Governor Gavin Newsom is smart to roll the dice
Tribune News Service
No outsider politicians venture into sultry South Carolina in July unless they are running for president. Certainly not a West Coast politician. Especially a California governor who lives in delightful Marin County near wonderful cool beaches. A governor who could easily vacation at spectacular Big Sur or hike a wilderness trail into the majestic Sierra. We can assume Gov. Gavin Newsom didn't choose South Carolina for its nightly light show of amazing fireflies or symphony of crickets. He was attracted to something so alluring that he was willing to brave skin-eating chiggers and oppressive humidity. The lure, of course, was that South Carolina will hold one of the earliest — perhaps the first — Democratic presidential primaries in 2028. The precise calendar for contests hasn't been set. But Newsom knows this: South Carolina propelled Joe Biden to the party's nomination in 2020. And it provided a huge boost for Barack Obama in 2008.
'What South Carolinians saw this week as ... Newsom made a two-day swing through the state was more than a highly visible candidate who probably will run for president in 2028,' wrote Andy Brack, editor, publisher and columnist at the Statehouse Report and Charleston City Paper.
'They saw a guy sweating through a white shirt in the South Carolina heat who was having fun. Yep, he seemed to enjoy engaging with voters in rural places too often forgotten by many candidates.'
Yes, Newsom, 57, loves campaigning on the stump — a whole lot more than he does toiling in the nitty-gritty of governing. I'd only bicker with Brack's word 'probably' when characterizing Newsom's White House bid. We're talking semantics. California's termed-out governor actually has been running for months. And he'll run as far as he can, slowly for a while and try to pick up speed down the road.
That's conventional politics. Most candidates — especially office holders — initially claim that running for president is 'the furthest thing' from their mind, then ultimately declare their candidacy with all the hoopla of a carnival barker.
OK, I admit to having been wrong about the governor in the past. I should have known better. I took him at his word. He persistently denied any interest in the presidency. 'Subzero,' he asserted. But to be fair, he and reporters previously were centered on the 2024 race and the distant 2028 contest got short shrift.
I figured Newsom mostly was running for a slot on the 'A' list of national political leaders. He wanted to be mentioned among the roster of top-tier potential presidents. He clearly savors the national attention.
But I've also always wondered whether Newsom might be leery of running for president because of his lifelong struggle with dyslexia. He could view the task with some trepidation. The governor has acknowledged having difficulty reading, especially speeches off teleprompters.
That said, he has adapted and is an articulate, passionate off-the-cuff speaker with a mind full of well-organized data. He excels on the stump — especially when he restrains a tendency to be long-winded and repetitive. Newsom is finally starting to acknowledge the White House glimmer in his eye.
'I'm not thinking about running, but it's a path that I could see unfold,' he told the Wall Street Journal last month.
More recently, in a lengthy interview with conservative podcaster Shawn Ryan, Newsom said: 'I'll tell you, the more Trump keeps doing what he does, the more compelled I am to think about it.'
Newsom's proclaimed hook for traveling to South Carolina was to 'sound the alarm' about President Donald Trump's brutish policies and to light a fire under Democratic voters to help the party win back the US House next year.
He's again trying to establish himself as a leader of the anti-Trump resistance after several months of playing nice to the president in a losing effort to keep federal funds flowing to California. But it's practically inevitable that a California governor will be lured into running for president. Governors have egos and ears. They constantly hear allies and advisors telling them they could become the leader of the free world. And, after all, this is the nation's most populous state, with by far the largest bloc of delegates to the Democratic National Convention — 20% of those needed to win the nomination.
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Gulf Today
a day ago
- Gulf Today
Families of Americans slain in West Bank lose hope for justice
When Sayfollah Musallet of Tampa, Florida, was beaten to death by Israeli settlers in the West Bank two weeks ago, he became the fourth Palestinian-American killed in the occupied territory since the war in Gaza began. No one has been arrested or charged in Musallet's slaying — and if Israel's track record on the other three deaths is any guide, it seems unlikely to happen. Yet Musallet's father and a growing number of US politicians want to flip the script. "We demand justice,' Kamel Musallet said at his 20-year-old son's funeral earlier this week. "We demand the US government do something about it.' Still, Musallet and relatives of the other Palestinian-Americans say they doubt anyone will be held accountable, either by Israel or the U.S. They believe the first word in their hyphenated identity undercuts the power of the second. And they say Israel and its law enforcement have made them feel like culprits - by imposing travel bans and, in some cases, detaining and interrogating them. The grave of Sayfollah Musallet, who was beaten to death by Israeli settlers while he was visiting family in the West Bank town of Al Mazra as-Sharqiya, is seen. AP Although the Trump administration has stopped short of promising investigations of its own, the US embassy in Jerusalem has urged Israel to investigate the circumstances of each American's death. Writing on X on July 15, US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee said he'd asked Israel to "aggressively investigate the murder" of Musallet and that "there must be accountability for this criminal and terrorist act." Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland and 28 other Democratic senators have also called for an investigation. In a letter this week to Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Attorney General Pam Bondi, they pointed to the "repeated lack of accountability" after the deaths of Musallet and other Americans killed in the West Bank. Israel's military, police and Shin Bet domestic security agency did not respond to requests for comment about the Palestinian-Americans' deaths. A memorial poster showing Sayfollah Musallet, who was beaten to death by Israeli settlers, is displayed outside of a bakery in West Bank. AP American-born teenagers Tawfic Abdel Jabbar and Mohammad Khdour were killed in early 2024 by Israeli fire while driving in the West Bank. In April 2025, 14-year-old Amer Rabee, a New Jersey native, was shot in the head at least nine times by Israeli forces, according to his father, as he stood among a grove of green almond trees in his family's village. In the immediate aftermath of both cases, Israeli authorities said that forces had fired on rock throwers, allegations disputed by the families and by testimony obtained by the AP. Israel pledged to investigate the cases further, but has released no new findings. The teens' families told the AP they sought independent investigations by American authorities, expressing doubts that Israel would investigate in good faith. According to the Israeli watchdog group Yesh Din, killings of Palestinians in the West Bank rarely result in investigations - and when they do, indictments are uncommon. Mourners carry the bodies of Sayfollah Musallet and Mohammed Al Shalabi during their funeral in the West Bank village of Al Mazraa a-Sharqiya. AP The US Justice Department has jurisdiction to investigate the deaths of its own citizens abroad, but does so after it gets permission from the host government and usually works with the host country's law enforcement. The US embassy in Jerusalem declined to say whether the US has launched independent probes into the killings. A spokesperson for the embassy said in a statement that investigations are "underway' in Israel over the deaths of the four Americans and that its staff is pressing the Israeli authorities to move quickly and transparently. Sen. Van Hollen said that when the U.S deals with Israel it "either doesn't pursue these cases with the vigor necessary, or we don't get any serious cooperation.' "And then instead of demanding cooperation and accountability, we sort of stop - and that's unacceptable. It's unacceptable to allow American citizens to be killed with impunity," the Maryland Democrat said. A man tidies the graves of Sayfollah Musallet, left, and Mohammed Al Shalabi, both of whom were killed by Israeli settlers in the West Bank town of Al Mazra. AP Israel says it holds soldiers and settlers to account under the bounds of the law, and that the lack of indictments does not mean a lack of effort. A prominent recent case was the death of Shireen Abu Akleh, a Palestinian-American journalist for broadcaster Al Jazeera killed in the West Bank in 2022. An independent U.S. analysis of the circumstances of her death found that fire from an Israeli soldier was "likely responsible' for her killing but said it appeared to be an accident. Despite an Israeli military investigation with similar conclusions, no one was ever disciplined. Rather than a path toward justice, the families of Khdour, Rabee, and Abdel Jabbar say they've faced only challenges since the deaths. Khdour, born in Miami, Florida, was shot and killed in April 2024 while driving in Biddu, a West Bank town near Jerusalem where he lived since age 2. U.S. investigators visited his family after the killing, his family said. Abdel Jabbar was killed while driving down a dirt road close to Al Mazra as-Sharqiya, his village in the northern West Bank. Khdour's cousin, Malek Mansour, the sole witness, told the AP he was questioned by both Israeli and American investigators and repeated his testimony that shots came from a white pickup on Israeli territory. He believes the investigators did not push hard enough to figure out who killed his cousin. "The matter ended like many of those who were martyred (killed),' said Hanan Khdour, Khdour's mother. Two months after the death, Israeli forces raided the family's home and detained Mohammad's brother, Omar Khdour, 23, also an American citizen. Videos taken by family and shared with the AP show Omar Khdour blindfolded and handcuffed as Israeli soldiers in riot gear lead him out of the building and into a military jeep. He said he was threatened during questioning, held from 4 a.m. to 3 p.m., and warned not to pursue the case. Omar Khdour said Israeli soldiers at checkpoints have prevented him from leaving the West Bank to visit Israel or Jerusalem. Two other American fathers of Palestinian-Americans killed since Oct. 7, 2023 reported similar restrictions. Hafeth Abdel Jabbar, Tawfic Abdel Jabbar's father, said he and his wife were blocked from leaving the West Bank for seven months. His son, Amir Abdel Jabbar, 22, remains restricted. The father of Amer Rabee says he and his wife have also been stuck in the West Bank since their son's killing. He showed AP emails from the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem in which a consular official told him that Israel had imposed a travel ban on him, though it was unclear why. Israeli authorities did not respond to comment on the detentions or travel restrictions. Rabee said that in a land where violence against Palestinians goes unchecked, his family's American passports amounted to nothing more than a blue book. "We are all American citizens,' Rabee said. "But here, for us, being American means nothing." Associated Press
Arabian Post
2 days ago
- Arabian Post
Another Indian Origin Left Democrat Saikat Chakrabarti Is Creating Waves In U.S.
By Nitya Chakraborty The Left wing section in the Democratic Party in the United States of America led by Senator Bernie Sanders is on upswing even though the party establishment seems clueless to deal effectively with the challenge thrown by the second term President Donald Trump to the very existence of its rival party. After the stunning victory of the 33 year old Zohran Mamdani in the Democratic primary for the New York mayoral election in November this year, another Indian origin Democrat Saikat Chakrabarti is creating waves in the American politics by announcing his intention to stand against the former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the veteran of the Democratic Party establishment in the November 2026 midterm elections. This has created furore in both the Republican Party and the Democratic Party leadership as Saikat carries a background of a successful activist who has been playing an important role in transforming the Democratic Party since the 2016 presidential elections in which he was associated with Bernie Sanders's campaign .Sanders could not win the nomination butSaikat was noted for his expertise in leading the election campaign. Starting with Bernie Sanders's 2016 presidential run, Saikat Chakrabarti has played an important role in the left-wing insurgency that has recently attempted to remake the Democratic Party. After working on Sanders's 2016 campaign, Saikat managed Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's (AOC) successful 2018 challenge against Joe Crowley. He went on to serve as her chief of staff, launching her Green New Deal proposal. Now Saikat is running for Congress himself, challenging former House speaker Nancy Pelosi, in California's 11th Congressional District. Saikat says that the Democrats' embarrassing loss to Trump last year inspired him to run. He hopes to build a national movement around an ambitious program called the 'Mission for America' that aims to transform the US economy through aggressive government planning and investment — a kind of spiritual successor to the Green New Deal. In a recent interview to the American left magazine Jacobin, Saikat said, back in the 1970s, America felt unstoppable. We had just put a man on the moon, built the interstate highway system, had decades of rising living standards and wages, and were including more and more people in society through the civil rights, gay rights, women's rights, and other movements. We were doing so much that we actually had immigration offices all over the world that were recruiting millions of people to come help build this country. That's how my parents got here. One of my dad's friends took him to one of these offices in Calcutta where a nice staffer pitched him on the American Dream and got him to apply for a visa right there on the spot. Elaborating on his immigrant background , Saikat says 'My parents came here with less than $20. They grew up poor in India, especially my father. After being displaced during Partition, his family of ten squatted in an abandoned house before 'upgrading' to a one-bedroom apartment. He often went days without food. But he was lucky to have a solid education because my grandfather was a teacher who ended up starting the local public school for all the neighbourhood kids. Saikat said ,In the United States, my dad was able to get a job within a week of arriving despite having no connections, and, on a single income, was able to afford a solid, middle-class life for me and my family. Growing up, I had everything I needed: a roof over my head, food on the table, and a great public school education in Fort Worth, Texas. He said 'My parents' story has always stuck with me precisely because of how common it actually was. Millions of immigrants who came here during that time had a similar story. So did hundreds of millions of Americans who, starting with the New Deal and all the way to the 1970s, accomplished one of the biggest leaps in incomes and living standards that humanity has ever seen. I've always been awed by that accomplishment, and the core driver of my politics and work over the last decade has been the belief that we can do it again. About his bringing up in USA, Saikat said 'I was pretty apolitical, though, growing up and through college. After college, I came out to San Francisco the first chance I got to work in tech because I naively believed tech would be a way to fix the biggest problems in the world. After working in tech for a few years though, I knew the answers didn't lie there. So I quit. It feels cheesy to say this today, but I actually made a list of the problems I wanted to help do something about. It said: inequality, poverty, and climate change. Then Bernie Sanders announced his run for president in 2016 talking about exactly those things, and he started filling stadiums with people excited for something new. So I joined!' Saikat got name as he was the prime mover of the Green New Deal was proposed by the leftwing congress members According to Saikat, the Green New Deal was our vision of what Democrats should stand for: a plan to invest in upgrading and developing our economy by tackling climate change, creating millions of high-wage jobs in the process. 'While Alexandra, Corbin, I, and others were working at Justice Democrats and then on AOC's race, Zack Exley was busy running New Consensus, the think tank he and I had started a few months after Justice Democrats. We had looked around for a think tank that was working on the details of how to radically reverse the decline of the working class while building a clean economy. We didn't find any (though many economists were talking about the need to do this), so we started one. The Green New Deal came out of the work Zack and others did at New Consensus.' Once AOC won, Saikat and his team had a three-pronged approach to launching the Green New Deal. He worked on the inside to build political support, while the Sunrise Movement, whose political team he had met through campaign work, worked on the outside to mount a pressure campaign on representatives and presidential candidates. At the same time, New Consensus worked to flesh out the ideas in the Green New Deal and socialize them with academics and journalists (which was a big reason people like Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman came out in favour of it when it launched). Saikat said that experience made him realize how powerful it can be to have people on the inside working with a movement on the outside who are all aligned on a vision for the country. And he learned that it is easier than we think to get new ideas to go somewhere in DC, especially right now when people are hungry for some vision of a future. If we could do the Green New Deal with just one member of Congress, what could be possible with dozens or hundreds of Congress members acting with real purpose and urgency?, he said. Saikat left AOC's office at the end of 2019 after ruffling a few too many feathers in DC and moved back to San Francisco. Since then, he has been working on the Mission for America at New Consensus, which is a successor to the Green New Deal . Saikat said that his plan when he left Washington DC and moved back to San Francisco was to continue working at New Consensus and continue supporting political candidates who rejected the corporate status quo in favour of championing working-class people. I wasn't looking to be a congressional candidate myself. But this last election changed his mind. He thought the fact that Trump made more inroads into the traditional working-class, multiracial Democratic base than any GOP presidential candidate would be a wake-up call for Democrats — especially since they couldn't dismiss his victory as a fluke like they did the first time around. He thought Democrats might take the threat of Trump and the authoritarian right seriously, since they repeatedly told us during the election that a Trump win would slide the US into authoritarianism and fascism. But then he saw how Democratic leaders actually acted in the face of a Trump win and Trump's brazen attempts to consolidate power. He heard Nancy Pelosi interviewed after this election saying Democrats did nothing wrong and didn't need to change. According to this young Democrat, Democrats need a new economic vision, and they need new leadership. Here in San Francisco, even those who have supported Pelosi for decades and deeply respect her past work believe it's time for change. But because of the deeply hierarchical nature and deference to seniority in the Democratic Party, no one else is willing to risk their political career by running against her. 'So it was one of those, 'If not me, then who?' moments, and I felt a duty to run.' Saikat said 'I'm running because I want to help spark a national movement of candidates who are willing to fight for a new economy and society that will dramatically improve working people's lives. No single candidate can do this alone, and I am recruiting others around the country to join me — a handful for 2026 and a wave for 2028. That huge leap in incomes and living standards that started with the New Deal and went into the 1970s — we can do that again and do it while building a clean and fair economy. And if we don't — if we can't prove that democracy can deliver what people need — then people will vote for the authoritarian who promises to do it himself.'' More than 15 months are left for the midterm elections in America scheduled in November 2026. But already preparations and campaigns have started. Nancy Pelosi, now 85, has the longest term as a US congress member. She is known belonging to the centrist group of Democrats including Joe Biden and Barack Obama. The centrists are feeling uneasy, but openly they are not taking any position against Saikat Chakrabarti. Saikat has the advantage that he represents the aspirations of the white American youth also , apart from the dream of immigrant youth. He went to Harvard, did big jobs in IT sector, set up his own company and then joined politics to make a difference. The younger population in the West Coast are rallying around Saikat. His group of campaigners are marketing their New Deal for the youth. There is an air of optimism in San Francisco 's political environment. Many veteran Democrats want Pelosi to retire. Saikat is involved full time in propagating his Mission for America to the Democratic Party support base irrespective of the outcome of the midterm polls in November 2026. (IPA Service)
Gulf Today
2 days ago
- Gulf Today
Forgotten godfather of Trump's immigration campaign
Gustavo Arellano, Tribune News Service He inveighs against illegal immigration in terms more appropriate for a vermin infestation. He wants all people without papers deported immediately, damn the cost. He thinks Los Angeles is a cesspool and that flying the Mexican flag in the United States is an act of insurrection. He uses the internet mostly to share crude videos and photos depicting Latinos as subhuman. Stephen Miller? Absolutely. But every time I hear the chief architect of President Donald Trump's scorched earth immigration policies rail in uglier and uglier terms, I recall another xenophobe I hadn't thought of in awhile. For nearly 30 years, Glenn Spencer fought illegal immigration in Los Angeles and beyond with a singular obsession. The former Sherman Oaks resident kicked off his campaign, he told The Times in a 2001 profile, after seeing Latinos looting during the 1992 LA riots and thinking, "Oh, my God, there are so many of them and they are so out of control." Spencer was a key volunteer who pushed for the passage of Prop. 187, the 1994 California ballot initiative that sought to make life miserable for undocumented immigrants and was so punitive that a federal judge later ruled it unconstitutional. A multiplatform influencer before that became commonplace, Spencer hosted a local radio show, produced videos that he mailed to all members of Congress warning about an "invasion" and turned his vitriolic newsletter into a website, American Patrol, that helped connect nativist groups across the country. American Patrol's home page was a collection of links to newspaper articles about suspected undocumented immigrants alleged to have committed crimes. While Spencer regularly trashed Muslims and other immigrants, he directed most of his bile at Mexicans. A "Family Values" button on the website, in the colors of the Mexican flag, highlighted sex crimes allegedly committed by undocumented immigrants. Editorial cartoons featured a Mexican flag piercing a hole in California with the caption "Sink-hole de Mayo." Long before conservative activists recorded themselves infiltrating the conferences of political enemies, Spencer was doing it. He provoked physical fights at protests and published reams of digital nonsense against Latino politicians, once superimposing a giant sombrero on an image of Antonio Villaraigosa with the epithet, "Viva Mexico!" On the morning Villaraigosa, the future LA mayor, was to be sworn in as speaker of the assembly in 1998, every seat in the legislative chamber was topped by a flier labeling him a communist and leader of the supposed Mexican takeover of California. "I don't remember if his name was on it, but it was all his terminology," said Villaraigosa, who recalled how Spencer helped make his college membership in the Chicano student group MEChA an issue in his 2001 mayoral loss to Jim Hahn. "But he never had the balls to talk to me in person." Spencer became the Johnny Appleseed of the modern-day Know Nothing movement, lecturing to groups of middle-aged gringos about his work — first across the San Fernando Valley, then in small towns where Latinos were migrating in large numbers for the first time. "California (it) has often been said is America's future. Let me tell you about your future," he told the Council of Conservative Citizens in Virginia in 1999. Spencer is the person most responsible for mainstreaming the lie of Reconquista, the wacko idea that Mexicans came to the U.S. not for economic reasons but because of a plot concocted by the Mexican government to take back the lands lost in the 1848 Mexican-American War. He wrote screeds like "Is Jew-Controlled Hollywood Brainwashing Americans?" and threatened libel lawsuits against anyone — myself included — who dared point out that he was a racist. He was a favorite punching bag of the mainstream media, a slovenly suburban Ahab doomed to fail. The Times wrote in 2001 that Spencer "foresaw millions of converts" to his anti-immigrant campaign, "only to see his temple founder." Moving to southern Arizona in 2002, the better to monitor the US-Mexico border, Spencer spent the rest of his life trying to sell state and federal authorities on border-monitoring technology he developed that involved planes, drones and motion-detection sensors. His move inspired other conservatives to monitor the US-Mexico border on their own. By the Obama era, he was isolated even from other anti-immigrant activists for extremist views like banning foreign-language media and insisting that every person who came to this country illegally was a drug smuggler. Even the rise of Trump didn't bring Spencer and his work back into the limelight. He was so forgotten that I didn't even realise he was dead until Googling his name recently, after enduring another Miller rant. Spencer's hometown Sierra Vista's Herald Review was the only publication I found that made any note of his death from cancer in 2022 at age 85, describing his life's work as bringing "the crisis of illegal immigration to the forefront of the American public's consciousness." That's a whitewash worthy of Tom Sawyer's picket fence. We live in Glenn Spencer's world, a place where the nastier the rhetoric against illegal immigration and the crueler the government's efforts against all migrants, the better. Every time a xenophobe makes Latinos out to be an invading force, every time someone posts a racist message on social media or Miller throws another tantrum on Fox News, Glenn Spencer gets his evil wings. Spencer "stood out among a vile swamp of racists and crackpots like a tornado supercell on radar," said Brian Levin, chair of the California Civil Rights Department's Commission on the State of Hate and founder of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at Cal State San Bernardino, who monitored American Patrol for years. "What's frightening now is that hate like his used to be well-segregated from the mainstream. Now, the guardrails are off, and what Spencer advocated for is federal policy." I first found out about Spencer in 1999 as a student activist at Chapman University. Spencer applauded the Anaheim Union High School District's decision to sue Mexico for the cost of educating undocumented immigrants' children, describing those of us who opposed it as communists — when he was being nice. His American Patrol described MEChA, which I, like Villaraigosa, belonged to, as a "scourge" and a "sickness." His website was disgusting, but it became a must-read of mine. I knew even then that ignoring hate allows it to fester, and I wanted to figure out why people like Spencer despised people like me, my family and my friends. So I regularly covered him and his allies in my early years as a reporter with an obsession that was a reverse mirror of his. Colleagues and even activists said my work was a waste of time — that people like Spencer were wheezing artifacts who would eventually disappear as the U.S. embraced Latinos and immigrants. And here we are. Spencer usually sent me legal threats whenever I wrote about his ugly ways — threats that went nowhere. That's why I was surprised at how relatively polite he was the last time we communicated, in 2019. I reached out via email asking for an interview for a Times podcast I hosted about the 25th anniversary of Prop. 187. By then, Spencer was openly criticizing Trump's planned border wall, which he found a waste of money and not nearly as efficient as his own system. Spencer initially said he would consider my request, while sending me an article he wrote that blamed Prop. 187's demise on then-California Gov. Gray Davis and Mexico's president at the time, Ernesto Zedillo. When I followed up a few months later, Spencer bragged about the legacy of his website, which he hadn't regularly updated since 2013 due to declining health. The American Patrol archives "would convince the casual observer that The Times did what it could do (to) defeat my efforts and advance the cause of illegal immigration," Spencer wrote. "Do I think The Times has changed its spots? No. Will I agree to an interview? No." Levin hadn't heard about Spencer's death until we talked. "I thought he went into irrelevance," he admitted with a chuckle that he quickly cut off, realizing he had forgotten about Spencer's legacy in the era of Trump. "We ignored that cough, that speck in the X-ray," Levin concluded, now somber. "And now, we have cancer."
