'Not Only Irresponsible But Also Dangerous': Democrats Demand Answers on Paused Military Sexual Assault Training
Democratic women on the House Armed Services Committee are demanding the Defense Department explain why at least some military services have paused sexual assault prevention training amid of a review of whether materials run afoul of President Donald Trump's orders to scrub anything related to diversity and gender identity.
In a letter Monday to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, the lawmakers noted the sexual assault prevention training is required by law and called on him to answer how exactly Trump's orders led to the pause.
"This decision is not only irresponsible but also dangerous, sending a clear signal that leadership is willing to deprioritize a systemic issue that continues to harm service members," the lawmakers wrote in the letter, a copy of which was obtained exclusively by Military.com. "Given the military's well-documented struggles with addressing sexual violence, pausing this critical training is indefensible and raises serious questions about the commitment to protecting those who serve."
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The letter was organized by Democratic Reps. Sara Jacobs of California and Chrissy Houlahan of Pennsylvania, who is the ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee's personnel subcommittee and an Air Force veteran. It was co-signed by all the other female Democrats on the House Armed Services Committee.
On his first day in office last month, Trump signed an executive order demanding an end to all "diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility" programs across the federal government. The executive order did not define what that means, which has led to a scramble across government agencies to remove any references to women and minorities that might upset Trump and his appointees.
A separate order Trump signed on his first day in office eliminated the federal government's recognition of transgender people and deemed anything related to gender identity to be impermissible "gender ideology."
In the military, the diversity order initially led to assurances from officials across the services and Pentagon that, after years of congressional restrictions on diversity measures, the order would have little to no impact. But in reality, the order led to widespread confusion, as well as concerted efforts to curtail outreach to minority groups.
In some cases the removal of materials has been short-lived after public outcry or key words were deleted. For example, Army and Navy webpages that featured histories of female soldiers and sailors were recently restored after being briefly offline. In the case of the Navy site, the word "diversity" was removed from the web address when it was restored.
Business Insider first reported last week that Navy and Marine Corps training for sexual assault prevention and response, known as SAPR, was paused amid a review of whether the training complied with the executive order.
The Navy confirmed to Military.com that it quietly paused all its SAPR training last week.
An email from the Navy's top base commander that was provided to reporters and posted online said that he was "advised to stand down ALL SAPR training until we receive further guidance" by a senior lawyer.
Destiny Sibert, a spokeswoman for the head of the Navy's Installations Command, confirmed that the email was authentic and that the sea service halted the training "in order to complete a review of the internal curriculum to ensure compliance with recent executive orders."
While Sibert said that the goal was to keep the pause as short as possible and there would be no disruptions for sailors, she wouldn't say what was being targeted for removal and didn't answer Military.com's request that the Navy share what was removed once the review was complete.
The Army, meanwhile, reviewed its training and found it to be in compliance without pausing it.
Officials at the Pentagon stressed that only the trainings were being paused and "sexual assault prevention and response programs and policies remain in place."
One official who spoke on the condition of anonymity told Military.com on Tuesday that the Defense Department was "revising content to remove references to 'gender,' 'gender identity,' and 'gender ideology' and replacing these terms with 'sex.'"
"These changes in terminology required a thorough review and administrative edits to SAPR policy, programs and training, but their critical work in the mission continues without pause," the official added.
The SAPR training has been required by law for more than a decade as part of Congress' efforts to stamp out sexual assault in the military. It is required for incoming service members, new commanders, first responders, victim advocates and as part of professional military education.
Despite the efforts by lawmakers and military officials, sexual assault rates in the military have remained troublingly high. The Pentagon's most recent sexual assault report, released in May, found that military sexual assaults were down in 2023 compared to 2021, the first time in nearly a decade there was reduction in assaults. But that still meant that about 29,000 service members were sexually assaulted.
During his confirmation process, Hegseth faced pointed questions about his commitment to fighting military sexual assault -- in large part because he himself faced allegations of sexual assault in 2017. Hegseth maintains the encounter was consensual, and he was not charged.
In written answers to questions about how he plans to prevent military sexual assault, Hegseth said during his confirmation process that his "ambition would be to drive sexual assaults in the military down to zero and any steps we can take toward that goal I will consider."
In their letter to Hegseth on Monday, the House Armed Services lawmakers were at a loss for how Trump's executive orders could apply to SAPR training.
"There is nothing in the executive orders published to date that would remotely lead to this result," they wrote.
The lawmakers demanded to know the rationale behind pausing the training, how long the pause will last, and if any lawyers weighed in on whether the pause violates the law requiring the training.
They also asked for information on how many victim advocates are missing out on training, whether any steps are being taken to ensure reporting of sexual assault doesn't decline during the pause, and whether the trainings are being restructured.
"The safety and well-being of our service members must remain a top priority," they wrote. "The DoD has a duty to maintain a safe and professional environment amongst all branches of our military, and this move signals a disturbing lack of commitment to that mission."
Related: Military Effort to Scrub Diversity Programs Leads to Dead Websites and Confusion
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Can Protestors Manufacture a Tipping Point? - The Assignment with Audie Cornish - Podcast on CNN Audio
Protest Noise 00:00:00 No more deportation! Just us go! Audie Cornish 00:00:05 It's been about a full week of protests and demonstrations against the ongoing immigration raids in L.A. Protestors 00:00:11 Get the f*** out of here! You guys are bad people! Period! Audie Cornish 00:00:17 'All of this ahead of President Trump's planned military parade on the streets of Washington, D.C. This weekend. It's the largest military parade the city's seen in decades, complete with dozens of tanks, about 7,000 soldiers, and a price tag potentially in the tens of millions of dollars. Now this celebration falls on the Army's 250th birthday and the president's birthday. No surprise, it's an event that's also drawn its share of opposition. In fact, in cities across the country, organizers are planning a No Kings protest. It's being billed as a nationwide day of defiance and the biggest single-day anti-Trump protest since the start of his second term. President Donald Trump 00:01:01 And we're going to be celebrating big on Saturday. We're going have a lot of... And if there's any protest that wants to come out, they will be met with very big force. By the way, for those people that want to protest, they're going be met very big force. And I haven't even heard about a protest. But, you know, this is people that hate our country. But they will met with a very heavy force. Audie Cornish 00:01:22 Now organizers started working on this long before the response to ICE out in LA, but I wanted to talk to them about what they're thinking now. Leah Greenberg 00:01:32 'We are working very closely with our folks to make sure that people are really trained and careful around security, around safety, around de-escalation, clear on non-violent principles. We want people to bring their kids. We want to bring people to their dogs. We want create, in these moments, a sense of community and support and care for each other. Audie Cornish 00:01:52 'Leah Greenberg is a co-founder and co-executive director of the progressive group, The Indivisible Project. How are they preparing? Are they changing their strategy in light of President Trump's willingness to use military force on US soil? I'm Audie Cornish, and this is The Assignment. Audie Cornish 00:02:14 'So just for people to understand, Indivisible has been around for a few years now, going back to the first Trump administration. Can you talk about, just so we have a sense of a tiny bit of that history, because I understand that in your mind, you had just experienced the kind of Tea Party protests, you were a legislative staffer, and all of a sudden you have this right-wing populist movement that spawned not just protests then, but senators and lawmakers and energy that politically we all live with now. What was it that you saw then that struck you? Leah Greenberg 00:02:55 'Well, so my husband, who's also my co-executive director at Invisible Night, we were congressional staffers during the early Obama years, which meant that we saw both the triumphs, like passing the Affordable Care Act, and the real frustrations of a legislative agenda that was bogged down by ferocious local opposition led by this movement of the Tea Party. And we got a lot of up close and personal interactions with those folks as congressional staffors. In 2016, when Donald Trump was elected and when we were suddenly watching everything that we had ever worked on and on the verge of being swept away by this incoming administration, as we were watching this rise of white Christian nationalism and authoritarianism, and as we are frankly seeing a democratic party that did not seem prepared to deal with any of it, we kind of like went back to those lessons. We were seeing this massive surge of people looking for answers for what to do. We were getting asked by previously non-political friends, like, how do I organize? Can I do this? Can I to that? And we decided that we were gonna take the lessons that we had learned from our own interactions with the Tea Party from their model. We were gonna to take out the racism and the bigotry and the violence, and we were going to turn it into a how to guide for people all over the country who are trying to figure out what is my power? How do I organized? How do make my voice heard to stop this? Audie Cornish 00:04:14 Trump menace. What is it that was specific about what the tea party air quotes had done? Because it also, I remember covering it, it started chaotically. Despite everyone's sort of determination that, oh the Koch brothers had astroturfed this and this was somehow a movement that was just like completely planned, in a lot of ways it wasn't. It was a coalition of fractious smaller groups that came together or maybe were backed by donors. But it was messy at first and it came together into something. What was it that you experienced that you wanted to replicate? Well, I first, I think... Leah Greenberg 00:04:50 'Absolutely right about that. It was messy and it was organic. I think that the lessons are actually capable of being adapted from either side. The Tea Party took much of their own organizing theory from Saul Alinsky, right? So we see the kind of like original left-wing community organizing getting repurposed by the Tea Party in their own theory of how to organize locally and then kind of pulling from what we had seen about how they operated. Audie Cornish 00:05:15 The reason why I'm asking that is because over the last decade or two, there were Occupy Wall Street, there was the Black Lives Matter mass movement, never mind the prior few years of backlashes that were city to city to policing. There have been all kinds of progressive street protest movements in the last few years and arguably none have been as successful as the Tea Party. Even indivisible, out raise the Tea Party, you know, and fundraising for a time, like, I don't have an Occupy Wall Street Senator, so to speak, you know, I don t have, there isn't a Ted Cruz and a Mike Lee or any of those folks that have permeated the politics. And so I'm trying to understand, based on what you learned from them, what do you think a movement should look like? And what do you consider success? Leah Greenberg 00:06:10 So what I tell people when I'm trying to recruit is that Indivisible is a movement for people who understand that politics is too important to be left up to the politicians and understand that when we come together and when we understand our own power, then we actually have far more than we think. Audie Cornish 00:06:25 And you tell them, if we do this, and if you do this with me, this is what we can achieve. What is the this? Leah Greenberg 00:06:33 What we can achieve is going to change based on the moment, right? We were born out of a moment of reaction. And so the initial conversation that we had with our folks, the initial guide we had that went viral and led to the formation of thousands of invisible groups was really about how you organize sustainable local infrastructure and then deploy a set of tactics that are designed to use leverage in relation to your elected officials right? Audie Cornish 00:06:55 So how you get people to leave their house, get together in groups, and take concrete, measurable action. Leah Greenberg 00:07:02 That's right. That's gonna change over time, right? Once you got communities of people together who are in motion, they found a ton of other things to do that were not in the original Indivisible Guide, right. Audie Cornish 00:07:13 And they had their own goals and their own ideas. Leah Greenberg 00:07:16 Absolutely, absolutely. And so, and we think that's good, right, because fundamentally, you know, we're not gonna get to scale on the kind of collective people power that we need in this country via nonprofits funded by grants, right we actually need to have. Audie Cornish 00:07:30 'Right, but the Tea Party found a way to focus, so that's what I'm asking about, finding a way to focus when you have lots of little groups. Sometimes, as a reporter, when I'm covering an organized protest, not a riot or a response, I notice there are so many different signs for so many different things. And as a result, sometimes you're not sure what you're looking at. You have a vague sense that it's left and left-leaning, but you're like, I don't know what they want in this moment. Leah Greenberg 00:07:59 You know, that can be a challenge. And especially in a moment like this, when just quite candidly, I could spend the rest of the conversation here just listing the number of harms and horrors that people are experiencing as a result of this administration. And so it is definitely one of the challenges around how do you maintain clarity about the core meta story that you are telling? Audie Cornish 00:08:20 Core meta story. Say that again. What value is that? The core meta story? Leah Greenberg 00:08:26 Well, I mean, humans understand the world through stories and frames much more than they understand it through policy positions, right? The right wing has a core story. It is the bad government is more focused on delivering for an other, sometimes a racialized other, sometimes a gender or sexuality based other, but some kind of other group than they are on you and they are hurting you in order to give benefits for immigrants for. Like trans people for people, right? This is the core story that the right wing uses and they plug everything that they're doing into some version of that story in order to distract from the fact that they are, in fact, a political movement dedicated to extracting wealth from the government to deliver it back to their donors. Now, on the left, like that core story can get harder to tell, right, like we are trying to construct something. Right now. Audie Cornish 00:09:17 Right now, I mean honestly, what is it? Leah Greenberg 00:09:20 'What it is right now. Well, the core story that we want people to understand right now, and I'm going to be clear, this is about the moment that we are in, not about the long-term and aspirational vision that we collectively need to build together, is this administration, this regime, they are out of control. They are wrecking the things that we care about, whether that is our services, whether that are our rights, whether it is the things that may give us the ability to live safe and healthy and dignified lives in this country. And they are doing it to benefit themselves. It's those three pieces, right? That they are seizing power for themselves, they are taking the things that we care about and they're doing it all to benefit themself. And that they know that this is not popular, they know this is the kind of stuff that will get checked in a democratic and accountable society. And so they're knocking out the checks and the balances that would normally stop someone from seizing power, implementing policies that hurt people and doing it benefit themselves Audie Cornish 00:10:15 'What's interesting to me is that, that story you've just told is not different from the story you might've told during the first Trump administration. In the second Trump administration, they're just taking everything further. So there's a lot to unpack there. Number one, second Trump Administration. Despite your organizing, despite your fundraising, despite the spread of sort of an anti-Trump non-profit infrastructure. He came to power again with the support of swing voters. And number two, the things you are now asking people to turn out for, they've heard and have been hearing for a long time. So what do you feel that you learned from the first time around? Leah Greenberg 00:11:01 We understood our job as the folks who were building this grassroots infrastructure, who were organizing. What we wanted to do was build the kind of popular opposition that would get Donald Trump out of office and then achieve the kind systemic reforms and accountability that would prevent him from getting back into power. And our movement was really aligned on the fact that we collectively were not, you know, our end goal was not getting him out. It was actually getting voting rights. It was getting structural democracy reform. It was seeing accountability for the perpetrators of January 6th. We were not the only deciders on what got on the agenda and how it moved. Audie Cornish 00:11:39 In the Biden years. But as a protest, go back to that list, because those things didn't come to pass in a lot of way, right? The voting rights thing you brought up, but even January 6, as all of them have now been pardoned. Yeah, it sounds like you identified specifically the things that didn't really pan out, if they were your even personal goals for the organization. Leah Greenberg 00:12:02 Well, I would say they were collectible movement goals. I think that there was actually a very clear thread that we were pulling out from across people who were organizing throughout this time that they got activated by Donald Trump, but they recognized very quickly that Donald Trump was a symptom, not a cause, right? That he was a manifestation of broader political forces around polarization, around kind of the longer term struggle for democracy in this country. And so there was there was broad support for a kind of like we actually can't just get him out We have to like fix the system in ways that makes democracy deliver for other people Audie Cornish 00:12:36 The reason why I'm asking all of these questions is because for a time when I was covering the South, the story that I sort of came to understand about the civil rights movement, the black civil rights movements of the late 60s and the moment when that became more multiracial is there were moments where protests could turn violent. There were moments when nonviolent protests was met with violence and that that was The goal, right? Before we had viral moments, we had people say to the Children's March in Birmingham, you may have to put yourself in harm's way so people understand what, quote unquote, we are dealing with here with segregationists in the South. You're going to be harmed doing that. I don't know if people are prepared to do all that today. And so what does that mean? For inviting people out into the streets to protest, like this weekend, when all week they've been watching on the news, a government that is prepared to respond violently. Leah Greenberg 00:13:48 'Well, it's a question we take enormously seriously, and also it's the question where we understand the answer cannot be to simply go along in advance, right? You know, we've got about 1900 events around the country. We have been doing intensive safety and deescalation training, both for hosts and making trainings available for attendees, including traditional know your rights, but also more intensive around, you know, how do you handle various kinds of scenarios? And escalations in the event of law enforcement, in the even of counter protests, in the events of agitators. We take those responsibilities to prepare people to have these events enormously seriously. And so we're in regular contact and support with the organizers of these events all over the country. Now, what I would say in terms of, how do you talk to people about risk in this moment is we can't, we're not gonna tell people that there's no risk. We're not going to tell people there's not reason to be concerned. And what we are going to say is that we are collectively going to be more powerful together. We are collectively going to embrace that commitment to nonviolence, right? We understand that it's gonna be really, really important for us collectively to show up in a nonviolent, as a non-violent movement. And we are working very closely with our folks to make sure that people are really trained and careful around security, around safety, around deescalation, clear on nonviolent principles. And we think that's a really important part of creating the conditions for bringing out as many people as possible. Audie Cornish 00:15:17 'I'm talking with Leah Greenberg. She's a co-founder and co-executive director of the progressive group, The Indivisible Project. Audie Cornish 00:15:25 I know that there are a lot of progressive activists who look at the choices that the Biden administration made when they came to office and were frustrated, right? Like that they somehow didn't carry forward some of the energy that had been in the streets. What's one thing you regret or you wish you did differently during that time? Leah Greenberg 00:15:47 'Yeah, I've thought about this a lot, and I have a really simple answer, which is that I think that after January 6th, everyone should have recognized that the most important thing that we could do was meaningful accountability for perpetrators and that that would require some political capital. That would require some reprioritization that- Audie Cornish 00:16:09 The average person, what do you mean by that? Because we know investigators went after them. Leah Greenberg 00:16:13 So what is it that you regret? So I think that there were decisions that we made as an advocacy community to prioritize the legislative agenda, right? We needed to go full force campaigning for a stimulus and relief package. We needed it to go, full force fighting for voting rights and structural Marx reform, full force for the Build Back Better package. And there was kind of a perception, I think for many folks, that the kind of political capital required to go. Fast on prosecutions and to really prioritize them in a way that the Merrick Garland Justice Department didn't, to prioritize a meaningful effort at a second impeachment, et cetera, that those were distractions from the ability to move key policy priorities. And I think that— Audie Cornish 00:16:52 So people said, let the law enforcement guys deal with January 6th. We don't need to spend time Leah Greenberg 00:17:00 Yeah, I mean, I think I think that collectively, you know, and again, oh, and I say this, I mean, me, I means everybody who made decisions about what we were talking to activists about and I mean democratic leadership. I think collectively, we needed to recognize that part of how you pull a democracy out of this, this descent into authoritarianism is you actually create some meaningful consequences for people who have attempted a violent coup. And the fact that we didn't do that. Created the conditions for Donald Trump to slink off, kind of lick his wounds for a little while, and for his movement to regroup and to reassert itself. And so fundamentally, I think it's a lesson that we all collectively have to take about the balance of what is necessary to ultimately pull out of a democratic backslide. Audie Cornish 00:17:49 That's interesting in the context of the way the administration is now using the word insurrectionist to describe people in L.A. on the street, right? Yeah, in a way you're saying that that word doesn't have the same consequences it might have. Leah Greenberg 00:18:04 Well, I think there's an enormously painful irony to the fact that Donald Trump, when asked to call out any kind of support for people who were under attack in the Capitol on January 6th, was notably unwilling to do so compared to his willingness to send in the National Guard over the objections of literally everybody in California in order to instigate his preferred brand of manufactured chaos. Audie Cornish 00:18:29 But I want to follow up on your idea, because you just said something I'd never heard before, which is you said we, as a movement, you use your political capital on legislation, big legislative goals, and not punishing and accountability for the actions of folks out of that movement on January 6th, and that maybe that would have been a more valuable place to spend your time. Am I hearing that correctly? Leah Greenberg 00:18:57 'I think there were certainly prosecutions of some of the people who were actually in the mob on January 6th. There was not a high level prioritization of accountability for the senior leadership who egged that on and who refused to intervene. When we look at what is the theory of the case around how democracies emerged from period of authoritarianism. Part of it has to be accountability for the people who have broken the law, who have attempted to seize power extra-legally. And there was a decision, and I think it's relatively similar to the decisions that were made after the Bush administration around Guantanamo too, there was the decision to kind of turn the page and move forward and not to prioritize the kind of accountability that would have meaningfully shifted the political landscape as of 2023, as of 2024. Audie Cornish 00:19:54 So what do you wish you did differently? Leah Greenberg 00:19:56 I wish I had said that at the time. I wish that we had collectively as a broader movement been willing to say, we can't simply turn a page. We actually have to address what just happened. People, these are the things that have happened and we can simply keep moving. Audie Cornish 00:20:12 To me, it seems like you're in a new landscape. You're in the landscape where more people have actually turned out to protest in a lot of ways in some cities. They've had that experience maybe in the last seven, eight years in some major cities. So why would they do it again? What is it that you're telling them now? One of the reasons why they may be feeling dispirited is not just because of the opposition, so to speak, not just of how the government is reacting, but because they actually feel like there was no significant change on the issues they cared about from those past protests. Leah Greenberg 00:20:48 'Yeah, so here's how I would talk about it. I'm going to say, I'm gonna do two versions of this, right? Okay, so I think we have a short-term crisis, which is that there is a would-be authoritarian who's rapidly running through every page of the authoritarian playbook, and we have to halt the democratic collapse that we are seeing. And then I think, we have longer-term crises, which is we have have a democracy that actually delivers for people in a way that they are invested in it because they experience it as something that is making their life better. That was not a test that this democracy passed in 2024, right? We know that we lost folks, not because they were like all in on Donald Trump. He has his core base, but we lost some set of folks who were simply so frustrated with the status quo, who had experienced the last four years as not what they needed, not what their, not making their own personal lives better, and who did not experience appeals to institutions or appeals to kind of abstract ideas about protecting democracy as relevant to. Or as more persuasive, then simply it's time for a change. And so we have a long-term challenge, which is about how do you actually break through that level of cynicism, and that's gotta be involved like actually having the systems and the structures for democracy that can deliver for people meaningfully in a way that they feel in their lives. Audie Cornish 00:22:01 It sounds like you're needing the people who might most believe in that era of invincibility to break that spell themselves. Or is it your visibility that helps break that spell, that helps make people feel less like, well, this is how things are. Leah Greenberg 00:22:19 'I think it's going to be a lot of things, right? Like breaking the aura of inevitability involves a thousand acts of individual courage or organizing or non-cooperation, right. It looks like people showing up to protest Elon Musk's actions at Tesla dealerships. It looks like students at Georgetown organizing a spreadsheet of big law collaborators and saying clear of these people. It looks like a boycott of Target for being one of the core corporations that threw out its DEI policies, in order to do the administration's bidding, it's going to look like a bunch of different societal, individual, and organized reactions that collectively create the conditions for courage across our country. It's going involve a lot of people doing something that the regime does not want them to do or not doing something it wants them to do. We won't even know the names of everybody who has done that across government, across institutions, across our own movements, but that is what it ultimately takes to start to build back conditions to recover democratic function. Audie Cornish 00:23:25 What are your hopes for the Monday after this weekend? What would you like to see, and do you see this moment as a turning point? Leah Greenberg 00:23:35 I would like us to get a surprising number of people in a surprising number of places out and I think it's worth noting that we've seen obviously very, very large protests in, in blue states and cities, but we're also seeing really significant turnout in places that you or I would think of like as quite red and quite conservative. I would for this to be understood as a moment in which Donald Trump attempted to send tanks to Washington DC, attempted to deploy troops to California and was collectively and roundly rejected by Americans for his fascist theatrics, for his attempts to harm our communities. I would like us to collectively harness the kind of political opposition that forces them to back off what they are doing to our immigrant communities and our immigrant neighbors. We want them to recognize that they have to back down from what they're doing. And then we wanna continue to build the conditions for courage across our society so that we mount that broader pushback against authoritarianism. Audie Cornish 00:24:38 'That was Leah Greenberg, co-founder and co-executive director of The Indivisible Project. They are organizing No King's Day protests this upcoming weekend. 00:24:52 The Assignment is a production of CNN Audio. This episode was produced by Grace Walker and Lori Galarreta with assistance from Jesse Remedios and Madeleine Thompson. Our senior producer is Matt Martinez. Dan Dzula is our technical director, and Steve Lickteig is executive producer of CNN audio. We had support from Dan Bloom, Haley Thomas, Alex Manassari, Robert Mathers, Jon Dionora, Leni Steinhardt, Jamus Anderus, Nichole Pesaru, and Lisa Namerow.
17 minutes ago
Trump's mass deportations leave Democrats more ready to fight back
WASHINGTON -- California Gov. Gavin Newsom looked straight into the camera and staked out a clear choice for his Democratic Party. The governor positioned himself as not only a leader of the opposition to President Donald Trump's mass deportation agenda, but a de facto champion of the immigrants now being rounded up in California and across the country. Many of them, he said in the video address, were not hardened criminals, but hard-working people scooped up at a Home Depot lot or a garment factory, and detained by masked agents assisted by National Guard troops. It's a politically charged position for the party to take, after watching voter discontent with illegal immigration fuel Trump's return to the White House. It leaves Democrats deciding how strongly to align with that message in the face of blistering criticism from Republicans who are pouring billions of dollars into supporting Trump's strict immigration campaign. Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer of New York said Wednesday he's proud of Newsom, 'he's refusing to be intimidated by Donald Trump.' From the streets of Los Angeles to the halls of Congress, the debate over Trump's mass deportation agenda is forcing the U.S. to reckon with core values as a nation of immigrants, but also its long-standing practice of allowing migrants to live and work in the U.S. in a gray zone while not granting them full legal status. More than 11 million immigrants are in the U.S. without proper approval, with millions more having arrived with temporary protections. As Trump's administration promises to round up some 3,000 immigrants a day and deport 1 million a year, the political stakes are shifting in real time. The president rode to the White House with his promise of mass deportations — rally crowds echoed his campaign promise to 'build the wall.' But Americans are watching as Trump deploys the National Guard and active U.S. Marines to Los Angeles, while pockets of demonstrations erupt in other cities nationwide, including after agents raided a meat processing plant in Omaha, Nebraska Joel Payne, a Democratic strategist, said the country's mood appears to be somewhere between then-President Barack Obama's assertion that America is 'a nation of immigrants, we're also a nation of laws' and Trump's 'more aggressive' deportation approach. 'Democrats still have some work to do to be consistently trustworthy messengers on the issue,' he said. At the same time, he said, Trump's actions as a 'chaos agent' on immigration when there's already unrest over his trade wars and economic uncertainty, risk overreaching if the upheaval begins to sow havoc in the lives of Americans. Republicans have been relentless in their attacks on Democrats, portraying the situation in Los Angeles, which has been largely confined to a small area downtown, in highly charged terms as 'riots,' in a preview of campaign ads to come. Police said more than 200 people were detained for failing to disperse on Tuesday, and 17 others for violating the 8 p.m. curfew over part of Los Angeles. Police arrested several more people for possessing a firearm, assaulting a police officer and other violations. Two people have been charged for allegedly throwing Molotov cocktails toward police during LA protests. House Speaker Mike Johnson said Newsom should be 'tarred and feathered' for his leadership in the state, which he called 'a safe haven to violent criminal illegal aliens.' At a private meeting of House Republicans this week with White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, Rep. Richard Hudson, the chairman of the GOP's campaign arm, framed the situation as Democrats supporting rioting and chaos while Republicans stand for law and order. 'Violent insurrectionists turned areas of Los Angeles into lawless hellscapes over the weekend,' wrote Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., earlier this week in the Wall Street Journal, suggesting it may be time to send in military troops. 'The American people elected Donald Trump and a Republican Congress to secure our border and deport violent illegal aliens. That's exactly what the president is doing.' But not all rank-and-file Republicans are on board with such a heavy-handed approach. GOP Rep, David Valadao, who represents California's agriculture regions in the Central Valley, said on social media he remains 'concerned about ongoing ICE operations throughout CA' and was urging the administration 'to prioritize the removal of known criminals over the hardworking people who have lived peacefully in the Valley for years.' Heading into the 2026 midterm election season, with control of the House and Senate at stake, it's a repeat of past political battles, as Congress has failed repeatedly to pass major immigration law changes. The politics have shifted dramatically from the Obama era, when his administration took executive action to protect young immigrants known as Dreamers under the landmark Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. Those days, lawmakers were considering proposals to beef up border security as part of a broader package that would also create legal pathways, including for citizenship, for immigrants who have lived in the country for years and paid taxes, some filling roles in jobs Americans won't always take. With Trump's return to the Oval Office, the debate has turned toward aggressively removing immigrants, including millions who were allowed to legally enter the U.S. during the Biden administration, as they await their immigration hearings and proceedings. 'This anniversary should be a reminder,' said Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., at a Wednesday event at the U.S. Capitol championing DACA's 13th year, even as protections are at risk under Trump's administration. 'Immigration has many faces.' Despite their challenges in last year's election, Democrats feel more emboldened to resist Trump's actions than even just a few months ago, but the political conversation has nonetheless shifted in Trump's direction. While Democrats are unified against Trump's big tax breaks bill, with its $150 billion for new detention facilities, deportation flights and 10,000 new Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, they talk more openly about beefing up border security and detaining the most dangerous criminal elements. Rep. Suzan DelBene, D-Wash., chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, points to the example of Democratic Rep. Tom Suozzi, who won a special election in New York last year when he addressed potential changes to the immigration system head-on. At one point, he crashed a GOP opponent's news conference with his own. 'Trump said he was going to go after the worst of the worst, but he has ignored the laws, ignored due process, ignored the courts — and the American people reject that,' she told The Associated Press. 'People want a president and a government that is going to fight for the issues that matter most to them, fight to move our country forward,' she said. 'They want a Congress that is going to be a coequal branch of government and a check on this president.'
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Trump is expected to sign a measure blocking California's nation-leading vehicle emissions rules
WASHINGTON -- President Donald Trump is expected to sign a measure Thursday that blocks California's first-in-the-nation rule banning the sale of new gas-powered cars by 2035, a White House official told The Associated Press. The resolution Trump plans to sign, which Congress approved last month, aims to quash the country's most aggressive attempt to phase out gas-powered cars. He also plans to approve measures to overturn state policies curbing tailpipe emissions in certain vehicles and smog-forming nitrogen oxide pollution from trucks. The timing of the signing was confirmed Wednesday by a White House official who spoke on condition of anonymity to share plans not yet public. The development comes as the Republican president is mired in a clash with California's Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, over Trump's move to deploy troops to Los Angeles in response to immigration protests. It's the latest in an ongoing battle between the Trump administration and heavily Democratic California over everything from tariffs to the rights of LGBTQ+ youth and funding for electric vehicle chargers. 'If it's a day ending in Y, it's another day of Trump's war on California,' Newsom spokesperson Daniel Villaseñor said in an email. "We're fighting back." According to the White House official, Trump is expected to sign resolutions that block California's rule phasing out gas-powered cars and ending the sale of new ones by 2035. He will also kill rules that phase out the sale of medium- and heavy-duty diesel vehicles and cut tailpipe emissions from trucks. The president is scheduled to sign the measures and make remarks during an event at the White House on Thursday morning. Newsom, who is considered a likely 2028 Democratic presidential candidate, and California officials contend that what the federal government is doing is illegal and said the state plans to sue. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin are expected to attend, along with members of Congress and representatives from the energy, trucking and gas station industries. The signings come as Trump has pledged to revive American auto manufacturing and boost oil and gas drilling. The move will also come a day after the Environmental Protection Agency proposed repealing rules that limit greenhouse gas emissions from power plants fueled by coal and natural gas. Zeldin said it would remove billions of dollars in costs for industry and help 'unleash' American energy. California, which has some of the nation's worst air pollution, has been able to seek waivers for decades from the EPA, allowing it to adopt stricter emissions standards than the federal government. In his first term, Trump revoked California's ability to enforce its standards, but President Joe Biden reinstated it in 2022. Trump has not yet sought to revoke it again. Republicans have long criticized those waivers and earlier this year opted to use the Congressional Review Act, a law aimed at improving congressional oversight of actions by federal agencies, to try to block the rules. That's despite a finding from the U.S. Government Accountability Office, a nonpartisan congressional watchdog, that California's standards cannot legally be blocked using the Congressional Review Act. The Senate parliamentarian agreed with that finding. California, which makes up roughly 11% of the U.S. car market, has significant power to sway trends in the auto industry. About a dozen states signed on to adopt California's rule phasing out the sale of new gas-powered cars. The National Automobile Dealers Association supported the federal government's move to block California's ban on gas-powered cars, saying Congress should decide on such a national issue, not the state. The American Trucking Associations said the rules were not feasible and celebrated Congress' move to block them. Chris Spear, the CEO of the American Trucking Associations, said in a statement Wednesday: 'This is not the United States of California.' It was also applauded by Detroit automaker General Motors, which said it will 'help align emissions standards with today's market realities.' 'We have long advocated for one national standard that will allow us to stay competitive, continue to invest in U.S. innovation, and offer customer choice across the broadest lineup of gas-powered and electric vehicles,' the company said in a statement. Dan Becker with the Center for Biological Diversity, in anticipation of the president signing the measures, said earlier Thursday that the move would be 'Trump's latest betrayal of democracy.' 'Signing this bill is a flagrant abuse of the law to reward Big Oil and Big Auto corporations at the expense of everyday people's health and their wallets,' Becker said in a statement.
