE WHO WENT TOO FAR . . . OR NOT FAR ENOUGH

The following is a list of some U.S. military leaders who have been cashiered or disciplined for their actions or comments. ADM. HUSBAND E. KIMMEL Commander in chief, Pacific Fleet

Retired in 1942 after being accused of dereliction of duty

By: Naval board of inquiry

For: Poor state of readiness of naval forces; poor response to Japan attack on Pearl Harbor.

GEN. JOSEPH HOOKER Commander, Union Army

Relieved of command in April, 1863

By: President Abraham Lincoln

For: Indecisiveness at the battle of Chancellorsville which allowed Confederates to mount surprise attack.

GEN. AMBROSE E. BURNSIDE Commander, Army of the Potomac

Relieved of command in December, 1862.

By: President Lincoln

For: Ordering his forces on Dec. 13, 1862, to make suicidal assault on entrenched

Confederate positions in Fredericksburg, Va., and sustaining 12,600 casualties.

GEN. GEORGE B. McCLELLAN Commander, Union Army

Fired on Nov. 7, 1862

By: President Lincoln

For: Procrastination and failure to capitalize on military opportunities, including allowing Confederates to hold the line at the Battle of Antietam on Sept. 17.

BRIG. GEN. JOHN POPE Union Army

Fired on Sept. 5, 1862

By: President Abraham Lincoln

For: Leading Union forces to defeat at the Second Bull Run battle in August.

DUGAN WAS WARNED: Cheney aides told the general to steer clear of the press. A10

WHITE HOUSE CONCERN: Officials are said to feel the military was too candid. A12

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the U.S. “is never going to default” as the deadline for increasing the federal debt ceiling gets closer.

“That is never going to happen,” Bessent said in an interview for CBS’ “Face the Nation” scheduled to air Sunday. “We are on the warning track and we will never hit the wall.”

Republican congressional leaders have attached an increase in the debt limit to President Trump’s tax and spending bill, which potentially puts avoiding a default at the mercy of complex negotiations over the legislation. The U.S. Senate returns this week to take up the bill.

Bessent declined to specify an “X date” — the point at which the Treasury runs out of cash and special accounting measures that allow it to stay within the debt ceiling and still make good on federal obligations on time.

“We don’t give out the ‘X date’ because we use that to move the bill forward,” Bessent said. Last month, Bessent told lawmakers that the U.S. was likely to exhaust its borrowing authority by August if the debt ceiling isn’t raised or suspended by then.

Wall Street analysts and private forecasters see the deadline falling sometime between late August and mid-October.

Bessent also pushed back against a warning by JPMorgan Chase & Co. Chief Executive Jamie Dimon that a crack in the bond market “is going to happen.”

“I’ve known Jamie for a long time, and for his entire career he’s made predictions like this,” he said. “Fortunately none of them have come true.”

“We are going to bring the deficit down slowly,” Bessent said. “This has been a long process, so the goal is to bring it down over the next four years.”

Czuczka writes for Bloomberg News.

WASHINGTON — President Trump is withdrawing the nomination of tech billionaire Jared Isaacman, an associate of Elon Musk, to lead NASA, a person familiar with the decision said Saturday.

The person spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly on the administration’s personnel decisions. The White House and NASA did not immediately respond to emailed requests for comment.

Trump announced last December during the presidential transition that he had chosen Isaacman to be the space agency’s next administrator. Isaacman has been a close collaborator with Musk ever since he bought his first chartered flight on Musk’s SpaceX in 2021.

He is the CEO and founder of Shift4, a credit card processing company. He also bought a series of spaceflights from SpaceX and conducted the first private spacewalk.

Isaacman testified at his Senate confirmation hearing on April 9 and a vote to send his nomination to the full Senate was expected soon.

SpaceX is owned by Musk, a Trump supporter and adviser who announced this week that he is leaving the government after several months at the helm of the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. Trump created the agency to slash the size of government and put Musk in charge.

Semafor was first to report that the White House had decided to pull Isaacman’s nomination.

Superville and Kim write for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — President Trump faces the challenge of convincing Republican senators, global investors, voters and even Elon Musk that he won’t bury the federal government in debt with his multitrillion-dollar tax breaks package.

The response so far from financial markets has been skeptical as Trump seems unable to trim deficits as promised.

“All of this rhetoric about cutting trillions of dollars of spending has come to nothing — and the tax bill codifies that,” said Michael Strain, director of economic policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, a right-leaning think tank. “There is a level of concern about the competence of Congress and this administration and that makes adding a whole bunch of money to the deficit riskier.”

The White House has viciously lashed out at anyone who has voiced concern about the debt snowballing under Trump, even though it did exactly that in his first term after his 2017 tax cuts.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt opened her briefing Thursday by saying she wanted “to debunk some false claims” about his tax cuts.

Leavitt said the “blatantly wrong claim that the ‘One, Big, Beautiful Bill’ increases the deficit is based on the Congressional Budget Office and other scorekeepers who use shoddy assumptions and have historically been terrible at forecasting across Democrat and Republican administrations alike.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) piled onto Congress’ number crunchers on Sunday, telling NBC’s “Meet the Press,” “The CBO sometimes gets projections correct, but they’re always off, every single time, when they project economic growth. They always underestimate the growth that will be brought about by tax cuts and reduction in regulations.”

Speaker Mike Johnson has said the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office are “always underestimates growth” spurred by tax cuts.

(Kevin Dietsch / Getty Images)

But Trump himself has suggested that the lack of sufficient spending cuts to offset his tax reductions came out of the need to hold the Republican congressional coalition together.

“We have to get a lot of votes,” Trump said last week. “We can’t be cutting.”

That has left the administration betting on the hope that economic growth can do the trick, a belief that few outside of Trump’s orbit think is viable.

Most economists consider the non-partisan CBO to be the foundational standard for assessing policies, though it does not produce cost estimates for actions taken by the executive branch such as Trump’s unilateral tariffs.

Tech billionaire Musk, who was until recently part of Trump’s inner sanctum as the leader of the Department of Government Efficiency, told CBS News: “I was disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly, which increases the budget deficit, not just decreases it, and undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing.”

Federal debt keeps rising

The tax and spending cuts that passed the House last month would add more than $5 trillion to the national debt in the coming decade if all of them are allowed to continue, according to the Committee for a Responsible Financial Budget, a fiscal watchdog group.

To make the bill’s price tag appear lower, various parts of the legislation are set to expire. This same tactic was used with Trump’s 2017 tax cuts and it set up this year’s dilemma, in which many of the tax cuts in that earlier package will sunset next year unless Congress renews them.

But the debt is a much bigger problem now than it was eight years ago. Investors are demanding the government pay a higher premium to keep borrowing as the total debt has crossed $36.1 trillion. The interest rate on a 10-year Treasury note is around 4.5%, up dramatically from the roughly 2.5% rate being charged when the 2017 tax cuts became law.

The White House Council of Economic Advisers argues that its policies will unleash so much rapid growth that the annual budget deficits will shrink in size relative to the overall economy, putting the U.S. government on a fiscally sustainable path.

The council argues the economy would expand over the next four years at an annual average of about 3.2%, instead of the Congressional Budget Office’s expected 1.9%, and as many as 7.4 million jobs would be created or saved.

Council chair Stephen Miran told reporters that when the growth being forecast by the White House is coupled with expected revenues from tariffs, the expected budget deficits will fall. The tax cuts will increase the supply of money for investment, the supply of workers and the supply of domestically produced goods — all of which, by Miran’s logic, would cause faster growth without creating new inflationary pressures.

“I do want to assure everyone that the deficit is a very significant concern for this administration,” Miran said.

White House budget director Russell Vought told reporters the idea that the bill is “in any way harmful to debt and deficits is fundamentally untrue.”

Economists doubt Trump’s plan can spark enough growth to reduce deficits

Most outside economists expect additional debt would keep interest rates higher and slow overall economic growth as the cost of borrowing for homes, cars, businesses and even college educations would increase.

“This just adds to the problem future policymakers are going to face,” said Brendan Duke, a former Biden administration aide now at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal think tank. Duke said that with the tax cuts in the bill set to expire in 2028, lawmakers would be “dealing with Social Security, Medicare and expiring tax cuts at the same time.”

Kent Smetters, faculty director of the Penn Wharton Budget Model, said the growth projections from Trump’s economic team are “a work of fiction.” He said the bill would lead some workers to choose to work fewer hours in order to qualify for Medicaid.

“I don’t know of any serious forecaster that has meaningfully raised their growth forecast because of this legislation,” said Harvard University professor Jason Furman, who was the Council of Economic Advisers chair under the Obama administration. “These are mostly not growth- and competitiveness-oriented tax cuts. And, in fact, the higher long-term interest rates will go the other way and hurt growth.”

The White House’s inability so far to calm deficit concerns is stirring up political blowback for Trump as the tax and spending cuts approved by the House now move to the Senate. Republican Sens. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Rand Paul of Kentucky have both expressed concerns about the likely deficit increases, with Johnson saying there are enough senators to stall the bill until deficits are addressed.

“I think we have enough to stop the process until the president gets serious about the spending reduction and reducing the deficit,” Johnson said on CNN.

Trump banking on tariff revenues to help

The White House is also banking that tariff revenues will help cover the additional deficits, even though recent court rulings cast doubt on the legitimacy of Trump declaring an economic emergency to impose sweeping taxes on imports.

When Trump announced his near-universal tariffs in April, he specifically said his policies would generate enough new revenues to start paying down the national debt. His comments dovetailed with remarks by aides, including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, that yearly budget deficits could be more than halved.

“It’s our turn to prosper and in so doing, use trillions and trillions of dollars to reduce our taxes and pay down our national debt, and it’ll all happen very quickly,” Trump said two months ago as he talked up his import taxes and encouraged lawmakers to pass the separate tax and spending cuts.

The Trump administration is correct that growth can help reduce deficit pressures, but it’s not enough on its own to accomplish the task, according to new research by economists Douglas Elmendorf, Glenn Hubbard and Zachary Liscow.

Ernie Tedeschi, director of economics at the Budget Lab at Yale University, said additional “growth doesn’t even get us close to where we need to be.”

The government would need $10 trillion of deficit reduction over the next 10 years just to stabilize the debt, Tedeschi said. And even though the White House says the tax cuts would add to growth, most of the cost goes to preserve existing tax breaks, so that’s unlikely to boost the economy meaningfully.

“It’s treading water,” Tedeschi said.

Boak writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — The widening and increasingly bitter divide between Republicans and Democrats defines American politics, but in recent weeks, it’s the divisions inside each of the two parties that have dominated headlines.

Democratic progressives have fumed at moderate lawmakers who have insisted on cutting the size of President Biden’s social spending plans.

Republicans have denounced 13 of their House colleagues who sided with Democrats earlier this month to pass Biden’s $1.2-trillion infrastructure bill. After conservative Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) posted their phone numbers on social media, some of the 13 reported getting death threats.

What issues create the deep fissures within the two parties, and which Americans make up the conflicting factions?

For some 30 years, many of the best answers to those questions have come from a project of the nonpartisan Pew Research Center — a long-running effort to analyze the political groupings into which Americans cluster, which Pew refers to as a political typology.

Pew released its latest typology on Tuesday, the eighth in the series. The results are key to understanding why American politics works the way it does.

Parties driven by their extremes

For this latest effort, Pew surveyed 10,221 American adults, asking each of them a series of questions about their political attitudes, values and views of American society. Researchers took the results and put them through what’s called a cluster analysis to define groups that make up U.S. society.

The new typology divides Americans into nine such groups — four on the left, which make up the Democratic coalition, four on the right, making up the Republican coalition, and one in between whose members are largely defined by a lack of interest in politics and public affairs.

Nearly all the Democrats agree on wanting a larger government that provides more services; nearly all the Republicans want the opposite.

And nearly all Democrats believe that race and gender discrimination remain serious problems in American society that require further efforts to resolve. On the Republican side, the belief that little — if anything — remains to be done to achieve equality has become a defining principle.

On other issues, however, the parties have deep internal splits. In each, the most energized group — the people who most regularly turn out to vote, post on social media and contribute to campaigns — stands at the edges.

On the right, that would be an extremely conservative, religiously oriented, nationalistic group which Pew calls the Faith and Flag conservatives. At the other end of the scale stands a socialist-friendly, largely secular group it calls the Progressive Left.

On several major issues, those two groups have views that are “far from the rest of their coalitions,” yet they’re “the most politically engaged groups, and they’re driving the conversation,” said Carroll Doherty, Pew’s director of political research.

The Faith and Flag conservatives, who make up about 10% of American adults and almost 25% of Republicans, have shaped the party’s policies on some social issues such as abortion, but have even more strongly affected its overall approach to politics. A majority (53%) of the group, for example, says that “compromise in politics is really just selling out.”

That has strongly shaped the GOP’s approach to legislation and helps explain the bitter, angry response to the Republicans who voted for Biden’s bipartisan infrastructure compromise.

The group is overwhelmingly white (85%), relatively old (two-thirds are 50 or older) mostly Christian (4 in 10 are white, evangelical Protestants) and heavily rural.

Their mirror image, the Progressive Left, is a significantly smaller group, only about 6% of Americans and 12% of Democrats. Despite their smaller size, however, they have had a strong impact, moving their party to the left, especially on expanding government and combating climate change.

That group is in several ways the opposite of the Faith and Flag conservatives: urban, secular and significantly more college-educated than the rest of the country.

Like the Faith and Flag group, however, the Progressives are mostly white (68%) — the only Democratic faction with a white majority.

The groups have one other trait in common — each has a deep, visceral dislike of the other party.

While those two set the parameters of a lot of American political debate, it’s the other groups in each party’s coalition that explain why the Democratic and Republican approaches to government have diverged so widely.

On the Democratic side, the two biggest blocs, which make up just over half of Democratic voters, fit comfortably into the party establishment.

The Establishment Liberals (think Vice President Kamala Harris or Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg) are a racially diverse, highly educated (one-quarter have post-graduate degrees), fairly affluent group that is optimistic in its outlook, liberal in its politics and strong believers that “compromise is how things get done” in politics.

The Democratic Mainstays (think House Democratic Whip James E. Clyburn of South Carolina or President Biden) are more likely to define themselves as political moderates and are significantly more likely than other Democrats to say that religion plays a major role in their lives. Roughly 40% of Black Democrats fit into this group.

The Mainstays are more likely than other Democrats to favor increasing funds for police in their neighborhoods and somewhat less likely to favor increased immigration, but are extremely loyal to the Democratic Party.

Together, those two groups give Democrats a strong orientation toward cutting deals, making incremental progress and getting the work of government done.

Virtually the opposite is true of Republicans, whose two largest groups, the Faith and Flag conservatives and what Pew calls the Populist Right, dislike compromise and harbor deep suspicions of American institutions. Together, those groups, which make up nearly half the GOP’s voters, have produced a party that revels in opposition but has often found itself stymied when trying to govern.

The Populists group, the one most closely identified with former President Trump‘s style of politics, has a negative view of huge swaths of American society — big corporations, but also the entertainment industry, tech companies, labor unions, colleges and universities, and K-12 schools.

Nearly 9 in 10 of them believe the U.S. economic system unfairly favors the powerful, and a majority support raising taxes on big companies and the wealthy. Both of those views put them at odds with the rest of the GOP, helping explain why the party struggles to come up with economic proposals beyond opposition to Democratic plans.

The Populist Right also overwhelmingly says that immigrants coming to the U.S. make the country worse off. That puts them in conflict with the party’s smaller but still influential business-oriented establishment.

About half the Populist group say that white people declining as a share of the U.S. population is a bad thing, more than in any other group.

The Republican establishment faction (think Majority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky or Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah) is what Pew calls the Committed Conservatives, pro-business, generally favorable to immigration and more moderate on racial issues.

A lot of Republican elected officials fall into that group, but unlike the very large establishment blocs on the Democratic side, relatively fewer voters do — 7% of Americans and 15% of the GOP. That creates a pervasive tension between GOP elected officials and many of their constituents.

Unlike the two larger conservative blocs, in which majorities want to see Trump run again, most Republicans in this group would prefer him to take a back seat.

Each of the coalitions also has a group that is alienated from its party.

A significant number in the Ambivalent Right, a younger, socially liberal, largely anti-Trump group within the GOP, voted for Biden in 2020.

On the Democratic side, the mostly young people in the Outsider Left are very liberal, but frustrated with the Democrats and not always motivated to vote. When Democratic political figures talk about the need to boost voter turnout, those are the potential voters many of them picture.

By the way, there’s a long connection between the Los Angeles Times and the political typology project. The first version of the political typology dates back to 1987 and was developed by the long-ago Times Mirror Center for the People and the Press, a research organization founded by the company that owned The Times.

To allow readers to see how they compared to the political types in that era, The Times published the typology quiz as a full-page in print, inviting people to fill it out, mail it in and get a letter back telling them what group they belonged to. Today, you can do it all online.

The vice president abroad

On a trip this week to France, Harris is introducing herself to the world in personal terms, Noah Bierman wrote. The trip, he said, has given Harris a chance “to reveal herself on the world stage — highlighting her status as the first woman and the first woman of color to serve in such high office — after 10 months of focusing on responding to the COVD-19 pandemic and other crises,” which have taken a political toll.

Part of Harris’ goal in the trip is to further mend relations with France, which were strained when the administration struck a deal with Australia to help build nuclear submarines, which wiped out a major French contract to build boats for the Australian navy. In her speeches, however, Harris has also tried to make the case that the U.S. has moved past the Trump era and once again can be relied upon as an ally, Bierman wrote. That’s met with some skepticism from Europeans, who wonder what will happen in the next election.

Meantime, Mark Barabak looked at how Harris has adopted a much lower public profile of late. As past occupants of the office, including George H.W. Bush and Al Gore have found, the number-two job is an “inherently diminishing one,” he wrote.

The continued racial impact of freeway projects

The U.S. has largely stopped building new freeways, but projects to widen or extend existing roads continue to displace thousands of Americans, with a particularly harsh impact on communities of color, Liam Dillon and Ben Poston reported.

Their investigation, based on thousands of documents and Transportation Department data, shows that more than 200,000 people have lost their homes nationwide to federal road projects over the last three decades. In many cases, predominantly Black or Latino communities that were torn apart by freeway construction a generation or more ago have been dislocated once more by new projects.

The new data show that the U.S. has not entirely moved beyond the racist history of freeway development.

The latest from Washington

Inflation has seriously damaged several presidencies in the last half century; now, rising prices threaten Biden, Chris Megerian and Erin Logan wrote.

At the international climate conference in Glasgow, the U.S., Britain and 17 other countries agreed to reduce emissions from the shipping industry, which is one of the largest sources of greenhouse gases, Anna Phillips reported. Large container ships use fuel that is dirtier by far than the diesel that powers cars. Ships can also be a major source of air pollution in port cities, including Los Angeles.

Phillips also wrote this look at what the international climate conference has achieved, including pledges to phase out gasoline-powered cars and stop building new coal-fired power plants — and what it hasn’t done.

As Democrats continue to haggle over the details of their big social spending proposal, Jennifer Haberkorn took a look at one of the plan’s largest elements — a major increase in money for early childhood education. The bill would devote about $390 billion over the next 10 years to providing preschool access to all 3- and 4-year-olds. That would mark the largest expansion of free education since high school was added about 100 years ago.

The latest from California

The state’s independent Citizens Redistricting Commission has come up with a draft map of new congressional and legislative districts, and it’s already causing heartburn for a number of incumbent lawmakers, Seema Mehta and John Myers reported.

The new maps may strengthen Latino political clout in California overall, but the most heavily Latino district in the state would be eliminated. The 40th District, represented by Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard, covers parts of East and South L.A. and would be parceled out among neighboring districts, Mehta reported. Roybal-Allard, 80, has raised very little money amid speculation that she has plans to retire next year. The state is losing one congressional district after last year’s census, and the loss was widely expected to come in the Los Angeles area, which has grown more slowly than other parts of the state.

The redrawn boundaries may force some incumbents to run against each other or run in districts that have suddenly become less politically secure. The Central Valley districts of GOP Rep. Devin Nunes of Tulare and Democratic Rep. Josh Harder of Turlock would both be significantly altered, according to redistricting analysts in both parties. Reps. Mike Garcia of Santa Clarita, Michelle Steel of Seal Beach and Darrell Issa of Bonsall would all find their districts becoming less secure.

But there’s a good chance the maps will change again after a two-week public comment period, which began with the commission’s approval of the maps on Wednesday night.

The Biden administration will extend a major homelessness initiative that has allowed Los Angeles and other cities to rent hotel rooms as temporary housing for thousands of people. As Ben Oreskes reported, the administration will extend the program through March. It was slated to expire at the end of the year.

In another development related to homelessness, a group looking to oust Los Angeles City Councilman Mike Bonin says it has submitted more than 39,000 signatures on recall petitions. If the signatures hold up to scrutiny, that would qualify the measure for the ballot. Bonin’s opponents have accused him of failing to take seriously the impact of crime that they say is connected to homeless encampments.

Sign up for our California Politics newsletter to get the best of The Times’ state politics reporting.

Reporting from Washington — For President Trump, chants and signs saying “Build the wall” are so 2016 — “Finish the wall” is his new rallying cry. Yet two years into his term, not one new mile of a barrier has been erected along the nearly 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border.

At a rally in El Paso on Monday night, Trump went so far as to declare that nearby, just that day, “the big beautiful wall right on the Rio Grande” had gotten underway. In fact, some brush was cleared in anticipation of construction, according to a check with the Homeland Security Department.

If and when a 25-mile physical barrier ultimately is built there, it will represent the first new miles of border barriers since Trump took office. That is the reality that the president — a businessman and self-proclaimed construction expert elected in part on his promise to build a massive border wall — is increasingly attempting to obscure as he looks to reelection.

Even as the president has failed to get the funding he wants for a wall, despite two years with a Republican-controlled Congress, he has shifted to declaring victory and claiming credit for the 654 miles of fencing constructed under his predecessors — the same former presidents he often criticizes for their border policies, as he did Tuesday by derisively referring to “our past geniuses.”

Trump himself directed campaign officials that “Finish the wall” was to be the theme of the El Paso rally, according to a person familiar with the planning. With the slogan on red and blue banners hanging from the rafters, and on signs distributed to the crowd, when supporters chanted the usual “Build the wall,” Trump corrected them: “You mean finish the wall.”

The president’s attempted sleight of hand on his signature issue comes amid both deepening resignation in his circle that Democrats in Congress are not going to support significant increases in wall funding and concern about disappointing his core supporters.

“The point is this wall will not be built without Donald Trump in office in 2021 and beyond,” said Raj Shah, a former White House deputy press secretary.

Even after a record five-week partial government shutdown provoked by Trump’s funding demand, and current efforts by lawmakers to avoid another impasse, Congress will not be approving anywhere close to the $5.7 billion he’s been demanding to finance 230 miles of new wall. Instead, tentative plans in Congress call for less than a quarter of that — $1.375 billion for 55 miles of barrier.

“Am I happy? The answer is no, I’m not. I’m not happy,” Trump told reporters at the White House on Tuesday. Claiming that he is “adding to” the emerging compromise, Trump did not say if he would sign off on the deal. He did say he does not expect another shutdown, which would occur if he doesn’t sign a spending bill for about a quarter of the government by midnight Friday.

Administration officials have been looking to redirect existing funds to his wall project. In his remarks to reporters during a Cabinet meeting, the president sought to reassure supporters that he’ll fulfill his promise regardless of what Congress does.

“It’s very simple: We’re building a wall and now I say we’re finishing a wall,” he said, repeating the false claim.

A campaign official, who asked to remain unidentified for speaking on the sensitive topic, argued that there is nothing contradictory in the president simultaneously claiming the wall is being finished and complaining that Congress won’t fund it.

“You can be at Mile 2 of a [26.2-mile] marathon and still say, ‘We’re going to finish,’” the person said. “And we are at Mile 2, not Mile 24. But we’ve erected some barricades, so it’s not nothing.”

The president, according to the official, “is just reassuring his voters because he knows he’s likely going to end up accepting a deal” that’s less than he sought.

Much of the work that Trump is touting consists of strengthening or restoring the existing 654 miles of pedestrian and vehicle barriers largely built or funded under the George W. Bush and Obama administrations, according to the Government Accountability Office.

From 2007 to 2015, the Customs and Border Protection agency spent about $2.3 billion to increase barriers on the border from 119 miles to the current 654 miles, with almost all of the work done on land, much of it federally owned, in California, Arizona and New Mexico. East of El Paso, much of the land along the U.S.-Mexico border in Texas — the least-fenced area — is privately owned.

So far under Trump, Congress has approved nearly $1 billion to replace more than 50 miles of fencing in California, New Mexico and Texas, the GAO reported.

Several of these renovation projects, in what are known as the El Paso and El Centro sectors, were completed in October. Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen boasted that the latter was the completion of the “first section” of Trump’s border wall. More replacement construction is underway, due to wrap up this spring.

More than $640 million of the funds Congress provided last year is for 25 miles of fencing along levees in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley as well as areas in the sector “to be determined.” That is the only new construction approved under Trump so far.

Carlos A. Diaz, a CBP spokesman, said the fiscal 2018 budget, which covered spending through September last year, included roughly three dozen new miles of a levee and border wall system in the Rio Grande Valley. Construction on the first 14 miles of the levee system is to begin this month.

The Homeland Security Department planned to spend billions to meet Trump’s executive orders for his border wall despite lacking key information on cost, acquisition and technology issues — risking that a wall would “cost more than projected, take longer than planned or not fully perform as expected,” the GAO concluded in August. Cost estimates have ranged from $20 billion to more than $70 billion.

For fiscal year 2019, through Oct. 1, the White House initially requested $1.6 billion for a wall system along 65 miles in the Rio Grande Valley. Now, after a shutdown estimated to have cost the U.S. economy $11 billion, the spending agreement reached Monday night would give Trump about $200 million and 10 miles less than what he stood to get before he upped his demand to nearly $6 billion late last year.

In his struggle to win Congress’ buy-in, Trump has significantly redefined what, exactly, his wall would be. He campaigned for a “big, beautiful wall” that he’s since variably said would be precast or plank concrete, steel slats, see-through, human, “matte black,” too tall to climb over, too deep to tunnel under, to be paid for by Mexico or paid for inexplicably by the benefits of a revised trade agreement with Canada and Mexico.

Trump’s former chief of staff and Homeland Security secretary, John F. Kelly, told The Times late last year: “To be honest, it’s not a wall.”

“Now he’s tended toward steel slats,” Kelly said. “But we left a solid concrete wall early on in the administration, when we asked people what they needed and where they needed it.”

The Trump administration awarded more than $3 million for the construction and design of eight border wall prototypes — four of reinforced concrete and two that could be seen through.

Congress’ tentative spending agreement would restrict CBP to using currently deployed designs for the new border barrier, including steel slats or bollard fencing. But it remains unclear whether the House and Senate will approve the compromise, or whether Trump will sign it if they do.

Key Trump supporters, led by Fox News host Sean Hannity, bashed the agreement as soon as it was announced for backing off the president’s $5.7-billion demand. Some liberal Democrats are likely to oppose any new funding for a border fence and complain that negotiators dropped a proposed cap on how many immigrants Trump can detain.

Still, Trump insisted Tuesday: “We’re getting a beautiful-looking structure that’s also less expensive to build and works much better.”

“I never kid about construction,” he added. “I love construction.”

The latest from Washington »

Not that you asked, but yes, I have been feeling a bit overwhelmed by all the bad news out of Washington:

Pardons for tax cheats who line President Trump’s pockets. Talk of pardons for the violent criminals who conspired to kidnap and kill Democratic Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. Dinners for crypto moguls who shower him with money. His monomaniacal quest to extinguish the light of the country’s most prestigious university. His budget that will deprive millions of their healthcare coverage, while slashing taxes for the rich and swelling the $36 trillion national debt by an estimated $3.8 trillion.

And don’t get me started on Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s inane move that could make it harder for pregnant women to get COVID-19 shots, thus depriving their infants of protection against the virus when they are vulnerable and not yet eligible for vaccination.

Good heavens, I needed a distraction. Happily, it arrived in the form of an unexpected video.

You may have seen it: Last Sunday, French President Emmanuel Macron’s wife, Brigitte, got tongues wagging when she did something that seemed entirely out of character for the painfully elegant first lady. She was caught on camera squishing her hands right into his handsome face. It looked like an act of hostility. I was intrigued.

I know, I know. It’s hardly world-shattering news. But who doesn’t perk up a bit when the scrim of perfection that shields the private lives of high-profile, perfectly turned-out couples is torn, even for one brief moment?

Who can forget the sight of First Lady Melania Trump swatting away her husband’s hand during a 2017 visit to Tel Aviv? Or the way her smile faded during his first inauguration the moment he looked away from her, inspiring the #FreeMelania hashtag?

For all the drama and rumor that swirled around the Clintons’ marriage, I can’t think of any public moment when they did not appear civil with one another, even after his disastrous relationship with a White House intern.

And the Obamas? Is there any other intensely scrutinized political couple who seem so downright normal? Not that anyone ever really knows what’s going on in anyone else’s marriage.

Which brings us back to the Macrons.

His plane was on the tarmac in Hanoi, where he was kicking off a tour to strengthen ties with countries in Southeast Asia. As the plane door opened, the couple were caught unawares. A startled-looking Macron backed up as disembodied hands smushed his face. He instantly collected himself, and his wife appeared at his side. As they began to descend the staircase, he offered her his arm, which she did not take.

The bizarre clip went viral, and sent the French government, known as the Élysée Palace, into what one headline described as “chaos.”

Part of the chaos stemmed from the government first claiming that the clip was not real but was possibly a deep fake created by AI and exploited by Russia to make Macron seem weak. After the Associated Press authenticated the video, the French government changed its tune, describing the moment as merely a playful interaction between the couple.

Unsurprisingly, given their back story, the Macrons have been the subject of intense fascination for years.

They met in 1993 at a Catholic high school in northern France when he was 15. She, nearly 40 at the time, and a married mother of three, was his drama teacher. His parents were so concerned about the impropriety of their relationship that they sent him away to Paris for his senior year.

In 2006, she divorced her husband, and married Macron the following year. He was 29. She was 54.

“Of course, we have breakfast together, me and my wrinkles, him with his youth, but it’s like that,” Macron told Elle France in 2017. “If I did not make that choice, I would have missed out on my life.”

Unfortunately, Le Slapgate threatened to overshadow the Macrons’ trip.

“We are squabbling and, rather, joking with my wife,” he told reporters, complaining that the incident was being overblown into “a sort of geo-planetary catastrophe.”

A few days later, though, he was making light of the incident. Or at least trying to.

On Tuesday in Jakarta, Indonesia, as his plane door opened, another disembodied hand appeared, this time waving before Macron stepped into the camera frame smiling before he walked down the stairs arm in arm with his wife. Ha ha.

For a brief moment, the squabbling of one of the world’s most interesting couples gave us a much needed break from the actual geo-planetary catastrophe unfolding around us. For that, the Macrons have my gratitude. Merci, you crazy lovebirds.

‪@rabcarian.bsky.social‬ @rabcarian

After the Palisades fire ignited, top brass at the Los Angeles Fire Department were quick to say that they were hampered by broken fire engines and a lack of mechanics to fix them.

If the roughly 40 fire engines that were in the shop had been repaired, they said, the battle against what turned out to be one of the costliest and most destructive disasters in Los Angeles history might have unfolded differently.

Then-Fire Chief Kristin Crowley cited the disabled engines as a reason fire officials didn’t dispatch more personnel to fire-prone areas as the winds escalated, and why they sent home firefighters who showed up to help as the blaze raged out of control. The department, she said, should have had three times as many mechanics.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, right, and Los Angeles Fire Chief Kristin Crowley address the media at a press conference onJan. 11.

(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)

But many of the broken engines highlighted by LAFD officials had been out of service for many months or even years — and not necessarily for a lack of mechanics, according to a Times review of engine work orders as of Jan. 3, four days before the fire.

What’s more, the LAFD had dozens of other engines that could have been staffed and deployed in advance of the fire.

Instead, the service records point to a broader problem: the city’s longtime reliance on an aging fleet of engines.

Well over half of the LAFD’s fire engines are due to be replaced. According to an LAFD report presented to the city Fire Commission last month, 127 out of 210 fire engines — 60% — and 29 out of 60 ladder trucks — 48% — are operating beyond their recommended lifespans.

“It just hasn’t been a priority,” said Frank Líma, general secretary treasurer of the International Assn. of Fire Fighters who is also an LAFD captain, adding that frontline rigs are “getting pounded like never before” as the number of 911 calls increases.

That means officials are relying heavily on reserve engines — older vehicles that can be used in emergencies or when regular engines are in the shop. The goal is to use no more than half of those vehicles, but for the last three years, LAFD has used, on average, 80% of the trucks, engines and ambulances in reserve, according to the Fire Commission report.

“That’s indicative of a fleet that’s just getting older,” said Assistant Chief Peter Hsiao, who oversees LAFD’s supply and maintenance division, in an interview with The Times.

“As our fleet gets older, the repairs become more difficult,” Hsiao told the Fire Commission. “We’re now doing things like rebuilding suspensions, rebuilding pump transmissions, rebuilding transmissions, engine overhauls.”

The problem stems from long-term funding challenges, Hsiao said in the interview, with the department receiving varying amounts of money each year that have to be divvied up among competing equipment needs.

“If you extrapolate that over a longer period of time, then you end up in a situation where we are,” he said.

To make matters worse, Hsiao said, the price of new engines and trucks has doubled since the pandemic. Engines that cost $775,000 a few years ago are now pushing $1.5 million — and it takes three years or more to build them, he said.

The number of fire engine manufacturers has also declined.

Recently, the IAFF asked the U.S. Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission to investigate a consolidation in emergency vehicle manufacturers that it said has resulted in skyrocketing costs and “brutal” wait times. In a letter, the IAFF said that at least two dozen companies have been rolled up into just three main manufacturers.

Firefighters battle the Palisades fire on El Medio Avenue on Jan. 7 in Pacific Palisades.

(Brian van der Brug/Los Angeles Times)

“These problems have reduced the readiness of fire departments to respond to emergencies, with dire consequences for public safety,” the letter said.

The IAFF is the parent organization of the United Firefighters of Los Angeles City, the local union representing LAFD firefighters. IAFF has been running the local labor group since suspending its top officers last month over allegations of financial impropriety.

Hsiao said the LAFD’s fleet is well-maintained, and engines don’t often break down.

But the age and condition of the fleet could deteriorate further, even with an infusion of cash to buy new equipment, because the wait times are so long.

Mayor Karen Bass’ office has previously said that she secured $51 million last year to purchase 10 fire engines, five trucks, 20 ambulances and other equipment. The 2025-26 budget passed by the City Council last month includes nearly $68 million for 10 fire engines, four trucks, 10 ambulances and a helicopter, among other equipment, the mayor’s office said.

“The Mayor’s Office is working with new leadership at LAFD to ensure that new vehicles are purchased in a timely manner and put into service,” a spokesperson said in an email.

A majority of the Fire Department’s budget goes toward pay and benefits for its more than 3,700 employees, most of them firefighters.

Members of the Los Angeles Fire Department fill the council chambers to show support for former Fire Chief Kristin Crowley, who was at City Hall March 4 to appeal her termination to the Los Angeles City Council after Mayor Karen Bass fired her as head of the Fire Department. Under the city charter, Crowley would need the support of 10 of the 15 council members to be reinstated as chief.

(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)

Despite the city’s financial troubles, firefighters secured four years of pay raises last year through negotiations with Bass. And firefighters often make much more than their base pay, with about 30% of the LAFD’s payroll costs going to overtime, according to the city’s payroll database. Firefighters and fire captains each earned an average of $73,500 in overtime last year, on top of an average base salary of about $140,100, the data show.

Líma said that while new engines will be useful, “a one-year little infusion doesn’t help a systemic problem that’s developed over decades.” Asked whether firefighters would defer raises, he said they “shouldn’t fund the Fire Department off the backs of their salaries.”

The National Fire Protection Assn. recommends that fire engines move to reserve status after 15 years and out of the fleet altogether after 25 years.

But many larger cities need to act sooner, “because of the constant wear and tear city equipment takes,” said Marc Bashoor, a former fire chief who now trains firefighters across the country, in an email. “In my opinion, 10 years is OLD for city apparatus.”

Bashoor also noted that incorporating a variety of brands into a fleet, as the LAFD does, can increase repair times.

“When a fire department doesn’t have a standardized fleet, departments typically are unable to stock enough … parts to fit every brand,” he said in an email. “They then have to find the part or use a 3rd party, which can significantly delay repairs.”

Of the roughly 40 engines in the shop before the Palisades fire, three were built in 1999. Hsiao said engines that old are typically used for training and don’t respond to calls.

Those that are too old or damaged from collisions or fires to ever return to city streets sometimes remain in the yard so they can be stripped for parts or used for training. Some are kept as evidence in lawsuits.

According to the service records reviewed by The Times, a work order was opened in 2023 for a 2003 engine burned in a fire, with notes saying “strip for salvage.” A 2006 engine damaged in an accident was waiting for parts, according to notes associated with a work order from last April. Two 2018 engines were damaged in collisions, including one with “heavy damage” to the rear body that had to be towed in, according to notes for an order from last July. Other orders noted oil leaks or problems with head gaskets.

Almost 30 of the engines that were out of service before the fire — 70% on the list — were 15 or more years old, past what the city considers an appropriate lifespan. Only a dozen had work orders that were three months old or less. That included three newer engines — two built in 2019 and one in 2020 — whose service records showed they were waiting for “warranty” repairs.

After the fire, LAFD union officials echoed Crowley’s fleet maintenance concerns. Freddy Escobar, who was then president of the United Firefighters of Los Angeles City, blamed chronic underfunding.

“The LAFD does not have the funding mechanism to supply enough mechanics and enough money for the parts to repair these engines, the trucks, the ambulances,” Escobar told KTLA-TV.

The issues date back more than a decade. A 2019 report showed that LAFD’s equipment was even more outdated at the time, with 136 of 216 engines, or 63%, due for replacement, as well as 43 of 58 ladder trucks, or 74%. In a report from 2012, LAFD officials said they didn’t have enough mechanics to keep up with the workload.

“Of paramount concern is the Department’s aging and less reliable fleet, a growing backlog of deferred repairs, and increased maintenance expense,” the 2012 report said, adding that mechanics were primarily doing emergency repairs instead of preventative maintenance.

LAFD’s equipment and operations have been under heightened scrutiny since the Palisades fire erupted Jan. 7, destroying thousands of homes and killing 12 people, with many saying that officials were severely unprepared.

A total of 18 firefighters are typically on duty at the two fire stations in the Palisades — Stations 23 and 69 — to respond to emergencies. Only 14 of them are routinely available to fight brush fires, The Times previously reported. The other four are assigned to ambulances at the two stations, although they might help with evacuations or rescues during fires.

The Palisades fire burns along Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu.

(Wally Skalij/Los Angeles Times)

LAFD officials did not pre-deploy any engines to the Palisades ahead of the fire, despite warnings about extreme weather, a Times investigation found. In preparing for the winds, the department staffed only five of more than 40 engines available to supplement the regular firefighting force.

Those working engines could have been pre-positioned in the Palisades and elsewhere, as had been done in the past during similar weather.

Less than two months after the fire, Bass dismissed Crowley, citing the chief’s pre-deployment decisions as one of the reasons.

Bass has rejected the idea that there was any connection between reductions at the department and the city’s response to the wildfires.

Meanwhile, the number of mechanics on the job hasn’t changed much in recent years, fluctuating between 64 and 74 since 2020, according to records released by the LAFD in January. As of this year, the agency had 71 mechanics.

According to its report to the Fire Commission, the LAFD doesn’t have enough mechanics to maintain and repair its fleet, based on the average number of hours the department said it takes to maintain a single vehicle.

Last year, the report said, mechanics completed 31,331 of 32,317 work requests, or 97%. So far this year, they have completed 62%, according to the report.

“With a greater number of mechanics, we can reduce the delays. However, a limited facility size, parts availability, and warranty repairs compound the issue,” LAFD said in an unsigned email.

Special correspondent Paul Pringle contributed to this report.

Reporting from Washington — Judge Brett Kavanaugh on Wednesday defended his broad view of gun rights and skepticism of federal regulatory agencies, but left uncertain his position on abortion and refused to detail his views on executive power, including whether a president can be ordered to answer questions in a criminal investigation.

Facing senators during a second day of his confirmation hearing that began in the morning and stretched well into the night, President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee proved adept at giving lengthy answers without fully revealing his views on matters of controversy.

“You’re learning to filibuster,” Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) told him when he steered around her question on whether the president is shielded from being investigated or questioned while in office.

As the evening wore on, none of the exchanges seemed to have changed the vote count in favor of Kavanaugh’s narrow confirmation. At only one point during the hearing — faced with questions about his knowledge of emails allegedly stolen from Democratic senators during the George W. Bush administration — did the otherwise well-prepared nominee appear flustered.

On presidential power, in particular, Kavanaugh seemed to come armed with a well-honed set of responses to questions about his previous writings.

In law review articles in 1998 and 2009, Kavanaugh said the president “should be excused from some of the burdens of ordinary citizenship while serving in office” and should not be subject to investigations or questioning. The “Constitution seems to dictate” that Congress, not a special prosecutor, should investigate a president for lawbreaking, he wrote.

But when pressed repeatedly by Democrats on Wednesday, Kavanaugh contended that he has never taken a position on whether the Constitution allows for indicting or investigating a sitting president for criminal wrongdoing. He did say a president could be tried and convicted after leaving office, whether at the end of a term or because of impeachment.

“I don’t think anyone thinks of immunity” for a president, he said.

The issue has taken on new significance because Trump is caught up in special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election and could be called to answer questions from a grand jury.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), joining other Republicans in trying to help the nominee articulate his views, asked Kavanaugh “whether you have any trouble ruling against a president who appointed you.”

“You’re correct. No one is above the law in our constitutional system,” Kavanaugh said. “The executive branch is subject to the law, subject to the court system.”

Kavanaugh passed up a chance to show his independence from Trump when Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) asked him whether he thought it was appropriate for the president to attack Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions for his prosecutors’ indictments of two GOP congressmen — Reps. Chris Collins of New York and Duncan Hunter of Alpine — ahead of the November election. Trump said it might endanger their reelection, ignoring the serious criminal charges against the men. Kavanaugh declined to offer his opinion. He also rebuffed a request from one Democratic senator that he recuse himself from any future cases involving the Mueller investigation of Trump and his campaign.

When Feinstein asked, “Can a sitting a president be required to respond to a subpoena?” Kavanaugh would not answer. “That’s a hypothetical question,” he said. “I can’t give you an answer to a hypothetical question.”

Kavanaugh did endorse as correct the Supreme Court’s 1974 ruling in United States vs. Nixon, which required President Nixon to turn over the Watergate tapes. It was “one of the greatest moments in American judicial history,” he said.

But he refused to give a similar endorsement for the 1973 ruling in Roe vs. Wade, which established a woman’s right to abortion. Feinstein tried to get him to say whether the ruling was correct; Kavanaugh said only that it was entitled to respect as a precedent.

Most legal experts predict that Kavanaugh, if confirmed, will provide the fifth conservative vote on the court to at least restrict abortion rights, if not overturn Roe. During his campaign, Trump promised to appoint only judges who would vote to overturn the abortion ruling.

But Kavanaugh seemed eager to raise some doubts about those predictions.

“I understand the significance on the issue,” he said Wednesday. “I don’t live in a bubble. I live in the real world.”

Kavanaugh noted several times that the 1973 abortion decision had been repeatedly affirmed, and that a 1992 ruling in Planned Parenthood vs. Casey, which affirmed much of Roe, in effect created a “precedent on precedent.”

And he made an analogy to the late Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist’s decision not to overturn the so-called Miranda rights disclosure requirement for criminal suspects. Rehnquist had long opposed the Miranda ruling, but then decided it was too late to overturn it, he noted. It’s also true, however, that Rehnquist found ways to narrow the ruling’s impact.

Kavanaugh’s remarks about Roe may have been largely directed at two female Republican senators, who support abortion rights and whose votes will be key to his confirmation. Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska have not announced how they will vote.

But Kavanaugh gave no assurances about how he might vote, and nothing he said committed him to any particular outcome. In the past, some Supreme Court nominees have spoken about the importance of respecting precedents, and then once on the court voted to overturn them.

Feinstein, for one, seem unsatisfied. “We can’t accept vague promises from Brett Kavanaugh when women’s reproductive freedom is at stake,” she said on Twitter.

Live chat: Brett Kavanaugh confirmation hearings in the Senate »

Last fall, Kavanaugh was involved in a dispute over whether a migrant teenager in Texas could be released from immigration custody to obtain an abortion. A federal judge cleared the way, but Kavanaugh wrote a 2-1 decision siding with Trump administration lawyers and blocking the abortion for up to 10 more days. The full appeals court intervened and overturned his ruling.

In dissent, Kavanaugh faulted his more liberal colleagues for wrongly creating a “new right for unlawful immigrant minors in U.S. government detention to obtain abortion on demand.”

He defended that ruling Wednesday, stressing that the girl was 17 and not yet an adult. “If she had been an adult, she would have had a right to obtain an abortion immediately,” he told Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.).

Durbin rejected the distinction, noting that the teenager had appeared before a state judge in Texas who decided she was sufficiently mature to make the decision on her own.

On guns, Kavanaugh stuck fast to his support of a broad 2nd Amendment right to possess many types of weapons, including a semiautomatic rifle with a large magazine of ammunition.

He dissented alone in 2011 when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upheld a D.C. ordinance that prohibited semiautomatic “assault weapons.”

Three years before, the Supreme Court in District of Columbia vs. Heller struck down a law prohibiting possession of a handgun at home and established a 2nd Amendment individual right for gun ownership.

Feinstein asked why Kavanaugh believed semiautomatic weapons could not be banned, when appellate judges across the country had upheld such restrictions.

“I had to follow precedent,” Kavanaugh replied. He said the late Justice Antonin Scalia said the 2nd Amendment did not protect weapons that are “dangerous and unusual,” and semiautomatic rifles are not unusual, he said. They are “widely possessed” by millions of gun owners, he said.

Kavanaugh did not back off, even when Feinstein spoke about the wave of mass shootings at schools using assault weapons. He stuck to the same position later when pressed by Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut.

On the question of presidential power, Kavanaugh said that “no one is above the law,” a standard response by nominees.

But he declined to answer questions about whether Trump could pardon himself or pardon someone in exchange for an agreement not to testify against him, saying those were “hypothetical” questions that he couldn’t answer without potentially prejudging issues that might come before the courts.

The one issue that seemed to throw the nominee came from Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), who confronted him with what the senator said was evidence that a Republican staff member during George W. Bush’s administration had supplied Kavanaugh — who was then helping to confirm judges — with information that had been stolen from Democratic files. Leahy said the information detailed what the senator planned to ask nominees during confirmation hearings.

Leahy, whose emails were stolen, quizzed Kavanaugh on whether he knowingly used the stolen documents, noting that Kavanaugh was included in an email chain discussing the information. Kavanaugh said he did not recall. “I don’t really have a specific recollection of any of this,” he told lawmakers.

Leahy said later Wednesday that Grassley agreed to release documents related to the materials he said were stolen, which are now confined only to lawmakers on the committee.

Grassley’s office didn’t make the same pledge. Spokesman Taylor Foy said Grassley would “do his best to accommodate this last-minute request,” adding that waiving the classification would require input from the White House and former President Bush.

Some of the most robust exchanges came near the end from Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), who has developed a reputation for her tough questioning of Trump nominees during confirmation hearings.

Harris referred back to Kavanaugh’s remark about a “precedent on precedent” concerning Roe vs. Wade, and asked if it were not true that any five justices could overturn a precedent if they wanted.

“There’s a reason why the Supreme Court doesn’t do that,” Kavanaugh responded. “There are times” when the justices do, he said, but it’s “rare.”

She also pressed Kavanaugh on whether he had any conversations about the Mueller investigation with anyone at a law firm founded by one of the president’s lawyers. Kavanaugh avoided answering the question several times, finally saying he remembered no such conversation. A Democratic aide said that Harris’ staff was continuing to investigate the matter.

Kavanaugh was pressed repeatedly to explain his relationship with Judge Alex Kozinski, the former chief judge of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals who retired last December after he was accused of sexually harassing female law clerks.

In 1991, Kavanaugh moved to Pasadena to work for one year as a law clerk for Kozinski. And he continued to consult with Kozinski over the years.

Kavanaugh said he had never heard of Kozinski harassing laws clerks or engaging in improper behavior until it was revealed last year in news stories. “It was a gut punch for me,” he said.

Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) said she was skeptical of his response. “It was an open secret, and it went on for 30 years,” she said.

Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) had a combative exchange with Kavanaugh while trying to pin the nominee down about his views on affirmative action. Booker asked if Kavanaugh believed that having a diverse student body is a compelling government interest that would justify considering race in admissions. Kavanaugh would not comment on his views, instead focusing on the Supreme Court’s precedent on affirmative action.

“I know what the law is now,” Booker said. “I’m worried about what the law is going to be when you get on the court.”

»

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UPDATES:

7:05 p.m.: This article was updated after Harris spoke.

5:30 p.m.: This article was updated with Booker’s comments and other new details.

4:55 p.m.: This article was updated with more details from the hearing.

3:30 p.m.: This article was updated with more comments from Feinstein, Kavanaugh and others.

9:50 a.m.: This article was updated with details about Miranda, presidential power and Leahy’s questions.

8:15 a.m.: This article was updated with Kavanaugh’s comments about gun rights.

This article was originally published at 8 a.m.

Norbert A. Schlei, key lawyer in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations who found legal underpinning for the 1962 blockade of Cuba, wrote landmark civil rights legislation and once waged a strong bid to replace an entrenched Republican California secretary of state, has died. He was 73.

Schlei died Thursday at an acute care hospital in Los Angeles of infections caused by long-term immobility, his wife, Joan, said Saturday. She said Schlei had been virtually unconscious since suffering a heart attack March 25, 2002, while jogging in Santa Monica.

Considered a legal wunderkind, Schlei was the Democratic candidate for the 57th California Assembly District in 1962 when he was tapped by President John F. Kennedy as an assistant attorney general in charge of the office of legal counsel.

At the time, Atty. Gen. Robert F. Kennedy, the president’s younger brother, quipped that Schlei — only 33 — had been named so there would finally be “someone younger” than he in the Justice Department.

But Schlei, who clerked for Supreme Court Justice John Harlan after graduating from Yale Law School, proved a scholarly asset to the Kennedys and later to President Lyndon B. Johnson and Atty. Gen. Nicolas Katzenbach during crises and in forging the landmark Kennedy-Johnson civil rights reforms.

Schlei was the principal draftsman of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Immigration Reform Act of 1967.

“I felt I was lucky,” Schlei told the New York Times in 1995, “because I was able to turn what ability I had to something important.”

Schlei had barely moved into his quarters in August 1962 as head of the office of legal counsel just vacated by Katzenbach, when he was put to work. The University of Mississippi had refused to allow James Meredith, a black student, to enroll that fall, and Kennedy sent Schlei to Oxford, Miss., to get Meredith into the school.

Hardly a month later, as the Cuban Missile Crisis developed, Kennedy asked Schlei to study the legal basis for presidential action in connection with Cuba after U.S. surveillance confirmed that Russia was installing surface-to-air missile sites in the Communist island nation. Schlei responded with what became Kennedy’s October justification for a naval quarantine on all offensive military equipment being shipped to Cuba.

“It is our view,” he wrote, “that international law would permit use by the United States of relatively extreme measures, including various forms and degree of force, for the purpose of terminating or preventing the realization of such a threat to the peace and security of the Western Hemisphere.”

The lawyer supported the view with references to self-defense rights, the collective and multilateral security obligations of the U.S. and the 1934 Cuban-U.S. Treaty, which established U.S. rights for its naval base at Guantanamo.

Although Schlei had to abandon his bid for assemblyman to go to Washington (incumbent Republican Charles Conrad was reelected), he tried for election in California four years later when he ran for secretary of state.

Schlei handily defeated six others in the 1966 Democratic primary, polling nearly twice as many votes as were received by his nearest competitor.

He also collected more than 2.7 million votes, a remarkable tally for a Democratic statewide office seeker in that penultimate general election against Republican Frank M. Jordan, incumbent for 23 years and at the time the only Republican statewide officeholder. Nevertheless, Schlei lost the general election Nov. 10, 1966, as Jordan was swept to victory in the Ronald Reagan Republican landslide.

Schlei, a personable Democratic campaigner, was only yards from Robert Kennedy at Los Angeles’ Ambassador Hotel when Kennedy was fatally shot on the night of the California primary in 1968. He largely bowed out of politics after serving as a delegate to the Democratic National Convention that year in Chicago.

A highly successful trial and securities lawyer who represented such clients as Howard Hughes’ Summa Corp. in lengthy litigation brought by ousted Hughes executive Robert Maheu, Schlei himself was tried in a Florida federal courtroom in 1995.

The charges and their aftermath were a cloud on Schlei’s brilliant career.

Schlei was acquitted of eight counts, including wire and bank fraud and money laundering, but was convicted by a jury of conspiracy and securities fraud for purportedly helping five others sell $16 billion in fake Japanese government bonds from the mid-1980s to 1992.

He was sentenced to five years in federal prison and lost his license to practice law for 3 1/2 years. But he never went to prison, remaining free on appeal. The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals vacated the judgment and, in 1998, Schlei abandoned motions for a new trial to clear his name. Instead he agreed to a negotiated settlement of a year’s unsupervised probation on one misdemeanor count of conspiracy to possess counterfeit foreign securities, and resumed his law practice in L.A.

Joan Schlei said Saturday that Schlei had been completely exonerated after federal prosecutors conceded that there was a “possibility the instruments are valid” and that Schlei had been wrongly prosecuted.

Schlei maintained all along that he had done nothing illegal, and that prosecutors who issued charges against the others after a sting operation had added him only because of his high profile in Democratic and government circles to “get in the papers” and make the trial “newsworthy.”

At issue were bonds the Japanese government claimed were counterfeit and created by a forger they imprisoned in 1983. Schlei countered that the securities were legitimate, that they had been issued in 1983 by Japan’s minister of finance, Michio Watanabe, at the request of former Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka after Tanaka left office in a bribery scandal. Schlei said he had never sold the securities and had simply tried to help about 30 clients purchase them with the understanding that the securities would be redeemable only if they could persuade a current Japanese government to honor them.

Among the highly prominent character witnesses who testified on Schlei’s behalf during the trial was key Republican U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, who had known Schlei since they were students together at Yale.

Born Norbert Anthony Schlei on June 14, 1929, in Dayton, Ohio, Schlei grew up in meager financial circumstances, taking odd jobs delivering papers and groceries to help his family. He paid his way through Ohio State University as a waiter, but managed to graduate with honors in English literature and international relations and earned three varsity letters for golf.

He served as a Navy officer during the Korean War and later went to Yale Law, where he graduated first in his class and was editor of the Yale Law Journal. After a year clerking for Harlan, he moved to Los Angeles in 1957 to work for the prestigious law firm of O’Melveny and Myers.

In 1959, Schlei helped form the firm Greenberg, Shafton and Schlei where he remained until he went to the Justice Department in 1962. In later years, he was associated with different law firms, most notably the Wall Street firm of Hughes Hubbard & Reed from 1972 until 1989, whose Los Angeles office he established.

He was co-author of “Studies in World Public Order,” a book on international law published in 1961, and in 1962 wrote the book “State Regulation of Corporate Financial Practices.”

Schlei sat on the boards of several corporations involved in international real estate and securities. Long involved in real estate development, Schlei had begun in 1959 to represent Janss Corp., which developed Westwood Village and the Conejo Ranch area near Thousand Oaks.

In addition to his wife, the former Joan Masson, he is survived by three sons and three daughters from his earlier marriages to Jane Moore and to attorney Barbara Lindemann — William, Andrew, Bradford, Anne, Blake and Elizabeth; and four grandchildren. Two other sons, Graham and Norbert L. Schlei, preceded him in death.

Calling hours will be 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. Wednesday at Gates-Kingsley Funeral Home, 19th Street and Arizona Avenue, Santa Monica. Graveside services are planned for 11 a.m. April 29 at Forest Lawn Hollywood Hills.

His wife asked that memorial contributions be made to any of these organizations: Amnesty International, the American Heart Assn., the American Cancer Society, the ACLU or the Constitutional Rights Foundation.

SOUTH BEND, Ind. — On Jan. 1, Pete Buttigieg’s second term ended, and the “Mayor Pete” era in South Bend was over. In the Democratic presidential candidate’s telling, he presided over a Rust Belt comeback story in Indiana’s fourth-largest city, a metaphor for what is possible elsewhere in America.

Before Buttigieg took office in 2012, downtown had been moribund for decades. Aging, abandoned homes dragged down spirits in poorer neighborhoods. Unemployment was high, wages low, evictions common. White residents were fleeing by the thousands. A Newsweek article declared South Bend, population 101,860, one of America’s “dying cities.”

Today, unemployment in the Greater South Bend area is less than 4%, down from nearly 10%; development has accelerated in the city’s downtown; and the population has stopped shrinking. Local business boosters recently raised street banners that said, “Thanks Mayor Pete.”

“South Bend’s trajectory has been transformed,” Buttigieg said in his farewell address to the city’s Common Council on Dec. 9.

Pete Buttigieg appeals to Democrats anxious to win back Rust Belt voters who defected from the party in 2016.

(Jae C. Hong / Associated Press)

That’s the resume that Buttigieg is promoting to make the jump from mayor to president. It’s a part of his appeal to Democrats who are anxious to win back Rust Belt voters who defected from the party in 2016.

But there’s a hitch. Among residents of color, who make up nearly half of South Bend’s population, reviews of Buttigieg’s legacy are noticeably mixed — some positive, some outright hostile.

The local criticism has taken on national importance in the Democratic primary, where he has struggled to attract voters who aren’t white. It’s a weakness that’s been offset by Buttigieg’s significant support in the two states that hold the first nominating contests, Iowa and New Hampshire, where black and Latino voters are deeply underrepresented compared with the Democratic Party overall.

“Pete isn’t ready to lead the free world, a world of huge diversity and tremendous need. He is not ready. That’s all I can say behind that,” said Common Council member Henry Davis Jr., one of Buttigieg’s most vocal critics, who unsuccessfully ran against the mayor in 2015.

But other black leaders have rallied to Buttigieg’s side, including the area’s NAACP president, Michael Patton, who has said he’s “grateful to Mayor Pete” for his work.

Life remains a struggle for many South Bend residents. Poverty is still stubbornly high, and homeless residents are a regular sight.

The Greater South Bend area “has become more segregated between White and African American/Black residents since 2010,” according to a forthcoming regional housing report prepared by South Bend and neighboring Mishawaka. (The report did not examine segregation data in South Bend alone, though the city is by far the most populous town in the metropolitan statistical area that was analyzed.)

The city also has “one of the highest foreclosure rates in the United States,” with an eviction rate that is “extremely high,” the report said. In South Bend, racial discrimination is the primary factor cited by tenants when making fair-housing complaints, bucking the national trend, where disability is the most common complaint, according to the report.

Buttigieg’s campaign defended his record, saying he devoted resources to a variety of programs to create affordable housing, fund home repairs and increase shelter capacity for homeless residents, while pointing to some forces that were beyond the city’s control.

“Indiana has pretty hostile laws toward tenants, unfortunately,” campaign spokesman Sean Savett said of the city’s foreclosure and eviction numbers.

Nonprofit housing developer Seymour Barker in South Bend. He’s a fan of Pete Buttigieg.

(Matt Pearce / Los Angeles Times)

Seymour Barker, 74, of Granger, Ind., who helps run a community development corporation, 466 Works, that receives grants from South Bend to help build new housing on the southeast side, said “the city has supported us every step of the way, and it’s all happened under the administration of Mayor Pete.”

“I can’t tell you the experience of other African Americans under him,” Barker said, “but that’s been our experience with him.”

::

After taking office, Buttigieg went to work on the city’s blight, launching an initiative to repair or demolish 1,000 abandoned or derelict homes in 1,000 days, a goal he reached ahead of schedule.

Common Council member Regina Williams-Preston, an occasional critic from the city’s black community, accused Buttigieg of moving too quickly against property owners who didn’t have the money to make repairs right away. Buttigieg acknowledged the program needed some adjustments.

But other residents happily welcomed Buttigieg’s demolition work. On a recent Thursday afternoon in December, two South Bend Bureau of Streets trucks rumbled by as James Underwood strung up Christmas lights outside a home on the 1100 block of Johnson Street, the block that saw the most houses targeted for repair or removal, according to city data.

As a result of that program, Underwood, a 60-year-old factory worker, bought a condemned home to fix up, between shifts, to give to one of his four children. He’s still trying to track down the absentee owner to finalize the sale, but he couldn’t be happier that two abandoned “eyesores” across the street had been razed.

“I would put a vote toward him because of what he did in this neighborhood and others,” Underwood said of Buttigieg. As he spoke, city workers in green vests piled out of their trucks to clear leaves from the sidewalks outside a home charred by a fire.

A South Bend home destroyed by fire.

(Matt Pearce / Los Angeles Times)

As Buttigieg progressed through his administration, he benefited from some fortunate timing. He arrived in office after the worst shocks of the Great Recession and then served through an uninterrupted run of national growth.

During Buttigieg’s first year, South Bend processed construction permits for commercial and residential projects valued at $69.8 million, city data showed. Within four years, in 2016, that figure had blossomed to $190 million.

Buttigieg harnessed that growth to lure new private investment. In the city’s downtown, Buttigieg invested public dollars to make the streets more walkable and to help finance some private development. Two new hotels opened, and young professionals started moving in, which boosted neighborhood merchants.

“He’s not afraid to ruffle feathers and get a job done that he thinks needs to be done,” South Bend restaurant owner Peg Dalton says of Buttigieg.

(Matt Pearce / Los Angeles Times)

When South Bend native Peg Dalton opened her restaurant in 2001, since renamed Peggs, “there was literally not a car on the street,” she said. As she spoke to a reporter, the spaces outside her restaurant that day were all taken.

Buttigieg cultivated local business leaders to draw support for his political initiatives, according to Dalton, telling them on issues such as raising pay for city workers or changing the flow of city streets downtown: “I need your support on the ground.”

“He’s not afraid to ruffle feathers and get a job done that he thinks needs to be done,” said Dalton, 55.

One of the biggest changes to South Bend under Buttigieg’s administration was the growth of the city’s Latino population, now estimated to make up more than 15% of the city’s residents. Buttigieg pushed for an identification-card program designed so residents without ID, including immigrants, could get access to social services.

Paul Beltran, 33, a healthcare case manager who emigrated from Ecuador, credited Buttigieg for being “accessible and present.”

(Matt Pearce / Los Angeles Times)

Paul Beltran, 33, a healthcare case manager who emigrated from Ecuador and a volunteer at his church, Vida Nueva Church of God, credited Buttigieg for being “accessible and present” and for the times he addressed residents in Spanish.

“It’s not 100% fluent,” Beltran said of Buttigieg’s Spanish, but “he could carry a conversation, to a point.”

Nanci Flores, a prominent local activist, said there was still work to be done to assist the city’s immigrant community. But “even when we don’t always get it right, I still see a city working to follow a compassionate and inclusive example,” Flores said.

Buttigieg’s relationship with black residents, who make up more than a quarter of the city’s population, has been much rockier.

Some black residents began distrusting Buttigieg when he demoted the black police chief less than three months after arriving in office. There were allegations that the chief had improperly recorded white officials accused of making racist comments. In his memoir, Buttigieg wrote that initially supporting the chief had been his “first serious mistake as mayor.”

During Buttigieg’s tenure, the number of black police officers also dropped by nearly half, according to the South Bend Tribune.

Tensions erupted in June after a white South Bend police officer shot and killed a black man, Eric Jack Logan. The officer, who didn’t have his body camera turned on, said Logan had threatened him with a knife. Angry black residents heckled Buttigieg at a town hall meeting. “We don’t trust you!” one woman shouted.

“It’s a mess. And we’re hurting,” Buttigieg said of the shooting in the June presidential debate.

As with many such protests around the nation, the angst went much deeper than a single shooting.

“I have been here all my life, and you have not done a damn thing about me or my son or none of these people out here,” Logan’s distraught mother, Shirley Newbill, told Buttigieg at a protest. “It’s time for you to do something.”

But Underwood, the factory worker, who is black, said he thought some of the criticism of Buttigieg was “overblown.”

“One guy can’t fix all the problems,” Underwood said. “You can’t blame one guy.”

Re “Tribe Risks Rejection, Pushes Plan for Casino Near Capital,” Dec. 20: Native American gaming on nonreservation land would set a dangerous precedent and absolutely should not be allowed. Granting permission to even one such tribe places us on a slippery slope that could quickly turn into a landslide of applications for similar treatment by the many tribes that are suddenly appearing from seemingly out of nowhere. I am against any and all tribal gaming, as I believe it is inherently unfair to allow them to profit in an untaxed manner while other Californians, by virtue of their ethnic roots, are not allowed the same privilege. This is a very clear example of an “uneven playing field.”

In an extremely short period of time since approval of the 2000 ballot proposal that guaranteed tribes this unfair business advantage, Native American tribes have parlayed huge gaming profits into tremendous political clout. As political contributions and lobbying from tribal windfalls continue to increase, Californians can only expect to see more perks and political favors go inequitably to these “impoverished” tribes and their wealthy financial backers. This nonsense needs to stop now.

Philip W. Luebben

Cypress

CLOVIS, Calif. — Overcoming intense pressure to quit from President Trump, dozens of local protesters and other prominent critics of transgender athletes in girls’ sports, 16-year-old AB Hernandez bounded past many of her peers to win multiple gold medals at California’s high school track and field championships Saturday.

The transgender junior from Jurupa Valley High School — who competed despite a directive from Trump that she be barred from doing so — won state titles in the girls’ triple jump and the girl’s high jump and took second place in the girls’ long jump.

Hernandez’s success at the 2025 CIF State Track and Field Championships in Clovis came amid high heat — with temperatures above 100 degrees for much of the day — and under an intense spotlight.

Earlier in the week, Trump had said on social media that he was “ordering local authorities, if necessary, to not allow” Hernandez to compete, wrongly alleging she had won “everything” in a prior meet and calling her “practically unbeatable.” Protesters gathered outside the meet both Friday and Saturday to denounce her inclusion and the LGBTQ+-friendly state laws allowing it.

Despite all that, Hernandez appeared calm and focused as she competed. When her name was announced for the long jump, she waved to the crowd. When she was announced for the high jump, she smiled.

Hernandez beat out all other competitors in the triple jump, though the runner-up was also awarded 1st place under new rules established by the California Interscholastic Federation after Trump issued his threats.

Hernandez tied with two other girls in the high jump, with the three of them all clearing the same height and sharing the gold.

Hernandez’s mother, Nereyda Hernandez, heaped praise on her after the events in a statement provided to The Times, saying, “As your mother, I cannot fully express how PROUD I am of you.”

“Watching you rise above months of being targeted, misunderstood, and judged not by peers, but by adults who should’ve known better, has left me in awe of your strength,” her mother said. “Despite it all, you stayed focused. You kept training, you kept showing up, and now you’re bringing THE GOLD HOME!!!

During some of Hernandez’s jumps, a protester could be heard on a bullhorn from outside the Buchanan High School stadium chanting “No boys in girls’ sports!” California Interscholastic Federation officials banned protest signs inside the facility, but outside protesters held a range of them — including ones that read “No Child Is Born in the Wrong Body,” “Trans Girls Are Boys: CIF Do Better,” and “She Trains to Win. He takes the trophy?”

Josh Fulfer, a 46-year-old father and conservative online influencer who lives near the stadium, said he was the protester on the bullhorn. He said Hernandez should not have been competing — regardless of how she placed — because her presence in the competition had a negative “psychological effect” on her cisgender competitors.

“I stand with truth,” he said. “Males should not be pretending to be females, and they shouldn’t be competing against female athletes.”

Loren Webster, a senior from Wilson High School in Long Beach who beat Hernandez in the long jump, said she wasn’t giving Hernandez much thought — instead, she was focused on her own performance.

“It wasn’t any other person I was worried about. I knew what I was capable of,” Webster said. “I can’t control the uncontrollable.”

A child holds a protest sign alongside a family member and others opposed to transgender athlete AB Hernandez competing in the 2025 CIF State Track and Field Championships, at Veterans Memorial Stadium at Buchanan High School in Clovis.

(Tomas Ovalle / For The Times)

The intense focus on Hernandez over two days of competition Friday and Saturday reflected a broad rise in conservative outrage over transgender girls competing in sporting events nationwide, despite their representing a tiny fraction of competitors. It also reflected a concerted effort by Trump and other prominent conservative figures to single out Hernandez, individually, as an unwitting poster child for such concerns.

Recent polls, including one conducted by The Times last year, have shown that many Americans support transgender rights, but a majority oppose transgender girls participating in youth sports. California has long defended transgender kids and their right to participate in youth athletics, but other states have increasingly moved to limit or remove such rights entirely.

Marci Strange supports protestors as they protest against transgender athlete AB Hernandez competing In the 2025 CIF State Track and Field Championships, at Veterans Memorial Stadium In the campus of Buchanan High School in Clovis.

(Tomas Ovalle / For The Times)

Trump first latched onto transgender issues with fervor during his presidential campaign, spending millions of dollars on anti-transgender political ads. Since being elected, he has issued a wave of executive orders and other policies aimed at rolling back transgender rights and protections.

Again and again, Hernandez has been singled out in that discussion.

Earlier this week, Trump referenced Hernandez in a social media post in which he said his administration would cut federal funding to California if it didn’t block her from competing in this weekend’s state finals and more broadly get in line with his executive order purporting to ban transgender youth from participating in school sports nationwide.

The following day, U.S. Justice Department officials referenced Hernandez again, announcing the launch of an investigation into whether California, its interscholastic sports federation and the Jurupa Unified School District are violating the civil rights of cisgender girls by allowing transgender students such as Hernandez to compete in sports.

Transgender athlete AB Hernandez competed for Jurupa Valley High School in the high jump at the 2025 CIF State Track and Field Championships at Buchanan High School in Clovis.

(Tomas Ovalle / For The Times)

At the meet Friday and Saturday, Hernandez often blended in with the hundreds of other athletes, hardly drawing attention. She was less conspicuous by far than the protesters there to denounce her for competing.

Hernandez’s mother has pleaded with Trump and other adults in recent days to show her daughter compassion, calling it heartbreaking “every time I see my child being attacked, not for a wrongdoing, but simply for being who they are.”

She has said her daughter “is not a threat,” while the harassment directed at her is “not just cruel, it’s dangerous.”

Local protesters — some with ties to national conservative organizations — cast Hernandez’s competing in girls’ events in starkly different terms.

Before being escorted out by police, Sophia Lorey, outreach director for the conservative California Family Council, walked around the stadium Saturday wearing a hat reading, “Women’s Sports, Women Only.” She told members of the crowd that Hernandez was a boy and handed out pink “Save Girls’ Sports” bracelets and fliers directing people to an online petition calling on the California Interscholastic Federation to change its policies to bar transgender athletes from competition.

Trump administration officials have taken a similar stance.

In a letter Wednesday to interscholastic federation executive director Ronald W. Nocetti, Assistant Atty. Gen. Harmeet Dhillon, who was appointed by Trump to head the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, called Hernandez’s success in recent track and field events “alarming.” And she said the California policies allowing Hernandez to compete are a potential violation of Title IX, the 1972 federal civil rights law prohibiting sex discrimination in educational programs and other activities that receive federal funding.

Dhillon also noted Gov. Gavin Newsom’s own recent remark to conservative activist Charlie Kirk that transgender girls competing in sports is “deeply unfair.”

Transgender athlete AB Hernandez competed in three events including the high jump, triple jump and long jump at the 2025 CIF State Track and Field Championships at Buchanan High School in Clovis.

(Tomas Ovalle / For The Times)

The remark came in a conversation on Newsom’s podcast in March, in which Hernandez was also singled out.

Kirk, a co-founder of the conservative organization Turning Point USA, asked Newsom whether he would voice his opposition to Hernandez competing in girls’ track and field events. Newsom said he agreed such situations were “unfair” but that he also took issue with “the way that people talk down to vulnerable communities,” including transgender people.

When Kirk suggested Newsom could say that he has “a heart for” Hernandez but still thinks her competing is unfair, Newsom again said he agreed.

Newsom has issued no such statement since. But, the playing field has shifted in California for transgender athletes since Trump started talking about Hernandez.

On Wednesday, the CIF announced a change in its rules for this weekend’s championships. Under the new rules, a cisgender girl who is bumped from qualifying for an event final by a transgender athlete will still advance to compete in the finals. In addition, the federation said, any cisgender girl who is beaten by a transgender competitor will be awarded whichever medal she would have claimed had the transgender athlete not been competing.

Transgender athlete AB Hernandez competed for Jurupa Valley High School in the high jump at the 2025 CIF State Track and Field Championships at Buchanan High School in Clovis.

(Tomas Ovalle / For The Times)

The CIF did not mention Hernandez by name in announcing its policy change, but it did make direct reference to the high jump, triple jump and long jump — the three events in which she was to compete.

Under the new rules, Hernandez shared her place on each of the event podiums with other girls.

The CIF did not respond to a list of questions about its new policy. A spokesman for Newsom applauded the change, but others were unimpressed.

Critics of transgender athletes rejected it as insufficient and demanded a full ban on transgender athletes. Fulfer, the protester on the bullhorn, said the CIF was “admitting that they’ve got it wrong for a long time” while still not doing enough to fix it — which Trump would see clearly.

“I hope Donald Trump sees what happens this weekend, and I hope he pulls the funding away from California,” Fulfer said.

LGBTQ+ advocates also criticized the rule change, but for different reasons, calling it a crass capitulation that singled out a teenager to appease a crowd of bullies picking a political fight.

“The fact that these same political players continue to bully and harass one child, even after CIF changed its policy, shows this was never about sports or fairness,” said Kristi Hirst, co-founder of the public education advocacy group Our Schools USA.

“It was simply about using a child, while compromising their personal safety on a national scale, to score political points and distract from the serious issues families and communities in this country are actually concerned about,” Hirst said, “affording groceries, the loss of health care, and access to quality teachers and resources in their public schools.”

Transgender athlete AB Hernandez competed for Jurupa Valley High School in the long jump at the 2025 CIF State Track and Field Championships at Buchanan High School in Clovis.

(Tomas Ovalle / For The Times)

Nereyda Hernandez said she hoped AB’s wins would serve as inspiration for other kids who feel “unseen.”

“To every young person watching, especially those who feel unseen or unheard, let AB be your reminder that authenticity, courage, and resilience shine BRIGHTER than hate,” she said. “It won’t be easy, but definitely worth it.”

Soon, the most powerful Los Angeles County politician won’t be the mayor of L.A. It won’t be a county supervisor.

It will be the elected chief executive.

“It’s probably going to be the second most powerful position in the state next to the governor,” said former West Covina Mayor Brian Calderón Tabatabai, one of 13 people now tasked with deciding just how much power should come with the post.

This week, the final five members were named to the county’s “governance reform task force.” The former politicians, union leaders, advocates and business owners will make recommendations on how to move forward with Measure G, the sprawling ballot measure approved by voters in November to overhaul L.A. County government.

Measure G was massive in scope but scant on details. That means members of the task force — five of whom were picked directly by supervisors — must figure out the contours of a new county ethics commission by 2026. They’ll also help expand the five-person board to nine by 2032.

Perhaps most consequentially, they will have to hammer out the powers of the new chief executive, an elected official who will represent 10 million county residents — a position that some task force members don’t even think should exist.

“I’m extremely concerned about the elected CEO,” said former Duarte Mayor John Fasana, a task force member. “At this point, we have to try and find a way to make it work.”

Rewind to last November’s election. The elected chief executive position was, by far, the most controversial part of the overhaul, and a bitter pill to swallow for some who were otherwise eager to see the Board of Supervisors expanded and ethics rules strengthened.

Currently, the chief executive, a role filled by Fesia Davenport, is appointed by the supervisors and works under them. She takes the first stab at the county budget and wrangles department heads, putting out whatever fires are erupting.

It’s not a glamorous job — many people don’t know it exists — but the chief executive, more than any other county leader, is responsible for keeping the place running smoothly.

With the passage of Measure G, the position will become a political one, beholden only to voters. Some have dubbed it the “mayor of L.A. County.”

Supervisor Lindsey Horvath, who spearheaded the overhaul, said that one of the most influential positions in local government will now come out of the shadows and be directly accountable to voters.

Supervisor Kathryn Barger has been deeply skeptical, warning that it will diminish the supervisors’ power and politicize a position that functions best behind the scenes. Supervisor Holly Mitchell had similar hesitations, as did some county employee unions.

Now, they’ve got to make it work.

Derek Hsieh, who heads the Assn. for Los Angeles Deputy Sheriffs as well as chairs the Coalition of County Unions, said both labor groups opposed Measure G and the creation of the elected chief executive. But now, as a member of the task force, he vowed to “bring success to that decision.”

In interviews, some task force members — both supporters of Measure G and opponents — said they plan to tread carefully.

“I’ve heard murmuring, like what if we get someone like an [Alex] Villanueva running amok and burning bridges unnecessarily,” said Marcel Rodarte, who heads the California Contract Cities Assn., referring to the bombastic former sheriff. “It’s a possibility it could happen. I want to make sure that those nine supervisors have the ability to rein in the CEO.”

Rodarte and his colleagues will take the first stab at creating checks and balances. Should the chief executive be able to hire and fire department heads? What are the veto powers? How much control will the executive have over the county’s purse strings? Currently, the position has no term limits — should that change?

Sara Sadhwani, a politics professor at Pomona College and a task force member, said she’s already hearing concerns about the lack of term limits, which would put the chief executive on an uneven footing with supervisors, who must leave after three four-year terms. She said the task force may consider a change in state law that would permit term limits.

“Looking at the federal government, there need to be very real constraints on executive power,” she said. “There has to be a healthy friction.”

Sadhwani said she’s expecting some pushback to parts of the proposal from county supervisors, who may be less than pleased to see their power siphoned away.

“We can imagine there are board members who do not want to see those powers move to an executive branch,” she said.

Rob Quan, a transparency advocate, said he’ll be watching closely.

“What I would like to see is this task force have the freedom and independence and insulation to come up with good, thoughtful recommendations,” he said. “What I don’t want to see is these supervisors using their commissioners as gladiators.”

State of play

— THREE-RING CIRCUS: L.A. city and county officials spent the past week in U.S. Dist. Judge David O. Carter’s courtroom — either monitoring or participating in a multi-day evidentiary hearing on the city’s settlement agreement with the L.A. Alliance for Human Rights. The stakes are high: the Alliance wants to place the city’s homelessness programs into receivership, effectively removing control from Mayor Karen Bass, on the grounds that the city is not meeting its legal obligations for providing such services. The city says it has made its best efforts to comply with the agreement.

So who was in the room? City Atty. Hydee Feldstein Soto monitored the hearing at various points. City Administrative Officer Matt Szabo was grilled on the stand over multiple days. Dr. Estemaye Agonafer, deputy mayor for homelessness, was sometimes prickly during three-plus hours of questioning.

— WHEN DOES IT END? The testimony in the Alliance case is expected to spill into next week, although it’s not clear how many more days are needed. Carter, who has remained unusually muted during this week’s proceedings, declared at one point: “Time’s not a concern.”

— READY TO MOVE ON: Speaking of homelessness, Councilmember Tim McOsker is looking to bring an end to Bass’ emergency declaration on homelessness, rescinding the mayor’s power to award no-bid contracts and lease buildings without council approval. The move comes two and a half years after Bass declared an emergency. Councilmember Monica Rodriguez, an outspoken critic of the city’s homeless programs, also has been a longtime supporter of terminating the emergency.

— WAGE WARRIORS: A coalition of airlines, hotels and concession companies at Los Angeles International Airport filed paperwork Thursday to force a citywide vote on a new ordinance hiking the minimum wage of hotel and airport workers to $30 per hour by 2028.

— FEELING POWERLESS: Former Animal Services General Manager Staycee Dains said in a series of interviews with The Times that she felt powerless to solve entrenched problems at her agency, including severe understaffing and mistreatment of shelter animals. Dains said she was repeatedly told by the city’s personnel department that she couldn’t fire problem employees. And she clashed with a union that represents shelter employees.

— MONEY IN THE MAIL: Many residents who lost their homes in the January wildfires should have received a tax refund after their damaged or destroyed properties were reassessed. But about 330 checks are in limbo after postal workers tried unsuccessfully to deliver them to vacant or destroyed homes.

— NO CHARGES: A former L.A. County probation official who was accused by more than two dozen women of sexually abusing them when they were minors will not be criminally prosecuted because the alleged incidents happened too long ago. Thomas Jackson, 58, has been named in dozens of lawsuits that were part of a historic $4-billion settlement.

— WHAT DISASTER? L.A. leaders declined to dramatically increase the budget of the city’s Emergency Management Department, despite the many natural disasters that could hit the region in years to come. Facing a nearly $1-billion shortfall, the City Council passed a budget that rejected the funding bump asked for by department leaders.

— I SUED THE SHERIFF: Former Times reporter Maya Lau is suing Los Angeles County and Villanueva, the former sheriff, arguing that her 1st Amendment rights were violated. Lau’s attorneys said she was the target of a sheriff’s investigation that was “designed to intimidate and punish” her for reporting about a leaked list of deputies with a history of misconduct.

QUICK HITS

• WHERE IS INSIDE SAFE? The mayor’s signature program to address homelessness went to the area around 103rd Street and Wilmington Avenue in Watts, according to the mayor’s team. That area is represented by Councilmember Tim McOsker.
• On the docket for next week: The supervisors meet Tuesday to consider a plan for holding regular meetings with city officials about the formation of the county’s new homelessness department. According to the motion, put forward by Horvath, the meetings would ensure “open communication” with the city after the supervisors voted to pull more than $300 million out of the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, or LAHSA.

Stay in touch

That’s it for this week! Send your questions, comments and gossip to [email protected]. Did a friend forward you this email? Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Saturday morning.

She rides three buses from her Panorama City home to her job as a caregiver for an 83-year-old Sherman Oaks woman with dementia, and lately she’s been worrying about getting nabbed by federal agents.

When I asked what she’ll do if she gets deported, B., who’s 60 and asked me to withhold her name, paused to compose herself.

“I don’t want to cry,” she said, but losing her $19 hourly job would be devastating, because she sends money to the Philippines to support her family.

Steve Lopez

Steve Lopez is a California native who has been a Los Angeles Times columnist since 2001. He has won more than a dozen national journalism awards and is a four-time Pulitzer finalist.

The world is getting grayer each day thanks to an epic demographic wave. In California, 22% of the state’s residents will be 65 and older by 2040, up by 14% from 2020.

“At a time where it seems fewer and fewer of us want to work in long-term care, the need has never been greater,” Harvard healthcare policy analyst David C. Grabowski told The Times’ Emily Alpert Reyes in January.

So how will millions of aging Americans be able to afford care for physical and cognitive decline, especially given President Trump’s big beautiful proposed cuts to Medicaid, which covers about two-thirds of nursing home residents? And who will take care of those who don’t have family members who can step up?

A building where multiple caregivers live in a cramped studio apartment in Panorama City.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

There are no good answers at the moment. Deporting care providers might make sense if there were a plan to make the jobs more attractive to homegrown replacements, but none of us would bet a day-old doughnut on that happening.

Nationally and in California, the vast majority of workers in care facilities and private settings are citizens. But employers were already having trouble recruiting and keeping staff to do jobs that are low-paying and difficult, and now Trump administration policies could further shrink the workforce.

Earlier this year, the administration ordered an end to programs offering temporary protected status and work authorization, and the latest goal in Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration is to make 3,000 arrests daily.

“People are worried about the threat of deportation … but also about losing whatever job they have and being unable to secure other work,” said Aquilina Soriano Versoza, director of the Pilipino Workers Center, who estimated that roughly half of her advocacy group’s members are undocumented.

In the past, she said, employers didn’t necessarily ask for work authorization documents, but that’s changing. And she fears that given the political climate, some employers will “feel like they have impunity to exploit workers,” many of whom are women from Southeast Asia, Africa, the Caribbean, Mexico and Latin America.

That may already be happening.

“We’ve seen a lot of fear, and we’ve seen workers who no longer want to pursue their cases” when it comes to fighting wage theft, said Yvonne Medrano, an employment rights lawyer with Bet Tzedek, a legal services nonprofit.

A gathering at the Pilipino Workers Center in Los Angeles in Historic Filipinotown. Aquilina Soriano Versoza, director of the center, says, “People are worried about the threat of deportation … but also about losing whatever job they have and being unable to secure other work.”

(Ringo Chiu / For The Times)

Medrano said the workers are worried that pursuing justice in the courts will expose them to greater risk of getting booted out of the country. In one case, she said, a worker was owed a final paycheck for a discontinued job, but the employer made a veiled threat, warning that showing up to retrieve it could be costly.

Given the hostile environment, some workers are giving up and going home.

“We’ve seen an increase in workers self-deporting,” Medrano said.

Conditions for elder care workers were bleak enough before Trump took office. Two years ago, I met with documented and undocumented caregivers and although they’re in the healthcare business, some of them didn’t have health insurance for themselves.

I met with a cancer survivor and caregiver who was renting a converted garage without a kitchen. And I visited an apartment in Panorama City where Josephine Biclar, in her early 70s, was struggling with knee and shoulder injuries while still working as a caregiver.

Biclar was sharing a cramped studio with two other caregivers. They used room dividers to carve their space into sleeping quarters. When I checked with Biclar this week, she said four women now share the same space. All of them have legal status, but because of low wages and the high cost of housing, along with the burden of supporting families abroad, they can’t afford better living arrangements.

B. and another care provider share a single room, at a cost of $400 apiece, from a homeowner in Panorama City. B. said her commute takes more than an hour each way, and during her nine-hour shift, her duties for her 83-year-old client include cooking, feeding and bathing.

She’s only working three days a week at the moment and said additional jobs are hard to come by given her status and the immigration crackdown. She was upset that for the last two months, she couldn’t afford to send any money home.

“People are worried about the threat of deportation, but also about losing whatever job they have and being unable to secure other work, said Aquilina Soriano Versoza, executive director of the Pilipino Workers Center.

(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)

Retired UCLA scholar Fernando Torres-Gil, who served as President Clinton’s assistant secretary on aging, said “fear and chaos” in the elder care industry are not likely to end during this presidential administration. And given budget constraints, California will be hard-pressed to do more for caregivers and those who need care.

But he thinks the growing crisis could eventually lead to an awakening.

“We’re going to see more and more older folks without long-term care,” Torres-Gil said. “Hopefully, Democrats and Republicans will get away from talking about open borders and talk about selective immigration” that serves the country’s economic and social needs.

The U.S. is not aging alone, Torres-Gil pointed out. The same demographic shifts and healthcare needs are hitting the rest of the world, and other countries may open their doors to workers the U.S. sends packing.

“As more baby boomers” join the ranks of those who need help, he said, “we might finally understand we need some kind of leadership.”

It’s hard not to be cynical these days, but I’d like to think he’s onto something.

Meanwhile, I’m following leads and working different angles on this topic. If you’re having trouble finding or paying for care, or if you’re on the front lines as a provider, I’m hoping you will drop me a line.

[email protected]

On a recent morning inside San Quentin prison, Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Nathan Hochman and more than a dozen other prosecutors crowded into a high-ceilinged meeting hall surrounded by killers, rapists and other serious offenders.

Name the crime, one of these guys has probably done it.

“It’s not every day that you’re in a room of 100 people, most of whom have committed murder, extremely violent crimes, and been convicted of it,” Hochman later said.

Many of these men, in their casual blue uniforms, were serving long sentences with little chance of getting out, like Marlon Arturo Melendez, an L.A. native who is now in for murder.

Melendez sat in a “sharing circle,” close enough to Hochman that their knees could touch, no bars between them. They chatted about the decrease in gang violence in the decades since Melendez was first incarcerated more than 20 years ago, and Melendez said he found Hochman “interesting.”

Inside San Quentin, this kind of interaction between inmates and guests isn’t unusual. For decades, the prison by the Bay has been doing incarceration differently, cobbling together a system that focuses on accountability and rehabilitation.

Like the other men in the room, Melendez takes responsibility for the harm he caused, and every day works to be a better man. When he introduces himself, he names his victims — an acknowledgment that what he did can’t be undone but also an acknowledgment that he doesn’t have to remain the same man who pulled the trigger.

Whether or not Melendez or any of these men ever walk free, what was once California’s most notorious lockup is now a place that offers them the chance to change and provides the most elusive of emotions for prisoners — hope.

Creating that culture is a theory and practice of imprisonment that Gov. Gavin Newsom wants to make the standard across the state.

He’s dubbed it the California Model, but as I’ve written about before, it’s common practice in other countries (and even in a few places in the United States). It’s based on a simple truth about incarceration: Most people who go into prison come out again. Public safety demands that they behave differently when they do.

“We are either paying to keep them here or we are paying if they come back out and harm somebody,” said Brooke Jenkins, the district attorney of San Francisco, who has visited San Quentin regularly for years.

Jenkins was the organizer of this unusual day that brought district attorneys from around the state inside of San Quentin to gain a better understanding of how the California Model works, and why even tough-on-crime district attorneys should support transforming our prisons.

As California does an about-face away from a decade of progressive criminal justice advances with new crackdowns such as those promised by the recently passed Proposition 36 (which is expected to increase the state inmate population), it is also continuing to move ahead with the controversial plan to remake prison culture, both for inmates and guards, by centering on rehabilitation over punishment.

Despite a tough economic year that is requiring the state to slash spending, Newsom has kept intact more than $200 million from the prior budget to revamp San Quentin so that its outdated facilities can support more than just locking up folks in cells.

Some of that construction, already happening on the grounds, is expected to be completed next year. It will make San Quentin the most visible example of the California Model. But changes in how inmates and guards interact and what rehabilitation opportunities are available are already underway at prisons across the state.

It is an overdue and profound transformation that has the potential to not only improve public safety and save money in the long run, but to fundamentally reshape what incarceration means across the country.

Jenkins’ push to help more prosecutors understand and value this metamorphosis might be crucial to helping the public support it as well — especially for those D.A.s whose constituents are just fine with a system that locks up men to suffer for their (often atrocious) crimes. Or even those Californians, such as many in San Francisco and Los Angeles, who are just fed up with the perception that California is soft on criminals.

“It’s not about moderate or progressive, but I think all of us that are moderates have to admit that there are reforms that still need to happen,” Jenkins told me as we walked through the prison yard. She took office after the successful recall of her progressive predecessor, Chesa Boudin, and a rightward shift in San Francisco on crime policy.

Still, she is vocal about the need for second chances. For her, prison reform is about more than the California Model, but a broader lens that includes the perspectives of incarcerated people, and their insights on what they need to make rehabilitation work.

“It really grounds you in your obligation to make sure that the culture in the [district attorney’s] office is fair,” she said.

For Hochman, a former federal prosecutor and defense lawyer who resoundingly ousted progressive George Gascón last year, rehabilitation makes sense. He likes to paraphrase a Fyodor Dostoevsky quote, “The degree of civilization in a society is revealed by entering its prisons.”

“In my perfect world, the education system, the family system, the community, would have done all this work on the front end such that these people wouldn’t have been in position to commit crimes in the first place,” he said. But when that fails, it’s up to the criminal justice system to help people fix themselves.

Despite being perceived as a tough-on-crime D.A. (he prefers “fair on crime”) he’s so committed to that goal of rehabilitation that he is determined to push for a new Men’s Central Jail in Los Angeles County — an expensive (billions) and unpopular idea that he says is long overdue but critical to public safety.

“Los Angeles County is absolutely failing because our prisons and jails are woefully inadequate,” he said.

He’s quick to add that rehabilitation isn’t for everyone. Some just aren’t ready for it. Some don’t care. The inmates of San Quentin agree with him. They are often fiercely vocal about who gets transferred to the prison, knowing that its success relies on having incarcerated people who want to change — one rogue inmate at San Quentin could ruin it for all of them.

“It has to be a choice. You have to understand that for yourself,” Oscar Acosta told me. Now 32, he’s a “CDC baby,” as he puts it — referring to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation — and has been behind bars since he was 18. He credits San Quentin with helping him accept responsibility for his crimes and see a path forward.

When the California Model works, as the district attorneys saw, it’s obvious what its value is. Men who once were nothing but dangerous have the option to live different lives, with different values. Even if they remain incarcerated.

“After having been considered the worst of the worst, today I am a new man,” Melendez told me. “I hope (the district attorneys) were able to see real change in those who sat with them and be persuaded that rehabilitation over punishment is more fruitful and that justice seasoned with restoration is better for all.”

Melendez and the other incarcerated men at San Quentin aspire for us to see them as more than their worst actions. And they take heart that even prosecutors like Jenkins and Hochman, who put them behind bars, sometimes with triple-digit sentences, do see that the past does not always determine the future, and that investing in their change is an investment in safer communities.

SACRAMENTO — Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office sent a letter on Friday requesting that the Trump administration remove California from its list of sanctuary jurisdictions that obstruct the enforcement of federal immigration law.

The Department of Homeland Security issued the list this week in accordance with an executive order President Trump signed in April that directs federal agencies to identify funding to sanctuary cities, counties and states that could be suspended or terminated.

In the letter, Newsom’s office contended that federal court rulings have rejected the argument that California law limiting law enforcement coordination with immigration authorities “unlawfully obstructs the enforcement of federal immigration laws.”

“This list is another gimmick — even the Trump Administration has admitted California law doesn’t block the federal government from doing its job,” Newsom said in a statement. “Most immigrants are hardworking taxpayers and part of American families. When they feel safe reporting crimes, we’re all safer.”

California is among more than a half-dozen states that were included on the list for self-identifying as sanctuaries for undocumented immigrants. Forty-eight California counties and dozens of cities, including Los Angeles, Long Beach, San Diego and San Francisco, were also on the Trump administration’s list of more than 500 total jurisdictions nationwide.

The state strengthened its sanctuary policies under a law signed by former Gov. Jerry Brown that took effect 2018 after Trump won office the first time. Then, state officials tried to strike a balance between preventing local law enforcement resources from being used to round up otherwise law-abiding immigrants without obstructing the ability of the federal government to enforce its laws within the state.

Local police, for example, cannot arrest someone on a deportation order alone or hold someone for extra time to transfer to immigration authorities. But state law does permit local governments to cooperate with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to transfer people to federal custody if they have been convicted of a felony or certain misdemeanors within a given time frame. The limitations do not apply to state prison officials, who can coordinate with federal authorities.

The law has been a thorn in the side of the Trump administration’s campaign to ramp up deportations, which the president has cast as an effort to rid the country of criminals despite also targeting immigrants with no prior convictions.

In a release announcing the list, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said politicians in sanctuary communities are “endangering Americans and our law enforcement in order to protect violent criminal illegal aliens.”

“We are exposing these sanctuary politicians who harbor criminal illegal aliens and defy federal law,” Noem said. “President Trump and I will always put the safety of the American people first. Sanctuary politicians are on notice: comply with federal law.”

The Trump administration’s assertion that California’s sanctuary policies protect criminals from deportation appears to irk Newsom, who has repeatedly denied the allegation. Trump’s threat to withhold federal dollars could also pose a challenge for a governor proposing billions in cuts to state programs to offset a state budget deficit for the year ahead.

Homeland Security said jurisdictions will receive a formal notice of non-compliance with federal law and demand that cities, counties and states immediately revise their policies.

WASHINGTON — Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, who has led an effort in the Trump administration to cut jobs and programs across the federal government, stood by President Trump’s side on Friday in the Oval Office, officially for the last time as a government employee. But neither man was clear whether Musk’s active hand in government is truly over.

Their display of unity comes after Musk, the entrepreneur behind Tesla and SpaceX, issued a series of criticisms of Trump’s policies, both directly and through his companies, and as reports emerge that the billionaire fought fierce battles with the president’s aides and has relied on potent drugs while serving as Trump’s confidante.

“Nobody like him,” Trump said of Musk at the White House event. “He had to go through the slings and the arrows, which is a shame, because he’s an incredible patriot.”

“Many of the DOGE people, Elon, are staying behind. So they’re not leaving. And Elon’s really not leaving,” Trump added. “He’s going to be back and forth, I think, I have a feeling. It’s his baby.”

Musk praised the team of DOGE, an acronym for the Department of Government Efficiency program, for saving what he said was $175 billion in government spending. The program had initially set a more lofty goal of cutting $2 trillion, and it is unclear if Musk’s team has even met its revised figure, with the Treasury Department’s Bureau of the Fiscal Service documenting an increase in federal spending over this time last year.

“The DOGE team is doing an incredible job,” Musk said. “I’ll continue to be visiting here, and be a friend and advisor to the president.”

Whether Musk continues in his role will have legal consequences. As a special government employee, Musk is obligated to end his service, now that the maximum work period allowed of 130 days has passed.

A group of 14 states has sued, arguing that Musk’s employee status was a ruse for the Trump administration to bring him into a powerful government role without having to go through a Senate confirmation process.

A federal judge in Washington on Wednesday ruled that Musk’s initial appointment was questionable, stating he “occupies a continuing position” and “exercises significant authority,” opening up a broader legal challenge over the constitutionality of his work for DOGE.

In a series of interviews leading up to his official departure from government, Musk has said that he plans to lessen his political spending going forward, and has criticized the Trump administration and congressional Republicans for pursuing legislation that would balloon the national deficit, a move he said was contrary to DOGE’s mission.

His departure this week comes after the New York Times reported on Musk’s heavy use of ketamine, a potent anesthetic drug, and after a Wall Street Journal article detailed Musk’s attempts to thwart Trump from pursuing partnerships on artificial intelligence in the Middle East that would benefit Sam Altman, the chief executive of OpenAI and a personal nemesis of Musk’s.

Musk’s time in government has been marked by multiple setbacks for his companies. SpaceX has failed to meet essential engineering milestones for Starship, a critical super-heavy rocket ship that is critical to the U.S. effort to return humans to the moon and his own personal goal of reaching Mars. And Tesla, his electric vehicle company, saw a 71% plunge in profits in the first quarter of 2025 and a 50% drop in stock value from its highs in December.

“I think I probably did spend a bit too much time on politics,” Musk told Ars Technica, a science and technology publication, in an interview on Tuesday.

“It’s not like I left the companies,” he added. “It was just relative time allocation that probably was a little too high on the government side, and I’ve reduced that significantly in recent weeks.”

On Wednesday evening, the world’s wealthiest man announced that his sojourn in the nation’s capital is almost over. “As my scheduled time as a Special Government Employee comes to an end, I would like to thank President @realDonaldTrump for the opportunity to reduce wasteful spending,” Elon Musk posted to X, the social media platform he owns.

While Musk was quick to add that the White House’s Department of Government Efficiency mission “will only strengthen over time as it becomes a way of life throughout the government,” his departure will represent the effective end of DOGE as we know it. As the Wall Street Journal reported, “much of DOGE’s work will shift to the White House Office of Management and Budget,” which is headed by Russell Vought.

The DOGE team claims it identified about $175 billion in total savings. Given the federal government spent $6.75 trillion in fiscal 2024 alone, that may seem like a mere drop in the bucket. And given that Musk himself once vowed to identify taxpayer savings in the trillions of dollars — albeit without much of a timeline attached to that pronouncement — it certainly is a bit disappointing.

But consider some of the specific outrageous spending outlays identified by Musk’s team as ripe for the cutting board, such as $382 million from alleged fraudulent unemployment benefits (as the Department of Labor had previously flagged) and astonishing extravagance on the foreign stage — for instance, $2 million to an organization in Guatemala advocating gender-affirming healthcare and $20 million to a “Sesame Street”-inspired early childhood initiative in Iraq.

Such ideologically driven spending is emblematic of what Vought, in a Newsweek op-ed written two years ago during the Biden-era presidential interregnum, described as the “the scourge of a woke and weaponized bureaucracy.” The brief DOGE experiment, which uncovered tens of thousands of combined government contract and grant terminations that would shock the conscience of most Americans with any inclination toward sound fiscal stewardship, is proof that such a “woke and weaponized bureaucracy” isn’t merely speculative — it really exists.

There is probably a lot more, furthermore, where that $175 billion in flagged waste came from. And Vought, who has worked with Musk since last year, is the right man to continue the mission once Musk fully returns to the private sector.

There are now at least two additional steps that must be taken — one pressing short-term item and one more difficult longer-term item.

The reconciliation budget in the so-called “Big Beautiful Bill” that passed the House last week, and which is now pending before the Senate, did not incorporate the DOGE cuts. It seems there is a procedural reason for this: The DOGE cuts are technically post hoc rescissions of presently appropriated money, and rescissions of current outlays are typically subject to their own process. An obscure figure known as the Senate parliamentarian controls the process by which the annual reconciliation budget bill — a favored tool because it permits a Senate majority to bypass the chamber’s legislative filibuster — can pass muster. And Capitol Hill Republicans apparently fear that including the DOGE rescissions would endanger President Trump’s desired bill.

But without Congress actually enacting the DOGE cuts into law, history will show this entire exercise to have been largely futile. Accordingly, Vought and the White House’s Office of Management and Budget must, following the reconciliation bill’s passage and enactment into law, transmit a fresh rescission package to Speaker Mike Johnson’s desk. It is extraordinarily important that the Trump administration and the Republican-led Congress demonstrate not merely that they can identify excessive spending but also that they are willing to cut it.

The longer-term problem is thornier.

While DOGE has served a useful function, and while Vought’s office can probably identify a good amount more in the way of “woke and weaponized bureaucracy” cost-cutting measures, it is a matter of basic mathematics that something more will be needed to begin to rein in America’s soaring annual deficits and our shocking national debt.

The Republican Party of Donald Trump has moved in a strongly populist direction on issues of political economy. On many fronts, such as antitrust and industrial policy efforts to reshore vital supply chains, such a shift is very much welcome.

But at some point, both Republicans and Democrats alike are going to have to find some way to come together and put our entitlement programs — above all, Medicare and Social Security — on a path to sustainability. The political optics of being perceived as “cutting” either of these programs are simply horrible, so any attempt at reform will not be easy. But it must be done anyway, as the recent Moody’s downgrade of the U.S. credit rating makes starkly clear. The longer we wait, the more credit downgrades and interest payment spikes we risk.

Basic game theory suggests that neither party will want to blink first. Recall the 2012-era political ads accusing then-GOP vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan of throwing grandmothers off cliffs. The politics are nasty, divisive and radioactive. But this must get done. So we’ll have to find some way to force everyone to do it together. And in the meantime, as a down payment, let’s just make sure DOGE’s crucial work was not done in vain.

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

Guess who suddenly has a “TACO” allergy? President Yuge Taco Salad himself.

In the annals of four-letter words and acronyms Donald Trump has long hitched his political fortunes on, the word “taco” may be easy to overlook.

There’s MAGA, most famously. DOGE, courtesy of Elon Musk. Huge (pronounced yuge, of course). Wall, as in the one he continues to build on the U.S.-Mexico border. “Love” for himself, “hate” against all who stand in his way.

There’s a four-letter term, however, that best sums up Trump’s shambolic presidency, one no one would’ve ever associated with him when he announced his first successful presidential campaign a decade ago.

Taco.

His first use of the most quintessential of Mexican meals happened on Cinco de Mayo 2016, when Trump posted a portrait of himself grinning in front of a giant taco salad while proclaiming “I Love Hispanics!” Latino leaders immediately ridiculed his Hispandering, with UnidosUS president Janet Murguia telling the New York Times that it was “clueless, offensive and self-promoting” while also complaining, “I don’t know that any self-respecting Latino would even acknowledge that a taco bowl is part of our culture.”

I might’ve been the only Trump critic in the country to defend his decision to promote taco salads. After all, it’s a dish invented by a Mexican American family at the old Casa de Fritos stand in Disneyland. But also because the meal can be a beautiful, crunchy thing in the right hands. Besides, I realized what Trump was doing: getting his name in the news, trolling opponents, and having a hell of a good time doing it while welcoming Latinos into his basket of deplorables as he strove for the presidency. Hey, you couldn’t blame the guy for trying.

Guess what happened?

Despite consistently trashing Latinos, Trump increased his share of that electorate in each of his presidential runs and leaned on them last year to capture swing states like Arizona and Nevada. Latino Republican politicians made historic gains across the country in his wake — especially in California, where the number of Latino GOP legislators jumped from four in 2022 to a record nine.

The Trump taco salad tweet allowed his campaign to present their billionaire boss to Latinos as just any other Jose Schmo ready to chow down on Mexican food. It used the ridicule thrown at him as proof to other supporters that elites hated people like them. Trump must have at least felt confident the taco salad gambit from yesteryear worked because he reposted the image on social media this Cinco de Mayo, adding the line “This was so wonderful, 9 years ago today!”

It’s not exactly live by the taco, die by the taco. (Come on, why would such a tasty force of good want to hurt anyone)? But Trump is suddenly perturbed by the mere mention of TACO.

Doritos Locos Tacos at the Taco Bell Laguna Beach location.

(Don Leach/Daily Pilot)

That’s an acronym mentioned in a Financial Times newsletter earlier this month that means Trump Always Chickens Out. The insult is in reference to the growing belief in Wall Street that people who invest in stocks should keep in mind that the president talks tough on tariffs but never follows through because he folds under pressure like the Clippers. Or a taco, come to think of it.

Trump raged when CNBC reporter Megan Cassella asked him about TACO at a White House press conference this week.

“Don’t ever say what you said,” the commander in chief snarled before boasting about how he wasn’t a chicken and was actually a tough guy. “That’s a nasty question.”

No other reporter followed up with TACO questions, because the rest of the internet did. Images of Trump in everything from taco suits to taco crowns to carnivorous tacos swallowing Trump whole have bloomed ever since. News outlets are spreading Trump’s out-of-proportion response to something he could’ve just laughed off, while “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” just aired a parody song to the tune of “Macho Man” titled — what else? — “Taco Man.”

The TACO coinage is perfect: snappy, easily understandable, truthful and seems Trump-proof. The master of appropriating insults just can’t do anything to make TACO his — Trump Always Cares Outstandingly just doesn’t have the same ring. It’s also a reminder that Trump’s anti-Latino agenda so far in his administration makes a predictable mockery of his taco salad boast and related Hispandering.

In just over four months, Trump and his lackeys have tried to deport as many Latino immigrants — legal and illegal — as possible and has threatened Mexico — one of this country’s vital trading partners — with a 25% tariff. He has signed executive orders declaring English the official language of the United States and seeking to bring back penalties against truck drivers who supposedly don’t speak English well enough at a time when immigrants make up about 18% of the troquero force and Latinos are a big chunk of it.

Meanwhile, the economy — the main reason why so many Latinos went for Trump in 2024 in the first place — hasn’t improved since the Biden administration and always seems one Trump speech away from getting even wobblier.

As for Latinos, there are some signs Trump’s early presidency has done him no great favors with them. An April survey by the Pew Research Center — considered the proverbial gold standard when it comes to objectively gauging how Latinos feel about issues — found 27% of them approve of how he’s doing as president, down from 36% back in February.

President Trump gives a thumbs up to the cheering crowd after a Latinos for Trump Coalition roundtable in Phoenix in 2020.

(Ross D. Franklin / Associated Press)

Trump was always an imperfect champion of the taco’s winning potential, and not because the fish tacos at his Trump Grill come with French fries (labeled “Idaho” on the menu) and the taco salad currently costs a ghastly $25. He never really understood that a successful taco must appeal to everyone, never shatter or rip apart under pressure and can never take itself seriously like a burrito or a snooty mole.

The president needs to move on from his taco dalliance and pay attention to another four-letter word, one more and more Americans utter after every pendejo move Trump and his flunkies commit:

Help.