Politics
Column: Kevin de León takes a page from Trump's playbook at Boyle Heights debate
More than 200 people packed the pews at Dolores Mission Church in Boyle Heights on Wednesday, and they all had one question on their minds:
Where was Kevin de León?
It was 5 p.m., and the debate was about to start. His opponent, Ysabel Jurado, was in the parish hall, where she had talked to reporters from Boyle Heights Beat.
Where was he?
City Council member Kevin de León with constituents at Dolores Mission Church in Boyle Heights.
(Wally Skalij/Los Angeles Times)
The L.A. City Council member was just pulling into the parking lot, as it turned out.
He stayed in his white electric SUV, chatting with a campaign consultant, while other staffers gathered nearby. After finally getting out of the car, he went inside a school building for a few minutes before ambling across the street to the historic church.
For the last two years, De León has insisted to anyone who’ll listen that he learned his lesson from the racist City Hall audio leak that upended L.A. politics and torpedoed — but didn’t sink — his career.
On the recording, he mocked Black political power and schemed with former council president Nury Martinez, former council member Gil Cedillo and ex-L.A. County Labor Federation head Ron Herrera to get back at their adversaries.
Attendees listen to Kevin de León and Ysabel Jurado debate at Dolores Mission Church.
(Wally Skalij/Los Angeles Times)
The conversation, revealed by The Times exactly two years ago that Wednesday, captured the De León that political insiders have long known: a man with a huge chip on his shoulder eclipsed by an ego as large as the General Sherman tree.
Ever since, he has strained to remake himself as a municipal Daddy Warbucks, handing out Christmas gifts to kids and groceries to poor families.
Now, he was 10 minutes late.
As De León stopped to pose for photos on the church patio, I thought: same old Kevin. He sees himself as a picaresque hero in the novel that exists in his mind — and forces the rest of us to deal with it.
Supporters roared and yelled his name when he finally walked into the church. They booed Jurado — but her supporters countered with “Y-sa-bel!”
Father Brendan Busse welcomed everyone before letting church volunteer Delmira Gonzalez speak.
“It’s a church and sanctuary, and we want it to be respected,” she told the audience in Spanish before laying out the ground rules. No cheering, clapping or booing. Don’t talk while the candidates are talking.
Attendees give their approval during a debate between Kevin de León and Ysabel Jurado in Boyle Heights.
(Wally Skalij/Los Angeles Times)
The two sat at tables on the altar. Next to De León was a statue of the church’s namesake, Our Lady of Sorrows, hands clasped and face frozen in misery. Jurado was near a painting of Maria del Camino — Our Lady of the Way, the patron saint of the Jesuits who run Dolores Mission.
They took gulps of water simultaneously, as the moderators began.
That would be the last time they agreed on anything.
Jurado, who wore a surgical mask because of a recent bout with COVID, used her one-minute opening remarks to say she was happy to return to Dolores Mission, where she had participated in two candidate forums during the primary.
“Unfortunately, some other people were absent,” she said, a playful dig at De León.
He wasn’t playing.
“There’s a clear difference in this campaign,” De León replied in Spanish. “I’ve dedicated my life to public service, for the well-being of our people. My opponent, to date, has never done a single thing for the good of our people.
“I’ve committed my errors,” he admitted a few seconds later. “But I don’t lie. And my opponent …”
He grinned. “She has lied a lot.”
City Council candidate Ysabel Jurado is challenging incumbent Kevin de León.
(Wally Skalij/Los Angeles Times)
In the previous weeks, the candidates had barnstormed across District 14 in their own version of the Lincoln-Douglas debates — but even more bitter.
Jurado, a Highland Park native, has promised an Eastside free of corporate influence and the scandals that have cursed the area’s councilmembers for decades.
De León — who has raised more money, while Jurado has secured more prominent endorsements — focused on his accomplishments at City Hall during his first term and in the state Capitol last decade. He dismissed Jurado as a dilettante whose ties to the L.A. chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America make her dangerous to public safety.
Throughout his 18 years in elected office, De León has positioned himself as a progressive champion standing against conservatives. That night, he took a page from the Donald Trump playbook to blast Jurado.
He accused her of lying six times, while offering few concrete examples. He mentioned socialism four times. He spoke almost entirely in Spanish and said “nuestra gente” — our people — at least 29 times to imply that his opponent, the daughter of Filipino immigrants, couldn’t possibly care for the mostly Latino audience.
He ridiculed people who keep bringing up the audio leak scandal, proclaiming that he has moved forward while they “see the scab” from the wound it caused and “continue to scratch and scratch and scratch.”
He claimed that Jurado faked her recent COVID diagnosis, citing “community members” who supposedly saw her at the Glendale Galleria. He even brought up the fact that Jurado — who was eight months pregnant at the time — didn’t vote in the 2008 presidential election and thus didn’t get to pick “the first African American in the history of the United States of America, Barack Obama.”
His face got sweatier and sweatier until he looked like a sinner in the confession booth.
“To this date, you haven’t lifted a single finger to help nuestra gente,” De León later said in Spanish as the moderator kept ringing a bell to let him know his time was up. “You just come with quejas [complaints] y quejas y quejas y quejas y quejas.”
The slightest of silences passed. “Quejona,” he finally muttered. Complainer.
The scene outside Dolores Mission Church in Boyle Heights, where Kevin de León and Ysabel Jurado held their debate.
(Wally Skalij/Los Angeles Times)
His supporters — many of them men who had hopped from debate to debate like Deadheads — laughed and whooped it up, despite the admonishments of Father Busse and church volunteers. De León never once tried to calm them down.
The barrage shook Jurado. She frequently went over her time limit. She kept delivering lines — quoting St. Oscar Romero, yelling, “Go Dodgers!” while pumping her fist and bringing up De León’s San Diego roots — that fell flat because her supporters followed the rules and largely stayed quiet. She spoke of a school-to-union job pipeline to combat youth violence and of having city staff keep better tabs on broken street lights and parking meters — plans that sounded good but couldn’t get traction against De León’s blitzkrieg.
When the councilmember wasn’t insulting his opponent, he rattled off accomplishments — investments in parks, tiny homes for unhoused people, affordable housing projects — that were an effective counter against Jurado’s critique that he had done nothing for constituents. His quip that he was about “results, not ideology“ was clever.
If he had stuck to his record, De León might have convinced me that he truly was a changed politico. Instead, he sounded like the man the world heard on the leaked audio: someone infuriated that people don’t think he’s “incredible,” a word he used to describe his first term.
Here was a man who had once showed enough promise and ambition to mount a campaign against U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein and to run for mayor in 2022. Now, he was reduced to questioning whether someone faked her COVID diagnosis.
Jurado and De León shook hands at the end of the 55-minute debate. She stepped outside to talk with supporters. He finally had the altar to himself.
De León hugged tearful acolytes and took photos with them, letting his million-watt smile flash. I waited my turn in line to see if De León — whose staff had blocked me from entering his primary night party in March — would take some questions.
“It was a spirited debate,” he said when I commented on the barbed tone.
When I asked how he thought he did, he responded, “I think I spoke to the issues that were important to the community here in Boyle Heights. I think we demonstrated our real body of work.”
What about all the times he called Jurado a liar?
De León smiled even wider.
“Oh, we can sit down, we can go through all of things, if you want. Trust me.”
His followers formed a blockade around him as their man walked to the patio to bask in their love a bit longer.
“It was more decent than before,” South Pasadena resident Jorge H. Rodriguez said of the debate as someone whispered, “He’s the enemy,” while pointing at me. “Both of them got their points across, but Kevin has more experience.”
De León talked to reporters as supporters chanted his name from afar. Suddenly, 34-year-old Stephanie Luna confronted him.
“Why won’t you make a real apology about the tapes?” the lifelong Boyle Heights resident asked. He ignored her as his handlers ushered him to the parish hall. Luna followed until they shut the door.
She then went to the front of the church, where Black Lives Matter Los Angeles members were protesting and waiting for De León to return to his car.
His fanboys cussed them out or went up to their faces and shouted, “Kevin!”
“It’s symbolic of who Kevin is,” said Luna when I asked about her encounter with him. “How can you ask your constituents to vote for you when you run away from them?”
That’s when I looked at the parking lot. De León’s car was gone. The Eastside’s Artful Dodger had sneaked off into the night.
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The city of San Diego sued the federal government to stop the construction of razor wire fencing on city-owned land near the U.S.-Mexico border, accusing federal agencies of trespassing and causing environmental damage.
The city filed the complaint in the U.S. District Court for Southern California on Monday. The complaint named Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth among the defendants.
The city accused the federal government of acting without legal authority when they entered city property in Marron Valley and began installing razor wire fencing.
“The City of San Diego will not allow federal agencies to disregard the law and damage City property,” said City Attorney Heather Ferbert in a news release. She said the lawsuit aims to protect sensitive habitats and ensure environmental commitments are upheld.
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San Diego is suing the federal government to stop the construction of razor wire fencing on city property in Marron Valley. (Justin Hamel/Bloomberg via Getty Images, File)
According to the lawsuit, federal personnel including U.S. Marines accessed the land without the city’s consent, and damaged environmentally sensitive areas protected under long-standing conservation agreements.
DHS Secretary Kristi Noem and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth were among the federal officials named in San Diego’s lawsuit. (Reuters/Brian Snyder; AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
San Diego argues the fencing has blocked the city’s ability to manage and assess its own property and could jeopardize compliance with environmental obligations.
An American flag can be seen through the barbed wire surrounding the CoreCivic Otay Mesa Detention Center on October 4, 2025 in San Diego, California. (Kevin Carter/Getty Images)
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The lawsuit also accuses the federal government of trespassing and beginning construction without proper authority or environmental review, and unconstitutionally taking the land in violation of the Fifth Amendment.
Fox News Digital reached out to DHS and the Pentagon for comment.
Former vice presidential contender and current aw-shucks Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz announced this week that he won’t run for a third term, dogged by a scandal over child care funds that may or may not be going to fraudsters.
It’s a politically driven mess that not coincidentally focuses on a Black immigrant community, tying the real problem of scammers stealing government funds to the growing MAGA frenzy around an imaginary version of America that thrives on whiteness and Christianity.
Despite the ugliness of current racial politics in America, the fraud remains real, and not just in Minnesota. California has lost billions to cheats in the last few years, leaving our own governor, who also harbors D.C. dreams, vulnerable to the same sort of attack that has taken down Walz.
As we edge closer to the 2028 presidential election, Republicans and Democrats alike will probably come at Gavin Newsom with critiques of the state’s handling of COVID-19 funds, unemployment insurance and community college financial aid to name a few of the honeypots that have been successfully swiped by thieves during his tenure.
In fact, President Trump said as much on his social media barf-fest this week.
“California, under Governor Gavin Newscum, is more corrupt than Minnesota, if that’s possible??? The Fraud Investigation of California has begun,” he wrote.
Right-wing commentator Benny Johnson also said he’s conducting his own “investigation.” And Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton is claiming his fraud tip line has turned up “(c)orruption, fraud and abuse on an epic scale.”
Just to bring home that this vulnerability is serious and bipartisan, Rep. Ro Khanna, the Silicon Valley congressman rumored to have his own interest in the Oval Office, is also circling the fraud feast like a vulture eyeing his next meal.
“I want to hear from residents in my district and across the state about waste, mismanagement, inefficiencies, or fraud that we must tackle,” Khanna wrote on social media.
Newsom’s spokesman Izzy Gardon questioned the validity of many fraud claims.
“In the actual world where adults govern,” Gardon said, “Gavin Newsom has been cleaning house. Since taking office, he’s blocked over $125 BILLION in fraud, arrested criminal parasites leaching off of taxpayers, and protected taxpayers from the exact kind of scam artists Trump celebrates, excuses, and pardons.”
What exactly are we talking about here? Well, it’s a pick-your-scandal type of thing. Even before the federal government dumped billions in aid into the states during the pandemic, California’s unemployment system was plagued by inefficiencies and yes, scammers. But when the world shut down and folks needed that government cash to survive, malfeasance skyrocketed.
Every thief with a half-baked plan — including CEOs, prisoners behind bars and overseas organized crime rackets — came for California’s cash, and seemingly got it. The sad part is these weren’t criminal geniuses. More often than not, they were low-level swindlers looking at a system full of holes because it was trying to do too much too fast.
In a matter of months, billions had been siphoned away. A state audit in 2021 found that at least $10 billion had been paid out on suspicious unemployment claims — never mind small business loans or other types of aid. An investigation by CalMatters in 2023 suggested the final figure may be up to triple that amount for unemployment. In truth, no one knows exactly how much was stolen — in California, or across the country.
It hasn’t entirely stopped. California is still paying out fraudulent unemployment claims at too high a rate, totaling up to $1.5 billion over the last few years — more than $500 million in 2024 alone, according to the state auditor.
But that’s not all. Enterprising thieves looked elsewhere when COVID-19 money largely dried up. Recently, that has been our community colleges, where millions in federal student aid has been lost to grifters who use bots to sign up for classes, receive government money to help with school, then disappear. Another CalMatters investigation using data obtained from a public records request found that up to 34% of community college applications in 2024 may have been false — though that number represents fraudulent admissions that were flagged and blocked, Gardon points out.
Still, community college fraud will probably be a bigger issue for Newsom because it’s fresher, and can be tied (albeit disingenuously) to immigrants and progressive policies.
California allows undocumented residents to enroll in community colleges, and it made those classes free — two terrific policies that have been exploited by the unscrupulous. For a while, community colleges didn’t do enough to ensure that students were real people, because they didn’t require enough proof of identity. This was in part to accommodate vulnerable students such as foster kids, homeless people and undocumented folks who lacked papers.
With no up-front costs for attempting to enroll, phonies threw thousands of identities at the system’s 116 schools, which were technologically unprepared for the assaults. These “ghost” students were often accepted and given grants and loans.
My former colleague Kaitlyn Huamani reported that in 2024, scammers stole roughly $8.4 million in federal financial aid and more than $2.7 million in state aid from our community colleges. That‘s a pittance compared with the tens of billions that was handed out in state and federal financial aid, but more than enough for a political fiasco.
As Walz would probably explain if nuanced policy conversations were still a thing, it’s both a fair and unfair criticism to blame these robberies on a governor alone — state government should be careful of its cash and aggressive in protecting it, and the buck stops with the governor, but crises and technology have collided to create opportunities for swindlers that frankly few governmental leaders, from the feds on down, have handled with any skill or luck.
The crooks have simply been smarter and faster than the rest of us to capitalize first on the pandemic, then on evolving technology including AI that makes scamming easier and scalable to levels our institutions were unprepared to handle.
Since being so roundly fleeced during the pandemic, multiple state and federal agencies have taken steps in combating fraud — including community colleges using their own AI tools to stop fake students before they get in.
And the state is holding thieves accountable. Newsom hired a former Trump-appointed federal prosecutor, McGregor Scott, to go after scam artists on unemployment. And other county, state and federal prosecutors have also dedicated resources to clawing back some of the lost money.
With the slow pace of our courts (burdened by their own aging technology), many of those cases are still ongoing or just winding up. For example, 24 L.A. County employees were charged in recent months with allegedly stealing more than $740,000 in unemployment benefits, which really is chump change in this whole mess.
Another California man recently pleaded guilty to allegedly cheating his way into $15.9 million in federal loans through the Paycheck Protection Program and Economic Injury Disaster Loan programs.
And in one of the most colorful schemes, four Californians with nicknames including “Red boy” and “Scooby” allegedly ran a scam that boosted nearly $250 million in federal tax refunds before three of them attempted to murder the fourth to keep him from ratting them out to the feds.
There are literally hundreds of cases across the country of pandemic fraud. And these schemes are just the tip of the cash-berg. Fraudsters are also targeting fire relief funds, food benefits — really, any pot of public money is fair game to them. And the truth is, the majority of that stolen money is gone for good.
So it’s hard to hear the numbers and not be shocked and angry, especially as the Golden State is faced with a budget shortfall that may be as much as $18 billion.
Whether you blame Newsom personally or not for all this fraud, it’s hard to be forgiving of so much public money being handed to scoundrels when our schools are in need, our healthcare in jeopardy and our bills on an upward trajectory.
The failure is going to stick to somebody, and it doesn’t take a criminal mastermind to figure out who it’s going to be.
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The Wyoming Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday that a pair of laws restricting abortion access violate the state constitution, including the country’s first explicit ban on abortion pills.
The court, in a 4-1 ruling, sided with the state’s only abortion clinic and others who had sued over the abortion bans passed since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, which returned the power to make laws on abortion back to the states.
Despite Wyoming being one of the most conservative states, the ruling handed down by justices who were all appointed by Republican governors upheld every previous lower court ruling that the abortion bans violated the state constitution.
Wellspring Health Access in Casper, the abortion access advocacy group Chelsea’s Fund and four women, including two obstetricians, argued that the laws violated a state constitutional amendment affirming that competent adults have the right to make their own health care decisions.
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The Wyoming Supreme Court ruled that a pair of laws restricting abortion access violate the state constitution. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
Voters approved the constitutional amendment in 2012 in response to the federal Affordable Care Act, which is also known as Obamacare.
The justices in Wyoming found that the amendment was not written to apply to abortion but noted that it is not their job to “add words” to the state constitution.
“But lawmakers could ask Wyoming voters to consider a constitutional amendment that would more clearly address this issue,” the justices wrote.
Wellspring Health Access President Julie Burkhart said in a statement that the ruling upholds abortion as “essential health care” that should not be met with government interference.
“Our clinic will remain open and ready to provide compassionate reproductive health care, including abortions, and our patients in Wyoming will be able to obtain this care without having to travel out of state,” Burkhart said.
Wellspring Health Access opened as the only clinic in the state to offer surgical abortions in 2023, a year after a firebombing stopped construction and delayed its opening. A woman is serving a five-year prison sentence after she admitted to breaking in and lighting gasoline that she poured over the clinic floors.
Wellspring Health Access opened as the only clinic in the state to offer surgical abortions in 2023, a year after a firebombing stopped construction. (AP)
Attorneys representing the state had argued that abortion cannot violate the Wyoming constitution because it is not a form of health care.
Republican Gov. Mark Gordon expressed disappointment in the ruling and called on state lawmakers meeting later this winter to pass a constitutional amendment prohibiting abortion that residents could vote on this fall.
An amendment like that would require a two-thirds vote to be introduced as a nonbudget matter in the monthlong legislative session that will primarily address the state budget, although it would have significant support in the Republican-dominated legislature.
“This ruling may settle, for now, a legal question, but it does not settle the moral one, nor does it reflect where many Wyoming citizens stand, including myself. It is time for this issue to go before the people for a vote,” Gordon said in a statement.
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Gov. Mark Gordon expressed disappointment in the ruling. (Getty Images)
One of the laws overturned by the state’s high court attempted to ban abortion, but with exceptions in cases where it is needed to protect a pregnant woman’s life or in cases of rape or incest. The other law would have made Wyoming the only state to explicitly ban abortion pills, although other states have implemented de facto bans on abortion medication by broadly restricting abortion.
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Abortion has remained legal in the state since Teton County District Judge Melissa Owens blocked the bans while the lawsuit challenging the restrictions moved forward. Owens struck down the laws as unconstitutional in 2024.
Last year, Wyoming passed additional laws requiring abortion clinics to be licensed surgical centers and women to receive ultrasounds before having medication abortions. A judge in a separate lawsuit blocked those laws from taking effect while that case moves forward.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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