POLITICS

After escalating incidents of violence involving federal agents taking part in the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, officials are looking to create “ICE-free” zones in L.A. County.

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously on Tuesday to bar immigration enforcement officers from county-owned spaces.

Lindsay Horvath, the District 3 supervisor, announced the motion to establish county property as “U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement-free” zones, prohibiting agents from staging, processing or operating in those areas.

“Los Angeles County will not allow its property to be used as a staging ground for violence caused by the Trump administration,” Horvath said at the Tuesday Board of Supervisors meeting.

The motion instructs county counsel to draft an ordinance for board consideration within 30 days.

The Times reached out to the Department of Homeland Security for comment but did not receive a response by publication.

Since June 6, 2025, when immigration enforcement officials descended on the region — raiding four businesses including a fast-fashion warehouse in downtown Los Angeles and detaining dozens — to the first month of 2026, Horvath said, “federal immigration enforcement has too often escalated into extreme violence.”

“Our federal government is freely, without cause, murdering its own citizens in broad daylight,” she said, “in front of witnesses and cameras.”

The action comes after multiple incidents of violence in California as well as last week’s fatal shooting in Minnesota of 37-year-old Renee Good by a federal immigration agent, which spurred outcry across the country. Good, a mother of three, has been portrayed by government officials as a domestic terrorist who tried to run down an agent with her vehicle. State and local officials in Minneapolis have rejected those claims.

On Friday in Southern California, a 21-year-old protester underwent six hours of surgery after a Department of Homeland Security agent fired a nonlethal round at close range at him during a protest. The protester is shown in video, his face covered in blood, being dragged by the neck by an agent. He suffered a fractured skull around his eyes and nose and permanently lost the vision in his left eye, according to family.

An off-duty ICE agent fatally shot Keith Porter Jr. at a Northridge apartment complex on New Year’s Eve. The officer suspected that Porter was an “active shooter,” according to the DHS. Porter was firing an assault-style rifle in what family members said was an act of celebration on New Year’s Eve.

“I think it’s really important for our communities to understand what we’re saying is, you don’t have the right to come in and harass people without a federal warrant,” said Hilda Solis, District 1 supervisor and co-author with Horvath of the motion. “If [federal agents] use our property to stage, then you need to show us documentation, a federal warrant, to back that up.”

Solis said she hoped city councils and other jurisdictions would be motivated to adopt their own ordinance to create “ICE-free” zones.

Prior to President Trump taking office in 2025, ICE agents were prohibited from conducting arrests and other enforcement activity in sensitive locations, including places of worship, schools and hospitals.

A DHS directive from Jan. 20, 2025, superseded that practice, saying that officers taking enforcement action in a sensitive location should use “discretion along with a healthy dose of common sense.”

Bay Area officials are also considering the adoption of “ICE-free” zones. Alameda County officials introduced a proposal for these designated zones in November; on Thursday, officials will incorporate feedback from the county’s sheriff, district attorney, probation department, and public defender, The Oaklandside reported.

The first “ICE-free” zone ordinance was established by Chicago in October barring immigration enforcement agents from property owned or controlled by the city.

As the state continues multiyear marathon discussions on rules for what residents in wildfire hazard zones must do to make the first five feet from their houses — an area dubbed “Zone Zero” — ember-resistant, the Los Angeles City Council voted Tuesday to start creating its own version of the regulations that is more lenient than most proposals currently favored in Sacramento.

Critics of Zone Zero, who are worried about the financial burden and labor required to comply as well as the detrimental impacts to urban ecosystems, have been particularly vocal in Los Angeles. However, wildfire safety advocates worry the measures endorsed by L.A.’s City Council will do little to prevent homes from burning.

“My motion is to get advice from local experts, from the Fire Department, to actually put something in place that makes sense, that’s rooted in science,” said City Councilmember John Lee, who put forth the motion. “Sacramento, unfortunately, doesn’t consult with the largest city in the state — the largest area that deals with wildfires — and so, this is our way of sending a message.”

Tony Andersen — executive officer of the state’s Board of Forestry and Fire Protection, which is in charge of creating the regulations — has repeatedly stressed the board’s commitment to incorporating L.A.’s feedback. Over the last year, the board hosted a contentious public meeting in Pasadena, walking tours with L.A. residents and numerous virtual workshops and hearings.

• Share via Close extra sharing options

Some L.A. residents are championing a proposed fire-safety rule, referred to as “Zone Zero,” requiring the clearance of flammable material within the first five feet of homes. Others are skeptical of its value.

With the state long past its original Jan. 1, 2023, deadline to complete the regulations, several cities around the state have taken the matter into their own hands and adopted regulations ahead of the state, including Berkeley and San Diego.

“With the lack of guidance from the State Board of Forestry and Fire Protection, the City is left in a precarious position as it strives to protect residents, property, and the landscape that creates the City of Los Angeles,” the L.A. City Council motion states.

However, unlike San Diego and Berkeley, whose regulations more or less match the strictest options the state Board of Forestry is considering, Los Angeles is pushing for a more lenient approach.

The statewide regulations, once adopted, are expected to override any local versions that are significantly more lenient.

The Zone Zero regulations apply only to rural areas where the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection responds to fires and urban areas that Cal Fire has determined have “very high” fire hazard. In L.A., that includes significant portions of Silver Lake, Echo Park, Brentwood and Pacific Palisades.

Fire experts and L.A. residents are generally fine with many of the measures within the state’s Zone Zero draft regulations, such as the requirement that there be no wooden or combustible fences or outbuildings within the first five feet of a home. Then there are some measures already required under previous wildfire regulations — such as removing dead vegetation like twigs and leaves, from the ground, roof and gutters — that are not under debate.

However, other new measures introduced by the state have generated controversy, especially in Los Angeles. The disputes have mainly centered around what to do about trees and other living vegetation, like shrubs and grass.

The state is considering two options for trees: One would require residents to trim branches within five feet of a house’s walls and roof; the other does not. Both require keeping trees well-maintained and at least 10 feet from chimneys.

On vegetation, the state is considering options for Zone Zero ranging from banning virtually all vegetation beyond small potted plants to just maintaining the regulations already on the books, which allow nearly all healthy vegetation.

Lee’s motion instructs the Los Angeles Fire Department to create regulations in line with the most lenient options that allow healthy vegetation and do not require the removal of tree limbs within five feet of a house. It is unclear whether LAFD will complete the process before the Board of Forestry considers finalized statewide regulations, which it expects to do midyear.

The motion follows a pointed report from LAFD and the city’s Community Forest Advisory Committee that argued the Board of Forestry’s draft regulations stepped beyond the intentions of the 2020 law creating Zone Zero, would undermine the city’s biodiversity goals and could result in the loss of up to 18% of the urban tree canopy in some neighborhoods.

The board has not decided which approach it will adopt statewide, but fire safety advocates worry that the lenient options championed by L.A. do little to protect vulnerable homes from wildfire.

Recent studies into fire mechanics have generally found that the intense heat from wildfire can quickly dry out these plants, making them susceptible to ignition from embers, flames and radiant heat. And anything next to a house that can burn risks taking the house with it.

Another recent study that looked at five major wildfires in California from the last decade, not including the 2025 Eaton and Palisades fires, found that 20% of homes with significant vegetation in Zone Zero survived, compared to 37% of homes that had cleared the vegetation.

A contentious housing bill that would have capped rent increases to 5% a year died in the Assembly on Tuesday, a decision greeted with boos and cries of disapproval from spectators packed inside the committee chamber.

Assembly Bill 1157 would have lowered California’s limit on rent increases from 10% to 5% annually and removed a clause that allows the cap to expire in 2030. It also would have extended tenant protections to single-family homes — though the bill’s author, Assemblyman Ash Kalra (D-San José), offered to nix that provision.

“Millions of Californians are still struggling with the high cost of rent,” Kalra said. “We must do something to address the fact that the current law is not enough for many renters.”

Assemblymember Diane Dixon (R-Newport Beach) said she was concerned the Legislature was enacting too many mandates and restrictions on property owners. She pointed to a recent law requiring landlords to equip rentals with a refrigerator.

“That sounds nice and humanly caring and all that and warm and fuzzy but someone has to pay,” she said. “There is a cost to humanity and how far do we squeeze the property owners?”

The California Apartment Assn., California Building Industry Assn., California Chamber of Commerce and California Assn. of Realtors spoke against the legislation during Tuesday’s hearing before the Assembly Judiciary Committee.

Debra Carlton, spokesperson for the apartment association, said the bill sought to overturn the will of the voters who have rejected several ballot measures that would have imposed rent control.

“Rather than addressing the core issue, which is California’s severe housing shortage, AB 1157 places blame on the rental housing industry,” she said. “It sends a chilling message to investors and builders of housing that they are subject to a reversal of legislation and laws by lawmakers. This instability alone threatens to stall or reverse the great work legislators have done in California in the last several years.”

Supporters of the bill included the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment Action, a statewide nonprofit that works for economic and social justice. The measure is also sponsored by Housing Now, PICO California, California Public Advocates and Unite Here Local 11.

The legislation failed to collect the votes needed to pass out of committee.

On Monday, proponents rallied outside the Capitol to drum up support. “We are the renters; the mighty mighty renters,” they chanted. “Fighting for justice, affordable housing.”

“My rent is half of my income,” said Claudia Reynolds, who is struggling to make ends meet after a recent hip injury. “I give up a lot of things. I use a cellphone for light; I don’t have heat.”

Lydia Hernandez, a teacher and renter from Claremont, said she used to dream of owning a home. As the first person in her family to obtain a college degree, she thought it was an obtainable goal. But now she worries she won’t even be able to keep up with her apartment’s rent.

Hernandez recalled noticing a woman who had recently become homeless last week on her way to school.

“I started to tear up,” said Hernandez, her voice cracking. “I could see myself in her in my future, where I could spend my retirement years living an unsheltered life.”

After Tuesday’s vote, Anya Svanoe, communications director for ACCE Action, said many of their members felt betrayed.

“While housing production is a very important part of getting us out of this housing crisis, it isn’t enough,” she said. “Families are in dire need of protections right now and we can’t wait for trickle-down housing production.”

In California, 40.6% of households are spending more than 30% of their income on housing, according to an analysis released in 2024 by the Pew Research Center. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development considers households that spend more than 30% of their incomes on housing to be “cost burdened.”

WASHINGTON — President Trump’s administration has made good on its pledge to label three Middle Eastern branches of the Muslim Brotherhood as terrorist organizations, imposing sanctions on them and their members in a decision that could have implications for U.S. relationships with allies in the region.

The Treasury and State departments announced the actions Tuesday against the Lebanese, Jordanian and Egyptian chapters of the Muslim Brotherhood, which they said pose a risk to the United States and American interests.

The State Department designated the Lebanese branch a foreign terrorist organization, the most severe of the labels, which makes it a criminal offense to provide material support to the group. The Jordanian and Egyptian branches were listed by the Treasury Department as specially designated global terrorists for providing support to militant group Hamas.

“These designations reflect the opening actions of an ongoing, sustained effort to thwart Muslim Brotherhood chapters’ violence and destabilization wherever it occurs,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement. “The United States will use all available tools to deprive these Muslim Brotherhood chapters of the resources to engage in or support terrorism.”

Rubio and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent were mandated last year under an executive order signed by Trump to determine the most appropriate way to impose sanctions on the groups, which U.S. officials say engage in or support violence and destabilization campaigns that harm the United States and other regions.

Bessent said in a post on X that the Muslim Brotherhood “has a longstanding record of perpetrating acts of terror, and we are working aggressively to cut them off from the financial system.” He added that the Trump administration will “deploy the full scope of its authorities to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat terrorist networks wherever they operate in order to keep Americans safe.”

Muslim Brotherhood leaders have said they renounce violence, and the Muslim Brotherhood branches in Egypt and Lebanon denounced their inclusion.

“The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood categorically rejects this designation and will pursue all legal avenues to challenge this decision which harms millions of Muslims worldwide,” it said in a statement, denying any involvement in or support for terrorism.

The Lebanese branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, known as Al Jamaa al Islamiya (the Islamic Group), said in a statement that it is “a licensed Lebanese political and social entity that operates openly and within the bounds of the law” and that the U.S. decision “has no legal effect within Lebanon.”

In singling out the chapters in Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt, Trump’s executive order noted that a wing of the Lebanese chapter had launched rockets on Israel after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack in Israel that set off the war in Gaza. Leaders of the group in Jordan also have provided support to Hamas, the order said.

The Muslim Brotherhood was founded in Egypt in 1928 but was banned in that country in 2013. Jordan announced a sweeping ban on the Muslim Brotherhood in April.

Egypt on Tuesday welcomed the designation and praised Trump’s efforts to combat global terrorism.

“This is a significant step that reflects the extremist ideology of this group and the direct threat it represents for regional and international security and stability,” the Egyptian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

Nathan Brown, a professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University, said other allies of the U.S., including the United Arab Emirates, would likely be pleased with the designation.

“For other governments where the brotherhood is tolerated, it would be a thorn in bilateral relations,” including in Qatar and Turkey, he said. While the Turkish ruling party has been associated with members of the Muslim Brotherhood in the past, the government of Qatar has denied any relationship with it.

Brown also said a designation on the chapters may have effects on visa and asylum claims for people entering not just the U.S. but also Western European countries and Canada.

“I think this would give immigration officials a stronger basis for suspicion, and it might make courts less likely to question any kind of official action against Brotherhood members who are seeking to stay in this country, seeking political asylum,” he said.

Trump, a Republican, weighed whether to designate the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization in 2019 during his first term in office. Some prominent Trump supporters, including right-wing influencer Laura Loomer, have pushed his administration to take aggressive action against the group.

Two Republican-led state governments — Florida and Texas — designated the group as a terrorist organization this year.

Hussein and Lee write for the Associated Press. Fatma Khaled in Cairo contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — Roughly half a dozen federal prosecutors in Minnesota have resigned and several supervisors in the criminal section of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division have given notice of their departures amid turmoil over the federal investigation into the killing of a woman by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer in Minneapolis, according to people familiar with the matter.

The resignations follow growing tensions over a decision by the Trump administration to block the state out of the investigation into the killing of Renee Good, who was shot in the head by an immigration agent last week. Lawyers in the Civil Rights Division, which generally investigates high-profile officer shootings, were also recently told that the division would not be involved at this stage in the investigation, two people familiar with the matter said.

Among the departures in Minnesota is First Asst. U.S. Atty. Joe Thompson, who had been leading the sprawling investigation and prosecution of fraud schemes in the state, two other people said. At least four other prosecutors in the Minnesota U.S. attorney’s office joined Thompson in resigning amid a period of tension in the office, the people said. The people spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss personnel matters.

They are the latest in an exodus of career Justice Department attorneys who have resigned or been forced out over concerns over political pressure or shifting priorities under the Trump administration. Hundreds of Justice Department lawyers have been fired or have left voluntarily over the last year.

Minnesota Democratic lawmakers criticized the departures, with Sen. Amy Klobuchar, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, calling the resignations “a loss for our state and for public safety” and warning that prosecutions should not be driven by politics. Gov. Tim Walz said the departures raised concerns about political pressure on career Justice Department officials.

The resignations of the lawyers in the Civil Rights Division’s criminal section, including its chief, were announced to staff on Monday. The Justice Department on Tuesday said those prosecutors had requested to participate in an early retirement program “well before the events in Minnesota,” and added that “any suggestion to the contrary is false.”

Founded nearly 70 years ago, the Civil Rights Division has a long history of investigating shootings of civilians by law enforcement officials even though prosecutors typically need to clear a high bar to mount a criminal prosecution.

In prior administrations, the division has moved quickly to open and publicly announce such investigations, not only to reflect federal jurisdiction over potential civil rights violations but also in hopes of soothing community angst that sometimes accompanies shootings involving law enforcement.

In Minneapolis, for instance, the Justice Department during the first Trump administration opened a civil rights investigation into the 2020 death of George Floyd at the hands of city police officers that resulted in criminal charges. The Minneapolis Police Department was separately scrutinized by the Biden administration for potential systemic civil rights violations through what’s known as a “pattern or practice” investigation, a type of police reform inquiry that is out of favor in the current Trump administration Justice Department.

Richer and Tucker write for the Associated Press.

A young protester gripped at the collar of his shirt, a desperate attempt to keep his airway clear as a Department of Homeland Security agent dragged him into a federal building in Santa Ana Friday, according to a statement he released to a social justice organization.

The protester, a 21-year-old who asked to only be identified as K, had been hit by a nonlethal round fired by an agent only feet away. He saw his blood pooling beneath him – “dark and thick,” and wider than his head.

K pleaded with agents to call an ambulance, he said in the statement. Instead, the agents taunted him, “laughing at the fact that I would never get to see out of my left eye again,” he said.

Rue El Amar, a friend of K’s, read the statement on his behalf during a press conference Tuesday, held by Dare to Struggle, a social justice organization that K is involved with, in front of the Santa Ana city jail.

Demonstrators had gathered in front of federal offices in Santa Ana Friday to protest the fatal shooting in Minnesota of Renee Good. K was injured and another protester, Skye Jones, was taken into custody.

Video footage of the incident shows three agents approaching the group before one agent tries to take a young person into custody, prompting at least three demonstrators to try to intervene.

The video then shows at least one agent firing nonlethal rounds at the crowd, before aiming and shooting a protester in the face. K drops to the ground after being shot, holding his face as the crowd retreats.

K remained in the hospital as of Tuesday afternoon, as they await a police report that can identify what type of metal was in the rounds used. His doctors are concerned about neurotoxins from the bullet, he said.

Rue El Amar holds a sign during a press conference about a young protester who was left blind in one eye after a Department of Homeland Security agent fired a less-lethal round at demonstrators.

(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)

“I pleaded with him, call an ambulance,” El Amar read. “I thought I was going to bleed out on the floor of the federal building with the DHS officer holding my head down to the ground like a trophy.”

K is now completely blind in his left eye, his tear duct was destroyed and the “flaps of my eye are barely holding on,” he said. Doctors found pieces of plastic and glass in his skull as well as metal in his stomach lining, and “pulled a piece of plastic the size of a nickel from my eye,” he said.

A piece of metal is lodged only millimeters from his carotid artery, which could have killed him. Doctors were unable to remove some of the shrapnel from his skull and he “will have to live with metal pieces there for the rest of my life,” he said.

“I focused on the voices of the people, the voices of my friends and comrades, I believe that’s what kept me alive, hearing them continue the fight despite how aggressive our oppressors were,” K said.

Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary with the Department of Homeland Security, previously told The Times that a “mob of 60 rioters threw rocks, bottles and fireworks at law enforcement officers outside of the federal building.”

A spokesperson for the Santa Ana Police Department said the only violence they were aware of that night were demonstrators tossing orange cones at the agents.

Connor Atwood, a member of Dare to Struggle who was present during the incident, said he didn’t witness bottles or rocks being thrown toward agents. Some firecrackers were set off near the sidewalk but away from the building entrance, he said.

Jones, who also spoke during the press conference, was arrested during the incident and held for nearly three days until being released yesterday, they said during the press conference. Jones said they weren’t told the charges against them until the morning of their release.

Jones said they hope Friday’s incident makes people “open their eyes” to the violence committed by immigration against against “innocent civilians who are just trying to protect their neighbors and friends,” they said.

“When confronting those who enforce ICE terror, they will snatch us out of a crowd. They will shoot us point blank with pepper ball bullets, and they will throw us to the ground,” Jones said. “Repression is inevitable when demanding justice, so we must not cower at it.”

Staff Writer Ruben Vives contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — Former President Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Tuesday that they will refuse to comply with a congressional subpoena to testify in a House committee’s investigation of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

The Clintons, in a letter released on social media, slammed the House Oversight probe as “legally invalid” even as Republican lawmakers prepared contempt of Congress proceedings against them. The Clintons wrote that the chair of the House Oversight Committee, Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), is on the cusp of a process “literally designed to result in our imprisonment.”

“We will forcefully defend ourselves,” wrote the Clintons, who are Democrats. They accused Comer of allowing other former officials to provide written statements about Epstein to the committee, while selectively enforcing subpoenas against them.

Comer said he’ll begin contempt of Congress proceedings next week. It potentially starts a complicated and politically messy process that Congress has rarely reached for and could result in prosecution from the Justice Department.

“No one’s accusing the Clintons of any wrongdoing. We just have questions,” Comer told reporters after Bill Clinton did not show up for a scheduled deposition at House offices Tuesday.

He added: “Anyone would admit they spent a lot of time together.”

Clinton has never been accused of wrongdoing in connection with Epstein but had a well-documented friendship with the wealthy financier throughout the 1990s and early 2000s. Republicans have zeroed in on that relationship as they wrestle with demands for a full accounting of Epstein’s wrongdoing.

Epstein was convicted in 2008 of procuring a child for prostitution in Florida, but served only 13 months in custody in what was considered a sweetheart plea deal that saved him a potential life sentence. In 2019, he was arrested on federal sex trafficking and conspiracy charges. He killed himself in a New York jail cell while awaiting trial.

“We have tried to give you the little information we have,” the Clintons wrote in the letter. “We’ve done so because Mr. Epstein’s crimes were horrific.”

Multiple former presidents have voluntarily testified before Congress, but none has been compelled to do so. That history was invoked by President Trump in 2022, between his first and second terms, when he faced a subpoena by the House committee investigating the deadly Jan. 6, 2021, riot by a mob of his supporters at the U.S. Capitol.

Trump’s lawyers cited decades of legal precedent that they said shielded a former president from being ordered to appear before Congress. The committee ultimately withdrew its subpoena.

Comer also indicated that the Oversight Committee would not attempt to compel testimony from Trump about Epstein, saying that it could not force a sitting president to testify.

Trump, a Republican, also had a well-documented friendship with Epstein. He has said he cut off that relationship before Epstein was accused of sexual abuse.

Groves writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON  — The Supreme Court justices sounded ready on Tuesday to uphold state laws that forbid transgender athletes from competing on school sports teams for girls.

Idaho, West Virginia and 25 other Republican-led states say a student’s biological sex at birth should determine who can play on the girls’ or boys’ teams.

They say it is unfair to girls to permit biological males to compete against them in sports like track and field or swimming. “Biological males are, on average, bigger, stronger and faster than biological females,” West Virginia’s state lawyers said.

While the court’s conservative majority court is likely to rule for these states, the justices said they prefer a narrow decision limited to these laws.

If so, such a ruling for the red states will not directly change the law in California and the more than a dozen other Democratic-led states that forbid discrimination based on gender identity. Those laws protect rights of transgender girls to compete on a girls’ team.

A similar dispute came before the court last year.

Then, the conservative justices ruled Tennessee and other red states may prohibit gender-affirming drugs and medical treatments for teenagers who suffer from gender dysphoria.

The 6-3 majority said this was not unconstitutional discrimination based on the teenagers’ transgender status. But that ruling did not strike down the conflicting law in California.

In recent months, the Trump administration joined the transgender sports cases on the side of West Virginia and Idaho.

But its lawyers argued only that the Constitution permits states to exclude transgender girls from girls’ teams. It does not require that they do so, their lawyers said.

Even a West Virginia lawyer agreed. “There is enough room for California to make a different interpretation,” state solicitor Michael R. Williams told the court.

Deputy Solicitor Gen. Hashim Mooppan said these Democratic states “are violating Title IX,” the education law that allows separate sports teams for girls and boys. But he said the court should not rule on that question now.

Last year, in response to the court’s ruling on gender-affirming care, President Trump cut off federal funds to hospitals and medical facilities that provided such care.

A ruling upholding restrictions on transgender athletes could spur the Trump administration to threaten Democratic states with a loss of federal education funds.

Becky Pepper-Jackson, now 15, has carried on a lonely legal fight to compete on her school’s track team in Bridgeport, W.Va.

Designated male at birth, she says she is the only transgender girl competing in her state and has been the target of complaints and protests.

In middle school, Becky participated in cross-country as a sixth-grader and described herself as slow. She “routinely placed near the back of the pack,” her attorneys told the court.

But upon reaching high school, she has been winning.

In 2024, she “placed in the top three in every track event in which B.P.J. competed, winning most,” the state’s attorneys said. Last spring “focusing on strength events, B.P.J. bumped female competitors out of the state tournament, then placed third in the state in discus and eighth in shot put while competing against much older female athletes,” they told the court.

Her attorney, Joshua Block of the American Civil Liberties Union, said she has been winning in the shot put and discus “through hard work and practice.”

He said she “received puberty-delaying medication and gender-affirming estrogen that allowed her to undergo a hormonal puberty typical of a girl.”

He urged the court to rule for Becky because she does not have a physical advantage due to her biology.

But the justices did not sound inclined to rule on the issue of puberty blockers.

President Trump’s administration said Tuesday it will end temporary protected status for immigrants from Somalia, the latest move in the president’s mass deportation agenda.

The move affects hundreds of people who are a small subset of immigrants with TPS protections in the United States. It comes during Trump’s immigration crackdown in Minneapolis, where many native Somalis live and where street protests have intensified since a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent killed a U.S citizen who was demonstrating against federal presence in the city.

The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that affected Somalis must leave the U.S. by March 17, when existing protections, last extended by former President Biden, will expire.

“Temporary means temporary,” said Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, adding that the decision puts “Americans first.”

The Congressional Research Service last spring said the Somali TPS population was 705 out of nearly 1.3 million TPS immigrants. But Trump has rolled back protections across multiple countries in his second presidency.

Congress established the Temporary Protected Status program in 1990 to help foreign nationals attempting to leave unstable, threatening conditions in their home countries. It allows the executive branch to designate a country so that its citizens are eligible to enter the U.S. and receive status.

Somalia first received the designation under President George H.W. Bush amid a civil war in 1991. The status has been extended for decades, most recently by Biden in July 2024.

Noem insisted circumstances in Somalia “have improved to the point that it no longer meets the law’s requirement for Temporary Protected Status.”

Located in the horn of Africa, Somalia is one of the world’s poorest nations and has for decades been beset by chronic strife exacerbated by multiple natural disasters, including severe droughts.

The 2025 congressional report stated that Somalis had received more than two dozen extensions because of perpetual “insecurity and ongoing armed conflict that present serious threats to the safety of returnees.”

Trump has targeted Somali immigrants with racist rhetoric and accused those in Minneapolis of massively defrauding federal programs.

In December, Trump said he did not want Somalis in the U.S., saying they “come from hell” and “contribute nothing.” He made no distinction between citizens and non-citizens or offered any opinion on immigration status. He has had especially harsh words for Rep. Ilhan Omar, a Minnesota Democrat who emigrated from Somalia as a child. Trump has repeatedly suggested she should be deported, despite her being a U.S. citizen, and in his rant last fall he called her “garbage.”

Omar, who has been an outspoken critic of the ICE deployment in Minneapolis, has called Trump’s “obsession” with her and Somali-Americans “creepy and unhealthy.”

Barrow writes for the Associated Press.

GENEVA — President Trump will return to the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting of business, political and cultural elites in Davos, Switzerland, next week, leading a record-large U.S. delegation, organizers said Tuesday.

The Geneva-based think tank says Trump, whose assertive foreign policy on issues as diverse as Venezuela and Greenland in recent months has stirred concerns among U.S. friends and foes alike, will be accompanied by five Cabinet secretaries and other top officials for the event running from Monday through Jan. 23.

A total of 850 CEOs and chairs of the world’s top companies will be among the 3,000 participants from 130 countries expected in the Alpine resort this year, the forum says.

Forum President Borge Brende says six of the Group of Seven leaders — including Trump — will attend, as well as presidents Volodymyr Zelenskky of Ukraine, Ahmad al-Sharaa of Syria and others. A total of 64 heads of state or government are expected so far — also a record — though that number could increase before the start of the event, he said.

China’s delegation will be headed by Vice Premier He Lifeng, Beijing’s top trade official, Brende said.

Among the scores of other high-profile attendees expected are European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, World Trade Organization Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala as well as tech industry titans Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.

Brende said the U.S. delegation will include Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, and U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, along with Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and special envoy Steve Witkoff.

The forum, which held its first annual meeting in 1971, has long been a hub of dialogue, debate and deal-making. Trump has already attended twice while president, and was beamed in by video last year just days after being inaugurated for his second term.

Critics call it a venue for the world’s elites to hobnob and do business that sometimes comes at the expense of workers, the impoverished or people on the margins of society. The forum counters that its stated goal is “improving the state of the world” and insists many advocacy groups, academics and cultural leaders have an important role too.

This year’s edition will be the first annual meeting not headed by forum founder Klaus Schwab, who resigned last year. He’s been succeeded by interim co-chairs Larry Fink, chairman and CEO of New York-based investment management company BlackRock, and Andre Hoffmann, the vice chairman of Swiss pharmaceuticals company Roche Holdings.

WASHINGTON — The Democratic National Committee will spend millions of dollars to cement control of voter registration efforts that have traditionally been entrusted to nonprofit advocacy groups and individual political campaigns, a shift that party leaders hope will increase their chances in this year’s midterm elections.

The initiative, being announced on Tuesday, will begin in Arizona and Nevada with at least $2 million for training organizers. It’s the first step in what could become the DNC’s largest-ever push to sign up new voters, with a particular focus on young people, voters of color and people without college educations. All of those demographics drifted away from Democrats in the last presidential race, which returned Republican Donald Trump to the White House.

“It’s a crisis. And for our party to actually win elections, we have to actually create more Democrats,” DNC Chair Ken Martin said in an interview with the Associated Press.

Martin added that “we need all hands on deck, not just the outside groups,” as the party tries to win back control of Congress and break Republicans’ unified control in Washington.

Democrats have spent decades relying on advocacy organizations and civic groups to register voters, but those efforts are generally required by law to be nonpartisan. Party leaders want a more explicitly partisan approach like the one used by Republicans, who have relied less on outside groups to register and mobilize their voter base.

Martin said allied nonprofits are “really important partners” that have “done amazing work to actually get people engaging in their democracy.”

“But in this moment right now, given the significant disadvantage that we have and the advantage the Republicans have, we actually have to do more,” he said.

The DNC initiative aims to reach non-college-educated young voters by recruiting organizers from a wide array of backgrounds, like gig economy workers and young parents, who have often been overlooked in the party’s grassroots efforts. Democrats hope that organizers’ own perspectives and experiences will help party strategists learn how to connect with Americans in blue-collar roles who are disaffected with politics, whom the party fears it has lost touch with in recent elections.

“I think it’s incredible that Democrats are actually investing in reaching Democratic voters who have been left behind,” said Santiago Mayer, founder of Voters for Tomorrow, a progressive political youth group that is collaborating with the DNC. “We got killed on persuasion in 2024, and I think this is a really important step, fixing it and ensuring that we do not have a repeat of that in 2026.”

The program will kick off with dozens of videos from lawmakers, activists and party leaders across the country. Democrats hope to boost enthusiasm for the program through interstate party competitions throughout the year.

If successful, the investments will provide a foundation that Democrats can rely upon beyond the fall midterm elections.

“This is a critical piece of the infrastructure that we’re building to actually not only win the moment in ’26 but to win the future,” Martin said. “For us to put ourselves in a position to win in ’28 and ’30 and ’32, we actually have to keep doing this work and do it consistently.”

Brown writes for the Associated Press.

MINNEAPOLIS — Days of demonstrations against immigration agents left Minnesota tense on Tuesday, a day after federal authorities used tear gas to break up crowds of whistle-blowing activists and state and local leaders sued to fight the enforcement surge that led to the fatal shooting of a Minneapolis woman.

Confrontations between federal agents and protesters stretched throughout the day and across multiple cities on Monday. Agents fired tear gas in Minneapolis as a crowd gathered around immigration officers questioning a man, while to the northwest in St. Cloud hundreds of people protested outside a strip of Somali-run businesses after ICE officers arrived.

Later that night, confrontations erupted between protesters and officers guarding the federal building being used as a base for the Twin Cities crackdown.

With the Department of Homeland Security pledging to send more than 2,000 immigration officers into Minnesota in what Immigration and Customs Enforcement has called its largest enforcement operation ever, the state, joined by Minneapolis and St. Paul, sued the Trump administration Monday to try to halt or limit the surge.

The lawsuit says the Department of Homeland Security operation violates the First Amendment and other constitutional protections and accuses the Republican Trump administration of violating free speech rights by focusing on a progressive state that favors Democrats and welcomes immigrants.

“This is, in essence, a federal invasion of the Twin Cities in Minnesota, and it must stop,” state Attorney General Keith Ellison said at a news conference.

Homeland Security says it has made more than 2,000 arrests in the state since early December.

Dozens of protests or vigils have taken place across the U.S. to honor Renee Good since the 37-year-old mother of three was shot in the head by an ICE officer in Minneapolis.

In response to Monday’s lawsuit, Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin accused Minnesota officials of ignoring public safety.

“President Trump’s job is to protect the American people and enforce the law — no matter who your mayor, governor, or state attorney general is,” McLaughlin said.

The Trump administration has repeatedly defended the immigration agent who shot Good, saying she and her vehicle presented a threat. But that explanation has been widely panned by Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and others based on videos of the confrontation.

The government also faces a new lawsuit over a similar immigration crackdown in Illinois. More than 4,300 people were arrested last year in “Operation Midway Blitz” as masked agents swept the Chicago area. The lawsuit by the city and state says the campaign had a chilling effect, making residents afraid to leave home.

The lawsuit seeks restrictions on certain tactics, among other remedies. McLaughlin called it “baseless.”

Meanwhile, in Portland, Ore., federal authorities filed charges against a Venezuelan national who was one of two people shot there by U.S. Border Patrol on Thursday. The U.S. Justice Department said the man used his pickup truck to strike a Border Patrol vehicle and escape the scene with a woman.

They were shot and eventually arrested. Their wounds were not life-threatening. The FBI said there was no video of the incident, unlike the Good shooting.

Santana, Vancleave and Karnowski write for the Associated Press. AP reporters Ed White in Detroit; Sarah Raza in Sioux Falls, S.D.; and Sophia Tareen in Chicago contributed to this report.

In another article, we warned that the greatest danger for the opposition led by María Corina Machado in the lead-up to a transition would be the Venezuelan Armed Forces (FANB) and the United States realizing they can reach an agreement on coexistence, and even on liberalization and democratization, without the opposition having a role.

A first reaction to what Trump has said about Machado would be to recall the growing popularity of the winner of the 2023 opposition primary and her key role in Edmundo González Urrutia’s presidential campaign. Clearly, María Corina is not a leader without support or respect, but it remains true that she will never be able to shake off the specter of her staunch anti-chavismo, which prevents her from becoming a credible interlocutor for the FANB-PSUV in a transition process. In a negotiation for the redemocratization of Venezuela, which would involve discussing an amnesty and an agreement that safeguards the personal integrity of the leaders of both sides, María Corina is the last person chavismo would trust.

A second reaction arises upon noticing the first belligerent pronouncements of Delcy Rodríguez, Minister of Defense Vladimir Padrino López, and Minister of Interior Diosdado Cabello. However, in the aforementioned article, we pointed out that in a transition process, the fact that the top party and military leadership maintain a hyper-ideological, anti-imperialist, and doctrinaire discourse is not contradictory to their pragmatism when negotiating with the United States. They maintain this discourse so that the FANB-PSUV can carry out such negotiations, ensuring cohesion within the ruling bloc.

The first not to utter this rhetoric will be denounced as a traitor, as the search is on for those who helped the US capture Maduro. Any change in tone will depend on the bloc agreeing to move forward with the transition. This is already happening, with Delcy Rodríguez delivering a message of dialogue and cooperation without belligerent rhetoric, while presiding over a cabinet meeting, just hours after the US military intervention on January 3rd.

Not without me

Trump and Rubio reiterate that their interest lies in preferential access to Venezuelan oil and curbing the influence of China and Russia in Latin America. There is no mention of the need to bring about the PSUV’s exit from power in the short term. They speak of a transition within a year, but also of observing Delcy’s willingness and capacity to cooperate.

Machado currently lacks both the experience and the political personnel to assume the presidency and manage the Venezuelan national bureaucracy. It is not enough to have technicians trained at the best universities in the West if they cannot navigate the web of middle and lower bureaucratic ranks while contending with the interests of the bureaucrats, the FANB, and the US. Machado also lacks the political cadres today to negotiate governance with a National Assembly, as well as governorships and mayoralties dominated by chavistas.

If María Corina wants to prevent the transition train from leaving without her on board, she will need to become an insurmountable obstacle to that transition for both the US and the FANB-PSUV coalition.

Even with general elections on the horizon, after 26 years out of power, few opposition leaders have the room of maneuver to assume political roles at the local or legislative level.

What the US needs from a transition (ostensibly economic, rather than political), neither Machado nor the opposition can provide. Delcy Rodríguez, on the other hand, can.

However, the price of sidelining the opposition is extremely high for those who desire democratic renewal. The problem is that it is not enough to demand a seat at the table if one does not possess sufficient real-world influence and leverage to assert oneself there. Therefore, if the opposition and María Corina want to prevent the transition train from leaving without them on board, they will need to do something ironically contradictory: become an insurmountable obstacle to that transition for both the United States and the FANB-PSUV coalition.

In other words, María Corina Machado must ensure that the transition cannot happen without her. And to do that, she needs to activate the only instrument that no one but her possesses: the mobilization of the popular masses she managed to mobilize in 2024. This requires us to consider a few things.

What does “street protests” mean in 2026? First, it cannot be a call to street protests with no turning back until the PSUV is ousted. It must establish achievable short-term objectives and rationally and economically rebuild the people’s own confidence in their capacity to intervene in the political system.

One option would be to start with a weekly mobilization scheme, on a predetermined day of the week, to demand the release of all political prisoners.

All-or-nothing calls for action without guarantees of success, such as those of 2014, 2017, or 2019, lacking clear and realistic objectives on the horizon, wear down the population. Ordinary people cannot abandon their sources of income indefinitely to participate in daily mobilizations. Experience shows how their self-esteem is shattered when they realize that no matter how much time passes, the PSUV doesn’t resign, the FANB doesn’t break apart, and nothing changes.

The sensible thing to do in this context, however, is to start with objectives that make the FANB-PSUV coalition uncomfortable, but that don’t pose an existential risk to its leaders. At the same time, that mobilization doesn’t constitute a call for open struggle against the government, but rather a challenge to the new business normality that the FANB-PSUV and the United States are trying to build. Just to test the waters, one option would be to start with a weekly mobilization scheme, on a predetermined day of the week, to demand the release of all political prisoners. This would be done solely with this slogan, with a political organization behind it that seeks to prevent confrontation with security forces, but at the same time, the mobilization begins to disrupt the normal functioning of the country. Demanding something that chavismo can, but refuses to give, until it eventually yields or the United States is forced to incorporate it into its transition agenda, at the risk of opposition mobilization hindering the negotiations Washington is conducting with the FANB-PSUV.

Machado must ensure that the US prioritizes raising the costs of repression and political persecution to the maximum, which brings us back to the first point.

This requires, secondly, a political organization capable of planning and executing this strategy. This organization does not need to be a political party, a union, or an NGO, although its eventual articulation into a coherent movement will make the political mobilization and calls to action more effective. Rather, the key to this organization was already prepared by Machado during the 2024 presidential campaign: the comanditos.

What already served as a structure to circumvent chavista persecution and censorship, and to technically prepare citizens throughout the country to face the campaign, observe the elections, and protect and process the physical and digital records of the July 28th vote, can serve as a model for envisioning a political organization with popular roots, capable of implementing this new political strategy. To achieve this, Machado must also ensure that the United States prioritizes raising the costs of repression and political persecution to the maximum, which brings us back to the first point.

Finally, this organized mobilization of the popular masses will also require Machado to recognize that she will have to challenge and emancipate herself from US interests in order to assert Venezuelan interests. This implies accepting popular organization as her ultimate source of power, but also acknowledging the imperative to solidify alliances with other international actors capable of mediating and interceding on her behalf with the United States: from the European Union to Brazil, Argentina, and Mexico, forming an international bloc pressing to guarantee that human rights, free elections, and other popular demands have a recognized place at the transitional negotiating table.

WASHINGTON — When the White House finally released $400 million in defense assistance it had withheld from Ukraine while pressuring its government to investigate President Trump’s political opponents, Republican and Democratic lawmakers had mere days to ensure millions of dollars for military equipment would not expire.

Even as the first stages of what became an impeachment inquiry got underway, key lawmakers in both parties raced over a frantic week last month to move the complex levers of the federal government’s spending process to save the aid for Ukraine, according to interviews and official communications.

Bipartisan pressure from Congress and officials within the administration prompted the White House to lift its hold on the defense assistance on Sept. 11. With a mandated 15-day wait period, that left less than a week to secure the money before the legal authority to spend it expired Sept. 30.

“Fifteen days to cut the checks and do all the paperwork and so forth,” said Rep. John Garamendi (D-Walnut Grove), who led a bipartisan group of lawmakers to Ukraine in mid-September to meet with military and foreign ministers. “That’s a big issue.”

Ultimately, lawmakers quietly tucked an extension into a stopgap spending bill to allow the State and Defense departments to use the money past the end of the month.

Trump signed the bill into law Sept. 27, three days before the deadline.

Despite those efforts, roughly $40 million of the money Congress originally appropriated for Defense Department aid to Ukraine still hasn’t been transferred to or contracted for the Ukrainians, according to the Pentagon, but will be over the coming weeks. That shortfall represents critical military equipment, including rocket-propelled-grenade launchers and gear for secure communications and to detect electronic warfare.

The scramble to save the Ukraine aid underscores how the administration’s freeze on the money raised alarm across party lines, and across the government, even before a whistleblower complaint first disclosed that Trump had been putting pressure on Ukrainian leaders to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his family.

Republican lawmakers shared Democrats’ concerns about the holdup in aid, as did Pentagon and State Department officials. Some of those GOP lawmakers are among Trump’s staunchest public defenders against the impeachment inquiry.

Trump administration officials and Republican allies are downplaying the effect of the holdup. Defense Department officials have been careful to say publicly that “at no time or at any time has any delay in this money, this funding, affected U.S. national security,” as Defense Secretary Mark Esper put it. But in the meantime, the Trump administration’s actions have left Ukraine militarily and politically vulnerable.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky mentioned a desire to purchase Javelin antitank weapons to Trump in their now-infamous July 25 phone call, to which Trump replied, “I would like you to do us a favor though,” according to the White House account of the call.

Trump asked for Ukraine’s government to investigate the Bidens, as well as the origins of the U.S. investigation into foreign meddling in the 2016 election.

“The United States has been very good to Ukraine,” Trump told Zelensky, complaining the relationship had not been “reciprocal.”

The Javelins, which the Ukrainians say they need amid continued clashes with Russian-backed separatists in the eastern part of the country, have yet to arrive.

The congressional trip that Garamendi led to Kyiv and Lviv in September had been planned months in advance. But since the whistleblower complaint became public a few days before the delegation arrived in Ukraine, the visit quickly became focused on the on-the-ground effects of the delay in military aid, Garamendi said.

The two-month freeze in aid forced the Ukrainian military to deplete its stockpiles, military and government officials told lawmakers, and raised internal concerns about whether the U.S. would remain a reliable ally.

“We’re talking bullets and guns and ammunition and artillery and so forth, all these things, and so any delay could change a battle if it doesn’t show up,” Garamendi said.

The aid is part of a program known as the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, created by Congress in 2015 after the Crimea annexation. Along with the Countering Russian Influence Fund and other State Department programs, these accounts serve as a signal of political will in the U.S. to stand up to Russian influence.

Many Republican Russia hawks had criticized the Obama administration for not approving the sale of lethal arms to Ukraine. The Trump administration approved the sales in 2017 despite resistance from some Trump allies who had pushed to take references to lethal assistance out of the GOP platform in the 2016 presidential campaign — including now-convicted former Trump campaign boss Paul Manafort.

Congress approved the $250 million in military aid and an additional $141 million in assistance from the State Department last fall with bipartisan support.

At the end of February, the Pentagon told defense and foreign affairs committees on Capitol Hill that it was coordinating with the State Department to transfer $125 million in aid and equipment to Ukraine. Then, in May, the Pentagon notified the panels it would send the other $125 million, certifying that Ukraine had made progress on corruption, as lawmakers had required when they approved the funds.

That certification, two months before the president’s call with Zelensky, undermines one explanation Trump and his allies have offered for holding up the money — that it was because of broader concerns about corruption.

“Why would you give money to a country that you think is corrupt?” Trump said at the United Nations General Assembly in late September, while suggesting there would have been nothing wrong with tying the aid to a request to investigate an American political figure.

In July, before Trump’s call with Zelensky, the president told Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, to hold the aid, an order then relayed to the Defense and State departments. Officials expressed concern they were potentially running afoul of the law by holding money appropriated by Congress.

It wasn’t until mid-August, days after the whistleblower submitted his complaint to the intelligence community’s inspector general, but a month before it became public, that congressional committees that handle defense issues learned the aid was being held up. In late August, after news reports that the assistance had been frozen, the Defense Department confirmed to the defense committees that the Office of Management and Budget had put a hold on the assistance, without explanation.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) quickly got involved, reaching out to Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo and Esper as senators and representatives began writing letters, making public statements and speeches criticizing the holdup.

“I have no idea what precipitated the delay, but I was among those advocating that we needed to stick with our Ukrainian friends,” McConnell told reporters.

On Sept. 9, the intelligence community inspector general notified the House and Senate intelligence committees, as required by law, that a “matter of urgent concern” had been raised by a whistleblower. The notice did not specify that the matter involved Ukraine.

Two days later, the Pentagon and State departments sent lawmakers official notification that the money was being disbursed, setting off the scramble to ensure it was committed before it expired at the end of the month. How the aid came to be withheld, and why, is expected to be a focus of the impeachment inquiry.

At least one Republican senator, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, the chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, had been told in August that aid was being withheld from the Ukrainians amid pressure on the Kyiv government to launch investigations related to 2016. He said he did not recall mention of the Biden family.

Johnson said he was told the reason for the delay by Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, who is scheduled to testify as part of the impeachment inquiry this week. According to Johnson, he called the president the next day, and Trump denied a connection between the holdup and a push for Ukraine to open investigations.

“He said, ‘Expletive deleted — No way. I would never do that,’ ” Johnson told the Wall Street Journal. “Who told you that?”

After admitting last week that the Los Angeles Fire Department’s after-action report on the Palisades fire was watered down so as not to reflect poorly on top command staff, Fire Chief Jaime Moore said Monday he does not plan to determine who was responsible.

Moore said he is taking a forward-looking approach and not seeking to assign blame for changes to the Oct. 8 report that downplayed the city’s failures in preparing for and responding to the disaster. But he said his predecessor, interim Fire Chief Ronnie Villanueva, ultimately was responsible for releasing the contents of the report.

As chief, Moore said, he will not allow similar edits to after-action reports, which he said are intended to help the department learn from and correct past errors.

“I don’t think there’s really any benefit to me” looking into who made the edits, Moore said in an interview with The Times. “I can see where the original report and the public report aim to fix the same thing. They aim to correct where we could have been better. And it identifies … the steps that are going to be necessary to make those corrective actions.”

Moore, an LAFD veteran who took the helm of the agency about two months ago, said last week that the edits to the after-action report, which were first documented by The Times, were intended to “soften language and reduce explicit criticism of department leadership.”

On Monday he said Villanueva “made the decision to publish it, had something to do with the decision that it was going to be published publicly, which caused these drafts to occur.”

Villanueva did not respond to a request for comment.

“My efforts need to be pointed toward fixing things, not looking back and trying to point blame at anybody,” said Moore, who previously headed the LAFD’s Operations Valley Bureau, overseeing nearly 1,000 firefighters. “I need to fix where we’re going so it never happens again.”

The Times found that the after-action report was edited to obscure mistakes by city and LAFD leaders in handling the fire last January that killed 12 people and destroyed thousands of homes. The Times reviewed seven drafts of the report obtained through a state Public Records Act request.

The most significant changes involved top LAFD officials’ decision not to fully staff up and pre-deploy all available engines and firefighters to the Palisades or other high-risk areas ahead of a dire wind forecast.

An initial draft said the decision “did not align” with policy, while the final version said the number of companies pre-deployed “went above and beyond the standard LAFD pre-deployment matrix.”

The author of the report, Battalion Chief Kenneth Cook, declined to endorse the final version because of changes that altered his findings and made the report “highly unprofessional and inconsistent with our established standards.”

Moore said he spoke with Cook, whose version included many more recommendations for improvements than ended up in the final report.

“He doesn’t know who did the edits. He provided me with the original that he submitted, and therefore, that’s all I can go by,” Moore said, adding that some recommendations were consolidated.

Earlier, the president of the Fire Commission said she was told that a draft of the after-action report was sent to the mayor’s office for “refinements,” though she did not know what they were.

Moore said he would refuse if the mayor, who is his boss, requested edits to an after-action report.

“I would just say, ‘Absolutely not. We don’t do that,’” he said.

A spokesperson previously said Mayor Karen Bass’ office did not demand changes and asked the LAFD only to confirm the accuracy of items such as how the weather and the department’s budget factored into the disaster.

“The report was written and edited by the Fire Department,” spokesperson Clara Karger said in an email last month. “We did not red-line, review every page or review every draft of the report.”

Moore also described his efforts to look into missteps made during the mop-up of the Lachman fire, which rekindled days later into the devastating Palisades fire. The after-action report contained only a brief mention of the earlier fire.

The Times found that a battalion chief ordered firefighters to roll up their hoses and leave the burn area despite complaints by crews that the ground still was smoldering. The Times reviewed text messages among firefighters and a third party, sent in the weeks and months after the fire, describing the crew’s concerns, and reported that at least one battalion chief assigned to the LAFD’s risk management section knew about them for months.

After the Times report, Bass directed Moore to commission an independent investigation into the LAFD’s handling of the Lachman fire.

Moore said he opened an internal investigation into the Lachman fire through the LAFD’s Professional Standards Division, which probes complaints against department members. He said he requested the Fire Safety Research Institute, which is reviewing last January’s wildfires at the request of Gov. Gavin Newsom, to include the Lachman fire as part of its analysis, and the institute agreed. Moore also pointed to the L.A. City Council’s move to hire an outside firm to examine the Lachman and Palisades fires.

Even with the internal investigation underway, Moore said he spoke with the battalion chief who was on duty during the Lachman fire mop-up.

“He swears to me that nobody ever told him verbally or through a text message that there was any hot spots,” Moore said.

Moore later added: “If that is true, then — you asked me about discipline — potential discipline would possibly occur.”

Former Times staff writer Paul Pringle contributed to this report.

BEIJING — A leader of the Canadian government is visiting China this week for the first time in nearly a decade, a bid to rebuild his country’s fractured relations with the world’s second-largest economy — and reduce Canada’s dependence on the United States, its neighbor and until recently one of its most supportive and unswerving allies.

The push by Prime Minster Mark Carney, who arrives Wednesday, is part of a major rethink as ties sour with the United States — the world’s No. 1 economy and long the largest trading partner for Canada by far.

Carney aims to double Canada’s non-U.S. exports in the next decade in the face of President Trump’s tariffs and the American leader’s musing that Canada could become “the 51st state.”

“At a time of global trade disruption, Canada is focused on building a more competitive, sustainable, and independent economy,” Carney said in a news release announcing his China visit. “We’re forging new partnerships around the world to transform our economy from one that has been reliant on a single trade partner.”

He will be in China until Saturday, then visit Qatar before attending the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Switzerland next week.

Trump’s tariffs have pushed Canada and China to look for opportunities to strengthen international cooperation, said Zhu Feng, the dean of the School of International Studies at China’s Nanjing University.

“Carney’s visit does reflect the new space for further development in China-Canadian relations under the current U.S. trade protectionism,” he said. But he cautioned against overestimating the importance of the visit, noting that Canada remains a U.S. ally. The two North American nations also share a deep cultural heritage and a common geography.

New leaders have pivoted toward China

Carney has been in office less than a year, succeeding Justin Trudeau, who was prime minister for nearly a decade. He is not the first new leader of a country to try to repair relations with China.

Australian Premier Anthony Albanese has reset ties since his Labor Party came to power in 2022. Relations had deteriorated under the previous conservative government, leading to Chinese trade restrictions on wine, beef, coal and other Australian exports. Unwinding those restrictions took about 18 months, culminating with the lifting of a Chinese ban on Australian lobsters in late 2024.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has sought to repair ties with China since his Labor Party ousted the Conservatives in 2024. He is reportedly planning a visit to China, though the government has not confirmed that.

The two governments have differences, with Starmer raising the case of former Hong Kong media magnate Jimmy Lai, a British citizen, in talks with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in late 2024 in Brazil.

Trump, who has said he will come to China in April, has indicated he wants a smooth relationship with China, though he also launched a tit-for-tat trade war, with tariffs rising to more than 100% before he backed down.

Bumpy relations, with Washington in the middle

In Canada, Trump’s threats have raised questions about the country’s longstanding relationship with its much more powerful neighbor. Those close ties have also been the source of much of Canada’s friction with China in recent years.

It was Canada’s detention of a Chinese telecommunications executive at the request of the U.S. that started the deterioration of relations in late 2018. The U.S. wanted the Huawei Technologies Co. executive, Meng Wenzhou, to be extradited to face American charges.

China retaliated by arresting two Canadians, Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, on spying charges. While they were imprisoned, Meng was under house arrest in Vancouver, a Canadian city home to a sizable Chinese population. All three were released under a deal reached in 2021.

More recently, Canada followed the U.S. in imposing a 100% tariff on electric vehicles and a 25% tariff on steel and aluminum from China.

China, which is Canada’s second-largest trading partner after the U.S., has hit back with tariffs on Canadian exports including canola, seafood and pork. It has indicated it would remove some of the tariffs if Canada were to drop the 100% charge on EVs.

An editorial in China’s state-run Global Times newspaper welcomed Carney’s visit as a new starting point and called on Canada to lift “unreasonable tariff restrictions” and advance more pragmatic cooperation.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said Monday that China looks forward to Carney’s visit as an opportunity to “consolidate the momentum of improvement in China-Canada relations.”

Canada is also repairing ties with India

Carney met Xi in late October in South Korea, where both were attending the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit.

He has also tried to mend ties with India, where relations deteriorated in 2024 after the Trudeau government accused India of being involved in the 2023 killing of a Sikh activist in Canada. The fallout led to tit-for-tat expulsions of senior diplomats, disruption of visa services, reduced consular staffing and a freeze on trade talks.

A cautious thaw began last June. Since then, both sides have restored some consular services and resumed diplomatic contacts. In November, Canadian Foreign Minister Anita Anand said the two countries would move quickly to advance a trade deal, noting the government’s new foreign policy in response to Trump’s trade war.

Carney is also expected to visit India later this year.

Moritsugu writes for the Associated Press. AP journalists Sheikh Saaliq in New Delhi and Jill Lawless in London, and researcher Shihuan Chen in Beijing contributed to this report.

Gloria Romero, a former Democrat and state Senate Majority Leader, announced Monday she is running for lieutenant governor as part of a ticket with GOP gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton, a former Fox News commentator.

“At the end of the day, it’s really about one-party rule in Sacramento. I’ve seen it. I left it,” Romero said in an interview. “We’ve got to make a change, otherwise we will never turn around on accountability or affordability and fight for working families like the Democrats once said the party stood for. Those days are gone. It’s a new day, and I’m proud to work alongside Steve in this exciting race to make California Golden again.”

Hilton, who has a long-standing political relationship with Romero, said her expertise in the state Capitol is among the reasons he selected her. Romero served in the state Senate and Assembly for about 12 years, including three as the state Senate’s first female majority leader.

“She’s been incredibly helpful already, helping me understand how Sacramento works and doesn’t work,” Hilton said. “When I’m the governor I will have to work with the legislature. And one of the most important things that I see as a real benefit from having Gloria there with me is that she’s not just been in the legislature, she’s led one of the chambers. She really understands how it works and still has relationships.”

Other candidates running for lieutenant governor include Treasurer Fiona Ma, former Stockton Mayor Michael Tubbs and Josh Fryday, a member of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s cabinet, all Democrats, and state Sen. Brian Jones (R-Santee).

Romero was a lifelong Democrat, including co-chairing President Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign in California. But she began to break with her party over education reform, notably her support for school choice.

“Education is the key to the American dream, and yet my party was so beholden to the teachers union, the alphabet soup of power influencers in Sacramento,” she said.

Invoking the words of the late President Reagan, Romero said she didn’t leave the Democratic party, the party left her. She became a registered Republican in September 2024 after what she calls a “political coup” to oust President Biden as the Democratic nominee. She then endorsed President Trump and spoke at a rally supporting him near Coachella.

She said the lieutenant governor’s role is typically a sleepy perch for politicians as they bide their time to run for higher office.

“It should not be that way,” Romero said, adding that the lieutenant governor’s role on the boards that oversee the UCs, Cal States and community college is a particularly good fit for her wheelhouse. “Education and turning around education, it’s in my blood, it’s in my dreams. It’s my passion.”

Unlike presidential elections, statewide contests do not feature running mates; each candidate must be elected on their own merits.

Hilton said Romero was the first member of his “golden ticket for California” and that he planned to roll out other statewide candidates who will join their effort.

“I know it hasn’t been done before. It’s not how things are normally done,” he said. “But right from the beginning, when I was thinking about my race for governor, one of the things that I really wanted to do was to put together a strong team, because turning around California is going to take a strong team.”

WASHINGTON — White House officials were caught by surprise when a post appeared Sunday night on the Federal Reserve’s official social media channel, with Jerome Powell, its chairman, delivering a plain and clear message.

President Trump was not only weaponizing the Justice Department to intimidate him, Powell said to the camera, standing before an American flag. This time, he added, it wasn’t going to work.

The lack of any warning for officials in the West Wing, confirmed to The Times, was yet another exertion of independence from a Fed chair whose stern resistance to presidential pressure has made him an outlier in Trump’s Washington.

Powell was responding to grand jury subpoenas delivered to the Fed on Friday related to his congressional testimony over the summer regarding construction work at the Reserve.

“The threat of criminal charges is a consequence of the Federal Reserve setting interest rates based on our best assessment of what will serve the public, rather than following the preferences of the president,” Powell said.

“This is about whether the Fed will be able to continue to set interest rates based on evidence and economic conditions,” he added, “or whether instead monetary policy will be directed by political pressure or intimidation.”

For months, Trump and his aides have harshly criticized Powell for his decision-making on interest rates, which the president believes should be dropped faster. On various occasions, Trump has threatened to fire Powell — a move that legal experts, and Powell himself, have said would be illegal — before pulling back.

The Trump administration is currently arguing before the Supreme Court that the president should have the ability to fire the heads of independent agencies at will, despite prior rulings from the high court underscoring the unique independence of the central bank.

The decision by the Justice Department to subpoena the Fed over the construction — a $2.5-billion project to overhaul two Fed buildings, operating unrenovated since the 1930s — comes at a critical juncture for the U.S. economy, which has been issuing conflicting signals over its health.

Employers added only 50,000 jobs last month, fewer than in November, even as the unemployment rate dipped a tenth of a point to 4.4%, for its first decline since June. The figures indicate that businesses aren’t hiring much despite inflation slowing down and growth picking up.

The government reported last month that inflation dropped to an annual rate of 2.7% in November, down from 3% in September, while economic growth rose unexpectedly to an annual rate of 4.3% in the third quarter.

However, the long government shutdown interrupted data collection, lending doubt to the numbers. At the same time, there is uncertainty about the legality of $150 billion or more in tariffs imposed on China and dozens of countries through the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which has been challenged and is under review by the Supreme Court.

As inflation has cooled, the Fed under Powell has incrementally cut the federal funds rate, the target interest rate at which banks lend to one another and the bank’s primary tool for influencing inflation and growth. The Fed held the rate steady at a range of 4.25% to 4.5% through August, before a series of fall cuts left it at 3.5% to 3.75%.

That hasn’t been enough for Trump, who has called for the rate to be lowered faster and to a nearly rock bottom 1%. The last time the central bank dropped the rate so low was in the dark days of the early pandemic in March 2020. It began raising rates in 2022 as inflation took off and proved stubborn despite the bank’s efforts to rein it in.

Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, said there is room to continue lowering the federal funds rate to 3%, where it should be in a “well functioning economy, neither supporting or restraining growth.”

However, muscling the Fed to lower rates and reduce or destroy its independence is another matter.

“There’s no upside to that. It’s all downside, different shades of gray and black, depending on how things unfold,” he said. “It ends in higher inflation and ultimately a much diminished economy and potentially a financial crisis.”

Zandi said much will hinge on the Supreme Court’s decision on whether Trump can remove Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook, which he sought to do last year, citing allegations of mortgage fraud she denies.

While Powell’s term as chairman ends in May, his term as a governor — influencing interest-rate decisions — extends to January 2028. A criminal indictment over the construction project could provide Trump the legal justification he needs to remove him altogether.

“When he steps down in May, will he stay on the board or does he leave? That will make a difference,” Zandi said.

A key issue will be how much independence the Fed retains, he said, given the central bank’s role in establishing the U.S. as a safe haven for international bond investors who play a key role funding the federal deficit.

The investors rely on the bank to keep inflation under control, or they will demand the government pay more for its long term bonds — though the subpoenas had little effect so far Monday on bond prices.

“There are scenarios where the bond market says, ‘Oh my gosh, we’re going to see much higher inflation, and there’s a bond sell-off and a spike in long-term rates,” he said. “That’s a crisis.”

Zandi said that even if the worst-case scenarios don’t play out, it will take time for the Federal Reserve to reestablish its reputation as an independent bank not influenced by politics.

“I’m not sure investors will ever forget this,” he said. “Most importantly, it depends on who Trump nominates to be the next chair of the Federal Reserve — and how that person views his or her job.”

Lawmakers from both parties have questioned the motivation behind the investigation.

North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis, a Republican member of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, has said he plans to oppose the confirmation of any nominee for the Fed until the legal matter is “fully resolved.”

“If there were any remaining doubt whether advisers within the Trump administration are actively pushing to end the independence of the Federal Reserve, there should now be none,” Tillis wrote in a social media post.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the top Democrat on that committee, accused Trump of trying to “install another sock puppet to complete his corrupt takeover of America’s central bank.”

“Trump is abusing the authorities of the Department of Justice like a wannabe dictator so the Fed serves his interests, along with his billionaire friends,” Warren said in a statement.

Rep. French Hill (R-Ark.), the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, also expressed skepticism about the inquiry, which he characterized as an “unnecessary distraction.”

“The Federal Reserve is led by strong, capable individuals appointed by President Trump, and this action could undermine this and future Administrations’ ability to make sound monetary public decisions,” Hill wrote in a statement.

As Hill raised concerns about the investigation, he added he personally knew Powell to be a “person of the highest integrity.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), meanwhile, dismissed the idea that the Justice Department was being weaponized against Powell. When asked by a reporter if he thought that was the case, he said: “Of course not.”

Times staff writers Wilner and Ceballos reported from Washington and Darmiento from Los Angeles.

When daylight broke on Saturday, January 3, the damage left by the United States’ military attack on Venezuelan territory began to come into view. In the days that followed, press reports as well as statements by authorities and official propaganda showed the condition of the sites struck by US weapons, often with fragments of the munitions left behind on the ground.

An assessment of photographs, videos, maps, and satellite imagery makes it possible to identify which targets were placed in the crosshairs—and why—while also incorporating audiovisual evidence recorded during the early hours of that same morning by residents of different neighborhoods. In some cases, this material matches footage of defensive weapons systems that Nicolás Maduro’s own administration publicly displayed during 2025.

FANB operates several air defense systems, the most prominent of which include BUK-M2E missile launchers, S-125 Pechora, S-300 systems, and ZU-23 anti-aircraft cannons, in addition to portable Igla-S systems.

The Wall Street Journal, citing US government sources, reported that the operation in Caracas was carried out by the Army’s elite Delta Force unit—the troops who captured Nicolás Maduro—and the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (SOAR), known as the “Night Stalkers.” Helicopters were used both to strike targets in the capital and to transport troops executing the mission.

The 160th SOAR operates Chinook (MH-47G) and Black Hawk helicopters (MH-60M for transport and the heavily armed MH-60M DAP). These aircraft were captured on video by Caracas residents during the early hours of January 3, as shown in this compilation:

Since October 2025, the presence of the 160th SOAR in the Caribbean had been reported, specifically in Trinidad and Tobago, where helicopters were observed flying. There has been no official admission that Operation “Absolute Resolve” included takeoffs from that country (Venezuela’s eastern neighbor) while Trinidadian authorities denied any involvement.

All the locations attacked during the early hours of January 3 were of military interest. In every case, US fire targeted air defense equipment such as BUK or ZU-23 systems, as well as radar installations.

Communications systems were also struck, including those used by the Venezuelan Armed Forces through the Tetra border security system (Terrestrial Trunked Radio), a closed and encrypted military command network referenced during military exercises. This system relies on microwave antennas located in elevated areas.

Port of La Guaira

As early as the dawn of Saturday, January 3, videos circulated showing damage at the Port of La Guaira, both from a distance—revealing evidence of bombardment—and up close at street level with the first visible destruction. Witnesses reported that the attack occurred at 1:56 am. This compilation of videos shows the impacts:

The strikes hit the commercial pier at La Guaira, where warehouses and shipping containers are stored. At least one BUK-M2E anti-aircraft missile platform was stationed there, according to port workers who confirmed this to journalists.

The equipment had been deployed during the “defense against the empire” exercises held in the last quarter of 2025. Official government narratives claim that the US attack targeted dialysis and chemotherapy supplies stored at the site. However, even in the video released by Governor Alejandro Terán making that allegation, destroyed military equipment is clearly visible—including fragments of an unused defensive missile:

Additionally, Bolipuertos workers told journalists that the medical supplies were stored in areas without signage or identification indicating sanitary materials.

La Carlota

The Generalísimo Francisco de Miranda air base also housed air defense systems. On November 26, images surfaced showing Russian-made BUK-M2E systems at the facilities located east of Caracas, next to the Francisco Fajardo highway. Deployment of these systems had begun a month earlier, coinciding with reports of US military aircraft flying near Venezuela’s coastline.

ZU-23 anti-aircraft artillery systems were also stationed at the base, as seen in a video shared by the FANB in October 2025.

When daylight broke on January 3, the remains of one BUK-M2E system were visible in the same location where it had been months earlier. There is no confirmation that it was activated or operated during the early hours of January 3. According to technical specifications, these systems have their own radar and can simultaneously engage up to 24 aerial targets at distances of up to 20 kilometers.

The runway and other military facilities, such as Army hangars, were not affected. Post-attack images confirm that a small aircraft and a truck were left blocking the runway, and burn marks were visible in grassy areas.

The positioning of the aircraft and truck is consistent with training exercises publicized by the Venezuelan government in October 2025. In those drills, officials showed that during an evacuation of La Carlota, equipment would be placed across the runway to disable it (for example, to prevent the landing of foreign troops) while BUK and ZU-23 batteries would be relocated. On January 3, there is evidence only of the former.

At least one Lucas drone, a guided explosive device known for its distinctive buzzing sound, was used in the attack on La Carlota. This is confirmed by a video recorded by a Caracas resident showing the impact on the base, located thanks to its proximity to the visible Torre Británica and the Caracas Palace Hotel in Altamira in the background:

Higuerote Airport

Before 1:50 am, the first impacts were recorded at Higuerote Airport, making it the first site attacked by the US. Individuals familiar with the location told TalCual that at least BUK-M2E systems were destroyed there, as shown in these videos recorded later that morning after the fires had been extinguished:

Sources added that a third BUK-M2E was also rendered inoperable at the airfield, along with three anti-aircraft artillery systems. An abandoned civilian aircraft was destroyed as a result of the defensive system’s explosion, as also visible in the footage.

Another video recorded during the night shows fireballs forming arcs in the sky above Higuerote Airport—believed to be anti-aircraft munitions stored at the site exploding and burning after the US strike.

Two rounds of attacks were carried out at Higuerote Airport, as military vehicles were positioned at two different points on the airfield. This was confirmed to TalCual by a source familiar with the site, who also stated that no military personnel were present there that morning, as well as by testimony from a local resident recorded by CNN en Español.

Cerro El Volcán

Another site hit was Cerro El Volcán, in southeastern Caracas. The hill is known for its concentration of transmission antennas that take advantage of the elevation to maximize coverage. Television repeaters operate from the site, and it is presumed that military-use antennas were also present, including those required for the Tetra system used in strategic defense communications.

Not all infrastructure at the site was destroyed. Post-attack images show that several civilian-use antennas remained standing.

Arturo Berti told La Hora de Venezuela how he and his family witnessed a missile fall into the garden of their three-story home on Calle 4 in La Boyera. It was the first of three impacts he counted. “After that, there was a second explosion and then a third. I think the second was El Volcán, where the telecommunications and TV antennas are. I heard a third explosion that I also assume was there. It was horrifying,” he recounted.

The impact damaged several homes, as shown in a video published by Amanda Lucci on YouTube.

The attack on El Volcán left one civilian dead: Yohanna Rodríguez Sierra, 45 years old.

Carmen de Uria

Carmen de Uria, in La Guaira state, was also attacked. There, at a training camp, the Venezuelan Army had positioned BUK air defense vehicles as well as artillery to repel aerial attacks.

In January 2025, the Lieutenant Colonel Eliécer Otaiza Special Forces Training Complex was inaugurated in Carmen de Uria. The facility was designed to train special tactical command units of the Bolivarian National Police (PNB) and the Armed Forces. It was also intended to strengthen defense and security capabilities under a “civilian–military–police” approach, which involves security forces acting in conjunction with government supporters. Two anti-aircraft batteries were deployed at the site.

Videos released on official platforms showed these systems aimed toward the sea, particularly ZU-23 artillery training exercises conducted in late October 2025. In another video showing two missile launchers, a military officer even pointed out to Telesur where camouflaged military equipment was located.

After January 3 and the US operation, photographs taken during the week—in broad daylight—show the remains of military equipment at the site, where Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello had previously appeared activating a militia training field.

A CICPC officer who visited the area on the morning of Saturday, January 4, told TalCual that “they didn’t hit the base itself” and that the attack was precise, targeting air defense equipment. Those weapons were positioned beside the “Cristo del Brazo Caído” church, a site frequented by civilians for prayer.

Marine Infantry at the Mamo Plateau, La Guaira

One of the locations where the US attack left the clearest evidence was the Mamo Plateau in La Guaira state. A naval base housing the Marine Infantry Command and the Bolivarian Navy Academy is located there.

In 2023, photos released by FANB documented a visit by the ZODI La Guaira commander to the base, showing the presence of a BUK-M2E system.

During the early hours of January 3, this site was one of the most heavily targeted. Civilian recordings from nearby areas show multiple detonations, as well as the launch of an anti-aircraft projectile, presumably a BUK missile.

Here is a compilation of those videos:

Social media videos show at least four damaged air defense systems stored under a shelter. Some of the equipment, however, remained potentially repairable.

Photographs also document the extent of the damage while indicating that several air defense units were not operational or were never activated that day.

Near the Mamo naval base lies the Rómulo Gallegos housing development in Catia La Mar, where eight homes were destroyed during the US attack after one of the missiles launched in the area fell directly into this civilian zone. The affected building is located about 500 meters from the military installation. One civilian, 70-year-old Rosa González, was killed.

Fuerte Guaicaipuro

US airstrikes also reached the Valles del Tuy region. During the early hours of January 3, social media users initially claimed the metropolitan airport had been bombed. Subsequent evidence showed that the target was instead Fuerte Guaicaipuro, a military installation.

At least two BUK-M2E missile launchers and a radar system—used to identify targets—were stationed there, as shown on television during an official broadcast in October 2025.

The site also housed a BUK-M26 missile launcher and other defense systems. It is the second-largest military base around the Caracas metropolitan area and is home to the 392nd Air Defense Missile Group “Captain Manuel Gual.” A Tetra network antenna was also located there.

A video recorded by a nearby resident shows at least two strikes. The second displays the same ground-level cluster explosion seen in Higuerote, possibly indicating that Venezuelan weaponry detonated when struck by US munitions.

Altos de Irapa, El Junquito

The US attacks also hit a radar base in El Junquito, though no major structural damage was reported. At least three homes suffered shattered windows, and two strong impacts were felt in the area.

An official confirmed to TalCual that a captain stationed at the radar base—located at the highest point of the Altos de Irapa neighborhood, with broad views of the Caribbean Sea—was killed in the offensive. The location was also ideal for installing a Tetra communications antenna, in addition to a military radar seen in a video shared on X on October 10, 2025.

The first strike on the El Junquito radar base occurred at exactly 1:57:13 am, and the second at 1:57:39 am. As explosions echoed across Caracas, a neighbor was heard shouting, “The war has started,” in a video recording.

Venezuelan Institute for Scientific Research (IVIC)

Communications antennas at the Venezuelan Institute for Scientific Research (IVIC), located at kilometer 11 of the Pan-American Highway in Miranda state, were reduced to rubble after being struck during the US military operation to capture Nicolás Maduro.

The explosions abruptly awakened residents of San Antonio de los Altos and surrounding areas. “The blast was extremely loud. We jumped out of bed running, not understanding what was happening,” a resident of the Los Salias neighborhood, just meters from the scientific complex, told local outlet El Tequeño.

By morning, twisted metal antennas, charred equipment, and craters were visible. The site was allegedly used to host military antennas for the Tetra system due to its strategic location and elevation.

The Ministry of Science and Technology reported that four scientific research centers located in adjacent buildings were affected by the attack on IVIC facilities.

Cajigal Observatory – Militia Command

As explosives continued to fall during the early hours of January 3, accompanied by the sound of helicopters and advanced drones used by the US in its attack on Venezuela, social media speculation spread about the supposed destruction of the Cuartel de la Montaña, the former Military History Museum turned Hugo Chávez mausoleum.

As hours passed and daylight arrived, it became clear that the infrastructure struck was not the mausoleum itself but another site roughly 500 meters away. The confusion stemmed from the angle at which the fire was seen during the night. The Cajigal Observatory burned that night.

The site occupies a strategic, elevated location and houses the Bolivarian Militia Command, as well as a communications facility used by the military Tetra system. It is also believed that ZU-23 anti-aircraft artillery was installed there.

Fuerte Tiuna

The central focus of the US attack in Caracas was Fuerte Tiuna, home to multiple military battalions and the location where Maduro was staying overnight. The site has been described as a safe house or “bunker,” equipped with its own power plant, reinforced entrances, and other protective features.

🇻🇪 | Camionetas pickup de Unidades de Reacción Rápida -URRA destruidas en Fuerte Tiuna en los ataques del 3 de enero. Se trata de Toyota Hilux en su mayoría, militarizadas para patrullaje armado, con afuste para una FN MAG 7,62mm y barandas para facilitar el transporte de tropas pic.twitter.com/xO66Yf3Z0D

— FAV-Club (@FAV_CLUB) January 10, 2026

The strike also hit the Ribas Group 397 at Cuartel Ribas, which was equipped with Igla-S (MANPADS) air defense systems. Fuerte Tiuna is perhaps the location where the clearest evidence of Venezuelan forces’ response remains. Social media users showed that some air defenses were activated, and a sergeant testified that the Ayala and Bolívar battalions were hit.

Here is a compilation of those videos:

Other targets were struck with precision, including a small electrical substation supplying part of the complex.

Satellite imagery compilations show buildings destroyed during the US attack on Fuerte Tiuna.

Corpoelec substations

The US attack also affected at least two electrical substations in Caracas as part of efforts to plunge Fuerte Tiuna into darkness—a measure consistent with infiltration and extraction operations.

The Ministry of Electric Energy reported on the morning of Saturday, January 3, that the Panamericana and Escuela Militar substations, which supply electricity to Fuerte Tiuna and surrounding areas, were hit. Minister Jorge Márquez stated that the damage was irreparable.

The US military attack in Venezuela ended with the capture of Nicolás Maduro and left “more than one hundred” people dead. The Army and Militia reported 24 uniformed personnel killed, publishing obituaries in Instagram stories on their respective accounts. Monitor de Víctimas and La Hora de Venezuela have identified 78 fatalities, including 42 Venezuelan military personnel, 32 Cubans, and four civilians.

Journalism in Venezuela is practiced in a hostile environment for the press, with dozens of legal instruments designed to punish speech—particularly the “anti-hate,” “anti-fascism,” and “anti-blockade” laws. This content was written considering the threats and limitations imposed on the dissemination of information from within the country.

WASHINGTON — Twelve House Democrats who last year sued the Trump administration over a policy limiting congressional oversight of immigrant detention facilities returned to federal court Monday to challenge a second, new policy imposing further limits on such unannounced visits.

In December, those members of Congress won their lawsuit challenging a Department of Homeland Security policy from June that required a week’s notice from lawmakers before an oversight visit. Now they’re accusing Homeland Security of having “secretly reimposed” the requirement last week.

In a Jan. 8 memorandum, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem wrote that “Facility visit requests must be made a minimum of seven (7) calendar days in advance. Any requests to shorten that time must be approved by me.”

The lawmakers who challenged the policies are led by Rep. Joe Neguse (D-Colo.) and include five members from California: Reps. Robert Garcia (D-Long Beach), Lou Correa (D-Santa Ana), Jimmy Gomez (D-Los Angeles), Raul Ruiz (D-Indio) and Norma Torres (D-Pomona).

Last summer, as immigration raids spread through Los Angeles and other parts of Southern California, many Democrats including those named in the lawsuit were denied entry to local detention facilities. Before then, unannounced inspections had been a common, long-standing practice under congressional oversight powers.

“The duplicate notice policy is a transparent attempt by DHS to again subvert Congress’s will…and this Court’s stay of DHS’s oversight visit policy,” the plaintiffs wrote in a federal court motion Monday requesting an emergency hearing.

On Saturday, three days after Renee Nicole Good was shot and killed by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent, three members of Congress from Minnesota attempted to conduct an oversight visit of an ICE facility near Minneapolis. They were denied access.

Afterward, lawyers for Homeland Security notified the lawmakers and the court of the new policy, according to the court filing.

In a joint statement, the plaintiffs wrote that “rather than complying with the law, the Department of Homeland Security is attempting to get around this order by re-imposing the same unlawful policy.”

“This is unacceptable,” they said. “Oversight is a core responsibility of Members of Congress, and a constitutional duty we do not take lightly. It is not something the executive branch can turn on or off at will.”

Congress has stipulated in yearly appropriations packages since 2020 that funds may not be used to prevent a member of Congress “from entering, for the purpose of conducting oversight, any facility operated by or for the Department of Homeland Security used to detain or otherwise house aliens.”

That language formed the basis of the decision last month by U.S. District Court Judge Jia Cobb in Washington, who found that lawmakers cannot be denied entry for visits “unless and until” the government could show that no appropriations money was being used to operate detention facilities.

In her policy memorandum, Noem wrote that funds from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which supplied roughly $170 billion toward immigration and border enforcement, are not subject to the limitations of the yearly appropriations law.

“ICE must ensure that this policy is implemented and enforced exclusively with money appropriated” by the act, Noem said.

Noem said the new policy is justified because unannounced visits pull ICE officers away from their normal duties. “Moreover, there is an increasing trend of replacing legitimate oversight activities with circus-like publicity stunts, all of which creates a chaotic environment with heightened emotions,” she wrote.

The lawmakers, in the court filing, argued it’s clear that the new policy violates the law.

“It is practically impossible that the development, promulgation, communication, and implementation of this policy has been, and will be, accomplished — as required — without using a single dollar of annually appropriated funds,” they wrote.

MINNEAPOLIS — Minnesota and its two largest cities sued the Trump administration Monday to try to stop an immigration enforcement surge that has led to the fatal shooting of a Minneapolis woman by a federal officer and evoked outrage and protests the country.

The state, joined by Minneapolis and St. Paul, said the Department of Homeland Security is violating the First Amendment and other constitutional protections. The lawsuit seeks a temporary restraining order to halt the enforcement action or limit the operation.

“This is, in essence, a federal invasion of the Twin Cities in Minnesota, and it must stop,” Attorney General Keith Ellison said at a news conference. “These poorly trained, aggressive and armed agents of the federal state have terrorized Minnesota with widespread unlawful conduct.”

Homeland Security is pledging to put more than 2,000 immigration officers into Minnesota and says it has made more than 2,000 arrests since December. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has called the surge its largest enforcement operation ever.

The lawsuit accuses the Republican Trump administration of violating free speech rights by targeting Democratic-friendly Minnesota over politics.

Hours earlier, federal officers fired tear gas to break up a crowd of whistle-blowing bystanders in Minneapolis who showed up to see the aftermath of a car crash involving immigration agents, just a few blocks from where Renee Good was fatally shot.

A crowd emerged to witness a man being questioned by agents who had rear-ended his car. Agents used tear gas to try to break up the group, then drove off as people screamed, “cowards!”

It was another tense scene following the death of Good on Jan. 7 and a weekend of more immigration enforcement sweeps in the Minneapolis area. There were dozens of protests or vigils across the U.S. to honor Good and passionately criticize the Trump administration’s tactics.

Gov. Tim Walz and his wife Gwen visited the memorial to Good, 37, on the street where she was shot in the head and killed while driving her SUV.

Trump administration officials have repeatedly defended the immigration agent who shot her, saying Good and her vehicle presented a threat. But that explanation has been widely panned by Walz and others based on videos of the confrontation.

Christian Molina, a U.S. citizen who lives in Coon Rapids, said he was driving to a mechanic Monday when agents in another vehicle followed him, even turning on a siren.

Molina said his rear bumper was hit as he turned a corner. He refused to produce identification for the agents, saying he would wait for local police.

“I’m glad they didn’t shoot me or something,” Molina told reporters.

Standing near the mangled fender, he wondered aloud: “Who’s going to pay for my car?”

Meanwhile, in Portland, Oregon, federal authorities filed charges against a Venezuelan national who was one of two people shot there by U.S. Border Patrol on Thursday. The U.S. Justice Department said the man used his pickup truck to strike a Border Patrol vehicle and escape the scene with a woman.

They were shot and eventually arrested. Their wounds were not life-threatening. The FBI said there was no video of the incident, unlike the Good shooting.

Santana and Vancleave write for the Associated Press.

ORLANDO, Fla. — The next U.S. census is four years away, but two lawsuits playing out this year could affect how it will be done and who will be counted.

Allies of President Trump are behind the federal lawsuits challenging various aspects of the once-a-decade count by the U.S. Census Bureau, which is used to determine congressional representation and how much federal aid flows to the states.

The challenges align with parts of Trump’s agenda even as the Republican administration must defend the agency in court.

A Democratic law firm is representing efforts to intervene in both cases because of concerns over whether the U.S. Justice Department will defend the bureau vigorously. There have been no indications so far that government attorneys are doing otherwise, and department lawyers have asked that one of the cases be dismissed.

As the challenges work their way through the courts, the Census Bureau is pushing ahead with its planning for the 2030 count and intends to conduct practice runs in six locations this year.

The legal challenges

America First Legal, co-founded by Stephen Miller, Trump’s deputy chief of staff, is leading one of the lawsuits, filed in Florida. It contests methods the bureau has used to protect participants’ privacy and to ensure that people in group-living facilities such as dorms and nursing homes will be counted.

The lawsuit’s intent is to prevent those methods from being used in the 2030 census and to have 2020 figures revised.

“This case is about stopping illegal methods that undermine equal representation and ensuring the next census complies with the Constitution,” Gene Hamilton, president of America First Legal, said in a statement.

The other lawsuit was filed in federal court in Louisiana by four Republican state attorneys general and the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which opposes illegal immigration and supports reduced legal immigration. The lawsuit seeks to exclude people who are in the United States illegally from being counted in the numbers for redrawing congressional districts.

In both cases, outside groups represented by the Democratic-aligned Elias Law Group have sought to intervene over concerns that the Justice Department would reach friendly settlements with the challengers.

In the Florida case, a judge allowed a retirees’ association and two university students to join the defense as intervenors. Justice Department lawyers have asked that the case be dismissed.

In the Louisiana lawsuit, government lawyers said three League of Women Voters chapters and Santa Clara County in California had not shown any proof that department attorneys would do anything other than robustly defend the Census Bureau. A judge has yet to rule on their request to join the case.

A spokesman for the Elias Law Group, Blake McCarren, referred in an email to its motion to dismiss the Florida case, warning of “a needlessly chaotic and disruptive effect upon the electoral process” if the conservative legal group were to prevail and all 50 states had to redraw their political districts.

Aligning with Trump’s agenda

The goals of the lawsuits, particularly the Louisiana case, align with core parts of Trump’s agenda, although the 2030 census will be conducted under a different president because his second term will end in January 2029.

During his first term, for the 2020 census, Trump tried to prevent those who are in the U.S. illegally from being used in the apportionment numbers, which determine how many congressional representatives and Electoral College votes each state receives. He also sought to have citizenship data collected through administrative records.

A Republican redistricting expert had written that using only the citizen voting-age population, rather than the total population, for the purpose of redrawing congressional and state legislative districts could be advantageous to Republicans and non-Hispanic whites.

Both Trump orders were rescinded when Democratic President Biden arrived at the White House in January 2021, before the 2020 census figures were released by the Census Bureau. The first Trump administration also attempted to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census questionnaire, a move that was blocked by the U.S. Supreme Court.

In August, Trump instructed the U.S. Commerce Department to change the way the Census Bureau collects data, seeking to exclude immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally. Neither officials at the White House nor the Commerce Department, which oversees the Census Bureau, explained what actions were being taken in response to the president’s social media post.

Congressional Republicans have introduced legislation to exclude noncitizens from the apportionment process. That could shrink the head count in both red and blue states because the states with the most people in the U.S. illegally include California, Texas, Florida and New York, according to the Pew Research Center.

The Constitution’s 14th Amendment says “the whole number of persons in each state” should be counted for the numbers used for apportionment. The numbers also guide the distribution of $2.8 trillion in federal dollars to the states for roads, healthcare and other programs.

Defending the Census Bureau

The Louisiana lawsuit was filed at the end of the Biden administration and put on hold in March at the request of the Commerce Department. Justice Department lawyers representing the Cabinet agency said they needed time to consider the position of the new leadership in the second Trump administration. The state attorneys general in December asked for that hold to be lifted.

So far, in the court record, there is nothing to suggest that those government attorneys have done anything to undermine the Census Bureau’s defense in both cases, despite the intervenors’ concerns.

In the Louisiana case, Justice Department lawyers argued against lifting the hold, saying the Census Bureau was in the middle of planning for the 2030 census: “At this stage of such preparations, lifting the stay is not appropriate.”

Schneider writes for the Associated Press.