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Alex Baldwin came back to Saturday Night Live and instead of doing his Trump impression, he made Brett Baier his right wing patsy.

During the very long and very funny cold opening, SNL exposed Baier and Fox News for the hypocrites and Trump propagandists they actually are. As usual Maya Rudolph does an exquisite VP Harris.

After the introductions, BaldwinBaier began the interview.

BALDWINBAIER: Thank you Madam Vice president. When I interviewed President Trump, my first question was, what do you think is the most important issue facing our nation, so my first question for you is – give me the exact number of murderers you let loose in this country.

MAYAHARRIS: Brett, I’m glad you brought up the topic of immigration.

BALDWINBAIER: A million, two million?

MAYAHARRIS: The first thing we did in office was to introduce a bill…

BALDWINBAIER: 10 million? Give me a number.

MAYAHARRIS: Brett, we came up with a bipartisan bill

BALDWINBAIER: But it did have a number, though?

MAYAHARRIS: May I please finish?

BALDWINBAIER: I’m asking you to.

MAYAHARRIS: Well, then you have to listen.

BALDWINBAIER: “Well I can’t because I’m talking.

MAYAHARRIS: “Well, When will you stop?

BALDWINBAIER: “Maybe when I go to bed.

The skit went on like this, dissecting every scrupulous attempt Baier made to attack and undermine Kamala Harris’s campaign instead of doing an actual interview.

To catch you up, here’s a few articles about said interview.

Harris Calls Out Baier’s Deception On Trump’s ‘The Enemy Within’ Garbage

Bret Baier Whines That He Was Outfoxed By Kamala Harris

WHOOPSIE! Brett Baier: ‘I Did Make A Mistake’ With Trump Clip

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Steve Williams is – at least for the moment – a police officer in Prescott, Wisconsin, which is on the far west side of the state, near the Mississippi River. Williams also was working as a substitute teacher at Woodbury High School in Minnesota.

It was while in the latter capacity that Williams crossed the line of acceptability and appropriateness:

According to a letter from school officials published in full by Minnesota Public Radio, Williams was a substitute for 10th and 12th grade English classes, when he put a student on the ground in front of the class to reenact Floyd’s murder.

[…]

Williams told the Woodbury teenagers that “police brutality isn’t real,” according to the letter.

He is accused of twisting a student’s arm behind the student’s back and showing pressure points on the chin and face.

Williams repeatedly made racially harmful comments and sexist jokes, the letter said. He also mimicked holding a gun and pointing it at students while sharing disturbing details about previous police investigations, according to the letter.

Williams said “cops would be the best criminals” and that “they know how to get away with stuff,” the letter reads.

Unsurprisingly, school officials have said that Williams will not be filling any vacancies at the school. Likewise, Prescott officials have placed Williams on leave pending an investigation.

My question is why the Prescott Police Department didn’t do a psych eval or a background check on him before hiring him?

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Joe Scarborough is shocked and more than a little pissed at the Wall St. Journal’s editorial page this morning.

“I’m not surprised by much, and certainly not shocked by much,” he said.

“The level of cynicism, though, coming this morning from the Wall Street Journal editorial page, in light of comments that Donald Trump has been making really is shocking.

“The Journal’s editorial the day after Donald Trump said that Democrats allied against him are, quote, the enemy from within, on a day after Donald Trump said that January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol, was, quote, a beautiful thing, after he said Nancy Pelosi and Adam Schiff were, quote, bad people who threatened democracy and were the enemy within, and then he was asked, ‘Will you say you won’t persecute or prosecute political opponents?’, Trump said, ‘Excuse me, that’s what they’re doing to me.’

“Separate Fox interview, Trump said his foes, quote, could very easily be handled by the National guard. If really necessary, by the military. He repeated the line about the enemy within days later during a Fox News town hall event. You call Americans who don’t support you, quote, the enemy within. and so this morning, I woke up expecting — because there are times the Wall Street Journal editorial page checks Mr. Trump at his worst instincts. Instead, they talk about the Democrat’s fascism meme, and say, basically, Democrats are the real National Socialists. What they’ve done is far worse than anything Donald Trump has done. Joe Biden’s loan forgiveness — stop me if you’ve heard this before — was more law breaking than anything Donald Trump has ever done.

“This entire editorial, they fail to mention one time January the 6th. instead, saying the worst thing Donald Trump has ever done was when he tried to use money to build a wall that wasn’t approved by Congress. I really, again, very rarely am I left without adequate words to explain what’s going on here, but I was shocked enough yesterday that Donald Trump continued calling Democrats, quote, the enemy within. Which, of course, is a precursor to him getting elected, calling them enemy combatants, and being able to lock them up and have military tribunals.

“They will dismiss this perhaps, but they’ve never heard language like this before. Republicans have been saying, oh, no, he doesn’t mean that. He’s talking about illegal immigrants. Donald Trump keeps saying, no, I’m not talking about illegal immigrants. I’m talking about Democrats being, quote, the enemy within. Let me say that again. and tell me if you’ve heard this before by major party candidate. Calling his political opponents, quote, the enemy within. Worse than Putin. Worse than Xi. He says, oh, they’re not our enemies. Worse than Kim Jong-un.

“Political rivals, the enemy within. and they’re calling this a meme which, I don’t know, Jon, I don’t know where that puts us. I really don’t know where this puts us as a country because I’ve never heard any politician call his opponent the enemy within and say they’re going — he’s going after them.

“We haven’t been to this particular place in America before. I don’t often say that. It worries me to say that. If we don’t have the recognition, and if we don’t have the moral and imaginative ability and capacity, it sounds grand, to recognize what is in front of our eyes and what we can hear with our ears, then the central thesis, the central thesis of the American republic, if you want to go back to George Washington’s farewell address, was that this republic cannot exist without the moral and religious principle of a people,” Meacham said.

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Hundreds of thousands of Floridians voting by mail already have said yes or no to Amendment 4, the abortion question. But Ron DeSantis is pushing for a legal challenge even if they win. Via the Sun Sentinel:

But an 11th-hour lawsuit filed Wednesday by anti-abortion opponents threatens to derail their efforts. The lawsuit, heavily based on a report from Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration and pushed by his allies, alleges “widespread fraud” in the abortion petition drive and seeks to strike Amendment 4 from the ballot — or nullify any election results.

After so much effort and time, could Amendment 4 really go by the wayside, regardless of what the voters want? It seems at least possible, according to experts interviewed by the Orlando Sentinel — a suggestion that deepens the extraordinary political and legal morass into which the abortion rights measure has been cast.

Opponents can tap into case law that provides a “veritable blueprint” for challenging a ballot initiative based on fraud accusations, said Bob Jarvis, a law professor at Nova Southeastern University.

Jarvis’ views are echoed by other experts who note Florida case law allows such challenges, even after an election. But the lawsuit faces tough hurdles, they say, from proving widespread fraud to overcoming other legal questions.

Here’s what I can’t figure out. Everyone knows if Trump loses, DeSantis plans to run in 2028. But draconian anti-abortion measures have turned Republican races into an uphill battle all over the country. So what is he up to? Is he trying to drive up Amendment 4 turnout to make sure Trump loses?

The mind boggles.

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SAN FRANCISCO — 

If there’s anything Mayor London Breed has learned in office, it’s that compassion has its limits.

So when she talks about her steady tack right in recent years on issues such as retail crime and homelessness, she’s direct and unapologetic. Sitting at the helm of one of America’s most celebrated cities and trying to keep that city on course, she said, has opened her eyes to some hard truths. Among them: That without guardrails, there are people who will take advantage of San Francisco’s generous spirit and behave in ways that drag the city down.

“We’ve gone too far in just letting people get away with things,” Breed said. “And as a result, people have been getting away with things.”

Breed, 50, made history six years ago when she became the city’s first Black female mayor. She was president of the powerful Board of Supervisors when then-Mayor Ed Lee died of a heart attack in December 2017. She won a special election to fill his seat the following June and was elected to a full term in 2019.

She’s now fighting to keep her seat in November against four other high-profile Democrats, three of them wealthy white men. This time, her greatest political threat isn’t coming from the left. Instead, the challengers with the most traction are two fellow moderates who’ve criticized Breed for not doing enough to rid the city of the tent encampments and open drug dealing pervasive in certain neighborhoods or to speed its recovery from the economic malaise still lingering from pandemic-related shutdowns.

Breed reflected on her tenure during a lengthy sit-down interview with The Times last month outside a café at the Transamerica Pyramid. The iconic building reopened in September after an extensive renovation that some see as as a symbol of downtown’s nascent comeback.

Breed has never been a bleeding-heart progressive, despite San Francisco’s liberal reputation. But the Breed of six years ago was more open to experimenting with a progressive reformist agenda when it came to solving intractable issues such as addiction and poverty. That included promoting “safe injection” sites — essentially sanctioned, supervised illicit drug use — to counter the staggering toll fentanyl was taking on the city’s homeless population, and encouraging police to form better relationships with residents in marginalized communities.

In the last two years, by contrast, she has become a leading voice in a statewide movement to crack down on homeless people and addicts who refuse shelter or treatment. And she successfully championed two local ballot measures that bolster police surveillance powers and require drug screening and treatment for people receiving county welfare benefits who are suspected of drug use.

Although some people dismiss her policy shifts as a calculated political ploy, Breed said her decisions are about personal growth, fueled by what she sees as a lack of accountability that has allowed social problems to fester.

“San Francisco has never abandoned its values of compassion and second chances,” said Breed, wearing one of her signature suits, this one a bold cerulean blue. “But I think that before the pandemic, we were headed in a direction with criminal justice reform, police reforms, and it went too far. And when I say it went too far, if you commit a crime, you have to be held accountable somehow.”

Born into poverty in the Western Addition, at the time one of San Francisco’s toughest neighborhoods, Breed doesn’t shy from political combat. She was raised by her grandmother, lost a sister to a drug overdose and has a brother who is serving time in prison for robbery and other charges. Throughout her career, she has fought and won against critics who doubted her.

“London will fight back. She’ll snap. She’ll show you she’s from Plaza East projects,” said James Taylor, a political science professor at the University of San Francisco and author of “Black Nationalism in the United States: From Malcolm X to Barack Obama.”

“She’ll go street on you in a second. That’s why the men who are running against her have to be careful.”

“London will fight back,” says University of San Francisco professor James Taylor. “She’ll go street on you in a second. That’s why the men who are running against her have to be careful.”

(Eric Risberg / Associated Press)

Breed’s evolution started with the COVID pandemic.

She was celebrated, initially, for her decisive response when she became the nation’s first big city mayor to declare a coronavirus state of emergency, followed soon after by a citywide lockdown. The move is credited with saving thousands of lives and keeping San Francisco’s death rate relatively low.

But a year later, she was on the defensive.

The combination of remote office work and prolonged restaurant and bar closures decimated downtown street life. And parents fumed as city schools remained closed for months longer than public schools in most districts in the nation.

Homelessness and rampant drug use have been a major campaign issue in San Francisco’s mayoral race.

(Tayfun Coskun / Getty Images)

Sprawling homeless encampments took root in portions of the city once lively with workers and tourists, spilling trash and needles onto the sidewalks. People overdosed in the streets, unattended. Videos of smash-and-grab retail crimes and auto theft went viral, giving ample opportunity for right-wing media pundits to use San Francisco as an urgent warning against electing Democrats.

“People were at home. They couldn’t travel. They couldn’t go on vacation. Their kids were with them all the time. The issues around government and government functioning, that was a real pain point,” said Nancy Tung, chair of the San Francisco Democratic Party. “Things were broken, and you knew it.”

Breed said she grew tired of seeing videos of people flagrantly grabbing merchandise from Walgreens and Louis Vuitton, as if it were their right, and of hearing from police that they didn’t have the tools they needed to fight crime. She was sick of battling supervisors and community activists who disparaged her tactics as inhumane and short-sighted when she called for giving police more authority to disperse homeless people and arrest drug users.

Her frustrations erupted in 2021, when during a news conference to announce a crackdown on crime in the drug-infested Tenderloin, Breed proclaimed it was time to be “less tolerant of all the bulls— that has destroyed our city.”

During her sit-down with The Times, Breed said her decision to declare a state of emergency in the Tenderloin stemmed from a visit a week earlier with families and local business owners. One mom told Breed how hard it was to raise her son in the neighborhood. Business owners shared their struggles running their shops amid break-ins and other crime.

“My heart broke,” Breed recalled. “They were tired of living like that. And, more importantly, they were hoping that we could help.”

Her emergency declaration enabled the city to cut through bureaucratic red tape to more quickly move people off the streets and into shelter and services. Separately, she pledged to assign more officers to the neighborhood.

Breed also took her grievances to voters.

In June 2022, voters ousted progressive Dist. Atty. Chesa Boudin over frustrations that he was focused more on on sentencing reform and addressing the root causes of crime than on actually prosecuting criminals.

Dist. Atty. Chesa Boudin and his wife, Valerie Block, leave an election night gathering after Boudin’s recall.

(Noah Berger / Associated Press)

Breed didn’t endorse the recall, but she and Boudin had traded barbs in the press over who was to blame for rising crime. After the recall, Breed appointed Brooke Jenkins, a more traditional law-and-order prosecutor who had quit Boudin’s office and worked on the campaign to remove her former boss from office. Five months later, Jenkins was elected to fill the rest of Boudin’s term.

Breed continued her crusade to push San Francisco toward the political center last spring, when voters approved the ballot measures she sponsored to bolster police powers and increase oversight of people receiving county benefits. During the summer, she applauded a pivotal U.S. Supreme Court ruling that allowed cities to more aggressively enforce laws against homeless people camping on public property. On the heels of the decision, she has launched an aggressive effort to clear tent encampments, leading to hundreds of arrests.

“Like a good politician, perhaps her best fuel this last year or two has been reading where the electorate is at,” said Jason McDaniel, a political science professor at San Francisco State University. “Voters have become fed up with this. There’s just no patience for a more systemic, root-cause kind of approach.”

The question before voters is whether they see Breed’s efforts as too little, too late.

“There’s no mayor that has overseen a steeper decline in our city’s history than London Breed,” said challenger Mark Farrell, a venture capitalist and former supervisor and interim mayor who is running a formidable campaign to replace Breed in November.

“She had her chance. It is time to turn the page on this mayor and all of the City Hall insiders,” said challenger Daniel Lurie, a nonprofit executive and heir to the Levi Strauss fortune, who is also considered a front-runner.

Like Breed, both Lurie and Farrell are moderate Democrats by San Francisco standards. And like Breed, they say they want to clear out tent encampments and end rampant drug dealing in the Tenderloin and South of Market neighborhoods. They’ve focused their pitch to voters on revitalizing the economy and reviving downtown.

Both blame Breed for the city’s continued struggles, and they argue she is undeserving of another four years in office.

Voting for Breed, Lurie said in a recent interview, would be like “getting onto a plane with a pilot that you know has crashed the plane over and over again.”

Breed’s supporters stand by her, hailing her as a homegrown champion who has led the city during a period of crisis that included a global pandemic and the insidious rise of fentanyl.

“They’re just going to blame everything on her, because she’s the mayor, and they are going to take whacks on her day and night,” state Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) said. “I am 100% confident none of them would have done better than London Breed on these massive issues that go well beyond San Francisco.”

“She sees the big picture on housing,” state Sen. Scott Wiener says of London Breed. “And she’s willing to spend political capital and take heat and take risks.”

(Josh Edelson / For The Times)

Wiener disagrees with Breed on some of her criminal justice policies, but said she’s the only candidate who will prioritize the construction of thousands of homes in a city desperate for affordable housing.

“She sees the big picture on housing,” Wiener said. “And she’s willing to spend political capital and take heat and take risks.”

Breed also has the support of the San Francisco Democratic Party, whose leader, Tung, recalled another time when Breed took a bold risk: shutting down the city during the pandemic.

“She kept our city safe,” Tung said. “She got people vaccinated.”

Speaking to the Noe Valley Democratic Club at a neighborhood pub last month, Breed listened as members shared their frustrations. One man asked why they should vote for Breed given the city’s problems. Another complained that police didn’t do anything after his home was burglarized.

Breed listened intently as they detailed their grievances. And in her responses, she was candid about mistakes.

“After the pandemic, it’s like, man, crime was out of control,” she said. “I’ll be very honest, we weren’t prepared.”

“We’ve gone too far in just letting people get away with things,” says San Francisco Mayor London Breed. “And as a result, people have been getting away with things.”

(Eric Risberg / Associated Press)

She touted her efforts to forge change, and smiled as she talked about enlivening downtown with night markets and music festivals on the waterfront.

As a result, Breed said, crime is receding. Homicides are down 40% compared with last year, according to the Police Department’s crime dashboard, and robberies have fallen 23%. This month, Breed announced 60% fewer tents across the city.

For those who want to see a better day in San Francisco, Breed said, “I am the change.”

The city’s ranked-choice voting system — which allows voters to choose several candidates and rank them in order of preference — makes it difficult to call out a clear leader in the mayoral race. Recent polls show Breed with a slight — but not decisive — advantage.

Still, Breed doesn’t give up easily. She said she’d like to be known as the mayor who guided San Francisco “through unprecedented crisis after crisis” and got the city “out to the other side.”

She is convinced she can get there. She just wants another four years.

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WASHINGTON — 

The presidential election is still too close to call, but here are three predictions you can take to the bank:

First, we won’t know who won on election night. Three potentially decisive states — Arizona, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — are notoriously slow at counting. A winner may not emerge before the end of the week.

Second, no matter who wins, Donald Trump will charge that the vote was rigged. He made that claim in 2020, when he lost decisively to Joe Biden. He claimed (again without evidence) that he was robbed of popular votes in 2016, even though he won the election. He has already charged that Democrats will cheat this year. “It’s the only way they’re going to win,” he claimed.

Third, if Trump loses, he will challenge the outcome in the courts, just as he did in 2020. “It’s not over on election day; it’s over on inauguration day,” Trump campaign manager Chris LaCivita said earlier this year. So get ready for long and bitter legal battles that could end up in the Supreme Court with its Trump-friendly majority.

We’ve been here before. Four years ago, Trump tried to undo Biden’s election with a barrage of legal challenges that failed. He asked Republican state legislators to overturn results and demanded that then-Vice President Mike Pence block the count of electoral votes. All refused. A mob of angry, deluded Trump supporters tried to stop the process by invading the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021; that failed, too.

The guardrails of democracy held — and legal scholars say those guardrails are a little stronger now.

“I’m very confident that the candidate who wins on Nov. 5 will be inaugurated on Jan. 20,” said Justin Levitt, who teaches election law at Loyola Law School in L.A. But a lot can happen between those two dates, he warned.

“There can be litigation. There can be delays. There will be a lot of misinformation, some of it spread on purpose,” he said. “There are real opportunities for unrest, maybe even violence.”

Here are four scenarios in which a close election could run into trouble:

Asking the courts to decide

“There is always the risk of another Bush v Gore,” Rick Hasen of UCLA Law School wrote recently, referring to the 2000 Supreme Court decision that decided that year’s presidential election between George W. Bush and Al Gore. “If the election comes down to a few thousand votes or less in a state that is crucial for an electoral college victory, then we’ll expect both sides to litigate as hard as they can.”

In Pennsylvania, for example, Republicans filed a lawsuit complaining the state’s rules for accepting absentee ballots that arrive with small errors, like a missing date on the envelope, are too lenient. The state Supreme Court left it up to the state’s 67 counties to decide how to handle the ballots.

If those ballots could swing the election, the Trump campaign could argue that it’s unfair for counties to adopt different rules. A similar issue prompted the high court to act in Bush vs. Gore.

Republicans have already filed more than 100 lawsuits challenging election rules in several states to improve their chances after election day.

Refusing to certify results

What if local officials refuse to certify election results they don’t like?

Most legal scholars say courts are almost certain to knock down those attempts — but they could still lead to delays, legal battles and potential unrest.

The once-obscure issue of certification achieved more notoriety after Georgia’s Republican-led election board issued new rules requiring county officials to investigate potential irregularities before they certify results.

Certification has traditionally been an administrative action in which election boards merely confirm that the compiled results match up with what precincts have reported. Investigating allegations of irregularity or fraud is up to law enforcement agencies, not election boards.

In several counties around the country, pro-Trump election officials have briefly refused to certify election results, but courts have uniformly ruled against them. Two Georgia courts have already ruled that the state election board’s new rules are invalid.

“Certification is not likely to produce a [constitutional] crisis,” said Edward Foley, a leading election law expert at Ohio State University. “The courts are going to handle it as they already do.”

The danger of violence

But all those challenges raise the prospect of violence.

On Jan. 6, 2021, Trump told his followers: “If you don’t fight like hell, you won’t have a country anymore.”

This year, he has revived that warning, telling supporters that the stakes of the election are existential — literally. Last month, in Wisconsin, he told a rally that if he doesn’t win, migrants “will walk into your kitchen. They will cut your throat.”

“You won’t have a country anymore,” he said, again.

Violence is always possible, even likely. Trump has already been the target of two assassination attempts. But law enforcement agencies have spent four years preparing to protect polling places, tabulation centers, election officials and judges.

Detroit’s tabulation center, which Trump claimed (without evidence) was a hotbed of fraud, has been outfitted with bulletproof glass. Maricopa County, Ariz., where election officials have been attacked by pro-Trump zealots, is stationing snipers on the roof. The U.S. Capitol Police have worked to ensure that Jan. 6 cannot recur.

In the end, election law scholars say violence need not derail the outcome.

“I do worry about it,” said Levitt. “We live in a climate where some people consider threats of violence an acceptable tactic. … But it’s not going to affect the outcome of the election any more than it did on January 6.”

Congress gets the final say — again

Under the Constitution, Congress formally counts the electoral votes on Jan. 6. That normally ceremonial process almost went off the rails in 2021, when Trump urged Republicans to block legitimately elected Biden electors from swing states. Two-thirds of House Republicans supported the scheme, but Democrats and moderate Republicans quashed it.

That scenario is less likely to recur, thanks to a law Congress passed in 2022, making it harder to challenge electoral votes and clarifying that the vice president has no power to direct the outcome.

Still, if one-fifth of the members of each chamber object to a state’s electoral votes, both houses must vote to accept or reject them. If both chambers have GOP majorities, the outcome could come down to a handful of moderate Republicans like Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska.

There’s also a wild card in the list of potential nightmares: What happens if the electoral vote is a tie, 269 to 269?

In that case, the House of Representatives would choose the next president under a rule that would favor Republicans. Instead of a normal vote by individual members of the House, each state’s House delegation would get one vote — meaning California and North Dakota would get equal weight. In the current House, 26 states have mostly Republican House members; only 22, including California’s, are dominated by Democrats. (Two states are evenly divided.)

A tie hasn’t happened since 1800, when Thomas Jefferson tied with Aaron Burr. (Jefferson won the runoff.) Polymarket, a prediction market, puts the odds of a tie this year at 4%.

Misinformation will remain a danger

This is not a “both sides” issue. Only one party has told its followers that if it loses, the only possible reason will be that the election was stolen.

It doesn’t seem to matter whether the challenges are plausible. In 2020, they weren’t, as evidenced by Trump’s long string of losses in the courts. But polls this month have found that most GOP voters believe election fraud is likely to occur this year even though no significant instances have been proven in decades.

Claiming that every election is rigged is not only part of Trump’s political message; it has become part of his business model.

Last time, he raised more than $250 million after election day with his claims. Only $13 million of those donations funded legal efforts to reverse the result. The rest went into Trump’s political coffers, giving him an early start toward his next campaign.

And the misinformation Trump has cultivated won’t go away after inauguration day. He has made bitter post-election battles a durable feature of American politics.

“It is profoundly unhealthy for democracy,” said Levitt. “It is a long-term cancer in the system.”

Read more McManus columns on the election:

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Homicide is a serious problem that calls for effective policy responses built on accurate information. Unfortunately, prominent politicians are again propagating the inaccurate notion that immigrants disproportionately contribute to crime, especially murder.

An Immigration and Customs Enforcement response to a request from a Texas congressman informed — or misinformed — many of the latest claims of a connection between immigration and violent crime. One statistic from the letter in particular has been in the headlines: ICE counted 13,099 cases of “non-detained” immigrants convicted of homicide.

The implication that some seized upon was that thousands of immigrant murderers are roaming America’s streets and that the Biden administration is to blame. Former President Trump tied the figure to Vice President Kamala Harris on social media, writing: “It was just revealed that 13,000 convicted murderers entered our Country during Kamala’s three and a half year period as Border Czar.”

None of which is true. “Non-detained” simply describes individuals who are not currently in ICE’s custody; it doesn’t mean that they are free and able to do as they wish.

The bulk of these convicted murderers are assuredly serving their sentences in jails and prisons, with deportation awaiting them if and when they’re released. In addition, these cases accumulated over multiple presidential administrations — dating at least to Reagan — not just over the last four years.

ICE may not know when an individual is in a state prison. Moreover, the people on the agency’s non-detained docket may have had pending immigration cases for years — for example, because they were ordered deported to a country that is not cooperating with the United States. Or they may have never come into contact with ICE because Border Patrol officials released them before learning of a prior conviction.

Why would ICE ever release a noncitizen with a prior conviction as serious as homicide? The answer lies in the Supreme Court’s 2001 ruling that immigrants subject to deportation orders can’t be detained indefinitely by U.S. officials. That becomes relevant if an immigrant’s country of origin won’t cooperate with the United States.

So if an immigrant who is in the country illegally was sentenced to prison for homicide in 1980, completed the sentence in 2000 and was then ordered deported to a country that is not cooperating with the United States, that person must be released pending deportation.

The problem, then, is not that countless noncitizen murderers are lurking in the shadows across America thanks to the Biden administration’s negligence. It’s the long-standing lack of coordination between ICE and a variety of other agencies and entities, ranging from county sheriffs to foreign governments. It’s also the disingenuous use of ICE’s data to generate fear of immigrants.

In reality, research shows that immigration does not significantly contribute to crime. As a recent Cato Institute report highlighted, immigrants consistently commit less crime than their native-born counterparts. Cato’s study, which focused on Texas, concluded: “The conviction and arrest rates of illegal and legal immigrants … were lower than those of native-born Americans for homicide and all crimes.”

Tethering migration to murder not only creates an inaccurate impression of immigrants; it also wrongly suggests that violent crime is out of control more broadly. In fact, violent crime has remained at historical lows for the last two decades, according to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics.

Homicides rose steeply in 2020 and 2021 but have since declined steadily. Murder remains a relatively rare event in this country: In a given year, 15,000 to 20,000 homicides are committed in the United States, or about 1 for every 19,000 Americans. About three-fourths of U.S. counties typically experience no killings in a year, and of the remaining counties, most see one or two.

We should absolutely do more to reduce violent crime and murder. We also need immigration reform that takes heed of our history as a nation of immigrants as well as the need to maintain control of our borders. But these two problems aren’t really related to each other.

And if we’re concerned about untimely deaths, perhaps our focus should be broader. The risk of suicide is roughly twice that of homicide. About 30,000 to 40,000 Americans die in vehicle collisions every year. More than 50,000 died of flu-related causes during the 2017-18 flu season. And almost a million died of COVID-19 during the first two years of the pandemic.

Policymakers who want to keep Americans safe and healthy face a multifaceted challenge. Credible facts and accurate representations of them would be a great place to start.

Daniel P. Mears is a professor of criminology and criminal justice at Florida State University. Bryan Holmes is an assistant professor of criminology and criminal justice at Florida State University.

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On a recent Tuesday in Sacramento, Alexa Sosa Nunez put in her AirPods, stacked her printed script and took a deep breath before she dialed her first call on behalf of Democratic congressional candidate Rudy Salas.

The 50-year-old woman who answered the phone said immigration is her top priority this election.

Sosa Nunez, who works for the voter mobilization group Communities for a New California Action Fund, told her that Salas supports a pathway to citizenship for undocumented workers. Salas is running against Republican Rep. David Valadao for control of California’s 22nd Congressional District in the San Joaquin Valley.

“Can we count on your vote?” she asked.

“Oh yeah,” the woman replied. “I have family that — they need something. We need to do something so they can get papers here.”

Some of California’s most competitive congressional races are in districts with significant Latino populations. In the 13th Congressional District, which is centered in Merced County and stretches from Lathrop to Coalinga, 50% of all eligible voters are Latino. In the 22nd Congressional District, encompassing portions of Kern, Kings and Tulare counties, that share is 59%. And in the 27th Congressional District, which spans northern Los Angeles County from Santa Clarita to the Kern County line, it’s 33%.

The races for those seats — currently occupied by Republicans but all of which President Biden won in 2020 — are critical to determining which party will control Congress next year and, by extension, how much the next president will achieve while in the White House.

Rep. David Valadao, second from left, campaigns for Congress in 2022. The Republican incumbent, a dairy farmer, is shown at the Buttonwillow Fall Farm Festival.

(Irfan Khan/Los Angeles Times)

If Democrats flip just four seats held by Republicans across the country, they would take back control of the U.S. House. In California, home to six tight congressional races, winning could come down to who appeals to the most Latino residents.

Latino voters are an increasingly influential and diverse bloc that draws power from multiple sources. Voting trends vary widely between Mexican Americans and Cuban Americans, for instance. But in California, a poll of 1,000 Latino voters released Wednesday by the Latino Community Foundation found that Democratic challengers in the 13th, 22nd and 27th congressional districts all hold significant leads over their Republican opponents, with around a quarter of voters still undecided.

In these districts, Latino voters overwhelmingly cite cost of living, the economy and concerns about jobs as the top issues facing the country, according to the poll.

“Latino voters in California’s competitive districts will play a crucial role in determining the balance of power in the U.S. House of Representatives,” said Julián Castro, chief executive of the Latino Community Foundation.

Matt Barreto, who founded the Latino Policy and Politics Institute at UCLA and a political polling firm that works for the California Democratic Party, said the ingredients are there for a heightened Latino turnout this year because of the historic presidential campaign of Vice President Kamala Harris, the state’s former attorney general and U.S. senator. But it’s up to the candidates to convert that into votes.

Baretto cautioned that those Democratic candidates have to overcome historic underinvestment in regions such as the San Joaquin Valley, which has led to lower voter registration and turnout among Latinos compared with other racial and ethnic groups.

George Whitesides, center, the Democratic candidate in California’s 27th district greets residents as he canvasses a neighborhood in Palmdale.

(Brian van der Brug/Los Angeles Times)

Campaigns and political groups are getting creative to court Latino voters. Democrat George Whitesides, who is vying to represent District 27, held a “ballots and burritos” event Sunday in Palmdale.

The California Republican Party has opened three Latino community centers, in Palmdale, Bakersfield and Merced, since 2022. (Other community centers opened by the Republican National Committee to reach Black, Latino, Asian and Native American voters have shuttered in places such as Connecticut and South Texas.)

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee held a fight night watch party last month in Atwater for Mexican boxer Canelo Álvarez.

And the Republican National Committee staffs a Latino regional engagement coordinator in Bakersfield, a man who was born in Mexico and became a U.S. citizen in March.

Those efforts — and the energy surrounding the presidential election — appear to be helping the campaigns make inroads with voters. Democratic Assemblymember Adam Gray, who is trying to oust Rep. John Duarte (R-Modesto) in the 13th Congressional District, said he’s had more volunteers in this campaign than in any other over the last 12 years. Salas said he’s on pace to raise twice what he raised last cycle, when he lost to Valadao in 2022 by 3 percentage points.

The LIBRE Initiative Action, a national conservative Latino political organization, is helping Duarte and other California Republican candidates. LIBRE’s President Daniel Garza said both parties took notice after the last election saw eight Latino Republicans flip blue House seats nationwide.

Campaign signs at a Democratic Party event at Domenic Massari Park in Palmdale.

(Brian van der Brug/Los Angeles Times)

“For the most part, the Republican Party just did a very inadequate job, I think, of connecting with the Latino community,” he said. “That is no longer the case. What you’re seeing is much more investment. Groups like ours, who are center right, are driving a different conversation about policy in a different direction, pointing to different candidates. So it’s game on.”

In close races like Duarte’s, which he won in 2022 by just 564 votes, every vote is worth gold, Garza said.

That fact isn’t taken lightly by locals such as Eliseo Gamiño, who heads the Central Valley Leadership Round Table, a coalition of Latino community leaders and elected officials. Earlier this year, the group issued their first-ever GOP endorsement in favor of Duarte over his opponent Gray.

It’s not a ringing endorsement, though.

“Cual es el menos peor — which is the least worst?” he said. “Because none of them are the ideal candidate.”

Gamiño pointed to Gray’s ad featuring longtime Merced County Sheriff Vern Warnke, who previously cooperated with immigration authorities seeking custody of jail inmates for deportation. No incarcerated immigrants have been transferred to federal authorities for the past two years, according to the Merced Focus.

ormer Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, second from left, greets volunteers at a Democratic Party event at in Palmdale.

(Brian van der Brug/Los Angeles Times)

Gamiño contrasted that with an ad by Duarte’s campaign that features a Latino family playing the Mexican bingo game lotería. He said it’s clear that Duarte knows he needs Latino voters, and many in the community are disillusioned with the Democratic Party’s inability to pass immigration reform.

“Hispanics don’t forget that,” Gamiño said of the sheriff. “Duarte is doing more in regards to talking about bringing families out of the shadows. You’ve got to give him credit.”

Duarte broke with most Republicans last year when he voted against the hard-line Secure the Border Act, citing a desire to protect the Valley’s farmworkers who lack U.S. citizenship. Last year, he co-sponsored a bill that would establish a path to permanent residence for immigrants who arrived in the U.S. as children. Gray has said he supports comprehensive immigration reform that includes a path to citizenship. As a California assemblyman, he voted for a 2017 bill that prohibited landlords from disclosing tenants’ immigration status.

Earlier this month, the Mendota Chamber of Commerce hosted a Spanish-language debate for Duarte and Gray, but only Duarte showed up. Gray said he wasn’t invited until a couple days before and when his campaign said he couldn’t make it, the chamber didn’t offer to reschedule.

“My opponent is running a campaign trying to mislead voters,” Gray said. “They’re trying to get in with the Latino community despite the fact that he helped to kill the compromised immigration reform bill.”

George Whitesides, the Democratic candidate in California’s 27th district, left, speaks with volunteers as they head out to canvass a neighborhood in Palmdale.

(Brian van der Brug/Los Angeles Times)

The bipartisan Border Act of 2024, which was opposed by many progressives because it did not include a path to citizenship, failed in the Senate after Trump pressured Republicans to abandon support for it. It was never brought to a vote in the House.

Duarte spokesman Duane Dichiara said his campaign has focused on reaching Latinos, who he said are moving quickly to the right politically.

“Democrats are ill prepared because what they want to talk about all the time is immigration and racism,” Dichiara said. “Most Hispanics don’t think we’re racist and most Hispanics want to secure the border.”

Because California’s swing district races may decide which party controls the House, both money and attention are in ample supply.

The Democratic National Committee announced last week that it had made a six-figure investment for a media campaign targeting diverse constituencies, including Latinos, in California districts with competitive House races. The top House GOP super PAC dropped more than $4 million last week on TV ads to help Republican candidates in competitive California races, including $250,000 on Spanish-language ads.

Battleground California, the first statewide independent expenditure coalition targeting competitive races in districts with substantial shares of Latino, Asian and Black voters, has spent $4 million toward its goal of a Democratic-controlled Congress.

The campaigns in the California swing seats, however, are more grounded on local issues and the individual, personal appeal of the candidates.

“Latino voters are Americans who love this country and deserve security like every American,” said Rep. Mike Garcia (R-Santa Clarita). “For my campaign, this isn’t an ‘outreach’ program as I am literally part of this community.”

Salas, the son of farmworkers, hopes to become the first Latino in Congress to represent the Central Valley. His campaign has partnered with organizers from United Farm Workers who are helping him connect with hard-to-reach voters.

“I tell people, look, I’m just a Central Valley kid. I used to wake up early in the morning to go out and work with my dad in the fields and in construction,” he said. “We know we have support in the community, it’s just about getting them to turn in the ballot.”

Back at Communities for a New California, Sosa Nunez, the woman phone banking on Salas’ behalf, was routed to another voter. This time, a 22-year-old woman answered in Spanish. Sosa Nunez told her Salas is in favor of women’s reproductive rights, including access to abortion.

“I’m not in favor of that procedure,” the woman replied.

Sosa Nunez asked how much power the woman thinks her vote has to make a difference in her community.

“Nada,” she said. None.

One in three voters in the 22nd Congressional District is Latina, Sosa Nunez told her.

“Our vote can really impact elections,” she said. “I recommend that you do your research — and vote.”

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In a rare rebuke, the CBS news magazine “60 Minutes” denied charges by former President Trump that the program doctored an answer in Vice President Kamala Harris’ recent interview to make her look better to viewers.

CBS ran an excerpt of the Democratic presidential candidate’s interview on “Face the Nation” the day before it ran in a special edition of “60 Minutes” that aired Oct. 7. The answer to a query about the Biden’s administration’s handling of the Israel-Gaza war was different from the one that aired on the program.

In speeches and appearances on his favorite conservative media outlets, Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, insists CBS was deceiving the public by editing the answer for the program as a way to put Harris in a more favorable light.

“This is false,” the program said in a statement posted Sunday on X. “’60 Minutes’ gave an excerpt of our interview to ‘Face the Nation’ that used a longer section of her answer than that on ’60 Minutes.’ Same question. Same answer but a different portion of the response.”

The portion used on “60 Minutes” was “more succinct, which allows time for other subjects in a wide ranging 21 minute long segment.”

CBS News released a clip of Harris’ entire answer online.

The statement posted on X noted that Trump decided not to participate in the same program. CBS News has previously said he pulled out because his campaign was told his remarks would be fact-checked. Trump also said he wanted an apology from “60 Minutes” for calling Hunter Biden’s laptop Russian propaganda, which was never stated on the program.

“60 Minutes” has interviewed both presidential candidates before an election since it first premiered in 1968.

Trump still has an open invitation to appear on the program before the Nov. 5 election.

Trump’s accusation of deceptive editing has been echoed by commentators on Fox News and other outlets favorable to the former president.

Trump told right-wing podcast host Dan Bongino that he will sue the network. He has also said that he wants CBS’ broadcast TV licenses pulled and that the program should be taken off the air.

Trump brought his beef up again during an appearance Sunday on Fox News’ “Media Buzz.” Host Howard Kurtz described CBS’ actions as “unethical,” although he informed Trump that the FCC has said it would never pull a TV station’s license due to a complaint from a politician over news coverage.

This post was originally published on this site

Former Republican Rick Wilson explains how Kamala Harris broke Trump’s brain on is latest podcast. Wilson says that Republicans marching Trump out on stage is “elder abuse” at this point. Watch the pod video but here are a few highlights from Wilson:

“This is why they’re canceling these events. He’s too tired. He’s too sick. His brain is too broken and he can’t keep doing this. He has lost a fundamental edge. You know, there’s an old Fitzgerald phrase about bankruptcy.

Ask somebody, how did he go bankrupt? Oh, well, slowly and then all at once. How did Donald Trump go mentally bankrupt? Slowly and then October. He has for the last two weeks displayed an acute, immediate, severe mental decline. His family should frankly have him withdraw from the race and get him some immediate medical attention.

This is elder abuse at this point, folks. It’s ugly. It’s sad.”

Silicon Valley Billionaires Using Trump to Get in the White House

Wilson explains why so many people follow Trump.

“And the number one thing they loved about Trump was he was the avatar of all their anger. And they blamed it on economic anxiety, which is of course English for racism and oppositional defiant disorder and hatred and a whole variety of bullshit grievances that they claim are the center of their lives and yet are really meaningless in almost every way. He can’t deliver any of that now.

Watch the pod video and let us know what you think.

He can’t deliver being the angel of their vengeance. He’s out there threatening to put his political opponents in jail, but he won’t be the president for very long. JD Vance will be the president.

JD doesn’t, I’m no fan of JD Vance, but it’s hard to see him pulling off and having the power over so many of the Republican-based voters to insist that elected officials follow his lead on something like that, something that egregious. He can’t pull off the powerful stage figure, the big entertainer, the macho character. Can’t do it anymore. Doesn’t work.

A Vote for Trump is a Vote for JD Vance

Anyone with eyes can see Trump isn’t up the job he’s running for but Wilson says Trump won’t be in the top spot lon.

Now, this is the dirty little secret of this campaign. Peter Thiel and JD. Vance and Chuck Johnson and Steve Bannon and all the rest of these people around Trump. Elon. The second Trump by some chance is inaugurated, the clock starts running.

They will replace him under the 25th Amendment because right now, no one, not even probably members of his own family, could sit there and say, with an honest, straight face, that Donald Trump is mentally acute and aware, and able to execute the duties of the president of the United States of America. He is not.”