Police responded to the Lake Nona Middle School campus in Orange County after reports of an armed individual on school property, according to the Orlando Police Department.Chopper 2 flew over the scene, where at least a dozen police cruisers could be seen in the parking lot and school bus loop. OPD responded to the scene just before 5 p.m. after receiving the 911 call.Officers secured the campus and did not find a threat to the school, OPD said.According to police, there are no reported injuries and the incident remains under investigation.>> This is a developing story and will be updated as new information is released.
ORLANDO, Fla. —
Police responded to the Lake Nona Middle School campus in Orange County after reports of an armed individual on school property, according to the Orlando Police Department.
Chopper 2 flew over the scene, where at least a dozen police cruisers could be seen in the parking lot and school bus loop.
OPD responded to the scene just before 5 p.m. after receiving the 911 call.
Officers secured the campus and did not find a threat to the school, OPD said.
According to police, there are no reported injuries and the incident remains under investigation.
>> This is a developing story and will be updated as new information is released.
Five people, including a child, were hospitalized when a helicopter crashed in the Southern California city of Huntington Beach on Saturday afternoon.It happened just after 2 p.m. local time near a parking lot off Pacific Coast Highway, between Beach Boulevard and Twin Dolphins Drive, according to Huntington Beach firefighters. City officials tell CBS News that the two people on the helicopter were safely pulled from the wreckage. Three pedestrians on the street were also injured in the incident, and all five people were taken to the hospital for treatment. None of their conditions was known.Police closed PCH between Huntington Street and Beach Boulevard at around 3 p.m., as they began to investigate the crash. They asked people to avoid the area and use alternate routes for at least several hours after the closure was put into place. A dramatic video posted on social media shows the helicopter spinning several times before crashing into palm trees and the outdoor stairway of the pedestrian bridge that runs over PCH to the Hyatt Regency Huntington Beach Resort and Spa. Other video footage shows an object falling from the helicopter moments before it plummeted from the sky. With SkyCal over the scene, scattered debris was seen in the beach access parking lot, a large part of which was blocked off by police tape. The tail of the aircraft broke off in the crash, with the rest of the helicopter still wedged between the staircase and palm trees as of 4:30 p.m.There were several other small helicopters parked in the parking lot near where the crash happened, just in front of the Hyatt Regency and Waterfront Beach Resort. An “exclusive helicopter landing party” was being hosted by MD Helicopters at the Offshore 9 Rooftop Lounge on Saturday afternoon, where attendees were invited to “watch helicopters arrive from a bird’s eye view.” The landing party was scheduled ahead of the Cars ‘N Copters On the Coast main event on Sunday.Event organizers said that the event was not going to be canceled. “We are sending our prayers out to all involved in the unfortunate incident today,” said a statement. “Our plan for now is to move forward with our event tomorrow, Sunday, October 12th. We will advise everyone at the earliest possible opportunity if that plan changes.”Witnesses said that the helicopter appeared to dip towards the bridge before it lost control and crashed. “You can hear this odd sound that didn’t sound right,” said Kevin Bullat, who saw the scene unfold. “I looked out and I see the helicopter spiraling out of control. … My friend saw shrapnel, or just debris, catapulting across PCH.”It’s unclear what caused the helicopter to crash. The Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board have been notified of the crash, city officials said. The helicopter was a Bell 222, which is powered by two turboshaft engines, and was manufactured in 1980.
KCAL,KCBS —
Five people, including a child, were hospitalized when a helicopter crashed in the Southern California city of Huntington Beach on Saturday afternoon.
It happened just after 2 p.m. local time near a parking lot off Pacific Coast Highway, between Beach Boulevard and Twin Dolphins Drive, according to Huntington Beach firefighters.
City officials tell CBS News that the two people on the helicopter were safely pulled from the wreckage. Three pedestrians on the street were also injured in the incident, and all five people were taken to the hospital for treatment. None of their conditions was known.
Police closed PCH between Huntington Street and Beach Boulevard at around 3 p.m., as they began to investigate the crash. They asked people to avoid the area and use alternate routes for at least several hours after the closure was put into place.
A dramatic video posted on social media shows the helicopter spinning several times before crashing into palm trees and the outdoor stairway of the pedestrian bridge that runs over PCH to the Hyatt Regency Huntington Beach Resort and Spa.
Other video footage shows an object falling from the helicopter moments before it plummeted from the sky.
With SkyCal over the scene, scattered debris was seen in the beach access parking lot, a large part of which was blocked off by police tape. The tail of the aircraft broke off in the crash, with the rest of the helicopter still wedged between the staircase and palm trees as of 4:30 p.m.
There were several other small helicopters parked in the parking lot near where the crash happened, just in front of the Hyatt Regency and Waterfront Beach Resort. An “exclusive helicopter landing party” was being hosted by MD Helicopters at the Offshore 9 Rooftop Lounge on Saturday afternoon, where attendees were invited to “watch helicopters arrive from a bird’s eye view.” The landing party was scheduled ahead of the Cars ‘N Copters On the Coast main event on Sunday.
Event organizers said that the event was not going to be canceled.
“We are sending our prayers out to all involved in the unfortunate incident today,” said a statement. “Our plan for now is to move forward with our event tomorrow, Sunday, October 12th. We will advise everyone at the earliest possible opportunity if that plan changes.”
Witnesses said that the helicopter appeared to dip towards the bridge before it lost control and crashed.
“You can hear this odd sound that didn’t sound right,” said Kevin Bullat, who saw the scene unfold. “I looked out and I see the helicopter spiraling out of control. … My friend saw shrapnel, or just debris, catapulting across PCH.”
It’s unclear what caused the helicopter to crash. The Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board have been notified of the crash, city officials said.
The helicopter was a Bell 222, which is powered by two turboshaft engines, and was manufactured in 1980.
A couple in Keene, New Hampshire, is thanking the fire department for their swift action when their baby boy decided to make an early entrance into the world, arriving before they could reach the hospital.Stephanie Weston, the mother, said, “I was like, oh, I think we need to go.”As they began driving towards Cheshire Medical Center, Noah Weston, the father, realized they wouldn’t make it in time.”We start driving toward Cheshire and then she goes, ‘Oh, we’re not making it to Cheshire.’ You got to call 911,” he said.Stephanie Weston recounted the urgency of the situation, saying, “We called 911 at 2:11. And then I had him by 2:17. Oh my gosh. Yeah. I was like, I’m pushing out a baby right now, and I’m not kidding. It’s happening. And it’s happening now.”Noah Weston had prepared for the birth by watching videos on how to support his wife in the hospital room, but those plans quickly changed.”Thought I had done all the studying I needed to when it came to watching videos of like, bedside manner for the dad. What should the dad be doing to support mom in the hospital room? And I had to throw all that information away,” he said.The couple drove directly to the fire department, and shortly after arriving, their baby was born.”All of a sudden, the chief walks away from the side of our truck and goes time of birth, 2:17,” Noah Weston said.Their son, Walker, arrived happy and healthy, weighing 7 pounds, 14 ounces.”Holy cow, did this really just happen? And they took care of pretty much everything. They were fantastic,” Noah Weston said.The Westons expressed their gratitude to the fire department and the staff at Cheshire Medical Center. The family is now back home, resting and recovering.
A couple in Keene, New Hampshire, is thanking the fire department for their swift action when their baby boy decided to make an early entrance into the world, arriving before they could reach the hospital.
Stephanie Weston, the mother, said, “I was like, oh, I think we need to go.”
As they began driving towards Cheshire Medical Center, Noah Weston, the father, realized they wouldn’t make it in time.
“We start driving toward Cheshire and then she goes, ‘Oh, we’re not making it to Cheshire.’ You got to call 911,” he said.
Stephanie Weston recounted the urgency of the situation, saying, “We called 911 at 2:11. And then I had him by 2:17. Oh my gosh. Yeah. I was like, I’m pushing out a baby right now, and I’m not kidding. It’s happening. And it’s happening now.”
Noah Weston had prepared for the birth by watching videos on how to support his wife in the hospital room, but those plans quickly changed.
“Thought I had done all the studying I needed to when it came to watching videos of like, bedside manner for the dad. What should the dad be doing to support mom in the hospital room? And I had to throw all that information away,” he said.
The couple drove directly to the fire department, and shortly after arriving, their baby was born.
“All of a sudden, the chief walks away from the side of our truck and goes time of birth, 2:17,” Noah Weston said.
Their son, Walker, arrived happy and healthy, weighing 7 pounds, 14 ounces.
“Holy cow, did this really just happen? And they took care of pretty much everything. They were fantastic,” Noah Weston said.
The Westons expressed their gratitude to the fire department and the staff at Cheshire Medical Center. The family is now back home, resting and recovering.
Two Los Angeles Police Department officers were transported to the hospital Saturday afternoon in Van Nuys, city police and fire officials said.
Few details about what happened are available other than it occurred in a McDonald’s parking lot on the 7000 block of Van Nuys Boulevard at 4:12 p.m., according to a police spokesperson. Los Angeles Fire Department ambulances were called to the scene to transport officers to the hospital, a fire spokesperson said.
Neither department had information on the officers’ condition, but by Saturday evening police said the situation was no longer an emergency and no further assistance was needed at the location.
CBS News Los Angeles reported that a damaged minivan surrounded by crime scene tape was seen in the parking lot and nearby a person appeared to be handcuffed in an LAPD patrol car.
While the number of immigration raids in Southern California have slowed in recent weeks, the focus on Home Depots appears to have intensified.
Parking lots at those stores have become a key new battleground in the federal government’s evolving strategy of immigration enforcement.
“Home Depot, whether they like it or not, they are the epicenter of raids,” said Pablo Alvarado, the co-executive director of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, a group that represents the tens of thousands of day laborers working in L.A.
On Thursday, agents moved on a Home Depot parking lot in Monrovia, sending laborers running, including a man who jumped a wall and onto the 210 Freeway, where he was fatally struck. A day prior, fear of a possible raid at a Ladera Ranch location sparked warnings across social media.
Since a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order prohibiting federal agents from targeting people solely based on their race, language, vocation, or location, the number of arrests in Southern California declined in July.
But over the last two weeks, some higher-profile raids have returned, often taking place at Home Depot locations, where immigrant laborers congregate looking for work.
The renewed burst of raids outside neighborhood Home Depots began Aug. 6, when a man drove a Penske moving truck to a Home Depot in Westlake and began soliciting day laborers when, all of a sudden, Border Patrol agents jumped out of the back of the vehicle and began to chase people down. Sixteen people were arrested.
The raid — branded “Operation Trojan House” by the Trump administration — was showcased by government officials with footage from an embedded Fox News TV crew. “For those who thought Immigration enforcement had stopped in Southern California, think again,” acting U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli posted on X.
The next day, federal agents raided a Home Depot in San Bernardino. Then, on Aug. 8, they conducted two raids outside a Home Depot in Van Nuys in what DHS described as a “targeted immigration raid” that resulted in the arrest of seven undocumented immigrants from Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico.
Over the weekend, activists say, a Home Depot was targeted in Cypress Park and word spread that federal agents were at a Home Depot in Marina del Rey. On Monday, day laborers were nabbed outside a Home Depot in North Hollywood, and on Tuesday more were arrested at a Home Depot in Inglewood.
“And it’s not just day laborers they are taking,” Alvarado added, noting that when federal agents descend on the hardware store’s parking lots, they question anyone who looks Latino or appears to be an immigrant and ask them about their papers. “They also get customers of Home Depot who look like day laborers, who speak Spanish.”
The national hardware chain — whose parking lots have for decades been an unofficial gathering point for undocumented laborers hoping to get hired for a day of home repair or construction work — was one of the first sites of the L.A. raids in June that kicked off the Trump administration’s intense immigration enforcement across Southern California.
Nearly 3,000 people across seven counties in L.A. were arrested in June as masked federal agents conducted roving patrols, carrying out a chaotic series of sweeps of street corners, bus stops, warehouses, farms, car washes and Home Depots. But the number of raids and arrests plummeted dramatically across L.A. in mid-July after the court order blocked federal agents across the region from targeting people unless they had reasonable suspicion they entered the country illegally.
On Aug. 1, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals denied a Trump administration request to lift the restraining order prohibiting roving raids. But within just a few days, federal agents were back, raiding the Westlake Home Depot.
“Even though we’ve had two successful court decisions, the administration continues with their unconstitutional behavior coming and going to Home Depot stores,” L.A. Mayor Karen Bass said at a news conference Thursday. “They are violating” the temporary restraining order, she added.
Advocates for undocumented immigrants question the legality of federal agents’ practices. In many cases, they say, agents are failing to show judicial warrants. They argue that the way agents are targeting day laborers and other brown-skinned people is illegal.
“It’s clear racial profiling,” said Alvarado.
The Department of Homeland Security did not answer questions from The Times about how many people have been arrested over the last week at Home Depots across L.A. or explain what why the agency has resumed raids outside hardware stores.
“What makes someone a target for immigration enforcement is if they are illegally in the U.S. — not their skin color, race, or ethnicity,” McLaughlin said. “America’s brave men and women are removing murderers, MS-13 gang members, pedophiles, rapists — truly the worst of the worst from Golden State communities.”
Activists say that federal agents are targeting Home Depots because they are hubs for a constant flow of day laborers — mostly Latino and many of whom are undocumented.
“They know that at the Home Depot there will always be people who are day laborers, many of them undocumented,” said Ron Gochez, a member of the Unión del Barrio, a group that patrols neighborhoods to alert residents of immigration sweeps. “And so they figured it would be a much easier, faster and more effective way for them to kidnap people — just to go to the Home Depot.”
Another reason the hardware store parking lots had become a focal point, Gochez said, is that they present a wide, open space to hunt people down.
“There’s nowhere to run, nowhere to hide,” Gochez said. “And when some of the day laborers started running inside of the Home Depot stores, the agents literally have chased them down the aisles of the store.”
In Los Angeles, pressure is mounting on Home Depot to speak out against the targeting of people outside their stores.
“They haven’t spoken out; their customers are being taken away and they are not saying anything,” Alvarado said. “They haven’t issued a public condemnation of the fact that their customers have been abducted in their premises.”
This is not the first time Home Depot has found itself in the center of a political firestorm.
In 2019, the Atlanta-based company faced boycott campaigns after its co-founder Bernie Marcus, a Republican megadonor, announced his support for Trump’s reelection campaign. Back then, the chain tried to distance itself from its founder, noting that Marcus retired from the company in 2002 and did not speak on its behalf.
But in a global city like L.A., where civic and political leaders are rallying against the raids and public schools have developed policies blocking federal agents from entering their premises, there are growing calls for the national hardware chain to develop consistent policies on raids, such as demanding federal agents have judicial warrants before descending on their lots.
On Tuesday, a coalition of advocacy groups led a protest in MacArthur Park and urged Angelenos to support a 24-hour boycott of Home Depot and other businesses that they say have not stopped federal immigration agents from conducting raids in their parking lots or chasing people down in their stores.
“We call them an accomplice to these raids, because there is no other location that’s been hit as much as they have,” Gochez said. “We think that Home Depot is being complicit. They’re actually, we think, in some way collaborating, whether directly or not.”
Home Depot denies that it is working with federal agents or has advance notice of federal immigration enforcement activities.
“That’s not true,” George Lane, manager of corporate communications for Home Depot, said in an email to The Times. “We aren’t notified that these activities are going to happen, and we aren’t involved in the operations. We’re required to follow all federal and local rules and regulations in every market where we operate.”
Lane said Home Depot asked associates to report any suspected immigration enforcement operations immediately and not to engage for their own safety.
“If associates feel uncomfortable after witnessing ICE activity,” he added, “we offer them the flexibility they need to take care of themselves and their families.”
The targeting of day laborers outside L.A. Home Depots is particularly contentious because day laborers, primarily Latino men, have for decades represented an integral part of the Los Angeles labor force.
Since the 1960s, day laborers have formed an informal labor market that has boosted this sprawling city, helping it expand, and in recent months they have played a pivotal role in rebuilding L.A. after the January firestorms tore through Pacific Palisades and Altadena destroying thousands of homes.
“It appears they’re targeting and taking the very people rebuilding our cities,” Alvarado said. “Without migrant labor, both documented and undocumented, it’s impossible to try to rebuild Los Angeles.”
In many L.A. neighborhoods, day laborers are such a constant, ingrained presence at Home Depots that the city’s Economic and Workforce Development Department sets up its resource centers for day laborers next to the stores.
Day laborers are also a reason many customers come to Home Depot.
“Day laborers are a part of their business model,” Alvarado said. “You come in, you get your materials, and then you get your helper.”
Alvaro M. Huerta, the Director of Litigation and Advocacy of the Immigrant Defenders Law Center, part of a coalition of groups suing Homeland Security over immigration raids in L.A., said the growing number of raids at Home Depot parking lots was “deeply troubling” and raised serious concerns that the federal government was continuing to violate the July temporary restraining order.
“This looks a lot like it did before a temporary restraining order was in place,” Huerta said. “My sense is they feel they can justify raids at Home Depots more than roving raids.”
Lawyers, Huerta said, were investigating the raids and asking some of the people taken into custody a series of questions: Did agents ever present a warrant? What kinds of questions did they ask? Did you feel like you were able to leave?
“One of the things we’ve been arguing is that some of these situations are coercive,” Huerta said. “The government is saying, ‘No, we’re allowed to ask questions, and people can volunteer answers.’ But we’ve argued that in many of these cases, people don’t feel like they cannot speak.”
Attorneys will likely present information about the arrests to court at a preliminary injunction hearing in September, Huerta said, as they press Trump administration attorneys for evidence that the arrests are targeted.
Huerta said some of the people caught up in recent Home Depot raids were not even looking for work at the parking lot.
One man, a 22-year-old who was getting gas across the street from a Home Depot last week, Huerta said, was detained even though he had special immigrant juvenile status as he was brought to the U.S. as a teen. The man had an asylum application pending, work authorization and no criminal history — and yet a week after he was arrested he was confined in Adelanto Detention Center.
Times staff writer Julia Wick contributed to this report.
From a parking lot on the corner of 12th and Figueroa streets, Michael Lopez carefully commandeered his drone through the skyline around LA Live.
A video screen showed the drone’s slow ascent. Up and up it went, until it framed a shot almost straight out of Ansel Adams. The cloud-covered San Gabriel Mountains. Green foothills glimmering from recent rains. And an abandoned, half-finished skyscraper plastered in bright, bubbly graffiti.
Two other towers were similarly hit, virtually every floor of each 20-plus-story building featuring graffiti on the corners.
The unfinished Oceanwide Plaza in downtown L.A. is marked with graffiti after being tagged this week.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
The audacity and visibility of the taggers’ feat — you can see it from the 10 Freeway and as far away as the Sixth Street Bridge — and the fact that the Grammys will be held on Sunday across the street at Crypto.com Arena has attracted worldwide attention.
It’s also become L.A.’s latest Rorschach test.
For civic leaders and professional L.A. haters, it’s the latest proof that the city is spiraling down in a doom cycle, another nightmare to add to our dumpster fire of street takeovers, homeless encampments and mass break-ins. The $1 billion behemoth, called Oceanwide Plaza, was once one of the biggest real estate projects in the city, but construction was halted five years ago when its Chinese developer ran out of money.
For Lopez, however, the graffed-up buildings, which were supposed to feature hotel and retail space as well as luxury condominiums and apartments, are the latest thing to love about his hometown.
“It’s beautiful. It’s amazing,” he said. He held his drone shot and waved over a friend who goes by Juan G. The two had driven up from South L.A. to take in the scene.
“I know it’s getting mixed reviews,” Juan deadpanned, before adding, “I’m sure the people who live in the lofts across the street didn’t like getting peeped at!”
He continued to crane his neck upward. I rattled off some tags visible from the lower floors — Axion. Inkz. Cuts. XN28.
“You’re never going to see something like this again,” Juan continued. “The rules are going to change. The security is gonna come in here hard. But to have been a part of that? To see this up close? It’s a once-in-a-lifetime moment.”
I’m no fan of graffiti, but I couldn’t help but admire what the taggers had accomplished. Before us was a monument to the Los Angeles of the moment, highlighting so many issues, consciously or not. Rampant overdevelopment downtown. Civic corruption. Out-of-control graffiti.
A place with so much potential, yet so much desmadre.
If someone tried this at Art Basel, it would sell for millions. If Banksy pulled off a project of this scope, he’d be hailed as a genius. Since it’s a bunch of mostly anonymous people (two have been arrested and released), polite L.A. is in an uproar. Even Kevin de León, the city council member who represents downtown, emerged from his hiding hole on Groundhog Day to tell KTLA Channel 5 that Los Angeles should not be an “open canvas [for] budding artists.”
It’s easy to portray the taggers as vandals intent on destroying L.A. But the towers have rotted while L.A.’s bureaucracy has done little to address the situation.
Oceanwide Plaza has sat empty and mostly forgotten, until a group of taggers spray-painted graffiti on the towers.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
Instead, the taggers took it upon themselves to transform something ugly into something far more vibrant. Isn’t that L.A. at its finest?
That they used the medium of street art makes their work that much more Angeleno.
The city has felt under siege from graffiti for decades. I used to estimate my drive time on the 10 by tracking the exit ramps on the freeway signs. Now, I can do it based on which giant tag on which huge warehouse I just passed.
Graffiti at its worst does nothing to beautify neighborhoods. But what happened at Oceanwide Plaza wasn’t some spur of the moment scribble. The ingenuity in methodically bombing every corner with dozens of names, exemplifies the teamwork we should all aspire to. The failure here was from a company that has no money to afford security guards and a city government that should never have approved the pie-in-the-sky venture in the first place.
Besides, graffiti has been a part of working-class Southern California for decades. Even I, a nerdy teen, scratched “Pharaoh” on windows and wooden desks in eighth grade until security guards at my Anaheim school took away my etching tool. There was something liberating — validating even — to see an art form long demonized as vandalism, at the same time that large corporations have appropriated it, take over such a visible part of downtown.
“All of this doesn’t just belong to the developers,” Lopez said. “It belongs to all of us.”
Above the parking lot where he and Juan stood loomed a two-story mural featuring Clippers superstar Kawhi Leonard, street-art style. He was surrounded by bromides such as “Never Never Give Up” and “Follow Your Dreams” in scrawls that tried to mimic graffiti but were as cool as mom jeans.
“They call this art,” Juan said before waving back toward the skyscrapers, “and not that?”
I left them and walked to the front of the Crypto.com Arena. There, I found Zack Woodard taking photos of the tagged-up high rises before asking a friend to capture him with the buildings as a backdrop. High above him, a tattered, pockmarked white banner that read “Oceanwide Plaza” hung from an unfinished structure.
“When I Ubered to here on Wednesday, it was only half-done,” said Woodard, who’s in town for the Grammys as program director for the Grammy Museum Mississippi. “It’s really impressive to see how quickly they finished it.”
Another friend, Rachel Patterson, continued to look upward. “I couldn’t imagine going all the way up there!”
“People say it makes the skyline look bad,” Woodard said. “But it’s not going to be there forever. It’s done nice. Besides, street art is a part of L.A. history.”
He asked me what the buildings were supposed to have been. When I told him residential and retail, Woodard scoffed — “Just like everything else in L.A.”
As I drove off, I passed by the parking lot where I had met Lopez and Juan. More people surrounded them, all looking up, all with big smiles on their faces.
I smiled, too. There are a lot of things wrong with Los Angeles, but tagged-up ruins that bring happiness to locals and tourists alike are the least of them.
A pair of brothers were arrested last week in a November robbery that critically injured the victim after she was dragged through a parking lot by the getaway car, officials said.
The robbery was reported at 6:40 p.m. Nov. 26 in the parking lot of a Costco on Castleton Street in the City of Industry.
The victim had been putting away her purchased items in her car when the assailants’ vehicle pulled up next to her, Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies said.
Mugshots provided by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department of suspects Andrew Morrison, left, 34, and David Morrison, 38, who are accused of a robbery in the parking lot of a Costco in the City of Industry on Nov. 26, 2023.
(Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department)
The two occupants of the car, identified by authorities as suspects David Morrison, 38, and Andrew Morrison, 34, allegedly tried grabbing the woman’s purse while driving away — but she refused to let go. The victim continued to hold onto the purse as the car sped away, dragging her about 50 yards through the parking lot before she let go as the vehicle exited on Hanover Road, authorities said.
The victim suffered critical but non-life-threatening injuries for which she was treated at a hospital.
After an investigation by the sheriff’s burglary-robbery task force, deputies served a search warrant Thursday in Diamond Bar. Both suspects were detained, and evidence from the robbery — including personal property of the victim — was seized, officials said.
David and Andrew Morrison were arrested on suspicion of robbery and booked into Los Angeles County jail with bail set at $500,000. The pair remain under investigation for potential connections to other robberies in the San Gabriel Valley. Anyone who may have information for investigators can call (562) 956-7187.
A few weeks ago, a three-inch square of plastic and metal began, slowly and steadily, to upend my life.
The culprit was my new portable carbon-dioxide monitor, a device that had been sitting in my Amazon cart for months. I’d first eyed the product around the height of the coronavirus pandemic, figuring it could help me identify unventilated public spaces where exhaled breath was left to linger and the risk for virus transmission was high. But I didn’t shell out the $250 until January 2023, when a different set of worries, over the health risks of gas stoves and indoorair pollution, reached a boiling point. It was as good a time as any to get savvy to the air in my home.
I knew from the get-go that the small, stuffy apartment in which I work remotely was bound to be an air-quality disaster. But with the help of my shiny Aranet4, the brand most indoor-air experts seem to swear by, I was sure to fix the place up. When carbon-dioxide levels increased, I’d crack a window; when I cooked on my gas stove, I’d run the range fan. What could be easier? It would basically be like living outside, with better Wi-Fi. This year, spring cleaning would be a literal breeze!
The illusion was shattered minutes after I popped the batteries into my new device. At baseline, the levels in my apartment were already dancing around 1,200 parts per million (ppm)—a concentration that, as the device’s user manual informed me, was cutting my brain’scognitive function by 15 percent. Aghast, I flung open a window, letting in a blast of frigid New England air. Two hours later, as I shivered in my 48-degree-Fahrenheit apartment in a coat, ski pants, and wool socks, typing numbly on my icy keyboard, the Aranet still hadn’t budged below 1,000 ppm, a common safetythreshold for many experts. By the evening, I’d given up on trying to hypothermia my way to clean air. But as I tried to sleep in the suffocating trap of noxious gas that I had once called my home, next to the reeking sack of respiring flesh I had once called my spouse, the Aranet let loose an ominous beep: The ppm had climbed back up, this time to above 1,400. My cognitive capacity was now down 50 percent, per the user manual, on account of self-poisoning with stagnant air.
By the next morning, I was in despair. This was not the reality I had imagined when I decided to invite the Aranet4 into my home. I had envisioned the device and myself as a team with a shared goal: clean, clean air for all! But it was becoming clear that I didn’t have the power to make the device happy. And that was making me miserable.
CO2 monitors are not designed to dictate behavior; the information they dole out is not a perfect read on air quality, indoors or out. And although carbon dioxide can pose some health risks at high levels, it’s just one of many pollutants in the air, and by no means the worst. Others, such as nitrogen oxide, carbon monoxide, and ozone, can cause more direct harm. Some CO2-tracking devices, including the Aranet4, don’t account for particulate matter—which means that they can’t tell when air’s been cleaned up by, say, a HEPA filter. “It gives you an indicator; it’s not the whole story,” says Linsey Marr, an environmental engineer at Virginia Tech.
Still, because CO2 builds up alongside other pollutants, the levels are “a pretty good proxy for how fresh or stale your air is,” and how badly it needs to be turned over, says Paula Olsiewski, a biochemist and an indoor-air-quality expert at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. The Aranet4 isn’t as accurate as, say, the $20,000 research-grade carbon-dioxide sensor in Marr’s lab, but it can get surprisingly close. When Jose-Luis Jimenez, an atmospheric chemist at the University of Colorado at Boulder, first picked one up three years ago, he was shocked that it could hold its own against the machines he used professionally. And in his personal life, “it allows you to find the terrible places and avoid them,” he told me, or to mask up when you can’t.
That rule of thumb starts to break down, though, when the terrible place turns out to be your home—or, at the very least, mine. To be fair, my apartment’s air quality has a lot working against it: two humans and two cats, all of us with an annoying penchant for breathing, crammed into 1,000 square feet; a gas stove with no outside-venting hood; a kitchen window that opens directly above a parking lot. Even so, I was flabbergasted by just how difficult it was to bring down the CO2 levels around me. Over several weeks, the best indoor reading I sustained, after keeping my window open for six hours, abstaining from cooking, and running my range fan nonstop, was in the 800s. I wondered, briefly, if my neighborhood just had terrible outdoor air quality—or if my device was broken. Within minutes of my bringing the meter outside, however, it displayed a chill 480.
The meter’s cruel readings began to haunt me. Each upward tick raised my anxiety; I started to dread what I’d learn each morning when I woke up. After watching the Aranet4 flash figures in the high 2,000s when I briefly ignited my gas stove, I miserably deleted 10 wok-stir-fry recipes I’d bookmarked the month before. At least once, I told my husband to cool it with the whole “needing oxygen” thing, lest I upgrade to a more climate-friendly Plant Spouse. (I’m pretty sure I was joking, but I lacked the cognitive capacity to tell.) In more lucid moments, I understood the deeper meaning of the monitor: It was a symbol of my helplessness. I’d known I couldn’t personally clean the air at my favorite restaurant, or the post office, or my local Trader Joe’s. Now I realized that the issues in my home weren’t much more fixable. The device offered evidence of a problem, but not the means to solve it.
Upon hearing my predicament, Sally Ng, an aerosol chemist at Georgia Tech, suggested that I share my concerns with building management. Marr recommended constructing a Corsi-Rosenthal box, a DIY contraption made up of a fan lashed to filters, to suck the schmutz out of my crummy air. But they and other experts acknowledged that the most sustainable, efficient solutions to my carbon conundrum were mostly out of reach. If you don’t own your home, or have the means to outfit it with more air-quality-friendly appliances, you can only do so much. “And I mean, yeah, that is a problem,” said Jimenez, who’s currently renovating his home to include a new energy-efficient ventilation device, a make-up-air system, and multiple heat pumps.
Many Americans face much greater challenges than mine. I am not among the millions living in a city with dangerous levels of particulate matter in the air, spewed out by industrial plants, gas-powered vehicles, and wildfires, for whom an open window could risk additional peril; I don’t have to be in a crowded office or a school with poor ventilation. Since the first year of the pandemic—and even before—experts have been calling for policy changes and infrastructural overhauls that would slash indoor air pollution for large sectors of the population at once. But as concern over COVID has faded, “people have moved on,” Marr told me. Individuals are left on their own in the largely futile fight against stale air.
Though a CO2 monitor won’t score anyone victories on its own, it can still be informative: “It’s nice to have an objective measure, because all of this is stuff you can’t really see with the naked eye,” says Abraar Karan, an infectious-disease physician at Stanford, who’s planning to use the Aranet4 in an upcoming study on viral transmission. But he told me that he doesn’t let himself get too worked up over the readings from his monitor at home. Even Olsiewski puts hers away when she’s cooking on the gas range in her Manhattan apartment. She already knows that the levels will spike; she already knows what she needs to do to mitigate the harms. “I use the tools I have and don’t make myself crazy,” she told me. (Admittedly, she has a lot of tools, especially in her second home in Texas—among them, an induction stove and an HVAC with ultra-high-quality filters and a continuously running fan. When we spoke on the phone, her Aranet4 read 570 ppm; mine, 1,200.)
I’m now aiming for my own middle ground. Earlier this week, I dreamed of trying and failing to open a stuck window, and woke up in a cold sweat. I spent that day working with my (real-life) kitchen window cracked, but I shut it when the apartment got too chilly. More important, I placed my Aranet4 in a drawer, and didn’t pull it out again until nightfall. When my spouse came home, he marveled that our apartment, once again, felt warm.
An Oklahoma daycare was evacuated after a car fire in their parking lot.The flames reached two cars next to the building, forcing everyone to get out. The daycare workers said that the fire scared them as much as it scared the children.When Jones Fire Department arrived to put out the fire, Nannie’s Daycare was already getting children to safety.”Before we could look up, all the women that worked there at Nannie’s daycare had a perfect plan in place,” said Mark Taylor, Jones Fire chief.The fire department said they were responding to a call of a car on fire in a shopping center parking lot.”Upon our arrival we found one car fully engulfed, impending on the second vehicle next to it. It had already blew out the windows and blew the tires out of that also,” Taylor said.In the shopping center, the staff was already working on getting children out.”The director went and pulled the fire alarm and proceeded to evacuate all the children out of the facility. Then she ran out to the playground to help with getting the children off of the playground because it was pretty close to where the car had caught on fire,” said Sherry Minnick, owner of Nannie’s Daycare.While the fire department worked to put out the blaze, the children were down the road at a local bank.”The people from the bank, who are right behind us, they actually came out and said, ‘Hey, bring those kids in here,’” Minnick said.The owner said it comes as no surprise that everyone around them was willing to help get the children to safety.”It’s a small community so everybody knows just about everybody and when the bank saw what was happening, they started handing out waters and suckers to the kids,” Minnick said.The owner said she’s extremely grateful for the help from their neighbors and the fire department.
OKLAHOMA CITY —
An Oklahoma daycare was evacuated after a car fire in their parking lot.
The flames reached two cars next to the building, forcing everyone to get out. The daycare workers said that the fire scared them as much as it scared the children.
When Jones Fire Department arrived to put out the fire, Nannie’s Daycare was already getting children to safety.
“Before we could look up, all the women that worked there at Nannie’s daycare had a perfect plan in place,” said Mark Taylor, Jones Fire chief.
The fire department said they were responding to a call of a car on fire in a shopping center parking lot.
“Upon our arrival we found one car fully engulfed, impending on the second vehicle next to it. It had already blew out the windows and blew the tires out of that also,” Taylor said.
In the shopping center, the staff was already working on getting children out.
“The director went and pulled the fire alarm and proceeded to evacuate all the children out of the facility. Then she ran out to the playground to help with getting the children off of the playground because it was pretty close to where the car had caught on fire,” said Sherry Minnick, owner of Nannie’s Daycare.
While the fire department worked to put out the blaze, the children were down the road at a local bank.
“The people from the bank, who are right behind us, they actually came out and said, ‘Hey, bring those kids in here,’” Minnick said.
The owner said it comes as no surprise that everyone around them was willing to help get the children to safety.
“It’s a small community so everybody knows just about everybody and when the bank saw what was happening, they started handing out waters and suckers to the kids,” Minnick said.
The owner said she’s extremely grateful for the help from their neighbors and the fire department.
JAY, Maine—Services at the New Life Baptist Church had just wrapped up, and in the parking lot outside its tiny chapel, Paul LePage was standing behind me with his arm wrapped around my head. He held a cellphone inches from my face, as if he were filming an extreme close-up. The former and perhaps future governor of Maine had insisted on reenacting an incident that had occurred a few weeks earlier, when he’d threatened “to deck” a Democratic operative tracking his campaign. “If you come into my space,” LePage had warned the young man, “you’re going down.”
I had asked LePage about the flap because it represented exactly the kind of uncivil confrontation for which the pugnacious Republican has become known. For more than a year, he had studiously been trying to avoid such encounters—and had largely succeeded. LePage, who as governor once challenged a Democratic legislator to a duel, famously bragged that he was “Donald Trump before Donald Trump.” After two tumultuous terms, he left office four years ago with an approval rating of just 39 percent. Now 73, LePage is attempting a comeback, bidding to oust the Democrat who replaced him, Janet Mills. With Trump eyeing a revival of his own in 2024, the gubernatorial race this fall could serve as a test of Maine voters’ appetite for the return of a Trumpian leader after four years of somewhat calmer Democratic governance.
A changed man LePage is not. But he is trying at least to sand down his rough edges, perhaps recognizing that the bombastic style he pioneered is no longer a winning formula in a state that shifted left in 2018 and decisively rejected Trump two years later. The governor who labeled people of color as “the enemy” of the nation’s whitest state has joined the parade of candidates denouncing the vitriol and even occasional violence that have infected American politics. “There’s an awful lot of hate in the hearts of many people, and it’s sad,” LePage told the parishioners inside the church, during a service on the 21st anniversary of 9/11. “We have to pray it away,” he said. “We have to come together as one nation.” Quoting Abraham Lincoln’s warning that a house divided cannot stand, LePage bemoaned the deep fissures between Republicans and Democrats. “It’s becoming vile and horrible.”
Was LePage trying to present a kinder, gentler version of himself this election? I asked the ex-governor that exact question outside the church. “No,” he replied. “What I’m saying is life is a journey. And along the way you learn and you get better, and hope that every day, the rest of my life, I’m a better man.”
An admirable sentiment. But did LePage think that during his time in office he had contributed to the hate he now recognizes in this country? He replied in a way that suggested he had some practice answering this query. “Am I perfect? No,” LePage said. “Did I make mistakes? Yes. Did I defend my family? Yes. Will I continue to defend my family? Yes.”
LePage likes to respond to inquiries with questions of his own. When asked about his critics’ pointing out how often he had promised to change his ways only to fall back into confrontations and insults, he responded by asking if I had seen such a lapse during this campaign. I replied that personally I had not. But of course, there was that pesky matter of the run-in with the Democratic operative. Clearly, LePage did not count that as one of his mistakes.
“He came into my personal space,” LePage said. “Let me show you what he did.” Before I knew it, the former governor had swung around me and begun the demonstration he hoped would exonerate him. Once he had shown me his quick version of events, LePage returned to where he had been standing for our interview. “If somebody attacks me,” he said, wagging a finger, “I will defend myself.”
When I checkedthe video of LePage’s brief confrontation with the Democratic operative, the interaction looked nothing like the former governor’s reenactment. The operative had approached LePage as the two men were stepping over a puddle after a parade (LePage was holding a Tim Hortons doughnut), but the closest the man came to LePage appeared to be a couple of feet, not inches. Yet the reason Democrats were so keen on broadcasting the incident as widely as possible—and why LePage was so intent on defending his reaction—was that the whole thing seemed so familiar, so very LePage.
Long before Trump shocked (and, in many cases, enthralled) voters on the campaign trail and upended Washington with his unfiltered, impulsive, often downright mean governing style, LePage had been doing the same in Maine. When in 2016 LePage described himself as Trump before Trump, “he was 100 percent correct,” says Roger Katz, a former GOP state legislator in Maine who backed LePage’s first gubernatorial run in 2010 but is now endorsing Mills. “The same kinds of insulting behavior and lack of respect for people is how he governed.”
LePage’s blatantly racist comments about Hispanic immigrants and Black people often made national headlines, but the many stories about his impulsive governing and frequent tirades have become local legends in Maine. Almost everyone I spoke with who had worked with the governor had a tale to share. Katz recalled the time that, in a fit of rage at lawmakers, LePage vetoed every single bill at the end of a legislative session, including those that he himself had proposed. Jeff McCabe, a Democrat who served as majority leader of the Maine House of Representatives, told me about how LePage had abruptly ordered a state prison closed in the middle of a dispute with lawmakers, resulting in the hasty transfer of inmates during the dark of night. “People woke up and thought there had been a prison break,” McCabe said.
Drew Gattine, now the chairman of the Maine Democratic Party, was serving in the state legislature in 2016 when he criticized LePage for comments in which the governor claimed that virtually all of the drug dealers arrested in Maine were “Black and Hispanic people.” In response, LePage left Gattine a voicemail in which he called him “a little son-of-a-bitch, socialist cocksucker.” The governor went on: “I want you to record this and make it public, because I am after you.” LePage later apologized to Gattine, but not before he told reporters that he wished it was “1825,” so the two men could duel. “I would not put my gun in the air,” LePage said at the time. “I guarantee you, I would not be [Alexander] Hamilton. I would point it right between his eyes, because he is a snot-nosed little runt.”
Protesters upset with then-Governor Paul LePage hold a rally outside the governor’s mansion in Augusta, Maine, on August 30, 2016. (Yoon Byun / The New York Times / Redux)
When I asked 63-year-old Joanne Glidden, an amateur motorcyclist with the United Bikers of Maine, what she liked most about LePage, she replied with a wide grin, “He reminds me of Trump!” As with Trump, LePage’s combativeness and lack of a public filter endeared him to many Republican and independent voters, who form the base of his current support. Glidden was among a dozen or so people who lingered at a fairgrounds in Windsor, Maine, after LePage had spoken to the biker group. “He spoke his mind, and I liked that,” Dan Adams, a 57-year-old crane operator, told me. “He don’t pull no punches.” The owner of a day-care center, Penny Nava, 56, told me she didn’t want to see LePage change his approach. “You need to be who you are,” she said. “You let that go, and you lose yourself.”
Maine is not as deeply blue a state as the most recent presidential election might suggest. In 2016, Hillary Clinton’s three-point margin of victory in Maine came closer than all but one other state (Nevada) to matching her slim advantage in the national popular vote. The state backed Biden by nine points in 2020, but Maine voters split their ballots and reelected Republican Senator Susan Collins by nearly the same margin, shocking Democrats who had spent nearly $100 million to defeat her. In both years, Trump won an electoral vote by carrying Maine’s rural Second Congressional District, where LePage yard signs have become ubiquitous.
Unlike Trump, LePage grew up in poverty, not wealth and privilege. The eldest of 18 children, he ran away from home to escape an abusive, alcoholic father and was homeless for a time, working odd jobs to survive. He eventually graduated from college, started a business, and then worked for many years as the general manager of a discount chain store before launching his career in politics. LePage ran for governor after two terms as mayor of Waterville, a Democratic-leaning city that is home to Colby College.
He won each of his two gubernatorial races in three-way contests that allowed him to capitalize on a divided opposition. In neither election did he capture a majority of the vote, winning with just 37.6 percent in 2010 and 48.2 percent in 2014. He spent eight years governing conservatively, reducing taxes and fighting for lower spending. After Maine voters approved a referendum to expand Medicaid, LePage blocked its implementation. His elections galvanized the movement in Maine toward ranked-choice voting, as advocates argued that the system would favor more-moderate candidates and would ensure that the winner ultimately secured votes from at least 50 percent of the electorate. Maine became the first state to adopt ranked-choice balloting and used the system in 2018 and 2020. But in a twist, a judge ruled that the system could go forward only in federal elections—for president and Congress—and not in state races. So it will not be in place for the Mills-LePage matchup this fall, although the lack of a serious independent candidate likely means that the change will have little effect.
Mills has held a small but consistent lead in the limited public polling so far, and Democrats expect the race to be close. They worry that the passage of time will have caused voters to forget what they disliked about LePage’s leadership style, so they’ve taken it upon themselves to remind them about his most memorable outbursts and dispute assertions that he’s changed. The strategy could be a preview of a national campaign against Trump should he run again in 2024. Across the country, this fall’s ballots feature plenty of Trump allies, acolytes, and would-be clones, most notably the gubernatorial candidates Kari Lake in Arizona and Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania. But Maine voters had already experienced eight years of Trump-style chaos before they turned in the other direction, and now they face the unique question of whether they want to go back. LePage “has never lost an election,” Mark Brewer, a political-science professor at the University of Maine, told me. “So betting against him historically has been a losing bet.”
Donald Trump shakes hands with Maine Governor Paul LePage as he is introduced at a rally in Merrill Auditorium on Thursday, August 4, 2016. (Derek Davis / Portland Press Herald / Getty)
If LePage is a stand-in for Trump this November, Janet Mills is a Biden-esque figure in Maine. At 74, she hails from a prominent political family and has served in public office with only a few years’ interruption since the ’70s. Mills’s parents were friends of the longtime Republican Senator Margaret Chase Smith, and one of her brothers twice ran for governor as a Republican. After decades as a prosecutor and state legislator, Mills won election as Maine’s attorney general in 2008 and again in 2012. From that perch, she battled frequently with LePage, who at one point sued her for refusing to represent his administration when it sided with then-President Trump over his executive order restricting travel from Muslim-majority countries. (The state supreme court ruled in favor of Mills.)
Mills became Maine’s first woman governor after earning 51 percent of the vote in 2018—a higher share than LePage won in either of his victories. She acted immediately to implement the voter-approved Medicaid expansion and has increased spending on education, on infrastructure, and in the fight against climate change. Like Biden, she has occasionally worked with Republicans, most recently drawing bipartisan support to send $850 relief checks to citizens as a way to reduce the effects of inflation. Mills has also occasionally tangled with progressives, vetoing some bills passed by the Democratic-controlled legislature.
Mostly, Mills seems to have lowered the temperature of state politics. She’s warm and unassuming; when I saw her greeting patrons at a small farmers’ market, she drew little attention to herself and seemed to blend in with the crowd. On a recent Saturday morning, Mills spoke briefly to mark the tenth anniversary of the opening of a local grain mill. She read her remarks off an iPhone while a dancing toddler competed for the audience’s attention nearby.
If Democrats find fault with Mills, it’s that she is perhaps too low-key. “I don’t think she’s brought in a lot of people,” Nancy Baxter, a 65-year-old health administrator for the federal government, told me at the market. “I don’t see her having excited the state as much as we’d hoped.”
I met Mills outside the Margaret Chase Smith Library in Skowhegan, where the governor had worked for many years as a lawyer before entering politics. During a 30-minute interview, she touted her administration’s handling of and emergence from the pandemic. Like its neighbors in New England, Maine has a relatively high vaccination rate and low death rate, especially considering its population is one of the oldest in the country. Mills boasted about the state’s migration rate, which she said was the country’s seventh highest. “We’re turning the corner, and people are coming here,” she said. “We’ve become branded as a safe and welcoming state, and I like that.”
Mills brushed off LePage’s frequent attacks on her. “I can’t judge who he is today, but the people of Maine know who he was before,” she said. Mills sounded a bit like a candidate who believes she’s ahead in the polls. She noted that LePage had appeared in the state with Trump during the height of the pandemic, in 2020, when the former president called her “a dictator.” “I thought, This is ridiculous,” Mills recalled, dismissively. “For the better part of my career, I’ve listened to weak men talk tough. Loud men talk tough to hide their weaknesses.”
Trump hasn’t come to Maine to campaign for LePage this year. During my swing through the state, the Trump-before-Trump himself was a tough man to find.
He’s running a decidedly low-profile statewide race—“a stealth campaign,” as Mills described it to me—having apparently determined that the easiest way to stay on his best behavior is to steer clear of situations that would test his discipline. After formally launching his gubernatorial campaign a year ago, LePage has held virtually no large rallies and given few press conferences or interviews (aside from appearances on conservative radio stations). Maine’s political press corps is not large, and LePage frequently evades reporters by publicizing his appearances only after they’ve occurred, usually by posting photos to his Twitter or Facebook pages.
LePage’s campaign ignored me entirely. My many calls and emails went unreturned, and when I stopped by his campaign headquarters early on a Friday afternoon after Labor Day, no one was there. (“Don’t take it personally,” Katz, the former GOP lawmaker and LePage critic, assured me, noting that LePage “had a terrible relationship with the press” when he was governor.) When I showed up at a local GOP fundraiser that Democrats said LePage would be addressing, the organizers told me he had never been on the schedule. They directed me instead to the charity event that the United Bikers of Maine was holding about an hour away. LePage had indeed spoken to the group, but he was long gone by the time I got there.
I finally found the former governor on the morning of September 11 in the rural town of Jay, about 30 miles northwest of Augusta, the state capital. The New Life Baptist Church is the size of a modest, one-story house, and LePage arrived with his wife, Ann; a campaign aide; and a trio of local Republican legislators. He had befriended the church’s pastor, Chris Grimbilas, during his second term as governor, and the two have stayed in close touch in the years since. Grimbilas told the approximately 30 parishioners gathered in the sanctuary that LePage was not there “to campaign,” although LePage sounded very much like a candidate on the stump during his brief remarks from the pulpit. The theme of the Sunday service was to honor first responders, and LePage began by comparing the state’s firing last year of police officers and firefighters who refused COVID-19 vaccinations to the horrors of 9/11. “It was the most vicious of attacks on first responders I’ve seen since the World Trade Center,” he said, pledging to reinstate those who lost their jobs in January if he becomes governor again.
LePage’s sparse public schedule might seem like a questionable campaign strategy, but it could prove effective. As a recent two-term governor, he does not need to introduce himself to voters, and he might be hoping that a midterm backlash against Democrats nationwide will return him to office.
As for Trump, LePage is happy to have the votes of Mainers who associate him positively with the former president. But he’s not emphasizing the connection. For some voters, the link between the two men seems to be thinner than it was when both were in office. Despite their similar personalities, LePage and Trump had very different upbringings, and they’ve diverged again during their (perhaps temporary) retirements.
Unlike Trump, LePage left office willingly when his term was up in 2019. He and his wife initially moved to Florida, but he returned to Maine and worked as a bartender at McSeagull’s Restaurant for two summers, in the coastal tourist town of Boothbay Harbor. The gig served as good publicity for both the bar and LePage, who was already talking about challenging Mills for governor. Although he struggled to keep up during busy times, LePage’s fellow bartenders told me he was a good colleague who took direction well. “He needs to keep his mouth shut,” Gigi Frost, 41, told me. But she added: “I really do like him personally.” Frost, an independent, said she hadn’t decided whether to vote for LePage or Mills. Yet she saw LePage as distinct from Trump. “I despise Trump,” she said. “I don’t think LePage is as bad.”
That assessment matched what I heard from some other Maine voters, including those who hadn’t spent a summer pouring beers with the former governor. Trump is in a whole other category now from LePage. “LePage is better than Trump,” Shirley Emery, a 74-year-old retiree, told me in Windsor. “He’s honest. He’s not a womanizer.”
LePage seems to be hearing those voices too, and his cautious, buttoned-up strategy suggests that he sees Trumpism waning in the upper reaches of New England. When I asked him whether he still aligned himself with Trump, the former governor clammed up. “I’m running for governor of the state of Maine,” he said, “and I’m not going to talk about national politics.” I tried again. Should Trump run again in 2024? “I’m running for governor of the state of Maine, all right? And that’s it.”
Perhaps Paul LePage is a transformed man after all. The conservative who ran on unvarnished, tell-it-like-it-is authenticity has finally discovered his filter and learned the coded deflection of the blue-state Republican. Distancing himself from the president he once claimed as a protégé, the straight-talking governor has, in pursuit of one more term in power, almost become a conventional politician.
