Politics
In key congressional race, Republicans criticize Democrat's Central Valley real estate deal
When the federal government closed Castle Air Force Base in Merced County in the 1990s, the dilapidated buildings and vast expanse of aging tarmac left behind seemed more like a liability than an opportunity.
But by 2018, the old runways that once carried B-52 bombers had found a new and unexpected customer: Google, which was testing its experimental self-driving vehicles there, far from the prying eyes of Silicon Valley.
At the urging of then-state Assemblyman Adam Gray, California gave Merced County $6.5 million that year to expand the self-driving testing program at the old base.
A few years later, Gray invested there, too.
In 2022, a company in which Gray is a minority owner bought four apartment buildings on the former base from Merced County, according to a Times review of business filings, property records and Gray’s financial disclosures. Gray’s link to the real estate deal has not been previously reported.
The sale closed for $600,000 in August 2022, records show, and the property is now valued at more than $2.5 million. Gray’s representatives said that the investment shows his interest in providing affordable housing, and that renovations have been so costly that he has yet to make money.
Nonetheless, the real estate deal in rural Atwater, Calif., has come under scrutiny as Gray, a Democrat, fights to unseat first-term Rep. John Duarte (R-Modesto). The race in California’s 13th Congressional District is a bitter rematch of 2022, when Duarte beat Gray by the second-closest margin in the nation: 564 votes.
The race is among the handful of contests across the U.S. that are seen as pivotal in determining which party controls Congress after the November election.
Republicans have questioned the timing of Gray’s purchase, which closed four months before he left the Legislature and less than a year before California officials awarded nearly $50 million in new funding for the site. The 2023 grant from the California State Transportation Agency helped Merced County build out a rail hub on the base site to handle cargo loaded onto trains from the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles.
“Gray’s self-serving scheme reveals his true colors as a Sacramento politician who lines his own pockets at the expense of Valley families’ trust and hard-earned dollars,” said Ben Petersen, a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee, which works to elect Republicans to the House of Representatives.
Petersen accused Gray of “mixing taxpayer money with personal profit” and said the apartment deal should be investigated.
Far from Gray lining his pockets, his campaign and company said, the old Castle Air Force Base apartments have required so much renovation that Gray has actually lost money.
Ben Rodriguez, Gray’s campaign manager, said the allegations were false and “intended to distract voters from John Duarte’s disastrous record.”
“While Adam Gray has brought back real help for families across this district, Duarte is making things worse for families every day he spends in Congress,” Rodriguez said.
Gray is a minority owner in Gemenii LLC, the company that owns the apartment complex at the base. Gemenii is a subsidiary of a family-owned residential and commercial construction company of which Gray is also a member, the firm said.
Gray learned about the Castle Air Force Base apartments about six months before the sale, when “partners that own other properties at Castle” approached him with the idea of renovating the 80-unit complex to provide affordable housing, the company said.
The four spartan buildings, once barracks for airmen, were in disrepair, and three were vacant. Merced County had classified the property as surplus and assessed the buildings and the 5.3 acres of land beneath them at $400,000 to $600,000, the company said.
When the county received “no other competitive offers,” the firm said, Merced County sold the buildings for $600,000.
The firm has since spent millions on renovations, “exactly as intended by Merced County when the property was sold in an open and public sale process,” company attorney Richard Marchini said in a written statement.
Gray was still representing the Modesto area in the state Assembly when the sale closed.
A Google Waymo autonomous vehicle navigates the roads inside the company’s facility on the property of the former Castle Air Force Base, which is now a municipal airport, in Atwater, Calif. in 2017.
(San Francisco Chronicle / Hearst Newspapers via Getty Images )
Gray has a 30% stake in the firm that owns the apartments, the company said. His name does not appear in the company’s state business filings.
Gray first disclosed his investment in his 2022 Form 700, the financial disclosure that California lawmakers are required to file annually with state ethics officials.
Government experts said it did not appear that Gray’s real estate deal broke the law.
But, they said, elected officials who invest in real estate must be aware of the appearance of conflicts of interest, particularly when investing in their districts.
Dan Schnur, the former head of the California Fair Political Practices Commission, said that Gray’s real estate investment at the site being bookended by the award of taxpayer funds seemed “suspicious.”
“Everyone deserves the benefit of the doubt, but the best way to receive the benefit of the doubt is to earn it,” Schnur said. “A public servant ought to be aware of how these things might be perceived.”
After Gray lost his run for Congress in 2022, he filed a federal financial disclosure with the House in which he did not disclose the real estate investment or his stake in the LLC that owns the buildings.
His campaign said that Gray did not mention the apartment complex investment because there was no revenue to report, but that he disclosed his position in the parent company.
In a new filing made public this month, for Gray’s second run for Congress, he said he received between $100,000 and $1 million from the LLC that owns the apartments in 2023, and between $50,000 and $100,000 in the first half of 2024.
Those figures represent the company’s total revenue, rather than Gray’s, and were listed “out of an abundance of caution,” the campaign said.
Gray has not received any income from the business in 2023 or 2024, the campaign said, and the investment has not made a profit.
The former air base, now called Castle Commerce Center, covers about 3 square miles. It’s home to miles of empty roads, as well as dozens of private and government tenants, including a federal prison, a post office, Merced’s commercial airport and Waymo, Google’s autonomous vehicle company.
After Gray helped secure the $6.5-million grant for the self-driving car testing site in 2018, Merced County converted vast stretches of unused tarmac at the base into a testing hub. There are now full intersections with traffic lights and signage and a 2.2-mile test freeway with on- and off-ramps where vehicles can practice driving in urban environments.
The site, operated by an Ohio-based company, has hosted two dozen companies from Silicon Valley and major automotive firms.
In the midst of that boom, Merced County’s supervisors continued selling portions of the base as surplus land. That included the 5.3-acre site and the 80-unit apartment complex, which the board sold on a 4-0 vote in May 2022 to Gemenii.
At the time of the sale, the land was valued at $465,000, and the structures were valued at $135,000, according to tax records provided by the company.
The company took out an $885,000, 30-year mortgage at the end of 2022, and a $3-million, 15-year mortgage in June of this year, to finance renovations at the building, the company said.
Two buildings have been gutted and renovated so far, a process that included asbestos removal and replacing windows and appliances, the company said.
The renovated buildings are now valued at more than $2 million, while the underlying land value has risen by $9,300, according to tax bills provided by the company.
The increase in value is “directly connected to the material financial efforts of Gemenii to revitalize the property,” the firm said. Any developments at the air base site, the company said, “have had no impact on the property’s value.”
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The House has officially shipped a colossal bipartisan housing package to President Donald Trump, and lawmakers are hoping that, at the very least, he doesn’t veto it.
Trump was supposed to sign the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act last week, but his last-minute decision to ghost the signing ceremony with House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., put into question whether the bill was dead.
His refusal to sign the bill, which passed with overwhelmingly bipartisan support in both chambers, was to leverage the Safeguarding American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) America Act, which doesn’t currently have the votes to succeed in the Senate.
WARREN TELLS TRUMP TO ‘SIGN THE DAMN BILL’ AS BIPARTISAN HOUSING PACKAGE REMAINS STALLED IN WASHINGTON
Trump has refused to sign the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act. (Shawn Thew/EPA/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Trump appears to be in no hurry to sign the bill, despite Republicans who are hungry for a win in the affordability fight ahead of the midterm elections.
“It’s so unimportant … compared to the SAVE America Act,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Monday. “I think the SAVE America Act is exactly what it says. It’s saving America from crooked elections.”
“Here’s what I would like to sign, much more than a bill that — big deal, it’s a yawn,” he continued. “Some people say it’s wonderful. To me, compared to the SAVE America Act, just about everything is a big yawn.”
GOP INFIGHTING OVER TRUMP’S VOTER ID BILL ERUPTS AS TOP SENATOR CALLS STRATEGY ‘FANTASY’
It’s legislation that is loaded with nearly 60 provisions from both sides of the aisle in both chambers that’s designed to make it easier for homes to be built and for younger Americans to buy their first home. It also includes a ban on hedge funds buying up housing stock that Trump pushed Congress to include during the State of the Union earlier this year.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., one of the architects behind the bill in the upper chamber alongside Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., charged that Congress handed the bill to Trump “on a silver platter.”
“When you ask me what happens next, if he cared about the American people, he’d have already signed the damned thing, and we’d be underway,” Warren said on WCVB’s “On the Record” on Sunday.
But Trump doesn’t have to put his signature on the bill for it to become law.
IRATE REPUBLICANS ACCUSE TRUMP OF HANDING DEMOCRATS A WIN AFTER BLOWING UP HOUSING PACKAGE
The Senate advanced a massive, Trump-backed housing package geared toward lowering the costs of homes and supercharging the housing supply. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., pitched it as legislation to prevent America from becoming a “nation of renters.” (Jemal Countess/Getty Images for Protect Borrowers; Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
The Constitution grants presidents the ability to veto a bill within 10 days of it being transferred over to the White House. In that scenario, Congress could override a veto of the housing package.
It’s happened before under the Trump administration. In early 2021, Congress overrode Trump’s veto of the annual National Defense Authorization Act — a massive Pentagon funding authorization package that some House Republicans are trying to use as a vehicle to pass the SAVE America Act.
But during that 10-day period, if Trump doesn’t sign the bill, it would automatically become law. That’s unless Congress completely adjourns, in which case a “pocket veto” could happen. The Senate is currently in recess and the House is scheduled to leave town by week’s end, but neither count as a full adjournment.
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Johnson, who spent the last few days meeting with Trump at the White House about the housing bill and the SAVE America Act, said: “I hope he does sign it.”
“If he doesn’t, it’s still law,” Johnson said. “We’ll still celebrate it, but he’s trying to make a point, and I think he’s making it very effectively. And the fact that you all ask me every three steps down the hallway illustrates that he has achieved the desired objective, and that is to make SAVE America the number one thing, because if we don’t get that right, everybody’s concerned about what happens next.”
Britain’s culture minister may challenge Paramount Skydance’s takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery — presenting a potential speed-bump to David Ellison’s plan to wrap up his $111-billion deal by September.
Earlier this month, Paramount secured the U.S. Justice Department’s blessing to buy the Warner assets, which include CNN, HBO, Cartoon Network, Animal Planet and the Warner Bros. film and TV studios in Burbank.
Paramount also must win the approval of British and European regulators, who are known for drilling deeply into media matters because of their influence on society.
Britain’s Competition and Markets Authority took a preliminary step this month by opening an investigation into Ellison’s proposed merger.
On Tuesday, Lisa Nandy, Britain’s Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, notified Parliament that she was inclined to intervene in the blockbuster deal.
In a written statement, Nandy cited her ability to weigh in on “public interest grounds,” due to concerns about maintaining a competitive media market in Britain.
“The UK’s move to intervene in the Paramount–WBD deal confirms what we’ve been saying for months. The real regulatory risk was never in the US — it’s in Europe,” Forrester VP Research Director Mike Proulx said Tuesday in a statement.
While Nandy cautioned she has not made “a final decision on intervention at this stage,” she has invited Paramount and Warner Bros. to respond to her concerns by July 6.
June 2026 photo of Culture, Media and Sport Secretary Lisa Nandy arriving at Downing Street for the weekly Government cabinet meeting in London.
(Alishia Abodunde/Getty Images)
Paramount did not offer immediate comment.
The company owns CBS News, children’s channel Nickelodeon and Channel 5, one of the largest over-the-air television broadcasters in the United Kingdom.
Warner Bros. Discovery owns CNN, Cartoon Network and TNT Sports, which broadcasts the Olympics, Champions League and Premier League soccer matches.
“I am conscious that the proposed acquisition is global in nature,” Nandy wrote in her statement. “In reaching this decision, my focus has been, and will remain, on the UK public interest and the range of services available to UK audiences, including Channel 5, TNT Sports, Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon, and CNN International, as well as Paramount+ and HBO Max.”
If Nandy decides to intervene, the Office of Communications, known as Ofcom, would launch an assessment of the deal. Britain’s Competition and Markets Authority also would determine how the merger might reshape the competitive landscape.
Teams from the two companies have been huddling for months to plan for the melding of the two operations as soon as Paramount receives all of its regulatory approvals.
Australia, New Zealand, China, Saudi Arabia, Ukraine, Serbia, France and Italy have already given their approvals to the deal.
Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund is planning to contribute $10 billion to help the billionaire Ellison family pull off the merger, which would make the Saudi royal family a significant, although passive, equity owner. In addition, the royal families of Qatar and Abu Dhabi have agreed to each contribute $7 billion in equity financing.
The Federal Communications Commission must evaluate the foreign ownership stakes due to Paramount’s holding of CBS broadcast licenses. U.S. antitrust regulators already have concluded the combination would not violate federal anticompetition laws.
Approval had been expected because President Trump — who has friendly ties with Ellison and his father, tech billionaire Larry Ellison — favors the deal.
Trump has been eager for changes at CNN.
The U.S. government stopped short of asking Paramount to make concessions or divestitures. Many expect that Paramount may have to reconfigure its children’s television holdings abroad due to the proposed combination of two large players — Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network.
Nandy suggested that Britain also should scrutinize the impact of combining two major streaming services HBO Max, a Warner property, with Paramount+.
HBO programming, including “Game of Thrones,” “Boardwalk Empire,” and “Succession,” has long been popular in Britain.
A coalition of state attorneys general, led by California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta, also is expected to challenge the deal, in part, due to concerns about news media consolidation. Bonta’s office has said the matter remains under review.
Opposition to the deal has been building in the U.S. for months. A group of Hollywood activists — led by actors Jane Fonda and Mark Ruffalo — have spearheaded a “block the merger” campaign that now has support from more than 5,000 entertainment workers.
The group’s open letter calls on Bonta to take action to thwart the Ellison expansion effort. Paramount’s Chief Legal Officer Makan Delrahim has blasted the campaign, calling it “fear-mongering” and a partisan distortion of antitrust law.
Forrester’s Proulx noted differences in attitudes toward the deal among the various constituencies.
“For US consumers, this merger has become a proxy fight about political influence and control of media,” Proulx said. “In the UK, it’s being treated as a structural competition issue where regulators, not consumers, will decide how this deal plays out and how long it takes.”
Politics
Fetterman unleashes on ‘dirtbag’ wing of Dems after far-left victories: ‘Orgy of socialism’
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Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., unloaded on his own party on Sunday evening, blasting a series of victories for progressives he called “anti-America.”
“Big night for the dirtbag left,” Fetterman said, referring to New York’s recent primaries, where two members of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) won primaries.
“I’ve said the party is becoming an orgy of socialism. Clearly anti-America, anti-Western Civilization,” Fetterman said.
Fetterman’s striking calls give a rare look at how some moderates may view the developments on their far-left flank that have dominated the party’s momentum in recent months, sparking concern that their high visibility is dragging the party further and further left.
FETTERMAN WARNS DEMOCRATS ‘DRIFTING FIRMLY INTO COMMUNISM’ AFTER SOCIALIST PRIMARY WINS
Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., speaks to reporters outside the Senate Chamber during votes on Nov. 10, 2025, on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
His comments come on the heels of a handful of key progressive victories.
In Maine, Graham Platner, a controversial Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate, has attracted controversy for denying knowledge of the meaning behind a Nazi-linked tattoo, for off-color comments about race and calling himself a “communist” in a deleted Reddit post.
In New York, one DSA member, Claire Valdez, won a primary on a platform of abolishing ICE and a Green New Deal-style approach to climate change. Similarly, Darializa Avila-Chevalier, another DSA candidate, beat out incumbent Rep. Adriano Espillat, D-N.Y., a high-ranking Democrat and the chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.
WINNERS AND LOSERS EMERGE AFTER SOCIALIST EARTHQUAKE ROCKS NYC PRIMARIES
Graham Platner, Democratic Senate candidate for Maine, speaks at a primary election night event at the Blue Hill YMCA in Blue Hill, Maine, on June 9, 2026. Platner won the party’s Senate primary after a campaign marked by accusations of past misbehavior and voter concerns. (Graeme Sloan/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Both Chevalier and Valdez had the backing of New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, himself a socialist.
The wins have captured national attention and drawn criticisms from Republicans who have pointed to their success as emblematic of the direction of the Democratic Party.
Fetterman, who has not shied away from confrontations, has been one of the few Democrats to express alarm about the kind of candidates carrying the party’s banner.
“I mean, you look at some of the things that people have said. Abolish prison, abolish the border, abolish ICE, I mean these crazy people — I have colleagues in my caucus that refuse to even call this out,” Fetterman said.
FETTERMAN REACTS TO MAMDANI’S REFUSAL TO ACCEPT SUPREME COURT’S IMMIGRATION RULING
U.S. Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., walks through the Senate Subway during the Senate War Powers vote on April 22, 2026, in Washington, D.C. (Heather Diehl/Getty Images)
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“Between P-hustle in Maine and some of the other winners in New York, they should form their own party and run on all the things that they’ve had to delete on social media,” Fetterman said, referring to Platner.
“That’s where our party has moved,” he added.
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