Democratic socialists are looking to extend their power in Los Angeles City Hall this fall with their biggest prizes yet: mayor and city attorney.
Mayoral candidate Nithya Raman and city attorney hopeful Marissa Roy, both members of the Los Angeles chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, are heading into the Nov. 3 general election with strong showings in the June 2 primary as tailwinds.
If she prevails in November, Raman would join the ranks of democratic socialists leading big U.S. cities, including New York’s Zohran Mamdani and Seattle’s Katie Wilson. Washington, D.C., looks to be next: Janeese Lewis George won the Democratic primary for mayor there this month, all but ensuring her a general election win in that deep-blue city.
In Los Angeles, a democratic socialist mayor and city attorney could mean added clout because of an ideological lockstep between the two offices, said Fernando Guerra, a political science professor at Loyola Marymount University. In such a scenario, he said, the city attorney’s office is less likely to be a check against the mayor’s authority to set policy on issues such as land use and public safety.
“It’s incredibly substantive that the city attorney will interpret much of the policy that the mayor may push to be the right policy, and not challenge it,” Guerra said.
The election of Raman and Roy would also underscore the leftward tilt of Los Angeles, which has four City Council members, including Raman, who are DSA members — two of whom were reelected in the primary. City Controller Kenneth Mejia, who was recommended (although not formally endorsed) by DSA, was also reelected.
The DSA champions ideas sharply to the left of more establishment Democrats, such as incumbent L.A. Mayor Karen Bass. The L.A. DSA chapter, for example, says its objectives include abolishing prisons and defunding the police.
DSA-L.A. co-chair Sean Wakasa said his organization is thriving in L.A. and across the country because it has destigmatized the concept of socialism.
“Democratic socialism ultimately, at the end of the day, is about making the politics that working-class Americans can see themselves in,” Wakasa said.
In Los Angeles, Wakasa said, a DSA mayor would be expected to build more public transit, strengthen protections for renters, fight for workers’ rights, raise the minimum wage and defend local immigrants from the federal government.
The city attorney, he said, would be expected to defend working-class Angelenos by enforcing renter protections, resolving wage-theft issues and enforcing sanctuary city policies.
Business groups and public safety advocates have voiced concerns over the prospects of DSA members calling the shots at City Hall.
“They would run roughshod over the city,” said Stuart Waldman, president of the Valley Industry and Commerce Assn. He said Raman and Roy “don’t just drink the DSA Kool-Aid, they live it.”
Waldman said he would expect Los Angeles under democratic socialist leadership to adopt overzealous tenant protection policies that would discourage new rental development. He said they would also seek to weaken the police, leading to a “free-for-all for crime.”
“They would run business out,” Waldman said.
Roy, who has promised to turn the city attorney’s office into “the largest public interest law firm in the city,” targeting wage theft, tenant harassment and other issues, disputed Waldman’s assertion.
“Allowing corporate bad actors to violate our laws doesn’t make L.A. safer or more affordable — enforcing protections for renters, workers, and consumers does,” Roy said in a statement.
Raman said in a statement that she shares “DSA’s commitment to fighting for working people and those who have been left behind by a political system that too often serves powerful interests instead of everyday Angelenos.”
But she also said “there is no liberal or conservative way to fill a pothole.”
“I’ve always believed the most progressive thing you can do is actually make government deliver,” Raman said. “Every time City Hall fails to do that— potholes that don’t get fixed, streetlights that stay dark, 911 calls that go unanswered — it erodes people’s faith that government can solve problems at all.”
Rick Cole, a former deputy mayor of L.A., said the DSA label for both candidates doesn’t mean they’ll adhere to the most dramatized versions of what DSA stands for. Neither candidate is an ideologue, he said.
Raman’s membership in DSA “is a signifier she’s going to be more skeptical of current policing,” said Cole, a Pasadena City Council member. “She’s going to be more focused on affordable housing. She’s going to be more focused on a humane approach to getting people off the streets.”
A poll by the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies that was co-sponsored by The Times showed that in a head-to-head runoff, Raman was supported by 32% of the registered voters polled, compared with 28% for Bass.
Bass finished first in the primary, ahead of Raman, with former reality TV personality Spencer Pratt finishing in third place.
With Pratt now out, the race is on for both campaigns to appeal to his voters, who are generally considered more conservative. Even so, the Bass campaign said it doesn’t plan to focus on Raman’s DSA affiliation.
“What’s important isn’t labels — it’s what her [Raman’s] record shows, and that’s voting over and over and over to allow encampments near schools and to shrink our police force. It goes against what L.A. needs and what most of L.A. believes,” Bass campaign spokesperson Alex Stack said in a statement.
Raman, who was twice elected to the City Council with DSA support, has voted against additional police hiring and spending and creating new anti-encampment zones around the city.
One irony is that the three other members of the DSA on the City Council — Eunisses Hernandez, Ysabel Jurado and Hugo Soto-Martínez — have all endorsed Bass, citing the mayor’s fierce resistance to the Trump administration’s immigration raids last year, among other factors.
In the primary, DSA’s L.A. chapter recommended Raman but didn’t endorse her, with the distinction being that an endorsement comes with active canvassing and support from DSA members. DSA-LA co-chair Leslie Chang said it wasn’t yet clear whether her group would endorse Raman in the runoff.
A DSA endorsement for Raman now might be a mixed blessing, given that Pratt’s support came from more conservative parts of the city, said Christian Grose, a political science professor at USC.
“Karen Bass is not popular with Pratt voters, and the DSA is not popular with Pratt voters, but that’s who will decide the mayor’s election,” he said.
Roy, a deputy state attorney general, finished first in the city attorney primary by a wide margin and will compete against John McKinney, a deputy district attorney, in the runoff.
McKinney said electing Roy to the city attorney’s office would be like “going back in time” to when George Gascón was the top prosecutor in Los Angeles County, which police and prosecutors said was a disaster for public safety.
In the recent City Council primaries, DSA-endorsed incumbents Hernandez and Soto-Martinez both won reelection easily, while DSA-endorsed Faizah Malik failed to push incumbent Traci Park into a runoff in her Westside district.
In the Council District 9 race, DSA-endorsed community organizer Estuardo Mazariegos will be in a runoff with Jose Ugarte, a former aide to termed-out incumbent Curren Price.
DSA leaders are pleased overall with how their candidates have performed.
“DSA has really claimed a foothold for ourselves in L.A. County politics,” Chang said.
Dr. Fauci’s attorney says Aaron Rodgers should ‘stick with football’
During the 2021 season, NFL players who had not received a COVID-19 vaccination were subject to daily tests for the virus and restrictions, such as wearing masks inside team facilities and practicing social distancing.
Rodgers did not get vaccinated — he has said he’s allergic to an ingredient in the vaccines — and instead opted for an alternative treatment to help prevent him from getting the virus. Still, he told reporters he was “immunized” and did not follow all of the league’s protocols for unvaccinated players.
In early November 2021, Rodgers tested positive for COVID-19 and admitted he had “misled people about my status.” He was fined $14,650 for the protocol violation and missed a game because unvaccinated players had to isolate for 10 days after testing positive.
Rodgers clearly still had a lot to get off his chest during Tuesday’s show.
“A lot of people had probably fake vac cards back in the day, too,” Rodgers said. “They didn’t have a problem with that. I mean, I remember seeing some of the vax cards. It was, like, written in crayon. I’m like, all right, so we’re gonna pass that on, but we’re gonna be second-rate citizens over here — I gotta wear a yellow armband, train in the back, can’t be around more than three people.
“Oh, you know, you got to wear a mask when you do your your interview, and all of us are going to be masked up the entire time back here, 20 feet away from you, because that’s safety first. What crock of s— we had to go through! Crazy times.”
Although McAfee tried changing the subject multiple times during the first several minutes of the interview, the host eventually embraced the topic and applauded Rodgers for standing “on your side of the truth throughout the entirety of that thing.”
“Your name was slandered,” McAfee told Rodgers. “You were called a murderer. You were called a lot of things.”
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GOP holdouts say they will back Blanche’s attorney general nomination after striking deal over fund
WASHINGTON — Two Republican senators who threatened to block acting Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche’s bid to lead the Justice Department said Monday that they will vote to advance his nomination, ending an impasse over plans to create a fund to compensate allies of President Trump.
The statement from Republican Sens. John Cornyn and Thom Tillis came after Blanche issued an order late Sunday formally rescinding the $1.8 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund” to compensate people who believe they were unfairly prosecuted by the Justice Department.
Cornyn and Tillis, whose votes Blanche needs to advance through the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, had said they would not endorse his nomination without written confirmation that the fund is dead.
“We want to express our gratitude to Mr. Blanche and his staff for working with us on this, and we look forward to voting to advance his nomination out of the Senate Judiciary Committee soon,” Cornyn and Tillis, who are not returning to the Senate next year, said in a statement.
DOJ order says ‘beyond any doubt’ that fund is dead
In a statement accompanying the order, the Justice Department said that “although the Acting Attorney General has repeatedly advised Congress through testimony, including under oath, as well as in written responses, that the Fund is not moving forward, and the Department has repeatedly represented to district courts that the Fund is not moving forward, today’s Order officially rescinds the May 18, 2026 Order.”
Since the settlement of the president’s lawsuit against the IRS was announced, “No Members were appointed; no funds were transferred; no process for receiving claims was established; no claims were paid,” the order says. “This order establishes, beyond any doubt, that there is no Fund.”
The document released by Blanche on Sunday night also limits the scope of another provision of the settlement that provided broad immunity for Trump and members of his family from tax audits.
The deal clarifies that the tax audit immunity agreement “applies by its terms only retroactively” to claims open at the time of the settlement and does not protect the president from examination of future tax filings.
Cornyn, who lost reelection this year after Trump endorsed his primary opponent, and Tillis, who is retiring when his term ends in January, have blocked Blanche’s nomination as many of their GOP colleagues have criticized the fund.
The Judiciary Committee postponed a vote on Blanche’s nomination that had been scheduled for Thursday morning after Tillis and Cornyn said they needed more from the administration before they could provide the necessary votes.
The two senators have repeatedly said the Justice Department seemed interested in reaching an agreement, but the White House wouldn’t budge even to aid the confirmation of Trump’s loyal former personal attorney, who has aggressively pursued the administration’s priorities as acting attorney general.
“I think as far as Blanche and the Department of Justice, we were pretty much on the same page,” Cornyn said Thursday. “But then when the president got wind of it, he wasn’t willing to go along with it.”
Trump continues to express support for his settlement
The two sides have been negotiating for weeks, but Trump has said repeatedly during the talks that he thinks the fund should go forward and threatened to move forward with it if Blanche was not confirmed.
After the Thursday vote was delayed, Trump said in a social media post that he might pull Blanche’s nomination and resubmit it after Cornyn and Tillis leave office next year.
On Sunday evening, Trump said that people who had faced charges from the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol and could have benefitted from the fund had “their lives destroyed.”
“This would be a reimbursement for the pain that they suffered,” Trump said. “A lot of people like it.”
Jalonick and Richer write for the Associated Press.
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U.S. cites ‘unauthorized travel’ to end DACA status for a mother of 3 deported to Mexico
McALLEN, Texas — A Texas mother deported to Mexico despite having legal permission to stay in the U.S. has filed a lawsuit against the federal government after it notified her it would be terminating her permission because of “unauthorized travel” stemming from her deportation.
Jessica Treviño, 34, filed a lawsuit through her attorney this week asking a federal judge to intervene.
Treviño and her husband were arrested in December after federal agents followed them and two of their daughters into a Home Depot parking lot in South Texas. Both were deported and are living in Matamoros, Mexico, just south of Brownsville, Texas. Their three children, all U.S. citizens, are living with family on the U.S. side near the border.
After being brought to the country as a child at the age of 7, Treviño subsequently received legal permission at 20 to remain in the U.S. under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA. Introduced in 2012, DACA does not confer legal status but has allowed hundreds of thousands of people who had come to the U.S. as children to temporarily remain and obtain work permits.
As a DACA recipient, she must maintain a clean criminal record and is not allowed to travel outside the United States.
Her attorney, David Rozas, filed the lawsuit. He noted her status and work permit were most recently authorized until April 2027.
Notice to terminate DACA cites ‘unauthorized travel’
Last week, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services sent her a notice of intent to terminate her status for “unauthorized travel outside of the United States on or about March 25, 2026,” the same day she was deported from the country by the Department of Homeland Security.
In a statement, DHS said Treviño’s husband was in the country without permission and driving at the time of the arrest. After a collision between the couple’s vehicle and an unmarked Homeland Security Investigations vehicle, the couple was arrested. DHS claimed she “knowingly accepted voluntary departure and waived appeal. She left the U.S. on March 25, 2026, and will NOT return.”
In a recent interview with the Associated Press, Treviño said she did not sign any forms at the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility and did not want to be deported.
Lawsuit seeks restitution of status
Rozas filed a petition asking a federal judge in Brownsville to declare the woman’s expulsion was unlawful, order the government to facilitate Treviño’s return to the U.S. and allow her DACA status to remain valid.
“The government had no lawful basis to remove her, and we filed this petition to demand she be brought back home,” her attorney added.
An immigration judge under the Justice Department had issued a voluntary departure order for Treviño in February while she was in ICE custody, but a valid DACA status prevents the Department of Homeland Security from deporting her.
“I would be so blessed to be able to go back home, because that’s what I long for most right now. I’m really desperate. It’s been seven months since I’ve been home,” Treviño said Thursday. Her three children are set to start school next month and Treviño said she would like to be there.
The current Trump administration has deported 86 DACA recipients and arrested 241 others, according to a DHS letter sent in February to Democratic Sen. Richard J. Durbin of Illinois.
Advocates for DACA recipients say Treviño’s deportation is part of a pattern.
“This is what a deliberate, systematic effort to destroy DACA looks like in practice: target recipients one by one, manufacture justifications after the fact and leave their children to grow up without them,” said Todd Schulte, president of FWD.us, a policy organization defending immigration rights.
Gonzalez writes for the Associated Press.
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Puka Nacua has to shut down distractions, protect a Super Bowl run
Do you think the Rams have a tracker at their headquarters for how many days it’s been since Puka Nacua’s last embarrassing incident?
They might. Because we all remember how frequently the self-inflicted damages were occurring during that bizarre and jarring stretch starting late last year.
We had the biting incident and alleged antisemitic comments on New Year’s Eve. Before that, we had the Rams’ star receiver making antisemitic gestures on a livestream with a couple of controversial streamers.
We also had him publicly calling out NFL officials on a stream and in a social media post sent from the locker room, and getting fined $25,000 by the league for that. We had his weird post on X — a laughing emoji and “sam darnold” — after the Seattle Seahawks’ quarterback led his team to the Super Bowl LX championship on Feb. 9, when Nacua also was recorded stumbling and dancing in a San Francisco street after the game.
We had this all within just a couple of months. So we had to replace the image we previously had of Nacua as a jolly, smiling football star with a new one: a picture of teeth marks on a woman’s skin.
Ick.
Rams receiver Puka Nacua signs autographs during training camp at Loyola Marymount University on Sunday.
(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times)
Nacua said Wednesday that he’s trying to be better, to do better.
“Definitely trying to take accountability for the things that I know that I can continue to change,” the 25-year-old said at Rams’ training camp at Loyola Marymount.
We should all hope so.
There’s enough at stake, don’t you think?
For Nacua, there’s the proverbial bag to secure. For the Rams, there’s the Super Bowl at SoFi Stadium, which everyone believes should be theirs for the taking. And there’s what winning will mean for the franchise’s stature in L.A., a city that’s impressed by little that’s short of championships.
Don’t mess this up, Puka.
No one wants the distraction of bizarre and disturbing behavior, of internet idiocy or civil lawsuits. (Nacua’s attorney, Levi McCathern, said the alleged bite was the result of “horseplay” and the Los Angeles city attorney’s office indicated last week that the matter was on track to be resolved through a program that allows eligible defendants to avoid criminal prosecution and jail time.)
No one wants to wonder what could have been if it turns out quarterback Matthew Stafford can’t count on Nacua getting open and punishing defenders downfield.
And no one should want to see the Rams’ sure-handed wide receiver let generational wealth slip through his fingers.
Nacua is one of those athletes who you trust on the field to make the play, but all his off-field shenanigans gave the Rams reason to doubt him, to make him skip his turn at the big payday.
He was up for a contract extension that could have paid him as much as $160 million over four years, instead he’ll be earning $5.8 million this season. He’ll have to prove himself to the Rams as a reliable investment.
But that’s OK, Nacua said. He’s happy to be back at work.
Rams receiver Puka Nacua tries to slip past defensive back Trent McDuffie during training camp at Loyola Marymount University on Sunday.
(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times)
“There have been things outside of my control that I think have impacted the way I’ve been able to kind of focus and enjoy this game of football,” he said. “But coming out here and seeing that jersey No. 12 hung up in my locker is something that I don’t take for granted … the level of connection that I feel like I have with all the guys out there, [it] has never crossed my mind that I don’t want to be out here.”
One of the Rams’ primary weapons on offense, a barefooted Nacua went on the charm offensive after practice Wednesday, opening his media scrum by joking with reporters, asking how his hair looked and whether he had any boogers visible in his nose.
He looked fit, like he’s been taking care of himself. He said he was mostly laying off McDonald’s, seeing a therapist and appreciating football as a safe space. The dad of a baby boy, he spoke about that too.
He said he’s closed his “circle of trust” and expressed regret for actions that, he said, “haven’t been the truest reflection of the person I feel like I am, and how my mother raised me.”
“There’s definitely been conversations with her to apologize, but also for her to say that she supports me,” Nacua said of his mom, Penina, who brought up Puka and his five siblings as a single parent after her husband, Lionel, died in 2012.
“And also my brothers are, I think, my biggest critics as well,” Nacua said. “So there were some intense conversations, but loving conversations, in order to see improvement.”
Nacua is one of the Rams’ best players and absolutely their most popular. The loudest roar at Wednesday’s practice was when he showed up on the sideline with fellow receiver Davante Adams. When it was over, the sound of children shrieking “Puka!” reverberated off the bleachers.
The Rams are fans, too. Nacua isn’t tolerated for his talent; he’s adored for his spirit.
Coach Sean McVay loves the guy, a fifth-round draft pick out of BYU who broke a 63-year-old record for the most receiving yards by a rookie in NFL history: “You know how much I love him and the heart that he has,” McVay said Wednesday. “And I’ve been really proud of what he’s been doing and how he’s taking accountability for some of the things that we can learn from.”
Nacua said he was buoyed by messages from teammates during this turbulent offseason, in which he checked himself into a Malibu rehab facility to, as attorney McCathern said, “focus on his health, personal growth and overall development.”
We all know how valuable Nacua is on the field, but now we’re going to find out how much he values this opportunity, getting to take another rep to repair his reputation.
We’re going to find out if this man of many routes can run straight-and-narrow. Whether the slow-moving train wreck can get back on track. Whether he can keep stacking incident-free days.
Nacua says he can. “I feel,” he said, “very confident about that.”
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Trump’s attorney general pick faces possible Republican roadblock | Donald Trump News
Interim United States Attorney General Todd Blanche is facing a possible roadblock from within the Republican Party as he faces a confirmation hearing to formally lead the Department of Justice.
Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, Republican Senator John Cornyn said he was still sceptical about confirming Blanche to the top federal law enforcement position in the country.
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“I’m not prepared to vote yes,” said Cornyn.
The senator’s comments come a day before a key committee vote in the US Senate to move Blanche’s nomination forward.
Cornyn cited concerns about Blanche’s current stewardship of the Department of Justice, which he has led in an acting capacity since April.
Previously, Blanche served as deputy attorney general, and before joining President Donald Trump’s second term, he worked as the Republican leader’s criminal defence lawyer.
But Cornyn has questioned a rare settlement Blanche brokered in May, in response to a lawsuit Trump filed against the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).
Under the deal, Trump and his family would be shielded from future IRS audits. The scheme also created a so-called “anti-weaponisation fund”, under which individuals deemed to have faced alleged political persecution could seek financial compensation.
Blanche has backed away from the “anti-weaponisation fund” amid bipartisan backlash. Critics had described it as a slush fund that would benefit the president’s allies.
Earlier this month, a federal judge also ruled the settlement illegal, accusing Blanche of double-dealing by working on behalf of both the federal government and Trump as a private citizen.
During his confirmation hearing, Blanche again assured lawmakers that the fund was dead, but Cornyn said he was awaiting written guarantees on the matter.
“I haven’t seen a single piece of writing that is responsive to what I’ve requested,” Cornyn told reporters.
Committee vote looms
Cornyn spoke before the Senate Judiciary Committee is set to hold a Thursday vote on Blanche’s nomination, the first step in a wider Senate debate on his confirmation.
All Republicans on the committee would need to vote in favour of Blanche for him to progress to the broader confirmation hearing.
While Republican lawmakers have generally been wary of opposing Trump, Cornyn has become an increasingly public critic of the president in recent months.
Trump endorsed Cornyn’s primary opponent, former Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, in May. Paxton went on to win the Republican Party’s nomination in May, allowing him to progress to the midterm election in November.
That race will see Paxton take on Democratic upstart James Talarico in what is expected to be one of the closest Senate races of the season.
Cornyn will leave the Senate, where he has served for more than two decades, at the end of his term in January.
In an Oval Office news conference on Wednesday, President Trump was asked about Cornyn’s reticence about approving Blanche for the attorney general role.
“ Well, all I can say is Todd Blanche is outstanding,” Trump said, before questioning Cornyn’s motives.
“Maybe John Cornyn’s upset with me because I didn’t endorse him. I don’t know what it is, but I haven’t heard that there’s a problem.”
Critics have accused Blanche of placing his loyalty to Trump above all else, including by using the Department of Justice to prosecute the president’s political adversaries.
Under Blanche’s watch, for instance, the Justice Department chose to file a second indictment against James Comey, a former director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, over a social media message made of seashells.
Blanche has denied any claims that his relationship with Trump presents a conflict of interest, saying he acts independently of the president.
However, he did little to shed the perception during a mid-July hearing before US lawmakers. Senator John Kennedy, a Republican, asked at the time if Blanche considered Trump a “friend”.
“I’m his lawyer,” Blanche replied, before quickly correcting himself to say “was his lawyer”.
The Department of Justice has had a long tradition of prosecutorial independence, whereby criminal charges are not meant to be influenced by politics.
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Voter ID backers sue California attorney general over ballot description
SACRAMENTO — Backers of a November ballot measure that would require Californians to verify their identity when voting sued state officials on Monday, alleging bias in how the ballot’s summary is written.
A group led by California State Assemblymember Carl DeMaio (R-San Diego) allege in a 10-page lawsuit filed in Sacramento Superior Court that Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta violated election laws that require the “impartial” labeling of a measure’s purpose.
DeMaio accused Bonta of trying “to rig the vote” against the measure with “a false title claiming it prohibits citizens from voting” in California elections.
He also said the measure, which will appear as Proposition 39 on the November ballot, is “a bipartisan solution to Voter ID and is supported by a supermajority of Democratic, independent, and Republican voters.”
“We take our duty to prepare a title and summary and ballot label seriously, and we are confident the court will agree we have faithfully executed that duty here,” said a spokesperson for Bonta.
Proposition 39 would require voters to present government-issued identification, such as a state driver’s license, every time they vote in person.
Voters who use mail-in ballots — by far the most popular method of voting in California — would be required to write a four-digit number, essentially a PIN, on their ballot envelopes. The PIN would come from ID such as a driver’s license or could be generated from the county.
The measure also requires that the secretary of state and county elections officials to maintain accurate voter registration lists, verify citizenship, and report annually the percentage of each county’s voter roll that have been citizenship-verified.
Under current law, Californians are required to provide identification when registering to vote and must swear under penalty of perjury, a felony, that they are eligible to vote and are U.S. citizens.
They are not required to show or provide identification when casting a ballot in person or by mail.
The lawsuit, filed by Californians for Voter ID, Yes on 39 and Donald DiCostanzo, a registered voter who lives Orange County, argues that the attorney general office’s summary “is not a true and impartial statement of the measure’s purpose” and violates California Elections Code 9051, which requires neutrality.
The suit claims the language used for the summary during the signature-gathering process — a required step to get the measure on the ballot — was “neutral” and named both of the measure’s chief purposes.
The final language omits the measure’s mandate to maintain accurate voter rolls and and verify citizenship, and describes the measure in “prohibitive terms,” according to the suit.
The original language said the measure “establishes additional voters identification and citizenship verification requirements.”
“This measure would amend the California Constitution to further require that voters present government-issued identification at the polls or the last four digits of a government-issued identification number when voting by mail; the State provide voter identification cards on request; and elections officials annually report percentage of each county’s voters whose citizenship they have verified.”
The summary language now states that the measure: “Prohibits citizens from voting unless they present government-issued identification.”
“Invalidates mail ballots that do not have last four digits of designated government-issued identification number written on envelope. Prohibits in-person voting without presenting government-issued identification.”
Election law expert Fred Woocher said that the law allows the ballot measure summary to be different than the description of the measure in circulation.
UCLA law professor Rick Hasen declined to weigh in on the arguments in the lawsuit, but said that “it’s common practice for the AG to write things in ways that that align with the political interests of the Attorney General.”
Hasen previously called the ballot measure a “disaster,” writing in a blog post that its requirements are vague and it would be costly and difficult for agencies to verify citizenship.
Proponents of an initiative to repeal gas tax increases in California sued then-Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra, now a candidate for governor, in 2017 over a state-drafted title and summary which they argued was misleading and negative.
A judge sided with proponents, but an appellate court later rule in Becerra’s favor.
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Mayor’s press team uses disappearing WhatsApp messages, avoiding scrutiny
Mayor Karen Bass’ press relations office communicates through WhatsApp messages that auto-delete every 24 hours, potentially shielding the messages from public records requests, according to three sources familiar with the office.
The press office is under scrutiny over its use of an unpaid consultant as a spokesperson for the first half of the year. Just weeks after the consultant, Yusef Robb, ceased working as a spokesperson for the city, he took a job doing crisis communications for Lineage, whose cold food storage facility in Boyle Heights caught fire last month, spreading smoke and foul odors. Robb continued to work for Bass as an informal advisor until The Times and other outlets reported his dual roles.
Even though he was no longer a spokesperson, Robb remained in several WhatsApp group channels with mayoral press staffers, all set to auto-delete, until at least a week after he started working for Lineage, said two sources, who requested anonymity for fear of professional repercussions. L.A. Material first reported Robb’s presence in the channels.
The Times has filed a public records request for all messages that Robb received or sent to the mayor or her press office between June 1 and July 10, including WhatsApp messages. The city administrative code requires records to be retained for at least two years.
The Bass administration declined to comment on the press office’s use of disappearing messages on WhatsApp.
Bass herself has also communicated through disappearing messages.
In response to a public records request from The Times for Bass’ texts in the aftermath of the January 2025 Palisades fire, her office initially declined to turn over any messages. City lawyer David Michaelson told The Times that “texts are ephemeral types of electronic communication” that aren’t subject to the city record retention requirement.
He also said Bass’ phone was “set not to save text messages.”
The city ultimately recovered more than 100 messages to and from Bass during that period and released them to The Times.
The Times still sued the city, alleging that it unlawfully withheld and deleted the mayor’s text messages and other public records from the catastrophic wildfire.
“Their contention is they don’t have to retain them, and our contention is they do,” said Kelly Aviles, outside counsel for The Times in the lawsuit, in an interview Thursday.
In a court filing, attorneys representing the city argued that keeping work-related messages for up to two years was “absurdly impractical.”
“The Times’ proposed rule requires a degree of intrusion into City employees’ personal sphere that is, at the very least, offensive if not violative of California and federal constitutional rights,” wrote Reuben Camper Cahn, an attorney for the city.
In the past, some city employees communicated with each other each other through Google Chat messages that auto-deleted after a day.
In January 2025, the city stopped that practice and required that Google Chats be saved “indefinitely.”
Retention of messages has also been an issue in the federal government, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio setting some of his Signal chats to auto-delete.
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Thousands of complaints, few punished: LAPD faces racial bias claims
Over the past decade, the LAPD has received thousands of complaints accusing officers of targeting people solely because of their race, ethnicity or other form of outward appearance.
Only one has been fired for it.
The now-former officer, Edgar Garcia Cancino, was part of a San Fernando Valley anti-gang unit whose members were alleged to have improperly pulled over and searched hundreds of motorists. Cancino has appealed his termination, arguing that other officers in his unit carried out more of the problematic stops. He claimed the department sought to make an example of him because he refused to implicate his superiors in wrongdoing.
Accusations of racial profiling have long plagued the department, alienating generations of Black and brown Angelenos. Known within the LAPD as “biased policing,” such complaints have persisted despite repeated attempts to enact reform. But the question of how commonly profiling occurs in the LAPD remains a topic of pointed debate.
Years of studies by researchers and reporting by The Times and other news outlets have found Blacks and Latinos in L.A. are subjected to stops, frisks, searches and arrests at significantly higher rates than whites, regardless of whether they live in high-crime neighborhoods. Past LAPD chiefs have acknowledged isolated cases of profiling may occur. At the same time, they have denied that there is a widespread, systemic problem.
An internal LAPD investigation of Cancino’s Mission Division gang squad uncovered an “overwhelming pattern of intentional policy violations,” according to a summary of the case file reviewed by The Times.
Police investigators said in the case file that they identified hundreds of stops that were not properly documented, along with failures by the officers to active their body and dashboard cameras.
The allegations against Cancino largely hinged on two stops, according to his attorney. In May 2023, Cancino and his partner pulled over a man for allegedly speeding and having tinted windows, said his attorney, Nicole Castronovo. The vehicle’s registration turned out to be expired, Castronovo said, but the driver was allowed to leave without a citation after the officers searched his vehicle and found nothing incriminating.
When interviewed about the incident later, according to Castronovo, the motorist told police investigators that Cancino had stopped him because ”I looked like a G,” or gangster.
A few months later, the attorney said, Cancino was involved in another questionable stop, this time of a pedestrian who also later lodged a complaint alleging he was profiled.
Castronovo denied that Cancino had unfairly targeted anyone while on the job, saying he is a proud Latino who joined the force out of a desire to give back to the city where he grew up. She argued that the department’s investigators cherry-picked cases involving Cancino while ignoring similar behavior by other Mission cops.
“They have set up a system where it’s virtually impossible to sustain a biased policing complaint against an officer,” she said. “And then they turn around and weaponized” it against Cancino.
The probe’s findings were presented to LAPD leadership, who recommended that Cancino be fired and sent to a disciplinary hearing.
Castronovo argued in an appeal that her client and another fired Mission officer, Kim Lobos, had been denied a fair disciplinary hearing because both were initially represented by a lawyer appointed by the police union who had a conflict of interest. According to Castronovo, the union attorney also represented other Mission officers who agreed to testify against Cancino and Lobos. A Los Angeles County judge ultimately rejected their appeal.
Only one other LAPD officer prior to Cancino was fired for alleged racial profiling, a case that occurred in 2011.
According to the California Department of Justice, 4,878 allegations of bias were brought against LAPD officers from 2016 to 2025. Of those, only three were sustained.
The department’s rates mirror those of most other law enforcement agencies across the state. The Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department, which received roughly 10% fewer complaints over than span, has sustained six racial bias allegations against deputies.
Defenders of the Police Department note that any member of the public is allowed to submit a complaint regardless of whether there is supporting evidence, which leads to a high number of allegations that cannot be proven. Others note that the presence of body-worn cameras has helped disprove frivolous claims filed by criminal suspects or others who have an ax to grind with the department.
A report released last year by the advocacy group Catalyst California found that in 2025, Black motorists accounted for nearly a third of all stops for minor traffic violations, even though they make up roughly 8% of the city’s population. The same report found that Latinos, who are about 47% of L.A.’s population, were pulled over in 58% of all traffic stops.
Latino people are up to four times more likely to be subjected to “consent” searches, and Black people up to three times as likely, according to the Catalyst study. Fewer than 1 in 10 of those stops resulted in seizures of guns or drugs, the report said.
LAPD officials have pushed back on the findings, saying there is no established methodology for analyzing racial profiling data. Many factors affect the racial and ethnic patterns of traffic stops — from the predominant race of the neighborhood in which the stop was made or whether the stop resulted in an arrest and conviction — all of which must be considered when interpreting raw data, officials say.
In May, the Los Angeles City Council voted in favor of limiting the use of “pretextual” stops, in which police use a broken taillight or another minor equipment violation as justification to pull someone over in order to investigate whether a more serious crime has occurred. Activists and some council members said they wanted to ban a controversial tactic that enabled racial discrimination. The measure urges the Police Commission, which is responsible for LAPD policy changes, to take up the issue this year.
The LAPD’s unwillingness to acknowledge officer biases and hand down punishment when warranted serves only to drive a wedge between the community and the department, said Peter Bibring, a civil rights and police practices attorney.
“The department, year after year after year, is saying, ‘Nope this never happens, this never happens,’” Bibring said. “Then the community doesn’t feel like the department is recognizing these legitimate problems and responding to their concerns.”
During a deposition for a racial profiling lawsuit filed over a 2019 traffic stop, an LAPD official was asked what evidence it would take to get someone fired.
The attorney for the plaintiff, a Black man who sued claiming he was pulled over by three gang officers who handcuffed him and allegedly searched his vehicle without probable cause, asked: “If you found out that a given officer had pulled over 2,000 people in the last year, and all 2,000 of them were Black, would you have enough information, sitting here today, to determine whether or not that data alone indicated that the officer was engaged in biased policing?”
The LAPD official’s response, according to the deposition transcript: “No.”
Jim Willis, a former LAPD detective who later worked for the L.A. Police Commission’s inspector general’s office, pointed to past audits that found serious shortcomings in the department’s investigations of racial bias complaints. Furthermore, he said, many people who are affected never file claims because they don’t understand laws around consent searches — or they are just relieved when officers let them go.
Even when someone bothers to file a complaint, Willis said, it’s difficult to gather enough evidence from a brief interaction to prove an officer made a traffic stop solely because of race. If there was a minor traffic infraction or other probable cause to make a stop, proving their motive requires them to confess to acting with intent to discriminate, Willis said.
That’s why most claims are dismissed by LAPD investigators, he said, “unless, you caught somebody on their body-worn video saying, ‘Hey tonight we’re going out and we’re (pulling over) brothers.’”
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Puka Nacua’s attorney questions authenticity of bite marks in photo
All-Pro wide receiver Puka Nacua has had a massive contract extension put on hold by the Rams. His reputation has been questioned, and he has gone through in-patient rehab at a facility that addresses mental health, wellness and behavioral issues.
And with training camp beginning Saturday, attention again has been diverted to the incident that remains unresolved — an allegation that Nacua left bite marks on a woman’s shoulder during an evening of revelry.
The latest twist is a color photo of well-defined teeth marks that the plaintiff in a civil lawsuit against Nacua says he left on her shoulder. The lawsuit was filed in March, but the plaintiff’s attorney, Joseph M. Kar, sent copies of the photo to The Times and other outlets this week before discovery and other evidence sharing in the case has begun.
A black-and-white photo of the teeth marks was included in the civil complaint filed by Kar in March asking a Los Angeles Superior Court judge for monetary damages for gender violence, assault and battery and negligence.
Nacua’s attorney Levi McCathern acknowledges a bite occurred in a sprinter van while Nacua and the woman were part of a group celebrating on New Year’s Eve. But he describes it as the result of “horseplay” in the van and questions the timing of the plaintiff producing the color photo, speculating that her attorney wanted to give the lawsuit a headline on the eve of training camp.
He also said the authenticity of the bite marks on the photo — which form a circular shape with an absence of bruising — could be challenged in court by an expert in tooth reconstruction.
An image present in a court filing as evidence shows an impression on a woman’s back. The plaintiff’s lawyer sent the photo to The Times. Puka Nacua’s attorney Levi McCathern acknowledged the bite but described it as “horseplay.”
(Law Office of Joseph M. Kar, PC)
“The marks look more like her back pressed against his face than an actual bite,” said McCathren, pointing out that video from the van published by TMZ shows a woman identified as the plaintiff twerking above Nacua, who appears to be sleeping.
In March, McCathern questioned the lawsuit being filed on the heels of the Seattle Seahawks’ Jaxon Smith-Njigba signing a record four-year, $168.6-million extension that Nacua could mirror, suggesting that Nacua’s impending wealth motivated her to seek monetary damages.
“That further underscores the complete lack of credibility behind these accusations,” McCathern said.
Kar described the incident as a vicious attack, saying that Nacua “bit her on her scapula leaving an impression of all his teeth, as well as he would not release [her] for what seemed to be 10-20 seconds, while Plaintiff was folded over and started crying and suffering severe physical and emotional pain.”
“Frankly, the color vs. the black/white [photo] was a non-sequitur for me,” Kar said. “A man attacked and bit a woman severely, he acted provocatively before, and had cursed at dinner.”
Nacua faced possible misdemeanor battery charges, but the Los Angeles city attorney’s office indicated in an email that “the matter is currently on track to be resolved through pre-filing diversion,” a program that allows eligible defendants to avoid criminal prosecution and jail time. The court agrees to dismiss the charges entirely if the defendant completes the required terms — such as community service, counseling or restitution.
The Rams were sufficiently alarmed to put the brakes on a contract extension that could have paid Nacua, 25, up to $160 million over four years. Instead, he will remain under the terms of the final year of his rookie contract, making about $5.8 million in 2026. Nacua led all NFL receivers with 129 receptions in 2025.
The incident came shortly after another behavioral issue involving Nacua that alarmed the Rams. He criticized NFL officials during a livestream and made a gesture regarded as antisemitic. Nacua apologized, but after the Rams’ loss to the Seahawks a few days later, Nacua criticized officials in a social media post from the locker room. The NFL fined him $25,000.
In March, Nacua checked into a rehab facility in Malibu. A few days later, Rams coach Sean McVay said, “I trust this kid’s heart” but that Nacua had some growing up to do and needed to represent the Rams just as well off the field as on.
“The play on the field is amazing [but] there is a responsibility in terms of representing all things not exclusive to just that,” McVay said. “He knows that those are expectations, and we are hopeful this will be an opportunity for him to learn and grow, and we are hopeful that he’s a Ram for a really long time.”
Nacua participated in a Rams team activity workout in May after leaving rehab and reflected on the experience.
“Something that I feel like I’ve learned is, it’s OK to ask for support,” he said. “And then to recognize the platform that I have in being a professional football player, and trying to use that for the betterment of myself and for those around me.”
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Wildfire survivors angered as utility-funded group claims to represent them
A group claiming to represent California fire survivors began sending mailers and paying for social media ads this spring, calling on lawmakers to take action to reduce the rising cost of wildfires.
“Contact your legislator and tell them we need to fix our wildfire problem to make California more affordable,” said a mailer sent this month by the group called Wildfire Victims First.
“Stand with wildfire victims,” the group’s website states, urging people to join its cause.
The group was created with money from California’s three biggest for-profit electric utilities — Southern California Edison, Pacific Gas & Electric and San Diego Gas & Electric — which government investigators found ignited at least six of the state’s 20 most destructive wildfires.
The corporate campaign has angered wildfire survivors, including some of the thousands of families in Altadena who lost their homes in last year’s Eaton fire. The blaze, which killed 19 people, remains under investigation. Edison has said its century-old transmission line is the likely cause.
The utility-funded group is lobbying in Sacramento for proposals in a study that Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered to guide lawmakers in writing wildfire-related bills. The study largely ignored utilities’ responsibility for igniting fires.
Among its dozens of proposals is limiting amounts victims can get for pain and suffering, capping fees for attorneys representing survivors and requiring property insurers to bear more of the cost of utility-sparked fires.
”Each proposal would shift more of the cost of catastrophic fires away from the corporations responsible and onto survivors, policyholders, taxpayers, and the public,” wrote Joy Chen of Every Fire Survivor’s Network in a letter to Newsom this week.
Chen wrote that the industry-funded Wildfire Victims First campaign “created the appearance that wildfire survivors supported” the findings of the study. “We do not.”
The 15-page letter was signed by other organizations including Public Citizen, Consumer Watchdog and the National Day Laborer Organizing Network.
The coalition is urging Newsom and lawmakers to do more to hold utilities accountable for the fires they ignite, so they don’t happen again.
“The Eaton fire devastated Altadena, home to one of California’s most historic Black communities,” said Brandon Lamar, president of NAACP Pasadena, who signed the letter. “Now as survivors fight to rebuild, they should not be asked to bear the cost of protecting the corporations whose failures devastated their community.”
Edison told its shareholders in its annual report that it believes it acted as a “reasonable” utility operator before the fire. If state regulators agree it acted reasonably, Edison will be reimbursed for payments it makes to victims by a $21-billion wildfire fund, which Newsom created through legislation in 2019.
And if Eaton fire damages exceed the $21-billion fund, Edison’s customers will pay the rest through their electric rates under fine print embedded in last year’s Senate Bill 254 — amendments that Newsom and lawmakers added so late that the legislative session had to be extended.
State Sen. Sasha Renee Perez, a Democrat who represents Altadena, said she opposed any bill that would limit payments to victims for pain and suffering.
“I can’t think of a more offensive thing to propose when I have friends who lost family members in the fire,” she said.
Anthony Martinez, a spokesperson for Newsom, said the governor and lawmakers were talking about new legislation because the study “concluded that the current system is unsustainable and not working for fire survivors, utility customers or insurance policyholders.”
“It’s essential that we work to address the complex and interconnected challenges Californians face from the increasing risk of catastrophic wildfire,” Martinez said.
He didn’t disclose what specific measures the governor supports.
Nathan Click, who directs the corporate Wildfire Victims First campaign, said that the group launched after the study found that “payouts to financial middlemen — like trial attorneys, hedge funds and insurance companies — are often paid out before wildfire victims receive a single dollar.”
“Shockingly, trial attorneys can take up to 40% of wildfire victims’ settlement awards,” he said.
Click said the group was advocating for legislation that reduces wildfire risk, expands access to affordable property insurance and ensures quick compensation to victims.
The utility-paid campaign has been joined by electrical worker unions, a powerful force in Sacramento, as well as the California Building Industry Assn. and dozens of other groups.
The Eaton fire was the second most destructive wildfire in state history.
Pedro Pizarro, Edison International’s chief executive, said last year that a leading theory of the fire’s cause was that an idle transmission line in Eaton Canyon was briefly reenergized through a process called induction, sparking the fire. Induction happens when the magnetic field of a nearby live wire causes power to jump to inactive equipment.
Edison kept the idle transmission line in place despite not using it for 50 years. The state’s utilities had known about the risks of leaving unused equipment in place. In 2019, the Kincade fire in Sonoma County, which destroyed hundreds of homes, was ignited by an idle transmission line owned by PG&E.
Despite the billions of dollars in damages caused by the Eaton fire, Edison’s profits soared last year by more than 200% — from $1.3 billion in 2024 to $4.5 billion.
The company also paid its top executives more. Pizarro received $16.6 million in cash, stock and other compensation, up 20% from 2024.
“If the financial rewards for repeated catastrophic failure are record profits, record executive compensation, and record shareholder dividends,” Chen wrote in the letter to Newsom, “then catastrophic failure is exactly what this system will keep producing.”
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Blanche to face questions about his independence at attorney general confirmation hearing
WASHINGTON — The Senate confirmation hearing Wednesday for Todd Blanche, President Trump’s pick for attorney general, will be a referendum on far more than his individual merits.
Blanche, the acting attorney general, served as Trump’s defense attorney before taking office and has been closely linked to many of the most consequential — and controversial — issues that have dominated the first two years of Trump’s second term.
Blanche is set to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee, which will decide whether to approve his nomination and send it to the full Senate for a confirmation vote. The committee hearing will continue Thursday.
“I would expect committee Democrats to treat Mr. Blanche’s hearing as an opportunity to conduct oversight of the Department of Justice,” said Phil Brest, president of the American Constitution Society, a progressive legal nonprofit and a former top Democratic staffer on the committee. “It’s a test of the Senate’s willingness to probe the department’s operations and to actually serve as a check on the department and the administration more broadly.”
Democrats on the committee are expected to push Blanche on a host of topics, including the $1.8-billion “anti-weaponization fund” that critics derided as a slush fund for the president’s allies, the Justice Department’s rollout of the so-called Epstein files, and the department’s prosecution of several perceived enemies of Trump, notably former FBI Director James Comey.
“While deploying the Justice Department as a shield for the president and his cronies, Blanche has also used our top law-enforcement agency as a sword against Trump’s political opponents,” said Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), the ranking Democrat on the committee last month. “The independence of DOJ has been decimated under Blanche’s authority.”
Blanche was confirmed by the Senate as deputy attorney general in March, 2025, and was elevated to his current role after Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi was fired in April.
More critical to the success of Blanche’s nomination will be whether he can win the support of two lame-duck Republican senators, Thom Tillis of North Carolina and John Cornyn of Texas, who expressed some reservations about Blanche soon after his nomination was announced.
Cornyn raised concern about Blanche’s independence from Trump, while Tillis said Blanche’s stance on protesters who violently stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, would be critical to his consideration.
Some of those Jan. 6 protesters were expected to be the beneficiaries of the $1.8-billion fund announced as part of a settlement to a lawsuit Trump and his sons and business brought against the IRS.
In a scathing ruling this week, the federal judge wrote that the lawsuit was improper and recommended sanctions against two Justice Department attorneys who worked on the case, though not Blanche himself.
Cornyn told Semafor on Tuesday that the ruling raised a number of issues, including “the potentially collusive nature of the lawsuit.”
He has said previously that he will hold off on making a decision about whether to approve Blanche until after the hearing.
Tillis, meanwhile, told CNN’s Manu Raju on Tuesday that the weaponization fund would need to be completely off the table for him to support Blanche’s nomination.
Trump touted Blanche’s record ahead of the hearing.
“Todd Blanche is doing a PHENOMENAL job as Acting Attorney General of the United States,” the president wrote on Truth Social. “He is a great lawyer, always very fair, and every Republican Senator should vote to CONFIRM Todd Blanche, ASAP!”
Sen. Lindsey Graham’s death means that Republicans currently only enjoy a one-seat majority, but a replacement for Graham on the committee could be in place before it votes on whether to move his nomination to the Senate floor, which will likely come two weeks after the hearing.
Blanche, 51, spent 12 years working for the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York, working largely on drug and violent crime cases, and rose to the level of co-chief of the district’s White Plains division.
He left the office in 2014 for private practice and joined the prominent law firm Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft in 2017 as a partner. He left the firm in 2023 and went independent after other partners expressed concern when he took Trump on as a client.
Blanche went on to represent Trump in several criminal matters, including the New York case about hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels, and cases brought by Special Counsel Jack Smith about Trump’s alleged efforts to block the transfer of power after the 2020 presidential election and his alleged retention of classified documents.
He listed all three as among the 10 most significant cases of his career in the questionnaire he completed ahead of the hearing, along with his work at the Justice Department on a lawsuit challenging the construction of a new White House ballroom.
A group of more than 1,200 former Justice Department attorneys wrote a letter opposing Blanche’s nomination, asserting that his leadership has resulted in mass departures of career staff. That has “meant that much of the department’s vital work isn’t being done, or isn’t being done as well – leaving communities less safe, Americans’ rights less protected, and our national security more vulnerable,” the lawyers wrote.
Former Justice Department pardon attorney Liz Oyer is scheduled to testify as a witness for Democrats on Thursday. She has said she was fired for refusing to recommend the restoration of actor Mel Gibson’s gun rights.
Oyer will be joined Thursday by Dani Bensky, one of many victims of the deceased sex abuser Jeffrey Epstein who has criticized Blanche’s handling of the release of the so-called Epstein files — millions of pages of records detailing the Justice Department’s investigations into Epstein’s crimes.
Numerous victims have said that their names and other sensitive information were not properly redacted in the files and criticized Blanche and the department for failing to investigate Epstein’s potential co-conspirators.
Blanche has also come under criticism from survivors of Epstein’s abuse for the interview he conducted in July, 2025, with Epstein accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year prison sentence for her role in facilitating and participating in Epstein’s abuse.
Days after their interview, Maxwell was moved from her prison in Florida to a minimum-security prison in Texas.
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Judge blasts Trump’s IRS lawsuit as filed for ‘improper purpose,’ recommends attorney discipline
WASHINGTON — President Trump’s lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service over his leaked tax returns was filed for an “improper purpose,” a judge said Monday in a scathing decision that referred one of his lawyers for discipline and characterized the $10-billion complaint as an exercise in self-dealing.
U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams accused Trump of having manipulated the court system when he sued a federal agency under his control, bypassing a requirement that parties in a lawsuit must have adverse interests and laying the groundwork for a settlement last spring that granted him immunity from tax audits and created a fund to compensate allies of the president who say they were unjustly persecuted.
Though the practical impacts of the ruling may be limited given the administration’s public pronouncements that the so-called $1.776 billion Anti-Weaponization Fund has been abandoned, the judge’s ruling nonetheless amounts to a scathing rebuke of the Trump administration and resurfaces a politically damaging storyline for acting Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche just as he prepares to face the Senate Judiciary Committee for his confirmation hearing Wednesday.
“The nature of the suit itself and the conduct of the Parties and counsel from its filing make plain that this was an attempt to use the Court to provide some legitimacy to an agreement to confer immunity to people and entities affiliated with the President and to earmark billions of dollars from American taxpayers to redress grievances not defined in the law,” Williams wrote in her ruling.
She added: “The President may be the functional ‘dominus litus’ of the Executive Branch, but as a party to a civil suit, he, as well as all the parties and lawyers before a court, are bound by the rules. Ensuring that our courts are used only for the express purpose created by the Constitution is the obligation of every judge and an obligation that this Court must discharge in light of the matter before it. ”
The judge pointed to Blanche’s congressional testimony in early June in which he revealed that the “anti-weaponization” fund was no longer moving forward amid intense bipartisan backlash. Though nothing had been filed in court, Blanche appeared confident in his testimony that he “could speak for, and bind, both sides of this matter,” the judge wrote.
“Acting Attorney General Blanche’s apparent capacity to speak for both Plaintiffs and Defendants, sign a ‘settlement’ document on behalf of all Parties to this action, and then repudiate part of that agreement, demonstrates that there was only one party whose interests were being represented throughout this case,” the judge wrote.
Tucker and Richer write for the Associated Press. AP writers Fatima Hussein and Michelle L. Price contributed to this report.
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Lawyers for man charged with killing Charlie Kirk question reliability of evidence
PROVO, Utah — Lawyers for the man accused of killing conservative activist Charlie Kirk planned to call a final witness Friday as they try to raise doubts about the prosecution’s case before it can go to trial.
A Utah judge is deciding whether prosecutors have enough evidence to put Tyler Robinson on trial on a charge of aggravated murder. Kirk, 31, was killed as he spoke to a crowd of thousands at Utah Valley University on Sept. 10.
One of Robinson’s attorneys, Michael Burt, tried to inject uncertainty into the case Thursday by challenging the reliability of ballistics tests on a bullet fragment recovered from Kirk’s body.
Authorities sought to tie the fragment to the suspected murder weapon, but the results were inconclusive.
“Saying anything but inconclusive was inappropriate,” said Samantha Karner with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
Earlier in the week, Robinson’s team questioned the reliability of DNA evidence that investigators said linked Robinson to the scene. Experts say the science behind DNA testing is sound.
Robinson has not entered a plea. He turned himself in a day after the fatal shooting of Kirk, a close ally of President Trump credited with helping galvanize young voters for the Republican in the 2024 election.
At the request of Kirk’s family, State District Judge Tony Graf said he would allow to be shown inside the courtroom an altered version of campus surveillance video that prosecutors said shows Robinson crawling out to a rooftop “sniper’s perch” before shooting Kirk.
The unaltered video was previously shown. The altered version includes footage that zooms in on a figure that prosecutors said was Robinson and red marks that were added to the video.
The weeklong preliminary hearing ends Friday, but a decision won’t come until after Sept. 1, when Graf scheduled oral arguments in the matter.
Prosecutors on Thursday aired portions of a recorded interview with Robinson’s roommate, Lance Twiggs. The day after Kirk was shot in the neck, Robinson allegedly told Twiggs “he wishes he hadn’t done it,” a recording played in court revealed.
Later that same day — and only about an hour before turning himself in — Robinson posted “it was me at UVU yesterday,” in a chat room on the Discord social media platform, according to investigators and messages shown by prosecutors.
Defense attorneys unsuccessfully fought the public release of the statements from Twiggs and the chat room messages. They argued prosecutors would characterize the material as a confession, undermining Robinson’s right to a fair trial.
Prosecutors contend the shooting endangered others at Kirk’s campus event — an aggravating circumstance that could make the crime punishable by death under Utah law. Robinson also faces possible sentence enhancements based on claims by prosecutors that he targeted Kirk because of his political views.
Twiggs said in the April interview with prosecutors and investigators that Robinson sometimes talked about politics, including Trump. But Twiggs said he never heard Robinson talk about Kirk before the shooting. The defendant also did not talk much about gender issues or LGBTQ rights, Twiggs said.
The weeklong preliminary hearing has attracted intense media coverage and spectators who have angled for one of the 14 seats in the courtroom that are reserved for the public.
People have lined up early — sometimes sleeping there overnight — in hopes of getting in.
Schoenbaum and Brown write for the Associated Press. Brown reported from Billings, Montana.
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A grand jury indicts Louisiana’s attorney general in a fight over changes to New Orleans courts
NEW ORLEANS — Louisiana’s attorney general has been indicted over accusations she threatened the jobs of New Orleans leaders who fought a Republican-led overhaul of local courts in the heavily Democratic city.
The 16-count indictment against Republican Liz Murrill, handed up Thursday by a New Orleans grand jury, charges Louisiana’s first female attorney general with intimidation and malfeasance.
At the center of the case are deepening rifts between state leaders in Louisiana, which is heavily Republican, and Democrats who control the state’s most prominent city.
Republican Gov. Jeff Landry promised a swift pardon, saying Murrill would not have her reputation tarnished by an “Orleans kangaroo court.” Mayor Helena Moreno, a Democrat, was among those who had accused the state’s top law enforcement official in May of making threats against public officials.
Murrill called the case against her “retaliatory, meritless, and unconstitutional.” Late Thursday, Murrill said she had filed for an emergency stay with the Louisiana Supreme Court.
“I will not back down. I will continue enforcing the law, fighting corruption, and doing the job the people of Louisiana elected me to do,” she wrote on X.
For months, political tensions intensified between Louisiana Republicans and New Orleans officials over a new law that abolished a court clerk office won by an exoneree, Calvin Duncan, who spent nearly three decades in prison. The change consolidated that job with another clerk’s office, which Republican supporters said would make the local judicial system more efficient.
The change was staunchly opposed by New Orleans leaders, and in May, the City Council set a special election that would have given Duncan a chance to win the newly combined job. Murrill responded by warning local officials in letters that they could lose their offices for violating state “usurper” laws, which forbid support for an unauthorized officeholder.
“We’re very interested in elected officials in New Orleans not being intimidated or threatened by letter or any other way,” special prosecutor Laurie White told reporters.
Bond for Murrill was set at $400,000 on Thursday, according to court records.
Landry said he was ordering state police to investigate what he called “alleged improprieties” of the grand jury and those who ran it.
“The criminal justice system is a circus at its finest in Orleans and we will not have any of that!” he wrote on X.
The Republican Attorneys General Assn. said that making statements to local officials — in writing — was simply “issuing a legal opinion and warning public officials about the law” as part of her official duties. It called the indictment “as outrageous as it is dangerous.”
Moreno, who was elected in January and was defiant after Murrill sent the letters, on Thursday called it a “matter for the courts” and did not directly address the allegations.
“My focus, as always, remains on fulfilling the responsibilities the people of New Orleans elected me to carry out,” Moreno said.
Duncan has said he believes state officials were retaliating against him in eliminating the job he won with 68% of the vote. Murrill and Landry have long refused to acknowledge his innocence, though he’s listed on the National Registry of Exonerations.
Republicans have said the change was not personal and supporters have noted that the offices of criminal and civil clerks of courts are combined in other parishes.
Duncan was a jailhouse lawyer who later graduated from law school. He founded a nonprofit dedicated to expanding incarcerated people’s access to the court system and was the driving force behind a 2020 U.S. Supreme Court decision that ended nonunanimous jury convictions.
Duncan spent more than 28 years in prison over a fatal shooting during a robbery in 1981.
The night before a 2011 hearing to consider new evidence, prosecutors offered to reduce Duncan’s sentence to the time he’d already served in prison if he pleaded guilty to manslaughter and armed robbery. Duncan took the deal and was freed but didn’t give up on clearing his name.
In 2021, a judge agreed that Duncan had been unjustly convicted and vacated his sentence altogether. Landry and Murrill have pointed to the 2011 plea deal in objecting to Duncan calling himself exonerated.
Riddle and Hanna write for the Associated Press. Associated Press reporter Jack Brook in New Orleans contributed.
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Supreme Court rules that states may ban trans athletes from girls’ sports teams
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld laws in West Virginia and Idaho that forbid transgender athletes from competing on girls’ sports teams.
In a 6-3 decision, the court said the federal Title IX law envisioned separate teams for girls and boys based on their biological sex at birth.
“Separate sports teams for biological males and biological females are reasonable,” wrote Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh. “Given the inherent physical differences between the sexes, allowing only biological females to play on women’s and girls’ teams can reduce the risk of physical injury and ensure fair competition.”
Kavanaugh, who has coached girls’ teams for many years, said 27 states have adopted laws prohibiting transgender athletes on girls’ teams.
But his opinion does not say states such as California must change their laws that forbid schools from discriminating based on gender. Instead, he stressed states are free to make their own decision.
“Consistent with Title IX and the Equal Protection Clause, we hold that the states may maintain women’s and girls’ sports for biological females. They may determine eligibility for women’s and girls’ sports based on biological sex. The Constitution and Title IX do not require an overhaul of women’s and girls’ sports throughout America,” Kavanaugh said.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissented in part. She said the state should have considered transgender students on a case-by-case basis to decide whether they had an unfair advantage. Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented as well.
The court’s decision is likely to bolster the Trump administration’s drive to pressure states, schools and universities that permit transgender athletes to compete on girls’ and women’s sports teams.
Because the Education Department provides federal funds to these states and schools, it can require them to comply with Title IX.
The sole plaintiff in the court case was Becky Pepper-Jackson. Now 15, she has carried on a lonely legal fight to compete on her school’s track team in Bridgeport, W.Va.
Designated male at birth, she says she is the only transgender girl competing in her state and has been the target of complaints and protests.
Her case drew strong reactions on both sides of the issue.
West Virginia Gov. Patrick Morrisey hailed Tuesday’s decision as “one of the most important victories for women’s athletics” since the passage of Title IX in 1972.
“We defended a simple principle most Americans instinctively understand — that women’s sports exist to provide women and girls a fair opportunity to compete and succeed,” he said.
Penny Nance, president of Concerned Women for America, said “it is self-evident that males and females are biologically different, and the U.S. Supreme Court has confirmed this truth. It is fundamentally unfair for a male who feels like a female to demand that biological categories be ignored to accommodate his desire to compete among females.”
Joshua Block, the ACLU attorney who argued the case, called it “a heartbreaking ruling for our clients and transgender girls like them who’ve asked for nothing more than the same opportunities afforded to their peers,” he said.
“The reality is that the equality of transgender women and girls takes nothing away from, and in fact promotes, the equality of all women and girls.”
“This ruling is deeply harmful for transgender women and girls who only asked for the ability to participate in sports with their peers,” said Sasha Buchert, senior attorney with Lambda Legal. “Countless studies have demonstrated the myriad benefits that come with participation in team sports.”
The sports career of Becky Pepper-Jackson reflects some of the difficulty of the issue.
In sixth grade, she participated in cross country and described herself as slow. She “routinely placed near the back of the pack,” her attorneys told the court.
Her court appeals focused on a wish to participate in sports, not to win. But upon reaching high school, she has been winning.
In 2024, she “placed in the top three in every track event in which B.P.J. competed, winning most,” the state’s attorneys said. In the spring of 2025, “focusing on strength events, B.P.J. bumped female competitors out of the state tournament, then placed third in the state in discus and eighth in shot put while competing against much older female athletes,” they told the court.
Her ACLU attorney explained she has been winning in the shot put and discus “through hard work and practice,” not because of an advantage based on biology.
He said she “received puberty-delaying medication and gender-affirming estrogen that allowed her to undergo a hormonal puberty typical of a girl.”
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’47 Ronin’ director gets prison sentence for defrauding Netflix
Carl Erik Rinsch, the director of the 2013 Keanu Reeves action film “47 Ronin,” will serve more than two years in federal prison for defrauding Netflix of $11 million.
U.S. District Judge Jed S. Rakoff on Monday sentenced 48-year-old Rinsch to 30 months in prison, the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Southern District of New York, announced. Federal prosecutors convicted Rinsch in December of wire fraud, money laundering and other counts. A legal representative for Rinsch did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday.
Federal prosecutors indicted Rinsch in March 2025, alleging the $11 million went into Rinsch’s personal accounts. The filmmaker “quickly transferred” the money from the Rinsch Co. account, where it had been deposited March 6, 2020, by Netflix, through additional accounts until about $10.5 million wound up weeks later in a personal brokerage account. He lost more than half of that money in less than two months via risky investments in the stock market, the indictment said.
Though Rinsch told the streamer that his sci-fi show “White Horse” was progressing nicely, the filmmaker allegedly moved the remaining money into cryptocurrency and profited from crypto speculation over the next couple of years. The streamer had invested around $44 million in the show. Rinsch was accused of spending around $10 million on five Rolls-Royces, a Ferrari, watches, clothing, luxury bedding and linens, credit card bills, attorneys to sue Netflix for more money, and lawyers to work on his divorce.
He was arrested in West Hollywood and released the same day after agreeing to post a $100,000 bond to guarantee his appearance in a New York federal court.
Rinsch never finished the Netflix show.
During his sentencing, Rinsch and his legal team told the court his behavior was a result of mental health struggles and medication problems and they are working to address those issues with a new care provider, the Associated Press reported.
“I failed to recognize the danger of the state I was in,” Rinsch said, though his mental issues were not described in court, and his attorneys declined to provide further detail.
Ahead of the sentencing, Reeves — the star of Rinsch’s most notable project to date — penned a letter in May requesting “leniency and mercy as well as justice” in the filmmaker’s sentencing.
In addition to prison time, Rinsch must serve three years of supervised release, forfeit the $11 million and pay $700 in mandatory special assessments, according to Monday’s announcement. U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton said in the announcement: “Today’s sentence sends a deterrent message: fraud will not be tolerated.”
The Associated Press and former Times assistant editor Christie D’Zurilla contributed to this report.
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Judge declares man with same name as Sen. Dan Sullivan eligible for Alaska ballot
JUNEAU, Alaska — A man with the same name and party affiliation as Alaska Republican U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan is eligible to challenge the senator in the August primary, a judge ruled Friday.
Superior Court Judge Thomas Matthews’ ruling overturns a June 15 decision by Division of Elections Director Carol Beecher to disqualify the challenger and keep him off the primary ballot. Matthews’ ruling can be appealed to the state Supreme Court.
Attorneys for the state have said Tuesday is the deadline for a final ruling so that ballots for the Aug. 18 primary can be printed.
The judge ruled that the Division of Elections decision to exclude Dan J. Sullivan because his candidacy was not “in good faith” was not based on the Constitution, Alaska law or the division’s own regulations. The retired teacher from the small fishing community of Petersburg filed to challenge the incumbent.
“Instead, the decision was based upon a new, previously unstated, ‘good faith’ criteria,” the judge wrote.
Attorneys for the state did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Friday’s ruling. Jeffrey Robinson, Dan J. Sullivan’s attorney, said in an email he expects the division to appeal the ruling and couldn’t comment until the Alaska Supreme Court rules on the case.
The controversy over the two Dan Sullivans has underscored the stakes involved in the incumbent’s reelection campaign. The Alaska race is one of about half a dozen U.S. Senate races expected to be highly competitive in the fall, and the seat is one Democrats are trying to flip in their efforts to regain the majority.
The senator and allies, including the National Republican Senatorial Committee, have condemned the challenger’s efforts to join the race, arguing his presence could confuse voters. Under Alaska’s election system, the top four candidates from the primary, regardless of party, move on to the ranked-choice November general election.
The senator has accused the challenger Sullivan of working with Democrats and the campaign of Democratic former U.S. Rep. Mary Peltola — who is considered the senator’s main opponent — to cause confusion and boost Peltola’s chances. Peltola’s campaign and state Democrats have denied the allegation, as has the challenger.
Sen. Sullivan and Peltola are the highest-profile candidates in the crowded race and the only ones to report raising any money.
Beecher has said she determined the challenger Sullivan is not eligible to run because his candidacy was not filed in good faith and instead was done with an intent to confuse voters. She said he had registered to vote as Daniel J. Sullivan Jr. and, in conjunction with his candidacy, changed his party affiliation to Republican.
She also cited similarities between his campaign website and the senator’s, and his work with a consultant whose clients have included some Democrats. She did not mention finding any evidence of alleged coordination.
In arguing to keep the challenger disqualified, attorneys for the state disputed suggestions that the ballot could be designed in a way to reduce voter confusion over two candidates with the same name and party running for the same office.
“The Constitution does not require States to place a sham candidate on the ballot and then attempt to mitigate the damage through design choices,” Rachel Witty, an attorney with the Alaska Department of Law, and outside attorneys Christopher Murray and Michael Francisco wrote in court filings.
Attorneys for the challenger Sullivan argued that the Constitution lays out three exclusive qualifications for the Senate — age, citizenship and residency. They said Beecher lacked the legal authority to boot their client off the ballot.
The challenger Sullivan has said that sharing a name and party affiliation with the incumbent gave him “an instant megaphone.” But the 69-year-old retired teacher and former U.S. Forest Service employee said he had considered a run for some time and had grown frustrated with the senator.
He initially was certified on the state’s candidate list as Dan J. Sullivan, with the senator listed as Dan S. Sullivan and identified as the incumbent.
Bohrer writes for the Associated Press.
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Newsom blesses Uber ballot truce; car crash lawsuit fight continues
Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a law Thursday to crack down on inflated profits stemming from car crash lawsuits, blessing a hard-fought compromise between Uber and the state’s trial attorneys that averts a November showdown between two of California’s most powerful and moneyed lobbying forces.
The deal, the fruit of months of negotiations, takes aim at the lucrative way doctors can charge for procedures on patients referred to them by personal injury lawyers.
If a law firm has a client who was hurt in a car accident, the lawyer will often send them to a doctor who will perform surgery on a “lien” basis, meaning the doctor will be paid from money that comes from a lawsuit settlement rather than through insurance.
Uber contends this arrangement has created an incentive for doctors and attorneys to collude to dramatically inflate medical bills. The more expensive the bill, they say, the bigger the resulting payout.
The law, SB 623, caps how much these doctors can charge when their patient is involved in a lawsuit against a ride-share company, which are frequent targets of litigation due to their top-of-the-line insurance policies. The new law will also require Uber to ramp up background checks of its drivers.
“We’re going to have a much safer state both for medical patients and passengers in Ubers,” said Nicholas Rowley, a prominent Texas attorney who helped bankroll the fight and took a leading role in the negotiations.
The law only applies to cases that involve ride-share accidents that take place after Jan. 1, 2027.
“This legislation puts meaningful guardrails in place to better protect accident victims, increase transparency and accountability in the medical lien system and strengthen safety,” said Ramona Prieto, Uber’s head of public policy for the Western U.S., in a statement.
For months, Uber and lawyers from across the state poured tens of millions into dueling ballot measures that threatened to devastate the profits of whichever side lost.
Uber fired the first shot with a ballot measure that sought to cap how much attorneys can earn in lawsuits involving auto accidents. The company argued attorneys were swindling their own clients, inflating medical bills of car crash victims to increase the value of the settlement and then pocketing a hefty chunk of the payouts.
The state’s trial attorneys countered that the fee cap would make small or difficult cases a money-losing endeavor and block scores of accident victims from the courts. They shot back with their own ballot measure that would increase legal liability for ride-share companies if a passenger or driver is sexually assaulted while on a ride, seizing on investigative reporting that highlighted assaults in Ubers.
“They were waiting for us to blink and we didn’t,” said Douglas Saeltzer, the head of the Consumer Attorneys of California, the lawyer trade group that pushed for the measure against Uber. “Their starting place, I don’t believe, was in the interest of protecting victims — it was in the interest of protecting Uber.”
With the passage of Thursday’s law, both sides have agreed to pull their respective measures from the November ballot, halting campaigns that had both parties amassing tens of millions in funding and blanketing the airwaves with ads.
“Now we can stop seeing all the commercials,” said Assemblymember Blanca Pancheo (D-Downey) at a Tuesday hearing.
The law, put forward by Assemblymember Diane Papan (D-San Mateo) and Sen. Thomas Umberg (D-Santa Ana), also caps the amount that can be earned by third-party investors who buy out a doctor’s lien in a personal injury case. These companies will purchase a doctor’s stake in the case at a reduced rate, then pocket a share of the payout if the case settles.
“Private equity and hedge funds buy them at a steep discount, then turn around and collect the full inflated amount,” Saeltzer said at a Tuesday hearing on the bill. “That’s money flowing to Wall Street investors, not patients.”
The law will require annual background checks for ride-share drivers and expand the list of offenses that disqualify someone from the job.
In addition to the ballot battle, has Uber sued two of LA’s most well-known personal injury firms — the Law Offices of Jacob Emrani and Downtown L.A. Law Group — accusing them of inflating medical bills and forcing clients to undergo needless and expensive surgeries to inflate the value of the claim. The firms asked the judge to dismiss the case Wednesday, arguing Uber had failed to prove fraud. Both firms have vehemently denied wrongdoing.
The lawsuit, filed last year, has put the plaintiff lawyers in the unusual position of playing defense. Listening in the audience at Wednesday’s hearings were the partners of Downtown L.A. Law Group and Jacob Emrani.
“Let’s be clear about what this Uber case really is,” said John Hueston, outside counsel for Emrani. “It’s brought by a $150 billion dollar company … to intimidate the plaintiff’s bar, exhaust its resources and chill the suits that hold Uber accountable.”
Michael Huston, one of the lawyers who represents Uber, countered that the case is “not an attack on the plaintiff’s bar.”
“We have brought suit against the two in this state … that are engaged in naked fraud,” he said.
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Drug charges against Bode Miller are being dropped, his attorney says
Two misdemeanor drug charges against U.S. alpine skiing great Bode Miller are set to be dropped, according to his attorney.
“No drugs were found on Bode’s person,” attorney Jeromy Stafford said in a statement emailed to The Times on Thursday morning. “After speaking with the Prosecuting Attorney for Fremont County Idaho, Lindsey Blake, she has agreed to dismiss all charges against Bode Miller.”
Blake has not announced the move and did not immediately respond to a message from The Times.
Miller was arrested June 6 in Fremont County. According to a probable cause statement by Sheriff’s Deputy Jacob Hurt, the six-time Olympic medalist was in possession of a white dispensary bag containing 4.1 grams of psilocybin mushrooms.
Hurt said in his statement that Miller “knew that the Psilocybin mushrooms were illegal.” The 48-year-old former athlete was taken into custody and released the same day after posting a $5,000 bond. On June 11, Miller pleaded not guilty to possession of a controlled substance and possession of drug paraphernalia.
In a statement posted to Instagram on Tuesday, Miller gave a different account of what led to his arrest.
“I was pulled over for accelerating while passing another vehicle on a highway in Idaho,” Miller said. “My friend, who was traveling with me, had a small amount of cannabis and a cannabis pipe in his possession which I was unaware of. We fully cooperated with the officer. I am hopeful the misdemeanor charges will be dropped once the facts are reviewed.”
Online court records show the status of Miller’s case as “Active – Pending.” A pretrial hearing remains scheduled for July 29.
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Los Angeles Rep. Xavier Becerra poised to become California’s first Latino attorney general
In a move that suggests a sharp battle to come with the administration of President-elect Donald Trump and upends conventional wisdom about who will emerge as the next generation of statewide elected officials, Gov. Jerry Brown picked House Democratic Caucus Chairman Xavier Becerra (D-Los Angeles) on Thursday to be California’s next attorney general.
If confirmed by both houses of the Legislature, he will succeed Kamala Harris, who was elected to the U.S. Senate in November.
Becerra, 58, has served 12 terms in Congress. Just days before the appointment, he had announced a bid to become the ranking Democrat on the powerful House Ways and Means Committee.
“It’s a phenomenal opportunity,” Becerra said. “It means I get to be home a lot more.”
Few statewide offices are as powerful, or prominent, as that of attorney general. The role has often been referred to as the state’s top lawyer and its top law enforcement officer, a nod to the breadth of responsibilities vested in the office and its leadership of the California Department of Justice.
Attorneys general not only must pursue cases of criminal and civil wrongdoing, they oversee criminal forensic work for most counties and make the final choice about defending state laws — even crafting the language that summarizes ballot measures for voters.
Becerra was beaming during an interview in his House office Thursday morning shortly after Brown offered him the job.
“I’m still processing,” Becerra said with a laugh. “I didn’t expect it.”
Becerra would be the state’s first Latino attorney general. The son of Mexican immigrants, he was the first member of his family to attend college, earning a law degree from Stanford Law School and a bachelor’s degree in economics from Stanford University. Elected to a two-year term in the state Assembly and then to the House in 1992, he rose through the ranks to become the highest-ranking Latino in Congress.
Becerra worked in the civil division of the state attorney general’s office, writing advisory opinions for former Gov. George Deukmejian, a Republican, and defending the state’s constitutional officers from 1987 to 1990 before entering the Assembly. He said he had always wanted to return to the office.
“It was a great place to be,” he said.
Brown’s pick was so sudden that Becerra has not yet had time to reactivate his state law license, though he would not be the first attorney general to have to do so. Inactive status allows attorneys to hold on to their licenses when they are not actively practicing law.
Becerra would also be the first attorney general appointed by a governor since Thomas Lynch, who was chosen by former Gov. Pat Brown in 1964. Few political appointments are likely to be as personal to the current governor as this one, given his own four-year stint as attorney general starting in 2006 and the fact that his father used the office as a steppingstone to governor more than five decades ago.
“Xavier has been an outstanding public servant — in the state Legislature, the U.S. Congress and as a deputy attorney general,” Brown said in a statement. “I’m confident he will be a champion for all Californians and help our state aggressively combat climate change.”
The choice sent political shock waves through California, in large part because Becerra was not on any of the widely circulated lists of potential picks. Brown had offered no details on whom he would pick or when.
Many suspected that he might choose a caretaker, perhaps even a career staffer who would simply carry out the office’s functions through the 2018 election. Virtually no Democrats who heard the news on Thursday believed that Becerra would be that kind of officeholder.
“He has the smarts, political experience and ambitions to run and win reelection,” said state Sen. Steve Glazer (D-Orinda), a former top political adviser to Brown.
If Becerra serves less than two years of Harris’ existing term, he could be eligible to run for up to two additional terms — eight years — as attorney general. Harris has said she plans to hold the position until she is sworn in to the Senate on Jan. 3, and at that point Brown could officially nominate Becerra.
Becerra said Thursday he’s thinking about the confirmation process at this point and not whether he’ll run for a full term as attorney general or another office in 2018. He must be confirmed by the state Senate and Assembly, both controlled by Democrats. Becerra said he hasn’t been told when a confirmation vote might happen.
Earlier, Becerra had flirted with a bid for U.S. Senate when Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) announced plans to retire, but Harris’ quick entry into the race kept him and other California Democrats from running.
Holding such a prominent statewide post would raise Becerra’s profile as the Golden State’s foil to Trump, potentially setting him up to run for governor or U.S. Senate in the future. The attorney general, by virtue of the office’s broad power, will likely be a key player alongside Brown in pushing back against Trump’s proposed efforts on issues important to California, including immigration and climate change. In Texas, a state that has its own experience fighting the federal government, attorneys general have been a major force in the battle over states’ rights.
“He has great tenacity and he respects the rights of all Californians — much-needed qualities for an attorney general given the troubling times ahead,” Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon (D-Paramount) said Thursday.
Several congressional colleagues echoed that sentiment.
“Many of the values that we stand by in California will be under attack in the next few years, and Chairman Becerra is the fighter I want in our corner,” Rep. Tony Cardenas (D-Los Angeles) said in a statement.
Becerra said that with Trump headed to the White House, he’s prepared to protect California’s progressive policies on immigration, the Affordable Care Act, energy and criminal justice. As California politicians embrace their roles in guarding the state against Trump’s policies, Becerra threw down his own gauntlet Thursday.
“If you want to take on a forward-leaning state that is prepared to defend its rights and interests, then come at us,” Becerra said.
A vocal advocate for Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid, Becerra was briefly floated as a potential pick for vice president or a Cabinet position. With Clinton’s loss Nov. 8 and no upward mobility available in House leadership, Becerra’s future political career was unclear.
He’d reached the time limit on serving as caucus chairman, the fourth highest-ranking House Democratic leadership position, and with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) and the other two Democrats above him in leadership staying put, there was no path up the ladder headed into the next Congress.
Becerra serves on the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, and made a play as recently as Tuesday to be the committee’s ranking Democrat. He was quickly endorsed by the current ranking member, Rep. Sandy Levin (D-Mich.), who said in a statement Thursday that he respects that Becerra “feels a special responsibility during these difficult times to look after vital legal interests in his home state.”
Democrats across California reacted Thursday with effusive praise for Becerra. Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom called him “a thoughtful and effective leader, with a keen legal mind and a passion for giving a voice to the voiceless.”
In particular, some pointed out the importance of elevating a Latino politician to statewide office, alongside both Latino leaders of the Legislature and Secretary of State Alex Padilla.
“It’s good for the state’s future,” said Bill Lockyer, who served as attorney general from 1999 to 2007.
The announcement also meant early guessing as to who would replace Becerra in representing downtown Los Angeles and communities to the west and north in Congress. Becerra won reelection in November in the solidly Democratic district. A special election to fill the seat would probably take place in late spring of 2017, though the law gives Brown wide discretion on the precise schedule.
John A. Pérez, the former Assembly speaker and current University of California regent, announced his bid less than an hour after Brown’s announcement, and more contenders may follow.
sarah.wire@latimes.com; john.myers@latimes.com
Follow @sarahdwire and @johnmyers on Twitter
Read more about the 55 members of California’s delegation at latimes.com/politics
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Supreme Court says ex-LAPD officer may be sued for excessive force in street shooting
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court refused Monday to block an excessive force lawsuit against a former Los Angeles Police Department officer who shot and killed a knife-wielding man whose speeding truck had slammed into several cars near downtown Los Angeles.
The court turned down an appeal petition from the Los Angeles city attorney’s office, over the objections of Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr.
Litigation over the six-second shooting incident has extended over six years.
Federal judges in California agreed that Officer Toni McBride had reason to fire four shots at the suspect in April 2020 but not the two final shots that killed him.
Daniel Hernandez was alleged to be under the influence of methamphetamine when he got out of his truck and walked toward the officer. She repeatedly ordered him, “Drop the knife,” as he approached.
But the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, by a 6-5 vote, ruled last year that a jury could decide the officer went too far when she fired two final shots after the suspect had fallen to the ground.
The majority reasoned that in the one-second pause between shots four and five, McBride “could have and should first reassessed the situation” and possibly concluded the suspect no longer posed a danger.
That ruling would have sent the case to a trial.
But the Los Angeles city’s attorney’s office appealed to the Supreme Court in October and urged the justices to review and reverse the 9th Circuit’s decision.
The city’s attorneys said the appeals court failed to consider the “totality of circumstances from the perspective of a reasonable officer on the scene” and its decision refused “to allow for reasonable mistakes in fast-moving, life-threatening encounters.”
UC Berkeley law dean Erwin Chemerinsky filed a response for the Hernandez family. He urged the court to stand aside and let a jury decide whether the officer’s actions were reasonable.
“The 9th Circuit simply held that it should be for the jury to resolve the factual dispute over what happened,” he said.
The justices had considered the appeal since late February before finally turning it down without comment on Monday.
The Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled police officers may be sued for unreasonable searches and seizures only if they are shown to have knowingly violated clearly established law.
However, this doctrine of “qualified immunity” has divided judges over whether a particular rule or limit has been clearly established.
The 9th Circuit majority said shooting a fallen suspect crosses the line.
“It has been clearly established for more than a decade that when an officer shoots and wounds a suspect, and he falls to the ground, the officer cannot continue to shoot him, absent some indication that he presents a continuing threat,” wrote Judge Jacqueline H. Nguyen.
“A fallen and injured suspect armed only with a bladed instrument does not present a continuing threat merely because he makes nonthreatening movements on the ground. … Under such circumstances, a jury could reasonably find that she employed constitutionally excessive force. If so, she is not entitled to qualified immunity,” she said.
The five dissenters said the officer made a reasonable split-second decision.
Judge Ryan Nelson said McBride “was justified in shooting Daniel Hernandez to alleviate the risk that he posed when he advanced toward her while armed and ignoring commands to stop. … She cannot be reasonably expected or required to reassess her shooting in a tight six second period during an intense and dangerous situation throughout which Hernandez was rising and never stopped moving.”
Judge Patrick Bumatay echoed this concern.
“Judges review police shootings only in hindsight. We review police tapes years after the fact. We get to rewind, pause, fast forward — analyzing the situation frame-by-frame. While the advent of police bodycam videos has been a welcome change, we can’t ignore that real life isn’t in slow motion,” he said.
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L.A. could get democratic socialists in mayor, city attorney spots
Democratic socialists are looking to extend their power in Los Angeles City Hall this fall with their biggest prizes yet: mayor and city attorney.
Mayoral candidate Nithya Raman and city attorney hopeful Marissa Roy, both members of the Los Angeles chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, are heading into the Nov. 3 general election with strong showings in the June 2 primary as tailwinds.
If she prevails in November, Raman would join the ranks of democratic socialists leading big U.S. cities, including New York’s Zohran Mamdani and Seattle’s Katie Wilson. Washington, D.C., looks to be next: Janeese Lewis George won the Democratic primary for mayor there this month, all but ensuring her a general election win in that deep-blue city.
In Los Angeles, a democratic socialist mayor and city attorney could mean added clout because of an ideological lockstep between the two offices, said Fernando Guerra, a political science professor at Loyola Marymount University. In such a scenario, he said, the city attorney’s office is less likely to be a check against the mayor’s authority to set policy on issues such as land use and public safety.
“It’s incredibly substantive that the city attorney will interpret much of the policy that the mayor may push to be the right policy, and not challenge it,” Guerra said.
The election of Raman and Roy would also underscore the leftward tilt of Los Angeles, which has four City Council members, including Raman, who are DSA members — two of whom were reelected in the primary. City Controller Kenneth Mejia, who was recommended (although not formally endorsed) by DSA, was also reelected.
The DSA champions ideas sharply to the left of more establishment Democrats, such as incumbent L.A. Mayor Karen Bass. The L.A. DSA chapter, for example, says its objectives include abolishing prisons and defunding the police.
DSA-L.A. co-chair Sean Wakasa said his organization is thriving in L.A. and across the country because it has destigmatized the concept of socialism.
“Democratic socialism ultimately, at the end of the day, is about making the politics that working-class Americans can see themselves in,” Wakasa said.
In Los Angeles, Wakasa said, a DSA mayor would be expected to build more public transit, strengthen protections for renters, fight for workers’ rights, raise the minimum wage and defend local immigrants from the federal government.
The city attorney, he said, would be expected to defend working-class Angelenos by enforcing renter protections, resolving wage-theft issues and enforcing sanctuary city policies.
Business groups and public safety advocates have voiced concerns over the prospects of DSA members calling the shots at City Hall.
“They would run roughshod over the city,” said Stuart Waldman, president of the Valley Industry and Commerce Assn. He said Raman and Roy “don’t just drink the DSA Kool-Aid, they live it.”
Waldman said he would expect Los Angeles under democratic socialist leadership to adopt overzealous tenant protection policies that would discourage new rental development. He said they would also seek to weaken the police, leading to a “free-for-all for crime.”
“They would run business out,” Waldman said.
Roy, who has promised to turn the city attorney’s office into “the largest public interest law firm in the city,” targeting wage theft, tenant harassment and other issues, disputed Waldman’s assertion.
“Allowing corporate bad actors to violate our laws doesn’t make L.A. safer or more affordable — enforcing protections for renters, workers, and consumers does,” Roy said in a statement.
Raman said in a statement that she shares “DSA’s commitment to fighting for working people and those who have been left behind by a political system that too often serves powerful interests instead of everyday Angelenos.”
But she also said “there is no liberal or conservative way to fill a pothole.”
“I’ve always believed the most progressive thing you can do is actually make government deliver,” Raman said. “Every time City Hall fails to do that— potholes that don’t get fixed, streetlights that stay dark, 911 calls that go unanswered — it erodes people’s faith that government can solve problems at all.”
Rick Cole, a former deputy mayor of L.A., said the DSA label for both candidates doesn’t mean they’ll adhere to the most dramatized versions of what DSA stands for. Neither candidate is an ideologue, he said.
Raman’s membership in DSA “is a signifier she’s going to be more skeptical of current policing,” said Cole, a Pasadena City Council member. “She’s going to be more focused on affordable housing. She’s going to be more focused on a humane approach to getting people off the streets.”
A poll by the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies that was co-sponsored by The Times showed that in a head-to-head runoff, Raman was supported by 32% of the registered voters polled, compared with 28% for Bass.
Bass finished first in the primary, ahead of Raman, with former reality TV personality Spencer Pratt finishing in third place.
With Pratt now out, the race is on for both campaigns to appeal to his voters, who are generally considered more conservative. Even so, the Bass campaign said it doesn’t plan to focus on Raman’s DSA affiliation.
“What’s important isn’t labels — it’s what her [Raman’s] record shows, and that’s voting over and over and over to allow encampments near schools and to shrink our police force. It goes against what L.A. needs and what most of L.A. believes,” Bass campaign spokesperson Alex Stack said in a statement.
Raman, who was twice elected to the City Council with DSA support, has voted against additional police hiring and spending and creating new anti-encampment zones around the city.
One irony is that the three other members of the DSA on the City Council — Eunisses Hernandez, Ysabel Jurado and Hugo Soto-Martínez — have all endorsed Bass, citing the mayor’s fierce resistance to the Trump administration’s immigration raids last year, among other factors.
In the primary, DSA’s L.A. chapter recommended Raman but didn’t endorse her, with the distinction being that an endorsement comes with active canvassing and support from DSA members. DSA-LA co-chair Leslie Chang said it wasn’t yet clear whether her group would endorse Raman in the runoff.
A DSA endorsement for Raman now might be a mixed blessing, given that Pratt’s support came from more conservative parts of the city, said Christian Grose, a political science professor at USC.
“Karen Bass is not popular with Pratt voters, and the DSA is not popular with Pratt voters, but that’s who will decide the mayor’s election,” he said.
Roy, a deputy state attorney general, finished first in the city attorney primary by a wide margin and will compete against John McKinney, a deputy district attorney, in the runoff.
McKinney said electing Roy to the city attorney’s office would be like “going back in time” to when George Gascón was the top prosecutor in Los Angeles County, which police and prosecutors said was a disaster for public safety.
In the recent City Council primaries, DSA-endorsed incumbents Hernandez and Soto-Martinez both won reelection easily, while DSA-endorsed Faizah Malik failed to push incumbent Traci Park into a runoff in her Westside district.
In the Council District 9 race, DSA-endorsed community organizer Estuardo Mazariegos will be in a runoff with Jose Ugarte, a former aide to termed-out incumbent Curren Price.
DSA leaders are pleased overall with how their candidates have performed.
“DSA has really claimed a foothold for ourselves in L.A. County politics,” Chang said.
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