As Paramount moved Monday to sweeten its bid for Warner Bros. Discovery, a high-stakes political battle is playing out behind the scenes.

Paramount’s latest offer enhanced its earlier $30-a-share bid, valued at $108 billion, said a person familiar with the process who was not authorized to comment publicly. Details of the revised proposal, first reported by Bloomberg, were not immediately available.

The firm is leveraging both the dynastic wealth of Larry Ellison’s empire and his ties to the Trump administration to dismantle Netflix’s rival $82.7-billion deal for Warner, which owns CNN, HBO and the premier Hollywood film and television studios, according to people close to the auction.

Over the weekend, President Trump turned up the heat, demanding that Netflix “IMMEDIATELY” fire Susan Rice — a former Obama and Biden administration official — who serves on Netflix’s 13-member board or “pay the consequences.”

Trump, in a Saturday night social media post, called the former ambassador “deranged … She’s got no talent or skills — Purely a political hack!”

Trump previously said he would not get involved in the pivotal Warner Bros. auction, instead leaving the matter to the Department of Justice, which is investigating whether a Netflix takeover, or Paramount’s alternative bid, would harm competition. Trump has been an outspoken critic of CNN and many of its on-air hosts.

Netflix won the bidding for the storied studio and HBO in December, prompting the spurned Paramount executives to launch a multipronged strategy to scuttle the Netflix deal.

Netflix co-Chief Executive Ted Sarandos sought to downplay the latest controversy, saying during a BBC interview Monday: “This is a business deal, it’s not a political deal.”

But Paramount, which declined to comment for this article, has not been shy about playing its political cards.

The company, overseen by Larry Ellison’s son, David, is trying to convince Justice Department regulators and Warner Bros. shareholders that the Netflix deal is too dicey and that they should instead side with Paramount, said sources who were not authorized to comment publicly.

Paramount has attempted numerous maneuvers to gain the upper hand.

“This deal was never going to be decided on the merits of the offer or rigid antitrust considerations,” said Gabriel Kahn, a professor at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. “This was a classic Trump administration deal where proximity to the president counts a lot more than financial terms.”

Trump’s Saturday night outburst came after Rice, during a podcast interview last week, said that “it is not going to end well” for corporations, media outlets and law firms that “bent the knee” to Trump should Democrats regain control in Washington.

The comments of Rice, a Netflix director for eight years, came as Paramount-owned CBS was involved in a headline-grabbing dust-up with late-night talk-show host, Stephen Colbert, over Trump’s Federal Communications Commission chair‘s threat to modify a rule requiring that broadcasters to give political candidates equal time. Colbert has accused his company of kowtowing to Trump, which CBS has denied.

Netflix’s Sarandos and Paramount’s David Ellison have made separate treks to the White House.

In October, Paramount hired a former Trump administration official, Makan Delrahim, who oversaw the Justice Department’s antitrust division during Trump’s first term, to quarterback Paramount’s campaign to win over regulators and politicians.

A formidable ally — Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) — recently visited Delrahim on Paramount’s Melrose Avenue lot in Los Angeles. While there, Cruz said he was a fan of the CBS show “NCIS,” which prompted Paramount executives to put together an impromptu tour of the “NCIS Origins” soundstages, according to a person familiar with the visit.

In December, Delrahim made a tactical move to apply for Justice Department approval of Paramount’s deal — despite the absence of a signed agreement with the Warner Bros. board and the consent of its shareholders. The gambit was meant to speed the agency’s approval should the Netflix deal crumble. Warner stockholders are expected to vote March 20.

Last week, Paramount announced that a major deadline had passed without pushback from the Justice Department. “There is no statutory impediment in the U.S. to closing Paramount’s proposed acquisition of WBD,” Paramount said in a regulatory filing.

Paramount faces a separate deadline late Monday to improve the finances of its proposed takeover to shake the support of Warner Bros. Discovery’s board members for the Netflix deal.

Paramount wants to buy all of Warner Bros. Discovery, including CNN.

Netflix, in contrast, does not want the bulk of cable TV channels beyond HBO, and has offered $27.75 a share. It has the right to match any improved Paramount proposal.

Warner is planning to spin off the bulk of its channel portfolio, including HGTV, TBS and Cartoon Network, in a separate company. Its shareholders will receive stock in that entity, slated to be called Discovery Global.

Concerns over Netflix’s deal have been mounting.

Department of Justice regulators have sent inquiries to the three companies, according to one senior executive who was not authorized to speak publicly. The department is said to be looking at Netflix’s historic business strategy of steering most of its film releases to its streaming platform, often bypassing movie theaters. Sarandos has promised to maintain a 45-day theatrical window for Warner Bros. films.

Bloomberg has reported that regulators also are trying to determine whether Netflix has exerted leverage over creators in negotiations when acquiring programming to build its catalog.

This month, Republican lawmakers blasted Sarandos during a Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy, and Consumer Rights hearing to explore antitrust implications of the Warner Bros. sale. Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) sent Netflix a series of pointed follow-up questions, including: “If allowed to proceed, what effect will the merger have on future competition?”

The hearing also veered into culture wars, with Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) suggesting Netflix was promoting a “transgender ideology” to children, which Sarandos denied.

Another Missouri Republican, Sen. Eric Schmitt, accused Netflix of making some of “the wokest content in the history of the world.”

“Netflix has no political agenda of any kind,” Sarandos told the lawmakers.

David Ellison also was invited to appear at the Feb. 3 hearing, but he declined — which raised the eyebrows of some members of the panel.

Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) challenged Ellison for failing to answer lawmakers’ questions under oath, including about his dealings with the president.

Ellison instead responded with a statement but Booker and other lawmakers wrote back, saying Ellison’s statement “failed to address” the issues raised by Booker.

“The pattern of evasion, combined with Paramount’s apparent confidence that a politically sensitive transaction will clear without difficulty warrants serious scrutiny,” Booker, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and others wrote in the Feb. 19 letter.

The Democrats instructed Ellison “to preserve records related to the proposed Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery transaction.”

The move came days after Gail Slater, the Justice Department’s antitrust chief, was bounced from her job, reportedly after becoming a thorn in the side of some business interests. Slater’s former top deputy, who also left the Justice Department, publicly warned that antitrust decisions are being influenced by corporate lobbyists — not in the interest of ordinary Americans.

“We see this happen again and again,” USC’s Kahn said.

“Let’s not forget that Larry Ellison’s Oracle was part of the consortium that purchased the U.S. operations of TikTok. Repeated complaints from the FCC about content at CBS have been heeded by the Ellison regime,” Kahn said, adding: “This is the reality of trying to do any business in the Trump administration: It’s about payoffs and proximity.”

WASHINGTON — U.S. Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi repeatedly sparred with lawmakers on Wednesday as she was pressed over the Justice Department’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein investigation and faced demands for greater transparency in the high-profile case.

Bondi accused Democrats and at least one Republican on the House Judiciary Committee of engaging in “theatrics” as she fielded questions about redaction errors made by the Justice Department when it released millions of files related to the Epstein case last month.

The attorney general at one point acknowledged that mistakes had been made as the Justice Department tried to comply with a federal law that required it to review, redact and publicize millions of files within a 30-day period. Given the tremendous task at hand, she said the “error rate was very low” and that fixes were made when issues were encountered.

Her testimony on the Epstein files, however, was mostly punctuated by dramatic clashes with lawmakers — exchanges that occurred as eight Epstein survivors attended the hearing.

In one instance, Bondi refused to apologize to Epstein victims in the room, saying she would not “get into the gutter” with partisan requests from Democrats.

In another exchange, Bondi declined to say how many perpetrators tied to the Epstein case are being investigated by the Justice Department. And at one point, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) said the Trump administration was engaging in a “cover-up,” prompting Bondi to tell him that he was suffering from “Trump derangement syndrome.”

The episodes underscore the extent to which the Epstein saga has roiled members of Congress. It has long been a political cudgel for Democrats, but after millions of files were released last month, offering the most detail yet of Epstein’s crimes, Republicans once unwilling to criticize Trump administration officials are growing more testy, as was put on full display during Wednesday’s hearing.

Among the details uncovered in the files is information that showed Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick had closer ties to Epstein than he had initially led on.

Rep. Becca Balint (D-Vt.) asked Bondi if federal prosecutors have talked to Lutnick about Epstein. Bondi said only that he has “addressed those ties himself.”

Lutnick said at a congressional hearing Tuesday that he visited Epstein’s island, an admission that is at odds with previous statements in which he said he had cut off contact with the disgraced financier after initially meeting him in 2005.

“I did have lunch with him as I was on a boat going across on a family vacation,” Lutnick told a Senate panel about a trip he took to the island in 2012.

As Balint peppered Bondi about senior administration officials’ ties to Epstein, the back-and-forth between them got increasingly heated as Bondi declined to answer her questions.

“This is not a game, secretary,” Balint told Bondi.

“I’m attorney general,” Bondi responded.

“My apologies,” Balint said. “I couldn’t tell.”

In another testy exchange, Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Torrance) pressed Bondi on whether the Justice Department has evidence tying Donald Trump to the sex-trafficking crimes of Jeffrey Epstein.

Bondi dismissed the line of questioning as politically motivated and said there was “no evidence” Trump committed a crime.

Lieu then accused her of misleading Congress, citing a witness statement to the FBI alleging that Trump attended Epstein gatherings with underage girls and describing secondhand claims from a limo driver who claimed that Trump sexually assaulted an underage girl who committed suicide shortly after.

He demanded Bondi’s resignation for failing to interview the witness or hold co-conspirators to account. Other Democrats have floated the possibility of impeaching Bondi over the handling of the Epstein files.

Beyond the Epstein files, Democrats raised broad concerns about the Justice Department increasingly investigating and prosecuting the president’s political foes.

Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, said Bondi has turned the agency into “Trump’s instrument of revenge.”

“Trump orders up prosecutions like pizza and you deliver every time,” Raskin said.

As an example, Raskin pointed to the Justice Department’s failed attempt to indict six Democratic lawmakers who urged service members to not comply with unlawful orders in a video posted in November.

“You tried to get a grand jury to indict six members of Congress who are veterans of our armed forces on charges of seditious conspiracy, simply for exercising their 1st Amendment rights,” he said.

During the hearing, Democrats criticized the Justice Department’s prosecution of journalist Don Lemon, who was arrested by federal agents last month after he covered an anti-immigration enforcement protest at a Minnesota church.

Bondi defended Lemon’s prosecution and called him a “blogger.”

“They were gearing for a resistance,” Bondi testified. “They met in a parking lot and they caravanned to a church on a Sunday morning when people were worshipping.”

The protest took place after federal immigration agents fatally shot two U.S. citizens, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, in Minneapolis.

Six federal prosecutors resigned last month after Bondi directed them to investigate Good’s widow. Bondi later stated on Fox News that she “fired them all” for being part of the “resistance.” Lemon then hired one of those prosecutors, former U.S. Atty. Joe Thompson, to represent him in the case.

Bondi also faced questions about a Justice Department memo that directed the FBI to “compile a list of groups or entities engaged in acts that may constitute domestic terrorism” by Jan. 30, and to establish a “cash reward system” that incentivizes individuals to report on their fellow Americans.

Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon (D-Pa.) asked Bondi if the list of groups had been compiled yet.

“I’m not going to answer it yes or no, but I will say, I know that antifa is part of that,” Bondi said.

Asked by Scanlon if she would share such a list with Congress, Bondi said she was “not going to commit anything to you because you won’t let me answer questions.”

Scanlon said she worried that if such a list exists, there is no way for individuals or groups included in it to dispute any charge of being domestic terrorists — and warned Bondi that this was a dangerous move by the federal government.

“Americans have never tolerated political demagogues who use the government to punish people on an enemies list,” Scanlon said. “It brought down McCarthy, Nixon and it will bring down this administration as well.”

Southern California lawmakers are demanding answers from U.S. Homeland Security officials following the deaths of two Orange County residents and nearly two dozen others while in federal immigration custody.

In a letter Friday to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, U.S. Reps. Dave Min (D-Irvine) and Judy Chu (D-Pasadena) pointed to the deaths of 25 people so far this year while being held by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The number of in-custody deaths has reached an annual record since the agency began keeping track in 2018.

Two Mexican immigrants — who had long made their homes in Orange County and were sent to the Adelanto ICE Processing Center north of Hesperia — were among the deaths.

“These are not just numbers on a website, but real people — with families, jobs, and hopes and dreams — each of whom died in ICE custody,” the lawmakers wrote. “The following cases illustrate systemic patterns of delayed treatment, neglect, and failure to properly notify families.”

Ismael Ayala-Uribe, 39, died Sept. 22 about a month after being apprehended while working at the Fountain Valley Auto Wash, where he had worked for 15 years, according to a GoFundMe post by his family.

He had lived in Westminster since he was 4 years old, and had previously been protected from deportation under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, known as DACA. The Times previously reported that his application for continued protection was not renewed in 2016.

Ayala-Uribe’s relatives and members of Congress have alleged that he was denied proper medical care after being taken into ICE custody in August. Adelanto detention staff members were aware of his medical crisis, according to internal emails obtained by The Times. But Ayala-Uribe initially was taken back to his Adelanto dorm room, where he waited for another three days before being moved to Victor Valley Global Medical Center in Victorville.

ICE officials acknowledged that Ayala-Uribe died at the Victorville hospital while waiting for surgery for an abscess on his buttock. The suspected cause of the sore was not disclosed.

Ayala-Uribe’s cause of death is under investigation, ICE has previously said.

A second man — Gabriel Garcia-Aviles, 56, who lived near Costa Mesa — died Oct. 23, about a week after being detained.

ICE said Garcia-Aviles was arrested Oct. 14 in Santa Ana by the U.S. Border Patrol for an outstanding warrant, and eventually sent to the Adelanto center. ICE said in a previous statement that he was only at the Adelanto facility for a few hours before he was taken to the Victorville hospital for “suspected alcohol withdrawal symptoms.”

His condition rapidly worsened.

The deaths have focused attention on the treatment of detained immigrants as well as long-standing concerns about medical care inside Adelanto, one of the largest federal immigration detention centers in California. The situation raises broader concerns about whether immigration detention centers throughout the country are equipped to care for the deluge of people rounded up since President Trump prioritized mass deportations as part of his second-term agenda.

“These deaths raise serious questions about ICE’s ability to comply with basic detention standards, medical care protocols, and notification requirements, and underscore a pattern of gross negligence that demands immediate accountability,” Min and Chu wrote in the letter to Noem and Todd M. Lyons, the acting director of ICE.

The letter was signed by 43 other lawmakers, including Reps. Robert Garcia (D-Long Beach), J. Luis Correa (D-Santa Ana), John Garamendi (D-Walnut Grove) and Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles).

An ICE representative did not immediately respond to an email Saturday seeking comment.

The lawmakers stressed the need to treat the immigrants with humanity.

The lawmakers said Garcia-Aviles had lived in the U.S. for three decades. His family did not learn of his dire medical condition until “he was on his deathbed.” Family members drove to the hospital to find him “unconscious, intubated, and . . . [with] dried blood on his forehead” as well as “a cut on his tongue … broken teeth and bruising on his body.”

“We never got the chance to speak to him anymore and [the family] never was called to let us know why he had been transferred to the hospital,” his daugher wrote on a GoFundMe page, seeking help to pay for his funeral costs. “His absence has left a hole in our hearts.”

By ADRIANA GOMEZ LICON and LISA MASCARO

WASHINGTON (AP) — A week after her decisive win in an Arizona special election, Adelita Grijalva arrived at the U.S. Capitol, where her father had served for decades.

SHANGHAI — The head of a U.S. congressional delegation visiting China said Thursday that much need to be done to resolve the U.S.-China trade conflict, which he said is creating difficulties for companies on both sides of the Pacific.

His biggest takeaway was that a lot of business is going on between the two economies despite the trade war, Rep. Adam Smith, a Democrat from Washington state, said on the final day of a five-day trip.

“We have a lot of work to do to resolve those issues, but China, the U.S. and the world can benefit from resolving some of our differences and working better together,” he told journalists after a meeting with the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai.

The group of three Democrats — Smith and Reps. Ro Khanna and Chrissy Houlahan — and Republican Rep. Michael Baumgartner could be seen having a coffee at a Starbucks in an office building lobby after their meeting with the Chamber.

The Democrats are all members of the House Armed Services Committee, and Smith repeated his call from the outset of the trip for more communication between the U.S. and Chinese militaries.

“Two of the largest nuclear powers in the world need to be talking to each other, particularly considering the fact that we do have some disagreements,” he said.

The lawmakers arrived in Shanghai on Wednesday after three days of meetings with Chinese political leaders in Beijing including Premier Li Qiang, Foreign Minister Wang Yi and Defense Minister Dong Jun.

Smith said the main purpose of trip was to open up lines of communication between the governments. Theirs was the first by a delegation from the U.S. House of Representatives since 2019. A U.S. Senate delegation visited in 2023.

U.S. President Donald Trump said recently that he would meet Chinese leader Xi Jinping at a regional summit in South Korea in late October and visit China in the early next year. China has not confirmed the meetings.

It’s been more than 60 years since Utah backed a Democrat for president. The state’s last Democratic U.S. senator left office nearly half a century ago and the last Utah Democrat to serve in the House lost his seat in 2020.

But, improbably enough, Utah has suddenly emerged as a rare Democratic bright spot in the red-vs.-blue redistricting wars.

Late last month, a judge tossed out the state’s slanted congressional lines and ordered Utah’s GOP-run Legislature to draw a new political map, ruling that lawmakers improperly thumbed their noses and overrode voters who created an independent redistricting commission to end gerrymandering.

It’s a welcome pushback against the growing pattern of lawmakers arrogantly ignoring voters and pursuing their preferred agenda. You don’t have to be a partisan to think that elections should matter and when voters express their will it should be honored.

Otherwise, what’s the point of holding elections?

Anyhow, redistricting. Did you ever dream you’d spend this much time thinking about the subject? Typically, it’s an arcane and extremely nerdy process that occurs once a decade, after the census, and mainly draws attention from a small priesthood of line-drawing experts and political obsessives.

Suddenly, everyone is fixated on congressional boundaries, for which we can thank our voraciously self-absorbed president.

Trump started the whole sorry gerrymandering business — voters and democracy be damned — by browbeating Texas into redrawing its congressional map to try to nab Republicans as many as five additional House seats in 2026. The paranoid president is looking to bolster his party ahead of a tough midterm election, when Democrats need to gain just three seats to win a House majority and attain some measure of control over Trump’s rogue regime.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom responded to Texas with a proposed Democratic gerrymander and perhaps you’re thinking, well, what about his attempted power grab? While your friendly columnist has deplored efforts to end-run the state’s voter-established redistricting commission, at least the matter is going on the ballot in a Nov. 4 special election, allowing the people to decide.

Meantime, the political race to the bottom continues.

Lawmakers in Republican-run Florida, Indiana, Missouri and Ohio may tear up their congressional maps in favor of partisan gerrymanders, and Democrats in Illinois and New York are being urged to do the same.

When all is said and done, 10 or so additional seats could be locked up by one party or the other, even before a single ballot is cast; this when the competitive congressional map nationwide has already shrunk to a postage stamp-sized historic low.

If you think that sort of pre-baked election and voter obsolescence is a good thing, you might consider switching your registration to Russia or China.

Utah, at least, offers a small ray of positivity.

In 2018, voters there narrowly approved Proposition 4, taking the map-drawing process away from self-interested lawmakers and creating an independent commission to handle redistricting. In 2021, the Republican-run Legislature chose to ignore voters, gutting the commission and passing a congressional map that allowed the GOP to easily win all four of Utah’s House seats.

The trick was slicing and dicing Democratic-leaning Salt Lake County, the state’s most populous and densely packed, and scattering its voters among four predominantly Republican districts.

“There’s always going to be someone who disagrees,” Carson Jorgensen, the chairman of the Utah Republican Party, said airily as lawmakers prepared to give voters their middle finger.

In July 2024, Utah’s five Supreme Court justices — all Republican appointees — found that the Legislature’s repeal and replacement of Proposition 4 was unconstitutional. The ruling kicked the case over to Salt Lake County District Judge Dianna Gibson, who on Aug. 25 rejected the partisan maps drawn by GOP lawmakers.

Cue the predictable outrage.

“Monday’s Court Order in Utah is absolutely Unconstitutional,” Trump bleated on social media. “How did such a wonderful Republican State like Utah, which I won in every Election, end up with so many Radical Left Judges?”

In Gibson’s case, the answer is her appointment by Gov. Gary R. Herbert, a Republican who would be considered a radical leftist in the same way a hot fudge sundae could be described as diet food.

Others offered the usual condemnation of “judicial activism,” which is political-speak for whenever a court decision doesn’t go your way.

“It’s a terrible day … for the rule of law,” lamented Utah’s Republican Sen. Mike Lee, who is apparently concerned with legal proprieties only insofar as they serve his party’s president and the GOP, having schemed with Trump allies in their failed attempt to overturn the 2020 election.

In a ruling last week rejecting lawmakers’ request to pause her decision, Gibson wrote that “Utah has an opportunity to be different.”

“While other states are currently redrawing their congressional maps to intentionally render some citizen votes meaningless, Utah could redesign its congressional plan with the intention to protect its citizens’ right to vote and to ensure that each citizen’s vote is meaningful.”

That’s true. Utah can not only be different from other states, as Gibson suggested.

It can be better.

Protests in Indonesia sparked by economic hardship have elicited a heavy-handed response from police, triggering concerns that the Southeast Asian nation could be returning to its authoritarian past.

As police trucks have been spray-painted with anti-law enforcement slogans, President Prabowo Subianto has denounced the demonstrations as “treason and terrorism” while seeking to assuage wide-ranging discontent.

Thousands have taken to the streets in major cities in the last week, joined at times by rioters setting fire to government buildings and looters ransacking the homes of politicians. At least 10 people have died and hundreds have been injured in the ensuing unrest.

On Wednesday, a coalition of student unions met with lawmakers and demanded an independent investigation into the police violence, portending further protests.

Frustrations in the world’s third-largest democracy have been building since Prabowo, a former military general and businessman, took power last year, implementing austerity measures that have cut billions from public services such as healthcare and education.

Many ordinary Indonesians criticize the government for primarily serving the interests of the wealthy elite even as youth unemployment soars and wages stagnate.

The initial wave of demonstrations began Aug. 25, with thousands gathering outside the country’s parliament to decry one stark example of such inequality: a $3,000 housing allowance for lawmakers that was nearly 10 times the minimum wage in Jakarta.

The discontent escalated into violence when a 21-year-old motorcycle taxi driver was fatally struck by an armored police vehicle speeding through the crowd.

Prabowo and his police chief have apologized for the incident, and one of the officers involved in the crash has been fired.

At a televised news conference, Prabowo stressed that the right to peaceful assembly should be protected but that “the state must step in to protect its citizens.”

Neither these measures, nor the president’s promise to scale back the lawmakers’ perks, have quelled the outpouring of public anger, which has been met with a police response that human rights groups have decried as excessive.

“Nobody should die while exercising their right to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly,” said Montse Ferrer, Amnesty International’s regional research director for East and Southeast Asia.

On Monday, the United Nations called for an investigation into the “alleged use of unnecessary or disproportionate force by security forces.”

Since the demonstrations began, Indonesian police have used tear gas, water cannons and rubber bullets against protesters, some of whom have lobbed back Molotov cocktails and rocks. Authorities have arrested over 3,000 people.

Two deaths have been attributed to the police crackdown: a pedicab driver in the city of Solo who died last week while being treated for tear gas exposure, and a college student who died Sunday after apparently being beaten by police.

Such incidents have resurfaced the Indonesian public’s festering distrust of the police force, said Jacqui Baker, a scholar of Indonesian security and policing at Murdoch University in Perth, Australia.

“Ordinary people have long repeated a saying ‘report a chicken, lose a buffalo,’ meaning if you engage the police in routine law enforcement … you are likely to suffer more material loss than the original theft,” she said.

In recent years, civic groups have accused police of dozens of extrajudicial killings and torture.

Many of the country’s policing problems stem from a three-decade-long period of authoritarian rule under then-President Suharto that ended in 1998.

With the police remaining wedded to political interests even after the country’s democratization, Baker said, the “historical sense of entitlement has generated a deeply corrupt, violent and predatory force that is widely hated by ordinary people.”

President Prabowo himself is accused of human rights abuses, such as the abduction of dissidents, under Suharto’s rule. Critics say he is now pulling the country back into authoritarianism by expanding the military’s involvement in civilian institutions. Prabowo denies these claims.

Vance Boelter, the man who authorities believe shot two Minnesota lawmakers and their spouses in politically motivated shootings early Saturday morning, is now in custody.

Law enforcement officials said Boelter, 57, was taken into custody after being located in the woods near his home in Green Isle, in Sibley County, on Sunday night.

Hennepin County court records show Boelter is charged with two counts of second-degree murder and two counts of second-degree attempted murder. He is due in court Monday afternoon. The Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office posted these booking photos of Boelter after his capture:

Shortly before 10 p.m., the Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office posted a picture on social media that appears to show Boelter being taken into custody. 

“The face of evil,” the sheriff’s office wrote. “After relentless and determined police work, the killer is now in custody. Thanks to the dedication of multiple agencies working together along with support from the community, justice is one step closer.”

The face of evil. After relentless and determined police work, the killer is now in custody. Thanks to the dedication of…

Posted by Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office on Sunday, June 15, 2025

The search had been going on since early Saturday, when Minnesota Rep. Melissa Hortman, a Democrat, and her husband Mark were shot and killed in their Brooklyn Park home and state Sen. John Hoffman, also a Democrat, and his wife Yvette were shot in their home in Champlin. Gov. Tim Walz told a news conference Sunday night that John Hoffman is out of his final surgery and is moving toward recovery and Yvette Hoffman is healing.

The manhunt for Boelter lasted over 36 hours, as authorities issued shelter-in-place orders for parts of the northwest metro.

Brooklyn Park police Chief Mark Burley said during the news conference that this was the largest manhunt in state history.

“Boelter exploited the trust our uniforms are meant to represent,” Bob Jacobson, commissioner of Minnesota’s Department of Public Safety, said during the news conference. “That betrayal is deeply disturbing to those of us who wear the badge with honor and responsibility.” 

Authorities said Boelter impersonated police officers as he approached their homes and shot his victims.

Minnesota State Patrol Lt. Col. Jeremy Geiger said at the news conference that in the end, Boelter surrendered — crawling to officers to give himself up.

State and law enforcement officials react

Walz told the Sunday night news conference that the state will do what it can to ensure fairness and justice prevail.

“You can rest assured that we will put every ounce of effort that the state of Minnesota has to make sure that justice is served and the individual responsible for this serves the time for the unspeakable act,” he said.

Walz also thanked law enforcement for their work in finding Boelter.

“That’s 48 hours that law enforcement [was] involved in a complex and dangerous manhunt, spent Father’s Day away from their families to deliver justice for Melissa and Mark Hortman, and their children, who spent this Father’s Day alone,” he said.

Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension Superintendent Drew Evans said his team will continue to work and gather evidence.

“The first step in a case like this is that we take him into custody,” Evans said. “And then the work will continue and begin to make sure that we have all the evidence we need to ensure that he is held accountable for his crimes.”

Speaker Lisa Demuth, R-Cold Spring, said the following in a written statement:

“I’m grateful that this nightmare has come to an end with the suspected murderer captured alive so he can be charged, prosecuted, and punished for the horror he has wrought on our state. Thank you to the brave men and women of local, state, and federal law enforcement who have worked around the clock to ensure this evil man faces justice.”  

U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar in a written statement thanked law enforcement for locating and arresting Boelter, saying it was a “mammoth and heroic effort.”

Officials said Brooklyn Park police arrived at Hortman’s home around 3:30 a.m. Saturday and found a car that looked like a police SUV with emergency lights on. Boelter then left the home and exchanged gunfire with police officers before fleeing on foot.

Walz called Hortman’s death a “political assassination” and ordered flags to fly at half staff to honor her and her husband. Hortman, who served as the Speaker Emerita of the Minnesota House, leaves behind two children.

Nearly 2 million California rooftop solar owners could lose the energy credits that help them cover what they spent to install the expensive climate-friendly systems under a proposed state bill.

The bill’s author, Assemblymember Lisa Calderon (D-Whittier), is a former executive at Southern California Edison and its parent company, Edison International. She says the credits that rooftop owners receive when they send unused electricity to the grid is raising the bills of customers who don’t own the panels.

Her bill, AB 942, would limit the current program’s benefits to 10 years — half the 20 year-period the state had told the rooftop owners they would receive. The bill would also cancel the solar contracts if the home was sold.

Southern California Edison and the state’s two other big for-profit utilities have long tried to reduce the energy credits that incentivized Californians to invest in the solar panels. The rooftop solar systems have cut into the utilities’ sales of electricity.

The legislation, which applies to people who bought the systems before April 15, 2023, has outraged some Californians who invested tens of thousands to install the solar panels.

“We’re just trying to reduce our carbon footprint and you’re penalizing me for that?” said David Rynerson, a Huntington Beach resident who spent $20,000 to install the panels. “That’s just absurd.”

Until she was elected in 2020, Calderon spent 25 years at Southern California Edison and Edison International. Her last position was as a government affairs executive at Edison International, where she managed the utility’s political action committee.

Calderon declined to be interviewed. In a statement, she said that she wasn’t acting on behalf of the utility companies.

“I introduced this bill with one goal in mind: to help lower the cost of energy for Californians,” she said.

Calderon said if her bill was enacted it would reduce electric costs for customers who do not own the panels beginning in 2026.

According to OpenSecrets.org, which tracks political spending, Southern California Edison and the other two big investor-owned utilities are among Calderon’s most generous corporate donors.

Last year, the the company gave Calerdon’s campaign $11,000. Sempra, the parent company of San Diego Gas & Electric, also contributed $11,000, while Pacific Gas & Electric provided $8,000.

Southern California Edison spokesperson Kathleen Dunleavy said that the company supports rooftop solar but it also supports efforts to reduce the amount of costs that have been shifted to customers who don’t own the panels.

She said the company’s political contributions to elected officials “are based on their shared interest in how best to safely serve SCE customers reliable and affordable energy.”

In her statement to The Times, Calderon said that “political contributions have no bearing on any policy decisions I make.”

Calderon is a member of a political dynasty that has held power in the blue-collar neighborhoods east of Los Angeles for four decades.

She is married to Charles Calderon, a former state Assembly speaker and former state Senate majority leader. She was elected to the Assembly seat that had been held by her stepson Ian Calderon.

Under California’s rooftop solar program, owners get a credit on their electric bills for the solar energy they produce but don’t use. The credit is based on the current retail electric rates. The value of the credits has increased rapidly as the state’s Public Utilities Commission approved rate increases requested by the companies.

In December 2022, the big utility companies successfully pressed the commission to slash financial incentives that rooftop solar owners could receive by about 75%, starting with those people purchasing the systems on April 15, 2023.

The commission left in place the program for owners who purchased the panels by that date. The agency says the value of the credits given to those owners is now a leading cause of the state’s rising electric bills — a claim that has been disputed by the rooftop solar industry and dozens of environmental groups.

In a February report to Gov. Gavin Newsom, the commission suggested reducing the number of years that rooftop solar owners can receive credits at the retail electric rate — similar to what Calderon’s bill would do — as a remedy for escalating power costs. California now has the country’s second highest electric rates.

The commission says the rooftop customers are not contributing their fair share of the costs to maintain the electrical grid, so the expense is shifted to those who don’t own the panels.

Dozens of environmental groups sent a letter this month to the chair of the Assembly Utilities & Energy Committee opposing Calderon’s bill and pointing out that the state has long said the solar contracts would last for 20 years, which is the expected useful life of the panels.

“The CPUC’s new proposal, to break energy contracts mid-stream, would be patently unfair,” the groups wrote. “It would punish the very people who California encouraged to invest in solar energy. And it would gut consumer confidence and trust in government.”

The groups pointed out that when Californians bought the systems, they signed a state-mandated legal agreement with their utility that details in the terms that the customer is eligible to receive the credits for 20 years.

In California, under a policy known as decoupling, utilities don’t make more money as customers use more energy. Instead they make most of their profit by building infrastructure, including poles, wires and the rest of the grid.

In their letter, the environmental groups pointed to an analysis that economist Richard McCann performed for the rooftop solar industry that found that electric rates had risen as the utilities spent more on infrastructure.

Even though homeowners’ solar panels helped keep demand for electricity flat for 20 years, the three utilities’ spending on transmission and distribution infrastructure had risen by 300%, McCann found.

“To address rising rates, California must focus on what’s really wrong with our energy system: uncontrolled utility spending and record utility profits,” the environmental groups wrote.

A hearing on the bill is scheduled in the Assembly Utilities & Energy committee on April 30.

Cherene Birkholz of Long Beach said that she and her husband spent $22,000 on panels for their home. The couple saw the solar panels, she said, as a way to control costs so they could stay in California after they retired.

Birkholz said she believed the credits would continue for 20 years. The proposed legislation, she said, “came as a shock.”

“If I had known, I may not have made these decisions,” she said.

Dwight James of Simi Valley said that he spent $35,000 on solar panels in 2018 and another $40,000 on batteries to store the power in 2021. He said he financed the purchase with a 20-year loan and that he found it “disturbing” that the state would now back out of what it had promised.

“If you follow the money, it gives you all the answers,” James said. “My thought is that this bill is a way for the utility companies to try to hold on a little bit longer and slow the adoption of solar.”

WASHINGTON — Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Long Beach) and other House Democrats are demanding that Department of Homeland Security officials justify their attempts last week to speak with students at two Los Angeles elementary schools.

Garcia and 17 other Democrats signed a letter sent Friday to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, requesting a briefing about the operation.

“If you falsely claim to be conducting welfare checks while actually targeting children for deportation, you undermine willingness to cooperate with law enforcement, provoke fear, and undermine public trust,” the lawmakers wrote, also demanding that the agency “desist from immigration enforcement activity” involving children who do not pose a public safety threat.

Federal agents showed up last Monday unannounced and without a judicial warrant at Russell Elementary and at Lillian Street Elementary in the Florence-Graham neighborhood of South Los Angeles. They asked to speak with five students collectively, ranging from first-graders to sixth-graders. But school principals denied access.

According to L.A. Unified Supt. Alberto Carvalho, the agents said they were there to perform wellness checks and falsely claimed the students’ families had given permission for the contact. The agents identified themselves as being with Homeland Security Investigations, an arm of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, but were not in uniform and were reluctant to show official identification, Carvalho said.

Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, told The Times that the agents were checking on the well-being of children who arrived unaccompanied at the border.

“DHS is leading efforts to conduct welfare checks on these children to ensure that they are safe and not being exploited, abused, and sex trafficked,” she said.

But according to Garcia’s letter, L.A. Unified School District staff informed lawmakers that the four students targeted at Russell Elementary “were not, in fact, unaccompanied minors.”

“This raises serious questions about the truthfulness of your Department, and the safety of our constituents,” the lawmakers wrote. “The United States Supreme Court has ruled that all students have a right to a public education, no matter their immigration status. If parents and children cannot access schools without fear of deportation or harassment, you deny that right.”

President Trump and other Republicans have repeatedly claimed that more than 300,000 migrant children are “missing, dead, sex slaves or slaves.” The claim appears to be based on a report by the DHS Office of Inspector General stating that 323,000 children either had not been served notices to appear in immigration court as of last May or had failed to appear for their hearings since 2019.

The report said children “who do not appear for court are considered at higher risk for trafficking, exploitation, or forced labor.”

Shortly after Trump took office, his administration declared that immigration agents are free to make arrests in places of worship, schools, hospitals and other locations that were previously considered “sensitive.” The new policy rescinded a 2011 memo restricting agents from making arrests in such locations.

The incidents last week in Los Angeles left educators across the country on edge about protecting immigrant students.

Garcia, who is on the House Homeland Security committee, said he is trying to determine whether it was the first such operation by federal immigration agents at any K-12 schools in the country. He believes it was an example of similar actions to come and said that communities need to be prepared to respond as the staff of these schools did.

Garcia noted that the schools that agents visited serve low-income families who live in neighborhoods with some of the highest immigrant and Latino populations in the country.

“They’re targeting vulnerable communities,” he said. “They’re not being truthful about what they’re doing and permissions that they have. That’s really concerning and has got to be known to people.”

SEOUL — South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, whose declaration of martial law in December involved special forces storming the National Assembly and National Election Commission, was officially removed from office Friday after the country’s Constitutional Court voted to uphold the impeachment motion passed by lawmakers late last year.

The court’s verdict, by a vote of 8 to 0, means South Korea will hold an election to choose a new president within 60 days. Separately, Yoon, 64, will also be tried on criminal insurrection charges.

In reading out the court’s ruling, acting chief justice Moon Hyung-bae said that Yoon had defied the constitutional order and “comprehensively violated South Koreans’ basic rights,” adding that it was only the “resistance of the citizenry and the passive operational conduct of police and soldiers” that allowed legislators to cancel the martial law declaration with a vote.

Yoon, who was halfway into a single five-year term, is the second South Korean president to be impeached. Park Geun-hye, another conservative, was removed from office in 2017 after a corruption scandal.

The court’s decision marks the end of what has been a turbulent presidency.

Yoon was elected in 2022, beating his liberal opponent, Lee Jae-myung, by just 0.73 of a percentage point, or 247,077 votes, beginning his term on what many viewed as a weak public mandate.

Although Yoon was welcomed by the Biden administration for bringing South Korea into a three-way military pact with Japan, aligning it with the United States’ broader push to constrain China’s ambitions in the region, his track record of scandals, diplomatic gaffes and flashes of authoritarian governance made him deeply unpopular at home.

During his tenure, Yoon and his allies were criticized for trying to muzzle adversarial media outlets and journalists as well as a government-funded cartoon competition that awarded its top prize to a work lampooning Yoon.

As part of his martial law order, Yoon banned all political activity and placed the media under military control.

His wife, Kim Keon-hee, was trailed by myriad controversies of her own, including revelations that she plagiarized her master’s thesis.

Yoon remained defiant at his impeachment trial, claiming that he was being framed for insurrection by his political enemies — and that his declaration of martial law was intended as a plea for public attention.

Since December, he has attempted to justify his declaration of martial law with accusations that members of the liberal opposition party — which holds 192 of the legislature’s 300 seats — were North Korea sympathizers who used their “legislative tyranny” to paralyze his government. It was an echo of the anti-communist rhetoric that past military dictators and subsequent conservative leaders have frequently invoked against South Korean liberals, who have long been defined by their support for reconciliation with Pyongyang.

In defending his decision to deploy troops to the election commission, Yoon has cited a widely debunked conspiracy theory that last year’s general elections, which resulted in his conservative People Power Party suffering a crushing defeat by the liberals, were compromised by voter fraud.

“The declaration of emergency martial law on Dec. 3 was intended to announce that the country is currently facing an existential crisis, and to desperately appeal to the public so that they would become aware of this situation and give their support in overcoming it,” Yoon told the Constitutional Court in early March.

But in their testimonies to the court and prosecutors, many of the military and government officials once under Yoon’s command contradicted his version of events, recalling orders to arrest Yoon’s political opponents — and to prevent the National Assembly from exercising its constitutionally guaranteed right to lift martial law with a vote, as it did hours after the president’s declaration.

Lt. Gen. Lee Jin-woo, the chief of the Capital Defense Command, one of the military units mobilized during martial law, reportedly told investigators that Yoon called him that night and said: “What are you doing? Break down the door and drag them out even if you have to fire your weapons.”

The commander of the military’s special forces, Lt. Gen. Kwak Jong-keun, also testified that Yoon told him to remove lawmakers from the National Assembly before they could vote to overturn the martial law declaration.

Both generals have also been indicted on insurrection charges.

Yoon, a former prosecutor, chose to defend himself in court, a move that many consider a monumental mistake.

“He made so many blunders during his defense and essentially exposed his own lack of knowledge of the constitution,” said Cho Gab-je, a conservative pundit. “It was a total comedy.”

Cho noted that Yoon acknowledged sending troops to occupy the country’s election commission, an independent constitutional institution that does not fall under the scope of martial law.

“It was basically a confession,” he said.

The trial has also stirred concerns that South Korea is seeing the resurgence of an authoritarian far right.

Despite widespread public fury at Yoon’s martial law declaration, his party has defended him, with some conservative lawmakers calling for the “destruction” of the Constitutional Court.

Opposition lawmakers have accused Yoon of inciting his most extreme followers to violence, after a pro-Yoon mob stormed and defaced the courthouse that issued his arrest warrant in January.

“Yoon’s party needs to cut ties with him, but they can’t because they’re conscious of his supporters,” Cho said. “I estimate that a third of people still believe the election fraud conspiracy theory.”

Yoon’s ouster will probably lead to a fresh rethinking of South Korea’s political system, which has seen four of its eight presidents either jailed or impeached since the nation became a democracy in 1987 after decades of authoritarian rule.

Many have argued that the president wields far too much power under the current constitution and that greater checks and balances are needed.

“The fact that president after president is being impeached or jailed tells us that we need to take this as an opportunity to begin discussing how to change South Korea’s governance structure,” said Ha Sang-eung, a political scientist at Sogang University. Ha pointed to the fact that the constitution allows lawmakers to hold Cabinet positions without giving up their seat in the National Assembly — one of several features that he argues undermines the legislature’s checks on executive power.

“Ruling party lawmakers know that they could be called up to the Cabinet anytime, which means they try not to run afoul of the president,” he said.

“It’s not something that we can just fix by electing a new president.”

WASHINGTON  —  Since he began taking over the Republican Party nearly a decade ago, President-elect Donald Trump has demanded increasing levels of loyalty from lawmakers who serve in Congress.

With few exceptions, they have gone along, refusing to convict him in two impeachment trials and, even after he was convicted of 34 felonies, helping him win a second term in the White House as he plowed through a Republican primary and general election after falsely denying his 2020 loss.

Now, members of the Senate will face another test: whether to cede their long-held independent authority under the Constitution to review an increasingly controversial group of Cabinet picks.

Many senators in both parties have already expressed concerns about some of Trump’s selections, but the president-elect has said he expects the body to test a controversial tactic that would let him bypass the confirmation process.

In the last several days, Trump has nominated Pete Hegseth, a Fox television host and veteran who has never held a leadership post, as his secretary of Defense; Tulsi Gabbard, a former Democratic House member accused of spreading Kremlin talking points, as his director of national intelligence; and Matt Gaetz, a Florida Republican who resigned his seat in the House on Wednesday while facing a congressional investigation into sex trafficking, as his attorney general.

Then on Thursday, Trump named Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a vociferous vaccine skeptic who has promoted false conspiracy theories concerning healthcare, to lead the Department of Health and Human Services.

Trump is known for defying tradition and going against the grain, but the recent appointments suggest a larger agenda, some political observers say.

“There is a difference between having a broader ideological mix and choosing [an accused] sex trafficker for attorney general of the United States,” said Marc Short, who served as Trump’s legislative affairs director during his first term and as chief of staff to former Vice President Mike Pence.

“I think he’s trying to disrupt,” Short said of Trump. But “I’m not convinced that it’s clearly thought through.”

Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, the Bakersfield Republican whose career in Congress was upended when Gaetz led a rebellion against him, predicted that at least the Gaetz nomination would fail, telling Bloomberg Television on Thursday that he “won’t get confirmed, everybody knows that.”

McCarthy called the nomination “a good deflection,” hinting at a popular Washington theory that Gaetz, even if defeated, could help Trump win approval of other controversial nominees by using up whatever willpower Republican senators have to take on the new president next year.

At the center of it all is Sen. John Thune, a South Dakota Republican who won an internal vote Wednesday to become Senate majority leader in the next Congress. He replaces Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell, the longtime Senate GOP leader who occasionally clashed with Trump during his first term but prevented an all-out intraparty war by largely acquiescing to the president. The Senate under Thune will be even more Trump-friendly, with more members who come into office with Trump’s support, while some of the more skeptical Republicans are no longer in office.

Trump had mixed results with his first-term nominations, even as he chose from an inexperienced talent pool. Several of his high-level nominees faced drawn-out battles — a few withdrew, but most were eventually approved.

Before Thune defeated two of his colleagues to win the leadership post, Trump said on social media that he wanted the new Senate leaders to push his nominees through using recess appointments, in which the Senate would declare itself closed for business for 10 days so the president can appoint a Cabinet secretary for the remainder of the two-year session.

The tactic, conceived in the horse-and-buggy days when Congress met part time, would probably be challenged in court. Opponents argue against the routine use of recess appointments, and members of the Senate are historically protective of their role as a check on the executive branch.

Thune told South Dakota reporters Wednesday that he would prefer to avoid a recess appointment but did not rule it out.

“I’m willing to grind through it and do it the old-fashioned way,” he said, according to the Sioux Falls Argus Leader.

He reiterated that point to ABC News on Thursday, promising that “we expect our committees to do their jobs and provide the advice and consent that is required under the Constitution.”

Lawmakers in both parties have already said they want to know more about the House Ethics Committee investigation into Gaetz, which was closed when he resigned his seat. The comments signal that they do not want to cede their right to review his record. One lawmaker who said he “absolutely” wants to see the House report was Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, a high-ranking Republican member of the Judiciary Committee who ran against Thune for majority leader.

The use of recess appointments to avoid the Senate is a concern to some who’ve worked in the federal government.

Richard Painter, chief White House ethics lawyer under President George W. Bush, said that immediately adjourning the Senate at the new president’s direction would signal a dark day for the country.

“This is the way it works in dictatorships,” said Painter, who ran unsuccessfully for Senate in Minnesota in 2018 as a Democrat. “To have a president sworn in and then immediately dissolve Congress? Absolutely nuts.”

But the pressure to push Trump’s preferred choices is mounting. Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, one of Trump’s most ardent allies, warned would-be dissenters during an appearance on Fox Business that if they stand in the way of Trump’s agenda, “we’re gonna try to get you out of the Senate.”

The Senate has a long tradition of protecting its status, as one of two houses in Congress, as part of a coequal branch of government, even if the president is in the same party. The late Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada rankled some fellow Democrats in 2009 when he said in an interview: “I do not work for Barack Obama. I work with him.”

But a former Reid advisor, James Manley, said he believes Trump is consciously trying to erode that boundary, and he’s skeptical that Republican lawmakers have the stomach to stand up to him.

“The House is broken. They’ll do whatever he wants,” Manley said. “Now, he’s turned his attention to the Senate.”

Ben Olinsky, senior vice president of structural reform and governance at the liberal Center for American Progress, said that how the Senate handles this moment — where Trump is putting forward deeply questionable candidates while demanding the Senate allow them to sail through without vetting — “will tell us a lot about what’s going to happen in the next couple of years.”

“I absolutely think it’s a test of independence and also integrity for them,” Olinsky said. “It may be a direct loyalty test from the president.”

A federal judge has ruled that Republican Reps. Matt Gaetz of Florida and Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia can move forward with their lawsuit against two California cities where their political rallies were canceled in 2021.

In a 22-page decision, U.S. District Judge Hernan Vera ruled Friday that the two lawmakers had grounds to allege that the cancellation of their rallies in Riverside and Anaheim was “expressly predicated on viewpoint discrimination.” The judge, however, rejected the claim that the cities conspired with civil rights groups to shut down the events, calling it a “conspiracy theory that relies purely on conjecture.”

“The Complaint — even charitably construed with all reasonable inferences drawn in Plaintiffs’ favor — is utterly devoid of any specifics plausibly alleging such an agreement,” the judge wrote. “And without an unlawful conspiracy, all that is left to aver against the Nonprofit Defendants are the unremarkable allegations that they exercised their own First Amendment rights to lobby for the cancellation of the event. That is protected.”

The two lawmakers who are known for their ardent support of former President Trump filed a lawsuit in federal court last year alleging that the venues caved under pressure from the cities of Anaheim and Riverside and canceled contracts for their America First rally because they disagreed with Greene and Gaetz politically.

Anaheim spokesperson Mike Lyster said the city remains confident in its position.

“While we disagree with the decision, it isn’t unusual to see a claim move forward at this early stage, regardless of the court’s initial thoughts on the strengths of the case,” Lyster said.

The lawsuit also accused a handful of advocacy or political organizations of conspiring with the cities to push the venues to cancel the rally. Vera dismissed that claim in his decision.

“The effect of Plaintiffs’ unprecedented and stunningly deficient pleading — haling nine civil rights groups into federal court for speaking out against an event — should shock in equal measure civic members from across the political spectrum,” Vera wrote.

Greene and Gaetz tried to host their rally at two locations in Orange County and one in Riverside in July 2021, but the venue operators kept backing out.

They first tried to host the rally at the Pacific Hills Banquet & Event Center in Laguna Hills, but the venue opted to cancel after receiving a flurry of calls and emails about the event.

The rally was moved to the Riverside Convention Center. But Raincross Hospitality Management, which operates the convention center, said it decided to cancel the event because of a discrepancy on the certificate of insurance it had been provided, according to court records.

With less than 24 hours until the rally, the group moved it to the Grand Theater, a private venue in Anaheim, but the outcry over the event followed it.

An Anaheim code enforcement officer allegedly called the theater the morning of the rally and told operators that the venue’s conditional use permit would be in jeopardy if they allowed it to go forward, according to the lawsuit. The Grand Theater canceled the rally.

With time running out and no venue, the lawmakers held a protest “against communism” outside Riverside City Hall.

Greene and Gaetz celebrated the judge’s decision to allow the case to move forward on social media Monday. Gaetz wrote on X, formerly Twitter, that “spreading the America First message is our duty and our distinct privilege.”

“We will win these important free speech cases against California cities Riverside and Anaheim and the insane left!” Greene wrote on X. “Then we will return to CA and hold America First rallies inviting everyone in California that hates what the Democrats have done to their state and our country!”

Times researcher Scott Wilson contributed to this report.

The 30-second video ad struck an ominous tone, urging Californians to tell their lawmakers to vote against legislation that would force Google, Facebook and other large platforms to pay news publishers.

“It’s a dangerous precedent that will drive up costs for small businesses and make it easier for politicians to raise taxes in the future,” the narrator says in the ad, which ran in June. “With inflation running high, we can’t afford another Sacramento tax increase.”

The ad stated that it was “paid for” by the California Taxpayers Assn., a nonprofit advocacy group, but it really was bankrolled by Google.

Between April and June, the search giant paid the association $1.2 million for advertising, filings to the California secretary of State show. The association confirmed that Google funded the ad campaign against the bill.

Tech companies strongly opposed Assembly Bill 886, known as the California Journalism Preservation Act.

The money appears to have been well spent. Lawmakers put the legislation on hold until 2024.

Google’s payment to the taxpayers group made up most of the record $1.5 million the company spent lobbying California lawmakers and regulators from January to September. During the same period last year, Google spent $187,434. The company spends an average of about $257,000 per year lobbying in California, according to a review of such expenditures from 2005 to 2022.

The massive surge reflects the growing efforts by tech companies to influence California lawmakers as they debate how to protect young people and journalists and other workers from the threats posed by social media sites, artificial intelligence and other emerging technology.

Bob Shrum, a longtime Democratic consultant and director of the Center for the Political Future at the University of Southern California, said political ads are one way companies try to sway lawmakers, but the strategy is not always effective.

Shrum, who listened to the California Taxpayers Assn. ad, said viewers might walk away with the impression that the price of their internet service will go up.

“They skirt the line of being factual,” he said. “At the same time, the ad is anything but a rounded, accurate portrait of what the controversy is all about.”

Google’s spending on lobbying in California outpaced that of Facebook parent company Meta, Amazon, Apple, and other multibillion-dollar companies, data from the California secretary of State show. The search giant’s lobbying spending lagged behind AT&T, Waymo (Google’s self-driving car unit) and McDonald’s, as well as major energy companies like Chevron.

Google’s lobbying efforts went beyond advertising. On June 28, California Gov. Gavin Newsom and two of his top staff members met with Google leaders at the company’s San Francisco office, according to filings to the secretary of State’s office.

A Google representative said the meeting was about the overall legislative landscape; Newsom’s office said it was related to an executive order about artificial intelligence that he went on to sign in September.

State Sen. Ben Allen (D-Santa Monica) also met with Google, the filings showed. Allen’s office said the senator and a legislative director who works on environmental policy toured the tech giant’s Mountain View campus in April to learn about sustainability and waste reduction.

“We regularly engage with lawmakers and regulators on a range of issues, including economic growth, small business support, cybersecurity and protecting online information, among other issues,” Bailey Tomson, a spokesperson for Google, said in a statement.

The company lobbied on a variety of bills during the last legislative session, including measures barring law enforcement demands for Google location data, protecting child safety on social media and regulating artificial intelligence.

One of the company’s biggest priorities: fighting a bill that would require tech giants to negotiate payment to news organizations for stories displayed on their platforms. The online platforms would pay a “journalism usage fee” to certain publishers.

Organizations that support the bill said it would help preserve democracy by funding local news outlets, which are grappling with drastic cuts and layoffs as they compete with tech companies for advertising dollars. Tech companies should pay publishers because they profit from their news content, helping to keep people engaged on their platforms, news advocacy groups such as the California News Publishers Assn. and News/Media Alliance say. (The Los Angeles Times is a member of both organizations and supports the proposed legislation.)

Meta spokesperson Andy Stone said in May that the bill would mostly benefit large publishers. The legislation “fails to recognize that publishers and broadcasters put their content on our platform themselves and that substantial consolidation in California’s local news industry came over 15 years ago, well before Facebook was widely used,” Stone tweeted.

Meta threatened to remove news from its platforms Facebook and Instagram if the California bill becomes law, a move the social media giant used in other countries that passed similar legislation. In 2021, Meta temporarily blocked news in Australia but reversed the decision after reaching a deal with the Australian government. In August, Meta blocked news in Canada.

Debate about AB 886 has continued since the legislative session wrapped in September. On Dec. 5, the California Senate Judiciary Committee held a four-hour hearing about the importance of journalism in the digital age. Chris Argentieri, president and chief operating officer of the L.A. Times, and Matt Pearce, a Times reporter and chair of Media Guild of the West, testified in support of the legislation.

At the hearing, Google Vice President of News Richard Gingras said the search engine helps drive traffic to digital publications and noted that the company also supports journalism in other ways, such as the Google News Initiative, which provides funding, resources and training.

“A link tax as proven elsewhere would be counterproductive, making it more difficult for users to find diverse sources of news, reducing the opportunity for news publishers to build new audiences and making it harder for Google to direct users to helpful content,” Gingras told lawmakers.

The insinuation that payments to news organizations in California would be a new tax has been a pivotal part of video ads against the Journalism Preservation Act. Political ads against AB 886, including the one aired by the California Taxpayers Assn., ran in June and July, when the bill faced a critical deadline in the Senate Judiciary Committee, data from Meta’s ad library show.

Advocacy group News/Media Alliance, which supports AB 886, pushed back against the ads’ claim that lawmakers are trying to impose a tax on tech companies.

“They distort reality, and they do a good job of it, because Google is a massive company with endless resources to be able to spend on creating messaging that’s false,” said Danielle Coffey, president and chief executive of the organization.

The California News Publishers Assn. and News/Media Alliance spent $161,519 on lobbying in California from January to September — far less than tech companies spent.

David Kline, a spokesperson for the California Taxpayers Assn., said ads are just one tool lobbyists use if legislation is moving quickly and they need to get the word out to a lot of people. The association’s ad against AB 886 has racked up 2.1 million views on Google-owned YouTube.

“It’s a giant state, where advertising is your only realistic option for doing that, and just by the nature of it, advertising is expensive,” he said. The taxpayers group wasn’t representing only Google but also other members that had concerns about the bill, he added.

Google and Meta are members of the Computer & Communications Industry Assn., which also ran ads against AB 886. From January to September, the trade group spent $1.3 million on lobbying, filings to the secretary of State’s office show.

Matt Schruers, president of the association, said the majority of the spending was related to political advertising.

Lawmakers’ decision to put the bill on hold until next year “is an acknowledgment of the fact that there are serious issues with the proposal and concerns that have yet to be resolved,” Schruers said.

Assemblymember Buffy Wicks (D-Oakland), who sponsored the bill, said political ads are a common strategy in Sacramento, especially by billion-dollar companies. Lawmakers put the bill on hold because it’s important that they get it done “right” rather than quickly, she said.

The extra time also allows lawmakers to see how similar legislation plays out in Canada, she said. Google, after threatening to block news in Canada, struck a deal with the Canadian government in November to pay news businesses $73.5 million annually to comply with a new law that requires tech platforms to pay publishers.

Wicks refuted the idea that the bill would impose a new tax, noting that there’s a different legislative process for tax increases, and it would require more votes.

“When you put out disingenuous ads like that, I assume some members got calls, but I think most members are savvy enough to know it’s just simply not a tax,” she said.

News advocacy groups also used advertising to increase support for the bill, but compared to tech industry spending, it’s “ a drop in the bucket,” Coffey said.

Ads from such groups that ran in October and November on Facebook included the face of Sen. Tom Umberg (D-Orange), the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

“Sen. Tom Umberg has the opportunity to be the hero our democracy needs,” one ad by the California News Publishers Assn. says.

Umberg said he doesn’t spend a lot of time on social media and doesn’t recall seeing the ads. He said the legislation is complex, and he has concerns about how the bill would be enforced, along with its impact on minority groups and local publications, which is why lawmakers put it on hold.

He remains optimistic, though, that the bill will reach the finish line next year, and tech platforms will have “some of their skin in the game.”

“It is my view that there’s going to be a piece of legislation that’s going to get to the governor’s desk that is going to address the issue of the symbiotic relationship between social media and credible journalism,” Umberg said.