The Brief

The winds of change blew swiftly and relentlessly into this oceanside city in northern Orange County.

Not long after winning election last November, the new conservative majority of the Huntington Beach city council adopted an ordinance that prevents the rainbow LGBTQ+ flag from flying at city hall during Pride Month.

Then this summer, the council dissolved a human relations committee formed after two notorious hate crimes by white supremacists in the mid-1990s; rewrote a declaration on human dignity to eliminate any reference to hate crimes but recognize “from birth the genetic differences between male and female”; and took away the ability to select who gives the invocation before its meetings from an interfaith council also founded in the wake of those 1990s hate incidents.

Last month, council members passed a ban on government mask and vaccine mandates in a city that has none, then placed measures on the March ballot that would add the flag policy to the city charter and require voter identification at the polls.

Hardly a few weeks pass anymore without another contentious vote pushing the community to the right — and right into some of the country’s fiercest cultural battles. Claiming a mandate from voters, Huntington Beach’s conservative council majority has set out to erase any vestige of progressive governance or “wokeism.”

They’ve been cheered on by constituents including Cari Swan, a local activist who helped organize an unsuccessful recall attempt against five members of the previous city council for passing liberal policies that she considered out of step with Huntington Beach’s values.

“The left kind of brought it on themselves,” Swan said. “They were poking the bear and the bear fought back.”

But now an opposition, growing fearful of just how far and how fast the conservative council may go to reshape their community, has galvanized around their latest move to create a citizen review panel to monitor library books for sexual content.

At a tense meeting last month, public comment dragged on for five hours as hundreds of residents filled the council chambers, frequently shouting at the conservative majority for promoting a book ban. Opponents have since launched a campaign against the March ballot measures, effectively turning the election into a referendum on the council members and their vision for Huntington Beach.

“They have just come in and taken a wrecking ball to the city with all of these things they have passed,” said Carol Daus, a library volunteer who has lived in Huntington Beach for more than three decades. “Now the community is divided. There is no place for the middle.”

How did the political center fall out, even in this swing region of California where the close partisan divide might have once invited moderation instead of conflict?

Welcome to the era of backlash politics.

Lacking power at the state level — where Democrats are so dominant that they can dismiss these cultural concerns without so much as a debate — conservatives are leaning into local governance as a form of protest against liberal California.

Their efforts can also be seen in Shasta County, where far-right activists took control of the government for not doing enough to fight coronavirus pandemic mandates and then got rid of voting machines at the center of election fraud conspiracies, and in school boards across the state, which have been roiled by fights over the rights of LGBTQ+ students.

It tracks with a growing repolarization among California voters. After decades of steady gains in independent registration, the trend has undergone a sharp reversal over the past five years as more voters embrace the Democratic and Republican parties again. Surveys find an increasing number have a favorable view of their own party and an unfavorable view of the opposition.

“It almost feels like you have to overcompensate for some of the damage being done,” said Gracey Van Der Mark, the Huntington Beach council member who proposed the library book review committee. “The more radical they got to the left, the more I felt myself pulling to the right.”

Gracey Van Der Mark, one of the conservative majority on the Huntington Beach City Council, in her City Hall office on Nov. 11, 2023.

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Many residents and former officials in Huntington Beach have watched with shock and horror as the city of nearly 200,000 emerged as a leader in this movement. They emphasize that the community historically leaned conservative, but not overly partisan, and had long been on the same page about maintaining its suburban beach town vibe.

The 2020 presidential election split fairly evenly, with Donald Trump beating Joe Biden by fewer than 4,000 votes. Several Democrats were elected to the nonpartisan city council, which began taking steps that might have once seemed unthinkable, such as flying the rainbow flag for Pride Month for the first time.

The Trump era and the pandemic deeply unsettled the community, however. Huntington Beach was the site of regular protests — in support of Trump and against pandemic restrictions, occasionally violent and sometimes led by white supremacist groups, recalling its history as a magnet for skinheads in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

The unsuccessful recall effort two years ago tapped into a sense among many conservative residents that they were losing their community. Local activist Russell Neal said the then-council’s decision to fly the Pride flag exemplified how progressives encourage moral weakness to bring people under control of the government.

“The whole transformation of culture goes together as a cohesive package,” Neal said. “The fundamental form of slavery is slavery to sin and when they’re slaves to sin, presto, they’ll find themselves slaves externally.”

It’s a message that can be heard at meetings of Republican groups around town and at Calvary Chapel of the Harbour, an influential evangelical church overlooking a marina on the northern edge of Huntington Beach. The conservative council candidates campaigned from the stage there last year, with Pastor Joe Pedick telling congregants he was voting for the foursome. One of the intern pastors is running for city council next year.

“We look for those types of leaders” who will “stand up for righteousness,” Pedick said after this past Sunday’s service, where a guest speaker preached to hundreds that Planned Parenthood is the source of all wickedness in modern American culture and that Democrats are demons.

Running as a slate last year, however, the conservatives focused their platform not on cultural issues but on fighting high-density development in the city, including a state requirement to plan for more than 13,000 new units in the next eight years, as well as on reducing homelessness and crime. They swept the four open seats last November, receiving at least 12,000 votes more than their closest competition, and celebrated the results as a mandate, though with lower turnout, each won the support of less than a fifth of Huntington Beach residents.

“Our voters have no more appetite for progressive governance or the wokeism,” said City Attorney Michael Gates, a staunch conservative elected to a third term last November after campaigning with the council candidates.

So opponents are flummoxed by how much the city council focused this year on issues that never came up in the campaign. They have come to see the housing and homelessness message as a bait-and-switch — though to what end, they’re not sure. To simply undo the work of the previous council? To boost future runs for higher office? To create a laboratory of conservative policymaking that could become a playbook for other communities?

“It’s a banana republic down here,” said Dan Kalmick, one of three Democrats on the city council who regularly oppose the conservative majority. “This isn’t Republicanism. This is nihilism.”

The political divisions have consumed city government — sometimes quite literally. The conservative majority chose adjoining offices on the same hallway in city hall, booting the Democrats to the other side of the building.

Council meetings are filled with open hostility and executive staff have fled for neighboring communities. While a potential budget deficit looms, the council majority recently approved a secret $7 million settlement with a political ally who sued the city after the final day of his popular air show was canceled in 2021 due to a massive oil spill.

“That whole philosophy, you would think it would be small government and fiscal prudence because they are Republicans. But they are ones who are Republicans in name only,” said Democratic Councilmember Rhonda Bolton, who slammed the conservative majority for advancing policies such as voter ID and the library book review committee without considering how much they might cost to administer or defend in court. “What I’m seeing is Trump ideology, MAGA ideology, and in that respect, no original ideas.”

The conservative council members say they are responding to concerns raised by constituents during more than 100 town halls they held on the campaign trail.

One of their first major steps, about two months after taking office, was adopting a policy that allows only flags for the United States, California, Orange County, Huntington Beach and the military to fly on city property. Councilmember Pat Burns, who introduced the ordinance, said it was a move to unify the community behind symbols that represent everyone equally. He said he has nothing against LGBTQ+ people, but believes the rainbow flag — the only flag previously approved for display in front of city hall that was not included in the new policy — promotes divisive identity politics that are actually counterproductive to LGBTQ+ acceptance.

“They’re such a small population and why would we recognize anybody special?” Burns said, adding that it would be like him asking for an NRA, white or Christian flag in front of city hall. “We’re all marginalized in some way or victimized in some way, but we don’t get months or parades or whatever.”

Known as the Fab Four to their fans, the council majority, along with Gates, have become rock stars to local Republicans, who hooted and hollered for them at a Veterans Day ceremony on the beach.

Supporters spun off groups like HB Lady Patriots, which aims to bring a patriotic education back into Huntington Beach schools and was active in promoting the library book review proposal. Gates said he hears from officials in other communities who want to replicate their policies, including Fresno County, which recently voted to create a panel to screen children’s books in the libraries.

“We’re willing to be the tip of the spear on this,” Van Der Mark said, attributing everything the council is doing to a philosophy of fighting government overreach. “We want to make Huntington Beach the city that protects your individual liberties and freedoms.”

Gracey Van Der Mark, a Huntington Beach City Councilmember, with a book she says should be banned from children’s sections of the library in Huntington Beach Nov. 11, 2023.

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Van Der Mark’s sunny fourth-floor office at city hall is stacked with books that she finds obscene. Many of them are sex education manuals, borrowed from the Huntington Beach public library and filled with sticky notes to mark offending passages — discussions of masturbation, explanations of fetishes, images of erect penises and gay sex.

She’s particularly perturbed by a picture book called “Grandad’s Pride,” currently on order for the library, which features a drawing of a Pride parade where two men in leather are kissing in the crowd; she equates it with promoting bondage to kids. Van Der Mark also returns again and again to a page in a sex education book that describes how to use lubricant to insert a tampon if it does not fit.

“The lines are so blurred that we don’t even know where to stop and where to start,” she said. “I don’t need to learn how to stick a finger up my vagina with K-Y jelly. We survived without that kind of graphic information. And if you want it, then you go talk to your mom.”

It’s the type of sexual content that her library book review committee, which the city is in the process of establishing, could move to the adult section or prevent the library from acquiring in the first place. Though a challenge process for library books already existed — there were five in the previous five years, including one by Van Der Mark herself — she said more robust steps are necessary to protect young readers from damaging material, even if it appears within the context of an educational or creative work.

“This one page is going to stick in their brain,” she said. “We should have one area that is completely safe for all children.”

Her crusade has mobilized library supporters — the central branch, a concrete marvel with a spiraling atrium, is beloved far beyond Huntington Beach — and First Amendment groups, who sent a letter to the council in October warning that the plan would infringe on free speech. Daus, the library volunteer, worries that the vague language of the ordinance could allow the committee to impose its own morality on the entire community, especially with LGBTQ+ books.

“It’s feeling like a China or a Russia or a Hungary,” Daus said as she toured the children’s room, which has a reading area designed as a pirate ship. The sex education section had only three books on the shelf.

Among the conservative council majority, Van Der Mark seems to especially rankle the opposition. She was a divisive activist even before her election, which she winkingly acknowledges in her office with a framed wall hanging of her entry in the OC Weekly’s Scariest People of 2018 list.

That was the year Van Der Mark got kicked off two school district committees after troubling comments she had made online resurfaced. In 2017, Van Der Mark joined alt-right protestors, including some with ties to white nationalist groups, to crash a racial justice workshop in Santa Monica. Beneath a video of the incident posted by Van Der Mark, she referred to Black attendees at the meeting as “colored people” who were doing the bidding of “elderly Jewish people” there. Her YouTube account also had a playlist of Holocaust denial videos titled “Holocaust hoax?”

The comments have continued to follow Van Der Mark through her rise in local politics. This summer, as the council majority voted to eliminate the human rights committee, Democratic Councilmember Natalie Moser publicly questioned whether Van Der Mark was a Holocaust denier, leading the conservatives to censure Moser.

“She was masking a face of radical extremism and she did it to infiltrate a government institution so she could become legitimized,” said Gina Clayton-Tarvin, a liberal school board trustee who initially appointed Van Der Mark and who finished fifth in last year’s city council election. “It’s a total threat to democracy, because they are acting in ways that are quasi-fascist.”

Van Der Mark said she has never doubted the Holocaust happened; she was unfamiliar with the conspiracy theory, she said, until she spoke with one of the Jewish organizers at the racial justice workshop she crashed, whom she said sent her the hoax videos as an example.

A 49-year-old grandmother and daughter of immigrants from Ecuador and Mexico, Van Der Mark said she was largely apolitical until around 2016, when she was pulled into advocacy against the local sex education curriculum. She acknowledged that, in the early stages of her political awakening, she attended all types of rallies “to find the truth,” not necessarily aware of who she was affiliating with, but she denied harboring any racist, anti-Semitic or homophobic sentiments.

“If I would have known they were there, I might not have gone,” she said. “But I can’t regret going, because had I not gone out in search of the truth, I would not be where I am today.”

As Van Der Mark prepares to take over as mayor next month, critics worry that she will unleash even more extreme policies. Van Der Mark said she has tried to explain herself to opponents but they remain hostile, perhaps because she betrays their idea of what a Latina politician should be.

“I want to be able to offer this little safe haven that I found for my family, for other people,” she said. “The other side is trying to push conservative values out. We’re saying, ‘no, no, no, this is our city.’ We want to keep it. Why do you want to change it? If this is not a good fit for you, there are other cities that may be a good fit.”

Carol Daus outside of the library in Huntington Beach on Nov. 11, 2023.

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Feeling like strangers in a strange land, some liberals in Huntington Beach are considering leaving.

Daus and her husband have started to explore a move to nearby Long Beach or Pasadena, where a daughter lives. An incident in June when a neighbor had their rainbow flag ripped down and torn to shreds unsettled Daus.

“These are the things that just make you go, you know, do you want to live around this? Or would you rather be in a more welcoming, inclusive neighborhood?” she said. “If I wanted to live in Florida, I’d live in Florida.”

The library fight diverted her attention, though, and the housing market is tough, so now she may wait to see what happens with the March election. The campaign to defeat the proposed charter amendments has provided some comfort and motivation. While she’s not ready yet to put a sign in her yard, she is getting bolder. At a kickoff event last Saturday afternoon, where hundreds gathered at the park outside the central library, Daus ran a table soliciting people to write op-eds in the local media.

Attendees picked up lawn signs and postcards from other booths. The three Democrats on the city council spoke, as did former elected officials. Under a canopy, Shirley Dettloff, who helped write the city’s human dignity statement when she served on the council in the 1990s, signed up volunteers.

“We wanted the city to be known as a city that protected people,” Detloff said. “I was just surprised that anyone would take that on as an issue.”

At the end of the event, dozens gathered around a 33-foot-by-24-foot rainbow flag lying in the grass and chanted, “Vote no! Vote no! Vote no!” The homemade flag is a project of Pride at the Pier, an LGBTQ+ community group that formed this spring after Huntington Beach passed its flag ban. In May, demonstrators unfurled the enormous flag over the side of the city’s famed pier in protest.

Attendees pose for a portrait with a giant Pride flag after a Protect Huntington Beach event in Central Park on Nov. 11, 2023. The group formed in opposition to the new conservative majority on the Huntington Beach City Council.

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Kane Durham, one of the group’s founders, said this year has raised difficult questions for LGBTQ+ residents about whether they will continue to be welcome in Huntington Beach. He fears the council might next use the updated human dignity declaration, which states that “sex carries advantages and disadvantages that warrant separation during certain activities (i.e. sports),” to prevent trans athletes from participating in the city’s youth sports programs.

Though he does not live in Huntington Beach, Durham has become a vocal activist on behalf of other transgender and nonbinary people whom he said do not feel safe putting themselves out there publicly. For his efforts, he said he’s been doxxed and subject to online rumors calling him a pedophile.

“Too many Californians are in this blue fantasy bubble. We think that it won’t happen here, even while it is happening here,” Durham said. “There are so many people there who are frogs in a boiling pot of water.”

Months of angry council meetings have hardly swayed the Fab Four off their path. They dismiss their opponents as a vocal minority searching for relevance and reject the notion that their actions have divided the community like they accuse their predecessors of doing.

“If just who shows up to city hall’s a reflection of the city, none of us four would have been elected,” said Tony Strickland, who is finishing up his year in the rotating mayorship. “The voters have the final say.”

That will again be the case in March, the first real test for the council majority of how sustainable backlash politics can be in transforming a community.

Even some allies already seem to have grown weary of what’s happening in Huntington Beach.

Pano Frousiakis, a young Republican activist, ended his own campaign for city council last year and worked to elect his conservative rivals so they could regain control of a community that he had always considered “our little oasis in California.”

Though he’s happy with the overall direction of the council, Frousiakis concedes that “the past few months have been getting a little bit off-track.” He established a political organization this year, the HB Patriots, and is running again for city council in 2024 with a message about getting back to local quality-of-life issues.

“Unfortunately, I feel that our residents get sidelined as a result of that. I feel sidelined as a resident,” he said. “The other issues that are being talked about, that’s why I vote for president.”

It's spring break season in the U.S. — and travelers are facing long airport lines as security screeners work without pay while the Department of Homeland security is shut down.

Congressional Democrats have declined to fund the agency in an attempt to force reforms of federal immigration enforcement practices.

Wait times at major hubs in Houston and Atlanta reached two hours on Friday, while New Orleans's Louis Armstrong International Airport advised passengers to arrive at least three hours before their scheduled departures. In Philadelphia, airport officials closed three security checkpoints entirely this week because of short staffing.

On Saturday, President Trump threatened to send Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to staff airport security lanes if Democrats don't "immediately" agree to fund DHS. A bipartisan group of senators has been negotiating with the White House over immigration enforcement and ending the shutdown.

"I will move our brilliant and patriotic ICE Agents to the Airports where they will do Security like no one has ever seen before, including the immediate arrest of all Illegal Immigrants who have come into our Country," Trump posted on Truth Social. In a follow-up post he said he told ICE to "GET READY" to deploy to airports on Monday.

Why are wait times so long?

Officials say wait times are unpredictable and can fluctuate sharply as airports struggle with Transportation Security Administration staffing shortages.

TSA staffers are considered essential workers, so about 50,000 have been working without pay due to the shutdown that started Feb. 14. Last week, they missed their first full paychecks. The Department of Homeland Security says more than 300 TSA officers have quit. More than half of TSA staff in Houston called out sick and nearly a third called out in Atlanta and New Orleans last week, DHS said.

The staffing shortage comes as travel has also been disrupted by severe weather, and as schools across the country close for spring break.

Some 2.8 million people were projected to travel on U.S. airlines each day in March and April, adding up to a record 171 million passengers, according to the industry group Airlines for America.

What do officials say?

Transportation officials are warning the situation could get worse if the shutdown isn't resolved. A second missed paycheck would put even more strain on TSA workers, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy told CNN on Friday.

"If a deal isn't cut, you're going to see what's happening today look like child's play," Duffy said. "Is it still safe as you go through the airport? Yes, but it takes a lot longer because we have less agents working." He added that some smaller airports may be forced to temporarily close if more staff calls out.

In the U.K., Foreign Office officials are also warning travelers of "travel disruption" caused by "longer than usual queues at some U.S. airports," and recommended passengers check with their travel provider, airport, or airline for guidance.

On Saturday, billionaire Elon Musk weighed in with an offer to personally pay TSA staff.

"I would like to offer to pay the salaries of TSA personnel during this funding impasse that is negatively affecting the lives of so many Americans at airports throughout the country," Musk posted on X early Saturday morning.

U.S. law generally bars government employees from receiving outside compensation for their work.

Even with disruptions, travel demand is still high

On top of long security wait times and weather impacts, travel is being affected by the war in Iran, which is driving up global oil prices.

On Friday, United Airlines said it would cut some flights over the next six months after jet fuel prices doubled in recent weeks. Capacity cuts are likely to send airfares even higher, even as ticket prices are already rising, said Clint Henderson, a spokesperson for the travel website The Points Guy.

Still, he said, none of that seems to be deterring Americans from flying.

"The appetite for travel is insatiable," he said. "People seem willing to endure a lot of stuff to travel. And I don't see any signs of that decreasing."

How can travelers prepare?

Travel experts say it's not just long wait times that travelers should prepare for — it's the uncertainty.

"Every day this goes on, it's getting worse and worse and worse," Henderson said.

Here are some tips on how to prepare for upcoming air travel:

1. Know before you go

Many airport websites list estimated security wait times. That should be the first place you check to get a sense of how long lines might be, Henderson says. (TSA also estimates wait times on its website and app, but that's not being regularly updated because of the shutdown, he added.)

"Knowledge is power," Henderson said. "You should know what's going on at your local airport."

He noted there are 20 U.S. airports where security screening is done by private contractors, not the TSA — and they are not experiencing staffing shortages or long waits. Some are smaller regional airports, but the list also includes some larger hubs, including San Francisco International Airport and Kansas City International Airport.

"There's big, big, big metropolitan areas where it's not an issue at all," Henderson said.

2. Budget extra time

If you're someone who shows up at the airport when your flight starts boarding, think twice, says travel writer Chris Dong.

"I'm the type of traveler who usually arrives pretty last minute," Dong said, "but I think that that advice would not be sound for the current situation."

Even if wait times are listed as short, things can change on a dime. Dong recently flew out of John F. Kennedy Airport in New York and found the TSA PreCheck line unexpectedly closed.

"So then everyone that was funneled through the regular line, it was an extra like 20, 30 minutes," he said. "I was sweating it out because I usually arrive super last-minute. And those levels of uncertainty are just higher now with the shutdown."

3. Consider biometric screening

Henderson typically recommends signing up for TSA PreCheck or the Global Entry program to move through airport security more quickly — and to opt in to biometric screening. That has to be done in advance, and travelers also have to choose biometric screening in their airline apps.

"Make sure if that's an option that you're opted in for that, because that will save you so much agita," he said.

For those who haven't signed up in advance, there is a last-minute alternative: the private CLEAR program, which allows people to enroll at the airport. Henderson notes it's pricey — annual membership costs $209 — but that some credit card companies will refund that fee.

"For me to skip a three-hour line is probably worth the membership fee, especially if you know your credit card will pay you back for it," he said.

That said, expedited screening lanes are not always faster than regular screening, both Henderson and Dong warned. Always check what all the lanes look like when you arrive at the airport.

4. Make a plan B

If you miss a connection or your flight is canceled, be proactive about rebooking. "Have all the tools available to you in the toolbox in case things go wrong," Henderson advises.

That includes installing your airline's app on your smartphone and writing down their customer service number, so you aren't scrambling to find it.

"And then, you know, obviously have a plan B," Henderson said. "Know what other airlines fly the route that you want to take in case, you know, you missed your Delta flight and American is offering a flight you can take later that day."

He says while airlines don't generally like to rebook passengers on competitors' flights, it's worth asking. He also recommends having the information at hand to give to customer service agents, including flight number, airline and departure time.

And if an airline cancels your flight in the U.S., you're entitled to a refund, according to the Department of Transportation.
Copyright 2026 NPR

Updated March 21, 2026 at 17:36 PM ET

Robert Mueller, the former FBI director and special counsel who led the high-profile investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and the possible obstruction of justice by President Trump, died on Friday at 81.

"With deep sadness, we are sharing the news that Bob passed away," his family said in a statement Saturday shared with NPR. No cause of death was given.

Mueller had been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease four years ago, his family told The New York Times in August.

Trump, who openly despised Mueller and his investigation, celebrated his death on Saturday.

"Good, I'm glad he's dead," the president posted on social media. "He can no longer hurt innocent people!"

WilmerHale, the law firm where Mueller served as a partner, remembered Mueller as a "friend" who was "an extraordinary leader and public servant and a person of the greatest integrity."

"His service to our country, including as a decorated officer in the Marine Corps, as FBI Director, and at the Department of Justice, was exemplary and inspiring," a spokesperson for WilmerHale told NPR in a statement. "We are deeply proud that he was our partner. Our thoughts are with Bob's family and loved ones during this time."

Former President Barack Obama on Saturday called Mueller "one of the finest directors in the history of the FBI, transforming the bureau after 9/11 and saving countless lives."

"But it was his relentless commitment to the rule of law and his unwavering belief in our bedrock values that made him one of the most respected public servants of our time," Obama wrote on social media. "Michelle and I send our condolences to Bob's family, and everyone who knew and admired him."

Path to public service

Born on Aug. 7, 1944 in New York City, Mueller was raised in Philadelphia and graduated from Princeton University in 1966. He received a master's degree in international relations from New York University.

Mueller, throughout his career, ran toward tough assignments. Following the lead of a classmate at Princeton, Mueller enrolled in the Marines and served in the Vietnam war. He earned the Bronze Star for rescuing a colleague. Mueller said he felt compelled to serve during that conflict, an idea he returned to throughout his life.

Law professor and former Justice Department lawyer Rory Little knew Mueller for many years.

"Bob is kind of a straight arrow, you know, wounded in Vietnam," Little said. "You keep wanting to hunt for where is the crack in that façade — 'Where is the real Bob Mueller?' — and after a while you begin to realize that's the real Bob Mueller. He is exactly who he appears to be. This kind of sour-faced, not a lot of humor, sort of all-business guy. That's him."

But with his closest friends, Mueller let down his guard. They teased him — saying Mueller would have made an excellent drill instructor on Parris Island, where Marine recruits are trained.

Instead, Mueller went to law school at the University of Virginia. He joined the Justice Department in 1976. There, he prosecuted crimes, big and small, for U.S. attorneys in San Francisco and Boston. He was a partner at Hale and Dorr, a Boston law firm now known as WilmerHale.

He later became a senior litigator prosecuting homicides at the U.S. attorney's office in Washington, D.C.

Head of the FBI

In 2001, President George W. Bush nominated him to serve as the director of the FBI. Mueller was sworn in a week before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

"I had been a prosecutor before, so I anticipated spending time on public corruption cases and narcotics cases and bank robberies, and the like. And Sept. 11th changed all of that," Mueller told NPR during an interview in 2013.

He shifted the bureau's attention to fighting terrorism. He staffed up the headquarters in Washington. He pushed those agents to try to predict crimes and to act before another tragedy hit.

"He directed and implemented what is arguably the most significant changes in the FBI's 105-year history," said his former FBI deputy, John Pistole.

Along the way, Mueller drew some criticism when his agents erred. During the investigation of the deadly anthrax attacks, the bureau focused on the wrong man as its lead suspect.

Mueller left the bureau in 2013.

Return to the national spotlight

After Trump fired FBI Director James Comey, Mueller in May 2017 was appointed by then Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein as special counsel to oversee the probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 election and possible connections to Trump associates.

Trump called the investigation "a witch hunt" and Republicans in Congress started to attack the investigators.

When then the investigation eventually concluded in March 2019 with the more than 400-page "Mueller report," the special counsel said the investigation did not establish that Trump's campaign or associates colluded with the Russian government to influence the 2016 election. The report did not take a position on whether Trump obstructed justice.

Mueller said the report spoke for itself. But Democrats wanted more and insisted he testify. A reluctant witness, Mueller once again fulfilled his duty. He was visibly older than at the time of his appointment and kept his testimony restrained.

He said Justice Department guidelines would not allow him to charge a sitting president with criminal wrongdoing. But he also refused to exonerate Trump.

"If we had had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so," Mueller later told Congress.

In the end, the team charged 37 people and entities, including former campaign chair Paul Manafort, national security adviser Michael Flynn and 25 Russians.

Trump went on to grant clemency to or back away from criminal cases against many of the people Mueller's investigators had charged.

Copyright 2026 NPR

At the Koreatown Senior and Community Center, people were used to seeing Keum-soon Lee arrive early. When she didn’t show up for the 11 a.m. group harmonica class at the center last Friday, people took notice. 

“She would always be there first,” said conductor Eun-young Kim. “If she couldn’t come, she would tell me ahead of time. This time, I didn’t receive any messages from her. I thought, something isn’t right.”

Kim tried calling and sending messages. She didn’t get a response.

Members of the center later learned that Lee, 73, was critically injured in a hit-and-run crash while biking home in Koreatown after attending early morning prayer at her church. She died in a hospital March 13 from her injuries, according to the Los Angeles Police Department.

“I was shocked,” said Jin-soon Baek, who has played with Lee for years. “We’ve been friends for a long time. We ate together, practiced together. She was like a sibling to me.

“She was so hardworking. Always the first one there to sign in for class. She’d walk ahead of me and I’d follow behind. That’s how it always was.”

Baek, who is in her 80s, said the two also shared something more personal: Both had cancer.

“I had cancer years ago, and she was going through treatment recently,” Baek said. “We understood each other.”

In January, Lee played with the harmonica ensemble at an LA Kings game. Lee spoke with a journalist about undergoing surgery and chemotherapy, and what the group meant to her. 

“I think I’ve almost fully recovered,” Lee told journalist Chase Karng at the hockey game. “Even while receiving chemotherapy, I felt encouraged when I heard that I could perform here.”

At the Koreatown Senior and Community Center, people were used to seeing Keum-soon Lee arrive early. When she didn’t show up for the 11 a.m. group harmonica class at the center last Friday, people took notice.

Lee was born in 1952 in South Korea and immigrated to the United States in 1998. She was an elder at Saehan Presbyterian Church in Pico Union and is survived by her husband, Sang-rae Lee, and son, Young-jo Lee.

The senior center, where Lee was a fixture and known as a reliable friend, has designated March 20 as a day of mourning.

On Friday, Lee’s church held a funeral service, where members of the harmonica ensemble performed the hymn, “Nearer My God to Thee,” in her memory.

“I usually don’t attend funeral services, but I had to come for hers,” said Alice Kim. “Whenever I came to church, I would see her watering the grass, bent over, and she would smile and say, ‘You’re here, Alice,’ and hand me the Sunday bulletin.”

In her eulogy, elder Gyu-sook Lee said the sudden loss has hit the congregation hard.

“She always greeted everyone with a warm smile,” she said. “She was the kind of person who always stepped forward first to do the hard work that no one else wanted to do. And when she took something on, she saw it through to the end.”

At the Koreatown Senior and Community Center, people were used to seeing Keum-soon Lee arrive early. When she didn’t show up for the 11 a.m. group harmonica class at the center last Friday, people took notice.

“She still had so many years ahead of her,” Baek said. “She was younger than us. Full of hope. It feels like it should have been me instead.”

According to police, Lee was riding through a crosswalk when a white Dodge Ram truck turning right struck her around 6:40 a.m. near Olympic Boulevard and Vermont Avenue. The driver briefly stopped, then drove away, authorities said.

Investigators found the truck and are looking into whether the driver was impaired on drugs or alcohol. The truck was seized and there was no information about the driver.

Kim, the conductor, said Lee was the first person to reach out to her when she started to lead the ensemble in September. 

“She sent me a message saying thank you for coming,” Kim said. “She was such a special person to me.” 

At Friday’s service, speaker after speaker described Lee as someone who was a light in every community she was part of. 

“The way she served the church behind the scenes became a lesson in faith for all of us. There isn’t a single part of this church that hasn’t felt her touch. Her warmth, her love, her dedication — I can still feel it,” Gyu-sook Lee said.

When Gilbert Lindsay became the first Black person elected to Los Angeles City Council in 1963, it gave the residents of the predominantly Black District 9 someone who understood the challenges they faced living in South Central. 

This area was the center of Black political power in LA because it was one of the few places in the city Black people were allowed to live and thrive due, in part, to housing restrictions. For the next 63 years, voters in this district — which includes historic South Central, Exposition Park and a small portion of downtown Los Angeles — consecutively chose a Black representative. 

That will end with Curren D. Price Jr., the current District 9 councilmember who can’t run again due to term limits. 

Twelve candidates announced campaigns in February to replace Price. Of them, six candidates have qualified to be on the June 2 primary election ballot, none of whom are Black. They include: Estuardo Mazariegos, Elmer Roldan, Jorge Hernandez Rosas, Jorge Nuño, Martha Sánchez and Jose Ugarte. 

The list is a reflection of the demographic shift of the area, but candidates also told The LA Local that it shows the strength of the district’s Black-Latino political coalition. And with the civil rights gains since the 1960s, while some locals are concerned that issues facing Black voters won’t get the attention they need, others who live in the district said they’re less concerned with what their representative looks like. Instead, they said they want someone who listens and gets things done. 

“As long as you do good in the community, we’re going to be happy,” said Dennis Anya, who works on Central Avenue and has lived in the district for nearly 40 years.

What the demographic shifts in District 9 mean for the June election

The upcoming election comes as the demographics have changed in District 9 and South LA. The Black population in South Los Angeles was 81% in 1965, according to a special census survey from November 1965 of South and East LA. 

As of 2021, District 9, specifically, is about 78% Latino and 13% Black, according to LA City Council population demographic data taken that year as part of a redistricting effort. 

Officials have predicted the district’s shift for years. Former City Councilmembers Kevin De León and Nury Martinez discussed the district’s future in the leaked 2021 audio — checkered with racist remarks — that the LA Times reported in 2022.“This will be [Price’s] last four years,” De Leon said at one point in the conversation, the transcript of which the LA Times published in full. “That eventually becomes a Latino seat.” 

Erin Aubry Kaplan, a writer and columnist who traces her family’s roots to South Central, told The LA Local that because District 9 has historically voted for a Black candidate, there is some anxiety amongst Black voters about losing Black representation in Los Angeles. 

“I would hope that whoever wins, will carry the interest of Black folk forward,” she said.

Manuel Pastor, a USC professor and co-author of “South Central Dreams: Finding Home and Community in South LA,” told The LA Local that traditionally, voters are older. While District 9 is now home to a younger, immigrant community, they may not vote at the same rate as older generations, and undocumented residents are ineligible to vote.  

Pastor said it’s likely for this reason that the current District 9 candidates are not emphasizing being Latino but are modeling their campaigns after other city leaders and focusing on Black-Latino solidarity. 

“Just because the demographics have changed, doesn’t mean that the voting population has changed,” Pastor said.  

Here’s what the candidates say about the transformation of District 9

Chris Martin, one of the two Black candidates who campaigned for the seat but did not qualify for the ballot, said he believes the city’s Black elected officials should have supported Black candidates in the race. Martin said he will challenge the city clerk’s decision on his nomination petition in court. 

“The story of Black political power in the city of Los Angeles is dying,” Martin said. “I felt like I had a good chance of keeping it alive.” 

When Gilbert Lindsay became the first Black person elected to Los Angeles City Council in 1963, it gave the residents of the predominantly Black District 9 someone who understood the challenges they faced living in South Central.

Michelle Washington, the other Black candidate who also did not qualify, did not respond to a request for comment.Price, the current District 9 councilmember, endorsed his deputy Jose Ugarte in the race and wrote in a statement that this election is about solidarity. 

“As a Black man who has served a majority-Latino district, I know that progress in South Central has always come from Black and Brown families moving forward together,” Price wrote. “We’ve had to fight harder for housing, safety, opportunity and the basic investments every neighborhood deserves. And when we’ve made gains, it’s because we stood united.”  

Five of the six candidates who qualified for the ballot told The LA Local that not having a Black candidate on the ballot doesn’t diminish the place of the district’s Black community. (Candidate Jorge Hernandez Rosas did not return requests for comment.) 

“It has always been a Black community and will always be a Black community. This isn’t about a passing of the baton or one community taking over another. It’s about building a solidarity movement,” Estuardo Mazariegos said. 

Elmer Roldan, who carries endorsements from LA Mayor Karen Bass and City Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson, said the district needs a councilmember who won’t leave anyone behind.“We have to avoid at all costs contributing to Black erasure and Black displacement,” Roldan said.

Ugarte said that the major quality of life problems — like dirty streets and broken street lights — affecting the neighborhood’s Black and brown communities haven’t changed since he was a child living in the district. 

“The same issues are still here,” he said. 

Here’s what happens next

If you haven’t registered to vote and you want to receive a vote-by-mail ballot, you must register to vote by May 18.

Results from the primary election will be certified by July 2. If no candidate receives more than 50% of the vote, the top two candidates will move on to the general election on Nov. 3, according to the City Clerk’s website. 

The winner of District 9 will begin a four-year term Dec. 14.