political

Aug. 25 (UPI) — A special congressional committee in Costa Rica is reviewing a request to lift President Rodrigo Chaves’ immunity, putting the executive branch and judiciary at odds.

Tensions between the two institutions escalated Friday after Chaves appeared before the committee, where he denied corruption charges and denounced the investigation by the National Prosecutor’s Office as a “setup” and a “judicial coup attempt.”

The more than four-hour session — broadcast live — marked an unprecedented moment: it was the first time a sitting president testified before lawmakers in a process to lift immunity.

Criticizing the judiciary’s role in the case brought by Attorney General Carlo Díaz, President Chaves told the committee the accusation had roots in the early days of his administration, when “I showed the people the responsibility of the judiciary and of legislative policy in the deep deterioration of our society.”

The case against President Chaves began after the Supreme Court asked Congress on July 1 to remove his immunity over an investigation tied to funds from the Central American Bank for Economic Integration. Prosecutors say Chaves intervened so that part of those funds — $32,000 — went to one of his advisers through a communications services contract.

The other side of the institutional clash came before and after the hearing. On Aug. 8, Attorney General Carlo Díaz told the same committee the case is backed by witness testimony and documents, evidence he said was sufficient to bring an indictment and request a trial.

Díaz said the case had gone through several internal reviews within the judiciary to ensure the accusation “is not seen as one branch attacking another.”

In a press release, Supreme Court President Orlando Aguirre Gómez rejected claims that the proceedings against the president amounted to a so-called “judicial coup.”

Aguirre defended the independence of the judiciary and the transparency with which the case has been handled. He stressed that every step in the process has followed the law and been carried out independently, without political pressure or private interests.

He also urged the public to be critical of rhetoric intended to mislead and reiterated that Costa Rica’s institutional strength rests on respect among branches of government and confidence in the justice system.

The special congressional committee also made its role clear: not to judge the merits of the case, but to decide whether there is sufficient basis to lift a sitting president’s immunity and bring him to trial.

Connie Contreras was so excited when her daughter told her that Bob Dole was campaigning for the presidency just a block from her Redondo Beach home Wednesday that she dropped the bedcovers she was straightening, left the dirty dishes in the sink and ran all the way to Perry Park to see Dole for herself.

And she didn’t even like Dole.

But for coming to her town, Dole earned the 64-year-old Contreras’ vote.

“This is the first time I’ve ever seen any politician in my life,” Contreras said, beaming. “This is so exciting for me!”

There are always political junkies who will work a presidential candidate’s phone banks, wave signs and crowd in front of TV cameras at rallies. But to excite at least some of the average, reputedly apathetic American voters, there’s nothing like a good, old-fashioned stump speech. Just ask Contreras.

“Dole came to my park, where I used to take my kids!” she said. “Now that I hear him, I’m going to vote for him.”

*

To be sure, there were more than a few political die-hards among the 300 or so in attendance, the ones who wear lapel pins with their candidate’s name and rattle off their previous campaigns the way other people list their children.

Nikola M. Mikulicich Jr., a 23-year-old who graduated from Cal State Dominguez Hills at 17 and from UCLA’s Law School when he was 20, is a veteran rally-goer, having attended Bush/Quayle rallies four years ago.

Mikulicich, a self-employed lawyer, a member of the Young Republicans and the local chapter of the California Republican Assembly, said he was glad he took a few hours away from his work.

“I came to show support for Dole and the work of the local officials to clean up this area,” said Mikulicich, a Redondo Beach resident. “I think we got the message loud and clear to Dole, [Gov. Pete] Wilson and [state Atty. Gen. Dan] Lungren that we care about the work they’re doing to make our streets safer.”

The UCLA campus Democrats also made an appearance, complete with both hand-drawn and official Clinton-Gore signs.

“I’m here to make a statement, you know, that I don’t think Dole has the best solutions to the problems in this country,” said Max Von Slauson, a 23-year-old history major from San Francisco, outfitted in a sweatshirt from an Asian dance troupe performance, dark blue plaid shorts and hiking boots. “We’re moving into the 21st century, you know, and he’s, like, back in the 17th or 18th century.”

Some ralliers came to Perry Park, a neighborhood green patch with playground equipment and a baseball diamond, not in support or defiance of Dole, but to share their opinions about park policing with the presidential hopeful.

Some neighbors and local officials said they were thrilled that Dole came to acknowledge what they called the successes of a temporary restraining order that bars 28 alleged gang members from congregating in the park or participating in various other activities, legal and illegal. The city hopes to be granted a permanent injunction in June.

But those named in the order, their friends and their supporters wanted Dole to know their side of the story too.

“Dole needs to come to our community and see what’s going on for himself,” said Rachel Lujan, an 18-year-old mother and student who rocked her stroller back and forth while she spoke. “It’s a violation of the Constitution.”

Dole may not have seen Lujan’s and her friends’ signs–”Redondo Beach 1996 Not Germany,” read one–behind the banners proclaiming Dole’s name, advocating abortion rights, supporting Clinton and Gore and touting education. But it would have been hard for him to miss the smaller anti-Dole group’s boos over his supporters’ cheers.

Dotty Ertel, a 52-year-old Marina del Rey resident standing next to the teenage protesters, said she might have been at home eating breakfast if it weren’t for Dole’s appearance.

But as long as Dole was coming, Ertel said, so was she. So in stylish black leggings and smart camel-colored blazer, she waved her Clinton-Gore sign and shouted, “Four more years!” with the other rabble-rousers.

“This is my first campaign,” she said proudly. “Even if it’s a Dole rally, we have our opinion and should be heard.”

*

Most of the 140 fifth- and sixth-graders from nearby Madison Elementary School were also participating in their first campaign event. Wearing bright red T-shirts proclaiming the name of their school, the children listened to the speech from the grass next to the adults’ folding chairs. After the candidate finished, they sang a song about the Constitution.

Although they missed rehearsal for their play about the Constitution and Bill of Rights, 11-year-old Kathryn said she thought hearing Dole’s speech was educational in its own right.

“He talked about gangs and making this a safe city and making this park a place where kids can play,” Kathryn said. “I thought that was right. I like to play in parks.”

Ray Comstock, 84, came to Perry Park not for Dole but for his regular Redondo Beach senior citizens meeting. Comstock said he was underwhelmed that he also caught the tail end of Dole’s speech by happenstance.

“It’s just politics is all it is,” Comstock said. “I think half of them are here just to say they’ve been here.”

NEW YORK — President Trump stood among several hundred law enforcement officers, National Guard troops and federal agents at a U.S. Park Police operations center in one of Washington, D.C.’s most dangerous neighborhoods. As the cameras rolled, he offered a stark message about crime, an issue he’s been hammering for decades, as he thanked them for their efforts.

“We’re not playing games,” he said. “We’re going to make it safe. And we’re going to then go on to other places.”

The Republican president is proudly promoting the work of roughly 2,000 National Guard troops in the city, lent by allied governors from at least six Republican-led states. They’re in place to confront what Trump describes as an out-of-control crime wave in the Democratic-run city, though violent crime in Washington, like dozens of cities led by Democrats, has been down significantly since a pandemic high.

Trump and his allies are confident that his stunning decision to dispatch troops to a major American city is a big political winner almost certain to remind voters of why they elected him last fall.

Democrats say this is a fight they’re eager to have.

Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, an Army veteran, cast Trump’s move as a dangerous political stunt designed to distract the American people from his inability to address persistent inflation, rising energy prices and major health insurance cuts, among other major policy challenges.

“I’m deeply offended, as someone who’s actually worn the uniform, that he would use the lives of these men and women and the activation of these men and women as political pawns,” Moore told the Associated Press.

Trump’s extraordinary federal power grab comes as the term-limited president has threatened to send troops to other American cities led by Democrats, even as voters voice increasing concern about his authoritarian tendencies. And it could be a factor for both sides in elections in Virginia and New Jersey this fall — and next year’s more consequential midterms.

Inside the White House strategy

The president and White House see Trump’s decision to take over the D.C. police department as a political boon and have been eager to publicize the efforts.

The White House offered a livestream of Trump’s Thursday evening appearance, and on Wednesday, Vice President JD Vance and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth made a surprise visit to Union Station, D.C.’s busy transit hub, to thank members of the National Guard over Shake Shack burgers.

Each morning, Trump’s press office distributes statistics outlining the previous night’s law enforcement actions, including total arrests and how many of those people are in the country illegally.

The strategy echoes Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration, which has often forced Democrats to come to the defense of people living in the country illegally, including some who have committed serious crimes.

A White House official, speaking on background to discuss internal deliberations, dismissed concerns about perceptions of federal overreach in Washington, saying public safety is a fundamental requirement and a priority for residents.

Trump defended his efforts during an interview on “The Todd Starnes Show” on Thursday.

“Because I sent in people to stop crime, they said, ‘He’s a dictator.’ The real people, though, even Democrats, are calling me and saying, ‘It’s unbelievable’ how much it has helped,” he said.

The White House hopes to use its actions in D.C. as a test case to inspire changes in other cities, though Trump has legal power to intervene in Washington that he doesn’t have elsewhere because the city is under partial federal control.

“Everyday Americans who support commonsense policies would deem the removal of more than 600 dangerous criminals from the streets of our nation’s capital a huge success,” said White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers. “The Democrats continue to be wildly unpopular because they oppose efforts to stop violent crime and protect law-abiding citizens.”

Democrats lean in

Moore, Maryland’s Democratic governor, suggested a dark motivation behind Trump’s approach, which is focused almost exclusively on cities with large minority populations led by Democratic mayors of color.

“Once again, we are seeing how these incredibly dangerous and biased tropes are being used about these communities by someone who is not willing to step foot in them, but is willing to stand in the Oval Office and defend them,” Moore said.

Even before Trump called the National Guard to Washington, Democratic mayors across the country have been touting their success in reducing violent crime.

Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb, who leads the Democratic Mayors Assn., noted that more than half of the 70 largest Democratic-led cities in the country have seen violent crime decrease so far this year.

“He’s stoking racial division and stoking fear and chaos,” Bibb said. “We need someone who wants to be a collaborator, not a dictator.”

Democratic strategists acknowledge that Trump’s GOP has enjoyed a significant advantage in recent years on the issues of crime and immigration — issues Trump has long sought to connect. But as Democratic officials push back against the federal takeover in Washington, party strategists are offering cautious optimism that Trump’s tactics will backfire.

“This is an opportunity for the party to go on offense on an issue that has plagued us for a long time,” said veteran Democratic strategist Daniel Wessel. “The facts are on our side.”

A closer look at the numbers

FBI statistics released this month show murder and nonnegligent manslaughter in the U.S. in 2024 fell nearly 15% from a year earlier, continuing a decline that’s been seen since a pandemic-era crime spike.

Meanwhile, recent public polling shows that Republicans have enjoyed an advantage over Democrats on the issue of crime.

A CNN/SSRS poll conducted in May found that about 4 in 10 U.S. adults said the Republican Party’s views were closer to their own on crime and policing, while 3 in 10 said they were more aligned with Democrats’ views. About 3 in 10 said neither party reflected their opinions. Other polls conducted in the past few years found a similar gap.

Trump also had a significant edge over Democrat Kamala Harris on the issue in the 2024 election. About half of voters said Trump was better able to handle crime, while about 4 in 10 said this about Harris, according to AP VoteCast, a survey of the American electorate.

At the same time, Americans have expressed more concern about the scope of presidential power since Trump took office for a second time in January.

An AP-NORC poll conducted in April found that about half of U.S. adults said the president has “too much” power in the way the U.S. government operates these days, up from 32% in March 2024.

The unusual military presence in a U.S. city, which featured checkpoints across Washington staffed in some cases by masked federal agents, injected a sense of fear and chaos into daily life for some people in the nation’s capital.

At least one day care center was closed Thursday as childcare staff feared the military action, which has featured a surge in immigration enforcement, while local officials raised concerns about next week’s public school openings.

Moore said he would block any push by Trump to send the National Guard into Baltimore.

“I have not seen anything or any conditions on the ground that I think would justify the mobilization of our National Guard,” he said. “They think they’re winning the political argument. I don’t give a s—- about the political argument.”

Peoples and Colvin write for the Associated Press. AP writers Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux and Chris Megerian in Washington contributed to this report.

Aug. 18 (UPI) — President Trump, as you sit down with President Lee Jae Myung on Aug. 25, you must not be swayed by his dangerously naive stance on “respect” for North Korea‘s political system. I say this not as a politician or a pundit, but as a soldier and practitioner/strategist who has spent his life confronting the nature of authoritarian regimes and understanding what it takes to resist them. President Lee’s position, that South Korea should affirm “respect” for the North’s totalitarian system and renounce unification by absorption, is not only strategically misguided but also morally bankrupt. It plays directly into Kim Jong Un‘s political warfare playbook, undermines the very purpose of the ROK/U.S. alliance, and sends a chilling message to 25 million oppressed Koreans living under tyranny.

Let’s be crystal clear: North Korea (with its Workers Party of Korea) is not a legitimate political system (which is why many of us write “north” in the lower case, though our editors often correct this). It is not a state that deserves our diplomatic courtesies or rhetorical deference. It is a mafia-like crime family cult masquerading as a government. It is a totalitarian regime that has committed, and continues to commit, crimes against humanity, as documented exhaustively in the 2014 United Nations Commission of Inquiry report. These are not allegations. They are facts backed by satellite images, eyewitness testimony, and escapee accounts. We are talking about gulags, torture chambers, public executions, and enforced starvation. To “respect” such a system is to betray the Korean people in the North who suffer daily under its jackboot.

President Lee’s argument is that by affirming respect and renouncing absorption, he can create space for inter-Korean dialogue and reduce tensions. But this is a fantasy built on hope, not strategy. The Kim family regime does not seek coexistence. It seeks domination. It does not want peace. It wants submission. It does not seek reconciliation. It seeks leverage. Every time a South Korean leader or American president makes conciliatory gestures without demanding reciprocal action, Kim Jong Un sees it not as good faith, but as weakness. He exploits it to gain legitimacy, extract economic concessions, and drive wedges into our alliance.

President Lee says he is not seeking unification by absorption. Fine. But he also says he “respects” the North’s political system. That is where the real danger lies. Because the more we normalize the abnormal, the more we embolden the regime to harden its rule. What the Korean people in the North deserve is not the international community’s respect for their captors, but solidarity with their longing for liberation. They deserve a unified Korea, not by force, but by freedom. That is not absorption. That is self-determination.

President Trump, you know what it means to negotiate from a position of strength. You know how dangerous it is to give away leverage before the other side has made a single concession. Do not allow your personal rapport with Kim Jong Un, or your desire for a legacy-defining deal, to cloud your judgment. You called Kim “rocket man” before you exchanged “love letters.” But love letters won’t free the Korean people, and respect for the regime won’t bring peace.

President Lee’s gestures, halting propaganda broadcasts, telling activists to stop sending leaflets and restoring the 2018 military agreement, may seem like confidence-building measures. But without reciprocity, they are simply appeasement. Kim Yo Jong, Kim Jong Un’s sister and a key regime mouthpiece, has already dismissed Lee’s outreach as a “pipe dream.” That should tell us everything we need to know about Pyongyang’s intentions.

The ROK/U.S. alliance must remain grounded in shared values, freedom and liberty, human rights, and the rule of law. Any strategy that begins by legitimizing the enemy’s political system undermines those very values. You would never “respect” ISIS’s caliphate or al-Qaeda’s ideology. Why offer respect to a regime that systematically enslaves its own people and threatens nuclear war?

To be clear, no one is advocating war. We are advocating clarity of purpose and unity of message. Our strategic objective must remain what it has always been: the peaceful unification of the Korean Peninsula under a liberal democratic system that guarantees the rights and dignity of all Koreans. That does not require invasion. It requires principled resistance to tyranny and a long-term strategy to support internal change, what some might call a Korean-led, values-based unification.

You have the power to set the tone for this summit. Do not give Kim Jong Un the propaganda victory of seeing the leader of the free world align with a South Korean president who chooses appeasement over accountability. Instead, reaffirm the alliance’s moral foundation. Remember the image of Ji Seung Ho holding up his crutches at your first State of the Union address to inspire all of us with his escape from the North. Speak directly to the Korean people in the North: We have not forgotten you. We will not abandon you. We do not “respect” your oppressors. We believe in your future.

Mr. President, history will remember what you say in that room with President Lee. Will you echo his message of concession? Or will you stand firm on the principles that made America great and the alliance strong?

I urge you, do not be persuaded by words that excuse oppression. Instead, speak truth. And let that truth be a beacon to all Koreans, North and South, who still believe in freedom.

David Maxwell is a retired U.S. Army Special Forces colonel who has spent more than 30 years in the Asia Pacific region. He specializes in Northeast Asian security affairs and irregular, unconventional and political warfare. He is vice president of the Center for Asia Pacific Strategy and a senior fellow at the Global Peace Foundation. After he retired, he became associate director of the Security Studies Program at Georgetown University. He is on the board of directors of the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea and the OSS Society and is the editor at large for the Small Wars Journal.

Aug. 17 (UPI) — Anti-corruption protesters in Serbia set fire to the Valjevo offices of the country’s ruling political party, city leaders said, amid clashes sparked by the deadly collapse of a rail station in November.

Saturday was the eighth night of unrest in the country, this time mostly centered in the western Serbian city, Balkan Insight reported Sunday. Protests also took place in the capital of Belgrade.

Demonstrations began peacefully in Valjevo on Saturday night before protesters broke windows and set fire to the facilities of the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS), the BBC reported. President Aleksandar Vučić was a founding member of the SNS.

Balkan Insight reported that protesters also broke windows at Valjevo City Hall, the local court building and the prosecutor’s offices. Police allegedly used stun grenades and tear gas on the Valjevo protesters and used violence against those in Belgrade and Novi Sad, the BBC reported. The interior ministry denied the allegations.

Ivan Manic, an opposition leader in the Valjevo city assembly, told N1 he’d never seen the anti-corruption protests escalate to this level.

“The past few days have been the most dramatic in our history,” he said in a translation provided by Balkan Insight. “Nothing like this has ever been seen on our streets. The direct responsibility lies with the mayor, the city administration, the ruling SNS, as well as the police department.”

The protests were were originally organized by students after a railway station collapse in Novi Sad in November killed 16 people. Protesters blame the tragedy on government corruption and infrastructure negligence.

Serbian Prime Minister Miloš Vučević, also a member of the SNS Party, resigned in January after members of his party allegedly attacked student protesters who were spray-painting anti-government slogans outside the party’s Novi Sad offices.

Aug. 14 (UPI) — A failed GOP candidate in New Mexico has been sentenced to 80 years behind bars for orchestrating a shooting spree targeting his perceived political adversaries following his defeat in the 2022 midterm elections, which he believed was rigged against him.

Solomon Pena, 42, was sentenced Wednesday, to 960 months in prison, a fine of $250,000 and three years of supervised release, the Justice Department said in a statement.

“Violence and intimidation have no place in our elections,” U.S. Attorney Ryan Ellison said. “This sentence shows that through the tireless work of our agents and prosecutors, we will protect our democracy and bring offenders to justice.”

A federal jury convicted Pena in March of one count of conspiracy, four counts of intimidation and interference with federally protected activities and several firearms charges, as well as three counts of solicitation to commit a crime of violence.

Pena ran as a Republican for the District 14 seat in the New Mexico House of Representatives in the 2022 midterm elections, and was handily defeated by Democrat Miguel Garcia, who secured 74% of the vote.

“I never conceded my HD 14 race,” he said in a statement published to what was then called Twitter, now X, following the election, with a picture of himself wearing a red “Make America Great Again” sweatshirt and flags supporting Donald Trump‘s 2024 re-election campaign.

“Now researching my options,” he said.

Following the election, the failed political candidate cried foul and was accused of pressuring members of the Bernalillo County Board of Commissioners not to certify the results.

Authorities said he had visited several of their homes to lodge complaints over voter fraud and election rigging. When they did not acquiesce to his demands, Pena turned violent.

Shortly after he visited the commissioners, several of their homes were shot at between Dec. 4, 2022, and Jan. 3, 2023 — specifically, the home of Bernalillo County Commissioner Adriann Barboa on Dec. 4, New Mexico House Speaker Javier Martinez on Dec. 8, former Bernalillo County Commissioner Debbie O’Malley on Dec. 11 and State Sen. Linda Lopez on Jan. 3.

Pena was arrested mid-January 2023 amid a hunt for a suspect. Inside his vehicle, authorities found two guns, 800 fentanyl pills and cash.

Federal prosecutors said the shootings were the product of a conspiracy involving four men Pena paid to shoot up their houses. The prosecutors also said that while in jail, he tried to solicit inmates to murder witnesses to prevent their testimony during his trial.

Two co-conspirators — Jose Trujillo and Demetrio Trujillo — previously pleaded guilty to their involvement in the crime, with the former being sentenced to 37 months in prison and the latter, 180 months.

Smithsonian Institution says it will update exhibit to reflect all impeachments of US presidents following backlash.

The parent organisation of a top-visited history museum in the United States has denied that political pressure played a role in the removal of a display about the impeachments of US President Donald Trump.

The Smithsonian Institution, which runs the National Museum of American History in Washington, DC, said on Saturday that it removed the “temporary” placard for failing to meet the museum’s standards in “appearance, location, timeline, and overall presentation”.

“It was not consistent with other sections in the exhibit and moreover blocked the view of the objects inside its case. For these reasons, we removed the placard,” the institution said in a statement.

“We were not asked by any Administration or other government officials to remove content from the exhibit.”

The Smithsonian Institution, which runs 21 museums and the National Zoo, said the impeachment section of the museum would be updated in the coming weeks to “reflect all impeachment proceedings in our nation’s history”.

The statement comes after The Washington Post on Thursday reported that the museum removed an explicit reference to Trump’s impeachments last month, resulting in its exhibit about impeachment incorrectly stating that “only three presidents have seriously faced removal”.

The Post, citing an unnamed person familiar with the exhibit plans, said the display was taken down following a “content review that the Smithsonian agreed to undertake following pressure from the White House to remove an art museum director”.

The museum’s removal of the display drew swift backlash, with critics of Trump casting the development as the latest capitulation to the whims of an authoritarian president.

“You can run, but you cannot hide from the judgment of history,” Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said on Friday.

“So, here’s my message to the president: no matter what exhibits you try to distort, the American people will never forget that you were impeached – not once, but twice.”

Trump has, with lightning speed, moved to exert greater control over political, cultural and media institutions as part of his transformative “Make America Great Again” agenda.

In March, the US president signed an executive order to remove “improper ideology” from the Smithsonian Institution’s properties and deny funding for exhibits that “degrade shared American values” or “divide Americans based on race”.

During his first term, Trump was impeached by the House of Representatives twice, in 2019 and 2021, but he was acquitted by the Senate on both occasions.

He was the third US president to be impeached, after Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton, and the only US president to be impeached twice.

Former President Richard Nixon faced near-certain impeachment before his resignation in 1974 in the wake of the Watergate scandal.

SACRAMENTO — Voters’ approval Tuesday of an open primary system, combined with their 2008 decision to strip state lawmakers of the power to draw their own election districts, will reshape California politics. The question is: How?

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who backed both moves, is confident that state elections will become more daunting for the rigid partisans he says plague Sacramento. Other politicians and election strategists are not so sure.

The new system will put candidates of all political stripes on a single ballot, and all voters will be able to participate. The top two vote-getters in a given contest — regardless of political affiliation — will advance to the general election. Supporters say that once the system is in place and voting districts have been redrawn outside of the Legislature, candidates will have no choice but to move to the middle as they compete for voters who are more politically diverse.

“Coupled with redistricting, Proposition 14 will change the political landscape in California — finally giving voters the power to truly hold politicians accountable,” Schwarzenegger said after declaring victory late Tuesday. Proposition 14 passed with 54.2% of the vote.

But party leaders, as well as some political analysts and election experts — admittedly with a vested interest in the status quo — offer a number of reasons that Proposition 14 could do the opposite of what Schwarzenegger suggests.

They say it could push California back to the days when candidates were picked by party bosses in smoke-filled rooms and send the cost of campaigns sky-high, giving special interests more power and wealthy candidates more of an advantage. The new system could even further disenfranchise candidates who are trying to break free of the special interests that have a grip on government, they say.

“This is a process that lends itself to back-room dealing, to big decisions being made by small groups of people,” said California Republican Party Chairman Ron Nehring.

In cases where two strong Republicans are running against one another, he said, party leaders may pressure one of them out of the race to avoid any risk of splitting the vote and creating an opportunity for other candidates to advance.

“We’ll be forced to turn to nominating conventions,” Nehring said.

Under his scenario, instead of millions of registered Republicans choosing the GOP’s gubernatorial candidate, the task would fall to a relative handful of party loyalists.

Other opponents say the new system is possibly unconstitutional, and they are scrambling to assess their options to challenge it in court.

Elections expert Alan Clayton said open primaries will make some campaigns more costly. Currently, the winner of a partisan primary in a safely drawn district doesn’t face a big expense in the general election, Clayton said , and that scenario may no longer be possible in some districts.

A new emphasis on money could give an advantage to wealthy candidates and hurt minority contenders with more limited funds, said Clayton, who represented groups, including the Los Angeles County Chicano Employees Assn., in the redistricting process.

State Democratic Party Chairman John Burton said anything that requires more fundraising is not good for state politics: It “means there’s more money that will have to be raised, and that doesn’t come from little old ladies, that comes from special interests.”

The new process could also disenfranchise candidates from smaller political parties, so those groups are weighing a possible court challenge, said Cres Vellucci, a spokesman for the Green Party of California.

“We would not be on the November ballot in the top two, and that’s the election that counts,” Vellucci said. “People don’t vote in the primaries. They vote in the majors.”

An analysis by the nonpartisan Center for Governmental Studies concluded recently that more than a third of all state legislative and congressional races could produce runoffs between two members of the same party and that nearly all of those races would feature two Democrats.

The Los Angeles-based group said there may be some races in which a “top two, same party” general election contest could be close enough that voters from another party, or decline-to-state voters, could swing the election to the more moderate candidate.

Backers of the open primary measure said the current system promotes partisan bickering that caused last year’s state budget to be delayed by weeks, forcing officials to stop cash payments to vendors and issue IOUs.

“For too long, running for office in California has meant pandering to your party’s narrow base, and it’s just to win that primary, and then you are basically a shoo-in,” said Jeannine English, state leader with AARP. The result, she said, is “elected officials who are locked into inflexible ideological positions that make it impossible for them to work together for solutions to get California back on track.”

But, there is some skepticism among political scientists, including Jaime Regalado, executive director of the Edmund G. “Pat” Brown Institute of Public Affairs at Cal State L.A.

“I don’t think Proposition 14 is going to make a fundamental difference in candidates elected and whether there will be a less polarized Sacramento,” said Regalado, who foresees unions and political parties continuing to elect their favorites. But the effect could be magnified when combined with the change in redistricting.

Two years ago, state voters gave the job of drawing legislative districts to a panel of citizens: five Democrats, five Republicans and four members of neither main party. That panel is to be picked by year’s end.

[email protected]

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Reporting from Sacramento — Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger refers to it as the “ribbon of shame,” a congressional district that stretches in a reed-thin line 200 miles along the California coast from Oxnard to the Monterey County line. Voters there refer to it as “the district that disappears at high tide.”

Democratic lawmakers drew it that way to make sure one of their own won every election. The party has held the seat throughout the decade — since the last redistricting gave it a big edge in voter registration there.

Critics of that 2001 remapping have cited the coastal ribbon as Exhibit A — the reason, they say, that Californians were right to strip elected officials of the power to choose their voters and give the task of determining political boundaries to more ordinary citizens.

As the new Citizens Redistricting Commission begins its work next month, members say, the 23rd Congressional District will be a good reminder of what not to do.

“It’s been used as an example of how absurd the process is,” said Peter Yao, the commission’s chairman. “It does not allow people to choose the candidate. They are forced to go with the party’s choice.”

Republicans have protected themselves too. Using a spaghetti strip of land along the shore of heavily Democratic Long Beach, for example, they connected a GOP-leaning area of Orange County with a pouch of like-minded voters on the Palos Verdes Peninsula to create the 46th Congressional District.

The whole country, in fact, is marked with districts so distorted by gerrymandering that they are referred to by such names as “Rabbit on a Skateboard” (in Illinois) and “Upside-Down Chinese Dragon” (in Pennsylvania).

California, which voted two years ago to take the job of redrawing state districts from lawmakers, is one of 10 states that have given the job to a citizens group. But most of them are appointed by elected officials and are less independent than the Golden State’s panel.

In the districts drawn by the Legislature the old way, every incumbent member of Congress and the state Legislature on the California ballot was reelected Nov. 2 — even as a survey by the Public Policy Institute of California found that only 21% of voters approve of the job being done by Congress and 12% like what state lawmakers do.

Now the bipartisan citizen commission, appointed through a process overseen by the state auditor, will draw both the Legislature’s districts and California’s congressional boundaries. Last month, voters added the federal districts to the panel’s job.

Proponents of the change said it could alter campaigns and improve government. The new districts would be more competitive, forcing candidates to appeal to a broader range of voters, according to Tony Quinn, co-editor of the nonpartisan Target Book, which analyzes California legislative races, and a former Republican redistricting consultant.

“They would be more worried about getting elected, so their behavior would change,” Quinn said. “They would reflect their districts much more.”

Under the new rules, boundaries can no longer be drawn according to where an incumbent lives or how the lines would benefit him or her, said advisors to the commission.

Lines must be drawn “for publicly minded good rather than reflecting what gives a particular legislator an advantage,” said Justin Levitt, a professor at Loyola Law School who advises the commission.

The new rules emphasize compactness, contiguity and the need to keep counties, cities, neighborhoods and other communities of interest together. The aim is to prevent redrawings such as the one that left San Luis Obispo County and some cities scattered among multiple districts.

Rep. Lois Capps (D- Santa Barbara) has easily won reelection every two years since the latest boundaries were drawn to create a district 44.3% Democratic and 32.9% Republican. Previously, she represented a district that was 39.1% Democratic and 39.4% Republican.

The map makers kept heavily Republican precincts out and connected heavily Democratic precincts along the coast, using areas that are just a few blocks wide.

“You can drive a golf ball across [the district] in a couple of places,” said Tom Watson, a Republican businessman who unsuccessfully challenged Capps last month.

The boundaries also split the city of Ventura between Capps, who has about a fourth of it, and Rep. Elton Gallegly (R-Simi Valley). In 2000, before the last remapping, Gallegly’s district was 40.6% Democratic and 39.8% Republican. Afterward, it was 45.9% Republican and 34.6% Democrat.

Redistricting expert Alan Clayton is concerned that black and Latino voters could lose ground under the new criteria, which he said are too vague about how much weight should be given to which factors and what constitutes “communities of interest.” And, he said, a citizens panel need not be responsive to constituent groups the way lawmakers would be.

Clayton cites the example of congressional districts that divide the city of Long Beach. Part of that city is split into a district shared with Compton, making it easier, at least theoretically, for an African American to be elected. If Long Beach is kept in one congressional district without Compton, it could mean the loss of an African American seat, Clayton said.

Bob Hertzberg, who was Assembly speaker during the 2001 redistricting, said he doubts the new method will produce significant change in the numbers of Democratic- and Republican-held seats, because that is largely a function of voter registration.

“I don’t think it makes a hill of beans’ difference,” he said. Still, he supported the ballot measure that took the job from the Legislature. “It’s about restoring public confidence in government. You can’t have people thinking that politicians are self-dealing.”

After last month’s election, Schwarzenegger said the old method polarized government and contributed to its dysfunction.

“To win those districts, you had to be far to the left or far to the right,” he said, “and of course that is why it is very tough here in Sacramento to get things done.”

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David Ellison stepped within reach of his hard-fought prize, Paramount Global, after winning regulators’ blessing for his Skydance Media’s $8-billion takeover of the storied media company.

President Trump-appointed Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr approved the Skydance-Paramount merger Thursday after months of turmoil and a monumental collision between the president’s broad powers and press freedoms.

Carr’s consent came just three weeks after Paramount agreed to pay Trump $16 million to settle the president’s lawsuit over edits to a “60 Minutes” broadcast. Trump had claimed CBS producers doctored the October interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris to boost her election chances. CBS denied his allegations, saying the edits were routine.

1st Amendment experts called Trump’s suit “frivolous.” But, after months of internal upheaval, Paramount capitulated. The move was widely seen as a prerequisite for Skydance to win FCC approval and push the Paramount-Skydance merger over the finish line.

Trump has said on social media that, as part of the settlement, he also expects the new owners to provide another $20 million in public service announcements and other free programming.

The FCC approval clears the final regulatory hurdle for the acquisition that will bring another technology titan to Hollywood. Carr authorized the transfer of Paramount’s CBS television station licenses to Larry Ellison, Oracle’s co-founder who ranks among the world’s richest men, and his family.

“Americans no longer trust the legacy national news media to report fully, accurately, and fairly. It is time for a change,” Carr said in a statement. “That is why I welcome Skydance’s commitment to make significant changes at the once storied CBS broadcast network.”

The FCC commissioners voted 2-1 in favor of the deal. Two Republicans, Carr and Olivia Trusty, voted yes, while Anna Gomez, the lone Democrat on the panel, dissented.

“After months of cowardly capitulation to this Administration, Paramount finally got what it wanted,” Gomez said in a statement. “Unfortunately, it is the American public who will ultimately pay the price for its actions.”

The Ellisons’ takeover of Paramount is expected to be complete in the coming days.

Santa Monica-based Skydance, which is owned by the Ellison family and private equity firm RedBird Capital Partners, faces an uphill slog to restore Paramount to its former glory. Years of programming under-investments, management missteps and ownership turmoil have taken a heavy toll.

Viewers’ shift to streaming has upended Paramount’s TV networks, CBS, Comedy Central, Nickelodeon, MTV and BET. Paramount Pictures lags behind Disney, Universal and Warner Bros.

Sumner Redstone’s family will exit the Hollywood stage, after nearly 40 years. The pugnacious mogul from Boston, who died five years ago, presided during an era of entertainment excesses in the 80s, 90s and early aughts — when Paramount released beloved blockbusters and cable television was in its hey-day.

For a stretch this spring, it seemed the Skydance deal could unravel.

The FCC’s review had stalled amid the legal wrangling over Trump’s lawsuit. Carr, in one of his first moves as chairman, separately opened an FCC inquiry into alleged news distortion with the “60 Minutes” Harris interview — putting CBS uncomfortably under the microscope.

Paramount’s controlling shareholder Shari Redstone (Sumner’s daughter), and some Skydance executives, urged Paramount to settle. But CBS News executives refused to apologize to Trump for the “60 Minutes” edits, saying CBS journalists did nothing wrong. The settlement, which steers money to Trump’s future presidential library, did not include an apology from CBS News or Paramount.

Two high-level CBS News executives departed and three progressive U.S. senators demanded answers. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and the others lambasted the settlement talks, saying that paying Trump money to end a “bogus” lawsuit simply to get a merger approved could be akin to paying a bribe.

The winds shifted in June. David Ellison, Larry’s 42-year-old son, talked briefly with Trump at a UFC fight in New Jersey. Days later, Trump talked favorably about his friendship with Larry Ellison and the Paramount-Skydance deal.

“Ellison’s great,” Trump told reporters in mid-June. “He’ll do a great job with it.”

David Ellison last week met with Carr in Washington to persuade him that Paramount would be in good hands. They discussed the firm’s commitments and management philosophies. Skydance also gave assurances that its Chinese investors would not have a say in the company’s affairs.

Last week, CBS separately said it was canceling “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert,” in May. The company said the move was financial, but conservatives and progressives alike questioned the timing due to the pending merger and Colbert’s pointed barbs at Trump.

Skydance outlined its planned changes at Paramount in a letter this week to Carr. Skydance promised to cancel all diversity initiatives, disband its Office of Global Inclusion and strip references to DEI from its internal and external messaging. The company also said news and entertainment programming would not tilt in any one political direction.

“New Paramount’s new management will ensure that the company’s array of news and entertainment programming embodies a diversity of viewpoints across the political and ideological spectrum, consistent with the varying perspectives of the viewing audience,” Skydance’s general counsel Stephanie Kyoko McKinnon wrote in Tuesday’s letter to Carr.

The company said it would install an ombudsman at CBS News for at least two years.

“They are committing to serious changes at CBS,” Carr told reporters in Washington earlier Thursday. “I think that would be a good thing. They’ve committed to addressing bias issues. They committed to embracing fact-based journalism.”

Ellison began his pursuit of Paramount two years ago.

He formalized his bid by January 2024. After months of negotiations, Paramount’s board and Redstone approved the Skydance takeover July 7, 2024.

Paramount’s leaders considered other prospective owners but concluded that Skydance, with its Ellison backing, would bring a solid financial foundation for a company that traces its roots back more than a century. Redstone also wanted Paramount to remain whole, rather than broken into pieces.

As part of the agreement, Skydance will be folded into the public company. Its backers will inject new capital to bolster Paramount’s finances and install a new cadre of leaders. Ellison will serve as chairman and chief executive. Former NBCUniversal Chief Executive Jeff Shell is slated to be president.

CBS’ current leader George Cheeks, one of Paramount’s three co-chief executives, could join the new regime. But the two other current chiefs, Chris McCarthy and Brian Robbins, are expected to depart.

The Skydance deal is expected to be executed in two parts. Larry Ellison and RedBird will buyout the Redstone family holding company, National Amusements Inc., for $2.4 billion.

After their debts are paid, the Redstone family will leave with $1.75 billion. The family controls 77% of Paramount’s voting shares, which will be passed to the Ellisons and RedBird.

Under the deal terms, the new Paramount will offer to buy out some shares of existing shareholders and inject $1.5 billion into Paramount’s strained balance sheet.

Paramount will then absorb Skydance, which has a movie, television, animation, video games and a sports unit. The deal values Skydance at $4.75-billion.

“We’re going to reorganize and restructure the business to prioritize cash flow generation,” David Ellison told investors last July. “With a track record in both entertainment and technological expertise [we will] be able to transition the company through this period of time to ensure that Paramount’s brightest days are ahead.”

President Trump is once again floating the idea of firing Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, ostensibly in objection to excessively high interest rates. But this debate is not about monetary policy. It’s a power play aimed at subordinating America’s central bank to the fiscal needs of the executive branch and Congress. In other words, we have a textbook case of “fiscal dominance” on our hands — and that always ends poorly.

I’m no cheerleader for Powell. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he enthusiastically backed every stimulus package, regardless of size or purpose, as if these involved no trade-offs. Where were the calls for “Fed independence” then? And where were the calls for fiscal restraint after the emergency was over?

Powell failed to anticipate the worst inflation in four decades and repeated for far too long the absurd claim that it was “transitory” even as mounting evidence showed otherwise. He blamed supply-side disruptions long after ports had reopened and goods were moving.

And as inflation was taking a stubborn hold, Powell delayed raising interest rates — possibly to shield the Biden administration from the fiscal fallout of the debt it was piling on — well past the point when monetary tightening was needed.

If this weren’t the world of government, where failure can be rewarded — and if there had been a more obvious alternative — Powell wouldn’t have been invited back for another term. But he was. And so Trump’s pressure campaign to prematurely end Powell’s tenure is dangerous.

I get why with budget deficits exploding and debt-service costs surging, the president wants lower interest rates. That would make the cost of his own fiscal agenda appear more tolerable. Trump likely believes he’s justified because he believes that his tax cuts and deregulation are about to spur huge economic growth.

To be sure, some growth will result, though the effects of deregulation will take a while to arrive. But gains could be swamped by the negative consequences of Trump’s tariffs and erratic tariff threats. No matter what, the new growth won’t lead to enough new tax revenue to escape the need for the government to borrow more. And the more the government borrows, the more intense the pressure on interest rates.

One thing is for sure: The pressure Trump and his people are exerting on the Fed is a push for fiscal dominance. The executive branch wants to use the central bank as a tool to accommodate the government’s frenzy of reckless borrowing. Such political control of a central bank is a hallmark of failed monetary systems in weak institutional settings. History shows where that always leads: to inflation, economic stagnation and financial instability.

So far, Powell is resisting cutting rates, hence the barrage of insults and threat of firing. But now is not the right time to play with fire. Bond yields surged last year as investors reckoned with the scale of U.S. borrowing. They crossed the 5% threshold again recently. Moody’s even stripped the government of its prized AAA credit rating. Lower interest rates from the Fed — especially if seen as the result of raw political pressure — could further diminish the allure of U.S. Treasuries.

While the Fed can temporally influence interest rates, especially in the short run, it cannot override long-term fears of inflation, economic sluggishness and political manipulation of monetary policy driven by unsustainable fiscal policy. That’s where confidence matters, and confidence is eroding.

This is why markets are demanding a premium for funds loaned to a government that is now $36 trillion in debt and shows no intention of slowing down. But it could get worse. If the average interest rate on U.S. debt climbs from 3.3% to 5%, interest payments alone could soar from $900 billion to $2 trillion annually. That would make debt service by far the single largest item in the federal budget — more than Medicare, Social Security, the military or any other program readers care about. And because much of this debt rolls over quickly, higher rates hit fast.

At the end of the day, the bigger problem isn’t Powell’s monetary policy. It’s the federal government’s spending addiction. Trump’s call to replace Powell with someone who will cut rates ignores the real math. Lower short-term interest rates will do only so much if looser monetary policy is perceived as a means of masking reckless budget deficits. That would make higher inflation a certainty, not merely a possibility. It might not arrive before the next election, but it will inevitably arrive.

There is still time to avoid this cliff. Trump is right to worry about surging debt costs, but he’s targeting a symptom. The solution isn’t to fire Powell — it’s to cure the underlying disease, which is excessive government spending.

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

Manila, Philippines – When former Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte was arrested by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in March, Sheerah Escuerdo spoke to a local television station, welcoming the politician’s detention on charges of murder linked to his war on drugs.

Escuerdo, who lost her 18-year-old brother, Ephraim, to Duterte’s war, clutched a portrait of her sibling during the interview with News 5 Everywhere as she demanded justice for his killing.

Days later, she was shocked to find an AI-generated video of her slain brother circulating on Facebook, in which he said he was alive and accused his sister of lying.

“I’m alive, not dead. Are they paying you to do this?” the computer-generated image of Ephraim said.

The video, posted online by a pro-Duterte influencer with 11,000 followers, immediately drew thousands of views on Facebook.

One of the comments read, “Fake drug war victims”.

It was Escudero and her brother’s image from her News 5 Everywhere interview that the influencer had used to falsify their family’s tragedy. The video has since been reposted countless times, spreading to other social media platforms and resulting in Duterte supporters hounding Escuerdo daily.

“I wake up to hundreds of notifications and hate messages,” she told Al Jazeera.

“The worst thing is reading comments of people who believe this is real!” she added.

The same kind of harassment has been levelled at other vocal drug war victims, especially those under the group Rise Up, who actively campaigned for the ICC’s intervention.

Duterte’s arrest in March came amid a bitter power struggle between the ex-leader and his former ally, the incumbent president of the Philippines, Ferdinand Marcos Jr. Their alliance collapsed last year due to disagreements over policy, including Marcos Jr’s courting of the United States. The president’s supporters are now leading an effort to impeach Duterte’s daughter, Sara, from her post as the country’s vice president.

As tensions have escalated, supporters of Duterte and Marcos Jr have stepped up digital smear campaigns, using disinformation. Apart from fake accounts and doctored images, the disinformation mix has noticeably included AI-generated content.

Both the Marcos Jr and Duterte clans have been known to deploy disinformation tactics. Marcos Jr won the election in 2022 following a disinformation campaign that sought to whitewash his father Ferdinand Marcos’s brutal rule during the 70s and 80s.

But fact-checkers and experts say the recent uptick in posts peddling false narratives can be attributed more to the Duterte camp.

Disinformation nation

Victims of the drug war, their families, supporters and even their lawyers say incessant online disinformation has targeted them.

In a statement, the National Union of People’s Lawyers (NUPL), which represents Rise Up, a group of drug war victims, said the “online hate” was being “directed at widows, mothers, and daughters of drug war victims, attempting to intimidate them into silence”.

Both NUPL and Rise Up have now formally requested the government to investigate the increasing online harassment.

The campaign by Duterte’s supporters aims to discredit the ICC, demonise their detractors and paint their family as persecuted victims leading to and after the May 2025 mid-term polls, according to Danilo Arao, mass media expert and convener of election watchdog Kontra-Daya.

“The Duterte camp aims to deodorize the image of both patriarch and daughter. They will resort to disinformation to get what they want, even if it means twisting certain data,” Arao told Al Jazeera.

He pointed to posts circulating online that the ICC consented to grant Duterte’s request for an interim release, which in reality was denied.

The surge in disinformation has caused worry among Filipinos.

A report released in June by Reuters Digital News found that a record number of Filipinos – nearly 7 out of 10 – were more concerned with disinformation than ever before.

In the same month, Duterte-allied senator, Ronald Dela Rosa, shared an AI-generated video on his official Facebook page. The video, which showed a young man criticising the “selective justice” targeting Sara Duterte, was posted on June 14, garnering at least 8.6 million views before it was taken down.

The vice president defended the video, saying there’s “no problem sharing an AI video supporting me as long as it’s not for profit”.

Arao, the mass media expert, countered, saying the politician is trying to normalise disinformation, and that she “badly needs media literacy”.

Tsek.ph, the Philippines’ pioneer fact-checking coalition, noted that fact checks on posts about Duterte’s ICC arrest over a six-week-period account for almost a quarter of the 127 news articles curated by the group.

The figure surpasses the two dozen pieces of news related to Sara Duterte’s impeachment.

On Sara Duterte’s deepfake defence, Tsek.ph coordinator Professor Rachel Khan told Al Jazeera that “for the educated, it reinforces their already tainted image of disregarding truth. But for followers, it could reinforce the dictum that ‘perception is truth.’”

In reality, the popularity of the Duterte family has waned significantly.

Opinion and approval surveys conducted in March indicate that at least 51 percent of the public want Rodrigo Duterte to be tried for his alleged crimes. Likewise, polls in June found that at least 66 percent of people want Sara Duterte to confront allegations of corruption against her through an impeachment process.

AI growth

The government of last year launched a task force to mitigate disinformation and the use of AI. However, spikes in disinformation were already noticeable in December as the Marcos-Duterte rivalry heated up.

Tsek.ph tracked the increasing use of AI in disinformation before the mid-term elections held in May this year. It found that from February to May, out of 35 unique altered claims, nearly a third “likely involved deepfake technology to impersonate public figures or distort reality”.

“This is a problem of human behaviour, not AI. It’s a disinformation influence operations problem, exacerbated by the unethical usage of AI tools,” Carljoe Javier, executive director of Data and AI Ethics PH, told Al Jazeera.

All mainstream political forces in the Philippines have, to some extent, deployed AI technologies to boost their agendas. The latest OpenAI Safety Report revealed that Comm&Sense, a Manila-based tech firm, used AI for a campaign using thousands of pro‑Marcos Jr and anti‑Duterte comments across Facebook and TikTok.

Besides generating content, the firm also used AI to analyse political trends and even draft public relations strategies.

The report said Comm&Sense manufactured TikTok channels to post identical videos with variant captions while handling shell accounts to post comments and boost engagement.

The use of AI to outline plans, not just create content, marks a shift away from the Marcos Jr administration employing troll armies as he did in his 2022 campaign.

“If you have the resources and the bully pulpit of the government, you can afford to keep on swatting the Dutertes and their partisans for whatever statements they have made against the Marcos government,” said Joel Ariate Jr, a researcher tracking political developments at the University of the Philippines Third World Studies Center.

“If you put AI in the hands of an already good public relations or marketing team, the capacity for disinformation is amplified by so much. They can have one message and instantly generate 20 different versions of it,” explained Javier.

The Philippines has several pieces of legislation in congress concerning the responsible use of AI. For a healthy policy approach, Javier believes that technical and ethical experts would be crucial.

He said he hoped the country’s leaders can take important steps, but said he has doubts about their appetite for ethical AI legislation.

“Is there enough push for legislators to advance a policy given that they may be benefitting from the current state of political operations?” he asked.

President Trump on Tuesday accused Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) of committing mortgage fraud by intentionally misleading lenders about his primary residence being in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., rather than California, in order to “get a cheaper mortgage and rip off America.”

Schiff, who led a House impeachment of Trump during the president’s first term and has remained one of his most vocal and forceful political adversaries since joining the Senate, dismissed the president’s claims as a “baseless attempt at political retribution.”

A spokesperson for Schiff said he has always been transparent about owning two homes, in part to be able to raise his children near him in Washington, and has always followed the law — and advice from House counsel — in arranging his mortgages.

In making his claims, Trump cited an investigation by the Fannie Mae “Financial Crimes Division” as his source.

A memorandum reviewed by The Times from Fannie Mae investigators to William J. Pulte, the Trump-appointed director of the U.S. Federal Housing Finance Agency, does not accuse Schiff of mortgage fraud. It noted that investigators had been asked by the FHFA inspector general’s office for loan files and “any related investigative or quality control documentation” for Schiff’s homes.

Investigators said they found that Schiff at various points identified both his home in Potomac, Md., and a Burbank unit he also owns as his primary residence. As a result, they concluded that Schiff and his wife, Eve, “engaged in a sustained pattern of possible occupancy misrepresentation” on their home loans between 2009 and 2020.

The investigators did not say they had concluded that a crime had been committed, nor did they mention the word “fraud” in the memo.

The memo was partially redacted to remove Schiff’s addresses and information about his wife. Fannie Mae did not respond to a request for comment.

In addition to denying any wrongdoing, Schiff also suggested that Trump’s accusation was an effort to distract from a growing controversy — important to many in the president’s MAGA base — over the administration’s failure to disclose more investigative records into child sex abuse by the late financier Jeffrey Epstein, a former acquaintance of Trump’s.

There has long been rumors of a “client list” of Epstein’s that could expose other powerful men as predators. Trump promised to release such a list as a candidate, and at one point Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi appeared to say such a list was on her desk. However, the administration has since said no such list exists, and Trump has begged his followers to move on.

Schiff drew a direct line between that controversy and Trump’s accusations against him Tuesday.

“This is just Donald Trump’s latest attempt at political retaliation against his perceived enemies. So it is not a surprise, only how weak this false allegation turns out to be,” Schiff wrote on X. “And much as Trump may hope, this smear will not distract from his Epstein files problem.”

A spokesperson for Schiff echoed the senator’s denial of any wrongdoing.

According to the spokesperson, Schiff made a decision routine for Congress members from states far from Washington to buy a home in Maryland so he could raise his children nearby. He also maintained a home in California, living there when not in Washington.

The spokesperson said all of Schiff’s lenders were aware that he intended to live in both as he traveled back and forth from Washington to his district — making neither a vacation home.

Trump’s own post about Schiff, on his social media platform, was thin on details and heavy on insults, calling Schiff “a scam artist” and “crook.”

Trump alleged that Schiff reported his primary residence being in Maryland, when “he must LIVE in CALIFORNIA” as a congressman from the state.

Schiff, a former federal prosecutor, has for years laid out detailed arguments against the president — and for why his actions violated the law and warranted his permanent removal from office. Those have included Trump’s first presidential campaign’s interactions with Russian assets, his pressuring Ukraine to investigate his rival Joe Biden while U.S. military aid was being withheld from the country, and his incitement of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection and storming of the U.S. Capitol to prevent the certification of Biden’s 2020 electoral win over him.

Schiff also has criticized the president — and his businesses, family members and political appointees — for their own financial actions.

He recently sponsored legislation that would restrict the ability of politicians and their family members from getting rich off of digital currencies of their own creation, as Trump and his family have done. He also has repeatedly demanded greater financial transparency from various Trump appointees, accusing them of breaking the law by not filing disclosures of their assets within required time frames.

Others have accused Trump for years of financial fraud. Last year, a judge in New York ordered Trump to pay $355 million in penalties in a civil fraud case after finding that the president and others in his business empire inflated his wealth to trick banks and insurers. Trump denied any wrongdoing and has appealed the decision.

All along the way, Trump has attacked Schiff personally, accusing him of peddling hoaxes for political gain and repeatedly suggesting that he should be charged with treason. During a presidential campaign stop in California last year — when Schiff was running for Senate — Trump called Schiff “one of the sleaziest politicians in history.”

Schiff made mention of Trump’s treason claims in his response to the new allegation of mortgage fraud Tuesday, writing, “Since I led his first impeachment, Trump has repeatedly called for me to be arrested for treason. So in a way, I guess this is a bit of a letdown.”

Before leaving office, President Biden preemptively pardoned Schiff and the other members of the committee that investigated Trump’s role in the Jan. 6 insurrection, anticipating that Trump would seek to retaliate against them for their work.

Schiff said at the time that he did not want a pardon. He later dismissed an assertion from Trump that the pardons were “void” as another attempt at intimidation.

Schiff was first elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 2000. He now splits his time between a two-story home in Potomac, Md., which he bought in 2003, according to property records, and a one-bedroom condo in a shopping area in downtown Burbank, which he bought in 2009.

In 2023, amid a bruising primary race for his Senate seat, CNN reported on Schiff’s two mortgages, citing experts who said the arrangement did not put Schiff in legal jeopardy — even if it could raise tough political questions.

CNN reported that deed records showed Schiff had designated his Maryland home as his primary residence, including while refinancing his mortgage over the years. In 2020, the outlet reported, Schiff again refinanced his mortgage and indicated that the Maryland home was his second.

CNN also reported that Schiff for years has taken a California homeowner’s tax exemption for his Burbank home, also designating it as his primary address. CNN said that exemption amounted to “roughly $70 in annual savings.” Schiff’s spokesperson confirmed that estimate in annual savings in California, and noted that Schiff did not claim such an exemption in Maryland.

A lot of people online have been very, very upset over the Trump Department of Justice’s twofold conclusion, announced last Sunday, that Jeffrey Epstein’s death in jail in 2019 was a suicide and that the Federal Bureau of Investigation had no “incriminating ‘client list’ ” among its Epstein files.

The tremendous uproar against the Justice Department and FBI has crossed partisan lines; if anything, it has been many conservative commentators and some Republican elected officials who have expressed the most outrage, with accusations and implications that the government is hiding something about the case to protect powerful individuals.

Given the sordid nature of the underlying subject matter and the fact the feds closely examined “over ten thousand downloaded videos and images of illegal child sex abuse material and other pornography,” the obsession with the “Epstein files” gives off a vibe that is, frankly, somewhat creepy. To be sure, it is always righteous to seek justice for victims, but many don’t want public scrutiny.

The Trump administration’s handling of the Epstein files has not been its finest hour. During a February interview on Fox News, Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi said, in response to host John Roberts’ question about whether the Justice Department would release a “list of Jeffrey Epstein’s clients,” that the list was “sitting on [her] desk right now to review.” It is an astonishing about-face for Bondi to now disavow that investigators have any such list. The Trump administration owes us all a clear explanation.

With that large caveat aside, though, the fact remains: This is just not the biggest deal in the world — and if you think it is, then you probably need to log off social media.

The midterm elections next fall are not going to be determined by the existence — or absence — of a “client list” for an extravagantly wealthy dead pedophile. Nor will they be decided on the absurd grounds of whether FBI Director Kash Patel and Deputy Director Dan Bongino have somehow been “compromised.” (They haven’t.) Instead, the election — and our politics — will be contested on typical substantive grounds: the economy, inflation, immigration, crime, global stability and so forth. This is as it should be. There are simply better uses of your time than fuming over the government’s avowed nonexistence of the much-ballyhooed client list.

You might, for instance, consider spending more time, during these midsummer weeks, with your family. Maybe you can take the kids camping or fishing. Maybe you can take them to an amusement park or to one of America’s many national park treasures. You can spend less time scrolling Instagram and TikTok and more time reading a good old-fashioned book; you will learn more, you will be happier and you will be considerably less likely to traffic in fringe issues and bizarre rhetoric that alienates far more than it unifies.

Instead of finding meaning in the confirmation biases and groupthink validations of social media algorithms, perhaps you can locate meaning where countless human beings have found it since time immemorial: religion. Spend more time praying, reading scripture and attending services at your preferred house of worship. All of these uses of your time will fill you with a sense of stability, meaning and purpose that you will never find deep in the bowels of an X thread on the Epstein files.

Too many people today who are deeply engaged in America’s combustible political process have forgotten that there are more important things in life than politics. And even within the specific realm of politics, there are plenty of things that are more deserving of attention and emotional investment than others. Above all, it is conservatives — those oriented toward sobriety and humility, not utopianism and decadence — who ought to be able to properly contextualize America’s political tug-of-war within our broader lives and who ought to then be able to focus on the meaningful political issues to the exclusion of tawdry soap opera drama.

Like many others, I expect that the Justice Department’s recent — and seemingly definitive — waving away of the Epstein files saga will not actually prove to be the final word on the matter. To the limited extent that I allow myself to think about this sideshow, I hope that the administration does squarely address the many legitimate and unanswered questions now being asked by a frustrated citizenry that has seemingly been misled by the Trump administration, either in Bondi’s February statement or in this month’s report. But I also hope that the extent of this past week’s rage might serve as an edifying moment. Let’s return to the real things in life and focus on what matters most.

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

Floating in the vastness of unknowable space, our miniscule planet contains all of our stories — victories and tragedies orbiting around a dying star. But what if we could leave it all behind and start anew elsewhere? To migrate if you will.

Elio Solís (voiced by Yonas Kibreab) dreams of leaving Earth — he feels he doesn’t belong. As day turns to night, the eponymous orphaned boy in Pixar’s new intergalactic adventure looks up at the sky and wonders if perhaps somewhere out there, on another levitating rock or among a still undiscovered alien race, he might feel more at home.

The animated voyage, with its themes of alienation and aliens, arrives at a time when immigrants in this country, and Latinos at large, have become the target of brutal ICE raids that ignore due process and racially profile citizens and undocumented people alike.

In turn, the production of “Elio” also illuminates the regressive political climate in this country. Last week, a piece published by The Hollywood Reporter claimed that leadership at Pixar erased the protagonist’s queer identity, prompting the original writer-director Adrian Molina to exit the project, with Domee Shi and Madeline Sharafian stepping in to co-direct “Elio.” Had his take come to fruition, Molina, who is Mexican American, would have become the first Latino and the first openly LGBTQ+ person to solo direct a movie for Pixar.

Still, the version that did make it to the screen, where Elio feels ostracized because of his obsession with extraterrestrial life and all its possibilities, remains relevant. Though not overt about his ethnicity, the movie features visual nods to Elio’s Latino upbringing: a Day of the Death altar (pertinent since Molina co-directed “Coco”), a Spanish language song on the radio and colorful conchas as part of a feast.

It’s not a stretch to think that the premise of a Latino kid alienated for who he is and who believes that he won’t ever feel fully accepted in the place he calls home could speak to millions of Latino children across this country; especially here in California, witnessing the disturbing, life-threatening consequences of the administration’s policies.

Elio (voice of Yonas Kibreab), left, and Glordon (voice of Remy Edgerly) in Disney and Pixar’s “Elio.”

(Disney/Pixar)

Kids who must be wondering why there are masked men violently abducting people that look like their family members solely based on their appearance, or why their parents don’t want to leave the house, or why the vendor near their school hasn’t shown up in weeks.

They might be devastated to learn via online chatter that the people in charge of this country don’t want them to feel like they belong, even if they were born here. Now think about the children whose parents were among those taken. Words fail to estimate the trauma they must be experiencing without any certainty of when or if they’ll be reunited.

How do you explain to a child that the president of the United States is gleefully targeting anyone he deems looks “illegal,” regardless of their immigration status? That millions of people in this country harbor such hatred against immigrants that they cheer on an ill child being deported, children crying for their mothers and people dying in detention centers?

“I voted for this,” they write on social media endorsing the inhumane atrocities their government is committing against people they consider “criminals.” But their rigid version of legality only applies to immigrants from underprivileged backgrounds, those who have no choice but to cross borders without documents in order to survive, to aspire to a dignified life. The “right way” is not available to the poor, and those in power know it.

Down here in our chaotic reality, the villains currently have the upper hand. But up in space, nobody asked Elio for a passport or questioned the validity of his existence. On the contrary, the leaders of other planets, who gathered in a striking locale known as “Communiverse,” take his claim that he is the leader of Earth at face value and the singular boy rises to the occasion. Elio helps deescalate a conflict with a space warlord and reconnects with his aunt Olga (Zoe Saldaña) by befriending and then saving the life of the warlord’s young son.

Unfortunately, “Elio” has become Pixar’s biggest box office failure, despite being one of the studio’s best reviewed releases in recent years. Grosses were low globally, perhaps as a result of poor marketing or because audiences have been conditioned to wait for Disney’s animated films to hit streaming rather than seeing them in theaters.

But while that outcome can’t entirely be attributed to Latinos not going to the movies, when millions who are part of the audience that most devoutly purchase tickets in this country — we see movies even though the movies don’t often show us — are frightened to step outside their door, one can’t help but wonder if the numbers for “Elio” would be at least slightly different if the ICE raids were not terrorizing the community. If people are afraid to even go to the grocery store, movie theaters are certainly not a priority.

This country takes Latinos for granted, including how our money impacts Hollywood.

I hope that “Elio” lands in front of Latino children soon, and that they see that the hero who saves not only himself but the entire planet is a Latino boy who ultimately redefines the meaning of home on his own terms. Amid the horrors, I also wish for them to not feel alone, and that they know thousands of people have taken to the streets to speak up for them.

People who believe they do belong here, that they are not “aliens” or “invaders,” but integral part of this country. And that their parents and others in their lives, documented or not, deserve dignity and compassion, no matter what the overlords do to deny them.

For the second time this week, Reform UK have announced a former Conservative cabinet minister has joined them.

The other day they said that former Welsh Secretary David Jones had signed up, back in January.

Two other former Tory MPs defected recently too – Anne Marie Morris and Ross Thomson.

Now it is Sir Jake Berry joining Nigel Farage’s party.

A man knighted by Boris Johnson.

A man whose son counts Johnson as his godfather.

A man who used to be the chairman of the Conservative Party and who was a Tory minister in three different government departments.

And yet a man who now says this: “If you were deliberately trying to wreck the country, you’d be hard pressed to do a better job than the last two decades of Labour and Tory rule.”

Read that sentence again and consider it was written by someone who was not just a Tory MP for 14 years but a senior one, occupying high office.

Extraordinary.

And this is probably not the end of it – both Reform and Conservative folk I speak to hint they expect there to be more to come.

Tories are trying to put the best gloss on it they can, saying Reform might be attracting former MPs – Sir Jake lost his seat at the last election – but they are losing current MPs.

The MP James McMurdock suspended himself from Reform at the weekend after a story in the Sunday Times about loans he took out under a Covid support scheme.

McMurdock has said he was compliant with the rules.

But the trend is clear: Conservatives of varying seniority are being lured across by Nigel Farage and are proud to say so when they make the leap.

Reform are particularly delighted that Sir Jake has not just defected but done so by going “studs in” on his former party, as one source put it.

“For us this is really crucial. If you want to join us you need to be really going for the other side when you do. Drawing a proper line in the sand,” they added.

They regard Sir Jake’s closeness to Boris Johnson as “dagger-in-the-heart stuff” for the Conservatives.

But perhaps the more interesting and consequential pivot in strategy we are currently witnessing is Labour’s approach to Reform.

At the very highest level in government they are reshaping their approach: turning their attention away from their principal opponent of the last century and more, the Conservatives, and tilting instead towards Nigel Farage’s party.

Again, extraordinary.

It tells you a lot about our contemporary politics that a party with Labour’s history, sitting on top of a colossal Commons majority, is now shifting its focus to a party with just a handful of MPs.

Senior ministers take the rise of Reform incredibly seriously and are not dismissing them as a flash in the pan insurgency.

After all, Reform’s lead in many opinion polls has proven to be sustained in recent months and was then garnished with their impressive performance in the English local elections in May and their win, on the same day, in the parliamentary by-election in Runcorn and Helsby in Cheshire.

If Labour folk then were still in need of the jolt of a wake-up call, that night provided it.

In their immediate response to Sir Jake’s defection, Labour are pointing to Reform recruiting Liz Truss’s party chairman and so are inheriting, they claim, her “reckless economics”.

But they know the challenge of taking on and, they hope, defeating Reform, will be work of years of slog and will have to be grounded in proving they can deliver in government – not easy, as their first year in office has so often proven.

Not for the first time in recent months, Reform UK have momentum and are making the political weather.

United States President Donald Trump has continued to publish letters announcing individualised tariff hikes for foreign trading partners.

But on Wednesday, one of those letters was different from the rest.

While most of the letters are virtually identical, denouncing trade relationships that are “far from reciprocal”, Trump’s letter to Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva took a decidedly more personal — and more confrontational — approach.

“Due in part to Brazil’s insidious attacks on Free Elections, and the fundamental Free Speech Rights of Americans”, Trump wrote that he would be charging Brazil an extra 50-percent tax on any goods it exports to the US, separate from existing “sectoral tariffs”.

“Please understand that the 50% number is far less than what is needed to have the Level Playing Field we must have with your Country,” Trump added. “And it is necessary to have this to rectify the grave injustices of the current regime.”

The letter marked the biggest attack yet in Trump’s escalating feud with Lula, as he seeks to pressure Brazil to drop criminal charges against a fellow far-right leader, Jair Bolsonaro.

Known as the “Trump of the Tropics”, Bolsonaro, a former army captain, led Brazil for a single term, from 2019 to 2023.

Like Trump, Bolsonaro refused to concede his election loss to a left-wing rival. Like Trump, Bolsonaro also raised questions about the accuracy of the results, including by voicing doubts about electronic voting machines.

And like Trump, Bolsonaro has faced legal repercussions, with court cases weighing whether he could be criminally liable for alleged actions he took to overturn his defeat.

In Bolsonaro’s case, the election in question took place in October 2022, against the current president, Lula. The results were narrow, but Lula edged Bolsonaro out in a run-off race, earning 50.9 percent of the vote.

Still, Bolsonaro did not acknowledge his defeat and instead filed a legal complaint to contest the election results.

Meanwhile, his followers attacked police headquarters, blocked highways, and even stormed government buildings in the capital, Brasilia, in an apparent attempt to spark a military backlash against Lula.

Prosecutors, meanwhile, have accused Bolsonaro of conspiring with allies behind the scenes to stage a coup d’etat, one that might have seen Supreme Court justices arrested and a new election called.

According to the indictment, Bolsonaro, as the outgoing president, considered provoking these changes by calling a “state of siege”, which would have empowered the military to take action.

One of the other possibilities reportedly discussed was poisoning Lula.

Bolsonaro and 33 others were charged in February, and the ex-president’s case is ongoing before the Brazilian Supreme Court.

The charges came as the result of a federal police investigation published in November 2024, which recommended a criminal trial. Bolsonaro, however, has denied any wrongdoing and has framed the trial as a politically motivated attack.

Trump himself has faced two criminal indictments – one on the state level, the other federal – for allegedly seeking to overturn his loss in the 2020 election. He, too, called those cases attempts to derail his political career.

In recent days, Trump has highlighted what he sees as parallels between their cases. On July 7, he wrote on social media that he empathised with what was happening to Bolsonaro: “It happened to me, times 10.”

He reprised that theme in Wednesday’s letter, announcing the dramatic increase in tariffs against Brazil.

“The way that Brazil has treated former President Bolsonaro, a Highly Respected Leader throughout the World during his term, including by the United states, is an international disgrace,” Trump said.

“This trial should not be taking place,” he added. “It is a Witch Hunt that should end IMMEDIATELY!”

In addition to ramping up tariffs against Brazil, Trump revealed in his letter that he had directed US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer to investigate Brazil for unfair practices under the Trade Act of 1974.

This is not the first time that Trump has lashed out at Brazil, though. In February, the Trump Media and Technology Group filed a Florida lawsuit against Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, arguing that his decisions curtailed online freedom of speech in the US.

De Moraes had also overseen the investigation into Bolsonaro’s alleged coup attempt, and he is a target of criticism among many on the far right.

While Trump’s tariff letter contained the standard language alleging that the US’s trading relationship with Brazil was “very unfair”, the US actually enjoys a trade surplus with the South American country.

According to the Office of the US Trade Representative, in 2024, the US imported a total of $42.3bn from Brazil. But that was dwarfed by the amount it exported to the country: $49.7bn.

In short, Brazil’s purchases from the US amounted to about $7.4bn more than US purchases from Brazil.

Still, Trump has cited uneven trade relationships as the motivation for his tariffs, though he has also used them to influence other countries’ policies, particularly with regards to immigration, digital services and transnational drug smuggling.

On Wednesday, Bolsonaro took to social media to once again proclaim his innocence. In a separate case, he was barred from holding public office in Brazil for a period of eight years.

“Jair Bolsonaro is persecuted because he remains alive in the popular consciousness,” the ex-president wrote in the third person. “Even out of power, he remains the most remembered name – and the most feared. That’s why they try to annihilate him politically, morally, and judicially.”

He also reposted a message from Trump himself: “Leave the Great Former President of Brazil alone. WITCH HUNT!!!”

Lula, meanwhile, responded to Trump’s previous tariff threats on Monday by saying, “The world has changed. We don’t want an emperor.”

Musk’s political ambition has spooked investors as the auto company reports a decrease in sales in the second quarter.

Tesla shares have tumbled after CEO Elon Musk announced plans to launch a new US political party amid his ongoing feud with his longtime ally, United States President Donald Trump.

Shares of the electric automaker are down 7 percent as of 12pm in New York (16:00 GMT) on Monday. Musk announced his plans on Friday to launch a new political party after disagreements with the president over the tax legislation signed into law the same day. Trump has called the idea “ridiculous”.

Musk’s announcement has fuelled further concerns amongst analysts about his dedication to the automaker after it reported a sales decline in the second quarter driven by Musk’s political involvement.

Trump-Musk conflict weighs on investors 

“Very simply, Musk diving deeper into politics and now trying to take on the Beltway establishment is exactly the opposite direction that Tesla investors/shareholders want him to take during this crucial period for the Tesla story,” Dan Ives, analyst at Wedbush Securities, said in a note. “While the core Musk supporters will back Musk at every turn no matter what, there is a broader sense of exhaustion from many Tesla investors that Musk keeps heading down the political track.”

“After leaving the Trump Administration and DOGE [the US Department of Government Efficiency], there was initial relief from Tesla shareholders and big supporters of the name that Tesla just got back its biggest asset, Musk. That relief lasted a very short time and now has taken a turn for the worse with this latest announcement.”

Last week, Trump had threatened to cut off the billions of dollars in subsidies that Musk’s companies receive from the federal government after their feud erupted into an all-out social media brawl in early June.

“I, and every other Tesla investor, would prefer to be out of the business of politics. The sooner this distraction can be removed and Tesla gets back to actual business, the better,” Camelthorn Investments adviser Shawn Campbell, who owns Tesla shares, told the Reuters news agency.

Tesla is set to lose more than $80bn in market valuation if current losses hold, while traders are set to make about $1.4bn in paper profits from their short positions in Tesla shares on Monday.

Musk’s latest move also raises questions around the Tesla board’s course of action. Its chair, Robyn Denholm, in May denied a Wall Street Journal report that said board members were looking to replace the CEO.

Tesla’s board, which has been criticised for failing to provide oversight of its combative, headline-making CEO, faces a dilemma managing him as he oversees five other companies and his personal political ambitions.

“This is exactly the kind of thing a board of directors would curtail – removing the CEO if he refused to curtail these kinds of activities,” said Ann Lipton, a professor at the University of Colorado Law School and an expert in business law.

The company’s shares and its future are seen as inextricably tied to Musk, the world’s richest man, whose wealth is constituted significantly of Tesla stock. He is Tesla’s single largest shareholder, according to data from the London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG).

“The Tesla board has been fairly supine; they have not, at least not in any demonstrable way, taken any action to force Musk to limit his outside ventures, and it’s difficult to imagine they would begin now,” Lipton added.

Other companies tied to Musk – including X Corp, formerly Twitter, and SpaceX – are not publicly traded.

US President Donald Trump has criticised Elon Musk’s plan to launch and fund a new US political party, calling it “ridiculous”. The America Party has yet to announce a platform and Musk is not eligible to run for the presidency.

The US president calls the tycoon ‘TRAIN WRECK’ who has gone ‘off the rails’ after Musk vows challenge to the US political system.

United States President Donald Trump has slammed former ally Elon Musk’s launching of a new political party as “ridiculous”, deepening the Republican’s feud with the man who was once his biggest backer.

The world’s richest man was almost inseparable from Trump as he headed the cost-cutting Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), but they fell out hard over the president’s “big beautiful” tax and spending mega-bill.

“I think it’s ridiculous to start a third party,” Trump told reporters on Sunday before he boarded Air Force One on his way back to Washington, DC from his New Jersey golf club.

“It’s always been a two-party system, and I think starting a third party just adds to confusion. Third parties have never worked. So he can have fun with it, but I think it’s ridiculous,” he said.

South African-born Musk announced on Saturday that he would found the America Party to challenge what he called the “one-party system” in the US.

SpaceX and Tesla tycoon Musk says the president’s massive domestic spending plan would explode the US debt, and has promised to do everything in his power to defeat lawmakers who voted for it.

The former DOGE head, who led a huge drive to slash federal spending and cut jobs, equated Trump’s Republicans with rival Democrats when it came to domestic spending.

“When it comes to bankrupting our country with waste & graft, we live in a one-party system, not a democracy,” Musk posted on X, the social media platform he owns.

Musk gave few details of his plan, and it was not clear whether he had registered the party with US electoral authorities, but it could cause Republicans headaches in the 2026 midterm elections and beyond.

‘TRAIN WRECK’

In a sign of how sensitive the issue could be for Trump, he took to his Truth Social network while still on Air Force One to double down on his assault on Musk.

“I am saddened to watch Elon Musk go completely ‘off the rails,’ essentially becoming a TRAIN WRECK over the past five weeks,” Trump posted.

“The one thing Third Parties are good for is the creation of Complete and Total DISRUPTION & CHAOS, and we have enough of that with the Radical Left Democrats.”

In a lengthy diatribe, Trump repeated his earlier assertion that Musk’s ownership of electric vehicle company Tesla had made him turn on the president due to the spending bill cutting subsidies for such automobiles.

Musk has insisted that his opposition is primarily due to the bill increasing the US fiscal deficit and sovereign debt.

Earlier on Sunday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent also threw shade at Musk’s attempts to enter the political fray, telling him to stick to running his companies.

When asked by CNN if Musk’s plan bothered the Trump administration, Bessent offered thinly veiled criticism.

“I believe that the boards of directors at his various companies wanted him to come back and run those companies, which he is better at than anyone,” Bessent said.

“So I imagine that those boards of directors did not like this announcement yesterday and will be encouraging him to focus on his business activities, not his political activities.”

Musk left DOGE in May to focus full-time on his corporate responsibilities, with Tesla’s sales and image especially suffering from his brief venture into Trump’s inner circle.

Trump gave him a grand sendoff in the Oval Office in a bizarre ceremony during which Musk appeared with a black eye and received a golden key to the White House from the president.

But just days later, the two were exchanging bitter insults on social media after Musk criticised Trump’s flagship spending bill.

Trump would not comment on Sunday when asked if he would be asking Musk to return the golden key.