Politics

The letters S and L have become the scarlet letters of politics. Consider what happened in July at World Savings & Loan in Oakland, where Herbert and Marion Sandler operate what is widely lauded as the nation’s best-run thrift and an industry model for avoiding risky investments that helped cause the thrift crisis. World Savings’ … Read more

The move to disband a task force on Russia oligarchs is one of several moves taken by Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi that presage a different approach toward Russia under President Trump. (Evan Vucci / Associated Press) The Justice Department under President Trump has disbanded a Biden-era program aimed at seizing the assets of Russian oligarchs … Read more

The downtown Los Angeles skyline, as seen from Griffith Observatory, in July. (Christina House / Los Angeles Times) The Trump administration’s political feud with California intensified Monday with a letter from the Environmental Protection Agency threatening to cut federal transportation funding from the state as punishment for not submitting timely pollution-control plans. The letter from … Read more

Immigrants from Venezuela take shelter at a Chicago police station. The Trump administration is suing Chicago over its sanctuary laws. (Charles Rex Arbogast / Associated Press) The Trump administration sued Chicago on Thursday, alleging that sanctuary laws in the nation’s third-largest city “thwart” federal efforts to enforce immigration laws. The lawsuit, which also names the … Read more

Geraldine A. Ferraro, the savvy New York Democrat who was embraced as a symbol of women’s equality in 1984 when she became the first woman nominated for vice president by a major party, died Saturday at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. She was 75. The cause was complications from multiple myeloma, her family said. Ferraro … Read more

California Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, who is running for governor, takes a picture with supporters during a rally in Hollywood on June 3. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times) While mayor of San Francisco, Democrat Gavin Newsom supported high-speed rail in California so strongly that he partnered with Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2008 … Read more

U.S. District Judge John C. Coughenour, left, has blocked President Trump’s effort to end birthright citizenship for the children of parents who are in the U.S. illegally, decrying what he described as the administration’s attempt to ignore the Constitution for political gain. (Associated Press) A second federal judge in two days has blocked President Trump’s … Read more

To any nefarious hackers looking for information that could be used to sway elections or steal Americans’ identities, the file compiled by a GOP data firm called Deep Root Analytics offered all manner of possibilities. There in one place was detailed personal information about almost every voter in the U.S. It was a collection of … Read more

A group of migrants huddle in the shadows of the border wall and try to keep warm while they wait for Border Patrol agents arrive. (Don Bartletti/For The Times) Of all the big issues that divide the country’s two major political parties — abortion, gay rights, gun regulation, perceptions of discrimination, beliefs about the role … Read more

President Clinton, in California on a weeklong vacation, Wednesday signed into law legislation that will offer federal workers buyouts of up to $25,000 as a means of trimming the federal work force. The measure is part of an effort to cut 272,900 federal workers and drop the total number of government workers below 2 million … Read more