Politics
Commentary: By running for mayor, Nithya Raman will learn how left L.A. really is — or isn’t
On the last day of January, hundreds of people filled the pews of Immanuel Presbyterian Church in Koreatown to hear not the word of God but the gospel of the Democratic Socialists of America.
It was the local chapter’s bimonthly meeting and also a kickoff event for a year during which they planned to build on an already impressive foothold in L.A. politics. Four of their own are council members and the two up for reelection — Eunisses Hernandez and Hugo Soto-Martínez — received standing ovations after their impassioned speeches. They implored the faithful to believe that anything is politically possible in a year when President Trump is waging war on Los Angeles and one of their own, Zohran Mamdani, is the mayor of New York.
Among the true believers was someone who arrived late that day: L.A.’s original democratic socialist insurgent, Nithya Raman.
She shocked the city’s political class in 2020 by beating Councilmember David Ryu — the first time in 17 years that an incumbent lost their seat. Her upset blazed the way for Hernandez and Soto-Martínez in 2022 and fellow DSAer Ysabel Jurado in 2024. They’ve created a progressive bloc that has helped Mayor Karen Bass implement her agenda, offering Her Honor cover from critics on the left while also pushing for democratic socialist principles such as less police spending and more intervention programs.
Raman kept a low profile at the DSA-LA event, according to attendees. The 44-year-old listened to her colleagues’ speeches and those of other hopefuls, made small talk with fellow members and then left.
There was no hint that afternoon of the political earthquake she uncorked this Saturday, when Raman announced a mayoral run against longtime ally Bass. The council member described the mayor to The Times as an “icon” who nevertheless needs to be replaced because “Los Angeles is at a breaking point.”
I can only imagine Bass — whom Raman publicly endorsed just a month ago — was surprised.
The mayor seems vulnerable, for sure. From her handling of the Palisades fire to crumbling infrastructure to the economy and so much more, critics maintain Bass spent all of last year living up to the old Johnny Mathis and Deniece Williams duet: She did things too much, too little and too late. This was all before sources told The Times last week that Bass ordered an after-action report on the Palisades fire be — no pun intended — watered down to limit legal liability against the city.
Her supporters point to a drop in homelessness and homicides over the last four years as reason enough for Bass to return — but their hosannas haven’t gotten as much traction as an incumbent should be seeing at this point in a reelection campaign. That’s why the proverbial smart money had someone on the right side of L.A.’s Democratic spectrum mounting a strong challenge this year — Councilmembers Monica Rodriguez or Traci Park, L.A. County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath or even 2022 challenger Rick Caruso.
While Mamdani’s fall win got local progressives dreaming about one day doing the same in Los Angeles, the prospect of a strong challenger from the left in this mayoral cycle was considered so unlikely that DSA-LA didn’t have candidate Rae Huang — a dues-paying member and Presbyterian minister — speak at the Immanuel gathering since she couldn’t gather enough signatures to make her case for an endorsement in the fall.
Raman has proved effective enough as a council member to win her reelection outright two years ago during the primaries despite a well-funded effort to paint her as a limousine leftist. I admire her brio to take on Bass and respect her place in L.A. political history. I’m glad someone is going to make the mayor work hard to get reelected because no incumbent should ever have an automatic reelection.
But Nithya Raman?
Los Angeles City Councilmember Nithya Raman, left, talks with Mayor Karen Bass at Hazeltine Park in Sherman Oaks during a 2024 rally for Raman’s ultimately successful reelection bid. She’s now challenging Bass in the 2026 mayoral election.
(Mel Melcon/Los Angeles Times)
Presbyterians, such as those who pray at the Koreatown church, have historically believed in predestination, the idea that God has determined everyone’s fate and we can’t do a thing about it. Raman doesn’t belong to the denomination, but perhaps its tenets moved her at Immanuel into believing that another unlikely political revival is in her stars. Because that’s the only way to make sense of Raman’s turn and belief that she can pull off the victory.
Raman’s 4th District is one of the wealthier in the city, a mishmash of Encino rich, Silver Lake hipster and the San Fernando Valley lower middle class — relatively sheltered from the day-to-day struggles of many working class and working poor Angelenos living in L.A. While Soto-Martínez and Hernandez draw their perspective and base from the union and activist left, Raman’s loudest supporters have struck me as folks who might have the passion and money to win over her district but don’t have the street-level knowledge and experience to sell their candidate to all corners of the city.
Raman has walked the progressive walk during her two council terms by getting arrested at sit-ins, showing up to protests and through her City Hall work. But the coalition she needs to topple Bass seems exceedingly hard to build.
She’d have to run under the assumption that enough people on the left think the current mayor is a sellout — or at minimum, just not progressive enough. That conservative and centrist voters so loathe Bass that they’ll hold their nose and vote for a democratic socialist. She’d have to win over Latino voters, who went with Caruso four years ago but who represent only 19% of Raman’s district in a city that’s nearly majority Latino.
Raman would have to peel off labor from Bass, who has counted on and rewarded their support from Sacramento to Washington to City Hall for over two decades. Needs to paint Bass as soft on Trump’s deportation deluge despite her consistently calling him out. Appeal to homeowners who won’t like Raman’s ties to YIMBY-minded folks seeking to shove multistory units anywhere and everywhere. Convince Black voters — who already must reckon with the likely reality that the city will not have three Black council members for the first time since 1963 because the leading candidates to replace outgoing Curren Price are Latinos — that dethroning the city’s first Black female mayor is somehow good for the community’s political future.
And then there’s Raman’s fellow DSA members. The rank-and-file are currently furious at her for recently, unsuccessfully trying to tweak L.A.’s so-called mansion tax. Raman can’t run in the primary with DSA’s endorsement because that process ended last fall. Supporters can petition for a vote on the matter, but that opens her anew to critics who engineered a censure of her during her 2024 reelection campaign for accepting an endorsement by a pro-Israel group while the country was bombing Gaza.
Raman — who can keep her council seat if she doesn’t beat Bass — is about to find out that L.A. isn’t as progressive as people make it out to be.
Los Angeles Councilmember Nithya Raman speaks to a crowd as she hosts an election night event in Edendale in March 2024 in Los Angeles.
(Myung Chun/Los Angeles Times)
She might have visions of a populist movement a la what happened in New York ushering her into City Hall — but she’s no Mamdani and Bass is no Eric Adams. Even fans of Raman I talked to over the weekend are upset that the progressive march that DSA-LA has successfully launched in city and county politics this decade now must deal with a curveball from within. It threatens to distract from efforts for other campaigns in a year when the left needs to concentrate on defeating true opponents — not a fellow traveler like Bass.
Raman must figure this disruption is worth the risk for her legacy and will further strengthen L.A.’s left. Let’s see what voters decide.
Virginia’s top court on Friday struck down a congressional map drawn by Democrats and recently approved by voters, dealing a major blow to the party as it struggles to keep pace with Republicans in the nation’s redistricting battle.
The ruling will wipe out four newly drawn Democratic-leaning U.S. House districts in Virginia and means that Republicans will enter the midterm elections with a structural advantage from their moves to carve out more red districts across the country.
Congressional maps have for generations been drawn once a decade, after the census, to account for population shifts. But last year, President Trump started a rare, mid-decade gerrymandering war when he persuaded Texas officials to draw a new map to help Republicans as they face midterm headwinds. California countered with a map favoring Democrats. Other red and blue states followed.
After the Virginia map passed in a statewide referendum late last month, Democrats thought that they had battled Republicans to a draw, or that they had even eked out a small advantage. Then a ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court prompted several Southern states to work to pass new maps, which will favor Republicans.
Now, the rejection of the new Virginia map means that across the country, Democrats stand to lose half a dozen safe seats, and possibly more, from redistricting alone.
Still, Republicans face a challenging political environment in their bid to retain control of their slim House majority, including worries about the economy, the unpopular war with Iran, high gas prices and Mr. Trump’s sagging approval ratings.
In its 4-to-3 decision, the Virginia Supreme Court wrote that Democratic legislators had violated the state’s constitution with their move to enact a new map meant to give their party 10 out of the state’s 11 U.S. House seats, up from the six it currently controls. Virginia voters approved a constitutional amendment to allow for the map in a referendum.
The problem, the court’s majority suggested, was that the first vote on the amendment in the General Assembly, which would authorize Democrats to redraw the map, occurred days before last fall’s legislative elections — meaning that some Virginians who cast their ballots early did so without knowing how their state lawmakers would vote on the new map.
That, the justices wrote, violated the process in the State Constitution.
“This constitutional violation incurably taints the resulting referendum vote and nullifies its legal efficacy,” the majority wrote.
Mr. Trump and Republicans celebrated the decision.
“Huge win for the Republican Party, and America, in Virginia,” the president posted on his social media site.
Democrats seemed despondent over the decision after eight months and nearly $70 million invested in passing the referendum.
Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the House minority leader, who lobbied Virginia legislators to advance their redistricting push and then campaigned for the referendum, said that “the decision to overturn an entire election is an unprecedented and undemocratic action that cannot stand.”
He added: “We are exploring all options to overturn this shocking decision.”
What those options are was not clear in the immediate aftermath of the decision.
Some legal experts believe that the Virginia Supreme Court’s ruling may be the final word on the state’s maps before the election. That is because the case involved a state law challenge about whether state lawmakers had followed rules laid out in the Virginia Constitution, not a question of federal law or the U.S. Constitution.
Gov. Abigail Spanberger, a Democrat, said in a statement that “I am disappointed by the Supreme Court of Virginia’s ruling, but my focus as governor will be on ensuring that all voters have the information necessary to make their voices heard this November.”
Since the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling late last month that further weakened the Voting Rights Act, Republicans in Tennessee, Alabama and Louisiana have taken steps to draw new maps before the midterms. Those efforts could net Republicans a handful of additional safe seats before voters cast a ballot in November. South Carolina is also exploring a new map before November.
While Democrats have themselves grown more ruthless about gerrymandering, they are broadly struggling to keep up.
In part that is because years ago, some Democratic-controlled states like Virginia installed independent commissions to oversee their map-drawing process in an effort to insulate it from politics. But Republicans kept the power in state legislatures, allowing states like Texas, Florida, North Carolina and Missouri to enact partisan maps with few logistical hurdles.
In Virginia, voters approved the amendment to override the independent commission by about three percentage points after the General Assembly had passed it twice. But Republicans challenged nearly every aspect of the process. Most of these lawsuits were filed before in a county court in the rural southwestern corner of the state, where a judge repeatedly ruled in the Republicans’ favor. These rulings were appealed to the State Supreme Court.
In lawsuits, Republicans argued that the language in the amendment was misleading, that the new districts were not drawn compactly, that it was improper to vote on redistricting at a legislative session that had convened to discuss budget issues and that a state law required county clerks to post notices about the amendment months before it was actually voted on.
One of the most critical questions concerned the sequence of events in Virginia’s complex amendment process. Before voters weigh in on an amendment to the State Constitution, the General Assembly must approve it twice, with an election for the state’s House of Delegates taking place between the two votes. The first vote for this amendment was on Oct. 31, just days before the state election. With hundreds of thousands of Virginians having already voted, Republicans argued that the legislative action had come too late.
The court sided with that argument.
“Early Virginia voters unknowingly forfeited their constitutionally protected opportunity to vote for or against delegates who favor or disfavor amending the Constitution by not anticipating a legislative vote on a constitutional amendment four days before the last day of voting,” the court’s majority wrote in its ruling.
But Democrats’ loss in Virginia is likely to only further stoke more redistricting battles. Already, the party’s lawmakers in New York and Colorado have signaled a desire to try and redraw their maps before the 2028 elections, and Virginia Democrats are likely to be in a similar position, since the court mainly took issue with the process, not with the resulting map.
Abbie VanSickle contributed reporting.
Politics
Gorsuch says ideological divides on Supreme Court come down to ‘how you read law,’ not politics
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Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch said differences among his colleagues on the high court are often less about politics than they are about diverging approaches to constitutional interpretation — a dynamic, he said, that influences both the court’s rulings and its internal relations.
“That has nothing to do with politics,” Gorsuch told Fox News Digital in a recent interview. “That has to do [with] how you read law. Interpretive methodologies.”
Gorsuch, who was nominated by President Donald Trump in 2017, has described himself as a “textualist,” noting his approach focuses on interpreting legal texts based on the ordinary meaning of the words as written. The philosophy is linked to originalism — or the view that the Constitution should be interpreted based on its original public meaning when it was adopted.
Other justices have different interpretations, including ones that allow for evolving interpretations over time. Gorsuch stressed that differences, while significant, are not inherently personal.
JUSTICE THOMAS WARNS PROGRESSIVISM IS A THREAT TO AMERICA IN RARE PUBLIC REMARKS
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch speaks at the Reagan Library on May 5, 2026, in Simi Valley, Calif. (Getty Images)
“At the end of the day, you’re trying to get to the right answer under the law,” he said, adding that disagreement is an expected, and healthy, part of the process.
His remarks come as the federal judiciary and members of the Supreme Court have come under increasing scrutiny in recent years, including by Trump and his allies, who have criticized the courts for impinging on what they see as the duties of the executive branch.
Trump took to Truth Social last month to criticize the Supreme Court’s conservative majority for showing him “very little loyalty” in blocking his so-called “Liberation Day” tariffs in February.
He also suggested they might block his executive order seeking to end so-called “birthright citizenship” in the U.S.
“Certain ‘Republican’ Justices have just gone weak, stupid, and bad, completely violating what they ‘supposedly’ stood for,” Trump said.
JUSTICE GORSUCH HIGHLIGHTS HUMANITY, HISTORY IN CHILDREN’S BOOK CELEBRATING AMERICA’S 250TH ANNIVERSARY
President Donald Trump greets Chief Supreme Court Justice John Roberts as he arrives to deliver an address to a joint session of Congress in 2025. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)
He contrasted this with liberal justices on the court, whom Trump said “stick together like glue, totally loyal to the people and ideology that got them there.”
Gorsuch, for his part, stressed that the justices often share plenty of common ground, even if their interpretation of the Constitution prompts them to reach different conclusions.
That approach, he suggested, carries over into how the justices work together behind closed doors — where collaboration and debate are central to the high court to perform its constitutional duties.
FEDERAL JUDGE BLOCKS TRUMP’S BIRTHRIGHT CITIZENSHIP BAN FOR ALL INFANTS, TESTING LOWER COURT POWERS
The U.S. Supreme Court building is shown in Washington, D.C., on Nov. 13, 2023, as the court unveiled a new ethics code following scandals involving gifts and vacations received by some justices. (Mandel Ngan/AFP)
“The framers understood that people would come to the table with different views,” Gorsuch told Fox News Digital. “The goal is to reason together.”
While ideological divides can be sharp, Gorsuch emphasized that culture at the high court is built on mutual respect.
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“If you sit and listen to someone long enough, you’re going to find something you can agree on,” he added. “Maybe you start there.”
Two press freedom groups that own shares in Paramount Skydance are demanding to see the company’s books and internal documents, citing allegations that the company’s leaders may have promised favors to the White House to win approval for Paramount’s deal to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery.
The letter, sent Thursday to Paramount chief legal officer Makan Delrahim, says that media reports alleging that Paramount owner David Ellison and others promised favors to the Trump administration “create credible concern that Paramount leadership has offered, solicited, or effectuated a corrupt exchange,” which the groups argue would “constitute a breach of fiduciary duties” and open the company up to a “range of potential civil and criminal penalties.”
The letter cites Delaware law that allows stockholders to inspect the company’s books and records “for any proper purpose.”
Paramount declined to comment on the letter.
Among the issues raised in the letter are promises reportedly made by David Ellison and his father, Oracle billionaire Larry Ellison, that they would make “sweeping” changes at the news network CNN, which is owned by Warner Bros. Discovery.
The Ellison family acquired Paramount, which includes CBS and the storied Melrose Avenue film studio, last summer.
The letter cites changes implemented in CBS since their acquisition, including their decision to end late night television house Stephen Colbert’s show days after he characterized a settlement Paramount reached with Trump as a “big fat bribe.”
Under Ellison’s ownership, the letter says, numerous high-profile reporters have left the network and its ratings have dropped to “historic lows.”
Larry Ellison, who is backing the financing of Paramount’s proposed takeover of Warner, reportedly told White House officials that Paramount would “implement the CBS playbook” at CNN if the merger is approved, and remove anchors and commentators at the cable news network that Trump doesn’t like, according to the letter.
The effort comes just two weeks after Warner Bros. Discovery shareholders overwhelmingly approved the proposed merger. Investors have supported the Larry Ellison family takeover, which would become the biggest Hollywood merger in nearly a decade. The deal would pay Warner stockholders $31 per share — four times the stock price a year ago.
The letter was written on behalf of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, which develops secure communication tools for journalists and tracks violations of press freedom, and Reporters Without Borders, which tracks press freedom globally.
The organizations are being represented by former federal prosecutor Brendan Ballou, who established the Public Integrity Project this year to challenged alleged government corruption, as well as Delaware attorney Ronald Poliquin.
The missive, which could be a precursor to a lawsuit, opens another avenue of attack against the controversial $111-billion deal, which would transform the smaller Paramount into an industry titan.
With Warner Bros. Discovery, the Ellisons would also control HBO, TBS and the vast film and TV library of Warner Bros., which includes the Harry Potter, DC Comics, and Scooby-Doo, in addition to CNN.
Paramount, led 43-year-old David Ellison, wants to finalize its Warner Bros. takeover by the end of September. President Trump favors the deal; he has long agitated for changes at CNN.
But the proposed merger would saddle the combined company with $79 billion in debt, stoking fears that Paramount would be forced to make steep cost cuts to juggle such a large debt load.
Politicians, unions and progressive groups separately have pressed California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta to scrutinize the proposed merger, hoping that he brings an antitrust lawsuit in an attempt to upend the deal.
More than 4,000 film industry workers, including Ben Stiller, Bryan Cranston, Ted Danson, J.J. Abrams, Jane Fonda and Kristen Stewart, have signed an open letter imploring Bonta and other regulators to block the merger. The group lamented the proposed tie-up, saying it “would reduce the number of major U.S. film studios to just four.”
Opponents fear the consolidation would lead to massive layoffs and diminish the quality of programming that Warner Bros., CNN and HBO are known for.
Hollywood has sustained thousands of layoffs over the last seven years since Walt Disney Co. swallowed Fox’s entertainment assets in another huge merger. In addition, the film production economy hasn’t recovered from shutdowns during the 2023 labor strikes. An estimated 42,000 entertainment industry jobs were lost from 2022 and 2024.
On Thursday, 34 California Democrats in Congress also sent a letter to Bonta, encouraging him to look closely at the merger.
The deal is expected to become one of the largest leveraged buyouts ever.
Ballou, who is working with the press freedom groups, previously served as a Justice Department special counsel with expertise in private equity transactions.
He resigned from the Justice Department in January 2025 when Trump returned to office. In his book, “Plunder: Private Equity’s Plan to Pillage America,” Ballou examined large leveraged buyouts and found that many of which resulted in bankruptcies.
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