POLITICS

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.”

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Tuesday turned down a middle-school student’s claim he had a free-speech right to wear a T-shirt stating there are “only two genders.”

Over two dissents, the justices let stand a ruling that said a school may enforce a dress code to protect students from “hate speech” or bullying.

After three months of internal debate, the justices decided they would not take up another conservative culture-war challenge to progressive policies that protect LGBTQ+ youth.

Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. filed a 14-page dissent joined only by Justice Clarence Thomas. He said the case “presented an issue of great importance for our nation’s youth: whether public schools may suppress student speech because it expresses a viewpoint the schools disfavor.”

Liam Morrison, a seventh-grader from Massachusetts, said he was responding to his school’s promotion of Pride Month when students were encouraged to wear rainbow colors and posters urged them to “rise up to protect trans and gender-nonconforming students.”

Two years ago, he went to school wearing a black T-shirt that said “There are only two genders.”

A teacher reported him to the principal, who sent him home to change his shirt. A few weeks later, he returned with the word “censored” taped over the words “two genders” and was sent home again.

The T-shirt dispute asked the Supreme Court to decide whether school officials may limit the free expression of some students to protect others from messages they may see as offensive or hurtful.

In March, the court voted to hear a free-speech challenge to laws in California and 21 other states that prohibit licensed counselors from using “conversion therapy” with minors.

That case, like the one on school T-shirts, arose from appeals by the Alliance Defending Freedom, a Christian legal group. It has already won free-speech rulings that allowed a cake maker and a website designer to refuse to participate in same-sex weddings despite state laws that barred discrimination based on sexual orientation.

On April 22, the court sounded ready to rule for religious parents in Montgomery County, Md., who seek the right to have their young elementary children “opt out” of the classroom use of new “LGBTQ-inclusive” storybooks.

The T-shirt case came before the court shortly after President Trump’s executive order declaring the U.S. government will “recognize two sexes, male and female,” not “an ever-shifting concept of self-assessed gender identity.”

Although the Supreme Court has yet to rule on T-shirts and the 1st Amendment, lower courts have upheld limits imposed by schools.

In 2006, the 9th Circuit Court in a 2-1 decision upheld a move by school officials at Poway High School in San Diego to bar a student from wearing a T-shirt that said “Homosexuality is shameful.” The appeals court said students are free to speak on controversial matters, but they are not free to make “derogatory and injurious remarks directed at students’ minority status such as race, religion and sexual orientation.”

Other courts have ruled schools may prohibit a student from wearing a Confederate flag on a T-shirt.

In the new case from Massachusetts, the boy’s father said his son’s T-shirt message was not “directed at any particular person” but dealt with a “hot political topic.”

In their defense, school officials pointed to their policy against bullying and a dress code that says “clothing must not state, imply, or depict hate speech or imagery that target groups based on race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, religious affiliation, or any other classification.”

Lawyers for the Alliance Defending Freedom sued on the student’s behalf and argued the school violated his rights under the 1st Amendment. They lost before a federal judge in Boston who ruled for school officials and said the T-shirt “invaded the rights of the other students … to a safe and secure educational environment.”

The 1st Circuit Court agreed as well, noting that schools may limit free expression of students if they fear a particular message will cause a disruption or “poison the atmosphere” at school.

The Supreme Court’s most famous ruling on student rights arose during the Vietnam War. In 1969, the Warren court ruled for high school students who wore black armbands as a protest.

In Tinker vs. Des Moines, the court said students do not “shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate. … For school officials to justify prohibition of a particular expression of opinion, [they] must be able to show that its action was caused by something more than a mere desire to avoid the discomfort and unpleasantness that always accompany an unpopular viewpoint.”

The justices said then a symbolic protest should be permitted so long as it did not cause a “substantial disruption of or material interference with school activities.”

The attorneys for Liam Morrison contended he should win under that standard.

“This case isn’t about T-shirts. It’s about public school telling a middle-schooler that he isn’t allowed to express a view that differs from their own,” said David Cortman, an Alliance Defending Freedom attorney in the case of L.M. vs. Town of Middleborough.

WASHINGTON — When President Trump directed his attorney general last month to investigate online fundraising, he cited concerns that foreigners and fraudsters were using elaborate “schemes“ and “dummy accounts” to funnel illegal contributions to politicians and causes.

Instead of calling for an expansive probe, however, the president identified just one potential target: ActBlue, the Democrats’ online fundraising juggernaut, which has acknowledged receiving over 200 potentially illicit contributions last year from foreign internet addresses.

Trump’s announcement contained a glaring omission — his political committees also received scores of potentially problematic contributions.

An Associated Press review of donations to Trump over the past five years found 1,600 contributions from donors who live abroad, have close ties to foreign interests or failed to disclose basic information, often making it difficult, if not impossible, to identify them and verify the legality of their donations Among those was $5,000 linked to a derelict building, and $5,000 from a Chinese businessman who listed a La Quinta Inn as his address. Another sizable donation — $1 million — was made by the wife of an African oil and mining magnate.

It’s against the law for U.S. candidates and political committees to accept contributions from foreign nationals. Laws also place strict limits on donation amounts and prohibit the laundering of contributions to get around legal caps. For the most part, such donations have been policed by campaigns and the Federal Election Commission, with only the most egregious examples being targeted by federal law enforcement.

But after reclaiming the White House, Trump embarked on a campaign of retribution against his perceived enemies, launching broadsides against universities, law firms and his own former officials. If the Justice Department were to investigate ActBlue, it could imperil a key fundraising tool for Trump’s political rivals before the 2026 midterm elections, when Republicans’ threadbare House majority — and the president’s ability to pass an agenda through Congress — will be on the line.

“This is him taking direct aim at the center of Democratic and progressive fundraising to hamstring his political opponents,” said Ezra Reese, an attorney who leads the political law division at the Elias Law Group, a leading Democratic firm that does not represent ActBlue. “I don’t think there’s any question that they picked their target first. He’s not even pretending.”

Trump’s committees collected scores of donations from people living overseas

The White House did not respond to questions about Trump’s fundraising, including what sort of fraud prevention measures his committees have in place. Instead, a senior administration official pointed to the findings of a recent House Republican investigation of ActBlue that the White House alleges “uncovered specific evidence of potentially unlawful conduct.”

“The memorandum directs the attorney general to investigate this matter broadly, and she will follow the evidence and take appropriate action as warranted,” said the official, who insisted on anonymity to discuss the matter.

Neither the Justice Department nor Trump’s 2024 campaign co-manager Chris LaCivita responded to requests for comment.

U.S. citizens living abroad are free to donate to politicians back home. But it can be difficult even for campaigns to discern who is allowed to give and whether a person may be serving as a “straw” donor for someone else seeking to influence U.S. elections.

The AP identified only two Trump donors out of more than 200 living abroad whose U.S. citizenship was listed as “verified” in the president’s campaign finance reports. He received over 1,000 contributions from 150 donors who omitted key identifying details such as their city, state, address or country. Trump also received at least 90 contributions from people who did not give a full name, are listed as “anonymous” or whose donations include the notation “name not provided.”

Many of these Trump donors contributed through WinRed, the Republicans’ online fundraising platform that is the GOP’s answer to ActBlue. Only about three dozen of these contributions were rejected, most of which came from an unknown source and were paid in cryptocurrency, campaign finance disclosures show.

WinRed officials did not respond to a request for comment.

“Foreign money in our elections is a legitimate concern,” said Dan Weiner, a former Federal Election Commission attorney who is now director of the Brennan Center’s elections and government program. “What’s not legitimate is to single out one political opponent and pretend the problem is limited to them.”

Donating from a La Quinta Inn

Jiajun “Jack” Zhang, for example, is a jet-setting Chinese businessman whose Qingdao Scaffolding Co. boasts of being one of the “biggest manufacturers and suppliers in China” of scaffolding. In October, he used WinRed to donate $5,000 to Trump, campaign finance disclosures show.

Zhang lives in China’s Shandong province, according to his LinkedIn account, and is described in French business filings as a Chinese national. But his contribution to Trump lists a La Quinta Inn in Hawaiian Gardens, California, as his address, records show. The donation was made around the time that Zhang posted a photo on social media of his family visiting Disneyland, which is near the hotel.

Zhang did not respond to an email seeking comment.

Other potentially troublesome donations include four from unnamed donors listing an address of “999 Anonymous Dr.”

There is also a series of contributions made through WinRed that listed the donor’s address as a vacant building in Washington that was formerly a funeral home. The donor, identified only as “Alex, A” on Trump’s campaign finance report, gave nearly $5,000, spread across more than 40 separate transactions last year. Those types of donations tend to draw scrutiny from campaigns and regulators.

Regulators and watchdogs have also long been concerned about donations from individuals with ties to foreign interests. Trump has received many such contributions, including one in December from Nnenna Peters, the wife of Benedict Peters, a Nigerian billionaire who is the founder and CEO of oil and mining businesses.

Nnenna Peters, who goes by Ella, gave $1 million to Trump’s inaugural committee. A naturalized citizen, Nnenna Peters — who lives in Potomac, Maryland, a tony suburb of the capital — is allowed to make campaign donations.

Federal law, however, bars U.S. citizens from making contributions on behalf of a noncitizen spouse if the money is not a shared asset. For example, experts said, a husband could be prohibited from making a campaign donation using funds from a checking account solely in his wife’s name.

In practice, such a prohibition is hard to enforce because it is difficult to assess whether spouses are acting on their own accord or on behalf of significant others. Government watchdogs say donations like these raise the risk of an attempt to influence U.S. policy on behalf of a foreign interest.

That was precisely the kind of problem Trump cited in his executive order that singled out ActBlue.

Benedict Peters, as it turns out, has a lot to offer that could be of interest to Trump, who has made the extraction of natural resources a focus on his second administration. In particular, the Trump administration has sought to secure access to critical minerals that help power modern technology. Peters’ Aiteo Group markets itself as one of the largest energy conglomerates in Nigeria, while his company, Bravura Holdings, purports to hold the rights to vast critical mineral deposits across Africa.

His wife’s donation stands out in light of her past giving: She donated exclusively to Democrats, records show, including a $66,800 contribution to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign.

“This clearly could have come from her husband,” said Craig Holman, a registered lobbyist for Public Citizen, a Washington-based government watchdog group. “This is something the FEC should take a very, very close look at.”

Benedict and Ella Peters did not respond to requests for comment.

Indifference towards campaign finance rules

The questionable donations fit a pattern for Trump, who has in the past exhibited indifference toward campaign finance rules and used his presidential powers to assist those facing legal trouble in such matters.

In January, Trump’s Justice Department dropped its case against former Rep. Jeff Fortenberry, a Nebraska Republican accused of accepting a $30,000 contribution from a Nigerian billionaire. During his first term, Trump pardoned conservative commentator Dinesh D’Souza and Republican donor Michael Liberty, who were both convicted of using straw donors to evade contribution limits. He also pardoned former California Rep. Duncan Hunter, who was convicted in 2020 of stealing $250,000 from his campaign fund.

Trump’s political efforts have also drawn contributions from straw donors and foreigners who have been subjected to legal scrutiny.

Among them is Barry Zekelman, a Canadian steel industry billionaire, who was fined $975,000 in 2022 by the Federal Election Commission for funneling $1.75 million to America First Action, Trump’s official super PAC, in 2018. The contribution helped Zekelman secure a dinner with Trump at which steel tariffs were discussed.

Two Soviet-born U.S. citizens, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, were convicted in a straw donor scheme that funneled $325,000 to the same super PAC in the runup to Trump’s losing 2020 reelection campaign.

Jesse Benton, a Republican political operative, was convicted in 2022 of serving as a straw donor for a Russian businessman who contributed $25,000 to Trump’s 2016 campaign.

Democrats say Trump’s focus on ActBlue is a lot to stomach in light of Trump’s acceptance of questionable donations and his seeming lack of interest in enforcing campaign finance laws more generally. They noted that Trump in February fired a commissioner at the Federal Election Commission. The firing, followed by the resignation of a Republican commissioner, has denied the agency the quorum necessary to enforce campaign finance laws and regulations.

“It’s telling that while Trump and his allies attack grassroots-funded platforms like ours, their own campaigns have welcomed money from questionable sources,” ActBlue spokesperson Megan Hughes said.

Republicans counter that there is well-founded reason to investigate the Democratic platform, which eased some fraud detection protocols in 2024 before the presidential election.

Democrats are concerned about ActBlue’s future

There is, however, a political upside to investigating ActBlue. The platform has proved more successful than WinRed, the Republican platform designed to imitate it, which took in less than half of the $3.8 billion that ActBlue raised during the 2024 election cycle.

ActBlue representatives declined to say whether they have been contacted by the Justice Department.

ActBlue is expected to battle any investigation. It took a different approach when a Republican-led congressional committee launched an investigation in 2023. That committee’s findings turned out to be the basis for some of the allegations cited by Trump in his executive order.

Democrats, meanwhile, are preparing for the worst.

“There is a pervasive fear that ActBlue could cease to exist,” said Matt Hodges, a veteran Democratic operative who served as the director of engineering for Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign. “That’s the worst fear people have — that this will escalate or drain legal resources that hinder their ability to operate.”

He predicted that the Democrats could lose more than $10 million in the short term if ActBlue were forced to shut down. That has led some Democrats to begin thinking about alternatives, but they acknowledged it might be too late to create something as successful as ActBlue with the midterms around the corner.

Slodysko and Peoples write for the Associated Press. Peoples reported from New York.

WASHINGTON — A federal judge suggested the Trump administration was “manufacturing” chaos and said he hoped that “reason can get the better of rhetoric” in a scathing order in a case about government efforts to deport a handful of migrants from various countries to South Sudan.

In the order published Monday evening, Judge Brian Murphy wrote that he had given the Trump administration “remarkable flexibility with minimal oversight” in the case and emphasized the numerous times he attempted to work with the government.

“From the course of conduct, it is hard to come to any conclusion other than that Defendants invite a lack of clarity as a means of evasion,” the Boston-based Murphy wrote in the 17-page order.

Murphy oversees a case in which immigration advocates are attempting to prevent the Trump administration from sending migrants they’re trying to deport from the U.S. to countries that they’re not from without giving them a meaningful chance to protest their removal.

The judge said the men couldn’t advocate for themselves

In a hearing last week called to address reports that eight immigrants had been sent to South Sudan, Murphy said the men hadn’t been able to argue that the deportation could put them in danger.

But instead of ordering the government to return the men to the U.S. for hearings — as the plaintiffs wanted — he gave the government the option of holding the hearings in Djibouti where the plane had flown on its way to South Sudan as long as the men remained in U.S. government custody. Days later, the Trump administration filed another motion saying that Murphy was requiring them to hold “dangerous criminals in a sensitive location.”

But in his order Monday he emphasized repeatedly that it was the government’s “own suggestion” that they be allowed to process the men’s claims while they were still abroad.

“It turns out that having immigration proceedings on another continent is harder and more logistically cumbersome than Defendants anticipated,” Murphy wrote.

The government has argued that the men had a history with the immigration system, giving them prior opportunities to express a fear of being deported to a country outside their homeland. And the Trump administration has said that the men’s home — Cuba, Laos, Mexico, Myanmar, Vietnam and South Sudan — would not take them back.

The administration has also repeatedly emphasized the men’s criminal histories in the U.S. and portrayed them as national security threats.

The administration is relying on third countries

The Trump administration has increasingly relied on third countries to take immigrants who cannot be sent to their home countries for various reasons. Some countries simply refuse to take back their citizens being deported while others take back some but not all of their citizens. And some cannot be sent to their home countries because of concerns they’ll be tortured or harmed.

Historically that has meant that immigration enforcement officials have had to release people into the U.S. that it wants to deport but can’t.

But the Trump administration has leaned on other countries to take them. In the Western Hemisphere, El Salvador, Costa Rica and Panama have all agreed to take some people being removed from the U.S., with El Salvador being the most controversial example because it is holding people deported from the U.S. in a notorious prison.

The Trump administration has said it’s exploring other third countries for deportations.

Murphy said in his order that the eight men were initially told May 19 they’d be going to South Africa and then later that same day were told they were going to South Sudan. He noted that the U.S. government “has issued stark warnings regarding South Sudan.”

He said the men had fewer than 16 hours between being told they were going to be removed and going to the airport “most of which were non-waking hours” and “limited, if any” ability to talk to family or a lawyer. “Given the totality of the circumstances, it is hard to take seriously the idea that Defendants intended these individuals to have any real opportunity to make a valid claim,” the judge wrote.

Santana writes for the Associated Press.

Former Los Angeles Times reporter Maya Lau filed a federal lawsuit Tuesday against Los Angeles County, former Sheriff Alex Villanueva, a former undersheriff and a former detective, alleging that a criminal investigation into her activities as a journalist violated her 1st Amendment rights.

The suit comes less than a year after a Times article revealed that Lau had been the target of an L.A. County Sheriff’s Department probe that “was designed to intimidate and punish Lau for her reporting” about a leaked list of deputies with a history of misconduct, Lau’s attorneys alleged in an emailed statement.

Lau’s suit seeks unspecified damages to compensate her for alleged violations of her dignity and privacy, as well as the “continuous injuries” and anxiety she says in the complaint that she has faced in the wake of the revelation she had been investigated.

The suit details “six different counts of violating Ms. Lau’s rights under the U.S. constitution and California state law, including retaliation and civil conspiracy to deny constitutional rights,” according to the statement by Lau’s attorneys.

“It is an absolute outrage that the Sheriff’s Department would criminally investigate a journalist for doing her job,” Lau said in the statement. “I am bringing this lawsuit not just for my own sake, but to send a clear signal in the name of reporters everywhere: we will not be intimidated. The Sheriff’s Department needs to know that these kinds of tactics against journalists are illegal.”

The Sheriff’s Department said in an emailed statement that it had “not been officially served with this lawsuit” by late Tuesday afternoon.

“While these allegations stem from a prior administration, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department under Sheriff Robert G. Luna is firmly committed to upholding the Constitution, including the First Amendment,” the statement said. “We respect the vital role journalists play in holding agencies accountable and believe in the public’s right to a free and independent press.”

Villanueva said via email that he had not yet reviewed the complaint in full and that “under the advice of counsel, I do not comment on pending litigation.”

“What I can say is the investigation in question, like all investigations conducted by the Public Corruption Unit during my tenure as Sheriff of Los Angeles County, were based on facts that were presented to the Office of the Attorney General,” he said. “It is the political establishment, of which the LA Times is a part, that wishes to chill lawful investigations and criminal accountability with frivolous lawsuits such as this one.”

A spokesperson for the county counsel’s office declined further comment. The other defendants in the lawsuit, former Undersheriff Tim Murakami and former Detective Mark Lillienfeld, did not respond to requests for comment Tuesday afternoon.

In December 2017, The Times published a story by Lau about a list of about 300 problem deputies. A lengthy case file reviewed by The Times last year found that department investigators launched an initial probe into who provided Lau with the list. The agency’s investigation began when Jim McDonnell was sheriff in 2017. The Sheriff’s Department ultimately dropped the investigation without referring it for proscution after, as Lau’s complaint says, it “turned up no evidence connecting Ms. Lau to any crime.”

The case file reviewed by The Times last year stated that, after Villanueva became sheriff in 2018, he revived the investigation into Lau, which the complaint alleges was part of an “unlawful conspiracy” conducted as part of a policy of “retaliatory criminal charges against perceived opponents of LASD.”

Lillienfeld led the investigation, and Villanueva “delegated to Undersheriff Murakami his decision-making authority” in the probe, which Murakami ultimately referred to the state attorney general’s office for prosecution, Lau’s complaint says. In May 2024, the office declined to prosecute her, citing insufficient evidence.

But Lau alleges that the damage was already done and that her rights under the 1st Amendment and California’s Constitution had been violated. “If LASD’s actions are left unredressed,” according to the complaint, “journalists in Los Angeles will be chilled from reporting on matters of public concern out of fear that they will be investigated and prosecuted.”

The Sheriff’s Department told The Times last year that its probe of Lau was closed and that the department under Luna does not monitor journalists.

David Snyder, executive director of the First Amendment Coalition, a nonprofit free speech and press freedom advocacy organization, told The Times last year that reporting on leaked materials involving a matter of public concern is typically “protected under the 1st Amendment” even if a reporter is aware they were obtained illegally.

“You’re not authorized to break into a file cabinet to get records. You’re not authorized to hack computers. But receiving information that somebody else obtained unlawfully is not a crime,” Snyder said.

The saga of the leaked records began in 2014, when Diana Teran compiled a list of deputies with histories of disciplinary problems. Teran was working for the Office of Independent Review, which conducted oversight of the Sheriff’s Department until it closed down that July.

In 2015, Teran was hired by the Sheriff’s Department to serve in an internal watchdog role. In 2017, according to the investigative file reviewed by The Times last year, she heard that Times reporters including Lau had been asking questions about the list.

After investigating further and learning that the reporters had asked about specific details that matched her 2014 list, she grew worried that it had been leaked.

On Dec. 8, 2017, The Times ran an investigation by Lau and two other reporters that described some of the misconduct detailed in the list, from planting evidence and falsifying records to sexual assault. Some of the deputies on the list, the reporters found, had kept their jobs or been promoted.

Sheriff’s department investigators interviewed Teran and other department officials who all denied leaking the list. The investigation was dropped before Villanueva became sheriff in November 2018.

Several months later, Lillienfeld was assigned to investigate allegations that Teran and other oversight officials had illegally accessed department personnel records, reopening the probe into the leaked list.

Lillienfeld’s inquiry produced an 80-page report that was part of the case file reviewed by The Times last year. It detailed potential times when the list could have been leaked by Teran and stated that she denied doing so.

In fall 2021, Murakami sent the 300-page case file – which identified Lau, Teran, L.A. County Inspector General Max Huntsman, an assistant to Teran and an attorney in Huntsman’s office as suspects – to California Atty. General Rob Bonta. There was no probable cause to prosecute Lau, according to the complaint.

“Undersheriff Murakami alleged that Ms. Lau had engaged in conspiracy, theft of government property, unlawful access of a computer, burglary, and receiving stolen property,” the complaint says. “Ms. Lau did not commit any of these crimes.”

Bonta declined to prosecute the case.

“The retaliatory investigation against Ms. Lau is one example of how Alex Villanueva used the LASD to target and harass his political opponents,” said Justin Hill, an attorney at Loevy & Loevy representing Lau. “Our communities suffer when governmental leaders try to silence journalists and other individuals who hold those leaders accountable. This lawsuit seeks to re-affirm the protected role that journalism plays in our society.”

“Chrisley Knows Best” reality TV stars Todd Chrisley and Julie Chrisley may soon leave life in federal prison behind, thanks to President Trump.

The White House announced Tuesday that the president was set to pardon the imprisoned reality TV personalities nearly three years after they were convicted in 2022 of tax evasion and bank fraud. The Georgia couple gained popularity for their USA Network series, which showcased their luxurious lifestyle and zany family dynamic.

The White House posted a video of Trump on the phone with Todd and Julie’s 27-year-old daughter, Savannah Chrisley, who has publicly decried her parents’ conviction and the toll it has taken on their family. He called the younger Chrisley, who also starred in “Chrisley Knows Best,” “to inform her that he will be granting full pardons to her parents.”

“Trump Knows Best,” the tweet said.

A legal representative for the Chrisleys did not immediately respond to The Times’ request for comment on Tuesday.

A federal grand jury in Atlanta indicted the Chrisley parents on several charges including tax evasion, conspiracy and wire fraud. Prosecutors alleged the charges stemmed from a scheme, which lasted from 2007 to 2012, that involved the stars submitting fake financial statements to financial institutions to get loans worth millions of dollars. A second indictment was filed in February, and Todd, 56, and Julie Chrisley, 52, were convicted on all charges in June 2022.

In November of that year, the reality TV stars were sentenced to prison: Todd was sentenced to 12 years in federal prison and Julie received seven years. They also received 16 months probation each. In September 2024, Julie Chrisley was resentenced, but a federal judge upheld her seven-year sentence.

Since her parents’ convictions, Savannah has spoken out, strongly challenging the verdict. Over the years, she has alleged corruption in the court proceedings, described the alleged “nightmare” conditions of her parents’ prison facilities and touted plans to appeal their convictions — airing her grievances and hopes on her “Unlocked” podcast, “The Masked Singer” and even at the Republican National Convention in July, where she threw her support behind Trump. During the political event, she alleged her family “was persecuted by rogue prosecutors in Fulton County due to our public profile … and our conservative beliefs.”

“Donald J. Trump has only one conviction that matters, and that is his conviction to make America great again,” she added elsewhere in her RNC address.

On Tuesday, Savannah brought news of Trump’s intentions to pardon her parents to Instagram. Wearing a white and gold MAGA hat, Savannah shared her side of her call with President Trump.

“I have shed so many tears. The president called me personally as I was walking into Sam’s Club and notified me that he was signing … pardon paper[s] for both of my parents,” she said. “So both my parents are coming home tonight or tomorrow. I still don’t believe it’s real.

“The fact that the president called me — I will forever be grateful for President Trump, his administration and everyone along the way,” she said, adding later in her video she “vows” to stand alongside Trump and continue to expose “corruption.”

Federal agencies must do more to house struggling victims from January’s Eaton Fires, Rep. Judy Chu (D-Monterey Park) and advocacy groups argued Tuesday.

Chu hosted a roundtable at the Altadena Library with officials from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services and other agencies, where a dozen organizations assisting fire survivors pleaded for more assistance.

Even with the availability of federal vouchers and other housing aid, thousands of people remain bouncing between hotel rooms, living out of their cars or in other unstable housing situations, advocates said.

“Survivors of the Eaton Fire are slipping through the cracks,” Chu said at a press conference following the event.

Chu is urging FEMA to authorize a housing program called Direct Lease where FEMA directly rents apartments for disaster survivors who cannot find somewhere to live on their own. The Times reported this month that FEMA hasn’t implemented Direct Lease in Los Angeles even though it’s commonly made available after natural disasters nationwide, including the 2023 wildfires in Maui.

Nearly 13,000 homes were destroyed in January’s wildfires with more than half the losses in Altadena and surrounding areas.

FEMA and CalOES officials have said that their data shows thousands of rental units available across L.A. County, making the program unnecessary.

“We know from anecdotal evidence that that cannot be true,” Chu said. “It is far from the truth.”

Fire survivors have faced numerous barriers to finding permanent housing while they decide on rebuilding their homes, advocates said. Landlords’ income requirements are too high. Potential tenants’ credit scores are too low. Some landlords aren’t accepting the vouchers FEMA is providing survivors. And the agency is including apartments in the Antelope Valley and other areas far from Altadena in its assessment of L.A.’s rental market.

By not taking these factors into account, FEMA officials are ignoring needs on the ground, advocates said.

“There is a huge gap between availability and vacancy and accessibility,” said Jasmin Shupper, president of Greenline Housing Foundation, a local nonprofit.

The push for additional housing aid comes amid widespread cuts to FEMA and resistance from the Trump administration for disaster spending nationwide. On Tuesday, the president threatened to strip federal funds from California if the state continued to allow transgender athletes to compete in girl’s sports.

Chu said that FEMA already has provided $132 million in assistance, including $40 million for help with housing.

She said that money for Direct Lease was available through the existing federal disaster allocation following January’s wildfires. She noted that she supported the state’s request to Trump and Congress for $40 billion for long-term recovery efforts.

FEMA and CalOES didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment on Chu’s request. After Times reporting earlier this month, state emergency officials said they were reevaluating an earlier decision not to advocate for Direct Lease.

AUSTIN, Texas — Texas this year has been the center of the nation’s largest measles outbreak in more than two decades, as a mostly eradicated disease has sickened more than 700 in the state, sent dozens to hospitals and led to the death of two children who were unvaccinated.

But even as the outbreak slows, a bill approved by state lawmakers and sent to Republican Gov. Greg Abbott would make it significantly easier for parents to enroll their children in school without standard vaccinations for diseases such as measles, whooping cough, polio and hepatitis A and B.

Supporters say the bill streamlines an already legal exemption process that allows families to avoid vaccines for reasons of conscience, religious beliefs or medical reasons. It would let them download the required forms from a website instead of contacting state health officials and waiting for one to come in the mail.

The bill does not change which vaccines are required. However, critics say easing the exemption process opens a door to further outbreaks with potentially deadly results.

“If this bill becomes law, Texas is likely to see more illness, more death and higher health care costs for families and business,” Rekha Lakshmanan, chief strategy officer for Texas-based nonprofit Immunization Project, told state senators before the bill won final approval.

“The outbreak (in Texas) is not a coincidence. It is the canary in the coal mine screaming at the top of its lungs,” she said.

The exemption bill — as well as other bills passed by the Texas House on lawsuits against vaccine makers and removing immunization restrictions on organ transplants — are a snapshot of efforts across dozens of conservative states to question vaccines or roll back requirements.

At the national level, this wave has been buoyed by still-lingering pushback from the COVID-19 pandemic and the Trump administration’s embrace of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who was one of the nation’s leading anti-vaccine advocates before being appointed secretary of the U.S. Health and Human Services Department.

The most recent federal data shows U.S. kindergarten vaccination rates have dipped since the pandemic — 92.7% in the 2023-24 school year compared to 95% before COVID-19 — and the proportion of children with exemptions rose to an all-time high. And last week, the “Make America Healthy Again” federal report on the nation’s health and wellness questioned the necessity of vaccine mandates for schoolkids.

The national Association of Immunization Managers, an organization of state and local immunization officials, has been tracking nearly 600 vaccine-related bills across the country in 2025, and the majority would not be considered pro-vaccine, said Brent Ewig, the group’s the group’s chief policy officer.

“We saw a spike in vaccine-related bills during the pandemic. The last few years it had been tapering off. With recent actions at the federal level, there has been a spike again,” Ewig said.

The Texas measles outbreak and vaccine requirements

Measles has been considered eliminated from the United States since 2000. The Texas outbreak started in late January in West Texas’ Mennonite communities that have been resistant to vaccines and distrustful of government intervention, and the highly contagious virus quickly jumped to other places with low vaccination rates.

Like many states, Texas requires children to obtain vaccines to protect against 11 diseases to attend public and private schools and child care centers. The state’s vaccination rates for the 2023-24 school year ranged between 93.78% for chicken pox to 95.78% for hepatitis B.

But parents can obtain exemptions for religious or personal reasons, or if a doctor determines it would not be safe because of a medical condition.

Exemption rates in Texas have been rising for nearly two decades, with a dramatic spike over the last five years. According to the Texas Department of Health Services, the agency received exemption requests for nearly 153,000 students in the 2023-2024 fiscal year, up from 136,000 the previous year and nearly double the 77,000 requested in 2019.

Texas’ vaccine rollback

The bill on vaccine exemption paperwork would make it easier for parents to obtain the needed form by letting them download it to a computer or smartphone. The current system where parents ask state health officials to mail a paper copy to their home can sometimes take weeks. The form would still need to be notarized before it is turned in to a school and a student is enrolled.

Advocates say the changes would help parents thread the bureaucratic process and get their children enrolled in school quicker.

“This bill is not about whether vaccines are good or bad, it’s about government efficiency and keeping kids in schools,” said Jackie Schlegal, founder of Texans for Medical Freedom, which advocates for “vaccine freedom of choice.”

Critics argue that simplifying the exemption form process makes it too easy for unvaccinated kids to enroll in a school, endangering the health of other kids and families.

“For years Texas has struck a delicate balance of parents’ right and public health and safety,” Lakshmanan said. “This bill is more than just a form … We can support parents without putting other families at risk.”

Still waiting for a Senate vote is a bill that would allow vaccine makers who advertise in Texas to be sued if their vaccine causes a person to be injured. That bill has been opposed by the Texas Association of Manufacturers.

The author of that bill is first-term state Rep. Shelley Luther, who was briefly jailed in 2020 for opening her Dallas salon in violation of governor’s emergency order during the pandemic. Abbott quickly weakened his enforcement of coronavirus safeguards and a court ordered her released.

Vertuno writes for the Associated Press.

Myriad calamities could hit the city of Los Angeles in coming years: Wildfires. Floods. Mudslides. Drought. And of course, the Big One.

Yet this month, L.A. leaders once again balked at dramatically increasing the budget of the city’s Emergency Management Department, even as the office coordinates recovery from the Palisades fire and is tasked with helping prepare for a variety of disasters and high-profile events, such as the 2028 Summer Olympics.

Facing a nearly $1-billion budget shortfall, the L.A. City Council voted 12 to 3 last week to pass a budget that rejected the funding increases requested by EMD leaders to hire more staffers and fix broken security equipment around its facility.

The only budgetary increase for EMD will come through bureaucratic restructuring. The department will absorb the five-person Climate Emergency Mobilization Office, which Mayor Karen Bass had slated for elimination in her initial proposal to trim the budget deficit.

The funding allotment for EMD — with an operating budget of about $4.5 million — puts the department short of similar big cities in California and beyond.

As a 2022 audit by then-City Controller Ron Galperin noted, San Diego ($2.46), Long Beach ($2.26) and San Francisco ($7.59) all spent more per capita on emergency management than L.A., which then spent $1.56 per resident. Whereas L.A. has a staff of roughly 30, New York, with more than double the population of L.A., has 200 people in its emergency management team, and Philadelphia, with a population less than half of L.A.’s, has 53.

The current leaders of EMD, General Manager Carol Parks and Assistant General Manager Jim Featherstone, had specifically requested funding this spring to build an in-house recovery team to better equip the city for the Palisades recovery as well as future disasters.

“We are one of the most populous and at-risk jurisdictions in the nation, if not in the world,” Featherstone told the L.A. City Council’s budget committee April 30. “I won’t say negligent, but it’s really not in the city’s best interest to [not] have a recovery capability for a disaster similar to the one we just experienced.”

Zach Seidl, a spokesperson for Bass, pushed back against the idea that EMD’s funding level would hamper the Palisades fire recovery or preparation for the Olympic Games and 2026 World Cup.

“During a difficult budget year, Mayor Bass focused on emergency management to keep Angelenos safe — that absolutely includes ensuring EMD has continued staffing and resources,” Seidl said in a statement. “We will continue to push forward with one of the fastest recovery efforts in state history.”

Councilmember Traci Park — who represents the Palisades — was among the trio on the City Council who opposed the budget that passed last week, citing insufficient funding for public safety as one of her main objections.

“It’s inevitable that we are going to have another disaster, and we still won’t be prepared. We’ll be in the same position we were before,” said Pete Brown, a spokesperson for Park, who decried cuts to EMD and a lack of resources for the Police and Fire departments.

“We got a horrible taste of what it’s like when we are not prepared,” Brown said, “and despite all of that, we haven’t learned a lesson from it, and we are doing the same thing.”

Rick Caruso, the developer whom Bass defeated in the 2022 mayoral race, called both the budget proposal put forward by Bass and the spending plan approved by the City Council “a blatant display of mismanagement and bad judgment,” expressing incredulity over the rationale for EMD’s funding level.

“We are in an earthquake zone. We are in a fire zone. Come on,” Caruso said in an interview.

Seidl, Bass’ spokesperson, disputed that L.A. had not learned from the Palisades fire and emphasized that the spending on emergency management included “continued and new investments” in EMD as well as the city’s police and fire agencies.

Emergency management experts, audits commissioned by the city and EMD’s current leadership have warned that the department lacked the staff and funding to accomplish its mandate in one of the nation’s most disaster-prone regions.

“That department could be the world leader in emergency management, and it could be the standard for the rest of the country, but with a third of the staff and a tenth of the budget that they need, that’s not possible,” said Nick Lowe, an independent emergency management consultant and the president and chief executive of CPARS Consulting.

The general manager of EMD and an agency spokesperson did not respond to written questions last week about the approved budget.

In recent public statements, Parks disclosed that her budget requests this year received opposition and appeared to have been whittled down.

She told the Ad Hoc Committee for L.A. Recovery in March that she had sought 24 more staffers at EMD, but that officials under the city administrative officer balked at her request.

Featherstone, who is now coordinating the Palisades fire recovery, said Parks’ requests received “a qualitative negative response,” and suggested that there was a lack of understanding or appreciation of the import of EMD’s role.

“There was a qualitative opinion not in favor of Ms. Parks having these positions and people who aren’t emergency managers opined about the value or the worth of these positions,” Featherstone said.

Parks said she scaled her request down “given the city’s current fiscal situation,” adding, “I need a minimum of 10” more positions. In a memo, Parks said these 10 positions would cost about $1.1 million per year.

When Bass unveiled her budget proposal, those 10 additional positions were not included; EMD remained at roughly 30 positions, similar to previous years, which costs about $7.5 million when pensions, healthcare and other expenses are included. Bass’ budget proposal touted that she was able to preserve all of EMD’s positions while other departments faced steep staff and funding cuts.

Both Parks and Featherstone had argued for the creation of a designated, in-house recovery team, which EMD has lacked. When the Palisades fire broke out in January, EMD had no person assigned full-time to recovery and instead had to move its limited staff onto a recovery unit. Bass also retained Hagerty Consulting, a private firm, to boost EMD and provide instant expertise on a yearlong contract for up to $10 million, much of which Bass’ spokesperson said is reimbursable by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Still, Featherstone has told the City Council that, since L.A. had no in-house recovery expertise, the need to train and create an in-house team has occupied much of the initial Palisades fire recovery effort.

Phasing in an in-house recovery and reconstruction division with 10 staffers would cost an additional $1.5 million next year, according to a memo prepared by the city administrative officer. Hiring an additional 21 staffers to prepare for the Olympics and other major events would cost nearly $3 million.

Parks also requested $209,000 to repair the video system at the emergency operations center, saying the lack of surveillance cameras posed a threat to city employees.

“Multiple incidents have occurred where the safety and security of the facility have been compromised without resolution due to the failing camera system,” Parks wrote in a budget memo submitted this spring.

The request for funding for replacement cameras was also denied.

L.A. officials have long been warned that EMD lacks resources. The 2022 audit by Galperin, the former city controller, found that L.A. provided less emergency management funding than peer cities, and that the COVID-19 pandemic “strained EMD resources and staffing, causing several existing preparedness programs to lag behind, likely impacting the City’s readiness for future emergencies.”

An after-action report on EMD’s handling of COVID-19, authored by Lowe, the emergency management consultant, found that the agency was “undervalued and misunderstood, underfunded, and demoralized.” Parks took over as general manager after the time period covered by Lowe’s report.

The lack of training and funding became apparent at a budget hearing in April 2024. Councilmember Katy Yaroslavsky asked Parks directly at the meeting: “With your current budget, are you able to staff your [emergency] response centers 24/7 during emergencies?”

“The answer is no,” Parks said. “If there are multiple days that the emergency operations center needs to be activated, we do not have enough staff.”

During the Palisades fire, EMD said it had to bring in additional emergency management officials from other cities to sustain the emergency operations center around the clock.

Lowe said L.A. leaders had failed to recognize EMD’s role within the broader public safety infrastructure of the city.

“I’m not sure at a political level that the city understands and appreciates emergency management and the purpose of the department, and that trickles down to the budget and the size of the department,” Lowe said.

The Supreme Court declined Tuesday to hear an Apache religious challenge to the construction of a massive copper mine on Oak Flat, a swath of untouched federal land in Arizona that tribe members consider sacred and irreplaceable.

The decision, which leaves intact a lower court’s ruling against the tribe members, marked a major loss for Apache Stronghold, a group that has long argued that the mine’s construction would violate their religious rights by permanently wiping out a unique sacred site used for Apache religious ceremonies.

It allows the U.S. Forest Service to move forward with plans to issue a final environmental impact report and hear a last round of public comment before issuing a decision on transferring the land to Resolution Copper, a joint venture by the multinational mining companies Rio Tinto and BHP Group.

Wendsler Nosie Sr., an Apache elder and leader of the Apache Stronghold, said in a statement that his group would continue to defend the land about 70 miles east of Phoenix — including through other court battles challenging the mine and an appeal to Congress to intervene.

“We will never stop fighting — nothing will deter us from protecting Oak Flat from destruction,” Nosie said. “We urge Congress to take decisive action to stop this injustice while we press forward in the courts.”

Vicky Peacey, Resolution Copper’s general manager, said in a statement that the company was pleased the lower court’s decision will stand.

“The Resolution Copper mine is vital to securing America’s energy future, infrastructure needs, and national defense with a domestic supply of copper and other critical minerals,” Peacey said.

She said the project has “significant community support” and “the potential to become one of the largest copper mines in America, add $1 billion a year to Arizona’s economy, and create thousands of local jobs in a region where mining has played an important role for more than a century.”

The high court’s majority did not articulate a stance in the case, but by declining to hear it sided with a heavily divided panel of judges in the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals that ruled against the Apache in March 2024.

However, Justice Neil M. Gorsuch wrote a dissent — joined by his fellow conservative, Justice Clarence Thomas — saying the majority’s decision not to take the case was “a grievous mistake” and “one with consequences that threaten to reverberate for generations.”

Gorsuch said he had “no doubt” that the high court would have heard the case “if the government sought to demolish a historic cathedral” rather than a Native American sacred site.

“Faced with the government’s plan to destroy an ancient site of tribal worship, we owe the Apaches no less,” Gorsuch wrote. “They may live far from Washington, D.C., and their history and religious practices may be unfamiliar to many. But that should make no difference.”

Gorsuch said no one could “sensibly” argue against the significance of the case. “As the government has made plain, it intends to clear the way for Resolution Copper to begin the destruction of Oak Flat imminently,” he wrote.

Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., another conservative, did not participate in the conversation or decision in the case, though a reason was not provided.

The case touches on a host of politicized issues, including federal land use, religious liberty and efforts to balance corporate interests with limited natural resources and environmental degradation. It also has confounded traditional political divides, including by uniting conservative religious organizations and liberal environmental groups behind the Apache.

The fight between Apache Stronghold and Resolution Copper has been ongoing for years.

Nosie and other Stronghold members have traveled the country since the 9th Circuit ruling against them to raise awareness about their effort. Resolution Copper has continued billions of dollars’ worth of preparations for the mine in the surrounding area, where it has other mining operations, and provided substantial financial support to local officials in the nearby town of Superior, Ariz. — which is braced for an influx of mining employees and their families and the accompanying strains on infrastructure.

At the core of the Apache challenge to the mine is their argument that the mine would not just hamper their ability to practice their religion, but obliterate it.

Oak Flat, on the edge of the Tonto National Forest about an hour outside Phoenix and not far from the San Carlos Apache Indian Reservation, is used by the Apache for sweats and for coming-of-age ceremonies known as Sunrise Dances, where young girls are ushered into womanhood. The Apache believe the land is blessed by their creator and home to spiritual guardians akin to angels, and researchers have found the site is archaeologically significant not just to the Apache but to Hopi, O’odham, Yavapai and Zuni tribes.

(Paul Duginski / Los Angeles Times)

Oak Flat also sits atop one of the world’s largest untapped copper ore deposits — with enough estimated copper to supply up to a quarter of U.S. copper demand. Such demand has exploded with the proliferation of telecommunications networks, electric vehicles and other technologies that use the element.

The land in question had been under federal protection for decades, until Republicans added language allowing the federal government to sell or swap the land to the mining companies into a must-pass defense bill in 2014. Federal planning records show that extracting the deposit would over the course of several decades turn Oak Flat — which the Apache call Chí’chil Bildagoteel — into a nearly two-mile-wide, 1,000-foot-deep industrial crater.

(Paul Duginski / Los Angeles Times)

Resolution Copper has said it has worked closely with Native American advisors and worked to avoid important Apache sites in its planning, including nearby Apache Leap. Peacey said the company has been working for more than a decade to “preserve and reduce potential impacts on Tribal, social, and cultural interests,” and will continue to do so.

Apache Stronghold asked the Supreme Court to take up the case after an 11-judge panel of 9th Circuit judges split 6-5 in favor of the federal government’s right to use its land as it chooses. Such splits in circuit decisions often get the attention of the high court, but not always.

Judge Daniel P. Collins, an appointee of President Trump, authored the majority opinion. He wrote that Apache Stronghold’s religious claims failed because, while the federal government’s transfer of Oak Flat to Resolution Copper might interfere with the Apaches’ practice of their religion, it did not “coerce” them into acting contrary to their beliefs, “discriminate” or “penalize” them, or deny them privileges afforded to other citizens.

He wrote that Apache Stronghold had essentially asked the government to give them “de facto” ownership of a “rather spacious tract” of public land, which had to be rejected.

Collins was joined by four other Trump appointees and an appointee of President George W. Bush.

In his dissent Tuesday, Gorsuch wrote that the 9th Circuit “encompasses approximately 74% of all federal land and almost a third of the nation’s Native American population,” so its ruling that the government could destroy a sacred native site on federal land would now govern most if not all “sacred-site disputes” in the country moving forward.

He said that ruling would not just threaten native sites, but all religious sites on federal land — including many churches.

Luke Goodrich, an attorney for Apache Stronghold and senior counsel at the religious rights law firm Becket, said it was “hard to imagine a more brazen attack on faith than blasting the birthplace of Apache religion into a gaping crater,” and the court’s “refusal to halt the destruction is a tragic departure from its strong record of defending religious freedom.”

Times staff writer David G. Savage in Washington contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is asking federal agencies to cancel contracts with Harvard University worth about $100 million, a senior administration official said Tuesday, intensifying the president’s clash with the nation’s oldest and wealthiest university.

The government already has canceled more than $2.6 billion in federal research grants for the Ivy League school, which has pushed back on the administration’s demands for changes to several of its policies.

A draft letter from the General Services Administration directs agencies to review contracts with the university and seek alternate vendors. The administration plans to send a version of the letter Tuesday, the official said. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal deliberations.

The New York Times first reported on the letter.

President Trump has railed against Harvard, calling it a hotbed of liberalism and antisemitism. The school filed a lawsuit April 21 over the administration’s calls for changes to the university’s leadership, governance and admissions policies. Since then, the administration has slashed the school’s federal funding, moved to cut off enrollment of international students and threatened its tax-exempt status.

Contracts include scientific research, executive training

The administration has identified about 30 contracts across nine agencies to be reviewed for cancellation, according to another administration official who was not authorized to speak publicly and provided details on the condition of anonymity.

The contracts total roughly $100 million. They include executive training for Department of Homeland Security officials, research on health outcomes related to energy drinks and a contract for graduate student research services.

Agencies with contracts that are deemed critical are being directed not to halt them immediately, but to devise a plan to transition to a different vendor other than Harvard.

The letter applies only to federal contracts with Harvard and not its remaining research grants.

Trump threatens to give Harvard’s funding to trade schools

Trump laid into Harvard on social media over the weekend, threatening to cut an additional $3 billion in federal grants and give it to trade schools across the United States. He did not explain which grants he was referring to or how they could be reallocated.

The president also accused Harvard of refusing to release the names of its foreign students. In a new line of attack, he argued that students’ home countries pay nothing toward their education and that some of the countries are “not at all friendly to the United States.” International students are not eligible for federal financial aid, but Harvard offers its own aid to foreign and domestic students alike.

“We are still waiting for the Foreign Student Lists from Harvard so that we can determine, after a ridiculous expenditure of BILLIONS OF DOLLARS, how many radicalized lunatics, troublemakers all, should not be let back into our Country,” Trump said on social media.

It wasn’t clear exactly what he was demanding. The federal government already has access to visa information and other records on foreign students at Harvard and other universities.

The Department of Homeland Security has demanded that Harvard turn over a trove of files related to its foreign students, including disciplinary records and records related to “dangerous or violent activity.”

Harvard says it complied, but the agency said its response fell short and moved to revoke the university’s ability to enroll foreign students. A federal judge in Boston temporarily blocked the move after Harvard sued.

Other nations respond

Japan’s government said Tuesday that it’s looking for ways to help Harvard’s foreign students. Education Minister Toshiko Abe told reporters she planned to ask Japanese universities to compile measures to support international students.

The University of Tokyo, Japan’s top school, is considering temporarily accepting some Harvard students hit by the Trump sanctions.

Superville and Binkley write for the Associated Press.