POLITICS

Federal Communications Commissioner Anna M. Gomez traveled to Los Angeles this week to sound an alarm that attacks on the media by President Trump and his lieutenants could fray the fabric of the 1st Amendment.

Gomez’s appearance Wednesday at Cal State L.A. was designed to take feedback from community members about the changed media atmosphere since Trump returned to office. The president initially expelled Associated Press journalists from the White House, for example. He signed an executive order demanding government funding be cut to PBS and NPR stations.

Should that order take effect, Pasadena-based radio station LAist would lose nearly $1.7 million — or about 4% of its annual budget, according to Alejandra Santamaria, chief executive of parent organization Southern California Public Radio.

“The point of all these actions is to chill speech,” Gomez told the small crowd. “We all need to understand what is happening and we need people to speak up and push back.”

Congress in the 1930s designed the FCC as an independent body, she said, rather than one beholden to the president.

But those lines have blurred. In the closing days of last fall’s presidential campaign, Trump sued CBS and “60 Minutes” over edits to an interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris, alleging producers doctored the broadcast to enhance her election chances. CBS has denied the allegations and the raw footage showed Harris was accurately quoted.

Trump-appointed FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, upon taking office in January, revived three complaints of bias against ABC, NBC and CBS, including one alleging the “60 Minutes” edits had violated rules against news distortion. He demanded that CBS release the unedited footage.

The FCC’s review of Skydance Media’s pending takeover of CBS-parent Paramount Global has been clouded by the president’s $20-billion lawsuit against CBS. The president rejected Paramount’s offer to settle for $15 million, according to the Wall Street Journal, which said Trump has demanded more.

Two high-level CBS News executives involved in “60 Minutes” were forced out this spring.

Gomez, in an interview, declined to discuss the FCC’s review of the Skydance-Paramount deal beyond saying: “It would be entirely inappropriate to consider the complaint against the ’60 Minutes’ segment as part of a transaction review.” Scrutinizing edits to a national newscast “are not part of the public interest analysis that the commission does when it considers mergers and acquisitions,” she said.

For months, Gomez has been the lone voice of dissent at the FCC. Next month, she will become the sole Democrat on the panel.

The longtime communications attorney, who was appointed to the commission in 2023 by former President Biden, has openly challenged her colleague Carr and his policies that align with Trump’s directives. She maintains that some of Carr’s proposals, including opening investigations into diversity and inclusion policies at Walt Disney Co. and Comcast, go beyond the scope of the FCC, which is designed to regulate radio and TV stations and others that use the public airwaves.

The pressure campaign is working, Gomez said.

“When you see corporate parents of news providers … telling their broadcasters to tone down their criticisms of this administration, or to push out the executive producer of ’60 Minutes’ or the head of [CBS] News because of concerns about retribution from this administration because of corporate transactions — that is a chilling effect,” Gomez said.

Wednesday’s forum, organized by the nonprofit advocacy group Free Press, was punctuated with pleas from professors, journalists and community advocates for help in fending off Trump’s attacks. One journalist said she lost her job this spring at Voice of America after Trump took aim at the organization, which was founded more than 80 years ago to counter Nazi propaganda during World War II.

The Voice of America’s remaining staffers could receive reduction-in-force notices later this week, according to Politico.

Latino journalists spoke about the difficulty of covering some stories because people have been frightened into silence due to the administration’s immigration crackdown.

For now, journalists are able to carry out their missions “for the most part,” said Gabriel Lerner, editor emeritus of the Spanish-language La Opinión.

But he added a warning.

“Many think that America is so exceptional that you don’t have to do anything because fascism will never happen here,” Lerner said. “I compare that with those who dance on the Titanic thinking it will never sink.”

The White House pushed back on such narratives:

“President Trump is leading the most transparent administration in history. He regularly takes questions from the media, communicates directly to the public, and signed an Executive Order to protect free speech on his first day back in office,” spokesperson Anna Kelly said. “He will continue to fight against censorship while evaluating all federal spending to identify waste, fraud, and abuse.”

FCC Commission Chairman Brendan Carr on Capitol Hill.

(Alex Wroblewski / Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Traditionally, the five-member FCC has maintained an ideological balance with three commissioners from the party in power and two from the minority. But the senior Democrat — Geoffrey Starks — plans to step down next month, which will leave just three commissioners: Gomez, Carr and another Republican, Nathan Simington.

Trump has nominated a third Republican, Olivia Trusty, but the Senate has not confirmed her appointment.

Trump has not named a Democrat to replace Starks.

Some on Wednesday expressed concern that Gomez’s five-year tenure on the commission could be cut short. Trump has fired Democrats from other independent bodies, including the Federal Trade Commission and the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

Gomez said if she is pushed out, it would only be because she was doing her job, which she said was defending the Constitution.

Rep. Raul Ruiz (D-Indio) applauded Gomez’s efforts and noted that he’s long appreciated coordinating with her on more routine FCC matters, such as ensuring wider broadband internet access.

“But now the fight is the survival of the free press,” Ruiz said.

He noted that millions of people now get news from non-journalist sources, leading to a rise of misinformation and confusion.

“What is the truth?” Ruiz said. “How can we begin to have a debate? How can we begin to create policy on problems when we can’t even agree on what reality is?”

California on Wednesday joined 15 other states filing suit against the National Science Foundation and its acting director, alleging the agency has illegally terminated millions of dollars in grants and imposed new fees that have ended or crippled research vital to health, the economy and the advancement of knowledge.

The Trump administration has defended its actions as both legal and necessary to align the NSF with the president’s priorities.

The lawsuit, filed in federal court in the Southern District of New York, specifically targets the science foundation for “terminating grants for scientific research that seeks to promote and understand diversity in higher education and the workforce,” according to a statement from California Atty. General Rob Bonta.

The suit alleges that the NSF’s actions are illegally arbitrary and capricious and violate federal law on the management and use of federal funding.

Bonta’s office asserted that between 1995 and 2017, the number of women in science and engineering occupations, or with science or engineering degrees, doubled with help from federal support; minorities, meanwhile, went from representing about 15% in the occupations to about 35%.

The suit also seeks to overturn the Trump administration’s 15% cap on indirect costs related to research, which universities say are critical to carrying out their work. Such indirect costs include maintaining lab space, keeping the temperature controlled and the proper handling and disposal of biological, chemical and biochemical materials.

Like other key federal agencies, the National Science Foundation has been in turmoil since Trump took office in January — undergoing across-the-board funding cuts, layoffs and reorganization as well as apparent ideological litmus tests for research, sweeping grant terminations and a funding freeze on grant applications.

The Trump administration has fired back at critics.

Earlier this month Michael Kratsios, the director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, criticized diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives in federally funded research, calling them “close-minded” in a speech before the National Academy of Sciences in Washington.

Kratsios also called for a reduction of “red tape” in scientific research, the online news site FedScoop reported. He said there is a “crisis of confidence in scientists” that comes from fears that political biases are impacting research.

Trump officials also have repeatedly maintained that the federal government is rife with waste and fraud.

The federal actions have come at extreme cost, according to Bonta.

“President Trump wants to make America’s universities second tier with his backwards efforts to slash research funding that has kept us on the cutting edge of science and innovation,” Bonta said. “For more than 50 years, Congress has expressly authorized the National Science Foundation to train up the next generation of talent and invest in the infrastructure necessary to keep our position as a global leader” in science, technology, engineering and math.

“With President Trump’s latest round of indiscriminate funding cuts, America is poised to fall behind its competitors at a critical moment in the global technology race. We’re suing to stop him,” Bonta said.

In California, billions of dollars are at risk across the California State University, University of California and public community college systems.

“Many innovations — like the internet, GPS, and MRI technology — trace their origins to research initially funded by NSF. Without NSF funding, many California colleges and universities will be forced to substantially reduce or stop altogether potentially groundbreaking programs and research projects,” according to Bonta’s office.

Terminated NSF grants, for instance, include a five-year, $3-million project, “Computational Research for Equity in the Legal System.” This study examined crime data for patterns of racial bias while also looking at police misconduct and eviction policies, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

Canceled UC Berkeley grants included projects on electoral systems and two on environmental science education.

The NSF has also told staff to screen grant proposals for “topics or activities that may not be in alignment with agency priorities” that had shifted under the Trump administration, the journal Nature reported.

The lawsuit lays out a wide range of benefits and goals of the federal funding.

“From developing AI technology that predicts weather patterns to protect communities, to developing sustainable solutions for environmental and economic challenges, to making power grids more sustainable, NSF-funded research at American universities ensures this nation’s status as a global leader in scientific innovation,” according to the lawsuit.

The other states involved in the litigation are Hawaii, New York, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Wisconsin and Washington.

The pattern of federal cuts and turmoil related to research also is playing out with the National Institutes of Health. And California also is party to a lawsuit over cuts to these grants.

Tara Kerin, a project scientist who works in pediatric infectious disease research at UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine, said that the funding cuts at the National Science Foundation echoed similar ones made at the National Institutes of Health.

That, she said, makes her “very nervous about the future of science and research.”

Kerin, whose work has partly focused on HIV prevention and detection in young adults, was funded by NIH grants — until they were cut this spring.

WASHINGTON — Lawmakers this week condemned the Trump administration’s termination of humanitarian protections that have left a 4-year-old girl who is receiving critical medical treatment in Los Angeles vulnerable to deportation and death.

On Tuesday, The Times published the story of S.G.V., who has short bowel syndrome — a rare condition that prevents her body from completely absorbing nutrients. She and her parents received temporary permission to enter the U.S. legally through Tijuana in 2023.

In a letter Thursday to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, 38 congressional Democrats, including California Sens. Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff, urged her to reconsider the termination of the family’s legal status.

“We believe this family’s situation clearly meets the need for humanitarian aid and urge you and this Administration to reconsider its decision,” the lawmakers wrote. “It is our duty to protect the sick, vulnerable, and defenseless.”

Last month, S.G.V.’s family, who now live in Bakersfield, received notice from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services that their status had been terminated and that they had to leave the country immediately. Earlier this month, they applied again for humanitarian protections.

Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary in the Department of Homeland Security, said in a statement that the family is not actively in the deportation process and that their application is still being considered.

The girl’s physician, Dr. John Arsenault of Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, wrote in a letter requested by her family that any interruption in her daily nutrition system “could be fatal within a matter of days.”

The story about S.G.V. drew swift public outcry. An online fundraiser for the girl’s care had amassed nearly $26,000 as of Thursday morning.

The letter to Noem was led by Reps. Luz Rivas (D-North Hollywood) and Sydney Kamlager-Dove (D-Los Angeles). Rivas said state legislators and constituents messaged her about the family, asking what she could do to help.

While the family lives outside of Rivas’ district, which encompasses the north-central San Fernando Valley, she said it is her role as a California Democrat and a member of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus to speak up for immigrant constituents in districts where Republican representatives may not do so.

“That’s why we’re organizing as members of Congress,” Rivas said. “Without action from Secretary Noem and this administration, this little girl will die within days.”

In a post on X, Rep. Judy Chu (D-Monterey Park) called the situation “heartbreaking.” Seeking to deport the girl despite her medical condition is “cruel and inexcusable,” Chu added.

In another X post, Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas) wrote: “Trump wants to deport a four-year-old who could die from a life-threatening medical condition if her treatment is interrupted. How does this cruelty make us a stronger nation?”

The family and their attorneys held a news conference Wednesday at the Koreatown office of the pro bono firm, Public Counsel. The lawyers explained that the equipment administered by the hospital to S.G.V. for home use is not available outside the U.S.

“If they deport us and they take away my daughter’s access to specialized medical care, she will die,” said Deysi Vargas.

Attorneys for the family noted that S.G.V. is not the only child affected in recent months by the Trump administration’s immigration policies. In an attempt to speed up arrests and deportations, they said, children are needlessly being swept up in the process.

Gina Amato Lough, directing attorney at Public Counsel, said the girl’s case “is a symbol of the recklessness of this administration’s deportation policies.”

“We’re seeing a pattern of cruelty and a violation of our most treasured rights and values,” said Amato Lough. “These are people coming to us for protection, and instead we’re sending them to die. That’s not justice, and it doesn’t make us any safer.”

President Trump’s tariff strategy has been thrown into turmoil after a U.S. court issued a rare rebuke blocking many of the import taxes he has threatened and imposed on other countries.

In a ruling issued late Wednesday, a three-judge panel for the U.S. Court of International Trade declared that the Trump administration had wrongly invoked a 1977 law in imposing his “Liberation Day” tariffs on dozens of countries and they were therefore illegal. It also extended that ruling to previous tariffs levied on Canada, Mexico and China over the security of the U.S. border and trafficking in fentanyl.

The Trump administration immediately said it would appeal, putting the fate of the tariffs in the hands of an appellate court and potentially the Supreme Court. The ruling doesn’t affect Trump’s first-term levies on many imports from China or sectoral duties planned or already imposed on goods including steel, which are based on a different legal foundation that the Trump administration may now be forced to make more use of to pursue its tariff campaign.

It’s unclear just how fast Wednesday’s ruling will go into effect, with the court giving the government up to 10 days to carry out the necessary administrative moves to remove the tariffs. But if the decision holds, it would in a matter of days eliminate new 30% U.S. tariffs on imports from China, 25% tariffs on goods from Canada and Mexico and 10% duties on most other goods entering the U.S.

Those tariffs and the prospect of retaliatory ones have been seen as a significant drag on U.S. and global growth and eliminating them — even temporarily — would improve prospects for the world’s major economies.

There is uncertainty over whether the ruling represents a permanent setback to Trump’s push to reshape global trade or a mere impediment. Trump and his supporters have attacked judges as biased and his administration has been accused of failing to fully comply with other court orders, raising questions over whether it will do so this time.

A White House spokesperson dismissed the ruling as one made by “unelected judges” who should not have the power “to decide how to properly address a national emergency.” Trump has invoked national emergencies ranging from the U.S. trade deficit to overdose deaths to justify many of his tariffs.

“Foreign countries’ nonreciprocal treatment of the Unites States has fueled America’s historic and persistent trade deficits,” White House spokesman Kush Desai said in a statement. “These deficits have created a national emergency that has decimated American communities, left our workers behind, and weakened our defense industrial base — facts that the court did not dispute.”

If the ruling isn’t reversed or ignored, one of the consequences could be greater fiscal concerns at a time when bond markets are questioning the trajectory of the U.S.’s mounting debt load. The Trump administration has been citing increased tariff revenues as a way to offset tax cuts in his “one big, beautiful bill” now before Congress, which is estimated to cost $3.8 trillion over the next decade.

U.S. importers paid a record $16.5 billion in tariffs in April and Trump’s aides have said they expected that to rise in the coming months.

Major trading partners including China, the European Union, India, and Japan that are in negotiations with the Trump’s administration must now decide whether to press ahead in efforts to secure deals or slow walk talks on the bet they now have a stronger hand.

Deal doubts

Also thrown into doubt would be the outlines for a trade deal that Trump reached with the UK earlier in May. That potential pact calls for the imposition of a 10% U.S. tariff on all imports from the UK that would be null and void if Wednesday’s decision endures.

“I don’t know why any country would want to engage in negotiations to get out of tariffs that have now been declared illegal,” said Jennifer Hillman, a Georgetown Law School professor and former WTO judge and general counsel for the U.S. Trade Representative. “It’s a very definitive decision that the reciprocal worldwide tariffs are simply illegal.”

Hillman and other legal experts pointed out that Trump has other legal authorities he can draw on. But none would give him as broad powers as those he invoked under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA.

A provision of the 1974 trade act gives presidents the power to impose tariffs of up to 15% for up to 150 days, though only in the event a balance of payments crisis, which Trump may not want to declare given the current nervous state of bond markets, Hillman said.

Trump could also invoke other authorities to impose tariffs on individual sectors or countries, as he did in his first term. In recent months, he has already used national security powers to impose duties on imported steel, aluminum and cars and launched seven other investigations pertaining to things like pharmaceuticals, lumber and critical minerals.

“The Trump administration’s toolbox won’t be completely empty,” Dmitry Grozoubinski, director of ExplainTrade and author of the book “Why Politicians Lie About Trade” said in an interview on Bloomberg Television. But as for IEEPA, “if they comply with this ruling that takes that toy out of the toy box.”

More uncertainty

Wednesday’s ruling came in two parallel cases brought by a conservative group on behalf of a small business and U.S. states controlled by Democrats.

“This ruling reaffirms that the President must act within the bounds of the law, and it protects American businesses and consumers from the destabilizing effects of volatile, unilaterally imposed tariffs,” said Jeffrey Schwab, senior counsel for the conservative Liberty Justice Center, which brought one of the cases.

For many other businesses, it brought the prospect of yet another sharp turn in U.S. tariff policies and more short-term questions and headaches.

Southern California-based Freight Right Global Logistics has several shipments on the water now for clients all over the U.S., carrying goods largely from China. Those containers are filled with everything from toys to robots, and it’s very uncertain what the tariff burden will be for those shipments when they land, said Freight Right Chief Executive Robert Khachatryan.

Khachatryan fielded questions Wednesday evening from his clients on potential refunds, which tariffs will be removed, and what would be the effective dates.

“We are working hard to answer customers questions but the reality is that there is not enough information out there yet,” he said. “Tomorrow we’re going to be all over the place figuring out what this means in practice.”

Donnan, Larson and Curtis write for Bloomberg News.

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Thursday sharply limited the reach of environmental impact statements in a victory for developers.

The justices said these claims of the potential impact on the environment have been used too often to delay or block new projects.

“A 1970 legislative acorn has grown over the years into a judicial oak that has hindered infrastructure development under the guise of just a little more process. A course correction of sorts is appropriate,” said Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, speaking for the court.

He said procedural law has given judges and environmentalists too much authority to hinder or prevent development, he said.

“Fewer projects make it to the finish line. Indeed, fewer projects make it to the starting line. Those that survive often end up costing much more than is anticipated or necessary,” he said. “And that in turn means fewer and more expensive railroads, airports, wind turbines, transmission lines, dams, housing developments, highways, bridges, subways, stadiums, arenas, data centers, and the like. And that also means fewer jobs, as new projects become difficult to finance and build in a timely fashion.”

In a unanimous decision, the high court ruled for the developers of a proposed 88-mile railroad in northeastern Utah which could carry crude oil that would be refined along the Gulf Coast.

In blocking the proposal, judges had cited its potential to spur more drilling for oil in Utah and more pollution along the Gulf Coast.

Long before Clayton Kershaw donned No. 22 and Fernando Valenzuela wore No. 34, another number told fans it was time for Dodger baseball: 76.

Union Oil Co., the 76 gasoline brand’s former owner, helped finance Dodger Stadium’s construction. The brand’s current owner, Phillips 66, remains a major sponsor. Through six World Series titles, orange-and-blue 76 logos have been a constant presence at Chavez Ravine. They tower above the scoreboards and grace the outfield walls.

So when 76 recently posted on Instagram that it had begun sponsoring L.A.’s rivals in San Francisco — with an orange-and-blue logo on the center field clock at Oracle Park — some Dodgers fans weren’t pleased.

“THE BETRAYAL,” one fan wrote on Instagram.

“bestiessss nooooo,” another lamented.

76 was unfazed, responding: “Still a bestie, just spreading the love!”

Strange as the reactions may sound, it’s not unheard of for long-lived ad campaigns to take on a life of their own, evolving from paid promotions to cultural touchstones. Outside Fenway Park in Boston, Red Sox fans have fought to preserve the massive Citgo sign, with its logo of a Venezuelan-owned oil company.

Nor is it shocking that Houston-based Phillips 66 would market itself through another baseball team. The 76 gasoline brand, after all, evokes the patriotism of 1776 — a clever marketing ploy. And what’s more American than Major League Baseball?

Still, the timing of Phillips 66’s decision to start sponsoring the Giants is intriguing.

Since last summer, nearly 30,000 people have signed a petition urging Dodgers ownership to cut ties with the oil company. California is currently suing Phillips 66 and other oil and gas companies for climate damages, accusing them of a “decades-long campaign of deception” to hide the truth about the climate crisis.

Climate activists protest outside Dodger Stadium before a game May 15, 2025, calling on the team’s ownership to drop Phillips 66 as a sponsor.

(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

The Sierra Club Angeles Chapter held its third protest at Dodger Stadium before a game against the Athletics on May 15. Activists cloaked in sackcloth marched outside the parking lots. One played a bagpipe.

“It was a bit hard for the fans to comprehend,” organizer Lisa Kaas Boyle acknowledged.

Still, she believes the cause is righteous.

A former environmental crimes prosecutor and a co-founder of the Plastic Pollution Coalition, Kaas Boyle lost her home in the Palisades fire. She’s also a Dodgers fan, having caught the bug from her husband, whose 89-year-old mom grew up cheering for the team in Brooklyn. She has a special place in her heart for Kiké Hernández.

So when the Dodgers joined other sports teams in pledging $8 million to wildfire relief, she felt the organization was “speaking out of two sides of its mouth.” She pointed to a study concluding that the weather conditions that helped drive the Palisades and Eaton fires were 35% more likely due to climate change.

“If you really care about us fire victims, you wouldn’t be promoting one of the major causes of the disaster,” Kaas Boyle said. “If you really care, you wouldn’t be boosting their image, greenwashing it through baseball.”

At least one member of the Dodgers ownership group cares about presenting a climate-friendly image.

Tennis star Billie Jean King posted on Facebook, Instagram and X in the fall promoting a climate summit being held next week at the University of Oxford, co-hosted by an arm of the United Nations. U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres has called on all countries to ban fossil fuel advertising.

So, what does King think of the 76 ads at Dodger Stadium?

Hard to say. Her publicist didn’t respond to my request for comment.

Dodgers infielder Miguel Rojas scratches a message in the dirt near second base at Dodger Stadium on May 18, with a 76 logo on the outfield wall in the background.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

The Dodgers also declined to respond. Same goes for the Giants and Phillips 66.

So why is the oil company “spreading the love” to the Bay Area?

Again, hard to know for sure. But Duncan Meisel has a theory. He runs the advocacy group Clean Creatives, which pressures ad agencies to stop working with fossil fuel clients. And he suspects that lawmakers and regulators based in Sacramento are less likely to attend a baseball game in L.A. than in nearby San Francisco.

“If you’re 76, and you’re worried about decision-makers in California, that’s where you’d want to be,” he said.

Indeed, Phillips 66 may have reasons to be worried.

The company plans to close its Los Angeles County oil refinery this year — a troubling sign of the economic times for Big Oil as California shifts toward electric cars. Lawmakers are also weighing a “polluters pay” bill that would require fossil fuel companies to help pay for damages from more intense heat waves, wildfires and storms.

Phillips 66, meanwhile, was arraigned this month on charges that it violated the U.S. Clean Water Act by dumping oil and grease from its L.A. County refinery into the local sewer system. (It pleaded not guilty.) That followed a win for climate activists in March, when state Senate Majority Leader Lena Gonzalez (D-Long Beach) wrote to Dodgers controlling owner Mark Walter, urging him to dump Phillips 66.

Hence, perhaps, the newfound relationship with the Giants.

“That’s why you advertise,” Meisel said. “If you’re a company like Phillips 66 that’s under threat from political and cultural pressures in California, it’s hard to get a better deal than sponsoring a local sports team.”

If you look closely, you can see the 76 ad on the digital clock high above the center field fence at San Francisco’s Oracle Park on May 4 (Star Wars Day, hence the Stormtroopers).

(Jeff Chiu / Associated Press)

It’s not just California turning up the heat on Phillips 66. Executives have been battling a pressure campaign from Elliott Investment Management, which won two seats on the company’s board last week.

As Elliott ramped up the pressure on Phillips 66 earlier this year, executives announced an expanded sponsorship deal with their hometown ball club — another Dodgers nemesis, as it happens, the cheating Houston Astros.

Phillips 66 now sponsors the home run train atop the high left-field wall at Houston’s Daikin Park (formerly Minute Maid Park). The train is filled with 25 oversized baseballs, each representing a special moment in Astros history — yes, including the World Series title they stole from the Dodgers.

As Phillips 66 brand manager John Field said in an April news release: “Sponsorships like these are more than just fun — they’re a strategic investment.”

Fun and strategic, sure, if you’re mainly invested in oil industry profits. If you care about watching baseball games in safe temperatures, without choking on wildfire smoke, you might reach a different conclusion.

One thing’s for sure: Fossil fuel companies will keep pumping money into baseball so long as teams let them. The Astros, Texas Rangers and Cleveland Guardians all wear jersey patches sponsored by oil and gas companies.

In California, meanwhile, Phillips 66 will keep reminding Dodgers fans how much they love looking at 76 logos — a playbook so successful it once inspired a campaign to save the rotating 76 balls above gas stations.

“This is a heavy play on Americana,” Roberta J. Newman said.

A Yankees fan and professor in New York University’s Liberal Studies program, Newman wrote the fascinating book, “Here’s the Pitch: The Amazing, True, New, and Improved Story of Baseball and Advertising.” There may be nobody with a better understanding of the cultural and political power of baseball-linked advertising.

The former 76 gas station in the Dodger Stadium parking lot, seen in 2003.

(Alex Gallardo / Los Angeles Times)

When a brand like 76 associates itself with the Dodgers — through special ticket deals, joint promotions with the team charity and TV commercials starring Vin Scully — it’s engaged in “meaning transfer,” Newman said.

“Your positive associations of the Dodgers will become positive associations with 76,” she said.

Most fans won’t drive away from Dodger Stadium and immediately choose 76 over a rival gasoline station. But in the long run, they’ll have good vibes when they see the orange-and-blue logo. It’ll feel familiar, friendly.

If that sounds nuts — well, you might want to tell business executives they blew $1 trillion on ads last year.

“People might think, ‘Oil is terrible. But 76 is the Dodgers,’” Newman said.

Now it’s the Giants, too — not that Newman thinks the dual loyalty will hurt the company. As one Instagram user, a Giants fan, wrote: “Hey Dodger fans, it’s OK! … 76 is a California icon and tradition from North to South!”

Fair enough. Wildfires are getting bigger and more destructive up there too.

This is the latest edition of Boiling Point, a newsletter about climate change and the environment in the American West. Sign up here to get it in your inbox. And listen to our “Boiling Point” podcast here.

For more climate and environment news, follow @Sammy_Roth on X and @sammyroth.bsky.social on Bluesky.

MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace has delivered some sharp criticism of President Trump since she became a host on the progressive-leaning cable news network in 2017.

So it’s surprising that her new podcast shares its name with one of Trump’s regular boasts about his team: “The Best People.”

“I thought he had abandoned it,” Wallace, 53, told The Times. “But I actually think ‘the best people’ was one of his best messages in 2016.”

“He abandoned it officially when he picked Matt Gaetz,” she added, referring to Trump’s first choice for attorney general.

Each week on “The Best People,” starting Monday, Wallace will have lengthy conversations with actors, musicians, thought leaders and other figures outside of politics. The guest on the first episode is actor and fellow podcaster Jason Bateman, followed by Sarah Jessica Parker, music producer Jimmy Jam, folk singer Joan Baez and Milwaukee Bucks coach Doc Rivers in coming weeks.

The jump into podcasting comes as the network looks for more ways to reach the growing number of consumers who are no longer watching cable TV.

The network says its existing audio podcasts, which include series from hosts Rachel Maddow, Chris Hayes and Jen Psaki, will top 10 million downloads in May.

“Our goal is to meet our audience where they are and to bring the talent of our hosts and anchors to them in those spaces,” said Madeleine Haeringer, MSNBC’s senior vice president of digital, audio and longform. “It’s not a one-size-fits-all formula — but instead, tailoring each project to both the host and the platform.”

Wallace said she was ready to expand her role at MSNBC before the corporate changes. Podcasting appealed to her because, as a working mom, she knows many women aren’t available to watch her daily program in the afternoon.

Her branching out into less overtly political territory is somewhat unexpected.

The former Bush White House communications director’s tenure on the ABC talk show “The View” was brief, partly due to her lack of pop culture expertise.

That’s not a concern this time around, she said. The guests she solicited for “The Best People” are coming to the table to discuss their own advocacy issues apart from the kind of instant political analysis presented on her MSNBC program “Deadline: White House.”

Wallace connected with Jimmy Jam when they discussed creating a “We Are the World” type of musical production to aid Ukraine. She knew Rivers through his social justice activism (as coach of the Los Angeles Clippers, he had to guide the players through the scandal over former owner Donald Sterling’s racist comments) and Parker for her devotion to literacy programs.

The podcast format allows them to open up in a way that doesn’t always happen on live TV.

“For some reason, people sitting in front of their computer screens on the Zoom are even more candid and forthcoming about how they feel,” Wallace said.

Wallace is wading into digital media at a time when MSNBC is in transition. The channel, along with other NBCUniversal cable outlets, is being spun off from current owner Comcast into a new company called Versant.

Comcast is getting out of the cable channel business, with the exception of its potent reality brand Bravo, out of concern about the steady decline of the pay TV audience. Over the last 10 years, cord-cutting has reduced the number of cable homes MSNBC reaches by 33%.

MSNBC also saw a mass exodus of viewers just after the presidential election, as its loyal left-leaning audience tuned out after Trump’s victory.

The ratings have gradually climbed back up, with MSNBC maintaining its second place position behind perennial cable leader Fox News but well ahead of third place CNN. In May, the network was up 24% from the lows it hit in November and December, but is still down 35% compared to the presidential campaign-elevated levels of a year ago, according to Nielsen.

But leadership at Versant has it made clear that MSNBC will continue to cater to a politically progressive audience.

Wallace believes the commitment to the network’s point of view has only deepened under new management. “It’s a culture that really rewards deep wonky coverage of politics,” she said. “[MSNBC President] Rebecca Kutler has come in and tripled down on all of that.”

The spinoff requires separating MSNBC from NBC News, where some journalists were uneasy with the intensity of partisan commentary on the cable network. Versant is hiring its own newsgathering team — as many as 100 journalists — including justice and intelligence correspondent Ken Dilanian, who is moving over from NBC.

“To work for someone who is hiring reporters at a time when we’re looking at an administration that seems a little meh about the Constitution is pretty forward leaning,” Wallace said.

She was inspired to try something new by the extracurricular activities of her husband, the New York Times’ Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Michael S. Schmidt, who co-created the Netflix thriller series “Zero Day” with former NBC News President Noah Oppenheim.

“Michael enjoyed it so much it gave me the idea to add something that is a little outside my comfort zone,” Wallace said.

Wallace met Schmidt, 41, at MSNBC, where he is a contributor. They married in 2022 and a year later had their first child via surrogate. Wallace also has a 13-year-old son, Liam, from her first marriage.

While Wallace and Schmidt have a business-like dynamic when they appear together on the program, family matters creep in off-camera.

“When we are both on set, my son is texting us about dinner,” Wallace said. “During the breaks, we’re never talking about the rule of law. We’re talking about logistics.”

Christopher Boyce and Andrew Daulton Lee were childhood friends, altar boys raised in the Catholic pews and prosperous suburbs of the Palos Verdes Peninsula.

By the mid-1970s, Boyce was angry about the Vietnam War and Watergate. He was a liberal, a stoner and a lover of falcons. Lee, a doctor’s adopted son, was a cocaine and heroin pusher who was spiraling into addiction.

How they became spies for the Soviet Union is a story emblematic of 1970s Southern California, where the state’s massive Cold War aerospace industry collided with its youthful anti-establishment currents.

Everyone agrees it should never have been possible.

In the summer of 1974, Boyce, a bright but disaffected 21-year-old college dropout, got a job as a clerk at the TRW Defense and Space Systems complex in Redondo Beach. He won entree through the old-boys network: His father, who ran security for an aircraft contractor and was once an FBI agent, had called in a favor.

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

Boyce made $140 a week at the defense plant and held down a second job tending bar. TRW investigators had performed only a perfunctory background check. They skipped his peers, who might have revealed his links to the drug culture and to Lee, who already had multiple drug busts and a serious cocaine habit — the white powder that would inspire his nickname.

In “The Falcon and the Snowman,” Robert Lindsey’s account of the case, the author describes Boyce beginning the day by popping amphetamines and winding down after a shift puffing a joint in the TRW parking lot. Falconry was his biggest passion. “Flying a falcon in exactly the same way that men had done centuries before Christ transplanted Chris into their time,” Lindsey wrote.

Boyce impressed his bosses and was soon cleared to enter the steel-doored fortress called the “black vault,” a classified sanctum where he was exposed to sensitive CIA communications pertaining to America’s network of espionage satellites. The satellites eavesdropped on Russian missiles and defense installations. Among the goals was to thwart a surprise nuclear attack.

Reading CIA communiques, Boyce didn’t like what he saw. Among its other sins, he decided, the U.S. government was deceiving its Australian allies by hiding satellite intelligence it had promised to share and meddling in the country’s elections.

“I just was in total disagreement with the whole direction of Western society,” Boyce told The Times many years later. He attributed his espionage opportunity to “synchronicity,” explaining: “How many kids can get a summer job working in an encrypted communications vault?”

Soon he made his life’s “biggest, dumbest decision.” He told his buddy Lee they might sell government secrets to the Soviets. Lee talked his way into the Soviet Embassy in Mexico City, where Russians fed him caviar and bought classified documents with the toast, “To peace.”

Lee’s KGB handlers devised protocols. When he wanted to meet, he would tape an X to lampposts at designated intersections around Mexico City.

For more than a year, thousands of classified documents flowed from the TRW complex to the Soviets, with Boyce sometimes smuggling them out in potted plants. In exchange, he and Lee received an estimated $70,000.

At parties, Lee showed off his miniature Minox camera and bragged that he was engaged in spycraft. In January 1977, desperate for money to finance a heroin deal, he flouted KGB instructions and appeared unannounced outside the Soviet Embassy. Mexican police thought he looked suspicious and arrested him.

He held an envelope with filmstrips documenting a U.S. satellite project called Pyramider. Under questioning, Lee revealed the name of his co-conspirator and childhood friend, who soon was also under arrest. Boyce had just returned from a hawk-trapping trip in the mountains.

The espionage trials of the two men presented special challenges for the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles. The Carter administration was ready to pull the plug on the case if it meant airing too many secrets, but a strategy was devised: Prosecutors would focus on the Pyramider documents, which involved a system that never actually got off the ground.

Joel Levine, one of the assistant U.S. attorneys who prosecuted Boyce and Lee, said only a fraction of what they sold to the Soviets ever came out at trial.

“I was told these other projects should not be revealed. It’s too costly to our government, and you can’t base a prosecution on them either in whole or in part,” Levine said in a recent interview. “You just gotta stay away from it.”

For federal prosecutors in L.A., hanging over the case was the memory of a recent humiliation: the collapse of the Pentagon Papers trial, as a result of the Nixon administration’s attempt to bribe the presiding judge with a job. It had caught prosecutors by surprise.

“We were afraid it would ruin our reputation forever if something like that were to happen,” Levine said. “So we made it very, very clear right from the get-go that if we smelled something like that was afoot, we would walk into court and have the case dismissed on our own.”

The defendants had sharply different motives. Lee was in it for the money, Richard Stilz, one of the prosecutors, said in a recent interview. But “Boyce was totally ideology. He wanted to damage the United States government,” Stilz said. “He just hated this country, period.”

The defendants got separate trials. A rift that had been growing between them deepened with their mutually hostile defenses. Lee’s defense: Boyce had led him to believe he was working for the CIA, feeding misinformation to the Russians. Jurors convicted Lee of espionage, nonetheless, and a judge gave him a life term.

Boyce’s defense: Lee had blackmailed him into espionage by threatening to expose a letter he had written, while stoned on hashish, alleging secret knowledge of CIA malfeasance. Jurors convicted Boyce as well, and a judge gave him 40 years.

In January 1980, at a federal prison in Lompoc, Boyce hid in a drainpipe and sprinted to freedom over a fence. He was on the run for 19 months. He robbed banks in the Pacific Northwest until federal agents caught him outside a burger joint in Washington state.

He was convicted of bank robbery and got 28 more years. In 1985, the same year a popular film adaptation of “The Falcon and the Snowman” was released, Boyce testified on Capitol Hill about the despair attending a life of espionage.

“There was no thrill,” he said. “There was only depression, and a hopeless enslavement to an inhuman, uncaring foreign bureaucracy…. No American who has gone to the KGB has not come to regret it.”

He spoke of how easily he had been allowed to access classified material at TRW. “Security was a joke,” he said, describing regular Bacardi-fueled parties in the black vault. “We used the code destruction blender for making banana daiquiris and mai tais.”

Cait Mills was working as a paralegal in San Diego when she read the Lindsey book and became fascinated by the case. She thought Lee had been unfairly maligned, and she spent the next two decades fighting to win him parole.

She got letters of support from the prosecutors and the sentencing judge attesting that Lee had made strides toward rehabilitation. He had taken classes in prison and become a dental technician. He won parole in 1998.

She turned her attention to freeing Boyce, with whom she fell in love. She wrote to the Russians and asked how much value there had been in the stolen TRW documents and received a fax claiming it was useless. He got out in 2002, and they married. They later divorced but remain close. Both live in central Oregon.

Stilz maintains the damage to America was “enormous.”

“In a murder case, you have one victim and a person dies,” Stilz said. “In an espionage case, the whole country is a victim. We were so far advanced over the Russians in spy satellite technology. They leveled the playing field. That’s probably the most important point.”

He gives no credence to the Russian government’s claim that it derived no value from the secret information. “Of course they’d say that,” Stilz said. “What do you think they’d say? ‘Oh yeah, it allowed us to catch up with the United States in terms of spying.’ They’re not gonna say that.”

Cait Mills Boyce said that Boyce and Lee, childhood best friends, no longer speak, and that the silence between them wounds Boyce.

“He said, ‘I love that man; I always loved him. He was my best friend.’ It hurt him so badly.”

She said Boyce, now in his 70s, lives a solitary life and immerses himself in the world of falconry. “His entire life, and I kid you not, is falconry,” she said. “He will die with a falcon on his arm.”

Part of what pushed him into the world of espionage, she thinks, was the challenge. “I think his uncommon smarts led him down a whimsical path that ended up being a disastrous path, not just for him but for everybody involved,” she said.

The movie “The Big Short” — dramatizing the reckless behavior in the banking and mortgage industries that contributed to the 2008 financial crisis — captures much of Wall Street’s misconduct but overlooks a central player in the collapse: the federal government, specifically through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

These two government-created and government-sponsored enterprises encouraged lenders to issue risky home loans by effectively making taxpayers co-sign the mortgages. This setup incentivized dangerous lending practices that inflated the housing bubble, eventually leading to catastrophic economic consequences.

Another critical but overlooked factor in the collapse was the Community Reinvestment Act. This federal law was intended to combat discriminatory lending practices but instead created substantial market distortions by pressuring banks to extend loans to borrowers who might otherwise have been deemed too risky. Under threat of regulatory penalties, banks significantly loosened lending standards — again, inflating the housing bubble.

After the bubble inevitably burst, Fannie and Freddie were placed under conservatorship by the Federal Housing Finance Agency. The conservatorship imposed rules aimed at preventing future taxpayer-funded bailouts and protecting the economy from government-fueled market distortions.

Now, President Trump’s appointee to lead that agency, Bill Pulte, is considering ending this conservatorship without addressing the core structural flaw that fueled the problem in the first place: implicit government guarantees backing all Fannie and Freddie mortgages. If Pulte proceeds without implementing real reform, taxpayers on Main Street are once again likely to be exposed to significant financial risks as they are conscripted into subsidizing lucrative deals for Wall Street.

Without genuine reform, the incentives and practices that led to the crisis remain unchanged, setting the stage for a repeat disaster.

Pulte’s proposal isn’t likely to unleash free-market policies. Instead, it could further rig the market in favor of hedge funds holding substantial stakes in Fannie and Freddie, allowing them to profit enormously from the potential upside, while leaving taxpayers to bear all the downside risks.

A meaningful solution requires Fannie and Freddie to significantly strengthen their capital reserves. The two government-sponsored enterprises still remain dangerously undercapitalized. A report from JP Morgan Chase describes it this way: “Despite steady growth in [their net worth], the GSEs remain well below the minimum regulatory capital framework requirements set by the Federal Housing Finance Agency in 2020.” Imposing robust capital requirements similar to those that govern private banks would oblige the two enterprises to internalize their risks, promoting genuine market discipline and accountability.

Further reforms should address transparency and oversight. Enhanced disclosure standards would allow investors, regulators and the public to better assess risks. Additionally, limiting the types of mortgages these entities can guarantee could reduce exposure to the riskiest loans, further protecting taxpayers. Implementing clear rules that prevent Fannie and Freddie from venturing into speculative financial products would also mitigate potential market distortions.

Critically, the federal government must clearly communicate that future bailouts are not an option. Explicitly removing government guarantees would compel Fannie and Freddie to operate responsibly, knowing that reckless behavior will lead to their insolvency, not to another taxpayer rescue. Clear legal separation from government backing is essential to prevent moral hazard.

The combination of government guarantees, regulatory pressure from policies such as the Community Reinvestment Act and inadequate capital standards created the perfect storm for the 2008 financial crisis. Ignoring these lessons and repeating past mistakes would inevitably lead to a similar disaster.

Proponents of prematurely releasing Fannie and Freddie argue that market conditions have changed and risk management has improved. Yet, history repeatedly demonstrates that without structural changes, financial entities — particularly those shielded by government guarantees — inevitably revert to risky behavior when market pressures and profit incentives align. Markets function best when participants bear the full consequences of their decisions, something impossible under the current structure of these government-sponsored enterprises.

Ultimately, the only responsible approach is removing taxpayers from the equation entirely. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac should participate in the mortgage market only as fully private entities, without any implicit government guarantees.

The American public doesn’t need a sequel to “The Big Short.” The painful lessons of the 2008 crisis are too recent and too severe to be ignored or forgotten. Market discipline, fiscal responsibility and genuine reform — not government-backed risk-taking — must guide our approach going forward. We can only hope that the Trump administration chooses fiscal responsibility over risky experiments that history has already shown end in disaster.

Veronique de Rugy is a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. This article was produced in collaboration with Creators Syndicate.

It was the first and possibly the most dramatic act by Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass after she took office: declaring a city emergency on homelessness.

That move, backed by the City Council, gave Bass the power to award no-bid contracts to nonprofit groups and to rent hotels and motels for interim homeless housing. It also allowed Bass to waive regulations limiting the size and scale of certain types of affordable housing.

Now, two and a half years into Bass’ tenure, some on the council are looking to reassert their authority, by rescinding the homelessness emergency declaration.

Councilmember Tim McOsker said he wants to return city government to its normal processes and procedures, as spelled out in the City Charter. Leases, contracts and other decisions related to homelessness would again be taken up at public meetings, with council members receiving testimony, taking written input and ultimately voting.

“Let’s come back to why these processes exist,” McOsker said in an interview. “They exist so the public can be made aware of what we’re doing with public dollars.”

McOsker said that, even if the declaration is rescinded, the city will need to address “the remainder of this crisis.” For example, he said, the homeless services that the city currently provides could become permanent. The city could also push county agencies — which provide public health, mental health counseling and substance abuse treatment — to do more, McOsker said.

Bass, for her part, pushed back on McOsker’s efforts this week, saying through an aide that the emergency declaration “has resulted in homelessness decreasing for the first time in years, bucking statewide and nationwide trends.”

“The Mayor encourages Council to resist the urge of returning to failed policies that saw homelessness explode in Los Angeles,” said Bass spokesperson Clara Karger.

The Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, also known as LAHSA, reported last summer that homelessness declined by 2.2% in the city of L.A., the first decrease in several years. The number of unsheltered homeless people — those who live in interim housing, such as hotels and motels, but do not have a permanent residence — dropped by more than 10% to 29,275, down from 32,680.

The push from McOsker and at least some of his colleagues comes at a pivotal time.

Last month, the L.A. County Board of Supervisors voted to pull more than $300 million from LAHSA, the city-county agency that provides an array of services to the unhoused population.

Meanwhile, the L.A. Alliance for Human Rights, which has been battling the city in court over its response to the crisis, is pushing for a federal judge to place the city’s homelessness initiatives into a receivership.

Matthew Umhofer, an attorney for the alliance, said the city has “very little to show” for its emergency declaration in terms of progress on the streets.

“It’s our view that a state of emergency around homelessness is appropriate, but that the city is not engaged in conduct that reflects the seriousness of the crisis — and is not doing what it needs to do in order to solve the crisis,” he said.

Inside Safe, Bass’ signature program to bring homeless people indoors, has moved 4,316 people into interim housing since it began in 2022, according to a LAHSA dashboard covering the period ending April 30. Of that total, nearly 1,040 went into permanent housing, while nearly 1,600 returned to homelessness.

Council members voted this week to extend the mayor’s homelessness emergency declaration for another 90 days, with McOsker casting the lone dissenting vote. However, they have also begun taking preliminary steps toward ending the declaration.

Last week, while approving the city budget, the council created a new bureau within the Los Angeles Housing Department to monitor spending on homeless services. On Tuesday, the council asked city policy analysts to provide strategies to ensure that nonprofit homeless service providers are paid on a timely basis, “even if there is no longer a declared emergency.”

The following day, McOsker and Councilmember Nithya Raman — who heads the council’s housing and homeless committee — co-authored a proposal asking city policy analysts to report back in 60 days with a plan addressing the “operational, legal and fiscal impacts” of terminating the emergency declaration.

That proposal, also signed by Councilmembers John Lee and Ysabel Jurado, now heads to Raman’s committee for deliberations.

While some on the council have already voiced support for repealing the emergency declaration, others say they are open to the idea — but only if there is a seamless transition.

“I want to make sure that if we do wind it down, that we do it responsibly,” said Councilmember Bob Blumenfield, who represents the southwest San Fernando Valley.

Blumenfield wants to protect Executive Directive 1, which was issued by Bass shortly after she declared the local emergency, by enshrining its provisions into city law. The directive lifts height limits and other planning restrictions for 100% affordable housing developments, which charge rents below market rates.

Raman said the city must confront a number of issues stemming from the homelessness crisis, such as improving data collection. But she, too, voiced interest in exploring the end of the emergency declaration.

“This is also an extremely important conversation, and it is one I am eager to have,” she said.

Fred Grandy, who has played the character Gopher on “The Love Boat” for nine years, confirmed that he is leaving the ABC series to run for Congress in his native Sioux City, Iowa.

Grandy, 37, said he will run as a Republican in the state’s sixth congressional district, where he once worked as a congressman’s aide prior to beginning his acting career.

“The Love Boat” already has completed filming of this season’s episodes, so Grandy will continue to be seen on new shows scheduled to air through the spring.

WASHINGTON — A Starship spun out of control in suborbital flight on Tuesday, failing to meet critical testing goals set by SpaceX in its plans for a mission to Mars. A poll released last week showed the national brand reputation for Tesla, once revered, had cratered. And later that same day, House Republicans passed a bill that would balloon the federal deficit.

It has been a challenging period for Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, who not long ago thought he had conquered the private sector and could, in short order, do the same with the federal government. That all ended Wednesday evening with his announcement he is leaving the Trump administration.

“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,” Musk wrote on X, his social media platform.

The mission of the program he called the Department of Government Efficiency “will only strengthen over time as it becomes a way of life throughout the government,” he added.

Musk’s departure comes on the heels of a ruling from a federal judge in Washington on Wednesday questioning Musk’s initial appointment as a temporary government employee and, by extension, whether any of his work for DOGE was constitutional.

“I thought there were problems,” Musk said in a recent interview with the Washington Post, “but it sure is an uphill battle trying to improve things in D.C., to say the least.”

Growing conflicts with Trump

Musk’s role as an omnipresent advisor to President Trump began to wane weeks ago, amid public backlash against DOGE’s cuts to treasured government programs — from cancer research to the National Park Service — and after Trump bucked Musk’s counsel on economic policy, launching a global trade war that jolted supply chains and financial markets.

But the entrepreneur has grown increasingly vocal with criticism of the Trump administration this week, stating that a megabill pushed by the White House proposing an overhaul to the tax code risks undermining his efforts to cut government spending.

Musk responded to a user on X, his social media platform, on Monday lamenting that House Republicans “won’t vote” to codify DOGE’s cuts. “Did my best,” he wrote.

“I was disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly, which increases the budget deficit, not decrease it, and undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing,” Musk explained further in an interview with “CBS Sunday Morning” later in the week. “I think a bill can be big, or it can be beautiful, but I don’t know if it can be both. My personal opinion.”

The “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” would increase border security and defense spending, renew tax cuts passed in 2017 and extend a new tax deduction to seniors, while eliminating green energy tax benefits and cutting $1 trillion in funding to Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.

Despite the cuts, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates the bill would add so much money to the debt that Congress may be forced to execute cuts across the board, including hundreds of billions to Medicare, in a process known as sequestration.

Hours after the CBS interview aired, the White House appeared to respond directly to Musk with the release of a press release titled “FACT: One, Big, Beautiful Bill Cuts Spending, Fuels Growth.” And Trump responded directly from the Oval Office, noting Democratic opposition and the challenges of unifying a fractious GOP caucus. Negotiations with the Senate will result in changes to the legislation, Trump said.

“My reaction’s a lot of things,” Trump said. “I’m not happy about certain aspects of it, but I’m thrilled by other aspects of it.”

“That’s the way they go,” he added. “It’s very big. It’s the big, beautiful bill.”

Cuts in question

It is unclear whether Musk succeeded in making the government more efficient, regardless of what Congress does.

While the DOGE program originally set a goal of cutting $2 trillion in federal spending, Musk ultimately revised that target down dramatically, to $150 billion. The program’s “wall of receipts” claims that $175 billion has been saved, but the Treasury Department’s Bureau of the Fiscal Service has documented an increase in spending over last year.

“DOGE is just becoming the whipping boy for everything,” Musk said in the Post interview this week. “So, like, something bad would happen anywhere, and we would get blamed for it even if we had nothing to do with it.”

Musk had been brought into the Trump administration designated as a special government employee, a position limited to 130 days that does not require Senate approval.

But the legal case making its way through the Washington courtroom of U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan is questioning the entire arrangement.

The White House attempted to “minimize Musk’s role, framing him as a mere advisor without any formal authority,” Chutkan wrote, while granting him broad powers that gave him “unauthorized access” to “private and proprietary information,” like Social Security numbers and medical records. Those actions, Chutkan added, provide the basis for parties to claim Musk inflicted substantial injury in a legal challenge.

‘I think I’ve done enough’

Musk was scheduled to speak on Tuesday after SpaceX’s Starship test launch, setting out the road ahead to “making life multiplanetary.” But he never appeared after the spacecraft failed early on in its planned trajectory to orbit Earth.

The SpaceX Starship rocket is launched Tuesday in Texas. It later disintegrated over the Indian Ocean, officials said.

(Sergio Flores / AFP / Getty Images)

Starship is supposed to be the vehicle that returns Americans to the moon in just two years. NASA, in conjunction with U.S. private sector companies, is in a close race with China to return humans to the moon for the first time since the end of the Apollo program.

But none of Musk’s endeavors has suffered more than his electric car company, Tesla, which saw a 71% plunge in profits in the first quarter of 2025 and a 50% drop in stock value from its highs in December. An Axios Harris Poll released last week found that Tesla dropped in its reputation ranking of America’s 100 most visible companies to 95th place, down from eighth in 2021 and 63rd last year.

The reputational damage to Tesla, setbacks at SpaceX and limits to his influence on Trump appear to be cautioning Musk to step back from his political activity.

“I think in terms of political spending, I’m going to do a lot less in the future,” Musk told Bloomberg News on May 20, during the Qatar Economic Forum. “I think I’ve done enough.”

What else you should be reading

The must-read: 217 days and counting: Trump’s rules slow the release of migrant children to their families
The deep dive: Villaraigosa, despite climate credentials, pivots toward oil industry in run for governor
The L.A. Times Special: Supreme Court clears way for massive copper mine on Apache sacred land

More to come,
Michael Wilner

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WASHINGTON — Dressed in a pink pullover, the 17-year-old girl rested her head in her hands, weighing her bleak options from the empty room of a shelter in Poughkeepsie, N.Y.

During a video call into an immigration courtroom in Manhattan, she listened as a lawyer explained to a judge how new regulations imposed by President Trump’s administration — for DNA testing, income verification and more — have hobbled efforts to reunite with her parents in the U.S. for more than 70 days.

As the administration’s aggressive efforts to curtail migration have taken shape, including unparalleled removals of men to prisons in other countries, migrant children are being separated for long periods from the relatives they had hoped to live with after crossing into the U.S.

Under the Trump rules, migrant children have stayed in shelters an average of 217 days before being released to family members, according to new data from the Health and Human Services Department’s Office of Refugee Resettlement. During the Biden administration, migrant children spent an average of 35 days in shelters before being released to relatives.

“Collectively, these policy changes have resulted in children across the country being separated from their loving families, while the government denies their release, unnecessarily prolonging their detention,” lawyers for the National Center for Youth Law argued in court documents submitted May 8.

The Trump administration, however, has argued that the new rules will ensure the children are put in safe homes and prevent traffickers from illegally bringing children into the country.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Health secretary, told lawmakers in Congress this month: “Nobody gets a kid without showing that they are a family member.”

The family situation for the 17-year-old, and her 14-year-old brother who came with her from the Dominican Republic, is complicated. Their parents, who were living apart, were already in the U.S. Their children were trying to reunite with them to leave behind a problematic living situation with a stepmother in their home country.

After 70 days in detention, the teen girl seemed to wonder if she would ever get back to her mother or father in the U.S. If she agreed to leave America, she asked the judge, how quickly would she be sent back to her home country?

“Pretty soon,” the judge said, before adding: “It doesn’t feel nice to be in that shelter all the time.”

The siblings, whom the Associated Press agreed not to identify at the request of their mother and because they are minors, are not alone. Thousands of children have made the trek from Guatemala, Haiti, Mexico and other countries, often alone on the promise of settling with a family member already in the U.S.

They’ve faced longer waits in federal custody as officials perform DNA testing, verify family members’ incomes and inspect homes before releasing the children. The new rules also require adults who sponsor children to provide U.S.-issued identification.

The federal government released only 45 children to sponsors last month, even as more than 2,200 children remained in custody.

Child stays in shelter as Trump requires DNA testing

Under the Biden administration, officials tried to release children to eligible adult sponsors within 30 days, reuniting many families quickly. But the approach also yielded errors, with some children being released to adults who forced them to work illegally, or to people who provided clearly false identification and addresses.

Trump’s Republican administration has said its requirements will prevent children from being placed in homes where they may be at risk for abuse or exploited for child labor. Officials are conducting a review of 65,000 “notices of concerns” that were submitted to the federal government involving thousands of children who have been placed with adult sponsors since 2023.

Already, the Justice Department indicted a man on allegations he enticed a 14-year-old girl to travel from Guatemala to the U.S., then falsely claimed she was his sister to gain custody as her sponsor.

DNA testing and ID requirements for child protection are taking time

Immigration advocacy groups have sued the Trump administration seeking to block the more rigorous requirements on behalf of parents and adult siblings who are waiting to bring migrant children into their homes.

“We have a lot of children stuck … simply because they are awaiting DNA testing,” immigration lawyer Tatine Darker, of Church World Service, told the Manhattan judge as she sat next to the Dominican girl.

Five other children appeared in court that day from shelters in New York and New England, all saying they experienced delays in being released to their relatives.

The Trump administration’s latest guidance on DNA testing says the process generally takes at least two weeks, when accounting for case review and shipping results.

But some relatives have waited a month or longer just to get a test, said Molly Chew, a legal aide at Vecina. The organization is ending its work supporting guardians in reunification because of federal funding cuts and other legal and political challenges to juvenile immigration programs. DNA Diagnostics Centers, which is conducting the tests for the federal government, did not respond to a request for comment.

Plaintiffs in the class-action lawsuit filed by the National Center for Youth Law have also cataloged long wait times and slow DNA results. One mother in Florida said she had been waiting at least a month just to get a DNA appointment, according to testimony submitted to the court.

Another mother waited three weeks for results. But by the time those came through in April, the Trump administration had introduced a new rule that required her to provide pay stubs she doesn’t have. She filed bank statements instead. Her children were released 10 weeks after her application was submitted, according to court documents filed Tuesday.

Many parents living in the U.S. without work authorization do not have income documents or U.S. identification documents, such as visas or driver’s licenses.

The siblings being held at the Poughkeepsie shelter are in that conundrum, said Darker, the New York immigration lawyer. They crossed the U.S.-Mexico border in March with their 25-year-old sister and her children, who were quickly deported.

Their mother said she moved to New Jersey a few years ago to earn money to support them. She couldn’t meet the new income reporting requirements. Their father, also from the Dominican Republic, lives in Boston and agreed to take them. But the DNA testing process has taken weeks. The AP could not reach him for comment.

She said her children are downcast and now simply want to return to the Dominican Republic.

“My children are going to return because they can’t take it anymore,” the mother said in Spanish. She noted that her children will have been in the shelter three months on Sunday.

Attanasio and Seitz write for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — A federal trade court on Wednesday blocked President Trump from imposing sweeping tariffs on imports under an emergency-powers law.

The ruling from a three-judge panel at the New York-based Court of International Trade came after several lawsuits arguing Trump has exceeded his authority, left U.S. trade policy dependent on his whims and unleashed economic chaos.

The White House did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment. The Trump administration is expected to appeal.

At least seven lawsuits are challenging the levies, the centerpiece of Trump’s trade policy.

Tariffs must typically be approved by Congress, but Trump has says he has the power to act because the country’s trade deficits amount to a national emergency. He imposed tariffs on most of the countries in the world at one point, sending markets reeling.

The plaintiffs argue that the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act does not authorize the use of tariffs.

Even if it did, they say, the trade deficit does not meet the law’s requirement that an emergency be triggered only by an “unusual and extraordinary threat.” The U.S. has run a trade deficit with the rest of the world for 49 consecutive years.

Trump’s tendency to levy extremely high import taxes and then retreat has created what’s known as the “TACO” trade, an acronym coined by the Financial Times’ Robert Armstrong that stands for “Trump Always Chickens Out.” Markets generally sell off when Trump makes his tariff threats and then recover after he backs down.

Trump was visibly offended when asked about the phrase Wednesday and rejected the idea that he’s “chickening out,” saying that the reporter’s inquiry was “nasty.”

“You call that chickening out?” Trump said. “It’s called negotiation,” adding that he sets a “ridiculous high number and I go down a little bit, you know, a little bit” until the figure is more reasonable.

Trump defended his approach of jacking up tariff rates to 145% on Chinese goods, only to pull back to 30% for 90 days of negotiations. He similarly last week threatened to impose a 50% tax on goods from the European Union starting in June, only to delay the tariff hike until July 9 so that negotiations can occur while the baseline 10% tariff continues to be charged. Similar dramas have played out over autos, electronics and the universal tariffs that Trump announced on April 2 that were based in part on individual trade deficits with other countries.

Trump imposed tariffs on most of the countries in the world in an effort to reverse America’s massive and longstanding trade deficits. He earlier plastered levies on imports from Canada, China and Mexico to combat the illegal flow of immigrants and the synthetic opioids across the U.S. border.

His administration argues that courts approved then-President Richard Nixon’s emergency use of tariffs in 1971, and that only Congress, and not the courts, can determine the “political” question of whether the president’s rationale for declaring an emergency complies with the law.

Trump’s Liberation Day tariffs shook global financial markets and led many economists to downgrade the outlook for U.S. economic growth. So far, though, the tariffs appear to have had little impact on the world’s largest economy.

A lawsuit was filed by a group of small businesses, including a wine importer, V.O.S. Selections, whose owner has said the tariffs are having a major impact and his company may not survive.

A dozen states also filed suit, led by Oregon. “This ruling reaffirms that our laws matter, and that trade decisions can’t be made on the president’s whim,” Atty. Gen. Dan Rayfield said.

Whitehurst and Boak write for the Associated Press. A.P. writers Zeke Miller and Paul Wiseman contributed to this report.

The U.S. Justice Department has launched 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 to compete in school sports, federal officials announced Wednesday.

The Justice Department is also throwing its support behind a pending lawsuit alleging similar violations of girls’ rights in the Riverside Unified School District, said U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli, who oversees much of the Los Angeles region, and Assistant Atty. Gen. Harmeet Dhillon, who heads the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.

Transgender track athletes have come under intense scrutiny in recent months in both Jurupa Valley and Riverside, with anti-LGBTQ+ activists attacking them on social media and screaming opposition to their competing at school meets.

Essayli and Dhillon, both Californians appointed under President Trump, have long fought against transgender rights in the state. Their announcements came one day after Trump threatened to withhold federal funding from California for allowing transgender youth to participate in sports.

The legal actions are just the latest attempts by the Trump administration to scale back transgender rights nationwide, including by bringing the fight to California — which has the nation’s largest queer population and some of its most robust LGBTQ+ legal protections — and targeting individual student athletes in the state.

Both Trump in his threats Tuesday and Essayli and Dhillon in their announcement of the investigation Wednesday appeared to reference the recent success of a 16-year-old transgender track athlete at Jurupa Valley High School named AB Hernandez. Trump wrongly suggested that Hernandez had won “everything” at a recent meet — which Hernandez didn’t do.

In a comment to The Times on Wednesday, Hernandez’s mother, Nereyda Hernandez, said it was heartbreaking to see her child being attacked “simply for being who they are,” and despite following all California laws and policies for competing.

“My child is a transgender student-athlete, a hardworking, disciplined, and passionate young person who just wants to play sports, continue to build friendships, and grow into their fullest potential like any other child,” her mother said.

The mother of another transgender high school track athlete in Riverside County who is the subject of the pending lawsuit the Justice Department is now backing declined to comment Wednesday.

The Justice Department said it had sent letters of legal notice to California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta, state Supt. of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond, the California Interscholastic Federation and Jurupa Unified.

The U.S. Department of Education had previously announced in February that it was investigating the CIF for allowing transgender athletes to compete. Dhillon said the two federal departments would coordinate their investigations.

Bonta has defended state laws protecting transgender youth, students and athletes, and advised school systems and other institutions in the state, such as hospitals, to adhere to state LGBTQ+ laws — even in the face of various Trump executive orders aimed at curtailing the rights of and healthcare for transgender youth. On Wednesday, his office said it remained “committed to defending and upholding California laws.”

Scott Roark, a spokesman for the California Department of Education, said his agency could not comment. Jacquie Paul, a spokesperson for Jurupa Unified, said the school system had yet to receive the letter Wednesday, and “without further information” could not comment. A spokesperson for the Riverside Unified School District also declined to comment, citing the pending litigation.

The CIF, in a statement, said it “values all of our student-athletes and we will continue to uphold our mission of providing students with the opportunity to belong, connect, and compete while complying with California law and Education Code.”

However, the sports federation also changed its rules for the upcoming 2025 CIF State Track and Field Championships, saying a cisgender girl who is bumped from qualifying for event finals by a transgender athlete would still be allowed to compete and would also be awarded the medal for whichever place they would have claimed were the transgender athlete not competing.

The changes brought renewed criticism from advocates on both sides of the political issue, including Chino Valley Unified school board President Sonja Shaw. Shaw is a Trump supporter running for state schools superintendent who has challenged pro-LGBTQ+ laws statewide and supports the latest investigation. She said that, in making the changes, CIF was “admitting” that girls “are being pushed out of their own sports.”

Dhillon said her office’s “pattern or practice” investigation will consider whether California’s laws and the CIF policies violate Title IX, a 1972 federal civil rights law prohibiting sex discrimination in educational programs and activities that receive federal funding.

Title IX has been used in the past to win rights for transgender people, but the Trump administration has taken a strikingly different view of the law — and cited it as a reason transgender rights must be rolled back.

Dhillon said the law “exists to protect women and girls in education,” that it is “perverse to allow males to compete against girls, invade their private spaces, and take their trophies,” and that her division would “aggressively defend women’s hard-fought rights to equal educational opportunities.”

Essayli said in a statement that his office would “work tirelessly to protect girls’ sports and stop anyone — public officials included — from violating women’s civil rights.”

LGBTQ+ advocates, civic institutions in California and many Democratic lawmakers in the state have denounced the framing of transgender inclusion in sports as diminishing the rights of women and girls and accused Trump and other Republicans of attacking transgender people — about 1% of the U.S. population — simply because they make for an easy and vulnerable political target.

Kristi Hirst, co-founder of the public education advocacy group Our Schools USA, said the Justice Department’s actions amounted to “bullying minors and using taxpayer resources to do so,” and that a “better use of public dollars would be for the Justice Department to affirm that all kids possess civil rights, and protect the very students being targeted today.”

The “pattern or practice” investigation is the second such investigation that Dhillon’s office has launched in the L.A. region in as many months. It’s also investigating Los Angeles County over its process for issuing gun permits.

Essayli’s separate decision to back the Riverside lawsuit adds another wrinkle to an already complicated case.

The group Save Girls’ Sports is suing over the inclusion of a transgender athlete in a girls’ track meet in October, a decision they allege unfairly bumped a cisgender girl from competition, and over a decision by high school officials to block students from wearing shirts that read, “IT’S COMMON SENSE. XX [does not equal] XY,” a reference to the different chromosome pairings of biological females and males.

Julianne Fleischer, an attorney with Advocates for Faith & Freedom who is representing Save Girls’ Sports, said Wednesday that Essayli’s decision to weigh in on behalf of the group was welcome.

“This case has always been about common sense, fairness, and the plain meaning of the law,” Fleischer said in a statement. “Girls’ sports were never meant to be a social experiment. They exist so that girls can win, lead and thrive on a level playing field.”

It was unclear how the case would be affected by Essayli’s interest.

The state and school district are asking for the lawsuit to be dismissed. A hearing is scheduled next month.

Essayli, formerly a state Assembly member from Riverside County, made his name in politics in part by attacking what he has called the “woke” policies of California’s liberal majority in Sacramento. Shortly before he was appointed as U.S. attorney last month, other California lawmakers blocked a bill he introduced that would have banned transgender athletes from female sports.

Hernandez, the mother of the targeted Jurupa Valley athlete, said Trump and other officials were bullying children by “weaponizing misinformation and fear instead of embracing truth, compassion and respect,” and asked Trump to reconsider.

“I respectfully request you to open your heart and mind to learn about the LGBTQ+ community,” she said, “not from the voices of fear or division, but from the people living these lives with courage, love and dignity.”

American universities have long feared that the Chinese government will restrict its country’s students from attending institutions that cross Beijing’s sensitive political lines.

Universities still fear that consequence today, but the most immediate threat is no longer posed by the Chinese government. Now, as the latest punishment meted out to the Trump administration’s preeminent academic scapegoat shows, it’s our own government posing the threat.

In a May 22 letter, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced she revoked Harvard University’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification, meaning the university’s thousands of international students must transfer immediately or lose their legal status. Harvard can no longer enroll future international students either.

Noem cited Harvard’s failure to hand over international student disciplinary records in response to a prior letter and, disturbingly, the Trump administration’s desire to “root out the evils of anti-Americanism” on campus. Among the most alarming demands in this latest missive was that Harvard supply all video of “any protest activity” by any international student within the last five years.

Harvard immediately sued Noem and her department and other agencies, rightfully calling the revocation “a blatant violation of the First Amendment,” and within hours a judge issued a temporary restraining order against the revocation.

“Let this serve as a warning to all universities and academic institutions across the country,” Noem wrote on X about the punishment. And on Tuesday, the administration halted interviews for all new student visas.

This is not how a free country treats its schools — or the international visitors who attend them.

Noem’s warning will, no doubt, be heard loud and clear. That’s because universities — which depend on international students’ tuition dollars — have already had reason to worry that they will lose access to international students for displeasing censorial government officials.

In 2010, Beijing revoked recognition of the University of Calgary’s accreditation in China, meaning Chinese students at the Canadian school suddenly risked paying for a degree worth little at home. The reason? The university’s granting of an honorary degree to the Dalai Lama the year before. “We have offended our Chinese partners by the very fact of bringing in the Dalai Lama, and we have work to resolve that issue,” a spokesperson said.

Beijing restored recognition over a year later, but many Chinese students had already left. Damage done.

Similarly, when UC San Diego hosted the Dalai Lama as commencement speaker in 2017, punishment followed. The China Scholarship Council suspended funding for academics intending to study at UCSD, and an article in the state media outlet Global Times recommended that Chinese authorities “not recognize diplomas or degree certificates issued by the university.”

This kind of direct punishment doesn’t happen very frequently. But the threat always exists, and it creates fear that administrators take into account when deciding how their universities operate.

American universities now must fear that they will suffer this penalty too, but at an even greater scale: revocation of access not just to students from China, but all international students. That’s a huge potential loss. At Harvard, for example, international students make up a whopping 27% of total enrollment.

Whether they publicly acknowledge it or not, university leaders probably are considering whether they need to adjust their behavior to avoid seeing international student tuition funds dry up.

Will our colleges and universities increase censorship and surveillance of international students? Avoid inviting commencement speakers disfavored by the Trump administration? Pressure academic departments against hiring any professors whose social media comments or areas of research will catch the eye of mercurial government officials?

And, equally disturbing, will they be willing to admit that they are now making these calculations at all? Unlike direct punishments by the Trump administration or Beijing, this chilling effect is likely to be largely invisible.

Harvard might be able to survive without international students’ tuition. But a vast number of other universities could not. The nation as a whole would feel their loss too: In the 2023-24 academic year, international students contributed a record-breaking $43.8 billion to the American economy.

And these students — who have uprooted their lives for the promise of what American education offers — are the ones who will suffer the most, as they experience weeks or months of panic and upheaval while being used as pawns in this campaign to punish higher ed.

If the Trump administration is seeking to root out “anti-Americanism,” it can begin by surveying its own behavior in recent months. Freedom of expression is one of our country’s most cherished values. Censorship, surveillance and punishment of government critics do not belong here.

Sarah McLaughlin is senior scholar on global expression at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression and author of the forthcoming book “Authoritarians in the Academy: How the Internationalization of Higher Education and Borderless Censorship Threaten Free Speech.”

A federal judge in Vermont on Wednesday released a Russian-born scientist and Harvard University researcher from immigration custody as she deals with a criminal charge of smuggling frog embryos into the United States.

Colleagues and academics testified on Kseniia Petrova’s behalf, saying she is doing valuable research to advance cures for cancer.

“It is excellent science,” Michael West, a scientist and entrepreneur in the biotech industry, testified on Petrova’s research papers. He said he does not know Petrova, but has become acquainted with her published work, citing one in which she explains that “mapping embryonic development [can produce] novel ways of intervening in the biology of regeneration and aging.”

West said that Petrova’s medical research skills are highly sought after and that he himself would hire her “in a heartbeat.”

Petrova, 30, is currently in the custody of the U.S. Marshals Service in Louisiana. She is expected to be brought to Massachusetts as early as Friday in preparation for a bail hearing next week on the smuggling charge, lawyers said in court.

“We are gratified that today’s hearing gave us the opportunity to present clear and convincing evidence that Kseniia Petrova was not carrying anything dangerous or unlawful, and that customs officers at Logan International Airport had no legal authority to revoke her visa or detain her,” Petrova’s lawyer, Gregory Romanovsky, said in a statement. “At today’s hearing, we demonstrated that Kseniia is neither a danger to the community nor a flight risk, and does not belong in immigration detention.”

Petrova had been vacationing in France, where she stopped at a lab specializing in splicing superfine sections of frog embryos and obtained a package of samples to be used for research.

As she passed through a U.S. Customs and Border Protection checkpoint in Boston Logan International Airport in February, Petrova was questioned about the samples. She told the Associated Press in an interview last month that she did not realize the items needed to be declared and was not trying to sneak anything into the country. After an interrogation, Petrova was told her visa was being canceled.

After being detained by immigration officials, she filed a petition in Vermont seeking her release. She was briefly detained in Vermont before she was brought to Louisiana.

Petrova was charged with smuggling earlier this month as U.S. District Judge Christina Reiss in Burlington, Vt., set the hearing date on her petition. Reiss ruled Wednesday that the immigration officers’ actions were unlawful, that Petrova didn’t present a danger, and that the embryos were non-living, non-hazardous and “posed a threat to no one.”

Romanovsky had asked Reiss to issue an order to stop the possibility of ICE re-detaining Petrova if she is also released from detention in Massachusetts.

Reiss said she was reluctant “to enjoin an executive agency from undertaking future actions which are uncertain” and would rely on U.S. Department of Justice attorney Jeffrey Hartman’s comments that the government has no intention at this time to rearrest Petrova.

Romanovsky had said Customs and Border Protection officials had no legal basis for canceling Petrova’s visa and detaining her.

The Department of Homeland Security had said in a statement on the social media platform X that Petrova was detained after “lying to federal officers about carrying substances into the country.” They allege that messages on her phone “revealed she planned to smuggle the materials through customs without declaring them.”

Harvard had said in a statement that the university “continues to monitor the situation.”

McCormack writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — Elon Musk is criticizing the centerpiece of President Trump’s legislative agenda, a significant fracture in a partnership that was forged during last year’s campaign and was poised to reshape American politics and the federal government.

The billionaire entrepreneur, who supported Trump’s candidacy with at least $250 million and has worked for his administration as a senior advisor, said he was “disappointed” by what the president calls his “big, beautiful bill.”

The legislation includes a mix of tax cuts and enhanced immigration enforcement. While speaking to CBS, Musk described it as a “massive spending bill” that increases the federal deficit and “undermines the work” of his so-called Department of Government Efficiency, which is not a government agency.

“I think a bill can be big or it could be beautiful,” Musk said. “But I don’t know if it could be both.”

His CBS interview came out Tuesday night. Trump, speaking in the Oval Office on Wednesday, defended his agenda by talking about the delicate politics involved with negotiating the legislation.

“I’m not happy about certain aspects of it, but I’m thrilled by other aspects of it,” he said.

Trump also suggested that more changes could be made.

“We’re going to see what happens,” he said. “It’s got a way to go.”

Republicans recently pushed the measure through the House and are debating it in the Senate.

Musk’s comments come as he steps back from his government work, rededicating himself to his electric automaker Tesla and rocket manufacturer SpaceX. He’s also said he’ll reduce his political spending, because “I think I’ve done enough.”

At times, he’s seemed chastened by his experience working in government. Although he hoped that DOGE would generate $1 trillion in spending cuts, he’s fallen far short of that target.

“The federal bureaucracy situation is much worse than I realized,” he told the Washington Post. “I thought there were problems, but it sure is an uphill battle trying to improve things in D.C., to say the least.”

The White House is set to send proposed rescissions, a mechanism used to cancel previously authorized spending, to Capitol Hill to solidify some of DOGE’s cuts.

A spokesperson for the Office of Management and Budget said the package will include $1.1 billion from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which funds NPR and PBS, and $8.3 billion in foreign assistance.

Musk had previously been energized by the opportunity to reshape Washington. He wore campaign hats in the White House, held campaign rallies and talked about excessive spending as an existential crisis.

He often tended to be effusive in his praise of Trump.

“The more I’ve gotten to know President Trump, the more I like the guy,” Musk said in February. “Frankly, I love him.”

Trump repaid the favor, describing Musk as “a truly great American.” When Tesla faced declining sales, he turned the White House driveway into a makeshift showroom to illustrate his support.

It’s unclear if Musk’s comments about the bill will affect the legislative debate. During the transition period, he helped whip up opposition to a spending measure as the country stood on the brink of a federal government shutdown.

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has asked senators to make as few changes to the legislation as possible, saying that House Republicans reached a “very delicate balance” that could be upended with major changes. The narrowly divided House will have to vote again on final passage once the Senate alters the bill.

However, Musk’s criticism could embolden Republicans who want bigger spending cuts. Republican Utah Sen. Mike Lee reposted a Fox News story about Musk’s interview while adding his own take on the measure, saying there was “still time to fix it.”

“The Senate version will be more aggressive,” Lee said. “It can, it must, and it will be. Or it won’t pass.”

Only two Republicans — Reps. Warren Davidson of Ohio and Thomas Massie of Kentucky — voted against the bill when the House took up the measure last week.

Davidson took note of Musk’s comments on social media.

“Hopefully, the Senate will succeed with the Big Beautiful Bill where the House missed the moment,” he wrote. “Don’t hope someone else will cut deficits someday, know it has been done this Congress.”

The Congressional Budget Office, in a preliminary estimate, said the tax provisions would increase federal deficits by $3.8 trillion over the decade, while the changes to Medicaid, food stamps and other services would reduce spending by slightly more than $1 trillion over the same period.

House Republican leaders say increased economic growth would allow the bill to be deficit neutral or reducing, but outside watchdogs are skeptical. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates the bill would add $3 trillion to the debt, including interest, over the next decade.

Megerian and Freking write for the Associated Press. AP writer Lisa Mascaro contributed to this report.

FRANKFURT, Germany — Top officials at the European Union’s executive commission say they’re pushing hard for a trade deal with the Trump administration to avoid a 50% tariff on imported goods. Trump had threatened to impose the tariffs on June 1, but has pushed back the deadline to July 9, repeating an oft-used tactic in his trade war.

European negotiators are contending with Trump’s ever-changing and unpredictable tariff threats, but “still, they have to come up with something to hopefully pacify him,” said Bruce Stokes, visiting senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States.

Stokes also sees more at play than just a disagreement over trade deficits. Trump’s threats “are rooted in frustration with the EU that has little to do with trade,’’ Stokes said. “He doesn’t like the EU. He doesn’t like Germany.”

What exactly does Trump want? What can Europe offer? Here are the key areas where the two sides are squaring off.

Buy our stuff

Over and over, Trump has bemoaned the fact that Europe sells more things to Americans than it buys from Americans. The difference, or the trade deficit in goods, last year was 157 billion euros ($178 billion). But Europe says that when it comes to services — particularly digital services like online advertising and cloud computing — the U.S. sells more than it buys and that lowers the overall trade deficit to 48 billion euros, which is only about 3% of total trade. The European Commission says that means trade is “balanced.”

One way to shift the trade in goods would be for Europe to buy more liquefied natural gas by ship from the U.S. To do so, the EU could cut off the remaining imports of Russian pipeline gas and LNG. The commission is preparing legislation to force an end to those purchases — last year, some 19% of imports — by the end of 2027.

That would push European private companies to look for other sources of gas such as the U.S. However the shift away from Russia is already in motion and that “has obviously not been enough to satisfy,” said Laurent Ruseckas, a natural gas markets expert at S&P Global Commodities Insights Research.

The commission doesn’t buy gas itself but can use “moral suasion” to convince companies to turn to U.S. suppliers in coming years but “this is no silver bullet and nothing that can yield immediate results,” said Simone Tagliapietra, an energy analyst at the Bruegel think tank in Brussels.

Europe could buy more from U.S. defense contractors as part of its effort to deter further aggression from Russia after the invasion of Ukraine, says Carsten Brzeski, global chief of macro at ING bank. If European countries did increase their overall defense spending — another of Trump’s demands — their voters are likely to insist that the purchases go to defense contractors in Europe, not America, said Stokes of the German Marshall Fund. One way around that political obstacle would be for U.S. defense companies to build factories in Europe, but “that would take time,’’ he said.

The EU could also reduce its 10% tax on foreign cars— one of Trump’s long-standing grievances against Europe. “The United States is not going to export that many cars to Europe anyway … The Germans would be most resistant, but I don’t think they’re terribly worried about competition from America,’’ said Edward Alden, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. ”That would be a symbolic victory for the president.’’

A beef over beef

The U.S. has long complained about European regulations on food and agricultural products that keep out hormone-raised beef and chickens washed with chlorine. But experts aren’t expecting EU trade negotiators to offer any concessions at the bargaining table.

“The EU is unwilling to capitulate,” said Mary Lovely, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. “The EU has repeatedly said it will not change its sanitary rules, its rules on (genetically modified) crops, its rules on chlorinated chickens, things that have been longtime irritants for the U.S.’’

Backing down on those issues, she said, would mean that “the U.S. gets to set food safety (standards) for Europe.’’

Value-added tax

One of Trump’s pet peeves has been the value-added taxes used by European governments, a tax he says is a burden on U.S. companies.

Economists say this kind of tax, used by some 170 countries, is trade-neutral because it applies equally to imports and exports. A value-added tax, or VAT, is paid by the end purchaser at the cash register but differs from sales taxes in that it is calculated at each stage of the production process. In both cases, VAT and sales tax, imports and exports get the same treatment. The U.S. is an outlier in that it doesn’t use VAT.

There’s little chance countries will change their tax systems for Trump and the EU has ruled it out.

Negotiating strategy

Trump’s approach to negotiations has involved threats of astronomical tariffs – up to 145% in the case of China – before striking a deal for far lower levels. In any case, however, the White House has taken the stance that it won’t go below a 10% baseline. The threat of 50% for the EU is so high it means “an effective trade embargo,” said Brzeski, since it would impose costs that would make it unprofitable to import goods or mean charging consumers prices so high the goods would be uncompetitive.

Because the knottiest issues dividing the EU and U.S. — food safety standards, the VAT, regulation of tech companies — are so difficult “it is impossible to imagine them being resolved by the deadline,’’ Alden said. ”Possibly what you could have — and Trump has shown he is willing to do this — is a very small deal’’ like the one he announced May 8 with the United Kingdom.

Economists Oliver Rakau and Nicola Nobile of Oxford Economics wrote in a commentary Monday that if imposed, the 50% tariffs would reduce the collective economy of the 20 countries that use the euro currency by up to 1% next year and slash business investment by more than 6%.

The EU has offered the US a “zero for zero” outcome in which tariffs would be removed on both sides industrial goods including autos. Trump has dismissed that but EU officials have said it’s still on the table.

Lovely of the Peterson Institute sees the threats and bluster as Trump’s way of negotiating. “In the short run, I don’t think 50% is going to be our reality.’’

But she says Trump’s strategy adds to the uncertainty around U.S. policy that is paralyzing business. “It suggests that the U.S. is an unreliable trading partner, that it operates on whim and not on rule of law,’’ Lovely said. “Friend or foe, you’re not going to be treated well by this administration.’’

McHugh and Wiseman write for the Associated Press. Wiseman contributed to this report from Washington.

A visit to Los Angeles by Vice President George Bush has pulled in more than $500,000 for his 1988 presidential campaign. But perhaps even more important to Bush, the visit finally gave him a chance to hit his stride as a campaigner.

Many of the 600 people who heard Bush speak Wednesday night at a dinner in Century City are supporting him, so they were not expected to be critical of his performance. But even they were surprised at the power of Bush’s speech and with how he took on criticism of his candidacy.

“He was dynamic,” said Rod Rood, former head of the Los Angeles Community Redevelopment Agency and a longtime player in Republican politics. “It was one of the best political speeches I have ever heard.”

Los Angeles attorney Charles G. Bakaly III said the speech had reassured some of the powerful people in the room who have been watching Bush attempt to remain loyal to President Reagan while establishing his own identity.

“He sounded very confident,” said Bakaly. He was the most energetic I have heard him in a long time. That was a tough crowd in the sense that they have been called upon (to give money) many times. But I think the vice president reassured the people there that he knows what he has to do.”

Among those in the crowd were such prominent California businessmen as Donald Bren, president of the Irvine Co., and entertainment magnate Jerry Weintraub. Also attending the $1,000-a-plate dinner were such longtime backers of President Reagan as Margaret Brock, Holmes Tuttle and Armand Deutsch. Gov. George Deukmejian gave the introduction.

“It was the real George Bush that I know. I think he has made up his mind that he has to come out fighting,” said Tuttle, one of the wealthy Southern California Republicans who helped build Reagan’s political career.

Bush noted in his remarks that some have said his resume was in fact a liability, not an asset, because it looked like he was merely running on his resume.

“I don’t think it is ‘resume’ to have had a broad amount of experience and to try to bring experience to the presidency,” Bush told his audience. “I happen to think it is a plus, not a minus.”

Past Recounted

Noting that he has “never been much about talking about” himself, Bush then recounted his past, from being shot down as a Navy pilot in World War II to serving in the House, starting a business, being ambassador to China and running the CIA.

In a speech interrupted numerous times by applause, he got an especially strong response when he defended the CIA, which he ran in 1976-77, toward the end of the Ford Administration.

“I ran the Central Intelligence Agency and people say that is a liability. They say ‘You ought to tiptoe on that one.’ But I led something at a very difficult time, went in there when it had been demoralized by the attacks of a bunch of little untutored squirts from Capitol Hill (who were) going out there looking at these confidential documents without one single iota of concern about the legitimate security of this country.

“I stood up for the CIA then and I will stand up for it now,” shouted Bush.

Loyalty to Reagan

Bush also defended his reluctance to speak out against Reagan over the last six years, which some critics say has created an identity problem that must be overcome if Bush is to win the GOP nomination.

“When I became vice president I said I would sublimate my own passions to a certain degree and support this President and I’ve taken some flak for it. But that doesn’t bother me. As I (have said), ‘In the Bush family we don’t consider loyalty a character flaw, we consider it a strength.’

“And I am going to stand with this President until the end of our term, without turning my back on him when the going gets tough,” Bush said, in an apparent allusion to the Iran- contra scandal, the worst crisis of the Reagan presidency.

“I will stand shoulder to shoulder with this President and say, ‘Here is what we have accomplished.’ And there is going to be plenty of good things–and you give me half the credit for the good things and I’ll take all the credit for the flak and the static and I’ll come out a great big winner.”

Promising to make education, energy, low taxes and arms control his top goals as President, Bush ridiculed pundits who note that the last sitting vice president to be elected President was Martin Van Buren in 1836.

“You take what we have done and build on it. So I am not worried about the Martin Van Buren syndrome. Nor am I worried that I can create my own ideas and my own path to the future of this country.”