Agency

COMSTOCK, Texas — The Trump administration has started building a border wall through a west Texas section of the Big Bend region, marking the first major construction in an area of the U.S.-Mexico border where the administration’s plans have met heavy, bipartisan opposition.

The start of construction marks a milestone in the administration’s $46-billion efforts to line the border with walls, barriers, roads and technology as it seeks to make good on a campaign promise by President Trump to finish the wall. And it comes as Customs and Border Protection says it has doubled the pace at which it is building the wall across the border.

Customs and Border Protection said in a statement to the Associated Press that “border wall panel installation is underway” in a 47-mile stretch of Hudspeth County in west Texas known as Big Bend 1. There are five project areas that make up the roughly 500-mile Big Bend region stretching from an area of Hudspeth County south of El Paso to Lake Amistad.

CBP said the first panels were erected Wednesday. On a map on the agency’s website where it posts updates of wall construction along the southern border, a photo showed a crane lifting one of the 30-foot-tall steel wall panels into place as construction workers looked on.

The new activity was separate from a border infrastructure project in the nearby Big Bend National Park, where the administration has suspended construction in an attempt to reach out to opponents.

In the broader Big Bend region of Texas, CBP has run up against concerted opposition from landowners, environmental groups, business owners and ranchers who say the remote region isn’t a high-traffic area for illegal immigration. Political leaders from both parties, including U.S. Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), have joined the opposition.

Activists said Friday they would continue opposing the border infrastructure projects in the rest of the Big Bend region, even as the panels were being installed.

Clara Benson, one of the founders of the No Big Bend Wall Coalition, which has been fighting against CBP’s plans, said in an interview Friday that the organization had been receiving reports of trucks moving supplies into the remote area along the Rio Grande and that contractors had been clearing yards to stage supplies.

Speaking from Washington, D.C., where she and others in the coalition were meeting with lawmakers, she said that the organization and others would continue to fight the wall-building plans across the region.

“We will continue to fight for this land no matter what the outcome is. We will continue fighting to the end,” said Benson. “You talk to people in west Texas and they say even if they put it up, we’ll fight for them to take it down. So this fight is not over.”

The news comes as the administration is speeding forward with a plan to line the entire border with a combination of 30-foot-tall steel bollard walls, barriers designed to stop vehicles from crossing the border, new patrol roads, and various technologies to deter and detect migrants or smugglers from crossing the border.

Customs and Border Protection said it is building an average of 12 miles of barriers per week along the 2,000-mile border with Mexico and recently reached a milestone of 200 miles of new barriers built since the second Trump administration took office. The 12-miles-a-week average is double the pace that the agency’s head, Rodney Scott, cited earlier this year.

The agency has faced opposition from environmental groups, a small town that worries the wall will cause flooding in its area, Native Americans who say the construction is disturbing sacred sites and landowners who say the construction will infringe on their land.

In Texas, much of the opposition has centered on the agency’s plans for Big Bend National Park, in the state’s southwest on the Rio Grande that is a draw for tourists from around the world. But up- and downriver outside the park, much of the land is owned by private landowners, many of whom have organized against the government’s efforts.

Earlier this week, landowners, ranchers and business owners in the Big Bend region along with a nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting the region’s landscape and heritage sued to stop the administration’s plans.

Activists and landowners have also shown up at county meetings to push their elected officials not to cooperate with contractors hired by CBP to build the wall, and many landowners have refused to allow government officials or contractors onto their land to survey it.

Santana writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — The White House said Thursday that it was withdrawing its nomination of Lance Schroyer, a former Oklahoma state trooper, to lead U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ensuring that an agency at the forefront of President Trump’s domestic agenda will remain without a Senate-confirmed leader for at least a while longer.

Schroyer, who has little experience in immigration, is close to Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, a former U.S. senator from Oklahoma.

The White House offered no comment in a brief statement.

The latest setback comes as the agency remains under withering scrutiny over its handling of enforcement operations. Critics have question how ICE has recruited and trained officers as it raced to hire thousands to carry out Trump’s promise of mass deportations. Officers have shot and killed multiple people, including two American citizens in Minneapolis this year.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), the chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, had refused to hold a hearing on the nominee until Homeland Security provided him with information he had been seeking about civilian deaths during ICE enforcement operations.

“I don’t have a concern with who the nominee was. I had asked them to give me an update on the internal investigation into civilian deaths,” Paul told The Associated Press. “And I’m still waiting.”

When Mullin took over the department in March, he pledged a lower-profile approach to immigration enforcement, pulling back on the aggressive, tumultuous crackdown on the streets of large cities that sparked widespread public condemnation.

Arrests have continued to accelerate, reaching nearly 51,000 in August, the highest single monthly arrest total during the second Trump administration.

Paul said he intended to hold a hearing on Schroyer’s nomination, but it never came to that. He heard about the nomination being withdrawn only when the White House made it public Thursday.

ICE has not had a Senate-confirmed leader since the Obama administration. David Venturella, a former executive at a private prison operator, returned to the agency as acting director this year after Todd Lyons resigned.

When Trump nominated Schroyer in June, Trump said on his Truth Social platform that his pick was “a PATRIOT with real operational experience” and a “proven leader with DECADES of experience locking up the worst of the worst.”

The administration did not indicate when it might announce another pick for the position.

Good morning, and welcome to L.A. on the Record — our City Hall newsletter. It’s David Zahniser, giving you the latest on city and county government.

It wasn’t that long ago that the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority was the place to be — at least, if you were a local politician.

L.A. Mayor Karen Bass put herself on the agency’s 10-member board in 2023, saying direct oversight would help her confront the region’s homelessness crisis. L.A. County Supervisors Lindsey Horvath and Kathryn Barger joined that year as well.

Those who follow local politics — and the travails of the region’s beleaguered homeless agency — know what happened next.

Barger left the board, comprised of city and county representatives, after a single year. Horvath lasted two. Both spearheaded the effort to shift more than $300 million out of LAHSA and into a new county homelessness department, saying they had lost confidence in the agency.

On Wednesday, Bass finally stepped down too, offering the latest and perhaps most crucial sign that LAHSA’s days could be numbered.

Bass, now in a tough reelection fight, portrayed her resignation partly as a scheduling issue, saying she recently became chair of the board that oversees the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

But Bass also said she has concluded that the city needs direct control over homeless services, replacing the joint city-county governance structure that has existed for three decades.

“To me, it is not functional at this point,” the mayor told reporters on Wednesday.

Bass was in fact Metro’s board chair when she joined LAHSA three years ago, juggling the two roles. But things are different now. LAHSA, long a subject of criticism, is under attack from all sides.

The Trump administration has spent months trying to strip LAHSA of its federal funding. Federal court battles have highlighted weak oversight at the agency. L.A. City Council members have voiced renewed frustration with LAHSA’s handling of the yearly homeless count. All of this follows years of critical news coverage and unflattering audits.

Paul Rubenstein, a LAHSA spokesperson, said the agency remains focused on its work — moving unhoused Angelenos indoors, managing public funds and “ensuring transparency and accountability across our rehousing system.”

Bass and her opponent in the mayor’s race, City Councilmember Nithya Raman, tried without success last year to dissuade county officials from pulling their funding out of LAHSA. At the time, they sent a letter telling the supervisors they were “going backwards into a silo.”

Now, LAHSA’s core responsibilities are up for grabs. County officials plan to compete for those duties, including management of the homeless count.

Bass and Raman want the city to compete as well. Asked this week if that process spells the end of the homeless agency, Raman hedged a bit.

“I don’t know what moment will be the death knell of LAHSA,” Raman said. “What I am saying right now is that the city … should be able to take greater control over the dollars that we are investing.”

Bass said Friday that she can envision a scenario where LAHSA continues to exist but is much, much smaller.

“Our $300 million would stay within the city,” she said.

Traci Park unloads on Raman

Raman has been taking her campaign to Pacific Palisades, talking to residents about her recovery plan for the community, which was devastated by the January 2025 wildfire. During one recent appearance, she told an audience that the city has let them down.

“I don’t want to let you down. I feel an urgency to show up,” she said.

That appearance — and Raman’s social media posts on the issue — drew a testy response last week from Councilmember Traci Park, who represents the Palisades. Appearing on KFI’s The John Kobylt Show, Park said Raman never spoke with her one on one about the disaster or what her constituents needed in the aftermath.

Park said she had council members tour the burn area with her early on, to help them understand what would be required during the recovery. Although most of her colleagues took her up on that offer, Raman did not, Park said.

“The Palisades have been through enough,” Park said. “They don’t need politicians discovering their suffering, and the challenges they’re dealing with, only when it becomes politically useful.”

Raman, through a campaign spokesperson, said she did tour the Palisades both before and after launching her mayoral bid — and signed on to multiple council motions dealing with wildfire prevention and disaster recovery.

In a statement, Raman also offered praise for Park, saying she has “worked tirelessly to support the rebuilding of the Palisades.”

“As mayor, I’ll be the strongest partner to her and Palisades residents to help them rebuild and return home as quickly as possible,” Raman said.

Park remains the only council member who has not endorsed in the mayor’s race. Thirteen others are backing Bass.

Dueling controllers unite for Raman

Raman has picked up endorsements from something of a political odd couple: two city controllers who have not always had kind things to say about each other.

City Controller Kenneth Mejia, who recently won reelection, stood with Raman in Chinatown on Wednesday as she called for L.A.’s nonprofit homeless providers to be paid based on their success rates.

A day later, Raman appeared in the San Fernando Valley with former City Controller Laura Chick as the two spoke out against the city’s $2.6-billion upgrade of the Convention Center.

The back-to-back appearances brought back memories. Chick had tough words for Mejia back in 2022, calling him “unfit for public office.” She pointed to his tweets calling then-President Joe Biden a rapist and a racist, and his decision to pose for a photo with a poster of Hillary Clinton photoshopped to look like she was behind bars in an orange prison jumpsuit.

Mejia responded by blasting Chick, a former City Council member, as a career politician who recycled lies and “exaggerated attacks.”

Chick, who served as controller from 2001 to 2009, went after Mejia again this year, endorsing his opponent, real estate executive Zach Sokoloff, in the run-up to the June 2 primary. This time, she said Mejia was not producing enough reports to fulfill his office’s watchdog role.

In many ways, Chick was the Mejia of her day, railing against the status quo and turning a spotlight on the city’s shortcomings, drawing the ire of other elected officials.

So could the Raman campaign bring about a detente between the two?

Chick, in an interview, said she hasn’t spoken with Mejia but would gladly take his call. She said she wishes him well now that he has another four years in office.

“I think she’s trying to get us together,” Chick said, referring to Raman.

Chick said she’s hoping that Raman, as mayor, will receive “lots of vigorous audits” from the controller and then implement the findings.

“I yearned for a mayor, as city controller, that I could turn to and say, ‘Here. Here are the findings of my audit. Please do something about it.’ She’ll have that with Mejia,” Chick said.

We should point out that Bass has picked up support from at least two former city controllers: Rick Tuttle, who served from 1985 to 2001, and Wendy Greuel, a former city councilmember who succeeded Chick in 2009.

State of play

— STICKER SHOCK: A long-promised makeover of the Veteran Administration’s historic Building 13 in West L.A. will create 24 units of housing for homeless veterans, at an estimated cost of $1.25 million per apartment. “It must be one of the most unaffordable projects ever undertaken,” said Bobby Shriver, the former Santa Monica mayor.

— LINEAGE LAWSUIT: Lineage, whose cold storage warehouse recently burned down in Boyle Heights, leaving behind the stench of rotting meat, said in a new lawsuit that a company that operated a solar array on the building’s roof is to blame for the fire. Altus Power, the solar company, said it would fight the allegations in court.

— BOTHERED BY BUSES: Business owners in Eagle Rock are worried about a dedicated bus lane coming to Colorado Boulevard — and the potential impact on customer visits.

— SETTING A SCHEDULE: The City Council voted this week to draft legal language that would require fast-food restaurants to give employees notice of their work schedules at least two weeks in advance. The move would build on an existing city ordinance that currently applies to retail employees at large companies.

— BACKING A BILL: Hollywood film and TV post production workers stood with Bass and Assemblymember Nick Schultz (D-Burbank) on Thursday, urging Gov. Gavin Newsom to sign a bill that would create the state’s first standalone post-production tax incentive.

— LIFE AFTER PRATT: Bass or Raman for mayor? In Spencer Pratt’s Pacific Palisades, some say that’s no choice at all.

QUICK HITS

• Where is Inside Safe? The mayor’s signature program to address homelessness went to Skid Row, an area represented by Councilmember Ysabel Jurado.
• On the docket next week: A House subcommittee holds a hearing Tuesday to discuss waste and fraud in L.A. County’s homelessness response system — one that won’t be attended by Bass.

Stay in touch

That’s it for this week! Send your questions, comments and gossip to LAontheRecord@latimes.com. Did a friend forward you this email? Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Saturday morning.

The Federal Communications Commission has asked a judge to toss out ABC’s 1st Amendment lawsuit, arguing that parent company Walt Disney Co. is wrongly attempting to short-circuit the agency’s review into whether the broadcaster has violated the law.

The commission, in court documents, maintains ABC’s lawsuit was premature because regulators simply were in the process of reviewing whether ABC has served the public interest in operating its eight television stations. No final determination has been reached, the FCC argued.

FCC Chairman Brendan Carr made the rare move last spring to call for an early review of ABC’s licenses as part of his yearlong look at whether Disney’s diversity and inclusion programs violate anti-discrimination laws.

The Disney-owned station licenses were not set to expire for several years. For example, the license for KABC-TV Channel 7 in Los Angeles extends to 2030.

But the FCC launched the probe a day after President Trump complained about ABC late night comedian Jimmy Kimmel over a joke that upset First Lady Melania Trump.

ABC has taken an aggressive stance, arguing the FCC is wielding its enforcement powers to punish the network after Trump repeatedly agitated to have ABC’s licenses revoked. ABC maintains the FCC’s enforcement action is an attempt to quell the network’s free speech, in violation of the 1st Amendment. It asked a federal judge to issue a temporary restraining order and injunction to halt the FCC’s early station review.

ABC also is fighting an FCC review into whether its daytime talk show, “The View,” should be entitled to an exemption from the so-called equal-time rule for political candidates who appear as guests.

Disney’s lawsuit has enormous 1st Amendment implications.

ABC is the first major broadcaster to challenge the FCC’s enforcement actions since Trump returned to power, joining a small handful of news organizations, including the Associated Press and the Wall Street Journal, that have pushed back against the president’s efforts to bully outlets he dislikes.

In late December, Trump wrote on social media: “If Network NEWSCASTS, and their Late Night Shows are almost 100% negative to President Donald J. Trump, MAGA, and the Republican Party, shouldn’t their very valuable Broadcast Licenses be terminated? I say YES!”

ABC, which did not comment Friday, argued the FCC’s review is “extraordinarily early” and “that timing underscores the Commission’s true purpose: coercing and retaliating against a network that refuses to bow to the Administration’s demands.”

The FCC has scoffed at the broadcaster’s arguments.

“Disney filed a meritless lawsuit in an effort to stop the FCC’s ongoing investigation into allegations that Disney violated the law,” an FCC spokesperson said in a statement. “The FCC has developed a voluminous record, and it will continue to follow the facts and the law wherever they lead.”

The government filed its motion Thursday in Washington. The 46-page document was filed by U.S. Atty. Jeanine Pirro and signed by Assistant U.S. Atty. Dimitar P. Georgiev on behalf of the FCC.

Disney was “not content to let the Commission’s ordinary investigative processes (and, if needed, ordinary processes of judicial review) run their course. They instead ask this Court to halt the license renewal proceeding in its tracks by issuing a preliminary injunction,” the FCC said.

U.S. District Judge Loren L. AliKhan has scheduled an Oct. 6 hearing.

Disney has argued the FCC has gone well beyond an examination of its internal hiring practices — the original purpose of the agency’s review.

But, in its motion, the FCC faulted Disney’s handling of the matter, saying “Disney’s responses to Commission information requests were deficient and nonresponsive,” prompting the agency to escalate the dispute.

In late April, Carr directed the FCC Media Bureau to force ABC to apply for renewal of their licenses early.

“The Commission’s Chairman has repeatedly emphasized that, although the allegations against Disney are serious, he and the agency remain ‘open-minded,’ have ‘not made a decision,’ and are ‘going to follow the facts and the law wherever they [lead],’ ” according to the motion.

The FCC also argued Disney picked the wrong court because Congress stipulated that any review of commission orders should be heard by an appeals court.

If ABC lost its licenses, it would hobble the network by forcing its largest stations off the air. Other ABC stations at risk include those in San Francisco, Fresno, Houston, Philadelphia and New York.

KABC-TV Channel 7 is owned by Disney in Glendale.

(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)

Trump on Sunday called for the FCC to “rebuke or punish” NBC’s “Meet the Press” anchor Kristen Welker after she pointed out that the president has had mixed success in endorsing political candidates in this election season.

The FCC also has an open investigation against NBC owner Comcast, also looking at the Philadelphia company’s diversity and hiring practices. The FCC has not ruled out calling NBC-owned station licenses in for an early review as well.

The U.S. Secret Service dealt with several drone-related incidents without adjusting its protection policies or documenting why it didn’t, according to a government report released Thursday. That information may have helped illustrate the emerging threat of civilian drone use before one was used in the 2024 assassination attempt on then-candidate Donald Trump in Butler, Pa.

The report from the Government Accountability Office found delays and holes in how the Secret Service updates its policies regarding threats, and arrives after a few turbulent years for the agency charged with the president’s protection.

The would-be assassin in Butler positioned himself on a roof left unsecured, nicking the president’s ear with a bullet. Months later, a man with a rifle got surprisingly close to Trump at his West Palm Beach, Fla., golf course. And in April, an armed man got beyond security barriers at the White House Correspondents’ Assn. dinner, where the president sat.

The report found that between 2015 and 2025 the Secret Service dealt with 83 security incidents and that it updated its protection policies in response to 25 of them. Among the incidents was a drone that made contact with President Obama’s motorcade in 2015 and another flown about 200 feet over a rally for then-presidential candidate Bernie Sanders.

Failing to document why the Secret Service decided not to change its policy is the concern, said Nathan Tranquilli, acting director of the Government Accountability Office, adding that the drone incidents were a “compelling example” of that.

“Some of the missing information has been relevant to subsequent attacks,” the report read. It cited the Butler incident, where the culprit flew a drone for 11 minutes over the crowd, which helped him position himself to get a clear shot at Trump.

The Secret Service also failed to update eight of 22 protection policies within a required time frame of four years. A memorandum of understanding between the Secret Service and the Diplomatic Security Service, which designates each agency’s responsibilities for the president’s overseas security, hasn’t been updated since 1991, even though an annual review and update are required. As a consequence, the memorandum doesn’t address newer threats, such as drones.

“When you look at the Secret Service and you look at their mission, really it’s a zero-fail mission, and they’ve got a ton of challenges,” Tranquilli said. “When decisions were being made about where to put time and energy, some of these things fell to the side, and, as a result, there were some delays.”

The report recommended three fixes, including that the Secret Service revise its policy to require that, when a security incident doesn’t warrant a policy update, that the rationale is documented.

A spokesperson for the Secret Service did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but the report stated that the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the Secret Service, agreed with all recommendations and plans to implement changes.

Bedayn writes for the Associated Press.

A federal judge this week threw out the U.S. Justice Department’s lawsuit challenging California policies that allow transgender athletes to compete on school sports teams that match their gender identity.

The Justice Department alleged that the California Department of Education and the California Interscholastic Federation were in violation of Title IX, a 1972 federal law that prohibits sex-based discrimination in any education program or activity that receives federal funding. It argued the law requires that sports eligibility and facilities access be based on biological sex, not gender identity.

But U.S. District Judge Cynthia Valenzuela found that Title IX does no such thing — and that a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling allowing other states to apply such eligibility standards only reinforced her conclusion.

Valenzuela, an appointee of President Biden, wrote that the Supreme Court had “explained that Title IX’s regulations ‘expressly permit schools’ to maintain separate sex-based teams and ultimately held that States ‘may maintain women’s and girls’ sports for biological females’ and ‘may determine eligibility’ for those teams based on biological sex” — and “thus upheld the biological-sex eligibility rules before it without holding that Title IX requires every school to adopt the same rule.”

Valenzuela wrote that the Supreme Court “declined to decide whether Title IX permits transgender girls to participate on girls’ and women’s teams,” and “expressly stated” that nothing in its opinion addressed that “distinct question.”

Valenzuela wrote that she, likewise, did not need to decide that issue, only “whether Title IX and its implementing regulations clearly required California to exclude transgender girls from girls’ teams and sex-separated facilities.” She found “they did not.”

Therefore, Valenzuela wrote that California “lacked clear notice” of such categorical exclusion of transgender athletes as a condition of the federal funding California received, and other court decisions — including the Supreme Court’s in June — did not “supply the missing clarity.”

A Justice Department spokesperson said the agency is “evaluating our options for appeal.”

“We are disappointed by the Court’s order, and remain committed to enforcing President Trump’s agenda preventing boys from playing in girls’ sports,” it said, referring to transgender girls.

The Justice Department suit threatened to cut $44.3 billion in federal funding from the California Department of Education, if the state did not change its policies.

California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta’s office, which represented the California agencies in court, deferred questions to the agencies.

Rebecca Brutlag, a spokesperson for the CIF, said it does not comment on legal matters. The California Department of Education did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

In court, they had made similar arguments as those Valenzuela cited in her ruling — arguing that Title IX does not require excluding transgender girls from girls’ sports, and neither does the recent Supreme Court ruling.

LGBTQ+ rights organizations praised Valenzuela’s ruling Tuesday.

Trevor Norcross, the father of Lily Norcross — a teenage transgender track athlete at Arroyo Grande High School on the Central Coast and one of the athletes whose participation in sports was cited by the Justice Department as a violation of Title IX — said it is “time to get back to supporting and enjoying girls’ and women’s sports instead of trying to tear them down.”

“I’m especially excited that girls in California can now focus on athletic competition without having to worry about manufactured culture wars and the prospect of invasive body inspections if they don’t look feminine enough,” he said.

Rainbow Families Action, a group that advocates for the rights of trans kids, hailed the decision, saying the Trump administration’s “relentless and hateful campaign against transgender children has hit another roadblock.”

The Justice Department’s lawsuit was brought by two longtime critics of California’s policies for transgender students: Harmeet Dhillon, a hard-charging conservative attorney in California before her elevation to head of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division; and Bill Essayli, a conservative state lawmaker before his elevation to lead the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles.

It was part of a much broader and ongoing effort by the Trump administration to erase trans-inclusive policies nationwide — around youth sports but also public bathrooms, medical care and official government documents.

California’s own policies for transgender athletes have been in flux.

Last year, President Trump took to his social media platform and demanded that state officials ban transgender teenage track star AB Hernandez from competing at the state track and field competition.

Amid those threats, the CIF updated its rules for transgender competitors. Under the new rules, transgender athletes can compete, but their qualifying for events cannot take a spot away from any cisgender competitor, and they must share whichever podium position they win with the next best cisgender athlete.

Hernandez went on to compete and win multiple medals, sharing her spots on the medal podiums with the cisgender athletes who otherwise would have claimed them had Hernandez not been competing. Hernandez repeated her success this year, again sharing her wins with cisgender competitors.

Los Angeles Times reporter Howard Blume contributed to this article.

President Trump lashed out Sunday at NBC’s “Meet the Press” moderator Kristen Welker, calling on the Federal Communications Commission to punish her over comments she made about the president’s record in endorsing primary candidates.

“Kristen Welker, the Unpopular ‘Hostess’ of the once great Meet the Press, now considered Meet the Fake Press, just stated that Donald Trump has ‘mixed results’ on his Endorsements of Candidates, when the recent WINS of Darline Graham and Mike Mazzei, stand at 100% for the U.S. Senate, and 98% for the U.S. House, recently and over the longterm,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

Trump actually endorsed Mazzei in the Oklahoma governor’s race, not a congressional seat.

“How can anyone be allowed to say this, working for freely given Public Airwaves?” Trump added. “Because of this purposeful inaccuracy, she will be reported to the FCC for rebuke or punishment.”

Welker was previewing Sunday’s edition of “Meet the Press” on NBC’s Washington station WRC when she made the remarks about Trump’s endorsements.

“He’s going to loom large over these midterms,” Welker said. “There’s no doubt about that. He, of course, has endorsed a slate of candidates in the primaries. He’s had some mixed results, but most recently, his pick of Senator Darline Graham, of course, the sister of the late Senator Lindsey Graham, was successful in her primary battle, so now she takes on Dr. Annie Andrews in South Carolina.”

In a statement, NBC News expressed its support for Welker. “Kristen is one of the best in the business and we stand by her,” a representative said in a statement.

FCC Chairman Brendan Carr has shown a willingness to use his agency’s levers to go after broadcast media outlets Trump deems unfriendly. In April, he called for an early review of the TV station licenses held by ABC, claiming the company’s diversity and inclusion policies are in violation of federal anti-discrimination laws.

ABC has filed a lawsuit against the FCC to block the review, saying it was motivated by Trump’s animus toward the late-night host Jimmy Kimmel.

Going after Welker for an anodyne analysis that did not match the president’s perception of his endorsement results would be a stretch, according to the FCC’s own guidelines.

“The FCC’s authority to take action on complaints about the accuracy or bias of news networks, stations, reporters or commentators in how they cover — or sometimes opt to not cover — events is narrow,” according to the FCC website. “The agency is prohibited by law from engaging in censorship or infringing on First Amendment rights of the press.”

Anna Gomez, the lone Democratic member of the FCC, said Trump’s comments are dangerous and also demonstrate a fundamental lack of understanding of the agency’s role.

“As I’ve said many times, the FCC has no authority to punish journalists this administration doesn’t like,” Gomez wrote on the social platform X. “These threats to press freedom are dangerous. They undermine the foundation of our democracy, and they have no place in it.”

Trump is clearly sensitive about critiques of his endorsement powers. On Friday, Bill Maher did a lengthy segment on his show “Real Time,” apologizing to the president for having said “almost none” of his endorsed candidates are winning their primaries. Maher noted that out of 260 candidates endorsed by Trump, only nine have lost. Maher noted that many of those candidates were heavy favorites to win but agreed that his statement was not accurate.

Maher also gave a strong indication that Trump had texted him to express his unhappiness over his comments.

But “Real Time” is on cable and streaming where the FCC has no say on programming content. The agency regulates broadcast channels that are delivered over the public airwaves.

Aug. 27 (UPI) — U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday named a new head of the agency that oversees his ballroom project at the White House and a proposed national arch in Washington, D.C.

Mark Paoletta, the general counsel of the White House Office of Management and Budget, will take charge of the National Capital Planning Commission. He will replace Mark Scharf, who is set to become White House counsel on Monday.

“President Trump has transformed D.C. into a capital worthy of the greatest nation in history,” Mr. Paoletta said in a statement to the news agencies. “I look forward to working with my new colleagues to further the president’s historic restoration and beautification of the National Capital Region, especially in the 250th year of our country’s independence.”

The NCPC is the federal government’s planning agency for projects in and around the capital city. According to its website, it “provides overall planning guidance for federal land and buildings in the region.”

In April, the 12-member panel approved the construction of the ballroom where the East Wing of the White House once stood.

Supreme Court Justice John Roberts last week temporarily blocked a ruling by a lower court stopping the project in a lawsuit filed by the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

In addition to his post at the OMB, Paoletta has been the acting chief of the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau since the start of August. Brian Johnson has been nominated to fill the role at the CFPB permanently.

Paoletta had represented Ginny Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, during the House Select committee’s investigation of the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

WASHINGTON — U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested nearly 50,000 people during July, the highest single monthly arrest total during the second Trump administration, according to new figures.

The spike in immigration arrests shows that the administration has continued to advance its mass deportations agenda despite a shift in approach earlier this year from high-profile operations in large American cities that sparked a public outcry to arrests that have garnered less attention but have nonetheless been disruptive.

The July arrest tally of 49,571 marks a 15% jump from 43,021 arrests a month earlier and a 70% increase from 29,241 in February, in the aftermath of the Trump administration’s enforcement surge in Minnesota, according to government data that was provided by ICE to the University of California, Berkeley’s Deportation Data Project and analyzed by the Associated Press.

Immigration arrests the month before Trump entered office hovered a little over 8,000 a figure largely made up of immigrants transferred from city or state jails and prisons and turned over to ICE to remove from the country. During Trump’s first year in office the numbers started climbing as the administration loosened restrictions on where and who ICE could arrest while it also infused the agency with billions of dollars.

By December, the number of arrests jumped to more than 40,177, according to the data, which was obtained through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.

In the aftermath of two fatal shootings in Minnesota in January that sparked protests and an uproar from Democratic lawmakers, arrests began to fall to nearly 30,000 in February. After remaining stagnant for months, the numbers of people arrested in June jumped to more than 43,000 and then to roughly 49,500 in July.

In his confirmation hearing earlier this year, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin pledged to keep ICE out of the headlines, suggesting that the administration’s immigration crackdown might take a softer approach. But his tenure has been marred by a number of fatal shootings of immigrants in encounters with ICE officers. And the figures show Mullin hasn’t shifted the agency from President Trump’s vision for mass deportations.

Texas and Florida accounted for nearly 20,000 of the July arrests, in a sign of how important those states have become to the Trump administration’s mass deportation agenda. Both states have leaned heavily into cooperation agreements with ICE called 287g agreements that allow local and state law enforcement to essentially operate as arms of federal immigration enforcement.

The spike in arrests comes as the agency, infused with billions of dollars last summer by Congress, has also hired 12,000 new deportation officers and investigative agents.

Santana writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — Immigration and Customs Enforcement is taking more and more steps to avoid oversight by local and state authorities of immigration detention centers amid growing complaints alleging unsanitary and unsafe conditions at the facilities.

The efforts to sidestep laws in California and elsewhere take many forms. In some instances, contracts have been changed to declare that the centers are simply not subject to certain local or state laws.

In other instances, ICE has purchased facilities owned and operated by private companies. Though the companies continue to run the centers holding thousands of detainees, federal ownership could aid their defense in the event of legal action.

George Zoley, the chief executive of GEO Group, which contracts with ICE to run detention centers in California and across the country, said as much to company shareholders this year. In an earnings call in May, he said that ownership bolsters the facilities’ protection from “unwarranted litigation” around medical care and other detention conditions.

The federal ownership strategy has become particularly crucial, he said, “as some blue states are considering more active involvement in oversight of facilities.”

Local oversight has taken on greater significance since the Trump administration hollowed out federal offices that were charged with investigating civil rights and safety issues at detention centers and began restricting visits by members of Congress. A recent analysis by the Project on Government Oversight found detention center inspections under the second Trump administration have increasingly resulted in “superior” grades.

Eunice Cho, a former American Civil Liberties Union attorney and an expert in immigration detention, called ICE’s efforts a “naked strategy” to evade local scrutiny of detention centers.

“This is a huge sea change in the way that immigration detention is expanding and hardening in the United States,” she said, adding that “this was every advocate’s nightmare scenario.”

In California, state leaders once attempted to shut down privately run detention centers and, after losing, resorted instead to proposing other oversight measures. California is home to eight ICE detention centers with a combined capacity of nearly 9,000 people.

State laws allow monitoring and investigation of the facilities by the California Department of Justice and local health authorities.

A 2021 law allows people to sue for damages when private detention center operators fail to follow the care standards laid out in their contracts. Starting in January, another law will require independent medical investigations into deaths in law enforcement custody, including in immigrant detention facilities.

Several bills are being considered by the California Legislature that would further regulate detention centers. Among them are bills that would authorize the California attorney general to bring civil action and impose fines to protect detainees’ constitutional rights and require the disclosure of public records, such as 911 calls from the facilities.

Recent attempts to limit California’s oversight actions haven’t been successful. CoreCivic turned San Diego health inspectors away from the Otay Mesa Detention Center in February, but after legal action the visit took place in June.

Another oversight battle concerns the rights of detainees who work at a facility, perhaps as a janitor, for $1 per day.

GEO Group recently settled with California regulators after a years-long fight over workplace health and safety violations. The settlement affirmed that immigrants who perform work while detained are considered employees.

Weeks earlier, ICE released new detention standards in June declaring that detainees who participate in the voluntary work program aren’t employees “and are not entitled to wages or benefits under applicable wage laws or labor regulations.”

Because the new standards will take effect as contracts are established or modified, the rules don’t yet apply to existing facilities in California, though they were implemented at a new facility in Minnesota.

An ICE spokesperson did not respond to questions but said the agency consulted with a variety of stakeholders, including facility operators, while revising its standards. The spokesperson, who did not provide their name in an emailed statement, said the agency consistently looks for ways to improve detention facilities to ensure they provide detainees the best care.

“ICE is regularly audited and inspected by external agencies to ensure that all ICE facilities comply with performance-based national detention standards,” the spokesperson wrote, adding that “ICE has higher detention standards than most U.S. prisons that hold actual U.S. citizens.”

An oversight battle involving changes to contracts is also playing out in other states.

For the last three years, GEO Group has blocked Washington health officials from inspecting the Northwest ICE Processing Center near Seattle despite 3,500 complaints from detainees about black mold, unsafe drinking water and substandard medical care.

A previous contract for the facility stated that services must comply with “federal, state and local laws and standards. Should a conflict exist between any of these standards, the most stringent shall apply.”

But in March, ICE and GEO Group established a new contract that says the opposite — that “applicable or more stringent state or local laws or regulations shall not apply.”

A federal district judge, rejecting that contract provision, ruled last month that GEO Group must let health inspectors in, writing that “GEO’s new contract cannot preempt state law, even if it purports to.” That decision is now paused under appeal.

But this week, GEO Group had a court victory in Colorado, where a federal judge prevented the state from enforcing a law that requires unannounced public health inspections of detention facilities and stiff penalties for refusal. Colorado health officials wanted to investigate a tuberculosis case at the Aurora ICE Processing Center near Denver, but have been refused entry and records.

The judge wrote that GEO Group’s contract with ICE “plausibly” requires the company to follow only state laws that existed when the contract was signed. At GEO Group’s suggestion, the judge’s order remains in effect until Oct. 15, when the contract expires.

Meanwhile, ICE appears to be trying a different route to apply the same restrictive contract language to the facilities near Seattle and Denver, among others.

Last month, the agency posted a solicitation with draft contract terms seeking 5,500 detention beds in Colorado, Florida, Pennsylvania and Washington. The locations and requirements match four existing GEO-owned facilities where operating contracts are set to expire in the coming months. During a shareholder call earlier this month, Zoley, the GEO Group CEO, indicated that the four facilities could also be sold off to the federal government while the company would continue to operate them.

The facilities would be governed by the new 2026 detention standards and include terms that mirror those from the Northwest facility’s contract, that stricter state or local laws “shall not apply.”

Zoley said ICE is contemplating buying more than 10 facilities, and that number “could continue to grow.”

GEO Group’s main competitor, CoreCivic, recently sold four detention centers to ICE — two of them in California — for a combined $2.2 billion. Spokesman Ryan Gustin said the facilities were valuated using independent appraisers and federal acquisition standards “to determine objective fair market value.”

ICE paid for them using $45 billion approved by Congress for ICE detention last year, enough for the agency to meet the administration’s goal of 100,000 detention beds. ICE is about 30,000 beds shy of meeting that goal.

Among more than 200 facilities ICE now relies on nationwide (most being local jails) are 36 privately owned detention centers. Those facilities hold the vast majority of detainees.

A Homeland Security spokesperson previously told The Times that it’s crucial for ICE to own detention centers on the West Coast so the agency can maintain the detention capacity it needs.

“Unlike in states like Florida and Oklahoma, ICE can not rely on local state and county partners for detention space in California,” the spokesperson said last month. “The state’s sanctuary politicians continue to push legislation to outlaw or make private prisons financially [unfeasible].”

GEO Group didn’t respond to a request for comment. Gustin, of CoreCivic, said its facilities operate under substantial government oversight, including “on-site government personnel, regular audits and inspections, detention-standard reviews, independent accreditation processes, and routine visits by government officials, attorneys, families and community representatives.”

How much power the federal government would be required to grant states is an open question if more facilities become federally owned, even if private companies continue to run the day-to-day operations.

Claire Trickler-McNulty, a former Homeland Security official who led efforts to reform detention standards, said federal ownership of detention facilities isn’t, on its face, a bad idea. If the goal was to own facilities that would be needed long term, she said, the agency could slowly transition to staffing those facilities with its own employees and cut out the need for private contractors.

Trickler-McNulty said federal ownership of detention centers could make state oversight “slightly more complicated.” But that doesn’t mean the centers can be operated without any review.

“I don’t think it shields the government from liability in total,” she said. “If the government owns a facility whose negligence causes harm or death in the government’s custody, I don’t think you can just buy away liability.”