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With Californias relationship to President Trump growing increasingly strained, Democratic lawmakers on Tuesday met in person with the high-profile attorney taskedwith shaping their strategy for upcoming clashes: former U.S. Atty. Gen. Eric Holder.

The visit marks the first time the Washington, D.C-based Holder has come to the state capital since he and his firm, Covington & Burling, were hired last month as independent counsel for the Legislature in anticipation of legal and policy battles with the new administration.

Holder, along with five lawyers from his firm, met separately with the Senate and Assembly Democratic caucuses. That afternoon, there wasa confab in the governors office with legislative leaders and, via telephone, stateAtty. Gen. Xavier Becerra.

Were here to talk about what are we going to do collectively, the Assembly and the Senate, to do everything within our power, within our own legal means to protect our policies, to protect the values of the people of California, Senate leader Kevin de Len said.I think it's pretty simple and straightforward.

Holder, who led the Department of Justice for sixyears under President Obama, kept his public remarks general in a brief appearance before reporters outside Gov. Jerry Browns office.

I'm here just to assist these gentlemen and the people who they serve with in trying to protect the interests of the people of California, Holder saidas he stood alongside De Len (D-Los Angeles) and Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon (D-Paramount).

When asked how he would provide such assistance, he simply answered, Well.

The visit comes as Trump has increasingly ratcheted up his rhetoric against California, asserting an unfounded theory of mass voter fraud in the state and threatening to strip the state of federal dollars for its friendly posture toward immigrants in the country illegally.

If we have to, well defund," Trump said in an interview with Fox News Bill OReilly on Sunday. "We give tremendous amounts of money to California. California in many ways is out of control, as you know.

Although Holders hiring came before Trumps inauguration, Rendon said Trumps hostile tone and string of controversial executive actions has since reinforced the need for Californialawmakers to hire outside counsel.

I think it's a better idea now than ever before, he said. "There's probably a wider scope of things that he could help us with. Ialso think a lot of the questions that we perhaps thought were going to be down the road will be in the very immediate future."

Democratic lawmakers were circumspect in describing Holders remarks delivered in the morning to state senatorson a full-day policy retreat, and at lunch for the Assembly caucus at a downtown Sacramento hotel for fear of violating attorney-client privilege.

We talked about Californias positioning, what options we have in front of us and how we can lead the nation in terms of a resistance and what we can do to fight back, Assemblyman Miguel Santiago (D-Los Angeles)said.

Assemblyman Tom Daly (D-Anaheim) described the mood of the gathering as wary of what Trump's up to.

Legislative Republicans grumbled at not having their own opportunity to meet with Holder. Assembly GOP Leader Chad Mayes (R-Yucca Valley), who previously denounced the hiring as a political stunt, was rebuffed in a request for his caucus to pose questions to Holder, although his staff did decline an offer to meet with other visiting attorneys.

The contract with Covington, which went into effect last week, caps the cost at $25,000 per month for three months. The bill will be split between the Senate and Assemblys operating budgets, and the agreement islimited to a maximum of 40 attorney hours per month.Holder has no immediate plans to return to Sacramento, legislative sources said.

Hiring outside legal help is not unprecedented for the Legislature, but it is uncommon, particularly given the breadth of issues Covington is contracted to consult on, including healthcare, environmental policy and immigration.

The latter has emerged as the top priority for lawmakers and their attorneys in the early weeks of Trumps presidency. Most of Covingtons initial work has been focused on building a strategy around so-called sanctuary cities which limit the use of local law enforcement resources in assisting federal immigration authorities after the president signed an executive order that threatenedto withhold funds from jurisdictions that act to protect those in the country illegally.

In Sacramento, lawmakers responded by fast-tracking legislation that would ramp up immigrant protections, including a bill by De Len that would prohibit state or local policefrom engaging in immigration enforcement, effectively makingCalifornia a sanctuary state. The bill was introduced less than a month after Trumps victory andbefore Holders firm was hired, but Covington attorneys have recently consulted on the measure as it speeds through the Legislature.

Other California officials have taken different approaches in the wake of Trumps order. The city of San Francisco promptly sued Trumps administration, asserting thatthe order violates states rights provisions in the U.S. Constitution. Santa Clara County also filed a lawsuit.

Becerra, Californias top lawyer, also left the door open for legal action.

We will fight anyone who wants to take away dollars that we have earned and are qualified for simply because we are unwilling to violate the Constitution under these defective executive orders,Becerra said this week.

The focus now turns to harmonizing the various reactions to the sanctuary city order. To do that, De Len has been reaching out to city and county leaders, along with Brown and Becerra,to create a unifiedstatewide response to Trumps action.

Becerra, who was in Bakersfield on Tuesday tomeetwith his Central Valley staff,farmers and farm workers, participated by telephone in Holders meeting with the governor and legislative leaders.

Participants in that afternoon meeting discussed the swirl of legal activity around another controversial executive order by Trump that restricted travel from residents of seven predominantly Muslimcountries. The travelban was stayedunder a court order, andjudges from the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments Tuesday afternoon on whether to extend that stay.

Conversation also touched on the need to ensure thatall parties the governor, attorney general and legislative leaders are on the same page as Californias policy battlewith Trump progresses.

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Former U.S. Atty. Gen. Eric Holder visits Sacramento to ...

Few attorneys who bill by the hour end up posing for pictures with their clients, or stopping and answering questions from reporters.

Which is why Tuesdays visit by Eric Holder to Sacramento was so notable.

Good morning from the state capital. Im Sacramento Bureau Chief John Myers, and yesterday was full of meetings attended by the former United States attorney general. They were private affairs, mostly confined to Holder huddling with members of the California Legislature.

HOLDERS HELP IS FOR COORDINATION, SAYS RENDON

With an entourage of attorneys from the law firm for which he now works, Holder made his way to separate private meetings with Democrats in the state Senate and Assembly.

Later on Tuesday afternoon, he paid a visit to Gov. Jerry Brown, with Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra joining by phone.

What did they talk about in terms of responding to the proposals made by President Trump and Republican leaders in Congress? Hard to say. As Melanie Mason reports, legislators were instructed that the conversations were covered by attorney-client privilege.

Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon (D-Paramount) offered this assessment: The theme was coordination.

As weve previously reported, Holders firm has a 90-day contract for $25,000 a month to advise legislators on federal policy changes. But absent from the former attorney generals client meetings on Tuesday: legislative Republicans.

Legislative Republicans grumbled about that, although the office of Assembly Republican Leader Chad Mayes (R-Yucca Valley) did decline a meeting with other attorneys in Holders firm, Covington & Burling.

Holders visit to Sacramento, though, was hardly Tuesdays biggest high-stakes discussion over the early actions of the Trump administration.

TRUMPS APPEAL TO THE U.S. 9TH CIRCUIT COURT OF APPEALS

For more than hour, three federal judges heard arguments on both sides of whether the presidents executive order suspending entry into the United States was constitutionally lawful.

The early take: There was skepticism about Trumps ban.

Even so, Judge Richard R. Clifton an appointee of President George W. Bush repeatedly noted that the moratorium on entry from the seven targeted nations affected only 15% of the worlds Muslim population.

Its worth noting the three-judge panel isnt expected to rule on the underlying constitutional issues, but whether the lower courts block of the ban should remain in place while the other questions are resolved.

In the run-up to Tuesdays big hearing, some legal observers suggested there are limits to Trumps power. In short, they said, theres not unlimited deference by federal courts to a presidents national security powers.

And in case you were looking for more information about the three appellate judges: Two were appointed by Democratic presidents; they hail from three different western states; and all are viewed somewhere in the realm of moderate judges.

MADAME SECRETARY, WELCOME TO THE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION

The fate of a presidential executive order remains in doubt, but Trump can celebrate victory in the confirmation of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos.

As expected, it all came down to a tie-breaker.

Vice President Mike Pence cast the decisive 51st vote in the Senate on Tuesday, the first time in history thats happened for a presidential Cabinet confirmation, thus putting DeVos over the top. Pence later gave her the oath of office, ending a fierce battle that saw some Republicans distance themselves from the wealthy self-styled education reformer.

Democrats held an all-night Senate floor session into the wee hours of Tuesday morning to protest the DeVos nomination, though they knew it was unlikely to sway any additional GOP senators to jump ship. Californias newest lawmaker, Sen. Kamala Harris, said in her Monday night stint on the Senate floor that DeVos has a complete lack of knowledge about special education law, among other areas.

LABOR WOES FOR THE LABOR NOMINEE

The presidents nominee for secretary of Labor, Andy Puzder, was forced to offer a mea culpa on Tuesday, admitting that he had once employed a woman in the U.S. illegally as a housekeeper.

When I learned of her status, we immediately ended her employment and offered her assistance in getting legal status, Puzder said in a statement. The fast-food company executive also said that he and his wife have paid back taxes to the IRS and the state of California.

By the way, can you remember the other prominent political figures caught in a similar predicament in years past? On the national level, there was the failed nomination of Zo Baird to be attorney general (her family hired two people to care for their kids).

Here in California, there have been two high-profile cases of candidates domestic helpers lacking legal residency. Former congressman Michael Huffingtons revelation rocked the 1994 campaign for the Senate. And in 2010, GOP gubernatorial nominee Meg Whitman admitted the same thing happened in her family, shaking up her race against Brown.

SESSIONS NOMINATION VOTE COMING, WARREN REBUKED

Trumps choice for attorney general, Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, is expected to receive a full Senate vote later today. Tuesday night, however, his nomination sparked a formal reprimand for Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren for reading from a letter once written by the late Coretta Scott King. King had written the letter opposing Sessionss failed judicial nomination three decades ago.

THE (SEE-THROUGH?) WALL WONT HAPPEN QUICKLY, SAYS KELLY

A bit of a political reality check was delivered on Tuesday by Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly: Its going to take some time to build that wall on the U.S.-Mexico border.

Were not going to be able to build a wall everywhere all at once, Kelly told a House committee. And then this nugget, which seems to undercut the presidents campaign promise: Border Patrol agents, said Kelly, prefer barriers they can see through rather than a solid wall.

NEWS ON CALIFORNIAS GOVERNORS RACE NEXT YEAR

A few nuggets of news in the still nascent 2018 race to replace Brown in the governors office.

Most notable, perhaps, is the decision by Assembly Speaker Rendon to endorse state Treasurer John Chiang in a crowded field of prominent Democrats. One prominent political analyst called Chiang the undervalued stock in the governors race.

Meanwhile, those close to Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel made it clear that the PayPal co-founder has no intention of running for the job.

And Republican outsider John Cox, a Rancho Santa Fe venture capitalist, said hes forming an exploratory committee.

As always, were tracking these and other politics and government happenings every day on our Essential Politics news feed.

TODAYS ESSENTIALS

A state lawmaker wants to prohibit state agencies, higher education institutions and public service providers from disclosing any personal information of applicants that would reveal immigration status.

With little discussion and no opposing testimony, the state Assembly Public Safety Committee on Monday passed a bill to fund immigration law resources for public defenders offices across California.

Two new candidates have joined the special election in Californias 34th congressional district, while another one has dropped out. And an endorsement in the race by the California Democratic Party sparked some challengers to issue a joint statement claiming the process was rigged.

John Burton, chair of the California Democratic Party, endorsed Rep. Keith Ellison on Tuesday to lead the Democratic National Committee. The decision could help swing the largest state delegation behind the Minnesota congressman.

Less than a year after a closely watched lawsuit challenging union fees assessed to California teachers was killed by a deadlocked U.S. Supreme Court, critics of the fees are back with a new effort.

State officials are reviewing the rules on how they spend money from Californias cap-and-trade program, with a new emphasis on sending funding to low-income communities.

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Essential Politics: Eric Holder huddles in Sacramento - Los Angeles Times

Holder joins former Vice President Biden as former Obama administration officials to back Perez over Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), the other top contender for DNC chair.

In a statement, Holder touted Perezs experience as a civil rights attorney at the Justice Department, saying he led the effort against former Sheriff Joe Arpaio in Arizona on immigration issues, stopped discriminatory voter ID laws, and successfully took on Wall Street in the aftermath of the foreclosure crisis.

Tom fights hard for what he believes in, and I have seen it firsthand, Holder said. Tom was an indispensable part of my team at the Department of Justice. It was not simply what he did, but how he did it that was impressive. He turned around the civil rights division by building an inclusive team, building partnerships inside and outside the Department, and empowering everyone with whom he worked.

Sanders took a swipe at Biden last week, casting his endorsement of Perez as a continuation of the Democratic Partys failed status-quo approach.

But few of these endorsements will matter when it comes to vote-counting in the race.

The contest will instead be decided over the weekend of Feb. 23 in Atlanta by the 447-member body of DNC members, most of whom are state party chairs, vice chairs or local officials.

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Eric Holder backs Perez in DNC chair race - The Hill

Laura Ingalls Wilder as a schoolteacher, c. 1887. (Credit: Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images)

Born on the American frontier on February 7, 1867, Laura Ingalls Wilder turned her memories of being a pioneer girl into the Little House on the Prairie books, one of the most popular childrens series of all time. Unknown to many, however, is that Wilder didnt write the books alone. On the 150th anniversary of Wilders birth, learn about her secret collaborator on the Little House on the Prairie books and her little-known connection to the Libertarian Party.

Laura Ingalls Wilder wasnt your typical debut novelist when her first book, Little House in the Big Woods, was published in 1932. She was 65 years old, decades removed from the childhood memories that provided the foundation for her colorful story of hardship, adventure and survival on the Wisconsin frontier that struck a chord in Depression-era America.

Children devoured the wholesome tales celebrating family, self-reliance, hard work and neighbor helping neighbor. There had never been anything like this for children, telling them what the pioneer daysa time in history that was still pretty recentwere like, says Christine Woodside, author of the new book Libertarians on the Prairie: Laura Ingalls Wilder, Rose Wilder Lane, and the Making of the Little House Books.

Wilder authored seven more books over the next 11 years, including Little House on the Prairie, which chronicled the exploits of the itinerant Ingalls family as they endured everything from blizzards of grasshoppers to plagues of snow as they rattled westward in their covered wagon across the wilderness and plains of the upper Midwest in the late 1800s before finally settling in the Dakota Territory.

While only the name of Laura Ingalls Wilder was emblazoned on the book covers of one of the most popular series in American literary history, scholars researching her family papers slowly came to the conclusion in the decades following her 1957 death that the beloved stories of Pa, Ma and sisters Mary, Carrie and Grace were the product of not just one womanbut two.

Unknown to readers at the time, Wilder secretly received considerable assistance from her only adult child, Rose Wilder Lane. While Wilder was an unknown author when Little House in the Big Woods was published, Lane was one of the most famous female writers in the United States, having penned novels, biographies of Charlie Chaplin and Herbert Hoover and short stories for magazines such as Harpers, Cosmopolitan and Ladies Home Journal.

Unlike her mother, however, Lane had little affinity for the hardscrabble life of the American heartland and left the familys Missouri farm as a teenager, eventually moving to San Francisco. Able to speak five languages, she traveled extensively and by the 1920s was living in Albania in a large house staffed by servants. Although she always had a tense relationship with her mother, Lane began to long for home and returned to the family farm in 1928.

Knowing a good story when she heard one, Lane prodded her mother to put her childhood experiences to paper. Wilder, however, had little literary experience outside of pieces that she wrote for rural newspapers. Lane, though, knew how to make a manuscript sing and hold chapters together, and she used her contacts in the publishing industry to sell Little House in the Big Woods.

Laura had lived the life. She had the memory. However, she didnt have any experience making a novel, Woodside tells HISTORY. Rose knew how to do that. They were each crucial to the book. Laura couldnt have written the books without Rose, and Rose couldnt have written them without Laura.

Lane not only polished her mothers prose but infused Wilders stoic outlook with the joy and optimism that connected with many readers. The authors secret collaborator also sanitized Wilders real-life experiences for an audience of children, scrubbing away the hard edges such as the death of a baby brother at 9 months of age and replacing stories of murders on the frontier with images of swimming holes and bonneted girls in dresses skipping through tall grasses and wildflowers.

Woodsides book also shines light on the political views of Wilder and her secret collaborator that were below the surface of the Little House series. Like many Americans, the Wilders were hit hard by the Great Depression. Both mother and daughter were dismayed with President Franklin D. Roosevelts New Deal and what they saw as Americans increasing dependence on the federal government. A life-long Democrat, Wilder grew disenchanted with her party and resented government agents who came to farms like hers and grilled farmers about the amount of acres they were planting.

They both hated the New Deal, Woodside says of Wilder and Lane. They thought the government was interfering in peoples lives, that individuals during the Depression were becoming very whiny and werent grabbing hold of their courage. The climate of America was really irritating them. The New Deal, for a lot of farmers and definitely the Wilders, made them change their politics.

An acquaintance of Ayn Rand and a critic of Keynesian economics, Lane would become an early theorist of the fledgling political movement that would eventually form the Libertarian Party in 1971. Neither woman set out to indoctrinate children with their political views, but their beliefs in individual freedom, free markets and limited government can be seen in the pages of the Little House books. Lane didnt explicitly use it as a political manifesto, Woodside says. She was being who she was, and they both felt strongly that the pioneers should be examples to people. It was inevitable she was going to flesh out the story by focusing things like free-market forces at work in the general store and farmers being free and independent.

While the Little House books emphasized self-reliance, at least two instances of government assistance that benefited the Ingalls family were downplayed. In addition to receiving their land in the Dakota Territory through the Homestead Act, it was the Dakota Territory that paid for the tuition of Mary Ingalls at the Iowa School for the Blind for seven years. Its an inconvenient fact, Woodside says. Rose suppressed that detail.

Ultimately, close quarters and close collaboration caused the fault lines between mother and daughter to reappear. The pair became estranged, and Lane moved to Connecticut, where in 1943 she wrote The Discovery of Freedom: Mans Struggle Against Authority, considered to be a libertarian manifesto. By World War II, Lane refused a ration card, grew and canned most of her food and deliberately curtailed her writing in order to pay as little tax as possible.

After inheriting the royalty rights to the Little House series after Wilders death in 1957, Lane donated money to the Freedom School in Colorado, a free-market academy that taught libertarian theory. When she died suddenly in 1968, future Little House royalties were bequeathed to her sole heir and political disciple, lawyer Roger Lea MacBride. In addition to becoming the first person to cast an electoral vote for a Libertarian Party ticket in 1972, MacBride was the Libertarian Party candidate for president four years later.

Both mother and daughter carried the secret of their collaboration to their graves. By the time a new generation of children were becoming exposed to Wilders stories through the Little House on the Prairie television show, on which MacBride served as a co-creator and co-producer, scholars were learning of the partnership from the womens letters and diaries. Laura and Rose were very clearly collaborators from day one on these books, Woodside says. Our understanding and celebrating that is essential to understanding why these books are so wonderful.

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Little Libertarians on the Prairie: The Hidden Politics Behind a ... - History

UPDATED (2:20 P.M.): The Texas state senator in question below turns out to be a complicated matter; it could be as many as four, three of whom are Republicans. Scroll down for new information.

Donald Trump campaigned as "the law and order" candidate, so it's not surprising that he is likely to govern as one, too.

Still, when it comes to the issue of civil-asset forfeiture laws, even the dirtiest of Dirty Harry wannabes will grant there's something really creepy about the cops and the courts having the ability to take your stuff without even charging you with anything, much less convicting you of anything.

But here's an exchange via the Twitter feed of CNBC's Steve Kopack that should send chills down the spineand bile up the windpipeof every American who gives a damn about the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and whether or not Lady Gaga included "under God" during her satanic Super Bowl incantations (she did).

Civil-asset forfeiture, which often doesn't require any sort of criminal charge, is big bucks. As Scott Shackford has noted, in 2014, the FBI alone snatched up $5 billion in seized assets. It's common for local police departments to grab whatever they can from whomever they can (often, the relatives or friends of people assumed to be drug dealers and the like). C.J. Ciaramella took a long, disturbing look at the way the state of Mississippi gilds its budget with seized assets.

Again, we're not talking about drug lords who are charged, have their assets frozen, are found guilty, and then have their assets sold at auction to pay reparations, or anything like that. The way a ton of asset forfeiture works is that the cops, or a prosecutor, or somebody else takes your stuff, claiming that it's connected to some sort of illegal activity. You may or may not be involved in anything illegal, but it's on you to get your stuff back. The likely next attorney general, Sen. Jeff Sessions, is a big fan of asset forfeiture, so it's likely to be an issue, even in states that are trying to rein it in. And it should be reined in, like a crazy horse: It's not about law and order, it's about unaccountable power.

Konni Burton, Texas ObserverThe Texas state senator referred to in the video above appears to be Konni Burton of Colleyville. Get this, too: She's a libertarian-leaning Republican and here's how she explained the situation to the Texas Observer:

"Right now, law enforcement can seize property under civil law, and it denies people their basic rights," said Burton, who sits on the Senate Criminal Justice Committee. "There's a basic problem with this process that I want to correct."...

Now it's uniting politicians who might not otherwise be willing to break bread, according to Matt Simpson, senior policy strategist for ACLU Texas.

"It's an issue that crosses party lines; it's not Democrat versus Republican or liberal versus conservative," he told the Observer, adding that he hasn't "seen a bill we wouldn't support in relation to civil asset forfeiture reform, especially some of the stronger ones."

Local police departments and other law enforcement agencies in Texas get about $42 million a year from seized assets, creating a moral hazard that even Donald Trump would recognize. And as far as ruining Burton's careeror that of anyone else involved in the effortthe president might want to consider that regular Americans understand that there's been a massive decrease in violent and property crime over the past couple of decades. These days, people are often worried about how bullying authorities are likely to act, creating a bipartisan push for all sorts of criminal-justice reform.

Hat tip: BalkansBohemia's Twitter feed.

Update: Various Texas media sources say that it's not actually clear whom Trump and Sheriff Harold Eavenson are discussing in the video clip above. Eavenson has refused to name the senator directly and now the Dallas Morning News reports that in addition to Burton, other possible senators include en. Juan "Chuy" Hinojosa (D-McAllen), Bob Hall (R-Rockwall), and Don Huffines (R-Dallas).

"He was just being emphatic that he did not agree with that senator's position," Eavenson said, adding of the senator in question, "I'm not into assassinating his character."

Eavenson will become president of the National Sheriff's Association in June. He has been active in the Sheriff's Association of Texas.

Well, sure, maybe. Then again, the fact that there are so many suspects underscores how unpopular civil-asset forfeiture is across traditional political parties.

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Updated! Meet the Libertarian-Leaning GOP Texas State Senator[s] Whose Career[s] Donald Trump Wants To Destroy - Reason (blog)