Politics
Commentary: This district is key to control of the House. That’s about all people agree on
CAREFREE, Ariz. — Elizabeth H. paused recently outside the post office in this small, high-desert community, not far from where Easy Street meets Nonchalant Avenue.
She felt neither easy nor nonchalant.
“I think the climate imposed by the Trump administration is really sad and scary,” said Elizabeth, who asked to withhold her last name to avoid being attacked for the views she expressed.
“I don’t like the way that ICE is being used to bully citizens and even just people who are brown,” she continued. “And I don’t like that governors of blue states are being shut out while governors of red states are being welcomed. I just don’t think he treats us like we’re all Americans.”
For his part, Anthony D. finds little not to like about President Trump. He, too, asked not to use his last name, as did several others who agreed to talk politics.
“We finally don’t have a— in office that are destroying our country and worrying about everybody else in the world,” said Anthony, 66, a plumbing contractor and proudly blunt-spoken New York native. (Just like Trump, he pointed out.) “I mean, his tariffs are working. The negotiations are working. I just see a lot of positive coming out of that office.”
Even so, there’s something that bothers him: The way so many fellow citizens view the president and his America First agenda.
“Most people don’t like what he says, but look what he’s doing,” Anthony said as the late-morning crowd trickled into an upscale North Scottsdale shopping center. “You can hate the person, but don’t hate the message. He’s trying to do the right thing.”
Here in central Arizona, a prime battleground in November’s midterm election, there is precious little agreement about Trump, his policies and motivations.
Supporters see the president turning things around after four disastrous years of Joe Biden. Critics see him turning the country into a place they barely recognize.
There is puzzlement on both sides.
Over what others believe. Over how others can possibly believe what they believe, see the things they see and perceive Trump the way they perceive him.
And although some are eager for the midterm elections as a way to corral the president — “I don’t think they should only impeach, I think they should imprison,” Brent Bond, a 59-year-old Scottsdale artist, said of his hopes for a Democratic Congress — others fear an end to Trump’s nearly unfettered reign.
Or that nothing will change, regardless of what happens at the polls in November.
“The fact is, Trump is going to keep Trumping until he’s done,” said Elizabeth H., who’s semiretired at age 55 after a career in financial services. “My only relief is that he’s an old, old man and he’s not going to be here forever.”
Brent Bond would like to see Trump imprisoned, not just impeached.
(Mark Z. Barabak / Los Angeles Times)
Arizona’s 1st Congressional District climbs from northeastern Phoenix to the mountainous heart of the Sonoran Desert. It takes in the affluent enclaves of Scottsdale and Paradise Valley and — where the urban sprawl finally yields to cactus, palo verde and other flora — Carefree and the Old West-themed Cave Creek.
It is the whitest, wealthiest and best-educated of Arizona’s nine congressional districts, home to numerous upscale resorts, major medical campuses and a large population of retirees comfortably settled in one of many gated communities.
Affordability, as in struggling just to get by, is not a pressing issue here.
In 2020, Biden carried the district 50% to 49%. Four years later, Trump beat Kamala Harris 51% to 48%.
(The Down Ballot, which crunches election data, rated Arizona’s 1st District the median of 435 congressional districts nationwide, meaning in 2024 half were redder on the presidential level and half were bluer.)
For more than a decade, the area has been represented by Republican Dave Schweikert, a local political fixture since the 1990s.
He’s had to fight hard for reelection in recent years as the district, like the whole of Arizona, has grown more competitive. Rather than run again, Schweikert announced he would give up his seat to try for governor. The result is a free-for-all and one of the relatively few toss-up House races anywhere in the country.
A passel of candidates is running and the result will help determine whether Democrats, who need to flip three seats, will seize control of the House in November.
Despite those high stakes, however, the race doesn’t seem to have generated much voter interest, at least not yet. In dozens of interviews across the district, it was the relentless Trump who drew the most attention, admiration and exasperation.
Moe Modjeski, a supporter, allowed as how the president “is no altar boy.”
Even so, “I’ll take his policies over someone that might be nice and polite,” said the 69-year-old Scottsdale resident, a financial advisor who cited the sky-scraping stock market as one example of Trump’s success. “I mean, gas is about half the price it was a year or two ago.”
But for Liz R., who’s “never been a sky-is-falling type,” it certainly feels that way. The 75-year-old cited “everything from tariffs to ICE to destroying the healthcare system and controls for pollution.”
“I lived through the ‘60s and 70s and can’t remember a time when I feared so much for the future of our country,” said Liz, a retired medical technologist.
She’ll vote for a Democrat in November — to put a check on Trump, not because the Carefree resident has great faith in the party or its direction.
“I wish the Dems would get it together and maybe we could get more of a centrist that could unite and not get hung up on some of these social issues,” she said. “There’s a lot of economic issues, bread-and-butter issues, and I think that’s why the Republicans won [in 2024], because of the problems with immigration and inflation.”
As a border state, Arizona has long been at the forefront of the political fight over immigration. It was here lawmakers passed — and opponents spent years battling — legislation that effectively turned police into immigration officers, requiring them to demand the papers of anyone suspected of being in the country illegally
Thomas Campbell, with Keegan and Guinness, blamed blue-state politicians for any overreach by ICE agents.
(Mark Z. Barabak / Los Angeles Times)
Now that aggressive approach has become national policy, which is fine by Thomas Campbell, a retired architect and staunch Trump backer. He blamed any enforcement overreach on blue-state lawmakers.
“For some reason, the Democrats have decided they want to side with the criminals, so they don’t allow their police departments to cooperate,” said Campbell, 72, who stopped outside Paradise Valley’s town hall while running errands with his Irish setters, Guinness and Keegan. “If that wasn’t the case, there wouldn’t be any” controversy over ICE’s tactics.
Martha Cornelison agreed the border with Mexico needed to be secured and that serious lawbreakers should be deported.
But why, she wondered, are immigration agents scooping up honest taxpayers, parents with children born in the U.S. and others keeping on the straight and narrow?
“I think they’re going after the wrong people,” said the 76-year-old Scottsdale retiree as a friend, Lily, nodded in agreement. The two were sharing a bench in Scottsdale’s pueblo-inspired civic plaza, a nearby fountain burbling in the 80-degree sunshine.
“I think we need to look at our county jails, look at our city jails,” said Cornelison, who made her living selling large appliances. “How many illegal immigrants are, say, in Florence, which is our state prison? Send them back. Don’t go after Mr. Gonzalez who’s doing my lawn. Empty out our prisons.”
Back at the North Scottsdale shopping center, Denise F. was walking Chase, her Shih Tzu, past a parking lot brimming with Teslas, Mercedes and Cadillac SUVs.
The 73-year-old voted for Trump because she couldn’t abide Harris. But she’s disgusted with the president.
“I don’t like the division in the country. I think Trump thinks he’s a king,” said Denise, a retired banker. “He’s poking the bear with Venezuela and Greenland, Iran” — she poked the air as she named each country — “to see who he can engage in a possible war, which is not the way I think the United States should be.”
As Denise was finishing up, Anthony D., her friend and neighbor, strolled up and joined the conversation, offering his laudatory view of the president. “Trump’s a businessman and he’s running the country like a business,” Anthony said, as Denise looked on impassively.
“How did I do?” he asked after saying his piece.
“Great,” Denise replied amiably and the two walked off together, Chase between them.
Politics
Trump renews bridge, power plant threat against Iran in push for deal, mocks ‘tough guy’ IRGC
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President Donald Trump mocked the Islamic Revolutionary Guard on Sunday morning for staking claim to a Strait of Hormuz “blockade” the U.S. military had already put in place.
“Iran recently announced that they were closing the Strait, which is strange, because our BLOCKADE has already closed it,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “They’re helping us without knowing, and they are the ones that lose with the closed passage, $500 Million Dollars a day! The United States loses nothing.
“In fact, many Ships are headed, right now, to the U.S., Texas, Louisiana, and Alaska, to load up, compliments of the IRGC, always wanting to be ‘the tough guy!’”
Trump declared Saturday’s IRGC fire was “a total violation” of the ceasefire.
“Iran decided to fire bullets yesterday in the Strait of Hormuz — A Total Violation of our Ceasefire Agreement!” his post began.
“Many of them were aimed at a French Ship, and a Freighter from the United Kingdom. That wasn’t nice, was it? My Representatives are going to Islamabad, Pakistan — They will be there tomorrow evening, for Negotiations.”
Trump remains hopeful about diplomacy, but is not ruling out a return to force, where he once warned about ending “civilation” in Iran as they know it.
“We’re offering a very fair and reasonable DEAL, and I hope they take it because, if they don’t, the United States is going to knock out every single Power Plant, and every single Bridge, in Iran,” Trump’s stern warning continued.
“NO MORE MR. NICE GUY!
“They’ll come down fast, they’ll come down easy and, if they don’t take the DEAL, it will be my Honor to do what has to be done, which should have been done to Iran, by other Presidents, for the last 47 years. IT’S TIME FOR THE IRAN KILLING MACHINE TO END!”
Judge Troy Nunley was fed up.
Federal immigration officials had once again flouted his authority by keeping a man locked up in a California City detention center after Nunley ordered him released. When he was finally set free, the man was booted onto the street with no passport, driver’s license or other personal effects. The judge’s demand that the items be returned were met with silence.
And so on Tuesday, Nunley, the chief judge of the Eastern District of California, slapped Department of Justice attorney Jonathan Yu with an official sanction and a $250 fine.
In a scathing order, Nunley laid out why he was compelled to take such a rare step. The fine may have been less than some traffic tickets, but it’s nearly unheard for a judge to formally admonish a government lawyer.
By Yu’s own admission, he was drowning in work. In his order, Nunley recounted the attorney’s claim he’d been assigned more than 300 nearly identical cases in the last three months, all of immigrants in detention who argued they were being held without cause.
Court filings show many California cases involve longtime U.S. residents unexpectedly hauled off to jail after routine check-ins with immigration officials. One was an Afghan who’d helped the American war effort. Another a Cambodian grandmother of eight who fled Pol Pot’s killing fields as a girl nearly 50 years ago.
Until last year, most would have fought deportation on bond after a brief hearing with an immigration judge. Now, their only hope of release is to file a petition for writ of habeas corpus — a legal maneuver once typically reserved for death row inmates and suspected terrorists — inundating the country’s busiest federal courts with thousands of emergency suits.
The Trump administration attorney said he was trying to “triage” the situation, but Nunley found he repeatedly failed to comply, leaving people with the right to walk free stuck behind bars.
“The Court is not persuaded,” he wrote, issuing the sanctions.
The order came days after Nunley took the unusual step of announcing a “judicial emergency” in the district, which covers nearly half of California, stretching from the Oregon border to the Mojave Desert in the inland part of the state, including Fresno, Bakersfield and Sacramento.
In the last year, the Eastern District has received more petitions from immigration detainees than almost any other jurisdiction in the United States: More than 2,700 since January, compared to fewer than 500 last year and just 18 in 2024. Similar crises are playing out elsewhere, with federal courts in Minnesota briefly paralyzed amid the Trump administration’s enforcement blitz there last winter.
People detained are seen behind fences at an ICE detention facility in Adelanto, California on July 10, 2025.
(Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images)
In an interview with The Times, Nunley said dealing with the surge of activity since last summer has been “like being hit over the head with a bat.”
“We’re up all night doing these cases,” he said.
So far this year, the Eastern District’s six active judges have ordered almost people 2,000 freed.
“The majority of the cases that we see are cases where people should not be detained,” Nunley said. “They should be receiving hearings to determine whether or not they are to remain in this country, and until they receive those hearings, they should be free.”
Since last July, the Department of Homeland Security has ordered that all immigrants it arrests are subject to “mandatory detention” — a policy that had previously only applied to those caught at the border.
The change came four days after President Trump signed a spending bill that earmarked $45 billion to expand the federal network of immigrant lockups.
“This has been a sea change in the way the government has read the law,” said My Khanh Ngo, a senior staff attorney at the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project. “Almost every judge who has looked at this has agreed these people should get bond, and yet thousands of people are still sitting in detention.”
Elizabeth Vega, 15, right, and Darlene Rumualdo, 15, from Torres High School join labor organizers, clergy leaders and immigrant rights groups to protest immigration raids nationwide at La Placita Olvera in downtown Los Angeles on January 23, 2026.
(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)
Longtime U.S. residents who might once have fought removal from home — where they can more easily gather evidence to support their case and confer with lawyers — are instead being held indefinitely.
Many have no criminal record. Some have been in the U.S. so long that the countries they came from no longer exist.
“People are locked up in the same facilities as people accused of crimes, people who’ve been convicted of crimes … and then you’re telling people, you have no shot of getting out,” Ngo said. “Detaining people and not giving them the chance to get out of detention is a way of coercing people to give up their claims.”
The habeas process can take weeks or months depending on the judge and the district.
“When the immigration cases dropped on our district, we got hit harder than any other outside West Texas,” Nunley said. “Initially we had more cases than anyone else.”
Today, data compiled by ProPublica and legal activist groups including the Immigration Justice Transparency Initiative show almost a quarter of the roughly 30,000 active habeas petitions in the United States are in California courts. Nunley’s own tabulations show half the California cases are in his district, where a perfect storm of stepped-up enforcement, a large population of immigrant workers and a concentration of detention centers produced a flash flood of habeas petitions.
The cases rely on the Constitution’s guarantee of due process before being deprived of life, liberty or property. But according to court filings, in some instances the government has argued “the Fifth Amendment does not apply” to detained immigrants.
DOJ lawyers responding to the bids for freedom now regularly complain they’re being crushed under paperwork.
Judges accustomed to having government lawyers comply with their orders have been left fuming.
In California’s Central District, which includes L.A. and surrounding areas, Judge Sunshine Sykes wrote a fiery decision earlier this year that said the Trump administration is inflicting “terror against noncitizens.”
Sykes is one of several federal judges across the country that have tried to compel the government to resume bond hearings. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals blocked that decision in March, leaving the habeas system in place for now. But with challenges or recent decisions across multiple circuits, experts say the fight is fated for the Supreme Court.
“ICE has the law and the facts on its side, and it adheres to all court decisions until it ultimately gets them shot down by the highest court in the land,” a Homeland Security spokesperson said in an email to The Times.
A woman holds a “ICE not welcome here!” sign at a vigil in San Pedro in January.
(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)
The lawyers fighting to free those jailed under the Trump administration’s mandatory detention policy say they were not initially equipped for these legal battles because they used to be exceedingly rare.
Most federal judges had only seen a handful of habeas petitions before last summer — then suddenly they had hundreds of requests for urgent relief, according to Jean Reisz, co-director of the USC Immigration Clinic.
Reisz said there are efforts to get pro bono law groups trained on how to effectively argue habeas cases, “but it takes a while to get up to speed.”
A federal agent asks residents to move back after a shooting during an immigration enforcement operation in Willowbrook on January 21, 2026.
(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)
At the same time, Reisz said, lawyers are pushing judges who oversee the cases to act swiftly, since interminable procedural delays ensure people remain incarcerated.
“Most of the habeas petitions include a motion for temporary restraining orders, and that requires emergency decisions from the courts, which requires the courts to act very fast,” Reisz said.
In California’s federal district courts, the backlog remains thousands deep. Nunley said the system is struggling to keep up with the crush of cases.
“There’s nothing that says that noncitizens should not be entitled to due process,” Nunley said. “These are our people, they reside in our district. They’re entitled to the same due process that you and I are entitled to.”
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Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced Saturday that the Trump administration is sanctioning a senior Nicaraguan official over alleged human rights violations.
Rubio said the U.S. is designating Vice Minister of the Interior Luis Roberto Cañas Novoa for his role in “gross violations of human rights” under the government of President Daniel Ortega and Vice President Rosario Murillo, marking what he said was the latest effort to hold the regime accountable.
“The Trump administration continues to hold the Murillo-Ortega dictatorship accountable for brutal human rights violations against Nicaraguans,” Rubio said in a post on X. “I’m designating Nicaraguan Vice Minister of the Interior Luis Roberto Cañas Novoa for his role in human rights violations.”
RUBIO TESTIFIES IN TRIAL OF EX-FLORIDA CONGRESSMAN ALLEGEDLY HIRED BY MADURO GOVERNMENT TO LOBBY FOR VENEZUELA
Secretary of State Marco Rubio speaks at the State Department, April 14, 2026. The U.S. announced sanctions on a Nicaraguan official tied to alleged human rights abuses under the Ortega-Murillo government. (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
The designation was made under Section 7031(c), which allows the State Department to bar foreign officials and their immediate family members from entering the United States due to involvement in significant corruption or human rights abuses.
The State Department has said the Ortega-Murillo government has engaged in arbitrary arrests, torture and extrajudicial killings following mass protests that began in April 2018.
“Nearly eight years ago, the Rosario Murillo and Daniel Ortega dictatorship unleashed a brutal wave of repression against Nicaraguans who courageously stood against the regime’s increased tyranny, corruption, and abuse,” the statement reads.
The State Department said that the sanction marked the anniversary of the 2018 protests, after which more than 325 protesters were murdered in the aftermath.
A panel of U.N.-backed human rights experts previously accused Nicaragua’s government of systematic abuses “tantamount to crimes against humanity,” following an investigation into the country’s crackdown on political dissent, according to The Associated Press.
The experts said the repression intensified after mass protests in 2018 and has since expanded across large parts of society, targeting perceived opponents of the government.
TRUMP ADMIN ANNOUNCES EXPANSION OF VISA RESTRICTION POLICY IN WESTERN HEMISPHERE
Nicaragua President Daniel Ortega delivers a speech during a ceremony to mark the 199th Independence Day anniversary, in Managua, Nicaragua Sept. 15, 2020. (Nicaragua’s Presidency/Cesar Perez/Handout via Reuters)
Nicaragua’s government has rejected those findings.
The designation follows a series of recent U.S. actions targeting the Ortega-Murillo government. In February, the State Department sanctioned five senior Nicaraguan officials tied to repression, citing arbitrary detention, torture, killings and the targeting of clergy, media and civil society.
Earlier this week, the department also announced sanctions on individuals and companies linked to Nicaragua’s gold sector, including two of Ortega and Murillo’s sons, accusing the regime of using the industry to generate foreign currency, launder assets and consolidate power within the ruling family.
The State Department said the move is part of ongoing efforts to hold the Nicaraguan government accountable for its actions.
Fox News Digital reached out to the Nicaraguan government and its embassy in Washington for comment but did not immediately receive a response.
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A man waves a Nicaraguan flag during a demonstration to commemorate Nicaragua’s national Day of Peace, which is celebrated in the country on April 19, and to protest against the government of Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega in San Jose, Costa Rica on April 16, 2023. (Jose Cordero/AFP)
The Trump administration has taken an increasingly aggressive posture in the Western Hemisphere in recent months, including a Jan. 3, 2026, operation that resulted in the capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores.
The U.S. has also carried out a series of strikes targeting suspected drug-trafficking vessels in the region, part of a broader crackdown tied to regional security and narcotics enforcement efforts.
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