california

CALIFORNIA: Three people were charged by federal authorities in Los Angeles on Wednesday with stealing $12 million in federal and state homelessness aid to pay for real estate, luxury trips and vintage vehicles.

It was the second such arrest of people on federal fraud charges in Southern California this week, as President Donald Trump’s administration tries to emphasize a crackdown on fraud and waste in government and aid programs. On Tuesday, 12 people were charged with stealing more than $10 million in federal childcare aid.

The three defendants each worked for or ran Southern California-based nonprofit organizations, which often contracted with city, county, state or federal agencies to provide aid or money to find housing and social services for homeless people. Prosecutors allege that the defendants used funds from those contracts to pay personal expenses, accepted bribes, and billed for services that were never provided.

“Make no mistake, HUD and the Trump administration will not tolerate the theft and abuse of taxpayers in this country,” Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Scott Turner said at a news conference.

Turner used the indictments to accuse the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, which approved grants to these defendants, of being negligent with taxpayer dollars.

Taxpayer aid spent on video games, nightclubs

Two defendants, Lakiya Malone, 48, and Michael Young, 46, were arrested early Wednesday in Los Angeles. A third defendant charged with wire fraud, Donye Mitchell, 55, is considered a fugitive.

Young is the founder of Home At Last, a nonprofit that took in more than $118 million in public funds since 2019 for its stated mission of providing housing and aid to homeless people.

Federal prosecutors say Young instead created shell companies that he claimed were independent contractors but were, in fact, controlled by him. This alleged self-dealing allowed Young to be paid both at Home At Last and overbill federal and local authorities, prosecutors said. They say Young misused an estimated $7.5 million in taxpayer funds through fake contractors and vendors.

Young used the proceeds to take luxury trips to Tahiti, and used funds to open a nightclub in Inglewood called the Six Seven Five Lounge and other commercial real estate projects, prosecutors allege.

Mitchell is the CEO of Big Blue Umbrella, which was awarded more than $1.2 million from a federally supported nonprofit for housing and mental health care aid. Prosecutors say Mitchell not only misstated his organization’s ability to provide such services, but also used money from the award to pay off his credit card debts, give funds to family members, buy video games and pay legal expenses for an unrelated case.

Malone was charged with accepting more than $180,000 in bribes from another homelessness-aid nonprofit. Malone allegedly not only accepted bribes but also placed people in homeless aid programs who weren’t homeless.

Separately, federal prosecutors announced that a fourth person pleaded guilty to wire fraud and money laundering charges for stealing at least $2 million in homeless aid. Alexander Soofer, the executive director of Abundant Blessings, admitted to working with Malone to bill federal and state authorities for homelessness aid services when there were no participants in his programs.

Big money, little documentation

Some 72,000 to 75,000 people live in shelters or encampments in Los Angeles and Los Angeles County, making it one of the largest homeless populations in the country. It has been a significant issue in Southern California for years, and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass made it a cornerstone of her 2022 election campaign.

City and county authorities spend roughly $1 billion a year trying to help the homeless population, often using LAHSA to coordinate aid. While significant funds are spent to address the issue, city and county reviews have repeatedly found that the programs lacked appropriate recordkeeping, audit trails and documentation.

Nathan Hochman, the district attorney for Los Angeles County, told reporters that the public should expect more investigations and indictments into the misuse of homeless aid funds. Hochman’s office’s investigation into Soofer and Abundant Blessings led to his indictment earlier this year.

“I can assure this is the beginning of these prosecutions and we are far, far from the end,” he said, adding that his office’s investigation had found that the only “abundant blessings” Soofer provided were to his friends and family.

Some of the Trump administration’s efforts to go after fraud and abuse of government benefit programs have faced criticism and legal challenges. In December, Vice President JD Vance, who chairs the administration’s task force on the subject, amplified a YouTube video of a popular right-wing influencer accusing childcare providers in Minnesota, many of them immigrants from Somalia, of running scams. State authorities visited the centers and found nearly all of them operating normally.

Nonetheless, the administration launched a massive immigration crackdown in Minnesota. Officials later attempted to freeze federal funds for childcare in five Democratic-led states but were halted by a lawsuit.

For the first time since California and Congress passed a pair of laws bolstering U.S.-based claims to Nazi-looted artwork around the world, two lawsuits have been filed in California demanding prominent museums relinquish pieces seized during World War II.

In one case, filed in federal court in Los Angeles on Monday, the daughters of Auschwitz survivor Dina Gottliebova Babbitt sued the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum in Poland for the return of watercolors Babbitt was forced to paint of fellow prisoners for the Nazi physician and war criminal Josef Mengele.

In the other, filed in Los Angeles Superior Court on Monday, the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles and Daniel Gryczman, the federation’s board chair, sued the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena for the return of the diptych “Adam and Eve,” a pair of 16th century masterpieces by Lucas Cranach the Elder.

The lawsuits revive legal battles waged unsuccessfully for the watercolors and the diptych for years, on the premise that their claims are newly viable under the new laws — one passed by California lawmakers in 2024 and the other signed into law by President Trump earlier this year.

Both laws were inspired in part by another legal battle over looted art between a California family and a prominent museum, which is still ongoing.

Lilly Cassirer Neubauer escaped Germany at the dawn of World War II by relinquishing to a Nazi art broker the exquisite impressionist masterpiece “Rue Saint-Honoré in the Afternoon. Effect of Rain,” by Camille Pissarro. The painting is now worth millions. Her grandson Claude Cassirer, who moved to California, and great-grandson David Cassirer have been fighting for the painting’s return from the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection in Madrid for the last two decades.

Amid that battle, California lawmakers rewrote state law to make clear that in situations where it and another jurisdiction’s law on looted artwork are in conflict, California law applies and requires the return of the art to its original owners regardless of the passage of time. In an unusual moment of bipartisanship, Congress followed up by passing its own measure — the Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery Act of 2025 — to further bolster such family claims.

The two new lawsuits — neither of which provide a valuation for the artwork in question — were filed just ahead of a deadline under the California law for claims to artwork with long-known locations.

David Cassirer said his father would be “extremely proud” to know a California law passed in part in response to his family’s fight has also given other families another chance “to vindicate their ancestors’ artistic legacies.”

Auschwitz watercolors

Michele Babbitt Kane, of Ben Lomond, Calif., and Karin Wendy Babbitt, of Las Vegas, say in their lawsuit that Mengele demanded their mother produce the seven watercolors in question — each depicting a Roma prisoner later murdered — to support his “pseudo-scientific” and racist work studying the Roma people. Known as the “Angel of Death,” Mengele conducted gruesome medical experiments on Auschwitz prisoners.

They said their mother obliged “with deep sympathy for her subjects,” on the condition Mengele “spare her and her mother from the gas chambers.”

After liberation, the lawsuit says, their mother moved to California and worked for nearly 20 years as an animation assistant for Hollywood studios such as MGM and Warner Bros., where she contributed to familiar cartoon characters such as Wile E. Coyote, Tweety, Daffy Duck and Speedy Gonzales.

They say theirs is exactly the sort of case California’s new law was enacted to allow — involving “a California family seeking the return of watercolors created by their Jewish mother under Nazi coercion at Auschwitz and withheld by a Polish state museum for decades despite the Museum’s own repeated acknowledgments of the family’s rights.”

Paweł Sawicki, a spokesperson for the Auschwitz Memorial, said in a statement to The Times that the Babbitt paintings “must remain in the Memorial as part of the documentation of the crimes of Mengele,” and that many in the Roma community agree.

“We fully understand the emotional approach of Dina Gottliebova’s family to the works she made on the orders of Josef Mengele in circumstances that certainly affected her life, but in carrying out our statutory responsibility, we express the deep conviction that the watercolors should remain at the Memorial,” Sawicki said. “The portraits of Roma victims are the few remaining fragments of the documentation made by Mengele as part of his criminal experiments. Therefore, they should be treated as unique documents related to the history of Auschwitz.”

‘Adam and Eve’ diptych

According to the Jewish Federation’s lawsuit, the “Adam and Eve” paintings were part of a vast collection seized from prominent Dutch Jewish art dealer Jacques Goudstikker by Hermann Göring, Hitler’s second-in-command. The collection was later recovered by Allied forces and given to the Dutch government, with the diptych being sold to the Norton Simon in 1971.

The lawsuit says Marei von Saher, Goudstikker’s surviving heir, has long sought the return of the Goudstikker collection, and years ago was successful in forcing the Dutch government to return 200 pieces still in its possession. She first demanded the “Adam and Eve” paintings from the Norton Simon in 2000, without success.

The new lawsuit says Von Saher on Monday signed her claimed rights to the paintings over to Gryczman and the Jewish Federation, which said in a statement that they will use a majority of any proceeds from the return of the paintings to “care for Los Angeles-area Holocaust survivors living in poverty.”

Von Saher’s daughter, Charlène von Saher, said in an interview that her family gave the painting rights to the Jewish Federation because of that shared mission. She said she wishes California and Congress had acted sooner but hopes a win now will help other Jewish families reclaim what is rightfully theirs in the future.

“My grandfather lost his life fleeing the Nazi invasion, and many of his family members were sent to Auschwitz and did not survive,” she said. “Victory would be justice, and a piece of the puzzle to restoring my grandfather’s legacy and his collection.”

The Norton Simon Art Foundation said in a statement to The Times that it was reviewing the new lawsuit, but that various courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, have over decades of litigation confirmed that the foundation “has proper title” to the diptych paintings, and the foundation “will continue to make these important artworks accessible to the public.”

The Pissarro

The Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection and the Kingdom of Spain, which owns it, have fought the Cassirer family’s claims to the Pissarro painting since Claude Cassirer, now deceased, first sued for its return in 2005. Spain has argued the painting was legally obtained by the collection prior to its 1993 sale to the country by Baron Hans Heinrich von Thyssen-Bornemisza, a prolific art collector whose wealthy industrialist family helped finance Adolf Hitler’s rise.

The matter has repeatedly wound its way through the U.S. courts, including to the Supreme Court, which remanded the case to the lower courts for additional review in light of California’s new law. A hearing is set for next month.

The museum has contended California’s new law is unconstitutional, which California is contesting. David Cassirer has argued the law clearly requires the museum to return the painting — and has pledged to support other looting victims with any proceeds.

He said both California and Congress “acted decisively to guarantee that stolen art victims, and victims of political persecution in particular, can have a fair shot to recover family legacies the Nazis ruthlessly tried to destroy,” and that “the momentum at all levels of government in favor of restitution is very encouraging.”

There are many states in America where a governor shares the ticket with his or her running mate. Nevada is not one of them.

That, however, is but a small detail.

Joe Lombardo, Nevada’s Republican governor, is seeking election to his second term. His chief opponent is Aaron Ford, Nevada’s Democratic attorney general.

But to hear Lombardo and his allies tell it, Ford’s guru, his doppelganger, his soulmate and political inspiration — if not his actual running mate — is the Democratic governor living next door. It’s almost as if Lombardo is facing Gavin Newsom in November.

Look, there, along the streets of Las Vegas, you’ll see California’s governor on billboards, grinning alongside Ford.

Stop at the gas pump, wince at the pain and ask yourself why? It’s not President Trump and the muddle-headed war he started over in Iran. Blame Newsom.

Higher taxes and more spending? Only if Newsom, er, Ford, has his way.

“It’s official,” a chirpy announcer says in one pro-Lombardo campaign spot. “Shared vision. Shared values. Aaron Ford: Gavin Newsom’s choice for Nevada.”

Lombardo seemed, for a time, the most politically vulnerable Republican governor in the country. Things have looked up. He’s built a big financial advantage over Ford. But anti-Trump sentiments are keeping the Democrat in contention, which is what happens when an incumbent is running shackled to a ball and chain.

Enter Newsom.

A familiar playbook

It’s not at all surprising he would endorse a member of his own party, especially in Nevada, which is holding one of the first contests of the 2028 presidential race. Newsom, if you haven’t heard, has been positioning himself for a potential White House bid for years. Backing Ford is a way of collecting chits, as they say in gambling and politics.

It’s also not surprising that Lombardo would try to deflect from the unpopular Trump by yoking his opponent to Newsom. Select a polarizing member of the opposite party and suggest your rival is their slavish devotee; it’s a strategy as well-thumbed as a Los Angeles-to-Las Vegas road atlas. (Google it, kids.)

In Nevada, the attack can have added resonance when the offending politician is from California, which has long been viewed, by some at least, as an overpriced, tax-happy, left-wing lunatic asylum.

“There’s a tendency in Nevada to worry about what’s called ‘Californication’ and this has gone on quite a while,” said Michael Green, a historian at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, who suggested it’s a particular slice of California, not the moderately conservative Central Valley but rather outré San Francisco, that Lombard is trying to convey.

For the governor, Newsom-bashing is a return to form.

Four years ago, as the sheriff of Clark County — that’s Las Vegas — Lombardo said the Democratic incumbent, Steve Sisolak, cared “more about copying Gavin Newsom than governing in the best interest of Nevadans.”

This time, Lombardo has focused on high fuel prices, a particular torment in a vast state with a lot of long, gas-guzzling stretches of rural highway. In March, he sent an open letter to Newsom blaming California’s environmental policies for running up energy costs. (Nevada relies on California for nearly 90% of its transportation fuels, which mainly flow from Southern California refineries to Las Vegas.)

In April, he explicitly blamed “Gavin Newsom’s energy policies” for “driving higher gas prices for Nevada families” and said Ford refused to push back because “he doesn’t want to risk his relationship with his biggest ally.”

Newsom vs. Lombardo

Turnabout being fair play, the Ford campaign has responded by tying Nevada’s governor to the unpopular president.

“Joe Lombardo is endorsed by Donald Trump and is running on a platform of raising costs and is laser-focused on taking care of Trump’s billionaire friends and padding the pockets of greedy corporations,” said spokesperson Tai Sims, who suggested the governor was relying on a “failed MAGA playbook” because “he’s too busy embracing Trump’s cost-raising agenda to acknowledge the economic pain caused by the Lombardo-Trump economy.”

Newsom and Lombardo have also gone at it.

“Since I took office, Nevada has created more jobs than California,” Lombardo boasted in a July posting on X that, of course, tied Ford to Newsom. “As Governor, I’ll never let Nevada become an extension of California’s failed agenda.”

“FALSE!” Newsom’s press team replied, with a Pinnochio-nosed emoji and a link to Federal Reserve data. “Using the same official jobs measure your office cites, California added about 340,900 jobs from December 2022 through June 2026. Nevada added 100,800.”

Lombardo hasn’t just focused on economics. Playing on old animosities, he told a Jewish Republican audience in Las Vegas last month that a certain California governor “wanted to pass two holidays for the Muslim community, agnostic to the Jewish community.” (Legislation that would add Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha to the list of state holidays is on Newsom’s desk, for him to sign or veto.)

“That’s not going to happen in the state of Nevada,” Lombardo said to applause, and so much for appealing to the better angels of our nature.

In the end, will the forced marriage of Newsom and Ford matter?

Probably not a whole lot. There are doubtless many things that matter more to your typical Nevadan than whether California’s governor hearts the state’s attorney general.

Wait until 2028. If Newsom is on the ballot, then we’ll find out what Nevada truly thinks of its next-door neighbor.

What else you should be reading

Get smart: Questions swirl over Trump’s pledge to give $5,000 payouts if GOP wins
The deep dive: Will the economy motivate voters? This Central Valley swing district could be a test
The L.A. Times Special:California provides tax breaks to Hollywood. Why not struggling news outlets?
Until next time,
mzb
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Californians are deeply frustrated with the length of the November ballot, which includes 14 statewide propositions, and gloomy about the direction of the state and the nation, according to a Public Policy Institute of California poll published Tuesday night.

They “are feeling very pessimistic,” said Mark Baldassare, PPIC’s statewide survey director. “You know that comes out not just in the questions we ask about the economy, but generally about the direction of the state and the nation. This just indicates the level of negativity that people have going into this final stage before people cast their ballots this November.”

More than half of the state’s likely voters believe that California is headed in the wrong direction, and 73% predict sour economic times in the state next year. Less than a quarter of likely voters believe the nation is headed in the right direction.

President Trump has an approval rating of 27% of likely voters, but that’s better than Congress, which has a 16% approval rating. Majorities do not have confidence in either major political party’s ability to solve problems.

Ballots will begin arriving in 23.2 million voters’ mailboxes in a little over two weeks. Nearly 80% of likely voters are frustrated by the length of the ballot, which includes 14 propositions as well as statewide, congressional and local elections. This a rare consensus among Democratic, Republican and independent voters.

“This year, there are more propositions on the ballot than we’ve seen for a decade,” Baldassare said. “Overwhelming majorities of Californians say that there are too many propositions on the ballot, too many things for them to decide. And many Californians feel that the wording of ballot initiatives makes it very hard for them to understand what happens if one passes.”

The proposal to tax the assets of billionaires to make up for federal government healthcare cuts, Proposition 40, has a slim lead in the poll, with 52% of likely voters saying they support the one-time 5% levy.

However, there are two ballot measures, Propositions 41 and 42, that would nullify the wealth tax if one is approved and gets more votes than Proposition 40. Narrow majorities support both of these proposals, creating a quandary for wealth tax supporters: ensuring their proposal receives the support of a majority of voters while also tamping down support for the competing efforts.

Findings about the proposal to require showing government-issued identification to vote and the governor’s race show less competitive contests that break along predictable partisan lines in a state where registered Democratic voters outnumber Republicans nearly 2 to 1.

The voter ID measure is opposed by 55% of likely voters. In the race to succeed termed-out Gov. Gavin Newsom, 60% of likely voters support Democrat Xavier Becerra, and 38% support Republican Steve Hilton. The other 2% were undecided or do not plan to vote on the race.

The poll of 1,745 adult Californians was conducted Sept. 4-10, and has a margin of error of about 3 percentage points in either direction, and 3.8 percentage points among the 1,103 likely voters.

LONDON — Prince Harry and his wife, Meghan, have moved their two children to a new school over security concerns, a spokesperson said Tuesday, just weeks after the family returned to the U.K. to make a fresh start.

“The decision for the children to move school was taken following a discussion with the family’s security team about the practicalities of their current arrangements,” the spokesperson said in a statement.

Prince Archie, 7, and Princess Lilibet, 5, had only just started the new school year in England after the family relocated from California in late August.

British media reported that the distance of the school run and the heavy traffic on the route were among the concerns raised by the couple and their security team. The family is living at a private, non-royal residence outside of London.

“This decision should in no way be interpreted as a reflection on the school or the exceptional care the children have received there,” the statement added.

The news followed reports that Harry and Meghan were awaiting a new risk assessment from the government committee that reviews protection of VIPs, including a decision on whether the family should be entitled to publicly funded security now that they live in the U.K.

Harry and Meghan gave up their royal duties and moved to California more than six years ago, saying they wanted to earn their own living. They later signed lucrative contracts with Netflix and Spotify.

Although relations with the rest of the royal family have soured since then, Harry has recently expressed an interest in reconciliation so he could spend more time with his father, King Charles III.

Harry has fought a long-running battle with Britain’s government for the restoration of publicly funded police protection, which was canceled when the couple gave up their royal roles.

He had previously said he couldn’t “see a world in which I would be bringing my wife and children back to the U.K.” without a security guarantee.

Earlier this month, the king reiterated that Harry and Meghan remain non-working members of the royal family and would continue to refrain from using formal royal titles, such as his royal highness and her royal highness, as they have done since 2020. The couple said they were surprised by the way the monarch issued that statement because they were given little time to review it.

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court has blocked President Trump’s plan to restrict voting by mail, ruling it is too late to impose new postal service rules for the November election.

The justices on Monday turned down an emergency appeal from Trump’s lawyers, who argued the government needed a new and untested system of unique bar codes to track all the ballots of the tens of millions of people who vote by mail.

Instead, the justices left in place a judge’s order that prevents the U.S. Postal Service from enforcing the new rules for the midterm elections.

Concurring, Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh agreed it was too late to enforce the new rules for this election.

Justices Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Clarence Thomas dissented.

The decision in USPS vs. California is a victory for California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta and the attorneys general for 22 other Democratic-led states who sued to block the new rules.

Last week, they warned there would be chaos and confusion if Trump’s rules were put in effect now.

Bonta cheered the decision late Monday, calling it “a victory for our democracy and a powerful affirmation of the rule of law” in a case where the stakes “could not have been higher.”

“Voting is the fundamental right from which all other rights flow, and all 50 states allow ballots to be cast by mail in some form. In California and several other states, mail voting is the primary way elections are conducted,” Bonta said. “Had this rule been allowed to take effect, the consequences would have been catastrophic.”

He said his office “will remain vigilant in safeguarding our elections,” and urged voters to make their voices heard.

Under the proposed rules, state and county election officials across the nation would be required to enroll each voter with a unique bar code and submit this data to a new online portal that, as of last week, was not yet functioning.

Without the individualized bar codes, states could not send ballots through the mail. In California, that would mean election officials would have to enroll 23 million voters with new bar codes before state ballots could be mailed.

“Compliance with the USPS’ rule would be impossible ahead of the midterms, meaning that millions of voters would be unable to vote by mail and some would not be able to vote at all,” the state attorneys general told the court last week.

The impact would not be limited to Democratic-leaning states. Utah Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson said it would be “an unmitigated disaster” if the new rules were put into effect now. About 30% of the nation’s voters — and 80% of Californians — cast ballots by mail in 2024.

But Trump has maintained, without providing evidence, that voting by mail leads to widespread cheating and fraud.

In March, he issued an executive order that called on the postal service to do more to “enhance election integrity.”

“Unique ballot envelope identifiers, such as bar codes, enable confirmation that only citizens receive and cast ballots,” he said.

Elections experts say there is no evidence of such widespread fraud, despite robust audits and other searches for it.

State attorneys general argued that the Constitution entrusts states, not federal officials, to conduct elections. While Congress may impose new rules, it is not done to limit voting by mail or to empower the postal service to do so, they said.

Trump and his lawyers maintained the administration had a duty to combat fraud, including in elections.

Solicitor Gen. D. John Sauer described the new rules as “modest measures that will help prevent and restrain potential gross abuses of the mails to perpetrate a fraud on the Nation.”

And he said the federal government, the states and the voting public would face irreparable harm if the new Postal Service rules were not allowed to be applied to the coming election.

But U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani, in Boston, ruled the postal service may not put its new regulations into effect for the Nov. 3 election. She found the Trump administration had presented no evidence to the court of widespread fraud existing, while the states had presented ample evidence that implementing such a system on such a fast timeline posed tremendous risk.

The 1st Circuit Court affirmed her order and said the administration’s lawyers “have not even seriously challenged the … detailed findings about the chaos and widespread disenfranchisement that would occur between now and November 3 should the USPS rule take immediate effect.”

On Sunday, U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols — a Trump appointee — also blocked the new Postal Service rules from being implemented in separate cases brought by the NAACP and Democratic groups, finding they clearly exceeding the Postal Service’s authority in elections.

What the future will hold is unclear. The courts did not declare the new rules to be illegal or unconstitutional, though multiple lower courts have suggested that parts of the plan likely would be — including by exceeding the Postal Service’s authority to intervene in elections.

Much of the debate before the appellate and high court related to the rushed timeline under which the Postal Service was seeking to implement the changes. With that set aside by the Supreme Court’s ruling that the rules will not apply this election, the debate in the lower courts may shift focus to whether the new regulations can be applied to the 2028 elections.

Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar, chair of the Democratic Assn. of Secretaries of State, said the high court’s ruling was a clear loss for Trump, and that state election officials are ready to continue their fight to protect U.S. elections if necessary.

“This ruling affirms what our Constitution has always held: Elections belong to the American people, not a desperate man in Washington,” he said.

California and other Democratic-led states and localities filed a pair of lawsuits Monday challenging new Trump administration rules giving immigration officials more power to deny green cards to applicants whose families have relied on public assistance programs in the past.

The challenge mirrors another by a similar coalition that successfully halted such changes during the first Trump administration.

California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta, whose office is helping lead the states’ challenge, said the rule changes seek to “rewrite more than 100 years of law” by making even brief use of public benefits in years past grounds for the federal government to deny a person’s application for legal permanent residency in the future — which he said was clearly illegal and would push tremendous costs onto states, counties and cities.

“No family should have to choose between accessing healthcare and nutrition assistance today — or protecting their pathway to a green card tomorrow,” Bonta said. “We’re going to court on behalf of the millions of immigrants who call this state home — and we will fight to get this unlawful rule undone.”

San Francisco City Atty. David Chiu, whose office is helping lead a separate challenge from Democratic-led cities and counties, said in a statement that the new Trump administration policies are “a blatant attempt to sow fear and confusion in our immigrant communities and coerce people into withdrawing from critical government services” — which he also said would shift millions in costs to local governments.

A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, which promulgated the new rules, said the lawsuits were proof that immigrants are unlawfully tapping into benefits programs intended for U.S. citizens.

“Sanctuary states are terrified they will lose federal funds because hundreds of thousands of illegals and noncitizens might remove themselves from American welfare programs,” the spokesperson said. “This is the ideological contortion required by left-wing leaders to justify their defrauding of the American taxpayer at the hands of illegal criminals.”

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

President Trump won office on a promise to rein in illegal immigration. Since taking office, his administration has launched a mass crackdown that has targeted both undocumented and documented immigrants. It has done so in part by targeting federal and state programs that offer immigrant assistance — which Trump has derided as diverting resources away from U.S. citizens.

In their lawsuit, the states acknowledge that federal law enacted by Congress in 1882 allows the U.S. to deny noncitizens entry to the country if they would be a “public charge,” or someone who is unable to support themselves and must rely on the government for assistance.

However, the states argue that Congress, the courts and federal government agencies have for “over 140 years” understood the term “public charge” to mean a person “who has become, or is likely to become, primarily dependent on the government for long-term subsistence” — not someone who has ever taken public assistance of any kind in the past, even in the short term.

And yet, the new policy promulgated by Homeland Security and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services gives immigration officers “unprecedented, sweeping new discretion to deny admission” to families that have tapped any number of public assistance programs for which both Congress and individual states have chosen to make them eligible, the states wrote.

The lawsuit, joined by Bonta, the attorneys general of 19 other states and the District of Columbia, and the governor of Pennsylvania, was filed in federal court in New York.

A separate lawsuit was filed in the same court by San Francisco and Santa Clara County in California, as well as New York City, Chicago, and Seattle and surrounding King County, Wash.

In a morning news conference, Bonta said the Trump administration’s new rules target families in unprecedented ways.

As one example, he said the new rules would potentially allow immigration officials to deny permanent residency to immigrant parents based on their U.S. citizen children accessing public benefits that they are clearly entitled to under the law.

As another, he said the new rules could penalize immigrant families for accessing basic, preventative healthcare that actually helps control the broader public cost of illness to localities and states.

Chiu said federal limits on residency for those who would be a “public charge” have in the past been applied in a “narrow and consistent way,” focusing on certain cash assistance and long-term medical needs. The new rules, he said, make “almost any” kind of government assistance grounds for residency denial.

The states’ lawsuit — California’s 92nd against the current Trump administration — revises a policy battle that began during Trump’s first administration, when it attempted in 2019 to implement similar policies, was sued by California, San Francisco and Santa Clara County, and lost.

The Biden administration later dropped the plans to change the rules.

Tony LoPresti, county counsel for Santa Clara County — which has per capita one of the largest foreign-born populations in the country — said that it was “déjà vu all over again.” and that the Trump administration will lose again because the new “public charge” policy is “outright illegal.”

It “bullies our community members into dropping health insurance, bypassing food assistance and turning their back on critical services out of fear” and constitutes “a wealth test for residents who are lawfully seeking status,” LoPresti said.

Byron Sher, a Stanford law professor-turned California legislator who wrote some of the state’s most far-reaching environmental laws, died Saturday. He was 98.

Cerebral and soft-spoken, Sher was the antithesis of politicians nowadays. He rarely issued press releases, didn’t convene news conferences, and disliked raising campaign money.

But he left an indelible mark on the environment, authoring legislation offering incentives to recycle, limiting advertisers’ inflated claims about products’ environmental benefits and combating water and air pollution.

He helped lead the effort to preserve ancient redwoods in Headwaters Forest in Humboldt County in 1999, pushing the state and federal government to buy it from Texas financier Charles Hurwitz, who owned Pacific Lumber Co. and was preparing to log it.

A decade earlier, in 1988, Sher authored legislation requiring that California take stock of the sources of greenhouse gases. It was the first time the legislature in California — or any other state — embedded the term “global warming” into a state law, and became the foundation for bills in later decades to combat climate change.

“The heat is on,’’ Sher said presciently, as quoted by the Sacramento Bee on May 5, 1989. “The state can either ignore what science is telling us, or we can respond to this challenge in a responsible way.’’

Because of his legislation, manufacturers today sell more products in spray bottles rather than aerosol cans, people can more easily dispose of televisions and other electronic waste, and underground gasoline storage tanks rarely leak and foul groundwater.

“Byron Sher built the legal and research foundation for California’s climate change regime and by extension helped shape how the world has tried to handle climate change,” said Joe Mathews, a Berggruen Institute fellow who is working on a book about the state’s legislative efforts to confront global warming.

Today, Sher’s 1989 legislation creating state wild and scenic rivers is a barrier to President Trump’s proposal to raise Shasta Dam north of Redding to increase water storage, an idea backed by Central Valley farming interests. His legislation protects the McCloud River, which feeds Shasta Reservoir. Raising the dam would inundate habitat along the McCloud.

That Sher placed such ideas into law reflected his ability to persuade and compromise. Gov. George Deukmejian, a Republican, signed the wild rivers legislation, and Sher’s Clean Air Act, which helped shape federal clean air legislation signed in 1990 by President George H.W. Bush.

Their partisan differences aside, Deukmejian viewed Sher as having “great personal integrity,” said Steve Merksamer, who was Deukmejian’s chief of staff.

“When Byron Sher wanted to come into the office and had the bill, would he get in? Absolutely. Would the governor listen to him? Yes,” Merksamer said.

Sher did fall short of convincing Deukmejian to sign one of his bills — a whimsical measure inspired by a Camp Fire girls and boys troop to proclaim the banana slug to be the official state mollusk. Deukmejian vetoed the bill, though Gov. Gavin Newsom signed legislation in 2024 designating the slimy yellow creature as the official state slug.

Sher was born in St. Louis in 1928, graduated from Harvard Law School in 1952, and joined the Stanford Law School faculty in 1957. He served on the Palo Alto City Council in the 1960s, got recalled in 1967 over his opposition to development and won back his seat in the 1970s. Sher was Palo Alto mayor in 1980 when he won an Assembly seat. He remained in the Assembly until 1996 when he was elected to the state Senate, serving until 2004 when term limits forced him to step aside.

Among the students who passed through his Stanford classrooms was Newsom’s father, William Newsom, who became a state court of appeals justice.

Sher and his aide and friend Kip Lipper attended a 2010 banquet in San Francisco at which the California League of Conservation Voters honored Justice Newsom with the Byron Sher Lifetime Achievement Award. In his acceptance speech, Newsom recalled that Sher was the only Sanford professor who gave him a C. When Lipper asked whether the story was true, Sher deadpanned, “He deserved it.”

“There aren’t a lot of tales to tell about Byron Sher,” said Bill Lockyer, who was Senate leader when Sher won a state seat in 1996. “He went home at night and tended not to get into the Capitol gossip.”

In 1996, Lockyer entrusted Sher to serve on a joint Assembly-Senate conference committee that produced landmark legislation that sought to deregulate California’s electricity system.

Sher added provisions expanding requirements that the state use renewable sources of electricity and called the legislation “an extraordinary result” given the issue’s complexity. Lockyer said Sher’s additions, while important, were “the cherry on top of the toxic sundae.”

The legislation was blamed for California’s electricity crisis in 2000 and 2001 when swashbuckling energy traders manipulated the markets, causing prices to spike, resulting in rolling blackouts, and fueling the 2003 recall of Gov. Gray Davis.

Sher was notable for measures he refused to support. With a few other liberal Democrats, nicknamed the Grizzlies, Sher would pick through turgid language of legislation looking for provisions that reflected the undue influence of special interests.

Sher voted against 1986 legislation that purported to open the way for a shrimp processing facility in West Sacramento. The bill turned out to be part of an elaborate FBI sting that resulted in 14 legislators, lobbyists and others being sent to prison.

“He wasn’t a comfortable politician,” said San Mateo County Supervisor Jackie Speier, a former Democratic congresswoman who served in the Legislature with Sher. “He didn’t speak up a lot. So, when he did, people listened.”

He displayed partisan side in 1994 when Republicans took a 41-seat majority in the 80-seat Assembly, and Republican Assemblyman Jim Brulte was in line to be elected speaker. But Democratic Speaker Willie Brown had a Republican supporter, Paul Horcher, who voted to retain Brown as speaker, plunging the two parties into a yearlong fight for control.

To wrest control from Republicans, Brown asked the professorial Sher to challenge one Republican’s right to remain in the Assembly. That Republican, Richard Mountjoy of the San Gabriel Valley, won two elections that November — one to the Assembly and the other in a special state Senate election to fill the seat vacated when the incumbent, Frank Hill, was sentenced to prison in the corruption scandal.

Sher reasoned that Mountjoy had to make up his mind — stay in the Assembly or move to the Senate. Facing term limits in the Assembly, Mountjoy joined the Senate in January 1995. The partisan battle went on all that year.

Brulte, who never did become speaker, was elected to the Senate in 1996, as was Sher. On Sunday, he called Sher “a wonderful man.”

“Everything in politics today is personal. It wasn’t personal,” Brulte said of Sher’s role in the speakership battle. “Somebody may have taken it personally, but I certainly didn’t.”

Sher retired to a pear orchard in the Sierra Nevada foothills and served on Tahoe Regional Planning Agency and Sierra Nevada Conservancy.

His wife of 62 years, Linda Bowser Sher, died in 2014. He is survived by three children, five grandchildren and a great-granddaughter.

Morain is a former Los Angeles Times reporter.

SACRAMENTO — President Trump and the Republican Congress have unintentionally provided California state government with the financial means to subsidize — help save — endangered local news reporting.

Now it’s up to Gov. Gavin Newsom to capitalize on the unanticipated gift.

He can sign or veto legislation to end state tax breaks for large corporations paying top executives $1 million-plus salaries and, instead, provide tax breaks for struggling California news outlets employing local reporters.

The state legislation would conform California law to a little-known provision of Trump’s “Big Beautiful” tax bill that eliminated corporate deductions for execs’ compensation exceeding $1 million.

California newsrooms — print, broadcast, digital — would receive an estimated $43 million in tax credits for employees’ wages. There’d still be a net $15 million left over for a small state revenue boost.

I’ll admit to feeling a bit squeamish about this.

First, it’s a conflict of interest, arguing that a governor — whom my colleagues and I write about often — should shovel public dollars into our profession.

Second, why should state government and taxpayers be asked to subsidize a private enterprise that’s flailing in the marketplace? Especially one that prides itself in being an impartial watchdog over government actions and politicians’ behavior. The dog shouldn’t be begging for food from the critters it watches.

Well, one answer is that state government provides tax breaks for lots of interests, including Hollywood movie studios. We’re allotting $750 million annually in tax credits for films produced in California.

And there’s a bill on the governor’s desk to offer $100 million annually in tax credits for post-production work, such as editing, sound mixing and visual effects.

That’s all fine. What would California have become without a healthy Hollywood? I don’t want to imagine.

Newsom also recently provided $3,500 rebates to first-time electric vehicle buyers, benefiting Tesla and other EV makers. It was “investing in our future,” the governor explained.

OK, but subsidizing local news reporting is investing in democracy. Robust coverage of city halls, school boards, Sacramento politicians and the like is essential for self-government.

And that journalism is in free fall all across America as exploding technology and social media opportunism have altered news consumption, mostly bypassing local communities and often spewing misinformation.

So this legislation, AB 2222 by Assemblyman Christopher Ward (D-San Diego), reaches far beyond just helping the troubled news industry. It’s about more than providing media outlets with financial incentives to retain and hire local reporters. It’s bolstering democracy.

Independent journalism is a pillar of democracy, providing citizens with reliable, fact-based information about how their elected representatives are performing their duties, fulfilling their campaign promises and cozying up to special interests.

You’re not going to glean that information from the politicians. You’re going to get mostly self-serving spin — government propaganda — whether it emanates from the White House, the state Capitol or the local mosquito abatement district.

That’s why the nation’s Founders protected press freedom in the Constitution’s 1st Amendment.

Thomas Jefferson famously wrote: “Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.”

Of course, that was early in Jefferson’s political career, before he became vice president and later president. He ultimately turned into a harsh press critic. For example: “Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle.”

Jefferson, like countless politicians ever since, apparently carried a huge chip on his shoulder because of reporting on his job performance that ticked him off.

Newsom is a master at attracting friendly national news coverage, especially on cable TV. But he naturally shudders at more critical coverage by Sacramento beat reporters.

As of this writing, the governor hadn’t publicly disclosed how he feels about the local reporter tax credit bill.

His finance department, which crafts the state budget, opposed the measure when legislators were considering it. The state would “not [be] receiving any incremental economic benefit to justify the expenditure,” its analysis read.

Again, even if that were true, citizens and democracy would benefit.

Also, the analysis contended, the tax credit would likely “provide windfall benefits” for news media owners “rather than encourage new hiring activity.”

That’s not quite accurate. Anyway, it could discourage layoffs and save reporters’ jobs.

Late last week, the McClatchy newspaper chain — owner of the Sacramento Bee and several medium-sized California papers, plus dozens across America — announced massive newsroom layoffs.

Since 2002, more than 12,000 local journalism jobs have been lost in California, according to the bill’s sponsor, the advocacy group Rebuild Local News. More than 3,500 newspapers have closed nationwide.

Many communities have become “news deserts.”

When that happens, fewer citizens turn out to vote, tax money gets spent more carelessly and political corruption increases.

Under the legislation, California media outlets — big and small — would be granted modest tax credits for each employee covering state and local news. There’d be $20,000 for up to five full-time positions and $15,000 for each of the rest. On top of that, there’d be an additional $15,000 for every new full-time job that’s created. Part-timers would be entitled to $7,500.

“National news outlets would be excluded. So would partisan ‘pink slime’ sites controlled by political action committees,” says Matt Pearce, policy director for Rebuild Local News, a former Los Angeles Times reporter and newspaper guild leader.

It would be the most ambitious program of its kind in the country. New York, Illinois and New Mexico currently offer local news subsidies.

“It’s about civic infrastructure and the foundation of democracy. We’re teetering toward autocracy,” says former state Sen. Steve Glazer (D-Orinda), an ex-mayor who has long pushed for stronger local news coverage.

This bill won’t save local newsrooms. But it may give them breathing room while the big thinkers try to concoct a more profitable business model for democracy’s watchdog.

What else you should be reading

The must-read: Architect of billionaire tax tried to ‘extort’ support for the measure and targeted women, union reports find
Money (That’s what I want): Becerra backers with business in Sacramento spend tens of millions boosting his gubernatorial bid
The L.A. Times Special: Will ‘Coxon Day’ save us from AI destruction?

Until next week,
George Skelton

—
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The race for California’s next superintendent of public instruction is meant to be nonpartisan. Still, the two candidates — both school board presidents — are pushing decidedly political campaigns, one aligning with liberal Democrats and the other with pro-Trump Republicans as they present dueling visions for how the state’s children should be taught.

Democrat Richard Barrera, the favorite, beat out six other Democrats with his background in union organizing and liberal politics — and with more than $5 million from the California Teachers Assn. Republican Sonja Shaw rode a wave of support from a conservative education movement she helped build alongside MAGA organizations, Christian nationalists and anti-LGBTQ+ groups, while also consolidating mainstream Republicans behind her.

Although Democratic state lawmakers recently stripped many of the powers from the superintendent, the race remains a bellwether for how Californians feel about the public education of about 5.7 million children — as the Trump administration aggressively targets the state over its progressive policies.

Candidates’ disparate visions

Taking the California Democratic Party convention stage in February, Barrera, president of the San Diego Unified Board of Education, gave a quick shout-out to the California Teachers Assn. for backing his bid.

He then promoted his work in San Diego to improve student performance, raise teacher salaries and construct “environmentally sustainable schools built by union workers.” He blasted “downtown Republican business interests” for trying to privatize schools, and President Trump’s immigration policies, which he said terrify many California students who fear losing their undocumented parents.

“It’s time for us to organize, stand up to Trump, abolish ICE and create the schools our students are worthy of,” Barrera said.

Two months later, Shaw, president of the Chino Valley Unified School District Board of Education, introduced herself at an event as a mom and a “fighter” who isn’t afraid to “look the enemy in the eye” because God protects her.

She described her opponents as California liberals who pushed school closures and mask policies during the COVID-19 pandemic and now advocate for the rights of transgender students at the expense of other students.

Shaw said she entered politics inspired by the MAGA-aligned group Moms for Liberty, which campaigns against teaching about ongoing systemic racism, opposes diversity programs as discriminatory and has fought against classroom instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity.

Shaw also described being called a year prior and encouraged to run for superintendent by then-state Assemblymember Bill Essayli, who is now the lead federal prosecutor in Los Angeles and one of Trump’s strongest local allies.

“And I kind of laughed,” she said. “Ha ha. Me? The soccer mom? Really?” She said she told Essayli that she had to talk to God and her family. Essayli urged her to decide quickly.

Despite her humble, “who, me?” persona on the campaign trail, Shaw argues that her message resonates with parents in both parties. Shaw said she would use the superintendent position as a bully pulpit to expand that base beyond party lines and fight what she sees as the state’s failed liberal schooling policies from within. She also would challenge in court the new state law that transferred most of the post’s authority to an appointee of the governor.

Morgan Polikoff, a USC education professor, said that to win, Shaw would have to “dramatically broaden her base, inviting people who aren’t animated primarily by anti-LGBTQ animus to vote for her.”

Barrera, meanwhile, a senior aide to current state Supt. Tony Thurmond, represented the California Department of Education at a recent event held by the statewide LGBTQ+ group Equality California, where school districts were rated on their LGBTQ+ policies and resources. San Diego Unified received a high rating, while Chino Valley did not participate in the voluntary analysis.

Tony Hoang, executive director of Equality California, has described Shaw as a threat to LGBTQ+ students and endorsed Barrera as a candidate who has spent his career “advancing policies that make schools safer and more inclusive.”

Lance Christensen, of the conservative California Policy Center, disagreed. He said Barrera “will continue to be the servant and mouthpiece of the CTA,” while Shaw “represents a return to common sense, or better yet, good sense — because she’s speaking to basic issues of education policy that have been ignored for far too long.”

Barrera acknowledged his primary win over the other Democratic challengers was largely thanks to the CTA, which he said “made all the difference.” But he also credited a “long partnership” with San Diego educators and a record of believing in public education.

Shaw consolidated conservative Republican support in the primary, in which she finished first, with her campaign raising $399,000.

Barrera’s campaign collected $274,000 in primary contributions. Since the primary, Barrera’s campaign has raised at least $340,000, compared with $104,000 for Shaw.

However, it is in independent expenditures — spending by outside groups on behalf of political candidates — that Barrera has the financial leg up on Shaw. Already considered the likely fall winner because he no longer will be splitting the state’s sizable liberal vote with other Democratic candidates, Barrera also has benefited from the CTA’s massive spending covering the cost of mailers, text message campaigns and TV, radio, newspaper and digital ads, among other things.

Shaw: Soccer mom to MAGA warrior

Shaw, a 44-year-old Chino native and mother who has worked in fitness training and photography, said pandemic school closures and mask and vaccine mandates she opposed prompted her to show up to school board meetings, confront officials and challenge school policies in court. “I’m relentless. I don’t let go,” she said.

In November 2022, she was elected to the Chino Valley Unified school board, part of a small wave of evangelical Christians and far-right candidates to win seats across the state that cycle, and quickly became a go-to conservative voice on education issues.

Shaw has sidestepped concerns about immigration agents targeting schools as an issue outside of a school district’s jurisdiction. She also has derided the influence of unions in the education sector. And she lambasted efforts by California Democrats to oppose “school choice,” calling charter schools, homeschooling and other “alternative learning models” critical “lifelines” for families.

Shaw also became laser-focused on LGBTQ+ issues, challenging state laws that allow transgender students to participate in athletics and use school facilities in line with their gender identity. She also fought a state privacy policy that dissuaded school administrators from informing the parents of children who change their gender presentation or pronouns at school, and backed bans on library books with passages deemed sexually obscene. Critics have said the policy targets LGBTQ+ books, which Shaw denied.

Separately, Shaw has rallied her followers online to protest transgender teen athletes, including Jurupa Valley High School track star AB Hernandez. Shaw has showed up at track meets to protest Hernandez’s participation — which Hernandez’s mother has called threatening.

Shaw also has filed federal civil rights complaints on behalf of and helped draft complaints for cisgender high school athletes — including some of Hernandez’s teammates — who, she said, told her they were unhappy with sharing races, podiums and athletic facilities with transgender peers.

Shaw said she did not consult with Essayli on his recent unsuccessful lawsuit challenging the state’s transgender sports policies, which was based on the participation of some of the same high school athletes Shaw has protested. However, she said she would be in touch with federal authorities about such issues were she to win.

“You don’t think I’ll be calling, in my position, to the federal government?” she said. Essayli did not respond to a request for comment.

Barrera: Built by labor

Barrera, a 59-year-old father of grown children and member of the San Diego Unified school board since 2008, has been a union organizer for decades.

He never has been a teacher — nor has Shaw — but said his organizing experience makes him a natural fit as the chosen candidate of the teachers union and other labor groups, where he said he believes “the educator voice comes out most powerfully.”

“For me, the unions are a partner and will always be a core … voice in influencing the way that I make decisions,” he said.

In the 2000s, Barrera served as a regional organizer for the United Domestic Workers and United Healthcare Workers, then helped start the Chula Vista chapter of ACORN, a liberal pro-labor group.

Barrera rejects the assertion that California’s public schools are failing and wants to help “create a different narrative,” that students are “capable of anything” and educators are “capable of bringing out the best in our young people.”

Barrera helped turn the San Diego school board from a conservative-dominated body to a liberal, union-allied one. He once joined a five-day hunger strike in support of hotel workers.

Barrera has long subsidized his school board pay — a stipend of about $20,000 a year plus health benefits — with outside union work. In 2013, he was appointed secretary-treasurer of the San Diego and Imperial Counties Labor Council, earning about $110,000 per year. The council includes the San Diego Unified employee unions, which critics considered a clear conflict of interest because as a school board member, Barrera was on the opposite side of the negotiation table from unions that were helping pay his Labor Council salary.

In 2016, Barrera switched to a lower-profile role as secretary-treasurer of UFCW Local 135, holding the No. 2 position in the San Diego area’s largest private-sector union representing grocery, pharmacy, casino and factory workers but not school employees.

During that period, Barrera’s direct supervisor, Mickey Kasparian, was accused of sexual harassment, which Kasparian denied. Three accusers were paid settlements with no admission of wrongdoing. Barrera was not accused of sexual misconduct but was swept out of office alongside Kasparian in 2018.

The subsequent union leadership, which is still in place, opposes Barrera for superintendent, arguing that he should have taken a stand against Kasparian. Barrera dismissed these criticisms as part of a “decade-old internal union leadership fight.”

In 2021, as officials debated when and how to reopen campuses closed during the pandemic, Barrera was aligned with the local teachers union, and his school board approved a vaccine mandate for all district employees and conditioned the return to in-person instruction on educators having the opportunity to be fully vaccinated.

Today, Barrera is in near lock-step with the CTA when it comes to policy. His only critique is that CTA lobbying in Sacramento should be better connected to ground-level demands, a goal that CTA leadership has been working toward, he said.

A former employee of Activision Blizzard is suing the Santa Monica-based game company, alleging she was sexually harassed and subject to retaliation.

In a lawsuit filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court on Wednesday, the woman, filing anonymously as Jane Doe, says the game giant “fostered and tolerated a pervasive ‘frat boy’ workplace culture,” where male employees and supervisors “openly objectified women, viewed and displayed pornography” and made demeaning sexual remarks in her presence.

She is seeking unspecified compensatory damages, including for lost wages, benefits and earning capacity.

“We take these allegations seriously. We strive to maintain a respectful and inclusive workplace, and we do that through best-in-class policies and systems designed to prevent and address harassment, discrimination, and retaliation, and by holding employees accountable for their behavior,” said a Blizzard spokesperson in a statement to The Times.

The woman, who said she worked for the company for 14 years beginning in 2009 in its sound department, accuses 10 men of subjecting her variously to harassment, physical assault, inappropriate touching and inappropriate comments.

Between 2011 and 2012, she alleges, one co-worker lured her to his apartment, where he repeatedly touched her leg and “blocked her exit, threaten[ing] her with physical violence and attempted to rape her.” He continued to demand dates and spread sexual rumors about her calling her a “bitch” and “slut” in front of co-workers and a male manager, according to the suit.

Over five years starting in 2010, Jane Doe says that she was “repeatedly sexually harassed” by another man, a re-recording mixer with whom she worked with, and who told her that she would “be risking her career if she reported him,” the complaint states.

She further alleges that a third man, Blizzard’s audio director, “repeatedly touched” her leg “in a sexual manner without her permission” and when she rejected his advances he “retaliated against her by sabotaging her work and ensuring that she was denied a promotion.”

According to the suit, Jane Doe’s complaints and reports to her supervisors and human resources about her alleged treatment were dismissed and they “failed to take timely or effective corrective action.”

Further, the former employee says that she was “required to work excessive and unsafe hours” and told not to report overtime.

As a result of the harassment, the employee says in her complaint, she suffered suffered depression “and was required to seek ongoing psychiatric care” before being discharged in April 2024.

A year earlier, Activision Blizzard and California’s Civil Rights Department reached a roughly $50-million settlement agreement to resolve an employment discrimination and equal pay lawsuit. .

The Civil Rights Department sued Activision Blizzard in 2021, alleging that women at the company were regularly subjected to sexual harassment, paid less, denied promotions and met with retaliation when they raised concerns with managers.

As part of the agreement, Activision Blizzard agreed to pay up to $45.75 million to compensate women who worked for the company in California from Oct. 12, 2015, to Dec. 31, 2020. The company also agreed to pay $9.1 million to cover the Civil Rights Department’s attorneys fees and costs.
Activision Blizzard also settled a case with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. As part of that 2022 settlement, the company agreed to establish an $18-million fund for workers who experienced sexual harassment or discrimination, among other types of workplace misconduct.

Activision Blizzard has denied all wrongdoing.

Gavin Newsom, the California governor who loves to heckle Donald Trump and talk about the “big swings” he’s taken at policy while in office, is now a lame duck.

Within a few short months, he will be termed out of office and return to being a regular citizen, if not an average one. Newsom’s presidential ambitions are stronger than ever, and there’s virtually no list of Democratic hopefuls that doesn’t include his name near the top.

But 2028 is a long way away, about a millennium in political time. Newsom has a tough road ahead to not just stay relevant, but also to forge a difficult path between keeping a national profile as a Trump-attacking defender of democracy and not getting pummeled (or worse, ignored) when he loses the safety and power of his elected office.

Our columnists Anita Chabria and Mark Z. Barabak take a look at what the next few months, and the next year, may have in store after the governor becomes simply Mr. Newsom.

Chabria: Newsom is making the most of his last leg in office. Recently, he went on an election jaunt through the South, visiting the Carolinas and Alabama to help campaign and raise money in those states.

It is not his first out-of-state trip to lend a hand in campaigns, but likely one of his last as governor. He wouldn’t be the first elected official to have a gap year (or years) before being elected to the Oval Office — Ronald Reagan had more than five years off between being governor of California and winning the presidency — but it’s definitely a disadvantage.

How much do you think being out of office hurts Newsom?

Barabak: Loyal readers of this column — thanks, we appreciate both of you! — know I’ve long looked askance at our gallivanting governor and his extracurricular, eyes-on-2028 activities. I understand that preening and politicking is way more fun and ego-enhancing than the minutiae of government in Sacramento. At the same time, I’m old-fashioned enough to think a person should do the job taxpayers are paying them to do.

But, as you note, that will be a moot point soon enough.

I’m not certain being out of office will be all that great a hindrance. In fact, I think it offers advantages, the main one being Newsom’s freedom to devote his full time and energies to running for president.

You mention Reagan; I don’t think it’s an accident he made two failed tries for the White House while serving in Sacramento. Pete Wilson also attempted the leap from the state Capitol to Washington, and failed badly.

It’s tough to do both.

As Dan Schnur, a former Wilson strategist, once put it, “There aren’t any direct flights from Sacramento to Manchester” — New Hampshire traditionally being home to the first primary — “and you can’t run the state from a cellphone at O’Hare” airport.

So I don’t think exiting office will necessarily hurt Newsom. But I’m highly dubious of his presidential prospects nonetheless. You?

Chabria: This is definitely a wide-open race, with, I suspect, contenders not yet on any lists. It’s way too early to know if Newsom will make it in the primary, but I do think he’s positioning himself in a way that differentiates him from some of the folks he may run against.

Socialism is the right’s boogeyman, framed as a peril to democracy full of death panels and welfare fraud. More than one presidential aspirant has shied away from the label for fear of supposedly losing middle-ground voters or being dragged through the “communist” muck that MAGA media such as Fox News love to sling.

In a recent PBS interview, though, Newsom didn’t disavow some democratic socialist ideas, such as Medicare for all, pointing out that California has long had a powerful progressive faction and many of the ideas considered radical for the right are run of the mill here — and potentially popular across the country.

Newsom seems to be embracing some of those lefty stances, especially ones about affordability and opportunity. While affordability is going to be everyone’s platform, pairing it with big-swing policy like universal health insurance might appeal to voters tired of words without action.

It’s a smart lane, embracing MAGA’s labels instead of defending against them, with policies even middle-ground voters might appreciate in these increasing desperate days when ground beef averages nearly $7 a pound and coffee costs more than booze.

Barabak: While I’m skeptical the words “socialism” and “communism” are the talisman that President Trump and other Republicans believe, warding off what could be a dreadful midterm election for the GOP, I still believe the connotation — wacky, lefty policies — has potency among a not-insignificant slice of the electorate.

November’s election is going to be a referendum on Trump, as Newsom himself frequently says. The fight for the Democratic nomination is a contest of a whole other order.

We agree that no fellow Democrat is going to cede the $7-a-pound affordability argument to Newsom. But to offer some differentiation, many will doubtless portray him as being a bit too out there, especially when they start making the electability argument.

And that’s not to mention what awaits him if Newsom were to emerge as the Democratic nominee. (Fun fact: In 1988, it was a Democratic primary opponent, Al Gore, who first criticized Michael Dukakis over Massachusetts’ prison-furlough program. Republicans then seized upon the issue and used it as a bludgeon, to Dukakis’ great detriment, in the fall campaign.)

In a way, it’s interesting we’re even having this discussion about whether Newsom is too far left. There are parts of his record — his chummy ties to Silicon Valley, his light regulatory stance toward data centers, his making nice with the likes of Charlie Kirk and Steve Bannon, that make some Democrats question whether he’s too far right.

Chabria: It’s true that Newsom is more centrist than progressive, and equally true that most of America misses that point.

I think there is a version of the next election, though, where the Democratic Party has its own Tea Party moment, when a populist faction wanting social change carries power.

Call it the anti-Trump swing, the search for a Democrat who seems authentic and pugilistic. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker fit this mold.

Everything we know about elections and electability really is up for grabs in this new age of technology and billionaire influence, and the vein of frustration within the rank-and-file of the Democratic Party is only growing stronger because of it. If Republicans do lose out in the midterms — and I am not convinced they will — it changes the calculation on everything, including how far left the average independent voter may swing in the face of an economically crushing oligarchy.

But I would be remiss if I did not say this: Fears that Trump will interfere with the midterms or the next presidential election are justified. Even though things have calmed a bit — there is less talk of agents of some sort at polls — he is pursuing policies and pushing propaganda that could harm a fair election.

We need to safeguard elections, otherwise candidates don’t matter.

Barabak: We 100% agree on that. Candidates, and the campaigns they wage, matter only if elections are free and fairly conducted and all sides —looking at you, President Trump — acknowledge and abide by the outcome.

I wouldn’t, however, infer too much from the outcome in November. For many voters, it will be a chance to vent — about inflation, an unpopular war, Trump’s brazen money-grubbing, his blatant disinterest in the lives and livelihoods of struggling Americans and anything else that’s causing an irritating rash under their collars. That’s why it seems more likely than not Democrats will at least win control of the House.

But midterm results are notoriously unreliable barometers of the presidential election that follows. To give just a few examples, Republicans walloped Democrats in the 1994 and 2010 midterm elections and yet Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama each won reelection just two years later. In 2022, Democrats fared surprisingly well in the midterm election, and in 2024, well … you know what happened.

Chabria: I don’t think America has a past political moment that can be compared to this one. By nearly every independent measure, the United States is closer to an autocracy than we’ve ever been. We’ve lost the respect and trust of our allies, and a political party that has the support of only about 30% of citizens is reshaping our social and civic life under white nationalist principles.

We are in a high-stakes moment, and the next election won’t be a decision between Democrats and Republicans, but between democracy and something else. The sad truth is that in 2024, more Americans did not vote at all than voted for Trump. About 64% of eligible voters cast a ballot, and Trump received only 49.8% of those votes.

The next Democratic nominee can come with whatever message they want, but if Democrats don’t vote, their candidates don’t win. So for Newsom, or whoever the nominee is, the first victory may be the nomination — but the real test will be turning out the vote.

Barabak: It’s a long way — about a millennium, as you said — from here to November 2028. I agree, though, on the importance of not sitting out this or any election, for that matter. I recollect a button I once saw in a shop on Elm Street, the main drag through, yes, downtown Manchester! It read: “Didn’t vote? Don’t bitch.”

That pretty well sums it up.

California prison towns made a grim bargain decades ago.

They built their economies around an industry that relied on an ever-growing prison population, mostly from California’s major metropolitan areas. Then, about 15 years ago, legislators changed sentencing laws in ways that caused the prison population to drop, and the prisons started going away.

Gov. Jerry Brown oversaw massive reductions in California’s prison population in the 2010s. Gov. Gavin Newsom has closed five prisons since taking office in 2019. Now, some of those towns face difficult choices if they’re going to survive. One prison town is still fighting the closure, one is betting on businesses to make up its losses and a third — the town of Susanville — is remote, isolated and in deeper trouble than the rest.

Perched on one of the last major stops before Reno and the desert deep in the Lassen National Forest, Susanville has always been the kind of place California puts the things it doesn’t want to see, hear, smell or really even think about.

“Prisons in communities are not popular, so they tend to be located in areas that are desperate economically,” said Dan Newton, who worked for the city of Susanville for 20 years and was its city manager until recently. “That would describe this area.”

The city’s management was informed in 2021 that the prison was scheduled for closure. They went to court to challenge the closure, arguing the state’s environmental review process hadn’t taken into account the prison closure’s impact on the town. Newsom had a solution: A budget bill that exempted correctional facility closures from the environmental review process.

“There was initially a lot of panic,” said Susanville Mayor Mendy Schuster. “Houses went on the market. People left town. State jobs are good jobs with a good income, and they were going to leave.”

Since the closure announcement, the population of Susanville has fallen from a peak of about 16,000 in 2021, the year Newsom announced the prison would close, to 14,000 in 2024, the last year for which American Community Survey data were available.

Not all of the 1,100 former prison employees left town. Some transferred to a nearby prison, and some retired and stayed in the area. The elementary school lost 10% of its enrolled students between 2021 and the 2025-2026 school year.

The town’s remoteness is also one of its attractions. The surrounding area offers some of the most stunning vistas in far Northern California, sweeping views from highway lookout points over miles of desert rimmed by the mountains of the Cascade Range where it meets the Sierra Nevada.

The history of this area is one of the state or federal government telling its residents that it needs them — to mine for gold, to cut down trees for timber, to guard all the people they sent to prison — and then coming along later to tell residents that their services are no longer needed.

Susanville, the spot on the map, is an immutable intermingling of unique geologic formations. Susanville, the incorporated city, is running out of time.

“We’re heading toward insolvency,” Newton said before he resigned as city manager to take a position in Tehama County government.

The prison building boom

When the state’s three-strikes law still imposed mandatory life sentences on anyone with two or more prior convictions for violent felonies, California needed places like Susanville to put its skyrocketing prison population.

According to Brown University’s Prison Proliferation Project, states and the federal government operated 511 prisons in 1970. By the end of the prison building boom in 2000, that number had risen to 1,663.

The prison guards who lived in Susanville coached Little League and bought bread at the bakery downtown. They had steady jobs with top-tier health and retirement benefits; today experienced correctional officers earn $9,650 a month in base pay.

The town benefited from carceral policies that pulled prisoners hundreds of miles from their families, even as Lassen County counted those inmates as residents until 2022 and built around a prison boom that showed no signs of ending.

Until, of course, it did.

In 2006, overcrowding forced some of the state’s 170,000 prisoners to sleep in hallways and multipurpose rooms. But sentencing policies changed in the early 2010s to put more people in jail than prisons, and when people went to prison, they went for shorter sentences. Now, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation is down to 90,000 prisoners, and has 8,000 more beds available than it has people in custody.

An emergent field of research in the last 15 years has focused on the era of the “prison bust,” when prison closures have outnumbered prison openings. Criminal justice policy researchers have found that the proposed economic benefits of prisons to small, rural communities were probably overstated to begin with.

“A large portion of prison jobs (were) filled by residents of neighboring towns,” wrote the authors of a 2024 article in the journal Punishment & Society. “Even those who moved to the area for prison jobs often settled in adjacent communities, providing little direct benefit to the local economy.”

Not only might prisons not be engines of economic growth, according to a seminal 2010 study from researchers at Washington State University, they might have stymied the development of other industries warded off by the presence of the prison.

Brown University associate sociology professor John Eason, whose book “Big House on the Prairie” focused on a prison in the rural South, found that the economic fate of prison towns is most closely correlated to when they were built, more than where they were built.

“Towns that adopted prisons earlier in the prison boom received a short-term boon compared to those that did not build, but the effects were not lasting,” Eason wrote.

Towns that built a prison early in the boom saw increased median home values and median income, Eason wrote, with reduced poverty and unemployment, but those effects did not last longer than a decade, which he called “a decay effect.”

But the residents and leadership of the city of Blythe, where the shuttered Chuckwalla Valley State Prison was built in 1987, are certain that their economic problems began and ended on the day in 2022 when the prison closed down.

Desert town tried to keep prison open

“We still haven’t got nothing from the state,” said Blythe Mayor Joseph DeConinck. “I hate to say it, but Blythe’s in the middle of nowhere, we’re the furthest from Sacramento, I just hate to say it again, we’re only a few votes out here.”

The mayor of the small desert city in Riverside County near the Arizona border watched the failed lawsuit over the Susanville prison closure and decided against filing their own litigation after Newsom ordered the Blythe prison closed just before Christmas 2022.

Instead, Blythe chose honey over vinegar and launched a lobbying effort to convince state legislators and the governor that the town needed some kind of economic rescue.

It has, so far, failed to produce results.

“We took these prisons when nobody else wanted them,” DeConinck said. “And we adapted to them because they became a strong economic generator for our area.”

Blythe’s population of 18,000 in 2022 had fallen to 17,400 by 2024, the last year for which census statistics are available. A drop of just 3% of the population might not sound drastic, but Blythe was in trouble long before the prison closed.

The population has been dropping since a peak of about 20,000 in 2010. A Riverside County civil investigation in June 2022 found that the city can’t pay its bills, its population is fleeing to Phoenix or the Coachella Valley, and neither the city nor its residents have bright prospects.

Six months after that investigation, Newsom announced the prison closure.

DeConinck said city leadership flew to Sacramento and tried, in vain, to get any traction. He recalled one meeting between the Blythe city manager and representatives of the governor in which he said the city itself was promised direct financial assistance.

The era of sweet-talking the state is over now, DeConinck said.

“They wouldn’t even have a conversation with us,” said Vice Mayor Johnny Rodriguez. “They’re not doing anything to assist us because they have this political mantra that all prisons are bad.”

Rodriguez said the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation and the Department of General Services sent representatives to a meeting on the future of the shuttered prison site. It didn’t go well.

“We had just one meeting with a potential developer who had some interest in it, and all the state provided was, what you can’t do, what they won’t do,” Rodriguez said. “They won’t give a timeline when they would start talking about it, so what’s that going to do?”

Newsom’s office referred questions to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

Will Matthews, a corrections spokesperson, said in a statement after this article first published that the state sent $995,000 to the Riverside County Workforce Development Division in August 2024.

“State representatives met with local leaders in July 2024 to discuss these resources and other available assistance,” Matthews said. “There was no commitment to providing direct financial assistance to the City of Blythe.”

Matthews said until the Blythe prison site’s infrastructure is separated from neighboring Ironwood State Prison and its bond obligations are resolved, the property can’t move through the state’s process for dispensing with surplus property.

In a March hearing before a Senate budget subcommittee, Corrections Secretary Jeff Macomber said he’s eager to end his agency’s control over closed prison sites.

“I don’t want to hold on to closed facilities,” Macomber said. “Believe it or not, I have to provide a little bit of staffing. It’s unpopular, there’s security risks. We have people break in because who doesn’t want to run in, to break into a closed prison?”

Newsom began closing prisons with the deactivation of the Deuel Vocational Institute in Tracy, followed by the prison in Susanville, and then a prison in Blythe near the Arizona border. The state also ended its contract with a private prison in Kern County, a site now being operated as an immigrant detention center. A prison in Norco, also in Riverside County, is scheduled to close in October.

More prisons probably will close. The Legislature this year passed a budget that called for the state to shut at least one more. Its passage reflected Democratic lawmakers’ desire to save money — about $150 million a year per prison — by eliminating underused correctional facilities.

And some state prisons have astronomical deferred maintenance bills. The state auditor recently released a report estimating that five of them need repairs that would cost $2.4 billion.

Rodriguez is still fighting for a prison on the shuttered site. He has plans to pitch the federal government on opening a women’s prison there to account for the closure of the Federal Correctional Institution in Dublin, which closed after 10 guards were charged with sexually abusing the prisoners.

“Closing Chuckawalla was a mistake,” said Assemblymember Jeff Gonzalez, a Coachella Republican. “For our rural communities, these facilities are critical employers that support local families and local economies.”

Ready for change on edge of Bay Area

If any town was prepared for a prison closure, it was Tracy.

Optimism abounds, even on the city website, which promotes it as “one of the fastest growing suburbs of the San Francisco Bay Area.” The city has for decades been a bedroom community for commuters to the East Bay Area and San José.

The offers are pouring in to fill the abandoned prison site, said San Joaquin County Supervisor Robert Rickman, who was mayor of Tracy from 2016-2020.

“We’ve been in contact with folks in the agricultural industry, the education industry and even some of them who are interested in opening a casino,” Rickman said. “I would say [the prison closure] was neutral. The property isn’t sitting forgotten. South county is a very prosperous portion of our county.”

Prison guards and support staff mainly transferred to the California Health Care Facility in Stockton, Rickman said.

“I guess you’re never really prepared for a closure,” Rickman said, “but the good thing is that nobody lost their jobs.”

Tracy has the advantages that Susanville does not: It’s next to Interstate 5 along a busy commercial corridor in a populated and growing section of the state. Tracy also doesn’t have the drawbacks of Blythe and the Inland Empire desert — the weather never gets too hot, and there is reliable access to water.

Instead of challenging the state government like Blythe, Rickman gets to play host and pitch man to businesses.

Back in Susanville, it’s been a struggle to get any business to return calls.

Hard choices in Susanville

“For the last two years, we’ve adopted deficit budgets,” said Newton, the erstwhile city manager. “We’re deficit spending in order to fill public safety vacancies, and expenditure increases are outpacing our revenue increases.

“It’s going to start eating at our cash reserves.”

The town is hoping some industry — any industry — can come in and save it. City leaders have little hope for state assistance. But the city also has its own limitations.

First, Newton said, it’s hard to make a businesses on the border of California and Nevada choose California, with its higher taxes and stern regulatory environment. That choice in finance terms is known as regulatory arbitrage.

Second, industry needs power, and Susanville doesn’t have a lot of power on the grid, nor the infrastructure to support it. A bad thunderstorm can knock out the lights to half the city. The city’s transmission lines can’t handle the wattage demanded by heavy industry.

Third, the city and county’s limited population is working against it. Prisons force people to work and live in an area, and the state supplies the workforce. But there is no big workforce base on which to draw for any industry. When the prisons close, the guards transfer to new locations or retire and leave the rural, geographically isolated area.

The pandemic didn’t help. Downtown businesses were already struggling when people started buying more retail goods online, a trend that didn’t abate when lockdowns ended, Schuster said.

Now, some of the largest tax generators in town are on sales from online shopping and fuel taxes — people stop in town to get gas because Susanville has the only gas stations for 20 miles in any direction.

A baseball grandstand burned down last year, and in March, a lumber mill that employed about 30 people caught fire. No one was injured, but the mill burned to the ground.

Now the 8,000 people in this remote corner of California have to ask themselves what more they can wring from the land, what more they can take and what more it can yield. One idea includes a new truck stop.

Whatever salvation comes for the town, if any salvation comes at all, won’t be at the hands of the state government that built a prison and then took it away, Newton said.

“No one is coming to save us.”

This article was updated to include information that the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation shared after publication.

Duara writes for CalMatters.

For an issue that received so much publicity at its peak — images of prisoners in triple bunk beds and overflowing into multipurpose rooms — the end of California’s prison crisis came quietly last week, when the state brought home the last of its inmates held in a private lockup northwest of Tucson.

Making good on a pledge by Gov. Gavin Newsom to finish the process begun in 2012, state prison officials have wrapped up the contracts with all out-of-state prisons. California’s prison overcrowding problems are now a thing of the past.

“At one point, at the height of our overcrowding, we had nearly 10,400 inmates out of state,” said Ralph Diaz, secretary of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. “To me, that meant 10,400 inmates away from their families, away from California. It was just a place we didn’t want to be.”

Gov. Gavin Newsom has signed his first budget. Here’s where the $215 billion will go »

The use of private prisons — six facilities in states as far away as Mississippi — began in 2006. Inmates were shuttled away at various intervals over the 13 years that followed, a cost that was unavoidable to help resolve a problem that was years in the making.

Lawsuits challenging conditions inside California’s crowded prisons resulted in a fixed cap on the inmate population, one imposed by federal judges in 2009 and upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2011 and again in 2013. Those decisions came in the wake of a 2006 announcement that outside experts would run the state’s prison healthcare system. Some of that independent oversight continues, though the state has made strides to resume control of health services.

Prison spending in the state’s new fiscal year will total some $15.7 billion — a $2.6-billion increase in the last four years and only slightly lower, by percentage, than what the budget earmarks for colleges and universities.

How the inmate population came down, though, is a story of criminal justice programs that sought to limit prison time to those convicted of the most serious and violent felonies. In the year before a major realignment of criminal justice services to California’s counties, 58% of new prison sentences were for property or drug crimes.

But the changes that shifted many of those crimes away from prison — keeping more offenders in local jails, reducing penalties for property crimes and a sweeping expansion of parole — have not come without controversy. Critics have said too many lower-level offenders have been responsible for new crimes. And a vocal coalition of victim advocates drafted a plan for voters to change those parole rules through a measure that has qualified for the November 2020 ballot.

State prison officials said last week the total population across 34 facilities now stands at just under 126,000 inmates — below the maximum number allowed by the courts. But the room for growth is not sizable enough to return to the era of long prison sentences, a shift that would require the state to do something almost unheard of in recent years: build more prisons.

Nor will it be as cheap to house those inmates in California. Corrections officials said it cost an average of $31,106 per inmate sent out of state last year — but those in state cost an average of $82,910 a year.

Still, the end of the out-of-state transfers marks an important moment. Diaz, who was appointed by the governor in March to run the prison system, said it sends an important message about accountability.

“It feels a lot better when I’m able to pick up the phone and send someone directly within a day to a prison under my care,” he said.

john.myers@latimes.com

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WASHINGTON — The Department of Homeland Security drew backlash over an AI-generated social media post featuring a Sikh man facing off against a character made to look like Optimus Prime from the movie “Transformers.” The agency later deleted the image.

Posted Wednesday to the official X account for DHS, the image created by artificial intelligence depicted the “Transformers” character opposite a bearded man wearing a bandanna over his hair. The image, made to look like a movie poster, stated, “America for Americans.”

“Get off our roads, you don’t know how to drive Mr. Singh,” it continued.

The post was denounced as “racist propaganda” and “completely unacceptable.”

Other X posts by DHS that reference Transformers remain online.

Sikh Americans and elected officials condemned the image and accused the Trump administration of using racist imagery to stigmatize Sikhs while promoting its deportation campaign.

Hasbro, which owns the franchise, issued a statement saying the posts by DHS were made “without permission and do not represent the Transformers brand or Hasbro.”

Singh, which translates to “lion,” is the most common last name for Sikh men.

DHS said the post depicted Harjinder Singh, an Indian truck driver accused of causing a fatal crash last year that left three people dead after his 18-wheeler collided with their minivan in Florida. He has pleaded not guilty to vehicular homicide charges.

In photos released by DHS, Harjinder Singh wears similar clothes as the man in the now-deleted AI image.

In an emailed statement, a Homeland Security spokesperson, who did not identify themself, called criticism of the post “nonsensical drivel.” The spokesperson did not respond to a question asking why it had removed the post.

“Harjinder Singh is an illegal alien from India who should never have been in our country,” the statement said, adding that he had been granted a commercial driver’s license by California.

In its campaign against immigrant commercial drivers, the Trump administration has repeatedly pointed out Sikh and Indian truckers, who make up about 20% of that industry’s workforce.

The department recently cited California as a problem state that allows drivers who don’t speak sufficient English to obtain licenses. It also started a tip line asking members of the public to report truck drivers they suspect of being undocumented.

The press office of California Gov. Gavin Newsom, which shared the deleted image in its own X post, called the post “disgusting” and “racist propaganda.”

Noting that the Central Valley is home to a large Sikh community, Rep. David Valadao (R-Hanford) called the post “completely unacceptable” and said he’s glad it was removed.

“No American should be targeted because of their faith or their name,” Valadao wrote on X.

The Sikh Coalition noted that the DHS post comes as the country mourns the 25th anniversary of 9/11, after which Sikhs were targeted for hate crimes.

“We remain fearless in identifying as Sikhs — even when our government portrays us as enemies,” the coalition wrote on X.

When her home burned down in the Eaton fire, artist Susannah Mills felt lost and adrift — but never alone. Her home was part of an Altadena artists collective called JJU, or John Joyce University, named after a beloved carpenter who lived there for 26 years. And although the residents were forced to scatter in the wake of the January 2025 devastation, they remained in contact, looking for ways to support one another through what is still an ongoing process of recovery.

A few months after her loss, Mills was accepted into an artist residency at BKN, a retreat in the northern Stockholm Archipelago, where she expanded her watercolor practice from relatively small works to large scale, and explored installation. Like JJU, BKN prides itself on building community, and while there Mills began talking with BKN curator Anna Viola Hallberg about bringing other L.A. fire survivors to Sweden to experience the same sense of connection and relief Mills was feeling.

Hallberg had already been thinking along those lines and suggested they create another residency to do just that. In the fall of 2025, Mills and Hallberg, with the help of another L.A. artist, Rick Gradone, started an organization named Los Angeles Wildfire Survivors, or L.A.W.S., and raised the funds to send 13 Eaton and Malibu-based artists to BKN for two months.

The result was life-altering for the artists, most of whom were still working to rebuild from the devastating loss — and some of whom had been so occupied with the logistics of recovery that they had not been able to make time to work.

“It creates a network, and people who work together in the residency continue to help each other,” said Hallberg in a recent interview. “So there’s a really true new arts community that lingers beyond the residency.”

It soon became clear to the team behind L.A.W.S. that more needed to be done, and they solicited another round of applications for a residency, set to begin later this month at Pilchuck Glass School in Washington state. Eight Eaton fire survivors have been selected in a competitive process, and plans are in the works to bring another cohort of artists to Sweden next Spring.

“We want to expand this outside of Los Angeles ultimately, because there are fires everywhere and there is climate disaster everywhere,” Mills said, explaining that the group’s mission is growing as changing weather patterns result in escalating cataclysm and displacement of artists globally.

“The media focuses on the disaster really fast, and they don’t understand just how long the recovery takes,” Gradone said in a recent interview. “So this puts some kind of resource in place where people can continue to to get help, especially artists who lose everything that they’ve made, lose their studio spaces and homes. That can’t be recovered in six months.”

L.A.W.S. operates as a not-for-profit and has applied for official nonprofit status, a process that can take some time in California. It is also actively looking for fiscal sponsorship. Up until now the group has relied on its personal connections to raise money to support its artist residencies. Mills’ partner, Brian Huskey, is a comedian and actor who has rallied celebrity friends to auction off small pieces of art on cards in support of L.A.W.S. But there is a need for more help as the group grows.

“Word has really caught on with people who want to have this experience, which I’m really happy about,” said Mills.

I’m arts editor Jessica Gelt, wishing I could turn back time, Cher-like, to an era before the world fast-tracked climate change with its laissez faire approach to global warming. This is your arts and culture news for the week.

The week ahead: A curated calendar

FRIDAY

Bruce Willis, left, talks with director M. Night Shyamalan on the set of the 2000 film “Unbreakable.”

(Frank Masi / Touchstone Pictures)

Unbreakable
M. Night Shyamalan’s 2000 superhero thriller with a twist stars Bruce Willis, Charlayne Woodard, Robin Wright, Samuel L. Jackson and Spencer Treat Clark.
7 p.m. Vidiots, The Eagle, 4884 Eagle Rock Blvd. vidiotsfoundation.org

SATURDAY

“the wheat leaping constantly from the shute,” Marley Freeman (2026). Oil, acrylic on linen, 58 by 54 inches.

(Marley Freeman / Parker Gallery)

Marley Freeman
The artist’s new exhibition of paintings, “worthless serpentine,” takes its title from the writings of Joan Didion.
Opening, 6-8 p.m. Saturday; 11 a.m.-6 p.m., Tuesday–Saturday, through Oct. 31. Parker Gallery, 6700 Melrose Ave. parkergallery.com

SUNDAY

Doyle Lane: Master Of Clay
The first major museum retrospective of the Los Angeles ceramic artist features more than 100 works from the 1950s through the 1980s, from functional pottery to monumental murals, as well as archival documents.
Through Feb 22. The Huntington, 1151 Oxford Road, San Marino. huntington.org

Marie Atoinette
A 20th anniversary screening of the semibiographical period film with a postpunk- and new wave-fueled soundtrack with writer-director Sofia Coppola and star Kirsten Dunst in person. Coppola and photographer Andrew Durham will sign copies of their new book, “Making Marie Antoinette,” at the Academy Museum Store in a separately ticketed event prior the screening.
6:30 p.m. Academy Museum, 6067 Wilshire Blvd. academymuseum.org

TUESDAY

Andrea Bocelli performs live in Vienna on Aug. 22.

(Thomas Kronsteiner / Getty Images)

Andrea Bocelli
The Italian tenor arrives at the Hollywood Bowl for two nights on his Romanza 30th Anniversary World Tour. 8 p.m. Tuesday-Wednesday. Hollywood Bowl, 2301 N. Highland Ave. hollywoodbowl.com

WEDNESDAY

Elliott Hundley
“Book of Sand” is an exhibition of new paintings, sculptures and tapestries focusing on the artist’s “own exuberant internal universe” created through compiling paint, paper cutouts, string, encaustic and other found materials.
Artist led walk–through, 11 a.m.; opening reception, 6-8 p.m.; 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday, through Oct. 24. Regen Projects, 6750 Santa Monica Blvd., Los Angeles. regenprojects.com

The Peterson Show
The world premiere of Janine Nabers’ play about a group of former child stars from a beloved TV show about a Black family come together after a scandal entangles their famous TV father. Directed by Michelle Bossy.
Previews, 8 p.m. Wednesday-Friday, opens, 8 p.m. Saturday (sold out), runs through Oct. 26. Atwater Village Theatre, 3269 Casitas Ave. echotheatercompany.com

THURSDAY

The Case-Book of C. Auguste Dupin
The world premiere of a new play adapted and directed by John Strysik, based on the stories of Edgar Allan Poe.
7:30 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays, through Oct. 18. Mary Levin Cutler Theatre, 241 S. Moreno Drive, Beverly Hills. theatre40.org

The Ford/Hill Project
A Waterwell Production created by Lee Sunday Evans and Elizabeth Marvel, this documentary theater piece is based on the verbatim Senate testimony of Anita Hill and Christine Blasey Ford during Supreme Court confirmation hearings, 30 years apart. The cast includes Rosemarie DeWitt, Betty Gabriel, Dulé Hill and Jerry O’Connell.
8 p.m. Thursday-Saturday. REDCAT, 631 W. 2nd St., downtown L.A. redcat.org

The SoCal scene

A view of the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Los Angeles from a garden.

(Ariana Drehsler / For The Times)

Hey, have you heard? The Lucas Museum of Narrative Arts will open Sept. 22 and began member previews late last week. Just kidding. Of course you have heard, because hot takes currently abound on the new $1-billion museum. Love it or hate it, it’s here to stay, and Team Arts spent the week rolling out a spate of stories explaining how we got here, as well as what you can find in the shiny new 300,000-square-foot Ma Yansong-designed building.

Times film critic Amy Nicholson wrote about what “Star Wars” fans can expect from the new museum and contributed to a piece about 11 must-see things while you’re there. We also commissioned a handy artist-drawn map of the place that should help you navigate the 100,000 square feet of gallery space with its more than 30 discrete galleries arranged by theme. Finally, Times contributor Jane Horowitz wrote two stories: one about whether or not the museum’s disregard for established art hierarchies will upend the art world; and another on how the museum’s epic search for a forever home ended in L.A.’s Exposition Park.

I also wrote about a lawsuit that a contractor filed against the museum claiming unpaid work that shines fresh light on the Museum’s Exposition Park land deal.

Randolph Thompson, Desiree Mee Jung, Adam J. Smith, Nicole Javier and Julanne Chidi Hill in “Pericles” at Boston Court Pasadena.

(Brian Hashimoto)

Times theater critic Charles McNulty spent an evening at Boston Court Pasadena watching Ellen McLaughlin’s modern verse translation of Shakespeare’s “Pericles,” which takes place at a disaster relief center, where anxious evacuees improvise a play to escape their fear of the storm they are fleeing. “It’s hard to allow yourself to fully believe in the incredible turn of events when the prevailing attitude is so emphatically tongue-in-cheek,” McNulty wrote of the West Coast premiere.

McNulty also had lunch in Manhattan with playwright Samuel D. Hunter, who has two plays running in L.A.: “Grangeville,” which McNulty calls “Los Angeles’ most acclaimed theatrical offering of the summer” and has been extended at Ruskin Group Theatre through Sept. 21; and “A Case for the Existence of God,” in a recently opened Rogue Machine production at the Matrix Theater’s Henry Murray Stage. “Drama in Hunter’s hands is built around an encounter. He doesn’t force his characters to jump through hoops,” writes McNulty in a profile. “He listens to them, as they navigate their complicated feelings, closely tracking the way their intersecting paths lead them toward incremental revelation.”

Paintings from the private collection of the late music executive Clive Davis, estimated to fetch more than $35 million, are heading for auction at Christie’s in November.

Culture news

Lucien Smith attends the Hugo Boss Prize 2014 ceremony at Guggenheim Museum in New York City.

(Dimitrios Kambouris)

Lucien Smith, a Los Angeles–born multidisciplinary artist who garnered loads of attention in 2010s art scene, has died at 37.

IAMA Theatre Company is set to launch its ninth annual New Works Festival, which will take place Sept. 14-28 at Atwater Village Theatre, and will feature staged readings of six new plays. Tickets are $18 for each reading and can be found at iamatheatre.com. This year’s festival includes “The Half-Sibling Play” by Agyeiwaa Asante; “All Remaining Assets” by Serena Berman; “The Starters” by Laura Winters; “Betta Mus Come” by Alicia Carroll; “Werewolves” by Liba Vaynberg; and “The Great Florida Python Challenge” by John Lavelle.

Additional tumult is coming for the Smithsonian Institution as secretary Lonnie Bunch announced he will step down from his leadership position. The news comes in the midst of President Trump’s pressure campaign on the organization and his administration’s attempts to alter what Smithsonian museums include in their exhibitions.

— Jessica Gelt

And last but not least

Oh, no! In-N-Out is making tweaks to staples like buns and ketchup!

Hollywood’s film and TV post-production workers took their case directly to Gov. Gavin Newsom on Thursday, urging him to sign a bill that would create the state’s first standalone post-production tax incentive.

Workers such as editors, singers and sound supervisors joined bill author Assemblymember Nick Schultz (D-Burbank) and Mayor Karen Bass at a news conference Thursday morning in front of the Television Academy’s headquarters in North Hollywood.

The bill, AB 2319, is aimed at supporting the industry’s editors, sound mixers, composers and visual effects artists. It passed the state Senate 33 to 5 on Aug. 30, and the Assembly approved the final version 72 to 2 the same day. Newsom, who has not taken a public position on the measure, has until Sept. 30 to sign or veto it.

Bass urged supporters not to let up before then.

“We need our industry in full force,” Bass said. “It’s all a part of making our city more affordable. We know that this is one of the biggest issues in our city, and so having a strong, robust industry helps Angelenos across the board.”

The incentive would allow a 35% to 50% credit on qualified expenses relating specifically to post-production in California. The state’s existing film and TV tax credit program already covers post-production, but only if 75% of filming or the overall budget is spent in the state. The new credit doesn’t require productions to shoot in California.

Even if Newsom signs the bill, the program would start small. Schultz initially proposed $100 million to fund the effort, but the Legislature’s end-of-session budget sets aside $10 million to launch it.

“When you think about production, it’s easy to think about the actors, the directors and the writers; you don’t think about all that happens when the camera stops rolling,” Schultz said. “What’s changed is that they’re now telling their story about the struggles they’re facing.”

For industry veteran Karen Baker Landers, the decline in local post-production work is impossible to overlook. A two-time Oscar-winning supervising sound editor, Baker Landers is vice president of California Post Alliance, the group sponsoring the bill.

“It’s affecting people in huge ways, like losing their health insurance. I get people calling me asking to get just two weeks of work to qualify for coverage,” said Baker Landers. “It’s really difficult.”

Last year, California expanded its film and TV tax credit program, more than doubling the old $330-million cap to $750 million through June 30, 2030. But a state budget measure Newsom signed in June capped how much in tax credits a business can claim each year, a limit industry groups warned would undercut the expanded program. Lawmakers passed a fix on the final day of the legislative session and it is also awaiting the governor’s signature.

Despite the state’s bigger bet on the industry — and this summer’s fight over the cap — L.A. City Councilmember Adrin Nazarian, whose district includes North Hollywood, argued at the press conference that this is the right moment to keep asking for more.

“It’s that exact momentum that we need. When you double down on something, you’re giving more than hope, and you’re saying welcome back. Please come and do your work. Don’t stop doing this,” Nazarian said.

The reporter may have misheard the comment, or maybe the person being quoted actually said it, or something odd happened in the editing process.

Whatever: This is what appeared in the Feb. 20, 1985 edition of the Oakland Tribune, quoting a UC Berkeley professor about a protest against immigration sweeps in the Bay Area.

“This probably won’t stop the Iron Ass [federal government] from making raids in the Eastbay.”

“Iron Ass” is how someone might hear the acronym INS, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the forerunner to ICE.

And now, 40 years on, it fits right into the kind of angry, derisory language many Americans use for the present-day hammer-handed operations of federal immigration officers, around the country, especially here in California.

California has always been — and that’s a couple of centuries of “always” — at the fulcrum of the immigration-deportation seesaw in the U.S., with national policies yo-yoing between kicking workers out and inviting them in. Consider the foreign-born who joined the Gold Rush, the Chinese railroad workers, and still and always the Latino population along the long, wide international border.

That underlies the name of a new exhibition at the California Museum in Sacramento, “Help Wanted/Leave Now!” about the “revolving door” of programs and practices that have alternately enticed and expelled workers, legal and undocumented.

The U.S. border with Mexico represents a political borderline but it cannot sever many decades of complicated history and culture. And it’s left us with endless paradoxes and contradictions of who belongs where, with the U.S. government shifting to and fro on deciding and enforcing that, depending on the American economy, and American politics.

Sean Manwaring is curator of the exhibit. “We have historically recruited foreign workers who set down roots, become members of the community, and then, when there’s an economic downturn or it becomes politically expedient, it’s kind of a revolving door.”

The endless argument is that undocumented immigrants, who work for less because of their needs and their vulnerability, take jobs that Americans will, or that Americans won’t do. Something else Americans won’t do: pay higher prices for food, 90 years ago or now.

Last year, the Kansas City Federal Reserve bank, one of 12 regional Feds, noted on its website, “Historically, the supply of U.S.-born farm workers has not been sufficient to meet demand for farm jobs at the going wage rate, contributing to a largely foreign-born workforce.” Even the H-2A legal process for hiring seasonal foreign workers “would likely be more expensive than employing undocumented workers.”

A 1924 immigration law that created the Border Patrol also revealingly put it under the control of the federal labor department. Cheaper Mexican workers had been welcomed during World War I, and were still coming north more casually back then, even as a U.S. labor group was beginning to agitate for organizing American migrant farmworkers.

But when the 1929 market crash and the Depression knifed the American economy, the blame for unemployment in the southwest and California in particular fell on these Mexicans, and the government’s “Mexican Repatriation” program sent hundreds of thousands back to Mexico, some voluntarily, some not, and some numbers of them American citizens.

Once, border migration patterns resembled a loop: thousands of laborers, mostly men, commuted here once or twice a year from Mexico to jobs in the fields, then on to other jobs once harvests were over. Then they’d take their earnings home to Mexico as breadwinners and comparatively rich men, and stay until the next year’s season.

But as U.S. policies over decades squeezed the border shut on this back-and-forth commuting, some workers chose to stay on the side of the border where they could find work, and a number brought their families north to settle, legally or otherwise.

Oct. 15, 1963: Mexican workers in the bracero program work in pepper fields in the Firebaugh area in Fresno County. This image is from the Los Angeles Times Archive at UCLA.

(Bill Murphy / Los Angeles Times)

And then that pendulum swung again. In 1942, Americans by the millions left their peacetime jobs for the war and wartime industries, and the “Bracero” program — from “brazo,” the Spanish word for “arm” — filled in the gaps in the domestic workforce with contracts for employers of Mexican workers, usually in agriculture or on railroads.

Under the program, the U.S. screened Mexicans for aptitude for the work, and for attitude. Manwaring shared with me the notes of Henry P. Anderson, a historian and farm labor organizer, who took a guided tour of a Calexico bracero processing center in 1958:

“Those deemed expendable were described one at a time: this one is too tall, he is too ‘cocky,’ that one a ‘loafer,’ another ‘lazy and irresponsible,’ he’s a ‘smart aleck,’ this one a ‘ladykiller’ and not ‘peon’ enough. On the other hand the ‘right man,’ according to the guide, was ‘built right. He’s a farm worker, you can tell that … he hasn’t got any big ideas. He’s got the right attitude. He’s humble, not fresh and cocky. He’s an Indian type, probably from Jalisco or Guanajuato.’”

Feb. 1, 1954: Unpublished photo from the Mexicali border crossing during the bracero program. Not known if these men are entering or leaving United States.

(Frank Q. Brown / Los Angeles Times)

Through the bracero program’s 22-year span, as many as 4 million workers came in and presumably went home — though not always; a generation of families came here, or were born here, and stayed. About 15 years after it ended, a former Texas labor commissioner and ranking Labor Department official overseeing the program went public. He characterized wages for braceros as unconscionably low, the food substandard and the housing prison-like. “It was not altruistic at all. The bracero program was definitely created by the farmer who needed to make a dollar.”

And then America’s policy yo-yoed again: in 1953, even as the bracero program was still operating, the federal government launched “Operation Wetback,” to rid the country of undocumented immigrants.

With its heavy-handed “sweeps” of labor camps and factories, American citizens were indiscriminately caught up in the operations, just as ICE is doing now.

Consider the breezy tone of a 1931 story in the Los Angeles Evening Citizen News, reporting on 1,200 Mexicans deported from L.A. County in a day, with the casual note that “virtually none of them” was “an undesirable alien — many are American citizens.”

“L.A. was really ground zero for these raids during Operation Wetback and the Mexican deportation,” said Manwaring. Those 1,200 deportees were among at least 50,000 deported from LA County in five months of 1931 — as much as a third of the county’s Mexican and Mexican American population.

Emilia Castaneda was no more than 10 years old when her Boyle Heights family was deported in the 1930s. In an archival videotaped interview made when she was in her late 70s or 80s, and now part of the exhibition, she remembered being teased by the girls in the parochial school she ended up attending in Mexico. “You’re not one of us,” they mocked her. “Go home.”

Just like today, as agriculture and other food chain businesses were hard-hit by Trump’s aggressive deportations, some industries and regions in earlier “sweeps” also asked for carve-outs and exemptions.

“I wouldn’t say there was a backlash but it really impacted agricultural networks across California and Arizona,” said Manwaring. “We came across specific requests from county officials like in Yuma, Arizona, asking for exceptions because they needed these workers, they didn’t have enough help.”

What’s called the Texas Proviso was a wink-and-nudge agribusiness-friendly federal loophole crafted in the early 1950s that for more than 30 years made it a crime to harbor or transport undocumented immigrants — but not a crime to hire them. (Federal law criminalized that in 1986.)

From the Los Angeles Times, June 18, 1954 front page headline: 500 Nabbed by L.A. Wetback Raiders.

(Los Angeles Times)

The 1950s enforcement drive also put the word “wetback” into casual use. Official statements and news stories used it to mean anyone here without documentation. It was derived from the people who waded across Texas’ Rio Grande into the U.S., but it was sometimes used interchangeably with any Latino workers. Sometimes it just got clipped to “wets.”

In 1961, as astronaut Alan Shepard sat aboard his Redstone rocket waiting to become the first American launched in space, hours of delays forced him to urinate in his space suit. “Well,” he remarked nonchalantly, “I’m a wetback now.”

Not much has changed. Court records released this July confirmed that ICE agents had been referring to immigrants during raids with such slurs as “wet” and “tonk,” the last term reportedly derived from the sound an agent’s utility flashlight makes when hitting a migrant’s head.

A 1956 crime drama called “Wetbacks” was a B picture about a human smuggling ring victimizing the undocumented. The Los Angeles Examiner’s movie reviewer called it a “tedious, amateurishly made picture [that] supposedly deals with how illegal Mexican immigrants are smuggled into this country.”

One of the paradoxes of these periodic anti-undocumented worker campaigns is how they divided Latino communities: the “I did it the right way” people who managed to get visas, the people whose forebears may have come illegally but are now themselves established, and the paperless people who have just arrived, or who have lived here for years under the radar.

Cesar Chavez with Richard Ybarra during the 1973 Coachella Grape Strike.

(Richard Ybarra)

César Chávez lived that paradox. The co-founder of the United Farm Workers — along with Dolores Huerta, an advisor on this exhibition — was a U.S. citizen. In the 1960s and into the 1970s, he wanted immigration officials to keep out undocumented workers, believing they’d be exploited as strikebreakers for growers and erode his union’s bargaining power. By the 1980s, though, he was endorsing immigration reform and protections, especially in the face of President Reagan’s recession-era 1982 “Operation Jobs” sweeps.

A Los Angeles Times survey that same year found that within three months of those raids, 80% of the booted-out workers were back on the job. Many of the Americans hired to replace them soon quit. They didn’t like the wages or the working conditions.

The employment manager of B.P. John furniture maker, in Santa Ana, told The Times, 75 of the American-born workers soon quit on him. “They told me they found another job, that the work was too hard, that there wasn’t enough pay.”

In June 1954, The Times covered the Border Patrol’s plans for L.A. Herman Landon, the local immigration chief, described a “stockade” being built in Elysian Park to “imprison illegal Mexicans flushed out” of factories, hotels, and “skid row saloons” at the rate of a thousand or two per day.

Farmers had once requested immigrant workers from smugglers by the truckload, and counted by “the head,” like livestock. When the feds moved in, workers were deported south of the border, sometimes far south, by bus, by ship, by plane. The feds briefly charged each worker $10 each for the cost of being deported.

The caption of a June 1952 photo in the McAllen, Texas, Evening Monitor that showed men boarding a deportation plane read, “It’s a quick bite to eat then off into the wild blue yonder for these wetbacks.” The newspaper offered a $5 prize in a contest to name the airborne deportations. Not all readers were cheering. One acidly suggested calling it “Truman’s Gestapo Airlift.”

The human numbers for any of these programs, coming in or kicking out, are hardly ever confirmed, but over all this time we are talking about the movement of millions — and the deaths, still uncounted.

Trump said he always planned to model his deportations on the Eisenhower-era operation.

“We’re rounding them up in a very humane way, a very nice way,” Trump told “60 Minutes.”

In July 1954, under Eisenhower, 88 workers died of sunstroke in the desert below Calexico, where they’d been deported.

A poster size photo in San Pedro of Alex Pretti, a registered nurse who was fatally shot by ICE agents in Minneapolis.

(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

In the first 17 months of the second Trump administration, at least 52 people died in ICE custody. ICE agents have shot and killed at least six more people, some in their cars, and some right out in public, like Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, and Keith Porter Jr., shot last New Year’s Eve in front of his L.A. apartment building by an off-duty ICE agent.

The deaths recall a deportation sweep in 1948, when a plane carrying 28 workers back to Mexico, with a crew of four, caught fire and crashed near Coalinga. The press coverage then identified the crew but not the dead Mexican workers, whose individual stories were finally told 70 years later in Tim Z. Hernandez’s book “All They Will Call You.”

The grave marker for the Mexican nationals killed in a 1948 plane crash did not include their names.

(Michael Robinson Chavez / Los Angeles Times)

The title is a line from Woody Guthrie’s celebrated song “Deportees,” about the crash, and what it signified in a nation that used and used up its foreign workers, and it ends like this:

“Is this the best way we can grow our big orchards?/Is this the best way we can grow our good fruit?/To fall like dry leaves to rot on my topsoil/And be called by no name except ‘deportees’?”

Explaining L.A. With Patt Morrison

Los Angeles is a complex place. In this weekly feature, Patt Morrison is explaining how it works, its history and its culture.

As a kid growing up in rural Oklahoma, I feared what lurked beneath the lake water.

I’d listen as my family spun yarns about the massive catfish they’d discovered while noodling. I was terrified that, despite their docile nature that not a single adult told me about, an alligator gar would eat me while I bobbed in the lake. Old timers would recount finding a water moccasin in their boat. And I’ve still never recovered from the concept of a “breeding ball,” which a friend’s cousin’s cousin claimed to have run into while water skiing.

Despite the fact that nothing bad ever happened to me in a lake, my fear stayed with me into adulthood. I’ve met several Californians who hold fears similar to mine, but rather than lakes, their outsized anxieties lie within the ocean. It not only keeps them from swimming at our local beaches but also from venturing beyond the shallow shoreline.

An underwater view near Terranea Resort on the Palos Verdes Peninsula.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

In this week’s edition of The Wild, our weekly outdoors newsletter, I will discuss how to safely tackle those fears and start exploring with a snorkeling kit. Get ready to learn about the incredibly diverse and colorful world that lives beneath our local waters — you’re about to feel like Ariel exploring a whole new world! Let’s dive in.

I spoke to Ralph Buck, who founded Barnacle Busters, an L.A.-based LGBTQ scuba club, with two others almost 40 years ago. Buck’s passion for helping others learn how to safely explore the ocean was so infectious that by the time we ended our call, I was seriously considering whether I should get my scuba certification (which is a story for another day).

Here’s what Buck advised regarding snorkeling.

The Wild writer Jaclyn Cosgrove snorkels among what appear to be grunion or topsmelt near the coastline of the Palos Verdes Peninsula.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

1. Get the right gear

Generally you will need the following gear to get started:

• A correctly sized mask and snorkel.
• A wetsuit (with booties, as a bonus, to protect your feet): Generally, 7 mm is a great thickness for Southern California, although our water is warmer because of our El Niño season (and climate change).
• A life jacket or flotation device: This is considered optional, as the wetsuit will help you float, but there’s absolutely no shame in being extra safe! (And if you don’t have a wetsuit, please do wear a life jacket.)
• Fins: It might be too strong to suggest they’re “optional,” but they can be awkward for those new to snorkeling and not necessary if you’re in calm enough waters or an overall strong swimmer.
• Camera: Very, very optional. While out at Santa Cruz Island two weeks ago, I took some terrible underwater photos with my iPhone and wished I’d just left it on the shore.
• Weight belt: If you want to dive, you might need a weight belt to help you go under. That said, this is a more advanced tool, and it’s good to just focus on the basics as you get more comfortable in the water.

One thing new snorkelers might not realize is the level of buoyancy that a wetsuit gives you. Both times I’ve been in the past month, I wore a 7-mm suit and loved how easy it was to float above the eel grass at Santa Cruz Island and the kelp on the coast of Palos Verdes. I love a sport that includes just lying around.

Kelp, sea grass and various algae grow beneath the water at Terranea Beach Cove in Rancho Palos Verdes.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

2. Plan for getting your wetsuit on

For anyone on the shore of Prisoners Harbor two weeks ago, they got the pleasure of watching me groan (and curse) as I maneuvered into a thick wetsuit without anything but my swimsuit on. I told my friend I knew what sausage felt like as it’s shoved into its casing.

Zach Cantrell, owner of Ventura Dive and Sport, gave me a tip I will be eternally grateful for: Bring a plastic bag or something else that will help you slide into your wetsuit, as it helps reduce the friction between your body and the wetsuit. I brought one with me when my colleague, Allen J. Schaben, and I went out last week, and getting my wetsuit on was a breeze. No human sausage vibes (or cursing).

Buck suggested other options might be pantyhose or a long-sleeved unitard. Anything to help you slide into your wetsuit!

3. Before going out, practice in a pool

“I would suggest before hitting the open water, go hop in a pool and maybe find an experienced snorkeler to go with you simply because there are some subtle little pieces to the puzzle, which are” easy to miss for a new snorkeler, Buck said.

That includes the direction to point your snorkel. If it’s pointing too far forward, you will likely find yourself breathing straight saltwater as the waves hit you. But if you point it straight up or tilt it a bit backward, it’ll help your breathing apparatus stay clear.

A variety of marine life living around the rocky bottom of Terranea Beach Cove in Rancho Palos Verdes.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

4. Never snorkel alone

You look out at the ocean and see calm waters. You hear the siren’s call. You are alone. Resist.

Despite looking like a fairly chill activity, snorkeling still comes with significant risks that will be exacerbated if swimming alone. While out with my colleague off the coast of Rancho Palos Verdes, he pointed out a massive rock that I thought I could maneuver around. I timed my movements wrong and whacked right into it. I was fine, but also glad someone had my back if I wasn’t.

5. Assess the day’s conditions

• Check the weather. If it is a particularly windy day, it’s likely not a good day for snorkeling, not only for safety reasons but also visibility.
• Check the surf. There are several websites that pull data about the height of the surf, including the L.A. County Department of Beaches & Harbors.
• Before entering, scan the shore to assess the movement of the water.
• Learn how to spot rip currents. Rip currents “most commonly form at low spots or breaks in sandbars and near structures such as groins, jetties, and piers,” according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

“If you’re a beginner, and the waves are higher than knee high, I would just go to brunch,” Buck said. “If the surf’s too big, your visibility is going to suck anyway.”

I do love any excuse to have waffles.

The Wild writer Jaclyn Cosgrove carefully enters the water at Terranea Cove Beach in Rancho Palos Verdes.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

6. Choose an area that’s easy to enter and exit

This includes sandy beaches, where you can easily wade into the water without losing your balance. At Prisoners Harbor, I fell over several times because the shore is covered in various fist-sized rocks. (I need to work on my balance.) Snorkeling off the Palos Verdes Peninsula, I took my time, watched the waves and slowly moved into the water as the waves allowed. I found that, when there are rocks around, walking into the water like I’m navigating a balance beam is a good approach.

Also, in terms of looking for the best spots to snorkel, look for kelp forests and rock reefs. And because you’re newer, I would stick to spots known for snorkeling.

7. Plan for fog

Buck said before the COVID-19 pandemic, the Barnacle Busters, like most diver clubs, would recommend a simple solution to fog in your goggles: Spit. They still recommend using your spit in bodies of water where your germs won’t immediately affect other swimmers like in the ocean.

You can also buy an anti-fogging agent for your goggles. If you take your goggles off at any point as you snorkel, you’ll need to reapply either spit or anti-fog spray.

While I was out snorkeling, I was amazed at how well spit worked. (And if you want to understand the science behind why this works, check out this blog post from Scuba.com.)

A garibaldi, California’s state fish, at Casino Point Dive Park on Catalina Island in 2016.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

8. Check in with yourself and your partner

You should check in with your partner every 30 seconds. That might feel like it’s way too frequent, but you’ll be amazed at how far apart you can float from your friend in that time frame. It can be as simple as making sure you see them and they see you.

9. Keep an eye out for hazards

When entering the water, you’ll want to do the “stingray shuffle” to ensure you alert any nearby rays of your presence. Around L.A. County, you’ll also want to watch out for sea urchins because their spines can prick your skin, which will require treatment if you bump into them.

As our county lifeguards point out, L.A. beaches aren’t typically places you’ll find the most dangerous jellyfish. “Jellyfish in Southern California are usually smaller in scale and have a more mild sting than other species found around the world,” according to the agency’s website.

(And don’t worry. Electric eels don’t live in the ocean.)

I asked Buck how often he and his fellow divers check for hazards like sharks.

He told me that outside of rocks, high surf and going out too deep for one’s skill level, he and his diving partners don’t think too much about hazards in our local waters.

Purple sea urchins grow on a rock near the shore of Prisoners Harbor on Santa Cruz Island in the Channel Islands National Park.

(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)

“Well, we don’t consider sharks to be a hazard at all. My husband and I blame Steven Spielberg for the irrational fear of sharks,” Buck said, referencing Spielberg’s 1975 film “Jaws” and the adverse effects the film had on white sharks.

Buck said he and his husband rarely see sharks. He does give some weight to the argument that divers in wetsuits can resemble seals and sea lions when floating on the surface.

“But in areas where you’ll probably be snorkeling, you’ll probably be snorkeling on shallow rocky reefs or shallow kelp. It’s not even a consideration for us,” he said.

Lastly, if you or your partner start to shiver, get out.

The Wild writer Jaclyn Cosgrove snorkels at Terranea Cove Beach in Rancho Palos Verdes.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

10. Don’t touch anything

Practice Leave No Trace in the ocean too. “That’s our philosophy for diving too,” Buck said. “Look, but don’t touch.”

And never feed the marine life.

11. Have fun!

Since learning to snorkel, I’ve already found two friends who also enjoy it, and I plan to ping them to go out soon. If you don’t have anyone in your circle who snorkels yet, consider joining a local club.

In a world that feels hard right now, I felt like I had a two-hour vacation as I floated above the bright green sea grass and golden yellow kelp, watching garibaldi and what appeared to be grunion or topsmelt bob and dive around me. I came out refreshed and grateful to live here.

3 things to do

The hike to Eaton Canyon Falls in the San Gabriel Mountains before the 2025 Eaton fire.

(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)

1. Learn about Eaton Canyon’s future in Arcadia
L.A. County Parks and Recreation will host From Ashes to Action: Reimagining Eaton Canyon from 5 to 7 p.m. Wednesday at the L.A. County Arboretum’s Ayres Hall (301 N. Baldwin Ave. in Arcadia). Attendees will learn about design concepts for the next Eaton Canyon nature center along with the latest work completed in the natural area. The event is free, but registration is required. Register at arboretum.org.

2. Service sage in San Pedro
Cabrillo Marine Aquarium (3720 Stephen M. White Drive) needs volunteers from 9 to 10:30 a.m. Saturday to work on its native plant garden. Participants will learn about plants as they work. All ages welcome. Learn more at cma.recreation.parks.lacity.gov.

3. Launch into Latino Conservation Week in L.A.
The Audubon Center at Debs Park will kick off Latino Conservation Week from noon to 6 p.m. Sunday at Metabolic Studio (1745 N. Spring St.). Activities include a bachata class, panel discussion and guided nature hike. Learn more at act.aubudon.org.

The must-read

Burn damage to the Torrey pine grove at Santa Rosa Island, as seen from a ferry on June 8.

(Kayla Bartkowski / Los Angeles Times)

Last week, the National Park Service announced that up to 80% of the rare Torrey pines on Santa Rosa Island in the Channel Islands National Park could die after being harmed by a wildfire in May. Times staff writer Corinne Purtill wrote that initially park officials were hopeful that because the fire, which charred through 40% of the 18,000-acre island, burned at low intensity through the grove, the trees could recover. Research found the fire hurt the mature trees’ exposed root systems. However, I am holding onto hope — for a few reasons. “Park staff have also collected more than 14,000 seeds released from the pine cones. Viable seeds will be planted and raised in a nursery until the seedlings can be planted in the grove,” Purtill wrote.

Another reason is that volunteers are already actively working to save these trees. You can help with that. The California Institute of Environmental Studies needs volunteers to help with recovery as well as with Channel Islands Restoration. You can also donate to the Channel Islands Park Foundation’s Santa Rosa fire resilience fund.

Now more than ever, it’s on us to protect our public lands.

Happy adventuring,

P.S.

While out kayaking off the coast of Santa Cruz Island last month, I yanked a plastic wrapper out of the ocean. I frequently pick up plastic snack wrappers and corners of wrappers that people have accidentally dropped on the trail. And not infrequently have I found thick plastic bags — those said to be reusable — floating in shallow water near the beach. In recent years, California lawmakers have passed laws to address our state’s plastic consumption, including the Plastic Pollution Prevention and Packaging Producer Responsibility Act, or Senate Bill 54. Starting in 2027, the state will receive $500 million every year for 10 years to address plastic pollution, and state leaders want to hear from you how to best spend that money. You can submit your thoughts through Sept. 30 using this form or send your message using the email listed on the form’s webpage. Times staff writer Susanne Rust recently wrote about how there’s a secretive multimillion-dollar campaign to crush California’s landmark plastics law. If the battle over single-use plastic in California is something you’re passionate about, consider subscribing to Boiling Point, where my Times colleagues explore what’s happening to our climate-changed world. They’ll definitely keep you posted!

For more insider tips on Southern California’s beaches, trails and parks, check out past editions of The Wild. And to view this newsletter in your browser, click here.

Companies and special interest groups with some of the diciest issues expected to land on California’s next governor’s desk are among the top financial backers of Democrat Xavier Becerra, the gubernatorial front runner.

Money from Big Tech, the healthcare industry, labor unions and tribes helped propel Becerra’s bid for governor, which languished at the outset then took off just months before the June primary. All are major players in national and state politics and have a major financial stake on the policies of California’s next governor.

Meta, which has contributed nearly $1.2 million to groups backing Becerra’s campagin, has faced mounting scrutiny by lawmakers and the courts. The Menlo Park-based company, which operates social media and communication platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, just agreed to a landmark $17.1 billion settlement to resolve multi-state claims that its apps endanger children.

The state Legislature in August also passed a measure to bar social media platforms from providing an “addictive feature” to lure children, as well as bills to shield Californians from threats posed by the boom in artificial intelligence and data centers. The fate of these measures is now in the hands of Gov. Gavin Newsom, and the next governor likely will have to decide whether approve even stricter controls on Big Tech.

Meta is among eight donors that wrote seven-figure checks supporting Becerra’s gubernatrial campaign, with most of he money funneled to independent committees backing the Democrat that are not allowed to legally coordinate with the candidate. Campaigns often find back doors to do so.

Former state Sen. Steve Glazer, a Democrat who ran Jerry Brown’s successful 2010 gubernatorial campaign, said such spending is not surprising.

“Look, millions and billions of dollars are at stake, and the governor is the central point for all of that in California,” Glazer said. “It’s not a gamble anymore. You’re not picking a winner or a loser, right? So the floodgates open up for a runaway winner like Xavier Becerra.”

Becerra, the former secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and a longtime congressman, won one of the top two spots in the chaotic June primary. Republican Steve Hilton, a conservative media commentator and strategist who was endorsed by President Trump, won the other slot to advance to the Nov. 3 election. Becerra is considered a heavy favorite to win, given that Democratic voters in California outnumber Republicans nearly 2 to 1.

Becerra has the financial edge in the race, raising at least $30 million while also receiving significant support from the independent committees. Donors have contributed $48.8 million to Becerra’s campaign committee as well as outside efforts supporting his bid, according to a Times analysis of contributions through Sept. 3.

A Becerra spokesman said that although the campaign welcomed support from any donor, he would not weigh their contributions as he makes policy decisions if elected

“Xavier Becerra is laser-focused on making California work for working people — lowering costs, building housing, and making this state affordable again,” said Jonathan Underland, a spokesman for the Democrat. “Anyone willing to stand with us in that fight is welcome to join it, and we won’t hesitate to challenge anyone who gets in the way of that goal.”

His GOP rival raked in $18.8 million, including a $90,100 contribution from the candidate himself. Hilton’s top donors are billionaires and business executives including manufacturer Donald Friese and his wife Andrea, Silicon Valley billionaire Tim Draper, former Fox Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch, Google co-founder Sergey Brin, Los Angeles real estate magnate Geoffrey Palmer and the founder of defense contractor Anduril Industries, Palmer Luckey.

Executives and employees at Lighthouse Worldwide Solutions Inc., a company that makes contamination monitoring systems, contributed more than $474,000 to Hilton’s campaign.

A small handful of donors gave to both candidates. Uber and its employees gave nearly $42,000 to Hilton, while the company and an affiliated political action committee spent $1,039,200 supporting Becerra. Vlad Tenev, founder of the financial trading platform Robinhood, gave $289,000 to Becerra and $15,000 to Hilton.

A committee ostensibly established to oppose Hilton, an effort that effectively propped him up among Republican voters before the June primary, raised $2.5 million through large donations from the California Nurses Assn., the Service Employees International Union, the Democratic Governors Assn. and wealthy businessman Bill Bloomfield, an unsuccessful congressional candidate and Republican-turned-Democrat.

Hilton said Becerra’s financial backers are unsurprising and illustrate the “corruption” created by one-party rule in Sacramento.

“All these businesses and organizations assume he’s going to be the next governor, so they’re trying to bribe him,” Hilton said in an interview. “You can call it donations if you want, but it’s actually legalized bribery. … Big business and special interests are shoveling cash into his mouth in the hope that they can bribe him to do their bidding.”

Becerra, who served in public office for nearly 35 years, has a long history of support from powerful industries, labor unions and others with business before the government. During his 24 years in Congress, donors spent roughly $11 million supporting Becerra, according to the Times analysis and Open Secrets, a nonprofit, nonpartisan tracker of campaign fundraising. While he served as California attorney general for four years, contributors spent nearly $9.4 million backing him.

Among the former Biden Cabinet secretary’s top financial backers in the governor’s race are labor unions, healthcare groups, tech companies and Native American tribes that own some of the state’s splashiest casinos. All will probably be affected by decisions made by the next governor.

The Laborers’ International Union of North America and local affiliates and political arms, focused on infrastructure projects and the creation of union jobs, has contributed nearly $3.2 million. A committee associated with the California Assn. of Realtors that is focused on housing, real estate policy and property rights has spent nearly $2.8 million backing Becerra.

The Pechanga Band of Indians chipped in more than $2.3 million to efforts supporting Becerra at a time that gaming issues continue to be scrutinized.

A Pechanga representative said the tribe’s leader was unavailable due to travel but pointed to a statement he made before the primary.

“Secretary Becerra has stood with Indian Country for decades and understands Tribal sovereignty. When tribal healthcare was on the line, he was there,” said Tribal Chairman Mark Macarro. “This experience comes from a lifetime of public service, not a checkbook.”

The California Medical Assn. has spent nearly $1.5 million backing Becerra at a time of deep impending federal healthcare funding cuts and efforts by the state to backfill that lost financial support.

Dr. René Bravo, president of the California Medical Assn., which represents more than 50,000 physicians, said their spending was spurred by the their belief that Becerra is the best candidate to take on impending federal healthcare funding cuts that will harm millions of Californians access to care.

“Xavier Becerra understands healthcare and the challenges facing patients and physicians. The next governor will make critical decisions on MediCal, the physician workforce, affordability and access to care,” Bravo said. “We’re investing in this race because those decisions will directly affect California patients and physicians.”

Meta declined to comment on its contributions, and the Realtors and the Laborers did not respond to requests for comment.

Becerra, asked about the Realtors’ large donations supporting his campaign, noted that most of the money was contributed to committees outside his control. But he argued that his policy priorities have long been clear, including when he was an afterthought in the gubernatorial race.

“I was pretty clear in the primary, where I wasn’t getting as much support from a lot of different folks,” Becerra said Fridayat a news conference in north Long Beach supporting Proposition 1, a proposed $11.25-billion bond measure on the November ballot to boost affordable housing construction around the state.

“What I will tell you is this: Take a look at my record. Take a look at what I’ve said, and rather than look to inflated promises, look at what I’ve done in my record,” Becerra said, standing in front of Laborers’ International Union of North America members clad in orange safety vests. “And I will tell you, I have built, not just as a public servant, but when I was wearing myself that orange vest as a construction worker, as a laborer for Local 185, in my younger years, I was out there helping build. And so what we’re going to do is we’re going to do what we need to do, regardless what the voices say. We’re doing it because the people demand it.”

Fossil fuel and renewable energy firms have also supported Becerra, notably Chevron and affiliated groups and employees, spent more than $1.1 million boosting his bid — money that his Democratic rivals in the governor’s race and other critics, including climate activist Jane Fonda, pounced upon before the primary.

Billionaire hedge fund founder Tom Steyer deployed mobile billboards touting Becerra saying “You need Chevron, I need Chevron,” a clip from a longer comment about how every Californian doesn’t drive an electric car.

Chevron did not respond to a request for comment.

Earlier this year, Becerra was a single-digit polling afterthought in the crowded race to replace Newsom, who is termed-out. But after a dizzying primary that included a potential front-runner, then-Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Dublin), dropping out amid allegations of rape and sexual assault, Becerra took the lead in the Democratic field and placed first in the June election.

Becerra, 68, has a long career in elected office, serving two years in the state Assembly, 24 years in Congress, four years as California’s attorney general, and four years in the Biden administration.

While he was in Congress, donations to his federal campaign committee grew dramatically, according to an analysis of Federal Election Commission documents provided by Open Secrets.

In the early 1990s, Becerra was receiving donations in the low six figures, but by the end of his time in Congress, he was receiving well over $1 million during each two-year electoral cycle.

Finance, insurance and real estate firms and trade groups, such as Charles Schwab, the National Assn. of Insurance and Financial Advisors, the New York Life Insurance Co., Merrill Lynch and Pacific Life Insurance, were major supporters of Becerra, who served on the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, which regulates taxation. Such donors contributed more than $2.6 million to his congressional bids, according to Open Secrets.

Healthcare interests came in a close second, contributing more than $2.4 million to his congressional campaigns in the years before he was nominated and confirmed as Biden’s secretary of Health and Human Services, according to Open Secrets. Among the groups that supported Becerra’s federal campaigns included organizations representing physical therapists, anesthesiologists, podiatrists, assisted living and long term care facilities, and dietitians. While in Congress, Becerra was a strong advocate and supporter of the Affordable Care Act, a landmark healthcare overhaul championed by former President Obama.

Labor donated more than $1.7 million to Becerra’s congressional bids, a trend that continued when he ran for attorney general. Unions representing laborers, electrical workers, pipe fitters and firefighters donated $1 million, according to the Times analysis. The number has spiked to $6.3 million for Becerra’s gubernatorial bid.

Lorena Gonzalez Fletcher, president of the powerful California Labor Federation, said Becerra’s personal and political resume are significant at a time when the next governor will need to tackle artificial intelligence and the potential resulting job losses, the state’s volatile budget and federal funding cuts to MediCal and Medicare.

“He comes from a union family,” she said. “He has a long history of being on the right side of working people in a lot of different roles — in Congress, as attorney general and as secretary of Health and Human Services.”

War in the Middle East. The hottest summer on record in the U.S. AI getting as scary as “Terminator 2: Judgment Day.” An eroding coastline. A president who spends more time posting pathetic memes than improving the lives of everyday Americans.

It sure seems like we’re living in the End Times, right?

Why, we haven’t even reached the most frightening part of 2026: Election Day, when false prophets will besmirch ballots as the Great Deceiver, also known as Donald J. Trump, does everything possible to maintain his reign.

While people should research candidates and ballot initiatives before deciding how to vote, I also suggest that they read up on some of the thousands of saints recognized by the Catholic Church. You don’t have to belong to the faith to find wisdom in the lives of people who dealt with trials and tribulations far harder than ours and are now considered worthy of emulation.

This campaign season contains all sorts of scenarios screaming for holy intervention. We should pray extra hard to these saints for the next two months:

St. Homobonus: The Catholic Church recognizes no patron saint for the wealthy, since Jesus preached that it was easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven. Captains of industry instead venerate this 12th century Italian nepo baby, who ran a successful clothing business yet gave most of his earnings to the poor. If tech bros followed St. Homobonus’ example, that would be a far more convincing argument against Prop. 40, the California ballot initiative that would impose a (supposed) onetime tax on billionaires, than what they’re doing: whining about socialism, threatening to leave California and spending tens of millions of dollars on ads that voters are already tuning out or tossing in the trash.

Archangel Gabriel: His role in telling the Virgin Mary she would become the mother of Jesus makes my brother’s namesake the patron saint of mail carriers. With Trump doing everything possible to ban mail-in voting — and a compliant Postal Service leadership eager to do his bidding — here’s to hoping Archangel Gabriel calls up his winged homeboys Michael and Raphael, fights off all electoral Satans and ensures a fair election.

St. Benedict: Patron saint of exorcisms. Someone place his prayer card at all the city halls in southeast L.A. County to rid the area of civic corruption once and for all!

St. Peter Claver: Chapters of the Knights of Peter Claver — the oldest Black Catholic fraternal organization in the U.S. — exist in parishes across South L.A. Some in the area are fretting because, for the first time in 63 years, not all of its three City Council seats will be held by Black representatives. With Curren Price terming out, a Latino immigrant — either Jose Ugarte or Estuardo Mazariegos — will capture the District 9 seat. May the winner follow the example of Claver, who spent his life advocating for Black people in Colombia despite the fact he was a white Spaniard, and ensure that Black Angelenos — now only 8% of the city’s population — continue to have strong representation at City Hall.

St. Augustine: The founder of the Augustinian order to which Pope Leo belongs, he’s the patron saint of converts and preached against the haughty. “They uplift themselves,” Augustine wrote, “as though they were righteous or important but, as Paul writes, ‘Like smoke they will not last because their insanity will soon become obvious to everyone.’” Are your ears burning yet, JD Vance? Do you feel a tingle on your neck, Gavin Newsom?

Xavier Becerra, left, and Steve Hilton during a California gubernatorial candidate debate Feb. 3 in San Francisco.

(Laure Andrillon / Associated Press)

St. Stephen and St. Francis Xavier: They share names and attributes with Steve Hilton and Xavier Becerra, who are running against each other to become California’s next governor. Becerra has spent his decades-long political career serving as missionary for California liberalism, just like Francis Xavier helped make the Jesuits a worldwide institution. Of the two St. Stephens, one was a former king who’s the patron saint of Hungary, birthplace of Hilton’s parents. Far more relevant is the St. Stephen who was the first Christian martyr. The way Hilton is sacrificing his political life in the name of Trump, he’d better ask that Stephen to tell God not to make his likely electoral demise too painful.

Our Lady of Refuge: Although St. Junípero Serra was the Apostle of California, this Marian apparition has been the patroness of the Golden State since the days when we were part of Mexico. Sinners ask her to beg God for forgiveness on their behalf — and isn’t that what we all will do when our chosen candidate inevitably messes up?

St. Thomas: He’s the patron saint of India, where Los Angeles city councilmember and mayoral candidate Nithya Raman was born. He’s also the patron saint of architects, too many of whom have sat around with their hands tied up in red tape while waiting to rebuild Pacific Palisades after last year’s inferno, a stasis that many residents will forever blame on Mayor Karen Bass. But history better remember the Apostle as Doubting Thomas, who refused to believe that Jesus had risen from the dead until feeling the holes in His crucified hands. Let’s hope Angelenos are as skeptical about the claims of both Bass and Raman that they, and only they, can revive L.A.

St. Clare of Assisi: She died in the 13th century, but the Italian nun was named the patron saint of television in 1958 because she could see a Mass held far away, despite being bedridden. May St. Clare convince God to short-circuit networks and streaming services every time another annoying political ad interrupts me while I’m watching the latest episode of “Project Runway.”

St. Thomas More: The patron saint of politicians famously stood up to England’s King Henry VIII and his philandering, unethical ways. May St. Thomas More’s witness inspire someone in Trump’s cabinet to do the same.

Eh, who am I kidding? Some things are beyond even God.

California and nearly two dozen other states warned the U.S. Supreme Court Wednesday that allowing the U.S. Postal Service to move forward with President Trump’s new rules for mail ballots in the November election would cause “chaos” and could disenfranchise millions of eligible voters.

“In some States … compliance with USPS’ rule would be impossible ahead of the midterms, meaning that millions of voters would be unable to vote by mail and some would not be able to vote at all,” the states argued. “In the remaining States, there would be chaos — and a significant risk that millions more voters would be denied the ability to vote.”

The Democrat-led coalition — which includes California, 23 other states and the District of Columbia — also cited objections from lower-ranking state and elections officials in conservative states that have not objected to the Postal Service’s position, including the lieutenant governor and other officials in Utah saying implementation of the new rules would “be an unmitigated disaster.”

Similar warnings have emanated from Florida, Ohio, Texas and Wisconsin.

“Whatever else may be said of USPS’ new rule, it would wreak havoc on States and their voters if it takes effect at this late point,” the Democrat-led states wrote, pointing out that some States, including North Carolina and Wisconsin, have already begun to mail out ballots.

The states’ arguments were in response to the Trump administration over the weekend filing an emergency appeal to the high court, asking it to overturn a lower-court ruling halting the plan from being implemented for the Nov. 3 election.

The new rules — developed in response to a March executive order from Trump — require states to submit their complete voter lists to the Postal Service, and to adopt new ballot envelopes with individualized voter bar codes designed by the Postal Service. They require the Postal Service to then reject any mail ballots that don’t match those lists.

Trump’s order also directed the Department of Homeland Security to develop its own list of eligible citizen voters, ostensibly to be compared against the state lists.

Trump and other supporters of the changes — including top officials from a dozen Republican-led states — argue they are necessary to prevent widespread voter fraud, including by non-citizens. Elections experts say there is no evidence of such widespread fraud, despite robust audits and other searches for it.

The Democrat-led states sued to block the changes on multiple grounds, including that neither Trump nor the Postal Service have any authority to regulate state-run elections, that the changes would illegally prevent eligible voters from casting ballots, and that the timeline imposed by the new rule — formally issued by the Postal Service on Aug. 21 — made compliance by November impossible.

Independent voting rights groups also sued, alleging the new rules threatened to disenfranchise voters and make their work educating voters on their options for casting a ballot impossible to carry out.

A Postal Service whistleblower recently added skepticism to the agency’s ability to implement the new rules on its end, alleging in a statement published by congressional Democrats that the agency’s online portal for verifying ballots was built in a “slapdash” manner, is “fundamentally flawed” and threatens as built to reject thousands of ballots if just a single one cannot be properly read.

Last week, U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani granted requests from the states and the independent groups to halt the plans from being implemented nationwide, issuing a preliminary injunction requiring the Postal Service to cease all work on them.

The Trump administration then bypassed the U.S. 1st Circuit Court of Appeals to ask the Supreme Court for relief from Talwani’s order.

Solicitor Gen. D. John Sauer, the administration’s top litigator, argued that the warnings from states that the changes are unworkable, represent an overreach of federal authority or would cause chaos in November are all baseless.

“The Rule ensures that States remain responsible for determining voter eligibility and eligibility to vote by mail, and it does not dictate ballot content, mailing or receipt deadlines, or ballot-counting procedures,” Sauer wrote. “The Rule thus plainly does not seize control of States’ administration of elections — it simply imposes reasonable preparation requirements for certain election-related mail.”

Sauer argued that if the court does not allow the changes to proceed, it would cause “serious irreparable harm on the federal government, the States themselves, and the voting public” by “nullifying the Postal Service’s efforts to address the risk that the federal mails will be used to perpetrate voter fraud.”

Experts have consistently rejected those claims — including in their own filings before the high court.

Rick Hasen, director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project at UCLA Law, joined three other election experts to argue to the lower court that the Trump administration’s claims of injury were “speculative and weak.” They noted that the administration had “offered no evidence” in court that the new rules would “stop any appreciable amount of voter fraud or even that voter fraud through the mails is a widespread problem that USPS should address.”

Meanwhile, they wrote, there was “undisputed evidence” presented to the lower court that the Postal Service is “still not prepared to implement its new rule or do so accurately and efficiently, even as states have begun mailing out their ballots,” and that the “harm to the states and to voters is enormous, as the rule threatens to disenfranchise millions of elderly voters, disabled voters, military voters and all others including the most vulnerable who depend on mail voting, in both red and blue states.”

The Democrat-led states also noted that the Trump administration hadn’t proven that widespread voter fraud is a legitimate threat, but had shown it is ill prepared itself to implement the changes without causing widespread disruption — as evidenced in part by the whistleblower’s claims.

It’s unclear when the Supreme Court will rule, though a relatively quick decision is expected given the emergency nature of the appeal.