Politics
Trump supporting California sheriff to launch GOP run for governor in race to succeed Newsom: sources
A tough-on-crime Republican sheriff in southern California who was a supporter of President Trump in last year’s election will launch a campaign for Golden State governor, a source familiar confirms to Fox News.
Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco is expected to announce his candidacy at a scheduled event Monday in Riverside, California, about 50 miles southeast of downtown Los Angeles, in the 2026 race to succeed term-limited Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom.
Bianco, a vocal critic of Newsom and other state Democratic leaders when it comes to the issues of crime and punishment, was one of the leaders who helped push California’s Proposition 36 ballot measure to a landslide victory in last November’s elections.
WHAT SHERIFF CHAD BIANCO TOLD FOX NEWS
Sheriff Chad Bianco of Riverside County speaks during a news conference at the U.S. Capitol on May 15, 2024. (Kent Nishimura/Getty Images)
The measure, which took effect in December, mandates stiffer penalties and longer sentences in California for certain drug and theft crimes.
MAJOR CALIFORNIA DEMOCRAT PREEDICTS FORMER VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS WOULD CLEAR GUBERNATORIAL FIELD
Bianco, who has worked in law enforcement for more than three decades, was first elected sheriff in 2018. He’s been openly flirting with a 2026 gubernatorial run since at least last spring.
House Speaker Mike Johnson listens to Sheriff Chad Bianco speak during a news conference in the U.S. Capitol on May 15, 2024. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
When asked late last year in a Fox News interview if he knew of anyone who might be capable of producing change in Sacramento – California’s capital city – Bianco responded, “I might, I might know someone that would go there with nothing but common sense and the betterment of the citizens of California rather than some crazy ideological agenda that truly makes absolutely no sense to any of us.”
It’s been nearly two decades since a Republican won statewide office in heavily blue California. You have to go all the way back to former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s 2006 re-election victory.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom is term-limited and cannot seek re-election in 2026. (California Governor Gavin Newsom YouTube channel)
There has been plenty of speculation since former Vice President Kamala Harris’ election defeat last November to Trump regarding her next political move, with the two potential options likely being launching a 2026 gubernatorial run in her home state of California or seeking the presidency again in 2028.
Harris served as San Francisco district attorney and California attorney general and U.S. senator before becoming vice president.
Sources in the former vice president’s political orbit say no decisions have been made about any next steps.
Vice President Kamala Harris delivers remarks at the Democratic National Committee’s holiday reception in Washington, D.C., Dec. 15, 2024. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
The Democrats’ field for governor in the heavily blue-leaning state is already crowded.
Among the more than half-dozen candidates already running for governor are Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis, a Harris ally, and former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.
Former Rep. Katie Porter, who unsuccessfully ran for the Democratic Senate nomination last year, has expressed interest in launching a campaign.
Additionally, former Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, who served in Congress and as California attorney general before joining the Biden administration, is also seen as a potential contender.
Former Fox News Channel host and conservative commentator Steve Hilton is considering a Republican run for California governor.
In California, unlike most other states, the top two finishers in a primary, regardless of party affiliation, advance to the general election.
SACRAMENTO — A caravan of pickup trucks waving large President Trump flags circled the California Republican Party’s convention this weekend, with drivers occasionally hopping out to dance to the Village People song “Y.M.C.A.,” a favorite tune at the president’s rallies.
Inside, delegates posed with giant cutouts of Trump, wore glittery gold-sequined jackets emblazoned with “Trump the Golden Era” and snapped up “MAGA” rhinestone jewelry.
Republicans attend the CAGOP spring organizing convention at the SAFE Credit Union Convention Center in Sacramento on Sunday.
(Lezlie Sterling/TNS)
Once dominated by Reagan-era Republicans who favored traditional conservative policies including opposing the Russia-led Soviet Union and favoring free trade, the California GOP is being reshaped by Trump’s populism.
“Just like Reagan was transformational figure in the political world, Donald Trump is a transformational figure,” said former state GOP chairman Jim Brulte.
For a party that has long been largely irrelevant in California politics — having last elected a statewide candidate nearly two decades ago — there were some bright spots in the November election. Republicans increased their representation in both houses of the state Legislature, the first time the GOP has done so in a presidential election year since 1980.
Though Trump lost the state by 20 points to former Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee and Californian, the Republican received more votes in November here than he did in the last two presidential elections.
Trump also did better with Latinos across the nation, winning 43% of their votes, according to the Associated Press. In California, Republicans increased their support from this voting bloc as well, according to the nonpartisan Cook Political Report as well as GOP officials.
“Here’s the secret sauce. You ready for it?” Rep. Tony Gonzalez (R-Texas) told California Republicans at the party’s Saturday luncheon. “You have to show up. Step one, show up. Show up early. Show up often. Don’t speak a little bit of broken Spanish. Don’t throw up an ad and then call it good two weeks at the tail end of election.”
Gonzalez, whose district has the most border miles of any congressional district in the nation, said Latino voters care about the same issues as most voters — the economy, safety and the education of their children.
“Be genuine,” he added. “You don’t have to be perfect. You don’t have to tell them what you think they want to hear.”
Assemblywoman Leticia Castillo, a Republican elected in November to represent a Democratic district with that includes swaths of Riverside and San Bernardino counties, said in addition to constant door-knocking, she reached out to Latinos in unconventional ways. She advertised about her parents’ immigrant roots and her priorities in popular local Spanish-language magazines that focus on soccer and quinceañeras.
“We’re talking about values, and we’re talking about what your beliefs are. And it was not that difficult to get people on board. They want the message, but they don’t know there’s a message that they need until you bring it to them,” she said.
State GOP leaders said such legislative gains were prompted by structural changes, including registering 1 million additional Republican voters over the last six years and focusing on early voting, ballot harvesting and other election day tactics long embraced by Democrats. The party also launched a concerted effort to appeal to Latino voters more consistently and aggressively than prior decades.
“I don’t think it happened overnight,” state Republican Party chairwoman Jessica Millan Patterson, whose tenure just ended, told reporters Saturday.
Describing Latinos as a community that had been previously “neglected” by the party, she added: “In 2019 we started going to farms and talking to farm workers, and we were talking about the things that were important to my community, and that was making sure you have a good job. It was making sure your kids got a great education so they could have a better life than you. It was making sure that you had safe streets.”
Though she argued that Democrats had failed on such issues, she acknowledged that they had long been a presence in Latino communities. “Democrats showed up, and Democrats made them feel like they cared about their problems,” Millan Patterson said.
Trump also did better among Latino and Black voters than other recent Republican presidential nominees, so it’s unclear whether California Republicans’ improved performance is part of a fundamental realignment of the base of the political parties or whether it’s specific to Trump and evaporates once he leaves office.
Getting Trump voters to turn out in elections when he is not on the ballot can be challenging, Millan Patterson added. That became evident during the failed recall election against Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, she said. Over a million more Californians voted for Trump in the 2020 presidential election than voted to recall Newsom in 2021.
Trump’s influence, and imprint, on the current California Republican Party was clear throughout the three-day convention in Sacramento.
Panels at the Hyatt Regency and the convention center in Sacramento focused on issues such as “lawfare,” a practice Trump supporters argue weaponized the legal system against him and his goals. Republicans also touted a potential 2026 California ballot measure to require voter ID and proof of citizenship for anyone casting ballots, which Trump demanded the state adopt in exchange for federal disaster relief in the aftermath of the deadly Los Angeles-area wildfires this year.
The most prominent speaker was Riley Gaines, a former collegiate swimmer who has railed against transgender athletes competing in women’s sports, a focus during Trump’s second election campaign.
“I do believe the issue of allowing men into women’s sports, it was the sleeper issue of the election,” she told the Republican crowd. “I believe, of course, that people turned up to the polls to embrace Donald Trump, to embrace the America first agenda … but more so, I believe that people turned up to the polls to reject absurdity, and that is what the Democratic Party has become.”
Republicans Robin Ellis, left, Sharie Abajian, center, and Barbara Moore take selfies at the CAGOP spring convention in Sacramento on Sunday.
(Lezlie Sterling/TNS)
The shifting voting dynamics in the state could have ramifications in next year’s midterm elections, where Californians are expected to play a major role in deciding which party wins control of the House.
The midterm elections are likely to be rocky for Republicans because the party that wins the White House frequently takes a beating in congressional elections two years later. And in 2024, congressional races were a weak point for the GOP even as the party was victorious in House races across much of the country.
Millan Patterson said the loss of three Republican congressional incumbents in 2024 was prompted by the competitiveness of their districts and a lack of resources. Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield), who was one of the most prodigious fundraisers in Congress and lavished money on California Republicans, left office in 2023.
This speaks to a broader fundraising problem facing the party. Millan Patterson was a McCarthy protege. The last party chairman, former legislative leader Brulte, had an Rolodex teeming with donors. The party’s future fundraising prospects are uncertain.
But the face of the party is clearly changing, as evidenced at a celebration of party leaders Friday evening. Eight former chairs, all older white men, took the stage to Thin Lizzy’s “The Boys Are Back in Town.” They saluted Millan Patterson, the party’s first Latina, female and millennial leader, who left the stage to Billy Joel’s “Uptown Girl.”
On Sunday, the party elected its new chair, Corrin Rankin. She’s the state party’s first Black leader.
“Change is coming to California. It’s time to end the Democrats’ one-party rule and make California great again,” she told delegates after winning the leadership post. “We’re going on the offense. We need to expand the battlefield and to take the fight to every corner of our state.”
The Trump administration has sent hundreds of Venezuelans accused of being gang members to a prison in El Salvador, pushing the limits of U.S. immigration law by carrying out the deportations seemingly after a federal judge ordered that the flights not proceed.
While the precise timing of the deportations remained unclear, White House officials exulted that they had carried out the transfer to a notorious Central American prison. U.S. courts, however, have just begun to wrestle with the serious legal questions raised by a new executive order that Trump officials hope will help them carry out many more rapid-fire expulsions.
President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador posted a three-minute video on social media on Sunday of men in handcuffs being led off a plane during the night and marched into prison. The video also shows prison officials shaving the prisoners’ heads.
The Trump administration hopes that the unusual prisoner transfer deal — not a swap but an agreement for El Salvador to take suspected gang members — will be the beginning of a larger effort to use the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to rapidly arrest and deport those it identifies as members of Tren de Aragua without many of the legal processes common in immigration cases.
The Alien Enemies Act allows for summary deportations of people from countries at war with the United States. The law, best known for its role in the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, has been invoked three times in U.S. history — during the War of 1812, World War I and World War II — according to the Brennan Center for Justice, a law and policy organization. American officials familiar with the deal said that the United States would pay El Salvador about $6 million to house the prisoners.
On Saturday, Judge James E. Boasberg of Federal District Court in Washington issued a temporary restraining order blocking the government from deporting any immigrants under the law after President Trump issued an executive order invoking it.
In a hastily scheduled hearing sought by the American Civil Liberties Union, the judge said he did not believe federal law allowed the president’s action, and ordered that any flights that had departed with Venezuelan immigrants under Trump’s executive order return to the United States “however that’s accomplished — whether turning around the plane or not.”
“This is something you need to make sure is complied with immediately,” he said.
A lawyer representing the government, Drew Ensign, told the judge that he did not have many details to share, and that describing operational details would raise “national security issues.”
The precise timing of the flights to El Salvador is important because Judge Boasberg issued his order shortly before 7 p.m. in Washington, but video posted from El Salvador shows the deportees disembarking the plane at night. El Salvador is two time zones behind Washington, which raises questions about whether the Trump administration ignored an explicit court order.
Judge Boasberg’s order to turn flights around came after he told the government earlier on Saturday not to deport five Venezuelan men who were the initial focus of the legal fight. The Trump administration is appealing Judge Boasberg’s order.
On Sunday, Mr. Bukele posted a screenshot on social media about Judge Boasberg’s order and wrote, “Oopsie… Too late.” Secretary of State Marco Rubio later shared Mr. Bukele’s post from his personal account.
Attorney General Pam Bondi criticized the judge on Saturday night in a written statement that said that he had sided with “terrorists over the safety of Americans,” and that his order “disregards well-established authority regarding President Trump’s power, and it puts the public and law enforcement at risk.”
On Sunday, the government of Venezuela denounced the transfer, saying that it flew in the face of U.S. and international laws, adding that the attempt to apply the Alien Enemies Act “constitutes a crime against humanity.”
The statement compared the transfer to “the darkest episodes of human history,” including slavery and Nazi concentration camps. In particular, the government denounced what it called a threat to kidnap minors as young as 14 by labeling them as terrorists, claiming that the minors were “considered criminals simply for being Venezuelan.”
The government of President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela has presented an obstacle to the Trump administration as it plans to step up deportations — and to target suspected Tren de Aragua members — because for years it has not regularly accepted deportation flights. In recent weeks, Mr. Maduro has gone back and forth on whether his government will accept flights of Venezuelans deported by the United States.
As a result, the Trump administration has sought alternative destinations for Venezuelans, including the naval base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, where it has sent migrants including accused gang members, though it has since removed them from the base.
In an unusual turn, El Salvador has presented Mr. Trump with another alternative.
In early February, while Secretary of State Marco Rubio was visiting El Salvador, Mr. Bukele offered to take in deportees of any nationality, including convicted criminals, and jail them in part of El Salvador’s prison system, for a fee.
Mr. Rubio, who announced Mr. Bukele’s offer at the time, said that the Salvadoran president had agreed to jail “any illegal alien in the United States who is a criminal of any nationality, whether from MS-13 or the Tren de Aragua.”
Officials from both the United States and El Salvador revealed that the deal with the Trump administration also included the transfer of suspected members of the Salvadoran gang MS-13 who were being held in the United States awaiting charges.
“We have sent 2 dangerous top MS-13 leaders plus 21 of its most wanted back to face justice in El Salvador,” Mr. Rubio posted on social media on Sunday. Mr. Rubio added that “over 250 alien enemy members of Tren de Aragua” had also been sent to El Salvador, which “has agreed to hold in their very good jails at a fair price.”
The two MS-13 men mentioned by Mr. Rubio were an accused top leader indicted in 2020 on Long Island on federal charges including terrorism and an accused gang member charged in Newark in February with entering the United States illegally.
The first, Cesar Humberto Lopez-Larios, was among 14 of the gang’s highest-ranking leaders who were charged on Long Island in 2020. He was arrested last year in Texas and has since been in U.S. custody awaiting trial.
The second, Cesar Eliseo Sorto-Amaya, was arrested in February on charges that he entered the United States illegally — for the fourth time since 2015. He was wanted on double aggravated homicide charges in El Salvador, where he had been sentenced in absentia to 50 years in prison. The U.S. charges against both men were dismissed on Wednesday, according to court records that were unsealed on Sunday.
The prosecutors in Mr. Lopez-Larios’s case offered the following reasoning in a letter to the judge for seeking the dismissal of the charges against him. “The United States has determined that sensitive and important foreign policy considerations outweigh the government’s interest in pursuing the prosecution of the defendant,” the letter said.
The two men’s transfers have raised concerns among some U.S. law enforcement officials, who fear that those individuals, once out of U.S. custody, could escape or issue orders that may endanger witnesses in both countries, according to people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal discussions.
Mr. Bukele came to power on promises to crack down on gang violence and MS-13. His success in restoring safety has won him broad support in El Salvador and around Latin America, but critics say that it has come at the cost of human rights.
By imposing a state of emergency, the Salvadoran leader has sidestepped due process and ordered sweeping arrests that have ensnared thousands of people without any affiliation to criminal groups, critics say. Under Mr. Bukele, the prison population has soared and abuses, including torture, have been documented in the system.
Mr. Bukele has promoted his iron-fisted approach by posting dramatic photographs from his country’s prisons that resemble those shared this weekend: They often feature scores of tattooed inmates with shaved heads held in handcuffs and forced into submissive poses.
Tim Balk contributed reporting.
Former Rep. Nita Lowey, D-N.Y., has died at age 87, according to her family.
Lowey, who represented New York in the U.S. House of Representatives for 32 years and was the first woman to chair the House Appropriations Committee, died Saturday after a long battle with metastatic breast cancer, according to a report from the New York Post.
“Nita’s family was central to her life as she was to all of ours,” the longtime lawmaker’s family said in a statement. “We will miss her more than words can say and take great comfort in knowing that she lived a full and purposeful life.”
NITA LOWEY, LONGTIME DEMOCRATIC LAWMAKER AND HOUSE APPROPRIATIONS CHAIRWOMAN, TO RETIRE
Rep. Nita Lowey makes a few remarks at the All Children Reading: A Grand Challenge for Development Launch at Ronald Reagan Building on Nov. 18, 2011, in Washington, D.C. (Paul Morigi/WireImage)
The New York lawmaker was born Nita Sue Menikoff in the Bronx in 1937, later graduating from Bronx High School of Science before going on to receive a degree from Mount Holyoke College in 1959, the Post report noted.
She married attorney Stephen Lowey in 1961, and was first elected to Congress in 1988 to represent New York’s 17th Congressional District.
A longtime ally of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Clinton family, Lowey became chair of the House Appropriations Committee in 2019. She frequently clashed with President Donald Trump during his first term in office in her time as chair, telling Lohud in 2019 that the president was an “embarrassment.”
Rep. Nita Lowey speaks during hearings on President Donald Trump’s first budget on Capitol Hill on March 28, 2017. (Zach Gibson/Getty Images)
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“The president is an embarrassment and as a member of the Congress and as the leader of the Appropriations Committee, we have the responsibility to serve the people,” she said at the time.
Lowey announced her retirement that same year, with House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., telling the New York Post that the longtime lawmaker was a “principled, passionate and powerful public servant.”
Rep. Nita Lowey listens as Rep. Ted Deutch, D-Fla., speaks during a news conference at the Capitol, Jan. 28, 2020. (Stefani Reynolds/Bloomberg)
“Over the course of her historic career, Congresswoman Lowey courageously served her constituents and stood up for New Yorkers while shattering multiple glass ceilings along the way,” Jeffries said Sunday, adding that Lowey was a “mentor and friend.”
Lowey is survived by her husband, three children and eight grandchildren.
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