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  • At Moms for Liberty summit, parents urged to turn their grievances into lawsuits

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    KISSIMMEE, Fla. — It’s not a rebrand. But the Moms for Liberty group that introduced itself three years ago as a band of female “joyful warriors” shedding domestic modesty to make raucous public challenges to masks, books and curriculum, is trying to glow up.

    The group’s national summit this past weekend at a convention center outside Orlando leaned into family (read: parental rights), faith — and youth. The latter appeared to be a bid to join the cool kids who are the new face of conservatism in America (hint: young, Christian, very male), as well as a recognition of the group’s “diversity,” which includes grandparents, men and kids. 

    But even as the youth — including 20- and 30-something podcasters and social media influencers, as well as student members of the late Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA — brought a high-energy vibe, stalwart members got a new assignment. Where past Moms for Liberty attendees were urged to run for school board, this year they were encouraged to turn their grievances into legal challenges. 

    Moms for Liberty CEO and co-founder Tina Descovich acknowledged that while many of them had experienced backlashes as a result of running for school board or publicly challenging books, curricula and policies, they needed to continue the fight. (The more pugnacious co-founder, Tiffany Justice, is now at Heritage Action, an arm of right-wing think tank The Heritage Foundation.) 

    “You have lost family, you have lost friends, you have lost neighbors, you’ve lost jobs, you’ve lost whole careers,” she said. Yet she insisted that it was vital that they “shake off the shackles of fear and stand for truth or we are going to lose Western civilization as a whole.”

    Related: Become a lifelong learner. Subscribe to our free weekly newsletter featuring the most important stories in education. 

    The gathering held up “the free state of Florida” as an example of Republican policies to be emulated, including around school choice and parental rights. The state’s attorney general, James Uthmeier, boasted of having created a state Office of Parental Rights last spring, describing it as “a law firm for parents.” 

    He trumpeted the state’s lawsuit against Target over the “market risks” of LGBTQ+ pride-themed merchandise and encouraged parents to reach out with potential legal actions. “If you’re identifying one of these wrongs that’s violating your rights and then subjecting our kids to danger and evil, then we want to know about it,” he said. “And we’re going to bring the heat in court to shut it down.”

    Tina Descovich, CEO and co-founder of Moms for Liberty, was interviewed on Real America’s Voice, a conservative news and entertainment network that set up a remote studio outside of the Sun Ballroom at the Moms for Liberty national summit. Credit: Laura Pappano for The Hechinger Report

    The shifting legal landscape, not just in Florida but nationally, had speakers gushing about the opportunity to file new challenges, particularly in the wake of the Supreme Court decision in Mahmoud v. Taylor in June. It gives parents broad power to object to school materials, including with LGBTQ+ themes, and the right to remove their children from public school on days when such materials are discussed. 

    “This is where we need to take that big Supreme Court victory and start fleshing it out,” said Matt Sharp, senior counsel at Alliance Defending Freedom, a Christian law firm. He added that they were “needing warriors, joyful warriors, to file cases to start putting meat on the bones of what that does.” 

    The directive to file suit was not just around opt-out policies, which were the basis for the Mahmoud case. (Moms for Liberty has opt-out forms and instructions on its website.) Rather, attendees were also urged to file lawsuits in support of school prayer; against school policies that let students use different names and pronouns without parental consent (what Moms for Liberty terms “secret transitions”); and to give parents access to surveys students take at school, including around mental health.

    “We need people willing to stand up legally and be, you know, named plaintiffs,” Kimberly S. Hermann, president of the Southeastern Legal Foundation, a conservative policy group, said on a panel featuring two moms who sued their school districts. Winning a lawsuit or even just bringing one in one state, said Hermann, can get other school districts and states to adopt policies, presumably to avoid lawsuits themselves. 

    “One offensive litigation can have this amazing ripple effect,” she said. She and others made clear that there is staff to provide support. The legal groups will “stand with you,” said Sharp, “whether you’re passing the law or passing the local policy all the way to litigating these cases.”

    Even as speakers criticized public schools particularly around LGBTQ+ issues, not as a form of inclusion but as foisting views into classrooms, they relished the chance to infuse their values into schools. 

    Filing these lawsuits is more than “just fighting for your role as parents,” Sharp told parents in a breakout session. “You’re ultimately fighting for your kids’ ability to be in their schools and make a difference, to be the salt and light in those classrooms with their friends and to take our message of freedom, of faith, of justice and to really spread it all across the schools.”

    Related: America’s schools and colleges are operating under two totally different sets of rules for sex discrimination 

    Overall, this year’s Moms for Liberty event lacked the obvious drama of recent years. The flood of protesters in 2023 in Philadelphia required a large police presence and barricades around the hotel, along with warnings not to wear Moms for Liberty lanyards on the streets. 

    This year, there were no protests. That was partly because the event was held in a secluded resort convention center that could accommodate 800 (larger than the 500-ish of past hotels). But the group failed to fill the venue or attract much media attention. There was on-location broadcast by Real America’s Voice, a conservative news and entertainment network, from a set outside the Sun Ballroom. (Steve Bannon interviewed Descovich on his show, “The War Room.”)

    It also didn’t draw opposition because protesters had a bigger target. Saturday saw “No Kings” rallies across the country, with thousands decrying what they see as President Donald Trump’s authoritarianism. “I forgot it was happening since they’re mostly ignored these days,” state Sen. Carlos Guillermo Smith, (D-Orlando) and a senior advisor to LGBTQ+ rights group Equality Florida, said in a text message about the Moms for Liberty event. Liz Mikitarian, founder of the national group, Stop Moms for Liberty, which is based in Florida, said the moms “are still a threat” but not worth organizing a protest against. 

    It was also a quieter affair than last year’s in Washington, D.C. There, Trump’s appearance fed a party atmosphere with Southern rock, sequined MAGA outfits and a cash bar. (This year, Trump appeared, but only in a prerecorded video message.)

    Sequined merchandise for sale at the Moms for Liberty gathering by the company Make America Sparkle Again included tops and jackets that paid tribute to Charlie Kirk, the slain founder of Turning Point USA. Credit: Laura Pappano for The Hechinger Report

    The three-day event, of course, aired familiar grievances in familiarly florid language — conservative school choice activist Corey DeAngelis railed against teacher unions over the “far-left radical agenda that they’re trying to push down children’s throats in the classroom.” Other sessions covered the expected — the alleged dangers of LGBTQ+ policies, in sports, restrooms, school curricula and books — but there was also discussion of concerns (shared on left and right) over youth screen use, online predators and artificial intelligence.

    The event made room for MAHA, the Make America Healthy Again movement led by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the secretary of Health and Human Services. Descovich interviewed Dr. Joseph Ladapo, the Florida surgeon general who is working to eliminate all vaccine mandates for the state’s schoolchildren.

    But the move by Moms for Liberty to attract young conservatives elevated the energy in the room. It was apparent not only in a tribute to Kirk, the slain founder of Turning Point USA, which trains young conservatives on high school and college campuses. About 40 Florida TPUSA members took the ballroom stage to accept the “Liberty Sword,” the group’s highest honor, posthumously awarded to Kirk. 

    Related: Red school boards in a blue state asked Trump for help — and got it

    It also showed up in a breakout session of mostly conservative social media influencers and podcasters who offered tips on using humor and handling online trolls: Lydia Shaffer (aka the Conservative Barbie 2.0), Alex Stein, Gates Garcia, Kaitlin Bennett, Angela Belcamino (known as “The Bold Lib,” who said she was surprised to have been invited), and Jayme Franklin, who in addition to her podcast is the Gen Z founder of The Conservateur, a conservative lifestyle brand that The New Yorker called “Vogue, But for Trumpers.”

    They have built huge followings based on their compulsion to provoke. “We need to go back to biblical values of what it means to be a real man and what it means to be a real woman,” urged Franklin. “People want that guidance, and that needs to begin at church. We need to push people back into the pews.”

    Their inclusion, like that of conservative commentator Benny Johnson, who moderated a panel, “Fathers: The Defenders of the Family,” appeared to recognize a need to expand the base — and be edgier. Johnson charged out on stage and trumpeted that “God’s first commandment to us was, ‘Go, be fruitful, multiply.’ Go make babies!!!!” He quipped that “right-wing moms, they’re happier, right?” and asked the crowd, “Any trad wife moms out there?”

    The phrase is shorthand for a woman who embraces a traditional domestic role, often with an emphasis on fashion and style. Johnson — who credited Kirk for prodding him to find Jesus, get married and become a father (he has four children) — argued that Republicans, especially those in Gen Z, should embrace the traditional nuclear family identity as a winning political move.

    “We are the party of parents. We are the party of children,” he said, adding that traditional values were already dominating culture and politics. “We live in a center-right country. And I’m tired of pretending that we don’t,” he said, and showed a map of red and blue votes in the 2024 presidential election. “This is the shift. You live in a red kingdom.”

    Contact editor Caroline Preston at 212-870-8965, via Signal at CarolineP.83 or on email at preston@hechingerreport.org.  

    This story about Moms for Liberty was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

    The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.

    Join us today.

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    Laura Pappano

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  • Cellphone bans can help kids learn — but Black students suspended at higher rates

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    Thirty states now limit or ban cellphone use in classrooms, and teachers are noticing children paying attention to their lessons again. But it’s not clear whether this policy — unpopular with students and a headache for teachers to enforce — makes an academic difference. 

    If student achievement goes up after a cellphone ban, it’s tough to know if the ban was the reason. Some other change in math or reading instruction might have caused the improvement. Or maybe the state assessment became easier to pass. Imagine if politicians required all students to wear striped shirts and test scores rose. Few would really think that stripes made kids smarter.

    Two researchers from the University of Rochester and RAND, a nonprofit research organization, figured out a clever way to tackle this question by taking advantage of cellphone activity data in one large school district in Florida, which in 2023 became the first state to institute school cellphone restrictions. The researchers compared schools that had high cellphone activity before the ban with those that had low cellphone usage to see if the ban made a bigger difference for schools that had high usage. 

    Indeed, it did. 

    Related: Our free weekly newsletter alerts you to what research says about schools and classrooms.

    Student test scores rose a bit more in high cellphone usage schools two years after the ban compared with schools that had lower cellphone usage to start. Students were also attending school more regularly. 

    The policy also came with a troubling side effect. The cellphone bans led to a significant increase in student suspensions in the first year, especially among Black students. But disciplinary actions declined during the second year. 

    “Cellphone bans are not a silver bullet,” said David Figlio, an economist at the University of Rochester and one of the study’s co-authors. “But they seem to be helping kids. They’re attending school more, and they’re performing a bit better on tests.”

    Figlio said he was “worried” about the short-term 16 percent increase in suspensions for Black students. What’s unclear from this data analysis is whether Black students were more likely to violate the new cellphone rules, or whether teachers were more likely to single out Black students for punishment. It’s also unclear from these administrative behavior records if students were first given warnings or lighter punishments before they were suspended. 

    The data suggest that students adjusted to the new rules. A year later, student suspensions, including those of Black students, fell back to what they had been before the cellphone ban.

    “What we observe is a rocky start,” Figlio added. “There was a lot of discipline.”

    The study, “The Impact of Cellphone Bans in Schools on Student Outcomes: Evidence from Florida,” is a draft working paper and has not been peer-reviewed. It was slated to be circulated by the National Bureau of Economic Research on Oct. 20 and the authors shared a draft with me in advance. Figlio and his co-author Umut Özek at RAND believe it is the first study to show a causal connection between cellphone bans and learning rather than just a correlation.

    The academic gains from the cellphone ban were small, less than a percentile point, on average. That’s the equivalent of moving from the 50th percentile on math and reading tests (in the middle) to the 51st percentile (still close to the middle), and this small gain did not emerge until the second year for most students. The academic benefits were strongest for middle schoolers, white students, Hispanic students and male students. The academic gains for Black students and female students were not statistically significant.  

    Related: Suspended for…what? 

    I was surprised to learn that there is data on student cellphone use in school. The authors of this study used information from Advan Research Corp., which collects and analyzes data from mobile phones around the world for business purposes, such as figuring out how many people visit a particular retail store. The researchers were able to obtain this data for schools in one Florida school district and estimate how many students were on their cellphones before and after the ban went into effect between the hours of 9 a.m. and 1 p.m.

    The data showed that more than 60 percent of middle schoolers, on average, were on their phones at least once during the school day before the 2023 ban in this particular Florida district, which was not named but described as one of the 10 largest districts in the country. (Five of the nation’s 10 largest school districts are in Florida.) After the ban, that fell in half to 30 percent of middle schoolers in the first year and down to 25 percent in the second year.

    Elementary school students were less likely to be on cellphones to start with and their in-school usage fell from about 25 percent of students before the ban to 15 percent after the ban. More than 45 percent of high schoolers were on their phones before the ban and that fell to about 10 percent afterwards.

    Average daily smartphone visits in schools, by year and grade level

    Average daily smartphone visits during regular school days (relative to teacher workdays without students) between 9am and 1pm (per 100 enrolled students) in the two months before and then after the 2023 ban took effect in one large urban Florida school district. Source: Figlio and Özek, October 2025 draft paper, figure 2C, p. 23.

    Florida did not enact a complete cellphone ban in 2023, but imposed severe restrictions. Those restrictions were tightened in 2025 and that additional tightening was not studied in this paper.

    Anti-cellphone policies have become increasingly popular since the pandemic, largely based on our collective adult gut hunches that kids are not learning well when they are consumed by TikTok and SnapChat. 

    This is perhaps a rare case in public policy, Figlio said, where the “data back up the hunches.” 

    Contact staff writer Jill Barshay at 212-678-3595, jillbarshay.35 on Signal, or barshay@hechingerreport.org.

    This story about cellphone bans was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Proof Points and other Hechinger newsletters.

    The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.

    Join us today.

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    Jill Barshay

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  • This couple has a bigger mission than the finish line during this year’s Marine Corps Marathon – WTOP News

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    One couple is venturing to the starting line not only with the goal of finishing this year’s marathon, but also honoring and advocating for the recognition of two fallen Marines, who died as heroes.

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    This couple has a bigger mission than the finish line during this year’s Marine Corps Marathon

    The 50th Marine Corps Marathon is less than a month away, and here at WTOP, we are highlighting some of the inspiring people that are running to that start line and what brought them there.

    One couple is venturing to the starting line, not only with the goal of finishing this year’s marathon, but also honoring and advocating for the recognition of two fallen Marines, who died as heroes.

    Andrew and Shelley Dalbey have run the Marine Corps Marathon before, but this year, they return from a slight hiatus and will continue to run as part of Team Jordan.

    The group honors Lance Cpl. Jordan Haerter and Cpl. Jonathan Yale. Both men were killed on April 22, 2008, in Ramadi, Iraq.

    Their two battalions were switching places at the Joint Security Station. Both men were standing guard at the entry control point when a large truck accelerated toward the gates. It did not stop on command and both men fired until it stopped and a suicide bomber detonated a 2,000-pound blast that killed them both.

    “They had six seconds to stop a suicide bomber,” Andrew told WTOP. “They saved the lives of 150 Marines and Iraqi police officers.”

    They were both posthumously awarded the Navy Cross and now this group, lead by Haerter’s mother, advocates for the two young men to receive the congressional Medal of Honor.

    One couple is running the Marine Corps Marathon not only with the goal of finishing, but also honoring and advocating for the recognition of two fallen Marines.
    (Courtesy Andrew and Shelley Dalbey)

    Courtesy Andrew and Shelley Dalbey

    Andrew and Shelley Dalbey have run the Marine Corps Marathon before, but this year, they return from a slight hiatus and will continue to run as part of Team Jordan.
    (Courtesy Andrew and Shelley Dalbey)

    Courtesy Andrew and Shelley Dalbey

    One couple is running the Marine Corps Marathon while honoring and advocating for the recognition of two fallen Marines.
    (Courtesy Andrew and Shelley Dalbey)

    Courtesy Andrew and Shelley Dalbey

    Team Jordan is a Marine Corps Marathon honoring two fallen Marines.
    (Courtesy Andrew and Shelley Dalbey)

    Courtesy Andrew and Shelley Dalbey

    Speaking about the two fallen Marines’ families, Shelley said, “Nothing in my life has changed my life as much as these events have shaped and changed their lives.”

    “They deserve to have their kids and their brothers remembered,” she added.

    The couple and the other members of Team Jordan will all sport similar shirts honoring Lance Cpl. Haerter. They will also pay respects at his remembrance on the “Wear Blue Mile” where many fallen service members are honored.

    This race and cause have special meaning for Andrew, as he was also a Marine. For the entire 26.2-mile race, he will carry the American flag complete with streamers with the names of both service members.

    “In training, I will typically carry an eight-pound dumbbell just to develop the arm fatigue, the stamina for it,” Andrew said.

    While they have raced the streets before, this is the first Marine Corps Marathon for Shelley since beating cancer a few years ago.

    “Surgery was sufficient, but it took a while, because it was an abdominal surgery, so it took a while to get past that,” she told WTOP.

    Though the Dalbeys have raced other marathons across the country, they keep coming back to the Marine Corps Marathon. This will be the ninth time Andrew has run with the Marines.

    “It’s the power of this race. It’s the Marines that are out there cheering you on. … There’s no other race like it,” Andrew said.

    Both said that this is a milestone in a personal fitness journey as well, as both have lost over 50 pounds in preparation for the marathon.

    Get breaking news and daily headlines delivered to your email inbox by signing up here.

    © 2025 WTOP. All Rights Reserved. This website is not intended for users located within the European Economic Area.

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    Luke Lukert

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  • Supreme Court might upend Voting Rights Act and help GOP keep control of the House

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    WASHINGTON  — The Supreme Court may help the GOP keep control of the House of Representatives next year by clearing the way for Republican-led states to redraw election districts now held by Black Democrats.

    That prospect formed the backdrop on Wednesday as the justices debated the future of the Voting Rights Act in a case from Louisiana.

    The Trump administration’s top courtroom attorney urged he justices to rule that partisan politics, not racial fairness, should guide the drawing election districts for Congress and state legislatures.

    “This court held that race-based affirmative action in higher education must come to an end,” Solicitor Gen. D. John Sauer wrote in his brief. The same is true, he said, for using the Voting Rights Act to draw legislative districts that are likely to elect a Black or Latino candidate.

    Too often, he said, the civil rights law has been “deployed as a form of electoral race-based affirmative action to undo a state’s constitutional pursuit of political ends.”

    The court’s conservatives lean in that direction and sought to limit the use of race for drawing district boundaries. But the five-member majority has not struck down the use of race for drawing district lines.

    But the Trump administration and Louisiana’s Republican leaders argued that now was the time to do so.

    If the court’s conservatives hand down such a ruling in the months ahead, it would permit Republican-led states across the South to redraw the congressional districts of a dozen or more Black Democrats.

    “There’s reason for alarm,” said Harvard law professor Nicholas Stephanopoulous. “The consequences for minority representation would likely be devastating. In particular, states with unified Republican governments would have a green light to flip as many Democratic minority-opportunity districts as possible.”

    Such a ruling would also upend the Voting Rights Act as it had been understood since the 1980s.

    As originally enacted in 1965, the historic measure put the federal government on the side of Blacks in registering to vote and casting ballots.

    But in 1982, Republicans and Democrats in Congress took note that these new Black voters were often shut out of electing anyone to office. White lawmakers could draw maps that put whites in the majority in all or nearly all the districts.

    Seeking a change, Congress amended the law to allow legal challenges when discrimination results in minority voters having “less opportunity … to elect representatives of their choice.”

    In decades after, the Supreme Court and the Justice Department pressed the states, and the South in particular, to draw at least some electoral districts that were likely to elect a Black candidate. These legal challenges turned on evidence that white voters in the state would not support a Black candidate.

    But since he joined the court in 1991, Justice Clarence Thomas has argued that drawing districts based on race is unconstitutional and should be prohibited. Justices Samuel A. Alito, Neil M. Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett dissented with Thomas two years ago when the court by a 5-4 vote approved a second congressional district in Alabama that elected a Black Democrat.

    Chief Justice John G. Roberts wrote the opinion. Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh cast the deciding fifth vote but also said he was open to the argument that “race-based redistricting cannot extend indefinitely into the future.”

    That issue is now before the court in the Louisiana case.

    It has six congressional districts, and about one-third of its population is Black.

    Prior to this decade, the New Orleans area elected a Black representative, and in response to a voting right suit, it was ordered to draw a second district where a Black candidate had a good chance to win.

    But to protect its leading House Republicans — Speaker Mike Johnson and Majority Leader Steve Scalise — the state drew a new elongated district that elected Rep. Cleo Fields, a Black Democrat.

    Now the state and the Trump administration argue the court should strike down that district because it was drawn based on race and free the state to replace him with a white Republican.

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    David G. Savage

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  • Supreme Court debate Louisiana redistricting case centering on Voting Rights Act

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    Supreme Court set to hear arguments on pivotal Louisiana redistricting case

    The Supreme Court is reviewing a case involving Louisiana’s congressional map and its implications for racial gerrymandering.

    Updated: 4:54 AM PDT Oct 15, 2025

    Editorial Standards ⓘ

    The Supreme Court is deliberating a case today that could reshape congressional redistricting nationwide, focusing on racial gerrymandering in Louisiana.States are allowed to redistrict based on party lines, but this case in the Supreme Court deals with gerrymandering along racial lines and could change who you’re voting for. If the Supreme Court justices get rid of Section Two, the last remaining part of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits racial discrimination in redistricting, it could upend electoral maps nationwide.At issue is Louisiana’s congressional map, which has two majority Black districts. The state drew a new map in 2022, but civil rights advocates argued in federal court that it violated part of the Voting Rights Act because it only included one majority Black district. They won, and the state redrew the map, but a group claimed it was racist against them. A court agreed, leading to the current Supreme Court case.A ruling in favor of Louisiana could open the door for states with large minority populations, mostly red states in the South, to redraw congressional districts, essentially eliminating majority Black and Latino seats that tend to favor Democrats.”If the court, as I think some people expect, says you can’t use race ever anymore, or if the Voting Rights Act allows you to use race, then that violates the Constitution under the 14th and 15th amendments, then we are basically done with the Voting Rights Act,” American University Washington College of Law Professor Stephen Wermiel said.Once the Supreme Court hears arguments today, a decision will most likely be released in the late spring or early summer.Keep watching for the latest from the Washington News Bureau:

    WASHINGTON —

    The Supreme Court is deliberating a case today that could reshape congressional redistricting nationwide, focusing on racial gerrymandering in Louisiana.

    States are allowed to redistrict based on party lines, but this case in the Supreme Court deals with gerrymandering along racial lines and could change who you’re voting for.

    If the Supreme Court justices get rid of Section Two, the last remaining part of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits racial discrimination in redistricting, it could upend electoral maps nationwide.

    At issue is Louisiana’s congressional map, which has two majority Black districts. The state drew a new map in 2022, but civil rights advocates argued in federal court that it violated part of the Voting Rights Act because it only included one majority Black district. They won, and the state redrew the map, but a group claimed it was racist against them. A court agreed, leading to the current Supreme Court case.

    A ruling in favor of Louisiana could open the door for states with large minority populations, mostly red states in the South, to redraw congressional districts, essentially eliminating majority Black and Latino seats that tend to favor Democrats.

    “If the court, as I think some people expect, says you can’t use race ever anymore, or if the Voting Rights Act allows you to use race, then that violates the Constitution under the 14th and 15th amendments, then we are basically done with the Voting Rights Act,” American University Washington College of Law Professor Stephen Wermiel said.

    Once the Supreme Court hears arguments today, a decision will most likely be released in the late spring or early summer.

    Keep watching for the latest from the Washington News Bureau:


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  • Former Rep. Katie Porter expresses remorse about her behavior in damaging videos

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    Democratic gubernatorial candidate Katie Porter, under fire for recently emerged videos showing her scolding a reporter and swearing at an aide, expressed remorse for her behavior on Tuesday in her first public remarks since the incidents were publicized.

    Porter, a former Orange County congresswoman and a top candidate in California’s 2026 governor’s race, said that she “could have handled things better.”

    “I think I’m known as someone who’s able to handle tough questions, who’s willing to answer questions,” Porter told Nikki Laurenzo, host of Inside California Politics and anchor on Fox40 in Sacramento. “I want people to know that I really value the incredible work that my staff can do. I think people who know me know I can be tough. But I need to do a better job expressing appreciation for the amazing work my team does.”

    Last week, a video emerged of Porter telling a separate television reporter that she doesn’t need the support of the millions of Californians who voted for President Trump, and brusquely threatening to end the interview because the reporter asked follow-up questions. The following day, a second video emerged of Porter telling a young staffer “Get out of my f—ing shot!” while videoconferencing with a member of then-President Biden’s cabinet in 2021.

    Porter on Tuesday said that she had apologized to the staffer. She repeatedly sidestepped Laurenzo’s questions about whether other videos could emerge.

    “What I can tell you … is that I am taking responsibility for the situation,” Porter said.

    Porter’s behavior in the videos underscored long-standing questions about her temperament and high staff turnover while she served in Congress.

    The most recent polls showed that Porter held a narrow lead in the competitive race to replace Gov. Gavin Newsom, who is serving his second and final term as governor. After the videos emerged last week, several of Porter’s rivals criticized her behavior, including former state Controller Betty Yee, who said she should drop out of the race.

    On Tuesday, Yee argued that Porter’s temperament could imperil Democrats’ efforts to pass Proposition 50, the Nov. 4 ballot measure to redraw congressional districts in California to boost their party’s numbers in the House.

    Yee, a former vice chair of the state Democratic party, warned that a Republican could potentially win the governor’s race and Democrats could lose the U.S. House of Representatives because of Porter’s “demeanor.”

    “I don’t relish picking a fight, and it’s not even a fight,” Yee said during a virtual press conference. “I’m doing what’s best for this party.”

    Porter is also expected to address the issue Tuesday night during a virtual forum with the California Working Families Party.

    Prior to her statements on Tuesday, Porter had released one statement about the 2021 video, saying, “It’s no secret I hold myself and my staff to a high standard, and that was especially true as a member of Congress. I have sought to be more intentional in showing gratitude to my staff for their important work.”

    The UC Irvine law professor has not responded to multiple interview requests from the Times.

    Mehta reported from Los Angeles and Smith reported from Sacramento.

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    Seema Mehta, Dakota Smith

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  • Outbursts by Katie Porter threaten gubernatorial ambitions

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    Former Rep. Katie Porter’s gubernatorial prospects are uncertain in the aftermath of the emergence of two videos that underscore long-swirling rumors that the Irvine Democrat is thin-skinned and a short-tempered boss.

    How Porter responds in coming days could determine her viability in next year’s race to replace termed-out Gov. Gavin Newsom, according to both Democratic and Republican political strategists.

    “Everyone’s had a bad day. Everyone’s done something that they wouldn’t want broadcast, right? You don’t want your worst boss moment, your worst employment moment, your worst personal moment, captured on camera,” said Christine Pelosi, a prominent Democratic activist from the Bay Area and a daughter of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

    “I definitely think that it’s a question of what comes next,” said Pelosi, who had endorsed former Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis before she dropped out of the race.

    Porter, the 2026 gubernatorial candidate who has a narrow edge in the polls, came under scrutiny this week when a recording emerged of her brusquely threatening to end a television interview after growing increasingly irritated by the reporter’s questions.

    After CBS reporter Julie Watts asked Porter what she would say to the nearly 6.1 million Californians who voted for President Trump in 2024, the UC Irvine law professor responded that she didn’t need their support if she competed against a Republican in the November 2026 runoff election.

    After Watts asked follow-up questions, Porter accused Watts of being “unnecessarily argumentative,” held up her hands towards the reporter’s face and later said, “I don’t want this all on camera.”

    The following day, a 2021 video emerged of Porter berating a staffer who corrected her about electric vehicle information she was discussing with a member of the Biden administration. “Get out of my f— shot!” Porter said to the young woman after she came into view in the background of the video conference. Porter’s comments in the video were first reported by Politico.

    Porter did not respond to multiple interview requests. She put out a statement about the 2021 video, saying: “It’s no secret I hold myself and my staff to a high standard, and that was especially true as a member of Congress. I have sought to be more intentional in showing gratitude to my staff for their important work.”

    Several Porter supporters voiced support for her after the videos went viral on social media and became the focus of national news coverage as well as programs such as “The View.”

    “In this critical moment in our country, we don’t need to be polite, go along to get along, establishment politicians that keep getting run over by the opposition,” wrote Peter Finn and Chris Griswold, co-chairs of Teamsters California, which has endorsed Porter and represents 250,000 workers in the state. “We need strong leaders like Katie Porter that are willing to call it like it is and stand up and fight for everyday Californians.”

    EMILYs List, which supports Democratic women who back abortion rights, and Rep. Dave Min (D-Irvine), who won the congressional seat Porter left to unsuccessfully run for U.S. Senate last year, are among those who also released statements supporting the embattled Democratic candidate.

    Lorena Gonzalez, president of the influential California Labor Federation, alluded to growing rumors in the state’s Capitol before the videos emerged that powerful Democratic and corporate interests dislike Porter and have been trying to coax another Democrat into the race.

    “The only thing that is clear after the past few days is that Katie Porter’s willingness to take on powerful interests has the status quo very afraid and very motivated,” Gonzalez said in a statement.

    There has been a concerted effort to urge Sen. Alex Padilla into the race. The San Fernando Valley Democrat has said he won’t make a decision until after voters decide Proposition 50, the redistricting proposal he and other state Democratic leaders are championing, on the November ballot.

    A pivotal indicator of Porter’s plans is whether she takes part in two events that she is scheduled to participate in next week — a virtual forum Tuesday evening with the California Working Families Party and a live UC Student and Policy Center Q&A on Friday in Sacramento.

    Democratic gubernatorial rivals in California’s 2026 race for governor seized on the videos. Former state Controller Betty Yee called on Porter to drop out of the race, and wealthy businessman Stephen Cloobeck and former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa attacked her in ads about the uproar.

    Former Sen. Barbara Boxer said she saw the same traits Porter displayed in the videos — anger, a lack of respect, privilege — previously, notably in the 2024 Senate contest, which is why she decided to back then-Rep. Adam Schiff, who ultimately won the race. Boxer has endorsed Villaraigosa for governor.

    “I had a bad taste in my mouth from that experience,” Boxer said, growing upset while describing her reaction to the video of Porter cursing at her staffer. “This video tells us everything we need to know about former Congresswoman Porter. She is unfit to serve. Period.”

    Disagreements arose between Boxer and her staff during her more than four decades in elected office, she said.

    But even when “we weren’t happy with each other, there was always respect, because I knew they deserved it, and I knew without them, I was nothing,” Boxer said, adding that men‘s and women’s behavior as elected officials must be viewed through the same lens. “We are equal; we are not better. She’s proof of that.”

    Beth Miller, a veteran Sacramento-based GOP strategist who has worked with female politicians since the 1980s, said women are held to a different standard by voters, though it has eased in recent years.

    “In some ways, this plays into that bias, but in other ways, it unfortunately sets women back because it underscores a concern that people have,” Miller said. “And that’s really disappointing and discouraging to a lot of female politicians who don’t ascribe to that type of behavior.”

    Miller also pointed to the dichotomy of Porter’s terse reaction in the television interview to Porter championing herself in Congress as a fearless and aggressive inquisitor of CEOs and government leaders.

    “You exhibit one kind of behavior on the one hand and another when it affects you,” Miller said. “And you know, governor of California is not a walk in the park, and so I don’t think she did herself any favors at all. And I think it really is a window into who she is.”

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    Seema Mehta

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  • Katie Porter gains backing of powerful Democratic women’s group in 2026 governor’s race

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    Former Rep. Katie Porter of Irvine received the endorsement of a prominent Democratic women’s group on Monday that backs candidates who support abortion rights. The organization could provide significant funding and grass-roots support to boost Porter’s 2026 gubernatorial campaign.

    “Katie Porter has spent her career holding the powerful accountable, fighting to lower costs and taking on Wall Street and Trump administration officials to deliver results for California’s working families,” said Jessica Mackler, president of EMILY’s List. “At a time when President Trump and his allies are attacking Californians’ health care and making their lives more expensive, Katie is the proven leader California needs.”

    The organization’s name stands for Early Money Is Like Yeast, a reference to the importance of early fundraising for female candidates. It was founded four decades ago to promote Democratic women who support legal abortion. The group has raised nearly $950 million to help elect such candidates across the country, including backing Porter’s successful congressional campaign to flip a GOP district in Orange County.

    “There’s nothing that Donald Trump hates more than facing down a strong, powerful woman,” Porter said. “For decades, EMILY’s List has backed winner after winner, helping elect pro-choice Democratic women to public office. They were instrumental in helping me flip a Republican stronghold blue in 2018, and together I’m confident we will make history again.”

    It’s unclear, however, how much the organization will spend on Porter’s bid to be California’s first female governor. There are multiple critical congressional races next year that will determine control of the House that the group will likely throw its weight behind.

    The 2026 gubernatorial race to replace termed-out Gov. Gavin Newsom is wide open after former Vice President Kamala Harris decided not to run and as Sen. Alex Padilla and businessman Rick Caruso mull whether to make a run.

    At the moment, Porter, a UC Irvine law professor who unsuccessfully ran for U.S. Senate last year, has a small edge in the polls among the multitude of Democrats running for the seat. The primary is in June.

    EMILY’s List, which often avoids making a nod when there are multiple female candidates in a race, made its decision after former state Senate leader Toni Atkins announced in late September that she was dropping out of the race. Former state Controller Betty Yee remains a gubernatorial candidate.

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    Seema Mehta

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  • Democratic candidates for governor focus on affordability and healthcare at labor forum

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    SAN DIEGO — Six Democrats running for governor next year focused on housing affordability, the cost of living and healthcare cuts as the most daunting issues facing Californians at a labor forum on Saturday in San Diego.

    Largely in lockstep about these matters, the candidates highlighted their political resumes and life stories to try to create contrasts and curry favor with attendees.

    Former state Assembly Majority Leader Ian Calderon, in his first gubernatorial forum since entering the race in late September, leaned into his experience as the first millennial elected to the state Legislature.

    “I feel like my experience and my passion uniquely positioned me in this race to ride a lane that nobody else can ride, being a millennial and being young and having a different perspective,” said Calderon, 39.

    Concerns about his four children’s future as well as the state’s reliance on Washington, D.C., drove his decision to run for governor after choosing not to seek reelection to the Legislature in 2020.

    “I want [my children] to have opportunity. I want them to have a future. I want life to be better. I want it to be easier,” said Calderon, whose family has deep roots in politics. State leaders must focus “on D.C.-proofing California. We cannot continue to depend on D.C. and expect that they’re going to give a s— about us and what our needs are, because they don’t.”

    Former U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, who also served as the state’s attorney general after a 24-year stint in Congress, argued that it is critical to elect a governor who has experience.

    “Would you let someone who’s never flown a plane tell you, ‘I can fly that plane back to land’ if they’ve never done it before?” Becerra asked. “Do you give the keys to the governor’s office to someone who hasn’t done this before?”

    He contrasted himself with other candidates in the race by invoking a barking chihuahua behind a chain-link fence.

    “Where’s the bite?” he said, after citing his history, such as suing President Trump 122 times, and leading the sprawling federal health bureaucracy during the pandemic. “You don’t just grow teeth overnight.”

    Calderon and Becerra were among six Democratic candidates who spoke at length to about 150 California leaders of multiple chapters of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.

    The union has more than 200,000 members in California and is being battered by the federal government shutdown, the state’s budget deficit and impending healthcare strikes. AFSCME is a powerful force in California politics, providing troops to knock on voters’ doors and man phone banks.

    The forum came as the gubernatorial field to replace termed-out Gov. Gavin Newsom is in flux.

    Former Vice President Kamala Harris announced earlier this summer that she has opted against running for the seat. Former state Senate leader Toni Atkins suspended her gubernatorial campaign in late September.

    Rumors continue to swirl about whether billionaire businessman Rick Caruso or Sen. Alex Padilla will join the field.

    “I am weighing it. But my focus is first and foremost on encouraging people to vote for Proposition 50,” the congressional redistricting matter on the November ballot, Padilla told the New York Times in an interview published Saturday. “The other decision? That race is not until next year. So that decision will come.”

    Wealthy Democratic businessman Stephen J. Cloobeck and Republican Riverside Sheriff Chad Bianco declined an invitation to participate in the forum, citing prior commitments.

    The union will consider an endorsement at a future conference, said Matthew Maldonado, executive director for District Council 36, which represents 25,000 workers in Southern California.

    Former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa leaned into his longtime roots in labor before he ran for office. But he also alluded to tensions with unions after being elected mayor in 2005.

    Labeled a “scab” when he crossed picket lines the following year during a major city workers’ strike, Villaraigosa also clashed with unions over furloughs and layoffs during the recession. His relationship with labor hit a low in 2010 when Villaraigosa called the city’s teachers union, where he once worked, “the largest obstacle to creating quality schools.”

    “I want you to know something about me. I’m not going to say yes to every darn thing that everybody comes up to me with, including sometimes the unions,” Villaraigosa said. “When I was mayor, they’ll tell you sometimes I had to say no. Why? I wasn’t going to go bankrupt, and I knew I had to protect pensions and the rest of it.”

    He pledged to work with labor if elected governor.

    Labor leaders asked most of the questions at the forum, with all of the candidates being asked about the same topics, such as if they supported and would campaign for a proposed state constitutional amendment to help UC workers with down-payment loans for houses.

    “Hell yes,” said former Rep. Katie Porter of Irvine, who teaches at UC Irvine’s law school and benefited from a program created by state university leaders to allow faculty to buy houses priced below the market rate in costly Orange County because the high cost of housing in the region was an obstacle in recruiting professors.

    “I get to benefit from UC Irvine’s investment in their professionals and professors and professional staff housing, but they are not doing it for everyone,” she said, noting workers such as clerks, janitors and patient-care staff don’t have access to similar benefits.

    State Supt. of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond, who entered the gathering dancing to Dr. Dre and Tupac’s “California Love,” agreed to support the housing loans as well as to walk picket lines with tens of thousands of Kaiser health employees expected to go on strike later this month.

    AFSCME local leaders listening to former U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra speak at a gubernatorial forum Saturday in San Diego.

    (Seema Mehta / Los Angeles Times)

    “I will be there,” Thurmond responded, adding that he had just spoken on the phone with Kaiser’s chief executive, and urged him to meet labor demands about staffing, pay, retirement and benefits, especially in the aftermath of their work during the pandemic. “Just get it done, damn it, and give them what they’re asking for.”

    Former state Controller Betty Yee agreed to both requests as well, arguing that the healthcare employers are focused on profit at the expense of patient care.

    “Yes, absolutely,” she said when asked about joining the Kaiser picket line. “Shame on them. You cannot be expected to take care of others if you cannot take care of yourselves.”

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    Seema Mehta

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  • Former California Senate leader Toni Atkins drops out of 2026 governor’s race

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    Toni Atkins, a former California Assembly speaker and former president pro tempore of the State Senate, is withdrawing her campaign to become the state’s next governor.She was among the crowded pool of Democrats hoping to take Gov. Gavin Newsom’s place once he terms out in 2026. In California, one can only hold the office of governor for two terms.In a Monday message to her supporters, she said it’s important that California Democrats be united in response to President Donald Trump’s policies.”That’s why it’s with such a heavy heart that I’m stepping aside today as a candidate for governor,” Atkins said. “Despite the strong support we’ve received and all we’ve achieved, there is simply no viable path forward to victory. Though my campaign is ending, I will keep fighting for California’s future.”Atkins is considered an LGBTQ+ trailblazer and was the lead author of a constitutional amendment enshrining the right to abortion in California. Voters approved the measure in 2022. “Toni Atkins’ run in this race is only the latest chapter in a career defined by trustworthy service and lifting up others – a legacy that will continue to shape California for generations to come,” shared the California Legislative LGBTQ Caucus in a statement, in part. “As the first openly LGBTQ+ individual and woman to lead both houses of our State Legislature, and as a proud member of our Caucus, Toni has shattered barriers once thought unbreakable and led with compassion, courage, and conviction. We were proud to support her campaign for governor because it was more than a candidacy – it was a powerful testament to how far our community has come and a beacon for what is possible.”Her withdrawal makes her the second prominent Democrat to drop out of the race, with current Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis announcing her dropped gubernatorial campaign in August.Former U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris spent this past summer mulling a run for governor before ultimately deciding against it.Even with Atkins out, several Democrats are still in the race. They include:Former U.S. House Rep. Katie PorterState Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony ThurmondFormer U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier BecerraFormer Los Angeles Mayor Antonio VillaraigosaCalifornia Democratic Party Vice Chair Betty YeeFormer California Assembly Majority Leader Ian CalderonU.S. Sen. Alex Padilla told KCRA 3’s Ashley Zavala that he is also not ruling out a run for governor. His term ends in 2029.| RELATED | The full list of who’s running for California governorThe two prominent Republicans are Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco and former Fox News commentator Steve Hilton.According to a Berkeley IGS Poll last month, Porter held a small lead as first choice, but nearly twice as many voters were undecided.See more coverage of top California stories here | Download our app | Subscribe to our morning newsletter | Find us on YouTube here and subscribe to our channel

    SACRAMENTO, Calif. —

    Toni Atkins, a former California Assembly speaker and former president pro tempore of the State Senate, is withdrawing her campaign to become the state’s next governor.

    She was among the crowded pool of Democrats hoping to take Gov. Gavin Newsom’s place once he terms out in 2026. In California, one can only hold the office of governor for two terms.

    In a Monday message to her supporters, she said it’s important that California Democrats be united in response to President Donald Trump’s policies.

    “That’s why it’s with such a heavy heart that I’m stepping aside today as a candidate for governor,” Atkins said. “Despite the strong support we’ve received and all we’ve achieved, there is simply no viable path forward to victory. Though my campaign is ending, I will keep fighting for California’s future.”

    Atkins is considered an LGBTQ+ trailblazer and was the lead author of a constitutional amendment enshrining the right to abortion in California. Voters approved the measure in 2022.

    “Toni Atkins’ run in this race is only the latest chapter in a career defined by trustworthy service and lifting up others – a legacy that will continue to shape California for generations to come,” shared the California Legislative LGBTQ Caucus in a statement, in part. “As the first openly LGBTQ+ individual and woman to lead both houses of our State Legislature, and as a proud member of our Caucus, Toni has shattered barriers once thought unbreakable and led with compassion, courage, and conviction. We were proud to support her campaign for governor because it was more than a candidacy – it was a powerful testament to how far our community has come and a beacon for what is possible.”

    Her withdrawal makes her the second prominent Democrat to drop out of the race, with current Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis announcing her dropped gubernatorial campaign in August.

    Former U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris spent this past summer mulling a run for governor before ultimately deciding against it.

    Even with Atkins out, several Democrats are still in the race. They include:

    • Former U.S. House Rep. Katie Porter
    • State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond
    • Former U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra
    • Former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa
    • California Democratic Party Vice Chair Betty Yee
    • Former California Assembly Majority Leader Ian Calderon

    U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla told KCRA 3’s Ashley Zavala that he is also not ruling out a run for governor. His term ends in 2029.

    | RELATED | The full list of who’s running for California governor

    The two prominent Republicans are Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco and former Fox News commentator Steve Hilton.

    According to a Berkeley IGS Poll last month, Porter held a small lead as first choice, but nearly twice as many voters were undecided.

    See more coverage of top California stories here | Download our app | Subscribe to our morning newsletter | Find us on YouTube here and subscribe to our channel

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  • In a race back to the moon, U.S. and China see a fast-approaching finish line

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    WASHINGTON — Early in his first term, President Trump held a modest ceremony directing NASA to return humans to the moon for the first time in 50 years. It was a goalpost set without a road map. Veterans of the space community reflected on the 2017 document, conspicuously silent on budgets and timelines, equivocating between excitement and concern.

    Was Trump setting up a giveaway to special interests in the aerospace community? Or was he setting forth a real strategic vision for the coming decade, to secure American leadership in the heavens?

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    It was a return to a plan first proposed by President George W. Bush in 2004, then abandoned by President Obama in 2010, asserting the moon as a vital part of American ambitions in space. Whether to return to the lunar surface at all — or skip it to focus on Mars — was a long-standing debate governing the division of resources at NASA, where every project is precious, holding extraordinary promise for the knowledge of mankind, yet requiring consistent, high-dollar funding commitments from a capricious Congress.

    Eight years on, the debate is over. Trump’s policy shift has blazed a new American trail in space — and spawned an urgent race with China that is fast approaching the finish line.

    Both nations are in a sprint toward manned missions to the lunar surface by the end of this decade, with sights on 2029 as a common deadline — marking the end of Trump’s presidency and, in China, the 80th anniversary of the People’s Republic.

    A "What Will 2030 Look Like?" sign behind Sen. Ted Cruz with American and Chinese astronauts on the moon

    A “What Will 2030 Look Like?” sign behind Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, who chairs the Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee, during a confirmation hearing in April.

    (Kent Nishimura/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

    It is a far different race from the original, against the Soviet Union, when U.S. astronauts inspired the world with a televised landing in 1969. This time, Washington would not just plant a flag and return its astronauts home. Instead, the Americans plan to stay, establishing a lunar base that would test humanity’s ability to live beyond Earth.

    China has similar plans. And with both countries aiming for the same strategic area of the surface — the south pole of the moon, where peaks of eternal light shine alongside crevices of permanent darkness, believed to store frozen water — the stakes of the race are grounded in national security. Whichever nation establishes a presence there first could lay claim to the region for themselves.

    The world's first full-scale model of the crewed pressurized lunar rover

    The world’s first full-scale model of the crewed pressurized lunar rover, to be used in the Artemis moon exploration program, is displayed during a press preview in July.

    (Kazuhiro Nogi/AFP via Getty Images)

    Advocates of the U.S. effort, called the Artemis program, increasingly fear that delays at NASA and its private sector partners, coupled with proposed funding cuts to NASA from the Trump administration, could ensure China’s victory in a race with broad consequences for U.S. interests.

    So it is a race that Trump started. The question is whether he can finish it.

    While U.S. intelligence officials have assessed that Beijing is on track to meet its goals, NASA veterans say that accomplishing a manned mission before the Chinese appears increasingly out of reach.

    “It’s a stretch,” said G. Scott Hubbard, a leader in human space exploration for the last half-century who served as NASA’s first “Mars czar” and former director of the Ames Research Center in Mountain View, Calif. “Bottom line, yes, it is doable. It’ll take an intense effort by the best engineers, and appropriate funding.

    “It’s not inconceivable,” he added.

    Visitors take photos of a space suit during an event marking China's Space Day

    Visitors take photos of a space suit during an event marking China’s Space Day at the Harbin Institute of Technology in Harbin, capital of northeast China’s Heilongjiang province.

    (Wang Jianwei/Xinhua via Getty Images)

    The White House said Trump is committed to making “American leadership in space great again,” noting his first-term push to return U.S. astronauts to the moon and his efforts to deregulate the U.S. space industry. But officials declined to comment on a timeline for the mission or on China’s steady progress.

    “Being first and beating China to the moon matters because it sets the rules of the road,” Sean Duffy, Transportation secretary and acting NASA administrator, told The Times. “We’re committed to doing this right — safely, peacefully, and ahead of strategic competitors — because American leadership on the moon secures our future in space.”

    The success of the Artemis program, Duffy said, is about ensuring the United States leads in space for generations to come. “Those who lead in space lead on Earth,” he added.

    NASA officials, granted anonymity to speak candidly, expressed concern that while leadership on the Artemis program has remained relatively stable, talent on robotics and in other key areas has left the agency at a critical time in the race, with potentially less than two years to go before China launches its first robotic mission to the south pole — a scout, of sorts, for a manned landing to follow.

    A proposal to cut NASA research funding by roughly 47% has gripped officials there with doubt, jeopardizing a sense of job security at the agency and destabilizing a talent pipeline that could prove critical to success.

    In the 1960s, the federal government increased spending on NASA to 4.4% of GDP to secure victory in the first space race.

    “There’s too much uncertainty,” one NASA official said, raising the specter of the Trump administration impounding funds for the agency even if Congress continues to fund it.

    Inside NASA headquarters, Hubbard said, “the feeling right now is terrified uncertainty — everyone is walking on eggshells.”

    “They’re treading water,” he added. “People want to be given clear direction, and they’re not getting it.”

    A Smart Dragon-3 rocket carrying the Geely-05 constellation satellites lifts off from sea

    A Chinese Smart Dragon-3 rocket carrying satellites lifts off from sea on Sept. 9.

    (VCG/VCG via Getty Images)

    China’s long march gets closer

    Beijing conducted a series of tests over the last several weeks viewed in Washington as crucial milestones for China on its journey to the moon.

    A launch of its Lanyue lander, equipped to carry two taikonauts to the lunar surface, “validated” its landing and takeoff system, state media reported. Two subsequent tests of China’s Long March 10, a super-heavy lift rocket designed to jump-start the mission, were a “complete success,” according to the China Manned Space Agency.

    Unlike in the United States, China’s manned space flight program is housed within its military.

    “We have seen them steadily progress on all of the various pieces that they are going to need,” said Dean Cheng, senior advisor to the China program at the U.S. Institute of Peace.

    “You need a vehicle to launch, because current rockets simply don’t have enough throw-weight. They’re testing the lander to carry astronauts to the surface,” Cheng said. “These are key pieces, and significant advances — this is a brand new rocket and a lunar lander with new technology.”

    China initially set a goal for its manned mission by 2035, but has since moved up its plans, an expression of confidence from Beijing and an unusual break from typical party protocol. Now, China aims not only to have completed that mission, but to begin establishing an International Lunar Research Station on its surface, in conjunction with Russia, by 2030.

    They are expected to target the south pole.

    “There’s room for two powers under schemes of coordination, but there’s not room in an uncoordinated environment. There can easily be a competition for resources,” said Thomas González Roberts, an assistant professor of international affairs and aerospace engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

    Landing and takeoff of spacecraft on the moon will kick up lunar dust and rocks, risking the safety of astronauts on the ground and sensitive equipment across a base site — considerations that are likely driving Beijing’s strategy to get there first. Those enjoying the benefits of first arrival could set up generous routes for rovers, equipment at dig sites for deposits, telecommunication assets, and even a nuclear reactor to assert a large area of domain.

    Since his first term, Trump and his aides have sought to avoid a showdown on the lunar surface, drafting a new set of international rules to govern an otherwise untamed frontier. The Artemis Accords “set out a practical set of principles to guide space exploration,” according to the State Department. President Biden embraced and extended the initiative, growing the list of signatories to 56 nations.

    But China is not one of them, prohibited by Congress during the Obama era from cooperating with the United States in space after attempting to steal U.S. technology on intercontinental ballistic missiles and thermonuclear weapons. Instead, Beijing has recruited a small list of countries to join its lunar base program, including Russia, Venezuela, Pakistan, Egypt, Nicaragua, Belarus and South Africa.

    “I don’t think there will be extreme congestion on the moon, but if you really define an area of interest — and there is that, with these peaks of eternal light next to permanently shadowed regions — you could manufacture congestion,” Roberts added.

    “How do you benefit from obfuscation?” he asked. “If you’re the first arrival, you spread yourself out.”

    A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifts off from launchpad 40 at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station

    A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifts off from launch pad 40 at Cape Canaveral, carrying Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus XL cargo spacecraft toward the International Space Station.

    (Manuel Mazzanti/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

    The promise and burden of Musk’s Starship

    Last month, Duffy warned NASA staff that the Trump administration suspects Beijing is planning to deliver a nuclear reactor to power a long-term presence at its lunar base by 2029.

    The move, Duffy said, could allow China to “declare a keep-out zone, which would significantly inhibit the United States from establishing a planned Artemis presence if not there first.” He ordered the agency to collect proposals by October on delivering a U.S. reactor to the surface no later than that year.

    The administration’s success relies on a man whose relationship with Trump has crashed spectacularly to Earth.

    Starship, a super heavy-lift launch vehicle produced by Elon Musk’s SpaceX, is the rocket Trump is relying on to accomplish the Artemis mission. Yet repeated setbacks in the Starship program have raised alarm at NASA over its fundamental constitution. A concerning series of tests have already delayed the U.S. manned launch, known as Artemis III, toward the end of Trump’s term.

    Last month, in its 10th test flight, the rocket finally succeeded in a suborbital mission. But “Starship has yet to reach orbit,” Hubbard said, “and once it reaches orbit, they’ve got to demonstrate microgravity transfer of cryogenic propellant.”

    “That’s something that’s never been done before,” he added. “So to say that they’ll be ready to do all of that in two years is a real stretch.”

    Setbacks are common course in the history of the U.S. space program. But the success of China’s recent tests has shown the Trump administration that NASA and its partners have run out of time for further delays.

    Duffy said that Artemis II, a manned mission to orbit the moon, will take place early next year, overcoming a separate set of design flaws that faced Lockheed Martin’s Orion spacecraft. Artemis III would keep astronauts on the surface for more than a week and deliver payloads to help begin the foundation of a base.

    Whether the Trump administration will commit to the funding and leadership necessary for the mission is an open question. The White House declined to say who within the West Wing is leading the effort. Trump has not named a permanent NASA administrator for Senate confirmation.

    Success on the moon is meant to provide a testing ground and a launching pad for more ambitious, challenging manned missions to Mars. But Trump’s commitment to those ventures are equally in doubt. The administration has proposed canceling funds for a landmark program decades in the making to return samples from the red planet, despite a NASA announcement last week revealed it had discovered signs of ancient Martian life.

    “I’ve been on the inside of it — you waste enormous amounts of time just trying to find workarounds to get funding in to stay on schedule,” Hubbard said. “If you really, really want to beat the Chinese, give NASA the funding and some stability — because you’re not going to beat them if every day, week or month, there’s a different direction, a different budget, a different administrator.

    “And China may still win,” he said, adding: “It would be another claim that they’re the dominant power in the world.”

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    Michael Wilner

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  • California Democrat turns to TikTok to reach Hispanic voters in governor’s race

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    A Democratic candidate for governor of California will be giving TikTok a go, but with a caveat: He’ll only post videos in Spanish.At least for now.Former Biden administration Health Secretary Xavier Becerra is embracing the popular short-video app to target Spanish-language users. His campaign and surveys note that Hispanic adults use TikTok in much higher numbers than Black and white adults.Congress last year passed a ban on TikTok, calling it a potential national security threat, but President Joe Biden, who signed the bill into law and was Becerra’s boss at the time, announced before leaving office that he wouldn’t enforce it. After the Supreme Court ruled the ban constitutional, President Donald Trump suspended it on his first day in office to give the China-based company ByteDance, which opposed the ban, time to find a new buyer.Trump, a Republican, had tried to ban dealings with ByteDance during his first term, but he joined the TikTok platform last year and has millions of followers. He has repeatedly extended the deadline for ByteDance to find a buyer and has hinted occasionally, as recently as Monday, that there was a deal over the future of the social media app, but without offering details. The White House started its own TikTok account last month.Becerra’s new approach is part of an effort by Democrats to counter the rightward swing that was seen last year both in red states such as Texas and Florida and blue states such as California, New Jersey and New York, where Trump improved his numbers among Latinos.The idea is to lock in a key user base by pushing out content early on a platform politicians are still largely experimenting with. The effort comes when the Trump administration is phasing out multilingual services as part of the president’s push to make English the official language of the United States.Candidates running in the 2025 elections in New Jersey and Virginia are already adapting their campaigns to appeal to Hispanics, who may have stayed away from the polls or voted for Trump based on his economic promises. But strategists say that it’s still very much up for debate whether the trend will hold.”It’s critical to communicate in the language and on the platforms where voters spend their time and get their information,” Becerra said in a statement.A 2024 Pew Research Center survey concluded that while TikTok has seen significant user growth in a short time, the demographics were different depending on race and ethnicity. Nearly half of Hispanic adults reported using it compared with 39% of Black adults and 28% of white adults.Becerra’s campaign says it will push out a mix of videos with him speaking directly to the camera, policy explainers and behind-the-scenes clips from the campaign trail. It also plans to collaborate with influencers and publish videos created by supporters. All in Spanish.”The working-class Latinos Democrats need to win back aren’t necessarily going to a Spanish-language website, but they are scrolling and watching vertical video in their free time,” said José Muñoz, a Democratic strategist advising the campaign and a former press secretary at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.In the New Jersey governor’s race this year, both Democratic candidate Mikie Sherrill and Republican candidate Jack Ciattarelli are participating in Spanish-language town halls on Univision, where Hispanic voters will ask the candidates questions. In Virginia, Democratic gubernatorial nominee Abigail Spanberger speaks Spanish in a radio ad about being a mother of three girls who attended public school.”I know how difficult things are for families these days,” she says in Spanish.One of Becerra’s challengers in the 2026 California governor’s race, Katie Porter, has quickly established herself as a leading contender in the Democratic primary and has already built a sizable following on TikTok, with more than half a million followers, compared with about 200,000 followers on Instagram and 164,000 on Facebook.In his introduction video, Becerra says his priority is to make housing more affordable and reduce health care costs.”I am the only candidate in this race who will speak to you in Spanish on this platform,” he said. “But I want this to be a two-way conversation. I want to learn what worries you the most and what you want from the next California governor.”See more coverage of top California stories here | Download our app | Subscribe to our morning newsletter | Find us on YouTube here and subscribe to our channel

    SACRAMENTO, Calif. —

    A Democratic candidate for governor of California will be giving TikTok a go, but with a caveat: He’ll only post videos in Spanish.

    At least for now.

    Former Biden administration Health Secretary Xavier Becerra is embracing the popular short-video app to target Spanish-language users. His campaign and surveys note that Hispanic adults use TikTok in much higher numbers than Black and white adults.

    Congress last year passed a ban on TikTok, calling it a potential national security threat, but President Joe Biden, who signed the bill into law and was Becerra’s boss at the time, announced before leaving office that he wouldn’t enforce it. After the Supreme Court ruled the ban constitutional, President Donald Trump suspended it on his first day in office to give the China-based company ByteDance, which opposed the ban, time to find a new buyer.

    Trump, a Republican, had tried to ban dealings with ByteDance during his first term, but he joined the TikTok platform last year and has millions of followers. He has repeatedly extended the deadline for ByteDance to find a buyer and has hinted occasionally, as recently as Monday, that there was a deal over the future of the social media app, but without offering details. The White House started its own TikTok account last month.

    Becerra’s new approach is part of an effort by Democrats to counter the rightward swing that was seen last year both in red states such as Texas and Florida and blue states such as California, New Jersey and New York, where Trump improved his numbers among Latinos.

    The idea is to lock in a key user base by pushing out content early on a platform politicians are still largely experimenting with. The effort comes when the Trump administration is phasing out multilingual services as part of the president’s push to make English the official language of the United States.

    Candidates running in the 2025 elections in New Jersey and Virginia are already adapting their campaigns to appeal to Hispanics, who may have stayed away from the polls or voted for Trump based on his economic promises. But strategists say that it’s still very much up for debate whether the trend will hold.

    “It’s critical to communicate in the language and on the platforms where voters spend their time and get their information,” Becerra said in a statement.

    A 2024 Pew Research Center survey concluded that while TikTok has seen significant user growth in a short time, the demographics were different depending on race and ethnicity. Nearly half of Hispanic adults reported using it compared with 39% of Black adults and 28% of white adults.

    Becerra’s campaign says it will push out a mix of videos with him speaking directly to the camera, policy explainers and behind-the-scenes clips from the campaign trail. It also plans to collaborate with influencers and publish videos created by supporters. All in Spanish.

    “The working-class Latinos Democrats need to win back aren’t necessarily going to a Spanish-language website, but they are scrolling and watching vertical video in their free time,” said José Muñoz, a Democratic strategist advising the campaign and a former press secretary at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

    In the New Jersey governor’s race this year, both Democratic candidate Mikie Sherrill and Republican candidate Jack Ciattarelli are participating in Spanish-language town halls on Univision, where Hispanic voters will ask the candidates questions. In Virginia, Democratic gubernatorial nominee Abigail Spanberger speaks Spanish in a radio ad about being a mother of three girls who attended public school.

    “I know how difficult things are for families these days,” she says in Spanish.

    One of Becerra’s challengers in the 2026 California governor’s race, Katie Porter, has quickly established herself as a leading contender in the Democratic primary and has already built a sizable following on TikTok, with more than half a million followers, compared with about 200,000 followers on Instagram and 164,000 on Facebook.

    In his introduction video, Becerra says his priority is to make housing more affordable and reduce health care costs.

    “I am the only candidate in this race who will speak to you in Spanish on this platform,” he said. “But I want this to be a two-way conversation. I want to learn what worries you the most and what you want from the next California governor.”

    See more coverage of top California stories here | Download our app | Subscribe to our morning newsletter | Find us on YouTube here and subscribe to our channel

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  • Critics fault Supreme Court for allowing immigration stops that consider race and ethnicity

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    WASHINGTON — Fifty years ago, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that U.S. Border Patrol agents violated the Constitution when they stopped a car on a freeway near San Clemente because its occupants appeared to be “of Mexican ancestry.”

    The 4th Amendment protects Americans from unreasonable searches, the justices said then, and a motorist’s “Mexican appearance” does not justify stopping them to ask about their immigration status.

    But the court sounded a decidedly different note on Monday when it ruled for the Trump administration and cleared the way for stopping and questioning Latinos who may be here illegally. By a 6-3 vote, the justices set aside a Los Angeles judge’s temporary restraining order that barred agents from stopping people based in part on their race or apparent ethnicity.

    “Apparent ethnicity alone cannot furnish reasonable suspicion,” said Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh. “However, it can be a relevant factor when considered along with other salient factors.”

    Critics of the ruling said it had opened the door for authorizing racial and ethnic bias.

    UCLA law professor Ahilan Arulanantham called it “shocking and appalling. I don’t know of any recent decision like this that authorized racial discrimination.”

    Arulanantham noted that Kavanaugh’s writings speak for the justice alone, and that the full court did not explain its ruling on a case that came through its emergency docket.

    By contrast, he and others pointed out that the court under Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. prohibited the use of race or ethnicity as a factor in college admissions.

    “Eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it,” Roberts wrote for a 6-3 majority in 2023. That decision struck down the affirmative action policies at Harvard and the University of North Carolina.

    “Today, the Supreme Court took a step in a badly wrong direction,” Ilya Somin, a George Mason University law professor, wrote on the Volokh Conspiracy blog. “It makes no sense to conclude that racial and ethnic discrimination is generally unconstitutional, yet also that its use is ‘reasonable’ under the 4th Amendment.”

    Reports had already emerged before the decision of ICE agents confronting U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents before they have been able to prove their status, compelling many to begin carrying documentation around at all times.

    In New York on Monday, one man outside a federal court was pushed by ICE agents before being able to show them his identification. He was let go.

    Asked by The Times to respond to increasing concern among U.S. citizens they could be swept up in expanded ICE raids as a result of the ruling, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Tuesday that individuals should not be worried.

    She added that immigration agents conduct targeted operations with the use of law enforcement intelligence.

    “The Supreme Court upheld the Trump administration’s right to stop individuals in Los Angeles to briefly question them regarding their legal status, because the law allows this, and this has been the practice of the federal government for decades,” Leavitt said. “The Immigration and Nationality Act states that immigration officers can briefly stop an individual to question them about their immigration status, if the officer has reasonable suspicion that the individual is illegally present in the United States. And reasonable suspicion is not just based on race — it’s based on a totality of the circumstances.”

    On X, the House Homeland Security Committee Democrats responded to Leavitt’s comments, writing: “ICE has jailed U.S. citizens. The Trump Admin is defending racial profiling. Nobody is safe when ‘looking Hispanic’ is treated as probable cause.”

    Justice Sonia Sotomayor in her dissent pointed out that nearly half of the residents of Greater Los Angeles are Latino and can speak Spanish.

    “Countless people in the Los Angeles area have been grabbed, thrown to the ground and handcuffed because of their looks, their accents, and the fact that they make a living by doing manual labor,” she wrote. “Today, the Court needlessly subjects countless more to these exact same indignities.”

    At issue in the case was the meaning of “reasonable suspicion.”

    For decades, the court has said police and federal agents may stop and question someone if they see something specific that suggests they may be violating the law.

    But the two sides disagreed over whether agents may stop people because they appear to be Latinos and work as day laborers, at car washes or other low-wage jobs.

    President Trump’s lawyers as well as Kavanaugh said agents may make stops based on the “totality of the circumstances” and that may include where people work as well as their ethnicity. They also pointed to the data that suggests about 10% of the people in the Los Angeles area are illegally in the United States.

    Tom Homan, the White House border advisor, said that the legal standard of reasonable suspicion “has a group of factors you must take into consideration,” adding, “racial profiling is not happening at all.”

    It is a “false narrative being pushed,” Homan told MSNBC in an interview, praising the Supreme Court decision. “We don’t arrest somebody or detain somebody without reasonable suspicion.”

    Times staff writer Andrea Castillo, in Washington, contributed to this report.

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  • Bonta ‘disappointed’ by Supreme Court ruling on L.A. immigration raids

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    California’s top law enforcement official has weighed in on Monday‘s controversial U.S. Supreme Court ruling on immigration enforcement.

    Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta condemned the decision, which clears the way for immigration agents to stop and question people they suspect of being in the U.S. illegally based solely on information such as their perceived race or place of employment.

    Speaking at a news conference Monday in downtown L.A., Bonta said he agreed with claims the ACLU made in its lawsuit against the Trump administration. He called indiscriminate tactics used to make immigration arrests a violation of the 4th Amendment, which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures.

    Bonta said he thinks it is unconstitutional “for ICE agents, federal immigration officers, to use race, the inability to speak English, location or perceived occupation to … stop and detain, search, seize Californians.”

    He also decried what he described as the Supreme Court’s increasing reliance on its emergency docket, which he said often obscures the justices’ decision-making.

    “It’s disappointing,” he said. “And the emergency docket has been used more and more. You often don’t know who has voted and how. There’s no argument. There’s no written opinion.”

    Bonta called Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh’s opinion “very disturbing.”

    The Trump-appointed justice argued that because many people who do day labor in fields such as construction or farming, engagement in such work could be useful in helping immigrant agents determine which people to stop.

    Bonta said the practice enables “the use of race to potentially discriminate,” saying “it is disturbing and it is troubling.”

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  • California voters undecided in 2026 governor’s race, but prefer Newsom over Harris for president in 2028

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    Former Vice President Kamala Harris’ decision to forgo a run for California governor has created a wide-open race in next year’s election to run the nation’s most populous state, according to a poll released Tuesday by UC Berkeley and the Los Angeles Times.

    Nearly 4 in 10 registered voters surveyed said they are uncertain about whom they will support in the 2026 contest to replace termed-out Gov. Gavin Newsom.

    “It’s very unsettled. Most of the voters, the plurality in this poll, are undecided,” said Mark DiCamillo, director of the poll, which was conducted by UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies and co-sponsored by The Times. “They don’t really know much about the candidates.”

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    Among those who had a preference, former Democratic Rep. Katie Porter of Irvine had a small edge as the top choice, with the backing of 17%. Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, a Republican, was the only other candidate who received double-digit support, winning the backing of 10% of respondents.

    DiCamillo said Porter’s unsuccessful 2024 U.S. Senate campaign boosted her recognition among California voters, but cautioned that she had a small, early lead more than nine months before the June 2 primary. Bianco’s support was driven by voters focused on crime and public safety, taxes and the budget deficit, perennial concerns among GOP voters, according to the survey.

    Other top candidates for governor — former U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, former state legislative leader Toni Atkins, current California Supt. of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond, former state Controller Betty Yee, wealthy businessman Stephen Cloobeck and conservative commentator Steve Hilton — received single-digit support as voters’ first choice in the poll. A few potential candidates also had single-digit support, including billionaire Los Angeles businessman Rick Caruso, former Trump administration official Ric Grenell and former GOP state Sen. Brian Dahle.

    The survey is among the first independent public polls since Harris announced in late July that she would not run for governor in 2026, dramatically reshuffling the calculus in a crowded race that the former vice president was widely expected to dominate if she mounted a campaign. The poll also took place after Lt. Gov Eleni Kounalakis dropped out of the contest this month to run for state treasurer instead.

    “It’s pretty wide-open,” DiCamillo said. “And when you look at the second-choice preference, first and second together, it’s bunched together.”

    When voters were asked to rank their top two choices, Porter received 22% as the first or second choice, Becerra got 18%, Bianco notched 15% and Hilton won 12%, according to the poll.

    None of the politicians running are well known by Californians compared with the state’s last three governors: Newsom, the former mayor of San Francisco and lieutenant governor, who during his two terms as governor has positioned himself as a foil to President Trump ; former two-term Gov. Jerry Brown, who along with his father left an indelible imprimatur on California’s history; and former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a global celebrity who returned to the Hollywood limelight after he left office, along with launching efforts to fight climate change and support independent redistricting nationwide.

    A pressing question is whether anyone else enters the race, notably Caruso, who has the ability to self-fund a campaign. The deadline to file to run for the seat is March 6.

    Whoever is elected as California’s next governor will face the difficult task of contending with a hostile Trump administration and an electorate looking to the state’s next leader to address its most pressing concerns.

    Economic issues are top of mind among all registered voters, with 36% saying the cost of living is their greatest concern and 25% focusing on the affordability of housing, according to the poll. But there were sharp partisan disparities about other issues. Democrats were more concerned about the state of democracy, climate change and healthcare, while Republicans prioritized crime, taxes and immigration.

    Two of California’s most prominent Democrats, Newsom and Harris, are longtime friends grounded in their Bay Area roots and both viewed as potential 2028 presidential candidates.

    As a potential White House hopeful, Newsom has an edge over Harris among Californians overall as well as the state’s Democrats, according to the poll.

    Roughly 45% of the state’s registered voters said they were very or somewhat enthusiastic about Newsom running, compared with 36% who expressed a similar sentiment about Harris. Additionally, nearly two-thirds of registered voters and 51% of Democrats said Harris should not run for president again after two unsuccessful White House bids — in the primary in 2020 and in the general election in 2024.

    “She lost, which is always a negative when you’re trying to run again,” DiCamillo said. “It’s interesting that even after Harris bowed out of the governor’s race, most Californians don’t really think she should run for president.”

    While he described Newsom’s support as a “mixed bag” among the state’s registered voters, DiCamillo pointed to his strength among Democrats. Nearly 7 of 10 registered Democratic voters in the state said they are very or somewhat enthusiastic about Newsom running for president, compared with 54% who expressed similar feelings about Harris.

    The poll took place during a tumultuous period as Trump’s far-right policies begin to hit their stride.

    Drastic cuts to healthcare, nutrition, reproductive rights and other federal safety-net programs are expected to disproportionately affect Californians. The Trump administration‘s aggressive immigration raids in Los Angeles and across the state and country have caused the nation’s partisan divide to widen, driven by the president’s decision to deploy the military and target all undocumented immigrants, including law-abiding workers. Higher-education institutions across the nation have been targeted by the Trump administration, including UCLA, which is being threatened with a $1-billion fine.

    Californians were surveyed shortly before Democratic state lawmakers, trying to fight the Trump administration’s agenda, voted Thursday to call a special election in November to redraw the state’s congressional districts. The action was taken to counter gerrymandering efforts in Texas and other GOP-led states as both parties fight for control of Congress in next year’s midterm elections.

    The Berkeley IGS poll surveyed 4,950 California registered voters online in English and Spanish from Aug. 11 to 17. The results are estimated to have a margin of error of 2 percentage points in either direction in the overall sample, and larger numbers for subgroups.

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  • OPINION: The resumption of student loan payments means students will need new policies — and our help

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    After a three-year pause prompted by the pandemic, the clock on student loan repayments suddenly started ticking again in September 2023, and forbearance ended last September. For millions of borrowers like Shauntee Russell, the resumption of payments marked a harsh return to financial reality.  

    Russell, a single mother of three from Chicago, had received $127,000 in student loan forgiveness through the SAVE program, and had experienced profound relief at having that $632 monthly payment lifted from her shoulders. SAVE exemplified both the transformative power of debt relief and the urgent need to continue this fight — but now SAVE has been suspended. 

    Such setbacks cannot be the end of our story, as I document in my forthcoming book. The resumption of loan payments, while painful, must serve as a rallying cry rather than a surrender. We stand at a critical juncture. The Supreme Court’s devastating blow to former President Biden’s initial forgiveness plan and the ongoing legal challenges to programs like SAVE have left 45 million borrowers in a state of financial limbo. The fundamental inequities of our higher education system have never been more apparent.  

    Black students graduate with nearly 50 percent more debt than their white counterparts, while women hold roughly two-thirds of all outstanding student debt — a staggering $1.5 trillion that continues to grow. These aren’t just statistics; they represent systemic barriers that prevent entire communities from achieving economic mobility. 

    Related: Interested in innovations in higher education? Subscribe to our free biweekly higher education newsletter. 

    The students I interviewed while reporting on this crisis reveal the human cost of inaction. They include Maria Sanchez, a nursing student in St. Louis who skips meals to save money and can only access textbooks through library loans.  

    Then there is Robert Carroll, who gave up his dorm room in Cleveland and now alternates between friends’ couches just to stay in school.  

    These students represent the millions who are working multiple jobs, sacrificing basic needs and seeing their dreams deferred under the weight of financial pressure. 

    Yet what strikes me most is their resilience and determination. Despite these overwhelming obstacles, these students persist, driven by the same belief that motivated civil rights leaders like Congressman Adam Clayton Powell Jr. — that education is the pathway to economic empowerment and social justice. 

    The current political landscape, with Donald J. Trump’s return to the presidency and a Republican-controlled Congress, presents unprecedented challenges. Plans to dismantle key borrower protections and efforts to eliminate the Department of Education signal a dark period ahead for student debt relief.  

    But history teaches us that progress often comes through sustained grassroots organizing and innovative policy solutions at multiple levels of government and society. 

    State governments have an opportunity to fill the federal void through programs like Massachusetts’ Student Loan Borrower Bill of Rights and Maine’s Student Loan Repayment Tax Credit. 

    Universities must step up with institutional relief programs, as my own institution, Trinity Washington University, did when it settled $1.8 million in student balances during the pandemic. 

    The Black church, which has long understood the connection between education and liberation, continues to provide crucial support through scholarship programs. Organizations like the United Negro College Fund, the Thurgood Marshall College Fund and the National Association for Equal Opportunity in Higher Education remain vital pillars in making higher education accessible. 

    Still, individual, institutional and state efforts, while necessary, are not sufficient. We need comprehensive federal action that treats student debt as what it truly is: a civil rights issue and a moral imperative. The magnitude of the crisis — it affects Americans across every congressional district — creates unique opportunities for bipartisan coalition building. 

    Smart advocates are already reframing the narrative by replacing partisan talking points with economic arguments that resonate across ideological lines: workforce development, entrepreneurship and American competitiveness on the world stage.  

    When student debt prevents nurses from serving rural communities, teachers from working in underserved schools and young entrepreneurs from starting businesses, it becomes an economic drag that affects everyone.  

    Related: How Trump is changing higher education: The view from 4 campuses 

    The path to federal action may require creative approaches — perhaps through tax policy, regulatory changes or targeted relief for specific professions — but the political mathematics of 45 million impacted voters ultimately makes comprehensive action not just morally necessary, but politically inevitable.  

    Student debt relief is not about handouts — it’s about honoring the promise that education should be a ladder up, not an anchor weighing down entire generations; it’s about ensuring that Shauntee Russell’s relief becomes the norm, not the exception. The fight is far from over.  

    The young activists I met at the March on Washington 60th anniversary understood something profound: Their debt is not their fault, but their fight is their responsibility. They carry forward the legacy of those who came before them who believed that access to education should not depend on one’s family wealth, and that crushing debt should not be the price of pursuing knowledge. 

    The arc of history still bends toward justice — but in this era of political resistance, we must be prepared to bend it ourselves through sustained organizing, innovative policy solutions and an unwavering commitment to the principle that education is a right, not a privilege reserved for the wealthy. 

    The resumption of payments is not the end of this story. It’s the beginning of the next chapter in our fight for educational equity and economic justice. And this chapter, like those before it, will be written by the voices of the millions who refuse to let debt define their destiny. 

    Jamal Watson is a professor and associate dean of graduate studies at Trinity Washington University and an editor at Diverse Issues In Higher Education. 

    Contact the opinion editor at opinion@hechingerreport.org. 

    This story about student loan payments was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s weekly newsletter.

    The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.

    Join us today.

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  • TRIO helps low-income students get to and through college. Trump wants to end it

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    MOREHEAD, Ky. — The summer after ninth grade, Zoey Griffith found herself in an unfamiliar setting: a dorm on the Morehead State University campus.

    There, she’d spend the months before her sophomore year taking classes in core subjects including math and biology and electives like oil painting. 

    For Griffith, it was an opportunity, but a scary one. “It was a big deal for me to live on campus at the age of 14,” she said. Morehead State is about an hour from her hometown of Maysville. “I was nervous, and I remember that I cried the first time that my dad left me on move-in day.”

    Her mother became a parent as a teenager and urged her daughter to avoid the same experience. Griffith’s father works as a mechanic, and he frowns upon the idea of higher education, she said. 

    And so college back then seemed a distant and unlikely idea.

    But Griffith’s stepsister had introduced her to a federal program called Upward Bound. It places high school students in college dorms during the summer, where they can take classes and participate in workshops on preparing for the SAT and financial literacy. During the school year, students get tutoring and work on what are called individual success plans.

    Upward Bound students test the robots they built in their robotics class – evaluating for programming and mechanical issues. Credit: Photo courtesy of the Upward Bound Programs

    It’s part of a group of federal programs, known as TRIO, aimed at helping low-income and first-generation students earn a college degree, often becoming the first in their families to do so. 

    So, thanks to that advice from her stepsister, Kirsty Beckett, who’s now 27 and pursuing a doctorate in psychology, Griffith signed up and found herself in that summer program at Morehead State. Now, Griffith is enrolled at Maysville Community and Technical College, with plans to become an ultrasound technician.

    Related: Interested in more news about colleges and universities? Subscribe to our free biweekly higher education newsletter.

    TRIO, once a group of three programs — giving it a name that stuck — is now the umbrella over eight some dating back to 1965. Together, they serve roughly 870,000 students nationwide a year.

    It has worked with millions of students and has bipartisan support in Congress. Some in this part of the Appalachian region of Kentucky, and across the country, worry about students who won’t get the same assistance if President Donald Trump ends federal spending on the program. 

    Students Zoey Griffith, left, and Aniyah Caldwell, right, say the Upward Bound program has been life-changing for them. Upward Bound is one of eight federal programs under the TRIO umbrella. Credit: Michael Vasquez for The Hechinger Report

    A White House budget proposal would eliminate spending on TRIO. The document says “access to college is not the obstacle it was for students of limited means” and puts the onus on colleges to recruit and support students.

    Advocates note that the programs, which cost roughly $1.2 billion each year, have a proven track record. Students in Upward Bound, for example, are more than twice as likely to earn a bachelor’s degree by age 24 than other students from some of the nation’s poorest households, according to the Council for Opportunity in Education. COE is a nonprofit that represents TRIO programs nationwide and advocates for expanded opportunities for first-generation, low-income students.

    For the high school class of 2022, 74 percent of Upward Bound students enrolled immediately in college — compared with only 56 percent of high school graduates in the bottom income quartile. 

    Upward Bound is for high school students, like Griffith. Another TRIO program, Talent Search, helps middle and high school students, without the residential component. One called Student Support Services (SSS) provides tutoring, advising and other assistance to at-risk college students. Another program prepares students for graduate school and doctoral degrees, and yet another trains TRIO staff.

    A 2019 study found that after four years of college, students in SSS were 48 percent more likely to complete an associate’s degree or certificate, or transfer to a four-year institution, than a comparable group of students with similar backgrounds and similar levels of high school achievement who were not in the program. 

    “TRIO has been around for 60 years,” said Kimberly Jones, the president of COE. “We’ve produced millions of college graduates. We know it works.”

    Related: Tracking Trump: His actions to dismantle the Education Department, and more

    Yet Education Secretary Linda McMahon and the White House refer to the programs as a “relic of the past.” 

    Jones countered that census data shows that “students from the poorest families still earn college degrees at rates far below that of students from the highest-income families,” demonstrating continued need for TRIO.

    McMahon is challenging that and pushing for further study of those TRIO success rates. In 2020, the U.S. Government Accountability Office found that even though the Education Department collects data on TRIO participants, “the agency has gaps in its evidence on program effectiveness.” The GAO criticized the Education Department for having “outdated” studies on some TRIO programs, and no studies at all for others. Since then, the department has expanded its evaluations of TRIO. 

    East Main Street in Morehead, Kentucky, just outside of Morehead State’s campus. Credit: Michael Vasquez for The Hechinger Report

    During a Senate subcommittee hearing in June, McMahon acknowledged “there is some effectiveness of the programs, in many circumstances.”

    Still, she said there is not enough research to justify TRIO’s total cost. “That’s a real drawback in these programs,” McMahon said. 

    Now, she is asking lawmakers to eliminate TRIO spending after this year and has already canceled some previously approved TRIO grants. 

    Related: A big reason rural students never go to college: No one recruits them 

    “What are we supposed to do, especially here in eastern Kentucky?” asked David Green, a former Upward Bound participant who is now marketing director for a pair of Kentucky hospitals.

    Green lives in a region that has some of the nation’s highest rates of unemployment, cancer and opioid addiction. “I mean, these people have big hearts, they want to grow,” he added. Cutting these programs amounts to “stifling us even more than we’re already stifled.”

    Green described his experience with TRIO at Morehead State in the mid-1980s as “one of the best things that ever happened to me.” 

    He grew up in a home without running water in Maysville, a city of about 8,000 people. It was on a TRIO trip to Washington, D.C., he recalled, that he stayed in a hotel for the first time. Green remembers bringing two suitcases so he could pack a pillow, sheets and comforter — unaware the hotel room would have its own.

    He met students from other towns and with different backgrounds. Some became lifelong friends. Green learned table manners, the kind of thing often required in business settings. After college, he was so grateful for TRIO that he became one of its tutors, working with the next generation of students. 

    TRIO’s all-encompassing nature makes it unique among college access programs, said Tom Stritikus, the president of Occidental College, a private liberal arts college in Los Angeles. He was previously president of Fort Lewis College, a public liberal arts school in Colorado with a large Native American student population. At both institutions, Stritikus said, he witnessed the effectiveness of TRIO’s methods, which he described as a “soup to nuts” menu of services for at-risk students trying to be the first in their families to earn degrees.

    After participating in the Upward Bound program, David Green has had a successful career, becoming a community leader in his hometown of Maysville, Kentucky. Credit: Michael Vasquez for The Hechinger Report

    Jones, of the Council for Opportunity in Education, said she is cautiously optimistic that Congress will continue funding TRIO, despite the Trump administration’s request. The programs serve students in all 50 states. According to the COE, about 34 percent are white, 32 percent are Black, 23 percent are Hispanic, 5 percent are Asian, and 3 percent are Native American. TRIO’s guidelines require that a majority of participants come from families making less than 150 percent of the federal poverty level. For a family of four living in the contiguous United States, that’s a max of $48,225 a year.

    Related: How Trump is changing higher education: The view from 4 campuses

    In May, Rep. Mike Simpson, an Idaho Republican, called TRIO “one of the most effective programs in the federal government,” which, he said, is supported by “many, many members of Congress.” 

    In June, Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, a Republican from West Virginia and a former TRIO employee, spoke about its importance to her state. TRIO helps “a student that really needs the extra push, the camaraderie, the community,” she said. “I’ve gone to their graduations, and been their speaker, and it’s really quite delightful to see how far they’ve come, in a short period of time.”

    TRIO survived, with its funding intact, when the Senate appropriations committee approved its budget last month. The House is expected to take up its version of the annual appropriations bill for education in early September. Both chambers ultimately have to agree on federal spending, a process that could drag on until December, leaving TRIO’s fate in Congress uncertain. 

    While lawmakers debate its future, the Trump administration could also delay or halt TRIO funding on its own. Earlier this year, the administration took the unprecedented step of unilaterally canceling about 20 previously approved new and continuing TRIO grants.

    At Morehead State, leaders say the university — and the region it serves — need the boost it receives from TRIO: While roughly 38 percent of American adults have earned at least a bachelor’s degree, in Kentucky, that figure is only 16 percent. And, locally, it’s 7 percent, according to Summer Fawn Bryant, the director of TRIO’s Talent Search programs at the university. 

    Summer Fawn Bryant, center, is director of TRIO’s Talent Search programs at Morehead State University in Kentucky. She stands with former TRIO students Alexandria Daniel, left, and Blake Thayer, right. Credit: Photo courtesy of Summer Fawn Bryant

    TRIO works to counter the stigma of attending college that still exists in parts of eastern Kentucky, Bryant said. A student from a humble background who is considering college, she said, might be scolded with the phrase: Don’t get above your raisin’.

    “A parent may say it,” Bryant said. “A teacher may say it.” 

    She added that she’s seen time and again how these programs can turn around the lives of young students facing adversity. 

    Students like Beth Cockrell, an Upward Bound alum from Pineville, Ky., who said her mom struggled with parenting. “Upward Bound stepped in as that kind of co-parent and helped me decide what my major was going to be.” 

    Cockrell went on to earn three degrees at Morehead State and has worked as a teacher for the past 19 years. She now works with students at her alma mater and teaches third grade at Conkwright Elementary School, about an hour away.

    In a few years, 17-year-old Upward Bound student Isaac Bocook plans to join the teaching ranks too — as a middle school social studies teacher. Bocook said he was indecisive about what to study after high school, but he finally figured it out after attending a career fair at Morehead State’s historic Button Auditorium. 

    Upward Bound students visit the Great Lake Science Center in Cleveland for the end-of-summer educational trip. Credit: Photo courtesy of the Upward Bound Programs

    Bocook lives in Lewis County, with just under 13,000 residents and a single public high school. At Morehead State’s TRIO program, Bocook met teenagers from across the entire region, which he said improved his social skills. TRIO also helped him with all kinds of paperwork on the pathway to adulthood. Filling out financial aid forms. Writing scholarship applications. Crafting a resume.

    “I’m just truly grateful to have TRIO, as sort of like a hand to hold,” Bocook said.

    His need for guidance is similar to what students at Morgan County High School in West Liberty, Kentucky, experience, said Lori Keeton, the school guidance counselor. The challenge facing these first-generation students, she said, is that “you just simply don’t know what you don’t know.”

    As the sole counselor for 550 students, Keeton doesn’t have time to help each student navigate the complex college-application process and said she worries that some of her students will apply to fewer colleges, or no colleges at all, if TRIO disappears. 

    TRIO’s Talent Search program serves about 100 students at her high school, and roughly another dozen are part of Upward Bound. Each program has a dedicated counselor who visits regularly to guide and assist students.

    Related: From gangs to college

    Sherry Adkins, an eastern Kentucky native who attended TRIO more than 50 years ago and went on to become a registered nurse, said efforts to cut TRIO spending ignore the long-term benefits. “Do you want all of these people that are disadvantaged to continue like that? Where they’re taking money from society? Or do you want to help prepare us to become successful people who pay lots of taxes?”

    As Washington considers TRIO’s future, program directors like Bryant, at Morehead State, press forward. She has preserved a text message a former student sent her two years ago to remind her of what’s at stake.

    After finishing college, the student was attending a conference on child abuse when a presenter showed a slide that included the quote: “Every child who winds up doing well has had at least one stable and committed relationship with a supportive adult.”

    “Forever thankful,” the student texted Bryant, “that you were that supportive adult for me.”

    Contact editor Nirvi Shah at 212-678-3445, securely on Signal at NirviShah.14 or via email at shah@hechingerreport.org. 

    This story about TRIO was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

    The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.

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    Michael Vasquez

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  • Commentary: Trump wants troops in D.C. But don’t expect him to stop there

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    Well, at least they’re not eating the cats and dogs.

    To hear President Trump tell it, Washington, D.C., has become a barbarous hellhole — worse even than Springfield, Ohio, it would seem, where he accused Black immigrants, many from Somalia, of barbecuing pets last year during the campaign.

    Back then, Trump was just a candidate. Now, he’s the commander in chief of the U.S. military with a clear desire to use troops of war on American streets, whether it’s for a fancy birthday parade, to enforce his immigration agenda in Los Angeles or to stop car thefts in the nation’s capital.

    “It’s becoming a situation of complete and total lawlessness,” Trump said during a Monday news conference, announcing that he was calling up National Guard troops to help with domestic policing in D.C.

    “We’ll get rid of the slums, too. We have slums here. We’ll get rid of them,” he said. “I know it’s not politically correct. You’ll say, ‘Oh, so terrible.’ No, we’re getting rid of the slums where they live.”

    Where “they” live.

    While the use of the military on American streets is alarming, it should be just as scary how blatantly this president is tying race not just to crime, but to violence so uncontrollable it requires military troops to stop it. Tying race to criminality is nothing new, of course. It’s a big part of American history and our justice system has unfortunately been steeped in it, from the Jim Crow era to the 1990s war on drugs, which targeted inner cities with the same rhetoric that Trump is recycling now.

    The difference between that last attack on minorities — started by President Nixon and lasting through Presidents Reagan and George H.W. Bush, also under the guise of law and order — and our current circumstances is that in this instance, the notion of war isn’t just hyperbole. We are literally talking about soldiers in the streets, targeting Black and brown people. Whether they are car wash employees in California or teenagers on school break in D.C., actual crimes don’t seem to matter. Skin color is enough for law enforcement scrutiny, a sad and dangerous return to an era before civil rights.

    “Certainly the language that President Trump is using with regard to D.C. has a message that’s racially based,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, the dean of the UC Berkeley School of Law.

    Chemerinsky pointed out that just a few days ago, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals called out the Trump administration for immigration raids that were unconstitutional because they were basically racial sweeps. But he is unabashed. His calls for violence against people of color are escalating. It increasingly appears that bringing troops to Los Angeles was a test case for a larger use of the military in civilian settings.

    President Trump holds up a chart in front of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth during Monday’s news conference announcing the deployment of troops in Washington, D.C.

    (Alex Brandon / Associated Press)

    “This will go further,” Trump ominously said, making it clear he’d like to see soldiers policing across America.

    “We have other cities also that are bad, very bad. You look at Chicago, how bad it is,” he went on. “We have other cities that are very bad. New York has a problem. And then you have, of course, Baltimore and Oakland. We don’t even mention that anymore, they’re so, they’re so far gone.”

    In reality, crime is dropping across the United States, including in Washington. As the Washington Post pointed out, violent crime rates, including murders, have for the most part been on a downward trend since 2023. But all it takes is a few explosive examples to banish truth from conscientiousness. Trump pointed out some tragic and horrific examples — including the beating of Edward “Big Balls” Coristine, a former employee of the president’s Department of Government Efficiency who was attacked after attempting to defend a woman during a carjacking recently, not far from the White House.

    These are crimes that should be punished, and certainly not tolerated. But the exploitation we are seeing from Trump is a dangerous precedent to justify military force for domestic law enforcement, which until now has been forbidden — or at least assumed forbidden — by the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878.

    This week, just how strong that prohibition is will be debated in a San Francisco courtroom, during the three-day trial over the deployment of troops in Los Angeles. While it’s uncertain how that case will resolve, “Los Angeles could provide a bit of a road map for any jurisdiction seeking to push back against the Trump administration when there’s a potential threat of sending in federal troops,” Jessica Levinson, a constitutional legal scholar at Loyola Law School, told me.

    Again, California coming out as the biggest foil to a Trump autocracy.

    But while we wait in the hopes that the courts will catch up to Trump, we can’t be blind to what is happening on our streets. Race and crime are not linked by anything other than racism.

    Allowing our military to terrorize Black and brown people under the guise of law and order is nothing more than a power grab based on the exploitation of our darkest natures.

    It’s a tactic Trump has perfected, but one which will fundamentally change, and weaken, American justice if we do not stop it.

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    Anita Chabria

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  • Column: Kamala Harris won’t cure what ails the Democratic Party

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    William Henry Harrison, the ninth president of the United States, was the last commander in chief born a British subject and the first member of the Whig Party to win the White House. He delivered the longest inaugural address in history, nearly two hours, and had the shortest presidency, being the first sitting president to die in office, just 31 days into his term.

    Oh, there is one more bit of trivia about the man who gave us the slogan “Tippecanoe and Tyler Too.” Harrison was the last politician to lose his first presidential election and then win the next one (Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson managed that before him). Richard Nixon lost only to win way down the road. (Grover Cleveland and Trump are the only two to win, lose and then win again.)

    Everyone else since Harrison’s era who lost on the first try and ran again in the next election lost again. Democrat Adlai Stevenson and Republican Thomas Dewey ran twice and lost twice. Henry Clay and William Jennings Bryan each ran three times in a row and lost (Clay ran on three different party tickets). Voters, it seems, don’t like losers.

    These are not encouraging results for Kamala Harris, who announced last week she will not be running for governor in California, sparking speculation that she wants another go at the White House.

    But history isn’t what she should worry about. It’s the here and now. The Democratic Party is wildly unpopular. It’s net favorability ( 30 points) is nearly triple the GOP’s (11 points). The Democratic Party is more unpopular than any time in the last 35 years. When Donald Trump’s unpopularity with Democrats should be having the opposite effect, 63% of Americans have an unfavorable view of the party.

    Why? Because Democrats are mad at their own party — both for losing to Trump and for failing to provide much of an obstacle to him now that he’s in office. As my Dispatch colleague Nick Cattogio puts it, “Even Democrats have learned to hate Democrats.”

    It’s not all Harris’ fault. Indeed, the lion’s share of the blame goes to Joe Biden and the coterie of enablers who encouraged him to run again.

    Harris’ dilemma is that she symbolizes Democratic discontent with the party. That discontent isn’t monolithic. For progressives, the objection is that Democrats aren’t fighting hard enough. For the more centrist wing of the party, the problem is the Democrats are fighting for the wrong things, having lurched too far left on culture war and identity politics. Uniting both factions is visceral desire to win. That’s awkward for a politician best known for losing.

    Almost the only reason Harris was positioned to be the nominee in 2024 was that she was a diversity pick. Biden was explicit that he would pick a woman and, later, an African American running mate. And the same dynamic made it impossible to sideline her when Biden withdrew.

    Of course, most Democrats don’t see her race and gender as a problem, and in the abstract they shouldn’t. Indeed, every VP pick is a diversity pick, including the white guys. Running mates are chosen to appeal to some part of a coalition.

    So Harris’ problem isn’t her race or sex; it’s her inability to appeal to voters in a way that expands the Democratic coalition. For Democrats to win, they need someone who can flip Trump voters. She didn’t lose because of low Democratic turnout, she lost because she’s uncompelling to a changing electorate.

    Her gauzy, often gaseous, rhetoric made her sound like a dean of students at a small liberal arts college. With the exception of reproductive rights, her convictions sounded like they were crafted by focus groups, at a time when voters craved authenticity. Worse, Harris acquiesced to Biden’s insistence she not distance herself from him.

    Such clubby deference to the establishment combined with boilerplate pandering to progressive constituencies — learned from years of San Francisco and California politics — makes her the perfect solution to a problem that doesn’t exist.

    Her choice to appear on Stephen Colbert’s “The Late Show” for her first interview since leaving office was telling. CBS recently announced it was terminating both Colbert and the show, insisting it was purely a business decision. But the reason for the broadcast network’s decision stemmed in part from the fact that Colbert narrow-casts his expensive show to a very small, very anti-Trump slice of the electorate.

    “I don’t want to go back into the system. I think it’s broken,” Harris lamented to Colbert, decrying the “naïve” and “feckless” lack of “leadership” and the “capitulation” of those who “consider themselves to be guardians of our system and our democracy.”

    That’s all catnip to Colbert’s ideologically committed audience. But that’s not the audience Democrats need to win. And that’s why, if Democrats nominate her again, she’ll probably go down in history as an answer to a trivia question. And it won’t be “Who was the 48th president of the United States?”

    @JonahDispatch

    Insights

    L.A. Times Insights delivers AI-generated analysis on Voices content to offer all points of view. Insights does not appear on any news articles.

    Perspectives

    The following AI-generated content is powered by Perplexity. The Los Angeles Times editorial staff does not create or edit the content.

    Ideas expressed in the piece

    • The Democratic Party faces historic unpopularity, with a net favorability 30 points lower than Republicans, driven by widespread dissatisfaction among its own base over losses to Trump and perceived ineffectiveness in opposing his policies[1].
    • Kamala Harris’ political challenges stem from internal Democratic factions: progressives blame her for insufficient fight while centrists view her as emblematic of leftward shifts on cultural issues, both detractors united by a desire to win[1].
    • Harris’s VP selection was viewed as a diversity-driven symbolic gesture by Biden, limiting her ability to build broader appeal beyond traditional Democratic coalitions, as seen in her 2024 loss[1].
    • Her communication style is criticized as overly generic and focus-group-driven, lacking authenticity required to attract Trump voters, while her ties to Biden and reluctance to distance herself from his leadership are seen as electoral liabilities[1].
    • Historical precedents suggest candidates who lose once rarely regain viability in subsequent elections, with Harris’ potential 2028 bid viewed skeptically in light of this pattern[1].
    • Democratic messaging under Harris risks pandering to niche progressive audiences (e.g., her Colbert interview appeal) rather than expanding outreach to swing voters, exacerbating perceptions of elitism[1].

    Different views on the topic

    • Harris remains a strong potential front-runner in the 2026 California governor’s race, with analysts noting her viability despite a crowded field and lingering questions about Biden’s health influencing her decision-making[1].
    • The Democratic Party is actively reassessing its strategy post-2024, focusing on reconnecting with working-class voters and addressing core issues like affordability and homelessness, suggesting a shift toward pragmatic problem-solving[1].
    • Harris’ announcement to forgo the governor’s race has been interpreted as positioning for a 2028 presidential bid, reflecting her ability to navigate political calculations with long-term ambition[2].
    • Internal criticisms, such as Antonio Villaraigosa’s demand for transparency on Biden’s health, reflect broader party debates about leadership accountability rather than a rejection of Harris’ Senate or VP legacy[1].
    • Other rising Democratic voices, like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Gov. Tim Walz, embody alternatives to Harris’ messaging, indicating the party’s capacity to diversify leadership beyond established figures[2].

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    Jonah Goldberg

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  • Wealthy first-time candidate Cloobeck drops $1.4 million on TV ads in the California governor’s race

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    Wealthy first-time political candidate Stephen J. Cloobeck is spending $1.4 million on television ads starting Tuesday — the first barrage of cable and broadcast messaging that Californians will likely be bombarded with in next year’s governor’s election.

    The ad features images of and commentary about President Trump and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

    “Trump is for them,” Cloobeck says in the 30-second ad, as a picture flashes on the screen of Trump, flanked by Epstein, and his long-time accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell, who was convicted in 2021 of helping Epstein sexually abuse girls. “Stephen Cloobeck is for you.”

    The candidate confirmed the size of the ad buy on Monday. Public records of advertising purchases show that Cloobeck bought space in every California market on cable, as well as broadcast television time in Sacramento. He also bought time in New York City and Washington, D.C. — as well as West Palm Beach, the location of President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago.

    A campaign advisor confirmed that the ads would run through Monday and that he was also launching a social-media effort.

    “I will always Fight for California. All Californians deserve the contract to be fulfilled for an affordable livable workable state,” Cloobeck said in a text message. “Watch [the ad] and you will see how a conservative Democrat fights for All Californians.”

    The move comes after former Vice President Kamala Harris opted last week against running for governor, leaving a race without a clear front-runner with a large field that is widely unknown to most California voters.

    The candidates need to raise their name recognition among California’s 22.9 million registered voters, which makes Cloobeck’s early advertising understandable, according to Democratic strategists.

    “It’s unprecedented for regular business. Not for this race,” said Democratic media buyer Sheri Sadler, who is not currently affiliated with a candidate in the contest.

    It’s also not unprecedented for Cloobeck, a Beverly Hills philanthropist and businessman. He announced his gubernatorial run in November with a fusillade of ads and billboards the morning after the 2024 presidential election bearing his slogan, “California, Get a Cloo,” and the California bear.

    While the 63-year-old’s exact net worth is unclear, he made his fortune in real estate and hospitality. He founded Diamond Resorts International, a timeshare and vacation property company, which he sold in 2016. Earlier, he appeared on several episodes of the reality-television show “Undercover Boss,” which sends executives in disguise into low-level jobs at their businesses.

    While Cloobeck has not run for office before, he has long been a prodigious Democratic donor and fundraiser. He also played a critical role in renaming the airport in Las Vegas after the late Sen. Harry Reid, whom he describes as a father figure. The bookshelves at his sprawling Beverly Hills mansion are lined with pictures of himself with Democratic presidents and many other prominent members of the party.

    Cloobeck announced last week that he was contributing $10 million to his campaign, on top of the $3 million he initially seeded it with. His wealth was on vivid display at the California Democratic Party‘s spring convention, where canvassers who said they were paid $25 per hour wore royal blue shirts emblazoned with his name chanted his name. Cloobeck said at the time that his campaign had spent “probably a couple hundred thousand dollars” on the effort.

    Times staff Writer Laura J. Nelson contributed to this report.

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    Seema Mehta

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