Biden

Former US Vice-President Kamala Harris has expressed concern that she didn’t ask Joe Biden to pull out of the race for the White House.

In an interview with the BBC for Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, she said: “I do reflect on whether I should have had a conversation with him, urging him not to run for re-election.”

After months of speculation about his health and mental acuity, President Biden ended his re-election bid in July 2024 after a disastrous performance in a debate against Donald Trump a few weeks earlier.

Harris, who stepped in as the Democratic nominee but lost to Trump, has revealed in her book about her three-month campaign that she did not discuss with President Biden her concerns over his ability. Nor did the then 81-year-old raise the issue with her.

In the book, 107 Days, the former vice-president wrote that Biden’s decision to run again was a choice that shouldn’t have “been left to an individual’s ego, an individual’s ambition”. She wrote that “perhaps” she should have raised it with him.

In this interview she told the BBC that she still ponders whether she should have acted differently and talked to him about it.

“I do reflect on whether I should have had a conversation with him, urging him not to run.” She said “my concern, especially on reflection is, should I have actually raised it”. She questioned whether it was “grace or recklessness” that stopped her speaking up.

Her worry, she added, was not Biden’s capacity to do the job of commander in chief but about whether he would meet the demands of a gruelling election campaign to stay in the White House.

When pressed on why there is a distinction, she said there was a serious difference between running for the office and conducting the duties of being president. And running against Trump is even more demanding, she said.

She said she had a “concern about his [Biden’s] ability, with the level of endurance, energy, that it requires, especially running against the now current president”.

The former vice-president said it was hard for her to speak up because she risked being accused of promoting her own political interests if she had confronted Biden about his health.

“Part of the issue there was that it would – would it have actually been an effective and productive conversation, given what would otherwise appear to be my self-interest?”

The issue of whether more people in Biden’s circle could have challenged him about the wisdom of him running again has become a major talking point.

One book, Original Sin by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson, alleged that people close to him covered up his physical deterioration from the public.

Biden’s aides have pushed back at the allegation, saying there were physical changes as he got older but no evidence of mental incapacity and nothing that affected his ability to do the job.

In his first interview after leaving the White House, in May of this year, Biden told the BBC it would not have mattered if he had left the race any earlier.

His former vice-president is in the UK promoting her new book. In a wide-ranging conversation for the Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg programme, Harris also said it was “possible” she could run for the White House again.

She has already ruled out running for governor in her home state, California, and the former prosecutor told the BBC she was “not done” with public service.

Hello and happy Thursday. It’s Anita Chabria again. Today, I’m coming to you from a coffee shop where I just used Apple Pay to buy a dirty chai.

Why does that matter? Because in the last five minutes, I’ve dropped all kinds of data into the universe. What I drink, how much I’ll pay for it, how long I sat here using this Wi-Fi and dozens of other details that companies are willing to pay for but that I don’t even think about — much less benefit from.

Every day, we all walk around dropping data like garbage — when in reality it’s gold. Especially in the age of budding artificial intelligence, when the smallest bit of insight is being crammed into these new robo-gods in the hope of making them seem ever smarter and more human.

It all raises the question, if it’s our data, shouldn’t we be paid for it?

André Vellozo thinks so, and is working to make that a reality. He’s a Brazilian hippie based in Silicon Valley, an outsider in an increasingly conservative and insular community with an idea that’s more about equality than power.

“Everything you do generates value and data,” Vellozo said. “Now you can collect.”

Here’s what he envisions — and why it’s as much politics as business.

A bus stop advertises Artisan AI, an artificial intelligence software company, along the Embarcadero in downtown San Francisco.

(Florence Middleton / For The Times)

Pennies add up

Think of Vellozo’s idea a bit like streaming royalties, giving you a small paycheck every time information you create is used, be it details of a coffee purchase or your hospital stay. Obviously, an artist could never keep track of every single time their show or song is played — they rely on managers and brokers.

Vellozo’s company, DrumWave, would act as that broker for individuals’ data. In his scenario, every person from birth would have a digital wallet where every bit of data they drop is accounted for. This is stuff you are already creating, whether you’re aware of it or not — and which companies are too often collecting, whether you are aware of it or not.

How many “accept all” buttons have you clicked in your life without reading the details of what you are agreeing to, including allowing others to sell your data for their own profit?

When companies want to use that data — which they do to understand economics in the macro and micro, or to study health outcomes, or to feed those large language models such as ChatGPT — DrumWave packages it and licenses it for use without identifying details, but with each consumer’s consent.

Data goes out, payment comes it — over and over for the life of the account.

It’s not as far-fetched as it might seem. Gov. Gavin Newsom proposed a similar idea in 2019, arguing, “California’s consumers should also be able to share in the wealth that is created from their data.”

Nothing ever came of it, in no small part due to the lobbying and money thrown at government by big tech. I asked the governor’s office if there was still any interest around the idea and got nothing back from them. But California already has a law that could give folks control of their data, though it isn’t often used the way Vellozo envisions.

Downsides

There are, of course, many obstacles and potential pitfalls. Data privacy is one that comes up often — do we really want to be selling the details of our most recent colonoscopy, anonymous or not?

And of course, there’s also the potential for exploitation. What data would the poor or desperate be willing to sell, and how cheaply?

Annemarie Butler is an associate professor of philosophy at Iowa State University who specializes in the ethics of AI. She wonders if people would really understand what their data was being used for or by whom, and if they would be able to pull it back in any way once it’s out there.

She also said that there may be no meaningful way to opt out.

“Our own data are not always restricted to that one person,” she warns. “DNA is probably the clearest example of this: When one shares a DNA sample, she shares vital (and immutable) information about any of her blood relatives. And yet only she provides the consent.”

Of course, privacy is something of an illusion right now.

And, Vellozo points out, it’s not just that we are currently giving data away for free under the current system — we are all actually paying to create that data in the first place. We pay for the electricity that charges our phones. We pay the monthly service charge on our devices. We are actively putting in our time and labor to create the information.

Vellozo’s company is currently running a pilot of digital wallets with rideshare drivers in California.

He points out that these drivers spend a lot of money and energy creating information that will likely be used to train their AI replacements — their gas, the cost of the car, insurance, maintenance and time. Then all that information — who they pick up, when, how long the ride is and a million other details — is just collected and used to create profit for others.

In another milestone, Brazil — a country that has embraced a national model of digital payments much to the chagrin of many technology and banking companies, and President Trump for that matter — is on board with the idea of a digital wallet for all citizens. Vellozo was back home this week to work on that effort.

A check on AI

So why does all this matter in a politics newsletter?

Beyond money, data ownership offers another benefit: Regulation. Although California has arguably done more to regulate AI than almost any other state, the controls on the technology remain woefully slim. The federal government, after a fancy dinner redolent in flattery at the White House, has made it clear it has no interest in protecting people from this powerful technology, or the men who would wield it.

Vellozo sees the ownership of data as an important step in curbing the power of corporations to pursue ever-mightier AI models without oversight.

The coming changes induced by artificial intelligence are going to be profound for the average person. Already, we are seeing a world in which physical money, or at least the movement of it, is increasingly a relic. Financial companies are becoming tech companies, and money is digital (yes, economists, I know this is technically too simple).

Combine that with the changes in our ability to earn money through work, and the power imbalance already faced by the poor and working class becomes, well, really bad. Remember the railroad barons? This is going to make it seem like they were running ice cream trucks.

We need to rethink what a successful economy looks like. Because AI is going to give a few people not just a lot of money, but a lot of power — by scavenging the knowledge and work of the rest of us. It will take all of us to build successful AI, but the rewards will go to a handful.

So the idea of owning our data is not really about Vellozo’s company or if it accomplishes its goal.

It’s about creating a future in which individual power isn’t a thing of the past.

And where the coming changes benefit society, not just the corporate titans who would like us all to remain too confused to object.

What else you should be reading:

The must-read: Just like humans, AI can get ‘brain rot’ from low-quality text and the effects appear to linger, pre-print study says
The what happened: Trump empowers election deniers, still fixated on 2020 grievances
The L.A. Times special: Malibu residents flee as international buyers snap up burned-out lots

P.S. We’re continuing to look at the blatant (and frankly frightening) propaganda that Homeland Security is posting on its official social media. Case in point, this recruitment ad with … medieval knights? Not only is this image chock-full of Christian nationalism dog whistles, it’s aimed at the young men Immigration and Customs Enforcement is hoping to recruit with its edgelord/video game fanatasies that would turn legimate law enforcement efforts into a religious crusade against immigrants.

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SACRAMENTO — Some witty person long ago gave us this immortal line: “No man’s life, liberty or property are safe while the legislature is in session.”

Humorist Will Rogers usually is credited — wrongly. Mark Twain, too, falsely.

The real author was Gideon J. Tucker, a former newspaper editor who founded the New York Daily News. He later became a state legislator and judge, and he crafted the comment in an 1866 court opinion.

Anyway, Californians are safe from further legislative harm for now. State lawmakers have gone home for the year after passing 917 bills. Gov. Gavin Newsom signed 794 (87%) and vetoed 123 (13%).

I’m not aware of any person’s life being jeopardized. Well, maybe after the lawmakers and governor cut back Medi-Cal healthcare for undocumented immigrants to save money.

One could argue — and many interests did — that what the Legislature did to increase housing availability made some existing residential neighborhoods less safe from congestion and possible declining property values.

But kudos to the lawmakers and governor for enacting major housing legislation that should have been passed years ago.

Public pressure generated by unaffordable costs — both for homebuyers and renters — spurred the politicians into significant action to remove regulatory barriers and encourage much more development. The goal is to close the gap between short supply and high demand.

But legislative passage was achieved over stiff opposition from some cities — especially Los Angeles — that objected to loss of local control.

“It’s a touchy issue that affects zoning and is always going to be controversial,” says state Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco), who finessed through a bill that will allow construction of residential high-rises up to nine stories near transit hubs such as light-rail and bus stations. The measure overrides local zoning ordinances.

Wiener had been trying unsuccessfully for eight years to get similar legislation passed. Finally, a fire was lit under legislators by their constituents.

“The public understands we’ve screwed ourselves by making it so hard to build homes,” Wiener says.

But to win support, he had to accept tons of exceptions. For example, the bill will affect only counties with at least 15 passenger rail stations. There are eight: Los Angeles, Orange, San Diego, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Alameda and Sacramento.

“Over time it will have a big effect, but it’s going to be gradual,” Wiener says.

Dan Dunmoyer, who heads the California Building Industry Assn., calls it “a positive step in the right direction.”

Yes, and that direction is up rather than sideways. California could accommodate a cherished ranch-house lifestyle when the population was only a third or half the nearly 40 million people it is today. But sprawling horizontally has become impossibly pricey for too many and also resulted in long smog-spewing commutes and risky encroachment into wildfire country.

Dozens of housing bills were passed and signed this year, ranging from minutia to major.

The Legislature continued to peck away at the much-abused California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). Opponents of projects have used the act to block construction for reasons other than environmental protection. Local NIMBYs — ”Not in my backyard” — have resisted neighborhood growth. Businesses have tried to avoid competition. Unions have practiced “greenmail” by threatening lawsuits unless developers signed labor agreements.

Another Wiener bill narrowed CEQA requirements for commercial housing construction. It also exempted from CEQA a bunch of nonresidental projects, including health clinics, manufacturing facilities and child-care centers.

A bill by Assemblymember Buffy Wicks (D-Oakland) exempted most urban infill housing projects from CEQA.

You can’t argue that the Legislature wasn’t productive this year. But you can spar over whether some of the production was a mistake. Some bills were both good and bad. That’s the nature of compromise in a functioning democracy.

One example: The state’s complex cap-and-trade program was extended beyond 2030 to 2045. That’s probably a good thing. It’s funded by businesses buying permits to emit greenhouse gases and pays for lots of clean energy projects.

But a questionable major piece of that legislation — demanded by Newsom — was a 20-year, $1-billion annual commitment of cap-and-trade money for California’s disappointing bullet train project.

The project was sold to voters in 2008 as a high-speed rail line connecting Los Angeles and San Francisco. It’s $100 billion over budget and far behind its promised 2020 completion. No tracks have even been laid. The new infusion of cap-and-trade money will merely pay for the initial 171-mile section between Merced and Bakersfield, which the state vows to open by 2033. Hot darn!

Newsom muscled through the bill at the last moment. The Legislature should have taken more time to study the project’s future.

One gutsy thing Democratic legislators and the governor did — given that “oil,” among the left, has become the new hated pejorative sidekick of “tobacco” — was to permit production of 2,000 more wells annually in oil-rich Kern County.

It was part of a compromise: Drilling in federal offshore waters was made more difficult by tightening pipeline regulations.

Credit the persistent Sen. Shannon Grove, a conservative Republican from Bakersfield who is adept at working across the aisle.

“Kern County knows how to produce energy,” she told colleagues during the Senate floor debate, citing not only oil but wind, solar and battery storage. “We are the experts. We are not the enemy.”

But what mostly motivated Newsom and legislators was the threat of even higher gas prices as two large California oil refineries prepare to shut down. Most Democrats agreed that the politically smart move was to allow more oil production, even as the state attempts to transcend entirely to clean energy.

Let’s not forget the most important bill the Legislature annually passes: the state budget. This year’s totaled $325 billion and allegedly covered a $15-billion deficit through borrowing, a few cuts and numerous gimmicks.

Nonpartisan Legislative Analyst Gabriel Petek last week projected deficit spending of up to $25 billion annually for the next three years.

In California, no state bank account is safe when the Legislature is in session.

What else you should be reading

The must-read: Sen. Scott Wiener to run for congressional seat held by Rep. Nancy Pelosi
California vs. Trump: Federal troops in San Francisco? Locals, leaders scoff at Trump’s plan
The L.A. Times Special: One of O.C.’s loudest pro-immigrant politicians is one of the unlikeliest

Until next week,
George Skelton

—
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President Biden, in one of his first moves in office, reversed the immigration restriction put in place by the Trump administration covering five Muslim-majority nations — Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria and Yemen — as well as North Korea and some government officials from Venezuela.

The Trump administration was forced to revise its original order twice to resolve legal problems over due process, implementation and exclusive targeting of Muslim nations.

Jake Sullivan, who will be Biden’s national security advisor, said the ban “was nothing less than a stain on our nation. It was rooted in xenophobia and religious animus.”

Biden also extended to June 2022 temporary legal status for Liberians who fled civil war and the Ebola outbreak.

Biden sent a broader immigration plan to Congress on Wednesday that includes a pathway to U.S. citizenship for an estimated 11 million people.

The bill also proposes an expansion of refugee admissions and increases in per-country visa caps.

Hello and happy Thursday. It’s me, California columnist Anita Chabria, filling in for your usual host, Washington bureau chief Michael Wilner.

Andrea Grossman was a kid when her mother pulled her out of school to join the 1969 Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam, a nationwide day of peaceful protest. They held hands while her mom walked in a knit suit and ladylike shoes, joining more than 2 million people nationwide.

Grossman, now one of the organizers of the Beverly Hills segment of the “No Kings” marches being held in more than 2,000 cities this weekend, remembers that opponents of that long-ago protest threw stinky rat poison on the lawns in Exposition Park so participants couldn’t sit on the grass. But protesters were not deterred.

“It made it all the more rebellious of us to be there,” Grossman told me. “It made us more insistent that we had to be there.”

Today, that rat poison is being metaphorically hurled by MAGA leaders such as House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), in the form of noxious allegations that the No Kings marches are “Hate America” rallies staged for a “rabid base” of criminal agitators.

“It’s all the pro-Hamas wing and the antifa people, they’re all coming out,” Johnson said on Fox News.

Of course, that is dumb and false. It would be all too easy to write off comments such as Johnson’s as partisan jibber-jabber, but his insidious words are the kind of poison that seeps into the soil and shouldn’t be ignored.

Participants in the Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam demonstrate in 1969 at Golden Gate Park in San Francisco.

(Clay Geerdes / Getty Images)

The ‘enemy within’

Johnson isn’t the only Republican working overtime to smear everyday folks such as Grossman. Talk about organized campaigns — Trumpites are all going after No Kings with the same script.

House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) said: “These guys are playing to the most radical, small, and violent base in the country. You’ll see them on Saturday on the Mall. They just do not love this country.”

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has parroted similar messaging, and Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.), diving into old, antisemitic conspiracies, described the events as “a Soros paid-for protest,” adding that the National Guard would probably need to be activated.

U.S. Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi added her two cents, apparently confusing printed signs, the kind that say, a union or organizations such as Planned Parenthood or the ACLU, might have made up, with evidence of diabolical terrorist networks.

“You’re seeing people out there with thousands of signs that all match,” Bondi told Fox News. “They are organized and someone is funding it. We are going to get to the funding of antifa, we’re going to get to the root of antifa and we are going to find and charge all of those people who are causing this chaos.”

Note to Bondi: Matching signs are not a conspiracy. Just ask Kinko’s.

But in her defense, it was a mere two weeks ago when President Trump addressed the leaders of the U.S. military at Quantico, Va. There, he warned that the use of military troops on American protesters was about to become reality, if he has any say in it.

“This is going to be a big thing for the people in this room, because it’s the enemy from within, and we have to handle it before it gets out of control,” Trump said.

That came on the heels of his executive order declaring antifa — a general descriptor for anyone who opposes fascism — as a terrorist organization.

So to recap: The president declares “antifa” a terrorist organization, warns military brass that they must be ready to defeat internal enemies, then MAGA Republicans begin to falsely claim No Kings rallies are full of “antifa.”

Andrea Grossman, second from left, with other activists in 2024 discussing efforts to protect a Beverly Hills abortion clinic.

(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

Bad journalism

Grossman calls the idea that she is anti-American “preposterous.”

“We wouldn’t be out there spending our time and energy if we weren’t desperately worried for our country. Of course we love America,” she said.

Here’s where I eat my own: Media are failing miserably and unforgivably in covering this issue — this terrifying march to turn peaceful protest into a criminal offense. We shouldn’t be asking Grossman whether she hates America. We should be pushing Johnson and his ilk to defend his attack on people like her.

“We can both recognize that it’s ridiculous and also that it’s pretty sinister,” Leah Greenberg told me.

She’s the co-executive director of Indivisible, the organization behind the No Kings effort, and she’ll be at the D.C. event — the one Johnson specifically condemned. At the first No Kings rally in Philadelphia, her husband led more than 1,000 people in reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, some real anti-American stuff.

“We have to see what is currently happening here, not only as Republicans desperately grasping for a message, but also of them creating a permission structure to, you know, invite a broader crackdown on peaceful dissent,” Greenberg warned.

I asked Grossman whether she felt personally at risk by taking on this organizing role at such a fraught moment, even in Beverly Hills, that hotbed of radicalism. At first, she said she didn’t. But when I asked her why not, she paused for a bit.

“We have to put ourselves out there and it takes risk sometimes,” she finally said. “I mean, I don’t consider myself a freedom fighter by any means. I consider myself a woman of a certain age, you know, who has to stand up and be loud and noisy.”

In her regular life, Grossman runs one of the preeminent literary salons in Los Angeles, drawing authors and luminaries including Rob Reiner, Rep. Jasmine Crockett and legal podcaster Joyce Vance. She was also one of the “abortion yentas” who last year fought a losing battle to protect a controversial abortion clinic in the neighborhood. So she knows risk and doesn’t shy away from it.

But this moment is different, because it’s not normal for a president to declare protests to be terrorism, or for legislators to deem them un-American. It is not normal to fear that the military will be used to silence us.

Which is why No Kings is so crucial to this moment.

It is a movement that seeks to draw the most normal, the most average, the most mild of people to highlight just how abnormal this government is. No flags are going to be burned (though that is a protected 1st Amendment right, no matter what Trump says). No Molotov cocktails will be tossed. Hamas is not invited.

Greenberg said that “anybody with eyes” can see who comes to a No Kings rally.

“You see veterans, you see members of faith communities. You see federal workers, dedicated public servants. You see parents and grandparents and kids all coming together in this joyous and defiant opposition,” she said.

Those are exactly the types that turned out in June, when somewhere between 3 million and 6 million people marched in what felt like a cross between a fall school carnival and a Fourth of July parade. People sauntered, they sat, they sang. But most of all, they showed up.

“If we’re going to be afraid and not say anything, then [they] win,” Grossman said. “The only way to stand up to oppression is to get out there in huge, great numbers.”

So like her mom, she’ll march and she’ll ignore the poison — and much to the dismay of MAGA, I suspect millions of others just like her will too.

What else you should be reading:

The must-read: Justices lean toward rejecting race in redistricting, likely boosting GOP in 2026
The what happened: Mike Johnson’s nightmare: Kevin Kiley is unhappy with the speaker and has nothing to lose
The L.A. Times special: USC finds itself in funding battle between Trump and Newsom over the campus’ future

P.S. This is another bit of propaganda from the Department of Homeland Security. “Remigrate” is a term often embraced by the far right that alludes to the forced deportation of immigrants, legal or not, especially those who are not of European origin.

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SACRAMENTO — Sen. Alex Padilla apparently dreams of becoming California’s next governor. He’s thinking hard about entering the race to succeed Gov. Gavin Newsom. And Katie Porter may have just opened the starting gate for him.

Porter has been regarded as the early front-runner. But she tripped and stumbled badly during a contentious, unprofessional and rude performance in a recent routine TV interview that went viral.

We don’t know the extent of her injury. But it was certainly enough to make Padilla’s decision a lot easier. If he really deep down covets the job of governor, the time seems ripe to apply for it.

Padilla wouldn’t need to vacate the Senate merely to run. He’d have what’s called a “free ride”: He doesn’t face reelection next year because his Senate term runs through 2028.

But a Senate seat is gold plated. No term limits — a job often for life. It offers prestige and power, with sway over a global array of issues.

Why would Padilla trade that to become the governor whose state is plagued by homelessness, wildfires and unaffordable living for millions?

For starters, it’s not much fun these days to be in the toothless Senate minority as a Democrat.

The California governor has immense power over spending and taxes, the appointment of positions ranging from local fair board members to state Supreme Court justices and the fate of hundreds of bills passed each year by the Legislature.

You lead the most populous state and the world’s fourth-largest economy.

The office provides an automatic launching pad for anyone with presidential aspirations, such as the termed-out present occupant.

Anyway, Padilla, 52, is a proud native Californian, raised in the San Fernando Valley with strong ties to the state.

And he’s immensely qualified to be governor, having served well in local, state and federal branches of government: Los Angeles City Council, state Senate, California secretary of State and the U.S. Senate.

There has been speculation for weeks about his entering the gubernatorial race. And in a recent New York Times interview, he acknowledged: “I am weighing it.”

“Look, California is home,” he said. “I love California. I miss California when I’m in Washington. And there’s a lot of important work to do there. … I’m just trying to think through: Where can I be most impactful.”

How long will he think? “The race is not until next year,” he said. “So that decision will come.”

It should come much sooner than next year in order to be elected governor in this far-flung state with its vast socio-economic and geographic diversity.

Former Democratic Rep. Porter from Orange County has been beating him and every announced candidate in the polls — although not by enough to loudly boast about.

In a September poll by Emerson College, 36% of surveyed voters said they were undecided about whom to support. Of the rest, 16% favored Porter and just 7% Padilla.

In an August survey by the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies, 38% were undecided. Porter led with 17%. The nearest Democrat at 9% was Xavier Becerra, former secretary of U.S. Health and Human Services, state attorney general and 12-term congressman. Padilla wasn’t listed.

Why Porter? She gained renown during congressional hearings while grilling corporate executives and using a white board. But mainly, I suspect, voters got to know her when she ran statewide for the U.S. Senate last year. She didn’t survive the primary, but her name familiarity did.

By contrast, Padilla has never had a tough top-of-the-ticket statewide race. He was appointed by Newsom to the Senate in 2021 to fill the vacancy created by Kamala Harris’ election as vice president.

Democratic strategist Garry South says it would be “risky” for Padilla to announce his candidacy unless he immediately became the front-runner. That’s because he’d need that status to attract the hefty campaign donations required to introduce himself to voters.

“Unlike the governor, a California senator is not really that well known,” the strategist says. “And he hasn’t been a senator that long. I don’t think voters have a sense of him. In order to improve his [poll] numbers, he’s going to have to spend a lot of money. If he were an instant frontrunner, the money would flow. But if he jumps in with only half the votes [of

the frontrunner], there’s no reason for money to flow.

“And the longer he waits, the less time he has to raise the money.”

Porter may have eased the way for Padilla.

The UC Irvine law professor came unglued when CBS Sacramento reporter Julie Watts asked what she’d tell California’s 6 million Donald Trump voters in order to win their needed support for governor. Porter reacted like a normal irritated person rather than a seasoned politician.

She tersely dismissed the question’s premise and replied that the GOP votes wouldn’t be needed.

When the interviewer persisted, Porter lost her cool. “I don’t want to keep doing this. I’m going to call it,” she said, threatening to walk out. But she didn’t.

It was raw meat for her campaign opponents and they immediately pounced.

Former state Controller Betty Yee called on Porter to “leave this race” because she’s “a weak, self-destructive candidate unfit to lead California.”

Veteran Democratic consultant Gale Kaufman, who’s not involved in the contest, says the TV flub “hurts her a lot because it goes to likability.”

If Padilla really longs for the job, he can stop dreaming and take advantage of a golden opportunity.

What else you should be reading

The must-read: California tightens leash on puppy sales with new laws signed by Newsom
Wut?: Inside tech billionaire Peter Thiel’s off-the-record lectures about the antichrist
The L.A. Times Special: At Trump’s Justice Department, partisan pugnacity where honor, integrity should be

Until next week,
George Skelton

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WASHINGTON — Former President Biden is receiving radiation and hormone therapy as part of a new phase of treating the aggressive form of prostate cancer he was diagnosed with after leaving office, a spokesperson said Saturday.

“As part of a treatment plan for prostate cancer, President Biden is currently undergoing radiation therapy and hormone treatment,” Biden aide Kelly Scully said.

Biden, 82, left office in January after he had dropped his bid for reelection six months earlier following a disastrous debate against Republican Donald Trump amid concerns about Biden’s age, health and mental fitness. Trump, despite similar questions during the campaign about his age and mental fitness, defeated Democrat Kamala Harris, who was Biden’s vice president.

In May, Biden’s postpresidential office announced that he had been diagnosed with prostate cancer and that it had spread to his bone. The discovery came after he reported urinary symptoms.

Prostate cancers are graded for aggressiveness using what is known as a Gleason score. The scores range from 6 to 10, with 8, 9 and 10 prostate cancers behaving more aggressively. Biden’s office said his score was 9, suggesting his cancer is among the most aggressive.

Last month, Biden had surgery to remove skin cancer lesions from his forehead.

Superville writes for the Associated Press.

Oct. 11 (UPI) — Former President Joe Biden has begun radiation therapy, in addition to hormone therapy, to treat aggressive prostate cancer, a spokesperson has confirmed.

The radiation treatments will continue over five weeks to treat the cancer that Biden, 82, first announced in May.

“As part of a treatment plan for prostate cancer, President Biden is currently undergoing radiation therapy and hormone treatment,” a Biden spokesperson told NBC News.

When Biden announced his cancer diagnosis, it already had spread to his bones, which his doctors had been treating with hormone medication.

“The expectation is we’re going to be able to beat this,” Biden told CNN in May.

“It’s not in any organ,” Biden said, adding that the cancer hadn’t penetrated any of his bones.

Doctors diagnosed Biden’s prostate cancer after he reported having issues with his urinary system, which led to the discovery of a small nodule on the former president’s prostate, according to the BBC.

Doctors determined it was an aggressive form of cancer that is vulnerable to hormone treatment.

The cancer’s spread to Biden’s bones makes it incurable, but recent developments in chemotherapy and hormone therapies can greatly extend the life expectancy of those who are similarly afflicted, Dr. Benjamin Davies, a urologic oncology professor at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, told CNN.

Biden last month also underwent Mohs surgery to remove skin cancer lesions.

While president, Biden launched a “cancer moonshot” program to advance the ways in which cancers are diagnosed and treated.

WASHINGTON — A peace plan for Gaza touted by President Trump as a historic breakthrough is facing its first test this week after Israel and Hamas agreed in principle to an initial list of terms that could end the war.

The 20-point American plan reflects an administration losing patience with Israel, while also leveraging its relationships with Arab partners to finally pressure Hamas into a deal that would release the Israeli hostages still in its custody two years since the Oct. 7 attack.

On Wednesday evening, Trump said both parties had agreed to the first phase of his plan, securing the hostage release in exchange for a limited Israeli troop withdrawal.

“I am very proud to announce that Israel and Hamas have both signed off on the first Phase of our Peace Plan,” Trump wrote on social media. “This means that ALL of the Hostages will be released very soon, and Israel will withdraw their Troops to an agreed upon line as the first steps toward a Strong, Durable, and Everlasting Peace.”

The president’s push comes amid an unexpected and growing divide within the Republican base over support for Israel — once seen as a bedrock of the alliance — and as Trump presents himself as a global peacemaker, ahead of the announcement of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize on Friday.

The president is expected to travel to the region over the weekend to secure the deal.

“All Parties will be treated fairly!” Trump wrote. “BLESSED ARE THE PEACEMAKERS!”

Who controls Hamas?

People attend a pro-Palestinian vigil and protest on Tuesday outside Columbia University.

(Adam Gray / Getty Images)

One former senior Biden administration official who worked on the Gaza crisis told The Times that Trump’s 20-point plan “is credible,” if not fully baked, and that Trump’s position of influence over Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may give the proposal “a real chance of success.”

Devastated after two years of war, Hamas had seen its continued holding of the hostages as its only remaining leverage to ensure later stages of a peace agreement are implemented by the Israelis. Trump’s plan demands an immediate release of all of the hostages, both dead and alive, in an initial phase, preceding reconstruction of the Strip that removes Hamas from power.

An opening emerged for progress in the talks after Israel conducted an extraordinary strike on a Hamas target in Doha, shaking the confidence of the Qatari government, a key U.S. ally. While Doha has hosted Hamas’ political leadership for years, Qatar’s leadership thought their relationship with Washington would protect them from Israeli violations of its territory.

“A lot of this stems from the Israeli attack on Hamas in Doha,” said Elliott Abrams, a veteran diplomat from the Reagan, George W. Bush and first Trump administrations. “The Qataris panicked, and went to Trump to ask for defense and assurance that Israel would never do that again. And I think he had a price: to deliver Hamas.”

“Can they deliver Hamas? They can deliver the guys in Doha,” Abrams continued. “They can threaten them with expulsion. They can tell them that they’re living in fancy hotels, but they can be Palestinian refugees tomorrow morning. But the relationship between those people and the leadership on the ground is very unclear.”

U.S. officials believe it is the Egyptians, more so than the Qataris, with intelligence, sourcing and leverage on the ground in the Gaza Strip that can bring Hamas’ chain of command in compliance with a settlement. But whether Egyptian leadership is willing to exert its leverage is unclear. An unusual Egyptian military buildup in the Sinai Peninsula, in violation of the Camp David Accords that have secured Israel’s peace with Egypt since 1979, is causing widespread concern in diplomatic circles over Cairo’s intentions.

Talks over Trump’s plan have moved from Doha to Cairo.

“If talks in Cairo focus solely on the first phase of the peace plan — the release of hostages and prisoners, the first Israeli withdrawal in Gaza and the flood of humanitarian goods — there is a good chance of success,” said Robert Satloff, executive director of the Washington Institute. “But if the talks range into subsequent phases of the plan, including Hamas disarmament and deployment of third-country troops to Gaza, it will likely get bogged down as has been the case before.”

Pressure on Israel

Trump’s diplomatic push has also exposed growing concern within his administration over the damage Israel’s continued military campaign is inflicting on its global reputation — and on its support within the United States.

Over the weekend, speaking with an Israeli news outlet, Trump said that Netanyahu had “gone too far in Gaza, and Israel has lost a lot of support in the world.” It came amid reports that Trump had scolded Netanyahu over his initial reaction to Hamas’ willingness to negotiate over the plan.

“Whether you believe it was justified or not, right or not, you cannot ignore the impact that this has had on Israel’s global standing,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio told CBS News on Sunday.

Much of the world supports Trump’s plan, which would see a technocratic, apolitical Palestinian committee oversee governance in the strip, and an international coalition funding the reconstruction of its economy and infrastructure. Palestinians would not be forced to leave the territory.

The proposal comes amid signs that Israel is rapidly losing support within the United States, with new polls showing 59% of Americans disapprove of its actions. A Pew poll showed that 55% of Republicans said they view Israel favorably — but that a growing generational divide, across party lines, risks eroding support for Israel over time.

“I think it’s gone on too long,” Megyn Kelly, a conservative commentator and former Fox News host, said last week on the Fifth Column Podcast. “I know what Hamas does, trust me. And I’ve been covering it. But that doesn’t mean that the devastation and destruction can go on forever.”

Other prominent figures on the right, including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and commentators Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes, have become more vocal criticizing Israel in recent months.

“Israel’s now taken out Hezbollah, it’s decimated Hamas, it had a war with Iran that we almost got dragged into,” Kelly added. “It’s time to wrap it up in this American’s view. I am entitled to that opinion. And I will not be shamed out of it by being called an antisemite.”

Netanyahu and his closest allies, including Ron Dermer, Israel’s minister of strategic affairs and a former ambassador to Washington, have long believed that Israel is best served relying more on deep ties to the American right than on Jewish Americans overall or on balanced bipartisanship. Increased opposition to the war among MAGA Republicans may force Netanyahu’s team to expedite its end.

Whether discontent on the right is driving Trump to push for a peace deal is unclear. But his personal involvement could prove key to success, regardless of his motives, Satloff said.

“The key new factor that is giving a chance to phase one is President Trump’s intense personal interest in freeing the hostages and the desire of key Arab players not to disappoint him,” Satloff said. “But we shouldn’t exaggerate the importance of even this critical factor — the entire house of cards can still collapse.”

What else you should be reading

The must-read: ‘I don’t want this all on camera,’ gubernatorial candidate Katie Porter says in testy interview
The deep dive: Your guide to Proposition 50: California redistricting
The L.A. Times Special: Those hyper-realistic videos you’re seeing could be fake news — because they’re actually AI ads

More to come,
Michael Wilner

—
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SACRAMENTO — Regardless of all the campaign jabber, Proposition 50 is not about saving democracy, stopping power grabs or veering off the moral high road. It’s about which political party controls Congress.

Or whether Republicans and Democrats share the power.

It’s also about exerting some control over unhinged President Trump. That would happen if voters across America next year flip the House of Representatives from Republican to Democrat, ending one-party rule of the federal government. Proposition 50 could help do that.

Does an obedient Republican Congress continue to allow Trump to walk all over it? Or does a new Democrat-led House exercise its constitutional duty to provide checks and balances over the executive branch?

This is what’s potentially at stake in California’s special election on Nov. 4. And it’s mostly what has motivated political donors to kick in an astronomical $128 million so far for the fight.

But let’s back up.

For many decades, state legislators drew their own districts — gerrymandering them to blatantly help themselves and their party win elections. And with some creative hands from California’s House delegation, Sacramento’s lawmakers also gerrymandered congressional districts.

It was unethical but perfectly legal. The final straw came in 2001 when legislators of both parties conspired to draw districts that protected every incumbent, whether Democrat or Republican.

California voters finally had enough and in 2008 banned gerrymandering. They assigned legislative redistricting to an independent bipartisan citizens’ commission. In 2010, voters also gave the panel responsibility for drawing House seats.

It has worked great. Politicians no longer get to choose their own voters. And the districts have become much more competitive.

District maps have always been drawn at the beginning of each decade after the decennial census — until now.

This time, Trump got worried that Republicans could lose the House in next year’s elections — a fate that has often befallen a president’s party during a midterm.

So Trump pressured Texas Gov. Greg Abbott into orchestrating a mid-decade legislative gerrymandering of his state’s House districts, with the aim of gaining five more Republican seats. The president has also been browbeating other red states to rig their congressional lines.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom quickly retaliated. He asked an eager Democrat-controlled Legislature to draw up new House maps designed to gain five new Democratic seats, neutralizing Texas’ action.

Democrats already outnumber Republicans in the California House delegation, 43 to 9. In Texas, Republicans hold 25 of the 38 House seats. Nationally, Democrats need to gain just three seats to retake House control.

Unlike in Texas, Newsom needs the voters’ permission to resume gerrymandering. That’s what Proposition 50 does, along with granting voter approval of proposed new weird-looking congressional maps drawn by Democratic lawmakers.

How weird? To make a new 2nd District Democrat-friendly, it was stretched hundreds of miles from the rural northeastern Oregon border southwestward into the urban San Francisco Bay Area.

Under the ballot measure, the independent commission would resume redistricting in 2031 after the next census. Proposition 50’s opponents contend Democrats can’t be trusted to keep the gerrymandering temporary.

And they’re hypocritically screaming about a “Newsom power grab” — without also pointing the finger at Trump and Abbott, who started this fight.

At its core, this is a brawl over raw political power. Forget any idealism.

Longtime Republican operative Jon Fleischman mixed his party’s principal talking point with reality in a recent blog:

“Prop. 50 is a naked power grab by Gavin Newsom,” he wrote.

“If it passes, five of nine safe GOP House seats in California will flip to safe Democrat, potentially flipping the House next year.”

In trying to rally Democratic voters — who outnumber Republicans by nearly 2 to 1 in California — Newsom frames Proposition 50 as essential for democracy.

“It’s all at stake,” the governor asserts, sounding a bit hyperbolic. “This is a profound and consequential moment in American history. We can lose this republic if we do not assert ourselves … and stand guard for the republic and our democracy.”

Come on, our republic will survive regardless of what happens to Newsom’s gerrymandering proposal — even if Trump does strain democracy.

Proposition 50 also is opposed on idealistic grounds — particularly by former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and wealthy GOP donor Charles Munger Jr. Both were strong backers of creating the independent redistricting commission. Munger has contributed $33 million to the anti-50 effort.

“Gerrymanders are a cancer and mid-decade gerrymanders are metastasis,” Munger wrote in a New York Times op-ed last month.

If Democratic politicians gerrymander California, he asserted, “then they lose the moral high ground.”

Well, if this is the moral high ground we’re living in under the Trump regime, I’d like to move to another level.

My definition of a moral high ground doesn’t include a Congress that won’t push back against a bully president who cuts back millions in research aid to universities because he doesn’t like what they teach, who sics his own masked police force of unidentified agents on California residents, who sabotages our anti-pollution programs.

Isra Ahmad, a member of the independent commission, noted in a recent Los Angeles Times opinion piece that “California has embraced [redistricting] equity and transparency while states like Texas entrench partisan advantage.”

And she asked: “Does taking the high road matter when your opponents are willing to play dirty?”

The answer: We should all play by the same rules — even if it unfortunately requires temporary gerrymandering. After Trump leaves, we can return to the high road.

What else you should be reading

The must-read: California voters were mailed inaccurate guides ahead of November special election
The interpersonal read: He’s a real pain for Gavin Newsom. And a rising Democratic star
The L.A. Times Special: In the biggest sex abuse settlement in U.S. history, some claim they were paid to sue

Until next week,
George Skelton

—
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WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court has ruled for a second time that the Trump administration may cancel the “temporary protected status” given to about 600,000 Venezuelans under the Biden administration.

The move, advocates for the Venezuelans said, means thousands of lawfully present individuals could lose their jobs, be detained in immigration facilities and deported to a country that the U.S. government considers unsafe to visit.

The high court granted an emergency appeal from Trump’s lawyers and set aside decisions of U.S. District Judge Edward Chen in San Francisco and the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

“Although the posture of the case has changed, the parties’ legal arguments and relative harms generally have not. The same result that we reached in May is appropriate here,” the court said in an unsigned order Friday.

Justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor said they would have denied the appeal.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented. “I view today’s decision as yet another grave misuse of our emergency docket,” she wrote. “Because, respectfully, I cannot abide our repeated, gratuitous, and harmful interference with cases pending in the lower courts while lives hang in the balance, I dissent.”

Last month, a three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court said Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem had overstepped her legal authority by canceling the legal protection.

Her decision “threw the future of these Venezuelan citizens into disarray and exposed them to substantial risk of wrongful removal, separation from their families and loss of employment,” the panel wrote.

But Trump’s lawyers said the law bars judges from reviewing these decisions by U.S. immigration officials.

Homeland Security applauded the Supreme Court’s action. “Temporary Protected Status was always supposed to be just that: Temporary,” Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement. “Yet, previous administrations abused, exploited, and mangled TPS into a de facto amnesty program.”

Congress authorized this protected status for people who are already in the United States but cannot return home because their native countries are not safe.

The Biden administration offered the protections to Venezuelans because of the political and economic collapse brought about by the authoritarian regime of Nicolás Maduro.

Alejandro Mayorkas, the Homeland Security secretary under Biden, granted the protected status to groups of Venezuelans in 2021 and 2023, totaling about 607,000 people.

Mayorkas extended it again in January, three days before Trump was sworn in. That same month, Noem decided to reverse the extension, which was set to expire for both groups of Venezuelans in October 2026.

Shortly afterward, Noem announced the termination of protections for the 2023 group by April.

In March, Chen issued an order temporarily pausing Noem’s repeal, which the Supreme Court set aside in May with only Jackson in dissent.

The San Francisco judge then held a hearing on the issue and concluded Noem’s repeal violated the Administrative Procedure Act because it was arbitrary and and not justified.

He said his earlier order imposing a temporary pause did not prevent him from ruling on the legality of the repeal, and the 9th Circuit agreed.

The approximately 350,000 Venezuelans who had TPS through the 2023 designation saw their legal status restored. Many reapplied for work authorization, said Ahilan Arulanantham, co-director of the Center for Immigration Law and Policy at UCLA School of Law, and a counsel for the plaintiffs.

In the meantime, Noem announced the cancellation of the 2021 designation, effective Nov. 7.

Trump’s solicitor general, D. John Sauer, went back to the Supreme Court in September and urged the justices to set aside the second order from Chen.

“This case is familiar to the Court and involves the increasingly familiar and untenable phenomenon of lower courts disregarding this Court’s orders on the emergency docket,” he said.

The Supreme Court’s decision once again reverses the legal status of the 2023 group and cements the end of legal protections for the 2021 group next month.

In a further complication, the Supreme Court’s previous decision said that anyone who had already received documents verifying their TPS status or employment authorization through next year is entitled to keep it.

That, Arulanantham said, “creates another totally bizarre situation, where there are some people who will have TPS through October 2026 as they’re supposed to because the Supreme Court says if you already got a document it can’t be canceled. Which to me just underscores how arbitrary and irrational the whole situation is.”

Advocates for the Venezuelans said the Trump administration has failed to show that their presence in the U.S. is an emergency requiring immediate court relief.

In a brief filed Monday, attorneys for the National TPS Alliance argued the Supreme Court should deny the Trump administration’s request because Homeland Security officials acted outside the scope of their authority by revoking the TPS protections early.

“Stripping the lawful immigration status of 600,000 people on 60 days’ notice is unprecedented,” Jessica Bansal, an attorney representing the Los Angeles-based National Day Laborer Organizing Network, wrote in a statement. “Doing it after promising an additional 18 months protection is illegal.”

Happy Thursday. Your usual host, D.C. Bureau Chief Michael Wilner, is on assignment. So you’re once again stuck with me, California columnist Anita Chabria.

Welcome to another week of the onslaught and overload that is Trump 2.0. What should we talk about?

President Trump’s threat to use the military in more American cities? Secretary of “War” Pete Hegseth’s He-Man rant to top military brass?

Or what about the government shutdown?

In a week with enough drama to make the Mormon wives on Hulu seem tame in comparison, it’s hard to know whether all of it matters or none of it. Because, of course, we desperately want none of it to matter, since it’s all just too much.

But too much is never enough for Trump. So let’s break it down, starting with the big man himself.

A protester holds a sign outside of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement building on Sept. 28, 2025, in Portland, Ore.

(Mathieu Lewis-Rolland / Getty Images)

The ‘enemy within’

“I told Pete, we should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military,” the Commander-in-Beef said during his Kim Jong Il-style televised address to military leaders.

“San Francisco, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, they’re very unsafe places and we’re gonna straighten them out one by one,” Trump said. “This is going to be a big thing for the people in this room because it’s the enemy from within and we have to handle it before it’s out of control.”

Yes, Los Angeles, you, with your whimsical opera whodunits and Hollywood ghost tours, are a threat to American stability. Knock it off or the National Guard will knock it off for you.

Those statements from Trump came minutes after Hegseth said to his military officers, “You kill people and break things for a living. You are not politically correct and don’t necessarily belong always in polite society.”

Senior military leaders look on as President Trump speaks at Marine Corps Base Quantico on Sept. 30, 2025, in Quantico, Va.

(Alex Wong / Getty Images)

Which sounds exactly like the kind of guy we should sent in to do crowd control at the Olympics. But before you dismiss the entire performance as strongman cosplay, consider how indifferent most Americans are to threats that the military will soon roll into Portland, Ore., or even our acceptance of troops in Chicago.

After L.A. and Washington, D.C., Trump has done exactly what he set out to do: Reduce our alarm at the use of the military on our streets so that it seems normal, almost benign. In fact, many now agree that this is the way to go. A recent study from the UC Davis Centers for Violence Prevention found that “nearly one third of respondents (32%) agree at least somewhat that the current federal government ‘should use the military to help enforce its policies.’”

Yikes.

It is, in fact, not OK. Protesting citizens are not the “enemy within.” Democrats are not the enemy. Jimmy Kimmel is not the enemy. Heck, even tech-bro libertarians aren’t the enemy, no matter how arrogant they are.

But the last few days have seen the president, through executive orders and speeches, label all dissent and dissenters as enemies — even using state agencies to do it. After the government shutdown, the Department of Housing and Urban Development displayed a banner on its homepage that blamed the “Radical Left.”

So the president has defined the “enemy within” as those who oppose him, and now informed the military personnel that they “have to handle it.”

Armed members of the National Guard patrol on Aug. 29, 2025, in Washington, D.C.

(Andrew Harnik / Getty Images)

What about the ‘beardos’?

That Hegseth, so clever. In between celebrating death and violence, he found time to attack female service members, “weak” men, those who would dare investigate wrongdoing in the military and of course, the most dreaded of insurgents: the “beardos.”

An apparent mash-up of “beard” and “weirdo,” which would please most eighth-grade boys, Hegseth used the term to describe what he said was an “unprofessional” look of some soldiers that is henceforth forbidden.

Of all the crazy and concerning in his 45-minute rant, why do I care about this moment?

Those beardos are mostly Black and brown men. Black men are prone to a shaving bump condition called pseudofolliculitis barbae and are sometimes granted permanent shaving waivers because of it. Hegseth wants to kick out of the military men with this painful condition who don’t shave.

It’s likely also aimed at Sikh service members, who grow beards as part of their religious observance. Until now they’ve been granted exemptions too. While this is a small number of servicemen, it’s significant that Hegseth’s “unprofessional” policy targets minorities.

Hegseth made it clear what he thinks of inclusion in any form, dubbing it an “insane fallacy” that “our diversity is our strength.”

Instead, he argued that it is widely accepted that “unity is strength.”

The troubling idea there is the confusion between unity and uniformity. Can’t a Black, bearded soldier have unity with a white, clean-shaven one? Can’t a female soldier share unity and purpose, a American identity, with a male fighter? Of course.

But Hegseth, who fired top Black and female military leaders this year, was never really talking about unity, was he? At least not the pluralism that has defined American unity until now.

The bipartisan flop

Let’s bounce to JD Vance, a “beardo” whose humorlessness has become his defining trait.

“There’s a lot of emergency healthcare at hospitals that are provided by illegal aliens,” he said on Fox News, in his ongoing press tour to blame the government shutdown on Democrats. The line here, a false one, is that Democrats are demanding the federal government pay healthcare costs for undocumented immigrants.

“We turned off that funding because of course we want American citizens to benefit from those hospital services,” Vance said.

Maybe if immigrants weren’t eating so many cats and dogs, they wouldn’t need so much healthcare. But I digress.

What Vance is maybe alluding to, disingenuously, is federal law that says anyone who enters an emergency room must be provided lifesaving services. So if an undocumented immigrant is in a serious car accident and is taken to a hospital, it is required to at least stabilize the person.

The same law was used, much to MAGA consternation, to protect some abortion services in dire cases — a protection Trump largely undid.

This raises the question, should we just let seriously injured brown people die in the waiting room because they can’t produce a passport?

But it’s also true that some states — through state funds — do insure undocumented immigrants, especially children and pregnant women. California is one of the few states that offer undocumented residents of all ages and genders access to its Medi-Cal coverage, though Newsom was forced by budget concerns to scale back that access in coming years. But states that do offer this coverage are, through a quirk in federal law, reimbursed at a higher rate for emergency services, also likely what has Vance in a tizzy.

The rationale behind offering this insurance has been proved out multiple times — preventative care is cheaper than emergency care. Give a guy a prescription for heart medication and he may not have a heart attack that lands him in the emergency room.

Federal programs, though, aren’t open to noncitizens, and no federal dollars are used to support California’s expansion of healthcare to undocumented people. That ban includes folks who want to buy their own affordable insurance through the marketplaces created by Obamacare.

The real issue around insurance and the shutdown is how much the cost of this marketplace insurance is about to skyrocket for average Americans. About 24 million Americans get their health insurance through these plans, with most receiving a tax credit or subsidy to help with the costs. The Republican plan would take away those credits, leaving consumers — many in the middle class — with premiums that would at least double in the coming year.

It is somewhat shocking that Democrats are doing such a terrible job getting the word out about this — instead going on the defensive to the claims about undocumented insurance. Average people — Republican or Democrat — cannot afford a doubling of their insurance costs. This is a bipartisan issue. All Americans want affordable healthcare.

We should not sacrifice affordable insurance in favor of billionaire-friendly policies and because Democrats are fumbling an easy message.

So, unfortunately, in a week of chaos, yes, it all matters.

What else you should be reading:

The must-read: Here’s how the U.S. government shutdown will impact California
The what happened: Pentagon plans widespread random polygraphs, NDAs to stanch leaks
The L.A. Times special: Jane Fonda, derided as ‘Hanoi Jane’ and a traitor during the Vietnam War, is a modern-day force in Democratic politics

P.S. I’m starting a propaganda watch, because it’s becoming off the hook. This is from the Department of Homeland Security. “Defend your culture.” You mean, like, your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free?

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ORLANDO, Fla. — After Paola Freites was allowed into the U.S. in 2024, she and her husband settled in Florida, drawn by warm temperatures, a large Latino community and the ease of finding employment and housing.

They were among hundreds of thousands of immigrants who came to the state in recent years as immigration surged under former President Biden.

No state has been more affected by the increase in immigrants than Florida, according to internal government data obtained by the Associated Press. Florida had 1,271 migrants who arrived from May 2023 to January 2025 for every 100,000 residents, followed by New York, California, Texas and Illinois.

Freites and her husband fled violence in Colombia with their three children. After some months in Mexico they moved to Apopka, an agricultural city near Orlando, where immigrants could find cheaper housing than in Miami as they spread throughout a community that already had large populations of Mexicans and Puerto Ricans. Her sister-in-law owned a mobile home that they could rent.

“She advised us to come to Orlando because Spanish is spoken here and the weather is good,” Freites, 37, said. “We felt good and welcomed.”

The data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which must verify addresses of everyone who is allowed to enter the U.S. and stay to pursue an immigration case, shows Miami was the most affected metropolitan area in the U.S. with 2,191 new migrants for every 100,000 residents. Orlando ranked 10th with 1,499 new migrants for every 100,000 residents.

The CBP data captured the stated U.S. destinations for 2.5 million migrants who crossed the border, including those like Freites who used the now-defunct CBP One app to make an appointment for entry.

Freites and her husband requested asylum and obtained work permits. She is now a housekeeper at a hotel in Orlando, a tourist destination with more than a dozen theme parks, including Walt Disney World, Universal Orlando and SeaWorld. Her husband works at a plant nursery.

“We came here looking for freedom, to work. We don’t like to be given anything for free,” said Freites, who asked that the AP identify her by her middle and second last name for fear of her mother’s safety in Colombia.

Orlando absorbed new immigrants who came

Historically, Central Florida’s immigrant population was mainly from Mexico and Central America, with a handful of Venezuelans coming after socialist Hugo Chávez became president in 1999. In 2022, more Venezuelans began to arrive, encouraged by a program created by the Biden administration that offered them a temporary legal pathway. That same program was extended later to Haitians and Cubans, and their presence became increasingly visible. The state also has a large Colombian population.

Many immigrants came to Florida because they had friends and relatives.

In Orlando, they settled throughout the area. Businesses catering to newer arrivals opened in shopping areas with Mexican and Puerto Rican shops. Venezuelan restaurants selling empanadas and arepas opened in the same plaza as a Mexican supermarket that offers tacos and enchiladas. Churches began offering more Masses in Spanish and in Creole, which Haitians speak.

As the population increased, apartments, shopping centers, offices and warehouses replaced many of the orange groves and forests that once surrounded Orlando.

The economy grew as more people arrived

New immigrants found work in the booming construction industry, as well as in agriculture, transportation, utilities and manufacturing. Many work in restaurants and hotels and as taxi drivers. Some started their own businesses.

“It’s just like a very vibrant community,” said Felipe Sousa-Lazaballet, executive director at Hope CommUnity Center, a group that offers free services to immigrants in Central Florida. “It’s like, ‘I’m going to work hard and I’m going to fight for my American dream,’ that spirit.”

Immigrants’ contributions to Florida’s gross domestic product — all goods and services produced in the state — rose from 24.3% in 2019 to 25.5% in 2023, according to the pro-immigration American Immigration Council’s analysis of the Census Bureau’s annual surveys. The number of immigrants in the workforce increased from 2.8 million to 3.1 million, or 26.5% to 27.4% of the overall population. The figures include immigrants in the U.S. legally and illegally.

Immigrants looked for advice

Groups that help immigrants also increased in size.

“We got hundreds of calls a week,” said Gisselle Martinez, legal director at the Orlando Center for Justice. “So many calls of people saying ‘I just arrived, I don’t know anybody, I don’t have money yet, I don’t have a job yet. Can you help me?’”

The center created a program to welcome them. It grew from serving 40 people in 2022 to 269 in 2023 and 524 in 2024, Melissa Marantes, the executive director, said.

In 2021, about 500 immigrants attended a Hispanic Federation fair offering free dental, medical, and legal services. By 2024, there were 2,500 attendees.

Hope, meantime, went from serving 6,000 people in 2019, to more than 20,000 in 2023 and 2024.

Many now fear being detained

After President Trump returned to office in January, anxiety spread through many immigrant communities. Florida, a Republican-led state, has worked to help the Trump administration with its immigration crackdown and has enacted laws targeting illegal immigration.

Blanca, a 38-year-old single mother from Mexico who crossed the border with her three children in July 2024, said she came to Central Florida because four nephews who were living in the area told her it was a peaceful place where people speak Spanish. The math teacher, who has requested asylum, insisted on being identified by her first name only because she fears deportation.

In July 2025, immigration officials placed an electronic bracelet on her ankle to monitor her.

Because a friend of hers was deported after submitting a work permit request, she has not asked for one herself, she said.

“It’s scary,” she said. “Of course it is.”

Salomon writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Elliot Spagat in San Diego contributed to this report.

SACRAMENTO — A former state legislative leader says fellow Democrats in Sacramento have long ignored the housing needs of middle-class Californians. And he has a plan to help them buy a new home.

To their credit, Gov. Gavin Newsom and Democratic lawmakers have been chipping away at regulatory obstacles to home building in recent years, particularly in the just-concluded legislative session.

But the building pace is still far behind what’s sorely needed — and what Newsom promised when he first ran for governor seven years ago. Supply doesn’t come close to meeting demand and that pushes home prices much higher than millions of middle-class families can afford.

One of the biggest raps on California is that housing costs have skyrocketed out of reach for many. That’s a big reason why lots of middle-class folks have fled the so-called Golden State for less expensive regions.

“Much of the work by the governor and the Legislature in recent years has focused on homelessness and affordable housing, both of which require taxpayer subsidies and leave the middle class behind,” says former Van Nuys lawmaker Bob Hertzberg, who was an Assembly speaker and Senate majority leader.

“Middle-class Californians just can’t save up enough for a down payment. And the few government programs to assist middle-class buyers are complex, underfunded and are restricted to first-time homebuyers.”

He notes the political consequences: “We [Democrats] haven’t done enough for them. And they’re punishing us in their voting patterns.”

Yes, the middle class has been turning right all across the country. Housing affordability is a problem in many states, but is particularly acute in California.

In July, the median price for an existing single-family home in California was $884,050, according to the California Assn. of Realtors. The normal 20% down payment would require a buyer to lay out $176,810 in cash. Not many young couples — or middle-aged either — have that much spare money on them.

The median home price varies greatly throughout the state. In San Mateo County, it’s $2.1 million; in San Francisco, $1.6 million. Other counties: Orange, $1.4 million; Riverside, $630,000; Ventura, $949,500; Kern, $390,000; Sacramento, $559,000.

Hertzberg has submitted a proposed ballot initiative for the 2026 election that would allow middle-class buyers of brand-new homes to borrow most of their down payment.

Rather than putting up 20% of the selling price in cash, the buyer would fork over just 3% — $26,522 based on the July statewide median price — and borrow the remaining 17%, or $150,289.

So, there’d be the regular first mortgage on 80% of the selling price, plus a second mortgage on the down-payment loan.

Based on Hertzberg’s calculations, for example, a three-bedroom, three-bath Santa Clarita home selling for $700,000 would require monthly payments of $4,253 on the two mortgages. That assumes a combined interest rate of 7%.

New townhouses and condos also would qualify under the program. The statewide median price for those in July was $647,000.

Why only new homes? Hertzberg says it’s “critically important” to increase the housing supply and the only way to do that is to build more. At the same time, it creates construction jobs.

Also, politically, it draws the support of developers, carpenters unions and Realtors.

And for local governments, it generates more property and sales taxes.

Who’s defined as middle class? Buyers whose household income is less than 200% of the median for their local area. Statewide, that’s $193,000. But it varies: $213,200 in Palmdale, $262,600 in Camarillo, $207,800 in San Bernardino, $177,000 in Fresno, $311,720 in San Francisco.

Unlike other government housing programs, this one isn’t limited to just first-time homebuyers. It only requires buyers to be Californians and to live in the home as their primary residence. No renting out.

The program would be administered and implemented by the California Housing Finance Agency.

“Most importantly — no cost to taxpayers,” Hertzberg says.

The “Middle Class Homeownership” act would be financed by the sale of $25 billion in revenue bonds that would create the down-payment loan pot. Borrowers must repay their second mortgage if the home is sold or refinanced within 15 years.

Regular lending institutions would arrange the loans and charge minimum fees.

“It’s very difficult to work with a government bureaucracy, so we’ll have banks handle all the paperwork,” Hertzberg says.

He says the program would be self-financed. Loan repayments would resupply the pot for additional homebuyers. He figures the $25-billion kitty would generate up to 150,000 new homes — helpful, but still well below the millions more that California needs.

Dan Dunmoyer, president and chief executive of the California Building Industry Assn., says California would need to be building 437,000 new homes annually to reach Newsom’s original campaign promise of 3.5 million by the time he leaves office after next year. Instead, we’re building only 112,000.

Hertzberg recalls that about five years ago he introduced legislation to spur middle-class home ownership. “It got loaded up with taxpayer-subsidized affordable housing and provisions from so many interest groups, I just walked away,” he says.

“Anytime there’s a nickel on the table, the interest groups find a way to grab it.”

“I was majority leader of the Senate,” he continues. “I know how to do this stuff. But I couldn’t get something just focused on the middle class.

“Let’s get them a home. Home is where the wealth is. Home is a dream.”

Hertzberg’s plan makes sense in concept. We rightly help veterans buy homes. Why not also help the entire struggling middle class.

What else you should be reading

The must-read: Supporters of redrawing California’s congressional districts raise tens of millions more than opponents
The deep dive: DC Explained: Medi-Cal Cuts Loom in San Diego as ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ Begins to Hit Home
The L.A. Times Special: Who’s winning the redistricting fight? Here’s how to read the polls

Until next week,
George Skelton

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Democrats, despite their hypersensitive, bleeding-heart reputation, can be harsh. Ruthless, even.

When it comes to picking their presidential nominee, it’s often one and done. Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis, Al Gore and John Kerry were embraced and then, after leading their party to disappointing defeat, cast off like so many wads of wet tissue.

Compare that with Republicans, who not only believe in second chances but, more often than not, seem to prefer their presidential candidates recycled. Over the last half century, all but a few of the GOP’s nominees have had at least one failed White House bid on their resume.

The roster of retreads includes the current occupant of the Oval Office, who is only the second president in U.S. history to regain the perch after losing it four years prior.

Why the difference? It would take a psychologist or geneticist to determine if there’s something in the minds or molecular makeup of party faithful, which could explain their varied treatment of those humbled and vanquished.

Regardless, it suggests the blowback facing Kamala Harris and the campaign diary she published last week is happening right on cue.

And it doesn’t portend well for another try at the White House in 2028, should the former vice president and U.S. senator from California pursue that path.

The criticism has come in assorted flavors.

Joe Biden loyalists — many of whom were never great fans of Harris — have bristled at her relatively mild criticisms of the obviously aged and physically declining president. (She leaves it to her husband, former Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff, to vent about the “impossible, s— jobs” Harris was given and, in spite of that, the failure of the president and first lady to defend Harris during her low points.)

The notable lack of self-blame has rankled other Democrats. Aside from some couldas and shouldas, Harris largely ascribes her defeat to insufficient time to make her case to voters — just 107 days, the title of her book — which hardly sits well with those who feel Harris squandered the time she did have.

More generally, some Democrats fault the former vice president for resurfacing, period, rather than slinking off and disappearing forever into some deep, dark hole. It’s a familiar gripe each time the party struggles to move past a presidential defeat; Hillary Clinton faced a similar backlash when she published her inside account after losing to Donald Trump in 2016.

That critique assumes great masses of voters devour campaign memoirs with the same voracious appetite as those who surrender their Sundays to the Beltway chat shows, or mainline political news like a continuous IV drip.

They do not.

Let the record show Democrats won the White House in 2020 even though Clinton bobbed back up in 2017 and, for a short while, thwarted the party’s fervent desire to “turn the page.”

But there are those avid consumers of campaigns and elections, and for the political fiends among us Harris offers plenty of fizz, much of it involving her party peers and prospective 2028 rivals.

Pete Buttigieg, the meteoric star of the 2020 campaign, was her heartfelt choice for vice president, but Harris said she feared the combination of a Black woman and gay running mate would exceed the load-bearing capacity of the electorate. (News to me, Buttigieg said after Harris revealed her thinking, and an underestimation of the American people.)

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, the runner-up to Harris’ ultimate vice presidential pick, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, comes across as unseemly salivating and greedily lusting after the job. (He fired back by suggesting Harris has some splainin’ to do about what she knew of Biden’s infirmities and when she knew it.)

Harris implies Govs. JB Pritzker and Gretchen Whitmer of Illinois and Michigan, respectively, were insufficiently gung-ho after Biden stepped aside and she became the Democratic nominee-in-waiting.

But for California readers, the most toothsome morsel involves Harris’ longtime frenemy, Gov. Gavin Newsom.

The two, who rose to political power in the early 2000s on parallel tracks in San Francisco, have long had a complicated relationship, mixing mutual aid with jealousy and jostling.

In her book, Harris recounts the hours after Biden’s sudden withdrawal, when she began telephoning top Democrats around the country to lock in their support. In contrast to the enthusiasm many displayed, Newsom responded tersely with a text message: “Hiking. Will call back.”

He never did, Harris noted, pointedly, though Newsom did issue a full-throated endorsement within hours, which the former vice president failed to mention.

It’s small-bore stuff. But the fact Harris chose to include that anecdote speaks to the tetchiness underlying the warmth and fuzziness that California’s two most prominent Democrats put on public display.

Will the two face off in 2028?

Riding the promotional circuit, Harris has repeatedly sidestepped the inevitable questions about another presidential bid.

“That’s not my focus right now,” she told Rachel Maddow, in a standard-issue non-denial denial. For his part, Newsom is obviously running, though he won’t say so.

There would be something operatic, or at least soap-operatic, about the two longtime competitors openly vying for the country’s ultimate political prize — though it’s hard to see Democrats, with their persistent hunger for novelty, turning to Harris or her left-coast political doppelganger as their savior.

Meantime, the two are back on parallel tracks, though seemingly headed in opposite directions.

While Newsom is looking to build Democratic bridges, Harris is burning hers down.

WASHINGTON — The U.S. remains mired in a deadly pandemic, the economy is suffering from a bout of inflation and states face challenges from climate to transportation, but with only days left in their close-fought race, the hottest issue dividing Virginia’s candidates for governor this week was the late novelist Toni Morrison.

The Republican candidate, Glenn Youngkin, who has steadily gained ground over the past two months, aired an ad featuring Laura Murphy, a parent who had campaigned years ago against the use of Morrison’s widely acclaimed, Pulitzer Prize-winning novel “Beloved” in her son’s high school Advanced Placement English class.

In 2016 and again in 2017, then-Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a Democrat, vetoed a bill aimed at “Beloved” that Murphy helped lobby through the state legislature. It would have required K-12 teachers to give parents advance notice of books with “sexually explicit content” and allow them to take their children out of class. “Beloved,” based on a true story of a woman who killed her child to save her from slavery, includes several graphic descriptions of sexual violence.

Youngkin accused the former governor, now seeking to return to the office, of wanting to “silence parents because he doesn’t believe they should have a say in their child’s education.”

McAuliffe fired back that Youngkin was “focused on banning award-winning books from our schools and silencing the voices of Black authors” such as Morrison. The Republican, he said, was engaged in “Trumpian dog whistles.”

For both candidates, the issue provided a chance to rally key audiences — conservative suburban parents on the one side, Black voters on the other — as the state hurtles toward an election Tuesday that, if polls are correct, could be among its closest in years.

President Biden and former President Trump both have a lot riding on the outcome.

A close race on Democratic turf

The Virginia election is everything that California’s recall turned out not to be — a test of whether Democrats can hold the allegiance of suburban voters stressed by nearly two years of COVID-19 restrictions and of whether Republicans can win a blue state despite Trump’s unpopularity.

Last year, Biden carried Virginia by 10 points, and Democrats currently control all the statewide elected offices. The party took control of both houses of the state legislature over the last four years, and Republicans haven’t won the governorship since 2009.

In short, while Virginia is not as deeply blue as California or New York, it’s a state Democrats recently have been able to count on.

Right now, they can’t.

Biden’s popularity in the state has tumbled, just as it has nationwide since this summer when the Delta variant of the coronavirus upended his optimistic forecasts about COVID-19. A Monmouth University poll in mid-October found Virginia voters disapproving of Biden’s job performance, 52% to 43%, sharply down from an August poll.

The president’s slumping polls are a big problem for McAuliffe, creating “headwinds” for him, as the candidate told supporters last month.

He faces several other difficulties: With Democrats having run the state for the last eight years, they’re naturally the target of voters seeking a change. And McAuliffe, as a former governor trying to make a comeback — Virginia doesn’t allow governors to run for consecutive terms — wouldn’t be a likely change candidate in any case. As a 64-year-old white, male, longtime political figure, he’s not the type to inspire huge enthusiasm among young voters or progressives.

Youngkin, a first-time candidate, has skillfully positioned himself. He’s seized on discontent over schools to take control of an issue on which Democrats have long had an advantage. The Monmouth poll showed that education had risen on the list of top voter concerns and that Youngkin had pulled even with McAuliffe as the candidate voters thought could best handle the issue.

Overall, Youngkin clearly has momentum on his side. The Monmouth poll was one of several recently that found the two candidates dead even — a big accomplishment for the Republican, who this summer trailed by around seven points. A Fox News poll released Thursday evening showed Youngkin moving into the lead among likely voters.

Democrats have dominated early voting, which the state has greatly expanded, but both parties expect Republicans to show up in large numbers to vote in person on Tuesday.

Youngkin, the former CEO of Carlyle Group, a big private equity firm, has poured at least $20 million of his own money into the race, allowing him to keep pace with McAuliffe, a prolific fundraiser. He’s used that money for a barrage of television ads that depict him in classrooms, pledging to raise teacher pay — stealing a page from the Democratic playbook.

At the same time, he has closely identified himself with parents angry over unresponsive school bureaucracies — a sentiment that has boiled over in many parts of the country.

Youngkin has used education issues to mobilize conservatives, pledging to ban teaching of critical race theory in Virginia. It’s not clear that the academic theory, which analyzes the outcomes of systemic racism, is taught anywhere in the state’s K-12 schools, but the idea that it might be has become a rallying cry on the right. That, plus Trump’s endorsement, has solidified his Republican support.

Education also has given him an entrée to less ideological voters in the state’s large suburban regions. In recent elections, those voters increasingly have turned against the GOP, but many are deeply frustrated over the last year and a half of COVID-related school disruptions.

In the California recall election, Republicans had hoped that tapping into parental anger could give them the boost they needed to defeat Gov. Gavin Newsom. That failed, in large part because the top Republican candidate, Larry Elder, lacked credibility with swing voters.

Youngkin has avoided Elder’s habit of creating controversies. Instead, it was McAuliffe who inadvertently helped his opponent with ill-chosen words. During a candidate debate in September, as he explained why he had vetoed the so-called “Beloved” bill, McAuliffe said “I’m not going to let parents come into schools and actually take books out and make their own decisions.”

Then, he added: “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.”

Youngkin has heavily featured that line in his ads.

McAuliffe’s campaign eventually responded with an ad in which the former governor expressed respect for parents, but the damage was done.

On top of the reasons that may cause some swing voters to switch this year, McAuliffe also faces a turnout problem, according to Democratic strategists close to his campaign: After the drama of last year, many Democratic voters are exhausted with politics. Republicans, by contrast, are highly motivated to avenge their recent losses.

To counter apathy, McAuliffe has depended heavily on Democrats’ chief motivator — Trump.

In speeches and advertisements, he constantly links his opponent with the unpopular former president.

So do his surrogates, including Biden.

“I ran against Donald Trump. And Terry is running against an acolyte of Donald Trump,” Biden said Tuesday during a campaign rally with McAuliffe in northern Virginia.

Former President Obama, Georgia’s Stacey Abrams and other leading Democrats who have come into the state to campaign have stressed the same point.

Trump, in his usual way, has not been able to resist the urge to get involved. On Wednesday, his spokesperson put out a statement saying that Trump “and his MAGA movement will be delivering a major victory to Trump-endorsed businessman Glenn Youngkin.”

McAuliffe’s campaign went into overdrive to ensure the statement was widely seen.

With the contest appearing so close — tight enough that the winner might not be known until final ballots are counted late next week — there’s one forecast that’s clear: Whichever candidate wins probably can thank Donald Trump.

A ‘framework’ if not a bill

Biden, before heading to Europe, where he will participate in the G20 economic summit and an international conference on climate change, traveled to Capitol Hill on Thursday to announce that he and party leaders had negotiated the “framework” of a bill to cover his major budget priorities.

As Jennifer Haberkorn and Nolan McCaskill reported, the measure, the subject of negotiations for months, would spend roughly $1.75 trillion over the next 10 years on a host of Democratic priorities, including universal preschool for 3- and 4-year-olds, subsidies for childcare and continuation of the expanded child tax credit.

On healthcare, the bill would expand subsidies under the Affordable Care Act and close the hole in Obamacare that excludes low-income people in the dozen states, mostly in the South, that have refused to expand Medicaid. Both expansions would last through 2025. Medicare would grow to include hearing coverage.

The bill would also include about $500 billion to combat climate change.

McCaskill prepared this summary of what’s in the framework.

Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi hope that agreement on the framework will allow the House to pass the separate $1 trillion infrastructure bill that cleared the Senate in early August. But a large number of progressive House Democrats are continuing to hold out. They want more concrete assurances that Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, who have been the main impediments to Biden’s budget plan in the Senate, will vote for the framework before they’ll vote to approve the infrastructure bill, which the two more-conservative senators support.

Democratic leaders hope to bring both bills to a vote as early as next week.

Several Democratic priorities fell out of the bill as the White House negotiated with Manchin and Sinema to reduce its cost. As Haberkorn reported, a key element that dropped out was a program for paid family leave. Also gone is a plan to allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices.

As Chris Megerian wrote, Biden has been pressing to get agreement on his domestic priorities before heading overseas for the summit meetings.

Friday morning, Biden began his European events with a private meeting with Pope Francis. As Megerian wrote, the meeting comes at a time when some conservative U.S. bishops have talked of denying Biden communion because of his support for abortion rights. The pope’s decision to host Biden “sends a message to the American bishops that denying communion is not something that he approves of,” said John K. White, professor of politics at the Catholic University of America in Washington.

Oil industry on the hot seat

In advance of the climate summit, a House committee has been grilling oil industry leaders about their decades-long record of downplaying the role that fossil fuels play in causing global warming. As Anna Phillips and Erin Logan reported, the hearing marked the first time that members of Congress have directly questioned oil and gas executives under oath about reported efforts to mislead the public about climate change.

The latest from California

Gov. Newsom and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg announced $5 billion in loans to help modernize California’s seaports. The money probably won’t come in time to help clear out current snarls that have backlogged shipments, but it should help prevent future logistical nightmares, Megerian and Russ Mitchell reported.

In Sacramento, lawmakers called for changes following the oil spill off the coast of Orange County, but, as Phil Willon reported, they largely conceded that the state has little ability to ban offshore drilling, most of which occurs in federal waters.

The field of candidates for mayor of Los Angeles got another entry this week as Ramit Varma, an entrepreneur from Encino, announced his candidacy. As Dakota Smith reported, another businessman waits in the wings. Rick Caruso, the prominent developer, has been discussing a race with strategists, including Bearstar Strategies, the firm whose partners Ace Smith and Sean Clegg devised campaigns for former Gov. Jerry Brown and Vice President Kamala Harris.

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

WASHINGTON — In an interview with Rachel Maddow this week promoting her new memoir, Kamala Harris was asked whether her book tour is part of a strategy to run again for the presidency in 2028.

“That’s not my focus at all,” Harris replied, dismissive of the idea. “It really isn’t.”

Democratic strategists agree that her book, “107 Days,” and the tour that has followed suggests Harris lacks a serious plan for a future in elected politics, generating more questions than clarity on her path forward and future role in public life.

The book has reopened a fractious intraparty debate over who is to blame for last year’s loss to President Trump. Polls show Harris’ standing in the field of 2028 Democratic presidential contenders as relatively weak for a figure who led the party less than a year ago. And even in California, her home state, Democrats prefer another potential candidate, Gov. Gavin Newsom, over her for the next contest.

A historically weak showing

Harris argues in her book she had too little time to mount a competitive campaign after President Biden announced he would drop out of the race that July, handing the party mantle to her with little notice.

She called it “reckless” to allow Biden to make the decision to run for reelection on his own, and on tour, has acknowledged responsibility for not speaking up more on the matter herself. But she has not stated explicitly that it was a mistake for him to enter the race in the first place.

Harris would ultimately post the worst electoral college showing for a Democrat since Michael Dukakis in 1988.

“I realize that I have and had a certain responsibility that I should have followed through on,” she told Maddow. “When I talk about the recklessness, as much as anything, I’m talking about myself.”

Potential 2028 candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination, many of whom already are making visits to battleground states, have seized the moment of her tour to criticize her handling of the 2024 race. Harris wrote in the book that it was her duty as Biden’s vice president to remain loyal to him, despite acknowledging that, at 81, Biden “got tired” on the job.

“She’s going to have to answer to how she was in the room and yet never said anything publicly,” Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro told a SiriusXM podcast last week.

The book touches on Shapiro as well as Pete Buttigieg, Biden’s former Transportation secretary and another possible contender in 2028, as figures she considered as potential running mates. But airing her assessments of active political aspirants has only drawn more scrutiny. On “Good Morning America” this week, asked whether her book had hurt her relationships with fellow Democrats, Harris replied, “that’s not my intention, and I hope not.”

“Harris, like other well-known Democrats, naturally wants to be a part of the national conversation — about 2024, 2026 and 2028. What happened, what should the party do, and who should lead it forward?” said Andrew Sinclair, an assistant professor of government at Claremont McKenna College. “These are all questions Democrats are actively debating now, and even if she decides not to run in the future, Harris has a high enough profile in the party to have a role in answering those questions.”

Passing on a potential run for governor of California, Harris told Stephen Colbert that she had decided America’s system of elected offices was no longer the venue for her to enact change. “I think it’s broken,” she said.

But her memoir and book tour have shed little light on what alternatives she might have in mind to remain a relevant figure in public life — or what vision she has for the Democratic Party going forward.

She concludes the book with a handful of platitudes on the need to invest in Gen Z.

“We need to come up with our own blueprint that sets out our alternative vision for our country,” she wrote.

Newsom better positioned

High-quality polls show Harris remains a leading choice for Democrats in the next campaign cycle, tied or slightly edged out by Newsom. But under the hood, data indicate that less than 20% of Democrats view her as an ideal party leader entering the coming race.

Newsom’s polling trajectory, on the other hand, has begun moving in the opposite direction.

A series of polls published late last month found support for the California governor had surged over the summer, as Newsom embraced high-profile battles with Trump over ICE raids in Los Angeles, national gerrymandering efforts and the cultural memesphere.

And after Trump took substantial time in his speech to the United Nations General Assembly this week to deride climate change as a “hoax,” Newsom is in New York, as well, to attend Climate Week, highlighting California initiatives in interviews with Colbert and the New York Times.

His combative appearances, looking forward to 2028 and beyond, offer a contrast with a book tour by Harris that has thus far focused on the past.

“Governor Newsom has deftly positioned himself as the national Democrat most consistently ready to stand up to the president, adopting the tools — his podcast — and tactics — in-your-face-social media — that proved so effective for the GOP ticket last time,” said Bruce Mehlman, a bipartisan campaign consultant in Washington.

But the pace of political change in Trump’s America makes current polling unreliable, Sinclair said.

“The 2028 election is far away at a time when the political situation in the United States is changing rapidly,” he said, adding: “At best, Democratic leaders today can put themselves in a position to be influential, but I do not think anyone knows enough about what is going to happen next to have much more of a plan than that.”

What else you should be reading

The must-read: Family of former DACA recipient who died in ICE custody says officials ignored his pleas for help
The deep dive: RFK Jr. wants an answer to rising autism rates. Scientists say he’s ignoring some obvious ones
The L.A. Times Special: How viral rumors worsened the fallout from an ICE raid at Santa Fe Springs Swap Meet

More to come,
Michael Wilner
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SACRAMENTO — John Burton was the unique sort of political leader we need much more of in today’s hate-spewing politics.

First, he dedicated his life to fighting for a cause that earned him only personal satisfaction and absolutely no political gain: the powerless poor, particularly the aged, blind and disabled.

These aren’t folks with any money to donate to political coffers. They’re not members of unions harboring large piles of campaign cash. They don’t volunteer to walk precincts before elections. Many can barely walk. They’re not organized. More likely they live lonely lives. And they never heard of John Burton.

Burton — and only Burton — had these peoples’ backs in Sacramento’s halls of power for many years. And no one has taken his place.

Second, this bleeding-heart San Francisco liberal instinctively liked and befriended many political opposites with whom he developed working relationships to achieve his and their goals. He’d loudly denounce their conservative positions on issues but not them personally — in contrast to today’s ugly, click-driven, opportunistic American politics.

Right-wingers? “I never held that against anybody,” Burton writes in his recently released autobiography, “I Yell Because I Care: The Passion and Politics of John Burton, California’s Liberal Warrior.”

“Like, you never know when you might need a right-winger for something. And when you do, it’s best to give them something in return. And it’s even better when what they want is something you don’t really care about. Sometimes, that’s the way s— gets done in politics.”

When it gets done, which is almost never these days in Congress. Things might get done in Sacramento — for good or bad — because Democrats wield ironclad control over all branches of government, unlike when Burton was a legislator during decades that required bipartisan compromise.

Burton was infamously foul-mouthed and often rude. But colleagues, staffers, lobbyists and reporters rolled their eyes and adjusted. OK, so you couldn’t always quote his exact words in a family newspaper or on TV.

At heart, Burton was a softie and extrovert who genuinely liked people of all political persuasions. And they liked him because he was a straight shooter whose word was golden — the No. 1 asset for most anyone in politics.

Softie? Longtime Burton spokesman David Seback recalls this incident when the lawmaker was Senate president pro tem, the No. 2 most powerful office in the Capitol:

“There was a guy who was pretty severely disabled who would go with difficulty using crutches from office to office delivering copies of these multi-page conspiracy theory laden packets he put together to all 120 legislators. There were some typewritten parts, some handwritten, some xeroxed photos.

“One day John stopped him and said, ‘From now on, you deliver one copy to my office.’ After that, all the legislators got a copy of these packets stamped, ‘Compliments of John Burton.’”

Most Capitol denizens — if they noticed him at all — probably dismissed this packet-carting conspiracy theorist on crutches as a sad kook. But he’s the type who was Burton’s purpose in life to help.

Burton, 92, died Sept. 7 at a hospice facility in San Francisco.

The Times ran an excellent Page 1 obituary on Burton written by former Times staffer Dan Morain. It covered the bases well: A pro-labor lawmaker instrumental in shaping California politics over six decades on topics as varied as welfare, foster care, mental health, auto emissions and guns.

Burton was integral to a powerful political organization founded by his older brother, U.S. Rep. Phil Burton, that included two of John’s closest pals: future San Francisco mayors George Moscone and Willie Brown. The organization kick-started the political careers of future U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Vice President Kamala Harris and Gov. Gavin Newsom.

John Burton left Congress in 1982 to fight cocaine addiction and remained clean and sober the rest of his life. He was reelected to the Legislature in 1988, ultimately chosen as Senate leader and termed out in 2004. Then he became state Democratic Party chairman for the second time.

When Burton died, I was recovering from an illness and missed out writing about him. That bothered me. So I’m doing it now.

I got to know Burton when he was first elected to the Assembly with Willie Brown in 1964. Both were fast learners about how the Capitol worked and ultimately each was elected leader of his house.

“Sometimes all it takes to succeed in politics is to make sure somebody has a nice view of Capitol Park and an extra secretary,” Burton writes in his autobiography of rounding up enough of Senate votes to become leader.

In the entertaining book, co-written with journalist Andy Furillo, Burton writes extensively about “the neediest of the needy…. My district included a ton of single-room occupancy hotels south of Market Street that were filled with people who cooked off hot plates and had to go down the hall to the bathroom. They survived on their federal and state assistance checks.”

Governors and legislative leaders of both parties routinely ripped off these poor folks’ federal aid increases to help balance the state budget in tough economic times. Or they’d try to until Burton blocked them.

“For some people,” Burton once told me, “it can be the difference between tuna fish and cat food for lunch.”

Without calling up local TV — as most politicians would — Burton bought blankets and drove around San Francisco by himself handing them out to the homeless.

“We were brought up to be that way,” Burton told me. “My old man [a doctor], he’d do house calls in the Fillmore, a Black area, at 2 in the morning. And if the family looked like it didn’t have money, he’d say, ‘Forget it. Go buy the kid a pair of shoes.’”

Thanks to Burton, the state was forced into buying lots of tuna fish lunches for the neediest of the needy.

What else you should be reading

The must-read: ‘We’re not North Korea.’ Newsom signs bills to limit immigration raids at schools and unmask federal agents
The TK: Here’s why the redistricting fight is raging. And why it may be moot
The L.A. Times Special: Don’t hold your breath, but as raids stifle economy, Trump proves case for immigration reform

Until next week,
George Skelton

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Without a doubt, it is important to capture the reflections of a vice president who found herself in an unprecedented situation after the president was pressured to withdraw from the 2024 election. And “107 Days,” a taut, often eye-opening account — written with the help of Geraldine Brooks — takes you inside the rooms where it happened, as well as what led up to Kamala Harris’ remarkable run.

For one, apparently MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell first gave Harris the idea she should seek the presidency in 2020. Harris and her husband, Doug Emhoff, were having breakfast at a restaurant near their Brentwood home when O’Donnell “wandered up to our table to talk about the dire consequences of a second Trump term.” Harris, then in her first term as a U.S. senator, recounts that O’Donnell bluntly suggested: “‘You should run for president.’ I honestly had not thought about it until that moment,” she writes in “107 Days.”

Later, Harris also reveals that Tim Walz was not her first choice for running mate: Pete Buttigieg was, though she ultimately concluded the country wasn’t ready for a gay man in the role.

“We were already asking a lot of America: to accept a woman, a Black woman, a Black woman married to a Jewish man,” she writes. She assumes Buttigieg felt similarly, but they never discussed it.

We do not glean much more than we already knew or assumed about President Biden’s life-changing 2024 phone call that set Harris on this path. Pleas for Biden to step aside had been building following his disastrous debate performance less than five months before the election, but by that time Harris had given up on the idea that he would withdraw from the race. But on Sunday, July 21, Harris had just finished making pancakes for her grandnieces at the vice president’s residence and was settling in to watch a cooking show with them when “No Caller ID” came up on her secure phone.

“I need to talk to you,” Biden rasps, then battling COVID-19. Without fanfare, he told her: “I’ve decided I’m dropping out.” “Are you sure?” Harris replies, to which Biden responds: “I’m sure. I’m going to announce in a few minutes.” In italics, we are made privy to what Harris is thinking during their brief phone call: “Really?” Give me a bit more time. The whole world is about to change. I’m here in sweatpants.”

If we wanted in on the powerful feelings that must have been swirling within each of them during such an exchange, or a nod to the momentousness of the moment — no dice. The conversation shifted to the timing of Biden’s endorsement of Harris, which Biden’s staff wanted to delay and which she wanted immediately. Politics, not sentiment, reigned.

The Atlantic book excerpt published earlier this month, it turns out, accurately represents the overall tone of “107 Days.” A thread running throughout is one of bitterness toward Biden’s inner circle, whom Harris felt had been poisoning the well since she first took office: “The public statements, the whispering campaigns, and the speculation had done a world of damage,” she recounts, and perhaps laid the groundwork for her defeat. While she had a warm relationship with the president himself, Harris believes she was never trusted by the first lady or the president’s closest advisors, nor did they throw their full weight behind her as the Democratic nominee.

At the same time, she never doubted that she was the right person for the job. She writes, “I knew I was the candidate in the strongest position to win. … The most qualified and ready. The highest name recognition.” She also calculates that the president and his team thought she was the least bad option to replace him because “I was the only person who would preserve his legacy.” “At this point,” she adds, “anyone else was bound to throw him — and all the good he had achieved — right under the bus.”

For those who are cynical about politics, “107 Days” will not alter your view. After Biden announces his withdrawal, First Lady Jill Biden welcomes Second Gentleman Emhoff into the fray, advising: “Be careful what you wish for. You’re about to see how horrible the world is.” Her senior adviser David Plouffe encourages Harris to distance herself from the president on the campaign trail, because “People hate Joe Biden.” Again and again, Harris provides examples of being left out of the loop or not robustly supported by his inner circle. She writes that her feelings for the president “were grounded in warmth and loyalty” but had become “more complicated over time.” She claims never to have doubted Biden’s competence, even while she worried about how he appeared to the public.

“On his worst day,” she writes, “he was more deeply knowledgeable, more capable of exercising judgment, and far more compassionate than Donald Trump at his best.” Still, his decision about seeking a second term shouldn’t “have been left to an individual’s ego, an individual’s ambition,” she concludes in an observation that grabbed headlines upon its publication in the Atlantic excerpt.

The exhilaration that Harris’ campaign frequently exuded in those early rallies is summarized here, but those accounts don’t capture the joy. Some of the details she chooses to highlight tamp down the excitement. For example, at their first rally together after picking Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz to be her running mate, Walz, Harris and their families greet an audience of 10,000 people in Philadelphia. Though Harris writes, “We rode the high of the crowd that night,” she also notes, “When Tim clasped my hand to thrust it high in an enthusiastic victory gesture, he was so tall that the entire front of my jacket rose up.” She makes “a mental note to tell him: From now on, when we do that, you gotta bend your elbow.”

The Kamala Harris I saw on the campaign trail and enthusiastically voted for is often in evidence on the page. She is smart, savvy, funny and tough. As in many of her stump speeches and media interviews, she tends to recite her accomplishments as if reading from a resume, which sometimes reads as defensive. But she is also indefatigable: She believes that she must win to save democracy, yet she seems to shoulder that formidable burden without breaking a sweat.

“107 Days” does an excellent job of conveying the difficulty of seeking — and occupying — high office, and suggests that if she’d won, Harris’ resilience and ambition would have served her well as the leader of the free world. Many of her insights are astute, though occasionally tinged with rancor. She does accept responsibility for certain missteps, such as when she was asked on “The View” if she would have done anything differently than Biden had she been in charge. She reflects that her response — “There is nothing that comes to mind” — landed as if she’d “pulled the pin on a hand grenade.” But she doesn’t attribute her eventual loss to that or any other miscalculation: She simply needed more time to make her case.

I craved a soaring moment, a rallying cry. I didn’t find hope or inspiration within these pages — the book felt more like an obligatory postmortem with an already established conclusion. If an aim of this memoir was to rally the troops for a Harris run in 2028, “107 Days” falls short of lighting a fire. The brilliant, charismatic woman who came close to breaking the ultimate glass ceiling has given us an essential portrait of an unforgettable turning point in her journey, but “107 Days” is mainly absent the perspective and blueprint for going forward that so many of us hunger for. A few years out, that wisdom may come.

Haber is a writer, editor and publishing strategist. She was director of Oprah’s Book Club and books editor for O, the Oprah Magazine.

WASHINGTON — Of all the investigations underway by the FBI, the case of Charlie Kirk’s killing is one that President Trump’s allies expect the bureau to get right. Yet its director, Kash Patel, has struggled out of the gate.

A series of missteps

He posted misleading updates of the manhunt for a suspect on social media, blaming “the heat of the moment” in testimony before a Senate panel on Tuesday. He failed to coordinate his messaging internally with Justice Department leadership. Instead of returning to headquarters, Patel dined at an exclusive restaurant in New York as the search unfolded. And after a suspect was apprehended, Patel joined Fox News to share unprecedented details.

It was a series of missteps viewed in law enforcement circles as rookie errors, reflective of a director in over his head.

Trump has publicly stood by Patel in recent days. But leading voices in the MAGA movement have wondered aloud whether it is time for Patel to be removed, and top officials at the White House and Justice Department are reportedly questioning his future at the bureau. The president has also installed another loyalist in a top deputy position at FBI headquarters, raising questions over his plans.

Kash Patel discusses the hunt for Charlie Kirk’s killer at a news conference Friday in Orem, Utah, joined by Utah Department of Public Safety Commissioner Beau Mason, left, and Utah Gov. Spencer Cox.

(Lindsey Wasson / Associated Press)

The renewed spotlight on Patel comes amid suspicion in right-wing circles the director is suppressing the release of files from the investigation of Jeffrey Epstein, a notorious sex offender, at Trump’s direction. And last week, former bureau officials filed a lawsuit against the administration accusing the White House of exerting extraordinary political influence over the FBI, issuing loyalty tests for agents to determine their support for Trump.

On Saturday, Trump told Fox News that he was “very proud of the FBI,” praising the agency for ultimately catching the suspected killer. “Kash — and everyone else — they have done a great job,” he added.

“In normal times, any run-of-the-mill president of either party would certainly have serious concerns with keeping Patel around,” said Douglas M. Charles, a professor and FBI historian at Penn State Greater Allegheny, characterizing Patel as historically unqualified for the role. “Of course, we are not living in normal political times.”

Patel’s job sustainability, Charles said, “rests not on whether he is competent, but exclusively on whether President Trump is satisfied with him.”

“Patel is not acting as an independent FBI director,” Charles added, “the standard we have historically had since 1973.”

Jeopardizing the Kirk case?

Justice Department officials reacted with alarm after Patel shared the content of text messages from the suspect in Kirk’s shooting, revelations that got out front of official court filings.

“Why are we reluctant to share the details of the investigation itself, and comment on the case?” Jeff Gray, the Utah County attorney, said Tuesday, outlining state charges against the murder suspect. “Because I want to ensure a fair and impartial trial.”

“I can’t talk about details at all,” said Pam Bondi, the U.S. attorney general, asked for insight into the case in a Fox News interview on Monday.

The episode drew harsh rebuke from Democrats on Capitol Hill this week, where Patel was scheduled for hearings with the House and Senate judiciary committees. “Could I have been more careful in my verbiage?” he mused, before facing a slew of questions from lawmakers.

But Patel fiercely defended himself, repeatedly citing his experience as a prosecutor in the national security division of the Justice Department, and later at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and at the Defense Department.

“I’m not going anywhere,” Patel told the Senate. “If you want to criticize my 16 years of service, please bring it on.”

Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones, a professor emeritus and FBI historian at the University of Edinburgh, said that precedent exists of public officials undermining the prosecution of high-profile cases, sometimes with devastating consequences. “The Patel remarks and actions may well prejudice the trial of Tyler Robinson,” he said, referencing Kirk’s murder suspect.

On Capitol Hill, Patel said his social posts and media appearances were in service of transparency with the American people. But the charges, trial, and evidence in the case are all public, said Norm Eisen, co-founder of the States United Democracy Center and counsel for the House Judiciary Committee during Trump’s first impeachment trial.

“Patel’s appointment as FBI director raised red flags from the start, mainly because of his lack of relevant experience and his partisan background. What we’ve seen in recent days has only reinforced those concerns,” Eisen said.

“The Utah County attorney leading the prosecution knew better than to comment on Patel’s speculative claims, correctly pointing out that it was necessary to preserve an impartial jury,” he added. “Making political speeches about the case undermines the integrity of the process and jeopardizes the prosecution.”

Political litmus tests

In a heated exchange with Patel this week, Sen. Adam Schiff, a Democrat from California, asked the director whether anyone from the bureau had been terminated or disciplined “in whole or in part” for being assigned to work on investigations of Trump in recent years. Trump was ultimately charged with federal crimes over his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election and his handling of highly classified documents.

“Anyone that was terminated at the FBI was done so for failing to meet their standards, uphold their constitutional oath, and effectuate the mission,” Patel replied, adding: “No one at the FBI is terminated for case assignments alone.”

The line of questioning came amid reports and a lawsuit alleging Patel has taken direct instructions from the White House to fire individuals involved in the Trump investigations.

Three former senior FBI officials — Spencer L. Evans, Brian J. Driscoll Jr. and Steven J. Jensen — brought the lawsuit after being fired from their jobs in a “campaign of retribution,” according to the filing, a 68-page document that paints Patel as a vassal of Trump prioritizing his social media image over the work of the bureau.

“Patel not only acted unlawfully, but deliberately chose to prioritize politicizing the FBI over protecting the American people,” the lawsuit reads.

But it was questioning over the Epstein case that set off Patel’s patience.

At the end of their exchange, Schiff asked the director how he could possibly be in the dark over the circumstances of a prison transfer for Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s close confidante serving 20 years in prison for aiding his abuse of hundreds of women and girls, to one of the most comfortable facilities in the federal penitentiary system. Patel erupted, calling Schiff a “buffoon” over his investigations of the president.

“Here’s the thing, Mr Patel,” Sen. Cory Booker, a Democrat from New Jersey, told Patel, ending a similarly heated exchange. “I think you’re not gonna be around long. I think this might be your last oversight hearing.”

“Because as much as you supplicate yourself to the will of Donald Trump and not the Constitution,” Booker added, “Donald Trump has shown us he is not loyal to people like you.”

What else you should be reading

The must-read: L.A.’s online ‘hood’ culture turns real-world violence into viral content
The deep dive: Primm was once an affordable casino mecca for L.A. Now it has become a ghost town
The L.A. Times Special: White supremacists, death threats and ‘disgust’: Charlie Kirk’s killing roils Huntington Beach

More to come,
Michael Wilner
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