Politics

Trump, California and the multi-front war over the next election

Published

3 months ago

February 9, 2026

Trump, California and the multi-front war over the next election

In recent weeks, Marin County Registrar Natalie Adona has been largely focused on the many mundane tasks of local elections administrators in the months before a midterm: finalizing voting locations, ordering supplies, facilitating candidate filings.

But in the wake of unprecedented efforts by the Trump administration to intervene in state-run elections, Adona said she has also been preparing her staff for far less ordinary scenarios — such as federal officials showing up and demanding ballots, as they recently did in Georgia, or immigration agents staging around polling stations on election day, as some in President Trump’s orbit have suggested.

“Part of my job is making sure that the plans are developed and then tested and then socialized with the staff so if those situations were to ever come up, we would not be figuring it out right then and there. We would know what to do,” Adona said. “Doing those sort of exercises and that level of planning in a way is kind of grounding, and makes things feel less chaotic.”

Natalie Adona faced harassment from election deniers and COVID anti-maskers when she served as the registrar of voters in Nevada County. She now serves Marin County and is preparing her staff for potential scenarios this upcoming election, including what to do if immigration agents are present.

(Jess Lynn Goss / For The Times)

Across California, local elections administrators say they have been running similar exercises to prepare for once unthinkable threats — not from local rabble-rousers, remote cyberattackers or foreign adversaries, but their own federal government.

State officials, too, are writing new contingency plans for unprecedented intrusions by Trump and other administration officials, who in recent days have repeated baseless 2020 election conspiracies, raided and taken ballots from a local election center in Fulton County, Ga., pushed both litigation and legislation that would radically alter local voting rules, and called for Republicans to seize control of elections nationwide.

California’s local and state officials — many of whom are Democrats — are walking a fine line, telling their constituents that elections remain fair and safe, but also that Trump’s talk of federal intervention must be taken seriously.

Their concerns are vastly different than the concerns voiced by Trump and other Republicans, who for years have alleged without evidence that U.S. elections are compromised by widespread fraud involving noncitizen voters, including in California.

But they have nonetheless added to a long-simmering sense of fear and doubt among voters — who this year have the potential to radically alter the nation’s political trajectory by flipping control of Congress to Democrats.

An election worker moves ballots to be sorted.

Trump has said he will accept Republican losses only if the elections are “honest.” A White House spokesperson said Trump is pushing for stricter rules for voting and voter registration because he “cares deeply about the safety and security of our elections.”

Rick Hasen, an election law expert and director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project at UCLA Law, said some of what Trump says about elections “is nonsensical and some is bluster,” but recent actions — especially the election center raid in Georgia — have brought home the reality of his threats.

“Some worry that this is a test run for trying to seize ballot boxes in 2026 and prevent a fair count of the votes, and given Trump’s track record, I don’t think that is something we can dismiss out of hand,” Hasen said. “States need to be making contingency plans to make sure that those kinds of things don’t happen.”

The White House dismissed such concerns, pointing to isolated incidents of noncitizens being charged with illegally voting, and to examples of duplicate registrations, voters remaining on rolls after death and people stealing ballots to vote multiple times.

“These so-called experts are ignoring the plentiful examples of noncitizens charged with voter fraud and of ineligible voters on voter rolls,” said Abigail Jackson, the White House spokesperson.

Experts said fraudulent votes are rare, most registration and roll issues do not translate into fraudulent votes being cast, and there is no evidence such issues swing elections.

A swirl of activity

Early in his term, Trump issued an executive order calling for voters nationwide to be required to show proof of U.S. citizenship, and for states to be required to disregard mail ballots received after election day. California and other states sued, and courts have so far blocked the order.

This past week, Trump said outright that Republicans should “take over” elections nationwide.

The Justice Department has sued California Secretary of State Shirley Weber and her counterparts in other states for refusing to hand over state voter rolls — the lawsuit against Weber was tossed — and raided and seized ballots from the election office of Fulton County, long a target of right-wing conspiracy theories over Trump’s 2020 election loss.

President Trump walks behind former chairperson of the Republican National Committee Michael Whatley.

Longtime Trump advisor and ally Stephen K. Bannon suggested U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents will be dispatched to polling locations in November, reprising old fears about voter intimidation. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said she couldn’t rule that out, despite it being illegal.

Democrats have raised concerns about the U.S. Postal Service mishandling mail ballots in the upcoming elections, following rule changes for how such mail is processed. Republicans have continued pushing the SAVE America Act, which would create new proof of citizenship requirements for voters. The U.S. Supreme Court is considering multiple voting rights cases, including one out of Louisiana that challenges Voting Rights Act protections for Black representation.

Charles H. Stewart, director of the MIT Election Data + Science Lab, said the series of events has created an “environment where chaos is being threatened,” and where “people who are concerned about the state of democracy are alarmed and very concerned,” and rightfully so.

But he said there are also “a number of guardrails” in place — what he called “the kind of mundane mechanics that are involved in running elections” — that will help prevent harm.

California prepares

California leaders have been vociferous in their defense of state elections, and said they’re prepared to fight any attempted takeover.

“The President regularly spews outright lies when it comes to elections in this country, particularly ones he and his party lose,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a statement. “We will continue to correct those lies, rebuild much-needed trust in our democratic institutions and civic duties, and defend the U.S. Constitution’s grant to the states authority over elections.”

California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta and Secretary of State Shirley Weber.

California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta said in an interview that his office “would go into court and we would get a restraining order within hours” if the Trump administration tries to intervene in California elections, “because the U.S. Constitution says that states predominantly determine the time, place and manner of elections, not the president.”

Weber told The Times that the state has “a cadre of attorneys” standing by to defend its election system, but also “absolutely amazing” county elections officials who “take their job very seriously” and serve as the first line of defense against any disruptions, from the Trump administration or otherwise.

Dean Logan, Los Angeles County’s chief elections official, said his office has been doing “contingency planning and tabletop exercises” for traditional disruptions, such as wildfires and earthquakes, and novel ones, such as federal immigration agents massing near voting locations and last-minute policy changes by the U.S. Postal Service or the courts.

“Those are the things that keep us up at night,” he said.

Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder Dean Logan said the county no longer has ballots from the 2020 election.

Logan said he is not currently concerned about the FBI raiding L.A. County elections offices because, while Fulton County still had its 2020 ballots on hand due to ongoing litigation, that is not the case for L.A. County, which is “beyond the retention period” for holding, and no longer has, its 2020 ballots.

However, Logan said he does consider what happened in Georgia a warning that the Trump administration “will utilize the federal government to go in and be disruptive in an elections operation.”

“What we don’t know is, would they do that during the conduct of an election, before an election is certified?” Logan said.

Kristin Connelly, chief elections officer for Contra Costa County, said she’s been working hard to make sure voters have confidence in the election process, including by giving speeches to concerned voters, expanding the county’s certified election observer program, and, in the lead-up to the 2024 election, running a grant-funded awareness campaign around election security.

Connelly — who joined local elections officials nationwide in challenging Trump’s executive order on elections in court — said she also has been running tabletop exercises and coordinating with local law enforcement, all with the goal of ensuring her constituents can vote.

“How the federal government is behaving is different from how it used to behave, but at the end of the day, what we have to do is run a mistake-free, perfect election, and to open our offices and operation to everybody — especially the people who ask hard questions,” she said.

Lessons from the past

Several officials in California said that as they prepare, they have been buoyed by lessons from the past.

Before being hired by the deep-blue county of Marin in May, Adona was the elected voting chief in rural Nevada County in the Sierra foothills.

In 2022, Adona affirmed that Trump’s 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden was legitimate and enforced a pandemic mask mandate in her office. That enraged a coalition of anti-mask, anti-vaccine, pro-Trump protesters, who pushed their way into the locked election office.

Protesters confronted Adona and her staffers, with one worker getting pushed down. They stationed themselves in the hallway, leaving Adona’s staff too terrified to leave their office to use the hallway bathroom, as local, state and federal authorities declined to step in.

“At this point, and for months afterwards, I felt isolated and depressed. I had panic attacks every few days. I felt that no one had our back. I focused all my attention on my staff’s safety, because they were clearly nervous about the unknown,” Adona said during subsequent testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

In part because she knows what can go wrong, Adona said her focus now is on preparing her new staff for whatever may come, while following the news out of Georgia and trying to maintain a cool head.

“I would rather have a plan and not use it than need a plan and not have one,” she said.

Clint Curtis, the clerk and registrar of voters in Shasta County — which ditched its voting machines in 2023 amid unfounded fraud allegations by Trump — said his biggest task ahead of the midterms is to increase both ballot security and transparency.

Since being appointed to lead the county office last spring, the conservative Republican from Florida has added more cameras and more space for election observers — which, during the recent special election on Proposition 50, California’s redistricting measure, included observers from Bonta’s and Weber’s offices.

He has also reduced the number of ballot drop boxes in the vast county from more than a dozen to four. Curtis told The Times he did not trust the security of ballots in the hands of “these little old ladies running all over the county” to pick them up, and noted there are dozens of other county locations where they can be dropped off. He said he invited Justice Department officials to observe voting on Proposition 50, though they didn’t show, and welcomes them again for the midterms.

“If they can make voting safer for everybody, I’m perfectly fine with that,” he said. “It always makes me nervous when people don’t want to cooperate. Whatcha hiding? It should be: ‘Come on in.’”

Election workers inspect ballots after extracting them from envelopes.

Weber, 77 and the daughter of an Arkansas sharecropper whose family fled Southern racism and threats of violence to reach California, said that while many people in the U.S. are confronting intense fear and doubt about the election for the first time, and understandably so, that is simply not the case for her or many other Black people.

“African Americans have always been under attack for voting, and not allowed to vote, and had new rules created for them about literacy and poll taxes and all those other kinds of things, and many folks lost their lives just trying to register to vote,” Weber said.

Weber said she still recalls her mother, who had never voted in Arkansas, setting up a polling location in their home in South L.A. each election when Weber was young, and today draws courage from those memories.

“I tell folks there’s no alternative to it. You have to fight for this right to vote. And you have to be aware of the fact that all these strategies that people are trying to use [to suppress voting] are not new strategies. They’re old strategies,” Weber said. “And we just have to be smarter and fight harder.”

Politics

Column: Obama’s strong terms curbed Iran. Trump struggles to secure even a weak deal

Published

7 minutes ago

May 21, 2026

Press Room

Column: Obama’s strong terms curbed Iran. Trump struggles to secure even a weak deal

President Trump, it’s well known, is into gold. Every day brings new evidence that he’s thoroughly enjoying the “golden age” he pronounced in his inaugural address — as few other Americans are — with stock trades, crypto profiteering and much more, even a new taxpayer-financed slush fund to reward his allies.

As for me, I’ve gone into silver. That is, I constantly look for the silver linings in Trump’s heinous acts.

One silver lining, of course, is his cratering job-approval numbers in the polls, especially among the young and Latino voters who made his reelection possible. But here’s another: By his humiliating failure to bring Iran to heel, nearly three months after starting a war that he said would last weeks at most, Trump has brought new, more positive attention to what he again this week derided as “Barack Hussein Obama’s Iran nuclear deal.” (The emphasis on “Hussein” is Trump’s, always.)

The president, along with his Republican cheerleaders, counts his first-term abrogation of the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, as a signature achievement. This week, yet again, he falsely claimed that had he not done so, Iran would have a nuclear weapon. In fact, his action in 2018 taking the United States out of the multinational deal subsequently led to Iran’s rebuilding of its nuclear program, the emboldening of the Iranian hard-liners now in power and the Middle East morass in which the United States is now mired.

That quagmire has left Trump seeming desperate for a deal — almost certainly a worse deal than the one Obama struck. Call it JCPOA Lite.

If he were able to get Iran’s sign-off on the sort of detailed, restrictive agreement that Obama and other world leaders won 11 years ago, he’d be trumpeting himself as the world’s greatest dealmaker. (He does that anyway, but his record proves otherwise.) Instead, by his own failure to date, Trump has invited reconsideration of the very agreement he decried as the “worst deal ever” on his march to election and reelection.

No sooner was the 2015 deal signed than Trump and Republicans succeeded in defining it as a giveaway to Iran that assured, not hindered, its development of a nuclear weapon to threaten Israel and the world. Opponents condemned the agreement for not addressing Iran’s other threats, notably its support for militant proxies throughout the Mideast. Some Democrats, notably Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York, were among the foes. Other Democrats, cowed by opposition to the agreement by Benjamin Netanyahu’s Israeli government and pro-Israel lobbyists, were all but mute in the pact’s defense.

Now some Democrats are belatedly finding their voice (and, post-Gaza, some willingness to defy Israel). Along with nonpartisan experts, those Democrats are drawing comparisons between the 2015 agreement, flawed yet successful, and Trump’s promised yet ever-elusive alternative. What’s ironic for Israel and Netanyahu, still implacably against negotiating with Tehran, is that they could end up, under Trump, with a nuclear deal that gives Iran more leeway than the hated JCPOA did.

As Americans are being reminded, the 2015 deal wasn’t just between Iran and Obama, as Trump has long suggested; other signatories were China, Russia, Britain, France, Germany and the 27-nation European Union. Reconstituting that group would be all but impossible today.

The pact’s 159 highly technical pages and five appendices — a far cry from the short-lived one-pager that Trump officials teased earlier this month — required Iran for 15 years to limit its nuclear program to civilian purposes, forfeit more than 97% of its enriched uranium and submit to intrusive monitoring by the International Atomic Energy Agency to ensure compliance. In return, Iran gradually got relief from some, but not all, international economic sanctions and access to Iranian funds that were frozen after the 1979 Islamic revolution. Presumably, after 15 years, the agreement would have been extended somehow.

By all accounts, including those of Trump’s first-term intelligence and national security officials, Iran was complying when he abandoned the deal. Its “breakout time” for building a nuclear weapon was about a year — time enough for the world to intervene — instead of two to three months. Now, though the president boasts he barred Iran from having that weapon by breaking the Iran nuclear deal, he incessantly tells Americans that he went to war against Iran on Feb. 28 because it was on the brink of a bomb — never mind that he also said he had “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program last summer, a program that was in a well-monitored box until he first took office.

If you’re confused, you’re paying attention.

A month ago, Trump posted online that he was close to a deal “FAR BETTER” than the 2015 accord. “I am under no pressure whatsoever, ⁠although, it will all happen, relatively quickly!” To several reporters, he suggested he in fact had a deal and that Iran had agreed both to suspend its nuclear activities and to forfeit all of its enriched, near-weapons-grade uranium.

Preposterous claims, given Iran’s current government, and Tehran promptly denied them. It was a sign of Trump’s squandered credibility that few, if anyone, believed him in the first place. Nor have folks believed his more recent talk of imminent success; oil markets, too, have learned not to trust the president, as prices at the pumps attest.

On Tuesday at the White House, amid a noisy tour of the billion-dollar-ballroom construction site, Trump told reporters he’d been “an hour away” from striking Iran again that very day but Mideast leaders asked for more time for negotiations.

Don’t hold your breath.

But for the tragic consequences, Obama might be enjoying some justifiable schadenfreude about Trump’s travails.

“We pulled it off without firing a missile. We got 97% of the enriched uranium out,” he told Stephen Colbert in an interview last week. Both U.S. and Israeli intelligence agreed that Iran was abiding by the nuclear limits, Obama added, “and we didn’t have to kill a whole bunch of people or shut down the Strait of Hormuz.”

That sure doesn’t sound like the “worst deal ever.” It wasn’t.

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Politics

Colorado Democrats formally censure Gov Polis over Tina Peters commutation

Published

12 hours ago

May 21, 2026

Press Room

Colorado Democrats formally censure Gov Polis over Tina Peters commutation

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Colorado Democrats formally censured Gov. Jared Polis on Wednesday after he commuted the prison sentence of former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters, a prominent election denier convicted in a voting system breach case.

The Colorado Democratic Party State Central Committee voted Wednesday to censure Polis, a fellow Democrat, after he issued a controversial commutation for Peters, who was convicted in connection with a 2021 voting equipment breach case.

“Reducing her sentence now, under pressure from Donald Trump, is not justice,” the party said in a statement. “It sends a message to future bad actors that election tampering has consequences, unless you’re friends with the president.”

“That’s a dangerous and disappointing precedent to set,” the statement added.

COLORADO GOVERNOR COMMUTES TINA PETERS’ SENTENCE AS TRUMP POSTS ‘FREE TINA!’

Mesa County Clerk and Recorder Tina Peters speaks at a rally on the west steps of the Colorado State Capitol in Denver, Colorado, on April 5, 2022. (Hyoung Chang/MediaNews Group/The Denver Post via Getty Images)

The party accused Polis of having “materially harmed” the state party’s credibility and barred him from participating in official Democratic Party-sponsored events moving forward.

It also said the clemency decision “does not reflect the values, institutional positions, or democratic commitments of the Colorado Democratic Party.”

When reached for comment, a spokesperson for Polis defended the governor’s decision in a statement to Fox News Digital.

TRUMP CONTINUES TO PUSH FOR RELEASE OF TINA PETERS AS COLORADO GOVERNOR WEIGHS CLEMENCY

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis speaks to members of the media in the spin room following the first vice presidential debate at the CBS Broadcast Center in New York on Oct. 1, 2024. (Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

“The Governor made this decision based on the facts of the case and what he believed was the right thing to do,” the spokesperson said. “Sometimes the right thing isn’t the popular thing with everybody. Democracy is strongest when disagreement is met with debate and dialogue, not censorship.”

The reprimand came after Polis announced clemency for 44 individuals last Friday, including 35 pardons and nine commutations.

Peters was among those granted a commutation, reducing her prison sentence and making her eligible for parole beginning June 1, 2026.

APPEALS JUDGE SEEMS SKEPTICAL OF SENTENCE FOR PRO-TRUMP COLORADO CLERK TINA PETERS

Attorneys for former Colorado election official Tina Peters filed a motion seeking her release from prison and urged the appellate court to recognize a pardon issued by President Donald Trump. The motion argues that Trump’s pardon applies to Peters’ state convictions, a claim disputed by Colorado officials as the court considers its jurisdiction. (Marc Piscotty/Getty Images)

Peters became a nationally known figure among 2020 election skeptics following the Mesa County voting equipment breach controversy and subsequent criminal prosecution.

President Donald Trump quickly weighed in on the commutation, posting on Truth Social: “FREE TINA!”

According to the executive order signed Friday, Peters’ sentence was reduced from eight years and three months to four years and four-and-a-half months.

The order also stated the clemency action “shall not in any way affect the underlying criminal conviction.”

Peters was convicted in 2024 of three counts of attempting to influence a public servant, along with conspiracy to commit criminal impersonation, official misconduct, violation of duty and failure to comply with secretary of state requirements.

In a statement announcing the clemencies, Polis said, “the Clemency power is a serious responsibility, and not one that I take lightly.”

“This power has the ability to change lives — help grant a second chance for someone who has made grave mistakes — and it comes with great consideration, and sometimes even controversy,” he added.

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The move was immediately condemned by Democrats, including Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, who accused Polis of legitimizing “the election denial movement.”

Fox News Digital’s Jasmine Baehr contributed to this report.

Politics

Immigrant rights advocates rally for more state healthcare funding, criticize Newsom

Published

12 hours ago

May 21, 2026

Press Room

Immigrant rights advocates rally for more state healthcare funding, criticize Newsom

SACRAMENTO — Human rights advocates on Tuesday rallied outside the state Capitol to push back on Gov. Gavin Newsom’s proposed budget plan to reduce state-sponsored healthcare coverage for undocumented immigrants.

“We are here to demand a budget that protects California’s values,” said Kiran Savage-Sangwan, executive director of California Pan-Ethnic Health Network. “We are fighting for a budget that rejects Medi-Cal cuts, seeks new revenues and strengthens our safety net reserve to keep families whole.”

Newsom last week unveiled his revised budget proposal, which would further move away from his previous policy to provide free healthcare coverage to all low-income undocumented immigrants.

His proposal would require monthly premiums for undocumented immigrants receiving coverage from Medi-Cal, the state’s version of the federal Medicaid program. It would also continue to block new adult applications, a cutback imposed last year.

The governor has explained that his original policy was more costly than expected and that difficult decisions must be made as the state could soon face an economic downturn.

Speakers at Tuesday’s rally argued this was unacceptable.

The cuts would force many immigrants to choose between putting food on the table or visiting a doctor, said Savage-Sangwan. She said certain groups, including refugees, older adults and those with disabilities, would be left especially vulnerable.

“These are the kinds of actions we would expect from a federal government that scapegoats immigrants and sends violent ICE forces to terrorize our community,” she said. “Instead, these proposals were made by our own governor in a state that claims to value immigrant communities. We know California is better than this.”

The governor’s office did not respond to a request for comment about the rally.

The event drew about 100 attendees, including Anahi Araiza, a policy researcher with Imperial Valley Equity and Justice. She told The Times that many immigrants in their community struggle to afford medical care and subsequently put off doctor visits.

“They wait until it’s an absolute emergency,” she said. “We’ve heard stories where people delay care and then get diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer.”

The event was supported by several organizations, including California Pan-Ethnic Health Network, Survivors of Torture International, Communities Organized for Relational Power in Action, Health4All Coalition, and Organizing Rooted in Abolition, Liberation and Empowerment.

One man carried a large sign with an image of the Virgin Mary that read “Safety Net For All.” Other marchers donned flowing monarch butterfly wings. The orange-and-black insect became a symbol for the pro-migrant movement years ago because it travels long distances between Mexico and the United States.

Meanwhile, another group gathered outside the Capitol for a news conference to raise awareness about the instability caused by federal healthcare cuts.

Assemblymembers Patrick Ahrens (D-Sunnyvale), Robert Garcia (D-Rancho Cucamonga) and Tina S. McKinnor (D-Hawthorne) joined several doctors and nurses to call for a $500-million state investment into public hospitals.

“Public hospitals are the backbone of our healthcare system,” Ahrens said. “It is estimated that federal cuts will strip over $3 billion a year from the California public hospital system — we cannot balance our budget on the backs of the most vulnerable Californians.”

The Republican-backed “Big Beautiful Bill” signed by President Trump last year shifted federal funding away from safety-net programs and toward tax cuts and immigration enforcement. During a legislative hearing this year, healthcare professionals warned state lawmakers the cuts would harm all patients, including those with private insurance.