Texas AG announces vote fraud charges against six people
A county judge, a former elections administrator and three other elected officials are among half a dozen people indicted in an alleged 'vote harvesting' scheme in a small south Texas county, state Attorney General Ken Paxton announced Wednesday.
'Elected officials who think they can cheat to stay in power will be held accountable. No one is above the law,' Paxton said in a statement.
According to Paxton's office, Frio County Judge Rochelle Camacho faces three counts of vote harvesting; former county elections administrator Carlos Segura faces one count of evidence tampering; Pearsall City Council members Ramiro Trevino and Racheal Garza face one count each of vote harvesting; Pearsall Independent School District Trustee Adriann Ramirez faces three counts of vote harvesting; and campaign worker Rosa Rodriguez faces two counts of vote harvesting.
Frio County has a population of about 18,000 residents and is located about 65 miles southwest of San Antonio.
Republicans have long sought to curb the role of intermediaries in elections, but critics contend that some voters rely on third parties to ensure their ballots are turned in on time.
The Texas Legislature approved a sweeping election law overhaul in 2021 that, among other provisions, outlawed 'vote harvesting services,' essentially collecting ballots in exchange for compensation or in massive amounts.
The law is being challenged in court, which prompted a temporary hold on state investigations into vote harvesting claims last year, but Paxton appealed and was allowed to continue seeking charges.
The League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), a voting rights advocacy group, has accused Paxton, who is running against Sen. John Cornyn (R) in Texas's 2026 Senate election, of targeting Hispanic and Democratic voters.
According to a tally last year from the National Conference of State Legislatures, 35 states allow voters to authorize someone else to return their ballots.
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18 minutes ago
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‘A Total Sham': Michelle Obama's Nutrition Adviser Lets Loose on MAHA
Before there was MAHA, there was Michelle. Anyone following the rise of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s Make America Healthy Again movement can't help but recall former First Lady Michelle Obama's efforts to improve Americans' diets — and the vitriol she faced in response. Now, many of the same Republicans who skewered Michelle Obama as a 'nanny state' warrior have embraced the MAHA movement. To explore this head-spinning turn, I called up Sam Kass, the former White House chef under President Barack Obama and a food policy adviser wholed the first lady's 'Let's Move' initiative. Kass said he was happy to find common ground with Kennedy and his MAHA brigade where possible. But he argued Kennedy's HHS has done little to actually improve the health of the public so far, and was instead mostly taking steps that would do real damage, including by undermining the use of vaccines. Kass also warned potentially MAHA-curious food advocates against legitimizing the Trump administration by offering support for Kennedy. 'Those who are lending their voice for the things that they support are going to ultimately help enable outcomes that are going to be quite devastating for this country and for our kids,' he said in an interview with POLITICO Magazine. At the same time, Kass is not surprised with MAHA's growing popularity. In the 10-plus years since Kass left the White House, the issues of diet-related chronic disease haven't abated and Americans are more anxious about their health than ever. Wellness is a trillion-dollar industry, and MAHA influencers have filled the gap left by Democrats. 'The Democratic Party has absolutely blundered this issue,' he said. 'We're getting what we deserve here in some ways.' This conversation has been edited for length and clarity. How do you square the earlier conservative criticism of the 'Let's Move' initiative with the rise of MAHA? Are you surprised by the seeming contradiction? I think most of that is because Republicans are fearful of President Trump. And therefore, if he is putting somebody in a position of great power and backing him, there's a huge part of the party that's going to go along with whatever that may be. I don't think this is actually about the Republican Party taking this up. This is actually about a Democrat, traditionally, who had built up a pretty strong following on these issues, and decided to join forces with President Trump. It's not like any of these ideas are coming from the GOP platform. This is an RFK-led effort that they're now supporting. So are they hypocrites for that? Certainly. But I welcome Republican support on trying to genuinely improve the health of the nation. Frankly, if we had had that for the last 20 years, I think that cultural retention would be far better. The reality, though, is what they're actually doing I don't think is going to have any positive impact, or very little. Even what they're saying is problematic on some levels, but what they're doing is a far cry from anything that's going to create the health outcomes this country needs. When you say that, do you mean banning soda from SNAP or the food dyes issue? Are there specific things that come to mind? It's a long list. There's the critique that MAHA brings at the highest level, that chronic disease has exploded in our country. Nobody can refute that, and what we're eating is a big driver of poor health outcomes on many different levels. That is absolutely true. What we grow, how we're growing it, and what's being made out of it is quite literally killing people. That is something that First Lady Michelle Obama said way back when. I've been saying it for a couple of decades. After that, everything falls apart in my mind. We can start with food dyes as the biggest announcement they made thus far. I'm all for getting food dyes out of food. There's just not a basis of evidence that most of the ones that are being used are actually the drivers of many of these health conditions. It was reported that they were banning food dyes. Sadly, what they did was a total sham. It was a farce of an event. There was no policy at all that was announced. There was no guidance, there was no regulatory proposal, there wasn't even a request for information. There was absolutely nothing put forward to revoke the approvals of these dyes. And the reason I believe is that to revoke an approval, you have to show that it's harming the public health. That's what we did for trans fats. Trans fats had been approved for consumption. There was plenty of evidence to show that that food was really driving death and disease in the country, and we banned it through a regulatory mechanism. I could not fathom making an announcement like that without actually having a real policy to put in place. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry about what they did. Also, you see a bunch of the influencers holding up bags of Fruit Loops and saying, 'In Europe or Canada, these have no [synthetic] food dyes and ours do.' But the fact of the matter is Fruit Loops aren't good for you either way. Part of the danger of RFK is he keeps talking about gold standard science and rebooting our public policy and science. The reality is he's doing the exact opposite. He's going to fast food restaurants, touting them on national television as the head of Health and Human Services, [saying that] a cheeseburger and french fries is good for you now because it's cooked in beef fat which is just the most insane thing on literally every single level. It has absolutely no basis in science. We're focusing on issues that are absolutely not going to make an iota of difference in public health. It's absolutely shocking. They have a platform that is fear-based on certain issues, like these food dyes or seed oils, which are absolutely not addressing the core of what we're eating and the core of what's really harming our health. The problem is the fries and the cheeseburger. It's not the oil that it's fried in. It's actually quite scary to me to see what's playing out. Why do you think the politics of food have changed in the years since you were in the White House, and why do you think MAHA ideas have such appeal? I don't exactly know for sure. In the age of social media, the thing that gets the algorithms the most activity is more extreme views. I think people are very vulnerable to very compelling, very scientifically sounding narratives that [MAHA influencers] all have, based on one study here or another study there, that can weave a narrative of fear. It's not like food dyes are good, I'm happy to see them go. But you get people scared of what they're eating to the point where people stop eating vegetables because they're worried about the pesticides, which is just not good for their health. This fear is definitely taking hold. I think it's because the mediums on which this information travels are exacerbating that fear. You already mentioned the food dye announcement and why that was concerning to you. What are some of the other actions that you think aren't necessarily achieving the stated goals? If you step back and start to look at what actions have actually been taken, what you're actually seeing is a full-on assault on science throughout HHS. You're seeing a complete gutting of NIH, which funds much of the research needed to understand what in hyper-processed foods is undermining people's health and how to actually identify those correlations so you can regulate it very aggressively. You're seeing the complete gutting or elimination of departments within CDC and FDA that oversee the safety of our food. Food toxicologists have been fired. There's a department in CDC that's in charge of assessing chronic health and environmental exposures to toxins. Those offices have been eliminated. The idea that somehow you're going to be more aggressively regulating based on the best science, while you're absolutely wholesale cutting scientific research and gutting the people who are in charge of overseeing the very industry that you're trying to clamp down on is a joke. Then look at the 'big, beautiful bill' that is being supported by this administration, and it's catastrophic to the public health of the United States of America. Eight million people are going to lose access to health care. Three million plus are going to lose SNAP assistance. Then we can get into USDA and EPA. Everybody's got to remember that the number one threat to the public health of the United States of America is climate change. If we continue on this path of pulling back every regulatory effort that's been made to try to transition our society to a much more sustainable, lower-carbon world, that's also preparing itself to deal with the volatility that's coming from the climate, we're not going to have food to eat. This idea that you're going to have big announcements about food dyes and Fruit Loops, while you completely roll back every effort to prepare our agricultural system and our food system to deal with climate change, you're gaslighting the American public. Have you spoken to the former first lady about MAHA at all? Not in any kind of depth. Have you ever been in touch with Kennedy? Have you ever talked to him about these issues? He's very close to a number of people I'm good friends with, but no, I have not. You noted Kennedy used to be a Democrat. His issues — his opposition to pesticides, his support for healthy nutrition, with all the caveats that we just discussed — these were Democratic issues. Now, this MAHA coalition helped Trump win the White House. Why do you think Democrats have ceded this terrain? The Democratic Party has absolutely blundered this issue. These are kitchen table issues. Our very well-being, our ability to eat food that's not harming ourselves and our kids, is fundamental to life on planet Earth and what it means to have a vibrant society. The fact that Democrats, much to my chagrin, definitely not because of lack of trying, have not taken this issue up with great effort over the last 15 years is shameful. We're getting what we deserve here in some ways. I'm deeply critical of Democrats, with some exceptions. Sen. Cory Booker has been amazing on these issues. [Former Sen.] Jon Tester is also great. But it was never part of the platform, and it absolutely always should have been. If there's some common ground to be found with Republicans, then great. We could get a lot done. But we can't just turn over the keys to this issue to people who are not serious. When you worked in the Obama White House, you pushed better nutrition labeling, active living, bans on unhealthy foods in school meals and trans fat. The recent MAHA report pointed the finger at similar programs for chronic illness. Is that a place where you and MAHA advocates are on the same page, and how do you balance that with the concerns you've raised? There's no clean answer to that. We largely, not entirely, share the same critique when it comes to food. Vaccines are another thing which are important to also talk about. People are trying to pick the issue that they like and can get around and pretend like the rest isn't happening. It would be great if we got food dyes out, but it would pale in comparison to if he continues down the path to undermine vaccines as the foundation of public health and people start dying, like they are, with measles. That is not even close to a trade. For all of my food friends who read this, or everybody in policy who are like, 'Oh yeah, I can work with him on this issue, but I'm going to turn a blind eye to that,' that doesn't work. That's going to lead to devastating outcomes. On the report, I share the general critique of the problem. I spent my life saying those things and working on these issues. That's the easy part. What matters is what you do about it. How do you actually change what people are eating, and what is it going to take to really put the country on a different trajectory when it comes to health? So far, I've seen absolutely no indication that the issues that they're focused on are going to have any meaningful or measurable impact on public health. Frankly, there's many other things that I think are going to be extremely detrimental. We will see. We're only a few months in. I could, depending on what happens, have a different perspective in six months or 12 months. RFK has blamed the food industry for Americans' poor health. He's argued that government institutions are overwrought with corporate influence. Do you think he's right? And what do you think about RFK's approach to trying to curb corporate influence? I'm all for curbing corporate influence. I had some big fights with industry. I won some of them, and sometimes I got my ass kicked. It's the nature of Washington when you're threatening the basic interests of an industry. What's stunning to me is that the food industry so far has been silent. They haven't done anything to fight back, which says to me that they're not feeling threatened yet. I think they're waiting to see what's going to happen. I'm sure they're doing some stuff in the background, but this is nothing like what we were dealing with. I agree that we should put the public's best interest first, not succumb to industry influence. I think the way that RFK talks about it is a real overstatement down a very dark conspiracy theory. The idea that JAMA and the American Medical Association and the New England Journal are just like corporate journals that just put corporate, completely distorted research out for the sake of making profits, it's just not serious. He starts to discredit the very institutions, like HHS, that you actually need to do the work to rein in industry. The way that industry does make inroads is that they fund a lot of research. If you want to reduce industry influence, you should dramatically increase [government] investment in funding of scientific research on agriculture and climate change, on food and nutrition. One of the biggest fights in the Obama era was over stricter nutrition standards for school lunches. The administration won some of those battles, but quite a few children still have obesity, according to the latest data. Is there anything you wish the Obama administration had done differently? Are there things policymakers should be doing differently? School nutrition is just one part of a young person's diet. You're not going to solve kids' health issues just through school nutrition, but obviously it's a huge lever to pull. If we really want to make progress, you have to look much more holistically at the food environment that people are living in. This is generational work. It's going to take literally decades of work to shift, not just the policies, but our culture, our businesses, to change how people are eating. I think the one thing we missed would have been a much stricter restriction on sugar across the board. We had it for drinks,, but we didn't [apply it across the board], and that was a miss. We should have pushed harder on sugar. I think the policy was a really important start. It can always be improved and strengthened. Both the first Trump administration and this one are looking to roll back some of that. The thing that we have to not forget — and this is true for schools, and certainly true for SNAP and WIC — is the biggest problem is not enough money for these programs. I started doing a lot of work on finding ways to restrict sugary drinks as an example from the SNAP program. But if you want to do that and actually get the health outcomes you need, you need to also increase the total dollar amount that people have so they can purchase healthier food. Part of the reason why people are drinking these things is they're the cheapest available drink. Coke is cheaper than water sometimes. RFK recently called sugar 'poison.' Do you agree with that? One of their tactics to obfuscate truth in science is dosage, right? The amount that we're consuming matters. If you had a birthday cake on your birthday and you have a cookie — my kids eat a cookie, they're not dying, they're not being poisoned to death. They're fine. I think the problem is the amount of sugar we're consuming and the sizes of the portions we have. It's the cumulative amount of sugar. It's probably technically not exactly the right word, poison. But I don't take issue with that. I think the levels of sugar consumption for young people are deeply alarming and are absolutely going to drive preventable death and disease for millions and millions of people. It already is and will continue to do so. It is a very serious problem. But what do you do? I can't wait to see the policy proposals here. It's a tough problem to solve. It is not a problem that can be solved overnight, and it's going to take a very comprehensive effort to really shift the amount of sugar we're consuming, but it should be the goal of this administration. They should work very hard at it in a very serious and science-based way. Thus far, I have not seen that.
Yahoo
18 minutes ago
- Yahoo
More Americans support than oppose Trump's Army celebration parade: Poll
As President Donald Trump hosts events on Saturday to celebrate the U.S. Army's 250th anniversary, a new national poll indicates more Americans are likely to approve than disapprove of the president's decision to hold a military parade. But six in 10 Americans are concerned about the cost of the parade, saying it's "not a good use" of government money, according to an Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research survey. Trump, who is marking his 79th birthday on Saturday, is scheduled to give a speech during the parade, which will take place Saturday evening along the National Mall in Washington D.C. Defense officials say roughly 6,600 soldiers will march in the parade, with some 50 military aircraft and 150 vehicles, including tanks, rocket launchers, and missiles. The Army says it's spending $25-$45 million to pay for the parade, which includes fixing D.C. streets damaged by the tanks. Trump Warns Any Protesters At His Military Parade Will Be 'Met With Very Big Force' Trump has defended the cost of the parade, saying last month in an interview on NBC's "Meet the Press" that it would be "peanuts compared to the value of doing it." Read On The Fox News App "We have the greatest missiles in the world. We have the greatest submarines in the world. We have the greatest army tanks in the world. We have the greatest weapons in the world. And we're going to celebrate it," the president said. Trump To Host Military Parade To Celebrate Army's 250Th Birthday But some in Congress are criticizing the parade, saying the money could be better spent. "If it was really about celebrating military families, we could put $30 million toward helping them offset the cost of their child care, food assistance and tuition," Sen. Tammy Duckworth, a military veteran who lost both of her legs in combat while piloting an Army Black Hawk helicopter during the Iraq War, said in a social media post. "But it isn't. Trump is throwing himself a $30 million birthday parade just to stroke his own ego," Duckworth argued. According to the poll, 40% of adults nationwide approved of the military parade, with 29% disapproving, and three in 10 neither approving nor disapproving. There was an expected partisan divide, with two-thirds of Republicans approving of the president's move to hold the parade, and half of Democrats disapproving. But in a separate question, 60% of those surveyed said holding the parade was not a good use of government funds, with 38% disagreeing. Nearly two-thirds of Republicans said holding the parade was a good use of government funds, while eight in 10 Democrats disagreed. The White House, in a statement, said that the parade "will be a unifying celebration for not only the thousands in attendance, but Americans across the country who can participate in honoring our active-duty servicemembers, Veterans, and fallen heroes." Pro-democracy, progressive, and labor activists are planning protests in all 50 states on Saturday that will coincide with Trump's military parade. Many are part of a series of "No Kings" protests across the country, with more than 1,500 rallies scheduled for this weekend. But organizers decided against holding a major protest in the nation's capital and instead will hold their main event in Philadelphia. The poll, which was conducted June 5-9, also indicates that 39% of those questioned approve of the job Trump's doing in the White House, with six in ten giving the president a thumbs down. The survey had an overall margin of error of plus or minus four percentage article source: More Americans support than oppose Trump's Army celebration parade: Poll
Yahoo
18 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Bill Essayli is out for revenge
Bill Essayli, the recently appointed 39-year-old U.S. attorney for California's central district, spent years in Sacramento angrily chafing at one-party rule — elected but impotent. Now he's ready to show the state's Democrats how it feels to be powerless. He has already charged David Huerta, one of California's most powerful union leaders, with felony conspiracy for allegedly impeding an ICE arrest by participating in a protest. On Thursday, he stood by as California Sen. Alex Padilla was handcuffed and forced to the ground at a press conference hosted by Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem. Now, other Democratic politicians say they fear being seen at immigration protests, confident that Essayli will seize any chance to put former colleagues behind bars and revel in the fallout. 'As legislators, we know fully well that if he has an opportunity and can somehow connect us to any violence or any disruptions that are going on, he is going to try to arrest us,' Assemblymember Corey Jackson said in an interview. 'It makes me feel crazy that I have to say these things. But it's the truth.' Essayli is President Donald Trump's man on the immigration battlefield of Los Angeles — a rapid status shift for a politician who not long ago was a junior, little-liked Republican state lawmaker. As an agitator turned enforcer with an ax to grind and the full weight of federal law enforcement at his back, Essayli is animated by many of the same vengeful impulses that drive the president who appointed him. (Essayli did not respond to interview requests for this story.) 'The Democrats that bullied Bill Essayli should be very worried,' said Assemblymember Carl DeMaio, a Republican who worked to get Essayli elected before serving alongside him. 'They've never been held accountable. But life changes.' Any story about the arc of Bill Essayli's career should probably begin on April 10, 2002. While visiting the Wells Fargo branch where his mother worked, the 17-year-old Essayli witnessed a bank robber leaving the building. As Essayli tells it, he instinctively jumped in his car to follow the suspect, writing down the thief's license number so he could report the vehicle to federal investigators. His actions that day earned him a personal letter from then-FBI Director Robert Mueller, a man who would later go on to investigate Essayli's current boss, who praised the teenager's 'tremendous initiative.' Raised by Lebanese immigrant parents on the western edge of the Inland Empire, east of Los Angeles, Essayli was long drawn to law enforcement, serving as a volunteer in Corona's police department Explorer program. After becoming the first member of his family to graduate college, Essayli attended Chapman University School of Law, which has been home to prominent conservatives like John Eastman and Hugh Hewitt. Essayli went into private practice before two years as a Riverside County prosecutor and four as an assistant U.S. attorney. In that role he worked on the deadly 2015 shooting and attempted bombing by alleged homegrown extremists in San Bernardino. In 2018, Essayli became directly involved in politics, joining a campaign to repeal a gas-tax increase while mounting his own failed, somewhat moderate, candidacy for the state assembly. Four years later, after district lines were redrawn, Essayli ran again on a tough on crime and conservative school issues platform. He was the first Muslim elected to the California State Assembly, representing a diverse, semi-rural region in a district Trump won by 12 points in 2024. But when the clean-cut Essayli came to Sacramento in 2022, he made little effort to conform to the capital's hobnobby culture and was quite open about how much he detested it. Even fellow Republicans who agreed with his politics disagreed with his tactics and aggressive stance toward Democrats and his own party. His political life, as his friend DeMaio described it, was a 'lonely' one. Upon arriving in the capital he hung the 2002 letter from Mueller on his office wall. Essayli quickly made a name for himself by taking up red-meat conservative causes and authoring bills that would require school staff to notify parents if their children might be transgender and mandate government identification to vote. He raged against the state's Covid-19 restrictions and criticized critical race theory. None of his bills became law, but Essayli distinguished himself on the Assembly floor with his penchant for political theater. His pattern of outlandish outbursts and near-physical altercations were of the sort that largely disappeared from the legislative process in the nineteenth century (Jackson himself once had to be restrained from Essayli after the two clashed on the Assembly floor). Other lawmakers, staff and lobbyists traded accounts of their favorite Essayli episodes. In one, he called the speaker pro tempore a 'fucking liar' on the Assembly floor. In another he banged a fist on his desk in petulant fury, shouting into the void of his muted microphone as state lawmakers looked on. To like-minded conservatives, this presented a vision of how a disruptive, aggressive opposition party should function. DeMaio, who was elected to the Assembly two years after Essayli and has followed in his footsteps, said he showed how an opposition party could 'illustrate how the other side is wrong' even if you don't get 'drinks paid for at the bars.' Essayli wasn't worried about rubbing people the wrong way, according to his former chief of staff Shawn Lewis. On a personal level, he was kind and even funny. But Essayli, according to Lewis, was also driven by 'an unshakable sense of what is right and wrong.' The outbursts were no performance, but rather the outward projections of a true believer's frustrations. 'Bill Essayli sees things as they can and should be, not as they are,' Lewis said. But at least some political observers believe that Essayli's moves were calculated. There are few avenues to power for a hard-right Republican in Democrat-dominated California. Serving as an avatar for the Trump administration's talking points within the state Legislature was one of them. And the performances led to even bigger platforms: regular appearances on Fox News that won him a casual following nationally among the MAGA faithful. 'I think he's a very smart guy,' Anthony Rendon, a former Assembly speaker, said of Essayli. 'There's nothing Bill does that isn't very well thought-out.' In April 2025, Essayli announced that he would be leaving Sacramento to accept an interim appointment as the top federal prosecutor for seven Southern California counties with a population of nearly 20 million people. Elsewhere, Trump sought out personal confidants, longtime political allies and loyal defenders to fill U.S. attorney's offices. In his hometown of New York City, Trump named Jay Clayton, who had served as his appointee atop the Securities and Exchange Commission, to the post. Trump's former personal attorney Alina Habba was named the prosecutor in New Jersey, home to Trump's Bedminster golf course. In Washington, D.C., he has placed conservative legal activist Ed Martin, a former lawyer for Jan. 6 defendants, and Fox News host Jeanine Pirro into powerful prosecutorial positions. Essayli does not have the same direct connection to Trump's circle, but his appointment vindicated the way Essayli had spent his brief time in Sacramento. Upon being named to the post, he made clear he was ready to adopt Trump's ethos. "I intend to implement the President's mission to restore trust in our justice system and pursue those who dare to cause harm to the United States and the People of our nation,' Essayli said. Newly backed by a small army of lawyers and special agents, Essayli is aiming at many of the same targets that eluded him as a politician. In April, he launched a task force to investigate fraud and corruption within homelessness funding sources administered by California's Democratic officials. In May, he threw his support behind a Justice Department investigation into Title IX violations in the state, alleging that transgender athletes were 'violating women's civil rights.' At the beginning of June, Essayli warned an air quality management district in Southern California to abandon plans to impose fees on gas appliances, threatening 'all appropriate action' to stop the regulations. But it is his role backing Trump's immigration enforcement actions that has given Essayli his biggest opportunity to flex his newfound power. Earlier this week, prominent conservative commentator Marc Thiessen suggested that Essayli may have found a workaround for sanctuary city laws, by charging migrants held on state charges with federal crimes in an effort to force local officials to turn them over to ICE. (Thiessen did not respond to a request to explain further.) In Los Angeles, his authority ran up against the most basic form of dissent: public protest. As immigration enforcement officials, aided by Essayli's search warrants and federal agents, launched targeted raids of migrant communities, they were met by demonstrators who intended to stand in the way. On Monday, Essayli announced that his prosecutors would use social media and video evidence to pursue protesters who threw objects at officers. Yesterday, two protesters were charged with possessing Molotov cocktails, which Essayli said would be punished by up to 10 years in prison. 'I don't care who you are — if you impede federal agents, you will be arrested and prosecuted,' Essayli wrote on X after Huerta's arrest on June 6. Immigrant advocacy and LGBTQ+ rights organizations allege that he intends to use that authority to 'prosecute his political opponents.' 'Bill Essayli spent his short career in the Legislature with a singular agenda: to attack the students and families he was supposed to serve,' said Kristi Hirst, the co-founder of Our Schools USA, an advocacy organization that pushes for LGBTQ-friendly school policies. 'Essayli is not interested in seeking justice.' Those concerns have now manifested in a political campaign called Stop Essayli run by Jacob Daruvala, a former constituent of Essayli's and a local LGBTQ+ advocate. The lobbying effort, which remains something of a hail Mary, is aimed at persuading Sens. Adam Schiff and Padilla to block Essayli's official confirmation, which would rid him of his interim title. If a permanent replacement is not confirmed within 120 days, the federal district court for his jurisdiction would instead appoint someone else to serve in the role until a Senate confirmation is successful. But without the votes to block his path, it is only a delicate historical courtesy, which Schiff and Padilla will have to ask the Senate to respect, that stands between Essayli and a permanent assignment. Daruvala is asking California's senators to withhold their 'blue slips,' a Senate tradition in which committees defer to a nominee's home-state senators for guidance on confirmation. There is something poetic in that question. After Essayli made his name defying the decorum of the California Legislature, it is only decorum that can halt his upward rise. Jeremy B. White contributed to this report.
