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.
Politics
EXCLUSIVE: ICE says El Paso detention facility will stay open under new contractor after $1.2B deal scrapped
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EXCLUSIVE: Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) said Camp East Montana in El Paso, Texas will remain open and is undergoing an operational upgrade, Fox News Digital has learned.
“Camp East Montana is NOT closing, quite the opposite,” an ICE spokesperson exclusively told Fox News Digital Tuesday.
“Rather, ICE has contracted with a new provider following Secretary Noem’s termination of the old contract inherited from the Department of War. ICE is always looking at ways to improve our detention facilities to ensure we are providing the best care to illegal aliens in our custody.”
Camp East Montana is photographed Friday, March 6, 2026, in El Paso, Texas. (Omar Ornelas/El Paso Times / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images)
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The spokesperson said the new contract will allow the facility to maintain what the agency described as the “highest detention standards” while expanding oversight.
According to ICE, the new contractor will also provide increased on-site medical care, additional staffing and a “PRECISE quality assurance surveillance plan.”
The agency said the updated agreement also strengthens ICE’s direct oversight of operations at the El Paso-area facility.
“Far from closing, Camp East Montana is upgrading,” the spokesperson said.
El Paso immigration facility faces scrutiny but ICE says Camp East Montana is upgrading, not closing, after the $1.2 billion contract termination. (Omar Ornelas/El Paso Times / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images)
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The news that the facility will remain open comes after The Washington Post reported that the facility could face closure amid scrutiny over operations.
A document was distributed to ICE staff, the Post reports, indicated that the agency was drafting a letter to terminate the facility’s $1.2 billion contract at an unspecified date.
ICE officials, however, characterized the contract termination as a deliberate effort by Noem to raise standards and improve services.
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Camp East Montana is photographed Friday, March 6, 2026, in El Paso, Texas, as a bus enters the detention center. (Omar Ornelas/El Paso Times / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images)
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The facility, located at Fort Bliss in Texas, has been used to house thousands of detainees as part of the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement efforts.
ICE did not immediately provide details on the identity of the new contractor or the timeline for full implementation.
WASHINGTON — Russia is emerging as one of the few early economic beneficiaries of the war with Iran, as disruptions to energy infrastructure drive up demand for Russian exports and the world casts its gaze to the Middle East and away from Moscow’s war in Ukraine.
The U.S. and its European counterparts slapped severe sanctions on Russia in March 2022, barely a month into Russian President Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The effect was a stranglehold on Russia’s exports, depriving Putin’s war effort of at least $500 billion, experts say. But over the last week, as President Trump’s war in the Middle East choked energy markets worldwide, the White House began easing its restrictions on Moscow.
“It is traitorous conduct for you to help Russia,” California Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Torrance) said on X, demanding the Trump administration reverse course. “Russia is giving intelligence info to Iran that helps Iran target American forces.”
Crude droplets rained over Tehran after Israeli airstrikes decimated oil depots, draping the Iranian capital in a dense smog. Iranian counterattacks have also targeted refineries and oil fields in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. Crude oil prices have surged, and traffic through the Strait of Hormuz has all but ceased, sending energy importers in search of alternate sources.
Those spikes are giving Russia, one of the world’s largest oil and gas exporters, a rare advantage. After spending a decade as the world’s most sanctioned nation over his aggression in Ukraine, Putin is finally starting to regain some leverage in global markets.
“In the current economic situation, if we refocus now on those markets that need increased supplies, we can gain a foothold there,” Putin said at a meeting at the Kremlin on Monday, according to Russian state media. “It’s important for Russian energy companies to take advantage of the current situation.”
On March 4, the Treasury Department issued a temporary 30-day waiver allowing Indian refiners to purchase Russian oil. The appeal by the Trump administration was described as a way to ease demand for Mideast oil, but was criticized as a reversal of sanctions placed against Putin meant to deny him the capital needed to fund his occupation of eastern Ukraine.
Now, Moscow is poised to press that advantage further, after Trump said Monday he will further lift sanctions on oil-producing countries to ease the trade friction and reintroduce additional oil and gas supplies. The only countries with U.S. oil sanctions are Russia, Iran and Venezuela.
“So, we have sanctions on some countries. We’re going to take those sanctions off until this straightens out,” Trump said at a news conference at his golf club in Doral, Fla. “Then, who knows, maybe we won’t have to put them on — they’ll be so much peace.”
The surprise concession to Moscow comes as reports suggest Russia is assisting Iran in targeting U.S. personnel.
Trump’s announcement followed an unscheduled hourlong call with Putin about the situation in the Middle East.
The war has also set the stage for Russia to make gains in Ukraine, as hostilities draw the global spotlight away from Kyiv and its struggle to hold back the bigger Russian army. U.S.-brokered talks between the two adversaries have been sidelined as Washington shifts focus to its war in Iran.
“At the moment, the partners’ priority and all attention are focused on the situation around Iran,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on X. “We see that the Russians are now trying to manipulate the situation in the Middle East and the Gulf region to the benefit of their aggression.”
Putin is unlikely to intervene militarily on Iran’s behalf, according to Robert English, an international foreign policy expert at USC. Instead, Putin is expected to play his position carefully, reap the economic rewards, and keep focused firmly on Ukraine at a time when key air defense systems are diverted from Ukraine to the Persian Gulf.
“Russia is winning the Iran-U.S.-Israel war, at least so far. Oil and natural gas prices have soared, filling Putin’s Ukraine war chest,” he said. “Russia is gathering forces for a big spring offensive in Eastern Ukraine, and it’s not even front-page news.”
Ukraine has dispatched drone interceptors and ordered its anti-drone experts to pivot from their war with Russia to help Western allies help intercept Iranian attacks. Zelensky’s allegiance may not pay off, English said.
“When will Ukraine see the benefits of helping the U.S. with anti-drone technology? No time soon, apparently,” he said.
Even several weeks of interruption in Gulf energy supplies could bring the largest windfall to Russia, the Associated Press reported, citing energy analysts.
The economic turmoil caused by the war has exposed vulnerabilities in Europe’s energy system, particularly its lingering dependence on Russian fuel.
Despite sanctions, the European Union remains a major purchaser of Russian natural gas and crude oil. Russian gas accounted for approximately 19% of E.U. gas imports in 2025. Allied Europeans have agreed to completely stop importing Russian liquefied natural gas, oil and pipeline gas by late 2027.
Putin expressed no desire Monday to rescue the European market now that U.S.-Israeli escalations and Iranian retaliation have choked oil production and shipping. The Russian president instead proposed to divert volumes away from the European market “to more promising areas” like the Asia-Pacific region, Slovakia and Hungary, which he said were “reliable counterparties.”
European leaders have been criticized for being “stunned, sidelined, and disunited” since hostilities began in late February. Excluded from the initial military planning by the U.S. and Israel, Europe entered the conflict with gas storage at only 30% capacity, the lowest levels in years. Instead of bold action, English said, European leaders have quarreled over internal divisions and rivalries.
“Sky-high energy prices are the underlying cause of many of these frictions, as Europe struggles now more than ever to find affordable alternatives to the cheap Russian petroleum,” English said.
Antonio Costa, president of the European Council, told European leaders in Brussels on Tuesday that rising energy prices and the world’s shifting attention risk strengthening the Kremlin at a critical moment in the war in Ukraine.
“So far, there is only one winner in this war,” Costa said. “Russia.”
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President Donald Trump is taking his feud with Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., to the libertarian lawmaker’s home turf on Wednesday.
Trump is expected to hold an event in Hebron, Kentucky, on Wednesday, the Republican Party of Kentucky announced on social media Monday. It’s located in the northern part of the state’s 4th Congressional District, which Massie represents.
Massie’s primary rival, Ed Gallrein, will attend the Hebron event, his campaign confirmed to Fox News Digital on Tuesday, while deferring all other questions on the matter to the White House.
Massie himself will miss the event due to a previously scheduled official engagement, his spokesperson told Fox News Digital.
KHANNA AND MASSIE THREATEN TO FORCE A VOTE ON IRAN AS PROSPECT OF US ATTACK LOOMS
President Donald Trump will be visiting Rep. Thomas Massie’s congressional district on Wednesday. (Win McNamee/Getty Images; Nathan Posner/Anadolu via Getty Images)
When asked about the visit, White House spokeswoman Liz Huston told Fox News Digital, “President Trump will visit the great states of Ohio and Kentucky on Wednesday to tout his economic victories and detail his Administration’s aggressive, ongoing efforts to lower prices and make America more affordable.”
The president has thrown his considerable influence behind Gallrein to unseat Massie after the GOP lawmaker publicly defied Trump on multiple occasions.
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Massie most recently was one of two House Republicans to vote to stop Trump’s joint operation in Iran with Israel, though the legislation was successfully blocked by the majority of GOP lawmakers and a handful of Democrats.
Ed Gallrein, left, seen with President Donald Trump in the Oval Office at the White House. (Ed Gallrein congressional campaign)
He was also one of two Republicans to vote against Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” last year.
Trump in turn has hurled a slew of personal attacks against Massie, including calling him “weak and pathetic” in a statement endorsing Gallrein in October.
“He only votes against the Republican Party, making life very easy for the Radical Left. Unlike ‘lightweight’ Massie, a totally ineffective LOSER who has failed us so badly, CAPTAIN ED GALLREIN IS A WINNER WHO WILL NOT LET YOU DOWN,” Trump posted on Truth Social at the time, one of numerous criticisms targeting the Kentucky Republican through the years.
He called Massie the “worst Republican congressman” in July amid Massie’s bipartisan push to force the Department of Justice (DOJ) to release its files on Jeffrey Epstein.
Then-Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican from Georgia, Rep. Thomas Massie, a Republican from Kentucky, and Rep. Ro Khanna, a Democrat from California, during a news conference outside the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, Nov. 18, 2025. (Graeme Sloan/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
But Massie has so far appeared to defy political gravity despite making political enemies out of both Trump and House GOP leaders.
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He handily defeated multiple primary challengers in 2024 and 2022, despite public feuds with Trump, and has served his district since 2012.
Gallrein is a retired Navy SEAL and farmer who launched his campaign days after Trump made his endorsement. Their primary election day is May 19.
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