One of the great conceits of California is its place on the cutting edge — of fashion, culture, technology, politics and other facets of the ways we live and thrive.
Not so with Proposition 50.
The redistricting measure, which passed resoundingly Tuesday, doesn’t break any ground, chart a fresh course or shed any light on a better pathway forward.
It is, to use a favorite word of California’s governor, merely the latest iteration of what has come to define today’s politics of fractiousness and division.
In fact, the redistricting measure and the partisan passions it stirred offer a perfect reflection of where we stand as a splintered country: Democrats overwhelming supported it. Republicans were overwhelmingly opposed.
And if Proposition 50 plays out as intended, it could make things worse, heightening the country’s polarization and increasing the animosity in Washington that is rotting our government and politics from the inside out.
You’re welcome.
The argument in favor of Proposition 50 — and it’s a strong one — is that California was merely responding to the scheming and underhanded actions of a rogue chief executive who desperately needs to be checked and balanced.
With GOP control of the House hanging by the merest of threads, Trump set out to boost his party’s prospects in the midterm election by browbeating Texas Republicans into redrawing the state’s congressional lines long before it was time. Trump’s hope next year is to gain as many as five of the state’s House seats.
And with that the redistricting battle was joined, as states across the country looked to rejigger their congressional boundaries to benefit one party or the other.
The upshot is that even more politicians now have the luxury of picking their voters, instead of the other way around, and if that doesn’t bother you maybe you’re not all that big a fan of representative democracy or the will of the people.
Was it necessary for Newsom, eyes fixed on the White House, to escalate the red-versus-blue battle? Did California have to jump in and be a part of the political race to the bottom? We won’t know until November 2026.
History and Trump’s sagging approval ratings — especially regarding the economy — suggest that Democrats are well positioned to gain at least the handful of seats needed to take control of the House, even without resorting to the machinations of Proposition 50.
There is, of course, no guarantee.
Gerrymandering aside, a pending Supreme Court decision that could gut the Voting Rights Act might deliver Republicans well over a dozen seats, greatly increasing the odds of the GOP maintaining power.
What is certain is that Proposition 50 will in effect disenfranchise millions of California Republicans and Republican-leaning voters who already feel overlooked and irrelevant to the workings of their home state.
Too bad for them, you might say. But that feeling of neglect frays faith in our political system and can breed a kind of to-hell-with-it cynicism that makes electing and cheering on a “disruptor” like Trump seem like a reasonable and appealing response.
(And, yes, disenfranchisement is just as bad when it targets Democratic voters who’ve been nullified in Texas, North Carolina, Missouri and other GOP-run states.)
Worse, slanting political lines so that one party or the other is guaranteed victory only widens the gulf that has helped turn Washington’s into its current slough of dysfunction.
The lack of competition means the greatest fear many lawmakers have is not the prospect of losing to the other party in a general election but rather being snuffed out in a primary by a more ideological and extreme challenger.
Witness the government shutdown, now in its record 36th day. Then imagine a Congress seated in January 2027 with even more lawmakers guaranteed reelection and concerned mainly with appeasing their party’s activist base.
The animating impulse behind Proposition 50 is understandable.
With the midterm election still nearly a year off — and the 2028 presidential contest eons away — many of those angry or despondent over the benighted state of our union desperately wanted to do something to push back.
Proposition 50, however, was a shortsighted solution.
Newsom and other proponents said the retaliatory ballot measure was a way of fighting fire with fire. But that smell in the air today isn’t victory.
Americans are famous for our creative dissents against taxes — just take the Boston Tea Party. Last week, a New Jersey man carried on the tradition at a town meeting by dancing to express his response to a property tax hike.In a video livestreamed on Cranford TV-35, Will Thilly, a candidate for the Cranford township committee, gets out of his seat and dances his way up to the podium. An official tells him, “I started your time,” and Thilly holds up his finger as he continues dancing.He pauses to grab a bottle of water and pieces of paper before asking the audience about their weekends. “Did you know I could do the backspin? Anybody?” he says. “Wanna see me do the backspin? No? I’m gonna do the backspin.”After proceeding to do so and unsuccessfully motioning for the audience to applaud, Thilly jumps into his remarks.”Well, why did our taxes go up so much? We were told the referendum was going to bring it up for an average household about $400,” he says. “And mine went up, like, 900 bucks. I think we were told, like, that was from the schools or something? But the school referendum said it would only go up, like I said, 400 bucks on an average assessed home.””So I wanted to know why it went up, if it did much more than that,” he goes on. “And what extra expenses were incurred by the schools that weren’t told to the public when we voted on that referendum?”Thilly then moonwalks back to his seat.”Thank you, Mr. Thilly,” Cranford Mayor Terrence Curran then says, according to NBC. “I like the interpretative dance.”Cranford is a town of less than 25,000 people as of the 2020 census, located 18 miles southwest of Manhattan. Thilly’s campaign website says he is running to “tell you the truth, to fight for what you need, and to defend our Town and schools,” explaining that he opposes “$150 million in 30-year tax exemptions to billionaire developers” for a development in his town.
Americans are famous for our creative dissents against taxes — just take the Boston Tea Party. Last week, a New Jersey man carried on the tradition at a town meeting by dancing to express his response to a property tax hike.
In a video livestreamed on Cranford TV-35, Will Thilly, a candidate for the Cranford township committee, gets out of his seat and dances his way up to the podium. An official tells him, “I started your time,” and Thilly holds up his finger as he continues dancing.
He pauses to grab a bottle of water and pieces of paper before asking the audience about their weekends.
“Did you know I could do the backspin? Anybody?” he says. “Wanna see me do the backspin? No? I’m gonna do the backspin.”
After proceeding to do so and unsuccessfully motioning for the audience to applaud, Thilly jumps into his remarks.
“Well, why did our taxes go up so much? We were told the referendum was going to bring it up for an average household about $400,” he says. “And mine went up, like, 900 bucks. I think we were told, like, that was from the schools or something? But the school referendum said it would only go up, like I said, 400 bucks on an average assessed home.”
“So I wanted to know why it went up, if it did much more than that,” he goes on. “And what extra expenses were incurred by the schools that weren’t told to the public when we voted on that referendum?”
Thilly then moonwalks back to his seat.
“Thank you, Mr. Thilly,” Cranford Mayor Terrence Curran then says, according to NBC. “I like the interpretative dance.”
Cranford is a town of less than 25,000 people as of the 2020 census, located 18 miles southwest of Manhattan. Thilly’s campaign website says he is running to “tell you the truth, to fight for what you need, and to defend our Town and schools,” explaining that he opposes “$150 million in 30-year tax exemptions to billionaire developers” for a development in his town.
The Utah Legislature will need to rapidly redraw the state’s congressional boundaries after a judge ruled Monday that the Republican-controlled body circumvented safeguards put in place by voters to ensure districts aren’t drawn to favor any party.Related video above — Get the Facts: Redistricting or Gerrymandering? The current map, drawn in 2021, divides Salt Lake County — the state’s population center and a Democratic stronghold — among the state’s four congressional districts, all of which have since elected Republicans by wide margins.District Court Judge Dianna Gibson made few judgments on the content of the map but declared it unlawful because lawmakers had weakened and ignored an independent commission established by voters to prevent partisan gerrymandering. The nature of the violation lies in “the Legislature’s refusal to respect the people’s exercise of their constitutional lawmaking power and to honor the people’s right to reform their government,” Gibson said in her ruling.New maps will need to be drawn quickly for the 2026 midterm elections. Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson, the state’s top elections official, asked the courts for the case to be finalized by November to leave time for the process before candidates start filing in early January. But appeals promised by Republican lawmakers could help them run out the clock to possibly delay adopting new maps until 2028.The ruling creates uncertainty in a state that was thought to be a clean sweep for the GOP as the party is preparing to defend its slim majority in the U.S. House. Nationally, Democrats need to net three seats next year to take control of the chamber. The sitting president’s party tends to lose seats in the midterms, as was the case for President Donald Trump in 2018.Trump has urged several Republican-led states to add winnable seats for the GOP. In Texas, a plan awaiting Gov. Greg Abbott’s approval includes five new districts that would favor Republicans. Ohio Republicans already were scheduled to revise their maps to make them more partisan, and Indiana, Florida and Missouri may choose to make changes. Some Democrat-led states say they may enter the redistricting battle, but so far only California has taken action to offset GOP gains in Texas.
The Utah Legislature will need to rapidly redraw the state’s congressional boundaries after a judge ruled Monday that the Republican-controlled body circumvented safeguards put in place by voters to ensure districts aren’t drawn to favor any party.
Related video above — Get the Facts: Redistricting or Gerrymandering?
The current map, drawn in 2021, divides Salt Lake County — the state’s population center and a Democratic stronghold — among the state’s four congressional districts, all of which have since elected Republicans by wide margins.
District Court Judge Dianna Gibson made few judgments on the content of the map but declared it unlawful because lawmakers had weakened and ignored an independent commission established by voters to prevent partisan gerrymandering. The nature of the violation lies in “the Legislature’s refusal to respect the people’s exercise of their constitutional lawmaking power and to honor the people’s right to reform their government,” Gibson said in her ruling.
New maps will need to be drawn quickly for the 2026 midterm elections. Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson, the state’s top elections official, asked the courts for the case to be finalized by November to leave time for the process before candidates start filing in early January. But appeals promised by Republican lawmakers could help them run out the clock to possibly delay adopting new maps until 2028.
The ruling creates uncertainty in a state that was thought to be a clean sweep for the GOP as the party is preparing to defend its slim majority in the U.S. House. Nationally, Democrats need to net three seats next year to take control of the chamber. The sitting president’s party tends to lose seats in the midterms, as was the case for President Donald Trump in 2018.
Trump has urged several Republican-led states to add winnable seats for the GOP. In Texas, a plan awaiting Gov. Greg Abbott’s approval includes five new districts that would favor Republicans. Ohio Republicans already were scheduled to revise their maps to make them more partisan, and Indiana, Florida and Missouri may choose to make changes. Some Democrat-led states say they may enter the redistricting battle, but so far only California has taken action to offset GOP gains in Texas.
WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald Trump’s election victory, combined with the Republican takeover of the Senate, may extend conservative control of the Supreme Court for another two decades.
For much of the last four years, progressives focused their energies on proposals to expand the size of the court or impose term limits on the current justices. These ideas to restructure the court depended on Democrats winning sweeping power in both the White House and the Senate.
Instead, Republicans will be in charge and positioned to preserve the conservative grip on the high court long after Trump leaves Washington.
The two oldest justices are also its most conservative jurists. Clarence Thomas, 76, joined the court 33 years ago and would become the longest-serving justice in the court’s history early in 2028. Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., appointed in 2006, is 74.
If Vice President Kamala Harris had won the election, there was little chance they would have chosen to retire and have their seats filled by a liberal.
But conservative analysts think it is quite likely Alito or Thomas or both will retire during Trump’s second term.
Ed Whelan, who writes regularly in the National Review, said he expects Alito will leave first.
“I certainly have no inside knowledge. But I’d bet big on it,” he said.
He thinks the death of liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg while Trump was in office will persuade Thomas and Alito they should not stay too long. She resisted calls from liberals to step down during President Obama’s last term, betting Hillary Clinton would succeed him in 2016. Instead Trump won, and a liberal seat flipped to a conservative.
Retirements by Alito or Thomas would allow Trump to appoint one or two far younger conservatives, likely selecting from those he appointed to the federal appeals courts during his first term.
Once confirmed, they could potentially sit for 30 years.
If Democrats had kept control of the Senate, they could have blocked Trump nominees they considered extreme. But Trump and his legal advisers will not face that hurdle.
In his first term, Trump appointed three conservative justices with the help of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).
When Justice Antonin Scalia died early in 2016, McConnell prevented Obama from filling his seat.
Early in 2017, Trump chose Neil M. Gorsuch, who is now 57, to fill Scalia’s seat. When Ginsburg died weeks before the 2020 election, McConnell cleared the way for Trump’s quick appointment of Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who is now 52.
Along with Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, 59, they cast the key votes to overturn the right to abortion in 2022, and in July, to give Trump and other presidents a broad immunity from criminal charges for their actions while in office.
All three of them can expect to serve another 20 years on the court.
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., the sixth conservative, will turn 70 in January. The oldest of the court’s three liberals, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, had her 70th birthday in June.
While neither of them are seen as likely candidates to step down in the next four years, Trump could appoint another young conservative if either of them retired.
President Biden will leave office having made a historic but singular appointment in Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the court’s first Black woman.
Republicans are expected to retake control of the U.S. Senate, creating obstacles for Vice President Kamala Harris if she is elected president and a potential glide path for former President Trump’s agenda if he wins the White House.
The GOP’s edge is created by a number of factors. Several of the Democratic senators up for reelection were initially elected during years favorable to their party, such as the 2006 backlash to then-President George W. Bush or during then-President Obama’s successful 2012 reelection campaign — and are facing headwinds for the first time.
“The nature of the calendar of Senate elections almost always gives one party or other an advantage in every cycle. Democrats have a lot more seats up this year and so they’re working at a disadvantage,” said Dan Schnur, a politics professor at USC, UC Berkeley and Pepperdine.
“One other way of looking at it is that 2018 was Trump’s first midterm election, and it ended up being a very good year for the Democrats,” Schnur added. “But now many of the senators who benefited from that climate six years ago are facing a much more difficult challenge this year.”
Additionally, Republicans recruited a number of wealthy candidates who have self-funded their campaigns or raised large sums of money. For example, Wisconsin Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin is being challenged by GOP Sen. Eric Hovde, who has put $20 million into his campaign, more than her last two rivals spent combined, said Jessica Taylor, the Senate and governors editor for the Cook Political Report, a nonpartisan analyst of races.
“Our current projection is Republicans picking up between two and five seats,” Taylor said.
Democrats currently control 51 seats of the 100-member Senate because the three independents in the body caucus with Democrats. Republicans control 49 seats.
Which states are the best pickup opportunities for Republicans?
One of the Senate’s three independents is Sen. Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, who is retiring. Republicans are expected to easily win this open seat in a state Trump carried by nearly 70% of the vote in 2020.
Montana, where Republican businessman Tim Sheehy is challenging Democratic incumbent Jon Tester, is also expected to be a likely GOP pickup. Sheehy leads Tester by an average of 6.5 percentage points in recent polling compiled by Real Clear Politics.
Ohio Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown was also believed to be vulnerable in a challenge by Republican businessman Bernie Moreno. The race is in effect tied in recent polling. Democrats have been hammering Moreno over a statement he was caught making on camera saying abortion rights shouldn’t be an issue for women over age 50. Taylor points to a new Iowa poll that showed a Democratic shift among older women that could boost Brown if it is happening in Ohio.
What other states are being watched closely?
Wisconsin’s Baldwin has a 1.4-point edge over Hovde in recent polling, according to Real Clear Politics. Contests in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Arizona and Nevada have similar tight contests, though the two Western states show an interesting dynamic:
Democrats Rep. Ruben Gallego of Arizona and Sen. Jacky Rosen of Nevada have narrow leads over their Republican challengers, but both outpace how Harris is expected to do in their respective states.
GOP incumbents are facing notable challenges in the red states of Texas and Nebraska.
In Texas, GOP Sen. Ted Cruz holds a 4-point lead over Democratic Rep. Colin Allred in recent polling, but the race is tight for such a traditional Republican state.
In Nebraska, incumbent GOP Sen. Deb Fischer narrowly leads independent union leader Dan Osborn.
What does control of the Senate mean for the next president?
Schnur and Taylor agreed that a Republican-controlled Senate would allow Trump to enact the policies he has discussed throughout his campaign.
“If it’s a Republican Senate, you could certainly see Republicans passing a lot of Trump’s priorities — no tax on tips, tariffs, following his foreign policy guidelines,” Taylor said.
Schnur added that the filibuster would almost certainly be eliminated and the body would become “almost an assembly line” for Trump’s judicial nominees.
The exact opposite is true if Harris wins the White House, they said.
“If President Harris was given a Republican Senate, she would be the first president in almost 40 years not to take office with a Congress of the same party,” Schnur said. “So from Day One, it would be much more difficult for her to move her agenda forward.”
Over a year into enacting a policy requiring instructors to tell parents if their children request to go by a different name or pronouns, Katy ISD officials report that there have been 36 instances where officials have made such notifications.
This number is an increase compared to the 19 notifications made roughly two months after the policy was adopted in August 2023. According to a public information request filed by Students Engaged in Advancing Texas — a student-led advocacy group — there have been no identified cases where a family member was not informed of a name or pronoun change.
The district declined to provide information regarding how and why decisions to notify were made, indicating that further details would be located in student files and confidential education records, which the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act protects.
“It’s sad to see this number increasing, and students are standing up for those who can’t advocate for themselves,” Cameron Samuels, executive director of SEAT and a former Katy ISD student, said. “We really hope this won’t be a norm for future generations.”
The controversial “gender fluidity” measure requires teachers to receive written permission from parents or guardians to use the name or different pronouns that a student requests to go by.
However, it states that instructors can choose not to refer to a student by their chosen name or pronouns despite parental consent.
One of the main arguments board president Victor Perez and fellow trustees Mary Ellen Cuzela, Amy Thieme and Morgan Calhoun made during the discussion before voting to approve the policy was that it reinforces the prioritization of parents’ rights.
The trustees in favor of the measure also indicated that it would prevent teachers from interfering in parent-child relationships by withholding such information from students’ parents or guardians.
Jarred Burton, a senior and president of Tompkins High School Sexuality and Gender Alliance, said those on the board who backed the policy’s passage are likely frustrated as the number of notifications going out to parents may not be as high as they initially anticipated.
“It depends on the school and the teachers,” Burton said. “I have heard of a lot of teachers enforcing it, but a lot of teachers also see the danger in it, and they’re scared to enforce it.”
“It’s not what they [trustees who supported it] wanted. It’s not what they envisioned,” he added. “I think it also shows how much of a waste of time it is for the district to constantly do all these things and make all these policies that they should know their employees, constituents and stakeholders don’t stand for.”
Trustees Rebecca Fox, Dawn Champagne and Lance Redmon voted against passing the policy. During the August 2023 board meeting, Fox said it would “make problems worse” for the district, similar to the book policy and ban of websites like the Trevor Project, which triggered a complaint against the district.
Fox’s concerns were actualized when SEAT filed a Title IX complaint against the district in November 2023. In May 2024, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights opened an investigation into the matter.
In an October 2023 report by the Houston Press, James Onambele, a former Katy ISD student who identifies as a transgender male, described the most harmful part of the policy as the “outing” or revealing students’ identities to their parents who may not be accepting or aware of their child’s situation.
Onambele noted that if the policy had been in place while he was a student, it would’ve made him “less open,” and being referred to as a girl would’ve made him “super uncomfortable.” He added that not feeling like he had anyone to talk to would’ve harmed his development.
“It seems like such a small difference, but in reality, it would’ve affected my life if I didn’t have those few teachers who were allowed to ask me, ‘What are your pronouns? ‘What is your name,’ Without spreading my business,” Onambele said.
Under the policy, employees are prohibited from asking for students’ pronouns and discussing “gender fluidity” or teaching such topics. Students are also required to use bathrooms and other facilities that align with their sex assigned at birth.
Many LGBTQ rights advocates who have spoken out against the policy warn trustees of assuming all parents are supportive their kids’ choices.
Photo by Faith Bugenhagen
Basil Chen, a senior and president of the gender and sexuality alliance at Jordan High School, said many transgender friends stopped introducing their names to their new teachers due to fear they won’t accept them.
Chen’s friends have what Chen described as an “it is what is” attitude toward not being able to identify the way they want to.
“We tend to joke about it being a ‘Texas’ thing, probably just to feel better about it,” Chen wrote to the Houston Press via text. “I’ve heard people talk about how much it hurts to be referred to by the wrong name, but ultimately there’s not much we can do about it since we’re not the ones in power and safety is always the top priority.”
Chen said it is discouraging to see participation dwindle at GASA meetings because students fear being seen attending them. Last year, the group had roughly 90 members, only about 10 of whom consistently showed up for meetings after the policy passed.
The group has not met this school year due to logistical issues with sponsorships. Participation further slowed over the summer, with only one to three students showing up to events. Chen added that when recruiting new people to join, many say something along the lines of “I’d love to join, but my parents will get mad if they find out.”
The policy has a clause that makes an exception for notification to parents and guardians in cases of “suspected abuse,” but it does not specify the guidelines for making this distinction.
One staff member per campus is responsible for processing and sending the notifications. Burton said the implementation of the policy varies across the district and is largely contingent on a campus’s LGBTQ-friendliness.
However, Burton indicated that he heard from peers that teachers felt emboldened to purposely address students using their “deadname” or incorrect pronouns when the policy first passed.
Burton referred to one incident in which a student arrived at class following the board’s vote to adopt the measure and was told by an instructor that they would be “going back to” using the student’s deadname. The student left the room and subsequently dropped out of the district.
Burton hasn’t heard of many more instances like these. He echoed Chen’s sentiments, saying there is likely a direct correlation between this and students concealing their identities to protect themselves.
“Other than the outing of students — which is bad on its own — I think the precedent it creates that you cannot be safe being yourself in the classroom is doing a lot of damage to the newer students,” Burton said.
In a statement to the Houston Press, Samuels expressed concern for the 36 students affected by these notifications.
“This 36 is not only an abstract number but 36 students’ livelihoods. Each of these parental notifications holds a potentially heartbreaking story not foreign to domestic violence or suicide ideation. Forcibly outing a student places them in harm’s way and neglects their plea for support when courageously navigating this journey to loving themselves. Every transgender student deserves the same dignity and respect that is afforded to peers. We deserve agency and confidentiality to come out when ready, and Katy ISD has cost 36 students their livelihoods.”
Barring divine intervention or the West Coast falling into the sea, President Biden will handily win California in the November election.
But should he — or presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump — secure a second term in the fall, the future of either’s policy agenda rests heavily on which party controls Congress, where Republicans currently hold a wafer-thin majority in the U.S. House of Representatives.
With the Golden State home to some of the most hotly contested swing districts in the country, the House’s fate will almost certainly come down to California.
The battle for the next two years of partisan political control will be waged door-to-door, from California’s beachside suburban cul-de-sacs to the tiny farm towns in the state’s fertile Central Valley.
Those battlefields will look a lot like Bridgecreek Plaza — a sun-bleached shopping center a few hundred yards from a freeway onramp in Orange County’s Huntington Beach. The mall is home to a crystal store, several insurance brokers, a dentist and the local Republican Party headquarters.
It’s also where about two dozen GOP faithful gathered on the morning of election day, bowing their heads for a quick prayer and pledging allegiance to a portable flag before turning their attention to Jessica Millan Patterson, chair of the California Republican Party.
Patterson was in a very good mood.
When she was first elected to lead the party, in 2019, California Republicans were “essentially the third-largest party in the state,” having sunk below the share of voters registering “decline to state” under party preference.
But Patterson had presided over a massive voter registration drive over the last five years, and the party had moved back into second. People across the country liked to dismiss “blue California,” she said, but they were forgetting that California has more registered Republicans than any other state.
“California Republicans are the reasons why we have a House majority,” she added, to raucous cheering.
That majority was what they hoped to hold on to, and the group would spend the morning of the March 5 primary election canvassing for Scott Baugh, a Republican attorney and former state Assembly member vying to push Democratic Rep. Katie Porter’s soon-to-be-open congressional seat back from blue to red.
Scott Baugh is trying again to flip Orange County’s 47th District back to the red column. The seat is a chief target of state and national Republican efforts to maintain control of the House.
(Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times)
The latest round of redistricting put more conservative enclaves such as Huntington Beach and Newport Beach into California’s 47th Congressional District, and Baugh lost to Porter only narrowly in 2022 despite being vastly outspent, making the coastal Orange County district one of the most competitive in the nation.
The charismatic Porter will be out of the House picture after a failed Senate run; her seat is one of the National Republican Congressional Committee’s three offensive targets in California and top priorities. And it’s equally prized by Democrats.
In a country where enmity and distrust separate the two major political parties on most issues, California’s utmost importance to any November House strategy is one of the few things on which Republicans and Democrats can agree.
California is home to 10 races rated as competitive by the nonpartisan Cook Political Report — five of them in districts that are represented by Republicans but that President Biden won in 2020. In the months to come, both parties will be investing significant resources in those races, as national attention inevitably turns west.
With an expected Biden-Trump rematch, voter turnout in 2024 is also likely to be supercharged compared with the 2022 midterm election. That could give an edge to Democrats, given the registration advantage that they hold in many of the competitive districts. Republicans gained one California House seat in the 2022 midterms, a nonpresidential election when turnout was substantially lower than when Biden and Trump topped the ballot two years prior.
“At the end of the day, the path to 218 runs through California,” said Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee spokesperson Dan Gottlieb, referring to the number of seats needed to garner a House majority.
Dave Min will face Baugh in November’s runoff for the 47th District seat, which Katie Porter is vacating. Min’s bruising primary battle for the crucial seat has already cost Democrats millions.
(Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press)
Gottlieb was bullish on his party’s chances, citing the high turnout expected for the presidential election, along with strong Democratic candidates and “a bunch of dysfunctional and out-of-touch Republicans enabling the worst of their party’s chaos and dysfunction and extremism.”
But Gottlieb’s GOP counterpart was equally roseate in his outlook, with National Republican Congressional Committee spokesperson Ben Petersen reveling in the ugly and expensive primary fights that consumed Democrats in several of the state’s most crucial swing districts.
In the O.C. district where GOP volunteers fanned out for Baugh on primary morning, Democrats had sunk millions into a bruising primary battle between state Sen. Dave Min and fellow Democrat Joanna Weiss. Min ultimately emerged victorious, but only after surviving a barrage of negative advertising centered on his 2023 arrest for driving while intoxicated — arguably a gift to Republicans ahead of his fall battle with Baugh.
“Extreme Democrats are stumbling out of their vicious primary fights broke and bested by Republicans, who saw a groundswell of support for a commonsense safety and affordability agenda,” Petersen said, adding that the primary results made clear the GOP was “playing offense in California” in a way that would set the stage for victories in November.
Baugh, though, is not expected to go unscathed. In 2022, Porter’s ad campaign ripped the Republican for his antiabortion stance, as well as his work as a lobbyist and criminal charges he faced over campaign violations, for which he ultimately paid $47,000 in fines.
In the San Joaquin Valley, there were last-minute fears that a bruising primary battle would lock Democrats out of one of the races where they have the best chance of flipping a seat, but those concerns proved overblown.
Rudy Salas, backed by the Democratic establishment, vanquished fellow Democrat Melissa Hurtado to secure a spot in the fall against incumbent Rep. David Valadao (R-Hanford) in the 22nd Congressional District, but that race also put a dent in Democratic coffers.
The November race will be a rematch of the pair’s 2022 runoff, when Salas lost to Valadao by several thousand votes. And Salas and Valadao won’t be the only rematch on the November ticket.
In a heavily agricultural San Joaquin Valley district that includes all of Merced County and parts of Fresno, Madera, San Joaquin and Stanislaus counties, incumbent GOP Rep. John Duarte will once again face off against Democratic challenger Adam Gray. Duarte won the 13th Congressional District in the midterm election by fewer than 600 votes, one of the closest races in the nation.
Several hundred miles southeast, in Southern California, Democratic challenger Will Rollins will again take on GOP incumbent Rep. Ken Calvert, the longest-serving member of the California delegation. The recently redrawn 41st Congressional District stretches from the suburban Inland Empire, where Calvert has long lived, to Palm Springs, where Rollins and his partner make their home.
The district’s new boundaries — which now include one of the largest concentrations of LGBTQ+ voters in the nation and liberal pockets of Californians in the desert — are far more friendly to Democrats. They also set up Rollins, who is gay, as a potent challenger to Calvert, who voted against LGBTQ+ rights in the past, but who says his views have since evolved.
One race that will have some new blood this year, after the same pair of candidates dueled in three previous elections, is California’s 27th Congressional District in northern Los Angeles County.
Once solidly Republican, the district has been reconfigured by redistricting, and has undergone a political transition driven by younger, more diverse transplants from L.A. seeking affordable housing in Santa Clarita and the Antelope Valley. The district briefly switched from red to blue with former Rep. Katie Hill’s victory in 2018, but the young Democrat’s very public scandals and ultimate resignation helped hand the seat back to the GOP.
Now-incumbent GOP Rep. Mike Garcia beat Democrat Christy Smith in a 2019 special election to fill the seat, then twice more for full terms in 2020 and 2022. He will face off against George Whitesides, a fresh Democratic challenger, in November.
Ludovic Blain, executive director of the California Donor Table, a progressive group that pools donor funds, said his organization hopes to invest about $10 million in California House races in the fall, working with local nonprofits in key areas to turn out voters of color.
They’ll be focusing on seven key races: the three aforementioned rematches, Porter’s open seat and two other Orange County races, and the Garcia-Whitesides matchup.
One point of concern Blain raised is that Republican Steve Garvey’s place near the top of the ticket, facing off against Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Burbank) in the Senate race, might affect Democrats in House races.
Schiff engaged in a controversial strategy in the primary, boosting Garvey to lock out Porter and his other major Democratic challenger, Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Oakland), whom Blain’s organization supported.
It was a gambit that some in the Democratic establishment said would actually help Democrats in other tight races, since a less-competitive Senate race would siphon away far less money from the party’s coffers.
But others, like Blain, argue that Garvey’s presence could hurt down-ballot Democrats. Plus, having him on the ballot may draw in moderate Republican and independent voters who remain sour on Trump.
“Having Garvey, I think, does spike or further encourage Republican voters to turn out, and more importantly, to vote down the ticket,” Blain said.
Patterson agreed. Unlike Trump, Garvey will likely campaign across the state, providing a lift for other Republicans while he’s at it.
Voters in seven Los Angeles City Council districts went to the polls Tuesday to decide who will win outright and who will go on to a second round in a series of races that could reshape City Hall.
Thirty-one candidates were competing in contests that will help determine the future of the city’s fight against homelessness, its approach to policing and public safety, and its ongoing efforts to make housing more affordable, particularly for the city’s renters.
Six of the seven races feature incumbents who are seeking a four-year term.
On the Eastside, Councilmember Kevin de León was hoping to fend off seven challengers, including State Assemblymembers Miguel Santiago and Wendy Carrillo, both Democrats, and tenant rights attorney Ysabel Jurado.
De León, a former state lawmaker, has been attempting a comeback after being at the center of a scandal over a secretly recorded conversation with former colleagues that featured racist and derogatory remarks. Since then, he has repeatedly apologized for his role in that conversation, which took place in October 2021.
Meanwhile, in the northwest San Fernando Valley, Councilmember John Lee was facing off against nonprofit leader Serena Oberstein. That race, in its final days, has focused heavily on the issue of ethics.
Oberstein spent much of the campaign highlighting an ongoing ethics commission case against Lee, which deals heavily with allegations that Lee violated laws governing the reporting and acceptance of gifts provided to city politicians. Lee, for his part, criticized Oberstein over a 2019 court case that dealt with her eligibility to run for council, which ended when a judge found that she was legally barred from running.
In a district that straddles the Hollywood Hills, Councilmember Nithya Raman was looking to fend off challenges from Deputy City Atty. Ethan Weaver and software engineer Levon “Lev” Baronian. Raman had been running in a race that was sharply different from the one that elected her in 2020.
In South Los Angeles, Councilmember Marqueece Harris-Dawson was heavily favored to win his bid for a third and final four-year term. His rivals in the race are real estate broker Jahan Epps and union leader Cliff Smith.
Meanwhile, in the San Fernando Valley, Councilmember Imelda Padilla was the heavy favorite in her race against real estate broker Ely De La Cruz Ayao and Carmenlina Minasova, a respiratory care practitioner who is also running for state Assembly. Padilla won a special election last summer, replacing former Council President Nury Martinez, and has been seeking her first full four-year term.
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Councilmember Heather Hutt, who has been in office since 2022, was running for her first full four-year term in a Koreatown-to-Crenshaw district.
Four candidates — state Assemblymember Reggie Jones-Sawyer, attorney Grace Yoo, former city commissioner Aura Vasquez and Pastor Eddie Anderson, a community organizer — were looking to unseat Hutt, who was first appointed to the seat several months after former Councilmember Mark Ridley-Thomas was charged in a federal corruption case.
The only contest without an incumbent was taking place in the East San Fernando Valley, where seven candidates were seeking to fill the seat being vacated this year by Council President Paul Krekorian, first elected in 2009.
Former state Assemblymember Adrin Nazarian, a former Krekorian aide, was competing against housing advocate Manny Gonez, small business owner Jillian Burgos, commissioner Sam Kbushyan and several others.
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David Zahniser, Dakota Smith, Angie Orellana Hernandez, Caroline Petrow-Cohen
The airplane was three miles into the sky and still climbing when passengers heard the boom and felt the blast of icy wind. A chunk of the metal membrane separating the 171 passengers and six crew members from the freezing mid-troposphere had unexpectedly “departed the airplane,” as transportation officials clinically put it.
No serious injuries were reported aboard Alaska Airlines Flight 1282, which made an emergency landing at Portland International Airport in Oregon on Friday night with a door-shaped gap in its side and a cabin full of frightened people.
But transportation officials say the midair blowout could have been calamitous if it had happened a little later in the flight, when the plane was at cruising altitude with passengers unbuckled and walking around.
“We are very, very fortunate here that this didn’t end up in something more tragic,” said Jennifer Homendy, chair of the National Transportation Safety Board, the federal agency responsible for investigating transportation accidents.
“I imagine this was a pretty terrifying event,” Homendy said. “We don’t often talk about psychological injury, but I’m sure that occurred here.”
The airliner was a new one, a Boeing 737 Max 9 that went into service late last year. Investigators will try to figure out what caused one of its so-called plug doors — described by some experts as “fake doors” — to be ripped loose in the air above Oregon.
With 178 seats, the plane is not required to have emergency exit doors at the spot, so builders installed sealed panels where the doors otherwise would have stood on each side.
Investigators are searching for the missing plug door, which is believed to have landed near the Cedar Hills neighborhood of Greater Portland. The NTSB is asking anyone who finds it to contact police.
Alaska Airlines said Sunday that all 65 of its Max 9s were grounded, and that it had canceled 170 flights Sunday affecting 25,000 passengers. On Saturday, United Airlines said it had grounded all 79 of its Boeing 737 Max 9 aircraft for inspection, and that 270 flights were canceled over the weekend as a result of Friday night’s incident.
Flight 1282 left Portland International Airport just after 5 p.m. Friday, headed to Ontario International in Southern California on an expected two-hour flight. It was traveling about 440 mph , at an altitude of about 16,000 feet, and had been airborne about 10 minutes.
Then passengers heard what some called a boom and some called a pop, as the faux door flew off and exposed bare insulation around it. Some passengers screamed and hurried to put on oxygen masks that had dropped. One passenger told KTLA-Channel 5 that the blowout ripped the shirt completely off a teenage boy.
The blowout ripped the headrests off some seats. There were seven empty seats in the plane, authorities said, and by a stroke of luck the two closest to the hole — 26A and 26B — happened to be empty.
An audio recording between the pilot and an air traffic controller describes what happened next. The pilot calmly explained that the plane had depressurized and needed to return to Portland International.
“We’re now leveling 12,000 and left turn heading 340,” the pilot said. “We do have information zero. We’d like to get lower, if possible …”
“Did you declare an emergency?” asked the air traffic controller. “Or did you just need to return to …”
“Yes, we are emergency. We are depressurized. We do need to return back to … Our fuel is 18,900 pounds and we have 177 passengers on board.”
“Do you need time to burn off some fuel before you land?”
“Negative.”
“Are you ready to approach now?”
The pilot said the plane was about 10 minutes away.
“Roger. Just let me know when you’re ready,” the air traffic controller said.
“We’ll let you know. Alaska 1282.”
“The only information we have is a depressurization issue. … The emergency aircraft will be the next arrival,” the air traffic controller said. “They are on a two-mile final. And you can expect access to the runway.”
Passengers applauded as the plane landed safely, about 13 minutes after the blowout.
Senator Dianne Feinstein, who died last night at 90, braved one of the most remarkable political expeditions in American history—and also one of the grimmer spectacles at the end of her life and career.
Is it too soon to point this out? Yes, perhaps. With the official notice of her death today, Feinstein received her just and proper tributes, hitting all the key markers: How Di-Fi, as she is known in Washington shorthand, had stepped in as mayor of San Francisco after her predecessor was assassinated in 1978. How she was a fervent proponent of gun safety, the longest-serving woman in the Senate, and the chamber’s oldest member. How, as chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, she presided over the preparation of an incriminating report describing the CIA’s torture of suspected terrorists in secret prisons around the world. How she was a trailblazer, stateswoman, powerhouse, force, grande dame, etc. Give her her due. She deserves it.
But Congress can be a tough and ghoulish place, with its zero-sum math and unforgiving partisanship. Over her last year, Feinstein’s declining health became a bleak sideshow—her absences and hospitalizations, shingles, encephalitis, and bad falls; the lawsuits over her late husband’s estate and the cost of her medical bills and long-term care.
Feinstein’s insistence on remaining in the Senate—and the uncertainty of her schedule—complicated life for Democrats, making it harder for them to hold votes, set strategy, and confirm judges. Her colleagues and White House officials whispered their frustration. And she became the latest exemplar of a basic, egalitarian principle in lawmaking: Even the most legendary figures ultimately amount to a vote. Often your most important job is simply to be available, show up, be counted.
When that is in doubt, patience can wear fast. Questions about “fitness” arise. Such is the price of continued residency in the senior center of the Capitol. Feinstein resisted quitting for years, and only grudgingly said she wouldn’t seek reelection in 2024, leaving the race to succeed her in a kind of morbid suspension.
Politics, of course, runs on its own schedules and follows its own rules. A few weeks ago, I asked Adam Schiff, one of the California House Democrats running to succeed Feinstein in the Senate, whether she should step down. In other words, was she fit to serve? Again, maybe this was harsh, but it had become a standard question around Washington and California, and perfectly germane, given the tight split in the Senate. “It’s her decision to make,” Schiff said, a classic duck, but also practical. “I would be very concerned,” he continued, “that the Republicans would not fill her seat on the Judiciary Committee, and that would be the end of Joe Biden’s judicial appointments.” (Politico reported today that Republican Whip John Thune, of South Dakota, said he expects that his party will not resist efforts to fill committee seats left vacant by Feinstein’s death.)
Schiff added that he had continued to have a productive working relationship with Feinstein’s office, despite her health struggles. He was a proponent of business as usual, for as long it lasted, and Feinstein was still there. The pageant continued, the government heading for another shutdown, House Republicans tripping toward an impeachment and over themselves.
In the hours after Feinstein’s death was announced, Washington took a brief and deferential pause. Statements and obituaries were dispatched, most prepared in advance. Then it was on to the next. Who would California Governor Gavin Newsom pick to serve out Feinstein’s term? How would that affect the race to succeed her next year? Who would replace Feinstein on the Judiciary Committee, and when would they be seated?
The hushed questions about how long the nonagenarian senator could hang on finally had their resolution. Far too many people in power resist the option of a restful denouement. The stakes can be high, even harrowing, for the country. These sagas can be distressing to follow, but there’s no shortage of dark fascination. Stick around too long, and you risk losing control of the finale. It can happen to the best, and at the end of the most extraordinary careers.
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ARIEL, Wash. — Music thumps. Boots stomp. Smoke swirls.
It rises like a dry mist from red-glowing cigarettes. It ebbs around an elk’s skull, five-point antlers still attached, and a muzzle loader hanging on the wall.
A potbellied stove washes its warmth over strutting men, women and children. A skinned-out bobcat dangles from the ceiling. A two-man chain saw with a 12-horsepower engine roosts on a canopy over the bar. A sign says: “This Business is Supported by Timber Dollars.”
Tab tops pop. Bartenders slide Budweiser and Rainier and Miller and Coors across the varnished bar top, 3,120 cans and bottles in all. On a wall nearby, these people have tacked up $40. The money is waiting for D.B. Cooper. If he ever shows up, they would like to buy him a drink.
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All of this is in his honor. For 11 hours, a guitar and a bass and a mandolin and a sax and a dobro and an accordion and some drums do not stop, and neither does the dancing nor the singing nor the drinking nor the joking. One husky man lifts his redheaded lady high in the air, puts her feet gently back on the floor and gives her a big kiss.
Maybe that is him. Or maybe that is her. The thought stops conversation cold. If D.B. Cooper were a woman, would she be a redhead? “Nah,” shouts Bill Partee, over the pounding of the band. He is 64 and has lived here a dozen years. He has a full, white Old Testament beard, and he wears a cap that says: Ariel Store, Home of D.B. Cooper Days. “She had dark hair when she did this thing, but by now she’s a blond.”
What D.B. Cooper did was hijack a plane. It had just taken off from Portland, Ore. At Seattle, he forced airline officials to bring him four parachutes and $200,000 in $20 bills. In the air again, somewhere around here, high over the cedars and the firs and the hemlocks that cover the Cascade Mountains, he strapped on two of the parachutes, and he jumped out. He disappeared. Vanished. No ripped rigging. No bones. Nothing.
In this undated file photo, a helicopter takes off from search headquarters to scour the area where hijacker Dan Cooper might have parachuted into in Woodland, Wash.
(Associated Press)
That was 25 years ago on Thanksgiving eve. People have found only two things in the wilderness to show that this hijacking ever happened: a placard that blew off the back door of the plane when he opened it, and money–a few bundles of $20 bills with serial numbers that match the loot. These prove that he died, some say. Others say no, he simply dropped some of the dough. Too bad, they add, not unkindly.
To many, D.B. Cooper is a folk hero. Nobody else in America has ever hijacked a commercial airliner for money and never been caught. He has become a legend, a new Jesse James, Butch Cassidy, Billy the Kid. Books have been written about him, a play staged, a movie filmed. He is the inspiration for ballads and bumper stickers and T-shirts and coffee mugs. Saloons across the country adopt his name and invite people to “drop in on us sometime.”
Every year, on the weekend after Thanksgiving, his fans gather here at the Ariel Store and Tavern, in this mountain town of 50 people, 35 miles north of the Oregon state line. This year they are 500 strong, and they come from as far away as Brooklyn, N.Y., and Birmingham, Ala., and even Seward, Alaska. Their appraisals of D.B. Cooper and what he did offer a case study in how Americans create mythic figures and the ways in which they worship them.
Some stand and read the walls in the southeast corner of the bar, which are covered with newspaper accounts of D.B. Cooper’s exploit. They scrawl their names on a white parachute canopy spread across the front porch. They eat D.B. Cooper stew and D.B. Cooper sausages. They shake their heads at a photograph of a headstone someone put up in a front yard across the Lewis River. “Here Lies D.B. Cooper,” it says. “We spent your money wisely.”
The headstone, regardless of its attempt at humor, runs contrary to an article of faith: that D.B. Cooper is very much alive and enjoying a modest and well-deserved decadence. To his fans, the headstone shows an impertinence that borders on the unseemly. They are relieved to learn that the stone and an oval of smaller rocks outlining a faux grave were judged in bad taste and that the attempted humorist finally removed them.
Mostly, though, they party. For much of Saturday and often into Sunday they holler and dance and set off roaring fireworks. Each explosion sends clouds of white smoke billowing into a light rain and then up through the trees. They draw for prizes, mainly D.B. Cooper T-shirts, and they stage a D.B. Cooper look-alike contest. One year the winner was a basset hound in D.B. Cooper’s trademark disguise: sunglasses.
This year the contest is hard-fought. Dona Elliott, 59, owns this combination country store and saloon, built in 1929 of clapboard and shingles, uphill from the river and hard by a narrow woodland road. She holds one hand over a young man, then an older man, both in sunglasses; then a man with a $20 bill pasted on his forehead; then a couple wearing torn clothes and parachute rigging with fir twigs snagged in the straps.
By hooting and yelling and applauding, the crowd decides. Jim Rainbow, 48, a Susanville, Calif., mortician, tangled in the rigging and the twigs, is here with his wife for their 10th anniversary. He runs second. The older man in sunglasses, Eldon Heller, 70, a retired contractor from Washougal, Wash., wins by a hair. He thinks for a minute about D.B. Cooper’s current age and then smiles. “I’m just about right, huh?”
The crowd cheers again, and the band, called the Enlightened Rogues, swings through another verse about “good women who drink with the boys.” Dona Elliott is short, soft-spoken and has wavy brown hair, but she has been known to throw unruly drunks out the front door bodily and by herself. She pronounces the event a good one.
She knows that celebrating D.B. Cooper angers pilots, the airlines and especially Ralph Himmelsbach, 71, a retired FBI agent who spent the last eight years of his career trying to find him. He has written the most authoritative book about the hijacking, called “NORJAK: the Investigation of D.B. Cooper.”
Himmelsbach, who code-named the case NORJAK when he was still with the agency, spends D.B. Cooper Day at his home in Redmond, Ore. To him, Cooper is “a bastard,” nothing more than a “sleazy, rotten criminal who jeopardized the lives of more than 40 people for money.”
“That’s not heroic,” he declares, and he means it. “It’s selfish, dangerous and antisocial. I have no admiration for him at all. He’s not at all admirable. He’s just stupid and greedy.”
Elliott understands. She knows why people on the hijacked plane, for instance, might not appreciate what goes on here. But she wishes that Himmelsbach would come up anyway.
Himmelsbach, for his part, says: “I know I wouldn’t be welcome there.”
“Oh, sure he would!” Elliott responds. She chuckles. “He’s chicken.”
Thanksgiving Eve 1971
As people here tell and retell the tale of D.B. Cooper and his feat, they praise Himmelsbach’s book as the most thorough.
Folklore has entwined itself around the story like heavy brush. But from Himmelsbach’s account and news reports at the time, this much can be said:
Shortly before 2 p.m. on Nov. 24, 1971, a man stepped out of a blowing rain at the airport in Portland, Ore., and walked to the Northwest Orient Airlines ticket counter. He asked for a seat on the next flight to Seattle.
The man was middle-aged, pleasant. He stood nearly 6 feet tall. He had olive skin, dark brown eyes and dark hair. It was cut short, neatly trimmed. He wore a lightweight black raincoat and loafers, a dark business suit, a crisp white shirt, a narrow black tie and a pearl stick-pin.
He had no luggage to check. In his left hand, he carried an attache case.
Returning?
“No,” the man replied.
His name?
“Dan Cooper.”
The fare was $20. He placed a $20 bill on the counter.
Ticket in hand, he walked to Gate 52, unhindered at the time by X-ray machines or metal detectors. As he walked, he slipped on a pair of dark glasses.
Departure was scheduled for 2:50 p.m. He waited and smoked a cigarette, a filter-tip Raleigh. Finally a gate agent called Flight 305 for Seattle. Dan Cooper shuffled into line. He handed his ticket envelope to the agent, who took it and checked off his name on a boarding list, then handed back the envelope and his boarding pass.
Cooper stepped onto the plane. It was a jet, a Boeing 727. It had a pilot, a co-pilot and a flight engineer. It had three flight attendants, and it offered nearly 100 seats. But it was less than half full. Besides himself, there were only 36 passengers. He walked to an empty row in back and sat in seat 18C. But he did not take off his sunglasses or his raincoat.
The plane began to taxi. A flight attendant, Florence Schaffner, took a seat nearby. She asked him to put his attache case beneath the seat in front of him.
She settled in for the roll-out and climb.
He handed her a note.
It was Thanksgiving, and he was away from home, and she was attractive. She thought that he was proposing something indiscreet. So she paid no attention and put the note aside.
“Miss,” he said, “you’d better look at that note.”
He paused. “I have a bomb.”
To Jim Lissick, 69, of South St. Paul, Minn., who is here at the Ariel Store and Tavern to celebrate with a son and a daughter, such good manners are a sign that Cooper is a gentleman. “He was a caring person,” Lissick says, then catches himself. “Still is.”
Certainly, Lissick says, people such as D.B. Cooper can be tough and extremely demanding. But history, he says, is full of hard cases who were unfailingly polite to women and always kind to children. All of this, he adds, simply becomes part of the mythology that grows up around them.
Mike Holliday, 40, agrees. He has lived in this area since the days when loggers came to the Ariel Store and Tavern after work, hung up their wet clothes to dry and sat around the potbellied stove in their long johns drinking beer and telling stories.
To him, D.B. Cooper shows the unflappable cool of a modern Robin Hood. “But I doubt like hell that he is the kind of guy who gives money away.”
3 p.m.
Florence Schaffner glanced at the man’s note. It was neat, clear. She looked at the man’s face. He was not joking.
The note specified his demands. Take it up to the captain, he ordered, and then bring it back with his response. The man repeated: Return the note.
She hurried to the cockpit and gave the note to Captain William Scott and First Officer Bill Rataczak. They radioed that Flight 305 was being hijacked: A man with a bomb wants $200,000 in negotiable bills, a money sack and a pair of back-pack parachutes.
Part of the money that was paid to legendary hijacker D.B. Cooper in 1971 is shown during an F.B.I. news conference, Feb. 12, 1980, where it was announced that several thousand dollars was found 5 miles northwest of Vancouver, Wash., by Howard and Patricia Ingram and their 8-year-old son Brian on Feb. 10.
(Eric Risberg / Associated Press)
Schaffner returned to Dan Cooper with his note. He opened his attache case. She saw red cylinders, a battery and wires. She hurried back to the cockpit and described the contents to Scott and Rataczak. They radioed authorities on the ground: It looks like dynamite.
Cooperate, responded Northwest Airlines headquarters in Minneapolis, and try not to alarm the passengers. By now Flight 305 was over Seattle, but Cooper refused to let it land until the money and the parachutes were ready. Scott told the passengers that the plane had a mechanical problem requiring it to circle and burn off fuel. The flight attendants served drinks. Cooper had a bourbon and water. He paid with a $20 bill.
Tina Mucklow, another of the flight attendants, sat down next to him. She was easygoing, pretty and wore her hair long and flowing. They developed a rapport. He smoked another Raleigh. She lit it for him so he could keep both hands on his briefcase. “He wasn’t nervous,” she recalled later. “He seemed rather nice. He was never cruel or nasty. He was thoughtful and calm.”
Now Cooper wanted two more parachutes, for a total of four–two front packs and two backpacks. Four meant that he might jump with a hostage, and this signaled: Do not tamper with the gear. The Air Force offered two. But Cooper demanded civilian models. Civilian parachutes meant that he might free-fall away from the flight path before pulling the rip cord, and this signaled: A tail plane will be useless.
As Flight 305 circled over Seattle, airline officials, FBI agents and Seattle police scrambled to get the money that Dan Cooper was demanding. They rounded up $20 bills from several banks. Twenties would be easy to pass and would signal cooperation. It took time, but they found enough–10,000 of them. The bills weighed 21 pounds and filled a white cotton sack. The FBI microfilmed every one.
Cooper grew impatient. He ordered another bourbon and water. Then he demanded that a truck meet the plane and refill it with fuel when it landed in Seattle. He said he would release all passengers, but he wanted meals brought on board for the crew.
A skydiving school finally came up with four civilian parachutes. In a mistake that the rigger would not discover until later, they included a dummy chute that would not open.
At 5:39 p.m., a message went by radio up to Flight 305. “Everything is ready for your arrival.”
Captain Scott eased the jet onto runway 16R. He taxied to a corner of the airfield. “He says to get that stuff out here right now.”
A fuel truck drove over.
Dan Cooper sent Tina Mucklow out to get the money and the parachutes.
Then he let the passengers go.
It is commonly held in Ariel that all of this demonstrates beyond the silly doubt of any pinch-nosed naysayer exactly how brilliant D.B. Cooper really is.
“He pulls it all off pretty good,” says Steve Forney, 40, of Kelso, Wash., a biker who parks his 1979 Harley shovelhead in a special spot at the door that Dona Elliott reserves for motorcycles.
A friend, Jim Smith, 49, of Castle Rock, Wash., who pulls up on a 1987 Harley blockhead, wipes the rain off his leather jacket. He declares with approval:
“D.B. Cooper is one smart outlaw.”
6 p.m.
Arguably, ground crews were less smart. The first fuel truck they sent out to the plane had a vapor lock. The second ran dry. Finally a third topped off the tanks.
Inside the plane, Cooper announced that he wanted to go to Mexico City, and he wanted to fly in a certain way: with the landing gear down, the wing flaps down and the aft air-stairs down.
Flaps?
“Fifteen degrees,” Cooper said, with precision.
This meant that he knew the rear stairway on a 727 could be lowered in flight. It also meant that he knew flying with the gear and the flaps down would slow the plane, and he knew how far the flaps could be lowered to do it safely.
He gave another order: Stay below 10,000 feet.
This meant that he knew flying any higher with the aft door open would be risky. At 10,000 feet, the outside air had enough oxygen in it to make it safe to breathe. But any higher it did not.
First Officer Bill Rataczak figured that flying this way would burn a lot of fuel. By his calculation the plane would have a range of only 1,000 miles. Mexico City was 2,200 miles away.
This called for refueling stops on the way. Cooper agreed that one would be Reno, Nev.
A hijacked Northwest Airlines jetliner is seen in this Nov. 25, 1971 file photo as it sits on a runway for refueling at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, Nov. 25, 1971, Seattle.
(Associated Press)
He freed attendants Alice Hancock and Florence Schaffner but kept Tina Mucklow seated next to him. At 7:37 p.m., Flight 305 was back in the air.
Cooper told Mucklow to go up to the cockpit and pull the first-class curtain closed behind her. She glanced back once. He was cutting cord from one of the parachutes and tying the money bag to his waist.
At 7:42 p.m. Captain Scott saw a cockpit light indicating that the aft stairs were down.
The plane leveled off at 10,000 feet and cruised at 196 mph. Outside it was dark, stormy and 7 degrees below zero. Now First Officer Rataczak’s watch showed almost 8 p.m.
“Everything OK back there?” he asked on the intercom. “Anything we can do for you?”
Finally a light showed that the stairs were fully extended.
“No!” Cooper replied.
At 8:12 p.m., the nose of the plane curtsied, and its instruments showed a small bump in cabin pressure. This meant that the tail had suddenly gotten lighter and that the stairs had bounced up and into the plane and then dropped down again.
Dan Cooper had jumped.
Around the potbellied stove in Ariel, two airline employees marvel at D.B. Cooper’s knowledge.
Phil Brooks, 34, of Speedway, Ind., an aircraft dispatcher, thinks that Cooper either was involved with an airline or did his homework very well.
“He was intelligent and gutsy,” Brooks says. “That tells me he had a good background, maybe Special Forces or intelligence. He didn’t work down at the carwash. And he was a major stud; he had the guts to jump out of an airplane at night in the winter.”
Brooks proudly shows off a Cooper Vane, a device named after D.B. Cooper, which locks aft air-stairs from the outside during flight. It was installed on all 727s after the hijacking to prevent further Cooper capers. Years later, Brooks found the hijacked jet in a Mississippi scrap yard. He recovered the Cooper Vane from the Cooper plane.
With Brooks is Dan Gradwohl, 30, a first officer on 727s for Ryan International Airlines, a charter service. “Cooper knew something about the 727,” Gradwohl says, “or he had to have talked to somebody and learned about it.
“He beat the system,” Gradwohl points out, and spectacularly so. “If D.B. Cooper would have simply robbed a bank, he wouldn’t be a legend.
“But he robbed several banks, and then he parachuted out of a plane.”
When Flight 305 landed in Reno, the FBI found two parachutes, the butts of eight filter-tip Raleighs and 66 fingerprints. None matched prints in the FBI files.
The next day in Seattle, the parachute rigger realized his mistake. Cooper had jumped with a good parachute and a backup that would not open.
At one point, a reporter for United Press International spotted FBI agents at the Portland police station and asked a clerk what they were doing.
“They’re looking for a guy named Cooper,” the clerk replied. “D.B. Cooper.”
The reporter phoned in his information. While it was a fact that agents were checking out a man named D.B. Cooper, they cleared him almost immediately.
But the initials stuck.
Dan Cooper entered history–and folklore–with the wrong name.
The only significant evidence that Ralph Himmelsbach ever processed was the $5,800, found on a Columbia River sandbar by Brian Ingram, 8, of Vancouver, Wash., while he was picnicking with his family. Himmelsbach matched the $20 bills to Cooper’s loot.
Will D.B. Cooper ever be located?
“I doubt it,” Himmelsbach says.
Officially, though, the FBI case against Dan Cooper is not closed. Ray Lauer, an agency spokesman in Seattle, says:
“We’re still trying to find the guy.”
Researchers Paul Singleton, Julia Franco and Steve Tice contributed to this story.
