Politics
Justice Dept. Aims to Use Terrorism Laws to Target Mexican Officials
The Trump administration this week instructed federal prosecutors to use terrorism statutes to target Mexican officials complicit in the narcotics trade, a significant escalation in its campaign against drug trafficking from Mexico, according to a U.S. official familiar with the remarks.
That new directive was announced Wednesday by Aakash Singh, an associate deputy attorney general, during an internal conference call with prosecutors in regional offices and represents an aggressive new tactic in the administration’s counternarcotics strategy that is almost certain to further strain its relationship with Mexico.
The initiative is the latest expansion of a hard-line policy that has defined President Trump’s agenda since his return to the White House last year, when he signed an executive order designating Latin American drug cartels as terrorist organizations. Within months, the U.S. military began blowing up boats in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean, killing nearly 200 people the administration says are drug smugglers.
The Justice Department directive, which has not been previously reported, comes two weeks after federal prosecutors in New York indicted the governor of Mexico’s Sinaloa state, who is also a member of the country’s governing party, and nine other current and former Mexican officials. Days earlier, the death of two Central Intelligence Agency officers in a car crash in Mexico revealed a covert element of the White House’s clampdown on cartels. The developments have sharply intensified cross-border tensions.
Mr. Singh’s role includes setting priorities for the 93 U.S. attorneys, and his marching orders for them on Wednesday were blunt and strikingly undiplomatic.
“We should be tripling the number of indictments of corrupt government officials in Mexico who are using their power and their positions to enable terrorists and monsters who traffic in misery and poison,” he told colleagues, according to the U.S. official, who was not authorized to speak publicly.
Prior U.S. indictments accusing Latin American officials of drug crimes have frayed bilateral relationships that include cooperation on many fronts. But Mr. Singh seemed to relish that prospect as he urged prosecutors to charge Mexican officials with providing material support to terrorist organizations, in addition to drug crimes.
“If that is an unwelcome development for Mexican government officials and they are offended that we’re doing that, I cannot think of a single thing I care about less,” he said. “If we are shaming and embarrassing them in the process, then that is the cherry on top for us.”
The Justice Department did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment.
President Claudia Sheinbaum of Mexico has made clear she is not happy with the U.S. decision last month to charge a sitting Mexican governor, Rubén Rocha Moya, and other officials with collaborating with drug cartels. She has refused to arrest Mr. Rocha, criticizing U.S. officials for not providing sufficient evidence, and she has repeatedly framed the accusations against him as a potential affront to Mexican sovereignty.
Mr. Rocha, who has temporarily stepped down, has denied the charges, instead accusing the Trump administration of politically targeting him to undermine Ms. Sheinbaum’s political party.
On Friday, the Mexican government said that one of the other indicted officials, Gerardo Mérida Sánchez, the former state security chief in Sinaloa, turned himself in to U.S. authorities earlier this week, crossing the border into Arizona from Nogales, Mexico.
A second indicted official, Enrique Díaz, a former finance official in Sinaloa, was arrested in Europe, according to a Mexican official who spoke on the condition of anonymity without authorization to speak publicly.
Ms. Sheinbaum said on Friday that she had “had a cordial and excellent conversation with President Trump,” in which they “reaffirmed the work we’re doing on security and the talks on trade.”
While the Justice Department has not publicly signaled its intention to charge Mexican politicians with terrorism crimes, senior administration officials made clear in recent days that the indictment of Mr. Rocha and other officials would not be a one-off.
“They are just as much responsible for the death and destruction of record amounts of Americans by cooperating, by conspiring, by helping producing this poison to come across the border and come into our country,” Terrance C. Cole, the head of the Drug Enforcement Administration, said during a Senate hearing on Tuesday. He added, “This is just the start.”
Taking a harder line against Mexican politicians is a shift in U.S. strategy, which has largely focused on prosecuting cartel leaders. Most recently, Mexico has sent more than 90 detained cartel operatives to the United States, including the notorious cartel boss Rafael Caro Quintero, who was convicted of masterminding the murder of a D.E.A. agent more than 40 years ago.
Those transfers reflect stronger cooperation on security issues under the Trump and Sheinbaum administrations, particularly compared with the relationship under Ms. Sheinbaum’s predecessor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who pursued a less-lethal approach known as “hugs, not bullets.”
But the U.S. investigations into Mexican politicians have put Ms. Sheinbaum in a difficult political position. Many members of her dominant political party, Morena, have been deeply suspicious of the U.S. government, and several of the politicians who could be targeted belong to Morena.
Yet it seems likely that the cartel defendants Mexico sent to the United States could now help lead to such cases. Earlier this month, Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, said that those drug traffickers had shared valuable intelligence.
“One consequence of having a lot of the leaders of some of these cartels brought here over the past year, in cooperation with the Mexican government, is some of them will likely want to cooperate,” Mr. Blanche said in an interview at a border security industry event. “That cooperation could lead to additional charges.”
By publicly signaling its intention to go after politicians who have helped cartels smuggle cocaine, fentanyl and other drugs into the United States, the Trump administration may have a number of goals, analysts said.
At face value, the threat could have a chilling effect on government officials who actively or tacitly support the trade, and whose political campaigns can be bankrolled by kingpins. But it could also give U.S. officials leverage as they negotiate the future of a trade alliance that includes Canada, Mexico and the United States ahead of a July 1 deadline. Mr. Trump’s frequent threats to carry out unilateral military action against the cartels on Mexican soil also hang over those talks.
“Many people will see this as a heavy-handed move against Mexico, which under Sheinbaum has done much more than any of her predecessors on these issues,” said Roberta S. Jacobson, who served as ambassador to Mexico during the Obama administration.
Because many of the officials the Justice Department could charge are from Ms. Sheinbaum’s Morena Party, “it could put her in perhaps the worst possible position,” Ms. Jacobson said.
Top officials in Ms. Sheinbaum’s government are frustrated with how the Trump administration has handled the indictment of Mr. Rocha, the Sinaloa governor, according to the Mexican official who spoke about Mr. Díaz.
Her government has handed over virtually every criminal defendant the Trump administration has asked for, this person said, yet it has received little information from their interrogations, making it difficult to collaborate on investigations. At the same time, Ms. Sheinbaum has publicly complained that the United States has denied dozens of extradition requests from Mexico.
The United States has charged top officials in Latin America with drug crimes for decades. Such cases have often scrambled power structures and political dynamics across the region, but the drug trade remains a behemoth that generates billions in profits, driven by strong demand from Americans.
High-profile prosecutions the Justice Department has pursued in recent years include the cases of Nicolás Maduro, the former leader of Venezuela seized in Caracas during a brazen operation carried out by U.S. Special Operations forces in January, and of Genaro García Luna, a former top law enforcement official in Mexico. Mr. Maduro is awaiting trial alongside his wife, Cilia Flores, in New York. Mr. García Luna was sentenced to 38 years in prison in 2024, following his conviction at trial in New York.
Another prominent case, involving Juan Orlando Hernández, the former president of Honduras, had an unusual twist. A little more than a year after a judge sentenced him to 45 years in prison for his role in the trade of 400 tons of cocaine, Mr. Trump pardoned him, heeding a request from Roger J. Stone Jr., a longtime adviser, and other right-wing figures.
One American case against a senior Mexican official — Salvador Cienfuegos, a former defense minister who was arrested at the Los Angeles airport in 2020 and charged with having ties to the violent H-2 cartel — backfired badly. The Justice Department dropped its charges against Mr. Cienfuegos under pressure from the Mexican government, which threatened to expel U.S. agents and subsequently passed legislation that severely restricted bilateral security cooperation.
Going forward, Mr. Singh, a top aide to Mr. Blanche known for an abrasive style, said that the Justice Department intended to take a zero-leniency approach. In addition to charging politicians with drug and firearms felonies, which can lead to lengthy prison terms, prosecutors should seek to also charge them with material support for terrorist groups, he said.
Convictions can result in prison terms of up to 15 years, or life, if the underlying offense resulted in a death.
But so far, the Justice Department has used terrorism charges sparingly against cartels. A year ago, prosecutors charged two leaders of the Sinaloa Cartel with material support for terrorism in connection with their alleged efforts to smuggle large amounts of drugs into the United States.
Mr. Singh said the department wanted to pursue more of those cases. “We need to be treating these people like the terrorists they are,” he said.
Maria Abi-Habib contributed reporting.
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President Donald Trump on Friday announced a major expansion of his administration’s initiative aimed at helping Americans access discounted prescription medications.
In a Truth Social post, Trump said the government-backed website TrumpRx.gov has added 160 prescription drugs, bringing the total number of discounted medications available through the program to more than 800.
“I am pleased to announce that TrumpRx.gov is adding another 160 Prescription Drugs, at highly discounted prices, for a new total of over 800 of the most commonly-used Prescription Drugs,” Trump wrote.
“TrumpRx.gov will now provide clear, transparent, and DISCOUNTED offerings for FOUR OUT OF FIVE of every prescription filled by Americans,” he added.
TRUMP ENDS BIDEN’S DRUG PRICE NIGHTMARE — AMERICANS GET REAL RELIEF WITH TRUMPRX
President Donald Trump announced an expansion of the TrumpRx program, which the administration says will provide discounted pricing on more than 800 prescription drugs. (Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP)
Trump unveiled the initiative in February, arguing that Americans have long paid more for prescription drugs than consumers in many other countries.
The website was launched after the administration finalized agreements with 16 major pharmaceutical companies under so-called “most-favored-nation” pricing arrangements.
Under the agreements, participating drugmakers received tariff-related exemptions while agreeing to lower prices for certain medications and extend discounted pricing to eligible cash-paying consumers through TrumpRx, according to the administration.
MARK CUBAN SHOOTS DOWN PRESIDENTIAL BID AS HE TEAMS UP WITH TRUMP ADMIN TO CUT HEALTHCARE COSTS
Shelves with prescription drugs inside a pharmacy in Los Angeles, California, US, on Wednesday, Aug. 6, 2025. (Eric Thayer/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Companies including Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk are participating in the program and have agreed to reduce prices on popular GLP-1 weight-loss medications.
Administration officials have also highlighted discounts on a range of other products, including inhalers, HIV treatments, diabetes medications and fertility drugs.
TrumpRx.gov allows users to search for discounted medications, view estimated savings and generate coupons for participating prescriptions.
SOARING MEDICARE PRESCRIPTION DRUG PRICES TARGETED IN TRUMP’S NEW EXECUTIVE ORDER
The Trump administration launched TrumpRx.gov, a website designed to direct patients to drugmakers’ websites. (Trump RX)
Trump said the initiative builds on efforts from his first term to reduce prescription drug costs.
“I was proud to make History during my First Term when we lowered Drug Prices, even if by a tiny percentage, because this amounted to a HUGE change compared to other presidents only raising Drug Prices, endlessly and significantly, every year,” Trump wrote.
“Then, during my Second Term, I decided to go BIG with Most Favored Nations Pricing — That is to say, we pay no more or, ideally, less than any other Country for the same exact Drug,” he continued. “Now we are cutting Prices, and cutting them by a LOT, sometimes by 400 or 500 or 600 Percent!”
HERE’S HOW TRUMP’S TARIFFS ON CHINA COULD IMPACT DRUG PRICING AND OTHER HEALTHCARE COSTS
President Donald Trump speaks about TrumpRx in the South Court Auditorium of the Old Eisenhower Executive Office Building on the White House campus in Washington on Feb. 5, 2026, as Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz listens. (AP Images)
Trump also claimed the program has generated significant savings for consumers.
“These Most Favored Nations Deals have already, in fact, saved American Patients over 400 Million Dollars since the launch of TrumpRx.gov,” he said.
The president further argued that tariffs played a key role in securing the pricing agreements.
“Of course, Most Favored Nations would not be possible without my use of TARIFFS, which are getting other Countries to ‘pay up’ instead of relying on American Patients getting ripped off, as they were for decades until I ordered an immediate ‘stop’ to this very unfair and, frankly, foolish situation,” Trump wrote.
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“This is all great news, and I have instructed my Administration to secure more Most Favored Nations Deals, more Partnerships, and Lower Prices for every American Patient,” he added.
Fox News Digital’s Emma Bussey contributed to this report.
Since election night in California, a single theory of election fraud has taken root like no other — not just among online conspiracy theorists or bot accounts, but among major conservative influencers and people close to President Trump.
Late on election night, an update of vote counts in the Los Angeles mayor’s race appeared on election results pages of various media outlets including the Los Angeles Times.
It showed leading Democrats Mayor Karen Bass and Councilmember Nithya Raman receiving tens of thousands of new votes, and leading Republican former reality TV star Spencer Pratt receiving no new votes.
Close observers of the vote tally immediately took screenshots, with some shouting fraud. Others ran statistical analyses that showed it would be impossible for a candidate such as Pratt — running second in the race — to receive zero votes in such a large batch of ballots.
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“They’re not even trying to hide the fraud anymore,” wrote Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and one-time member of Trump’s inner circle.
The claim fit into the broader narrative being pushed relentlessly by Trump and other Republicans in recent days, that California Democrats were cheating.
But the discrepancy in the Tuesday vote count in the mayor’s race was not fraud.
What attracted far less attention than the update with zero Pratt votes was another update one minute later that showed tens of thousands of votes for Pratt, and none for Bass or Raman.
There was no batch of votes that included zero votes for any candidate, as Los Angeles County’s own data show plainly.
But voting data pushed out by the Associated Press came as two separate updates one minute apart, with Bass’ and Raman’s votes in the first and Pratt’s in the second.
“The AP vote count receives updates as provided by election officials and adds them to our vote count. What happened in this case is that there was a lag in an automated update such that some candidates’ votes were added in one update and the other candidates followed about a minute later,” the Associated Press said in a statement to The Times.
“Specifically, an electronic update from the Los Angeles County website pulled in votes for only one group of candidates, including Karen Bass and Nithya Raman. Exactly one minute later, the electronic update picked up the votes for another group of candidates including Spencer Pratt. Taken together, the updates included 21,870 votes for Pratt, 12,850 votes for Bass and 9,521 votes for Raman, along with votes for other candidates.”
The Times’ election results page relies on the AP’s data feed, and checks for updates once a minute.
According to a Times review of election night results data, The Times pulled data from the AP’s feed at approximately 8:35 p.m. that included 0 new votes for Pratt and eight other candidates. When The Times’ system next checked for new numbers a minute later, there was an update with votes for Pratt but no new votes for Raman, Bass and others.
Michael Sanchez, a spokesperson for Dean Logan, head of the L.A. County registrar-recorder/county clerk’s office, said he could not speak for how news outlets report county data, but that he could confirm there were no batches of votes that included zero votes for Pratt.
“It is false,” he said of that narrative. “In every single result update that we released on election night and since election night, he has received votes,” Sanchez said.
Justin Grimmer, a political science professor at Stanford University and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution who researches and evaluates claims of election fraud, conducted his own data analysis of the vote updates, and came to the same conclusion.
He said there was an initial update with no Pratt votes, but a second one 41 seconds later with no votes for Bass or Raman — leading him to believe the single batch of ballots was just reported in two back-to-back updates rather than one.
“Because they came so close together, it looks like it was just a sequence of updates,” he said.
Grimmer said news outlets are “thinking about speed” and the best way to get people the most accurate information as quickly as possible, but “haven’t quite adjusted to being in this world where there’s this group of people who monitor these data feeds as if they are official government reports.”
“It leads to these horrible tweets about there being evidence of fraud,” he said.
Grimmer said he operates under the “mantra” that such fraud claims can’t be dismissed “by mere assertion” that the fraud didn’t happen, but must be looked into — which is why he dived into the data in the first place. This claim, he said, was similar to claims about odd-seeming vote tallies that were made during and after the 2020 election of Joe Biden over Trump, so he was familiar with how to look into the data.
“You can just go to the source code for the page, and then you can find where the sort of feed is, and that’s all I did — just found the feed, downloaded it, and then just saw what the updates were,” he said.
Grimmer said it was not surprising to him that people were watching the data feeds come in closely enough to notice an apparent discrepancy in the data that lasted less than a minute.
“There is a group of individuals who are convinced that there’s lots of fraud going on in U.S. elections, and for whatever reason, this group is convinced that they’re gonna uncover this by careful monitoring of these data feeds and the data that is being reported,” he said.
Grimmer said he would not presume to tell news outlets how to do their job of delivering election results quickly in the future, but does hope they balance the need to move quickly with “this reality that their feeds are now being monitored by individuals who think that they’re able to discover instances of fraud from what’s happening in the feeds.”
Sanchez reiterated that the county’s own official results of votes have been accurate — saying that “at no point” did the county office “report an official results update in which Pratt received zero votes.”
Politics
Spencer Pratt loses ground to Democrat while Hilton maintains lead in latest California ballot batch drop
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Former reality star Spencer Pratt’s lead over Councilwoman Nithya Raman in the Los Angeles mayoral contest narrowed Thursday, while Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton maintained a lead over Democratic candidates Xavier Becerra and Tom Steyer.
Following the devastating Los Angeles wildfires, California’s key elections have taken on national significance, serving as critical testing grounds for the future of progressive leadership.
Pratt, a registered Republican, remains behind incumbent Democratic Mayor Karen Bass for a chance to advance to the November general election. Bass has already secured enough votes to advance.
With 163,549 votes in Los Angeles’ latest tabulation, Pratt maintains a near 6% lead on Raman, who has 130,473 votes, according to the Thursday vote count from Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder and the County Clerk.
A Fox News Digital review of an archived version of Los Angeles’ official vote tally shows that Raman gained over 10,000 votes in the latest count compared to under 6,000 for Pratt. At the previous count, Pratt had 157,116 votes compared to Raman’s 119,809.
LA CITY COUNCILWOMAN PREVIOUSLY BACKED BY DSA RUNNING FOR MAYOR IN PRIMARY CHALLENGE TO BASS
Mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt hosts a campaign block party on 10th Avenue in Los Angeles on May 20, 2026. (Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times)
CALIFORNIA ELECTION RESULTS STILL UNDECIDED AS LOS ANGELES BEGINS COUNTING BALLOTS
In the governor’s race, Republican Steve Hilton maintained a slim lead over former Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Xavier Becerra. Hilton has 1,533,435 votes as of Friday afternoon, according to the California Secretary of State. Becerra is behind with 1,470,100 votes.
Billionaire Democrat Tom Steyer trails both with 1,139,517 votes.
HILTON, BECERRA IN THE LEAD WITH VOTES STILL BEING COUNTED IN BATTLE FOR CALIFORNIA GOVERNOR
Democratic candidate Tom Steyer attends a debate in the race for governor of California, hosted by the San Francisco Examiner and CBS, in San Francisco, California, on May 14, 2026. (Carlos Barria/REUTERS)
Like the mayoral race, if no candidate receives more than 50% of the votes in the gubernatorial race, the top two candidates will advance to a November runoff.
Former Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, a Democratic gubernatorial candidate, speaks during a roundtable discussion with representatives from the Child Guidance Center in Santa Ana on Tuesday, March 31, 2026. (Leonard Ortiz/MediaNews Group/Orange County Register via Getty Images)
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While California’s polls closed on June 2, it could take weeks for results to be final. The state did not have its official final results from the 2024 election until state Secretary of State Shirley Weber certified the election results in December, 38 days later.
A bipartisan bill has since passed in 2025 requiring “non-problematic” votes to be counted within 13 days.
The state leads the nation in mail-in ballots, with 81% of voters sending their choices by post in 2024, nearly double the national average of 43% for 2024, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
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