Politics
Pete McCloskey, a decorated Marine veteran who wanted U.S. troops out of Vietnam and the first congressman to urge consideration of Nixon’s impeachment on the House floor, has died
When Pete McCloskey challenged President Nixon for the Republican nomination in 1972, his defeat was nothing short of stunning. Only one of the 1,348 delegates at the Miami convention voted for McCloskey, and nobody gave a speech on his behalf.
Running to protest the war in Vietnam, the California congressman never expected to win, but he had no idea his short-lived campaign would cost him so many friends. Outside a basement meeting room at the Fontainebleau Hotel, someone said he must be the loneliest man in town, and he agreed.
“It’s always lonely at conventions like this,” McCloskey, haggard and hoarse, told reporters. “But then Patrick Henry was lonely when he talked about liberty.”
McCloskey was no revolutionary, but, as a decorated Marine veteran who wanted U.S. troops out of Vietnam and as the first congressman to urge consideration of Nixon’s impeachment on the House floor, he led a life of vigorous dissent.
A Stanford-educated attorney and an ardent outdoorsman, Paul Norton “Pete” McCloskey Jr. died Wednesday at his home in Winters, Calif., said longtime family friend Lee Houskeeper. McCloskey was 96.
The cause, Houskeeper said, was congestive heart failure.
“He was always somebody who had the ability to act from complete integrity and not rely on ideology or party pressure,” Helen McCloskey, the congressman’s wife of 42 years, said in an interview Wednesday night.
With a photogenic square chin and a shock of Kennedy-esque hair, McCloskey represented his San Mateo district in Congress from 1967 to 1983. In that period, he may have become “the only political figure in America who has managed to offend just about everybody,” his friend, actor Paul Newman, said in a trailer for a 2009 documentary.
His outspokenness about Vietnam earned McCloskey an exile, as he later characterized it, to the Merchant Marine and Fisheries Committee. But even in what he first considered a congressional backwater, McCloskey managed to upset many of his fellow Republicans.
“Well, the Congress then was much more inclined to be made up of 70-, 80- and 90-year-olds who had grown up at a time when development and progress was the keynote of the country,” he told The Times in 1985. “Environmentalists in those days were viewed as little old ladies in tennis shoes or nuts or cranks or kooks.”
In the relative obscurity of his position, McCloskey thrived. “I was able to help put together a coalition that quadrupled the money for clean water with this funny little bill called the National Environmental Policy Act,” he said. “I’ll tell you, if the Congress had known what was in it, that bill wouldn’t have passed.”
He co-authored the 1973 Endangered Species Act — “the one thing I was proudest of, in that miserable town called Washington,” he said in a 2012 interview with environmentalist Huey Johnson.
McCloskey was co-chair of the first Earth Day. Its Democratic organizers, reaching across the aisle in 1970, could find no other Republican willing to do it.
But not every Democrat was enthralled with the blunt-talking McCloskey, particularly after he started airing his views on the Middle East in the early 1980s. McCloskey supported Yasser Arafat, then chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, and angered Jewish organizations with his criticism of what he saw as “the Jewish lobby’s” undue influence over U.S. policies.
In 1982, McCloskey lost to future governor Pete Wilson in a primary election for the U.S. Senate. He told The Times that his controversial positions on Israel might have contributed to his defeat.
“He has been supportive of the Palestinian people’s plight since the late 1970s,” Helen McCloskey said. “Of course, now that is very relevant.”
Returning to California, McCloskey practiced law in the San Francisco area before cutting back his hours and moving to a ranch near the tiny Yolo County town of Rumsey.
Raising Arabian horses and growing organic olives and oranges, McCloskey made a quixotic primary run in 2006 against Rep. Richard Pombo, a longtime Republican congressman known for his opposition to environmental regulations. McCloskey lost but was credited by Democrats with weakening Pombo, who was defeated in the general election.
A year later, McCloskey, repelled by a series of influence-peddling scandals and the George W. Bush administration’s “misdeeds and incompetence,” switched parties. For 59 years he had been a Republican, but in an email to local newspapers, the fledgling Democrat decried “the stench of Jack Abramoff” and declared of Republican leaders: “A pox on them and their values.”
McCloskey was born in San Bernardino on Sept. 29, 1927, and raised in South Pasadena. His father and both grandfathers were attorneys.
After graduating high school in 1945, he served in the Navy until 1947. He earned an undergraduate degree at Stanford in 1950 and signed on with the Marines for combat in Korea. His commendations included the Navy Cross, the Silver Star and, for wounds received while leading a rifle platoon, two Purple Hearts.
At a Christmas party in 2011, he gave one of them to then-Rep. Jackie Speier, a Democratic lawmaker from Hillsborough. As an aide to Rep. Leo Ryan in 1978, she was shot five times while helping to evacuate defectors fleeing Jonestown, the Guyana commune where some 900 people died in a massacre.
“She earned it,” McCloskey told The Times. “She got hurt worse than I did.”
McCloskey’s wounds were also emotional. Suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, he had recurring dreams of peering into a trench and emptying his weapon into young, terrified enemy troops.
In 2014, he traveled to North Korea and arranged to meet with a war veteran from the other side — a retired three-star general who, like McCloskey, had been wounded.
“I told him how bravely I thought his people had fought, and we embraced,” McCloskey told The Times. “We ended up agreeing that we don’t want our grandchildren or great-grandchildren to fight, that war is hell, and there’s no glory in it.”
McCloskey is survived by Helen — his longtime press secretary whom he married in 1982 — and four children by his first wife: Nancy, Peter, John and Kathleen.
The relationship between McCloskey and Helen, who was 26 years his junior, is the subject of a documentary film, “Helen and the Bear,” made by their niece, Alix Blair, which premiered at the Hot Docs Festival in Toronto last month.
Helen McCloskey said her husband had a bawdy sense of humor and “was very open-minded in the most wonderful way.”
When he was 82, she said, she asked him: “‘Would you like to try magic mushrooms?’ And, oh my God, he loved them.” The PTSD-afflicted congressman, she said, awoke from his first trip and said: “Why is that illegal?”
“He was never old,” Helen said. “A lot of people, when they get older they kind of defend the box that they’ve created that they think the world fits into, and anything new, they either deplore or condemn. Pete was never like that.”
Chawkins is a former Times staff writer.
Gov. Gavin Newsom has signed off on a 100% state tax on money any Californians receive from Trump’s $1.8-billion “anti-weaponization” fund for his political allies.
Newsom unveiled his proposal in May, after Trump’s Justice Department said it would create a fund to compensate Trump’s allies who claim they have “suffered weaponization and lawfare” under Biden’s Justice Department.
The settlement fund was criticized by politicians on both sides of the aisle, including Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who described it as a “slush fund to pay people who assault cops.”
The fund remains in legal limbo. Earlier this month, a federal judge in Virginia extended a court-ordered block on the plan, which critics warned could be used to pay pardoned Jan. 6 rioters.
Fast-tracked into law as part of Senate Bill 122, Newsom’s plan imposes “a tax on any settlement fund payment from the federal Anti-Weaponization Fund, or any subsequent fund, settlement, or agreement, as provided, at a rate of 100%,” according to the bill text. The tax applies to all tax years between 2026 and 2030.
Newsom signed the bill Tuesday. In a statement, his office said the tax is meant to ensure that, should Trump’s fund proceed, California recipients won’t “receive favorable state treatment on those payments.”
“We believe democracy is worth defending, the rule of law matters, and public dollars should support victims—not those who attacked the very institutions that protect our freedoms,” Newsom said in the statement.
University of Southern California law professor Ariel Jurow Kleiman, an expert on tax law and policy, said that while Newsom’s tax is a “novel legal strategy,” she believes there is “no categorical legal restriction” preventing California from implementing it.
States have a “wide degree of discretion” to design their tax systems — including how they define income — so long as they do not violate their constitutions, Jurow Kleiman said.
If a California resident wanted to challenge the tax in court, they would need to show they were harmed by it to have standing to sue, according to Jurow Kleiman. That would mean receiving a payment from Trump’s settlement fund and then paying the 100% California tax. Unless the settlement fund is established and distributes payments, that scenario is unlikely.
While there have been proposals to levy a 100% tax on income above certain thresholds — Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in 2023 said he supports a 100% tax on income exceeding $1 billion — Jurow Kleiman said she is not aware of any governments that have adopted such a policy.
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The House has officially shipped a colossal bipartisan housing package to President Donald Trump, and lawmakers are hoping that, at the very least, he doesn’t veto it.
Trump was supposed to sign the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act last week, but his last-minute decision to ghost the signing ceremony with House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., put into question whether the bill was dead.
His refusal to sign the bill, which passed with overwhelmingly bipartisan support in both chambers, was to leverage the Safeguarding American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) America Act, which doesn’t currently have the votes to succeed in the Senate.
WARREN TELLS TRUMP TO ‘SIGN THE DAMN BILL’ AS BIPARTISAN HOUSING PACKAGE REMAINS STALLED IN WASHINGTON
Trump has refused to sign the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act. (Shawn Thew/EPA/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Trump appears to be in no hurry to sign the bill, despite Republicans who are hungry for a win in the affordability fight ahead of the midterm elections.
“It’s so unimportant … compared to the SAVE America Act,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Monday. “I think the SAVE America Act is exactly what it says. It’s saving America from crooked elections.”
“Here’s what I would like to sign, much more than a bill that — big deal, it’s a yawn,” he continued. “Some people say it’s wonderful. To me, compared to the SAVE America Act, just about everything is a big yawn.”
GOP INFIGHTING OVER TRUMP’S VOTER ID BILL ERUPTS AS TOP SENATOR CALLS STRATEGY ‘FANTASY’
It’s legislation that is loaded with nearly 60 provisions from both sides of the aisle in both chambers that’s designed to make it easier for homes to be built and for younger Americans to buy their first home. It also includes a ban on hedge funds buying up housing stock that Trump pushed Congress to include during the State of the Union earlier this year.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., one of the architects behind the bill in the upper chamber alongside Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., charged that Congress handed the bill to Trump “on a silver platter.”
“When you ask me what happens next, if he cared about the American people, he’d have already signed the damned thing, and we’d be underway,” Warren said on WCVB’s “On the Record” on Sunday.
But Trump doesn’t have to put his signature on the bill for it to become law.
IRATE REPUBLICANS ACCUSE TRUMP OF HANDING DEMOCRATS A WIN AFTER BLOWING UP HOUSING PACKAGE
The Senate advanced a massive, Trump-backed housing package geared toward lowering the costs of homes and supercharging the housing supply. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., pitched it as legislation to prevent America from becoming a “nation of renters.” (Jemal Countess/Getty Images for Protect Borrowers; Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
The Constitution grants presidents the ability to veto a bill within 10 days of it being transferred over to the White House. In that scenario, Congress could override a veto of the housing package.
It’s happened before under the Trump administration. In early 2021, Congress overrode Trump’s veto of the annual National Defense Authorization Act — a massive Pentagon funding authorization package that some House Republicans are trying to use as a vehicle to pass the SAVE America Act.
But during that 10-day period, if Trump doesn’t sign the bill, it would automatically become law. That’s unless Congress completely adjourns, in which case a “pocket veto” could happen. The Senate is currently in recess and the House is scheduled to leave town by week’s end, but neither count as a full adjournment.
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Johnson, who spent the last few days meeting with Trump at the White House about the housing bill and the SAVE America Act, said: “I hope he does sign it.”
“If he doesn’t, it’s still law,” Johnson said. “We’ll still celebrate it, but he’s trying to make a point, and I think he’s making it very effectively. And the fact that you all ask me every three steps down the hallway illustrates that he has achieved the desired objective, and that is to make SAVE America the number one thing, because if we don’t get that right, everybody’s concerned about what happens next.”
Britain’s culture minister may challenge Paramount Skydance’s takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery — presenting a potential speed-bump to David Ellison’s plan to wrap up his $111-billion deal by September.
Earlier this month, Paramount secured the U.S. Justice Department’s blessing to buy the Warner assets, which include CNN, HBO, Cartoon Network, Animal Planet and the Warner Bros. film and TV studios in Burbank.
Paramount also must win the approval of British and European regulators, who are known for drilling deeply into media matters because of their influence on society.
Britain’s Competition and Markets Authority took a preliminary step this month by opening an investigation into Ellison’s proposed merger.
On Tuesday, Lisa Nandy, Britain’s Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, notified Parliament that she was inclined to intervene in the blockbuster deal.
In a written statement, Nandy cited her ability to weigh in on “public interest grounds,” due to concerns about maintaining a competitive media market in Britain.
“The UK’s move to intervene in the Paramount–WBD deal confirms what we’ve been saying for months. The real regulatory risk was never in the US — it’s in Europe,” Forrester VP Research Director Mike Proulx said Tuesday in a statement.
While Nandy cautioned she has not made “a final decision on intervention at this stage,” she has invited Paramount and Warner Bros. to respond to her concerns by July 6.
June 2026 photo of Culture, Media and Sport Secretary Lisa Nandy arriving at Downing Street for the weekly Government cabinet meeting in London.
(Alishia Abodunde/Getty Images)
Paramount did not offer immediate comment.
The company owns CBS News, children’s channel Nickelodeon and Channel 5, one of the largest over-the-air television broadcasters in the United Kingdom.
Warner Bros. Discovery owns CNN, Cartoon Network and TNT Sports, which broadcasts the Olympics, Champions League and Premier League soccer matches.
“I am conscious that the proposed acquisition is global in nature,” Nandy wrote in her statement. “In reaching this decision, my focus has been, and will remain, on the UK public interest and the range of services available to UK audiences, including Channel 5, TNT Sports, Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon, and CNN International, as well as Paramount+ and HBO Max.”
If Nandy decides to intervene, the Office of Communications, known as Ofcom, would launch an assessment of the deal. Britain’s Competition and Markets Authority also would determine how the merger might reshape the competitive landscape.
Teams from the two companies have been huddling for months to plan for the melding of the two operations as soon as Paramount receives all of its regulatory approvals.
Australia, New Zealand, China, Saudi Arabia, Ukraine, Serbia, France and Italy have already given their approvals to the deal.
Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund is planning to contribute $10 billion to help the billionaire Ellison family pull off the merger, which would make the Saudi royal family a significant, although passive, equity owner. In addition, the royal families of Qatar and Abu Dhabi have agreed to each contribute $7 billion in equity financing.
The Federal Communications Commission must evaluate the foreign ownership stakes due to Paramount’s holding of CBS broadcast licenses. U.S. antitrust regulators already have concluded the combination would not violate federal anticompetition laws.
Approval had been expected because President Trump — who has friendly ties with Ellison and his father, tech billionaire Larry Ellison — favors the deal.
Trump has been eager for changes at CNN.
The U.S. government stopped short of asking Paramount to make concessions or divestitures. Many expect that Paramount may have to reconfigure its children’s television holdings abroad due to the proposed combination of two large players — Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network.
Nandy suggested that Britain also should scrutinize the impact of combining two major streaming services HBO Max, a Warner property, with Paramount+.
HBO programming, including “Game of Thrones,” “Boardwalk Empire,” and “Succession,” has long been popular in Britain.
A coalition of state attorneys general, led by California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta, also is expected to challenge the deal, in part, due to concerns about news media consolidation. Bonta’s office has said the matter remains under review.
Opposition to the deal has been building in the U.S. for months. A group of Hollywood activists — led by actors Jane Fonda and Mark Ruffalo — have spearheaded a “block the merger” campaign that now has support from more than 5,000 entertainment workers.
The group’s open letter calls on Bonta to take action to thwart the Ellison expansion effort. Paramount’s Chief Legal Officer Makan Delrahim has blasted the campaign, calling it “fear-mongering” and a partisan distortion of antitrust law.
Forrester’s Proulx noted differences in attitudes toward the deal among the various constituencies.
“For US consumers, this merger has become a proxy fight about political influence and control of media,” Proulx said. “In the UK, it’s being treated as a structural competition issue where regulators, not consumers, will decide how this deal plays out and how long it takes.”
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