Addiction, mental health agency eviscerated under Trump

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration’s plan to revamp the entire Health and Human Services Department, which Congress has rejected, has nevertheless led to the gutting of a 33-year-old agency that had been leading the nation’s response to the drug and mental health response epidemic.

Since February, staffing at the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration has shrunk by more than half to about 400 people, according to multiple sources. Many of its duties, assigned by Congress, have been given to a sister agency that primarily focuses on primary care, not substance use and mental health.

The damage to the agency, described in interviews with congressional staffers, former workers and health advocates, appears to line up with the Trump administration’s plan to reorganize the department, including the absorption of a much leaner SAMHSA and other subagencies into a newly created “Administration for a Healthy America.” That’s after Congress rejected such a plan as committees put together fiscal 2026 spending bills that have yet to become law.

The changes have raised concerns among lawmakers and activists who say the administration is upending the agency meant to lead the response to the substance use and mental health crises facing the United States.

—CQ Roll Call

After outburst, Katie Porter’s support in the California governor’s race slips, new poll shows

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — A new poll shows that former Orange County Rep. Katie Porter’s support in the 2026 governor’s race dropped after she tangled with a television reporter during a heated interview in October, an incident that rival candidates used to question her temperament.

Porter was the clear front-runner over the summer, but by late October she dropped behind Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, a Republican, according to a poll released Friday by the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies and co-sponsored by the Los Angeles Times.

Still, nearly half of the registered voters surveyed remain undecided, evidence that few Californians are paying attention to a race that remains wide open and was eclipsed in recent months by the costly and successful congressional redistricting battle that became a referendum on President Donald Trump. Porter remains the most favored Democratic candidate, which is significant in a state that has not elected a Republican governor since 2006.

“She’s the leading Democrat among the various ones that are in there right now,” said Mark DiCamillo, director of the poll. “But it’s because nobody really on the Democratic side has really jumped out of the pack. It’s kind of a political vacuum at the moment.”

—Los Angeles Times

Hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans, many in South Florida, lose TPS after Friday

MIAMI — Hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans living in the United States will lose temporary protected status at the end of the day Friday, leaving many of them vulnerable to deportation to a homeland in extreme turmoil.

Losing the protection: a group of about 268,000 Venezuelans who became eligible for TPS in March 2021 under the Biden administration.

The loss of TPS means that large swaths of the Venezuelan community will find themselves without a legal immigration status or work authorization at a time when the U.S. is weighing whether to attack targets in Venezuela. The Trump administration has been blowing up boats in the Caribbean and Latin America’s Pacific coast, claiming they are carrying drugs.

Venezuelans left without TPS may now be forced to return to a country plunged in a humanitarian crisis and economic turbulence, exacerbated by political repression — and now also facing the possibility of war with the world’s largest military superpower.

—Miami Herald

Opponents of Alaska's ranked choice voting say they have gathered 48,000 signatures in effort to repeal it

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — A group seeking to repeal Alaska’s ranked choice voting and open primary system says it has gathered enough signatures to put the repeal question on the 2026 ballot.

The group formed after the 2024 election, when a similar effort narrowly failed to pass.

It began gathering signatures in February, looking to collect more than 34,000 signatures from three-quarters of state House districts.

Supporters of the repeal effort now say they have gathered more than 48,000 signatures. Once they’re submitted to the Division of Elections, state workers will review the signatures to ensure they come from registered Alaska voters, were collected according to state laws, and meet the geographic distribution requirements. If approved by the state Division of Elections, the repeal question will appear on the 2026 ballot.

—Anchorage Daily News

Ukraine in ‘positive’ talks with US on missiles, ambassador says

Ukraine Ambassador Olha Stefanishyna said her country is engaged in “positive” talks about buying Tomahawk missiles and other long-range weaponry, even after President Donald Trump signaled he didn’t want to send them to the country.

“The discussion is still ongoing but we have a lot of delegations working to scale up the available financial resources to procure more military capabilities from the U.S.,” Stefanishyna said in an interview with Bloomberg TV’s Balance of Power.

“It is not only Tomahawks but different types of other long-range and short-range missiles and I can only say that it’s rather positive,” she said.

Stefanishyna, a former lawyer who oversaw Ukraine’s push to boost European and Euro-Atlantic integration, became Ukraine’s ambassador in Washington a little more than two months ago. One of her top tasks was to strengthen the relationship with Trump, who has sometimes been critical of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and once called him a “dictator.”

—Bloomberg News