California’s potential to lead a national Democratic comeback was on full display as party leaders from across the country recently gathered in downtown Los Angeles.
But is the party ready to bet on the Golden State?
Appearances at the Democratic National Committee meeting by the state’s most prominent Democrats, former Vice President Kamala Harris and Gov. Gavin Newsom, crystallized the peril and promise of California’s appeal. Harris failed to beat a politically wounded Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential race and Newsom, now among President Trump’s most celebrated critics, is considered a top Democratic contender to replace the Republican president in the White House in 2028.
California policies on divisive issues such as providing expanded access to government-sponsored healthcare, aiding undocumented immigrants and supporting LGBTQ+ rights continually serve as a Rorschach test for the nation’s polarized electorate, providing comfort to progressives and ammunition for Republican attack ads.
“California is like your cool cousin that comes for the holidays who is intriguing and glamorous, but who might not fit in with the family year-round,” said Elizabeth Ashford, a veteran Democratic strategist who worked for former Govs. Jerry Brown and Arnold Schwarzenegger and Harris when she was the state’s attorney general.
Newsom, in particular, is quick to boast about California being home to the world’s fourth-largest economy, a billion-dollar agricultural industry and economic and cultural powerhouses in Hollywood and the Silicon Valley. Critics, Trump chief among them, paint the state as a dystopian hellhole — littered with homeless encampments and lawlessness, and plagued by high taxes and an even higher cost of living.
Only two Californians have been elected president, Republicans Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon. But that was generations ago, and Harris and Newsom are considering bids to end the decades-long drought in 2028. Both seized the moment by courting party leaders and activists during the three-day winter meeting of the Democratic National Committee that ended Saturday.
Harris, speaking to committee members and guests Friday, said the party’s victories in state elections across the nation in November reflect voters’ agitation about the impacts of Trump’s policies, notably affordability and healthcare costs. But she argued that “both parties have failed to hold the public’s trust.”
“So as we plan for what comes after this administration, we cannot afford to be nostalgic for what was, in fact, a flawed status quo, and a system that failed so many of you,” said Harris, who was criticized after her presidential campaign for not focusing enough on kitchen table issues, including the increasing financial strains faced by Americans.
While Harris, who ruled out running for governor earlier this year, did not address whether she would make another bid for the White House in 2028, she argued that the party needed to be introspective about its future.
“We need to answer the question, what comes next for our party and our democracy, and in so doing, we must be honest that for so many, the American dream has become more of a myth than a reality,” she said.
Many of the party leaders who spoke at the gathering focused on California’s possible role in determining control of Congress after voters in November approved Proposition 50, a rare mid-decade redrawing of congressional districts in an effort to boost the number of Democrats in the state’s congressional delegation in the 2026 election.
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass rallied the crowd by reminding them that Democrats took back the U.S. House of Representatives during Trump’s first term and predicted the state would be critical in next year’s midterm elections.
Mayor Karen Bass speaks at the Democratic National Committee Winter Meeting at the InterContinental Hotel in downtown Los Angeles on Friday.
(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)
Newsom, who championed Proposition 50, basked in that victory when he strode through the hotel’s corridors at the DNC meeting the day before, stopping every few feet to talk to committee members, shake their hands and take selfies.
“There’s just a sense of optimism here,” Newsom said.
Democratic candidates in New Jersey and Virginia also won races by a significant margin last month which, party leaders say, were all telltale signs of growing voter dissatisfaction with Trump and Washington’s Republican leadership.
“The party, more broadly, got their sea legs back, and they’re winning,” Newsom said. “And winning solves a lot of problems.”
Louisiana committee member Katie Darling teared up as she watched fellow Democrats flock to Newsom.
“He really is trying to bring people together during a very difficult time,” said Darling, who grew up in Sacramento in a Republican household. “He gets a lot of pushback for talking to and working with Republicans, but when he does that, I see him talking to my mom and dad who I love, who I vehemently disagree with politically. … I do think that we need to talk to each other to move the country forward.”
Gov. Gavin Newsom speaks as his wife Jennifer Siebel Newsom looks on during an election night gathering at the California Democratic Party headquarters on November 04, 2025 in Sacramento.
(Justin Sullivan / Getty Images)
Darling said she listens to Newsom’s podcast, where his choice of guests, including the late Charlie Kirk, and his comments on the show that transgender athletes taking part in women’s sports is “deeply unfair” have drawn outrage from some on the left.
Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, another potential 2028 presidential candidate whose family has historically supported Newsom, was also reportedly on site Thursday, holding closed-door meetings. And former Transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg, also a possible White House contender, was in Los Angeles on Thursday, appearing on Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show and holding meetings.
Corrin Rankin, chair of the California Republican Party, cast the DNC meetings in L.A. as “anti-Trump sessions” and pointed to the homeless encampments on Skid Row, just blocks from where committee members gathered.
“We need accountability and solutions that actually get people off the streets, make communities safer and life more affordable,” Rankin said.
Elected officials from across the nation are drawn to California because of its wellspring of wealthy political donors. The state was the largest source of contributions to the campaign committees of Trump and Harris during the 2024 presidential contest, contributing nearly a quarter of a billion dollars, according to the nonpartisan, nonprofit organization Open Secrets, which tracks electoral finances.
While the DNC gathering focused mostly on mundane internal business, the gathering of party leaders attracted liberal groups seeking to raise money and draw attention to their causes.
Actor Jane Fonda and comedian Nikki Glaser headlined an event aimed at increasing the minimum wage at the Three Clubs cocktail bar in Hollywood. California already has among the highest minimum wages in the nation; one of the organizers of the event is campaigning to increase the rate to $30 per hour in some California counties.
“The affordability crisis is pushing millions of Americans to the edge, and no democracy can survive when people who work full time cannot afford basic necessities,” Fonda said prior to the event. “Raising wages is one of the most powerful ways to give families stability and hope.”
But California’s liberal policies have been viewed as a liability for Democrats elsewhere, where issues such as transgender rights and providing healthcare for undocumented immigrants have not been warmly received by some blue-collar workers who once formed the party’s base.
Trump capitalized on that disconnect in the closing months of the 2024 presidential contest, when his campaign aired ads that highlighted Harris’ support of transgender rights, including taxpayer-funded gender-affirming surgery for inmates.
“Kamala is for they/them, President Trump is for you,” the commercial stated. The ad aired more than 30,000 times in swing states in the fall, notably during football games and NASCAR races.
“Kamala had 99 problems. California wasn’t one of them,” said John Podesta, a veteran Democratic strategist who served a senior advisor to former President Biden, counselor to former President Obama and White House chief of staff for former President Clinton.
He disputed the argument that California, whether through its policies or candidates, will impact Democrats’ chances, arguing there’s a broader disconnect between the party and its voters.
“This sense that Democrats lost touch with the middle class and the poor in favor of the cultural elite is a real problem,” said Podesta. “My shorthand is, we used to be the party of the factory floor, and now we’re the party of the faculty lounge. That’s not a California problem. It’s an elitist problem.”
While Podesta isn’t backing anyone yet in the 2028 presidential contest, he praised Newsom for his efforts to not only buck Trump but the “leftist extremists” in the Democratic party.
The narrative of Californians being out of touch with many Americans has been exacerbated this year during the state’s battles with the Trump administration over immigration, climate change, water and artificial intelligence policy. But Newsom and committee members argued that the state has been at the vanguard of where the nation will eventually head.
“I am very proud of California. It’s a state that’s not just about growth, it’s about inclusion,” the governor said, before ticking off a list of California initiatives, including low-priced insulin and higher minimum wages. “So much of the policy that’s coming out of the state of California promotes not just promise, but policy direction that I think is really important for the party.”
Reporting from Sacramento — In a Time Life book titled “The Indians of California,” there’s a passage that probably isn’t taught to schoolchildren studying our not-so-golden state’s checkered history.
It reads:
“One old Pomo woman looked on in horror as two whites impaled a little girl on the bayonets of their guns and tossed the body in the water. [She] saw a little boy and a mother and baby put to death in similar fashion. One man was strung up by a noose and a large fire built under him….”
That happened on what soon became known as Bloody Island at Clear Lake, 90 miles north of San Francisco.
There’s a historical marker that reads: “On this island in 1850, U.S. soldiers nearly annihilated all its inhabitants for the murder of two white men. Doubt exists of these Indians’ guilt.”
There’s no doubt two white ranchers were killed by a handful of Indians. The ranchers had enslaved, tortured and starved the Indians. They were planning to force-march the “surplus” — those unfit or unneeded for ranch labor — to Sutter’s Fort in the Sacramento Valley 100 miles away. A final straw was when the ranchers captured the chief’s young wife and forced her to live with them.
After the chief and some buddies killed the two ranchers, the U.S. Army retaliated by massacring much of the Pomo tribe. The commander wrote his general: “The number killed I confidently report at not less than 60, and doubt little that it extended to 100 and upwards.”
Technically, state government wasn’t the assassin at Clear Lake. The U.S. Cavalry was. California was still four months short of official statehood. But the carnage unquestionably reflected the prevailing California political sentiment.
The next January, California’s first elected governor, Peter Burnett, declared in his State of the State address: “That a war of extermination will continue to be waged between the two races until the Indian race becomes extinct must be expected.”
In the 1850s, the Legislature appropriated $1.29 million to wage militia war against California’s Native Americans. Some of that money was used to pay bounties for body parts — 25 cents per scalp, up to $5 for a whole head.
California’s indigenous population exceeded 200,000 in 1800, but plummeted to around 15,000 by 1900.
“It’s called a genocide,” Gavin Newsom said at a ceremony with Native American leaders along the Sacramento River in 103-degree heat. “That’s what it was. A genocide. No other way to describe it and that’s the way it needs to be described in the history books….
“You have to call things what they are…. We allowed vigilantes. We organized militias. We funded them. We reimbursed them and we got the federal government to make us whole. That was genocide….
“And so,” he concluded, “I’m here to say the following: I’m sorry on behalf of the state of California.”
OK, but so what? Why now? And what good does it do?
For starters, why not?
It does mean that California’s government finally acknowledges that a significant number of the state’s early elected officials and pioneer citizens were a bunch of greedy, bigoted thugs. It’s healthy to admit that.
We’ve never been reluctant to demand that Southern whites face up to their shameful history of enslaving, segregating and lynching African Americans.
“It’s definitely overdue,” Newsom senior advisor Daniel Zingale replied when I asked what prompted the governor’s apology. “It’s the kind of thing he wanted to address early on. It’s on his list of core values.”
Another thing it does: It makes the Democratic governor lots of wealthy friends who run tribal casinos and have vaults full of potential campaign donations when he eventually runs for president.
Actually, I figure, most California voters partially apologized in 1998 and 2000 by allowing tribes to build Vegas-style casinos on their rural reservations. There are now 64 casinos operated by 62 tribes.
No one seems to know — at least publicly — how much in winnings they pull in each year. But it’s in the many billions of dollars.
The governor’s apology apparently means a lot personally to Native American leaders.
“It’s instrumental,” says Assemblyman James Ramos (D-Highland), the first California Indian elected to the Legislature. “Sometimes local elected officials don’t really believe what happened to us. It’s just ‘our story.’ So having the leader of the state of California come out and give an apology, it’s instrumental.”
Ramos, who grew up on the San Manuel Indian Reservation, talks about the “Battle of 1866.” White militia forces swarmed into the San Bernardino Mountains to clear out the Indians. His great-great-grandfather, Ramos says, saved the last 30 tribal members and founded the San Manuel reservation in the valley.
“There’s the same story of genocide over gold and logging throughout the state,” he says. “Tribes were pretty much annihilated.”
Now California has the largest American Indian population in the country — around 723,000.
This state, of course, also has a bigoted, greedy history toward Asians. For generations, Japanese immigrants were barred from owning property. The Chinese couldn’t legally migrate here at all.
But California Indians were the only ones systematically killed with Sacramento’s financial support.
If Newsom is ever elected president, he can offer the nation’s apology for all the atrocities inflicted on Native Americans by European invaders — including at the Trail of Tears, Wounded Knee and Bloody Island.
For most American infants, the hepatitis B shot comes just before their first bath, in the blur of pokes, prods and pictures that attend a 21st century hospital delivery.
But as of this week, thousands of newborns across the U.S. will no longer receive the initial inoculation for hepatitis B — the first in a litany of childhood vaccinations and the top defense against one of the world’s deadliest cancers.
On Dec. 5, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s powerful vaccine advisory panel voted to nix the decades-old birth-dose recommendation.
The change was pushed by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his “Make America Healthy Again” movement, which has long sought to rewrite the CDC’s childhood vaccine schedule and unwind state immunization requirements for kindergarten.
California officials have vowed to keep the state’s current guidelines in place, but the federal changes could threaten vaccine coverage by some insurers and public benefits programs, along with broader reverberations.
“It’s a gateway,” said Jessica Malaty Rivera, an infectious disease epidemiologist in Los Angeles. “It’s not just hepatitis B — it’s chipping away at the entire schedule.”
Democratic-led states and blue-chip insurance companies have scrambled to shore up access. California joined Hawaii, Oregon and Washington in forming the West Coast Health Alliance to maintain uniform public policy on vaccines in the face of official “mis- and dis-information.”
“Universal hepatitis B vaccinations at birth save lives, and walking away from this science is reckless,” California Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a statement. “The Trump administration’s ideological politics continue to drive increasingly high costs — for parents, for newborns, and for our entire public-health system.”
The issue is also already tied up in court.
On Tuesday, the Supreme Court sent a lawsuit over New York’s vaccine rules back to the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for review, signaling skepticism about the stringent shots-for-school requirements pioneered in California. On Friday, public health officials in Florida appeared poised to ax their schools’ hepatitis B immunization requirement, along with shots for chickenpox, a dozen strains of bacterial pneumonia and the longtime leading cause of deadly meningitis.
Boosters of the hep B change said it replaces impersonal prescriptions with “shared clinical decision-making” about whether and how to vaccinate, while preserving the more stringent recommendation for children of infected mothers and those whose status is unknown.
Critics say families were always free to decline the vaccine, as about 20% did nationwide in 2020, according to data published by the CDC. It’s the only shot on the schedule that children on Medicaid receive at the same rate as those with private insurance.
Rather than improve informed consent, critics say the CDC committee’s decision and the splashy public fight leading up to it have depressed vaccination rates, even among children of infected mothers.
“Hepatitis B is the most vulnerable vaccine in the schedule,” said Dr. Chari Cohen, president of the Hepatitis B Foundation. “The message we’re hearing from pediatricians and gynecologists is parents are making it clear that they don’t want their baby to get the birth dose, they don’t want their baby to get the vaccine.”
Much of that vulnerability has to do with timing: The first dose is given within hours of birth, while symptoms of the disease might not show up for decades.
“The whole Day One thing really messes with people,” Rivera said. “They think, ‘This is my perfect fresh baby and I don’t want to put anything inside of them.’ ”
U.S. surgeon general nominee Casey Means called the universal birth dose recommendation “absolute insanity,” saying in a post on X last year that it should “make every American pause and question the healthcare system’s mandates.”
“The disease is transmitted through needles and sex exclusively,” she said. “There is no benefit to the baby or the wider population for a child to get this vaccine who is not at risk for sexual or IV transmission. There is only risk.”
In fact, at least half of transmission occurs from mother to child, typically at birth. A smaller percentage of babies get the disease by sharing food, nail clippers or other common household items with their fathers, grandparents or day-care teachers. Because infections are often asymptomatic, most don’t know they have the virus, and at least 15% of pregnant women in the U.S. aren’t tested for the disease, experts said.
Infants who contract hepatitis B are overwhelmingly likely to develop chronic hepatitis, leading to liver cancer or cirrhosis in midlife. The vaccine, by contrast, is far less likely than those for flu or chickenpox to cause even minor reactions, such as fever.
“We’ve given 50 billion doses of the hepatitis B vaccine and we’ve not seen signals that make us concerned,” said Dr. Su Wang, medical director of Viral Hepatitis Programs and the Center for Asian Health at the Cooperman Barnabas Medical Center in New Jersey, who lives with the disease.
Still, “sex and drugs” remains a popular talking point, not only with Kennedy allies in Washington and Atlanta, but among many prominent Los Angeles pediatricians.
“It sets up on Day One this mentality of, ‘I don’t necessarily agree with this, so what else do I not agree with?’” said Dr. Joel Warsh, a Studio City pediatrician and MAHA luminary, whose recent book “Between a Shot and a Hard Place” is aimed at vaccine-hesitant families.
Hepatitis B also disproportionately affects immigrant communities, further stigmatizing an illness that first entered the mainstream consciousness as an early proxy for HIV infection in the 1980s, before it was fully understood.
At the committee meeting last week, member Dr. Evelyn Griffin called illegal immigration the “elephant in the room” in the birth dose debate.
The move comes as post-pandemic wellness culture has supercharged vaccine hesitancy, expanding objections from a long-debunked link between the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine and autism to a more generalized, equally false belief that “healthy” children who eat whole foods and play outside are unlikely to get sick from vaccine-preventable diseases and, if they do, can be treated with “natural” remedies such as beef tallow and cod liver oil.
“It’s about your quality of life, it’s about what you put in your body, it’s about your wellness journey — we have debunked this before,” Rivera said. “This is eugenics.”
Across Southern California, pediatricians, preschool teachers and public health experts say they’ve seen a surge in families seeking to prune certain shots from the schedule and many delay others based on “individualized risk.” The trend has spawned a cottage industry of e-books, Zoom workshops by “vaccine friendly” doctors offering alternative schedules, bespoke inoculations and post-vaccine detox regimens.
CDC data show state exemptions for kindergarten vaccines have surged since the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, with about 5% of schoolchildren in Georgia, Florida and Ohio, more than 6% in Pennsylvania and nearly 7% in Michigan waved out of the requirement last year.
In Alaska and Arizona, those numbers topped 9%. In Idaho, 1 in 6 kindergartners are exempt.
California is one of four states — alongside New York, Connecticut and Maine — with no religious or personal-belief exemptions for school vaccines.
It is also among at least 20 states that have committed to keep the hepatitis B birth dose for babies on public insurance, which covers about half of American children. It is not clear whether the revised recommendation will affect government coverage of the vaccine in other states.
Experts warn that the success of the birth-dose reversal over near-universal objection from the medical establishment puts the entire pediatric vaccination schedule up for grabs, and threatens the school-based rules that enforce it.
Ongoing measles outbreaks in Texas and elsewhere that have killed three and sickened close to 2,000 show the risks of rolling back requirements, experts said.
Hepatitis is not nearly as contagious as measles, which can linger in the air for about two hours. But it’s still fairly easy to pick up, and devastating to those who contract it, experts said.
“These decisions happening today are going to have terrible residual effects later,” said Rivera, the L.A. epidemiologist. “I can’t imagine being a new mom having to navigate this.”
With the way Patrick Mahomes & Co. have played lately — losing four of five and in danger of missing the playoffs for the first time with Mahomes — that’s entirely possible.
The Chargers need to win at least one of their final four games to get to double digits and put themselves in position to make the playoffs, and it’s a brutal stretch — at Kansas City and Dallas, home against Houston, and a finale at Denver. They could check that box Sunday, having won five of their last six games.
How the Chargers can win: The Chargers need to ratchet up the pressure on Mahomes, particularly off the edges, and test an offensive line that has been in a steady rotation and is suspect at the tackle spots. Take advantage of the inconsistency at receiver and the propensity for drops. The secondary led the way in the win over Philadelphia. Win on early downs to get into third-and-manageable and don’t fall behind in what can be one of the loudest stadiums in the league. Keep Chris Jones and the rest off of Justin Herbert, who still is recovering from surgery on his left hand. Continue to pound the ball with Omarion Hampton and Kimani Vidal.
How the Chiefs can win: The Chiefs need to win out, and to do that they must get out of their own way. Too many times they have fallen victim to mistakes — drops, penalties, missed assignments, defensive lapses. It’s like a bizarro version of the team that went 11-0 in one-score games last season. As great as he is, Mahomes can’t get happy feet the way he has too often. Kansas City needs to do a better job of giving him a clean pocket. The Chiefs need to tighten up on defense late — that has been a problem — and limit turnovers. They’re in a loud stadium and the cold weather plays to their advantage.
California and a coalition of other states are suing the Trump administration over a policy charging employers $100,000 for each new H-1B visa they request for foreign employees to work in the U.S. — calling it a threat not only to major industry but also to public education and healthcare services.
“As the world’s fourth largest economy, California knows that when skilled talent from around the world joins our workforce, it drives our state forward,” said California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta, who announced the litigation Friday.
President Trump imposed the fee through a Sept. 19 proclamation, in which he said the H-1B visa program — designed to provide U.S. employers with skilled workers in science, technology, engineering, math and other advanced fields — has been “deliberately exploited to replace, rather than supplement, American workers with lower-paid, lower-skilled labor.”
Trump said the program also created a “national security threat by discouraging Americans from pursuing careers in science and technology, risking American leadership in these fields.”
Bonta said such claims are baseless, and that the imposition of such fees is unlawful because it runs counter to the intent of Congress in creating the program and exceeds the president’s authority. He said Congress has included significant safeguards to prevent abuses, and that the new fee structure undermines the program’s purpose.
“President Trump’s illegal $100,000 H-1B visa fee creates unnecessary — and illegal — financial burdens on California public employers and other providers of vital services, exacerbating labor shortages in key sectors,” Bonta said in a statement. “The Trump Administration thinks it can raise costs on a whim, but the law says otherwise.”
Taylor Rogers, a White House spokeswoman, said Friday that the fee was “a necessary, initial, incremental step towards necessary reforms” that were lawful and in line with the president’s promise to “put American workers first.”
Attorneys for the administration previously defended the fee in response to a separate lawsuit brought by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Assn. of American Universities, arguing earlier this month that the president has “extraordinarily broad discretion to suspend the entry of aliens whenever he finds their admission ‘detrimental to the interests of the United States,’” or to adopt “reasonable rules, regulations, and orders” related to their entry.
“The Supreme Court has repeatedly confirmed that this authority is ‘sweeping,’ subject only to the requirement that the President identify a class of aliens and articulate a facially legitimate reason for their exclusion,” the administration’s attorneys wrote.
They alleged that the H-1B program has been “ruthlessly and shamelessly exploited by bad actors,” and wrote that the plaintiffs were asking the court “to disregard the President’s inherent authority to restrict the entry of aliens into the country and override his judgment,” which they said it cannot legally do.
Trump’s announcement of the new fee alarmed many existing visa holders and badly rattled industries that are heavily reliant on such visas, including tech companies trying to compete for the world’s best talent in the global race to ramp up their AI capabilities. Thousands of companies in California have applied for H-1B visas this year, and tens of thousands have been granted to them.
Trump’s adoption of the fees is seen as part of his much broader effort to restrict immigration into the U.S. in nearly all its forms. However, he is far from alone in criticizing the H-1B program as a problematic pipeline.
Critics of the program have for years documented examples of employers using it to replace American workers with cheaper foreign workers, as Trump has suggested, and questioned whether the country truly has a shortage of certain types of workers — including tech workers.
There have also been allegations of employers, who control the visas, abusing workers and using the threat of deportation to deter complaints — among the reasons some on the political left have also been critical of the program.
“Not only is this program disastrous for American workers, it can be very harmful to guest workers as well, who are often locked into lower-paying jobs and can have their visas taken away from them by their corporate bosses if they complain about dangerous, unfair or illegal working conditions,” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) wrote in a Fox News opinion column in January.
In the Chamber of Commerce case, attorneys for the administration wrote that companies in the U.S. “have at times laid off thousands of American workers while simultaneously hiring thousands of H-1B workers,” sometimes even forcing the American workers “to train their H-1B replacements” before they leave.
They have done so, the attorneys wrote, even as unemployment among recent U.S. college graduates in STEM fields has increased.
“Employing H-1B workers in entry-level positions at discounted rates undercuts American worker wages and opportunities, and is antithetical to the purpose of the H-1B program, which is ‘to fill jobs for which highly skilled and educated American workers are unavailable,’” the administration’s attorneys wrote.
By contrast, the states’ lawsuit stresses the shortfalls in the American workforce in key industries, and defends the program by citing its existing limits. The legal action notes that employers must certify to the government that their hiring of visa workers will not negatively affect American wages or working conditions. Congress also has set a cap on the number of visa holders that any individual employer may hire.
Bonta’s office said educators account for the third-largest occupation group in the program, with nearly 30,000 educators with H-1B visas helping thousands of institutions fill a national teacher shortage that saw nearly three-quarters of U.S. school districts report difficulty filling positions in the 2024-2025 school year.
Schools, universities and colleges — largely public or nonprofit — cannot afford to pay $100,000 per visa, Bonta’s office said.
In addition, some 17,000 healthcare workers with H-1B visas — half of them physicians and surgeons — are helping to backfill a massive shortfall in trained medical staff in the U.S., including by working as doctors and nurses in low-income and rural neighborhoods, Bonta’s office said.
“In California, access to specialists and primary care providers in rural areas is already extremely limited and is projected to worsen as physicians retire and these communities struggle to attract new doctors,” it said. “As a result of the fee, these institutions will be forced to operate with inadequate staffing or divert funding away from other important programs to cover expenses.”
Bonta’s office said that prior to the imposition of the new fee, employers could expect to pay between $960 and $7,595 in “regulatory and statutory fees” per H-1B visa, based on the actual cost to the government of processing the request and document, as intended by Congress.
The Trump administration, Bonta’s office said, issued the new fee without going through legally required processes for collecting outside input first, and “without considering the full range of impacts — especially on the provision of the critical services by government and nonprofit entities.”
The arguments echo findings by a judge in a separate case years ago, after Trump tried to restrict many such visas in his first term. A judge in that case — brought by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Assn. of Manufacturers and others — found that Congress, not the president, had the authority to change the terms of the visas, and that the Trump administration had not evaluated the potential impacts of such a change before implementing it, as required by law.
Joining in the lawsuit — California’s 49th against the Trump administration in the last year alone — are Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, North Carolina, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington and Wisconsin.
New York routinely issues commercial driver’s licenses to immigrants that may be valid long after they are legally authorized to be in the country, U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said Friday. He threatened to withhold $73 million in highway funds unless the system is fixed and any flawed licenses are revoked.
State officials said they are following all the federal rules for the licenses and have been verifying drivers’ immigration status.
New York is the fourth state run by a Democratic governor Duffy has targeted in his effort to make sure truck and bus drivers are qualified to get commercial licenses. He launched the review after a truck driver who was not authorized to be in the U.S. made an illegal U-turn and caused a crash in Florida that killed three people in August. But the rules on these licenses have been in place for years.
The Transportation Department has said it is auditing these non-domiciled licenses nationwide, but so far no states run by Republican governors have been targeted. But Duffy said Friday that this effort is not political, and he hopes New York Gov. Kathy Hochul will take responsibility and work with him. He said it is about making sure everyone behind the wheel of an 80,000-pound truck is qualified and safe.
“Let’s hold hands and sing Christmas music and fix your system,” Duffy said. Instead, he said, the response appears to be trying to “dodge, divert and weave” without taking responsibility for the problems.
Widespread problems found in New York audit, feds say
Duffy said federal investigators found that more than half of the 200 licenses they reviewed in New York were issued improperly, with many of them defaulting to be valid for eight years regardless of when an immigrant’s work permit expires. And he said the state couldn’t prove it had verified these drivers’ immigration status for the 32,000 active non-domiciled commercial licenses it has issued. Plus, investigators found some examples of New York issuing licenses even when applicants’ work authorizations were already expired.
“When more than half of the licenses reviewed were issued illegally, it isn’t just a mistake — it is a dereliction of duty by state leadership. Gov. Hochul must immediately revoke these illegally issued licenses,” Duffy said.
New York has 30 days to respond to these concerns. State DMV spokesperson Walter McClure defended the state’s practices.
“Secretary Duffy is lying about New York State once again in a desperate attempt to distract from the failing, chaotic administration he represents. Here is the truth: Commercial Drivers Licenses are regulated by the Federal Government, and New York State DMV has, and will continue to, comply with federal rules,” McClure said.
Duffy has previously threatened to pull federal funding from New York if the state did not abandon its plan to charge drivers a congestion pricing fee in New York City and if crime on the subway system was not addressed. The Transportation Department also put $18 billion of funding on hold for two major infrastructure projects in New York, including a new rail tunnel beneath the Hudson River between New York City and New Jersey, because of concerns about whether the spending was based on unconstitutional diversity, equity and inclusion principles.
Previous efforts to restrict immigrant truck drivers
Immigrants account for about 20% of all truck drivers, but these non-domiciled licenses only represent about 5% of all commercial driver’s licenses. The Transportation Department also proposed new restrictions that would severely limit which noncitizens could get a license, but a court put the new rules on hold.
Duffy has threatened to withhold millions from California, Pennsylvania and Minnesota after the audits found significant problems under the existing rules, like commercial licenses being valid long after an immigrant truck driver’s work permit expired. That pressure prompted California to revoke 17,000 licenses. No money has been withheld so far from any state because, Duffy said, California has complied and the other two states still have more time to respond.
Trucking trade groups have praised the effort to get unqualified drivers and drivers who can’t speak English off the road, along with the Transportation Department’s actions last week to go after questionable commercial driver’s license schools. But immigrant advocacy groups have raised concerns these actions have led to harassment of immigrant drivers and prompted some of them to abandon the profession.
“For too long, loopholes in this program have allowed unqualified drivers onto our highways, putting professional truckers and the motoring public at risk,” said Todd Spencer, who is president of the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Assn.
This past week, my dear friend Bob and I went to Griffith Park in search of a little bit of holiday magic in the hillsides. We were looking for bright red toyon.
In the fall and winter, toyons produce iconic red berries, a signal that the temperatures are lowering around L.A. and that winter is coming.
“Though the most common name ‘toyon’ is thought to be a Spanish alteration of the plant’s Ohlone name (“totcon”), Indigenous peoples around California have given the plant many names,” according to environmental nonprofit TreePeople. “It has also more recently been referred to as ‘California holly’ or even ‘Christmas berry’ due to it’s similar appearance to English holly in the winter months.”
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For many Angelenos, myself included, toyon brings about a warm sense that the winter holidays are nearing too.
“During the fall season, after several months of growing and maturity, toyon fruits change color from green to red; it’s a signal to birds and other larger animals that a meal is ready for them,” wrote Jorge Ochoa, a professor of horticulture at Long Beach City College. “It is also during the fall that the hills of Griffith Park are adorned with striking red colors reflecting the many toyon plants growing in the hills of the park.”
Although Los Angeles County is warmer in the winter and thus doesn’t produce iconic scenes of a winter wonderland, you can easily drive nearby and find it, whether it’s by hiking past toyons, frolicking in the mountain snow or, as you’ll see here, catching a cosmic light show during Hanukkah.
If L.A. is your ho-ho-home for the holidays, I hope visiting these three natural places below helps you catch the holiday spirit, regardless of how you celebrate. Let’s sleigh these trails! (I had to!)
Bright red toyon berries in Griffith Park.
(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)
1. For red berry bliss: Griffith Park’s Five Points-Beacon Hill Loop
The Five Points-Beacon Hill Loop is a six-mile moderate hike past several toyon trees, laurel sumac and California black walnut (with bright yellow leaves at the moment).
Friends of Griffith Park developed that trail option as part of the Griffith Park Explorer, 15 routes along more than 50 miles of trails in L.A.’s outdoor sanctuary. As someone who has gotten lost (or just forgot where I parked) in Griffith Park more than I will readily admit, I am grateful for these efforts.
Also, the Griffith Park Explorer makes it easy to discern which trails will provide the best red berry bliss! If you’d like to determine the best trail for your physical conditioning that has toyons, you can look at iNaturalist, a citizen science app, to see where toyons grow in the park and match that with the best Explorer trail.
That’s how I identified the Beacon Hill loop. As Bob and I started our hike, I quickly spotted red berries on the hillside. We also savored the quiet that Griffith Park offers just before sunset as the hillsides become blanketed in yellow, orange and scarlet light. At Beacon Hill, I paused and took in the clear views that winter brings. I felt grateful to be here now, which, to me, evokes gratitude and joy, two essential elements of the winter holiday season.
Distance: A six-mile loop Elevation gained: About 1,200 feet Difficulty: Moderate Dogs allowed? Yes Accessible alternative:Bette Davis Picnic Area
The snow-covered road to the Buckhorn Campground in Angeles National Forest in 2024. The campground is a common spot for anyone near L.A. who wants to snowshoe and frolic in the powder.
(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)
2. For snow-dappled trees: Buckhorn Campground trail
The Buckhorn Campground in Angeles National Forest is a special place to me, bringing me and my family joy every season. In the winter, it is often covered in snow, as it sits above 6,000 feet in the San Gabriel Mountains.
Crunching over the snow-covered road into the campground this past March — the campground is closed for camping in the winter — I was transported back into a childlike sense of wonder. The evergreen conifers towered above, like giant Christmas trees for squirrels, deer and bobcats.
The view of the snowy mountains near Mt. Hawkins from Angeles Crest Highway in the Angeles National Forest on Nov. 23.
(Raul Roa / Los Angeles Times)
If you celebrate Kwanzaa, Buckhorn would be a great place to visit to observe multiple of the seven principles, including unity, as you and your friends and family slog through the elements together. (Microspikes recommended!)
And if you can’t make it up to the mountains, but still want to observe Kwanzaa with community, the annual Unity Run/Walk is scheduled for Dec. 27 at Balboa Park in San Diego. Either way, you can be in a natural environment hopefully in unity with each other and nature.
Distance: Varies Elevation gained: 300 to 500 feet Difficulty: Easy to lower-level moderate Accessible alternative: Large turnouts after snow along Highway 2 east of Camp Valcrest
A Perseid meteor streaks low in the sky in this 16-second exposure, as seen from White Tank campground in Joshua Tree National Park early on Aug. 12, 2024.
(Raul Roa / Los Angeles Times)
3. For cosmic candlelight: Joshua Tree National Park
On Dec. 21, during the second to last night of Hanukkah (and also the start of the winter solstice), the Ursids meteor shower will peak, allowing anyone watching to see around five to 10 meteors per hour, according to the American Meteor Society.
If you’re celebrating Hanukkah, you can experience your own cosmic Festival of Lights as the sky lights up during the meteor shower at Joshua Tree National Park. I checked, and there are still several campsites available at the park on the peak night. It’s also a great place to celebrate the winter solstice, lighting a campfire (if allowed under fire restrictions) and taking in the natural elements. There are endless hiking options too.
If you want to camp closer to home, you could try Chilao Campground in Angeles National Forest for a darker sky option. (Chilao is at 5,300 elevation, and it’ll be cold. And it is sometimes closed because of snow.) To check whether it’s open, you can call the Angeles National Forest office in Acton at (661) 269-2808. The office is generally closed Wednesday and Thursday, so another option is to call the Gateway District office at (818) 899-1900.
Either way, be prepared for an awe-inspiring light show, a beautiful way to be together with the people you love (who can also keep you warm, in body and spirit).
Happy holidays to you, my dear Wilder!
3 things to do
Members of Paddle LA and OC participate in annual Christmas paddles near Long Beach, dressing in festive costumes.
(David Sanchez)
1. Paddle past pretty lights in Long Beach Paddling LA and OC will host an evening paddle from 4 to 6:30 p.m. Saturday through Alamitos Bay to observe holiday lights near the water. Guests are encouraged to don holiday costumes and light up their boards with good cheer. All skill levels are welcome, but paddlers need to be comfortable in the water after dark and around slow-moving boats. Register at eventbrite.com.
2. Secure Fido’s ranger badge in Calabasas Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area will host its B.A.R.K. Holidays event from noon to 2 p.m. Saturday at the King Gillette Ranch visitor center. Dogs and their owners can visit ranger-led booths and take part in a special swearing-in ceremony where pups will earn their official B.A.R.K. Ranger badge. Learn more at the park’s Instagram page.
3. Hike among native plants in Sylmar Scorpio Gardens, a queer, Latinx-owned native plant landscape design company, will host a hike along the May Canyon trail from 9 to 11:30 a.m. Sunday at Veterans Memorial Community Regional Park in Sylmar. Guests will first be guided in mindfulness and stretching before heading onto the trail. Hike leaders will help participants with native plant identification, discussing the roles the plants play in the larger San Fernando Valley ecosystem. The event is free, but donations are welcome. Register at eventbrite.com.
The must-read
(Ruthy Kim / For The Times)
In highlighting these hikes and natural places where you can celebrate the holidays, I don’t want to seem oblivious or excessively positive. It would be a massive understatement to say it has been a hard year for L.A. “In the past 12 months, we’ve witnessed homes destroyed by fire, families broken up by ICE, skyrocketing anti-trans hate and massive layoffs across the entertainment and media industries leaving thousands in our city unemployed,” wrote Times staff writer Deborah Netburn. Amid all this devastation, it is even more important to try to find joy. That was the message Netburn heard from experts she spoke to about how to still find joy this holiday season in L.A. Joy is an essential element of our lives, refilling our tanks not only to help us survive but also to keep doing good in the world. “The purpose of oppression, hatred and discrimination is to disconnect us and dehumanize us,” said Thema Bryant, a psychologist and minister at First AME Church in Los Angeles. “It is an act of resistance to say, ‘I’m not going to give all my peace to those who are working to stress me out.’”
Happy adventuring,
P.S.
For almost 20 years, the Mojave Desert Land Trust has worked to preserve prime desert habitat, protecting more than 125,000 acres of California desert. Recently, the trust acquired 1,280 acres at the entrance to Mojave Trails National Monument, a massive swath of federal land south of Mojave National Preserve that had been suffering from illegal dumping, graffiti and more. If you’d like to help support the trust’s efforts to protect the desert, consider attending a fundraiser at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday at the Last Bookstore in Studio City. Barret Baumgart, author of “Yuck,” and Josh Jackson, author of “The Enduring Wild,” will discuss their books that underscore the importance of protecting our diverse desert landscape. Guests can imbibe free beer and buy signed books and limited-edition desert posters and tote bags. Half of sales will support the trust. 🏜️
For more insider tips on Southern California’s beaches, trails and parks, check out past editions of The Wild. And to view this newsletter in your browser, click here.
WASHINGTON — Members of Congress clashed Thursday over President Trump’s use of the National Guard in American cities, with Republicans saying the deployments were needed to fight lawlessness while Democrats called his move an extraordinary abuse of military power that violated states’ rights.
Top military officials faced questioning over the deployments for the first time at the hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee. They were pressed by Democrats over the legality of sending in troops, which in some places were done over the objections of mayors and governors, while Trump’s Republican allies offered a robust defense of the policy.
It was the highest level of scrutiny, outside a courtroom, of Trump’s use of the National Guard in U.S. cities since the deployments began and came a day after the president faced another legal setback over efforts to send troops to support federal law enforcement, protect federal facilities and combat crime.
“In recent years, violent crime, rioting, drug trafficking and heinous gang activity have steadily escalated,” said Mississippi Sen. Roger Wicker, the committee chairman. The deployments, he said, are “not only appropriate, but essential.”
Democrats argued they are illegal and contrary to historic prohibitions about the use of military force on U.S. soil.
Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., had pushed for the hearing, saying domestic deployments traditionally have involved responding to major floods and tornadoes, not assisting immigration agents who are detaining people in aggressive raids.
“Trump is forcing our military men and women to make a horrible choice: uphold their loyalty to the Constitution and protect peaceful protesters, or execute questionable orders from the president,” said Duckworth, a combat veteran who served in the Illinois National Guard.
Military leaders point to training
During questioning, military leaders highlighted the duties that National Guard units have carried out. Troops are trained in community policing, they said, and are prohibited from using force unless in self-defense.
Since the deployments began, only one civilian — in California — has been detained by National Guard personnel, according to Air Force Gen. Gregory M. Guillot, commander of U.S. troops in North America. Guillot said the troops are trained to de-escalate tense interactions with people, but do not receive any specific training on mental health episodes.
“They can very quickly be trained to conduct any mission that we task of them,” Guillot said.
Republicans and Democrats see the deployments much differently
In one exchange, Sen. Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, noted how former Defense Secretary Mark Esper alleged that Trump inquired about shooting protesters during the George Floyd demonstrations. She asked whether a presidential order to shoot protesters would be lawful.
Charles L. Young III, principal deputy general counsel at the Defense Department, said he was unaware of Trump’s previous comments and that “orders to that effect would depend on the circumstances.”
“We have a president who doesn’t think the rule of law applies to him,” Hirono said in response.
Republicans countered that Trump was within his rights — and his duty — to send in the troops.
Republican Sen. Tim Sheehy of Montana, a former Navy SEAL officer, argued during the hearing that transnational crimes present enough of a risk to national security to justify military action, including on U.S. soil.
Sheehy claimed there are foreign powers “actively attacking this country, using illegal immigration, using transnational crime, using drugs to do so.”
Senators also offered their sympathies after two West Virginia National Guard members deployed to Washington were shot just blocks from the White House in what the city’s mayor described as a targeted attack. Spc. Sarah Beckstrom died a day after the Nov. 26 shooting, and her funeral took place Tuesday. Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe is hospitalized in Washington.
Hearing follows court setback for Trump
A federal judge in California on Wednesday ruled that the administration must stop deploying the California National Guard in Los Angeles and return control of the troops to the state.
U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer granted a preliminary injunction sought by California officials, but also put the decision on hold until Monday. The White House said it plans to appeal.
Trump called up more than 4,000 California National Guard troops in June without Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom’s approval to further the administration’s immigration enforcement efforts.
The move was the first time in decades that a state’s National Guard was activated without a request from its governor and marked a significant escalation in the administration’s efforts to carry out its mass deportation policy. The troops were stationed outside a federal detention center in downtown Los Angeles where protesters gathered and were later sent on the streets to protect immigration officers as they made arrests.
Trump also had announced National Guard members would be sent to Illinois, Oregon, Louisiana and Tennessee. Other judges have blocked or limited the deployment of troops to Portland, Oregon, and Chicago, while Guard members have not yet been sent to New Orleans.
Klepper, Finley and Groves write for the Associated Press. AP writer Konstantin Toropin contributed to this report.
FERNDALE, Calif. — Like many of California’s fairs, the one in Humboldt County is a cherished local institution, beloved for its junk food, adorable baby animals and exhibits of local arts and crafts. Rock star chef Guy Fieri, who grew up in town, even turns up to host the chili cook-off.
But along with its Ferris wheels and funnel cakes, the Humboldt County event shares something darker in common with a number of California’s 77 local fairs: It has been racked with fraud and mismanagement.
The fair’s former bookkeeper is due in federal court early next year after pleading guilty to stealing $430,000 from the fair, according to documents filed in federal court. Police had arrested her after catching up with her at a local casino.
Humboldt is hardly an outlier. A Los Angeles Times investigation has found that one-third of the state’s 77 fairs — hallowed celebrations of the state’s agrarian tradition — have been plagued by an array of problems. Workers from at least four fairs have been prosecuted in the last few years for theft, bribery or embezzlement, with more than $1 million stolen, according to a Times review of criminal court filings. State auditors have accused officials at dozens of other fairs of misspending millions more, according to a Times review. Ventura suffered a cash heist, Santa Clara a kickback scheme, and across much of California, public funds have been spent in violation of state rules, including on prime rib steaks and fancy wines while once-proud fairgrounds crumble into disrepair.
A great horned owl performs for visitors during the raptor show at the Humboldt County Fair in Ferndale.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
Drawing on thousands of pages of court filings, audits and public records from more than three dozen counties, along with scores of interviews, The Times identified at least 25 fairs where prosecutors, state auditors or government officials have accused employees in the last decade of misusing taxpayer money, pressuring businesses for bribes or treating public resources as their own. At still more fairs, officials have been called out in government reports or lawsuits for glaring failures of good governance.
Collectively, the fairs bring in more than $400 million a year in revenue, and many fairgoers see them as priceless cultural events honoring California‘s agricultural heritage and their local communities.
But despite their crucial role, The Times found that the state and county leaders overseeing these fairs have often failed to step in — even when problems are glaring or have been denounced by auditors or judges. The state department of Food and Agriculture oversees 52 of the local fairs through district agricultural associations. An additional 22, plus the state fair and two citrus fairs, are in the state’s “network of fairs,” meaning they receive some state funding but are overseen by local governments and nonprofits.
“There needs to be more accountability,” said John Moot, a San Diego lawyer who represented a carnival company that has sued both the San Diego and Orange County fairs — both of which are overseen by the state.
Last year that carnival company, Talley Amusements, was paid $500,000 by the San Diego County Fair to settle a lawsuit that alleged fair officials had engaged in bid-rigging when they went to hand out a multimillion-dollar contract to run rides and games on the midway. A San Diego County judge wrote that the evidence he reviewed “supports an inference of ‘favoritism,’ fraud’ and ‘corruption’ as to the award of public contracts, although no such definitive findings are made herein.”
Local newspapers called on the state to do something. When asked about the case, California officials said only that they continue “to review the circumstances of this case to determine whether further guidance or compliance measures are warranted.”
State officials also took a tolerant stance toward problems that the California state auditor uncovered. In 2019, an audit found that top officials at the Kern County Fair and in the state had allowed “gross mismanagement to continue unchecked for years.” The audit revealed as well that the Kern district agricultural association’s board of directors, appointed by the governor, had feasted on lobster dinners and fine wines paid by fair funds but failed to provide effective oversight. Kern fair officials did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
County leaders and local nonprofits have not always been better stewards. Some have failed to notice or take action as fair officials stole money or allowed fairgrounds to fall into debt or disrepair — even when grand juries warned there were problems.
“Not surprised,” said David McCuan, a professor of political science at Sonoma State University who is well-versed in local fairs. “There are generations of farmers and generations of networks of neighbors, friends and family members [who run these fairs]. They help each other. How business is done is insular. It’s not open or transparent.” At the same time, he said, “fairs are big money.” Put all those things together, he said, and the conditions are ripe for mismanagement and corruption.
Although many county fairs operate without incident, scandals sometimes erupt from the most mundane of matters.
Last year, Shasta County agreed to pay $300,000 to settle a lawsuit brought by a 9-year-old girl and her family after sheriff’s deputies seized her goat. The girl had raised the goat, a floppy eared brown and white guy known as Cedar, as part of the fair’s agricultural program, then changed her mind about watching a beloved animal turn into meat. But fair officials refused to allow her to back out; instead the county dispatched deputies across Northern California in pursuit of the animal, which was eventually butchered.
In a statement, a spokesperson for Gov. Gavin Newsom said “the state recognizes the challenges facing some of California’s fairgrounds and takes concerns about governance and accountability very seriously.”
In a separate statement, the California Department of Food and Agriculture said that “the difficulties uncovered at some fairs” should not overshadow their larger contributions. “These institutions serve as vital community hubs that play a key role in emergency response, as they support local economies.”
Fairgrounds are becoming increasingly important in the state’s disaster planning. During many of California’s recent wildfires, local fairgrounds have served as staging areas for firefighters and other emergency responders. Displaced animals find refuge there. They’ve also served as crucial evacuation centers — about 600 people, for example, lived at the Butte County fairgrounds in Chico for months after the 2018 Camp fire. Fairgrounds have become so essential to disaster response that the state has recently awarded tens of millions of dollars to upgrade facilities such as showers and kitchens that could be used for evacuees.
Yet in many counties, fairgrounds are in a state of disrepair. The Times identified more than a dozen that are plagued by leaky roofs, corroded and unsafe electrical systems, faulty plumbing, dangerously dilapidated grandstands and other unsafe conditions. This is partly because of mismanagement, but also because state funding for fairs has declined in recent years. Fair finances have also been hard hit by the declining popularity of horse racing.
“I think back to how full the fair used to be,” said Jeannie Fulton, gesturing to Humboldt’s half-empty fairgrounds during the August celebration.
“County fairs are still really valuable, but they are mismanaged in a lot of ways. We all see the grounds just deteriorating,” added Fulton, who runs the Humboldt County Farm Bureau. “They need to be run better.”
Mindy Romero, director of USC’s Center for Inclusive Democracy, said fair management may not be the most pressing issue facing state leaders but “there should be some accountability … these people are in charge of large amounts of money, and public trust and public resources.”
A judge, left, tries to decide which Boer goat has the best qualities and features during the Boer goat competition with 4-H club members, right, at the Humboldt County Fair.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
County fairs are “supposed to be a place where everybody can come together, family and friends and you bring the kids … it’s these rituals and communities that we really need to take care of. If a community hears that their local fair is stealing it can make [people] even more distrustful of government,” she said.
‘Capricious abuse of power’
California’s first fair was held in 1854, in what is now downtown San Francisco. It was so popular that the idea quickly spread, to Humboldt County in 1861, to San Diego in 1880 and to Orange County in 1890. (Los Angeles didn’t get in on the tradition until 1922.)
In 1887, the state Legislature, anxious to harness and regulate the explosion of fairs, created district agricultural associations, mini state agencies that manage the fairgrounds in each county and are run by boards appointed by the governor.
California is a dramatically different place than it was in 1887, but the governance structure of fairs largely remains. The 52 district agricultural associations each put on a fair, guided by boards appointed by the governor.
The 25 other fairs in the state’s network of fairs follow a similar program. The goal is for fairs to pay for themselves through admission prices, contracts with vendors and other sources of revenue, but they also receive state funding. District agricultural associations get about $2.6 million a year from the state’s general fund; an additional $5 million from sales tax revenue at the fairs is handed out each year to all 77 fairs in the network.
Each of the fairs strives to reflect its particular community. In Nevada County, the rides and food vendors set up beneath towering pine trees, and a central attraction this year was a model-train exhibit showcasing the historic derailment of circus cars. The Los Angeles County Fair, one of the state’s biggest, is known for its preposterous combination of junk food: deep-fried Oreos and pickles; corn wrapped in Cheetos; chicken sandwiches with funnel cake buns. The Calaveras County Fair features a frog-jumping contest, a nod to Mark Twain’s famous short story.
In small rural counties, said Jeff Griffiths, an Inyo County supervisor who is president of the California State Assn. of Counties, the fairgrounds serve as a “social and cultural hub” for the community all year.
“They are our event space,” he said. “We don’t have SoFi Stadium. Concerts, car shows, dances, on and on, they all happen at the fairgrounds.”
Lavish expenditures have for decades been part of the mix. A 1986 state audit blasted the entire fair system, detailing state funds spent on parties, meals and expensive custom belt buckles, along with other misuses of state funds. These include improper contracting — a problem that continues to plague many fairs.
Five years ago, Ventura Flores was pleased when the Santa Clara County Fairgrounds hired his firm — 4 Diamond Security — to provide security as public health officials ramped up a massive COVID-19 testing and eventually vaccination operation at the fairgrounds. It was the middle of the pandemic, and 4 Diamond had little other work.
A performer with Animal Cracker Conspiracy high-fives Ryder Lang, 7, next to his friend Abigail Fielding, 6, both from San José, after entering the Santa Clara County Fair in San José.
(Nhat V. Meyer / Bay Area News Group)
When he got the job, however, the fair’s event’s director, Obdulia Banuelos-Esparza, informed Flores that he would have to slip her cash in secret if he wanted to keep his contract, according to a statement of probable cause produced by the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s office.
After he refused, Flores said, Banuelos-Esparza began to complain about the work his guards were doing, accusing them of shirking their duties and sleeping on the job. Flores said he doubted the accusations but also feared he would lose the job if he didn’t pay, according to the statement of probable cause.
Flores, who did not respond to emails and calls from The Times, told investigators that he began giving Banuelos-Esparza between $2,500 and $4,000 a month, continuing for more than a year until sometime in the fall of 2021, when he said he stopped paying her. Then fair officials, who had told him they would be renewing 4 Diamond’s contract for another six months, instead terminated it, according to the statement of probable cause.
The Santa Clara County district attorney began investigating the scheme in 2023, following a whistleblower complaint. In 2024, after reviewing Banuelos’ bank records, the district attorney charged her with extortion and bribery, issuing a statement that the fairgrounds should be “where our community goes for fairs, festivals, and fun. Not felonies.”
There had long been warning signs: A 2019 Santa Clara County grand jury report uncovered “financial reports lacking in accuracy and transparency, violations of local bingo regulations, questionable tax reporting practices” and other problems. The grand jury also called out “a relaxed level of scrutiny and oversight” by the county.
After Banuelos’ conviction, the district attorney released another statement, declaring the midway now “free of corruption.”
“Ride the Ferris wheel, see the farm animals, eat the food and have fun knowing our fair is safe,” he said.
Santa Clara’s fair is not the only one that has strayed from accepted contracting rules. State audits in recent years have called out more than a dozen fairs, including those in Santa Barbara and Turlock, for violating state policies by handing out money without signed agreements or competitive bidding.
In Fresno, officials required some vendors doing business with the Big Fresno Fair to also make donations to a foundation associated with the fair, according to a 2022 state audit. The foundation then purchased more than $21,000 in gift cards that it gifted to fair employees, along with more than $68,000, according to the audit.
In a statement, fair officials said that the fair and its board of directors “took the findings of the audit very seriously” and made corrective actions that satisfied the state. The statement added that the fair plays a vital role in the community: in addition to the fair itself, the fairgrounds host 250 events each year and are used during fires and other emergencies.
In San Diego, after Talley Amusements filed its 2022 lawsuit alleging bid-rigging, several fair officials testified in sworn depositions that Talley had actually won the bid, but that a top fair official had pressured them to change the scores to award the contract to a different company. One fair official also testified that she had shredded the original scoring documents.
Fair officials, however, admitted no wrongdoing, with a spokesperson in 2023 calling the allegations of bid-rigging “hogwash.” In a counterclaim filed in San Diego Superior Court, the fair accused Talley of submitting “a sham bid” that might have compromised public safety. In a statement, fair officials said that they agreed to settle the suit only because it was cheaper to do so than litigating it in court.
An ‘inside job’ safe heist
Every year, local fairs in California handle millions of dollars in cash — sometimes without the most basic of safeguards.
In the summer of 2022, a man working at the Ventura County Fair gave some accomplices a hot tip: A safe in the fair’s office was packed with more than half a million dollars in cash.
Alexander Piceno, who worked at the Ventura County Fair, was arrested and charged and pleaded guilty — along with three burglars — to stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars.
(Ventura County District Attorney’s office)
On the night of Aug. 10, Alexander Piceno, 30, who worked for a company processing cash for the fair, left the front door to the state’s 31st District Agricultural Assn. unlocked. He also left instructions on how to open the office safe, according to prosecutors. Two burglars walked in, loaded up $572,000 in paper bills (which weighed upward of 50 pounds), and jumped in a car headed back to Los Angeles.
Police quickly realized they were dealing with an inside job, and four conspirators including Piceno were later arrested and charged, and pleaded guilty to felonies, according to the district attorney. Most of the money, however, was never recovered; prosecutors said they seized $6,100 and a used pickup truck purchased with proceeds from the crime.
The Times, reviewing state audits, grand jury reports, lawsuits and criminal filings, found allegations of theft or inappropriate use of public resources at more than a dozen fairs, including those in San Joaquin, Monterey,Yolo, Inyo, Fresno and Tulare counties.
In Orange County, according to a 2018 state audit, officials at the 32nd District Agricultural Assn. caught an employee embezzling more than $9,000 in ticket sales but failed to report the crime to the state as required. The audit also noted that fair officials had spent more than $220,000 on catering without explaining a clear business purpose. In a statement, fair officials said that “issues cited” in the audit “have been addressed” and “new policies are in place regarding meals.” The statement added that all audits since have been “free of any issues.”
September 2022 photo of fairgoers on the opening day of the Tulare County Fair.
(Ari Plachta / Sacramento Bee)
In several cases, including in Stanislaus County, public money went for fancy meals for the board members who are supposed to be watching over the fair’s operations. State audits sometime read like restaurant menus, with references to prime rib, salmon, ribeye steak and fine wine. It is one of many perks board members enjoy, which also often include free tickets for themselves and friends to concerts, dinners and the fair itself.
State auditors also found plenty of gifts to staff, including bowling nights and credit card charges (with and without required receipts) for flowers, gift cards and even clothes.
One employee at the Stanislaus fair spent thousands of dollars on clothes, which he told state auditors he bought for himself and members of the maintenance staff to wear during fair events. But the audit also found that other members of the maintenance staff members “do not recall receiving these items.”
‘The fair got off scot-free’
September 2017 photo of turkeys competing in a race during the annual Kern County Fair in Bakersfield.
(Mark Ralston / AFP / Getty Images)
In Kern County, the state’s 15th Agricultural Assn. has put on a fair every year since 1916, except for two years during the Great Depression and in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Held in Bakersfield, in the heart of California’s farm belt, the fair has an operating budget of about $10 million and welcomes around 350,000 people each year, according to officials.
To pull it off, the fair has a permanent staff of about 20, and hires about 500 temporary employees during the season. But investigators from the state auditor’s office found that some of these workers appeared far from wholly committed to their fair duties.
In a 2019 audit, investigators found that several employees maintained second jobs — which they performed not in their spare time, but while clocked into their posts at the fair. “Several witnesses told us that Employee A and the other employees left work for almost the entire day nearly every day for weeks or even months at a time,” the audit said.
The fair’s board of directors and chief executive had their own issues, auditors found, among them a taste for expensive dinners and bottles of fine Cabernet, paid for with fair credit cards despite rules against it. In addition, auditors found that at least one of the dinners, which included six board members gabbing together across a table, may have violated the state’s open meeting law that forbids a quorum of a governing body without public notice. Over a three-year period, the audit found, the Kern County fair “spent $132,584 on credit card purchases for which [it] had no supporting receipts.”
Auditors reserved some of their harshest criticisms for the lack of oversight by state officials that they said had allowed all of these “improper governmental activities.”
The audit reported that the department’s Fairs and Expositions branch did not conduct a single compliance audit of the more than 50 fairs under its purview from 2011 to 2017.
The audit generated a series of outraged headlines in newspapers around the state, many of them focused on the fine food and wine that board members and the CEO, Michael Olcott, had feasted upon. Olcott did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
The audit’s release did not bring about many substantive changes in the leadership at the Kern County Fair. Six years later, the CEO remains in his post, as do most of the board members who oversaw the fair back then. In a statement, state officials said they “worked with the fair’s leadership to implement corrective measures, including stronger financial controls, enhanced segregation of duties, and updated board and staff training on state contracting and accounting policies.” Officials also said they continue to “monitor the fair’s progress through periodic reviews and ongoing technical assistance.”
After the audit, the Kern County district attorney opened a case against the fair’s maintenance supervisor, accusing him of recycling scrap metal from the fair and pocketing the proceeds. The case is set to go to trial next year. The maintenance supervisor, Joe Hebert, maintains his innocence. He said that he is being scapegoated.
“Recycling scrap metal was part of my job and I had permission to do it,” Hebert said. “I could walk away and plead to a misdemeanor and I’m not going to do it,” he said.
Mark Salvaggio, a former Bakersfield City Council member who served on the Kern County fair board for several years ending in 2014, said he was outraged at the outcome of the audit. “The fair got off scot-free,” he said.
After the state auditor released its Kern County report, the California Department of Food and Agriculture threw its own auditing team into high gear. The division has released more than 15 audits since 2020 — after years of doing few or none.
A series of blistering reports have been issued, followed in some cases by radical changes in personnel.
In a statement, officials said they are “committed to ensuring transparency and accountability at California’s fairs.” Officials noted that audits check for compliance with state policies, and that the oversight program has been reestablished after being “drastically reduced” because of funding cuts during the Great Recession.
But some local officials say the audits, although they may be exposing examples of misspending, sometimes unfairly tarnish fair officials who often struggle to run vital community events with little training in government accounting and contracting rules.
“This is a very unique business that isn’t found anywhere else in state government,” said Corey Oakley, the CEO of the Napa Valley Expo. “We have live animals, corn dogs, flowers, drag queens, horse racing, tractors, destruction Derby …”
Griffiths of the California Assn. of Counties said he thinks the state should either fully fund fairs and “make them viable, or they should turn them over to local communities so we can run them.”
“They have to follow state requirements, but there is none of the benefit of state funding that comes with that,” he said. Meanwhile, he added, “the deferred maintenance on these things is outrageous. They’re falling apart.”
‘I pray we can keep this alive’
Bella Gantt uses her feet as she performs her blindfolded archery show for visitors at the Humboldt County Fair in Ferndale. Gantt is the only person in the world who performs a blindfolded archery show using her feet.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
In Humboldt, where the fair is in the state’s network of fairs but not directly overseen by the state, Fair Board President Andy Titus said he is desperate to make sure his local fair survives. His is the oldest continuously operating festival in the state but is reeling from the double blow of embezzlement and the loss of horse racing. The fairgrounds are also in tough shape; in 2023 the fair had to perform emergency repairs to make its grandstands safe enough for people to sit in them.
“I’ve loved this fair since I was a little kid,” said Titus, a local dairy farmer who said he grew up showing animals at the fair and now helps his children do the same. “I pray we can keep this alive.”
The fairgrounds sprawl across a flat coastal plain near the Victorian-era town of Ferndale. A few miles away, the cliffs of California’s Lost Coast rise up and white-capped waves pound into miles of empty beach. In a county with more trees than people, many residents say their yearly visits to the fair help them gather as a community in a part of California known for its isolation.
Nina Tafarella stole more than $430,000 from the Humboldt County Fair, according to a federal criminal complaint, and has pleaded guilty to embezzlement charges.
(Humboldt County Sheriff )
But the beloved fair has not been well-run for some time, according to federal district court records in San Francisco. At the beginning of 2021, it was in “total chaos,” as one manager would describe to an FBI agent.
The organization was 15 years behind on auditing its books, and the state was threatening to cut off its funding. The fair also lacked a bookkeeper, a secretary and other assistance. Even the office itself was in disarray, with “approximately a year worth of backlogged mail and files on the floor,” an interim manager would later tell the FBI, according to an agent’s report of his interview with her filed in federal court.
The manager turned to Craigslist for a bookkeeper who could help make sense of the disorder, and found Nina Tafarella.
At this point in her life, Tafarella was recovering from an addiction to prescription painkillers, was drinking heavily and was in a state of stress and occasional seeming mania, according to a sentencing memo her attorney filed in federal court. She was also deep in the grips of a compulsive gambling problem, which got so bad that she started lying to her friends about how much time she was spending at casinos.
But she was cheerful and helpful and she was charging only about $35 to $40 an hour for her time, far less than a certified public accountant might have cost the fair. She was hired.
It all came crashing down at a nearby dance studio. Tafarella had also worked there and had stolen a little more than $20,000. But unlike the fair, the owner of the studio noticed and filed a police report.
After learning of that on Nov. 8, 2022, the fair called in an outside financial expert, who took a quick look at the books and discovered the ghost payroll scheme. Fair officials shut down Tafarella’s access to their bank accounts and by Nov. 15, when Tafarella was next due at work, an FBI agent was at the fair offices.
She was arrested and later pleaded guilty to five counts of wire fraud.
“Everybody was shocked,” Titus said. “She was always very friendly when you saw her.”
In filings to the judge overseeing her sentencing, Tafarella said she has now stopped drinking and gambling and that it “makes me sick” to think about what she has done. Still, in asking for a reduced sentence, her lawyer also argued that if the fair had been better run, it might have been able to protect itself from Tafarella’s schemes.
“Remarkably, the fair association’s own witnesses admitted that the Board was not financially savvy and had little to no idea about the state of the fair’s finances,” Tafarella’s lawyer wrote. Instead, “they solely entrusted Ms. Tafarella, who was suffering from visibly anxious, drinking too much, acting erratically, and reliably to be found at the casino, with the fair association’s finances.”
Titus, whose job at the fair is volunteer, said he has been working almost around the clock ever since to try to save the operation, which saw smaller crowds this year, partly because the lack of horse racing.
“It’s sad,” said Robin Eckerfield, a 72-year-old educator from Fortuna, who said she goes to the fair every year to sample the food, look at the crafts and catch up with old friends. She couldn’t help but notice the reduced offerings this year, a result of the fair’s dire circumstances.
The crowds were small enough that even on the day of the famous chili cook-off, celebrity chef Fieri could walk through the fair mostly unmobbed.
Fieri, who said he got his start as a chef with a pretzel cart at the fairgrounds as a kid, said he returns whenever he can to support it.
While handing out the trophies, Fieri delivered an impassioned speech to the paltry but enthusiastic crowd about the importance of supporting the annual event.
“We all love the fair,” he told the small crowd. “This is our fair. We have to keep it going. We have to keep it alive.”
On a glorious September morning, a scientist emerged cheerfully from the depths of a corrugated metal tunnel under a remote stretch of Highway 395 north of the town of Bridgeport.
It wasn’t a planned encounter. I happened upon Ben Carter, of the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, as I toured the area with a couple of Caltrans employees.
Carter was switching out the SD cards from cameras installed to document animals that might be using two wildlife crossings recently constructed under the highway near Sonora Junction.
“We’ve got some deer sign coming through here, which is great,” he said, referring to cloven hoof prints pressed into the soft earth. He’d looked through a few photos at the other culvert and saw deer there, too, and perhaps a coyote.
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The effort comes at a critical moment. Mule deer in the region have declined in recent years, sparking concern among hunters. Getting hit by cars or trucks is the second biggest cause of deer death, not counting unknown causes.
Some hunters would like the state to control the population of mountain lions in the area to help the deer, which the cougars eat. But state wildlife officials aren’t allowed to do that.
The big, charismatic cats are a “specially protected species” in the Golden State. (Officials are permitted to kill mountain lions in limited circumstances, including to protect endangered bighorn sheep. They recently began doing that again after a long hiatus, which I wrote about in a story this week.)
So wildlife crossings could be a win-win solution. Both hunters and conservationists are especially keen to see one rise along a stretch of the 395 that runs past the Mammoth Yosemite Airport — the top roadkill hot spot in the Eastern Sierra.
There are plans to put one there, but getting it off the ground is estimated to cost more than $65 million, according to Caltrans, which is leading the project.
Brian Tillemans, a hunter and former watershed resource manager for the L.A. Department of Water and Power, who has called on the state to help deer, said the crossing can’t come too soon.
“If there’s ever a spot for a deer crossing, it’s up here,” he added, driving near the proposed site.
Ben Carter, of the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, checks a trail camera at a wildlife undercrossing recently installed near the town of Bridgeport.
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
At the other crossing, about 70 miles to the north, Carter expressed both hope and concern.
It’s among the top three roadkill hot spots in the region because deer migrate across the highway. But the project area didn’t perfectly align with their route, according to Carter. That’s because the undercrossings were put in opportunistically, as part of a shoulder-widening endeavor spearheaded by Caltrans.
Beth Pratt, of the National Wildlife Federation, who joined a tour of the crossing, was optimistic the animals would use it.
“I feel like word’s gonna get out,” she said. “I know they are really loyal to their migration sites. On the other hand, they can start being loyal to this.”
The trail cameras will determine if she’s right.
More recent animal news
It’s been a sad few weeks for real-life animal mascots in the northern part of the state.
Last week, Claude, a striking albino alligator living in San Francisco’s California Academy of the Sciences — where he served as unofficial mascot — passed away from liver cancer at the age of 30, my fellow Times reporter Hailey Branson-Potts reported. During his 17 years at the science museum, the ghostly white reptile became a cultural icon, appearing in children’s books, city advertisements and a 24/7 livestream. “Claude represented that core San Francisco value of seeing the beauty & value in everyone, including those who are a bit different from the norm. Rest in peace, buddy,” state Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) tweeted.
A month earlier, a beloved bald eagle named Hope was fatally electrocuted on power lines near a Milpitas elementary school where she and her mate presided as mascots. The feathered local celebrity’s unceremonious end — covered by my colleague Susanne Rust — is not a one-off. Every year, as many as 11.6 million birds perish on wires that juice our TVs and blow dryers, according to a 2014 analysis. PG&E, which operates the power lines that killed Hope, said it took measures to make lines and poles around the eagle’s nesting area safe for raptors. (As for Hope’s widower, he may already have a new girlfriend.)
It’s not all doom and gloom for animals in the Golden State — and around the world.
The Los Angeles Zoo recently welcomed the birth of a baby gorilla, the fifth and latest addition in a baby boom of adorable great apes that includes three chimpanzees and an orangutan, writes Times staffer Andrea Flores.
Meanwhile, a global treaty has extended trade protections to more than 70 shark and ray species who have seen sharp declines, according to the New York Times’ Alexa Robles-Gil. She writes that the agreement includes a full international commercial trade ban for oceanic whitetip sharks, manta and devil rays, and whale sharks.
A few last things in climate news
Soon, the country’s largest all-electric hospital will open in Orange County, my editor Ingrid Lobet reports. It’s only the second facility of its kind in the U.S., and offers an alternative to the way that buildings contribute to climate change: burning natural gas.
Not far away, the city of Los Angeles is shifting away from the power source most harmful to the environment. Times staffer Hayley Smith writes that the L.A. Department of Water and Power has stopped receiving any coal-fired power. L.A. Mayor Karen Bass called it a “defining moment” for the city.
There are plans by the Trump administration to pump more water to farmlands in the Central Valley from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, per my colleague Ian James. California officials said the move could threaten fish and reduce the amount of water available for millions of people in other parts of California.
A nonprofit is trying to create a 1.2 million-acre national monument centered on the Amargosa River, which runs through the bone-dry Mojave Desert, according to Kurtis Alexander of the San Francisco Chronicle. Early this year, former president Joe Biden designated two massive national monuments in the Golden State, including one covering a large swath of the desert.
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A San Francisco supervisor has proposed increasing the city’s film and television tax credit to lure more productions to the Bay Area.
Board President Rafael Mandelman introduced legislation Tuesday that would create a tiered rebate system based on local spending on items like San Francisco resident wages, services or goods.
To qualify, most productions must spend a minimum of $500,000 in the city and shoot at least five days of principal photography there. Those productions also get a 100% rebate on city agency fees, including permits and police services.
Then, under the new proposal, those projects could get 10% back on the first million dollars spent in San Francisco, then 20% on any qualified local spending beyond that, said Manijeh Fata, executive director of the San Francisco Film Commission.
“As localities across the state compete to attract more film production, San Francisco must stay in the game,” Mandelman said in a statement. “Strengthening our film incentive program will keep jobs in San Francisco and help ensure this important economic activity doesn’t bypass us.”
The legislation is expected to go to a committee hearing next month, with a final vote potentially at the end of January or early February, Fata said.
Though San Francisco’s production incentive was established in 2006, the program has been “underutilized,” said Supervisor Connie Chan, who is co-sponsoring the legislation.
“I support this legislative update so we can ensure the original intent and benefits of the program can be fully materialized,” she said in a statement. “I expect the film rebate program to deliver robust job opportunities for workers, creative promotion of our City through films that will boost tourism and increase sales tax revenue with film industry spending.”
California now allocates $750 million annually to the program, up from $330 million. Legislators also broadened the type of productions eligible to apply for the credit.
A federal judge ruled Wednesday that the Trump administration must immediately end the deployment of the National Guard in Los Angeles, the latest legal blow to the president’s embattled efforts to police American streets with armed soldiers.
Senior U.S. District Judge Charles R. Breyer said in his ruling that command of the remaining 300 federalized National Guard troops must return to Gov. Gavin Newsom, who sued the administration in June after it commandeered thousands of troops to quell protests over immigration enforcement in Los Angeles.
On June 12, Breyer ruled that deployment illegal — a decision that was challenged and ultimately reversed by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. The court said the esoteric statute Trump invoked to wrest command of the Guard from the governor afforded him “a great level of deference” to determine whether a rebellion was underway in Los Angeles, as the Justice Department claimed at the time.
The same sequence repeated this autumn in Oregon, where 200 California Guard troops were sent to help quash demonstrations outside an ICE facility.
Unlike in California, the Oregon decision was vacated amid claims the Justice Department inflated the number of federal protective personnel it said were detailed to Portland and misrepresented other facts to the court.
The decision is now under review by a larger panel of the 9th Circuit, while the Supreme Court weighs an almost identical challenge to the deployment in Illinois.
In both cases, conservative judicial appointees have signaled skepticism about the president’s authority to order boots on the ground, and to keep troops federalized indefinitely.
“States are not only owed protection by the federal government, they are owed protection from it,” Judge Jay Bybee wrote in a lengthy filing Tuesday in support of the 9th Circuit review. “There is no greater threat to the sovereignty of the states than an assertion of federal control over their domestic affairs.”
The “domestic violence” clause of the Constitution was part of a careful compromise between its framers allowing the president to deploy armed soldiers against citizens “only as a last resort,” the judge argued. The president should be compelled to provide some proof of his claims and the states should be empowered to test it — “particularly in the face of contrary evidence.”
That position earned him a sharp rebuke from the court’s newest member, Trump appointee Judge Eric Tung, who echoed the administration’s claim that its deployments were “unreviewable” by the courts.
A demonstrator interacts with U.S. Marines and National Guard troops standing in line at the entrance of the Metropolitan Detention Center following federal immigration operations in July.
(Etienne Laurent / AFP via Getty Images)
Their exchange reflects a deepening rift on the 9th Circuit, once the most liberal appellate division in the United States.
Trump remade the 9th Circuit in his first term, naming 10 judges to the bench. Those picks were largely curated by Leonard Leo of the libertarian-leaning Federalist Society.
But Leo has since lost favor to Tung’s longtime friend Mike Davis of the Article III Project, whose recommendations tack well to the right of his predecessor, experts said.
Still, infighting on the appellate bench is far from the only hurdle facing Trump’s domestic deployments.
In October, the Supreme Court ordered both the administration and the state of Illinois to address a theory by Georgetown University law professor Martin S. Lederman, who argued the statute only allows presidents to federalize the National Guard after they send in the army.
“If the court wants to rule against Trump on this, that’s the least offensive way,” said Eric J. Segall, a professor at Georgia State College of Law. “It’s a way to avoid all factual determinations for the moment.”
But such a ruling could open the door to even more aggressive military action in the future, he and others warn.
“If the Supreme Court comes in and says, ‘you have to use the active duty military before you can use the National Guard,’ it has the effect of saying everything that happened until now [was illegal],” said David Janovsky from the Project on Government Oversight. “But then you have the prospect of more active duty troops getting deployed.”
Congress, too, is taking a fine-toothed comb to Trump’s troop cases. The Senate Armed Services Committee is set to hear testimony Thursday from military top brass about repeated domestic deployments.
“Across the United States, Donald Trump has illegally deployed our nation’s servicemembers into American cities under unclear and false pretexts and despite the costs to our military and civil rights,” Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) said in a statement announcing the hearing. “The American people and our troops deserve answers.”
Meanwhile, the Trump administration has continued to broaden its claims of executive power in court.
In recent weeks, Department of Justice lawyers have argued that, once federalized, state Guard troops would remain under the president’s command in perpetuity. Breyer called that position “contrary to law” in his ruling Wednesday.
“Defendants’ argument for a president to hold unchecked power to control state troops would wholly upend the federalism that is at the heart of our system of government,” Breyer wrote.
California leaders cheered Wednesday’s ruling as a turning point in what until now has been an uphill legal battle to constrain the president’s use of state troops. The order was set to take effect on Monday, though it was all but certain to be appealed to the 9th Circuit.
“The President deployed these brave men and women against their own communities, removing them from essential public safety operations,” Newsom said in a statement Wednesday morning. “We look forward to all National Guard servicemembers being returned to state service.”
Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta called it “a good day for our democracy and the strength of the rule of law.”
Still, some legal scholars and civil liberties experts warn repeated deployments — and the slogging court battles that attend them — could inure the public to further politicization of the military around the midterms.
“The sense of normalization is probably part of the plan here,” Janovsky said. “Having troops trained for war on the streets of American cities puts everyone at more risk. The more we normalize the blurring of those lines, the higher the risk that troops will be used for inappropriate purposes against the American people.”
Times staff writers Kevin Rector and Jenny Jarvie contributed to this report.
It was paparazzi time on Tuesday night at the old Morningside High gymnasium, where more than 20 photographers stationed themselves on the baseline trying to capture the moment Jason Crowe Jr. of Inglewood set the state record for career scoring by a high school basketball player.
Think Chino Hills days with the Ball brothers and Sierra Canyon days with Bronny James to bring out the cameras en masse.
The 6-foot-4 senior and son of Inglewood coach Jason Crowe Sr. needed 29 points to pass the 3,659 career points accumulated by Tounde Yessoufou of Santa Maria St. Joseph.
The basketball presented after Jason Crowe Jr. of Inglewood became the state’s all-time career scoring leader.
(Nick Koza)
It happened at the outset of the third quarter against Beverly Hills, which Inglewood defeated 112-75. After scoring 24 points in the first half when Inglewood took a 57-32 lead, Crowe made two free throws on a technical called at the end of the second quarter, then made a three with 7:51 left in the third quarter to break the record. The game was halted briefly to present a special basketball honoring the occasion.
Crowe, a Missouri commit who finished with 51 points Tuesday, has been on a four-year journey to establish himself as one of the best basketball players in Southern California. He said he never set out to be the state’s all-time scoring leader.
“It just happened as the years went on and I kept racking up points,” he said.
From the moment he debuted as a 14-year-old freshman at Lynwood, Crowe has been a game-changer. He averaged 36.0 points as a freshman when Lynwood won a Division V state championship, 37.4 points as a sophomore and 35.3 points last season at Inglewood. This season, he’s averaging 42.9 points.
The parents of Inglewood guard Jason Crowe Jr: His mother, Irene, and father, Jason Sr.
(Nick Koza)
Crowe said that first season winning a state championship remains his biggest accomplishment.
“My freshman year was one of the finest years I had playing against good teams at a young age and carrying my team to a state title. That was the best feeling,” he said.
As Crowe’s reputation grew, many of his father’s friends joined in the fun. Crowe has spoken frequently with Inglewood’s most famous basketball player, Hall of Famer Paul Pierce. Crowe’s grandfather used to be the principal at Inglewood.
His scoring prowess is helped by his ability to attack the basket, draw fouls and make free throws. He’s relentless and never satisfied. His work ethic has helped him get stronger and show improvement each season.
“I feel I have established who I am in the high school basketball world,” Crowe said. “But there’s always something I can get better at.”
To be able to play for his father, a former Inglewood guard, is something for which Crowe is grateful.
“It’s been great having somebody who really cares about me on your side,” he said.
Crowe’s father is expected to join him in Missouri.
“He’s definitely going to encourage me and be with me on this journey,” Crowe said.
The fact Crowe still has more than two months of high school basketball to play means he’s only going to add to a record that might last a long time.
In February 2023, Jaime Green, the superintendent of a tiny school district in the mountains of Northern California, flew to Washington, D.C., with an urgent appeal.
The Secure Rural Schools Act, a long-standing financial aid program for schools like his in forested counties, was about to lapse, putting thousands of districts at risk of losing significant chunks of their budgets. The law had originated 25 years ago as a temporary fix for rural counties that were losing tax revenue from reduced timber harvesting on public lands.
Green, whose Trinity Alps Unified School District serves about 650 students in the struggling logging town of Weaverville, bounded through Capitol Hill with a small group of Northern California educators, pleading with anyone who would listen: Please renew the program.
They were assured, over and over, that it had bipartisan support, wasn’t much money in the grand scheme of things, and almost certainly would be renewed.
But because Congress could not agree on how to fund the program, it took nearly three years — and a lapse in funding — for the Secure Rural Schools Act to be revived, at least temporarily.
On Tuesday, the U.S. House overwhelmingly voted to extend the program through 2027 and to provide retroactive payments to districts that lost funding while it was lapsed.
The vote was 399 to 5, with all nay votes cast by Republicans. The bill, approved unanimously by the Senate in June, now awaits President Trump’s signature.
“We’ve got Republicans and Democrats holding hands, passing this freaking bill, finally,” Green said. “We stayed positive. The option to quit was, what, layofffs and kids not getting educated? We kept telling them the same story, and they kept listening.”
Green, who until that 2023 trip had never traveled east of Texas, wound up flying to Washington 14 times. He was in the House audience Tuesday as the bill was passed.
In an interview Tuesday, Republican Rep. Doug LaMalfa, who represents a vast swath of Northern California and helped lead the push for reauthorization, said Congress never should have let the program lapse in the first place.
The Secure Rural Schools Act, he said, was a victim of a Congress in which “it’s still an eternal fight over anything fiscal.” It is “annoying,” LaMalfa said, “how hard it is to get basic things done around here.”
Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), greets Supts. Jaime Green, of Weaverville, and Anmarie Swanstrom, of Hayfork, on Capitol Hill in February 2023.
(Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times)
“I’m not proud of the situation taking this long and putting these folks in this much stress,” he said of rural communities that rely upon the funding. “I’m not going to break my arm patting myself on the back.”
Despite broad bipartisan support, the Secure Rural Schools Act, run by the U.S. Forest Service, expired in the fall of 2023, with final payouts made in 2024. That year, the program distributed more than $232 million to more than 700 counties across the United States and Puerto Rico, with nearly $34 million going to California.
In 2024, reauthorization stalled in the House. This year, it was included in a House draft of the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act but was ultimately dropped from the final package.
While public school budgets are largely supported by local property taxes, districts surrounded by untaxed federal forest land have depended upon modest payments from the U.S. Forest Service to stay afloat.
Historically, that money mostly came from logging. Under a 1908 law, counties with national forests — primarily in the rural West — received 25% of what the federal government made from timber sales off that land. The money was split between schools, roads and other critical services.
But by the early 1990s, the once-thriving logging industry had cratered. So did the school funding.
In 2000, Congress enacted what was supposed to be a short-term, six-year solution: the Secure Rural Schools & Community Self-Determination Act, with funding based on a complex formula involving historical timber revenues and other factors.
Congress never made the program permanent, instead reauthorizing versions of it by tucking it into other bills. Once, it was included in a bill to shore up the nation’s helium supply. Another time, it was funded in part by a tax on roll-your-own-cigarette machines.
The program extension passed Tuesday was a standalone bill.
“For rural school districts, it’s critically important, and it means stability from a financial perspective,” said Yuri Calderon, executive director of the Sacramento-based Small School Districts’ Assn.
Calderon said he had heard from numerous school districts across the state that had been dipping into reserve funds to avoid layoffs and cutbacks since the Secure Rural Schools Act expired.
Calderon said the program wasn’t “a handout; it’s basically a mitigation payment” from the federal government, which owns and manages about 45% of California’s land.
Rep. Jared Huffman (D-San Rafael) meets with a group of superintendents from rural Northern California in February 2023.
(Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times)
On Dec. 3, LaMalfa and Democratic Rep. Joe Neguse of Colorado, alongside Idaho Republican Sen. Mike Crapo and Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, spearheaded a letter with signatures from more than 80 bipartisan members of Congress urging House leadership to renew the program by the end of the year.
The letter said the lapse in funding already had led to “school closures, delayed road and bridge maintenance, and reduced public safety services.”
In Trinity County, where Green’s district is located, the federal government owns more than 75% of the land, limiting the tax base and the ability to pass local bonds for things like campus maintenance.
As the Secure Rural Schools Act has been tweaked over the years, funding has seesawed. In 2004, Green’s district in Weaverville, population 3,200, received $1.3 million through the program.
The last payment was about $600,000, roughly 4% of the district’s budget, said Sheree Beans, the district’s chief budget official.
Beans said Monday that, had the program not been renewed, the district likely would have had to lay off seven or eight staff members.
“I don’t want to lay off anyone in my small town,” Beans said. “I see them at the post office. It affects kids. It affects their education.”
In October — during the 43-day federal government shutdown — Beans took three Trinity County students who are members of Future Farmers of America to Capitol Hill to meet with House Speaker Mike Johnson’s staff about the program.
After years of back and forth, Green could not go on that trip. He did not feel well. His doctor told him he needed to stop traveling so much.
Before hopping on a flight to Washington this weekend, the 59-year-old superintendent penned a letter to his staff. After three decades in the district, he was retiring, effective Monday.
Green wrote that he has a rare genetic condition called neurofibromatosis type 2, which has caused tumors to grow on his spinal cord. He will soon undergo surgeries to have them removed.
“My body has let me go as far as I can,” he wrote.
In Green’s letter, he wrote that, if the Secure Rural Schools Act was extended, “financially we will be alright for years to come.”
On Monday night, the district’s Board of Trustees named Beans interim superintendent. She attended the meeting, then drove more than three hours to the airport in Sacramento. She got on a red-eye flight and made it to Washington in time for the Secure Rural Schools vote on the House floor.
When Green decided a few weeks ago to step down, he did not know the reauthorization vote would coincide with his first day of retirement.
But, he said, he never doubted the program would eventually be revived. Coming right before Christmas, he said, “the timing is beautiful.”
Anti-incumbent fever. The Year of the Woman. Coattails and skirt-tails. Yes, the pundits are in a lather with prognostications of a blitzkrieg this year against the powers-that-be in American politics. But will this sortie swoop down on Orange County’s long-entrenched state Legislators?
Don’t count on it, say the region’s Republican hierarchy. They insist the hefty contingent of GOP incumbents in Orange County is just too powerful. Even some leaders of the second-fiddle Democrats, who hold only one state elected office in Orange County, say privately that they don’t expect to make much headway against the GOP.
But such behind-the-scenes sentiments haven’t stopped most Democratic challengers–as well as Libertarians and other third-party candidates–from mounting spirited grass-roots campaigns and espousing the optimistic view that in this wacky political season, anything could happen.
These Democrats suggest they could benefit by hitching a ride on the coattails or skirt hems of their party’s candidates at the top of the ticket. Some of the challengers also predict the Democrat’s surge in voter registration, which saw the party begin to close the GOP’s huge lead, may signal the beginnings of change in the political climate of Orange County.
The Democrats also predict that the electorate’s grumpy feelings about the Legislature–fueled by the nationally embarrassing budget stalemate over the summer–will spark an anti-incumbent wildfire that could hurt GOP candidates in Orange County.
“I think this is the year,” enthused Jim Toledano, an Irvine attorney running against longtime Assemblyman Gil Ferguson (R-Newport Beach) in the 70th District, where Republicans outnumber Democrats nearly 2 to 1. “I get a feeling voters will be picking and choosing this year. And an awful lot of them will be going anti-incumbent.”
Republican officials just aren’t buying it. They admit that anti-incumbency could shave a few points off the usual electoral landslides their candidates enjoy, but say the GOP isn’t taking any chances. The Republicans, after all, still enjoy a hefty edge in fund raising and party registration in nearly all the districts.
“We don’t see any upsets, but this is not a good year to be resting on your laurels,” said Greg Haskin, Orange County’s Republican executive director. “Most of our Republican incumbents are taking it very seriously and working hard to get reelected.”
A look at Orange County’s races for the Assembly:
67th Assembly District
Assemblywoman Doris Allen (R-Cypress) had to engage in a tumultuous primary campaign to defeat colleagues Tom Mays (R-Huntington Beach) and Nolan Frizzelle (R-Fountain Valley) after redistricting put all three in this coastal Orange County district anchored by Huntington Beach.
Although the five-term assemblywoman heads toward election day with a 51.5% to 35.4% registration advantage for the GOP, Democrat challenger Ken LeBlanc is bullish on his chances.
“I’m doing everything I can to position myself for lightning to strike,” LeBlanc said. He is tapping into the 700 volunteers working out of the Democratic Party’s west Orange County office. LeBlanc also notes that much of the newly reapportioned district is new to Allen. In the meantime, LeBlanc has tried to characterize himself as a maverick, “not your usual liberal Democrat.”
LeBlanc also makes a fuss over money funneled to Allen during the primary by education and labor groups that have traditionally supported Democrats. It has prompted an unusual charge: LeBlanc, the Democrat, has tried to tie Allen to powerful Democratic Assembly Speaker Willie Brown.
“Doris made a deal with Willie obviously,” LeBlanc contends. “If Doris wants to sell herself to the highest bidder, she can do that.”
Allen bristles at such accusations, saying Brown had nothing to do with the contributions, which she contends were sparked by her support of education.
“There was never a deal with Willie, never a discussion,” she said. “In fact, Willie was mad that they were putting money into a Republican district.” Allen also said LeBlanc “hurts himself worse than he helps himself” by making such charges.
She hopes to return to Sacramento and work on finding “a balance between the economy and environment.” Her big effort in recent years has been to outlaw the use of gill nets by commercial fishermen.
Libertarian Brian Schar, an aerospace engineer, says meaningful budget reform needs to start with public schools and supports the proposed voucher system allowing parents to more easily send their children to private schools. Like other Libertarians, he wants to cut taxes and regulations to help improve the state’s business climate.
68th Assembly District
Curt Pringle, Orange County’s former assemblyman, is back.
After one term in the Legislature, Pringle was defeated by Democrat Tom Umberg in an unruly 1990 race. Reapportionment shifted Pringle into a new district, and here he is again in the 68th.
His Democratic opponent, Linda Kay Rigney, is running a campaign long on hustle and short on cash. Nonetheless, Rigney sees signs of hope. The central county district–anchored by Garden Grove, Westminster and Anaheim–isn’t nearly as lopsided as some (it’s 46.2% Republican and 42.2% Democratic). With no other candidate in the race, Rigney hopes the 11% who aren’t followers of the major parties will vote for her.
Moreover, she thinks the area’s residents, irked by the lingering recession, will be ready to revolt against the GOP hierarchy. She also expects to gain votes in this political “Year of the Woman” and perhaps even ride the hems of Feinstein and Boxer.
A longtime Democratic activist and school instructional aide, Rigney hopes to take “drastic measures” to spur the economy by streamlining the regulatory process and reforming workers compensation.
Pringle, 33, has mostly focused on his desire to work at reducing the size of government. Like other Republicans, he wants to roll back regulations to “bring the economy out of the doldrums.”
He also wants to overhaul the worker’s compensation system to outlaw stress disability claims and make cuts “in every area of the budget.” Noting that many politicians “shy away” from talking about cuts in education, Pringle stressed that the problem isn’t a lack of money but a bloated education bureaucracy.
69th Assembly District
With a Democrat majority, this district is an anomaly in the GOP bastion of Orange County. Assemblyman Tom Umberg (D-Garden Grove) enjoys a 54% to 36% registration edge over the Republicans.
But local Republicans would like nothing better than to unseat Umberg, and they feel they’ve got just the candidate to do it–Jo Ellen Allen, a conservative former associate professor of political science and champion of “traditional family values.”
Both sides are armed for war. Allen has raised about $200,000 so far, while Umberg has amassed $300,000. There’s even been a few early skirmishes.
Allen has made a point to regularly blast Umberg for his vote in 1990 to retain Willie Brown as speaker of the Assembly, a post the San Francisco Democrat has held for a dozen years to the ever-increasing irritation of frustrated Republican politicos.
Umberg’s campaign, meanwhile, has been quietly making a fuss over Allen’s role for the past decade as president of the California chapter of Eagle Forum, a conservative group headed by Phyllis Schlafly, the right-wing national celebrity most prominent for her stand against the proposed equal rights amendment and other feminist causes.
David Keller, the Libertarian candidate, wants to privatize the public school system and many other government services. He also would work to abolish the South Coast Air Quality Management District as well as agencies such as the Iceberg Lettuce Commission and the state Arts Council. Keller favors a flat-rate personal income tax for the state and wants to reduce sales taxes. He also wants to legalize drugs, saying that “the drug war is diverting police and court resources from real crime, serious crime.”
70th Assembly District
Like other Republican incumbents, Assemblyman Gil Ferguson enjoys a decided registration advantage (56.1% GOP to 29.7% Democratic), but challenger Jim Toledano remains confident.
Toledano and his volunteers have been walking precincts for more than two months. He has also raised more than $50,000 and figures he will capture GOP voters who supported Costa Mesa Mayor Mary Hornbuckle, who gave Ferguson a rough fight in the Republican primary.
He contends the state has “systematically shortchanged education,” turning a “first-rate education system into one that hasn’t done the job.” Business, in turn, has suffered because of a dearth of well-educated workers, he said.
The Democrat is also talking tough.
“Gil Ferguson has an extreme right-wing ideological agenda that he pushes at every opportunity,” Toledano said. “He is focused on winning ideological points on the right and not in dealing with problems.”
Ferguson scoffs at Toledano’s critique. Although the challenger insists he would vote to oust Democrat Willie Brown as speaker of the Assembly, Ferguson isn’t buying it.
“He’s a typical Democrat opponent,” Ferguson said. “They distort your record and say bad things about you. But they never tell the constituents that they’re going to go up to Sacramento and join Willie Brown.”
Ferguson said he’s happy to run on his record, noting that he worked to get an independent Caltrans district office in Orange County and served on a blue-ribbon task force that successfully pushed a highway funding measure that fueled the current freeway building binge.
Libertarian Scott Bieser, meanwhile, is running as a protest candidate to give voters who are “fed up with Republicans and Democrats” another choice. He wants to cut government by about 80%, comparing politicians’ thirst for tax dollars to “a person addicted to a drug.”
71st Assembly District
Assemblyman Mickey Conroy (R-Santa Ana) has a bigger registration advantage than any Republican in the state (58% to 29.2% for the Democrats). But he’s not taking chances in this unpredictable political year.
Conroy is running on his record–he managed to get 24 bills signed into law since he won a special election for the seat last year. They’ve included a domestic violence bill, a law making it a crime to deface veterans’ memorials and legislation repealing the tax on white canes for the blind.
His Democratic opponent, Bea Foster, hopes to parlay her many years of activism in community politics into votes. She helped push through Orange County’s TINCUP campaign finance reform measure, was active in the unsuccessful effort to incorporate north Tustin and helped block plans for extension of the Garden Grove Freeway into the Tustin hills.
Foster wants to see the state’s health care system improved and boost funding for education, saying “one of our gold mines is going down the drain.” She also wants to push for retraining of aerospace workers and others out of jobs because of the economy.
72nd Assembly District
Like many other heavily Republican districts, this race could turn into a coronation for powerful Assemblyman Ross Johnson. The former Assembly minority party leader enjoys a 55.6% to 37.7% registration advantage over the Democrats in his district. Moreover, Democratic challenger Paul Garza Jr. is running a low-key campaign.
Johnson hopes to fundamentally restructure state government, cutting regulations and spending fewer tax dollars. He wants to rework the welfare system, shifting the emphasis to helping people become “fully functioning, productive members of society.”
Garza, a public affairs consultant and former Orange County Democratic Party executive director, supports abortion rights, wants to see the state’s health care system revamped to improve care for all and wants the welfare system reformed to provide education and vocational skills.
Libertarian Geoffrey Braun favors school vouchers, wants the state’s workers’ compensation system revamped and backs campaign finance reform, saying that big political contributions are undermining the ability of government to truly serve the people.
73rd Assembly District
Up until a few weeks ago, this race appeared headed toward a historic intraparty showdown. But then Republican nominee Bill Morrow and the opponent he defeated in the primary, Laguna Niguel Councilwoman Patricia C. Bates, made up and held a peace powwow with GOP officials.
Democrat Lee Walker isn’t holding back the punches, calling Morrow an “ultra-conservative, right-wing Christian” who is “out of the mainstream of Republicanism.”
Walker, a college professor who has modeled himself as the “education candidate,” also has blasted Morrow for raising more than $275,000 in contributions, much of the money from powerful Sacramento politicians and political action committees. “I could call him Mr. Pac-Man because he’s got so many PACs giving him money,” Walker said.
Morrow counters that “people who contribute to my campaign do so because they know I stand for certain principles that are consistent with their own beliefs” and stressed that he has received many small-dollar contributions from the general public.
