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.
new video loaded: Jan. 6 Rioter Hired by Pentagon
transcript
transcript
Jan. 6 Rioter Hired by Pentagon
Elias Irizarry, who pleaded guilty to climbing through a broken window at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, now works for an office responsible for uncovering and defending against terrorism plots at the Pentagon.
-
“Full pardon or commutation?” “Full pardon.”
By Alisa Shodiyev Kaff
June 4, 2026
NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!
Democrats splintered over a resolution seeking to block the U.S. from assisting Israel’s war against Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed terrorist group, on Thursday.
The measure, offered by progressive Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., would require President Donald Trump to withdraw U.S. forces from Lebanon. For months, Israel and Hezbollah, a U.S.-designated terrorist group and Iranian proxy, have been at war in southern Lebanon, but the United States has not joined the conflict.
A bipartisan coalition of lawmakers, including House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., rejected the measure. Critics argued the resolution could aid Hezbollah and potentially hamstring U.S. military operations in the country.
Tlaib’s resolution failed 92-324, with more than half of House Democrats joining nearly all Republicans to vote it down.
The Lebanon war powers resolution divided Democrats, with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., joining Republicans in rejecting the measure. (Aaron Schwartz/Bloomberg)
REP RASHIDA TLAIB MOVES TO BLOCK US OPERATIONS IN LEBANON BUT IGNORES HEZBOLLAH
Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., an Israel critic, was the lone Republican to support Tlaib’s measure. Meanwhile, Reps. Derek Tran, D-Calif., and Betty McCollum, D-Minn., voted present.
House Democratic leaders said shortly before the vote they would oppose Tlaib’s resolution and work with the progressive lawmaker on a narrower measure exempting some U.S. military operations in the country. Their statement also denounced Hezbollah as a “violent terrorist organization” and a “sworn enemy of the United States.”
Tlaib, who has accused Israel of committing “ethnic cleansing” in Lebanon, did not mention Hezbollah in her resolution. She and other proponents of the measure also avoided discussing the Iranian proxy force during heated floor debate over the measure.
Republicans highlighted the omission and accused the legislation’s supporters of serving as “proxies for Hezbollah.”
“Apparently they don’t want to see Israel killing Hezbollah, even though it’s Hezbollah that is killing Israeli children, Israeli adults, Israeli elders,” House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Brian Mast, R-Fla., said Wednesday, referring to his Democratic colleagues.
Tlaib asserted that her resolution would only affect U.S. forces actively engaged in hostilities. Republicans, however, disputed that claim and suggested it would hurt U.S. efforts to counter Hezbollah.
“It doesn’t say anything about [whether] you can keep the Marines that are in the embassy,” Mast said, referring to the U.S. embassy in Beirut. “That’s a pretty big oversight. It doesn’t say anything about whether we can keep United States armed forces that are training missions with the LAF [Lebanese Armed Forces]. Again, pretty big oversight.”
Rep. Rashida Tlaib, a Democrat from Michigan, attempted to bar U.S. forces from joining Israel’s war in Lebanon. (Tierney L. Cross/Bloomberg)
RASHIDA TLAIB HIT WITH HOUSE CENSURE THREAT, ACCUSED OF ‘CELEBRATING TERRORISM’ IN PRO-PALESTINIAN SPEECH
The debate turned personal when Rep. Max Miller, R-Ohio, a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, linked Tlaib to Hezbollah.
“Hezbollah is a terrorist organization … and its members are butchers that you like to hang out with to a certain extent,” the Ohio lawmaker said, referring to Tlaib.
A shouting match between the two then broke out, with Tlaib demanding that Miller’s remarks be stricken from the record.
The presiding chair ultimately complied with her request, but Miller doubled down on his remarks.
CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX NEWS APP
“Yes, I said it. I own it, and I stand by it,” Mast said on behalf of Miller on the floor.
Tlaib’s failed war powers resolution comes as Iran has sought to tie Israel’s invasion of Lebanon to its ceasefire negotiations with the United States.
Hezbollah, which has long helped Iran project power in the region, rejected a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Lebanon’s government Thursday.
WASHINGTON — Initial efforts in the Senate failed Thursday to block the $1.8-billion fund that the Trump administration has sought to establish to pay people who claim the government wronged them, though further attempts were likely to come Thursday afternoon.
Republicans narrowly voted down a Democratic amendment to ban the payout fund and then Democrats killed a Republican amendment, which would have prohibited the use of federal money for the fund but would have sent $1.7 billion to the Justice Department’s fraud division.
It was the second effort in Congress to rebuke President Trump in two days, following the House vote Wednesday to rein in Trump’s war powers in Iran.
The dueling amendments were proposed by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.). They were attached to the reconciliation bill that would fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Border Patrol, a high priority for Republicans.
The votes came as the Senate began a “vote-a-rama,” during which lawmakers were expected to propose a stream of amendments to the immigration bill on various topics.
The Trump administration’s plan for the payment fund — widely seen as a way for Trump to compensate his political allies, including those who participated in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol — set off particular ire from some GOP lawmakers.
The plan has fueled growing unrest within parts of Trump’s party over his governance, compounded by the president’s endorsement of primary challengers to Sens. John Cornyn (R-Texas) and Bill Cassidy (R-La.), as well as Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), which angered some Republican senators.
Cassidy, who lost his primary and has since voiced strong opposition to Trump’s $1.8-billion fund, became a key player in the Thursday votes, voting down Schumer’s amendment but supporting Tillis’.
On Wednesday, Cassidy joined with Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) to argue in a court filing that the $1.8-billion fund circumvents Congress’ authority and violates the Constitution’s spending and appropriations clauses.
“It is an unconstitutional attempt to spend the People’s money without Congressional approval,” Cassidy and Booker wrote in an amicus brief filed in the federal court case challenging the fund.
The fund was created by the Justice Department to settle a lawsuit brought by Trump against the Internal Revenue Service over the leak of his tax returns. Trump and his sons agreed to drop their personal lawsuit against the government in exchange for the creation of the $1.776-billion fund. Critics immediately questioned the plan, and it drew a rare backlash from Republicans.
In late May, GOP senators derailed plans to vote on the immigration bill over their displeasure with the payout fund and with Trump’s desire to use taxpayer funds for his planned White House ballroom. Senate Republicans removed the ballroom funding from the immigration package Wednesday, another setback for Trump.
The Trump administration sought to back away from its plans for the fund this week, following bipartisan outcry and a federal court ruling that temporarily blocked any payouts from the fund. Acting Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche said Tuesday the administration would end its plans to move ahead with the concept.
But Trump on Wednesday told reporters he didn’t know whether the fund was dead, calling it “a beautiful thing.”
After Schumer proposed the first amendment to ban the fund Thursday morning, the Senate came to a standstill as three key Republican senators deliberated. Schumer framed his effort to ban the fund Thursday as a way to force a referendum on Trump’s plan.
The amendment “offers Republicans a choice: Do you support Donald Trump’s $2 billion taxpayer-funded slush fund, or do you want to protect the American people and their paychecks?” Schumer said on the Senate floor before the vote.
Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio) urged Republicans to reject the amendment, saying Democrats were planning to “play so many games” on Thursday during the marathon session.
“We are going to fund immigration enforcement and border patrol, and I urge my Republican colleagues to stay united on that singular mission,” Moreno said.
The amendment failed after Cassidy voted against it. Republican Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Jon Husted of Ohio and Dan Sullivan of Alaska voted in favor.
Schumer’s amendment was uniformly supported by Democrats, including California Sens. Adam Schiff and Alex Padilla.
Tillis, who also voted against Schumer’s amendment, immediately proposed his amendment. Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Oregon) urged Democrats to oppose it, saying that the proposal would create “a new slush fund” by giving the money to the Justice Department.
“We heard over the last 48 hours that the acting attorney general said that this fund’s not moving forward. All this amendment does is codify what I believe the policy of the DOJ is,” Tillis said on the floor before voting began on his amendment. “This [fund] is unpopular, this administration has said they’re not moving forward with it; this is an opportunity for us to put it to bed.”
Responded Merkley: “Taking one slush fund and eliminating it and then creating a new slush fund still under control of the attorney general is not the way to go. The way to go is to get rid of these slush funds altogether.”
Trump has faced a recent string of failures, including the House vote Wednesday, a court ruling to remove his name from the Kennedy Center and a record-low approval rating among Americans as concern rises about economic issues, gas prices and Trump’s war with Iran.
On Wednesday, Trump lashed out against the four Republicans who backed the House war powers resolution, calling it “an unpatriotic thing” to do and calling the vote “meaningless.”
“They’re GRANDSTANDERS! They should be ashamed of themselves. MAGA!!! President DJT,” Trump wrote.
Times staff writer Ana Ceballos, in Washington, contributed to this report.
-
Alabama3 minutes agoAlabama has one of college football’s toughest schedule stretches in 2026
-
Alaska6 minutes agoFormer Alaska corrections officer sentenced to 150 years in prison for killing wife and teen daughter
-
Arizona11 minutes agoDozens charged under Preston’s Law in Arizona
-
Arkansas18 minutes agoStockton rappers plead guilty to possessing machine gun, marijuana in Arkansas traffic stop
-
California21 minutes agoCalifornia’s AB 412 Still Demands Developers Do The Impossible
-
Colorado26 minutes agoColorado governor vetoes bill that would have allowed lawsuits against federal immigration officers, signs another to regulate detention centers
-
Connecticut33 minutes agoOwner seeks return of historic Abraham Lincoln documents lost in New London
-
Delaware36 minutes agoDelaware high school lacrosse star returns for playoffs after potentially deadly jaw condition
