Politics

John H. Sununu, under fire throughout his three years as President Bush’s senior assistant, quit Tuesday as White House chief of staff, in an unexpectedly peaceful departure that ended a bitter Republican feud. After being warned by Bush’s oldest son that sentiment was mounting against him, Sununu told Bush in a handwritten letter that, “as … Read more

President Trump and First Lady Melania Trump at the White House on Monday. (Alex Brandon / Associated Press) Sen. John McCain’s decision to exclude President Trump from his funeral is an extraordinary moment on its own, a posthumous rebuke from an American icon who regarded the presidency as sacred, and believed its current occupant defiles … Read more

Jimmy Carter, shown during his winning presidential campaign in October 1976, dedicated his time after leaving office to charity work and advancing human rights. (Boris Yaro / Los Angeles Times) Jimmy Carter, a peanut farmer and little-known Georgia governor who became the 39th president of the United States, promising “honest and decent” government to Watergate-weary … Read more

Jimmy Carter teaching a Sunday school class at Maranatha Baptist Church in his hometown, in Plains, Ga., in 2015. (David Goldman / Associated Press) At a campaign event in Winston-Salem on the eve of the 1976 North Carolina Democratic primary, a voter asked then-candidate Jimmy Carter whether he was a “born again” Christian. Carter, a … Read more

Jonathan Alter, who wrote a Carter biography, describes him as “an underrated and under-appreciated president and an appropriately appreciated but slightly overrated former president.” (Associated Press) In the lives of public figures a tale often takes hold and that narrative becomes their story. In the case of Jimmy Carter, it goes like this: A humble … Read more

Patrick Murray of Appleton, Wis., cast his ballot for Donald Trump in 2016 but won’t do so again. He plans to watch the Democratic National Convention this week to decide how to vote in November. (Mark Z. Barabak / Los Angeles Times) In 2016, a fed-up Patrick Murray cast his presidential ballot for Donald Trump, … Read more

The state Senate will get a new leader today and nobody is quite sure what to expect. The first day should be pretty routine. Sen. Bill Lockyer (D-Hayward) will be nominated by the Democratic Caucus to become president pro-tem, succeeding Sen. David A. Roberti (D-Van Nuys), whose 13-year reign is being severed by legislative term … Read more

Iranian demonstrators chant slogans and hold a poster of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei at an anti-Israel gathering Saturday in Tehran. (Vahid Salemi / Associated Press) Iran faces a complex dilemma over whether to attack Israel directly or use its string of proxy armies — as weakened as some of those now appear — … Read more

High-flying ex-state Sen. Alan Robbins, driven from the Legislature in 1991 as an admitted felon, has quietly resurfaced here in a fight to save his legacy. Robbins is waging a low-profile campaign to kill an extraordinary bill that would remove his name from the official title of every state law memorializing him as its author. … Read more

Jack Grubman emerged from the working-class neighborhoods here more than 30 years ago with little more than an aptitude for numbers and a reputation as someone who was going places. That place was Wall Street, where Grubman became one of the most influential and highest-paid securities analysts of the 1990s, pulling down a reported $20 … Read more