Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr testifies before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government at the Rayburn House Office Building on May 21, 2025 in Washington, DC.
(Photo by John McDonnell/Getty Images)
“Brendan Carr is threatening the media to cover the war the way the Trump regime wants. It’s one of the most anti-American messages ever posted by a government official,” one news network said.
In a move one administration critic described as “fragrantly unconstitutional,” Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr wrote a post on social media on Saturday that appeared to threaten the broadcast license of any media outlet that reported information concerning President Donald Trump’s war on Iran that the president did not like.
“Broadcasters that are running hoaxes and news distortions—also known as the fake news—have a chance now to correct course before their license renewals come up. The law is clear. Broadcasters must operate in the public interest, and they will lose their licenses if they do not,” Carr’s message began.
Carr also shared a screenshot of a Trump post on Truth Social complaining about “Fake News Media” coverage of five US Air Force refueling planes that were reportedly hit and damaged in an Iranian missile strike on Prince Sultan air base in Saudi Arabia.
“The[is] is the federal government telling news stations to provide favorable coverage of the war or their licenses will be pulled,” wrote Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) on social media in response to the post. “A truly extraordinary moment. We aren’t on the verge of a totalitarian takeover. WE ARE IN THE MIDDLE OF IT. Act like it.”
Several other media professionals, free speech advocates, and Democratic politicians understood Carr’s post as a threat.
“The truth is this war has been a failure of historic proportions. They don’t want Americans to know that.”
“The FCC is threatening the licenses of news stations that report on the effects of Iranian attacks on the American military,” wrote journalist Séamus Malekafzali.
Bulwark economics editor Catherine Rampell wrote, “FCC Chair Brendan Carr threatens broadcast licenses over Iran War coverage.”
Journalist Sam Stein posted, “The state doesn’t like the war coverage, threatens the license of the broadcasters.”
Independent news network MediasTouch wrote: “Brendan Carr is threatening the media to cover the war the way the Trump regime wants. It’s one of the most anti-American messages ever posted by a government official.”
“The truth is this war has been a failure of historic proportions. They don’t want Americans to know that,” the group continued.
“This is worse than the comedian stuff, and by a lot. The stakes here are much higher. He’s not talking about late night shows, he’s talking about how a war is covered.”
Several pointed out that such a threat would be in violation of the First Amendment of the US Constitution, which guarantees freedom of speech and of the press.
“Constitutional law 101: It’s illegal for the government to censor free speech it just doesn’t like about Trump’s Iran war,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) posted on social media. “This threat is straight out of the authoritarian playbook.”
Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), who has faced scrutiny from the administration for advising service members to disobey illegal orders, wrote: “When our nation is at war it is critical that the press is free to report without government interference. It is literally in the Constitution. This is overreach by the FCC because this administration doesn’t like the microscope and doesn’t want to be held accountable.”
California Gov. Gavin Newsomwrote, “If Trump doesn’t like your coverage of the war, his FCC will pull your broadcast license. That is flagrantly unconstitutional.”
Aaron Terr, the director of public advocacy at the Foundation of Individual Rights and Expression, said: “The president’s hand-picked misinformation czar is at it again, singling out ‘fake news’ that conflicts with his boss’ political agenda. The First Amendment doesn’t allow the government to censor information about the war it’s waging.”
Free Press senior director of strategy and communications Timothy Karr responded to Carr with a screenshot of the First Amendment and the words: “Here it is—as it seems you’ve forgotten what you swore an oath to ‘support and defend.’”
This is not the first time that Carr has been accused of putting his loyalty to Trump over his duty to the Constitution. In September, he pressured ABC to take comedian Jimmy Kimmel off the air over remarks Kimmel had made following the murder of Charlie Kirk.
While ABC eventually reinstated Kimmel’s show following public backlash, free speech advocates warned at the time that the Trump administration would not stop trying to censor opposing views.
“The Trump regime’s war on free speech is no joke—and it’s not over,” Free Press co-CEO Craig Aaron said at the time.
Indeed, Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) wrote of Carr’s Saturday statement: “This is worse than the comedian stuff, and by a lot. The stakes here are much higher. He’s not talking about late night shows, he’s talking about how a war is covered.”
Carr’s note comes at a particularly urgent time for independent media coverage in the US, as Paramount Skydance, which is run by the son of pro-Trump billionaire Larry Ellison, is set to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery, which owns CNN. The Trump administration has often criticized CNN’s coverage, including of the war.
On Friday, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth told reporters, “The sooner David Ellison takes over that network, the better,” as he complained about a CNN report on how the Pentagon underestimated the risk that Iran would close the Strait of Hormuz in response to US aggression.
Carr has already spoken out in favor of the merger, telling CNBC he thought it was a “good deal, and I think it should get through pretty quickly.”
This piece has been updated with quotes from Sens. Chris Murphy, Elizabeth Warren, and Mark Kelly.
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Democracy Now! Mar 16, 2026 Latest Shows Support our work: https://democracynow.org/donate/sm-de… “Mr Nobody Against Putin” won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature on Sunday. Democracy Now! recently spoke with co-director David Borenstein and the subject of the film, the Russian teacher Pavel “Pasha” Talankin, who personally documented Russia’s use of wartime propaganda. “I need for as many people as possible to see what is happening inside of Russian schools,” says Talankin. “Putin is forcing propaganda into their schools, and [the children are] absorbing all of this.” Democracy Now! is an independent global news hour that airs on over 1,500 TV and radio stations Monday through Friday. Watch our livestream at democracynow.org Mondays to Fridays 8-9 a.m. ET. Subscribe to our Daily Email Digest: https://democracynow.org/subscribe
Iranian officials display Tomahawk missile components with US markings at the site of the massacre of around 175 people, mostly children, at a school in Minab, Iran on February 28, 2026.
(Photo by Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting/Telegram)
Trump falsely claimed that Iran has “some” highly restricted Tomahawk missiles as additional evidence pointed to US culpability for the deadly strike.
As Iranian officials displayed US-marked fragments of a missile believed to have been used in Saturday’s massacre of around 175 mostly school children in Minab, President Donald Trump on Monday doubled down on his unfounded claim that Iran carried out the strike.
The president suggested during a press conference at his Trump National Doral Miami resort that Iran may have used a US Tomahawk missile to carry out the February 28 attack on the Shajareh Tayyebeh girls’ elementary school in Minab.
Trump falsely claimed that Iran has “some” of the highly restricted cruise missiles after one of them was recorded hitting an Iranian military facility near the school just after Saturday’s strike there.
“A Tomahawk is very generic,” Trump added. “It’s sold to other countries.”
New York Timesreporter Shawn McCreesh pressed Trump on his claim, asking, “You just suggested that Iran somehow got its hands on a Tomahawk and bombed its own elementary school on the first day of the war… Why are you the only person saying this?”
Trump replied: “Because I just don’t know enough about it. I think it’s something that I was told is under investigation, but Tomahawks are, are used by others. As you know, numerous other nations have Tomahawks. They buy them from us.”
Iran has no Tomahawks, which are not “generic.” Originally developed by General Dynamics and now manufactured by Raytheon, the BGM‑109 Tomahawk is a specific long-range cruise missile designed and produced in the United States. Only two other countries—Australia and the United Kingdom—are known to have Tomahawks in their arsenals, although Japan and the Netherlands have also agreed to buy them.
The US also does not sell weaponry to the Iranian government—with the extraordinary exception of the Iran-Contra Affair, in which the Reagan administration secretly sold arms to Iran in order to fund anti-communist Contra terrorists in Nicaragua.
Trump’s Monday remarks followed his Saturday comments to reporters aboard Air Force One, where he said that the bombing “was done by Iran.”
However, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who was accompanying Trump, notably declined to back Trump’s claim, saying only that “we’re certainly investigating” the strike.
US Ambassador to the United Nations Michael Waltz also did not endorse the president’s assertion, tellingABC News’ Martha Raddatz Sunday that he would “leave that to the investigators to determine.”
Waltz—a former Army Special Forces officer who served in Afghanistan—also toldNBC News’ Meet the Press Sunday that “we never deliberately attack civilians.”
More than 400,000 civilians in over half a dozen countries have been killed in US-led wars since 9/11, according to the Costs of War Project at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs.
Hundreds of Iranian civilians have been killed by US and Israeli bombing since February 28. Israeli airstrikes have also killed hundreds of Lebanese civilians during the same period.
During Monday’s press conference, Trump said that he is “willing to live with” whatever the probe into the Minab school strike shows.
A preliminary US intelligence assessment reportedly concluded that the United States is “likely” responsible for the strike, although a probe is ongoing.
On Monday, the New York Timespublished photos of fragments purportedly from a missile used in the school strike, which were marked with the names of multiple companies that produce Tomahawk components, a unique Department of Defense contract number, and “Made in USA.” Another remnant is marked SDL ANTENNA, a key satellite data link component of Tomahawk missiles.
Paramedics and victims’ relatives said the school bombing was a so-called “double-tap” airstrike—a common tactic used by US, Israeli, and Russian forces in which attackers bomb a target and then follow up with a second strike meant to kill survivors and first responders.
If carried out by the US, the Minab school strike would be one of the deadliest US civilian massacres in modern times, ranking with the bombing of a Baghdad bomb shelter during the 1991 Gulf War—which killed more than 400 people—and the March 2017 slaughter of at least 105 people in an apartment building in Mosul, Iraq during Trump’s “war of annihilation” against the so-called Islamic State.
Trump’s claim that Iran may have bought a US missile whose sale is restricted to just a handful of close allies and used it to bomb its own school prompted worldwide ridicule.
US Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said on the upper chamber floor Tuesday that “Iran doesn’t have Tomahawk missiles, Donald Trump!”
“The claim is beyond asinine,” he continued. “He says whatever pops into his head no matter what the truth is. And we all know he lies, but on something as formidable as this, it’s appalling.”
“Trump is lying through his teeth,” Schumer added.
Barry Andrews, an Irish politician who serves as a Member of the European Parliament for the Dublin constituency, said on X that Trump’s “latest use of the ‘big lie’ tactic… was to claim that Iran somehow possesses US-made Tomahawk missiles and fired upon its own girls school.”
“Such blatant lies are meant to distract,” Andrews added. “He knows the world will move on.”
New Yorker cartoonist Mark Thompson quipped, “How Iran fired a Tomahawk missile at their own school is beyond me, but President Trump wouldn’t lie to us.”
Reza Nasri, an international law expert at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, said on X that “Trump claims that Iran somehow got its hands on a US Tomahawk cruise missile and used it to bomb its own elementary school.”
“Ask him how Iran could possibly have obtained such missiles—and how it allegedly launched one, given that Tomahawks are typically fired from naval platforms, primarily warships and submarines,” Nasri added. “Did Iran get its hands on US warships and submarines too?”
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President Donald Trump speaks to members of the media traveling on Air Force One while heading to Miami on March 7, 2026, while Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth grimaces in the background.
(Photo by Roberto Schmidt/Getty Images)
Sens. Chris Van Hollen and Elizabeth Warren make the case for the urgent ouster of President Donald Trump’s Defense Secretary.
“Pete Hegseth needs to be fired—immediately,” argues US Sen. Chris Van Hollen in a video statement posted Thursday night alongside Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who also backs the demand. Their joint call arrived as global outrage mounts over the bombing of a Iranian school on Feb. 28 that killed upwards of 175 civilians, mostly young children.
Warren cited preliminary findings of a Pentagon report out this week that determined the US was the highly likely culprit behind the school massacre in the southeastern city of Minab, she noted, “killing mostly little girls between the ages of seven and 14.”
Human rights groups have condemned the bombing of the school—which had happened on the very first day of Trump’s unprovoked attack on Iran—as a possible “war crime” that demands independent investigation. Trump, for his part, has repeatedly lied about the bombing, claiming it was Iran who bombed the school, despite having access to internal intelligence assessments that appear to say otherwise.
Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) on Wednesday said there was more than enough evidence to conclude that the US was behind the attack, with reports bubbling up from inside the Pentagon only helping to confirm what outside analysts had determined. “Trump should be impeached. Hegseth should be fired,” Tlaib said. “And the administration must be held accountable in international courts for their heinous war crimes.”
For Van Hollen and Warren, the massacre in Minab is only the latest and most gruesome example of the US military’s bloodthirsty and careless conduct under Hegseth, whose time at the Pentagon has been marked by controversy and accusations of human rights abuses, national security blunders, and violations of international law as a matter of policy.
Pete Hegseth needs to be fired.
New reporting seems to confirm our worst fears: it was a US missile that struck the girls school in Iran.
That strike comes at a time when Secretary Hegseth has systematically weakened US protections against civilian harm by our military.… pic.twitter.com/A34bcLQI3w
— Senator Chris Van Hollen (@ChrisVanHollen) March 12, 2026
“We had ‘Signalgate,’ where he put out troops at risk,” says Van Hollen in the video, a reference to Hegseth using a public encryption communication tool to share national security details of a military operation that had yet to be carried out.
“We had him blowing up ships in the Caribbean,” he continues, attacks that have killed over 160 people and been called nothing short of murder by human rights experts. “We had them targeting defenseless swimmers” who survived some of those attacks, said Van Hollen.
“That’s right,” Warren interjects in the video, “with no accountability” for any of that behavior. On top of all that, Van Hollen adds, Hegseth has “no idea what he’s doing in this war in Iran. And now an American missile hit an Iranian school, killing about 150 innocent school kids.”
Hegseth has aggressively denounced restrictive “rules of engagement” for the military—calling such guardrails “stupid” and disparaging what he has termed “woke” warfare. As The New York Timesdetails Friday, Hegseth’s entire career has been colored by his criticism of what he views as the restrictive nature of rules designed to curb atrocities. Now serving as Secretary of Defense, he has been empowered to put his theories into action:
[Hegseth] has tried to reshape Pentagon culture, reveling in lethality with “no apologies, no hesitation.” He has portrayed this approach as a “warrior ethos,” one that is tough and manly.
He came up as an Army infantry officer and, as he wrote in his 2024 memoir “The War on Warriors,” loathed strict rules of engagement imposed to minimize risk to civilians, seeing heightened standards for when his platoon could open fire as putting soldiers at greater risk on the battlefield. He blamed judge advocate general lawyers, or JAGs, for such rules — even though it is commanders, not lawyers, who issue them.
Mr. Hegseth later continued that line of thinking as a Fox News contributor and host and as an advocate for U.S. service members charged with war crimes. In his 2024 book, he questioned the need to obey the Geneva Conventions and derisively referred to military lawyers as “jagoffs.”
In the video with Van Hollen, Warren says the key reason behind the call for his immediate ouster has to do with Hegseth’s hostility toward mechanisms designed to mitigate “civilian harm” during war time or other military operations.
As legislators, Van Hollen and Warren describe how they helped put in place stronger rules to prevent civilian harm. “Whenever the military is thinking about an attack,” says Warren, “where there are civilians in the area and innocent people could get harmed, it’s how to think through ‘What are the risks? Are there ways to minimize the risks? Have we checked and double checked?’”
“But what did Pete Hegseth do?” asks Warren. To which Van Hollen answers: “Hegseth came in and he dismantled the whole system. He said they were ‘stupid rules of engagement.’ But we know rules of engagement are intended to prevent civilian harm, they’re intended to prevent war crimes.”
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An American citizen can now return to a United States airport, present a valid passport, and disappear inside a for-profit detention system under the Trump administration’s vague category of “suspicious travel.” This is not theoretical; someone I love endured that experience. The system is rapidly expanding.
For generations Americans returning from international travel treated the passport as proof that they belonged on this soil, a guarantee embedded in citizenship. That guarantee now erodes quietly without announcement and without the knowledge of the people meant to receive its protection. Anyone who has stepped off a plane believing a passport confirmed arrival at home should read what follows carefully.
In January 2026 a CBP officer delivered a sentence that revealed the shift: You will know when you need to know. The remark came after five hours of interrogation inside a windowless inspection room at Newark Liberty International Airport.
A member of my family approached passport control carrying a valid United States passport, the document generations of Americans trusted as proof that returning home remained a routine act inside a constitutional republic.
Five hours later a federal officer made clear that the document meant nothing and left behind a cloud of future threat hanging over every trip that might follow.
An officer abruptly confiscated the traveler’s phone without explanation and directed movement through a door marked secondary inspection into an enclosed room where federal scrutiny replaced the ordinary rhythms of civilian life. Agents retained the device for hours with messages and photographs becoming material for government examination and retention.
Questioning returned repeatedly to one subject: travel to Palestine, even though the passport already recorded the full history of international movement. The passenger had never been to Palestine.
A surprise release followed five hours later. The traveler asked the only question that mattered: WHY? A CBP officer repeated the warning that explanation would arrive only when authorities decided explanation became necessary.
No written justification appeared. The passport guaranteed nothing beyond the name printed inside the booklet.
National attention erupted on March 5, 2026 when Sundas Sunny Naqvi, a 28-year-old American citizen from the Chicago area, returned through O’Hare Airport after travel abroad.
US Citizen Sundas Sunny Naqvi, a United States citizen and scientist from Chicago, photographed on a university campus. Photo credit: Image circulated in reporting and public posts related to the case. Original photographer unknown.
Sunny Naqvi came home through O’Hare and entered a Wisconsin deportation facility.
A daughter returned home while relatives waited for the routine message confirming safe arrival. Instead, the family learned that federal agents had taken her into custody for nearly two days and moved her through multiple facilities before release. The Department of Homeland Security later minimized the episode as a brief secondary inspection, yet the family account triggered national outrage that official statements failed to quiet.
Federal custody moved Naqvi through several locations before arrival at a detention center in Wisconsin, a transfer that pushed the process far beyond airport inspection space. Once Customs and Border Protection transfers someone to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the detention machinery engages and transparency disappears. The ICE locator database routinely fails to identify where detainees are held. Reporting by the American Immigration Council documents cases in which people vanish from that system while families search for answers that never come.
The transfer exposes a deeper institutional failure. The detention network exists to confine people awaiting deportation proceedings. Naqvi carried a valid United States passport and possessed the full right of return guaranteed to every American citizen.
Across the United States more than 200 detention facilities operate through a national network of federal centers and privately run prisons designed to warehouse people awaiting deportation. Contractors such as CoreCivic and GEO Group receive federal payments tied to guaranteed bed quotas, a financial structure that rewards filled cells rather than resolved cases.
Federal spending on immigration detention now exceeds $3 billion each year under the Trump administration’s 2025 to 2026 enforcement expansion.
Within that structure, immigration enforcement functions as the legal gateway feeding bodies into detention while bed occupancy remains the operational objective.
The administration has accelerated that machinery while directing CBP to widen the intake funnel. Constitutional attorneys warn that citizens entering this infrastructure upon return represents a rupture in the system’s original design. Detention facilities were built for individuals facing removal proceedings. American citizens whose constitutional right of return is absolute were never meant to pass through those gates
Understanding how such a situation exists requires examining a structural feature rarely discussed in public debate. Constitutional protections function differently at international borders than inside the country because federal courts recognize the border search exception, a doctrine granting CBP broad authority to detain and search people entering the United States. The authority applies to citizens and noncitizens alike, and digital device searches frequently occur without warrants during entry.
Immigration enforcement doctrine also defines an operational zone extending 100 miles inland from every external boundary of the United States, a perimeter that encompasses most of the national population.
Passenger data enters federal screening databases before aircraft arrival. Overseas contacts and itinerary records undergo automated analysis designed to flag risk patterns within a surveillance system largely hidden from public oversight. The second Trump administration widened discretionary screening authority during 2025 and 2026 through vague classifications such as suspicious travel history, language elastic enough to justify extended detention for almost any itinerary.
Early executive actions by President Trump directed agencies to compile gang membership indicators and alleged antifa affiliations as grounds for enforcement, prompting civil liberties organizations to warn that those categories erase the boundary separating security screening from political targeting. Federal databases already contain documented inaccuracies and identification methods previously rejected by federal courts.
Federal data show that CBP electronic device searches surged from roughly 8,500 in 2015 to more than 41,000 within four years. Attorneys report the same enforcement pattern continuing through 2025 and 2026 as travelers describe device seizures and prolonged detention at major American ports of entry.
Constitutional attorneys now describe nearly identical accounts from travelers nationwide: phones seized at passport control, overseas contacts turned into interrogation subjects, and agents demanding access to private communications even though passports and travel records already contain the information officials claim to seek.
Viewed alone the incidents appear isolated. Taken together they reveal a pattern.
History clarifies the pattern. Soviet citizens required government issued exit visas before crossing any border, and those who traveled without authorization faced prosecution upon return because contact with the outside world produced knowledge the state considered politically dangerous.
Nazi Germany applied similar logic during the late 1930s. Border crossings operated under Gestapo scrutiny while journalists and scholars with international ties faced document seizures as surveillance spread through civic institutions.
Such practices belong to a familiar tradition in which state power dismantles the liberty of the population it claims to govern. Generations of Americans believed their country stood apart because citizens retained the freedom to leave and return without interrogation by agents of the state.
What happened to my family member should never happen in a country where the Fifth Amendment protects the liberty of citizens to return home. No American life should be upended to fill for profit detention beds.
International lawyers, journalists, and security professionals who cross borders now assume every device may face inspection.
Before travel, send flight number, airline, departure time, arrival time, and airport to at least one trusted contact. Your contact(s) knows when you should land and when silence signals trouble.
Carry emergency contact information somewhere that remains with the body if belongings are taken. A small card can be placed inside a sock, waistband, or taped inside clothing so the information stays with the traveler even if a phone, bag, or wallet is seized. The card should list an emergency contact, an attorney if available, and a request that the person be notified if detention occurs.
Memorize at least one phone number. Phones disappear during inspection but memorized numbers remain available when a call becomes possible.
Write names, badge numbers, times, and locations immediately after release. Small notebooks pass through inspections more easily than phones and allow memory reconstruction later.
Ask directly for officer names and badge numbers during questioning. Officers often refuse but the request itself sometimes produces identifying information.
Airport surveillance cameras record most inspection areas. Attorneys can request those recordings if a detention becomes contested.
Family members should contact the airline, airport police, and the local office of U.S. Customs and Border Protection if a traveler does not emerge after an international arrival. Civil liberties attorneys or immigration attorneys familiar with border detention should also be contacted because those lawyers regularly confront CBP inspection and detention cases.
The traveler’s congressional representative or senator should be notified because congressional offices can demand information directly from federal agencies.
Local news organizations should be alerted, and families can launch a social media campaign naming the airport, the flight, and the missing traveler. Public attention often forces faster answers when someone disappears inside the federal inspection system.
No precaution guarantees protection, yet each step reduces the portion of personal life exposed during border inspection.
The Soviet Union banned citizens from leaving the country while the current administration has created a different calculation. Departure remains technically legal in the United States, yet return now carries uncertainty.
United States citizen, Sunny Naqvi came home through O’Hare and was trafficked to a Wisconsin deportation facility.
Family members who watched that event unfold now reconsider every future flight because that hesitation reflects the outcome such policies were designed to produce.
A fascist government does not require an official travel ban when fear of returning home produces the same result.
Every American who leaves this country and wonders whether a passport will still carry authority at passport control already understands the danger. A citizen who lands at a United States airport with a valid passport should walk through the gate and go home. When that certainty disappears, travel no longer carries inconvenience but the risk of detention inside a system designed to feed bodies into detention beds where rights vanish behind closed doors.
Sunny Naqvi had a passport. Sunny Naqvi came home. Sunny Naqvi entered a deportation facility.
When a passport no longer guarantees law abiding American citizens the right to return home without interrogation, the United States begins to resemble the Soviet Union under Stalin more than the republic Americans lived in before Trump.
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By Anabel Sosa,Senior California politics reporter March 13, 2026 (SFGate.com)
Conservative commentator and Silicon Valley entrepreneur Steve Hilton announces his campaign for California governor at the Pier Plaza in Huntington Beach on April 22, 2025. Hilton received support from 19% of likely voters in a recent poll.Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images
Republican Steve Hilton, a British-born former Fox News commentator, continues to lead the governor’s race as Democrats remain divided over a favored candidate.
Hilton received support from 19% of likely voters, according to a poll released Wednesday from the UC Berkeley Citrin Center for Public Opinion Research and Politico. Following him is Tom Steyer, a billionaire Democrat, with 13% support. Former Rep. Katie Porter, current Rep. Eric Swalwell, both Democrats, and Chad Bianco, the Republican sheriff of Riverside County, are tied with 11% support.
Even with a June primary election approaching, the governor’s race remains crowded, and polling has been anything but consistent. Prior polls have shown Hilton has an edge with likely voters and that there is oscillating support for the top three Democratic candidates, with Porter, Swalwell and Steyer playing political musical chairs in the rankings. It is clear, however, that they are the top three Democratic contenders right now.
Those leading candidates are followed by the lingering Democrats with polling in the single digits. Xavier Becerra, the former health and human services secretary in the Biden administration, had 5% of likely voter support in Politico’s latest poll. Antonio Villaraigosa, the former mayor of Los Angeles, had 4%; Matt Mahan, the mayor of San Jose, had 3%; former state Controller Betty Yee had 2%; and state Superintendent Tony Thurmond had 1%.
Ian Calderon, a former state legislator who was already at the bottom of the polls, is the only Democrat to drop out before the state’s March 6 deadline to officially declare candidacy. The remaining Democrats will appear on the June ballot. California Democratic Party Chairperson Rusty Hicks in February subtly pressured candidates who were polling in the single digits to drop out in order to make room for voters to coalesce around one clear Democrat.
Overall, 41% of likely voters said they were most looking for the next governor of California to bring a fresh perspective from outside politics. Meanwhile, 27% said the most important quality would be having prior state government experience; 25% said they wanted someone with business experience; and 24% said prior elected office experience was most important to them.
Another section of the poll examined voters’ second choices. Nearly 40% of voters who said they would vote for Swalwell said Porter would be their second choice; 25% of those who said they’d vote for Porter put Swalwell as their alternative choice. Meanwhile, Steyer was a popular second pick, with 18% of voters who said they’d cast a vote for Becerra or Villaraigosa choosing him next.
In California’s primary election system, the top two vote-getters in June, regardless of party, will move on to the general election in November. That means the final race can be between two Democrats, between two Republicans, or between a Democrat and a Republican. California has a high number of registered Democratic voters, which usually makes it unlikely for a Republican candidate to reach the general election, but with several polls showing Hilton with a steady lead, it’s increasingly possible the showdown this November will be between a Republican and a Democrat.
The poll was conducted between Feb. 25 and March 3 in both English and Spanish. It surveyed a random sample of 1,004 registered voters who are likely to vote in the June primary. There is a margin of error of plus or minus 3.3 percentage points.
In a separate poll also released Wednesday, this one conducted by Emerson College, Swalwell was in the lead with 17% support, followed by Hilton with 13%, Bianco and Steyer with 11%, and Porter with 8%.
Anabel Sosa is the senior California politics reporter at SFGATE. She previously covered the statehouse and elections for the Los Angeles Times. She has a masters degree in investigative journalism from UC Berkeley. You can reach her at anabel.sosa@sfgate.com.
Hundreds of members of United Auto Workers Local 4811, a union representing 48,000 student employees, postdocs and academic researchers across the UC system, held a protest at the steps below the Campanile on March 12 over alleged unfair labor practices by the university.
According to union sources, union leaders will decide by March 15 whether they will initiate a strike, which could begin as soon as next week.
Richard Villagomez, a head steward and undergraduate tutor for Data 8, said the protest was the union’s “last chance” to show the UC system that they are leveraging a “very real” strike threat if no fair contract is reached.
“UC still hasn’t agreed to things like fair wages and strong international worker protections, and they’ve been bargaining in bad faith, breaking the law, doing things like cutting appointments in half unilaterally, capping TA appointments, and imposing new fees,” Villagomez said.
Many of the hundreds of protesters in attendance were, or had been, graduate student instructors, or GSIs. Noelle Blose, a graduate student researcher and former GSI in the physics department, said she was driven to attend the protest after witnessing alleged harsh cuts to the department’s GSI staff.
“The physics department cut our GSI staff to one-half the usual numbers,” Blose said, “The workload for the intro courses is always the highest for any of the GSIs in the physics department, and these cuts functionally meant that we could barely run the classes. The discussion and lab sections were so overcrowded. We couldn’t answer questions.”
Former U.S. Rep. Katie Porter — who is currently a candidate for California governor — also attended the protest. Porter marched in the picket line and met with union leaders about an hour after the protest began.
“I am here to support labor unions,” Porter said. “I’m here to support the people who make the UCs great, the people who are in the trenches every day teaching and running this university. They are workers and they need to be able to afford to live and to thrive.”
Porter, who is a UCI law professor, also said she taught at UC Berkeley as a visiting professor in 2009 and 2010, focusing on consumer protection. She added that she sees a lot of parallels between the union movement and consumer protection in their shared fight for economic justice.
Porter also emphasized the importance of treating university workers like any other employee in the private or public sector.
“(The UCs) want to be their own category,” Porter said. “But at the end of the day, they’re paying payroll, and they need to honor the labor laws.”
In a statement, UC Office of the President spokesperson Heather Hansen said the UC has been bargaining in good faith with the union in their mediation talks.
Hansen added that the number of bargaining units makes negotiations more complex.
“Our focus is on making real progress while ensuring any agreements are financially sustainable and workable across the entire UC system,” Hansen said in an email. “We strongly disagree with the union’s unfair labor practice claims, which can be filed during negotiations before they are reviewed or determined to have merit. Real progress happens at the bargaining table, and that is where UC remains focused.”
100 UCSF workers walked a picket line at the Weill Neurosciences building in Mission Bay on Thursday, March 12. Similar demonstrations were held at UC campuses across the state. Photo by Béatrice Vallières.
From cancelling a federal student loan repayment program to attempting to cut diversity programs, the Trump administration’s attacks against higher education have thrown universities into uncertainty.
Workers at the University of California have found what they think might be a solution: unionize.
On Wednesday, workers in communications, marketing and sales at the University of California, representing 2,000 people statewide and 200 in San Francisco, voted at an 82-percent clip to form a new union with United Auto Workers.
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It marked the third time in recent months that UC workers formed a new union with UAW. Student services and advising professionals unionized in April, and research professionals followed suit in September.
In total, that represents 12,000 new union members working for the University of California system.
“There’s a lot of exciting energy in the labor movement right now, and especially at UC,” said Rebecca Griffin, a member of the new communication workers union’s organizing committee and communications director at UCSF’s Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health.
The creation of the Communications, Marketing, and Sales Professionals Union (CoMaS) brings the total number of UC workers represented by UAW to more than 60,000.
At UCSF—one of the city’s largest employers, with 39,000 employees according to UC data—about 1,600 workers have joined one of three new unions in the past 12 months, according to union estimates.
The three unions have similar demands: higher wages, increased job security, protections for international workers and more flexible work arrangements.
More than that, union leaders say this is also a way to defend their workers as attacks coming from the federal government have meant budget cuts, layoffs and hiring freezes.
“We’re realizing that, by forming a union like this, we now have a platform to protect the important work that we do that we care so much about,” said Eve Perry, a data scientist at UCSF and member of the Research and Public Service Professionals bargaining team.
In March last year, faced with financial uncertainty due to proposed federal budget cuts, UC implemented a systemwide hiring freeze.
In July, the Trump administration attempted to pull $584 million in federal funds to UCLA over the university’s supposed failure to fight antisemitism on campus. In exchange for releasing those funds, the federal government later demanded a $1.2 billion settlement from the University.
Most recently, four public health programs within UCSF have faced cuts due to the government’s plans to undo $600 million in Centers for Disease Control and Prevention grants.
UC’s unions have been fighting back. In September, UAW successfully filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration over the $1.2 billion fine. The university system did not join the lawsuit.
UAW is also working with UC on a state bill that would put a $23 billion bond to fund scientific research across California on the November 2026 ballot.
Potential strike brewing
Two of the recently formed UC unions are currently in contract negotiations. Negotiations for Student Services and Advising Professionals started in July, and Research and Public Service Professionals commenced in October. But eight months in, negotiations are grinding to a halt.
On Thursday, UC workers across the state walked picket lines as a “last chance” measure. In San Francisco, 100 employees held a demonstration before the Weill Neurosciences building in Mission Bay.
Three UC unions have already voted to authorize a strike, with 93 percent voting in favor out of 23,300 voting members.
Union leaders say the university has not been acting in good faith in the negotiations and engaging in unfair labor practices.
In an emailed statement to Mission Local, the University of California’s Office of the President said it “strongly disagree[s]” with the unions’ claims.
“These negotiations are complex because they encompass multiple bargaining units that cover academic student employees as well as newly represented staff employees transitioning from policy-covered roles into union-covered positions,” the statement read.
“Our focus is on making real progress while ensuring any agreements are financially sustainable and workable across the entire UC system.”
Asked about the newly formed union, the Office of the President acknowledged its formation, and added that “UC respects our employees’ right to choose whether to organize” and “look[s] forward to working with them in good faith.”
The unions will decide whether to strike by Sunday. If a work stoppage occurs, it could come as early as next week, said Riley Stockard, graduate student researcher at UCSF.
Across the state, that would represent close to 40,000 people on strike. At UCSF, that would be about 2,000 people.
“I think it’s a really important time for people just to see the power of the labor movement and understand, how more full and strong we are when we are working in solidarity with one another,” Griffin said.
“I’m very excited to see what we and other UAW unions at UC can get done.”
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Béatrice is a reporting intern covering immigration and the Tenderloin. She studied linguistics at McGill University before turning to journalism and getting a master’s degree from Columbia Journalism School.More by Béatrice Vallières
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