Construction materials and an unfinished home peak through the trees at the front of Nacotee’s Vista neighborhood, where a custom home builder is accused of collecting deposits then abandoning the projects, a Florida sheriff’s office said.
The owner of a custom home construction company is accused of collecting millions of dollars worth of deposits from clients and then abandoning the projects, leaving half-built houses and vacant concrete slabs, a Florida sheriff’s office said.
Spencer Calvert, owner of Pineapple Corporation, embezzled and misappropriated $15 million, which included construction funds, payment for subcontractors and deposits from intended homeowners, according to a Friday, Feb. 23 news release from the St. Johns County Sheriff’s Office.
The sheriff’s office said Calvert’s company was under contract with at least 13 clients to build custom homes in Nocatee’s Vista neighborhood. The clients purchased lots between 2019 and 2023 from Calvert, according to the sheriff’s office.
Despite some clients paying Calvert years ago, their houses remain unfinished.
A few of the homeowners reached out to the investigation team at WJXT, and said they had paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to Calvert, but still had just a concrete slab.
One client, Lisa Sparta, told the outlet she moved with her husband from Philadelphia and went under contract in 2021 with Calvert, who said the home would be completed in a year and a half.
“After we paid some deposits to the builder, and the deposits weren’t passed on to the contractors, the house was just sitting or you know, a little bit of work would get done. And then it would sit for a few months. And there was always an excuse, there was always a reason it was out of their control. It had nothing to do with the builder. It was, you know, supply chain, it was labor shortages. It was any excuse you could think of it was never their fault,” Sparta told WJXT.
Sandy Yawn, known as a reality TV star on the show “Below Deck Mediterranean,” also bought a lot to build her dream house from Calvert and has paid $1.6 million, she told the outlet.
“We’ve spent every dime that we have. And so now we don’t really have the money to finish it. We have to try to get a loan. And we just want it when our house finishes. But more importantly, the person that took our money, I just want to know where our money is,” Yawn told WJXT.
The sheriff’s office said not only was Calvert not building houses, but he wasn’t paying subcontractors with the money he took for deposits.
Funds intended for labor, services and materials were never paid, the sheriff’s office said, and the costs totaled more than $900,000.
“Calvert is accused of knowingly and intentionally accepting deposits and abandoning the project without any attempt to refund or correct the situation,” the sheriff’s office said.
Calvert is charged with embezzling and misappropriating more than $100,000 in construction funds, first degree larceny of $100,000 or more and organized scheme to defraud, according to the sheriff’s office.
Nocatee is about 30 miles south of Jacksonville.
Irene Wright is a McClatchy Real-Time reporter. She earned a B.A. in ecology and an M.A. in health and medical journalism from the University of Georgia and is now based in Atlanta. Irene previously worked as a business reporter at The Dallas Morning News.
Near the end of the Supreme Court’s oral arguments about whether Colorado could exclude former President Donald Trump from its ballot as an insurrectionist, the attorney representing voters from the state offered a warning to the justices—one evoking the January 6 riot that had set the case in motion.
By this point in the hearing, the justices had made clear that they didn’t like the idea of allowing a single state to kick Trump out of the presidential race, and they didn’t appear comfortable with the Court doing so either. Sensing that Trump would likely stay on the ballot, the attorney, Jason Murray, said that if the Supreme Court didn’t resolve the question of Trump’s eligibility, “it could come back with a vengeance”—after the election, when Congress meets once again to count and certify the votes of the Electoral College.
Murray and other legal scholars say that, absent clear guidance from the Supreme Court, a Trump win could lead to a constitutional crisis in Congress. Democrats would have to choose between confirming a winner many of them believe is ineligible and defying the will of voters who elected him. Their choice could be decisive: As their victory in a House special election in New York last week demonstrated, Democrats have a serious chance of winning a majority in Congress in November, even if Trump recaptures the presidency on the same day. If that happens, they could have the votes to prevent him from taking office.
In interviews, senior House Democrats would not commit to certifying a Trump win, saying they would do so only if the Supreme Court affirms his eligibility. But during oral arguments, liberal and conservative justices alike seemed inclined to dodge the question of his eligibility altogether and throw the decision to Congress.
“That would be a colossal disaster,” Representative Adam Schiff of California told me. “We already had one horrendous January 6. We don’t need another.”
The justices could conclude definitively that Trump is eligible to serve another term as president. The Fourteenth Amendment bars people who have “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” from holding office, but it does not define those terms. Trump has not been convicted of fomenting an insurrection, nor do any of his 91 indictments charge him with that particular crime. But in early 2021, every House Democrat (along with 10 Republicans) voted to impeach Trump for “incitement of insurrection,” and a significant majority of those lawmakers will still be in Congress next year.
If the Court deems Trump eligible, even a few of his most fervent Democratic critics told me they would vote for certification should he win. “I’m going to follow the law,” Representative Eric Swalwell of California told me. “I would not object out of protest of how the Supreme Court comes down. It would be doing what I didn’t like about the January 6 Republicans.” Schiff, who served on the committee that investigated Trump’s role in the Capitol riot, believes that the Supreme Court should rule that Trump is disqualified. But if the Court deems Trump eligible, Schiff said, he wouldn’t object to a Trump victory.
What if the Court declines to answer? “I don’t want to get into the chaos hypothetical,” Schiff told me. Nor did Representative Jim Clyburn of South Carolina, who served in the party leadership for two decades. “I think he’s an insurrectionist,” he said of Trump. Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who would become speaker if Democrats retake the House, did not respond to questions sent to his office.
Even as Democrats left open the possibility of challenging a Trump win, they shuddered at its potential repercussions. For three years they have attacked the 147 Republicans—including a majority of the party’s House conference—who voted to overturn President Joe Biden’s 2020 victory. More recently they’ve criticized top congressional Republicans such as Representative Elise Stefanik, the House GOP conference chair, for refusing to commit to certifying a Biden win.
The choice that Democrats would face if Trump won without a definitive ruling on his eligibility was almost too fraught for Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland to contemplate. He told me he didn’t know how he’d vote in that scenario. As we spoke about what might happen, he recalled the brutality of January 6. “There was blood all over the Capitol in the hypothetical you posit,” Raskin, who served on the January 6 committee with Schiff, told me.
Theoretically, the House and Senate could act before the election by passing a law that defines the meaning of “insurrection” in the Fourteenth Amendment and establishes a process to determine whether a candidate is barred from holding a particular office, including the presidency. But such a bill would have to get through the Republican-controlled House, whose leaders have all endorsed Trump’s candidacy. “There’s absolutely no chance in the world,” Representative Zoe Lofgren, a California Democrat who also served on the January 6 committee, told me.
In late 2022, Congress did enact reforms to the Electoral Count Act. That bill raised the threshold for objecting to a state’s slate of electors, and it clarified that the vice president, in presiding over the opening of Electoral College ballots, has no real power to affect the outcome of the election. But it did not address the question of insurrection.
As Republicans are fond of pointing out, Democrats have objected to the certification of each GOP presidential winner since 2000. None of those challenges went anywhere, and they were all premised on disputing the outcome or legitimacy of the election itself. Contesting a presidential election by claiming that the winner is ineligible, however, has no precedent. “It’s very murky,” Lofgren said. She believes that Trump is “clearly ineligible,” but acknowledged that “there’s no procedure, per se, for challenging on this basis.”
In an amicus brief to the Supreme Court, a trio of legal scholars—Edward Foley, Benjamin Ginsberg, and Richard Hasen—warned the justices that if they did not rule on Trump’s eligibility, “it is a certainty” that members of Congress would seek to disqualify him on January 6, 2025. I asked Lofgren whether she would be one of those lawmakers. “I might be.”
(After this article was published, Lofgren issued a statement to “clarify” her position. “I would consider objecting to the electoral vote certification under the Electoral Count Act if the Supreme Court rules that the 14th Amendment required such action despite the Electoral Count Act,” she said. “I am not considering objecting prior to the Supreme Court issuing its decision and if the decision provides that path legally.”)
The scholars also warned that serious political instability and violence could ensue. That possibility was on Raskin’s mind, too. He conceded that the threat of violence could influence what Democrats do if Trump wins. But, Raskin added, it wouldn’t necessarily stop them from trying to disqualify him. “We might just decide that’s something we need to prepare for.”
SAN JOSE — A big affordable housing project in San Jose is pushing ahead with a property purchase and the landing of a crucial money package for the construction of the residences, public documents show.
The affordable residences are part of Stevens Creek Promenade in San Jose, a big mixed-use development that will feature housing, retail and a hotel.
Pacific West Builders, acting through an affiliate, has paid roughly $3.5 million for the site where the affordable homes would be built, according to documents filed on Feb. 21 with the Santa Clara County Recorder’s Office.
Miramar Capital Group, which is the primary developer of the Stevens Creek Promenade complex, sold the site for the affordable housing portion of the project to Idaho-based Pacific West Builders.
In 2020, Santa Monica-based Miramar Capital Group and Machine Investment, acting through affiliate MPG Stevens Creek Owner, paid $54.5 million for the overall development site, including the just-sold affordable homes parcel. The overall development property is located on the south side of Stevens Creek Boulevard between Kiely Boulevard and Palace Road.
The California Housing Financing Agency authorized the issuance of a bond package to enable construction financing for the affordable housing project, according to a staff report prepared for a recent meeting during which the state agency approved bonds and funding for the project.
The affordable residential development would consist of 173 homes. Of these, 171 will be affordable apartments that will be rented to residents belonging to households making 30% to 70% of the area’s median income, according to the state housing agency’s report. Two of the units will be market-rate homes for on-site managers.
The Santa Clara County area median income in 2023 was $181,300 for a four-person household. That would mean the income limits for the affordable homes in this project would range from about $54,390 a year to $126,910.
The total construction package is valued at $125.6 million, according to the agenda materials for the state Housing Finance Agency.
Of that overall amount, Citibank is providing the project with $98.6 million in construction financing through two separate loans. Bonneville Multifamily Capital is providing a third loan of $10 million, according to the California Housing Finance Agency documents.
The 173-unit project will include 44 studio units of 422 square feet each, 37 one-bedroom units ranging in size from 563 to 573 square feet, 45 two-bedroom units of 776 square feet and 47 three-bedroom units of 1,064 square feet. Two of the three-bedroom units will be manager’s homes.
“This is an inclusionary project and will be part of a larger development that will include two market-rate apartment buildings and a 250-room hotel,” the state housing agency documents state.
One of the market-rate apartments will be 191 units and the other will be 216 units.
The market-rate apartments as well as the hotel are expected to be built at some point after the affordable housing is built, or at least under construction. The project is being built in phases in a way to enable the affordable homes to be developed first.
This project is located at 4300 Stevens Creek Boulevard, a short distance from San Jose’s two mega malls, Westfield Valley Fair and Santana Row.
Construction of the affordable apartments is slated to begin within weeks and should take roughly two years to complete and potentially open in 2026, the state agency documents show.
When originally conceived, Stevens Creek Promenade was expected to feature 233,000 to 300,000 square feet of office space, up to 582 apartment units and as much as 22,000 square feet of retail and restaurant space on the ground floor.
In the latest version, the retail component has been trimmed to 10,800 square feet. The developers have scrapped the office component completely in an uncertain market for that type of product as well as fast-rising office vacancies.
Having failed to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas the first time, House Republicans are determined to try again Tuesday, but it’s not at all certain the do-over vote will produce a better tally after last week’s politically embarrassing setback.The evening vote is expected to be tight with Speaker Mike Johnson’s threadbare GOP majority unable to handle many defectors or absences in the face of staunch Democratic opposition to impeaching Mayorkas, the first Cabinet secretary facing charges in nearly 150 years.Despite the expected arrival of Majority Leader Steve Scalise, who will bolster the GOP numbers after being away from Washington for cancer care, even one other missing or weather-delayed lawmaker could imperil the Mayorkas impeachment. If the vote pushes later into the week, the outcome of Tuesday’s special election in New York to replace ousted Rep. George Santos could tip the balance further.Johnson posted a fists-clenched photo with Scalise, announcing his remission from cancer, saying, “looking forward to having him back in the trenches this week!”The GOP effort to impeach Mayorkas over border security has taken on an air of political desperation as Republicans try to make good on their priorities after last week’s mishap and after Republicans rejected a bipartisan Senate border security package.Border security has shot to the top of campaign issues, with Donald Trump, the Republican front-runner for the presidential nomination, insisting he will launch “the largest domestic deportation operation in American history” on day one if he retakes the White House.In stark language over the weekend, Trump debased immigrant arrivals. even going so far as to suggest without evidence they bring disease into the U.S. Trump reiterated his plans of a second-term roundup to remove potentially millions of newcomers from the U.S., a spectacle practically unseen in modern times.”We have no choice,” Trump said at a rally in South Carolina.The House, which launched an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden over his son’s business dealings, has instead turned its attention to Mayorkas after Trump ally Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia pushed the debate forward.If the House succeeds in impeaching Mayorkas, the charges against him would go to the Senate for a trial, but neither Democratic nor Republican senators have shown interest in the matter and it may be indefinitely shelved to a committee. After a months-long investigation, the House Homeland Security Committee filed two articles of impeachment against Mayorkas — arguing that he “willfully and systematically” refused to enforce existing immigration laws and that he breached the public trust by lying to Congress and saying the border was secure.Never before has a sitting Cabinet secretary been impeached, and it was nearly 150 years ago that the House voted to impeach President Ulysses S. Grant’s secretary of war, William Belknap, over a kickback scheme in government contracts. He resigned moments before the vote.Mayorkas, who did not appear to testify before the impeachment proceedings, put the border crisis squarely on Congress for failing to update immigration laws during a time of global migration.”There is no question that we have a challenge, a crisis at the border,” Mayorkas said over the weekend on NBC. “And there is no question that Congress needs to fix it.”Johnson and the Republicans have pushed back, arguing that the Biden administration could take executive actions, as Trump did, to stop the number of crossings — though the courts have questioned and turned back some of those efforts.”We always explore what options are available to us that are permissible under the law,” Mayorkas said in the interview. Last week’s failed vote to impeach Mayorkas — a surprise outcome rarely seen on such a high-profile issue — was a stunning display in the chamber that has been churning through months of GOP chaos since the ouster of the previous House speaker. As the clock ticked down, three Republicans opposed impeaching Mayorkas, leaving the tally at razor’s edge. With a 219-212 majority and Scalise absent, Johnson had just a few votes to spare.One Democrat, Rep, Al Green of Texas, who had been hospitalized for emergency abdominal surgery, made a surprise arrival, wheeled into the chamber in scrubs and socks to vote against it — leaving the vote tied.One of the Republican holdouts, Rep. Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin, who had served as a Marine and is now a committee chairman, was quickly encircled by colleagues, including the impeachment’s chief sponsor, Georgia’s Greene. He refused to change his vote.Gallagher announced over the weekend he would not be seeking reelection in the fall. Once a rising star as a next generation of the GOP, he now joins a growing list of serious-minded Republican lawmakers heading for the exits.Republicans are hopeful the New York special election will boost their ranks further, but the outcome of that race is uncertain.Democrat Green of Texas is now out of the hospital and recuperating from surgery, and was amazed at how critics suggested he was sneaked into the Capitol to vote. He described the painstaking effort to get from his hospital bed to the House floor.”Obviously, you feel good when you can make a difference,” said Green. “All I did was what I was elected to do, and that was to cast my vote on the issues of our time, using the best judgment available to me.”He plans to be there again this week to vote against Mayorkas’ impeachment.
WASHINGTON —
Having failed to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas the first time, House Republicans are determined to try again Tuesday, but it’s not at all certain the do-over vote will produce a better tally after last week’s politically embarrassing setback.
The evening vote is expected to be tight with Speaker Mike Johnson’s threadbare GOP majority unable to handle many defectors or absences in the face of staunch Democratic opposition to impeaching Mayorkas, the first Cabinet secretary facing charges in nearly 150 years.
Despite the expected arrival of Majority Leader Steve Scalise, who will bolster the GOP numbers after being away from Washington for cancer care, even one other missing or weather-delayed lawmaker could imperil the Mayorkas impeachment. If the vote pushes later into the week, the outcome of Tuesday’s special election in New York to replace ousted Rep. George Santos could tip the balance further.
Johnson posted a fists-clenched photo with Scalise, announcing his remission from cancer, saying, “looking forward to having him back in the trenches this week!”
The GOP effort to impeach Mayorkas over border security has taken on an air of political desperation as Republicans try to make good on their priorities after last week’s mishap and after Republicans rejected a bipartisan Senate border security package.
Border security has shot to the top of campaign issues, with Donald Trump, the Republican front-runner for the presidential nomination, insisting he will launch “the largest domestic deportation operation in American history” on day one if he retakes the White House.
In stark language over the weekend, Trump debased immigrant arrivals. even going so far as to suggest without evidence they bring disease into the U.S. Trump reiterated his plans of a second-term roundup to remove potentially millions of newcomers from the U.S., a spectacle practically unseen in modern times.
“We have no choice,” Trump said at a rally in South Carolina.
The House, which launched an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden over his son’s business dealings, has instead turned its attention to Mayorkas after Trump ally Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia pushed the debate forward.
If the House succeeds in impeaching Mayorkas, the charges against him would go to the Senate for a trial, but neither Democratic nor Republican senators have shown interest in the matter and it may be indefinitely shelved to a committee.
After a months-long investigation, the House Homeland Security Committee filed two articles of impeachment against Mayorkas — arguing that he “willfully and systematically” refused to enforce existing immigration laws and that he breached the public trust by lying to Congress and saying the border was secure.
Never before has a sitting Cabinet secretary been impeached, and it was nearly 150 years ago that the House voted to impeach President Ulysses S. Grant’s secretary of war, William Belknap, over a kickback scheme in government contracts. He resigned moments before the vote.
Mayorkas, who did not appear to testify before the impeachment proceedings, put the border crisis squarely on Congress for failing to update immigration laws during a time of global migration.
“There is no question that we have a challenge, a crisis at the border,” Mayorkas said over the weekend on NBC. “And there is no question that Congress needs to fix it.”
Johnson and the Republicans have pushed back, arguing that the Biden administration could take executive actions, as Trump did, to stop the number of crossings — though the courts have questioned and turned back some of those efforts.
“We always explore what options are available to us that are permissible under the law,” Mayorkas said in the interview.
Last week’s failed vote to impeach Mayorkas — a surprise outcome rarely seen on such a high-profile issue — was a stunning display in the chamber that has been churning through months of GOP chaos since the ouster of the previous House speaker.
As the clock ticked down, three Republicans opposed impeaching Mayorkas, leaving the tally at razor’s edge. With a 219-212 majority and Scalise absent, Johnson had just a few votes to spare.
One Democrat, Rep, Al Green of Texas, who had been hospitalized for emergency abdominal surgery, made a surprise arrival, wheeled into the chamber in scrubs and socks to vote against it — leaving the vote tied.
One of the Republican holdouts, Rep. Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin, who had served as a Marine and is now a committee chairman, was quickly encircled by colleagues, including the impeachment’s chief sponsor, Georgia’s Greene. He refused to change his vote.
Gallagher announced over the weekend he would not be seeking reelection in the fall. Once a rising star as a next generation of the GOP, he now joins a growing list of serious-minded Republican lawmakers heading for the exits.
Republicans are hopeful the New York special election will boost their ranks further, but the outcome of that race is uncertain.
Democrat Green of Texas is now out of the hospital and recuperating from surgery, and was amazed at how critics suggested he was sneaked into the Capitol to vote. He described the painstaking effort to get from his hospital bed to the House floor.
“Obviously, you feel good when you can make a difference,” said Green. “All I did was what I was elected to do, and that was to cast my vote on the issues of our time, using the best judgment available to me.”
He plans to be there again this week to vote against Mayorkas’ impeachment.
For thousands across the Southland, this week’s storms brought unwanted water into their houses, condos and businesses due to flooding, leaky roofs or other causes.
The task now for many property owners is to dry out their interior spaces and prevent further damage due to mold and mildew. Not just an unsightly and smelly nuisance, mold is a potential health hazard that can require costly additional repairs if it’s not addressed properly and relatively quickly. Once it does appear, it’s imperative that you take steps to address it before it spreads.
To get some answers about what to do when you’ve got moisture in the walls, floors, ceilings or insulation of your home or business, The Times spoke to mold remediation professionals and other experts.
Here’s what they said:
1. Don’t make it worse
The first thing you should do is make sure you don’t exacerbate the problem. If money’s tight, it may be tempting to try to fix the problem yourself.
If you’re lucky and mold hasn’t started to grow, it may be O.K. to run some fans or pull up a damp patch of carpet. But if areas of moisture remain, mold will likely follow within a few days.
Once you start to see visible mold or smell its telltale dank odor, it may already be too late to take purely preventive measures. Even just running fans could spread mold spores throughout your home, as could removing moldy materials.
2. Call a professional
As soon as you can after an event like a storm or a pipe break causes water to pour into your home or business, you should get in touch with someone who knows what they’re doing.
One good option is to contact a full-service water damage recovery and mold remediation company. These firms are inundated with calls after inclement weather, so the sooner you call them the better. They’ll start out by talking you through what you’re facing and will typically send someone to assess the damage and how to address it.
You’ll also need to consider whether — and when — to get in touch with your insurance company. This is a personal decision, but there are some important questions to consider before you make that call. For instance, what’s your deductible and how much do you expect the bill to repair the damage to be? Do you have flood insurance and what exactly does your policy cover? If you anticipate costly repairs, it might even be worth consulting with a property damage attorney to help you navigate the claims process.
Joel Moss, chief business development officer for Paul Davis Restoration in Santa Clarita, said he recommends a property owner’s first call be to a company that can come to your home and determine what’s needed.
“We can come out and assess what’s going on and give them some professional feedback,” he said, “rather than calling their insurance company first and then finding out that it may not be a covered claim, or if the damage is so small that it’s not going to be beneficial to run the deductible.”
3. Water mitigation
If it’s soon enough after the storm and the water hasn’t permeated too deeply, you might be looking at a minimally invasive mitigation process, according to Shay Benhamo, office manager at Green Planet Restoration in Chatsworth.
By removing moisture before mold can take hold, you can avoid the high costs and lengthy processes often associated with mold remediation. Sometimes just mitigating water can cost a few thousand dollars. But it’s always less expensive and disruptive than waiting until there’s mold.
“Sometimes you can just dry it out with machines,” Benhamo said, “and sometimes you have to actually remove wet material, like two feet of wet drywall.”
4. Mold remediation
There are hundreds of varieties of mold that can show up in indoor spaces, and their appearance can vary widely. Mold can be blue, green, white — essentially any color. If it’s black, you should be particularly concerned, but the feared black mold is not the only variety that can cause respiratory problems and other health issues.
Just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean there isn’t mold. If you know you’ve had significant moisture inside your home or business for three or more days, or if you smell it in the air, you’ll likely need to pursue mold remediation.
All water and moisture will first need to be mitigated, and any moldy materials will need to be removed. That can mean losing parts of your floor, walls and even furniture and other belongings.
Paul Davis Restoration’s standards require that when mold is found in a floor, ceiling or wall, the moldy portion must be cut out and removed, Moss said, along with two extra feet in every direction past the part where mold can be seen.
After the materials are removed, the next step is rebuilding the affected portions of your home or business. Full-service water recovery and mold remediation providers can handle that work, or a capable contractor can be brought in to handle the reconstruction process.
5. Prevention
You’ve spent thousands of dollars on water mitigation, mold remediation and reconstruction. But what’s stopping water from entering your home or business again next time there’s heavy rains or flooding?
It’s essential that you find an engineer who can work with you to ensure proper drainage if flooding or blocked outdoor drains were the issue. If a roof leak or other structural problem was the cause of your property’s water damage, you’ll need to work with a contractor who can reinforce your roof or other parts of your home or business to ensure they’re able to keep water at bay next time there’s a torrential rain and flooding event.
Because if there’s anything Southern Californians have learned these last couple of years, it’s that there will be a next time.
Enriqueta Lima stood beside her car in Studio City, holding a puffer jacket over her head as a cold, steady rain fell Monday morning.
Lima, 49, had parked near Fryman Road, a street in a wooded canyon lined with million-dollar homes. She cleans a house there and was trying to figure out if it was safe to keep driving. She had not heard from the homeowners Sunday night, as the slow-moving storm poured down, so she decided to risk the drive to Studio City Monday after dropping her daughter off at school.
“I got scared thinking about driving here,” Lima said in Spanish. “I don’t want to park my car where it’s flooded.”
Mud and water flowed down the street. She got back into her gray sedan and drove away.
Across Southern California, hillside and canyon neighborhoods bore the brunt of the powerful atmospheric river that parked itself over Los Angeles late Sunday just as the Grammys were being handed out at Crypto.com Arena downtown.
The record-breaking deluge — which prompted a state of emergency declaration from Gov. Gavin Newsom — triggered mudslides and evacuations, damaged houses, flooded roadways and knocked out power for thousands of people.
In Northern California, three deaths, all from fallen trees, were attributed to the storm, officials said. One was in Santa Cruz County, one in Sutter County and one in Sacramento County.
Still, amid a massive deployment of emergency response teams, more widespread public safety issues have so far been avoided.
“Things have held. We are in pretty good shape,” Brian Ferguson, a spokesman for the governor’s Office of Emergency Services, said Monday. But, he added, “we are not out of the woods yet.”
The rains will keep coming, off and on, most of the week, according to the National Weather Service. And the cleanup has just begun.
On Monday afternoon in Studio City, yellow trucks from the Los Angeles Bureau of Street Services lined Fryman Road, where a mudslide had coated the roadway in piles of mud, rocks, tree limbs and debris laced with silverware, tools, garden pots and books. The debris field crashed down from Lockridge Road, which sits beneath Dearing Mountain Trail in Fryman Canyon Park.
Longtime resident Scott Toro said the mudslide Sunday night “sounded like a plane crashing.”
“It sounded like, ‘Boom! Boom! Boom!’ and we came outside and saw all this debris,” said Toro, 60. “I saw all these rocks.”
Toro left his home after midnight and stayed at a relative’s house. He said he’s used to water coming down the ravine during storms, but “we’ve never had anything like this.”
In nearby Beverly Glen, on Caribou Lane, an upside-down piano — caked in mud, keys askew — lay in the road. In that neighborhood, mud flows pushed a house off its foundation around 2 a.m. Monday, said Travis Longcore, who lives a few houses down.
“It was a big rumbling sound and then a boom,” he said.
The house, neighbors said, was unoccupied.
The winding residential streets south of the Encino Reservoir, covered with tree branches and muck, were mostly deserted Monday. On nearby Boris Drive, the storm washed away the hillside behind Nathan Khalili’s rented house, leaving a steep, muddy scar in its place.
“I’m usually not worried about storms, but I didn’t think a … landslide would happen,” said Khalili, 23. “I woke up, looked outside and half the mud had slid down the hill.”
Khalili lost power between midnight and 9 a.m. Monday. His phone, on which he sets his morning alarm, died overnight. “I’m supposed to be at work right now,” said Khalili, an insurance broker. “But I accidentally slept in.”
On the Palos Verdes Peninsula, where a landslide caused several homes to slide into a canyon last summer, residents were wary as they watched the downpour.
David Zee, whose house in Rolling Hills Estates was red-tagged after neighboring homes on Peartree Lane collapsed, said he went to his home Monday to check for damage. Though his house is upright, Zee and his family have been displaced since July. The landslide, according to a city report, was triggered by excessive precipitation during a series of heavy storms last winter. Now, every time it rains, Zee worries.
“There’s not much we can do,” he said. “We just have to hope that our hillside, our foundation that our home sits on, doesn’t buckle under the weight of all the rain.”
According to the National Weather Service, a staggering 11.34 inches of rain had fallen in Topanga Canyon by Monday afternoon.
Keith Wilbur, 65, walked along Topanga Canyon Boulevard in rubber rain boots and a plastic poncho. Wilbur was walking home from the Topanga Creek General Store. He said he needed something to drink after his water pipe burst. His hands and forearms were coated in mud. He had hiked about two miles to get to the store and fell in the mud on a closed stretch of Topanga Canyon Boulevard.
“There are cones there stopping cars from going through, but I figured I could walk,” he said.
Wilbur lives on the boulevard and said two creeks intersect on his property. Both were overflowing. He said he and his family got an evacuation notice a few days ago but didn’t want to leave their animals behind.
“I have six peacocks, two dogs and a 400-pound pig,” he said. “How am I supposed to put them all in a car and drive off?”
Also wandering the boulevard on foot was a bearded man in a wetsuit, who carried a neon green kayak and wore a GoPro camera strapped to his chest. He did not give his name but said, a bit sheepishly, that he was going to Topanga Creek, which is usually too dry for kayaking.
Nearby, three young men and a young woman stood ankle-deep in mud as a plow pushed debris to the side of the road. Each held a can of White Claw alcoholic seltzer. Among them, Maxwell Stiggants said his driveway was covered in mud and he couldn’t leave his property by vehicle. A neighbor was driving the plow, trying to clear the area.
“Do we look worried?” Stiggants asked, holding up his drink and chuckling. “It’s either this or a fire.”
Staff writers Ashley Ahn, Hannah Fry, Summer Lin and Hannah Wiley contributed to this report.
She was 15. He told her he was 17, just a few months shy of 18. They met on Instagram during the summer of 2022.
The girl, who lived with her mother, younger sister and grandparents in Riverside, kept their “relationship” a secret from her family. They would send messages through Instagram and talk over Discord, an instant messaging platform that allows voice calls.
He showered her with gifts, sending her jewelry, groceries, money and gift cards. He paid for her UberEats and DoorDash deliveries and helped her buy birthday gifts for her friends, telling her he had a good job that could pay for it.
But then he got clingy — pushy, even. He was pressuring her to send nude photos, which made her uncomfortable. Right after Halloween, she broke up with him.
She blocked him on Instagram, but he still found a way to send her a suicide letter.
In reality, the “boy” she had been talking to was a 28-year-old sheriff’s deputy from Virginia named Austin Lee Edwards. And on Black Friday, a few weeks after the teen broke up with him, he drove to her home in Riverside and killed her mother, Brooke Winek, 38, and her grandparents, Mark Winek, 69, and Sharie Winek, 65. He set fire to their house before kidnapping the teen at gunpoint. After getting into a shootout with police, Edwards shot himself with his service weapon and died, according to police. The teen was physically unharmed.
New, grisly details about the incident are now coming to light through a federal lawsuit that the now-16-year-old and her foster mother filed Friday against Edwards’ estate; the Washington County Sheriff’s Office in Virginia, which employed him at the time of the killings; Washington County Sheriff Blake Andis; and Det. William Smarr, the investigator who reviewed Edwards’ employment application at the agency.
The lawsuit alleges violation of her 4th Amendment rights, false imprisonment, negligent hiring, assault and battery, among other charges. Scott Perry, the teen’s attorney, said the damages amount to at least $50 million.
The filing is the second suit by a member of the Winek family against the Sheriff’s office — Mychelle Blandin, Mark and Sharie Winek’s surviving daughter, filed a lawsuit last year, alleging negligent hiring practices and seeking more than $100 million in damages. The lawsuits hinge in part on reporting by The Times that detailed how police hired Edwards despite his troubling mental health history.
In February 2016, Edwards was detained by Abingdon police in Virginia after he cut himself and threatened to kill himself and his father, who told police the incident was spurred by Edwards’ problems with his girlfriend, The Times reported. The incident prompted two custody orders, Edwards’ stay at a psychiatric facility and a court’s revocation of his gun rights, which were never restored.
Mychelle Blandin looks at photos of her mom, dad and sister, who were victims of a triple homicide in Riverside that authorities say began with a “catfishing” case involving Blandin’s niece.
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
Perry is arguing that Edwards should never have been hired and that the sheriff’s office failed to interview most of Edwards’ references or conduct a proper background check. If they had, they would have discovered the mental health orders, the lawsuit claims.
“The Washington County’s Sheriff’s office gave Austin Lee Edwards a gun, a badge and cloaked him with the authority of the law,” Perry said in a statement. “He used these things to gain access to the Winek home and commit these atrocities. We will prove that an adequate investigation of Edwards’ background would have prevented this tragedy.”
The teenager and her foster parent declined interviews for this story. The Washington County Sheriff’s office didn’t respond to requests for comment.
According to The Times’ review of Edwards’ personnel file, which includes his employment application, Smarr chose not to interview Edwards’ father, who was listed as a reference, because of their “close familial relationship,” the detective wrote. Smarr spoke with Edwards’ previous employer at Lowe’s, but he couldn’t get hold of two of Edwards’ personal references or his two neighbors.
Smarr also sought background information from the Virginia State Police, where Edwards had been employed for nine months before resigning and applying to Washington County. But Smarr was rebuffed by a sergeant there, who said he wasn’t comfortable answering whether Edwards had gotten in any trouble, been reprimanded or been subjected to an internal investigation.
In addition to Smarr, the lieutenant and captain of the Washington County Sheriff’s criminal investigation division signed off on Edwards’ employment application, as did its personnel director and chief deputy, according to the file.
“Edwards has no criminal history or civil issues, past and current employers speak positively of him, as well as his references,” Smarr wrote. “It is my belief that Edwards is hirable.”
The most recent lawsuit also answers some lingering questions about the crime, including how Edwards met the teenager, why he decided to kill her family, and where he planned to take the teen after kidnapping her. Here is an account of what transpired during that fateful Thanksgiving holiday weekend, taken from the lawsuit and previous reporting by The Times.
The teenager celebrated Thanksgiving 2022 with her mother, her younger sister and her mother’s boyfriend at Golden Corral. Afterward, they went to the Moreno Valley apartment where her mother’s boyfriend lived and stayed there overnight.
The next day, Brooke Winek and her daughters went to Starbucks, planning to go Black Friday shopping with Brooke’s boyfriend. When they got back to the apartment, Brooke got a call from her mother, Sharie, who told her to take the call off speakerphone because they needed to speak about something serious.
Undated handout photo of 28-year-old Austin Lee Edwards of North Chesterfield, Va.
(Riverside Police Dept.)
The Times reported last year that Edwards gained access to Sharie and Mark Winek’s home on Price Court by pretending he was a detective conducting an investigation involving the teenager. After getting into the Wineks’ home, Edwards told Sharie to call Brooke and tell her that she and the teenager needed to come to the house so he could ask them some questions.
In order to keep the “investigation” from her daughters, Brooke told them there was something wrong with their phones and that they needed to go back to their home on Price Court to get them fixed. Brooke then dropped off her younger daughter with Brooke’s sister, Blandin, before heading over to Price Court.
The teen recalled that, once they got to the house, Brooke put her keys in her purse and told her to wait in the car while she went inside. The teen noticed that she didn’t see her mother’s dog in the window, which was unusual because the dog always perched there whenever people visited the home.
After waiting for a while, the teen decided to go into the house. As she opened the screen door, Edwards grabbed her by the hair and pulled her inside.
In the moment, she thought the man grabbing her was the telephone repairman. She didn’t realize it was the man who had catfished her.
Then she saw the bodies of her grandmother near the entryway, her grandfather next to the stairs and her mother lying on the hardwood floor. She saw the bags over their heads, taped to their necks. Their arms and legs were bound with duct tape.
The teen started to scream.
Edwards was wearing a gold police badge on his belt in the shape of a star. As she yelled, he pointed a handgun, which also had a star engraved on it, at her.
“Stop screaming,” he said.
She recognized his voice. It was the “boy” she had met online, whom she had been talking to for months.
“Are you going to hurt me?” she asked.
“I will if you keep screaming,” he replied.
Edwards grabbed the teen and pulled her through the house, dousing everything with gasoline from a canister he brought with him and lighting the rooms on fire. He also opened the windows and doors so the flames would spread. Then he took the girl outside and forced her into the backseat of his red Kia Soul.
Family photo of slain victims Brooke Winek, 38, and her parents Sharie Winek, 65, and Mark Winek, 69.
(Winek Family Photos / Los Angeles Times)
Meanwhile, the Wineks’ next-door neighbor saw the house on fire and called 911. Another neighbor, whose driveway Edwards had parked in, also called the police. She phoned the authorities again when she saw Edwards force the teen into his car.
After speeding away, Edwards told the teen to pretend that she was his daughter if anyone asked. He said he was going to take her back to Virginia. When the girl asked why he killed her family, he said that if he didn’t, they would “report it” and he wouldn’t have enough time to escape.
Edwards also said he was a police officer and that agencies “need to do better backgrounds” because he “lied” during the hiring process. As he continued to drive toward his eventual destination of Saltville, Va., where he had recently purchased a home and blacked out the windows, he kept his hand on his gun. In the car with them was also the large, bloody knife he used to stab Brooke.
They made two pitstops during the drive to use the restroom, but Edwards never let go of the teen’s hand. They also made a stop so Edwards could clean the blood off himself. He told the girl that they wouldn’t stop for food until they left California and that they would drive to Virginia through Las Vegas, New Mexico and Texas. She would have to stay in the backseat, he said, until they got her a change of clothes.
The Riverside Police Department identified Edwards through interviews with neighbors, who provided descriptions of his car and video footage from security cameras. Police determined that he was in the Mojave Desert and alerted San Bernardino County authorities, who chased after his Kia Soul.
During the pursuit, Edwards fired his gun through the back window of the car, causing the Kia to fill with smoke. The fuel canister, which Edwards had placed in the backseat with the teen, splashed her with gasoline.
Edwards’ Kia drifted off the road and got stuck on some rocks under a bridge, enabling the police cars to catch up.
As law enforcement closed in, Edwards told the teen to get out of the car.
With nowhere else left to go, he turned his service weapon on himself and pulled the trigger.
A search warrant revealed “approximately 2,500 marijuana plants” inside the home, Maine officials say.
Androscoggin County Sheriff’s Office photo
A concerned citizen’s report of smoke at a home in southern Maine turned awkward when firefighters discovered it was steam generated by thousands of marijuana plants.
Closer inspection revealed the single-family home was being used as a massive pot farm, with an estimated 2,500 plants lined up under specialized gardening fixtures, photos show.
The discovery was made around 11:30 a.m. on Wednesday, Jan. 31, at a home on Auburn Road in Turner, officials said. Turner is about 105 miles southwest of Bangor.
Investigators say a caller “reported seeing smoke coming out of the eves of the garage,” the Androscoggin County Sheriff’s Office said in a news release.
“A deputy arrived on scene along with Turner Fire-Rescue personnel and upon investigating it was determined that the smoke the citizen saw was actually steam generated from a large quantity of marijuana plants growing inside the residence,” the sheriff’s office said.
“It was initially estimated that there were approximately 500 marijuana plants as well as items related to the growing of marijuana including grow lights, chemical fertilizers, dehumidifiers, and propane heaters were seen.”
A search warrant raised that estimate to 2,500 plants, officials said.
There is no record of a marijuana operation license for the site, “or any license issued to the homeowner who is from Massachusetts,” the Maine Office of Cannabis Policy told investigators.
The plants were seized by deputies, and investigators are looking into whether the operation might be related to similar “illegal marijuana grows” found in Lincoln, Kennebec and Somerset counties, officials said.
The four-bedroom home is 3,244 square feet and was built in 1890 on a lot that is just over half an acre, Realtor.com reports.
Mark Price is a National Reporter for McClatchy News. He joined the network of newspapers in 1991 at The Charlotte Observer, covering beats including schools, crime, immigration, LGBTQ issues, homelessness and nonprofits. He graduated from the University of Memphis with majors in journalism and art history, and a minor in geology.
QUEENS VILLAGE, Queens (WABC) — The candidates looking to replace expelled Congressman George Santos hit the campaign trail on Thursday.
Republican candidate Mazi Pilip called out her opponent, former Congressman Tom Suozzi, a Democrat, for what she says is his open border policy when it comes to migrants.
Pilip, an immigrant from Israel, and Congressman Anthony D’Esposito say the way Democrats are handling the migrant crisis is having a negative impact on communities through New York City and the neighborhoods surrounding the Creedmoor Psychiatric Facility.
“Look around me, that playground used to be full of young kids playing here, now parents tell me they are afraid to bring their children here — why? Because just across the street in the back, a massive tent city was built to house 1,000 migrants,” Pilip said.
So far in the campaign, Pilip is known better for what she doesn’t say than what she does — including everything from government funding to why she has only committed to one debate with her challenger Suozzi.
“I have been available to the press every time when I got the request and I am happy to speak and I have a debate coming Feb 8th…only one,” Pilip said. “When they announced my name it was only six weeks ago, it’s a short time to meet people, engage myself to be available for press and do a debate.”
After Pilip’s event on Thursday, her opponent arrived.
“In this post-age of George Santos, I don’t know how anybody can think they can run for U.S. Congress for the 3rd Congressional district and not be transparent with the people, not make themselves completely available in every single way,” Suozzi said.
Suozzi also blamed Republicans with trying to mislead the public about a complicated situation.
He said people care about the issue and want to solve it.
“They’re focused on this issue, they want the problem solved, they’re sick of the finger-pointing, also they want to get a deal on Ukraine, and on Israel, so this is the best opportunity to make a deal in 35 years, but President Trump said ‘I don’t want you to make a deal with the border because it would give a victory to Biden and I couldn’t use it as a political issue,’” Suozzi said.
Many think the back and forth is a moot point as the race is falling along party lines with redistricting playing a key role.
The Bronx, which is heavily Democrat, is no longer included — but Levittown and Massapequa, both Republican strongholds, are included.
“George Santos: The Man, The Myths, The Lessons,” an ABC7 New York Eyewitness News investigation, explores the rise of the politician whose path to Congress was paved with lies.
Have a breaking news tip or an idea for a story we should cover? Send it to Eyewitness News using the form below. If attaching a video or photo, terms of use apply.
Movement Music Festival has given us a sneak peek into the 2024 lineup. Once again, music aficionados will flock to Detroit, the hub of Techno music, for three days of eclectic tunes on Memorial Day Weekend (May 25-27, 2024) at Hart Plaza along downtown Detroit’s iconic riverfront.
The 2024 lineup teaser provides a small taste of what the festival’s extensive programming will feature. Movement continues to showcase a carefully curated selection of dance music’s premier artists, underground legends, and emerging talents. This dynamic mix spans seasoned veterans and the next generation. Notable first-time performers include the award-winning artist and producer James Blake (DJ Set), acclaimed British actor and DJ Idris Elba (performing a b2b set with Detroit Techno legend Kevin Saunderson), German-Bosnian superstar DJ and Diynamic label boss Solomun, enigmatic French producer I Hate Models, Austin-based producer and FEMME HOUSE founder LP Giobbi, Spanish Psytrance icon Indira Paganotto, UK Techno maximalist VTSS (performing a b2b set with Movement alum Boys Noize), and London-based DJ and BBC Radio 1 host Jaguar.
The announcement also features a unique live set from Drum & Bass luminary and Metalheadz founder Goldie, performing as Goldie (Live Band); Italian hard Techno duo 999999999; revered House music icon Honey Dijon; UK powerhouse duo Gorgon City; acclaimed British composer Floating Points; Palestinian global Techno sensation Sama’ Abdulhadi; Italian Techno maestro and festival favorite Joseph Capriati; UK electronic music pioneer and dubstep legend Skream; Detroit Techno icon and Women on Wax founder DJ Minx; and Warp Records mainstays Mount Kimbie.
Explore the full lineup teaser below. The full lineup will drop sooner than you know! Tickets are on sale now at Movementfestival.com
I was leaving a friend’s housewarming party on a street of nice single-family homes in Los Angeles a few years back when my curiosity got the best of me. I pulled up Zillow on my phone, entered her address and blinked at the property’s purchase price. I suppose I could have just asked her. In Los Angeles, talking about the cost of real estate is common, and I’ve often heard people comparing their refinance interest rates or saying how much they had to pay over the asking price. But by pursuing the information privately, I could digest my feelings about not being in a position to afford a house of equal value because I came from a different family of origin, because I was unmarried, because our writing careers had unfolded differently.
This emotional aspect of homeownership isn’t discussed in articles that make the choice between buying and renting seem as low impact as choosing whether to eat carbs. Of course, it’s a financial investment and should theoretically be approached without sentiment. But it’s also one of the most loaded tenets of the American dream. When a belief or ideal has been drilled into your subconscious, detaching your values and self-identity from the fantasy can be difficult. This is true, even for people like me who were raised outside the mainstream.
When I was a child, my mother and some friends bought 100 acres of land in Maine, creating an intentional community as part of the Back to the Land movement in the 1970s. Four families, including my own, designed and built properties — with our own hands — as well as the organic gardens, compost bins and wood piles that supported our chosen way of life. Everything was purposeful, such as our home being heated by solar energy and wood we mostly cut from our land. We ate our vegetarian, home-grown meals together under our skylights and at regular neighborhood potlucks. At the time, I felt like an outsider at school. Most families in our village had lobstered for generations and did not understand our preferences. But even then, I sensed I was being raised thoughtfully and well.
All of this introduced me to the idea that owning a home was a conscious commitment to creating a small oasis of mindful, environmentally friendly, community-oriented living, as well as an act of stewardship — my parents own 30 acres of woodland that our family will never develop. And while I rebelled at 15 by moving to Massachusetts to start college early, I internalized these values and have been looking for my own version ever since.
Perhaps it was this unusual upbringing that made me always love peeping in other people’s windows, to see how they lived by comparison. On runs through my neighborhood, I have spied scenes of a boy practicing piano or my neighbors watching “Jeopardy” by the light of their Christmas tree. As a child, I drew elaborate underground squirrel-houses with bunk beds and roller rinks. As an author, when I’m creating a new character I go to their hometown’s Zillow page and seek their living situation, scouring photos for my scene-setting. In my forthcoming novel, the main character, Mari, is a ghostwriter who sleuths intel about her client by looking up her home on Zillow. But I don’t need an excuse to peruse the site. Even though I’m not in the market to buy, I love to get lost in the fantasy of other houses, other lives.
This tendency to look up residences in my neighborhood, for sale or not, morphed into looking up homes to which I am invited. Like many things in life, you only have to do it a few times for it to become a habit, whether it feels good or not. When I looked up a former mentor’s new home, the elegant, high-ceilinged rooms, alluring yard and swimming pool gave me all the feelings we can have about an old friend whose career has skyrocketed when ours has not yet hit the same heights.
Perhaps I should stop. Or perhaps it’s a healthy way of getting a handle on how I compare myself to others and assess where I am in my own life, and what my level of success or acquisition says about me. Perhaps, just as it fuels my writing, it helps me envision the many possible future stories of my own life.
Finally, in 2017, I compromised on my desire for a home and bought an investment property in Joshua Tree. Many of my friends also own places there, so in that way I was becoming part of a community as I had long sought. But owning a house that I would live in had become such a potent signifier, and even though I’m well aware that being able to buy property anywhere is a luxury many others will never have, this still felt like a concession. I knew vacationers would frequent it more than I would.
The day I decided to buy the home, I peered up at the sky through one of the perfectly placed windows and nearly wept because the space was that beautiful. The Los Angeles real estate market — and the rental market — had beaten me down, and I had given up thinking I had a right to anything as nice as this property. Except I did, and I do. We all have this right. And now, sometimes, I pull up the Zillow listing for my house and smile at this little corner of the world where I fulfilled a dream and took the first step into my own version of stewardship.
Rachel Lindsay and Callie Curry kick off today’s podcast by sharing their reactions to the riveting Summer House trailer that dropped this week (2:10), before diving into The Real Housewives of Potomac Season 8, Episode 8 (8:38). Then, Rachel and Callie break down Season 13, Episode 11 of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills (30:41), followed by Part 1 of the Real Housewives of Salt Lake City Season 4 Reunion (54:28).
House Republicans didn’t exactly have a banner year in 2023. They made history for all the wrong reasons. Last January, they presided over the most protracted election for speaker in a century, and nine months later, for good measure, lawmakers ejected their leader, Kevin McCarthy, for the first time ever. Last month, the House expelled one of its own, George Santos, for only the sixth time.
The rest of the year wasn’t any more productive. Thanks in part to Republican discord, the House passed fewer bills that became laws than any other year in decades. And for the few important measures that did pass, GOP leaders had to rely on Democrats to bail them out.
Republican lawmakers have responded by quitting in droves. After the House spent much of October fighting over whom to elect as speaker, November saw more retirement announcements than any single month in more than a decade. Some members aren’t even waiting for their term to end. McCarthy resigned last week, depriving the party that fired him of both his experience and, more crucially, his vote. Representative Bill Johnson of Ohio, a Republican, and Brian Higgins of New York, a Democrat, are each leaving for new jobs in the next several weeks. (Santos would have stuck around, but his colleagues had other ideas.)
A roughly equal number of members from each party plan to forgo reelection this year. But the most powerful departing lawmakers are Republicans: The chair of the House Appropriations Committee, Representative Kay Granger of Texas, is leaving after a quarter century in Congress, and the head of the Financial Services Committee, Representative Patrick McHenry of North Carolina, will end his 20-year House career next year.
Still, some Republicans are leaving after just a few years in Congress, including Representatives Victoria Spartz of Indiana and Debbie Lesko of Arizona, both former state legislators. For them, serving in Congress simply isn’t all it’s cracked up to be—not when your party can’t seem to figure out how to govern. “People don’t engage with each other,” Lesko told me. “They just make speeches.”
Here are the stories of four Republicans who are calling it quits at different stages of their career: McHenry, a onetime rabble-rouser who became a party insider; Brad Wenstrup, an Army podiatrist whose House tenure spanned from the Tea Party to Donald Trump; Spartz, a conservative with an impulsive streak; and Lesko, a Trump loyalist who never quite found her way in Washington. Taken together, their departures reflect the rising frustrations within a Republican Party that has floundered in the year since it assumed power in the House—a year in which it has spent more time fighting than governing.
Debbie Lesko
On October 17, after House Republicans had just tanked their third choice for speaker, Representative Debbie Lesko finally decided she’d had enough: She wouldn’t be seeking reelection. The 65-year-old grandmother of five had been planning to stay for one more term, but the ouster of Kevin McCarthy and the weeks of chaos that followed changed her mind. “It kind of put me over the top,” Lesko told me.
Lesko had higher hopes for Congress back in 2018, when she won a special election to represent a safely Republican seat north of Phoenix. “Perhaps I was naive,” she conceded. Lesko prioritized border security during her first campaign and managed to get one border-related bill signed into law while Trump was president and Republicans controlled the House in 2018, but her legislative goals have fallen short since then. In the Arizona state legislature, she had served in the leadership and chaired two powerful committees. “I was used to getting things done in a bipartisan fashion,” Lesko said. The House proved to be far more difficult terrain. As a Trump ally, Lesko found few willing Democratic partners after the GOP lost control first of the House majority in 2018 and then of the presidency in 2020.
In Arizona, Lesko said, lawmakers actually debated bills and amendments on the floor of the House and Senate; in Washington, by contrast, members just deliver speeches written for them by their young staff. “We don’t listen to each other,” Lesko lamented. “We just go in and read a statement.” She bemoaned the “lack of civility” and the hurling of personal insults between members in both parties. (When I asked if Trump had contributed to the incivility, she said, “I would prefer he not attack people personally, but he does a great job.”)
Lesko told me she enjoyed most the days she spent interacting with constituents back home, but over six years, they could not make up for the family time she gave up on cross-country flights and on fundraising. “If I felt we were getting a whole lot accomplished, I would sacrifice it,” she said. Instead, Republicans spent a week in January 2023 fighting over their speaker and then did it all over again in October. “That certainly didn’t make me feel like I wanted to stay,” she told me.
Patrick McHenry
Representative Patrick McHenry introduced himself to much of America last year as a very frustrated man. The North Carolina Republican opened his unlikely stint as House speaker pro tempore with a memorable slam of the gavel—a brief eruption of anger aimed at the rump group of Republicans who had dethroned his ally, Speaker Kevin McCarthy.
When McHenry arrived in Congress nearly two decades ago, he might have counted as one of the renegades. He was a brash 29-year-old who liked nothing more than to pick fights with Democrats on cable news. After his first term, however, McHenry began to shift his strategy and redraw his image. He wanted to become a serious legislator, capable of using influence in Congress to affect public policy. “I realized that my actions were not enabling my goal, so I changed how I operated,” he told me. He became less of a partisan brawler and more of an inside player, studying the institution and how leaders in both parties wielded power. “My early years in Congress were like graduate school,” McHenry said.
McHenry is leaving with a reputation as a widely respected if not-quite-elder statesman (he’s only 48). He serves as the chair of the Financial Services Committee and acted as one of the GOP’s top negotiators of perhaps the most significant bill to come out of Congress last year, the Fiscal Responsibility Act, which prevented a debt default and ordered modest budget cuts. McHenry is retiring in part because he has to give up the committee gavel he so enjoys; Republican term limits allow most members to hold top committee posts for up to six years.
He also passed up a bid for a more permanent promotion. At one point in October, some of the same Democrats who had chafed at McHenry’s bombast as a young lawmaker were open to the idea of him serving as speaker. McHenry told me he’d wanted to be speaker earlier in his career, but not anymore. He refused entreaties to seek election as speaker or even to use his temporary position to try to pass legislation. “It would have been to the institution’s detriment and, frankly, even to mine,” he told me. “So I decided the best course of action is to want for nothing during that time period, and that meant resisting the opportunity to use power.”
When McHenry announced his retirement from the House two months later, he insisted that he was departing with none of the bitterness people might assume he carried. “I truly feel this institution is on the verge of the next great turn,” he said in his statement. When I asked him what gave him hope, he tried to put a positive spin on the dysfunction and disenchantment that have plagued Congress for years. “The operations of the House have been under severe pressure for a while,” McHenry said. “We have an institution that is struggling to perform in the current political environment.” He then made a prediction: “There’ll be significant changes that will happen in the coming congresses to make the place work.”
He won’t be around to see them. The GOP’s term limits for committee leaders is an often-underappreciated reason for turnover in the party’s House ranks, but McHenry declined to seek a waiver so he could stay atop the Financial Services Committee. “I’m going to honor our rules,” he said. He hasn’t decided what comes next: “This chapter is closing, and I’ve got another chapter ahead of me.”
Brad Wenstrup
This much is clear: Representative Brad Wenstrup is not leaving the House out of frustration with Washington gridlock. “I reject the notion that this has been a do-nothing House of Representatives,” he told me. Wenstrup proceeded to read from a list that he said ran to 20 pages of bills that the narrow Republican majority had advanced through the lower chamber of Congress over the past year. Most of these measures are gathering dust in the Democratic-controlled Senate, but the fact that a onetime outsider like Wenstrup would be defending an embattled institution so fervently is itself something of a revelation.
Wenstrup won election to the House a decade ago as a Tea Party–backed insurgent, having defeated an incumbent Republican in a surprising 2012 primary challenge from the right. He’ll leave next year as a leadership loyalist, positioned in the ideological center of a GOP conference that has grown decidedly more conservative in the past decade. He voted for the debt-ceiling deal in June, despite having criticized his first Republican opponent during their campaign for backing a similar bipartisan agreement. “Am I a conservative? Yes,” he said. “Did I try to advance common sense? Yes. Did I try to establish myself as a statesman? Yes.”
Wenstrup has become an institutionalist in other ways too. His biggest complaint—a common one among small-government conservatives—is that federal agencies have taken too much power from Congress, evading proper oversight and interpreting laws beyond the intent of the legislators who wrote them. “We have to bring back Schoolhouse Rock,” Wenstrup said, recalling the cartoon that taught a generation of Americans a somewhat-idealized version of legislative sausage-making. “A bill on Capitol Hill gets signed by the president. That’s the law. Agencies don’t get to change it.”
An Iraq War veteran who served as a combat surgeon, Wenstrup, 65, started his family later than most and has two young children in Ohio. He told me he had decided that this term would be his last in the House before any of the speaker tumult of the past year: “I decided that I wanted to make sure that I raised my kids, not someone else.”
Victoria Spartz
Good luck trying to predict Representative Victoria Spartz’s next move. The Indiana conservative is leaving Congress next year after just two terms—assuming she sticks with her plan.
That hasn’t always been the case during Spartz’s short tenure in the House. She is fiercely protective of her options, and she has made her name by going her own way. At one point this fall, she threatened to resign her seat if Congress did not create a commission to tackle the federal debt. “I cannot save this Republic alone,” she said at the time. (Congress has created no such commission, but Spartz isn’t leaving quite yet.)
Spartz, 45, is the only Ukrainian-born member of Congress, and she assumed a prominent role in the GOP after Russia’s invasion in 2022. Her nuanced position on the conflict has defied easy characterization. While cheering for Ukraine’s victory, she sharply criticized its prime minister, Volodymyr Zelensky, at a time when much of the West was rallying to his side. Spartz has accused Zelensky of “playing politics and theater” and demanded an investigation of one of his top aides. When members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee traveled to Ukraine on an official visit without her—she doesn’t serve on the panel—Spartz paid her own way and “crashed” the trip. She supports more U.S. aid to Ukraine, but not without conditions, and she believes that the funding must be more targeted toward heavy military equipment rather than humanitarian assistance. “Ukraine must win this war,” she told me, “but wars are won with weapons, and we need to be much faster, much tougher, and better.”
Spartz again proved to be a wild card during the House’s recurring struggles over picking a speaker. During the 15 rounds of balloting last January, she supported Kevin McCarthy on the first three turns, then voted “present” eight times before returning to McCarthy for the final four rounds. In October, she voted with McCarthy’s critics to bring up a resolution to oust him as speaker, but on the climactic vote, she stuck with McCarthy. “Kevin wasn’t a bad guy. He just didn’t like to govern,” Spartz said.
Midway through Spartz’s first term, Politicoreported on high staff turnover in her congressional office, quoting former aides who described Spartz as a quick-tempered boss who frequently yelled at and belittled her underlings. Spartz made no effort to deny the accounts, telling Politico that her style was “not for everyone.” After winning a second term that fall, however, Spartz quickly announced that she would not seek office in 2024—forgoing both a third bid for the House and open statewide races for governor and Senate in Indiana.
Her departure, she insisted to me, represents a break from politics, and not a retirement. “Sometimes it’s good to take some time off,” Spartz said. She denied that any of the drama of the past two years—the war in Ukraine, the speaker fights, criticism of her management—contributed to her decision to leave. Her children are now teenagers, Spartz said, and she wants to spend more time with them.
Still, Spartz doesn’t quite seem at peace with her plans. Given her past shifts, I asked if she still might change her mind and run again. She wouldn’t, she said, but with a caveat: “Unless I get real upset!”
Given the volatility of the past year in Congress, that’s a threat it would be wise not to ignore.
Chelsea and Zack return from the holiday break with lots to discuss on Southern Charm and Real Housewives of Miami. Starting with Southern Charm, the two discuss Season 9, Episode 14 and recap all the continued drama between Olivia and Taylor, Taylor’s dinner table speech that ends not so in her favor, and, of course, Olivia’s hotel room confrontation after overhearing Taylor (2:58). Then the two recap Season 6, Episode 9 of RHOM and discuss Lisa’s Palm Beach trip with the girls, her nonstop Lenny talk, and, of course, the Mother’s Day brunch!
Host: Chelsea Stark-Jones Guest: Zack Peter Producer: Jade Whaley Theme Song: Devon Renaldo
Rep. Kevin McCarthy’s last day in Congress was Sunday. The Bakersfield Republican congressman and former speaker’s career in Washington, D.C., spanned more than a decade and a half.
Always a prodigious fundraiser, McCarthy rose quickly through the ranks of the House GOP after winning election in 2006. His first attempt to secure the speakership, in 2015, ended in failure. He finally achieved his longtime goal in 2023, after a historic 15-ballot fight. But his grasp on the gavel was short-lived. In early October, eight rebel Republicans joined with Democrats to oust him from the speaker’s chair. In December, he announced he would retire before the end of the year, bringing his congressional career to a close.
Here’s a photographic look at some of the highlights of McCarthy’s time on Capitol Hill.
California’s state Assembly members Dario Frommer, left, Speaker of the Assembly Fabian Nunez, Assembly minority leader Kevin McCarthy and Darrell Steinberg chat before the 2004 budget bill vote in the state Capitol building in Sacramento on May 28, 2004.
(Bloomberg via Getty Images)
House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) performs a mock swearing in for Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield) on Jan. 3, 2013, on Capitol Hill in Washington as the 113th Congress began.
(Charles Dharapak / Associated Press)
House Speaker-elect Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), who will lead the 116th Congress, shakes hands with Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield) as he hands her the gavel at the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Jan. 3, 2019.
(Carolyn Kaster / Associated Press)
Then-President Trump and Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield) disembark from Air Force One at Los Angeles International Airport on April 5, 2019, in Los Angeles.
(Los Angeles Times)
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield) speaks at a press conference on Capitol Hill on March 11, 2021, in Washington, D.C., about the situation at the U.S. southern border.
(Kent Nishimura/Los Angeles Times)
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield) leaves a news conference with two unidentified people Nov. 3, 2021, in Washington, D.C.
(Kent Nishimura/Los Angeles Times)
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield) speaks during a press conference on Capitol Hill on March 18, 2021, in Washington, D.C.
(Kent Nishimura/Los Angeles Times)
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield) and other members of the House Republican leadership walk down the steps of the House of Representatives, where members of the National Guard from California were standing at the base of the steps on Capitol Hill on March 11, 2021, in Washington, D.C.
(Kent Nishimura/Los Angeles Times)
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield), center, prepares to depart after addressing a crowd during an election night watch party at the Westin, City Center, on Nov. 9, 2022, in Washington, D.C.
(Kent Nishimura/Los Angeles Times)
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) poses with Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), former House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield), her husband, Paul Pelosi, and others near her portrait following an unveiling ceremony in National Statuary Hall in the U.S. Capitol Building on Dec. 14, 2022, in Washington, D.C.
(Kent Nishimura/Los Angeles Times)
Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield) pumps his fist as he votes for himself a 10th time in the House chamber as the House meets for the third day to try to elect a speaker and convene the 118th Congress in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 5, 2023.
(Alex Brandon / Associated Press)
Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield) speaks with reporters as he departs a GOP Caucus meeting in the U.S. Capitol building on Jan. 3, 2023, in Washington, D.C. That day members of the 118th Congress would be sworn in and the House of Representatives would hold votes on a new speaker of the House.
(Kent Nishimura/Los Angeles Times)
President Biden speaks as Vice President Kamala Harris, left, and Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield), right, listen during a State of the Union address at the U.S. Capitol on Feb. 7, 2023, in Washington, D.C.
(Kent Nishimura/Los Angeles Times)
President Biden, left, Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield) and Irish Taoiseach Leo Varadkar attend the annual Friends of Ireland Caucus St. Patrick’s Day Luncheon in the Rayburn Room of the U.S. Capitol on March 17, 2023, in Washington, D.C.
(Kent Nishimura/Los Angeles Times)
Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) speak to reporters after meeting with President Biden, Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) at the White House on May 9, 2023, in Washington, D.C.
(Kent Nishimura/Los Angeles Times)
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield) turns to walk away after speaking to the media outside the West Wing after meeting with President Biden and other congressional leaders in the White House on Nov. 29, 2022, in Washington, D.C. Biden met with Senate and House leaders to discuss the legislative agenda for the remainder of the year.
A man and a 5-year-old child were found dead in a suspected murder-suicide in a Long Beach home after police spent hours outside the residence trying to make contact with the occupants.
Long Beach police said they responded to a “domestic dispute” call at a house in the 3400 block of Adriatic Avenue on Thursday around 2:40 p.m. When they arrived at the scene, the house was on fire, according to a post from the department on X, formerly known as Twitter.
Firefighters responded and extinguished the flames, but police believed the suspect in the domestic disturbance incident might be inside the home, authorities said.
A SWAT team responded to the scene, establishing a perimeter around the house and warning neighbors to either evacuate or shelter in place, police said.
SWAT negotiators then attempted to contact the person in the home. Although it is not clear how long the SWAT team was outside the home, police obtained a search warrant and entered the home about 12:15 a.m. Friday. Inside, they found a man dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound and a 5-year-old child who was also dead, authorities said.
“Homicide detectives are on scene and are investigating this as a murder-suicide,” Long Beach Police Department said in a statement.
Southern California’s luxury real estate market never sleeps. But this past year, it collectively caught its breath.
Luxury sales slowed down in 2023 — a combination of soaring interest rates, a newly introduced “mansion tax” and an inevitable drop-off from a pandemic market when megamansions flipped like hotcakes.
In 2022, there were 17 home sales above $50 million and 48 over $30 million in L.A. County, according to the Multiple Listing Service. In 2023, there were only five sales over $50 million and 23 over $30 million.
But even in a down year, there were still plenty of headlines. Jay-Z and Beyoncé set the all-time price record in the state of California, while other celebrities sold homes and left L.A. just in time to avoid paying taxes under Measure ULA.
Here are the top sales of the year.
$200 million
Bought for $200 million, the 40,000-square-foot mansion overlooks the ocean in the affluent enclave of Paradise Cove.
The L-shaped house, which topped the previous record of $177 million, looks more like an airplane hangar or supervillain’s lair than a home. It was built by Tadao Ando, a decorated Japanese architect who also designed a home for Kanye West a few miles down the coast. Ando brought in 7,645 cubic yards of concrete to erect the 40,000-square-foot home.
It never officially hit the market, so photos are scarce. The property is perched above Malibu’s Paradise Cove and features concrete hallways and walls of glass that open to a swimming pool and lawn overlooking the ocean.
$60.85 million
Another power couple — Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck — claimed the second-highest home purchase of the year when they shelled out $60.85 million for a five-acre spread in Beverly Crest. High interest rates weren’t a problem; they didn’t need a 30-year-fixed. The pair paid in cash.
The deal marked the end of a year-long house hunt for Lopez and Affleck, and the house boasts an array of amenities that few other mega-mansions can match. Across 38,000 square feet are 12 bedrooms, 24 bathrooms, 15 fireplaces, a movie theater, wine cellar, nail salon and sauna, as well as a 5,000-square-foot sports facility with a boxing ring and pickleball court.
The $60.85-million sale actually came at a discount; the home originally hit the market with a gargantuan price tag of $135 million.
$55 million
Built in 2014, the European-inspired mansion comes with 12 bedrooms, 20 bathrooms, a skate park, movie theater and grotto.
(Anthony Barcelo)
Some scratched their heads when Mark Wahlberg unloaded his Beverly Park mega-mansion for $55 million in February. The movie star spent years designing the French-inspired palace, and he originally asked $87.5 million when he first listed it in 2022.
But Wahlberg was a motivated seller. He moved to Nevada last year, and by selling the home in February, he avoided Measure ULA, a transfer tax that took effect April 1 and would’ve charged a 5.5% tax on the sale. At $55 million, Wahlberg’s tax bill would’ve been more than $3 million.
The European-inspired showplace is truly one of a kind, featuring amenities such as a five-hole golf course, driving range, grotto-style swimming pool and skate park. Wahlberg, a native of Massachusetts, also added a Boston Celtics-themed basketball court during his stay.
$52.056 million
Malibu’s second entry on this list comes via attorney Stuart Liner and his wife, Stephanie Hershey Liner, who sold their beach house on Point Dume for just over $52 million.
The Liners have made a fortune flipping houses over the years, including doubling their money on a house they bought from actor Danny DeVito. They scored a hefty profit here as well; records show they paid $21.758 million for the oceanfront home in 2020 before extensively remodeling the place.
The 6,000-square-foot house comes with a swimming pool and tennis court. It sold to Tom van Loben Sels, a partner at Bay Area tax firm Apercen Partners.
$52 million
Built in 1998, Villa Firenze combines three lots across nearly 10 acres and centers on an Italian-inspired mansion.
(Hilton & Hyland)
For years, Villa Firenze was a cautionary tale, an extravagant reminder that while fortunes can be won in Southern California’s lucrative real estate market, you have to be strategic in how you sell to truly cash in.
Hungarian billionaire Steven Udvar-Hazy was not. The airplane mogul built the Italian-inspired mansion in 1998 and listed it for $165 million in 2017, which at the time was one of the most ambitious asking prices in California history.
Clearly overpriced, the house sat on the market for years until it was auctioned off for $51 million in 2021 to biotech entrepreneur Roy Eddleman, who, for some reason, tried the same thing as Udvar-Hazy.
Eddleman quickly attempted to flip the house for a massive profit, putting it back onto the market for $120 million just a year after he bought it. Unsurprisingly, there were no takers, and he died before it sold.
His estate slashed the price on the luxurious villa, which features 40-foot palm trees, 20-foot ceilings and a two-story library complete with a secret passageway that leads to a bedroom and bar.
After a year of price cuts, it finally sold in February for $52 million, just $1 million more than Eddleman paid for it at auction two years prior.
In a remarkable fusion of genres and eras, UK’s renowned DJ and producer Freejak has recently unveiled his latest masterpiece, “Only You”. This track is rapidly gaining acclaim for its unique ability to transcend traditional musical boundaries, establishing itself as a sonic wonder in the contemporary music scene.
“Only You” is characterized by a riff that has ignited a fervor across various musical landscapes. This element of the track not only captivates its listeners but also stands as a testament to Freejak’s skill in weaving together diverse sonic elements. The track is a blend of innovation and nostalgia, appealing to a wide range of music enthusiasts.
Recognized for its instant appeal in live performances, “Only You” encapsulates an energy that has become a hallmark of Freejak’s electrifying sets. The track’s carefully crafted rework amplifies its impact, offering an unbridled rush of excitement for DJs and music lovers alike.
Freejak, in a recent statement, expressed his aspirations for the track: “I genuinely hope that fellow DJs and music enthusiasts revel in the sheer potency of this timeless gem.” He acknowledges the unique allure of “Only You” and its capacity to captivate audiences worldwide.
“Only You” emerges not just as a track but as a symbol of Freejak’s ongoing journey in redefining musical paradigms. It showcases his relentless dedication to creating sonic escapades that push the limits of conventional music.
In a quote that further underscores his passion for the track, Freejak said, “The riff from ‘Only You’ has gotta be one of the all-time greats. Universally accepted by Rockers, Hip Hoppers, and the electronic dance world. It was an instant crowd pleaser that I had to rework to include in my sets. I sincerely hope that other DJs and music fans can enjoy the power and energy of this classic as much as I do.”
As “Only You” continues to resonate across the globe, it solidifies Freejak’s position as a visionary in the world of music, capable of creating tracks that are not just heard but experienced.
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In the last spring of the Obama administration, Michelle Obama was delivering her final commencement address as first lady, at City College of New York. Then, as now, the specter of Donald Trump had become the inescapable backdrop to everything. He’d spent the past year smashing every precept of restraint, every dignified tradition of the supposedly kindhearted nation he was seeking to lead. Obama couldn’t help but lob some barely cloaked denunciations of Trump’s wrecking-ball presidential campaign—the one that would soon be ratified with the Republican nomination. “That is not who we are,” the first lady assured the graduates. “That is not what this country stands for, no.”
The promise did not age well. Not that November, and not since.
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“This is not who we are”: The would-be guardians of America’s better angels have been scolding us with this line for years. Or maybe they mean it as an affirmation. Either way, the axiom prompts a question: Who is “we” anyway? Because it sure seems like a lot of this “we” keeps voting for Trump. Today the dictum sounds more like a liberal wish than any true assessment of our national character.
In retrospect, so many of the high-minded appeals of the Obama era—“We are the ones we’ve been waiting for”; “When they go low, we go high”—feel deeply naive. Question for Michelle: What if they keep going lower and lower—and that keeps landing the lowest of the low back in the White House?
Recently, I read through some old articles and notes of mine from the campaign trail in 2015 and 2016, when Trump first cannonballed into our serene political bathtub. This was back when “we”—the out-of-touch media know-it-alls—were trying to understand Trump’s appeal. What did his supporters love so much about their noisy new savior? I dropped into a few rallies and heard the same basic idea over and over: Trump says things that no one else will say. They didn’t necessarily agree with or believe everything their candidate declared. But he spoke on their behalf.
When political elites insisted “We’re better than this!”—a close cousin of “This is not who we are”—many Trump disciples heard “We’re better than them.” Hillary Clinton ably confirmed this when she dismissed half of the Republican nominee’s supporters—at an LGBTQ fundraiser in New York—as people who held views that were “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic, you name it.” Whether or not she was correct, the targets of her judgment did not appreciate it. And the disdain was mutual. “He’s our murder weapon,” said the conservative political scientist Charles Murray, summarizing the appeal that Trump held for many of his loyalists.
After the shock of Trump’s victory in 2016, the denial and rationalizations kicked in fast. Just ride out the embarrassment for a few years, many thought, and then America would revert to something in the ballpark of sanity. But one of the overlooked portents of 2020 (many Democrats were too relieved to notice) was that the election was still extremely close. Trump received 74 million votes, nearly 47 percent of the electorate. That’s a huge amount of support, especially after such an ordeal of a presidency—the “very fine people on both sides,” the “perfect” phone call, the bleach, the daily OMG and WTF of it all. The populist nerves that Trump had jangled in 2016 remained very much aroused. Many of his voters’ grievances were unresolved. They clung to their murder weapon.
Trump has continued to test their loyalty. He hasn’t exactly enhanced his résumé since 2020, unless you count a second impeachment, several loser endorsements, and a bunch of indictments as selling points (some do, apparently: more medallions for his victimhood). January 6 posed the biggest hazard—the brutality of it, the fever of the multitudes, and Trump’s obvious pride in the whole furor. Even the GOP lawmakers who still vouched for Trump from their Capitol safe rooms seemed shaken.
“This is not who we are,” Representative Nancy Mace, the newly elected Republican of South Carolina, said of the deadly riot. “We’re better than this.” There was a lot of that: thoughts and prayers from freaked-out Americans. “Let me be very clear,” President-elect Joe Biden tried to reassure the country that day. “The scenes of chaos at the Capitol do not reflect a true America, do not represent who we are.”
One hoped that Biden was correct, that we were in fact not a nation of vandals, cranks, and insurrectionists. But then, on the very day the Capitol had been ransacked, 147 House and Senate Republicans voted not to certify Biden’s election. Kevin McCarthy, the House minority leader, skulked back to the ousted president a few weeks later, and the pucker-up parade to Mar-a-Lago was on. Large majorities of Republicans never stopped supporting Trump, and claim they never stopped believing that Biden stole the 2020 election and that Crooked Joe’s regime is abusing the legal system to persecute Trump out of the way.
Here we remain, amazingly enough, ready to do this all again. Trump might be the ultimate con man, but his essential nature has never been a mystery. Yet he appears to be gliding to his third straight Republican nomination and is running strong in a likely rematch with an unpopular incumbent. A durable coalition seems fully comfortable entrusting the White House to the guy who left behind a Capitol encircled with razor-wire fence and 25,000 National Guard troops protecting the federal government from his own supporters.
You can dismiss Trump voters all you want, but give them this: They’re every bit as American as any idealized vision of the place. If Trump wins in 2024, his detractors will have to reckon once again with the voters who got us here—to reconcile what it means to share a country with so many citizens who keep watching Trump spiral deeper into his moral void and still conclude, “Yes, that’s our guy.”
This article appears in the January/February 2024 print edition with the headline “This Is Who We Are.”
