Politics
‘It’s the people who are suffering.’ How Cuba is struggling under U.S. oil blockade
HAVANA — Reggaeton boomed in a neighborhood bar in Old Havana on a recent night, when, suddenly, the music stopped and everything went dark.
The customers groaned. Another blackout.
A U.S. blockade on oil shipments to Cuba has plunged the island into its worst energy crisis in modern history. The country’s already cratering economy now teeters on the verge of collapse, with vehicles idled by a lack of gas, hospitals forced to cancel surgeries and millions living without a steady supply of electricity and water.
It is the result of a calculated pressure campaign by President Trump, whose administration is negotiating with Cuba’s leaders over the future of the communist-ruled Caribbean island.
People fed up with rolling blackouts have staged sporadic protests in recent days, banging pots and shouting slogans against the government, rare demonstrations in a country known for repressing dissent.
Some power outages hit isolated areas, but in recent weeks Cuba has experienced three island-wide blackouts. The most recent one struck Saturday night and continued into Sunday.
Two men sell food from a cart in front of the Kempinski hotel Friday night in Havana.
As Havana and Washington hash out a possible deal — which is likely to include some form of economic opening, and perhaps limited changes to Cuba’s leadership — many people here say they feel like pawns in a geopolitical game beyond their control.
Some, like those at the bar, who kept drinking in the dark after the power vanished, say they have little choice but to adjust to a life where flushing a toilet, cooking a pot of rice or riding a bus to work is now considered a luxury.
“The U.S. is trying to punish the Cuban government,” said one customer, named Rolando. “But it’s the people who are suffering.”
Cuba’s struggles long predate the oil embargo. For years, Cubans have complained of food shortages, crumbling public services and political repression. Demographers say Cuba is undergoing one of the world’s fastest population declines — a 25% drop in just four years — as birth rates fall and emigration soars.
Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel blames “genocidal” economic, financial and trade restrictions imposed by the United States in the decades since Fidel Castro’s army toppled the U.S.-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista in 1959.
1
2
1. Young people play dominoes in the streets of Old Havana. 2. A woman reacts to her granddaughter at a bar in Old Havana. (Natalia Favre/For The Times)
But many Cubans blame their own leaders for mismanaging the economy — and straying from the ideals of Castro’s revolution. They were raised to believe in an implicit social contract, which maintained that while Cubans might not have luxuries or be allowed all civil liberties, they would always have free education and healthcare, a place to sleep and enough to eat.
“The pact has failed,” said Juan Carlos Albizu-Campos Espiñeira, an economist at the Christian Center for Reflection and Dialogue in Havana.
He faults the government for soaring inflation and a misguided investment strategy that pumped money into the tourism industry while neglecting fundamental sectors like industry and healthcare.
“This is the worst moment in Cuba’s history,” he said. “But things were really bad before this.”
The Vedado neighborhood in Havana.
Life has long been challenging for Pablo Barrueto, 63, who works mornings at a construction site and now spends afternoons filling plastic jugs from a tap on the street and hauling them up narrow stairwells to neighbors who have been without water for weeks.
His two jobs barely enough cover food for him and his partner, Maribel Estrada, 55, who earns $5 monthly as a security guard at a state-run museum.
The pair, who live in a cramped studio apartment in a crumbling colonial-era building, can’t afford butter or mayonnaise, so breakfast is a piece of plain bread. Barrueto said he often goes to bed hungry. It has been years since he has tasted pork or beef.
“I work so hard,” said Barrueto, who on a recent afternoon was cooking beans in a pair of tattered jeans. “But I don’t see the fruits of my labor.”
Pablo Barrueto, center, fills water containers from a public tap after more than 17 days without running water.
Estrada has developed ulcers on her legs, but the doctor who prescribed her antibiotics said she wouldn’t be able to find them on the empty shelves of state-run pharmacies. On the black market, the medication was being sold for more than what Estrada makes in a month.
“If I lived in another country, my legs wouldn’t look like this,” she said, rolling up her pants to show the chronic sores on her calves.
Estrada said she was reaching a point where she would accept anything that would improve her life, even U.S. intervention.
“If things don’t get better, they should just hand over the country to Trump,” she said.
The U.S. has long played a major role in Cuban history, from its involvement in the island’s war of independence from Spain to the heavy hand of American companies in Cuba’s sugar industry. Washington repeatedly backed unpopular leaders who protected U.S. interests, including Batista, whose corrupt and repressive regime sparked support for the Cuban Revolution.
For decades, the island was celebrated by U.S. critics worldwide as a scrappy symbol of anti-imperialism and a utopic experiment in socialism. But in recent years, amid a government crackdown on dissent, some of that support has faded.
A man holds his ration book and cash while waiting to collect his daily bread in Havana.
The Trump administration’s bellicose new push to dominate Latin America with tariffs and military intervention has scared allies who in the past might have come to Cuba’s rescue.
Mexico, Brazil and Colombia, all led by leftists, have declined to provide emergency fuel shipments in recent months out of fear of angering Trump.
The current crisis was set in motion on Jan. 3, when the U.S. launched a surprise attack on Venezuela, killing 32 Cuban security guards stationed there — in addition to scores of Venezuelan troops and civilians — and capturing President Nicolás Maduro.
As the U.S. seized control of Venezuela’s oil industry, the impacts immediately rocked Cuba, which had long relied on subsidized oil shipments from Maduro’s regime.
Cuba’s leaders say the country has not received a single fuel shipment in three months, debilitating an economy that depends on oil to generate the electricity.
There is little relief in sight.
An employee of a MIPYME sells vegetables and other goods to a customer Friday in Havana.
A state-owned Russian oil tanker loaded with 750,000 barrels of crude is currently crossing the Atlantic. It’s unclear whether the U.S. will try to stop the ship from reaching Cuba, where the oil, once refined, could provide Havana with energy for several weeks.
At the same time, the “Nuestra América” humanitarian convoy is in the process of delivering more than 20 tons of critical supplies to Cuba, some of which will arrive by boat in the coming days.
David Adler, a general coordinator of Progressive International, a global leftist group that helped organize the flotilla, said he hoped the delivery of medicine, food, baby formula and solar panels would highlight the severity of Trump’s restrictions on Cuba.
“We’re beginning to come to grips with the fact that there will be mothers and children and elderly and sick people who will die simply as a result of this senseless and cruel and criminal policy,” Adler said. “Why are we inflicting such cruel punishment on a country that does not represent any threat to the United States?”
In Cuba, where many fear the prospect of no electricity come summer, with its muggy heat and swarms of disease-carrying mosquitoes, people are getting creative. With virtually no public transport and few drivers able to find — or afford — gas that costs more than $5 a gallon, many people have resumed riding bicycles. Others have fashioned electric-powered scooters into slow-moving taxis.
Young people talk in the street in central Havana.
One man in the small town of Aguacate made headlines after he modified his 1980 Fiat Polski to run on charcoal, the same fuel many people here are now cooking with.
Camila Hernández, who works at Havana’s airport, had hoped to celebrate her 21st birthday at home with friends, eating and dancing. “It would have been wonderful,” she said.
But it had been weeks without regular electricity in the home she shares with her parents and boyfriend. His family’s home had power — but lacked water.
To avoid yet another night sitting in the darkness, she marked her birthday by strolling to the Paseo del Prado, an iconic boulevard not far from the waterfront cooled by a light sea breeze.
Her boyfriend’s mother, Yusmary Salas, 47, said poor living conditions were testing her patience. “I can’t even go to the bathroom without planning how I will flush the toilet,” she said. She said she is hungry for change, but has no idea what shape it will take.
Trump insists he “can do whatever I want” in Cuba, and recently said he expects to have the “honor” of “taking Cuba in some form.”
Pablo Barrueto carries a water container up to his home in Old Havana.
Such talk rattles many here who grew up in a country where government buildings still bear the revolutionary motto: “Homeland or death, we will prevail.”
Salas said she hopes that whatever comes next is peaceful, and that Cubans, long a proud people, have their dignity restored. And their power restored, too.
At the darkened bar in Old Havana, workers scrambled to light candles and serve beer that, without refrigeration, would soon go warm. Someone with a battery-powered speaker hit “play” on a song, the 2004 Daddy Yankee hit “Gasolina.”
“Dáme más gasolina!” they sang together. “Give me more gasoline!”
The Supreme Court on Wednesday struck down Louisiana’s voting map, finding that lawmakers had illegally used race when drawing up a new majority-Black district.
The decision was 6-to-3, split along ideological lines. The conservative majority asserted that the opinion was a limited ruling that preserved a central tenet of the Voting Rights Act, but the court’s liberal wing, in dissent, argued that the justices had taken the final step to dismantle the landmark civil rights law.
In the majority opinion, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. wrote that the court had kept intact the Voting Rights Act but that Louisiana’s new majority-minority district violated the equal protection clause of the Constitution.
For decades, lawmakers have crafted congressional districts with a focus on ensuring that minority voters had the opportunity to elect candidates of their choice, often working to create majority-minority districts as they labored under scrutiny from federal courts that guaranteed the rights of minorities because of the Voting Rights Act.
Justice Alito wrote that the justices were updating the 40-year-old framework that courts look to for evaluating the use of race in drawing up congressional districts, essentially saying that the Voting Rights Act only prevents lawmakers from drawing maps that would intentionally limit the power of minority voters.
To successfully challenge district maps under the Voting Rights Act now, Justice Alito wrote, challengers will need to show proof a state “intentionally drew its districts to afford minority voters less opportunity because of their race.” A legal challenge that “cannot disentangle race from the state’s race-neutral considerations, including politics,” will fail.
Justice Alito added that the new framework “reflects important developments” since the court laid out factors for evaluating the use of race in voting maps in 1986. He cited increased voter registration and turnout by minorities, writing that “the racial gap in voter registration and turnout” had “largely disappeared.”
Justice Elena Kagan, in dissent, countered that the practical effect of the decision would be to make it nearly impossible to use race when drawing up voting maps, writing that “the court’s decision will set back the foundational right Congress granted of racial equality in electoral opportunity.”
Justice Kagan read her dissent from the bench, a rare move that often signals a justice’s strong displeasure with a decision.
It is unclear how the decision will impact the midterm elections amid the nationwide redistricting battle that has spiraled already into multiple states.
Coming in the middle of the primary calendar, there were still multiple states that could draw new maps, citing today’s decision. Republicans in Florida moved swiftly after the announcement. The state’s House approving a new map on Wednesday morning. Louisiana will likely lose one Democratic district when it finalizes a new map.
Got a news tip about the courts? If you have information to share about the Supreme Court or other federal courts, please contact us.
Any map that eliminated majority-minority districts and was drawn in the wake of the ruling would likely be challenged in court — potentially prompting a new wave of litigation.
Representative Troy Carter of Louisiana, a Democrat, condemned the ruling.
“It sends a dangerous signal that the progress we have made can be undone under the guise of legal theory,” Mr. Carter said in a statement. “The Voting Rights Act is not a relic. It is a living promise, a commitment that our democracy belongs to everyone.”
Wednesday’s decision marks the latest in a series of rulings by the justices to weaken the Voting Rights Act of 1965, often considered the crown jewel of the civil rights-era laws.
The case, Louisiana v. Callais, arose from a dispute over a new voting map drafted by Louisiana lawmakers after the 2020 census. Before then, only one of the state’s six congressional districts was majority Black, even though Black Louisianans made up about a third of the state’s population.
Two groups of Black voters sued in 2022, after state lawmakers adopted a new map that still included only one majority-Black district. They argued Louisiana had violated the Voting Rights Act by packing Black voters into one district, which had the effect of diluting the power of their votes. A federal judge agreed.
In 2024, state lawmakers tried again, this time adopting a map that included a second majority-Black district. A group of white Louisiana voters then challenged that map, claiming it was an illegal racial gerrymander. They pointed to the boundaries of the new district, which snakes diagonally across the state from the southeast to the northwest.
Lawmakers initially defended the map, arguing that the odd shape was the result of politics, not race. They said that lawmakers created the second district’s area to protect high-profile politicians, including House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican. The court has said it is acceptable to draw maps motivated by partisan advantage.
The Supreme Court first heard the challenge to the Louisiana map in spring 2025, considering whether state lawmakers had properly balanced race and political considerations. But in June, rather than announce a decision, the justices said they would rehear it in the fall. In August, the justices announced they were expanding the case, asking the lawyers to prepare for an argument on a much broader question than they had originally considered: Whether the state’s creation of a second majority-minority district violated the Constitution.
That announcement raised alarms among proponents of the Voting Rights Act, who feared that the court’s conservative majority — long skeptical of the legislation — would use the case to deal a fatal blow to the law and rule its provision requiring lawmakers to consider race was unconstitutional.
Just two years ago, the justices heard a similar dispute over Alabama’s congressional map and cited the Voting Rights Act without finding it unconstitutional. In that case, Allen v. Milligan, the Supreme Court ruled that the state’s Republican supermajority illegally diluted the power of Black voters in violation of the Voting Rights Act.
But in that case, Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh wrote in a concurring opinion that he wondered whether there should be a time limit on the ability of states to “conduct race-based redistricting,” writing that it could not “extend indefinitely into the future.”
During the oral arguments in the Louisiana case, Justice Kavanaugh and several other conservative justices appeared to question whether there should be a sunset to taking race into account in drawing voting maps.
“What exactly do you think the end point should be, or how would we know, for the intentional use of race to create districts?” Justice Kavanaugh had asked a lawyer for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, who argued to uphold the Voting Rights Act.
Nick Corasaniti and Rick Rojas contributed reporting.
Federal agents raid 22 Minneapolis businesses in massive fraud investigation
Federal agents are currently raiding 22 businesses in Minneapolis, Minnesota, as part of a major federal fraud investigation. Brooke Taylor reports live that the raids are connected to a viral YouTube video from Nick Shirley, which exposed alleged childcare funding fraud in December. The Trump administration previously froze childcare funding and called for a full audit of certain daycare centers.
NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!
A 29-year-old Texas woman is now in custody and facing federal fraud charges after being exposed for impersonating an immigration officer in a multi-year visa fraud scheme.
Mayra Collins, a resident of Brownsville, a city on the far southern tip of Texas, is facing five counts of fraudulently posing as a federal agent with various agencies in 2022 and 2025, Acting U.S. Attorney John Marck announced.
The charges against Collins are for two counts of wire fraud and three counts of impersonating a federal agent, according to local affiliate Fox 26.
The DOJ said Collins first allegedly posed as a federal immigration officer. She allegedly falsely represented that she could expedite the process for obtaining U.S. visas and took money from four victims. In 2025, Collins also allegedly impersonated a Border Patrol agent with influence over the hiring of federal employees. She allegedly told one victim there were job positions available, but that they needed to send her money for uniforms and ballistic vests before beginning employment with Border Patrol.
ILLEGAL ALIEN ALLEGEDLY RAN FAKE DHS BRANCH, PASSED OUT ‘IMMUNITY’ CARDS DURING A $400 FRAUDULENT COURSE
U.S. Border Patrol officers apprehended drivers of two vehicles involved in an incident and recovered eight of nine migrants missing from a boat, leaving a 10-year-old child unaccounted for.
According to the DOJ, Collins “never worked for the United States” and “had no power to provide victims of her schemes with Visas or employment” with Border Patrol.
The woman is now facing up to 20 years in federal prison for the two counts of wire fraud and another three years for the impersonation charges. She is also facing a maximum fine of $250,000.
She is expected to make her initial court appearance before U.S. Magistrate Julie Hampton this Thursday.
Lora Ries, an immigration policy expert with the Heritage Foundation, explained that “the needless complexity of immigration law and the fragmented immigration bureaucracy spread across five federal departments are fertile ground for fraudsters.”
Ries, who is director of the Heritage Foundation’s Border Security and Immigration Center, told Fox News Digital that Democrats “helped create these systemic conditions because they facilitate illegal immigration.”
CBP SEIZES MASSIVE METH HAUL WORTH MILLIONS STASHED IN SECRET TILE SHIPMENT
People return to the Mexican side of the Rio Grande river in Brownsville, Texas, on May 11, 2023, after dropping off migrants on the U.S. side. The U.S. ended its 40-month Covid-19 emergency and discarded the Title 42 law on the same day. (Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP)
“This perpetrator exploiting that confusing and scattered system is a consequence of their own making,” Ries said.
She noted that “Congress should greatly simplify immigration law and consolidate many of the immigration agencies for a better immigration system and to prevent such fraud.”
This comes as the DOJ and Department of Homeland Security ramp up the federal government’s investigation into a massive fraud scheme largely involving the Somali immigrant community in Minnesota. Federal officials raided 22 alleged fraud sites Tuesday morning.
The raids center on federal fraud investigations into largely Somali-owned businesses, including childcare facilities that registered their daycare with the state but were allegedly billing for care that was not provided.
EMMER SAYS MN FRAUD RAIDS SEND ‘CRYSTAL CLEAR’ MESSAGE AFTER FEDS HIT DOZENS OF SITES
Law enforcement officers seen getting into a vehicle outside of Quality learning center in Minneapolis on April 28, 2026. (Fox News)
Following news of the raids breaking, Vice President JD Vance, head of the administration’s fraud task force, remarked that the “task force and the DOJ will be relentless in exposing these fraudsters wherever they may be hiding.”
CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX NEWS APP
Commenting on the Minnesota crackdown, Ries told Fox News Digital that “Americans, particularly Minnesotans, are pleased to see the ongoing pursuit of justice against fraud in that state.”
“We’ve only seen a glimpse of both the immigration fraud and welfare fraud that have occurred in Minnesota,” she said, adding, “Significant criminal and immigration consequences are needed for all the perpetrators to achieve justice and to send a message to others throughout the country not to engage in fraud.”
John Seymour was the rare politician who didn’t mind harming his career if it meant doing right by his constituents.
As the newly elected mayor of Anaheim in 1978, he angered the city’s Police Department by suggesting the creation of a citizens oversight commission after residents complained that officers regularly harassed and beat them.
The lifelong Republican upset his party’s conservative base in the 1980s as a state senator, when he announced his support for abortion rights and opposition to offshore drilling.
“I’m not going to always be right,” Seymour told reporters in 1990. “Therefore, to expect one to never change a position on an issue … is too much to ask.”
Appointed to the U.S. Senate in 1990 after Pete Wilson was elected governor, Seymour lost his seat to Dianne Feinstein two years later and never ran for public office again. He remains the last California Republican to serve in that role.
“John was a guy who had great courage, he had great goodwill and a damn good mind,” Wilson, who was mayor of San Diego when he first met Seymour in the 1970s, said Monday. “He not only enjoyed a little combat, he was willing to give the time necessary for it.”
Seymour died on April 18 at his home in Carlsbad. He was 88, and the cause was Alzheimer’s disease, according to his son John.
As his party swung to the right, the moderate Seymour had no problem with becoming a political afterthought.
Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas, center, poses with senators on Capitol Hill in 1991. With Thomas, from left to right, are Sens. John Seymour (R-Calif.), Larry Craig (R-Idaho), Bob Dole (R-Kan.), Jesse Helms (R-N.C.), Connie Mack (R-Fla.) and Dan Coats (R-Ind.), right front.
(John Duricka / Associated Press)
“If somewhere in a footnote, history should record my public service, I would hope that they record me as one who cared more for people than for policy, one who was a no-nonsense guy who worked hard for those in need of help, but who wasn’t hesitant to knock heads of bureaucrats in order to get things done,” he told supporters at the kickoff to his Senate campaign in 1992.
Born in Chicago, Seymour settled in Southern California in the 1960s after a stint in the Marine Corps. The UCLA graduate started a real estate business in Orange County as the region transformed from farmland to suburbia. After four years on the Anaheim City Council, he became mayor in 1978.
He quickly established the pragmatic persona that would enable his rise in California politics.
Months after Seymour’s mayoral win, Anaheim police officers stormed a Latino neighborhood and beat up dozens of people in what became known as the Little People’s Park riots. At community meetings, Seymour admitted his shock at learning about the poor relations between the police and many residents.
The mayor described his approach as: “Don’t sweep it under the rug; don’t look the other way. Admit that we have a problem.”
At the same time, Seymour was negotiating with the Los Angeles Rams to move from the Coliseum to Orange County. While other O.C. officials proposed a new stadium, he convinced the Anaheim City Council to convert Angel Stadium into a multipurpose venue that he argued would create “the greatest opportunity for Anaheim since Disneyland and the California Angels.”
The Rams moved to the city in 1980. Two years later, Seymour was off to Sacramento as a state senator.
He became head of the Republican Senate caucus in his first year and bucked the stereotype of an Orange County GOP firebrand by largely eschewing culture war issues in favor of matters like higher pay for teachers and government support for poor parents that sometimes aligned him with Democrats. That made him few friends in his own party, with many finding his personal ambition grating — he once wrote a letter to then-Gov. George Deukmejian asking that he be appointed state treasurer — and a distraction from getting more of their own elected to Sacramento.
Seymour made no apologies for selling himself as a public servant while simultaneously seeking more power.
“I like to do things,” Seymour told The Times in 1987. “I’ve been a doer all my life. I don’t like to sit around sucking my thumb. I like to resolve problems.”
That year, conservative opponents deposed him as caucus chair. They snickered two years later when he announced that while he personally opposed abortion, he now supported a woman’s right to choose.
Sen. John Seymour in 1991.
(Don Boomer / For The Times)
The impetus was a U.S. Supreme Court decision that gave states more leeway to regulate abortion. Since California had legalized the procedure decades earlier, Seymour reasoned that he should respect women’s choices. He spoke with people who were for and against abortion, and with his own family, before going public with his change of heart.
Naysayers accused the state senator of trying to pick up female voters as he was campaigning for the Republican nomination for lieutenant governor against fellow Orange County legislator Marian Bergeson, who opposed abortion. The charge was bogus, according to longtime Seymour campaign advisor Eileen Padberg.
“He didn’t get talked into it — he was an effing Marine,” she said. “He had to be convinced in anything before making a decision. In my career representing hundreds of candidates, John was one of very few who consistently would say about their stances, ‘This is going to kill me, but I gotta do it.’”
Seymour lost the primary to Bergeson. Six months later, he was once again one of the most powerful Republicans in the state when he took the Senate seat Wilson had just vacated to become governor.
Seymour’s son John recalled his father getting the call from Wilson while the family was vacationing in Shasta.
“Dad knew that it was a heavy, weighted responsibility, and that it would affect the family,” John said. “But we kids said, ‘You should do this, if it makes you happy.’”
Seymour became the second Anaheim Republican to serve in the position, after Thomas Kuchel in the 1950s and 1960s.
Wilson told The Times that he originally wanted to keep his friend in Sacramento to help push through his agenda. But the governor figured he needed a trusted voice in Washington even more.
“You’re looking for people who are not only friends but are capable and experienced and understand what’s necessary,” Wilson said. “And I don’t think I was doing him a great favor, because it was a tough time for the state.”
California was weathering its worst recession in decades and a punishing drought. The state’s vaunted defense industry was shedding tens of thousands of jobs with the closure of military bases after the end of the Cold War.
The daunting task didn’t faze Seymour.
“I mean, you gotta be good to succeed in the private sector,” he told The Times in 1992. “But if you’re gonna succeed in getting things done in the public sector, you gotta be better than that! That’s the challenge!”
Seymour spent most of his short time in the Senate in triage mode. He lobbied especially hard for California’s real estate industry, calling himself the “realtors’ senator.” But the diminutive man’s plainspoken demeanor failed to gain traction with California voters — a 1991 Times profile deemed him “the unknown senator.” And his one moment in the national spotlight became fodder for opponents.
In the spring of 1992, Los Angeles erupted in deadly riots after a jury acquitted four police officers who beat Rodney King. As he once did in Anaheim, Seymour went on a listening tour across affected neighborhoods, accompanying President George H.W. Bush.
This time, Seymour was accused of seeking photo opportunities a month before his primary election and being tone-deaf to the riot’s root causes by airing television ads stating, “We can’t be tough enough on lawbreakers.” White House aides ridiculed him in the press as the “Velcro senator.” His Republican opponent, Orange County Rep. William Dannemeyer, labeled him “Senator Flip Flop.”
Seymour easily beat Dannemeyer, then faced Democrat Dianne Feinstein, the former San Francisco mayor whose narrow loss to Wilson in the governor’s race had earned her widespread name recognition. He received only 38% of the vote as Feinstein rode a Democratic wave that swept Bill Clinton into the White House and a record number of women into the U.S. Senate, including Barbara Boxer in California.
California Department of Finance spokesperson H.D. Palmer worked for Seymour at the time and saw his “regular guy” boss give “one of the kindest and most gracious concession speeches I’ve ever heard.”
“Then he went down to O.C. to be with his supporters,” Palmer said. “He was true to his roots.”
Wilson soon appointed Seymour to head the California Housing Finance Agency, which helps first-time home buyers access low-rate loans. He stayed in that role for two years before becoming chief executive of the Southern California Housing Development Corp. The Inland Empire nonprofit, which managed and built affordable housing complexes, is now known as National Community Renaissance, or National CORE.
John, who is the nonprofit’s vice president of acquisitions, said his father had no regrets about leaving politics behind because “housing was his passion. He saw it as a platform for people to grow. He would say, ‘Once you’re housed, you have a big, beautiful horizon to do anything.’”
Seymour did lean on his past to urge skeptical cities and counties to allow affordable housing projects, challenging them to be like him: do the right thing regardless of political cost.
“If in fact you’re going to try to change an environment in which a mayor or city council will do what they know in their hearts is right, you need to offset the political blow,” he said at a housing conference in Cathedral City in 2002. “I challenge you to form a coalition.”
Seymour is survived by his wife of 54 years, Judy; children John, Shad, Jeffrey, Barrett, Lisa Houser and Sarena Talbert; nine grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren.
-
Movie Reviews13 minutes agoThe Devil Wears Prada 2 review – a sequel? For spring? Groundbreaking
-
News31 minutes agoSpringfield’s Haitian Workers and Businesses Face Uncertain Future
-
Politics37 minutes agoSupreme Court Deals Further Blow to Voting Rights Act
-
Business43 minutes agoU.S. Gas Prices Climb Further as Effects of Iran War Reverberate
-
Science49 minutes agoHow Iran Accumulated 11 Tons of Enriched Uranium
-
Health55 minutes agoDoes Chitosan for Weight Loss Work? A Harvard Doctor Reveals the Truth
-
Culture1 hour agoBook Review: “Japanese Gothic,” by Kylie Lee Baker
-
Lifestyle1 hour agoMelania Trump, Queen Camilla and the Look of the Special Relationship