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The five-term Louisiana congressman earned a law degree and maneuvered his way to become speaker of the House. That requires a certain mental aptitude.
But maybe Johnson isn’t stupid. Maybe he’s just willfully ignorant, or uninformed. Perhaps he simply doesn’t know any better.
How else to explain his persistent claim there’s something sinister and nefarious about the way California casts and counts its election ballots?
Just last week, Johnson once again repeated one of the sophistries the president uses to dump all over the country’s elections system and explain away his oft-verified loss in the 2020 presidential campaign.
With an apparent eye toward rigging the 2026 midterm election, Trump suggested Republicans should “take over the voting” in at least “15 places,” which, presumably, would all be Democratic strongholds. Johnson — bowing, scraping — echoed Trump’s phony claims of corruption to justify the president’s latest treachery.
“In some of the states, like in California, for example. I mean, they hold the elections open for weeks after election day,” Johnson told reporters. “We had three House Republican candidates who were ahead on election day in the last election cycle, and every time a new tranche of ballots came in, they just magically whittled away until their leads were lost. … It looks on its face to be fraudulent.”
Fact check: There was no hocus-pocus. No “holding open” of elections to allow for manipulation of the result. No voting or any other kind of fraud.
California does take awhile to count its ballots and finalize its elections. If people want a quicker count, then push lawmakers in Sacramento to spend more on the consistently underfunded election offices that tally the results in California’s 58 counties.
That said, there are plenty of reasons — none involving any kind of partisan chicanery — that explain why California elections seems to drag on and vote totals shift as ballots are steadily counted.
For starters, there are a lot of ballots to count. Over the last several decades, California has worked to encourage as many eligible citizens as possible to invest in the state and its future by engaging at election time and voting.
That’s a good thing. Participatory democracy, and all that.
Once votes are cast, California takes great care to make sure they’re legitimate and counted properly. (Which is exactly what Trump and Johnson want, right? Right?)
That diligence takes time. It may require looking up an individual’s address or verifying his or her signature. Or routing a ballot dropped off at the wrong polling location to its appropriate county for processing.
In recent years, California has shifted to conducting its elections predominantly by mail. That’s further extended the counting process. The state allows those ballots to arrive and be counted up to seven days after the election, so long as they are postmarked on or before election day. Once received, each mail ballot has to be verified and processed before it can be counted. That prolongs the process.
County elections officials have 30 days to tally each valid ballot and conduct a required postelection audit. That’s been the time frame under state law for quite some time.
“For that reason, we get an outsized amount of criticism for our long vote count, because everyone’s impatient,” said Kim Alexander, president of the nonpartisan California Voter Foundation.
As for why the vote in congressional races has tended to shift in Democrats’ favor, there’s a simple, non-diabolical explanation.
Republican voters have generally preferred to cast their ballots in person, on election day. Democrats are more likely to mail their ballots, meaning they arrive — and get counted — later. As those votes were tallied, several close contests in 2024 moved in Democrats’ direction.
There are plenty of reasons to bash California, if one is so inclined.
The exorbitant cost of housing. Nightmarish traffic. High rates of poverty and homelessness.
But on the plus side, a comprehensive study — the 2024 Cost of Voting Index, published in the Election Law Journal — ranked California seventh in the nation in the ease of casting a ballot. That’s something to be proud of.
As for Johnson, the evidence suggests the speaker is neither dumb nor uninformed when it comes to California and its elections. Rather, he’s scheming and cynical, sowing unwarranted and corrosive doubts about election integrity to mollify Trump and thwart a free and fair election in November.
Voting is fundamental to democracy, but here in the U.S. people don’t vote very much. In December, Miami held a runoff election for mayor, and all of 37,000 voters turned out. This was 2,000 fewer people than voted in comparable off-cycle elections in Apizaco, a small city in the mountains of central Mexico. It was no blip: The median turnout in U.S. city elections is 26% of the voting age population. In Mexico, by contrast, turnout rarely dips below 50%, and unglamorous small-town elections attract higher numbers, often more than 70% of the citizenry.
Nevertheless, the United States disdains Mexico as a pale shadow of its own democracy. Mexican elections are written off as corrupt, violent and unrepresentative. This was part-true for much of the last century, when versions of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional ruled without interruption for 71 years. Mexicans were “oriented” to vote by party managers, fined if they didn’t, violently dissuaded from voting for dissidents, disenfranchised with stuffed ballot boxes. Impressive turnouts were coerced. Even today, decades after the arrival of a competitive democracy, the violence persists. Thirty-four candidates were murdered in the 2024 elections.
Yet Mexicans also vote in impressive numbers because they have always cared profoundly about representative politics, and particularly at a local level. Many of those large turnouts in authoritarian Mexico were crowds of everyday people struggling to elect legitimate authorities in the teeth of a rigged system. Those struggles meant that sometimes they won.
Historical outcomes are revealing. More than 200 years of elections in Mexico have given results significantly more diverse and representative than those of the United States. In 2024 Mexicans elected the first female president in North American history, climate scientist Claudia Sheinbaum. In 1829 Mexicans elected the first Black president in North American history, mule driver Vicente Guerrero. In 1856 they elected lawyer Benito Juárez as the only Indigenous president in North American history.
The United States was born committed to rule by freely elected representatives. “We the people” is a good start to a piece of political writing and a good start to a country. When the French sociologist Aléxis de Tocqueville visited New England in the 1820s he was struck by how the citizens of small towns argued out their differences and came up with solutions together. The federal republic was a scaling up of those habits. The sum of those people’s beliefs, institutions and bloody-mindedness, Tocqueville wrote, was democracy in America.
The peoples of the United Mexican States, founded in 1824 after gaining independence from Spain, shared those ambitions. Mexico was likewise a federal republic, its rulers elected, its powers divided among executive, legislature and judiciary. As in the U.S., the female half of the population was excluded. But Mexico’s founders were ahead of ours in one sine qua non of genuine democracy: racial equality. In the Federalist Papers, Alexander Hamilton claimed that “to all general purposes we have uniformly been one people; each individual citizen everywhere enjoying the same national rights, privileges, and protection.” That was a self-evident untruth, because Black and Indigenous peoples were not included.
In Mexico, people of color had some standing from the founding onward. Mexican history has its own wrenching tragedies of race: the slavery of West Africans, the ethnocides of the North, the systematic impoverishment of peoples like the Maya of Chiapas, a eugenic hunger for white migration. But from the colonial outset Black people were acknowledged to be fully human, their enslavers’ abuses punished, their lynching unknown. Many Indigenous peoples preserved their language, lands and governments over centuries. Asians joined them; the first Japanese ambassador arrived in 1614. Mexico was the world’s first great melting pot.
So the founders of the United Mexican States made no formal distinction among the multitudes they contained. Their leaders in the War of Independence abolished slavery. Their post-independence congress mandated “the equality of civil rights to all free inhabitants of the empire, whatever their origin.” The 1824 Constitution extended the vote to every adult male. All would be free, all equal under law and all voters with a stake in the outcome.
In 1917 Mexicans passed the most progressive constitution in the world following their own revolution. It mandated an eight-hour working day, a minimum wage, equal salaries for men and women, and paid maternity leave. While women didn’t get the vote until the 1950s, they exercised notable power behind the scenes; even the most conservative parties had female organizers and supporters. Progressive social policies inspired leaders across the hemisphere, including Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Three core beliefs inspire Mexicans to vote. They believe that face-to-face freedom, embedded in the power and autonomy of the municipio libre, the free county, is sacrosanct. And they believe that to preserve communal freedom, whether from federal abuse or oligarchs, requires two things, sufragio efectivo y no reelección; in historian John Womack’s translation, “a real vote and no boss rule.”
Historically enough Mexicans — of all political stripes, from conservatives to anarchists — cared about those three beliefs to fight in elections tooth and nail.
Alongside the belief that voting is a duty comes clear-eyed rejection of boss rule. While Mexican Mayor Daleys are historically ubiquitous — they sparked the Mexican Revolution — there are none of the national dynasties that beset U.S. politics. The great dictator Porfirio Díaz left his ambitious nephew struggling to make army captain for eighteen years. Dynastic power befits monarchies, not democracies, and Mexicans know it.
Neither do Mexican politicians enjoy the unfettered power of their American counterparts to buy elections. Parties are publicly funded, under a system designed to promote fairness. Each party gets a certain amount from the state: 30% of that amount is the same for all, the remaining 70% proportional to their success in the previous elections. Private donations are transparent, regulated and capped at a very low level, on paper at least. The system unduly favors incumbents, and illegal, off-books funding is rife. Yet the need for sizable contributions to be covert keeps election results out of the hands of the likes of Elon Musk. A national watchdog and a diverse and competent press ensure it.
Sheinbaum spent $18 million winning her presidential election. In losing New York City’s mayoral election, Andrew Cuomo spent three times as much. A single oligarch, Michael Bloomberg, chipped in $13 million. Mexican elections are sometimes bought and sold, but never with the obscene unconcern prevalent in the U.S. since the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling.
Republics that endure rely on egalitarian beliefs, hard-nosed pragmatism, unwritten rules of decency and written rules of institutions — and unrelenting struggle against all who break those rules. Democracy relies on people of all races being recognized as fully human and guaranteed access to the ballot. It then relies on those people turning up to vote whenever given the chance. Mexicans have repeatedly demonstrated how deeply they know that across their history, against sometimes heavy odds. Their government documents come stamped with the revolutionary slogan sufragio efectivo y no reelección, a real vote and no boss rule, as a reminder. We could use one ourselves.
Paul Gillingham, a professor of history at Northwestern University, is the author of “Mexico: A 500-Year History.”
Los Angeles County leaders are pushing forward a measure for the November ballot that would remove their ability to have final say on one of the costliest decisions they make: How much to pay firefighters and sheriff’s deputies.
The supervisors voted 4 to 0 on Tuesday to have their lawyers draft a ballot measure that would give final decision-making power in contract disputes regarding pay and working conditions for public safety workers to a three-person panel, a practice known as binding arbitration.
Supporters say the proposal, which the supervisors are pushing to get on the November ballot, would offer a new tool to smooth over disputes and provide a “reset” after recent tumultuous contract negotiations.
“It incentivizes both parties to come to a fair agreement,” said Supervisor Lindsey Horvath, who introduced the measure along with Supervisor Hilda Solis.
The supervisors are expected to vote again on the proposal in the coming months before putting it on the ballot.
Currently, if contract talks hit an impasse, the five county supervisors can, after a complex mediation process, impose a final offer. Public safety workers, who are not allowed to strike, say they have no leverage with which to fight back, giving the county final word.
Under the new proposal, the power dynamics would shift. An arbitration panel would instead make the final decision on some contract disputes for public safety employees, including firefighters, sheriff’s deputies and county lifeguards. The panel would have one arbitrator chosen by the county, one chosen by the union and one agreed to by both sides.
It’s rare for labor negotiations to get to this point. The county said it has imposed contract terms after reaching impasse over negotiations twice since 2001, once with the Union of American Physicians and Dentists in 2001 and Supervising Deputy Probation Officers in 2024.
“The goal is to never have to get to that step,” Horvath said.
Unions say the measure would give them needed leverage and remove political pressure from the thorniest contract questions. Critics say it shifts financial control away from politicians and into the hands of unaccountable arbitrators, which could lead to bloated labor costs.
“Arbitrators aren’t elected, they’re not required to weigh countywide trade-offs like homeless services, healthcare, capital improvements, all of those things,” said Supervisor Holly Mitchell, the only supervisor to abstain from the vote.
Interim County Executive Officer Joseph M. Nicchitta said he viewed it as a potential “seismic change” in how the county handles labor negotiations.
“Because the arbitrators ‘pick a winner’ as between the parties’ final offers, the decision will no longer be a compromise. One side will win,” Nicchitta wrote in a Feb. 9 letter to the board.
Substantial raises mandated by arbitrators, he wrote, “could, among other things, materially and detrimentally increase the County’s day-to-day operating costs, lead to workforce reductions and program curtailments, balloon our unfunded pension liabilities, and damage the County’s credit ratings.”
The decision of who gets final say over wage increases will become increasingly important as county leaders try to steer the government through financial tumult brought on by federal cuts, booming labor costs and billions in sex abuse payouts. Last week, the supervisors unanimously approved $200 million in homeless service cuts to close the budget gap.
Horvath said more than 20 jurisdictions in California use binding arbitration for public safety workers, including the counties of San Francisco and Sacramento.
Public safety unions are simultaneously gathering signatures to get the proposal on the ballot in case the board decides against moving forward. A coalition of public safety unions has started a campaign arguing that binding arbitration would “remove politics from pay decisions” and leave “pay decisions in the hands of neutral experts.”
“They have every intention and probably all of the resources needed to collect signatures to put something on the ballot that gets them this,” Supervisor Janice Hahn said. “This makes sense to work on something that we can have some input in.”
SACRAMENTO — Gov. Gavin Newsom is heading to a conference of world leaders in Germany later this week as part of his ongoing effort to use the global stage to urge investment in California’s climate-related initiatives and challenge President Trump’s isolationist policies.
Newsom will appear at the Munich Security Conference to talk about trade and jobs and tell foreign leaders that “California is a stable and reliable partner,” he said Tuesday during an unrelated event.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio is leading the official U.S. delegation to the conference, while Democratic leaders Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York are also expected, according to news reports.
The three-day event focuses on the intersections of trade, economics, security and foreign policy, and is expected to draw business leaders and heads of state.
Vice President JD Vance’s appearance at last year’s gathering caused a stir after he argued that European’s immigration policies are too relaxed and European nations are too reliant on the United States.
Ahead of the gathering, conference organizers released a report Monday that found that the “world has entered a period of wrecking-ball politics. Sweeping destruction — rather than careful reforms and policy corrections — is the order of the day.”
Newsom told reporters that he will appear on several panels, and suggested he will focus in part on staying competitive with China when it comes to new technologies and job growth.
“China is cleaning our clock as it relates to low-carbon green growth. They are cleaning our clock in terms of not just electric vehicles, because it’s not about electric power, it’s about economic power,” he said.
“It’s about exports, manufacturing, jobs — and this country is walking away,” he continued. “We are walking away from science and we are walking away from common sense.”
“Gavin Newscum is traveling to another international conference to whine about climate policies instead of doing his job as the governor of California?” said White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers, using President Trump’s derogatory nickname for the governor. “Nothing new to see here.”
Newsom is in his last year as California governor and is considering running for president in 2028. He last month traveled to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, where he criticized world leaders for not challenging Trump’s aggressive posture when it comes to his threats to acquire Greenland, as well as his tariffs.
Newsom also attended the U.N. climate policy summit in Belém, Brazil, in November.
L.A. County voters will be asked this June to hike the sales tax rate by a half-cent to soften the blow of federal funding cuts on the region’s public health system.
The county Board of Supervisors voted 4 to 1 Tuesday to put the sales tax on the ballot. County officials estimate it would generate $1 billion per year to replenish the shrinking budgets of local hospitals and clinics. The tax, if approved by voters this summer, would last for five years.
The supervisors say the increased tax — a half-cent of every dollar spent — would offset major funding cuts in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which is expected to slash more than $2 billion from the county’s budget for health services over the next three years.
“Millions of people look to us to step up even when the federal government has walked away,” said Supervisor Holly Mitchell, who introduced the ballot proposal along with Supervisor Hilda Solis.
The tax was pushed by Restore Healthcare for Angelenos, a coalition of healthcare workers and advocates, who argue it is necessary to ward off mass layoffs of healthcare workers and keep emergency rooms open.
Mitchell said she was trying to make sure supervisors learned their lesson from the closure of Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center in 2007, which ripped a gaping hole in the health system for South L.A. residents who had to travel farther to more crowded emergency rooms.
“People died as a result of that,” she said. “I don’t want to go back there.”
Supervisor Kathryn Barger cast the lone no vote, saying she believed the county should look to the state for help rather than taxpayers. She also said she was concerned the tax money was not earmarked for healthcare costs but rather would go into the general fund, giving officials more discretion over how it gets spent.
“We are not, as a whole, credible when it comes to promises made, promises broken,” she said.
Members of the audience hold up signs inside the county Hall of Administration, where supervisors discussed how to replenish more than $2 billion in federal funding cuts to the county healthcare system.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
As part of the tax hike, voters would be asked to also approve the creation of an oversight group to monitor how the money is spent. The supervisors also voted on a spending plan for the money, which would have the largest chunk of funds go to care for uninsured residents.
Los Angeles County currently has a sales tax of 9.75% with cities adding their own sales tax on top. If the healthcare hike passes this summer, the sales tax would be more than 11% in some cities. Palmdale and Lancaster, some of the poorest parts of the county, would potentially have the highest sales tax of 11.75%.
County public health officials painted a grim picture of what life looks like for the poorest and sickest residents if new money doesn’t flow into the system. Emergency rooms could be shuttered, they warned. Contact tracing and the daily testing of ocean water quality could slow down. Tens of thousands of health workers could lose their jobs, they said.
“The threat is real already,” said Barbara Ferrer, the head of the county Department of Public Health.
Some on Tuesday condemned the measure as well-intentioned but ill-formulated. The California Contract Cities Assn., a coalition of cities inside Los Angeles County, argued a larger sales tax would “disproportionately burden the very residents the County seeks to protect.”
“My phone has been blowing up,” said Janice Hahn, one of two supervisors who said the Citadel Outlets, a large shopping mall in City of Commerce, called to say they were worried shoppers were going to start crossing county lines.
With the effects of the federal cuts expected to be felt across the state, other California counties have already started to look to consumers to replenish government coffers. Last November, Santa Clara County voters approved a similar sales tax measure to raise money for the public health system.
Los Angeles police officers must turn on their body cameras at the scene of federal immigration enforcement operations and preserve the footage, according to an executive directive issued by Mayor Karen Bass on Tuesday.
Since June, federal immigration raids have disrupted neighborhoods and communities across Los Angeles and around the nation, including at work sites, along neighborhood streets and in commercial areas.
Often, police officers have responded to the scene to try to keep order amid tensions between immigration agents and community members.
“The point that we’re trying to make here is that ICE enforcement is not welcome here,” Bass said at a news conference Tuesday morning. “We have resisted against it since this terror started, and we will continue to do that.”
In addition to recording the federal immigration agents’ actions, LAPD officers must document the name and badge number of the agents’ on-scene supervisor, summon emergency personnel if someone at a scene is injured and take reports from the public about federal agents’ alleged misconduct, Bass’ five-page directive states.
The directive also prohibits federal immigration agents from using city property and imposes a fee on owners who allow federal agents to use private property.
The effort builds on a previous Bass directive that aimed to restrict the city from assisting federal immigration agents. The LAPD has a long-standing policy that its officers should not be involved in immigration enforcement.
The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Bass noted that officers are supposed to turn on their body cameras anyway, including when they’re responding to a call from the public or when another law enforcement agency asks for assistance.
“We’re saying we really want you to do that, even if you are there and there’s not a disturbance that breaks out, if you’re there on the scene,” Bass said.
The LAPD did not immediately provide comment. The Los Angeles Police Protective League, which represents rank-and-file LAPD officers, did not respond to a request for comment.
In Chicago, the mayor issued a similar directive in January, instructing the Police Department to “investigate and document” alleged illegal activity by federal agents, said Tania Unzueta, political director of Mijente, a national group that organizes within Latino and Chicano communities.
“ICE’s power must be challenged at every level, and local governments have a critical role to play in holding the line against federal enforcement,” Unzueta said.
But in Los Angeles, immigrant rights advocates expressed concerns about requiring the LAPD to police another agency.
Maegan Ortiz, executive director of the Institute of Popular Education of Southern California, or IDEPSCA, cited the LAPD’s history of using excessive force against civilians and said that in the recent immigration raids, officers have sometimes inflamed instead of defused tensions.
“Are they really the best people to determine what is excessive use of force, given the literal millions of dollars that we’re seeing paid out in settlement because of use of force by LAPD?” Ortiz said. “Can we trust this police department to police others when they can’t police themselves?”
James “Jim” Willis, a former LAPD detective who later worked for the L.A. Police Commission’s inspector general’s office, said he agreed with the directive’s intent: to bring greater accountability to Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations. But he has questions about how it would work in practice.
For one thing, he said, it’s unclear whether LAPD officers are supposed to respond whenever an ICE operation is underway. Doing so would put further strain on a department that is down hundreds of officers from a few years ago, he said.
It’s also unclear what will happen with the recorded footage.
“Who’s going to audit this?” he asked. “Do you now create a new group, a new division and new section?”
Since rolling out the tiny recording devices in 2015, the city has spent millions of dollars, both on the body cameras themselves and data storage for the digital files. LAPD officials have conceded that the vast majority of the footage gathered by officers goes unwatched, since there isn’t enough manpower to review it.
At Tuesday’s news conference, Jocelyn Duarte, executive director of the Salvadoran American Leadership and Educational Fund, praised Bass’ directive and called on the Los Angeles Board of Commissioners, which provides civilian oversight of the LAPD, to ensure that officers “protect Angelenos from lawless federal conduct.”
“Local law enforcement must not be complicit through silence or inaction when federal agents overstep legal and ethical boundaries,” Duarte said. “Now it is imperative that our commission and LAPD fully implement this directive and make it clear that our city will not allow for fear-based enforcement to define life in our neighborhoods.”
Ortiz said she is excited that the directive imposes fees on private property owners who allow federal immigration agents to use their property. The Institute of Popular Education of Southern California has been a leader in calling for a boycott against Home Depot, which has not taken a public stance against repeated raids at the day labor centers that the organization runs at the stores.
“I do think that something does need to be done with these huge billion-dollar corporations who are allowing this and are choosing to stay silent while their customers are being dragged away and disappeared,” Ortiz said.
WASHINGTON — Public health experts warned Tuesday that $600 million in cuts to federal public health funding announced by the Trump administration would endanger one of California’s main early-warning systems for HIV outbreaks, leaving communities vulnerable to undetected disease spread.
The grant terminations affect funding for a number of disease control programs in California, Colorado, Illinois and Minnesota, but the vast majority target California, according to congressional Democrats who received the full list of affected programs Monday. The move is the latest in the White House’s campaign against what it called “radical gender ideology” at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“These cuts will hurt vital efforts to prevent the spread of disease,” said Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.). “It’s dangerous, and it’s deliberate.”
Under Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the CDC has increasingly turned away from evidence-backed HIV monitoring and prevention programs, claiming they “undermined core American values.”
The stoppage will derail $1.1 million slated for the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health’s National HIV Behavioral Surveillance Project, according to the president’s budget office.
The program is a “critical” tool used to detect emerging HIV trends, prevent outbreaks before they spread and reduce HIV incidence, said Dr. Paul Simon, an epidemiologist at the UCLA Fielding School and former chief science officer for the county’s public health department.
“Without this program, we’re flying blind. The first step in addressing any public health threat is understanding what’s happening on the ground,” Simon said. “With HIV in particular, people often have no symptoms for years and can unknowingly spread the virus.”
The White House gave little explanation for the move but claimed the programs it targeted “promote DEI and radical gender ideology.”
Simon pushed back on the claim, calling the move “dangerous” and “shortsighted.”
“It’s particularly dangerous to put your head in the sand and pretend there’s not a problem,” Simon said. “The success we’ve had over the past decades comes from finding cases early. … By treating people early, we can prevent transmission.”
Several local front-line service providers were targeted for cuts including the Los Angeles LGBT Center, which is set to lose $383,000 in investments for community HIV prevention programs.
The LGBT Center has not received official notice of the elimination but said the cuts would disproportionately affect LGBTQ+ communities and other underserved populations.
“These decisions are not guided by public health evidence, but by politics — and the consequences are real,” said LGBT Center spokesperson Brian De Los Santos. “Any reduction in funding directly affects our ability to provide care, prevention and lifesaving services to the people who rely on us.”
The Trump administration’s announced cuts are likely to face challenges from states and grant recipients.
The LGBT Center succeeded last year in blocking similar grant cancellations stemming from the president’s executive orders. A federal judge in San Francisco issued a preliminary injunction ruling the administration could not use executive orders to “weaponize Congressionally appropriated funds” to bypass statutory funding obligations.
“We stand ready to bring more litigation against this administration if it is required in order to protect our community,” De Los Santos said.
The White House has repeatedly pushed to halt the flow of billions of dollars to California and other states led by Democrats, a strategy that has sharpened partisan tensions and expanded the scope of California’s legal fight against the administration.
Last year, the administration made broad cuts to federal funding for minority-serving institutions, leaving California colleges scrambling to figure out how to replace or do without the money. Federal officials argued that such programs were racially discriminatory.
In June, California congressional Democrats demanded the release of $19.8 million in frozen HIV prevention grants to the L.A. County Department of Public Health. That freeze forced the county to terminate contracts with 39 community health providers and nearly shut down HIV testing and other services at the Los Angeles LGBT Center.
The administration reversed course after sustained pressure from Rep. Laura Friedman (D-Burbank) and 22 fellow House Democrats.
“These grants save lives,” Friedman said of recent terminations. “They connect homeless people to care, they support front-line organizations fighting HIV, and they build the public health infrastructure that protects my constituents. Just like I did last time the Trump Administration came after our communities, I won’t stop fighting back.”
In a letter to Kennedy last year, Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Long Beach) said that the Cabinet secretary has a history of peddling misinformation about the virus and disease.
Kennedy’s motivations are “grounded not in sound science, but in misinformation and disinformation you have spread previously about HIV and AIDS, including your repeated claim that HIV does not cause AIDS,” Garcia wrote.
Gov. Gavin Newsom called President Trump’s latest threats to public health funding “a familiar pattern,” and shed doubt on their long-term legal viability.
“The President publicly claims he will rip away public health funding from states that voted against him, while offering no details or formal notice,” Newsom said. “If or when the Trump administration takes action, we will respond appropriately. Until then, we will pass on participating in his attempt to chase headlines.”
WASHINGTON — The leaders of the agencies enforcing President Trump’s immigration crackdown faced tough questioning on Capitol Hill on Tuesday, with one Democratic lawmaker asking the head of ICE if he would apologize to the families of two U.S. citizens killed by federal agents and called domestic terrorists by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.
Todd Lyons, acting head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, declined to apologize to the families of Renee Good and Alex Pretti during the hearing but said he welcomed the opportunity to speak to Good’s family in private.
“I’m not going to speak to any ongoing investigation,” Lyons said.
For the first time since the federal operation in Minneapolis led to the deaths of Good and Pretti, the heads of three immigration agencies testified before the House Homeland Security Committee.
Along with Lyons, the other witnesses were Joseph Edlow, director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, and Rodney Scott, commissioner of Customs and Border Protection. Their agencies fall under the Department of Homeland Security.
Democrats and some Republicans have called for increased oversight of the Trump administration’s immigration operations since the shootings last month of Good and Pretti, both 37, by federal agents.
In the aftermath of the shootings, the administration replaced Gregory Bovino, a Border Patrol official who led the charge in Minneapolis, with border policy advisor Tom Homan, a former ICE official. Officials also withdrew some agents and began requiring those in Minneapolis to wear body cameras.
“We must take the temperature down and look at the record of enforcement actions through rational eyes,” said the committee’s chair, Rep. Andrew Garbarino (R-N.Y.).
Garbarino asked for commitment from the ICE and CBP leaders to give the committee the full reports and findings of the investigations into the shootings of Good and Pretti once those conclude. Scott and Lyons agreed.
Scott, the CBP commissioner, told the committee members that officers face an unprecedented increase in attacks by people who interfere with law enforcement action. He said these actions are “coordinated and well-funded.”
“This is not peaceful protest,” he said.
Lyons, the ICE leader, told lawmakers that his agency has removed more than 475,000 people from the U.S. and conducted nearly 379,000 arrests since President Trump returned to the White House. He said the agency has hired more than 12,000 officers and agents.
He condemned so-called sanctuary jurisdictions, which limit the collaboration between local law enforcement and ICE, as well as the rhetoric from public officials against ICE.
Lyons testified that 3,000 out of 13,000 ICE agents wear body cameras. Scott estimated that about 10,000 of 20,000 Border Patrol agents wear cameras, adding that “we’re building that program out.”
The agency heads faced intense questioning from Democrats on the committee, including those from California.
Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Dublin) asked Lyons about his comment last year that the deportation process should work “like Amazon Prime, but with human beings.”
Lyons said the comment had been taken out of context.
“I did say that we need to be more efficient when it comes to removing individuals from the United States, because ICE doesn’t detain people punitively — we detain to remove,” he said. “I don’t want to see people in custody.”
“Well, speaking of human beings, how many times has Amazon Prime shot a nurse 10 times in the back?” Swalwell responded.
Swalwell asked how many agents have been fired for their conduct under Lyons’ leadership. Lyons said he would get that data.
“Can you tell us if, at least — God, I hope at least one person has been fired for their conduct since these operations have begun,” Swalwell said.
Lyons said he wouldn’t talk about personnel.
Swalwell was the one who asked Lyons if he would apologize to the families of Good and Pretti. He also asked if Lyons would resign from ICE. Lyons declined.
Rep. Lou Correa (D-Santa Ana) questioned Lyons about whether carrying a U.S. passport is enough for people to avoid being detained or deported. An October report by ProPublica identified more than 170 instances of U.S. citizens who were detained at raids or protests.
Lyons said U.S. citizens shouldn’t feel the need to carry their passports.
“No American citizen will be arrested for being an American citizen,” Lyons said.
Correa said a number of U.S. citizens in his district, which is majority Latino, have been detained, some for several days.
Lyons said he wasn’t aware of any cases of detained American citizens.
“Are you surveilling U.S. citizens today?” Correa asked.
Lyons said there is no database for protesters.
“I can assure you there is no database that’s tracking down citizens,” he said.
February’s first weekend produced a flurry of gestures that were quickly read as progress. A deeply flawed amnesty law was approved in the first round without even being seen, high-profile prisoners were released after months of disappearance, and the tone of official politics softened, at least on the surface. What emerged, however, was not a clearer transition but a clearer struggle over authorship, over who gets to define what this process is, and what it is allowed to become.
What the weekend revealed is that Venezuela’s transition is not being negotiated in a single place or under a single logic. It is being contested simultaneously across different arenas, each operating on its own incentives, timelines, and definitions of success.
The least visible of these battles is unfolding inside the governing coalition itself. Here, the question is not democracy versus repression but something more technical, and more cynical, how much openness can be performed without relinquishing control over coercion, adjudication, and resources.
Seen from this angle, the weekend’s choreography makes sense. Political prisoners were not simply released, their freedom was folded into a legislative ritual authored by the same political actors responsible for their detention, complete with announced deadlines, speeches heavy with the language of forgiveness, and even calls for applause. This was not the state binding itself, but an attempt to convert discretion into legitimacy.
Political prisoners in Venezuela could have been freed at any moment by executive decision. By embedding their release in a process the government controls, the regime preserved its core advantage, the ability to decide not just when to give, but what the giving means. The Guanipa episode made that logic explicit. A release could function as a signal, and its reversal or legal redefinition could function as discipline. Freedom, in this model, is not a right restored but a condition granted. Arbitrariness is not eliminated, it is rebranded.
If political prisoners are released into silence, surveillance, or renewed legal jeopardy, as we have already seen, then the transition exists largely on paper.
The later revelation that the families Jorge Rodríguez met outside Zona 7 were staged only reinforces the point. Real families introduce uncertainty, anger, memory, demands that do not respect sequencing. Staged ones deliver predictability and allow reconciliation to be performed rather than negotiated. That choice suggests a lack of confidence. A government secure in its legitimacy would not need to simulate social consent at the moment consent matters most.
A second battle is unfolding far from Caracas, inside Washington. It is not a fight over tactics so much as over objectives.
Recent reporting and congressional testimony suggest growing tension over what the Venezuela file is supposed to deliver. Is the goal stabilization, the appearance of calm streets, predictable governance, reduced migration pressure, reopened markets, or is it a democratic transition, with all the uncertainty and volatility that implies.
Those two goals are often rhetorically conflated. In practice, they can diverge.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s testimony is revealing here. By emphasizing that the United States will pay attention not only to the release of political prisoners but to how they are treated after, whether they return to political life, whether they speak freely, whether they are harassed or re-detained, Rubio shifted the metric from gestures to behavior over time. That distinction matters. Releasing prisoners is a signal, allowing them to act politically afterwards is a concession.
The regime’s strategy appears aimed at satisfying the former while containing the latter. Speed becomes an asset. If the appearance of a transition advances quickly enough, attention fades, diplomatic costs accumulate, and renewed pressure begins to look disruptive rather than principled.
But stabilization without a genuine transfer of political authority is a fragile equilibrium. It depends on discretionary power remaining benevolent, conditional freedoms remaining honored, and social legitimacy remaining dormant. The events of this weekend, reversible releases, staged consent, selective recognition, suggest none of those conditions can be safely assumed.
This is where the US debate becomes consequential. A Venezuela that is calmer but still politically closed begins to resemble not a democratic transition but a familiar Pinochet-style authoritarian compromise, technocratic opening, crony capitalism, and political repression wrapped in legal form. Whether that outcome is treated as acceptable stabilization or failed transition remains an open question in Washington.
A transition conducted under regime terms prioritizes closure over accountability and order over pluralism. One conducted under society’s terms is slower, messier, and harder to manage, but it is also the only path to durable stability.
The third battle is the most visible and the most familiar. It is the struggle inside Venezuela itself over whether this moment produces a real political opening or merely a rearrangement of control.
Here, the opposition’s internal divide matters. One faction, already seated in the National Assembly, is pursuing legitimacy from the top down. Its wager is that institutional participation, procedural wins, and international recognition will eventually cascade downward to society.
Another current rests on the opposite theory, that legitimacy flows from society upward, and that institutions rebuilt without social consent remain hollow. It is no accident that this current is not attacked head-on but bracketed out of the official narrative. It is easier to exclude than to incorporate.
The treatment of released prisoners will be the clearest test of which logic prevails. If those freed are able to speak, organize, and contest power without fear, then something real is shifting. If they are released into silence, surveillance, or renewed legal jeopardy, as we have already seen, then the transition exists largely on paper.
What the February weekend demonstrated is not that Venezuela is transitioning, but that the fight over who gets to define that transition has intensified.
Inside chavismo, the battle is over how much can be conceded without surrender. In Washington, it is over whether stability is an acceptable substitute for democracy. Inside Venezuela, it is over whether political life will be genuinely reopened or carefully contained.
These battles are related, but they are not the same. They may not even resolve on the same timeline.
A transition conducted under regime terms prioritizes closure over accountability and order over pluralism. One conducted under society’s terms is slower, messier, and harder to manage, but it is also the only path to durable stability. The events of this weekend, far from settling that question, have made it unavoidable.
Sen. Bernie Sanders, a political hero among liberals and populists, next week will formally kick off the campaign to place a new tax on billionaires on California’s November ballot.
The controversial proposal, which would impose a one-time 5% tax on the assets of the state’s wealthiest residents, is critical to backfilling federal funding cuts to healthcare enacted by the Trump administration, Sanders said in a statement.
“This initiative would provide the necessary funding to prevent over 3 million working-class Californians from losing the healthcare they currently have — and would help prevent the closures of California hospitals and emergency rooms,” he said. “It should be common sense that the billionaires pay just slightly more so that entire communities can preserve access to life-saving medical care. Our country needs access to hospitals and emergency rooms, not more tax breaks for billionaires.”
The independent senator from Vermont, who caucuses with Democrats in the nation’s Capitol, will appear Feb. 18 at the Wiltern in Los Angeles alongside prominent musical acts. Sanders has a deep base of support among California Democrats, winning the state’s 2020 presidential primary over Joe Biden by eight points, and narrowly losing the 2016 primary to Hillary Clinton. In both elections, he won the votes of more than 2 million Californians, who were also a major source of the small-dollar donations that fueled his insurgent campaigns.
The tax proposal, which Sanders previously endorsed on social media, is proposed by the Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West. The supporters need to gather the signatures of nearly 875,000 registered voters and submit them to county elections officials by June 24 for the measure to qualify for the November ballot. They began gathering signatures in January.
Supporters of the tax argue it is one of the few ways the state can backfill major federal cuts to healthcare services for California’s most vulnerable residents. Opponents warn it would kill the innovation that has made the state rich and prompt an exodus of wealthy entrepreneurs.
More than 200 billionaires in Californians would be affected if the proposal qualifies for the ballot and is approved. Some prominent billionaires have already left the state, notably PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel and venture capitalist David Sacks.
Both men were major supporters of President Trump.
Democrats are divided about the issue. Notably, Gov. Gavin Newsom and San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, who is among a dozen candidates running in November to replace the termed-out governor, oppose the proposal.
SACRAMENTO — California lawmakers on Monday approved a one-time infusion of $90 million for Planned Parenthood and other women’s health clinics, a direct respond to the Trump administration’s cuts to reproductive healthcare and access to abortion providers.
“Trump is tearing down healthcare and increasing costs,” Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas (D-Hollister) said in a statement. “Democrats are building it up — investing millions in women’s health and maternal care, because families come first in California.”
The legislation providing the funding, SB 106, carried by Sen. John Laird (D-Santa Cruz), is intended to help offset the losses from federal cuts that targeted abortion providers. The Republican-backed One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed last year by President Trump, prohibited federal Medicaid funding from going to Planned Parenthood.
The bill now heads to Gov. Gavin Newsom.
California and a coalition of other Democrat-led states filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration last year over the provision. More than 80% of the nearly 1.3 million annual patient visits to Planned Parenthood in California previously were reimbursed by Medi-Cal, the state’s version of Medicaid, which provides healthcare coverage to low-income Americans.
Assemblyman David Tangipa (R-Clovis) voiced opposition to the legislation Monday.
“Why does Planned Parenthood get a $90-million grant when right now over 60 hospitals in the state of California are on the verge of shutting down?” Tangipa asked, speaking on the Assembly floor. “Hospitals across our state that deliver high quality care to women are on the brink of closure.”
Planned Parenthood offers a range of services, including abortions, birth control and cancer screenings.
A federal judge on Monday struck down a new California law that banned federal immigration agents and other law enforcement officers from wearing masks in the state, but an effort already is underway to revive the statute.
U.S. District Judge Christina A. Snyder in Los Angeles ruled that the No Secret Police Act does not apply equally to all law enforcement officers because it excludes state law enforcement, and therefore “unlawfully discriminates against federal officers.”
But, Snyder said, the ban does not impede federal officers from performing their federal functions, indicating that a revised law that remedies that discrimination may be constitutional.
State Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco), the author of the legislation, on Monday proposed a new prohibition on mask-wearing by all law enforcement officers in California, a change he argued would bring the ban into compliance with Snyder’s ruling.
Wiener said he will immediately file his updated bill in order to unmask U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other federal agents conducting unconstitutional enforcement in the state as soon as possible.
“We will unmask these thugs and hold them accountable. Full stop,” Wiener said, calling Snyder’s ruling a “huge win.”
Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi, who sued California to block the law from taking effect, cast the ruling in starkly different terms, as a win for the federal government and immigration agents doing a difficult job under intense scrutiny.
“ANOTHER key court victory thanks to our outstanding [Justice Department] attorneys,” Bondi wrote on X.
“Following our arguments, a district court in California BLOCKED the enforcement of a law that would have banned federal agents from wearing masks to protect their identities,” Bondi wrote. “These federal agents are harassed, doxxed, obstructed, and attacked on a regular basis just for doing their jobs.”
Wiener helped push two new California laws last year — the No Secret Police Act and the No Vigilantes Act — in the wake of intense and aggressive immigration enforcement by masked ICE and other federal agents in California and around the country.
The No Secret Police Act banned local law enforcement officers, officers from other states and federal law enforcement personnel from wearing masks except in specific circumstances — such as in tactical, SWAT or undercover operations. It did not apply those restrictions on California’s state law enforcement officers.
The No Vigilantes Act required any law enforcement officer operating in California to visibly display identification, including the name of their agency and their name or badge number, except in undercover and other specific scenarios.
Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the measures into law in September, though the state agreed to not enforce the measures against federal agents in the state while the Justice Department’s challenge was heard in court.
In her ruling Monday, Snyder blocked only the ban on masking by federal agents, and on seemingly narrow grounds.
Snyder said that the court “finds that federal officers can perform their federal functions without wearing masks. However, because the No Secret Police Act, as presently enacted, does not apply equally to all law enforcement officers in the state, it unlawfully discriminates against federal officers.”
“Because such discrimination violates the Supremacy Clause, the Court is constrained to enjoin the facial covering prohibition,” she wrote.
Weiner said it was “hard to overstate how important this ruling is for our efforts to ensure full accountability for ICE and Border Patrol’s terror campaign.”
Wiener said he and colleagues had crafted the No Secret Police Act in consultation with constitutional law experts, but had “removed state police from the bill” based on conversations with Newsom’s office.
“Now that the Court has made clear that state officers must be included, I am immediately introducing new legislation to include state officers,” Wiener said. “I will do everything in my power to expedite passage of this adjustment to the No Secret Police Act.”
He said ICE and Customs and Border Protection officers were “covering their faces to maximize their terror campaign and to insulate themselves from accountability. We won’t let them get away with it.”
Wiener is also pushing new legislation — called the No Kings Act — that would allow people in California to sue federal agents for violating their rights. Democrats in Congress are also demanding that immigration agents stop wearing masks as a condition for extending Department of Homeland Security funding.
In response to Wiener’s suggestion that he had removed state officers from the bill based on conversations with the governor’s office, Newsom’s office posted on X that Wiener “rejected our proposed fixes to his bill” and “chose a different approach, and today the court found his approach unlawful.”
In a separate statement, Newsom hailed Snyder’s upholding the identification requirement for officers as “a clear win for the rule of law.”
“No badge and no name mean no accountability. California will keep standing up for civil rights and our democracy.”
Bondi said her office would continue defending federal agents from such state action.
“We will continue fighting and winning in court for President Trump’s law-and-order agenda — and we will ALWAYS have the backs of our great federal law enforcement officers,” she said.
Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) has endorsed Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Dublin) for California governor, the Swalwell campaign and a Schiff spokesperson said Monday.
Schiff, one of the state’s most prominent Democrats, previously served with Swalwell on the House Intelligence Committee, where they riled Republicans by investigating President Trump during his first term.
They also both worked to impeach Trump during his first term, with Schiff serving as the lead manager of Trump’s first impeachment and Swalwell as a manager of Trump’s second impeachment.
Schiff, in a statement, said Swalwell “has the vision and strength to take on our state’s biggest challenges and make real progress, from lowering costs for families to protecting our democracy from Donald Trump.”
“Congressman Swalwell and I worked together to investigate Trump during his first presidency, and Eric played a leadership role in the impeachment trial after the President incited a violent mob to attack the capitol on January 6th,” Schiff said. “What I saw then, and what I know now, is that Eric is fully prepared to get things done and deliver for the Golden State, even as he will fight to protect our values, rights and freedoms.”
Swalwell announced in November his bid to replace Gov. Gavin Newsom, who is termed out next year — entering a crowded field of candidates without a clear front-runner.
Both Swalwell and Schiff have been targeted by Trump and the Trump administration with allegations of committing mortgage fraud. They have both denied those accusations — calling them part of a political retribution campaign against Trump’s critics and chief political opponents.
Swalwell has sued Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte over the accusations, accusing him of of criminally misusing government databases to target Trump’s political opponents.
In contexts of war, pacification means a ceasefire achieved through agreements. In its most literal sense, pacification refers to the act of becoming peaceful. In Venezuela, however, pacification cannot be reduced to simply “returning to peace.” The concept acquires a political meaning because violence is neither symmetrical nor bilateral. Pacification in Venezuela means dismantling state violence and opening the political system to all actors.
In this sense, amnesty laws are conceived as a form of special justice for contexts in which pacification is necessary. They are legal instruments that States use exceptionally to close cycles of conflict. Amnesty is not about pardoning isolated acts, but about ending the criminal consequences derived from conflicts in which justice operated selectively and became a tool of political persecution.
In transitional contexts, amnesty has been used repeatedly. Spain, Chile, and Colombia are among the closest examples for Venezuela, and in all of them amnesty served as a bridge between a past of persecution and a future of democratic political competition.
Amnesty must pursue a single goal: preventing the repetition of abuses. For this reason, although amnesties may be decreed, they are not limitless instruments. On the contrary, they must exclude human rights violations and prevent impunity. From this perspective, the draft bill approved in first discussion by the National Assembly is insufficient for the moment the country is facing and for dismantling the regime’s repressive apparatus.
Article 6 does not mention events from 2015, 2016, 2018, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, and part of 2024. As a result, it excludes cases involving military personnel unjustly imprisoned.
Let us begin with one of the basic principles of the legislative process: transparency. The way the bill was introduced failed to inspire confidence among political actors and civil society. At the time of the debate in the chamber, the text of the bill was not publicly available. Only unofficial versions circulated on social media. It was not until 24 hours later that the approved draft was informally released via X, undermining the principle of publicity that should govern lawmaking.
Deliberate vagueness
Setting aside procedural flaws, we must examine the substance of the law. To begin with, Delcy Rodríguez and the National Assembly do not need an amnesty law to release the more than 600 political prisoners who, as of the morning of February 9, remained detained in Venezuela. An amnesty law should aim to correct structural failures in the justice system, address abuses, and guarantee non-repetition.
Reducing the acts covered by amnesty to “acts of violence for political motives” (Article 1) is overly simplistic for the Venezuelan context. More than twenty years of systematic repression and persecution for dissent require precise typologies. Enumerating historical events does not clearly define what constitutes a “political or related offense.” This lack of specificity grants excessive discretionary power to judges—who, in a country without judicial independence, may reproduce the very arbitrariness the law seeks to correct.
This vagueness also excludes many situations that have been used by the repressive apparatus, since not all unjustly imprisoned individuals were detained for “acts of violence.” The law further establishes the exclusion of “offenses against public property” (Article 7.4), which is particularly dangerous. It places corruption crimes and the use of administrative sanctions as political punishment in the same category. As a result, the bill leaves unprotected those subjected to political disqualifications or public officials persecuted and harassed for ideological reasons. This is not accidental: it prevents the creation of precedents that could support amnesty for figures such as María Corina Machado and other politically disqualified actors.
The bodies authorized to execute it are the courts and the Public Prosecutor’s Office, the same institutions responsible for the abuses the law seeks to remedy.
Beyond typification, the bill also omits important events that deserve amnesty. Although the introductory provisions establish a period “from January 1, 1999 to January 30, 2026,” Article 6 does not mention events from 2015, 2016, 2018, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, and part of 2024. As a result, it excludes cases involving military personnel unjustly imprisoned, such as Operación Gedeón or the 2018 drone attack against Maduro. The law’s temporal scope remains unclear due to its own internal contradictions.
Another troubling aspect is the interpretative principle set out in Article 5, which states that in case of doubt, the interpretation favoring the protection of human rights shall prevail, leaving out a basic criminal law principle: in dubio pro reo, meaning that doubt must be resolved in favor of the accused.
Paying oneself and giving change back
The procedure for implementing the amnesty is not verifiable. The bodies authorized to execute it are the courts and the Public Prosecutor’s Office, the same institutions responsible for the abuses the law seeks to remedy. A clear example of the dangers of this arrangement is the revocation of Juan Pablo Guanipa’s release order, announced by the Public Prosecutor’s Office through social media. Allowing the execution of the law to be controlled solely by those who committed the injustice is akin to cheating oneself.
Moreover, the procedure requires the initiative to come from the Public Prosecutor’s Office or from the person prosecuted or convicted, leaving a gap for those physically unable to file requests themselves, including detainees and people in exile. To remedy this, legal representation in the amnesty process must be explicitly authorized.
The legislative process must be further opened to include citizens, families of those still unjustly detained, and especially those recently released. Their testimonies are essential.
Recognizing these deficiencies, our duty as jurists and as Venezuelans is also to propose solutions. The first recommendation is to guarantee publicity and transparency throughout the legislative process. The National Assembly could turn the process that began on Thursday into a genuine national consultation. Recent invitations extended to law school deans from UCAB, UNIMET, and UCV, as well as to human rights groups such as Provea, Foro Penal, and Acceso a la Justicia, are encouraging signs—provided these voices are genuinely heard and reflected in substantive changes.
Beware of forgetting by design
Still, this effort is not enough. An amnesty law should be the framework for reconciliation and peacebuilding. The legislative process must be further opened to include citizens, families of those still unjustly detained, and especially those recently released. Their testimonies are essential to understanding past abuses and designing guarantees of non-repetition.
The second recommendation concerns the substance of the law. Amnesty cannot be treated as a communications tool of “clemency.” Its purpose must be non-repetition. As Juan Miguel Matheus (2019) aptly put it, reconciliation requires “forgetting enough so that there is no room for revenge or historical resentment, and remembering enough to prevent atrocities from happening again.”
In this regard, the bill’s provision mandating the elimination of files and records related to amnesty beneficiaries is deeply problematic. Rather than promoting truth, it risks enabling impunity for officials who committed human rights violations. Documentation must be preserved to ensure accountability and non-repetition.
Article 12 further establishes that oversight of the law’s implementation would fall to the Executive, through the Ministry of Interior, Justice, and Peace—headed by Diosdado Cabello, who has led repression and state violence for years. This makes genuine oversight impossible. A third recommendation, therefore, is the creation of a Special Commission within the National Assembly, composed of lawmakers and civil society representatives, to monitor compliance.
The bill also lacks transitional provisions and does not repeal existing repressive laws. A fourth recommendation is the repeal of legislation such as the anti-hate law, the so-called anti-NGO, and the asset forfeiture law, as well as the reversal of unjust political bans imposed by the Comptroller General and the reinstatement of officials removed for ideological reasons.
Finally, a call to lawmakers and those invited to participate in this process, from universities, civil society and other sectors. The amnesty bill is not a gift from the regime to the opposition. It is an opportunity to pacify the country and find real pathways toward a transition. This responsibility demands that we act with everyone in mind: those inside and outside the country, and all those who could be covered by the law.
In moments of confusion, we must focus on what matters. An amnesty law is being debated and will be approved. Perfect solutions are difficult to produce in the current circumstances, but the recommendations of civil society and experts must be translated into substantive changes. Reconciliation in Venezuela means healing after years of injustice in order to rebuild a society battered by conflict.
The new law must serve to ensure that the regime acknowledges that, for years, it implemented a policy of repression and persecution. From there, it must enable the reconstruction of the rule of law, the restoration of trust in institutions, and the transition toward a country where all people have real opportunities to live with dignity.
As citizens, we have the task of demanding (even through informal channels, the only ones available to us in the absence of functioning institutions) that institutional norms be respected and that justice and peace be guaranteed. This is a law still under construction. It is not a symbolic gesture by the regime. We must turn it into the starting point for genuine reconciliation.
SACRAMENTO — California may be headed toward killing the billionaire birds that lay the golden eggs needed to nourish this Golden State.
The English fable about the farmer and his wife who foolishly whack their golden goose comes to mind when I think about the proposed billionaire tax in California.
The couple possessed a bird that laid a golden egg every morning, but they slaughtered it for one fat meal.
The billionaire tax — or wealth tax — would generate a one-time bounty for the state government of up to $100 billion collected over five years, according to its promoters. But its many critics say it would drive billionaires out of California, costing the state lots more in tax revenue over the long run.
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“Temporary increase in state revenues … probably would add up to tens of billions of dollars spread over several years.”
”Likely ongoing decrease in state income tax revenues of hundreds of millions of dollars or more per year.”
The golden goose is replaced by a mud hen.
Whether billionaires fly the coop or are forcibly penned in by the measure, as its drafters intend — and whatever the policy’s merits — it just seems like bad PR for California.
We might as well run TV ads and erect billboards along the border proclaiming: “Welcome to California, the land of opportunity. Make a fortune so state politicians can grab a sizable chunk.”
We’ve already got by far the highest income tax rates in the nation, topping out at 13.3%. The top 1% of earners pay between 40% and 50% of the entire state income tax collected annually. The top 0.1% kick in about 20%.
California is infamous for its unfriendly business climate, with byzantine regulations and an agonizingly slow permitting system.
“It sends out the worst possible message to the people we need in the state, the people who produce jobs,” says Rob Lapsley, president of the California Business Roundtable.
Democratic strategist Garry South says: “Bleating about ‘tax the billionaires’ is a good applause line at Democratic gatherings, but it appears oblivious to the fact they’re already being taxed …
“Our revenue base is disproportionately dependent on capital gains and other income sources unique to the well-off.”
This wealth tax is not being pushed by Sacramento Democrats.
And the governor asserts: “You would have a windfall one time, and then over the years you would see a significant reduction in taxes because taxpayers will move.”
“Driving out the entrepreneurs and innovators who have enriched California is not the answer to the pressing societal question” of how to address the “growing concentration of wealth,” says the latest gubernatorial entry, San José Mayor Matt Mahan.
The initiative is being led by a labor organization: the Service Employees International Union–United Healthcare Workers West, which represents 120,000 healthcare workers. It intends to spend up to $14 million to collect nearly 875,000 voter signatures by June 24 to place the measure on the November statewide ballot.
It would impose a one-time 5% tax on the net worth of California’s 200-plus billionaires, based on their wealth as of Jan. 1 this year. The tax would be due in 2027, but it could be paid in installments over five years.
That’s assuming state bureaucrats can even figure out the billionaires’ worth. And the new tax law isn’t tied up in courts for many years, as it surely would be.
Band-Aid for Republican healthcare cuts
The measure’s purpose is to make up for the billions of dollars in federal cuts to California healthcare programs, especially Medi-Cal. Of the total tax take, 90% would go to healthcare and 10% to education.
“If we don’t do something about [the federal cuts], we’re going to see devastating consequences,” says Suzanne Jimenez, the union’s chief of staff.
Unless the billionaires are taxed extra, she says, money will need to be seized from other programs — such as education and public safety — to salvage healthcare.
It’s just the opposite, critics argue: If billionaires flee the state to avoid the wealth tax, all programs will suffer in the long run because the golden geese no longer will be producing billions in annual tax revenue.
Actually, a better, more reliable solution than the billionaire tax for Democrats is to flip the House of Representatives in November. Win enough seats to seize control from Republicans. Maybe take over the Senate, too. Then restore adequate federal healthcare funding.
Some political infighters suspect that the union is using the threat of a ballot initiative to negotiate more healthcare money from the state budget.
“I think this whole thing is a bluff,” says Mike Murphy, a veteran political consultant who has been helping the opposition. “If you don’t want to see this thing on the ballot, make me happy by putting more money in the budget.
“But they picked the wrong time to rob an empty bank.”
The state government is running on red ink, with deficit estimates ranging from $3 billion (Newsom’s figure) to $18 billion (the legislative analyst’s). Even deeper holes are projected for the future.
Jimenez denies the measure is being used as a negotiating hammer.
“No,” she says. “Our focus is to qualify this for the ballot.”
If it does, there will probably be flocks of golden geese voting by absentee ballot in other states.
On the last day of January, hundreds of people filled the pews of Immanuel Presbyterian Church in Koreatown to hear not the word of God but the gospel of the Democratic Socialists of America.
It was the local chapter’s bimonthly meeting and also a kickoff event for a year during which they planned to build on an already impressive foothold in L.A. politics. Four of their own are council members and the two up for reelection — Eunisses Hernandez and Hugo Soto-Martínez — received standing ovations after their impassioned speeches. They implored the faithful to believe that anything is politically possible in a year when President Trump is waging war on Los Angeles and one of their own, Zohran Mamdani, is the mayor of New York.
Among the true believers was someone who arrived late that day: L.A.’s original democratic socialist insurgent, Nithya Raman.
She shocked the city’s political class in 2020 by beating Councilmember David Ryu — the first time in 17 years that an incumbent lost their seat. Her upset blazed the way for Hernandez and Soto-Martínez in 2022 and fellow DSAer Ysabel Jurado in 2024. They’ve created a progressive bloc that has helped Mayor Karen Bass implement her agenda, offering Her Honor cover from critics on the left while also pushing for democratic socialist principles such as less police spending and more intervention programs.
Raman kept a low profile at the DSA-LA event, according to attendees. The 44-year-old listened to her colleagues’ speeches and those of other hopefuls, made small talk with fellow members and then left.
There was no hint that afternoon of the political earthquake she uncorked this Saturday, when Raman announced a mayoral run against longtime ally Bass. The council member described the mayor to The Times as an “icon” who nevertheless needs to be replaced because “Los Angeles is at a breaking point.”
I can only imagine Bass — whom Raman publicly endorsed just a month ago — was surprised.
The mayor seems vulnerable, for sure. From her handling of the Palisades fire to crumbling infrastructure to the economy and so much more, critics maintain Bass spent all of last year living up to the old Johnny Mathis and Deniece Williams duet: She did things too much, too little and too late. This was all before sources told The Times last week that Bass ordered an after-action report on the Palisades fire be — no pun intended — watered down to limit legal liability against the city.
Her supporters point to a drop in homelessness and homicides over the last four years as reason enough for Bass to return — but their hosannas haven’t gotten as much traction as an incumbent should be seeing at this point in a reelection campaign. That’s why the proverbial smart money had someone on the right side of L.A.’s Democratic spectrum mounting a strong challenge this year — Councilmembers Monica Rodriguez or Traci Park, L.A. County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath or even 2022 challenger Rick Caruso.
While Mamdani’s fall win got local progressives dreaming about one day doing the same in Los Angeles, the prospect of a strong challenger from the left in this mayoral cycle was considered so unlikely that DSA-LA didn’t have candidate Rae Huang — a dues-paying member and Presbyterian minister — speak at the Immanuel gathering since she couldn’t gather enough signatures to make her case for an endorsement in the fall.
Raman has proved effective enough as a council member to win her reelection outright two years ago during the primaries despite a well-funded effort to paint her as a limousine leftist. I admire her brio to take on Bass and respect her place in L.A. political history. I’m glad someone is going to make the mayor work hard to get reelected because no incumbent should ever have an automatic reelection.
But Nithya Raman?
Los Angeles City Councilmember Nithya Raman, left, talks with Mayor Karen Bass at Hazeltine Park in Sherman Oaks during a 2024 rally for Raman’s ultimately successful reelection bid. She’s now challenging Bass in the 2026 mayoral election.
(Mel Melcon/Los Angeles Times)
Presbyterians, such as those who pray at the Koreatown church, have historically believed in predestination, the idea that God has determined everyone’s fate and we can’t do a thing about it. Raman doesn’t belong to the denomination, but perhaps its tenets moved her at Immanuel into believing that another unlikely political revival is in her stars. Because that’s the only way to make sense of Raman’s turn and belief that she can pull off the victory.
Raman’s 4th District is one of the wealthier in the city, a mishmash of Encino rich, Silver Lake hipster and the San Fernando Valley lower middle class — relatively sheltered from the day-to-day struggles of many working class and working poor Angelenos living in L.A. While Soto-Martínez and Hernandez draw their perspective and base from the union and activist left, Raman’s loudest supporters have struck me as folks who might have the passion and money to win over her district but don’t have the street-level knowledge and experience to sell their candidate to all corners of the city.
Raman has walked the progressive walk during her two council terms by getting arrested at sit-ins, showing up to protests and through her City Hall work. But the coalition she needs to topple Bass seems exceedingly hard to build.
She’d have to run under the assumption that enough people on the left think the current mayor is a sellout — or at minimum, just not progressive enough. That conservative and centrist voters so loathe Bass that they’ll hold their nose and vote for a democratic socialist. She’d have to win over Latino voters, who went with Caruso four years ago but who represent only 19% of Raman’s district in a city that’s nearly majority Latino.
Raman would have to peel off labor from Bass, who has counted on and rewarded their support from Sacramento to Washington to City Hall for over two decades. Needs to paint Bass as soft on Trump’s deportation deluge despite her consistently calling him out. Appeal to homeowners who won’t like Raman’s ties to YIMBY-minded folks seeking to shove multistory units anywhere and everywhere. Convince Black voters — who already must reckon with the likely reality that the city will not have three Black council members for the first time since 1963 because the leading candidates to replace outgoing Curren Price are Latinos — that dethroning the city’s first Black female mayor is somehow good for the community’s political future.
And then there’s Raman’s fellow DSA members. The rank-and-file are currently furious at her for recently, unsuccessfully trying to tweak L.A.’s so-called mansion tax. Raman can’t run in the primary with DSA’s endorsement because that process ended last fall. Supporters can petition for a vote on the matter, but that opens her anew to critics who engineered a censure of her during her 2024 reelection campaign for accepting an endorsement by a pro-Israel group while the country was bombing Gaza.
Raman — who can keep her council seat if she doesn’t beat Bass — is about to find out that L.A. isn’t as progressive as people make it out to be.
Los Angeles Councilmember Nithya Raman speaks to a crowd as she hosts an election night event in Edendale in March 2024 in Los Angeles.
(Myung Chun/Los Angeles Times)
She might have visions of a populist movement a la what happened in New York ushering her into City Hall — but she’s no Mamdani and Bass is no Eric Adams. Even fans of Raman I talked to over the weekend are upset that the progressive march that DSA-LA has successfully launched in city and county politics this decade now must deal with a curveball from within. It threatens to distract from efforts for other campaigns in a year when the left needs to concentrate on defeating true opponents — not a fellow traveler like Bass.
Raman must figure this disruption is worth the risk for her legacy and will further strengthen L.A.’s left. Let’s see what voters decide.
When Casey Wasserman boarded Jeffrey Epstein’s private jet for a two-week tour of Africa in 2002, he had little inkling he was embarking on a journey that could imperil his fortune.
The 28-year-old scion of Hollywood mogul Lew Wasserman was already the heir of a multimillion-dollar philanthropic foundation, the owner of a professional football team and the founder of a growing sports marketing firm. But many saw this as just the beginning for Wasserman, who seemed destined to follow his legendary grandfather as a business, political and culture titan.
He found an opportunity to step onto the world stage when former President Clinton invited him on a humanitarian trip to five African countries to promote AIDS/HIV prevention and economic development in nations racked by disease and war.
Wasserman, a prolific Clinton fundraiser whose grandfather helped him win the 1992 presidential election, was joined by others including his then-wife, Laura, actor Kevin Spacey, Epstein and his longtime companion Ghislaine Maxwell.
Casey Wasserman, then a 28-year-old owner of the LA Avengers, is photographed at his office in Beverly Hills in January 2003.
(Gary Friedman / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
Revelations around that trip and Wasserman’s risque emails with Maxwell now threaten his legacy.
A trove of documents recently released by the U.S. Department of Justice offer new details about the journey to Africa and Wasserman’s intimate relationship with Maxwell — an entanglement that has jeopardized his leadership of the 2028 Los Angeles Olympic Games.
From left, former U.S. President Bill Clinton, then-AEG CEO of Timothy J. Leiweke and Casey Wasserman attend the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) annual meeting in 2011 in New York City.
(Daniel Berehulak / Getty Images for AEG)
Wasserman boarded Epstein’s jet three years before the family of a 14-year-old girl in Palm Beach, Fla., reported she was molested by Epstein, triggering a decades-long investigation that resulted in Epstein’s 2008 conviction for procuring a child for prostitution and 2019 arrest for sex trafficking underage girls. Wasserman has not been linked to any of Epstein’s wrongdoings.
Wasserman has previously apologized for his correspondence with Maxwell and expressed regret for having any association with both her and Epstein.
In a statement to The Times on Sunday, he said the Africa trip was the only time he met Epstein. “Following that trip, where I never witnessed anything inappropriate, I did not speak to, see him or communicate with him ever again,” he said.
This undated photo released by the U.S. Department of Justice shows Ghislaine Maxwell, a longtime confidant of Jeffrey Epstein and convicted sex offender.
(U.S. Department of Justice via Associated Press)
For Wasserman, now 51, the most damaging of the files highlight his relationship with Maxwell, the Oxford University-educated daughter of British newspaper magnate Robert Maxwell. She was sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2022 for conspiring with Epstein to sexually abuse minors.
“I think of you all the time,” Wasserman wrote to Maxwell about five months after he and his wife left Africa. “So, what do I have to do to see you in a tight leather outfit?”
Maxwell, in turn, offered Wasserman a massage that can “drive a man wild.”
Wasserman is one of L.A.’s most influential figures, presiding over a sports marketing and talent agency that represents professional athletes, including star Dodgers pitcher Yoshinobu Yamamoto, and scores of top musicians, such as Kendrick Lamar, Kacey Musgraves, Chappell Roan and Coldplay.
“Wasserman is in trouble,” longtime Los Angeles political observer Sherry Bebitch Jeffe said. “These Games are so important to Los Angeles — economically and politically. This will not be helpful to the city if this drumbeat continues and gets louder.”
Movie studio titan Lew Wasserman’s only grandson entered the world in 1974 as Casey Myers.
His parents, Lynne Wasserman and stockbroker Jack Myers, separated when he was 7. His father wasn’t much of a figure in his life and was later charged with money-laundering. Lew and his wife, Edie, filled the gap.
Lew R. Wasserman, chairman of MCA’s board of directors since 1973, is shown in December 1976 at an unknown location. Wasserman became president and chief executive officer of MCA Inc., later known as Universal Studios Inc., the major entertainment and communications company.
(Associated Press)
“Lew was disappointed he never had a son,” Lew Wasserman’s biographer Dennis McDougal told The Times in 2002. “In his typical fashion, by dint of his power and his money and his overbearing personality, he took what he wanted. He essentially stole Jack Myers’ son. By the time Casey was a teenager, the die was cast. He was Lew’s little boy.”
Like his famous grandfather, Casey was drawn to politics and one figure in particular: Bill Clinton.
In 1992, the then-governor of Arkansas was struggling for traction in his presidential bid and his campaign was heavily in debt when a stately door opened for him in Los Angeles.
Lew Wasserman, the godfather of modern-day Hollywood, was willing to help propel Clinton to the White House.
A larger-than-life figure, Wasserman was a onetime talent agent who clawed his way to the pinnacle of power by building an entertainment colossus with movie production, television, music and theme parks. His MCA Inc., which owned Universal, gave a young Steven Spielberg his break that became “Jaws.”
Lew and Edie Wasserman held a splashy fundraiser for Clinton in August 1992 at their Beverly Hills mansion adorned with Matisse and Degas paintings. Tom Cruise, Nicole Kidman and Kirk Douglas were among the stars who attended the $5,000-per-plate dinner.
Lew Wasserman and Edie Wasserman attend a party at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Beverly Hills on April 20, 1984.
(WWD / Penske Media via Getty Images)
“Lew figuratively — and literally — put his arm around Clinton, and that was very helpful,” said a former Clinton aide who was not authorized to speak publicly.
Clinton mingled with guests and gave a short speech, according to one former MCA agent who was there. Casey later told the Hollywood Reporter it was his first meeting with Clinton. He was just 18.
The event raised $1 million, according to a 1992 Times article. It also marked the beginning of a lasting friendship between the Wassermans and the Clintons — one that remains to this day, according to people close to the family.
As Wasserman aged, he was determined that his grandson would have the same high-level political access. “Lew loved Casey and he wanted him to meet a lot of the powerful people,” the former Clinton aide said.
At 21, Casey received his multimillion-dollar inheritance and changed his name to Wasserman. Two years later, he played golf with President Clinton at the Hillcrest Country Club.
After Clinton left the White House, the former president asked Lew Wasserman whether he would host a fundraising luncheon to promote the launch of his foundation.
“My grandfather said yes, ‘but only one thing: I will be there, but Casey is going to host at his house,’” Casey later said. “I was 26 at the time, and thankfully my wife — who wasn’t my wife yet — was around to help with the combined pressure of having the just ex-president and my grandparents there.
“We’ve since built an incredible friendship,” Casey said of Clinton. “I’ve been terribly lucky.”
Laura Ziffren and Wasserman Media Group CEO Casey Wasserman attend a luncheon honoring Casey at UCLA’s Pauley Pavilion on Nov. 18, 2015, in Westwood.
(Jesse Grant / Getty Images for National Football Foundation)
Casey Wasserman and his then-wife, Laura, set off for Africa on Epstein’s jet — an aircraft that would one day gain notoriety as the “Lolita Express” — the same year his family’s foundation donated $3 million to the Clinton Library Foundation.
Joining them was an eclectic crew: Clinton and his aides, Secret Service agents, actors Spacey and Chris Tucker, businessman Ronald Burkle, and former Secretary of Transportation Rodney Slater, along with Epstein and Maxwell.
Several unidentified young women were also on the plane.
Kevin Spacey poses for photographers on the red carpet for the film “Father Mother Sister Brother” at the Venice Film Festival in Venice, Italy, in August.
According to newly released FBI notes based on a telephone interview with an emergency physician who traveled with the group, about four women ages 20 to 22 were on board. Their names were redacted from the file, but according to the physician, one young woman was a masseuse, another a model and a third described herself as a ballerina.
The physician, the report said, “thought it weird that Epstein flew with his former girlfriend, Maxwell, and four other women that no one knew why they were there as everyone else had a purpose.”
According to the FBI, the physician described the jet layout as a cockpit up front, then a seating area where Clinton and his staff sat, a kitchenette, another seating area with couches and a bedroom in the back with a sliding wooden door.
At one point, the physician told the FBI, one of the unidentified passengers shut Epstein’s bedroom door abruptly, as if they “did not want him to see or hear what was going on in that bedroom.” He also said he witnessed Epstein “grab and rub” an unidentified passenger’s buttocks.
There was no evidence that Wasserman or any other passengers — who largely stayed in the front of the cabin — witnessed any inappropriate behavior.
The group’s first stop was Ghana, where they launched a program with a Peruvian economist that would establish a legal property system for the poor. Next was Nigeria, and then Rwanda and Mozambique, where they visited AIDS clinics. In South Africa, they met Nelson Mandela to recognize a project to cut the country’s youth HIV/AIDS infection rate by half in five years.
Spacey told The Times he joined Clinton on the Africa trip to raise awareness and funds for HIV/AIDS, visit clinics and communities, and spend “an unforgettable day with Nelson Mandela.”
Financier (and future convicted sex offender) Jeffrey Epstein and his longtime confidant Ghislaine Maxwell at Mar-a-Lago in February 2000.
(Davidoff Studios Photography/Getty Images)
“The work — particularly helping ensure HIV-positive pregnant women received life-saving medication — remains one of the most meaningful experiences of my life,” he said in a statement. “It’s unfortunate that such important work has been overshadowed by the fact that the plane was provided by someone I did not know, had no association with, and never saw again.”
The Clinton Foundation did not respond to a request for comment. Clinton is scheduled to testify this month before a congressional committee — a historic appearance by a former president — to detail his dealings with Epstein.
“I have called for the full release of the Epstein files,” Clinton said Friday in a statement. “I have provided a sworn statement of what I know. And just this week, I’ve agreed to appear in person before the committee.”
After the trip, Wasserman and Maxwell kept in touch, sending each other salacious emails from various cities.
“Where are you, I miss you,” Wasserman wrote on April 1, 2003. “I will be in nyc for 4 days starting april 22 … can we book that massage now?”
“Umm — all that rubbing — are you sure you can take it?” Maxwell wrote on April 2. “The thought frankly is leaving me a little breathless. There are a few spots that apparently drive a man wild — I suppose I could practise them on you and you could let me know if they work or not?”
The pair also traded jokes. On April 6, Maxwell told him she was headed to London and could bring him back British staples: KitKat, cheddar cheese or baked beans. He passed.
“Ok, so that combo did not do it for you, what combo would then? she asked.
“You, me and not much else,” Wasserman replied.
In another exchange April 12, Maxwell told him that she was coming to L.A. and planned to stay at the Peninsula hotel in Beverly Hills. Wasserman replied with a smiley face.
A month after the racy exchanges, Laura Wasserman — daughter of Hollywood legal power broker Ken Ziffren, a close friend of Lew Wasserman — gave birth to the couple’s first child, a son.
Casey Wasserman launched his eponymous talent and marketing firm in 2002, a time when sports media were soaring and athletes increasingly were celebrities. He made a calculated decision to bypass the movie business, recognizing that he would always be measured against his grandfather’s success.
Over the next few decades, the Wasserman agency expanded into a major force in entertainment. Through strategic acquisitions, Wasserman now has about 4,000 employees and has branched out into television and music representation, acquiring a diverse portfolio of clients, including the Barenaked Ladies and the Dave Matthews Band.
His influence stretched further in 2014 when then-Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, a close friend, insisted that Wasserman’s fundraising skills and access to movers and shakers made him the perfect figure to lead L.A.’s effort to land the Summer Olympics. Three years later, L.A. secured the role as host of the 2028 Games.
Today, Wasserman is under extraordinary pressure to deliver a spectacular event to uphold the city’s tradition of excellence. The 1984 Games surpassed expectations and even turned a profit, projecting a unified and gleaming image of Los Angeles to the world.
Wasserman takes no salary as chairman of LA28, but he has received benefits, including travel and other expenses. The Games also will showcase, and perhaps boost the fortunes of, his agency’s numerous Olympic athlete clients.
His ties to corporate sponsors, politicians and sports figures have been viewed by civic leaders as crucial to the success of the Games.
Peter Chernin, former president of News Corp., left, and Casey Wasserman, chief executive officer of Wasserman Media Group, walk the grounds after a morning session during the Allen & Co. Media and Technology Conference in Sun Valley, Idaho, in 2015.
(David Paul Morris / Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Even before the latest scandal, there were tensions between Wasserman and some Los Angeles politicians who are concerned that financial shortfalls in staging the $7-billion Summer Games will need to be covered by local taxpayers. Other host cities have been left with yawning deficits, prompting local political blowback. LA28 organizers have expressed confidence that the Games will be a success.
The relationship between the city and LA28 was further strained when the Daily Mail, a British tabloid, published allegations in 2024 that Wasserman was a “serial cheater” who’d carried on affairs with young female staff members. Wasserman, who separated from Laura in 2021, denied the allegations.
Wasserman, at the time, was in Paris for the 2024 Games.
The sports mogul — who had helped carry the torch at the 1984 Summer Olympics in L.A. when he was 10 — had been scheduled to join Mayor Karen Bass on the Paris stage during the flag handoff at the glitzy closing ceremony televised around the world.
But Bass, who does not have the personal relationship with Wasserman that her predecessors Garcetti and Antonio Villaraigosa did, instead stepped up to the stage alone. Then she was joined by gold-medal-winning gymnast Simone Biles, and they handed the flag to Tom Cruise.
Wasserman does not appear ready to bow to pressure from politicians, including Los Angeles County Supervisor Janice Hahn, who have called for him to step down as head of LA28.
Casey Wasserman, chair of the 2028 LA Olympics organizing committee, and President Trump look at Olympic medals during a signing ceremony at the White House in August.
(Kent Nishimura / Bloomberg via Getty Images)
“This is not about shaming him for his past indiscretions,” Hahn said. “This is about the message we are sending to Epstein survivors and to the world about our values — especially as we work to combat any sex trafficking associated with the Games.”
After the release of the latest Epstein documents, lawyers, art museum executives, a former U.K. ambassador and Slovakia’s national security advisor have resigned, apologized or stepped back from high positions. Britain’s King Charles III stripped his brother Andrew of his prince title and position in the royal family after earlier revelations of his involvement.
“The Epstein files have been so powerful in moving people off the stage,” Bebitch Jeffe said.
But Wasserman appears to still enjoy the support of LA28’s nearly three-dozen-member board, which includes actor Jessica Alba, former movie mogul Jeffrey Katzenberg, Lakers minority owner Jeanie Buss, former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and former Trump White House aide Reince Priebus.
Ultimately, he could weather the Maxwell controversy, hoisting the Olympic flame in 2028 — just like he did as a boy.
LONDON — A prince, an ambassador, senior diplomats, top politicians and other government officials. All brought down by the Jeffrey Epstein files. And all in Europe, rather than the United States.
The huge trove of Epstein documents released by the U.S. Department of Justice has sent shock waves through Europe’s political, economic and social elites — dominating headlines, ending careers and spurring political and criminal investigations.
Former U.K. Ambassador to the United States Peter Mandelson was fired and could go to prison. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer faces a leadership crisis over the Mandelson appointment, and on Sunday, his chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, resigned over having advised Starmer to appoint Mandelson.
Senior figures have fallen in Norway, Sweden and Slovakia. And, even before the latest batch of files, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, brother of King Charles III, lost his honors, princely title and taxpayer-funded mansion.
Apart from the former Prince Andrew, none of them faces claims of sexual wrongdoing. They have been toppled for maintaining friendly relationships with Epstein after he became a convicted sex offender.
“Epstein collected powerful people the way others collect frequent flier points,” said Mark Stephens, a specialist in international and human rights law at Howard Kennedy in London. “But the receipts are now in public, and some might wish they’d traveled less.”
The documents were published after a public frenzy over Epstein became a crisis for President Trump’s administration and led to a rare bipartisan effort to force the government to open its investigative files. But in the U.S., the long-sought publication has not brought the same public reckoning with Epstein’s associates — at least so far.
Rob Ford, a professor of political science at the University of Manchester, said that in Britain, “if you’re in those files, it’s immediately a big story.”
“It suggests to me we have a more functional media, we have a more functional accountability structure, that there is still a degree of shame in politics, in terms of people will say: ‘This is just not acceptable, this is just not done,’” he said.
British repercussions
U.K. figures felled by their ties to Epstein include the former Prince Andrew and his ex-wife Sarah Ferguson, whose charity shut down last week. The former prince paid millions to settle a lawsuit with late Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre, who said she was forced to have sex with Andrew beginning when she was 17, and he is facing pressure to testify in the U.S.
Like others now ensnared, veteran politician Mandelson long downplayed his relationship with Epstein, despite calling him “my best pal” in 2003. The new files reveal contact continued for years after the financier’s 2008 prison term for sexual offenses involving a minor. In a July 2009 message, Mandelson appeared to refer to Epstein’s release from prison as “liberation day.”
Starmer fired Mandelson in September over earlier revelations about his Epstein ties. Now British police are investigating whether Mandelson committed misconduct in public office by passing on sensitive government information to Epstein.
Starmer has apologized to Epstein’s victims and pledged to release public documents that will show Mandelson lied when he was being vetted for the ambassador’s job. That may not be enough to stop furious lawmakers trying to eject the prime minister from office over his failure of judgment, and it has already claimed his top advisor in McSweeney.
American associates
Experts caution that Britain shouldn’t be too quick to pat itself on the back over its rapid reckoning with Mandelson. The U.S. has a better record than the U.K. when it comes to declassifying and publishing information.
But Alex Thomas, executive director of the Institute for Government think tank, said that “there is something about parliamentary democracy,” with its need for a prime minister to retain the confidence of Parliament to stay in office, “that I think does help drive accountability.”
A few high-profile Americans have faced repercussions over their friendly ties with Epstein. Most prominent is former U.S. Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers, who went on leave from academic positions at Harvard University late last year.
Brad Karp quit last month as chair of top U.S. law firm Paul Weiss after revelations in the latest batch of documents, and the National Football League said it would investigate Epstein’s relationship with New York Giants co-owner Steve Tisch, who exchanged sometimes crude emails with Epstein about potential dates with adult women.
Other U.S. Epstein associates have not yet faced severe sanction, including former Trump strategist Stephen K. Bannon, who exchanged hundreds of texts with Epstein; Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who accepted an invitation to visit Epstein’s private island; and tech billionaire Elon Musk, who discussed visiting the island in emails, but says he never made the trip.
Former President Clinton has been compelled by Republicans to testify before Congress about his friendship with Epstein, and Trump has repeatedly faced scrutiny over his own long friendship with the financier. A New York Times review identified more than 5,300 files in the Epstein documents containing over 38,000 references to Trump, his family or his properties. Neither Trump nor Clinton has ever been accused of wrongdoing by Epstein’s victims.
European investigations
The Epstein files reveal the global network of royals, political leaders, billionaires, bankers and academics that the wealthy financier built around him.
Across Europe, officials have had to resign or face censure after the Epstein files revealed relationships that were more extensive than previously disclosed.
Joanna Rubinstein, a Swedish United Nations official, quit after the revelation of a 2012 visit to Epstein’s Caribbean island. Miroslav Lajcak, national security advisor to Slovakia’s prime minister, quit over his communications with Epstein, which included the pair discussing “gorgeous” girls.
Latvia, Lithuania and Poland have set up wide-ranging official investigations into the documents. Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk said a team would scour the files for potential Polish victims and any links between Epstein and Russian secret services.
Epstein took an interest in European politics, in one email exchange with billionaire Peter Thiel calling Britain’s 2016 vote to leave the European Union “just the beginning” and part of a return to “tribalism.”
Grégoire Roos, director of the Europe program at the think tank Chatham House, said the files uncover Epstein’s “far-reaching” network of contacts in Europe, “and the level of access among not just those who were already in power, but those who were getting there.”
“It will be interesting to see whether in the correspondence he had an influence in policymaking,” Roos said.
Norwegian revelations
Few countries have been as roiled by the Epstein revelations as Norway, a Scandinavian nation with a population of less than 6 million.
The country’s economic crimes unit has opened a corruption investigation into former Prime Minister Thorbjorn Jagland — who also once headed the committee that hands out the Nobel Peace Prize — over his ties with Epstein. His lawyer said Jagland would cooperate with the probe.
Also ensnared are high-profile Norwegian diplomat couple Terje Rod-Larsen and Mona Juul, key players in the 1990s Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts. Juul has been suspended as Norway’s ambassador to Jordan after revelations including the fact that Epstein left the couple’s children $10 million in a will drawn up shortly before his death by suicide in a New York prison in 2019.
Norwegians’ respect for their royal family has been dented by new details about Epstein’s friendship with Crown Princess Mette-Marit, who is married to the heir to the throne, Prince Haakon. The files include jokey exchanges and emails planning visits to Epstein properties, teeth-whitening appointments and shopping trips.
The princess apologized Friday “to all of you whom I have disappointed.”
The disclosures came as her son from a previous relationship, Marius Borg Hoiby, stands trial in Oslo on rape charges, which he denies.
Lawless writes for the Associated Press. AP writers David B. Caruso in New York and Danica Kirka in London contributed to this report.
While Los Angeles mayor is the marquee race and has already generated plenty of drama, with surprises coming down to the wire of last Saturday’s filing deadline, many other seats will also be contested in the June 2 primary.
A host of candidates arrived at the City Clerk’s Office last week to file paperwork to run for city attorney, city controller, eight City Council seats and two L.A. Unified school board seats.
Some may not get on the ballot — each candidate must gather 500 legitimate voter signatures by March 4, which is relatively easy in citywide races but harder in council and school board districts. In each race, if no candidate gets more than 50% of the vote in June, the top two finishers will compete in a November runoff.
City Attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto is facing three challengers — deputy attorney general Marissa Roy, human rights attorney Aida Ashouri and Deputy Dist. Atty. John McKinney.
City Controller Kenneth Mejia has one opponent — Zach Sokoloff, senior vice president for asset management at studio owner Hackman Capital Partners, after former State Sen. Isadore Hall dropped out.
In District 3, which covers the southwestern San Fernando Valley including Woodland Hills, Tarzana and Reseda, City Councilmember Bob Blumenfield is terming out, leaving the field open.
The five candidates hoping to replace him are Jon Rawlings, a member of the Tarzana Neighborhood Council; Timothy Gaspar, founder of Gaspar Insurance; Lehi White, a small-business owner; Barri Worth Girvan, former director of community affairs for L.A. County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath; and media executive Christopher Robert “C.R.” Celona.
City Councilmember Curren Price’s downtown and South L.A. district is also up for grabs. Twelve candidates, including Price’s Deputy Chief of Staff Jose Ugarte, have entered the race to represent District 9 after he terms out.
In addition to Ugarte, the candidates are Estuardo Mazariegos, co-director of Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment; Jo Uraizee, a social worker; Adriana Cabrera, president of the Central Alameda Neighborhood Council; Jorge Nuño, a social entrepreneur; Martha Sánchez, a professor at Los Angeles Mission College and a therapist; Elmer Roldan, executive director of Communities in Schools of Los Angeles; Michelle Washington, a social worker; Jorge Hernandez Rosas, an educator and therapist; Chris Martin, a civil rights attorney; Enrique Hernandez-Garcia, a college student; and Nathan Juarez, a cashier.
In the other five City Council races, challengers will try to unseat incumbents.
Eight people are seeking to oust Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez to represent District 1, which stretches from Glassell Park and Highland Park to Chinatown and Pico Union.
The District 1 challengers who filed last week are Maria Lou Calanche, a former member of the Los Angeles Police Commission and founder of the nonprofit Legacy LA; Raul Claros, founder of the CD1 Coalition, which organizes community cleanup days; Jesse Rosas, a tax preparer and businessman; Joseph Lucey, a businessman; Nelson Grande, an executive consultant and former president of Avenida Entertainment Group; Sylvia Robledo, a small-business owner and former council aide; Rosa Requeno, a community activist; and Annalee Harr.
In District 5, Councilmember Katy Yaroslavsky is defending her seat against six Angelenos who filed paperwork last week in hopes of representing a West L.A. district that includes Bel-Air, Westwood and Hancock Park.
Her challengers are publicist Dory Frank; Ashkan “Alex’’ Nazarian, co-founder of AAA Diamond and Jewelry; city employee Peter Gerard Kearns; real estate professional Eddie Ha; tenant rights attorney Henry Mantel; and small-business accountant Morgan Oyler.
In the northeastern San Fernando Valley, four challengers are looking to take the reins from Councilmember Monica Rodriguez and represent District 7 — regional recruiting manager Tony Rodriguez (no relation), hospitality worker Michael Daniel Ebenkamp, worker advocate Ernesto Ayala and business owner Daniel Lerma.
In the 11th District, Councilmember Traci Park faces Faizah Malik, a civil rights attorney, and Jeremy Wineberg, an entrepreneur and Pacific Palisades resident, in the contest to represent Westside communities including Brentwood, Pacific Palisades and Venice.
Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martínez in the 13th District, which includes Hollywood and East Hollywood as well as parts of Silver Lake, Echo Park and Westlake, has seven challengers — military veteran Gilbert Vitela Jr.; Rich Sarian, an urban community planner and vice president of strategic initiatives for the Social District; Dylan Kendall, an entrepreneur and founder of Grow Hollywood; Colter Carlisle, vice president of the East Hollywood Neighborhood Council; community safety advocate Sebastian Davis; creative director Kristen Suszek; and district improvement advocate Gregory Downer.
In the 15th District, which includes San Pedro and other harbor-area communities as well as Watts, Councilmember Tim McOsker is running against two challengers — community organizer Jordan Rivers and homeless shelter director Phillip Crouch Jr.
Three Los Angeles Unified school board members will defend their seats in the June 2 primary.
In District 2, Rocío Rivas faces challenges from public school teacher Raquel Zamora and executive and education advocate Joseph Quintana.
District 4 incumbent Nick Melvoin will run against Ankur Patel, a teacher and outreach director, and Benjamin-Shalom “Bo” Rodriguez, an educator, artist and professor.
School Board Member Kelly Gonez faces a single challenger for her District 6 seat — retired aerospace engineer John “J.P.” Perron.
MINNEAPOLIS — For days, Luis Ramirez had an uneasy feeling about the men dressed as utility workers he’d seen outside his family’s Mexican restaurant in suburban Minneapolis.
They wore high-visibility vests and spotless white hard hats, he noticed, even while parked in their vehicle. His search for the Wisconsin-based electrician advertised on the car’s doors returned no results.
On Tuesday, when their Nissan returned to the lot outside his restaurant, Ramirez, 31, filmed his confrontation with the two men, who hide their faces as he approaches and appear to be wearing heavy tactical gear beneath their yellow vests.
“This is what our taxpayer money goes to: renting these vehicles with fake tags to come sit here and watch my business,” Ramirez shouts in the video.
A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not respond to inquiries about whether the men were federal immigration officers. But encounters like Ramirez’s have become increasingly common.
As the sweeping immigration crackdown in Minnesota continues, legal observers and officials say they have received a growing number of reports of federal agents impersonating construction workers, delivery drivers and, in some cases, anti-ICE activists.
Not all of those incidents have been verified, but they have heightened fears in a state already on edge, adding to legal groups’ concerns about the Trump administration’s dramatic reshaping of immigration enforcement tactics nationwide.
“If you have people afraid that the electrical worker outside their house might be ICE, you’re inviting public distrust and confusion on a much more dangerous level,” said Naureen Shah, the director of immigration advocacy at the American Civil Liberties Union. “This is what you do if you’re trying to control a populace, not trying to do routine, professional law enforcement.”
A ‘more extreme degree’ of deception
In the past, immigration authorities have sometimes used disguises and other deceptions, which they call ruses, to gain entry into homes without a warrant.
The tactics became more common during President Trump’s first term, attorneys said, prompting an ACLU lawsuit accusing immigration agents of violating the Constitution by posing as local law enforcement during home raids. A recent settlement restricted the practice in Los Angeles. But ICE deceptions remain legal elsewhere in the country.
Still, the undercover operations reported in Minnesota would appear to be a “more extreme degree than we’ve seen in the past,” said Shah, in part because they seem to be happening in plain sight.
Where past ruses were aimed at deceiving immigration targets, the current tactics may also be a response to Minnesota’s sprawling networks of citizen observers that have sought to call attention to federal agents before they make arrests.
At the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building in Minneapolis, the city’s central hub of ICE activity, activists told the Associated Press they had seen agents leaving in vehicles with stuffed animals on their dashboards or Mexican flag decals on their bumpers. Pickups with lumber or tools in their beds were also frequently spotted.
In recent weeks, federal agents have repeatedly shown up to construction sites dressed as workers, according to Jose Alvillar, a lead organizer for the local immigrant rights group, Unidos MN.
“We’ve seen an increase in the cowboy tactics,” he said, though he noted the raids had not resulted in arrests. “Construction workers are good at identifying who is a real construction worker and who is dressing up as one.”
Using vintage plates
Since the start of the operation in Minnesota, local officials, including Democratic Gov. Tim Walz, have said ICE agents had been seen swapping license plates or using bogus ones, a violation of state law.
Candice Metrailer, an antiques dealer in south Minneapolis, believes she witnessed such an attempt firsthand.
On Jan. 13, she received a call from a man who identified himself as a collector, asking if her store sold license plates. She said it did. A few minutes later, two men in street clothes entered the shop and began looking through her collection of vintage plates.
“One of them says, ‘Hey, do you have any recent ones?’” Metrailer recalled. “Immediately, an alarm bell went off in my head.”
Metrailer stepped outside while the men continued browsing. A few doors down from the shop, she saw an idling Ford Explorer with blacked-out windows. She memorized its license plate, then quickly plugged it into a crowdsourced database used by local activists to track vehicles linked to immigration enforcement.
The database shows an identical Ford with the same plates had been photographed leaving the Whipple building seven times and reported at the scene of an immigration arrest weeks earlier.
When one of the men approached the register holding a white Minnesota plate, Metrailer said she told him that the store had a new policy against selling the items.
Metrailer said she had reported the incident to Minnesota’s attorney general. A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security did not respond to a request for comment.
A response to obstruction
Supporters of the immigration crackdown say the volunteer army of ICE-tracking activists in Minneapolis has forced federal agents to adopt new methods of avoiding detection.
“Of course agents are adapting their tactics so that they’re a step ahead,” said Scott Mechkowski, former deputy director of ICE enforcement and operations in New York City. “We’ve never seen this level of obstruction and interference.”
In nearly three decades in immigration enforcement, Mechkowski said he also hadn’t seen ICE agents disguising themselves as uniformed workers in the course of making arrests.
Last summer, a Homeland Security spokesperson confirmed a man wearing a high-visibility construction vest was an ICE agent conducting surveillance. In Oregon, a natural gas company published guidance on how customers could identify their employees after reports of federal impersonators.
In the days since his encounter, Ramirez, the restaurant worker, said he has been on high alert for undercover agents. He recently stopped a locksmith who he feared might be a federal agent, before realizing he was a local resident.
“Everybody is on edge about these guys, man,” Ramirez said. “It feels like they’re everywhere.”
President Trump’s administration can continue to detain immigrants without bond, marking a major legal victory for the federal immigration agenda and countering a slew of recent lower court decisions across the country that argued the practice is illegal.
A panel of judges on the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Friday evening that the Department of Homeland Security’s decision to deny bond hearings to immigrants arrested across the country is consistent with the Constitution and federal immigration law.
Specifically, Circuit Judge Edith H. Jones wrote in the 2-1 majority opinion that the government correctly interpreted the Immigration and Nationality Act by asserting that “unadmitted aliens apprehended anywhere in the United States are ineligible for release on bond, regardless of how long they have resided inside the United States.”
Under past administrations, most noncitizens with no criminal record who were arrested away from the border had an opportunity to request a bond hearing while their cases wound through immigration court. Historically, bond was often granted to those without criminal convictions who were not flight risks, and mandatory detention was limited to recent border crossers.
“That prior Administrations decided to use less than their full enforcement authority under” the law “does not mean they lacked the authority to do more,” Jones wrote.
The plaintiffs in the two separate cases filed last year against the Trump administration were both Mexican nationals who had lived in the United States for more than 10 years and weren’t flight risks, their attorneys argued. Neither man had a criminal record, and both were jailed for months last year before a lower Texas court granted them bond in October.
The Trump White House reversed that policy in favor of mandatory detention in July, reversing almost 30 years of precedent under both Democrat and Republican administrations.
Friday’s ruling also bucks a November district court decision in California, which granted detained immigrants with no criminal history the opportunity to request a bond hearing and had implications for noncitizens held in detention nationwide.
Circuit Judge Dana M. Douglas wrote the lone dissent in Friday’s decision.
The elected members of Congress who passed the Immigration and Nationality Act “would be surprised to learn it had also required the detention without bond of two million people,” Douglas wrote, adding that many of the people detained are “the spouses, mothers, fathers, and grandparents of American citizens.”
She went on to argue that the federal government was overriding the lawmaking process with the Department of Homeland Security’s new immigration detention policy that denies detained immigrants bond.
“Because I would reject the government’s invitation to rubber stamp its proposed legislation by executive fiat, I dissent,” Douglas wrote.
Douglas’ opinion echoed widespread tensions between the Trump administration and federal judges around the country, who have increasingly accused the administration of flouting court orders.
U.S. Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi celebrated the decision as “a significant blow against activist judges who have been undermining our efforts to make America safe again at every turn.”
“We will continue vindicating President Trump’s law and order agenda in courtrooms across the country,” Bondi wrote on the social media platform X.
MINNEAPOLIS — Alberto Castañeda Mondragón says his memory was so jumbled after a beating by immigration officers that he initially could not remember he had a daughter and still struggles to recall treasured moments like the night he taught her to dance.
But the violence he endured last month in Minnesota while being detained is seared into his battered brain.
He remembers Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents pulling him from a friend’s car on Jan. 8 outside a St. Paul shopping center and throwing him to the ground, handcuffing him, then punching him and striking his head with a steel baton. He remembers being dragged into an SUV and taken to a detention facility, where he said he was beaten again.
He also remembers the emergency room and the intense pain from eight skull fractures and five life-threatening brain hemorrhages.
“They started beating me right away when they arrested me,” the Mexican immigrant recounted last week to the Associated Press, which recently reported on how his case contributed to mounting friction between federal immigration agents and a Minneapolis hospital.
Castañeda Mondragón, 31, is one of an unknown number of immigration detainees who, despite avoiding deportation during the Trump administration’s enforcement crackdown, have been left with lasting injuries following violent encounters with ICE officers. His case is one of the excessive-force claims the federal government has thus far declined to investigate.
He was hurt so badly he was disoriented for days at Hennepin County Medical Center, where ICE officers constantly watched over him.
A dubious claim
The officers told nurses Castañeda Mondragón “purposefully ran headfirst into a brick wall,” an account his caregivers immediately doubted. A CT scan showed fractures to the front, back and both sides of his skull — injuries a doctor told AP were inconsistent with a fall.
“There was never a wall,” Castañeda Mondragón said in Spanish, recalling ICE officers striking him with the same metal rod used to break the windows of the vehicle he was in. He later identified it as an ASP, a telescoping baton routinely carried by law enforcement.
Training materials and police use-of-force policies across the U.S. say such a baton can be used to hit the arms, legs and body. But striking the head, neck or spine is considered potentially deadly force.
“The only time a person can be struck in the head with any baton is when the person presents the same threat that would permit the use of a firearm — a lethal threat to the officer or others,” said Joe Key, a former Baltimore police lieutenant and use-of-force expert who testifies in defense of police.
Once he was taken to an ICE holding facility at Ft. Snelling in suburban Minneapolis, Castañeda Mondragón said officers resumed beating him. Recognizing that he was seriously hurt, he said, he pleaded with them to stop, but they just “laughed at me and hit me again.”
“They were very racist people,” he said. “No one insulted them, neither me nor the other person they detained me with. It was their character, their racism toward us, for being immigrants.”
The Department of Homeland Security, which includes ICE, did not respond to repeated requests for comment over the last two weeks on Castañeda Mondragón’s injuries.
It is unclear whether his arrest was captured on body-camera video or if there might be additional recordings from security cameras at the detention center.
In a recent bid to boost transparency, Homeland Security announced a broad rollout of body cameras for immigration officers in Minneapolis as the government draws down ICE’s presence there.
ICE deportation officer William J. Robinson did not say how Castañeda Mondragón’s skull was smashed in a Jan. 20 declaration filed in federal court. During the intake process, it was determined he “had a head injury that required emergency medical treatment,” he wrote in the filing.
The declaration also stated that Castañeda Mondragón entered the U.S. legally in March 2022, and that the agency determined only after his arrest that he had overstayed his visa. A federal judge later ruled his arrest had been unlawful and ordered him released from ICE custody.
‘Hope they don’t kill you’
A video posted to social media captured the moments immediately after Castañeda Mondragón’s arrest as four masked men walk him handcuffed through a parking lot. The video shows him unsteady and stumbling, held up by ICE officers.
“Don’t resist!” shouts the woman who is recording. “‘Cause they ain’t gonna do nothing but bang you up some more.
“Hope they don’t kill you,” she adds.
“And y’all gave the man a concussion,” a male bystander shouts.
The witness who posted the video declined to speak with AP or provide consent for the video’s publication, but Castañeda Mondragón confirmed he is the handcuffed man seen in the recording.
At least one ICE officer later told staff at the medical center that Castañeda Mondragón “got his [expletive] rocked,” according to court documents filed by a lawyer seeking his release and nurses who spoke with AP.
AP interviewed a doctor and five nurses about Castañeda Mondragón’s treatment at Hennepin County Medical Center and the presence of ICE officers inside the hospital. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss patient care and feared retaliation. AP also consulted an outside physician, who affirmed the injuries were inconsistent with an accidental fall or running into a wall.
Minnesota state law requires health professionals to report to law enforcement any wounds that could have been perpetrated as part of a crime.
A hospital spokeswoman declined to say last week whether anyone at the facility had done so. However, after the Jan. 31 publication of AP’s initial story about Castañeda Mondragón’s beating and arrest, hospital administrators opened an internal inquiry seeking to determine which staff members have spoken to the media, according to internal communications viewed by AP.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz posted a link to AP’s prior story about Castañeda Mondragón, but his office has not said whether state authorities would pursue answers.
“Law enforcement cannot be lawless,” Walz wrote in the post on X. “Thousands of aggressive, untrained agents of the federal government continue to injure and terrorize Minnesotans. This must end.”
Castañeda Mondragón’s arrest came a day after the slaying of Renee Good, the first of two fatal shootings of U.S. citizens in Minneapolis by immigration officers, triggering widespread public protests.
Calls for accountability
Minnesota congressional leaders and other elected officials, including St. Paul Mayor Kaohly Her, called last week for an investigation of Castañeda Mondragón’s injuries.
The Ramsey County attorney’s office, which oversees St. Paul, urged Castañeda Mondragón to file a police report to prompt an investigation. He said he plans to file a complaint. A St. Paul police spokesperson said the department would investigate “all alleged crimes that are reported to us.”
While the Trump administration insists ICE limits its operations to immigrants with violent rap sheets, Castañeda Mondragón has no criminal record.
“We are seeing a repeated pattern of Trump Administration officials attempting to lie and gaslight the American people when it comes to the cruelty of this ICE operation in Minnesota,” U.S. Sen. Tina Smith, a Minnesota Democrat, said in a statement.
Rep. Kelly Morrison, another Democrat and a doctor, recently toured the Whipple Building, the ICE facility at Ft. Snelling. She said she saw severe overcrowding, unsanitary conditions and an almost complete lack of medical care.
“If any one of our police officers did this, you know what just happened in Minnesota with George Floyd, we hold them accountable,” said Democratic Rep. Betty McCollum, whose district includes St. Paul.
A native of Veracruz, Mexico, Castañeda Mondragón came to Minnesota nearly four years ago on a temporary work visa and found jobs as a driver and roofer. He uses his earnings to support his elderly father, who is disabled and diabetic, and his 10-year-old daughter.
On the day of his arrest, he was running errands with a friend when they suddenly found themselves surrounded by ICE agents. The agents began breaking the windows and opening the doors of the vehicle. He said the first person who hit him “got ugly with me for being Mexican” and not having documents showing his immigration status.
About four hours after his arrest, court records show, Castañeda Mondragón was taken to an emergency room in the suburb of Edina with swelling and bruising around his right eye and bleeding. He was then transferred to Hennepin County Medical Center in Minneapolis, where he told staff he had been “dragged and mistreated by federal agents,” before his condition deteriorated, court records show.
A week into his hospitalization, caregivers described him as minimally responsive. As his condition slowly improved, hospital staff handed him his cellphone, and he spoke with his child in Mexico, whom he could not remember.
“I am your daughter,” she told him. “You left when I was 6 years old.”
His head injuries erased past experiences that for his daughter are unforgettable, including birthday parties and the day he left for the United States. She’s been trying to revive his memory in daily calls.
“When I turned 5, you taught me how to dance for the first time,” she reminded him recently.
“All these moments, really, for me, have been forgotten,″ he said.
He showed gradual improvement and, to the surprise of some who treated him, was released from the hospital on Jan. 27.
Long recovery lies ahead
He faces a long recovery and an uncertain future. Questions loom about whether he will be able to continue to support his family back in Mexico. “My family depends on me,” he said.
Though his bruises have faded, the effects of his traumatic brain injuries linger. In addition to the problems with his memory, he also has issues with balance and coordination that could prove debilitating for a man whose work requires going up and down ladders. He said he is unable to bathe himself without help.
“I can’t get on a roof now,” he said.
Castañeda Mondragón, who does not have health insurance, said doctors have told him he needs ongoing care. Unable to earn a living, he is relying on support from co-workers and members of the Minneapolis-St. Paul community who are raising money to help provide food, housing and medical care. He has launched a GoFundMe.
Still, he hopes to stay in the U.S. and to provide again someday for his loved ones. He differentiates between people in Minnesota, where he said he has felt welcome, and the federal officers who beat him.
“It’s immense luck to have survived, to be able to be in this country again, to be able to heal, and to try to move forward,” he said. “For me, it’s the best luck in the world.”
But when he closes his eyes at night, the fear that ICE officers will come for him dominates his dreams. He is now terrified to leave his apartment, he said.
“You’re left with the nightmare of going to work and being stopped,” Castañeda Mondragón said, “or that you’re buying your food somewhere, your lunch, and they show up and stop you again. They hit you.”
Brook, Biesecker, Mustian and Attanasio write for the Associated Press and reported from Minneapolis, Washington, New York and Seattle, respectively.
