Jennifer Medina

Nevada will be the third state to vote in 2020, with its caucus coming just 11 days after the New Hampshire primary. And voters in California, which sends 495 delegates to the national convention, will start casting early ballots in the Democratic primary soon after the Iowa caucuses begin.

As more than a dozen candidates made their way through the states this weekend for campaign rallies and marathon candidate forums, there were near constant reminders about why each could make more sense to lead the charge to pick the party’s nominee for president.

There are more Latinos in Los Angeles County than the total population of the state of Iowa, as a moderator pointed out at the start of a forum on Latino issues in Los Angeles Sunday morning. Nevada, already a majority-minority state, is also home to one of the fastest-growing Asian American communities in the country.

“I don’t think it matters what happens in New Hampshire or Iowa, which are not representative of the country,” said former Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada, speaking to reporters before the state Democratic Party’s “First in the West” event Sunday night, which featured speeches from 14 candidates. “The press focuses on those two states, and I think they do that to the detriment of our country.”

Reid, the former Senate majority leader, has long been a champion of boosting Nevada’s influence in the primary season by pushing it further ahead in the calendar. Still, it remains a state where politicians occasionally need to be reminded about how to pronounce its name — Ne-VA-da, never Ne-VAH-da. And the concern about potentially being looked over is so great that “we matter” is now both a hashtag and rallying cry to signal that Nevada voters deserve the same kind of attention lavished on those in other early states.

“Nevada is eclectic, in a way that Iowa is just not,” said Nazia Junejo, a physician in Las Vegas who immigrated from India 30 years ago. “We live in a city where people come from all over the world. We used to feel comfortable, but now we’re just not. Now people are scared, and we understand that.”

Though the candidates’ basic stump speeches remain largely unchanged whether they’re in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, or Long Beach, California, the questions they face can be entirely different. For every question about farm subsidies or ethanol in Iowa, here they comb over the granular details of housing policies and immigration enforcement.

In a series of forums in California and Nevada this weekend, candidates offered a glimpse of how they were pitching themselves to an electorate that is less white, more likely to be represented by a labor union and often more liberal than crowds in New Hampshire and Iowa.

With his signature call for a political revolution, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont received a rowdy welcome in both California and Nevada.

“The truth is that this country faces an unprecedented moment in our history with enormous challenges before us,” Sanders said in Las Vegas on Sunday. “And tinkering around the edges just won’t do what has to be done. In this unprecedented moment in American history, we need an unprecedented response.”

Deval Patrick, the former governor of Massachusetts and the latest candidate to enter the race, received a lukewarm reception through much of the weekend, in his first major events since starting his campaign. California Democrats greeted his five-minute speech with a collective shrug, and those in Nevada had mostly left the room before he began his remarks, the last of 14 candidates who spoke Sunday night.

But the leading candidates were more enthusiastically welcomed. Former Vice President Joe Biden had the most raucous section of the ballroom in Las Vegas, entering to a thundering marching band and letters spelling out “NV 4 JOE” decorated with twinkle lights. (While Iowa may be known for its steak fries, the biggest night in Nevada politics had no food but plenty of glitz and poker chips.)

“The risk of nominating someone who wouldn’t beat Trump is a nation and a world our children and our grandkids won’t want to live in,” Biden told the crowd, leaning on one of the central arguments of his campaign. “I can beat Trump. I can beat him.”

Campaign aides were not abuzz over the latest poll in Nevada, which showed Biden ahead of Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Sanders. Instead, they were focused on the latest numbers from Iowa, where Pete Buttigieg has begun to take a commanding lead. Buttigieg, mayor of South Bend, Indiana, faces significant skepticism in Nevada and especially California, where he is far less known outside of donors backing his bid.

To the crowd in Las Vegas, Buttigieg touted his health care plan as better for unions, who have fought for paid heath care during contract negotiations for years.

“If you are a culinary worker who negotiated a plan you like, you should have the option to keep it,” he told them.

At the California Democratic Convention in Long Beach on Saturday, candidates were pressed for detailed specifics on immigration policy. Asked about the possibility of sending U.S. troops to Mexico to fight against drug and gang violence, Buttigieg said he would be open to considering it.

Sen. Kamala Harris of California, who arrived at the forum late after her staff said she was stuck in traffic, declared herself a “Sangeleno,” a portmanteau of her former home in San Francisco and her current status as an Angeleno.

“The last time I looked, one in two Californians was born outside the United States or has a parent who was born outside the United States, myself included,” Harris told the crowd Saturday.

At the Latino Issues forum the next morning, Harris said she believed Immigration and Customs Enforcement needed to be radically restructured, calling it the most dysfunctional federal agency.

Julián Castro, the former housing secretary who is calling for Iowa to lose its long-held distinction as the first-in-the-nation nominating state, said issues such as immigration and transportation would be more of a consistent focus in the campaign if states like Nevada, with significant urban populations, voted sooner.

Though Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota typically casts herself as a Midwesterner who wins Midwestern votes, she carefully tailored her speech to the Nevada crowd, praising Reid and mentioning victims of the 2017 mass shooting on the Las Vegas Strip.

Biden and Warren spent much of their weekend in Nevada, holding campaign rallies. But both sat out the California events, as he held a fundraiser in Portland, Oregon, while she campaigned in Iowa.

Rusty Hicks, chairman of the state party, derided the choice as “misguided” and a public snub of California and Latino voters.

Their decision showed “blatant disregard and disrespect to California’s grassroots leaders who make the phone calls, knock the doors and give the money in swing districts and swing states alike year after year after year,” he wrote on Facebook.

Asked about her decision to skip California, Warren said that she was not ignoring any group of voters, pointing to the time she spends speaking with them on her selfie line as one bit of evidence.

When she stepped onstage in Nevada on Sunday night, Warren reiterated her call for “big, structural change” on issues like health care, taxes and government corruption.

“We’re not going to change it by a nibble here and a little bit of change over there,” she said.

This article originally appeared in

Voters in West Bemoan Iowa's Grip on Primary Season

LAS VEGAS — Want to understand Iowa’s outsize role in selecting the Democratic presidential nominee? Just come to the West, where anyone in Nevada or California will tell you: We are the voters presidential candidates should be paying more attention to.

But from the moment she sat down on set to tape her appearance, she did not stop herself. At the top of the show, Noah ripped off his shirt to reveal a leopard print leotard, a crowd-pleasing reprise from his long-ago appearance on “Dancing With the Stars.” Then, when the senator joined him, he grew more serious.

“A lot of people say you were one of the winners of the last debate,” Noah began, addressing his guest. “Do you get a trophy? What do you get for winning a debate?”

There was a half-second pause before she began.

“Well, I’m hoping I get to dance with you in that outfit,” she said, as the audience exploded with laughter again. “I’m thinking at the end of the interview.”

In the end, there was no dancing and no trophy for Klobuchar. But her late-night TV appearances, including on “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” Tuesday; last month’s debate; and time out on the trail all point to a different kind of bragging right: Klobuchar is funny.

Wry, wholesome, self-deprecating, sometimes hokey funny, but funny. She has comedic timing, occasional deadpan delivery and a more than occasional wink to reveal just how hilarious she thinks she is.

This is all part of Klobuchar’s approach: She sees humor as a strategy, a way she can disarm an opponent, charm a voter and, she hopes, undercut President Donald Trump on the debate stage. “When things are so divided in politics, it helps to warm things up a little bit and find something that people agree on,” she said in an interview.

Shortly before Klobuchar declared her own presidential bid earlier this year, Abigail Bessler, her 24-year-old daughter, an amateur stand-up comic herself, somewhat sheepishly reminded her mother about the senior thesis Bessler wrote at Yale. The topic: the use of humor in presidential politics and the “Path to Power Through One-Liners, Talk Shows and Tweets.”

“Should an orator want to stir up laughter?” Bessler asked in her thesis. “The answer is a fairly resounding yes.”

Additional gems from the paper, written to complete a degree in political science, include:

“Humor can be used as a political weapon: to attack opponents, inoculate oneself from criticism, establish one’s good humor and more. Through comedy and wit, a politician can reduce audience scrutiny of arguments by appealing to their emotions and allowing them to discount any messages they might disagree with as ‘just a joke.’”

Sitting with her daughter over plates of dumplings and sweet potato fries before her “Daily Show” appearance, Klobuchar spoke in great detail about the way she thinks about her own humor and power.

Do not call it “mom humor,” a term Klobuchar disdains because, she said, it implies she is not actually funny. Never mind the fact that Klobuchar poked fun at her own mothering during a nationally televised debate, describing herself “meddling” in her daughter’s weekend social life. “In my mind as a mom, it’s not lame at all,” she quipped.

(As for “dad humor” — Klobuchar said that while her husband, John Bessler, is constantly trying out new jokes and offering her new material, nine out of every 10 of his attempts are more likely to make her laugh at him, rather than with him.)

Klobuchar’s brand of comedy is a clean, “aw, shucks” approach that conveys her own background as a Midwesterner, a mom and a slightly exasperated politician. She laughs easily, at herself and others, and can recall dozens of her successful zingers.

At a campaign stop in Virginia last week, she recounted her personal favorite: On her first Senate race, scrounging to find money any way she could, she started calling up men she once dated.

“I raised $17,000 from ex-boyfriends,” the joke begins. “That is not an expanding base.”

The first time she delivered it, she said, was in liberal Los Angeles during a fundraiser at Danny DeVito’s home. Initially, she presumed it was the kind of racy humor that could only go over well in Hollywood. But slowly, she began trying it out on Midwestern crowds and found that it got peals of laughter there too. When she delivered the monologue in 2009 at a Gridiron Club dinner in Washington, D.C., the $17,000 ex-boyfriend fund made its way into her remarks there too.

“True story!” she added then. “I know that is the record in the Senate, but in the House it’s held by Barney Frank,” she said, referring to the then-congressman of Massachusetts. The joke got roars of laugher, including from Frank. (One reporter at the time called her speech “bring-down-the-house funny.”)

President Barack Obama would later joke at then-Sen. Al Franken’s expense, saying that the professional comedian was the “second funniest” senator from Minnesota.

There’s an addition to the joke now: Klobuchar declines to say how many boyfriends chipped in.

More recently, she has been particularly fond and proud of an exchange she had with Trump soon after she announced her presidential run. Noting the inclement weather as she stood outside talking about fighting global warming, Trump tweeted that by the end of her announcement speech, she “looked like a Snowman (woman).”

“I wonder how your hair would fare in a blizzard?” she wrote back on Twitter.

For months, Klobuchar made the joke part of her stump speech. But she mostly retired it after Noah made a clip reel showing her using the hair joke several times. (Recycling is, as Noah no doubt knows well, a familiar aspect of the comedian and politician’s playbook.)

The campaign has provided plenty of fodder for new material. On “The Late Show” Tuesday she said the backstage atmosphere at the debates was more friendly than competitive. So much so, she joked, that she’s passed notes on the edge of the stage, where the lower polling candidates are placed.

“We were kind of down there in the corner,” she added, referring to the candidates, herself included, who are largely stuck in the single-digits. And she had no problem laughing during a clip Colbert played showing a cartoon version of Klobuchar screaming at other candidates.

A former aide did recall one joke that fell flat publicly: During a confirmation hearing for Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan, Klobuchar asked Kagan whether she was on team Jacob or Edward, a reference to the “Twilight” series that was popular with teenage girls at the time. Klobuchar was simply trying to lighten the mood, but Kagan looked at her blankly and replied, “I wish you wouldn’t.”

Like any comic, Klobuchar said she is constantly looking for and testing out new material, learning quickly what works and what doesn’t. Her daughter often provides suggestions that Klobuchar accepts, though the opposite seldom happens, the two said.

Another recent favorite is one comparing herself to Melania Trump, at her own expense.

“She was born, it’s true, an hour away from where my relatives were from in Slovenia. And every time I look at her, it’s like looking in the mirror,” the joke goes, which reliably gets laughs.

Many of her jokes are so goofy, the listener just has to laugh. When three campaign volunteers in New Hampshire recently lined up, each holding a letter of her name, Klobuchar reacted with some glee.

“Look what they can do with my name,” she told a radio reporter. “Have you seen this? Let’s make yam!”

There were some chuckles. “And then we could do May,” she went on. “It just shows a kind of broad support. We have the yam vote.” (A call to the U.S. Sweet Potato Council confirmed that, unfortunately for Klobuchar or any other anagrammatical political aspirants, the association does not endorse candidates.)

During a recent tour of a manufacturing facility at Nashua Community College, Klobuchar paid careful attention as an instructor showed her how a machine created a metal fastener. Then, like a stealth class clown, she interjected: “I have a real desire to pull this emergency stop — maybe it’s because of Washington right now.” (Klobuchar did keep her hands off the machine.)

Later that evening, she stepped into a hotel conference room, where a Halloween-themed wedding was set to take place. She took in the scene of black tulle and pumpkins, wondering aloud whether a witch was getting married. Then she began, unprompted, to talk about her own personal favorite Halloween costume: when she dressed up as “Purple Rain” in law school.

Like a proud mother, Klobuchar said she has read her daughter’s political comedy thesis more than once and even passed it on to John McCain and Mitt Romney, who are both mentioned in the paper. And Klobuchar has used several of her daughter’s humorous videos, which Bessler began creating after her mother called urgently asking for “something viral.”

But asked whether she was taking any advice from the thesis, the answer was a firm no. She would not, she said, be hiring any joke writers, as other candidates have done. Still, knowingly or not, she is taking a page from her daughter’s research.

Several academic studies “showed voters’ increasing attention to comedy shows over hard news sources, and found that candidates’ appearances on late-night shows increased voter knowledge more than morning shows,” Bessler wrote. “Politicians appeared on entertainment shows more and more to reach out to voters, and consultants knew an effective parody could change the course of a campaign.”

The Punchlines Amy Klobuchar Uses to Keep Voters Laughing

There were three hours to go before Amy Klobuchar would take the stage with Trevor Noah on “The Daily Show,” and she had no jokes prepared. After several late-night appearances she had learned one thing: It’s the host’s job to bring the comedy, not hers.

But whatever the language, one thing was clear: Democratic attitudes toward Israel are shifting in the highest echelons of the party.

Several Democratic presidential hopefuls spoke at a national conference hosted by J Street, a liberal lobbying group that describes itself as “pro-Israel and pro-peace.” Thousands of progressive Jewish activists gathered at the two-day conference, as candidates answered questions about what they would do to end the Israeli occupation in the West Bank as well as restart negotiations between Palestinians and the Israeli government. Such negotiations have long been at a standstill.

But the questions went beyond what is known as the two-state solution, which would grant Palestinians statehood — an idea that many see as far-fetched or impossible under the Trump and Netanyahu administrations.

In a sign of how far the Trump administration has changed the conversation around Israel, several Democratic candidates said they were open to withholding aid from Israel if it annexed more land in the West Bank. Speakers at the conference repeatedly referred to what they called racist policies in both the United States and Israel. None of the candidates did so in more personal terms than Sanders, who opened his speech by referring to his own Jewishness, his time living on an Israeli kibbutz, and his father, who immigrated from Poland to escape anti-Semitism.

“It is not anti-Semitism to say that the Netanyahu government has been racist — that is a fact,” Sanders said, receiving enthusiastic applause from the audience.

“I’m very proud to be Jewish and look forward to being the first Jewish president,” he said, adding that Jews “have suffered for century after century.”

“If there is any people on earth who understands the danger of racism and white nationalism,” he said, rising from his chair to deliver each answer. “It is certainly the Jewish people.”

He went on to say that the Israeli government should not be given “carte blanche” for spending the roughly $3.8 billion it receives in military aid.

In 2017, the Trump administration moved the American Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv, and formally recognized Jerusalem as the country’s capital, a move that broke with decades of U.S. policy.

Jeremy Ben-Ami, the president of J Street, said that the group’s polling showed that the vast majority of Democratic voters supported both Palestinians and Israelis but did not approve of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has backed settlement expansion and annexation of more of the West Bank.

In some quarters, any criticism of Israel is seen as a political risk that could leave candidates open to accusations of anti-Semitism.

“It shouldn’t be hard to be against bad policies and against anti-Semitism. Those are table stakes,” Buttigieg said. “You can be committed to the U.S.-Israel alliance without being supportive of any individual choice by a right-wing government over there.”

J Street college activists have been pressing the Democratic Party to add to its official platform explicit language opposing Israel’s occupation in the West Bank and a “commitment to Palestinian rights.”

Buttigieg also appealed directly to the young activists in the room.

“Mathematically, it is within the lifetime of anybody in college today that the situation in Israel, for Israelis and Palestinians, will either reach some kind of harmony, or catastrophe,” Buttigieg said. “You will live to see one of these two things happen.”

Former Housing Secretary Julián Castro received sustained applause from the audience when he said that he would reestablish a consulate in East Jerusalem that would serve as an embassy for Palestinians under a two-state solution.

“I am glad to see in this Democratic Party that the voices of folks who are concerned about the rights of Palestinians has emerged recently stronger,” Castro said, speaking after Buttigieg. On the question of whether he would withhold aid from Israel, Castro said it “wouldn’t be my first move.”

Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota also spoke at the conference, and declined to answer a question about military aid, saying only: “It’s not a good idea to negotiate these things right now.”

Sen. Michael Bennet of Colorado also attended the conference and echoed his refrain that Democrats have moved too far to the left to attract swing voters, including on foreign policy.

The race’s two leading candidates, former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, did not attend the conference, citing scheduling issues. But each of them recorded a video for the group, in which Warren repeatedly referred to the occupation, but Biden did not.

Ben-Ami said in a speech to the group Sunday, the first day of the conference, that “there is simply no question under international law that Israel is an occupying power.”

“Gradually over these decades, a one-state reality has emerged between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea — an area where today well over 13 million people live, slightly less than half of whom are Jewish,” Ben-Ami said.

He said that the group would continue to ask all candidates “what steps are they willing to consider should the occupation continue to deepen and the government of Israel consider formal annexation of all or parts of the West Bank.”

Klobuchar said at the conference that she did not support Netanyahu’s promise to annex more of the West Bank, but declined to say whether she would be willing to withhold aid if the Israeli government proceeded with such plans. She also defended her vote on legislation that would penalize groups that support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement.

“It just showed to me what Mitch McConnell is trying to do all the time: Instead of bringing people together for support of Israel on a bipartisan basis, he and President Trump are always looking for those wedges, a way to do things that creates wedges, instead of bringing people together,” Klobuchar said. “I think it has been very negative. And I’m not just talking about one vote. I’m talking about how the prime minister’s visit was handled, as everyone remembers that.”

2020 Democrats at J Street Conference Reflect New Tone on U.S.-Israel Relations

WASHINGTON — Pete Buttigieg on Monday compared Israel’s relationship with the United States to that of a close friend — one who needed and should accept more guidance. Bernie Sanders put it in starker terms, saying the United States should demand more from Israel.

The suspect, who was identified as Mark Steven Domingo, was seeking retribution for the recent attacks on mosques in New Zealand, according to authorities. He spoke of unleashing an attack similar to the massacre in Las Vegas, aiming to kill hundreds of people and was especially targeting white nationalists, Jews, churches and military bases, according to court documents filed Monday.

The suspect was arrested Friday night after he received what he thought was a live bomb, but in fact was an inert explosive device that was delivered by an undercover law enforcement officer as part of an investigation by the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force.

He has been charged with providing and attempting to provide material support to terrorists. Domingo, 26, of Reseda, “planned and took steps to manufacture and use a weapon of mass destruction order to commit mass murder,” according to the criminal complaint filed in court Monday.

Last week, Domingo “purchased several hundred nails” meant to be used as shrapnel inside an explosive device, according to the complaint. The person Domingo believed was a collaborator was an undercover law enforcement officer.

Domingo was previously an active duty Army infantryman who had been deployed to Afghanistan from September 2012 to January 2013. Officials said they reviewed many online posts in which Domingo voiced his enthusiastic support for “violent Jihad” and his desire to attack the Los Angeles area.

On March 3, Domingo posted “America needs another Vegas event,” he added, in reference to the massacre in 2017, “something to kick off civil unrest.” Later that month he posted “there must be retribution” for the Christchurch, New Zealand, shooting.

The arrest comes just two days after a shooting at a synagogue in the San Diego area that left one woman dead and three others injured, leaving many on edge and wary of copycat attacks.

Domingo, according to law enforcement, had three firearms registered to him, including two semi-automatic firearms and a bolt-action rifle. He was a recent convert to Islam, according to the complaint, and expressed support for the activities of the Islamic State.

Over several weeks the informant met with Domingo and discussed his detailed plans to carry out an attack.

“This investigation successfully disrupted a very real threat posed by a trained combat soldier who repeatedly stated he wanted to cause the maximum number of casualties,” said the U.S. attorney, Nick Hanna, “Protecting Americans from terror attacks is the No. 1 priority of the Justice Department, and anyone who plots to use a weapon of mass destruction will be held to account.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/29/us/terror-attack-los-angeles.html" id="199b5898-1a65-31d7-a0f6-3676c8b2572d">The New York Times</a>.

Terror Attack Thwarted in Los Angeles, Authorities Say

LOS ANGELES — Federal authorities said Monday that they had thwarted a domestic terror plot by a U.S. military veteran aimed at “multiple targets” in Southern California, including Huntington Beach, the port of Long Beach and the Santa Monica Pier.

Loughlin’s not guilty plea comes a week after 13 other parents, including actress Felicity Huffman, indicated that they would plead guilty in what prosecutors have described as the largest-ever college admissions prosecution. The decisions by Loughlin and Huffman, the most widely known parents involved in the case, were only the latest way in which their legal paths have diverged.

Loughlin waived her right to appear in court for an arraignment, after being indicted last week on a count of conspiracy to commit fraud and another of money laundering conspiracy. Her husband, fashion designer Mossimo Giannulli, is also pleading not guilty to the same charges, documents showed.

Loughlin and Giannulli are accused of paying $500,000 in bribes to ensure that their daughters would be admitted to the University of Southern California. The young women were presented as recruits for the women’s crew team, though they did not participate in the sport, according to prosecutors.

Loughlin, who has appeared largely upbeat during court appearances, has not publicly spoken about the charges.

Four other parents — Gamal Abdelaziz, I-Hsin “Joey” Chen, Douglas Hodge and John Wilson — also submitted not guilty pleas and waived their rights to court appearances for arraignment.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/15/us/lori-loughlin-court.html" id="9afeae3c-ef20-3b1b-a526-c185b8609303">The New York Times</a>.

Lori Loughlin Enters Not Guilty Pleas in College Admissions Scandal

Actress Lori Loughlin, one of the most high-profile defendants in the college admissions bribery case, is pleading not guilty to the charges against her, court documents showed Monday.

Lori Loughlin Enters Not Guilty Plea in College Admissions Case

Loughlin waived her right to appear in court for an arraignment, after being indicted last week on a count of conspiracy to commit fraud and another of money laundering conspiracy.

Loughlin and her husband, fashion designer Mossimo Giannulli, are accused of paying $500,000 in bribes to ensure that their daughters would be admitted to the University of Southern California. The young women were presented as recruits for the women’s crew team, though they did not participate in the sport, according to prosecutors.

Thirteen other parents charged in the case, including actress Felicity Huffman, have agreed to plead guilty. Loughlin has not publicly addressed the charges. In court appearances, Loughlin has largely appeared upbeat.

Now, Hollywood actresses Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin find themselves as the twin public faces of a sprawling college admissions bribery scheme — the best-known symbols of presumptuous entitlement at the center of widespread ire.

But even as the admissions scandal has placed Huffman and Loughlin side by side in the spotlight amid dozens of lesser-known parents, the actresses’ roles in this real-life drama are actually quite different — and diverging by the minute.

When Huffman announced this week that she would plead guilty to the crime she’s accused of, she issued a long, hand-wringing apology and her appearances in court have been somber — lips pursed and eyes avoiding the dozens of news cameras all around. Loughlin, who so far has not opted to enter a plea, has seemed to approach her courthouse visits with an affect more common on the red carpet — she has repeatedly been photographed smiling, at one point signing autographs for fans before she walked into federal court.

Distinctions between the two actresses’ cases, though, run far deeper, and they offer hints at the legal fight that may be ahead in the nation’s largest-ever admissions prosecution. The amounts the women are accused of spending in the fraud are far different — $15,000 versus $500,000. The circumstances outlined in court documents are distinct as well: a faked test for a daughter versus deals to get two daughters admitted to the University of Southern California with phony athletic claims.

“There are enormous differences between them and it is a critical factor,” Eileen Decker, a former federal prosecutor in Los Angeles, said of the cases against Huffman and Loughlin. “It goes to their individual culpability. This scheme had so many levels to it: having a person take the test for them, putting money through the fake charity, hiding it from children and authorities. So far, the Loughlin case indicates far more significant involvement in the fraud.”

The Accusations

Huffman and Loughlin are charged in the same sweeping criminal complaint, but the particular claims against them suggest far different plots.

In 2017, William Singer, the private college admissions consultant who has admitted to being the architect of a ring that used bribes from parents to get children into colleges, came to the Los Angeles home Huffman shared with her husband, actor William H. Macy. Singer, who has pleaded guilty to multiple counts of conspiracy, bribery and fraud, explained that for $15,000 he could pay someone to supervise their daughter’s SAT at a test center he “controlled.” That person would then secretly correct her answers.

Over several months, Huffman exchanged emails with Singer, making sure she understood the precise details of how the cheating would work. When a counselor at her daughter’s school suggested she take the exam somewhere other than at Singer’s preferred testing center, Huffman wrote to Singer with alarm, copies of her emails show: “Ruh Ro! Looks like (my daughter’s high school) wants to provide own proctor.”

In the end, prosecutors say, the scheme went forward. Huffman’s daughter, who apparently knew nothing of the plans, got a score of 1420, about 400 points higher than she had earned on her Preliminary SAT exams.

According to the criminal complaint against Huffman, when it came time for her younger daughter to take the exams, Huffman and Singer again spoke in great detail and plans began for a similar process. But those plans were ultimately scrapped, the prosecutors said, and the younger girl took the tests on her own.

Loughlin’s lawyers did not return calls Wednesday, but prosecutors suggest that for Loughlin and her husband, fashion designer Mossimo Giannulli, plans with Singer began in 2016 and were far more complicated.

Giannulli, who, like Loughlin, has been indicted on conspiracy to commit mail fraud as well as conspiracy to commit money laundering, told Singer he was concerned about his oldest daughter and needed to ensure a “road map for success” for “getting her into a school other than ASU!”

For months, investigators say, Loughlin kept in close touch with Singer, even while the family vacationed in the Bahamas. Following his suggestion, they would present the daughter — Isabella Rose Giannulli — as a coxswain, though she had never rowed crew. Once her spot at the University of Southern California was assured, they wired $200,000 to Singer’s supposed charity.

According to prosecutors, Loughlin and Giannulli followed a similar path with their younger daughter. The total price tag? $500,000.

The Responses

On the same week Huffman announced she would plead guilty to the single criminal count against her, Loughlin was indicted in the case, and a criminal count — conspiracy to commit money laundering — was added. So the legal case against Huffman headed toward a final, penalty phase even as the legal stakes appeared to be mounting for Loughlin.

Back home in Southern California, Loughlin has been spotted out and about by eager paparazzi. She politely told one that he was welcome to follow her all day, but that she would not talk about the case. When he wished her well, she responded: “You have a beautiful day.”

She added: “Thank you so much. Thanks, honey.”

Huffman has appeared more reserved, saying little beyond her public statement this week as she announced she intended to plead guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit mail fraud. “This transgression toward her and the public I will carry for the rest of my life,” she said of her daughter. “My desire to help my daughter is no excuse to break the law or engage in dishonesty.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/10/us/lori-loughlin-felicity-huffman-admissions-scandal.html" id="d9eaffb7-c9c6-39dd-a5d2-d9b04566f636">The New York Times</a>.

On television, they both have played doting mothers who could do no wrong.

Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman: 1 Scandal, 2 Actresses, Diverging Paths

This is also life as a USC student: working an overnight shift to earn money for books, going hungry when the campus meal plan runs out, and seething as friends presume that a $20 glass of wine is affordable.

The divide between rich and poor students could hardly be more vivid than it is at USC, where the children of celebrities and real estate moguls study alongside the children of nannies and dishwashers.

Now, the college admissions bribery scheme, which has ensnared dozens of wealthy parents accused of bribing their children’s way into USC, has brought renewed attention to class divides on campus — and how different the student experience can be depending on the size of the bank account.

“USC tries to paint the campus as this beautiful place to enjoy and relish in abundance,” said Oliver Bentley, a sophomore who is among the first in his family to attend college. “There’s this idea that once you enter USC, you’re all on the same playing field. That in and of itself is a lie. I have met these rich kids who have so much that I can’t comprehend, doing things that I can’t fathom.”

Interviews with students on campus from across the economic spectrum show how difficult it is to navigate a university that tries to be a home for all. After decades of attracting some of Los Angeles’ wealthiest families, USC has aggressively recruited and enrolled students who could never afford the roughly $57,000 annual tuition.

But the reality for many is a microcosm of the economic disparities of the city the campus calls home — and as in the rest of Los Angeles, the vast majority feel ill-equipped to bridge the divide.

The university has made attracting students from all backgrounds a priority, and by almost any measure, its recruitment efforts have been a resounding success. The academic credentials of incoming freshmen have steadily risen, and applications to the university are at an all-time high. As USC has fought to shed its reputation as a playground for the spoiled elite, officials have boasted about its racial and socio-economic diversity: More than a quarter of all students are from underrepresented minority groups, 14 percent of freshmen are the first in their families to attend college, and two out of three students receive financial assistance. The college has one of the largest financial aid pools in the country — more than $350 million, an increase of nearly 80 percent over the last decade.

And yet, as the bribery cases have made clear, the campus remains a place of pervasive wealth, where celebrity, money and status are still a part of daily life. This is the campus of choice for Dr. Dre, who boasted last month about his daughter being admitted on her own merit, without mentioning that he had donated millions for a school building named in his honor. Wealth is so closely associated with USC that when a recent “Saturday Night Live” skit spoofed the admissions scandal, it opened with a shot of USC’s central library.

On the sun-streaked campus, students said conversations focused on a mix of envy and judgment for those with more. Students of all backgrounds said they often silently worried that they were being judged by their peers — either for having too much or not enough.

Bentley was raised by a single mother in Menifee, a small working-class city about 80 miles east of Los Angeles. When he arrived on campus, he expected to feel comfortable quickly, but instead said he was “completely alienated” because he did not have enough money. Most of his friends now, he said, come from similar backgrounds “lower middle class or just poor.”

Undoubtedly, there are benefits to attending a private university with a $5.5 billion endowment: gleaming new buildings, access to premier technology, smaller classes. And wealthy students are a fixture at elite colleges across the country — the challenges at USC are similar to issues faced by students at many top private universities.

“We know when low-income students get to these elite schools, they have a large problem with fit,” said Jessica Thompson, director of policy and planning at the Institute for College Access &amp; Success. “These schools have built reputations in the world that they are operating to erase class lines, but they are actually sort of hardening the types of inequity they claim to eliminate.”

But whether because of the students it attracts or because of its place in glittering Los Angeles, the campus exudes a kind of singular flashiness. There are also signs that the university understands the buying power of students. In the campus bookstore, one wall is filled with pricey Kiehl’s bath products and an Abercrombie &amp; Fitch welcomes students in USC Village, a $700 million residential and retail development opened by the university in 2017.

Heran Mamo, who grew up in Portland as the only child of an epidemiologist and a sports writer who both emigrated from Ethiopia, considers herself middle class. In the last four years, she has seldom hesitated to go out for expensive meals and drinks.

“There’s not a huge culture of saying no to spending,” said Mamo, who will graduate this spring. “You think ‘I deserve to treat myself,’ and you start fearing saying you can’t do something because you can’t afford it.”

When she has turned down invitations because of money — bypassing a night out or a spring break in Hawaii — her friends have been understanding, Mamo said. Money is rarely spoken about explicitly, she added, and “people don’t really acknowledge when they’re really wealthy, you usually only find out after a while.”

For many, the freshman residence halls offer students the most exposure to classmates from a broad swath of economic backgrounds. Some students, though, fear those kinds of interactions are fading as some wealthier students choose to live in more costly university-owned apartments during their first year, when the majority of students live on campus.

As at other large universities in urban areas, the vast majority of students live off campus as upperclassmen. In the last decade, there has been a growing number of private homes and apartments marketed to students near campus, where rents can range anywhere between $750 and $2,750 a month. Students at schools such as New York University, Harvard and Yale have a similar range of choices, with the top-dollar options providing the wealthy with more amenities.

Some of the most overt signs of wealth are in the campus fraternity and sorority system, where dues often reach in the thousands of dollars, even before the extra money for exclusive formal parties and the wardrobes required to attend them. (One recent trend: Golden Goose sneakers, which cost about $500 a pair.)

The impact of family income goes beyond campus social life. Wealthier students can easily turn to private tutors when they are struggling in class, and often have built-in access to their parents’ networks, which they can turn to for jobs and internships.

“People know they want to be rich,” Mamo said. “That’s the goal in mind, it’s just a question of how realistic that is.”

Growing up in Cohasset, Massachusetts, a wealthy coastal community south of Boston, Dan Toomey knew he was well off. “You would be naive to think you weren’t born into privilege there,” he said. And he knew USC had a reputation as a haven for spoiled children, but he has seen little evidence of that.

“Everyone is always pursuing different things, doing all kinds of projects,” he said. “We’ve all been told over and over again: You’re going to be poor, you’re never going to make as much as your parents, you’re going to need to move back in with them. So we’re much more financially sensitive than perhaps other generations.”

This year, Toomey is living at the Lorenzo, which houses about 3,600 students and bills itself as the largest private student housing complex in the country — and the most luxurious. For students who share a bedroom, monthly rent can be $950 a month, but a private room in a two-bedroom apartment can cost more than $2,000. The upscale amenities are a key selling point to attract students; a private movie theater, a beach volleyball court, nightly aerobics classes and a rock climbing wall. Each apartment comes with a 46-inch flat-screen television, and the Lorenzo website boasts of “spectacular dancing waters that come to life in our Bellagio style interactive fountain.”

But not everyone is proud to call it home. Toomey said he spends far more time on campus than in the building. Tyler Mazaheri, a sophomore, signed a lease before even seeing his apartment in the Lorenzo, because it was the easiest option late last summer. He cringed when he realized it was just a few blocks away from a welfare office. Soon after he moved in, Mazaheri clashed with two of his roommates because they wanted to hire a maid to clean the apartment weekly.

“There was no way in the world I was going to do that, it was just a ridiculous thought to me,” he said. “There’s a lot that’s unnecessary there — unnecessary marble in the lobby and unnecessary cars coming out of the garage. Under what circumstances do people in college need a Corvette?”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/03/us/usc-admissions-scandal-students.html" id="60565dd9-9bdd-3b3b-aacb-71a5f92f6bbd">The New York Times</a>.

What's Life Like as a Student at USC? Depends on the Size of the Bank Account.

LOS ANGELES — Spring breaks in Bali, resort-style apartment buildings with rooftop pools and tanning beds, and regular dinners out at Nobu, where a tab for four roommates could easily stretch into four digits. This is life as a student at the University of Southern California.

Now, the college admissions bribery scheme, which has ensnared dozens of wealthy parents accused of bribing their children’s way into USC, has brought renewed attention to class divides on campus — and how different the student experience can be depending on the size of their bank account.

At a news conference in Boston on Tuesday, the U.S. attorney for the District of Massachusetts, Andrew E. Lelling, called the case the largest college admissions scandal ever prosecuted by the Justice Department.

Both coaches and private admissions counselors received millions of dollars for helping to get students admitted as athletes to Yale, Stanford and the University of Southern California, regardless of their academic or sports ability, officials said.

Along with Hollywood stars Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman, those charged included prominent business leaders, a fashion designer and a top lawyer, officials said.

The bribery ring centered around a for-profit college admissions company based in Newport Beach, California, which powerful and wealthy parents paid to help their children cheat on college entrance exams and manufacture athletic credentials, prosecutors said.

William Rick Singer, owner of the admissions company, was charged with racketeering, money laundering, obstruction of justice and conspiracy to defraud the United States. Singer created the company in 2007 officially named The Edge College &amp; Career Network but also known simply as “The Key.”

Joseph R. Bonavolonta, the special agent in charge of the Boston office of the FBI, accused those involved in the scheme of fostering “a culture of corruption and greed” that was unfair to those students who were following the rules to get into prestigious universities.

“You can’t lie and cheat to get ahead because you will get caught,” he warned.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/12/us/college-cheating-scandal.html" id="7592e151-2134-3c0d-a2ef-e0d6a7ca8b37">The New York Times</a>.

Nearly 50 Charged in College Admissions Bribery Scandal

Federal prosecutors on Tuesday charged nearly 50 people, including Hollywood actresses, wealthy business leaders and coaches at top American universities, with paying or accepting bribes to admit student applicants.

Both coaches and private admissions counselors received millions of dollars for helping to get students admitted as athletes to Yale, Stanford and University of Southern California, regardless of their academic or sports ability.

Among those charged included Hollywood actresses Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman.

Federal prosecutors on Tuesday charged dozens of people, including coaches at top universities around the country, for paying for or accepting bribes to admit student applicants.

Dozens Charged in College Admissions Bribery Scandal

The teachers won a 6 percent pay raise and caps on class sizes, which had become one of the most contentious issue between the union and district officials. The city and county will also spend money to expand services in schools, including hiring more nurses, counselors and psychologists.

The settlement came after tens of thousands of teachers marched in downtown Los Angeles and picketed outside schools for six school days, and a round of marathon negotiating sessions over the holiday weekend.

The contract still needs to be ratified by members of the union, but that approval is widely expected. Teachers are expected to be back in their classrooms Wednesday morning.

“Today is a day full of good news,” Mayor Eric Garcetti said during a news conference at City Hall on Tuesday morning, as he stood alongside Austin Beutner, superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District, and Alex Caputo-Pearl, president of United Teachers Los Angeles. “This is a good agreement; it is a historic agreement; it gets to lower class sizes; it gets to support services.”

“The strike is painful and had a cost,” the mayor added. “But there is no question to get here, the strike helped.”

The victory for the teachers’ union goes far beyond the new two-year contract.

Caputo-Pearl said the last week showed an “absolute groundswell” of support for Los Angeles’ public schools.

“We have seen over the last week something amazing happened,” Caputo-Pearl said. “We took on the idea of bargaining for the common good. Public education desperately needs attention.”

The three men declined to give specific details, but said that the county and city would pay for some services and that class sizes would be reduced incrementally in every school starting next year.

“We’re spending every nickel we have,” Beutner said. “It’s all in for schools. This is the start, not the end.”

LOS ANGELES — Los Angeles public-school teachers reached a tentative deal with school officials Tuesday to end a weeklong strike that had upended learning for more than a half million students in the nation’s second-largest public school system.

Jennifer Medina

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