POLITICS

In recent months, federal agents camped out in the lobby of a Southern California hospital, guarded detained patients — sometimes shackled — in hospital rooms, and chased an immigrant landscaper into a surgical center.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents also have shown up at community clinics. Health providers say officers tried to enter a parking lot hosting a mobile clinic, waved a machine gun in the faces of clinicians serving the homeless, and hauled a passerby into an unmarked car outside a community health center.

In response to such immigration enforcement activity in and around clinics and hospitals, Gov. Gavin Newsom last month signed SB 81, which prohibits medical establishments from allowing federal agents without a valid search warrant or court order into private areas, including places where patients receive treatment or discuss health matters.

But while the bill received broad support from medical groups, health care workers and immigrant rights advocates, legal experts say California can’t stop federal authorities from carrying out duties in public places like hospital lobbies and general waiting areas, parking lots and surrounding neighborhoods — places where recent ICE activities sparked outrage and fear. Previous federal restrictions on immigration enforcement in or near sensitive areas, including health care establishments, were rescinded by the Trump administration in January.

“The issue that states encounter is the supremacy clause,” said Sophia Genovese, a supervising attorney and clinical teaching fellow at Georgetown Law. She said the federal government has the right to conduct enforcement activities, and there are limits to what the state can do to stop them.

California’s law designates a patient’s immigration status and birthplace as protected information, which like medical records cannot be disclosed to law enforcement without a warrant or court order. And it requires health care facilities to have clear procedures for handling requests from immigration authorities, including training staff to immediately notify a designated administrator or legal counsel if agents ask to enter a private area or review patient records.

Several other Democratic-led states also have taken up legislation to protect patients at hospitals and health centers. In May, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis signed the Protect Civil Rights Immigration Status bill, which penalizes hospitals for unauthorized sharing of information about people in the country illegally and bars ICE agents from entering private areas of health care facilities without a judicial warrant. In Maryland, a law requiring the attorney general to create guidance on keeping ICE out of health care facilities went into effect in June. New Mexico instituted new patient data protections, and Rhode Island prohibited health care facilities from asking patients about their immigration status.

Republican-led states have aligned with federal efforts to prevent health care spending on immigrants without legal authorization. Such immigrants are not eligible for comprehensive Medicaid coverage, but states do bill the federal government for emergency care in certain cases. Under a law that took effect in 2023, Florida requires hospitals that accept Medicaid to ask about a patient’s legal status. In Texas, hospitals now have to report how much they spend on care for immigrants without legal authorization.

“Texans should not have to shoulder the burden of financially supporting medical care for illegal immigrants,” Gov. Greg Abbott said in issuing his executive order last year.

California’s efforts to rein in federal enforcement come as the state, where more than a quarter of residents are foreign-born, has become a target of President Trump’s immigration crackdown. Newsom signed SB 81 as part of a bill package prohibiting immigration agents from entering schools without a warrant, requiring law enforcement officers to identify themselves, and banning officers from wearing masks. SB 81 was passed on a party-line vote with no formal opposition.

“We’re not North Korea,” Newsom said during a September bill-signing ceremony. “We’re pushing back against these authoritarian tendencies and actions of this administration.”

Some supporters of the bill and legal experts said California’s law can prevent ICE from violating existing patient privacy rights. Those include the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits searches without a warrant in places where people have a reasonable expectation of privacy. Valid warrants must be issued by a court and signed by a judge. But ICE agents frequently use administrative warrants to try to gain access to private areas they don’t have the authority to enter, Genovese said.

“People don’t always understand the difference between an administrative warrant, which is a meaningless piece of paper, versus a judicial warrant that is enforceable,” Genovese said. Judicial warrants are rarely issued in immigration cases, she added.

The Department of Homeland Security said it won’t abide by California’s mask ban or identification requirements for law enforcement officers, slamming them as unconstitutional. The department did not respond to a request for comment on the state’s new rules for health care facilities, which went into immediate effect.

Tanya Broder, a senior counsel with the National Immigration Law Center, said immigration arrests at health care facilities appear to be relatively rare. But the federal decision to rescind protections around sensitive areas, she said, “has generated fear and uncertainty across the country.” Many of the most high-profile news reports of immigration agents at health care facilities have been in California, largely involving detained patients brought in for care.

The California Nurses Assn., the state’s largest nurses union, was a co-sponsor of the bill and raised concerns about the treatment of Milagro Solis-Portillo, a 36-year-old Salvadoran woman who was under round-the-clock ICE surveillance at Glendale Memorial Hospital over the summer.

Nurses say immigration agents brought a patient to California Hospital Medical Center in Los Angeles and stayed in the patient’s room for almost a week.

(Mel Melcon/Los Angeles Times)

Union leaders also condemned the presence of agents at California Hospital Medical Center south of downtown Los Angeles. According to Anne Caputo-Pearl, a labor and delivery nurse and the chief union representative at the hospital, agents brought in a patient on Oct. 21 and remained in the patient’s room for almost a week. The Los Angeles Times reported that a TikTok streamer, Carlitos Ricardo Parias, was taken to the hospital that day after he was wounded during an immigration enforcement operation in South Los Angeles.

The presence of ICE was intimidating for nurses and patients, Caputo-Pearl said, and prompted visitor restrictions at the hospital. “We want better clarification,” she said. “Why is it that these agents are allowed to be in the room?”

Hospital and clinic representatives, however, said they already are following the law’s requirements, which largely reinforce extensive guidance put out by state Attorney General Rob Bonta in December.

Community clinics throughout Los Angeles County, which serve more than 2 million patients a year, including a large portion of immigrants, have been implementing the attorney general’s guidelines for months, said Louise McCarthy, president and chief executive of the Community Clinic Assn. of Los Angeles County. She said the law should help ensure uniform standards across health facilities that clinics refer out to and reassure patients that procedures are in place to protect them.

Still, it can’t prevent immigration raids from happening in the broader community, which have made some patients and even health workers afraid to venture outside, McCarthy said. Some incidents have occurred near clinics, including an arrest of a passerby outside a clinic in East Los Angeles, which a security guard caught on video, she said.

“We’ve had clinic staff say, ‘Is it safe for me to go out?’” she said.

At St. John’s Community Health, a network of 24 community health centers and five mobile clinics in South Los Angeles and the Inland Empire, chief executive Jim Mangia agreed the new law can’t prevent all immigration enforcement activity, but said it gives clinics a tool to push back with if agents show up, something his staff has had to do.

Mangia said St. John’s staff had two encounters with immigration agents over the summer. In one, he said, staff stopped armed officers from entering a gated parking lot at a drug and alcohol recovery center where doctors and nurses were seeing patients at a mobile health clinic.

Another occurred in July, when immigration agents descended upon MacArthur Park on horses and in armored vehicles, in a show of force by the Trump administration. Mangia said masked officers in full tactical gear surrounded a street medicine tent where St. John’s providers were tending to homeless patients, screamed at staff to get out and pointed a gun at them. The providers were so shaken by the episode, Mangia said, that he had to bring in mental health professionals to help them feel safe going back out on the street.

A DHS spokesperson told CalMatters that in the rare instance when agents enter certain sensitive locations, officers would need “secondary supervisor approval.”

Since then, St. John’s doubled down on providing support and training to staff and offered patients afraid to go out the option of home medical visits and grocery deliveries. Patient fears and ICE activity have decreased since the summer, Mangia said, but with DHS planning to hire an additional 10,000 ICE agents, he doubts that will last.

KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF — the independent source for health policy research, polling, and journalism.

With the 2028 Olympic Games less than three years away, Mayor Karen Bass is showing a newfound interest in one of L.A.’s less flattering qualities: its trash-strewn streets.

In April, Bass announced the launch of Shine L.A., a beautification program that sends ordinary Angelenos out with shovels, gloves and trash bags to remove detritus from streets and sidewalks.

Officials are also scrambling to comply with a June 2026 legal deadline for removing 9,800 homeless encampments — tents, makeshift shelters and even RVs. And they’re working to divert three-fourths of the city’s food scraps and other organic waste away from landfills, as required under state law.

Now, the Bureau of Sanitation faces the prospect of more disruption, with its top executive stepping down after four and a half years.

Barbara Romero, who was appointed in 2021 by then-Mayor Eric Garcetti, told sanitation employees in an email on Monday that she will leave at the end of the year. She did not say what prompted her departure or whether she has another job lined up.

Romero did not respond to requests for comment. A Bass spokesperson declined to comment on the reason for the exit, referring The Times to Romero’s email.

“Mayor Bass thanks her for her many years of service and significant contributions to the people of Los Angeles,” said the spokesperson, Clara Karger.

Bruce Reznik, executive director of the environmental group Los Angeles Waterkeeper, said he is “frustrated and angry” over the pending departure — and is convinced that Romero is being pushed out by the mayor.

Reznik described Romero as a crucial voice at City Hall on environmental issues, such as the effort to build new wastewater recycling facilities. Romero also secured new funding to pay for repairs to the city’s aging sewer system, which will in turn avert future sewage spills, he said.

“She genuinely cares about these issues,” Reznik said. “She will engage communities, even when it’s uncomfortable.”

Romero’s departure comes at a crucial time for her agency — one of the city’s largest, with well over 3,000 employees and a budget of more than $400 million. Since Bass took office in December 2022, the agency has been working to bring in more money to cover the cost of trash pickup and sewer system upgrades.

This month, the City Council hiked trash removal fees to nearly $56 per month, up from $36.32 for single-family homes and duplexes and $24.33 for three- and four-unit apartment properties. The increase, which is expected to generate $200 million per year for the city, will be followed by several more fee hikes through 2029.

The department is also in the middle of its once-a-decade selection of private companies to carry out RecycLA, the commercial trash program that serves L.A. businesses and apartment buildings with five or more units.

Then there’s the basic issue of trash, which ranges from discarded fast food wrappers lining gutters to illegal dumping problems in Watts, Wilmington and other neighborhoods. International visitors to L.A. — first for next year’s World Cup, then the Olympic and Paralympic Games in 2028 — will have a close-up view of some residents’ slovenly ways.

Bass has sought to avert that scenario by creating Shine L.A., which has marshaled thousands of Angelenos to participate in monthly cleanups and tree plantings in such areas as downtown, Hollywood and the San Fernando Valley. In her most recent State of the City address, Bass said the initiative would restore local pride in the city.

“It’s about choosing to believe in our city again, and proving it with action,” she said. “Block by block, we will come together to be stronger, more unified than ever before. And that matters, especially in a world that feels more divided with each passing day.”

Chatsworth resident Jill Mather, who founded the group Volunteers Cleaning Communities, said she has already participated in Bass’ program. Still, she warned it will do little to address the parts of the city that have been hit hard by illegal dumping or others that have long-term homeless encampments.

“There are serious areas that need serious cleanup, and once a month in one area is not going to do it,” said Mather, whose members fan out across the Valley each day to pick up trash.

Mather said the city’s homelessness crisis is deeply intertwined with its trash problem, with sanitation crews facing limits on the removal of objects that might be someone’s property. Beyond that, Mather said, the sanitation bureau lacks the resources to gain control over the volume of refuse that’s discarded on a daily basis.

Estela Lopez, executive director of the Downtown Industrial District Business Improvement District, said her organization regularly sends the city photos and videos of trucks and other vehicles — with license plates clearly visible — dumping garbage in the eastern half of downtown.

Those perpetrators have treated the neighborhood like an “open-air landfill,” she said.

“We’ve seen everything from rotting produce and other food to refrigerators, couches, green waste, flowers, tires and construction debris,” Lopez said. “It’s the extent of it, the amount of it, and the fact that no one seems to have a solution to it.”

Lopez said she believes that downtown’s trash problem has gotten worse since the city created RecycLA a decade ago. That trash franchise program was so expensive for customers, she said, that some businesses scaled back pickup service or dropped it entirely.

“The city shot itself in the foot,” she said.

Romero, in her letter to her staff, pointed to her agency’s many accomplishments. Since she took the helm, she said, the bureau succeeded in increasing sewer fees for the first time in a decade, putting them on track to double by July 2028.

Romero championed the construction of a water purification facility that is expected to recharge the San Fernando Valley groundwater aquifer and provide drinking water for 500,000 people. She also pushed for a comprehensive strategy for reducing citywide use of plastics.

Lisa Gritzner, chief executive of the consulting firm LG Strategies, said Romero has been “very accessible” at City Hall, jumping on problems that go far beyond trash pickup. When a multistory, multi-tower affordable-housing project faced a tight deadline to secure a wastewater permit in Skid Row, Romero moved quickly to address the situation, Gritzner said.

“She was very good at helping to navigate the red tape, so we could get the project open,” said Gritzner, who represented one of the project’s developers.

City Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martínez said he feels good about the city’s handling of trash — at least in his district, which stretches from Echo Park and Historic Filipinotown to Hollywood and Atwater Village.

“I feel like our district does a good job of addressing 311 requests, illegal dumping, the trash,” he said. “We have a very nimble and efficient team.”

Soto-Martínez said he’s not too worried about Romero’s departure, noting that the top managers of city agencies “change all the time.”

“We have a lot of talented people in the city,” he said. “Losing one person doesn’t mean the city falls apart, whether it’s a council member or a general manager.”

A new report from the city controller’s office questions the effectiveness of the LAPD’s signature crisis response program, saying clinicians trained in de-escalation too often are forced to defer to armed patrol officers.

For years, Los Angeles Police Department officials have touted the success of the Systemwide Mental Assessment Response Team, or SMART. But critics say the program, which pairs licensed specialists with officers in unmarked cars, is failing in the crucial initial minutes of encounters when multiple police shootings of mentally ill people have occurred.

Dinah M. Manning, chief of strategic initiatives and senior advisor in the controller’s office, said the report found an “inherent contradiction” in the SMART program.

Even though its purpose is to send in clinicians and tap their expertise to avoid killings, LAPD policy still requires armed patrol officers to clear a scene of any potential threats beforehand.

Traditional police units almost always take charge, even on calls in which no weapon is involved, such as a person threatening to commit suicide, Manning said.

Referring to SMART as a co-response program “is pretty much a misnomer in this case,” she said. “How is it that we’re ending up with so many fatalities?”

An LAPD spokesperson declined to comment in response to questions about the report.

LAPD officers have opened fire 35 times this year; in recent years, department statistics showed at least a third of all police shootings involved someone with obvious signs of emotional distress.

The report pointed to other shortcomings with the SMART program, which is housed within the department’s Mental Health Unit. Officers detailed to the units receive no specialized training, the report said, also finding that the department has failed to properly track uses of force on mental health-related calls.

The department’s existing use of force policy “falls short” of best practices for dealing with people in mental distress, the controller’s report said. The LAPD’s policy, it said, “only makes cursory mention of ‘vulnerable populations’ without expounding on the dynamic realities presented in encounters with people who have a mental health condition or appear to be in a mental health crisis.”

Too often in cases in which SMART responds, the report said, the outcome is that the person in crisis is placed on an involuntary 72-hour hold. Such scenarios do not involve an arrest or criminal charges; instead the person is held under state law that allows for detention if a person poses a threat to themselves or others.

The controller’s report comes amid a continued debate in L.A. and elsewhere about how officials should respond to emergencies involving mental health, homelessness, substance use or minor traffic incidents.

The city has expanded its alternative programs in recent years, but proponents warn that looming cuts in federal spending for social safety net programs under the Trump administration could hinder efforts to scale up and have more impact.

LAPD leaders in the past offered support of such programs, while cautioning that any call has the potential to quickly spiral into violence, necessitating the presence of officers.

L.A. County supervisors have unanimously approved an $828-million settlement for alleged victims of childhood sexual abuse, finalizing the deal while questions mount over the legitimacy of some claims in a separate multibillion-dollar payout that they agreed to this spring.

The settlement approved Tuesday brings the county’s spending on sex abuse litigation this year to nearly $5 billion, with the bulk of that total coming from a $4-billion deal made in April to resolve thousands of claims filed by people who said they were abused decades ago in county-run juvenile detention centers and foster homes.

The latest settlement involves similar claims brought by 414 clients of three law firms who opted to negotiate separately from the rest. The $4-billion settlement initially covered roughly 6,800 claims, but has ballooned to more than 11,000.

The larger settlement has come under scrutiny after The Times found nine people who said they were paid to sue. Four said they were told to fabricate the claims. All had lawsuits filed by Downtown LA Law Group, which represents more than 2,700 clients in the first settlement.

The firm has denied paying clients to sue and said it has “systems in place to help weed out false or exaggerated allegations.” The firm has asked the court to dismiss three claims on behalf of allegedly fraudulent plaintiffs this month.

Downtown LA Law Group will be required to detail any claims that came to it through recruiters, the county’s top attorney said Tuesday. The firm has denied any wrongdoing.

(Carlin Stiehl / Los Angeles Times)

The settlement approved Tuesday involves cases only from Arias Sanguinetti Wang & Team, Manly, Stewart & Finaldi, and Panish Shea Ravipudi and has no cases from DTLA. But the firm nevertheless took center stage Tuesday as the supervisors pressed their top attorney on how the lawsuits were vetted.

“What were we doing prior to this article?” said Supervisor Kathryn Barger, referencing The Times’ reporting from earlier this month.

The county was in a tough spot, county counsel Dawyn Harrison explained. Many plaintiff attorneys didn’t want the county interviewing their clients, she said. And a judge had temporarily paused the discovery process, providing the county little insight into the identities of the thousands of people suing.

Harrison said Tuesday that DTLA cases now will be required to go through a “completely new level of review” beyond the standard vetting that was already underway by retired Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Louis Meisinger. In addition to having a new retired Superior Court judge vet all their cases, DTLA must provide the county with information on plaintiffs acquired through “a recruiter or vendor,” she said.

“DTLA is required to identify every recruiter it used, a list of each plaintiff brought in per recruiter, information about any funds that changed hands, and a declaration under oath by each recruiter identifying what was done, what was said, and any monies paid,” Harrison said.

It’s an unusual request.

California law bans a practice known as capping, in which non-attorneys directly solicit or procure clients to sign up for lawsuits with a law firm.

DTLA has denied knowledge of any of its clients receiving payments to sue and said the firm wants “justice for real victims” of sexual abuse.

“If we ever became aware that anyone associated with us, in any capacity, did such a thing, we would end our relationship with them immediately,” the firm said.

The rush of lawsuits was kicked off by a now-controversial bill known as AB 218, which changed the statute of limitations for victims of sexual abuse and created a new window to sue. The county, which is responsible for the safety of children inside juvenile carceral facilities and foster care, has seen more than 12,000 claims and counting since the law took effect in 2020.

The allegations of fraud that now hover over these cases was the fault of “an unmanageable law,” not the county’s vetting process, Harrison said.

“AB 218 erased those guardrails and allowed decades-old claims that no one can meaningfully vet,” she said.

The county’s lawyers and politicians have become increasingly loud critics of the law, which they say has left them facing a deluge of decades-old claims with no records. Supervisor Hilda Solis said she felt the county had become the “guinea pig” for the bill.

Joe Nicchitta, the county’s acting chief executive officer, estimated that anywhere between $1 billion to $2 billion in county taxpayer money from the settlements will go to attorneys.

“The law had some very noble intentions but it has been … and I’m just going to say what I think, hijacked by the plaintiff’s bar,” he said. “They do all of the vetting, they do all of the intake, they advertise extensively. They’re incentivized to bring as many cases as possible.”

Nicchitta said he’d heard rumors that venture capitalists were poking around Sacramento to find out “whether or not we have enough cash to pay for another settlement, so that they can finance a law firm to bring another round of settlements against us.”

“It’s clear to me the system is ruptured,” he said.

Courtney Thom, who was the lead attorney on cases from Manly, Stewart & Finaldi, said she believed the county was blaming the new state law for the failures of its own lawyers.

“To blame AB 218 and say that’s what enabled the fraud is just a pathetic attempt to deflect responsibility,” Thom said. “Our firm has been saying for two years we’re concerned about fraud.”

Mike Arias, who represents clients in the latest settlement as a partner with Arias Sanguinetti Wang & Team, said the three firms involved stopped adding clients more than a year ago.

“That’s a big distinction,” Arias said. “We said, at the time, the number of plaintiffs would not change. Ethically, my view was that’s who we represent and who we’re going to negotiate for.”

Arias said the allocation for the second settlement will be done by retired Orange County Superior Court Judge Gail Andler, who specializes in overseeing sexual abuse litigation. Potential payouts will range between $750,000 and $3.25 million, he said.

Victims say the money represents a sliver of justice for the abuse they say they suffered while confined in county custody — little of which has been criminally prosecuted.

One man, who is part of the settlement and asked not to be identified, said he has no idea what happened to the probation official who he alleges raped him at around 16 while he was asleep in his cell at Barry J. Nidorf Juvenile Hall, knocked out on sleep medication.

“I had no control in that place,” said the man, now 34. “My body hasn’t ever felt the same since.”

The county has launched an “AB 218 fraud hotline” where tipsters can report misconduct related to the flood of sex abuse claims.

(Rebecca Ellis / Los Angeles Times)

The county recently launched an “AB 218 fraud hotline” where tipsters can report misconduct related to the flood of claims. The county says it also plans to start a hotline for victims to safely report allegations of sex abuse in its facilities.

“It is illegal for anyone to file, pay for, or receive payments for making fake claims of childhood sexual abuse,” states a banner now running atop the county website with a hand doling out hundred-dollar bills.

The county also has launched a website that asks people to report if they were offered cash to sue, which law firms were involved, and whether they were coached, among other questions.

Supervisor Holly Mitchell, whose district includes the South Central social services office where seven people told The Times they were paid to sue, said she wanted to see the hotlines advertised as aggressively as the plaintiff attorneys advertised for their cases.

“You couldn’t turn on an urban radio station without hearing a commercial advertising these cases,” Mitchell said. “I certainly hope whatever we use, as we talk about our outreach, that we lean in as hard.”

A federal judge Tuesday ruled that Acting U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli is not lawfully serving in that role, but declined to dismiss criminal indictments that were challenged by defense attorneys.

Senior Judge J. Michael Seabright from the District of Hawaii was brought in to oversee the case after federal judges in Los Angeles recused themselves. In his ruling, Seabright said Essayli “unlawfully assumed the role of Acting United States Attorney” but can remain in charge under a different title.

Seabright said Essayli “remains the First Assistant United States Attorney” and can “perform the functions and duties of that office.”

Essayli, a former Riverside County assemblyman, was appointed as the region’s interim top federal prosecutor by U.S. Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi in April.

The top prosecutors in charge of U.S. Attorney’s offices are supposed to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate or a panel of federal judges, but the Trump administration has circumvented the normal process in order to allow Essayli and others to remain on the job without facing a vote.

Essayli’s temporary appointment was set to expire in late July, but the White House never moved to nominate him to a permanent role, instead opting to use an unprecedented legal maneuver to shift his title to “acting,” extending his term for an additional nine months.

Challenges to Essayli’s appointment have been brought in at least three criminal cases, with defense lawyers arguing that charges brought under his watch are invalid. The federal public defender’s office in Los Angeles asked the judge to disqualify Essayli from participating in and supervising criminal prosecutions in the district.

The U.S. Attorney’s office in Los Angeles did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Seabright’s ruling comes amid similar challenges across the country to the Trump administration’s tactics for installing loyalists who wield the power to bring criminal charges and sue on the government’s behalf.

A federal judge in August determined Alina Habba has been illegally occupying the U.S. attorney post in New Jersey, although that order was put on hold pending appeal. Last month a federal judge disqualified Nevada’s top federal prosecutor, Sigal Chattah, from several cases, concluding she “is not validly serving as acting U.S. attorney.” Chattah’s disqualification also is paused while the Department of Justice appeals the decision.

James Comey, the former FBI director charged with lying to Congress, cited the Nevada and New Jersey cases in a recent filing and is now challenging the legality of Trump’s appointment of Lindsey Halligan as U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. Halligan was appointed after his predecessor, also a Trump appointee, refused to seek charges against Comey.

Since taking office, Essayli has doggedly pursued President Trump’s agenda, championing hard-line immigration enforcement in Southern California, often using the president’s language at news conferences. Essayli’s tenure has sparked discord in the office, with dozens of career DOJ prosecutors quitting.

The judge’s ruling Tuesday conceded arguments from the Justice Department that Essayli would continue leading the U.S. Attorney’s office in L.A. regardless of how the judged decided on the challenge to his status.

Assistant U.S. Atty. Alexander P. Robbins said that because Essayli also has been designated as first assistant U.S. attorney, he would retain his authority even if stripped of the “acting” title.

Bondi in July also appointed him as a “special attorney.” Robbins told the judge that “there’s no developed challenge to Mr. Essayli’s appointment as a special attorney or his designation as a first assistant.”

The prosecutor told the judge the government believes Essayli’s term will end Feb. 24 and that afterward the role of acting U.S. attorney will remain vacant.

Robbins argued in a court filing that the court shouldn’t order Essayli “to remove the prosecutorial and supervisory hats that many others in this Office wear, sowing chaos and confusion into the internal workings of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the largest district in the country.”

When asked by a Times reporter last month about the motion to disqualify him, Essayli said “the president won the election.”

“The American people provided him a mandate to run the executive branch, including the U.S. attorney’s office, and I look forward to serving at the pleasure of the president,” he said during a news conference.

CHICAGO — A judge on Tuesday ordered a senior U.S. Border Patrol official to meet her each evening to discuss the government’s immigration crackdown in the Chicago area, an extraordinary step following weeks of street confrontations, tear gas volleys and complaints of excessive force.

“Yes, ma’am,” responded Greg Bovino, who has become the face of the Trump administration’s immigration sweeps in America’s big cities.

Bovino got an earful from U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis as soon as he settled into the witness chair in his green uniform.

Ellis quickly expressed concerns about video and other images from an illegal immigration drive that has produced more than 1,800 arrests since September. The hearing is the latest in a lawsuit by news outlets and protesters who say agents have used too much force, including tear gas, during demonstrations.

“My role is not to tell you that you can or cannot enforce validly passed laws by Congress. … My role is simply to see that in the enforcement of those laws, the agents are acting in a manner that is consistent with the Constitution,” the judge said.

Bovino is chief of the Border Patrol sector in El Centro, Calif., one of nine sectors on the Mexican border.

The judge wants him to meet her in person daily at 6 p.m. “to hear about how the day went.”

“I suspect, that now knowing where we are and that he understands what I expect, I don’t know that we’re going to see a whole lot of tear gas deployed in the next week,” Ellis said.

Ellis zeroed in on reports that Border Patrol agents disrupted a children’s Halloween parade with tear gas on the city’s Northwest Side over the weekend. Neighbors had gathered in the street as someone was arrested.

“Those kids were tear-gassed on their way to celebrate Halloween in their local school parking lot,” Ellis said. “And I can only imagine how terrified they were. These kids, you can imagine, their sense of safety was shattered on Saturday. And it’s going to take a long time for that to come back, if ever.”

Ellis ordered Bovino to produce all use-of-force reports since Sept. 2 from agents involved in Operation Midway Blitz. She first demanded them by the end of Tuesday, but Bovino said it would be “physically impossible” because of the “sheer amount.”

Lawyers for the government have repeatedly defended the actions of agents, including those from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and told the judge that videos and other portrayals have been one-sided.

Besides his court appearance, Bovino still must sit for a deposition, an interview in private, with lawyers from both sides.

The judge has already ordered agents to wear badges, and she’s banned them from using certain riot control techniques against peaceful protesters and journalists. She subsequently required body cameras after the use of tear gas raised concerns that agents were not following her initial order.

Ellis set a Friday deadline for Bovino to get a camera and to complete training.

Attorneys representing a coalition of news outlets and protesters claim he violated the judge’s use-of-force order in Little Village, a Mexican enclave in Chicago, and they filed an image of him allegedly “throwing tear gas into a crowd without justification.”

Over the weekend, masked agents and unmarked SUVs were seen on Chicago’s wealthier, predominantly white North Side, where video showed chemical agents deployed in a street. Agents have been recorded using tear gas several times over the past few weeks.

Bovino also led the immigration operation in Los Angeles in recent months, leading to thousands of arrests. Agents smashed car windows, blew open a door to a house and patrolled MacArthur Park on horseback.

Fernando writes for the Associated Press.

SAN FRANCISCO — A federal judge in San Francisco on Tuesday indefinitely barred the Trump administration from firing federal employees during the government shutdown, saying that labor unions were likely to prevail on their claims that the cuts were arbitrary and politically motivated.

U.S. District Judge Susan Illston granted a preliminary injunction that bars the firings while a lawsuit challenging them plays out. She previously issued a temporary restraining order against the job cuts that was set to expire Wednesday.

Illston, who was nominated by former President Clinton, has said she believes evidence will show the mass firings were illegal and in excess of authority.

Federal agencies are enjoined from issuing layoff notices or acting on notices issued since the government shut down Oct. 1. Illston said her order does not apply to notices sent before the shutdown.

The Republican administration has slashed jobs in education, health and other areas it says are favored by Democrats. The administration also said it will not tap roughly $5 billion in contingency funds to keep benefits through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, commonly referred to as SNAP, flowing into November.

The American Federation of Government Employees and other labor unions sued to stop the “reductions in force” layoffs, saying the firings were an abuse of power designed to punish workers and pressure Congress.

“President Trump is using the government shutdown as a pretense to illegally fire thousands of federal workers — specifically those employees carrying out programs and policies that the administration finds objectionable,” AFGE National President Everett Kelley said in a statement thanking the court.

The White House referred a request for comment to the Office of Management and Budget, which did not immediately respond.

Lawyers for the government say the district court does not have the authority to hear personnel challenges and that President Trump has broad authority to reduce the federal workforce as he pledged to do during his campaign.

“The president was elected on this specific platform,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Velchik said. “The American people selected someone known above all else for his eloquence in communicating to employees that you’re fired; this is what they voted for.”

Trump starred on a long-running reality TV series called “The Apprentice” in which his signature catchphrase was telling candidates they were fired.

About 4,100 layoff notices have gone out since Oct. 10, some sent to work email addresses that furloughed employees are not allowed to check. Some personnel were called back to work, without pay, to issue layoff notices to others.

The lawsuit has expanded to include employees represented by additional labor unions, including the National Treasury Employees Union, the American Federation of Teachers, and the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers. All Cabinet departments and two dozen independent agencies are included in the lawsuit.

Democratic lawmakers are demanding that any deal to reopen the government address expiring health care subsidies that have made health insurance more affordable for millions of Americans. They also want any government funding bill to reverse the Medicaid cuts in Trump’s big tax breaks and spending cuts bill passed this summer.

Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson has refused to negotiate with Democrats until they agree to reopen the government.

This is now the second-longest shutdown in U.S. history. The longest occurred during Trump’s first term over his demands for funds to build the Mexico border wall. That one ended in 2019 after 35 days.

Har writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — President Trump faces the most important international meeting of his second term so far on Thursday: face-to-face negotiations with Xi Jinping, who has made China a formidable economic and military challenger to the United States.

The two presidents face a vast agenda during their meeting in Seoul, beginning with the two countries’ escalating trade war over tariffs and high-tech exports. The list also includes U.S. demands for a Chinese crackdown on fentanyl, China’s aid to Russia in its war with Ukraine, the future of Taiwan and China’s growing nuclear arsenal.

Trump has already promised, characteristically, that the meeting will be a major success.

“It’s going to be fantastic for both countries, and it’s going to be fantastic for the entire world,” he said last week.

But it isn’t yet clear that the summit’s concrete results will measure up to that high standard.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Sunday that the two sides have agreed to a “framework” under which China would delay implementing tight controls on rare earth elements, minerals crucial for the production of high-tech products from smartphones and electric vehicles to military aircraft and missiles. He said China has also agreed to resume buying soybeans from U.S. farmers and to crack down on fentanyl components.

In return, Bessent said, the United States will back down from its stinging tariffs on Chinese goods.

Nicholas Burns, the U.S. ambassador in Beijing under then-President Biden, said that kind of deal would amount to “an uneasy trade truce rather than a comprehensive trade deal.”

“That may be the best we can expect,” he said in an interview Monday. Still, he added, “it will be a positive step to stabilize world markets and allow the continuation of U.S.-China trade for the time being.”

But U.S. and Chinese officials have been close-mouthed on what, if anything, has been agreed on regarding Xi’s other big trade demand: easier U.S. restrictions on high-tech exports to China, especially advanced semiconductor chips used for artificial intelligence.

Burns said the two superpowers’ technology competition is “the most sensitive … in terms of where this relationship will head, which country will emerge more powerful.”

Giving China easy access to advanced semiconductors “would only help [the Chinese army] in its competition with the U.S. military for power in the Indo-Pacific,” he warned.

Other former officials and China hawks outside the administration have said, even more pointedly, that they worry that Trump may be too willing to trade long-term technology assets for short-term trade deals.

In August, Trump eased export controls to allow Nvidia, the world leader in AI chips, to sell more semiconductors to China — in an unusual deal under which the U.S. company would pay 15% of its revenue from the sales to the U.S. Treasury.

Matthew Pottinger, Trump’s top China advisor in his first term, protested in a recent podcast interview that the deal risked trading a strategic technology advantage “for $20 billion and Nvidia’s bottom line.”

Underlying the controversy over technology, some China watchers warn, is a basic mismatch between the two presidents: Trump is focused almost entirely on trade and commercial deals, while Xi is focused on displacing the United States as the biggest economic and military power in Asia.

“I don’t think the administration has a strategy toward China,” said Bonnie Glaser, a China expert at the German Marshall Fund of the United States. “It has a trade strategy, not a China strategy.”

“The administration does not seem to be focused on competition with China,” said Jonathan Czin, a former CIA analyst now at Washington’s Brookings Institution. “It’s focused on deal making. … It’s tactics without strategy.”

“We’ve fallen into a kind of trade and technology myopia,” he added. “We’re not talking about issues like China’s coercion [of smaller countries] in the South China Sea. … China doesn’t want to have that bigger, broader conversation.”

It isn’t clear that Trump and Xi will have either the time or inclination to talk in detail about anything other than trade.

And even on the front-burner economic issues, this week’s ceasefire is unlikely to produce a permanent peace.

“As with all such agreements, the devil will be in the details,” Burns, the former ambassador, said. “The two countries will remain fierce trade rivals. Expect friction ahead and further trade duels well into 2026.”

“Buckle up,” Czin said. “There are likely more sudden moves from Beijing ahead.”

In the long run, Trump’s legacy in U.S.-China relations will rest not only on trade deals but on the larger competition for economic and military power in the Pacific Rim. No matter how this week’s meetings go, those challenges still lie ahead.

PORTLAND, Maine — Maine’s elections in recent years have been relatively free of problems, and verified cases of voter fraud are exceedingly rare.

That’s not stopping Republicans from pushing for major changes in the way the state conducts its voting.

Maine is one of two states with election-related initiatives on the Nov. 4 ballot but is putting the most far-reaching measure before voters. In Texas, Republicans are asking voters to make clear in the state constitution that people who are not U.S. citizens are ineligible to vote.

Maine’s Question 1 centers on requiring voter ID, but is more sweeping in nature. The initiative, which has the backing of an influential conservative group in the state, also would limit the use of drop boxes to just one per municipality and create restrictions for absentee voting even as the practice has been growing in popularity.

Voters in both states will decide on the measures at a time when President Trump continues to lie about widespread fraud leading to his loss in the 2020 presidential election and make unsubstantiated claims about future election-rigging, a strategy that has become routine during election years. Republicans in Congress and state legislatures have been pushing for proof of citizenship requirements to register and vote, but with only limited success.

Maine’s initiative would impose voter ID, restrict absentee voting

The Maine proposal seeks to require voters to produce a voter ID before casting a ballot, a provision that has been adopted in several other states, mostly those controlled by Republicans. In April, Wisconsin voters enshrined that state’s existing voter ID law into the state’s constitution.

Question 1 also would eliminate two days of absentee voting, prohibit requests for absentee ballots by phone or family members, end absentee voter status for seniors and people with disabilities, and limit the number of drop boxes, among other changes.

Absentee voting is popular in Maine, where Democrats control the Legislature and governor’s office and voters have elected a Republican and an independent as U.S. senators. Nearly half of voters there used absentee voting in the 2024 presidential election.

Gov. Janet Mills is one of many Democrats in the state speaking out against the proposed changes.

“Whether you vote in person or by absentee ballot, you can trust that your vote will be counted fairly,” Mills said. “But that fundamental right to vote is under attack from Question 1.”

Proponents of the voter ID push said it’s about shoring up election security.

“There’s been a lot of noise about what it would supposedly do, but here’s the simple truth: Question 1 is about securing Maine’s elections,” said Republican Rep. Laurel Libby, a proponent of the measure.

A key supporter of the ballot initiative is Dinner Table PAC, a conservative group in the state. Dinner Table launched Voter ID for ME, which has raised more than $600,000 to promote the initiative. The bulk of that money has come from the Republican State Leadership Committee, which advocates for Republican candidates and initiatives at the state level through the country. Save Maine Absentee Voting, a state group that opposes the initiative, has raised more than $1.6 million, with the National Education Assn. as its top donor.

The campaigning for and against the initiative is playing out as the state and FBI are investigating how dozens of unmarked ballots meant to be used in this year’s election arrived inside a woman’s Amazon order. The secretary of state’s office says the blank ballots, still bundled and wrapped in plastic, will not be used in the election.

Texas voters consider a citizenship requirement

In Texas, voters are deciding whether to add wording to the state constitution that Republican Gov. Greg Abbott and other backers said would guarantee that noncitizens will not be able to vote in elections there. State and federal laws already make it illegal for noncitizens to vote.

Thirteen states have made similar changes to their constitutions since North Dakota first did in 2018. Proposed constitutional amendments are on the November 2026 ballot in Kansas and South Dakota.

The measures have so far proven popular, winning approval with an average of 72% of the vote.

“I think it needs to sweep the nation,” said Republican state Rep. A.J. Louderback, who represents a district southwest of Houston. “I think we need to clean this mess up.”

Voters already have to attest they are U.S. citizens when they register, and voting by noncitizens, which is rare, is punishable as a felony and can lead to deportation.

Louderback and other supporters of such amendments point to policies in at least 20 communities across the country that allow noncitizens to vote in local elections, though none are in Texas. They include Oakland and San Francisco, where noncitizens can cast ballots in school board races if they have children in the public schools, the District of Columbia, and several towns in Maryland and Vermont.

Other states, including Kansas, have wording in their constitutions putting a citizenship requirement in affirmative terms: Any U.S. citizen over 18 is eligible to vote. In some states, amendments have rewritten the language to make it more of a prohibition: Only U.S. citizens are eligible to vote.

The article on voting in the Texas Constitution currently begins with a list of three “classes of persons not allowed to vote”: people under 18, convicted felons and those “who have been determined mentally incompetent by a court.” The Nov. 4 amendment would add a fourth, “persons who are not citizens of the United States.”

Critics say the proposed changes are unnecessary

Critics say the Maine voter ID requirement and Texas noncitizen prohibition are solutions in search of a problem and promote a longstanding conservative GOP narrative that noncitizen voting is a significant problem, when in fact it’s exceedingly rare.

In Texas, the secretary of state’s office recently announced it had found the names of 2,700 “potential noncitizens” on its registration rolls out of the state’s nearly 18.5 million registered voters.

Veronikah Warms, staff attorney at the Texas Civil Rights Project, said pushing the narrative encourages discrimination and stokes fear of state retaliation among naturalized citizens and people of color. Her group works to protect the rights of those groups and immigrants and opposes the proposed amendment.

“It just doesn’t serve any purpose besides furthering the lie that noncitizens are trying to subvert our democratic process,” she said. “This is just furthering a harmful narrative that will make it scarier for people to actually exercise their constitutional right.”

In Maine, approval of Question 1 would most likely make voting more difficult overall, said Mark Brewer, chair of the University of Maine political science department. He added that claims of widespread voter fraud are unsupported by evidence.

“The data show that the more hoops and restrictions you put on voting, the harder it is to vote and the fewer people will vote,” he said.

Whittle and Hanna write for the Associated Press. Hanna reported from Topeka, Kan.

NEW YORK — President Trump’s lawyers have asked a New York state appeals court to toss out his hush money criminal conviction, saying federal law preempts state law and there was no intent to commit a crime.

The lawyers filed their written arguments with the state’s mid-level appeals court just before midnight Monday.

In June, the lawyers asked a federal appeals court to move the case to federal court, where the Republican president can challenge the conviction on presidential immunity grounds. The appeals court has not yet ruled.

Trump was convicted in May 2024 of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to conceal a hush money payment to adult film actor Stormy Daniels, whose affair allegations threatened to upend his 2016 presidential campaign. Trump denies her claim and said he did nothing wrong. It was the only one of the four criminal cases against him to go to trial.

Trump was sentenced in January to what’s known as an unconditional discharge, leaving his conviction on the books but sparing him jail, probation, a fine or other punishment.

Appearing by video at his sentencing, Trump called the case a “political witch hunt,” “a weaponization of government” and “an embarrassment to New York.”

The Manhattan district attorney’s office, which prosecuted the case, will have a chance to respond to the appeals arguments in court papers. A message seeking comment was left with the office Tuesday.

At trial, prosecutors said Trump mislabeled payments to his then-lawyer Michael Cohen as legal fees to conceal that he was actually reimbursing the $130,000 that Cohen paid Daniels to keep her quiet in the final weeks of Trump’s successful 2016 presidential run.

At the time, Daniels was considering going public with a claim that she and the married Trump had a 2006 sexual encounter that Trump has consistently denied.

In their arguments to the New York state appeals court, Trump’s lawyers wrote that the prosecution of Trump was “the most politically charged prosecution in our Nation’s history.”

They said Trump was the victim of a Democratic district attorney in Manhattan who “concocted a purported felony by stacking time-barred misdemeanors under a convoluted legal theory” during a contentious presidential election in which Trump was the leading Republican candidate.

They wrote that federal law preempts the “misdemeanor-turned-felony charges” because the charges rely on an alleged violation of federal campaign regulations that states cannot enforce.

They said the trial was also spoiled when prosecutors introduced official presidential acts that the Supreme Court has made clear cannot be used as evidence against a U.S. president.

“Beyond these fatal flaws, the evidence was clearly insufficient to convict,” the lawyers wrote.

The lawyers also attacked the conviction on the grounds that “pure, evidence-free speculation” was behind the effort by prosecutors to persuade jurors that Trump was thinking about the 2020 election when he allegedly decided to reimburse Cohen.

Neumeister writes for the Associated Press.

NASHVILLE — A federal judge in Tennessee on Monday warned of possible sanctions against top Trump administration officials if they continue to make inflammatory statements about Kilmar Abrego Garcia that could prejudice his coming trial.

U.S. District Judge Waverly Crenshaw filed an order late on Monday instructing local prosecutors in Nashville to provide a copy of his opinion to all Justice Department and Department of Homeland Security employees, including Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.

“Government employees have made extrajudicial statements that are troubling, especially where many of them are exaggerated if not simply inaccurate,” Crenshaw writes.

He lists a number of examples of prohibited statements as outlined in the local rules for the U.S. District Court of Middle Tennessee. They include any statements about the “character, credibility, reputation, or criminal record of a party” and “any opinion as to the accused’s guilt or innocence.”

“DOJ and DHS employees who fail to comply with the requirement to refrain from making any statement that ‘will have a substantial likelihood of materially prejudicing’ this criminal prosecution may be subject to sanctions,” his order reads.

Earlier this year, Abrego Garcia’s mistaken deportation to El Salvador, where he was held in a notoriously brutal prison despite having no criminal record, helped galvanize opposition to President Trump’s immigration crackdown. Facing mounting public pressure and a court order, the Trump administration brought him back to the U.S. in June, but only after issuing an arrest warrant on human smuggling charges in Tennessee. Abrego Garcia has pleaded not guilty to those charges and asked Crenshaw to dismiss them.

Meanwhile, Trump administration officials have waged a relentless public relations campaign against Abrego Garcia, repeatedly referring to him as a member of the MS-13 gang and even implicating him in a murder. Crenshaw’s opinion cites statements from several top officials, including Bondi and Noem, as potentially damaging to Abrego Garcia’s right to a fair trial. He also admonishes Abrego Garcia’s defense attorneys for publicly disclosing details of plea agreement negotiations.

Abrego Garcia has an American wife and child and has lived in Maryland for years, but he immigrated to the U.S. illegally from El Salvador as a teenager. In 2019, an immigration judge granted him protection from being deported back to his home country, finding he had a well-founded fear of violence there from a gang that targeted his family.

Since his return to the U.S. in June, Immigration and Customs Enforcement has announced plans to deport him to a series of African countries, most recently Liberia.

Loller writes for the Associated Press.

Michaela Thompson, an unemployed mother in the San Fernando Valley, relies on federal assistance to afford the specialized baby formula her 15-month-old daughter needs because of a feeding disorder. At $47 for a five-day supply, it’s out of her reach otherwise.

But with the federal shutdown blocking upcoming disbursements of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits — previously known as food stamps — Thompson said she doesn’t know how she’s going to fill her daughter’s bottles.

“It feels like the world is kind of crumbling right now,” she said. “I’m terrified for my family and my daughter.”

Millions of low-income families who rely on SNAP benefits to put food on the table in California and across the country — about 1 in 8 Americans — are confronting similar fears this week, as federal and state officials warn that November funds will not be issued without a resolution to the ongoing federal shutdown and Congress shows no sign of a breakthrough.

Gov. Gavin Newsom and state Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta announced Tuesday that California is joining other Democrat-led states in suing the Trump administration to force SNAP payments through the use of contingency funds, but the litigation — even if successful — won’t prevent all the disruptions.

Army Spc. Jazmine Contreras, center, and Pfc. Vivian Almaraz, right, of the 40th Division Sustainment Brigade, Army National Guard, Los Alamitos, help workers and volunteers pack boxes of produce at the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank on Friday.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

It is already too late for some of the 5.5 million California residents — including 2 million children — who rely on such benefits to receive them in time to buy groceries after Friday, when many will have already used up their October benefits, state officials said. Advocates warned of a tidal wave of need as home pantries and CalFresh cards run empty — which they said is no longer a risk but a certainty.

“We are past the point at which it is possible to prevent harm,” said Andrew Cheyne, managing director of public policy at the organization End Child Poverty California.

About 41.7 million Americans were served through SNAP per month in fiscal 2024, at an annual cost of nearly $100 billion, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

State officials, local governments and nonprofit organizations are scrambling to get the word out to families and to redirect millions of dollars in emergency funding to stock more food at local food banks or load gift cards for the neediest families, but many say the capacity to respond is insufficient — and are bracing for a deluge of need.

“People really don’t understand the scale and scope of what is happening and the ripple effect it will have on the economy and with people just meeting their basic needs,” said Angela F. Williams, president and chief executive of United Way.

Already, United Way is seeing an uptick in calls to its 211 centers nationwide from people looking for help with groceries, utility bills and rent, Williams said. “There’s a critical crisis that has been brewing for a while, and it’s reaching a fevered pitch.”

Cheyne said many families are well aware of the looming disruption to aid and scrambling to prepare, including by going to state food banks for groceries. Newsom has activated the National Guard to help handle that influx in California.

However, Cheyne said many others will likely find out about the disruption while standing in grocery store checkouts.

“We anticipate a huge surge in people extremely upset to find out that they’ve literally shopped, and the groceries are in their cart, and their kids are probably with them, and then they get to the checkout, and then it’s, ‘transaction denied: insufficient funds.’”

Children and older people — who make up more than 63% of SNAP recipients in California — going hungry across America is a dire enough political spectacle that politicians of both parties have worked aggressively to prevent it in the past, including during previous government shutdowns. But this time around, they seem resigned to that outcome.

Members of the military and their families receive food donated by Feeding San Diego food bank on Friday.

(Sandy Huffaker / AFP / Getty Images)

Republicans and Democrats have been unable to reach a deal on the budget impasse as Democrats fight Republicans over their decision to slash healthcare subsidies relied on by millions of Americans. With no end in sight to the nearly month-long shutdown, federal workers who are either furloughed or working without pay — including many in California — are facing financial strain and increasingly showing up at food pantries, officials said.

A deluge of SNAP recipients will only add to the lines, and some food bank leaders are becoming increasingly worried about security at those facilities if they are overwhelmed by need.

Pointing fingers

In a statement posted to its website Monday, the Department of Agriculture wrote that Senate Democrats had repeatedly voted not to restore the SNAP funds by passing a short-term Republican spending measure.

“Bottom line, the well has run dry,” it said. “We are approaching an inflection point for Senate Democrats.”

The Trump administration had said Friday that it cannot legally dip into contingency funds to continue funding SNAP into November, even as it uses nontraditional means to pay for the salaries of active-duty military and federal law enforcement.

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) walks through Statuary Hall at the Capitol on Tuesday.

(Samuel Corum / Bloomberg / Getty Images)

The administration has used tariff revenue to temporarily fund the Women, Infants and Children Nutrition Program, which serves about 6.7 million women and children nationally, though it is unclear how long it will continue do so. The California Department of Public Health said the state WIC program, which supports about half of all babies born in California, should “remain fully operational through Nov. 30, assuming no unexpected changes.”

On Capitol Hill, negotiations to end the shutdown have mostly ground to a halt. Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) once again refused to call House members back into session this week, sparking criticism from Democrats and some Republicans who want to negotiate a deal to reopen the government. In the Senate, negotiations remain at a stalemate.

Senate Democrats, meanwhile, have relentlessly blamed President Trump and his administration for causing the disruption to food aid, just as they have blamed the president for the shutdown overall.

“Donald Trump has the power to ensure 40 million people don’t go hungry during the shutdown. But he wishes to inflict the maximum pain on those who can least afford it. He won’t fund food. But he’s happy to build a golden ballroom,” Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) wrote Monday on X.

Schiff was referring to a $250-million ballroom Trump has planned for the White House, which he recently set into motion by demolishing the historic East Wing.

A member of the U.S. Navy waits in line to receive food from volunteers with Feeding San Diego food bank.

(Sandy Huffanker / AFP / Getty Images)

State and local responses

States have responded to the looming cut in different ways. Some have promised to backfill SNAP funding from their own coffers, though federal officials have warned they will not be reimbursed.

Newsom has stood up the National Guard and directed tens of millions of dollars to state food banks, but has made no promises to directly supplement missing SNAP benefits with state dollars — despite advocacy groups calling on him to do so.

On Friday, dozens of organizations wrote a letter to Newsom and other state officials estimating the total amount of lapsed funding for November to be about $1.1 billion, and calling on them to use state funds to cover the total amount to prevent “a crisis of unthinkable magnitude.”

Carlos Marquez III, executive director of the County Welfare Directors Assn. of California, said counties and other local agencies are responding in a number of ways, including making contributions to local food banks and looking for ways to redirect local funds — and find matching philanthropic dollars — to directly backfill missing SNAP benefits.

Los Angeles County, which has about 1.5 million SNAP recipients, has already approved a $10-million expenditure to support local food banks, its Department of Children and Family Services has identified an additional $2 million to redirect, and its partners providing managed care plans to SNAP recipients have committed another $5 million, he said.

He said his group has advocated for Newsom to declare a statewide emergency, which would help equalize the response statewide and allow for mutual aid agreements between wealthier and poorer areas.

He said his group also is advocating for the state to begin using school lunch programs to direct additional food to families with younger children at home, and to work with local senior care facilities to make sure elderly SNAP recipients are also being helped.

What comes next?

Williams, of United Way, said the organization’s local chapters are “looking for partners on the ground” to provide additional support moving forward, as needs will persist.

“It seems like every day the needs just become more and more pressing, and I’m concerned, honestly, not only about the economic toll that is being taken on individuals, I’m concerned about the mental health and emotional toll this is taking on people,” Williams said. “My hope is that people from all sectors will step up and say, ‘How can we be good neighbors?’”

On Friday, National Guard troops began a 30-day deployment at the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank, where they are sorting produce and packing food boxes. Due to “heightened concern” in the community about the military’s role in Trump’s immigration crackdown, the troops will be working in warehouses and not interacting directly with the public, said Chief Executive Michael Flood.

Flood said there has already been a surge in demand from laid-off federal workers in Los Angeles, but he’s expecting demand to increase markedly beginning Saturday, and building up distribution capacity similar to what was in place during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic — which seemed odd, considering “this is a man-made disaster.”

“It doesn’t have to happen,” Flood said. “Folks in D.C. can prevent this from happening.”

WASHINGTON — House Republicans on Tuesday unveiled their long-promised report on former President Biden’s use of the autopen, delivering a blistering critique of his time in office and inner circle that largely rehashes public information while making sweeping accusations about the workings of his White House.

The GOP report does not include any concrete evidence that aides conspired to enact policies without Biden’s knowledge or that the president was unaware of laws, pardons or executive orders signed in his name. But Republicans said their findings cast doubt on all of Biden’s actions in office. They sent a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi urging a full investigation. President Trump ordered a similar inquiry earlier this year.

At its core, the report advances contested claims that Biden’s mental state declined to a degree that allowed White House officials to enact policies without his knowledge. It focuses heavily on the pardons he granted in office, including to his son, Hunter Biden, based on depositions with close Biden aides.

“The cost of the scheme to hide the fallout of President Biden’s diminished physical and mental acuity was great but will likely never be fully calculated,” the report reads. “The cover-up put American national security at risk and the nation’s trust in its leaders in jeopardy.”

Biden has strenuously denied he was unaware of his administration’s actions, calling such claims “ridiculous and false.” Democrats on the House Oversight committee denounced the probe as a distraction and waste of time.

Republicans are shifting attention back to Biden at a tumultuous time, 10 months into Trump’s presidency, with the government shut down and Congress at a standstill over legislation to fund it. House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., has kept the House out of session for nearly a month, with most public-facing committee work grinding to a halt.

The report on Biden was largely compiled over several months before the shutdown began. Based on interviews with more than a dozen members of Biden’s inner circle, the report offers few new revelations, instead drawing broad conclusions from unanswered questions.

It includes repeated references to polls of Biden’s approval rating and perceptions of his public gaffes and apparent aging, much of it publicly known.

It alleges a “cover-up of the president’s cognitive decline” orchestrated by Biden’s inner circle and takes particular aim at Biden’s doctor, Kevin O’Connor, who invoked his Fifth Amendment right against testifying. Republicans also singled out senior aides Anthony Bernal and Annie Tomasini, who similarly pleaded the Fifth. All three “should face further scrutiny” from the Justice Department, Republicans said.

Republicans also sent a letter to the D.C. Board of Medicine urging that O’Connor face “discipline, sanction or revocation of his medical license” and “be barred from the practice of medicine in the District of Columbia.”

The report does not include full transcripts of the at-times multiple hours of recorded testimony that witnesses delivered before the committee. It repeatedly scolds Biden officials and Democratic allies for defending Biden’s mental state.

“The inner-most circle, or cocoon, of the White House senior staff organized one of the largest scandals in American history — hiding a cognitively failing president and refusing any means of confirmation of such demise,” the report says.

While the report claims that record-keeping policies in the Biden White House “were so lax that the chain of custody for a given decision is difficult or impossible to establish,” Republicans do not offer any concrete instances of the chain of command being violated or a policy being enacted without Biden’s knowledge.

Still, Republicans argue that Biden’s use of the autopen should be considered invalid unless there is documented proof of him approving a decision.

“Barring evidence of executive actions taken during the Biden presidency showing that President Biden indeed took a particular executive action, the committee deems those actions taken through use of the autopen as void,” the report says.

Democrats and legal experts have warned that broad scrutiny of executive actions could pose future legal headaches for the Trump administration and congressional Republicans, who also often enact policies directed by lawmakers through devices like the presidential autopen.

Brown and Cappelletti write for the Associated Press.

TOKYO — President Trump treated his time in Japan on Tuesday as a victory lap — befriending the new Japanese prime minister, taking her with him as he spoke to U.S. troops aboard an aircraft carrier and then unveiling several major energy and technology projects in America to be funded by Japan.

Sanae Takaichi, who became the country’s first female prime minister only days ago, solidified her relationship with Trump while defending her country’s economic interests. She talked baseball, stationed a Ford F-150 truck outside their meeting and greeted Trump with, by his estimation, a firm handshake.

By the end of the day, Trump — by his administration’s count — came close to nailing down the goal of $550 billion in Japanese investment as part of a trade framework. At a dinner for business leaders in Tokyo, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick announced up to $490 billion in commitments, including $100 billion each for nuclear projects involving Westinghouse and GE Vernova.

“You’re great business people,” Trump told the gathered executives before the dinner. “Our country will not let you down.”

It was not immediately clear how the investments would operate and how they compared with previous plans, but Trump declared a win as he capped off a day of bonding with Takaichi.

Trump and Japanese PM swap warm words

The compliments started as soon as the two leaders met on Tuesday morning. “That’s a very strong handshake,” Trump said to Takaichi.

She talked about watching the third game of the U.S. World Series before the event, and said Japan would give Washington 250 cherry trees and fireworks for July 4 celebrations to honor America’s 250th anniversary next year.

Takaichi emphasized her ties to the late Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, her archconservative mentor who had forged a friendship with Trump during his first term through their shared interest of golf.

“As a matter of fact, Prime Minister Abe often told me about your dynamic diplomacy,” she said, later gifting Trump a putter used by Abe.

Trump told her it was a “big deal” that she is Japan’s first woman prime minister, and said the U.S. is committed to Japan. While the president is known for not shying away from publicly scolding his foreign counterparts, he had nothing but praise for Takaichi.

“Anything I can do to help Japan, we will be there,” Trump said. “We are an ally at the strongest level.”

Takaichi laid out a charm offensive, serving American beef and rice mixed with Japanese ingredients during a working lunch, where the two leaders also discussed efforts to end Russia’s war in Ukraine. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters that Takaichi would be nominating Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize.

The two leaders signed black “Japan is Back” baseball caps that resembled Trump’s own red “Make America Great Again” caps.

Reporters arriving for the meeting were hustled past a gold-hued Ford F-150 outside the Akasaka Palace, which is Tokyo’s guest house for visiting foreign leaders.

Trump has often complained that Japan doesn’t buy American vehicles, which are often too wide to be practical on narrow Japanese streets. But the Japanese government is considering buying a fleet of Ford trucks for road and infrastructure inspection.

They vow a ‘golden age’ for alliance and cooperation on critical minerals

Both leaders signed the implementation of an agreement for the “golden age” of their nations’ alliance, a short affirmation of a framework under which the U.S. will tax goods imported from Japan at 15% while Japan creates a $550 billion fund of investments in the U.S.

Later, at a dinner at the U.S. embassy in Tokyo packed with CEOs including Apple’s Tim Cook, Trump reveled in the deals. Trump and Takaichi also signed an agreement to cooperate on critical minerals and rare earths.

Trump has focused his foreign policy toward Asia around tariffs and trade, but on Tuesday he also spoke aboard the USS George Washington, an aircraft carrier docked at an American naval base near Tokyo. The president brought Takaichi with him and she also spoke as Japan plans to increase its military spending.

The president talked about individual units on the aircraft carrier, his political opponents, national security and the U.S. economy, saying that Takaichi had told him that Toyota would be investing $10 billion in auto plants in America.

Trump arrived in Tokyo on Monday, meeting the emperor in a ceremonial visit after a brief trip to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, for the annual summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

Trump is scheduled to leave Japan on Wednesday for South Korea, which is hosting the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit. Trump plans to meet with South Korean President Lee Jae Myung.

On Thursday, Trump is expected to cap off his Asia trip with a highly anticipated meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping. There were signs that tensions between the U.S. and China were cooling off before the planned meeting in South Korea. Top negotiators from each country said a trade deal was coming together, which could prevent a potentially damaging confrontation between the world’s two largest economies.

Boak and Megerian write for the Associated Press. Megerian reported from Seoul, South Korea. Mayuko Ono and Mari Yamaguchi in Tokyo contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced that the U.S. military carried out three strikes Monday in the waters of the Eastern Pacific against boats suspected of carrying drugs, killing 14 and leaving one survivor.

The announcement made on social media Tuesday, marks a continued escalation in the pace of the strikes, which began in early September spaced weeks apart. This was the first time multiple strikes were announced in a single day.

Hegseth said Mexican search and rescue authorities “assumed responsibility for coordinating the rescue” of the sole survivor but didn’t say if that person would stay in their custody or be handed over to the U.S.

In a strike earlier in October which had two survivors, the U.S. military rescued the pair and later repatriated them to Colombia and Ecuador.

Hegseth posted footage of the strikes to social media in which two boats can be seen moving at speed through the water. One is visibly laden with a large amount of parcels or bundles. Both then suddenly explode and are seen aflame.

The third strike appears to have been conducted on a pair of boats that were stationary in the water alongside each other. They appear to be largely empty with at least two people seen moving before an explosion engulfs both boats.

Hegseth said “the four vessels were known by our intelligence apparatus, transiting along known narco-trafficking routes, and carrying narcotics.”

The death toll from the 13 disclosed strikes since early September is now at least 57 people.

It’s been a rough few years for Santa Monica.

Businesses have abandoned its once-thriving downtown. Its retail and office vacancy rates are among the highest in Los Angeles County. The crowds that previously packed the area surrounding the city’s famous pier have dwindled.

Homelessness has risen. City officials acknowledge crime incidents had become more visible and volatile.

The breadth and depth of the issues became apparent just last month when the city was forced to declare itself in fiscal distress after paying $229 million in settlements related to alleged sexual abuse by Eric Uller, a former city dispatcher.

Now, Santa Monica is trying to plot a new path forward. A significant first step could come Tuesday.

That’s when the City Council is set to consider a plan to reverse its fortunes.

A shuttered business on Broadway in Santa Monica.

(David Butow/For The Times)

The plan includes significantly increasing police patrols and enforcing misdemeanor ordinances, investing in infrastructure and new community events, and taking a more business-friendly brush to permits and fees. Officials also plan to be more aggressive in making sure property owners maintain unused properties.

The blueprint tackles many “quality of life” issues that critics say have contributed to lower foot traffic in the city’s tourist districts since the COVID-19 pandemic.

It’s far from clear the tactics will work. But given the city’s current trajectory, officials say bold action is necessary.

“We’re trying to usher in a rebirth — a renaissance of the city — by investing in ourselves,” Councilmember Dan Hall said.

Hall, 38, is part of a relatively youthful City Council majority that swept into office in recent years as voters opted for new leadership and a fresh approach. Five of the seven council members are millennials, and six members first joined the council in either 2022 or 2024.

Also new on the scene is City Manager Oliver Chi, who five months ago was hired away from the same position in Irvine.

“The city is in a period of distress, for sure,” said Chi, 45. “We’re not in a moment where the city is broke. The city still has resources. … But right now, if we do nothing, the city’s general fund operating budget is projected to run a structural deficit of nearly $30 million a year, and that’s because we’ve seen big drops” in revenues, such as from hotel taxes, sales tax and parking.

“But part of that is the private sector hasn’t been investing in the city. And we haven’t had people traveling to the city,” Chi said.

Santa Monica is far from the only city — in California or nationwide — to face the pain of a downtown in decline. Brick-and-mortar retailers have long bled business to online offerings, and the pandemic upended the cadence of daily life that was the lifeblood of commercial districts, with many people continuing to work from home at least part of the week.

Birds fly over and people walk on the Santa Monica Pier.

(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)

But the hope is through concerted, planned investment that Santa Monica can shine once again and modernize to be competitive in the postpandemic era.

The City Council had already decided to set aside $60 million from its cash reserves to spend over the next four or five years to cover any operating deficits. But with Tuesday’s vote, Santa Monica would instead use those dollars as an investment in hopes of getting the city back on track.

“Those things really are issues related to public safety, disorder in town, the disrepair that we’ve seen in our infrastructure,” Chi said. “All of those things are preventing, I think, confidence in the local economy.”

In downtown, the city’s plan would include doubling the number of police officers assigned to a specialized unit to at least eight to 10 a day, deploying an additional five patrol officers daily, creating a new police substation, adding two workers daily to address homelessness issues, and hiring eight public safety employees to provide a more constant presence across the city’s main commercial district, parks and parking garages.

Staff in the city attorney’s office would also be augmented to boost the ability to prosecute misdemeanor cases.

An unhoused man naps on a bench in Palisades Park.

(David Butow / For The Times)

Also on the agenda: moving the city’s homeless shelter out of downtown; making a one-time $3.5-million investment to address fraying sidewalks and streets and freshen up trees and trash cans; funding monthly events at the Third Street Promenade to attract crowds; creating a large-scale “Santa Monica Music Festival” next year; upgrading restrooms near the pier and Muscle Beach; and increasing operating days for libraries.

Another proposal would require the owners of vacant properties to register with the city, in hopes of addressing lots that remain in disrepair.

The city is also looking to be more business friendly. It’s seeking to upgrade the current permit process, utilizing artificial intelligence to get nearly instantaneous permit reviews for single-family homes and accessory dwelling units, as well as reduce permit fees for restaurants with outdoor dining.

The plan also outlines strategies to boost revenue. Santa Monica is poised to end its contract with a private ambulance operator, McCormick Ambulance, in February and move those operations in house.

“It’s going to cost roughly $2.8 million a year to stand that operation up. But the reality is, once we start running it, it’ll generate about $7 million a year in new ongoing revenues,” Chi said.

“That’s part of what we’re thinking through: How do we invest now in order to grow our revenue base moving ahead?” he said.

Parking rates are also going up, which city officials estimate should generate $8 million to $9 million in additional annual revenue — though officials say they still charge a lower rate than those of nearby cities.

The city also plans more traffic safety enforcement and will cut the current 90 minutes of free parking in downtown parking structures to 30 minutes.

There’s also been talk of a new city parcel tax, though no decision has yet been made to pursue that. A parcel tax would need voter approval.

Another priority is building back the city’s cash reserves, which have dwindled over the years, largely on account of legal payments. Eight years ago, Santa Monica had $436 million in cash reserves; today, there’s only $158 million in nonrestricted reserves.

The planned $60 million in spending would further reduce the city’s unobligated cash down to $98 million.

Santa Monica’s annual general fund operating budget is nearly $800 million a year.

Beachgoers enjoying the scene near the Santa Monica Pier.

(David Butow/For The Times)

The city is also looking to redevelop some of its underutilized properties, including a 2.57-acre parcel bounded by Arizona Avenue and 4th and 5th streets, which includes branches of Bank of America and Chase bank, the leases of which are expected to expire in a few years. Also being eyed are a 1.09-acre kiss-and-ride lot southeast of the Santa Monica light rail station; the city’s seismically vulnerable Parking Structure 1 on 4th Street, which sits on 0.75 of an acre; and the old Fire Station No. 1, which sits on 0.34 of an acre and is being used for storage.

No firm plans are in place just yet. The parcels could be sold, leased long term or redeveloped as part of a joint venture. One likely possibility is that the developments would include new housing.

“When you look at any revitalization effort of any vibrant downtown core that’s eroded, there’s always been an element of repopulating the area with people,” Chi said. A smart redevelopment plan for those properties will not only “hopefully help bring back vibrancy to the downtown, but also help replenish the city’s cash reserves.”

The seeds of downtown Santa Monica’s decline actually started before the pandemic. But COVID hit the city hard, and commercial vacancies rose significantly, Councilmember Caroline Torosis, 39, said.

Santa Monica also sustained damage in 2020 from rioters who swarmed the downtown area in what appeared to be an organized attack amid a protest meant to decry the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

Tourists never came back in the numbers they had before the pandemic.

Torosis said the new council majority was elected on a promise to boost economic activity in the city.

“We need to absolutely ensure that people feel safe, welcome, invited and included in our city,” said Torosis, who serves as mayor pro tem.

Hall called the plan a bold bet.

“What we’re trying to do here is move us away from a scarcity mind-set, where we’re nickel-and-diming businesses trying to stay open, restaurants trying to open a parklet, residents trying to build an ADU,” Hall said.

The council’s relative youth, he said, is a plus for a city trying to write a bright new chapter.

“I think that that’s something that millennials are finding themselves needing to do as we take ownership of society, and we see a world where past generations have been afraid to make mistakes or afraid to make decisions,” he said.

Today we’re taking a tour through the mythical Land of Election Fraud, where President Trump has built a palace of lies, imprisoning both truth and democracy.

I put it in fairy tale terms because the idea that American elections are corrupt should hold about as much credence as a magical beanstalk growing into the sky. Countless lawsuits and investigations have found no proof of these false claims.

But here we are — not only do many Americans erroneously believe that Trump won the 2020 election, but the chief water-carriers of that lie are now in powerful government positions.

Last week, the U.S. Department of Justice announced that it will send monitors to Los Angeles and other locations in California and New Jersey for next week’s balloting. Those who study voting and democracies warn that this could be a test run for how far Trump could go in attempting to impose his will on the 2026 midterms and perhaps the 2028 presidential election.

If you think that it is harmless coincidence that he’s stacked election deniers in key posts, or that once again California is the center of his attack on democratic norms, I have beans you may be interested in buying.

“The sending of the observers to the special election could very well be, and probably likely is, a precursor or practice run for 2026,” Mindy Romero told me. She’s an assistant professor and the founder of the Center for Inclusive Democracy at USC’s Sol Price School of Public Policy.

Like others I spoke with, Romero sees a larger context to the poll monitors that has the potential to end with voter suppression.

“The Trump administration is laying a foundation, and they’re being very open about it, very clear about it,” Romero said. “They are saying that they are anticipating there to be fraud and for the election to be rigged.”

Trump put it even more clearly in a social media post on Sunday.

“I hope the DOJ pursues this with as much ‘gusto’ as befitting the biggest SCANDAL in American history!,” he wrote. “If not, it will happen again, including the upcoming Midterms. … Watch how totally dishonest the California Prop Vote is!”

To understand where all this may be headed involves digging back into Golden State history. The conspiracy underpinning election fraud claims has deep roots in California’s Proposition 187 — the anti-immigrant measure that was passed by voters in 1994 but squashed by the courts.

The far right never got over the defeat. Anti-immigrant sentiment morphed into conspiracy theory, specifically that undocumented folks were voting in huge numbers, at the behest of Democrats.

This absolutely loony bit of racist paranoia spawned an “election integrity” movement that cloaked itself as patriotism and fairness, but at heart remained doused in fear-of-brown.

Calfornia Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta said Monday he sees that Proposition 187 “playbook” at work today with “a targeting, unfortunately, of immigrants … because it creates fear in the eyes of some, in the minds of some, and it helps the Republican Party, MAGA and the Trump administration achieve their goals.”

Trump’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids are just the flip side of the coin to his election fraud claims — both at heart a part of the white Christian nationalism that his administration is now openly embracing.

Let me just say here that all Americans want fair elections and many average folks involved in election integrity efforts simply want to ensure our one-person, one-vote system stays honest — regardless of race or anything else. No hate on them at all. It’s the funders and organizers of many voter witch-hunt efforts that draw my ire, because they exploit that reasonable wish for fairness for their own dark agenda.

And that agenda increasingly appears to be the end of free and fair elections, while maintaining the appearance of them — the classic authoritarian way of ruling with the seeming consent of the people. Remember, Russia still holds elections.

“To have real control, you want to rule with a velvet glove,” Romero said. “That velvet glove can come off, and the people know it can come off,” but mostly, you want them to comply because it feels like “just what has to be.”

So how exactly would we get from poll monitors, a reasonable and established norm, to something as dire as an election that is rigged, or that is so chaotic the average person doesn’t know the truth?

It starts with introducing doubt into the system, which Trump has done. To be fair, with Proposition 50, the Election Rigging Response Act, Democrats now fear rigged elections, too.

But Gowri Ramachandran, the director of elections and security in the Brennan Center for Justice’s Elections and Government Program, told me her “biggest fear” is that those election deniers whom Trump elevated to official roles “now have the platform of the federal government.”

For that reason, “information about elections [that] comes out of the federal government right now, I think everyone’s going to have to take it with a really big grain of salt,” she said.

So we come out of the California 2025 special election unable to trust the federal government’s take on it, with one year until the midterm elections that will determine whether or not Trump’s power remains unfettered.

Maybe everything turns out fine, but there’s a string of other maybes where it doesn’t.

Let’s say Trump tries to declare an end to mail-in ballots and early voting, both of which increase turnout for lower-income folks who don’t have time to line up. Trump tried that earlier this year, though courts blocked it.

What does the 2026 election look like if you have to line up in person to vote if you want to be sure it counts, with ICE potentially around the block rounding up citizens and noncitizens alike? And the government requiring that you have multiple forms of identification, all with matching names (take that, married women), and even military “guarding” the polls?

Kind of intimidating, huh?

But let’s say the election happens anyway. And let’s say Republicans lose enough congressional seats to put Democrats in control of the House. But let’s say the federal government claims there is so much fraud, it has to be investigated before any results can be considered official.

Private groups sue on both sides. Half the country believes Trump, half the country believes the secretaries of state, like California’s Shirley Weber, charged with managing the results.

In that chaos, the newly elected Democratic representatives head to Washington, D.C., to get to work, only to have House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) refuse to swear them in — no differently than he is currently doing with elected Arizona Rep. Adelita Grijalva, who has promised to vote to release the Epstein files if Johnson ever does his job.

Romero calls that scenario “not even … that big of a stretch.”

Congress comes to a halt, not enough members sworn in to function, which is just fine by Trump.

And voila! The vote is suppressed by confusion, chaos and the velvet glove, because of course it’s reasonable to want to know the truth before we move forward.

So monitor away. Watch the polls and watch the watchers, and protect the vote.

But don’t buy the beans.

SACRAMENTO — Top California health officials warned that federal cuts will deliver a devastating blow to public health, even as the state grapples with ways to mitigate the damage.

“These changes will impact our emergency departments, rural hospitals, private and public hospitals, community health centers, ambulance providers and the broader health care system that serves every community,” said Michelle Baass, director of the California Department of Health Care Services.

Baass was among several experts who spoke Monday at a briefing about the effects of HR 1, a massive tax and spending bill passed by the Republican-led Congress and signed by President Trump that shifts federal funding away from safety-net programs for the vulnerable and toward tax cuts and immigration enforcement. She said the legislation makes sweeping changes to Medi-Cal, as Medicaid is known in California.

It “will cause widespread harm by making massive reductions in federal funding and potentially cripple the health care safety net,” Baass said. “These changes put tens of billions of dollars of federal funding at risk for California and could result in a loss of coverage for millions of Californians.”

Roughly 15 million Californians — a third of the state — are on Medi-Cal, with some of the highest percentages being in rural counties. More than half of the children in California receive healthcare coverage through Medi-Cal, healthcare coverage provided to eligible, low-income residents, according to the state Department of Health Care Services.

California officials expect the state to lose billions of dollars in federal funding for Medi-Cal and other essential healthcare programs. Given that California is facing an ongoing budget deficit, it is highly unlikely that the state will be able to raise enough money to make up for the loss in funding to continue the current level of services to residents, according to a report by the state Legislative Analyst’s Office.

Baass explained the federal legislation creates new eligibility requirements for Medicaid. Starting in 2027, many individuals ages 19 to 64 will need to work for at least 80 hours a month, or perform 80 hours of community service or be enrolled in an educational program, to qualify. The law allows various exemptions, including pregnancy, disabilities, or caring for children under the age of 19.

She estimated 3 million Medi-Cal recipients could lose coverage as a result.

“This would significantly drive up the uninsured rate that raises cost for hospitals treating uninsured patients,” Baass said.

Baass said HR 1, which Republicans labeled the “Big, Beautiful Bill,” also bans abortion providers from receiving federal Medicaid funding — even for healthcare services they offer that are not related to the procedure — and reduces federal dollars for emergency medical care for undocumented immigrants. It additionally limits state funding mechanisms, such as taxes paid by managed care providers, and establishes federal penalties for improper payments.

CalFresh, the state name for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, is expecting cuts of at least $1.7 billion annually, said Jennifer Troia, director of the California Department of Social Services. About 395,000 people could lose their benefits for government food assistance.

SNAP benefits are also being hit by the current government shutdown, with payments halting in November.

At the heart of the shutdown is a political standoff in Washington over the expiring tax credits for people who get health insurance through the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. Democrats said they will not vote to reopen the government until Republicans agree to renew the expanded subsidies. Republican leaders refused to negotiate until Democrats vote to reopen the government.

Covered California, the state’s Affordable Care Act health insurance marketplace, estimated over the summer that as many as 660,000 of the roughly 2 million people in the program will either be stripped of coverage or drop out because of increased cost and the onerous new mandates to stay enrolled.

Impacts from the new federal cuts and policies are already being felt across the state and nation.

A Planned Parenthood program in Orange and San Bernardino counties announced its imminent closure earlier this month due to being federally defunded. Los Angeles County’s health system has implemented a hiring freeze and is bracing to lose $750 million per year for the county Department of Health Services, which oversees four public hospitals and roughly two dozen clinics. Meanwhile, food banks nationwide are seeking donations and preparing for longer lines.

Kim Johnson, secretary of the state Health and Human Services Agency, discussed how California is fighting back.

Gov. Gavin Newsom recently announced he is deploying the National Guard and fast-tracking $80 million to support food banks, she said. This came alongside the governor’s decision to allocate $140 million in state funding to Planned Parenthood.

Johnson said Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta has filed more than two dozen lawsuits related to HR 1.

“Here in California,” she said, “we will continue to mitigate the harm of these federal changes wherever we can.”

It was one of the most dramatic protests in Los Angeles by activists who opposed Israel’s war in Gaza: a shutdown of the southbound lanes of the 110 Freeway as it passes through downtown.

In a chaotic scene captured by news helicopters, protesters sat down on the freeway in December 2013, halting traffic just south of the four-level interchange. On live television, enraged motorists responded by getting into physical altercations with demonstrators.

Los Angeles City Atty. Hydee Feldstein Soto’s office later charged many of the protesters with unlawful assembly, failure to disperse, failure to comply with a lawful order and obstruction of a street, sidewalk or other public corridor — all misdemeanors.

On Monday, after a lengthy legal battle, a judge agreed to put 29 protesters into a 12-month diversion program, which requires that each performs 20 hours of community service.

If they complete that service and obey the law, the charges will be dismissed in October 2026, said Colleen Flynn, the protesters’ attorney.

In court Monday, Flynn praised her clients for taking a stand, motivated by a moral duty to “bring attention to the loss of life and humanitarian crisis going on in Gaza.”

“These are people who were, out of conscience, making a decision to engage in an act of civil disobedience,” she told the judge.

Two others charged in connection with the protest were granted judicial diversion earlier this year and have already completed their community service. The charges against them have been dismissed, Flynn said.

Flynn initially asked for the 29 protesters to each receive eight hours of community service. City prosecutors successfully pushed for 20 hours, saying the political reason for the protest had no bearing on the case. Deputy City Atty. Brad Rothenberg told the judge that the freeway closure lasted about four hours.

“That affected thousands of people who come to the second largest city in the United States to work,” he said.

The hearing brought a quiet end to a furious legal battle.

Flynn spent several months pushing for the case to be dismissed, arguing that Feldstein Soto’s decision to charge the protesters was rooted in “impermissible bias” — religious or ethnic prejudice against Palestinians and their supporters.

At multiple hearings, Flynn said her clients experienced disparate treatment compared to other protesters who also disrupted traffic but were highlighting different political issues, such as higher wages for hotel workers. Flynn also pointed to social media posts by Feldstein Soto on Oct. 7, 2023, the day Hamas-led militants invaded Israel, murdering more than 1,200 people and kidnapping about 250 others.

“Every nation and every moral person must support Israel in defending her people,” Feldstein Soto wrote on her @ElectHydee page.

Last month, a judge denied Flynn’s request to dismiss the case. At that hearing, prosecutors said the protesters were charged because they shut down a freeway, creating a particular threat to public safety.

Prosecutors argued that a motorcycle traveling between traffic lanes at a high rate of speed easily could have plowed into freeway protesters who were sitting cross-legged on the pavement.

Prosecutors also defended Feldstein Soto’s social media posts, saying they were written on the day of the invasion, before Israel had launched its counterattack. At that point, Feldstein Soto was expressing outrage over a horrific day of violence, the prosecutors said.

Since then, Israel’s campaign in Gaza has killed more than 68,000 Palestinians, a majority of whom were women and children, according to the Health Ministry in Gaza.

A son of conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly has publicly revealed that he is homosexual, while at the same time defending his mother’s political views and the Republican Party’s “family values” campaign theme.

“The family values movement is not anti-gay,” said John F. Schlafly, a 41-year-old attorney who lives with his parents in Alton, Ill., and counts among his clients the Eagle Forum, the conservative group founded by his mother.

“These people are not anti-gay. They’re not gay bashers,” John Schlafly said in a telephone interview Friday. “I hold my mother in very high esteem. She’s doing good work.”

He added that he “didn’t agree with everything” he heard at the GOP convention but insisted that “efforts to convey the (Republican) Convention and the platform and speakers as bigots and gay bashers is completely inaccurate. The concept of family values should not be threatening to gays and lesbians. Most gays and lesbians have good relations with their family, as I do.”

Schlafly was “outed,” or revealed to be gay, by QW, a magazine published in New York, two weeks ago. He confirmed his homosexuality in an interview published Friday by the San Francisco Examiner.

“I thought it best to set the record straight,” Schlafly explained. “The media was trying to push the angle that there was some sort of hypocrisy going on, which I felt was inaccurate.”

Phyllis Schlafly characterized the media’s interest in her son’s revelation as “obviously a political hit against me.” She declined to say when she learned her son is gay and added that homosexuality “is not a big subject around (the Schlafly family).”

As for her stand on gay rights, Phyllis Schlafly said: “There’s nothing about my position on gay rights that should be offensive to a gay unless he’s seeking some kind of preferential status.”

While John Schlafly said he did not think it was right for someone to be fired based on sexual orientation, he said he did “not support the so-called gay-rights agenda” and was not sure what he thought of the military’s ban on homosexuals.

In his remarks to the Examiner, he disagreed with one common contention of the religious right, that homosexuality is a choice. “You can say in some sense I choose to write with my right or left hand,” Schlafly said. “But the point is that it is such an automatic decision. That’s how I see homosexuality.”

He also objected “to anyone saying that being gay constitutes not having good moral character.”