california

A federal appeals court Monday denied an emergency request from the U.S. Justice Department to step in and block California election officials from counting about 20,000 ballots from voters whose citizenship the Trump administration has questioned.

The three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals — composed of two judges appointed by President Trump and one by President Biden — ruled that it did not have jurisdiction over the request, given that a lower district court has not yet made a ruling on it.

But two of the three judges also wrote separately to make clear they also would have denied the Trump administration’s request on other grounds, if they did have jurisdiction.

In an unsigned order — joined by Judge Mark J. Bennett, one of the Trump appointees, and Judge Gabriel P. Sanchez, the Biden appointee — the court granted a request from Los Angeles County to dismiss the appeal, writing that the Trump administration “failed to allow the district court adequate opportunity to consider” its request for a temporary restraining order barring the ballots from being counted before filing its unusual appeal to the appellate panel.

The court found that the “emergency” the Trump administration asserted was in part a “self-constructed one” and that delays in the district court were partly attributable to its “own delay in filing suit, in realizing that existing California state law governs the issuance and processing of ballots, in recognizing that California has millions of registered voters and processes ballots on a schedule aligned with that scale, and in communicating to the court its desired relief.”

Both Bennett and Sanchez also each wrote a concurring opinion — in which they made clear that they would have denied the Trump administration’s request even if they did have jurisdiction, too.

Sanchez wrote that federal law would bar the court from issuing such a demand on state elections officials so close to an election.

“The United States seeks to have a federal court dictate to California the manner in which it must administer its own electoral process by segregating mail-in ballots and undertaking a citizenship verification process the State has never done before,” Sanchez wrote. “The proposed injunction would transform California’s election rules for an election that is already underway and would cause widespread confusion among voters and election officials, divert election administration resources, and ‘usher in electoral chaos.’”

Bennett wrote that he would have denied the Trump administration’s emergency request for several reasons beyond jurisdiction, including that it would be likely unconstitutional under the Elections Clause of the U.S. Constitution, which he wrote “confers broad authority only on Congress and the States, not the Executive,” and Congress has not acted to say that California’s existing laws for ensuring only U.S. citizens vote are problematic.

“Thus, under the Elections Clause, the legislature’s statutory scheme remains as the only method to do so,” Bennett wrote.

Bennett wrote that there are existing California laws to deal with the harm the Trump administration claims it is suffering, but that granting its request to intervene could “result in immense hardship” to the state “and harm the public by risking the disenfranchisement of eligible voters and putting the entire tabulation process in jeopardy.”

Bennett wrote that the Trump administration “offered no workable plan of any kind as to how the remedy it seeks could be accomplished in practice without potential catastrophic consequences to California’s ongoing election.”

Judge Patrick J. Bumatay, the other Trump appointee, dissented — arguing the Trump administration was well within its legal rights to intervene, and the appellate court did have jurisdiction to grant its request and bar the state “from accepting and processing ballots likely cast by aliens until their citizenship could be verified.”

“The question — does the federal government have the power to stop this potential attack on the integrity of our elections? Under both federal law and the Constitution, the answer must be ‘yes,’” Bumatay wrote. “Simply, the federal government has a sovereign interest in safeguarding federal elections and ensuring that the votes of noncitizens do not undermine our electoral results.”

The ruling clears the way for the lower court to proceed with a hearing scheduled Tuesday afternoon before U.S. District Judge David O. Carter in Los Angeles.

Carter, an appointee of President Clinton, previously rejected an attempt by the Trump administration to obtain California’s full voter rolls, calling that demand unlawful and a threat to democracy in January. Other federal judges made similar rulings in dozens of states across the country.

The question at issue Tuesday — and hashed over by the appellate court during oral arguments Sunday — is whether the courts should bar the state, Secretary of State Shirley Weber and Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk Dean Logan from processing and tabulating the flagged ballots until they can provide to the Trump administration proof that those individuals are citizens.

The Trump administration has argued in court filings that the federal government is suffering irreparable harm each day such counting is allowed to continue, as once California ballots are removed from their mail envelopes or cast in person, there is “no way to associate the voter with the ballot” or resegregate those ballots from others.

More than 3 million ballots have already been cast in the upcoming Nov. 3 midterm elections statewide, and more than 500,000 have already been cast in L.A. County.

Attorneys for California, Weber and Logan have argued in court filings that the administration’s demands to segregate 20,000 ballots and vet those voters for citizenship with just days to go before the election are impossible to comply with and would cause catastrophic disruptions if elections officials across the state were forced to try.

They have also said the demands are clearly unconstitutional, illegal under state and federal law, and based on federal immigration and third-party data sets that have been shown to be deeply flawed, inaccurate and inclusive of legitimate voters.

While the appellate court’s formal ruling Monday adhered closely to the technical issue of jurisdiction, its conversation Sunday did not — with both Bennett and Sanchez expressing substantial doubts about the lawfulness of the Trump administration’s request, just as they did in their separate concurrences.

Bennett grilled Matthew Donnelly, the attorney for the Justice Department, on how the executive branch’s demands squared with the U.S. Constitution, which explicitly gives states the power to set laws regarding the time, place and manner of elections and Congress — not the executive branch — oversight over those laws.

Bennett said that while the Trump administration is “unhappy” with how California law ensures voters are citizens — namely by requiring that they attest to their citizenship upon registration — the state has the right to determine its election laws under the Elections Clause of the Constitution, and Congress has not challenged its process.

“It seems to me that you want us to issue an injunction that is entirely inconsistent with the law the California Legislature has adopted pursuant to the Elections Clause,” Bennett said. “How can we do that?”

Bennett and Sanchez both questioned how the appellate court could step in and adjudicate whether to grant the Trump administration’s request to intervene in the state’s election when it is not a fact-finding body, and the district court was never given a chance to develop a record of facts — including around the dueling and contradicting claims about the origins and reliability of the federal government’s list of “likely” noncitizen voters and the state’s claims that an order forcing them to segregate out the votes at this late stage in the election would cause catastrophic harm to the election process.

Carter is sure to pick those issues back up on Tuesday.

WASHINGTON — President Trump offered $1 million Monday to anyone who reports voter fraud that leads to an arrest and conviction, escalating his efforts to cast doubt on the midterms as Republicans risk losing control of Congress.

“Anybody reporting Voter Fraud in the past Elections, or the upcoming 2026 Midterm Election, will be paid $1,000,000 upon the arrest and conviction of those that created the Fraud!” Trump posted on Truth Social.

The offer comes as the Trump administration has moved more aggressively to intervene in the midterms, including an effort in Alaska to invalidate a potential Democratic victory in a U.S. Senate race and a push in California to segregate ballots from voters the administration considers likely non-citizens.

Trump did not say how the tips should be submitted to the federal government or who would decide whether a claim qualifies for a reward. The White House declined to comment beyond Trump’s social media post.

Last week, the administration launched a separate program that is meant to pay people for providing information to the administration to combat fraud. When announcing it, Trump said he would personally decide who gets paid.

“I will be the arbitrator of all of these decisions,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. “In other words, I’ll determine whether or not the person is deserving, and I’ll determine, and I will be very generous.”

It is unclear whether Trump, who has spread false claims about the nation’s voting systems and routinely questions the integrity of the elections, intends to play a similar role over the voter fraud tipping system.

In the lead up to the midterms, Trump has tried to assert more control over the elections, calling on Republicans to “nationalize” voting and pushing for restrictions on mail-in ballots. Trump has also cast doubt over the integrity of California’s primary election, claiming without evidence that Democrat cheated — an allegation that was investigated by the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles, which is run by a Trump loyalist.

Even as Trump says he wants “honesty in our elections,” the president told supporters at the Republican Party convention in Dallas in September to “cheat like hell, like they do.”

Trump’s efforts to cast doubt over voting come as polls show Republicans facing headwinds heading into the Nov. 3 election as Trump’s popularity sags amid voter concerns over the economy.

As Trump has tried to rally supporters in red states, he has also vowed to give every American adult $5,000 if Republican retain control of Congress. The promise drew bipartisan criticism, with some even calling the idea a potential bribe.

My fellow Californians, let us begin with an intelligence test.

Our great state has been voting since early October. Folks have been mailing in their ballots, dropping them off at collection sites and even showing up at in-person centers.

So raise your hand if you know — or even just assume — elections officials have been doing something with those ballots as they arrive, other than just throwing them in a pile.

Congratulations, hand-raisers. You are now officially smarter than the entire U.S. Department of Justice. Or at least more honest.

On Sunday, the lawyers for the DOJ managed to get a three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit to convene a rare emergency hearing because, OMG, people are actually voting and California is processing ballots!

Who could have possibly known?

Even though it’s literally law that counties count ballots in a timely manner; even though it’s happened in every other election; even though the daily tallies of how many ballots are received are posted online by the secretary of State; even though there are live camera feeds of ballots being processed in Los Angeles — somehow the U.S. government didn’t know this normal election procedure was happening, it claimed.

It wasn’t until late Friday, when DOJ lawyers read a filing by California DOJ lawyers laying out that L.A. is, like, actually opening mail-in ballots, that the U.S. DOJ realized that ballots are being opened. About 600,000 so far in L.A.

That seemed “absurd on its face,” argued California Deputy Solicitor Gen. Samuel P. Siegel.

Armed with this previously unknowable information, Trump’s lawyers were begging the appeals court to take their flimsy, constitutionally questionable case away from the judge who had already promised to rule on their requests on Tuesday and immediately give them an injunction to further their election conspiracy claims.

Most folks are aware of the background of this drama, but here’s the quick recap.

President Trump for years has falsely but incessantly claimed that Democrats are colluding with undocumented people to help them sneak into the country in exchange for illegally voting in mass numbers for Democrats. This is not happening, but the president is obsessed with this conspiracy, so much so that he is weaponizing the Department of Justice to attack states, California in particular, in a bid to prove his delusions correct, and perhaps as a bonus, undermine democracy.

A few months ago, the DOJ came to the state of California and claimed it had a list of 190,000 people it believed were illegally registered to vote. That list has since dropped to 20,000. But with all the investigative power of the government hard at work on this, only 28 people in California have been indicted by the feds during this no-holds-barred effort, and it looks as though not all of those cases will hold up.

Undeterred, Trump lawyers tried to get a California judge to order the state (and Los Angeles) to set aside ballots that it claims to have doubts about. They asked the judge in that case for a temporary restraining order forcing L.A. County to do that, and the judge agreed to rule on that request early next week, in an already-expedited fashion.

But then the Trump lawyers learned about all that ballot processing and demanded the judge instead rule by Saturday afternoon — though the reasoning here seems iffy. When the federal judge assigned to the case didn’t rule by Saturday, an absurd ask that didn’t even allow enough time for lawyers to file briefs, the feds ran to the 9th Circuit, claiming that failing to rule on Saturday was a de facto denial of their request.

Basically, it seems the Trump lawyers were arguing two things. First, that once ballots are counted, they can’t be uncounted, and if there are illegal ballots, that hurts all voters. Sure, OK.

But again, there is no evidence this is happening in any widespread fashion, and the lists of potential vote scofflaws compiled by the government have been shown to be error-ridden. They may also involve the use of a mysterious non-government “third party” to gather the information that not even the Trump lawyers could identify Sunday.

DOJ lawyers also claimed they had just learned that once a ballot is taken out of the envelope, there was no way to reconnect that ballot to the voter who cast it — because our votes are anonymous. Therefore, the 20,000 ballots had to be grabbed before they were separated from the documents inside.

The lawyers did not explain why they needed to know how a person voted to confirm they illegally voted. The envelopes are retained by county elections officials, but apparently the Trump lawyers feel it’s critical to tie them to particular votes.

But here’s the thing — there are simply not enough illegal voters to sway a Los Angeles election, or a California one for that matter. We have a system to ferrets out problematic ballots right now, and a separate criminal system that can hold illegal voters accountable. Two weeks before an election isn’t a time to demand ballots be withheld — unless you’re trying to undermine trust.

The appellate judges did not seem impressed by the federal laywers’ arguments, questioning more than once if the 9th Circuit even had jurisdiction since states are in charge of elections, not the federal government. There was even some reading of the 10th Amendment. You know, the one the don’t-tread-on-me types love that reads: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States.”

We should expect a ruling sooner rather than later, but the real question remains, why the emergency? The DOJ is involved in another voting lawsuit in Washington, D.C., where the plaintiffs, led by the UCLA Voting Rights Project, have asked for a restraining order of their own stopping the government from creating national lists of who it thinks should vote, and using janky, secretive information gathering to do it.

It’s also true that the original case was reassigned from a Trump-appointed judge to one appointed by Bill Clinton. There has been speculation the switch may have been viewed unfavorably by the feds, though the Clinton-appointed judge, David O. Carter, was given the case because of his experience in the subject matter.

The D.C. restraining order could be decided in the next few days. I’m not saying the cases are related, or that the judge should or does matter, but the Trump DOJ’s argument in California is basically that its list of 20,000 is really solid, reliable information.

If the D.C. federal judge rules first that the government information gathering is potentially both an overreach and sloppy, it makes it that much harder for another judge, or the appellate court for that matter, to rule that the list is so critical that they must step in.

So maybe there is an emergency.

Just not the one the government is claiming.

Judge questions the Trump administration’s efforts to exert greater influence over elections process ahead of upcoming midterm vote.

A United States appeals court has expressed doubt over the Department of Justice’s lawsuit against California, which seeks to force the state to throw out mail-in ballots it has deemed likely to go to non-citizens.

Circuit Judge Mark Bennett said on Sunday that the three-judge panel would issue a decision as soon as possible, following a rare weekend oral argument.

But Bennett, an appointee of Republican President Donald Trump, voiced concern that the lawsuit would not hold up to scrutiny.

He pointed to the Elections Clause in the US Constitution, which allows states — not the federal government — to administer elections.

“It seems to me that you want us to issue an injunction that is entirely inconsistent with the law that the California legislature has adopted pursuant to the Elections Clause,” Bennett told Justice Department lawyer Matthew Donnelly. “How can we do that?”

The case is part of a larger effort under the right-wing Trump administration to crack down on alleged non-citizen voting ahead of the crucial November 3 midterm elections.

On October 15, less than three weeks before the midterm races, the Justice Department issued a complaint targeting California, a left-wing stronghold.

It asked the federal court system to set aside thousands of mail-in ballots that the government says were sent to “likely non-citizens”.

The lawsuit indicates the Trump administration sent California officials a list of 20,000 names it believes are not eligible to vote, based on citizenship.

Trump has often pushed the discredited claim that the Democratic Party is benefiting from widespread voting by non-citizens.

California has long been one of the targets for his election misinformation.

Earlier this year, Trump denounced the state’s primaries after right-wing candidates like Los Angeles mayoral hopeful Spencer Pratt felt short of his expectations.

“There’s BIG cheating by the Dumocrats in California,” he wrote on social media at the time.

He then announced that the state would be under investigation from the US attorney’s office.

Trump’s efforts have caused alarm, with critics accusing him of seeking to dampen voter turnout through intimidation and confusion.

The midterms will decide which party controls the US Congress, as well as key state and local positions.

Polls, however, predict steep odds for Republican candidates, given Trump’s souring approval ratings and dissatisfaction with issues like the cost of living and the US-Israeli war against Iran.

Voting rights advocates have warned that the Trump administration has not publicly revealed how it has compiled its list of non-citizen voters, and whistleblower reports have cast doubt on the accuracy of such lists.

In response to the October 15 lawsuit, California has countered that it has strong safeguards to prevent non-citizens from voting.

It also said that the Justice Department’s claims are based on dubious data.

“This is a sad, desperate attempt by Trump to use his politicized Justice Department to try to suppress California voters just three weeks before Election Day,” California Governor Gavin Newsom said in a statement earlier this month.

“We will continue to carry out free and fair elections in the Golden State — and call out this authoritarian as he tries every play in the dictator’s playbook.”

In a rare Sunday hearing, a federal appeals court judge appointed by President Trump questioned how the Trump administration’s request to intervene in California’s ongoing midterm election in order to force state officials to set aside 20,000 ballots from voters whose citizenship it questions squares with the U.S. Constitution.

Judge Mark J. Bennett said that while the executive branch is “unhappy” with what California law requires for ensuring voters are citizens, the state has the right to determine the manner of its elections under the Elections Clause of the Constitution and Congress has not challenged that process, despite having the ability to do so.

“It seems to me that you want us to issue an injunction that is entirely inconsistent with the law the California legislature has adopted pursuant to the Elections Clause,” Bennett said. “How can we do that?”

Matthew Donnelly, a Justice Department attorney, said the Trump administration has good reason to believe those ballots are from ineligible noncitizen voters, and has the legal right under seperate federal criminal law to challenge their tabulation until state officials can prove otherwise.

Donnelly said both federal criminal law and state election law bar noncitizen voters from casting ballots, but “the problem is that California isn’t interested in enforcing that provision.”

The exchange came during an hour-long hearing before a three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, over the Justice Department’s unprecedented emergency request that the court order California Secretary of State Shirley Weber and Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk Dean Logan to immediately stop counting ballots from the 20,000 flagged voters until they can definitively prove those voters are U.S. citizens.

The appellate panel — on which Bennett was joined by circuit Judges Patrick J. Bumatay, another Trump appointee, and Gabriel P. Sanchez, an appointee of President Biden — did not issue a ruling, though a decision is expected soon given the emergency nature of the appeal.

How it will rule is unclear, though both Bennett and Sanchez hammered Donnelly with questions about how the Trump administration’s position squared with the law.

Rick Hasen, director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project at UCLA School of Law, wrote online Sunday that the court seemed “very likely to reject” the Trump administration’s appeal, with Bennett and Sanchez having “expressed great skepticism on both jurisdiction and the merits.”

In addition to questioning its constitutionality, Bennett also questioned how the appellate court even had jurisdiction over the case, given that the Trump administration appealed the matter to the appellate court before the lower district court had a chance to assess the facts in the case or issue an order.

“How do we have jurisdiction when the district court has said it’s going to rule expeditiously?” Bennett said. “I don’t see how we have jurisdiction.”

Bennett also questioned why the appellate court should ignore the claims of state elections officials that having to comply with the Trump administration’s demands in the few remaining days before the Nov. 3 election would be catastrophically disruptive to the election, given that the lower court has had no chance to assess those claims.

“Isn’t that sufficient to give us pause as to whether we should do exactly what [a state expert] avers is going to cause a catastrophe?” Bennett asked.

Bennett’s questions evoked many of the arguments made by the state in its own filings in the matter, which were repeated by California Deputy Solicitor Gen. Samuel P. Siegel during the hearing.

Siegel said there was “nothing” for the appellate court to review, given there has been no fact finding and no order out of the lower court, and that the administration’s demands were unconstitutional and illegal. He said the court did not have to wrestle with many of the arguments being put forward by the Trump administration, because it should simply reject the appeal for lack of jurisdiction and send the matter back down to the lower court.

Bumatay appeared most interested of the three judges in the damage done when noncitizens do vote, and the underlying question of how the state should handle objections to alleged noncitizen voters when they arise.

Siegel and Seth Waxman, an attorney for Logan, said there are existing processes for that — which require the challenger to present extraordinary proof, which they said the Trump administration has not done for the 20,000 voters it has flagged.

Sanchez repeatedly questioned the provenance of the administration’s list, asking which third parties were involved in providing the data. Donnelly could not answer, which Sanchez said raised questions about the reliability of the list.

The Justice Department appealed the case after a lower district court judge declined to immediately rule last week on its request for a temporary restraining order barring California officials from tabulating the flagged ballots.

In court filings, the administration argued that once mail ballots are removed from their envelopes in California, or a ballot has been cast in person, there is “no way to associate the voter with the ballot” or resegregate it from other cast ballots.

Attorneys for California, Weber and Logan have argued the demands are illegal, impossible to comply with before the Nov. 3 election and based on deeply flawed federal immigration and third-party data sets shown to be inaccurate and inclusive of legitimate voters.

In court filings, they have argued that the Trump administration’s argument “rests on mere suspicion, aroused by suspect data,” and that its lawsuit is at best “a reckless political stunt” and at worst “threatens to disenfranchise thousands of Californians this election.”

Independent elections experts have said the Justice Department’s efforts break with longstanding department policy of not wading into election-related issues within 90 days of an election, to avoid disenfranchising legitimate voters.

They also have said the Trump administration’s lists of alleged noncitizen voters and its authority to intervene are both questionable, including because the U.S. Constitution empowers states to run elections with oversight from Congress, not the executive branch.

The Justice Department sued California, Weber and Logan on Oct. 15, two days after Acting Deputy Atty. Gen. Trent McCotter wrote to Weber and Logan giving them 48 hours to set aside the ballots for the 20,000 flagged voters — whom McCotter claimed were “likely noncitizens.”

First Assistant U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli, the lead federal prosecutor in L.A., has claimed federal authorities have “overwhelming evidence” that tens of thousands of noncitizens are registered to vote in California, and has defended the methods used to identify those voters. He and other federal prosecutors in the state also recently charged 28 legal permanent residents in California with election-related crimes, including illegally registering to vote.

On Friday, the Justice Department sent letters to county elections offices statewide with demands that they segregate ballots from voters the Trump administration believes are noncitizens, drawing from the same list of 20,000 at issue in the case against Weber and Logan. In those letters, the Justice Department gave the county officials 48 hours to comply, and threatened them with criminal punishment if they refuse.

State officials have said neither Essayli nor other Trump administration officials have provided proof to back up their claims, and that their list of 20,000 voters is clearly inaccurate. Logan said a preliminary review of a subset of those voters found many were born in the U.S., weren’t registered and had never voted.

More than 3 million people have already cast ballots in California — and more than 500,000 have already done so in Los Angeles County.

The challenge to the 20,000 ballots in California is just the latest Trump administration attempt to intervene in state-run elections ahead of the midterms.

Federal judges in dozens of states have rejected Justice Department lawsuits demanding the states turn over their voter rolls to the Trump administration. Federal judges also have rejected multiple Trump executive orders trying to institute national voter ID and citizenship checks, and his administration’s attempt to empower the U.S. Postal Service to vet mail ballots.

Other cases — including over the Trump administration using unproven and inaccurate federal data sets to question the citizenship of state voters — are pending.

Democrats and voting rights groups are also bracing for fresh litigation from the Trump administration to challenge the outcome of pivotal election results the president doesn’t like — and are already defending against a lawsuit the Justice Department brought at Trump’s urging in Alaska, preemptively challenging a Democratic win in the Senate race there based on a third candidate sharing a similar name as the Republican incumbent.

Times staff writer Brittny Mejia contributed to this report.

As Ohio Republican gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy came under fire for releasing an attack ad featuring his Democratic competitor’s estranged mother, a mysterious news site was running a Facebook ad boosting the controversial video.

The Buckeye Bulletin, which bills itself as an Ohio-based news platform committed to “reliable journalism” and “strong editorial standards,” popped up suddenly this spring and began pumping out a steady stream of pro-Ramaswamy content.

The publication’s articles have no bylines. There is no list of staff. The website does not feature digital advertisements, nor does it prompt readers to subscribe, but there is also no disclosure of who is funding it.

A closer look at the Buckeye Bulletin’s Meta advertising data shows that its Facebook and Instagram accounts are managed by the Lincoln Media Foundation, a nonprofit organization affiliated with the Orange County-based Lincoln Club — the oldest and largest conservative donor organization in California. IRS documents show that the club and foundation are associated organizations and share at least two key executives.

Meta’s advertising data shows that the Lincoln Media Foundation manages the Instagram and Facebook accounts for the Buckeye Bulletin.

(Meta)

The Buckeye Bulletin, Lincoln Club and Lincoln Media Foundation did not respond to requests for comment.

The Bulletin appears to be a partisan site posing as a local news outlet ahead of the midterm elections, a strategy political scientists refer to as “pink-slime” journalism.

This is not the first time a “pink-slime” outlet has been linked to the Lincoln Media Foundation. In 2024 Max Read, director of civic innovation for the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, identified seven such alleged outlets.

With the exception of one Los Angeles-focused site, those outlets all targeted critical states for the 2024 presidential election such as Georgia, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Read reported that the media group had spent more than $63,000 on Facebook and Instagram ads, resulting in up to 18 million impressions during the last election cycle.

“[The sites were] very clearly designed to try to influence the information environment ahead of the presidential election,” Read told The Times. “They had all been started early in the year and used advertising on Meta platforms to juice their engagement numbers.”

When asked by The Times to take a look at the Buckeye Bulletin, Read said it appeared to be “pretty much copy and paste the same tactic that they used in 2024, even down to the aesthetics of the Facebook page and Instagram account.”

“It seems like they realized this worked at some level in 2024 and is worth doing again this year,” he said.

Earlier this year, CalMatters identified another outlet tied to the Lincoln Media Foundation called the California Courier, which had been circulating Facebook advertisements criticizing Gov. Gavin Newsom and the statewide redistricting ballot measure Proposition 50.

Since the Buckeye Bulletin’s Facebook and Instagram pages launched in March, the outlet has shared posts touting endorsements of Ramaswamy — a biotech billionaire and former presidential candidate — as well as his platform for addressing Ohio’s healthcare crisis and his stance on religious freedom in schools.

Simultaneously, the outlet’s social media posts have highlighted the refusal of his opponent — Amy Acton, Ohio’s former public health director — to debate, comments on how she “shut down” the state’s economy during the COVID-19 pandemic and a video with a watermark from right-wing political activist Laura Loomer.

This week, the outlet turned attention to Ramaswamy’s controversial campaign ad featuring Acton’s estranged mother, Donna Arthur. In the ad, Arthur calls her daughter a liar and urges voters not to support her.

However, the ad did not acknowledge that Arthur lost custody of her children after their stepfather, Arthur’s husband, was indicted for raping Acton when she was a child — an omission that drew fierce condemnation from Democrats and some Republicans, including Ohio’s Republican Gov. Mike DeWine. Others, including President Trump and Vice President JD Vance, an Ohioan, have defended the ad.

Arthur and her husband fled to Pennsylvania after his 1978 indictment where he died in 2004 without having been brought back to Ohio to face the charge.

Peppered in between political content on the Bulletin’s social media feeds is a smattering of reels related to non-political news, often featuring videos lifted directly from local TV stations. These other posts are used to create a “veneer of genuine local journalism,” Read said.

The language on the Bulletin’s About Us page displays markers of artificial intelligence such as generic mission statements, polished but repetitive phrasing and vague claims about journalistic standards with no details about the publication’s staff.

Of the last 30 posts shared on the Bulletin’s Facebook as of 5 p.m. Friday, 21 were about state or national politics and 10 were about the gubernatorial race. Engagement on the posts dealing with Ramaswamy and Acton is consistently strong for a page with around 5,600 followers.

For example, a Wednesday post on Ohio State Medical Assn.’s PAC endorsing Ramaswamy received more than 770 likes, 260 comments and 150 shares. Another video posted Wednesday with the label “Amy Acton refuses to debate, says mother is lying about her” received more than 4,800 likes, 1,500 comments and 500 shares.

Meanwhile, a non-political Wednesday post on a chemical explosion in Toledo received two likes, no comments and no shares.

The unassuming social media scroller or person who clicked onto the website would have no clue of the Buckeye Bulletin’s apparent connection to a group of wealthy Southern California Republications.

The Lincoln Media Foundation was started by leaders of the historic Lincoln Club, which was founded in 1962 and once counted John Wayne and former President Richard Nixon as members.

Today, the club describes itself as being home to “the most prominent business and thought leaders” in California and says it offers members the opportunity to meet world leaders and “experience their hobbies come to life through a combination of extravagance and leisure.”

The foundation notes that it uses a digital approach to reach communities left out of the national conversation, but its website does not disclose providing funding to any news outlets.

IRS records show that the nonprofit’s financial activities kicked up dramatically in 2024, the latest year for which data are available. The Lincoln Media Foundation reported $3.88 million in revenue in 2024, compared with $738,000 in 2023, $453,000 in 2022 and $415,000 in 2021.

The Buckeye Bulletin’s Facebook and Instagram accounts have spent just over $10,000 boosting posts this year, according to Meta’s ad library.

That’s barely a drop in the bucket in Ohio, where hotly contested races for governor and U.S. Senate have drawn hundreds of millions in spending. But presenting a slanted political view under the guise of local news tends to offer more bang for your buck than traditional advertisements, said Georgia Kernell, an associate professor in the departments of communications and political science at UCLA.

“Voters are so sick of ads; they’re getting tons of clear paid advertisements on the radio, on the television and on their social media feeds now,” she said. “Anything that can kind of look different is going to be more likely to keep their attention.”

Presenting as a traditional news source also increases the likelihood of viewers believing that the information presented is well-researched, she said.

Nik Usher, associate professor of communications at the University of San Diego, said it’s unclear how much influence pink-slime journalism is having on voting behavior, but political strategists are willing to try any new approach to possibly make a difference in tight races.

“This is one strategic effort to throw more spaghetti at the wall, hoping it’ll stick,” Usher said.

Creators of these partisan sites further stand to benefit from the fact that artificial intelligence tools are constantly scraping content from news websites without paywalls.

Researchers at NewsGuard recently found that leading AI chat bots are citing pink-slime websites nearly half the time when users ask questions about candidates and issues in the midterm elections.

Democrats and Republicans have increasingly leveraged pink-slime journalism to influence voters in the past few election cycles.

In 2020, the New York Times identified a network of 1,300 news sites that paid freelance writers to produce biased content for Republican groups and corporate public relations firms. In 2024, the left-leaning Star Spangled Media group used a site called the Morning Mirror to promote down-ballot Democratic candidates, according to research from Columbia Journalism School’s Tow Center for Digital Journalism.

More recently, the evolution of AI has increased the ease with which these websites can be populated with content, eliminating the need to pay writers and automating the production of social media posts.

Usher described pink-slime websites as “explosive bombs for public trust” that take advantage of the gap created by the loss of independent local papers and further diminish expectations for news to be fairly reported.

“Once these sorts of sites are pointed out to the public it further undermines distrust in political institutions, political parties, the news media,” Usher said, “especially when AI is associated with this kind of stuff.”

BAKERSFIELD  — Top Democratic and Republican leaders are sweeping through California as the Nov. 3 election approaches, evidence of the state’s pivotal role in deciding which party will control the U.S. House of Representatives and the fate of President Trump’s final two years in office.

Seizing on their party’s momentum nationwide, Democrats rallied crowds from Orange County to the Bay Area this past week. They blamed Trump and the Republican-led Congress for rising gas and food prices, massive cuts to healthcare funding, deceitful attacks on the elections process and the vilification of immigrants.

In the Central Valley, New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Friday evening appeared alongside Randy Villegas, a Democrat challenging Republican incumbent David Valadao of Hanford in a Latino voter-heavy district in the state’s agricultural heartland. The population of the district is one of the youngest in the country, Ocasio-Cortez told the crowd, and Gen Z and millennial voters are expected to play a pivotal role.

“We have the opportunity to take the reins,” said Ocasio-Cortez, one of the nation’s most well-known progressive leaders. “And to give direction to where our future will be headed. And I got to tell you, folks, the future is not with David Valadao.”

Recent polls show Democrats may retake control of the House in the Nov. 3 election, and they may have a chance of taking power in the U.S. Senate. Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana, who has swung through California twice within the last month to help Republican candidates, acknowledged the challenges ahead but predicted his party would fare better than many predict.

Roughly two dozen House races across the country are expected to decide the House majority, including three competitive races in California: Those of Republican Valadao, Democratic Rep. Adam Gray in the Central Valley and the open seat of retiring Republican Rep. Darrell Issa in the San Diego area.

Democrats are hoping that the new congressional maps approved by California voters in 2025 will give them an edge. The reconfigured congressional districts approved by Proposition 50 were a response by California’s Democratic leadership to Trump urging Republicans, notably in Texas, to shift their boundaries to help the GOP hold onto control of Congress during his final two years in office.

The San Joaquin Valley district represented by Valadao, which already had a Democratic majority, added about 100,000 Fresno residents, turning it even bluer. Valadao has been a perpetual target of Democrats given their longtime voter registration edge in this area.

Aside from briefly losing the seat for one term nearly a decade ago, Valadao has hung onto the seat. He comes from a dairy farming family and is well-known in the area, winning by nearly seven percentage points in 2024, outperforming Trump.

This cycle, Democrats are hammering him for supporting Trump’s budget cuts that impacted healthcare programs, a critical issue since roughly two-thirds of the population in his district is covered by Medi-Cal, as Medicaid is known in the state, the most of any district in California, according to the UC Berkeley Labor Center.

Valadao is among a handful of GOP members in California’s 52-member congressional delegation, the largest of any state in the nation, and among the Republicans targeted by Democrats in response to Trump’s efforts to keep his party in control of Congress.

“Donald Trump’s gerrymandering scheme is going to fail,” said House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries in Buena Park on Thursday. “It’s going to fail in Texas. It’s failing in Florida, and it’s failing in North Carolina. But I’m grateful to the people of California who decided to decisively respond and create the situation where we’ll have a fair national map.”

The party in control of the White House typically loses seats in the midterm election, and Trump and the GOP face additional headwinds because of the affordability crisis that the president promised to address when he ran for reelection in 2024. Californians face some of the highest gas and electricity prices in the country.

“The MAGA extremists are on the run because they have failed. They’ve broken every promise that they’ve made to the American people,” Jeffries said, after stumping for Rep. Derek Tran (D-Orange) at a carpenters’ union hall. “Life has not gotten more affordable. Life is far too expensive. Trump policies … have increased costs on everyday Americans by thousands of dollars per year.”

House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries interacts with members of the audience after he delivered a speech during representative Derek Tran’s “Take Back the House” rally for his reelection campaign in California’s 45th Congressional District, at Carpenters Local Union 714 in Buena Park on Thursday.

(Etienne Laurent/For The Times)

Tran narrowly unseated Republican Rep. Michelle Steel in 2024, winning by just 653 votes. The recently redrawn district, which is located primarily in Orange County, could give him an edge this election.

“Prop. 50 did help me out of the battleground districts in California,” Tran said. “I got the least amount of help, but better, still better.”

On Wednesday, the Republican House speaker acknowledged his party’s hurdles while stumping for congressional candidate Kevin Lincoln in Stockton in the Central Valley.

“We’re gonna be very sober-minded about the challenge, and I want you all to know the odds that we are facing,” Johnson said.

Campaigning for Lincoln, a former Stockton mayor and an underdog in a congressional race against Democratic Rep. Gray of Merced, Johnson acknowledged that the congressional midterm will be a “very close election.” But he argued that public polling is flawed and fought back against the notion that GOP voters are dejected.

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-La.), center left, and Rep. David Valadao (R-Hanford) talk to reporters after a campaign event in Bakersfield on Sept. 30.

(Jae C. Hong / AP)

“Republicans are not staying home. They are not depressed,” said Johnson, who also traveled to Bakersfield to campaign for Valadao just a few weeks ago. “They’re coming out in huge numbers, and we’re going to win because of that. You know why? Because everybody knows what’s at stake.”

Lincoln, the grandson of an immigrant and the son of a teenage mother, talked up his experiences in the military and as a pastor. He aligned himself with the “hardworking” people in the Valley, suggesting that D.C. leaders were failing the district.

“When you have a job to do, you show up, you roll up your sleeves and you get that job done, and that same standard should apply to the people that we choose to send to Washington, D.C.,” he said.

Two of California’s most powerful Democrats, Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco and Gov. Gavin Newsom, on Friday appeared at a San Francisco union hall to rally support for Democratic congressional candidates and warn that basic rights will be at risk if Republicans stay in power in Washington. They urged voters to reject Proposition 39, the Republican-led voter identification measure that comes amid Trump’s baseless claims of widespread, illegal voting by undocumented immigrants.

Pelosi, who will retire early next year after a historic 40-year run in Congress and two stints as House speaker, criticized Trump’s “vicious, malicious” attempts to undermine elections through gerrymandering, fraud claims and attempts to mandate voter ID.

“They are putting up obstacles to participation to vote. As women, if you have your husband’s name in marriage, you’re going to have to go find your birth certificate in order to vote,” Pelosi warned of voter ID requirements. After “63 years in marriage, you think I could find my birth certificate?” Newsom, a potential 2028 presidential candidate, warned that Republicans “are ruthless” in their attempts to roll back civil rights. The outgoing governor said the 2026 midterm fight began when he and state lawmakers put Proposition 50 on last year’s November ballot.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom speaks during a rally, accompanied by former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, right, members of the state’s Democratic Party, organized labor and other advocates in San Francisco on Friday.

(Heather Diehl / AP)

“Everything we have done to get us to this point is unbelievable,” he told union members in the Mission District. “You’re unbelievable, but it won’t mean anything unless we run through the tape.”

The Democrats were supporting state Sen. Mike McGuire, who is trying to flip one of Northern California’s redrawn congressional districts. He faces Rep. James Gallagher (R-Yuba City), who won a June special election to finish the term of the late Rep. Doug LaMalfa. “Prop. 50’s final chapter is almost here,” said McGuire, who has represented the rural North Coast in the Senate since 2014. “It is time to close the book on Donald Trump. It’s time to take America back.”

Seema Mehta reported from Buena Park, Nicole Nixon from San Francisco and Dakota Smith from Bakersfield.

MISSION VIEJO — Twenty years after the GOP last won a state-level election in California, few Republican voters believe this will be the year.

But they can hope.

“I’m praying, praying, praying that people will come out of the woodwork and show up and just vote for Steve,” said Annette Owens, a 65-year-old Orange County resident and longtime special education teacher.

Steve Hilton, a former Fox News host originally from the United Kingdom, faces Xavier Becerra, a longtime Democratic politician who is heavily favored to win the Nov. 3 election to replace term-limited Gov. Gavin Newsom.

The 2026 elections are looking particularly grim for California Republicans, whose statewide influence over the past two decades has atrophied to super-minority levels. Redistricting from Proposition 50 removed some key GOP seats in Congress. And nationally, the party is struggling with high prices, fallout from the war in Iran and polls showing President Trump’s popularity at all-time lows.

While she is “doubtful” Hilton or any other Republicans running statewide will beat their Democratic opponents, Owens says “if anyone’s going to do it,” it’s Hilton.

The candidate had just spent nearly 40 minutes addressing several dozen Orange County moms in Mission Viejo, a hilly and affluent enclave speckled with golf courses and Spanish colonial architecture.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton visits patrons at Victorio’s Ristorante in North Hollywood, which hosted a watch party for the CNN debate between him and Xavier Becerra.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

Sipping mimosas in a glass-walled event space overlooking the city’s verdant public course, women — and a couple of tagalong husbands — listened as Hilton and local Republicans argued for a change after 16 years of Democrats controlling California government.

“We can make this a place where people follow their dreams and build their lives, and that’s the ultimate test: That people are moving back to California after my first four years in government,” Hilton said.

Rachel Darvish drove from her home in Pacific Palisades to support the gubernatorial candidate. In the aftermath of the January 2025 fires, Darvish was captured on viral video angrily confronting Newsom as he toured the wreckage. She joined the Republican Party after the fires.

“I considered myself an independent up until the day I realized we had no choice,” Darvish, wearing a Hilton campaign T-shirt, said. “I think this is really the first election that the R or the D really does matter, and there is an obvious difference.”

Hilton and other Republicans acknowledge the math. Democrats outnumber GOP voters nearly 2-to-1 in California, and no-party-preference voters largely side with Democrats in statewide contests.

Hilton, who is endorsed by Trump, often declares to supporters that the race against Becerra, a President Biden-era U.S. Health and Human Services secretary and former state attorney general, “is going to be really difficult to win, but not impossible.”

As he calculates his chances of victory, the former Fox News host considers three sets of facts. The “establishment polls,” as he calls them, conducted by widely trusted pollsters, including the Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies and the Public Policy Institute of California, have shown him more than 20 percentage points behind. His internal polls also have him losing, albeit by smaller margins.

Then there are the people who come to his events.

California Democratic gubernatorial candidate Xavier Becerra speaks at a rally Thursday in Bakersfield.

(Jae C. Hong / Associated Press)

“Every single day I get all these people saying, ‘I’m a lifelong Democrat, but I’m voting for you because we got to have some balance, we got to have a change,’” he said in an interview on the golf course patio following his event. “A lot of them say, ‘But I’m not telling anyone.’”

Midterm elections are historically more difficult for the incumbent president’s party. While never popular in California, Trump’s approval rating recently fell to a record low of 27% in a Berkeley IGS poll.

Fierce headwinds for GOP in California

Political operatives expect anti-Trump sentiment to intensify the headwinds Republicans face in California. More than half of likely Democratic voters, and 37% overall, said a top motivator in this election is pushing back against the administration‘s policies.

“I’m not really anticipating Republicans winning for anything statewide,” said Jon Fleischman, a conservative writer and former executive director of the California GOP. “If somebody’s anticipating that, then they don’t know how to do math.”

He doesn’t expect Republican turnout to drop, but “Democrat turnout could be enhanced over what it normally is. Maybe it’s a distinction without a difference.”

Some Republicans are frustrated by the Democratic-only choices in the high-profile race for Los Angeles mayor, as well as the down-ballot contest for state insurance commissioner.

Darvish, who supported conservative Spencer Pratt for L.A. mayor in the primary, described the runoff between incumbent Karen Bass and City Councilmember Nithya Raman as a choice between “Satan and Lucifer.”

“I’m going to have to vote for Karen Bass,” she said. “It’s really hard for me to say that,” but she does not want Raman or any candidates backed by the Democratic Socialists of America to win.

Some Republicans say they won’t vote for insurance commissioner, the only statewide race between two Democrats: Jane Kim, a former San Francisco supervisor, and state Sen. Ben Allen.

Fleischman described the DSA-endorsed Kim as “nuts” and Allen, who represents Manhattan Beach, El Segundo, Beverly Hills and other cities, as “an extreme liberal” who “has enthusiastically supported virtually every Gavin Newsom policy I dislike.”

While Trump and Republicans will likely suffer midterm losses, many Democrats are “massively unpopular as well,” said Republican strategist Rob Stutzman. “All politicians are underwater right now. Voters are in a pretty bad mood.”

Hilton concedes it would be easier to run a midterm race with a sitting Democratic president, but believes the Trump endorsement is not as toxic to his campaign as it might seem.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton enjoys a light moment with a woman who was happy to get gas for $3 a gallon at a gas station in Los Angeles on Oct. 8.

(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

“It doesn’t come up in really any of the meetings,” he said. “People really are asking about gas prices.”

Republican candidates and party officials are making the case that California’s longstanding homelessness and cost-of-living woes have little to do with the president.

“I can’t think of anything less relevant” than Trump, said Roxanne Hoge, chair of the Los Angeles Republican Party. “We are drowning in high taxes and high costs. Anyone trying to make this election about who the president is — and who will only be president for two more years — has a screw loose and also doesn’t have much of anything to offer.”

Hilton doesn’t engage in voter fraud allegations

Federal authorities this week charged 28 people in California with illegally registering and casting ballots as part of a broader fight to exert more control over elections, which are run by states.

Having just won an election primary in June, Hilton walks a line when discussing claims of electoral fraud. He takes issue with rules like ballot harvesting and a seven-day, post-election deadline for mail ballots to arrive, but he does not believe there is systemic fraud or cheating.

“We mustn’t let ourselves believe that every time we lose an election, it’s because they cheated,” he said when a supporter made the accusation during a Modesto town hall in August. “We lose the elections [because] we don’t win enough votes, right?”

Viewers attend a watch party at Victorio’s Ristorante in North Hollywood during the debate between gubernatorial candidates Democrat Xavier Becerra, left, and Republican Steve Hilton earlier this month.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

That’s why he is trying to reach independent voters and Democrats who “can’t stand President Trump” but “are desperate for something to change in California,” he explained as applause rippled through the heavily Republican crowd.

Hilton is counting on voters like Summer Behan, a former Democrat, to not only vote for him but persuade other disenchanted voters.

“My car got broken into 14 times in a year and a half,” Behan told Hilton during the Modesto event. “Our homeowners insurance went from $180 to $860, so we had to sell our house.”

She drives more than two hours to her nonprofit job in San Francisco.

“It’s sort of an exhausting way to live,” Behan said after the town hall. Families from her children’s schools have moved to other states, but she wants to stay. “California is beautiful, and it’s just got so much to offer people, so I want to try and stick it out and see what it looks like with different leadership.”

More than $351 million in political donations has been poured into a high-stakes contest about a proposed wealth tax on the November ballot, making it one of the most costly campaigns in California history.

About 90% of the money is being spent to defeat a statewide initiative to impose a new tax on the assets of billionaires, a multifaceted opposition effort bankrolled primarily by ultra-rich Californians being targeted by a measure that supporters call an economic reckoning.

The billionaire tax, Proposition 40, would levy a one-time, 5% tax on many assets of California billionaires who lived in the state as of Jan. 1.

Millions of dollars continue to flow into the campaigns of three intertwined ballot initiatives at the center of the debate: Proposition 40, and Propositions 41 and Proposition 42, which would neuter the Proposition 40 through strategic, esoteric tax law changes.

“The pro-40 campaign picked a fight and then came to that fight with a butter knife against a nuclear arsenal,” said GOP strategist Rob Stutzman, who is not involved in any of the wealth-tax-related ballot measures. “Because they’re so well funded, in today’s multifaceted media world, they are able to show up everywhere from network TV to inside video games. That is a very, very large advantage few campaigns ever get to have.”

But, Stutzman warned, money does not guarantee a win.

In the most expensive ballot measure fights in California history, $463 million was spent on two gambling proposals 2022. The initiatives pitted some of California’s most successful Native American tribes with gaming interests against gambling corporations, including online sports gaming companies DraftKings and FanDuel. Both side’s measure failed.

People attend a rally against Proposition 40 at the Iron Workers Apprenticeship Training Center on Oct. 5 in La Palma.

(Eric Thayer/Los Angeles Times)

The tax measure was crafted by Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West in response to federal healthcare funding cuts signed by President Trump last year that are expected to reduce California’s healthcare budget by $100 billion, burdening the state’s most vulnerable residents.

“Trump’s ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ slashes healthcare funding, with major coverage cuts scheduled to hit after the midterms,” said Suzanne Jimenez, the union’s chief of staff. “More than 3 million Californians could lose their health insurance. Hospitals and emergency rooms face closure. Patients will die unnecessarily when the care they need is no longer there. Proposition 40 is an emergency response to that looming disaster.”

The proposition’s supporters raised $34.3 million, nearly all of it from Jimenez’s union.

The two other measures, Propositions 41 and 42, would nullify the billionaire tax if either receives more votes.

Proposition 41 supporters say the measure aims to cut wasteful government spending by requiring audits for new state special taxes and would bar new state taxes that exempt their revenue from a state spending limit. Backers of Proposition 42 argue it would prohibit new taxes on retirement holdings, individually owned assets and other forms of personal savings.

Advocates for the billionaire tax say both are well-financed smokescreens to undercut Proposition 40.

Opposition campaigns to the wealth tax as well as the two countermeasures have received enormous donations from several of the state’s billionaires. But Building a Better California, the main funder of efforts to defeat the wealth tax, noted that its allies included Democratic and Republican politicians, prominent labor groups and business leaders.

“It’s rare for such a broad coalition to unite around any single cause in California, but it reflects the potentially devastating impact of this measure on healthcare, education, and our state’s economy,” the group said in a statement.

Among the largest donors opposing the wealth tax are billionaires Sergey Brin, a co-founder of Google who has donated more than $100 million to anti-wealth-tax efforts, and former Google leader Eric Schmidt and venture capitalist L. John Doerr, who each kicked in $40 million.

Brin, Schmidt and Doerr did not respond to requests for comment.

US tech entrepreneur Sergey Brin and Gerelyn Gilbert-Soto arrive for the 2026 Met Gala celebrating “Costume Art” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in May.

(ANGELA WEISS/AFP via Getty Images)

The spending disparity also reflects a divide among Democrats and their allies, many of whom support wealth taxes, but argue that the way Proposition 40 was written is disastrous to California’s volatile budget, which is dependent on the state’s wealthiest residents.

Jodi Hicks, chief executive and president of Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California, said that while her organization would support a nationwide or a California wealth tax, their primary concerns are about 40’s impacts on the state budget and healthcare in the state.

“We are opposed to this particular proposal because we think it does more harm than good,” she said, adding that after what her organization “faced last year having to scramble for dollars because of [federal funding cuts] we are committed to work with the stakeholders facing cuts and not harming the budget and finding revenue in a smart way.”

The cash imbalance between supporters and opponents of the billionaire tax is vast. Those opposed to the measure raised $316.7 million, while proponents raised nearly $34.3 million.

The Fair Games Coalition, made up of community leaders, labor organizations and advocates, announce the launch of the Overpaid CEO Tax Initiative in front of the Tesla Diner in West Hollywood in January.

(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)

The supporters of the wealth tax spent nearly all of their money gathering signatures to place the measure on the ballot. They had $1.6 million on hand as of Oct. 17.

Now, as voters cast ballots, their campaign appears reliant on public events and media coverage, such as of Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-Vt.) recent rally in support of Proposition 40 in downtown Los Angeles.

“What you are showing people from coast to coast and all over is that, yes, we can take on the greed of the oligarchs,” he said, calling it the most important ballot measure in the country. “Yes, we can create an economy and a government that works for all of us, not just the 1 percent.”

Facebook creator and Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg was among the California billionaires Sanders name-checked in his remarks. After Zuckerberg told company leaders that he planned to leave the state to avoid his control over the company substantially reduced by being forced to sell enough of his stock in the social media giant to pay the proposed levy, the company on Wednesday announced the creation of a new, non-voting type of stock that would allow Zuckerberg to sell enough shares to pay the proposed tax while retaining his voting power in exchange for him agreeing to remain in the state for eight years.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg listens as President Trump speaks to reporters at the White House on Sept. 29.

(Jacquelyn Martin / Ap Photo/jacquelyn Martin)

The pro-wealth-tax campaign is sending voters emails and texts and has an online presence.

“Remember: it’s not enough to vote YES on 40. You also need to vote NO on 41 + 42,” read an email sent to voters on Tuesday. “Don’t be fooled: Props 41 and 42 are billionaire-funded initiatives designed specifically to undermine Prop 40, the California Billionaire Tax.”

Meanwhile, the anti-40 and pro-42 campaigns are inundating voters on television, streaming services, in mailboxes, through online influencers and even in digital video games such as Sim City.

Jimenez said voters will see through the blizzard of campaign messaging.

“The billionaires think voters are stupid. They think they can bury the facts under millions of dollars in advertising and disguise Prop. 42 … as protection for ordinary taxpayers,” she said. “Their spending also makes our case for us. When billionaires can afford to spend millions a day protecting their fortunes, voters can see that billionaires have plenty of money to spare.”

Sheri Sadler, a veteran Democratic media buyer, questioned how much voters were hearing about the rationale for the proposed billionaire tax.

“The yes side is severely lacking in getting their message through while the no side is dipping into different kinds of pockets,” she said.

Jessica Levinson, an election law professor at Loyola Law School, said that beyond voter confusion about the competing ballot measures, it is certain to face legal challenges, notably about the retroactive nature of the tax, which would apply to any billionaire who lived in California as of Jan. 1. She described that as “the biggest legal pressure point.”

“It’s kind of a mess,” she said.

Times staff writer Gabrielle LaMarr LeMee contributed to this report.

Buying a home in California requires a colossal amount of money — and coming up with a 20% cash down payment of $180,000 for a median price home is a staggering hurdle for many would-be buyers.

That down payment amount is based on the statewide median $900,000 price tag for a house, according to recent data from the California Assn. of Realtors. In Los Angeles County, the median price for a single-family home is $935,000. In Orange County, it’s $1.5 million.

Proposition 37 on the Nov. 3 ballot would allow the state to amass a $25 billion down payment assistance program for middle-class households. For perspective on the enormity of the measure before voters, one of the state’s existing down payment programs, California Dream For All, launched several years ago with $500 million, just 2% of the funding involved in Proposition 37.

The ballot measure would allow qualified prospective homebuyers to borrow up to 17% of the sales price of a new home, contributing 3% of the down payment from their own funds.

The program would not be funded by taxpayers, but instead by the interest charged to borrowers on their down payment loans, also referred to as second mortgages. The measure has garnered widespread support, including from Gov. Gavin Newsom, statewide unions and mayors from Santa Monica to San José.

“Prop. 37 is a historic opportunity to expand homeownership opportunities for generations of working families — at zero cost or risk to taxpayers,” Newsom said in a statement.

But Proposition 37 carries a significant caveat: Any home purchased through the program must be new construction, which could limit its potential reach because of the high cost of building, some critics said.

Also, the proposition does not spell out the terms or interest rates on the loans, which would be worked out if the measure is approved. And some have questioned whether there will be sufficiently robust interest from investors to buy the state-issued bonds that will be used to fund the down payment loans.

The concept of down payment assistance is not new. Cities and states, including California, have long offered such programs to low- and middle-income homeowners, either in the form of loans or grants, and there are reportedly more than 2,700 such programs across the country.

Nevada, Connecticut, Massachusetts and New York all have programs to help homebuyers afford a down payment. Since 2021, New York has dispersed $70 million in down payment assistance. In Massachusetts, more than $146 million has been doled out in down payment help to homebuyers since 2020.

How the program would work

Under Proposition 37, down payment loans would work like any other, and would carry an interest rate and payback period — all of which would be determined by the California Housing Finance Agency.

To qualify, borrowers would need to have lived in the state for at least a year and earn no more than 200% of the local median income; in Los Angeles County, for example, that equates to a family of four earning no more than $216,200 a year.

Borrowers don’t have to be first-time homebuyers, which is often a requirement of down payment aid programs. But they would need to live in the home.

The program would restrict the price of qualifying homes, depending on the county where someone is trying to buy. A general estimate, though, is that would-be homebuyers would be limited to houses costing between $1 million and $1.5 million and the homes, more importantly, would need to be new construction.

While Proposition 37 has little opposition, and is supported by unions, chambers of commerce and organizations representing builders, the League of Women Voters opposes the ballot measure, concerned it would saddle residents with too much debt and that the terms of these loans are opaque, the details worked out only after the vote.

New homes only

Only buyers of newly-built homes would be eligible for these loans. That could include existing commercial buildings that had been converted into homes, such as condos or townhomes.

This provision is uncommon as many existing down payment assistance programs don’t strictly limit the type of home someone can buy — only the sale price. Bob Hertzberg, former Senate Majority Leader and the architect of the proposal, said he wanted Proposition 37 to spur new construction.

“The problem is we have to increase supply,” Hertzberg said. The shortage of homes in the state is estimated to range anywhere from 840,000 to upwards of 3 million.

By creating more demand for new homes, he said, the hope is that builders will respond en masse.

But some groups are wary of this logic. One analysis, funded by the Proposition 37 campaign, estimated that this program could result in the building of 190,000 homes in the state, although the report’s author said it was “impossible to know” the true number given the various factors that impact housing.

Matthew Lewis, director of communications for California YIMBY, an organization that advocates making it easier and cheaper to build homes, said high prices make it clear that the demand for homes already exists and that Proposition 37 does little to address a bigger issue: the cost of building.

“In concept, [Proposition 37 is] a great idea,” Lewis said. “The thing we’re concerned about is, California is still way behind on its housing production goals, so there’s the risk of an unintended consequence of instead of having 10 people bidding on a house, now you’ve given a couple folks down payment assistance, and so there’s now 12 people bidding on the same house.”

To drive builders to construct eligible homes, the measure would allow them to opt into a “qualified builder” option. As long as they adhere to price caps, agree to certain labor requirements and fix repairs that arise, they’re protected from lawsuits from buyers concerning defects 10 years after construction of the home.

Homebuilders say even given some relief from litigation, they aren’t sure Proposition 37 would push construction into overdrive.

“There are so many more things the state, city and county could do to help add more supply [of homes],” said Paul Schon, a developer who builds apartments in L.A. County. He said tackling permitting times and red tape involved in building would have a greater impact. “This is minor,” he said.

Interest rates could be a tough sell

Many down payment assistance programs offer interest-free loans to homebuyers, including an existing program run by CalHFA.

But in order to be self-funding, the fixed-rate loans offered through Proposition 37 would carry interest. If passed, the state would issue revenue bonds, selling them to investors and using that money to issue loans to homebuyers. The investors are repaid with the interest paid on the loans.

According to the Legislative Analyst’s Office, CalHFA would decide the total amount of bonds to issue and over what period of time.

Revenue bonds are generally viewed as riskier than other types of government bonds, in part because they’re backed by the promise of revenue from a specific project — in this case, payment by individual borrowers. That means interest rates on these loans could be higher than borrowers might like or be able to afford.

Hertzberg said he’s talked to investors who may be willing to buy these bonds at cheaper rates, given the crushing issue the funding is trying to solve. This would keep interest rates down for borrowers. He said he’s appealing to foundations and socially-minded tech leaders.

One of the biggest financial backers of the measure is the political nonprofit Building a Better California, which has been fighting the billionaire’s tax with help from wealthy donors, including Google co-founder Sergey Brin.

Hertzberg, for his part, refused to name any organization or person who may be interested in buying the bonds that would fund this program.

This article is part of The Times’ equity reporting initiative, funded by the James Irvine Foundation, exploring the challenges facing low-income workers and the efforts being made to address California’s economic divide.

FRIDAY’S RESULTS

CITY SECTION

Central League

Contreras 30, Roybal 12

Hollywood 39, Mendez 8

Maywood CES 44, Bernstein 40

Coliseum League

Crenshaw 18, Dorsey 14

King/Drew 30, Marquez 7

Eastern League

Bell 27, L.A. Roosevelt 0

South Gate 42, South East 32

East Valley League

Arleta 47, Fulton 15

Monroe 40, Grant 7

North Hollywood 35, San Fernando Arroyo 14

Sun Valley Poly 38, Verdugo Hills 20

Marine League

Carson 35, San Pedro 0

Wilmington Banning 35, Narbonne 32

Metro League

Dymally 18, L.A. Jordan 10

Locke 12, Hawkins 6

Northern League

Franklin 37, Lincoln 21

L.A. Marshall 54, L.A. Wilson 14

Southern League

Los Angeles 30, West Adams 0

Valley Mission League

Granada Hills Kennedy 43, San Fernando 7

Panorama 49, Van Nuys 7

Sylmar 56, Reseda 8

Western League

L.A. Hamilton 15, Venice 14

L.A. University 41, Westchester 0

Palisades 49, Fairfax 35

West Valley League

Birmingham 42, Chatsworth 0

Cleveland 37, Granada Hills 7

El Camino Real 28, Taft 7

Nonleague

Angelou 16, Fremont 14

Garfield 34, Eagle Rock 20

Stella 54, Sotomayor 26

SOUTHERN SECTION

Alliance League

South El Monte 20, Montebello 7

Alpha League

Mission Viejo 58, Los Alamitos 7

San Juan Hills 16, San Clemente 0

Yorba Linda 20, Edison 17

Angelus League

Cathedral 42, Paraclete 21

St. Pius X-St. Matthias Academy 37, St. Paul 27

Baseline League

Rancho Cucamonga 41, Upland 0

Bay League

Inglewood 41, Leuzinger 0

Palos Verdes 28, Redondo Union 7

Big West League

Corona Centennial 41, Chaparral 27

Great Oak 31, Riverside King 21

Murrieta Valley 20, Murrieta Mesa 7

Boulder League

Crescenta Valley 28, Burbank Burroughs 7

San Marino 42, Gabrielino 0

South Pasadena d. Pasadena, forfeit

Bravo League

Crean Lutheran 31, Corona del Mar 17

Camino Real League

Mary Star of the Sea 57, St. Bernard 21

St. Monica 47, St. Genevieve 13

Channel League

Moorpark 37, Ventura 34

Rio Mesa 41, Thousand Oaks 7

Santa Barbara 13, Westlake 10

Citrus Coast League

Del Sol 21, Carpinteria 10

Grace 35, Nordhoff 14

Coastal 101 League

Agoura 49, Oxnard 12

Calabasas 55, Buena 10

Conference 12 League

El Monte Arroyo 62, Keppel 0

Mountain View 14, Rosemead 0

Cottonwood League

Riverside Notre Dame 30, Vasquez 7

Whittier Christian 18, Riverside Prep 14

Crest League

Arcadia 41, Glendale 38

Hoover 49, Temple City 14

Del Rey League

Crespi 48, Alemany 12

Salesian 21, St. Anthony 14

Delta League

El Modena at Dana Hills

Western 26, Laguna Beach 13

Desert Empire League

Palm Desert 30, Palm Springs 0

Desert Valley League

Yucca Valley 38, Coachella Valley 0

Foothill League

Hart 57, Canyon Country Canyon 0

Valencia 55, Golden Valley 6

West Ranch 14, Castaic 0

Gateway League

La Mirada 42, Warren 31

La Serna 42, Mayfair 14

Gold Coast League

Rio Hondo Prep 35, Brentwood 21

Golden League

Antelope Valley 52, Littlerock 0

Knight 21, Eastside 17

Lancaster 26, Highland 17

Hacienda League

Baldwin Park 35, Los Altos 22

Diamond Bar 23, Covina 22

West Covina 42, South Hills 21

Hub City League

Dominguez 47, Long Beach Cabrillo 7

Inland Valley League

Arlington 28, Lakeside 14

Heritage 49, Citrus Hill 36

Iota League

Garden Grove Pacifica 28, Marina 13

Ironwood League

Aquinas 49, Village Christian 7

Cerritos Valley Christian 55, Western Christian 50

Ivy League

Orange Vista 42, Rancho Christian 14

Vista del Lago 51, Riverside Poly 27

Kappa League

Portola at Anaheim Canyon, postponed

Lambda League

Fountain Valley 49, Placentia Valencia 14

Sonora 26, Woodbridge 13

Manzanita League

Anza Hamilton 39, Silver Valley 14

Marmonte League

Oaks Christian 14, Newbury Park 6

Oxnard Pacifica 24, St. Bonaventure 14

Mesquite League

Desert Christian Academy 47, Santa Rosa Academy 3

Metro League

El Rancho 25, Bell Gardens 0

Mid-Cities League

Bellflower 45, Norwalk 6

Paramount 63, California 3

Miramonte League

Pomona 21, Garey 7

Workman 31, Ganesha 21

Mission League

Bishop Amat 31, Loyola 10

Chaminade 21, Gardena Serra 7

Sierra Canyon 63, Sherman Oaks Notre Dame 6

Mission Valley League

Mountain View 14, Rosemead 0

Mojave River League

Hesperia 30, Sultana 14

Oak Hills 54, Ridgecrest Burroughs 21

Montview League

Ontario 35, Azusa 6

Sierra Vista 13, La Puente 7

Moore League

Lakewood 46, Long Beach Jordan 0

Mountain Pass League

Granite Hills 14, San Jacinto 13

Mountain Valley League

La Sierra 57, Jurupa Valley 28

Rubidoux 42, San Bernardino 6

Ocean League

South Torrance 48, Hawthorne 0

Peninsula 42, Beverly Hills 21

Pioneer League

Culver City 54, Torrance 52

El Segundo 45, North Torrance 40

Santa Monica 42, West Torrance 7

Rio Vista League

Lynwood 21, Glenn 14

Pioneer 41, Firebaugh 20

San Andreas League

Colton 48, Rim of the World 17

Sierra League

Bonita 35, Charter Oak 32

Glendora 28, Colony 13

Northview at Ayala, postponed

Skyline League

Carter 21, Arroyo Valley 6

Sunbelt League

Hillcrest 49, Riverside North 28

Moreno Valley 51, Perris 8

Sunkist League

Grand Terrace at Jurupa Hills

Summit 36, Eisenhower 0

Sun Valley League

Desert Hot Springs 62, Banning 15

Twentynine Palms 43, Desert Mirage 20

Tango League

Westminster La Quinta 43, Century 13

Tri-County League

Fillmore 14, Dos Pueblos 0

Royal 21, San Marcos 14

Santa Paula 21, Hueneme 19

Trinity League

Mater Dei 52, Orange Lutheran 38

Santa Margarita 36, JSerra 12

St. John Bosco 54, Servite 7

Valle Vista League

Alta Loma 43, Chino 0

San Dimas 35, Claremont 10

Nonleague

Viewpoint 36, Maranatha 8

INTERSECTIONAL

Diego Rivera 45, St. Jeanne de Lestonnac 7

8-MAN

CITY SECTION

City League

Animo Robinson 20, New Designs University Park 8

New Designs Watts 42, USC Hybrid 6

Valley League

Valley Oaks CES 44, TEACH Tech 8

South L.A. College Prep 52, Sherman Oaks CES 8

SOUTHERN SECTION

Freelance League

Laguna Blanca 60, Malibu 32

Majestic League

Cornerstone Christian 51, Public Safety Academy 8

Nonleague

Faith Baptist 35, California School for the Deaf Riverside 6

Sage Hill 51, Thacher 34

About 260 California billionaires would be subject to Proposition 40’s one-time 5% wealth tax according to the Forbes Real-Time billionaires list. Just 30 of those billionaires or their spouses, or 1 in 8, spent money opposing Proposition 40, the billionaire tax, according to a Times analysis of recent campaign filings.

Billionaires have individually contributed $293 million to oppose the tax measure and to support Proposition 41 and 42, which would nullify the billionaire tax if either receives more votes, according to a Times analysis. Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google, has given $102 million, more than a third of all billionaire money against the measure. But this is less than 1% of his estimated tax bill.

Several billionaires also contributed to the political action committee of the California Business Roundtable, which is spending to oppose Proposition 40 and support Proposition 43. Peter Thiel gave $3 million, Eric Schmidt gave nearly $2.6 million, Marco DeGeorge’s wife, Kim, gave $1.9 million, Chris Larsen gave $750,000 and Douglas Leone and his wife gave $500,000.

Proposition 40 would apply the tax to billionaires who were California residents on Jan. 1, 2026, and the taxable amount would be based on their net worth on Dec. 31. The tax is payable over five years.

Altogether, these individuals would owe at least $107 billion in taxes, according to an analysis by economists Jasper Boll, Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman. Their research was published in the National Bureau of Economic Research in August. Saez and Zucman are also architects of the tax proposal.

This amount is 5% of their combined estimated wealth by Forbes as of Oct. 16 and factors in a certain amount of tax avoidance and evasion. Spread across all 39 million Californians, the $107 billion would be roughly $2,700 per person. The Public Policy Institute of California estimates that the median household net worth in California was $303,000 in 2023.

The four richest Californians — Sergey Brin, Jensen Huang, Larry Page and Mark Zuckerberg — would owe 40% of the estimated taxes to be collected from the billionaire tax, according to a Times analysis. Their wealth largely comes from ownership of stock in extremely high-value technology companies.

Their net worth would increase 5% in about four months if their stock investments continues to grow as they have since December.

California billionaire wealth grew nearly threefold from 2022 to 2026, according to Times analysis of Forbes data collected by Boll and his colleagues, and much of that growth was not taxed. Billionaires’ taxable income is small compared with their wealth, because most of that wealth is invested in public stocks, and gains aren’t taxed until the stock is sold.

Page and Brin disclosed no taxable income in three of the years since 2019. Many others had similarly no publicly disclosed income. For that reason, Boll and his colleagues estimate that the Proposition 40 one-time tax would raise more than $100 billion, “with comparatively minor impacts on income tax revenue” from some billionaires leaving the state.

Based on Meta’s filings, the economists estimated that Zuckerberg’s taxable income was about $947 million in 2025, just 0.4% of his net worth.

Over the summer, Zuckerberg shared with Meta advisors his plans to relocate outside California to avoid the possibility of a significant reduction in his control over the company as a result of selling enough stock to fund a 5% tax. The advisors determined that Zuckerberg’s leadership presence at Meta headquarters was essential to the company’s success. On Wednesday, Meta announced the creation of new, nonvoting Class C common stock, which will allow Zuckerberg to sell the amount he needs to pay his potential tax bill while maintaining his voting power in exchange for his commitment to remain in the state for eight years.

Researchers at the Hoover Institution estimate the revenue to the state to be closer to $40 billion based on reports of billionaires’ residential purchases outside the state before and after Jan. 1 and their estimate of unannounced residency moves.

Chris Hoene, executive director at the California Budget and Policy Center, a nonpartisan group, said the residency question hinges on the amount of time spent living in the state. “Purchasing property in another location does not mean that they have changed their residency,” he said.

Ultimately, the state’s Franchise Tax Board, responsible for administering the tax, will have to assess residency. Hoene says this task is “easier for them to do than people realize.” The board will also calculate the amount of wealth subject to the tax using publicly available stock information and private assessments of personal property, such as artwork and jewelry. Real property, pensions and retirement accounts would be excluded.

Opponents of Proposition 40 are concerned that the threat of wealth taxes will lead to billionaires continuing to leave the state, resulting in a long-term decrease in state income tax revenue. Forbes recently reported that Brin registered to vote in Nevada last year. Peter Thiel disclosed Dec. 31 that he opened a new office in Miami; Florida has no wealth tax or income tax. But in July, he purchased a $130-million mansion in Bel-Air.

“The reality is the income tax loss can never get anywhere near the scale of what the wealth tax gain would be,” Hoene said.

Ninety percent of that gain would be spent on healthcare services to fill a gap in Medi-Cal from losses in federal funding that the measure’s authors estimate would total $190 billion over the next 10 years. Medi-Cal provides healthcare coverage for one-third of low-income Californians, according to the Legislative Analyst’s Office.

Gov. Gavin Newsom opposes a California-only tax and has instead called for a national wealth tax. Democrat Xavier Becerra and Republican Steve Hilton, who are running to replace Newsom, have spoken out against the tax. Other opponents include the California Teachers Assn., the California Medical Assn., and Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California. Supporters include Service Employees International Union, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), the California Democratic Party and the California Federation of Labor Unions AFL-CIO.

Times staff writer Queenie Wong contributed to this report.

The U.S. Justice Department expanded its efforts to intervene in California’s ongoing election Friday, sending letters to more than a dozen county elections offices statewide with demands that they segregate ballots from voters the Trump administration believes are noncitizens.

The letters — which give officials 48 hours to act and threaten them with criminal punishments if they refuse — follow similar correspondence the Justice Department sent last week to California Secretary of State Shirley Weber and Dean Logan, head of the L.A. County registrar’s office, calling for some 20,000 ballots statewide be set aside and left uncounted until state and local officials can prove that the voters are citizens.

When Weber and Logan balked, the Justice Department promptly sued them and the state in a case currently pending in federal court. The California officials have contended the Justice Department’s efforts are illegal.

The new letters, first reported by the San Francisco Chronicle, follow previous threats from Justice Department officials and President Trump warning that local California elections officials could face criminal prosecution for being “aiders and abettors to a federal crime” if they tabulate votes from the “likely noncitizens” the administration has flagged.

A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s office in Los Angeles said 57 of California’s 58 counties were served the letters, with the exception of Los Angeles, which had already received a notice.

“The letters speak for themselves. Any election official who knowingly processes the ballot of a noncitizen is opening themselves to legal jeopardy,” First Assistant U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli, the top federal prosecutor in Los Angeles, said in a statement.

Essayli wrote Friday evening on X that “California does not verify citizenship status. We did the work for them. We obtained the registered voter list and told them who we believe are noncitizens on their rolls.”

Essayli wrote that “knowingly processing noncitizen ballots is a federal crime,” and said authorities “will hold election officials accountable. No one is above the law.”

The Justice Department did not respond to an inquiry from The Times. California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta’s office declined to comment.

Santa Cruz County Clerk Tricia Webber, who is president of the California Association of Clerks and Election Officials, said, “From what I’ve been able to gather, most counties if not all of the counties are doing what I’m doing: Sat down with our counsel, went over everything,” Webber said.

Webber said two people with Justice Department credentials showed up at her office Friday and handed her a manila envelope with the letter inside demanding she comply within 48 hours to determine the citizenship of 81 people in her county.

“I can’t tell you anything other than I’m looking at it and doing my due diligence,” she said. “This is not normal protocol for us.”

Kristin Connelly, head of the Contra Costa County registrar’s office, said she was also among those who received a letter. She said she had not yet responded as of late Friday, but was in contact with her county counsel and “colleagues around the state who received similar letters today.”

“The non-partisan Contra Costa County Elections Division administers elections according to all state and federal election laws, as well as the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of California. Our work is observable,” Connelly said. “This threat is not helpful and is intended to intimidate.”

The letter she received, from U.S. Atty. Craig Missakian, was full of threats of criminal punishment for tabulating votes from individuals whom the county is “on actual notice” may not be U.S. citizens.

Missakian, the top federal prosecutor in the Northern District of California, wrote that he was providing Connelly with a “subset” of “407 likely aliens” from the broader statewide list of 20,000 voters, and demanded that Connelly commit within 48 hours to working with Justice Department and Department of Homeland Security officials to identify who among those 407 “is a citizen and who is not.”

“That means sending us the nonpublic information associated with each suspected alien’s registration, which includes everything in your possession from the following: a social security number, a copy of a state ID or driver’s license or the information that appears on it, a copy of the voter registration application supporting the registration, and a copy or list of documents that were presented by the registrant at the time the person registered to vote or obtained their driver’s license if registered as part of motor voter,” Missakian wrote.

He also wrote that he was reaching out by letter “to make unmistakably clear the legal implications of continuing to send vote-by-mail ballots to those people on the list or tabulating ballots cast by them until citizenship can be verified.”

The Justice Department previously sued California for its voter records. A federal judge rejected the lawsuit, calling the demands a threat to democracy. The Justice Department has also lost similar cases demanding voter rolls in dozens of other states.

California Sen. Alex Padilla said in a statement Friday that, “Donald Trump and Todd Blanche are trying to interfere in California elections.”

Padilla, the ranking Democrat on the U.S. Senate Rules and Administration Committee, which has oversight over federal elections, added: No matter how many lawsuits they file or how many election officials they threaten, they do not have the authority to interfere.”

Padilla told local election officials, “We have your back.”

“The Trump administration is afraid and desperate,” he said. “Their attempts to take over our elections will fail.”

The Justice Department has received some records by subpoenaing state and county officials for the records of specific voters.

The letters were a topic of discussion among members of the California Association of Clerks and Election Officials Friday, with officials working on how to respond.

Logan, L.A. County’s top elections official, sent an email to fellow association members saying he had seen a copy of the letter to some counties — which he condemned as misrepresenting facts and threatening elections officials “twelve days before the election” through a “posture of intimidation.”

Logan called the 48-hour deadline for responses “unenforceable,” and noted that the Justice Department was “demanding individual level data from the named counties similar to what it has previously only obtained through subpoenas.”

Logan’s office has also said that an initial review it conducted of a subset of the 20,000 voters the Justice Department initially flagged found many were born in the U.S., many weren’t actually registered and many had never voted.

Foes of Gov. Gavin Newsom, who is widely viewed as a likely 2028 presidential candidate, are launching television and digital ads this weekend in early primary states that criticize the governor’s opposition to the proposed billionaire tax on California’s November ballot.

The ad, funded by backers of the wealth tax, castigates Newsom for opposing Proposition 40, the ballot measure that would impose a 5% tax on California billionaires’ assets to offset federal healthcare funding cuts approved by congressional Republicans and signed by President Trump last year.

“We’re all struggling with the high cost of healthcare. In California, Democrats are championing a one-time tax on billionaires that would save coverage for millions,” a narrator says in the 30-second ad. “So why [has] presidential hopeful Gavin Newsom betrayed his own supporters by trying to sabotage the billionaire tax? Maybe it’s because the same billionaires who oppose Prop. 40 also gave millions of dollars to Newsom. Gavin Newsom turned his back on working Californians. Will he do the same to you?”

The ad specifically calls out billionaires Stewart Resnick, who owns several businesses including Pom Wonderful, Fiji Water and Justin Wines; crypto executive Chris Larsen; former Google leader Eric Schmidt; and venture capitalist Michael Moritz, all of whom have backed Newsom’s political ambitions.

Newsom has argued that, although he supports wealth taxes, they ought to be enacted at the national level, rather than a state-by-state patchwork that could drive the rich to leave California, a state with a volatile budget heavily dependent on the state’s wealthiest residents.

The primary funders of the ad are the Service Employees International Union – United Healthcare Workers West, which crafted Proposition 40; Saikat Chakrabarti, a climate change warrior and political advisor who made his wealth in part as a founding engineer at Stripe; and Ross Boucher, an early engineer at Stripe.

The ad buy is six figures but could grow, according to its backers. Among the states where the ad is expected to air are South Carolina, Nevada, New Mexico, Virginia and New Hampshire.

Earlier this month, Newsom stumped for candidates in New Hampshire, his latest foray to early presidential primary states.

The ad launch comes amid a contentious, expensive battle over the proposed wealth tax, which has divided Democrats and their allies. Although Newsom is among Democrats who oppose it, the ballot measure was endorsed by the state Democratic Party and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). Voters are closely divided about the measure.

WASHINGTON — President Trump has alleged that elections, public benefit programs and federal grants to nonprofits are rife with fraud. Now, he is increasingly focusing on fraud in his effort to detain and deport more immigrants.

Recent, high-profile flash points include 28 lawful permanent residents accused this week of illegally voting in California and the federal investigation into Somali-born Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.).

The broader crusade takes many forms, including allegations of fraud in immigration applications, illegal voting by noncitizens and misuse of federal benefits by immigrants who don’t qualify.

“This administration has purposefully mischaracterized immigrants and asylum seekers as fraudsters,” said Royce Murray, a former senior official at the Department of Homeland Security under the Biden administration. That, she said, “serves a narrative that immigrants are not to be trusted and are here to take something rather than contribute, with an end goal of trying to make Americans less welcoming and more comfortable with a mass deportation agenda.”

On Tuesday, Trump and Vice President JD Vance announced a $25-million program under the Justice Department to encourage the public to report suspected fraud in the U.S. government.

The White House said the first check, for $10,000, will go to right-wing influencer Nick Shirley, who posted a video last year alleging that Somali residents in Minnesota were running fake child-care centers to collect federal subsidies. Dozens of people were convicted in connection with a sprawling, $250-million children’s food assistance scheme that predated this administration, though more charges have been announced in recent months.

Also Tuesday, administration officials launched another nationwide anti-fraud crackdown, this time targeting immigrants who they allege have illegally collected SNAP benefits. Homeland Security highlighted the arrests of five people, calling them “the opening salvo in a sustained, large-scale ICE operation.”

“From day one of my administration, we’ve waged an unprecedented war on corruption and fraud, and will not let our country be looted and plundered by thieves and pirates and foreign fraudsters and basically scum,” Trump said during a news conference announcing the Fraud Whistleblower Incentive Program.

Earlier this year, the White House created a task force to eliminate fraud and the Department of Justice created a fraud enforcement division, in part, to target immigration-related offenses. Prosecutors have put aside thousands of other cases to zero in on immigration enforcement.

The focus on fraud has noticeably accelerated in the weeks leading up to the election.

In California, some of the green card holders arrested this week over voter fraud said they didn’t remember registering to vote. The daughter of one defendant, Omar Muñoz, 72, of Belize, said she wondered whether her father had been confused with his U.S.-born son of the same name, who is a registered voter.

California officials pounced on the small number of people alleged to have cast illegal ballots. Illegal voting by immigrants “is so rare that the Trump admin is parading around town about .0001% of California voters,” Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office wrote on X.

In the last seven weeks alone, the State Department said, 112 noncitizens across 20 states have been charged with illegal voting and registration offenses. Overall, since Trump returned to the White House, 155 people have been charged with voting fraud-related offenses.

Mullin and Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche said earlier this month that Homeland Security agents had secured 10 convictions and detained 100 others for civil immigration violations since August.

During the Biden administration, voter fraud charges were brought in just 13 cases, Blanche added.

Studies and audits of state voter rolls have repeatedly found that voting by noncitizens is rare and hasn’t swayed any elections.

Ballot machines at the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder in Norwalk this week. Early voting has started for the 2026 midterm election.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

Last week, with mail-in voting already underway, the Justice Department sued California, asking a federal court to bar the state from counting the ballots of 20,000 voters who were flagged by federal officials as “likely noncitizens.” Los Angeles County officials reviewed a sample of 200 of those voter registrations and found that nearly 40% indicated they were born in the U.S.

That number of flagged ballots — 20,000 — is a substantial reduction from the 190,000 noncitizens the administration alleged were on state voter rolls earlier this year, though federal authorities this week said they had found a “separate batch of 17,000 voting records potentially tied to noncitizens.”

California leaders pointed to other states, such as Nevada, where similar accusations have proved meritless.

Murray, the former Homeland Security official, said she believes the administration is “trying to sow the seeds of doubt that the midterm outcomes will be trustworthy, so that if the Republican Party loses as badly as they’re predicted to, they can characterize it as due to fraud.”

Murray said the Trump administration has largely misconstrued what it means to commit fraud.

“Fraud is a very specific thing — it’s essentially lying,” she said. “Because you don’t get asylum does not mean you committed fraud, it just means you were ineligible.”

In September, a Homeland Security whistleblower told Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) that hundreds of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services employees had been tasked with quickly reviewing the voter information of thousands of people in search of suspected noncitizen voters, and were given a quota of investigating 40 subjects per day.

On Wednesday, a federal judge restricted Homeland Security agents from carrying out sweeping field operations aimed at rooting out voter fraud in nine states, including California.

It is against federal law for immigrants who are not naturalized citizens to vote or register to do so. Penalties can include fines, jail time and even deportation, though authorities rarely pursued that option.

Eric Balliet, a former special agent with Homeland Security Investigations, the criminal investigative arm of ICE, said he takes no issue with investigating fraud, but the timing of this operation and significant resources dedicated show it is “highly politically charged.”

Balliet worked for various administrations, including Trump’s first, before retiring in 2024. Homeland Security Investigations agents typically focused on transnational criminal investigations such as drug smuggling and human trafficking.

Instead of initiating investigations based on tips or specific information, agents are now taking aggregated data and using algorithms to produce suspect lists, Balliet said. That’s not how law enforcement should operate, he said, calling it a massive privacy overreach against millions of law-abiding citizens.

“It’s the epitome of Big Brother,” he said.

Beyond the allegations of voter fraud, the Trump administration has also increasingly targeted immigrants on suspicion of lying to obtain a visa, green card or citizenship.

Omar’s family fled civil war in Somalia and immigrated to the U.S. in 1995 when she was 12. After agents searched her residence this month looking for evidence that her immigration paperwork contained falsehoods, she called the allegations baseless.

Last month, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Muillin suggested the outcome of the investigation could be deportation. Years ago, the agency declined to move forward with a probe based on similar allegations against Omar, according to the Washington Post.

The congresswoman is not alone.

Emiliano Andrade-Covarrubias, 56, who died of unknown causes last week at an ICE facility in Texas, was arrested because the agency alleged he had fraudulently obtained his green card. ICE sought to deport him, saying he had failed to disclose a 2004 arrest for theft, but his daughter told the Texas Tribune that he did bring up his criminal record during the application process for his permanent residency.

Immigration lawyers say their clients are facing more intense scrutiny and that some have battled false accusations of fraud after applying for a green card or citizenship.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services spokesperson Zach Kahler blamed the Biden administration for lax vetting that allowed bad actors to exploit immigration programs.

“These abuses are not harmless,” he wrote in a statement. “Meritless claims clog the system, drain limited resources, and delay relief for legitimate victims of crime. USCIS is taking aggressive action to identify, expose, and eliminate fraud.”

Erin O’Neil, an attorney based in Connecticut, said some of her clients are now in deportation proceedings triggered by allegations of fraud over minor inconsistencies that have no bearing on the case. In one case that resulted in a denial based on fraud, she said, the allegation was simply that her client failed to disclose a two-week work assignment in another state.

“In the past, the worst that would happen is your citizenship application would be denied,” O’Neil said. “Now we have seen through several of my clients that, not only is the citizenship application denied, but they are placed into removal proceedings.”

The U.S. government seems to be coming for California (again). Big surprise.

But scratch the surface of the recent Department of Justice voter fraud blitz and the ugly truth peeks through — this is an attack on immigrants of color, no different than accusing the Haitians of Ohio of eating cats and dogs or the aggressive escalation of detaining and deporting Black and brown people with no criminal record.

It’s meant to excite and appease the Christian nationalist contingent of MAGA voters — including Trump advisor Stephen Miller — who make no secret of their belief that even some naturalized citizens should be forced out of the country if they aren’t white.

Just a few days ago, the White House posted on social media that “If you import the third world, you become the third world.” Not be be outdone, the fine Americans at the Department of Homeland Security responded with what seems to be a problematic mission statement that may wind up in court documents: “Reject the third world. Export the third world.” So far in President Trump’s second term, only 20% of the nearly 1 million people deported had a criminal record, according to the Migration Policy Institute.

Speaking of court documents, wow, do we have a lot to go through. Turns out not a lot of judges are into voter suppression.

After First Assistant U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli, the son of Lebanese immigrants and the first Muslim to serve in the California Legislature, announced charges against 28 Californians — all immigrants — who allegedly registered or voted illegally, the legal battles went into overdrive.

There’s the U.S. Justice Department case claiming California is somehow stopping the feds from enforcing federal voting laws, despite those 28 cases. There’s a ruling in a different case that prevents the Department of Homeland Security from going door-to-door in California and other places checking on immigration status and voter registration — a terrifying overreach of power meant to intimidate legal voters.

And there’s the ongoing lawsuit from the UCLA Voting Rights Project and the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights in a Washington courtroom — a case that could take the lead in protecting the midterms.

Here’s what you need to know about all three, and what comes next.

Stop the knocks

Starting around August, Homeland Security began knocking on the doors of residents in California and eight other states in what it dubbed a “surge” in investigations on voter fraud.

These in-person checks were based on lists of folks the government thought might not be legally allowed to cast a ballot — and focused on naturalized citizens, according to court documents. They were also, according to the court, unreliable and included “instances where DHS simply did not have data to determine that the individual did not engage in voter fraud,” the California judge in the case wrote, meaning it was a giant fishing expedition.

In addition, Homeland Security was apparently investigating nonprofits and other organizations that help get out the vote, including interrogating the staff and covertly infiltrating their operations, according to court documents.

That’s McCarthyism-level scary. The California Nurses Assn. and its parent union, National Nurses United, filed a lawsuit to stop the Homeland Security surge, arguing in part that one of their core missions is political organizing and turning out voters, and that the operation directly harmed them by scaring their members away from that work.

They also have a lot of members who are naturalized citizens. Four union members told the court that they didn’t want to participate in the union’s election work because they were afraid of being targeted by the government, citizens or not.

The court found that fear “objectively reasonable” and ordered Homeland Security to stop the door-knocking until after the election. The judge then stayed that order until Friday to give the government time to appeal. So far, the government hasn’t filed that objection.

“So many people in the United States are suffering under Trump’s corrupt and cruel policies on behalf of the billionaire class that he knows cannot hold onto power in these upcoming elections without illegally suppressing our vote through outright harassment, intimidation, and even detention,” said Puneet Maharaj, executive director of the two nurses groups.

Emergency relief

At the same time, the Department of Justice this week filed a suit against California seeking an emergency order to force the state to segregate 20,000 ballots of folks it claims may not be citizens — an unprecedented ask in furtherance of the long-running conspiracy theory that immigrants who lack legal status are in a scheme with Democrats to vote en masse.

State Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta has asked the court to throw out the case, in part because the federal government can’t prove it’s actually being harmed in any way by state law. The feds have already filed charges in those 28 cases claiming voter fraud, so it’s hard to argue that state law is preventing them from going after illegal voters.

But the feds are arguing that the state is aiding and abetting illegal voting by not segregating those ballots, even though there is no proof they are in the hands of noncitizens. A review by the Los Angeles County registrar’s office found that about 40% of those on the list were born in the United States.

Trump even threatened that election officials could be jailed for not bending to his will.

Attorneys general from other states filed a friend of the court brief siding with California, arguing that the Justice Department is basically trying to create a new law where “the executive branch can invent new election requirements, unmoored from any constitutional or statutory authority, and demand that States enforce them in the middle of an election.”

The court will rule on that next week.

Beyond Nov. 3

Our final case takes us to Washington, where the UCLA Voting Rights Project and the Coalition for Human Immigrant Rights, or CHIRLA, are asking for their own temporary restraining order — this one stopping the government from carrying out its ballot segregation scheme and from using its flawed, janky methods for supposedly identifying noncitizen voters.

I’ve written about this lawsuit before, and how the Voting Rights Project beat back Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco’s attempt to snatch ballots. The court will probably make a ruling in that one next week as well.

But election day is less than two weeks away, and many have already voted. So what does it all mean?

It means we’re in for a rough ride. The Trump administration is not dumb. Midterms might not go the way Republicans would like, potentially even giving control of both the House and Senate to Democrats. Some experts and legislators are concerned that all these ballot drama is posturing for that midterm loss — creating a reason to potentially question results or even refuse to seat newly elected Democrats when the time comes.

That would be unthinkable, unprecedented, a constitutional crisis. But impossible? Nope.

And almost certainly, no matter what voters decide, Trump will spin it back to that white nationalism — the idea that “true” Americans are being replaced through fraud, violence and vote stealing, a trio of conspiracies glued together by the sticky, tricky manipulations of a man who will do anything for power.

What else you should be reading:

The must-read: How Meta struck a deal to keep Mark Zuckerberg in California despite looming billionaire tax
The California angle: As companies leave California, is the state’s $4.25-trillion economy really in trouble?
The L.A. Times Special: In Trumpworld, dogs who commit voter fraud aren’t as bad as immigrants

Stay Golden,

Anita Chabria

—

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A sweeping campaign by federal immigration agents to identify voter fraud by noncitizens through door knocks, street stops and other field interviews in California and eight other states must be reined in ahead of the Nov. 3 election, after a federal judge in Northern California ruled it has intimidated U.S. citizens and interfered with the work of voting rights groups.

Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguin said in a ruling Wednesday that limiting the Department of Homeland Security’s surging operations in those states — which she wrote “sweep in U.S. citizens for investigation” — does not prevent the Trump administration from “exercising their authority to investigate voter fraud by lawful means.”

A Homeland Security spokesperson said the agency is “laser focused on identifying, prosecuting, and removing aliens who vote,” and has “no plans to question or investigate people we believe to be U.S. citizens.”

The ruling was the latest to come out of an unprecedented legal war playing out between the Trump administration and California in recent days, in which an array of election cases are working their way through the federal courts at breakneck speed.

There is, for example, the lawsuit the U.S. Justice Department filed against California and state and local elections officials last week, demanding that they set aside any ballots from a list of 20,000 individuals identified by immigration officials as “likely noncitizens.”

There are also two cases out of Washington, D.C., in which a coalition of Democratic leaders, immigrant rights groups, voting rights experts and naturalized citizens in California are challenging the Trump administration’s use of Homeland Security data to target voters.

The litigation is playing out amid an intense political debate about election security at the national level — driven in part by President Trump, a longtime election denier — and a sweeping campaign by his administration to root out and parade examples of alleged voter fraud in the final days before the election.

White House, Homeland Security and Justice Department officials have all defended the administration’s efforts as necessary to ensure that noncitizens are not illegally diluting the votes of U.S. citizens. First Assistant U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli, the lead federal prosecutor in Los Angeles, has claimed to have “overwhelming evidence” that tens of thousands of noncitizens are doing so in California.

‘That is not normal’

Democratic leaders and prominent elections experts, meanwhile, have cast the administration’s claims as baseless and intentionally exaggerated to stoke uncertainty about election security and ultimately challenge midterm results the president doesn’t like, and the Justice Department’s legal arguments as fundamentally flawed and wildly out of line with long-established department policy to stay out of elections in the lead up to voting.

“That is not normal. We have literally never experienced that in American history. Not once,” said David Becker, executive director of the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation & Research and a former Justice Department elections attorney. “The fact that the administration appears poised for the first time to act as an adversary to the states and counties who have [the] undisputed constitutional authority to run elections? That is unusual.”

At the same time, Becker and other experts stressed that those efforts to date have failed, and state and local elections have largely proceeded in recent weeks without incident, with millions of Americans having already cast their ballots.

“California voters need to know that they’re in good hands, that we have leaders at the state and local levels who are protecting our ballots and are ensuring that these attempts by the federal government to root out supposed noncitizen voting are not going to prevent Californians from casting our ballots,” said Kim Alexander, president of the California Voter Foundation. “Part of the strategy here is to distract people and scare people and raise fears, and the important thing is to continue to stay focused on … making a plan to vote.”

Status of cases

Federal courts have already rejected multiple Trump executive orders seeking to enforce nationwide voter ID and citizenship requirements. The Supreme Court blocked an administration plan for the U.S. Postal Service to vet mail ballots. The Justice Department has compiled a stunning record of losses in its 30 lawsuits demanding state voter rolls — with 26 of those cases, including the one in California, so far dismissed.

And election experts said they expect the Trump administration to rack up more losses in coming days — including in the Justice Department’s case challenging California officials’ refusal to segregate the ballots of some 20,000 voters based on the administration’s unsubstantiated claims they are noncitizens.

U.S. District Judge David O. Carter, shown in 2023, is overseeing a lawsuit in which the Department of Justice says 20,000 California ballots may have been sent to “likely noncitizens.”

(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)

That case was taken up — and scheduled for a Tuesday hearing — by Judge David O. Carter, an appointee of President Clinton who in January rejected the administration’s demand for California’s voter rolls, calling it a clear federal overreach that would have a “chilling effect” on voters and threaten American democracy.

California has called for the case to be dismissed outright, on the grounds that the administration has zero authority to make such demands, and that the demands are unlawful. The Trump administration has asked Carter to immediately rule in the matter.

“Every minute of [ballot] processing that occurs without segregating the ballots of suspected non-eligible voters causes untraceable disenfranchisement and dilution of the votes of United States citizens,” wrote Julie Hamill, an assistant U.S. attorney in Essayli’s office.

In D.C. federal court, Judge James E. Boasberg set an Oct. 30 hearing in a case in which UCLA Voting Rights Project attorneys, the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, or CHIRLA, and a California voter named Pedro Trujillo are challenging the administration’s use of unproven federal databases to allege California voters aren’t citizens.

Carl Bergquist, an attorney for CHIRLA, said he looked forward to bringing a host of recent Trump administration actions to the court’s attention — including the administration’s lawsuit against California, the charging this week of 28 legal permanent residents in California with election-related crimes, and Trump’s threats to arrest California elections officials who don’t comply with his administration’s demands.

“The events of the last few days, from threats to state and local officials, increased general immigration operations, the random knocking on doors by federal agents and the recent arrests are causing a chill in the community,” Bergquist said. “People, including naturalized citizens, are making their plans to vote and the Federal Government is doing its utmost to quash their attempts to exercise this fundamental right that they have lawfully acquired.”

The argument that naturalized citizens are being intimidated also features prominently in a second lawsuit filed in D.C. federal court Tuesday, in which top Democrats in Congress joined Nevada party officials and a California immigrant named Erick Jose Jimenez to challenge the Trump administration’s unprecedented voter fraud probes.

That lawsuit, also assigned to Boasberg, says Jimenez, a naturalized citizen since 2006, fears being “unlawfully targeted for voting and disenfranchised (or worse).”

Justin Levitt, a Loyola Law School professor who studies elections and was a senior policy advisor on democracy and voting rights in the Biden White House, said there is “so much noise” around the election right now, in part because the administration has been making wild legal arguments about its authority over elections.

But he said “none of the federal government’s attempts to assert power that they do not have are working,” and voting “for 99.999% of the public” will remain “wonderfully normal.”

The mayor of the small Central Valley farm town of Kerman pulled up to a bakery, her cellphone camera recording, and confronted federal immigration agents conducting an early-morning operation in which multiple people were detained.

“You’re not welcome in my city,” Maria Pacheco told the masked agents, identifying herself as the mayor. “You’ve taken enough people yesterday. We don’t want you here. You need to leave.”

As the men wearing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement vests drove away, she shouted: “How can you make a living kidnapping people? How can you sleep at night doing what you’re doing? … You are a sorry piece of sh—!”

Pacheco, who is running for a seat on the Fresno County Board of Supervisors, posted video of the Oct. 8 confrontation in Kerman — a mostly Latino city of 17,000 west of Fresno — on social media, labeling it: “Mayor Maria Pacheco Stands Up to ICE.”

The footage went viral. TikTok commentators praised her bravery. Comedian and actor George Lopez posted about it on Facebook — writing, “We need more politicians like Maria Pacheco!” — and she shared her campaign fundraising link in the comments.

A few days later, Pacheco allegedly drove through Fresno, closely following a vehicle driven by a man she assumed was an ICE agent.

Except, he wasn’t one.

Eric Bridges, a Fresno hairdresser, has accused Pacheco of closely trailing him in an orange Nissan Altima for more than 20 minutes on Oct. 14 and taking photos of his vehicles as she followed him to his sister’s house.

“I’m looking for ICE, and you look like ICE,” Pacheco told him, according to a signed statement submitted to the Fresno County District Attorney’s Office this week in which Bridges wrote that he wanted “to press charges to the fullest extent of the law.”

Bridges’ attorney, Roger Bonakdar, told The Times that Pacheco used his client “as a political trampoline so she could create social media clickbait” to benefit her political campaign.

“There are real concerns as to whether or not she is acting as some sort of vigilante law enforcement person, that she’s wrongfully abusing her position as an elected official,” Bonakdar said.

Bonakdar added that he filed complaints about the incident with the Fresno Police Department and county prosecutor.

Taylor Long, a spokesperson for the district attorney’s office, said in an email that the information provided by Bonakdar had been referred to its Public Integrity Unit, which investigates public officials for potential crimes related to their office, but that “the receipt and review of information” does not mean a crime had occurred or that charges were warranted.

No charges had been filed by the district attorney’s office in connection with the incident as of Wednesday, Long wrote.

In an email to The Times, Pacheco wrote: “Regarding recent allegations, my only comment is this: If he wants to go to court, we will go to court.”

“Meanwhile, the Kerman Food Bank and other local organizations are experiencing food shortages as families face fear and uncertainty caused by recent immigration enforcement actions,” Pacheco wrote. “Parents are afraid to go to work or leave home, even to buy groceries, leaving more families struggling to put food on the table. … That is where our attention belongs, and where my time, energy and heart will remain.”

The encounter comes at a tense time in the Central Valley, where a surge this month in federal immigration operations and detentions has rattled agricultural communities, causing workers to stop showing up to farm fields and construction sites and families to keep their children home from school.

The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to requests for information about the Oct. 8 operation outside La Princesa Real Bakery in Kerman, where Pacheco filmed her interaction with agents. Pacheco told the Fresno Bee that four of the bakery’s customers had been detained and that one was eventually released because he had lawful immigration status.

In his signed statement, Bridges wrote that he was driving near Kearney Park just west of Fresno on the afternoon of Oct. 14 when he noticed an orange car “pull behind me quickly and follow me into the park.” Bridges said he stopped his vehicle and was on the phone with his sister, telling her that he was being followed and that the driver was taking photos of him.

As he sat in the parking lot, he wrote, the car circled him for five minutes, and he could overhear the driver on the phone through her vehicle’s speaker system.

He then drove to his sister’s neighborhood, where the car tailed him into a cul-de-sac and stopped beside his white Mercedes sport utility vehicle — an encounter recorded by a home security camera.

When the female driver rolled down her car window, Bridges wrote, she asked who he was and he did the same. According to Bridges’ statement, the driver told him he was “in [her] ‘hood driving an unmarked car.”

Bridges wrote that he had a California Department of Motor Vehicles print-out affixed to the back of his vehicle and asked if she was a police officer or DMV employee.

She replied, “Don’t worry about who I am; I’m someone important” then accused him of being an ICE agent, Bridges wrote. Outraged, he began filming her.

In the home security footage, Bridges can be heard from a distance saying, “I didn’t know you owned the neighborhood,” and shouting in apparent surprise: “I look like I’m ICE?” after the woman speaks to him.

A close-up video that Bridges recorded shows a woman in sunglasses smiling as she drives away, with him saying, “Don’t you ever in your … life follow me, you weird-ass b—.”

Bridges wrote that she flipped him off as she left and that he learned she was the mayor of Kerman after reviewing the video footage.

Bonakdar, his attorney, said Bridges is a grandfather and hair stylist who has never worked for ICE or the Department of Homeland Security. When the driver of the orange vehicle saw him, Bonakdar said, Bridges was not wearing a face covering, as immigration agents often do, or a badge or tactical vest.

Pacheco “claims to be an advocate for minority groups, or to somehow have an interest in helping those people,” Bonakdar said. “I mean, she just victimized somebody who is a member of two minority groups. [Bridges] is a thin-framed, middle-aged Black gay man.”

Bonakdar said Bridges had received threats from people accusing him of being an undercover ICE agent and that some had told him he was not welcome in certain places.

On Oct. 15, the day after the alleged encounter with Bridges, Pacheco wrote a Facebook post about a street corner near agricultural fields just west of Fresno city limits: “I have spotted ICE on Shaw and Dickenson. White SUV. No plates. Driver is masked and hooded.”

Two days later, she took to Facebook again, writing: “I never imagined we’d live in a time when communities would fear masked men in unmarked vehicles. It’s exhausting living on constant high alert, watching for out-of-state or missing license plates, never knowing who’s next.”

I was trying to discern whether I’d made a wrong turn when I heard a loud whoosh next to me. Somehow, I’d missed the red-tailed hawk perched on a small tree, watching me from an arm’s length away.

That was one of many delightful surprises I encountered as I developed a 6.7-mile urban hike that I will share in this edition of The Wild, our weekly outdoors newsletter.

Back in May, I published a 13.5-mile urban hike (see map) that connects trails along the Arroyo Seco and in Elephant Hill Open Space, Ascot Hills, Lincoln Park, Flat Top Park and Ernest E. Debs Park. I wanted to celebrate our local hillsides but also showcase natural areas that remain under threat of development.

I have wanted to expand the route ever since I published it. I got motivated, though, when I saw that the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority, or MRCA, will receive a $200,000 grant in Proposition 4 money to develop a trail connecting open spaces in Northeast L.A.

MRCA will consider how to connect Elephant Hill Open Space with other land that it owns and manages, including Elyria Canyon and Rainbow Canyon, along with parks and open spaces owned by other public agencies.

The view from Kite Hill, a high point in Mount Washington, from near North Avenue 37.

(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)

“We’ve been thinking about connectivity in Northeast L.A. for a while, the idea being that we connect the protected hilltops and canyons creating access to the Arroyo Seco, which ties up to the Angeles National Forest and down to the L.A. River,” said Sarah Kevorkian, deputy chief of wildfire resilience at MRCA, noting that there’s great energy and momentum built by community members who want to see their neighborhood open spaces protected.

I am eager to see what MRCA and its partners develop. Based on what I’ve experienced, urban hiking trails can lead to better connection among neighbors and a deeper appreciation for nature nearest to us. In the interim, I developed the trail below that envisions what a regional connector trail could look like.

The total extension to the River to the Hilltops route is about 9.4 miles when you include the three “connector” trails that I indicate via a dotted blue line on the map. In total, the full route is now about 23 miles. Below, I explain the heart of the extension through Cypress Park and Mount Washington, which is about 6.7 miles without the connectors, including the two that would take you to the larger original trail. I made this route in a “Choose Your Own Adventure” style, hoping to inspire folks to (legally!) explore their city, hence the flexibility (and complications in explaining mileage).

Some quick logistics before I dive into the route:

• I developed the route using CalTopo, an online mapping software with a desktop site and mobile app. You can download the CalTopo app onto your phone and follow the route there; you can also download the trail from CalTopo to use on your Garmin or other device. I also uploaded it to my AllTrails profile.
• In May, I dubbed the original trail “River to the Hilltops” in CalTopo and on AllTrails. Afterward, a reader suggested “Jewel Necklace” as a name. What do you think?
• I haven’t marked everywhere you can find a restroom or water, but will try to add those as time allows. Please plan accordingly, as some stretches run through neighborhoods or open spaces where there isn’t much nearby.
• There is no single place to start this route, although this newsletter will focus on the latest extension. You can start and stop this route in several spots though.
• Trail access and conditions can change. Please follow all posted signage (and contact me if you encounter major issues).
• This route travels through several neighborhoods. Please refrain from using Bluetooth speakers and anything else that would be disruptive to residents.
• There are several places along the route where you will walk in the street of a neighborhood because it lacks sidewalks; please use caution!
• At several junctures along the suggested route, you will have an option to take a different path that will essentially get you to the same place. Do what’s best for you, and most important: Have fun, be safe and don’t trespass!

A red-tailed hawk flies over Bob Scholfield Park in Mount Washington.

(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)

Now let’s talk more about the route (full map here).

To begin this extension into the neighborhoods of Mount Washington and, briefly, Cypress Park, I started at the Lincoln/Cypress Metro station off the A Line (previously, and forever in our hearts, the Gold Line). The station has a series of stairs and ramps that you can take down to West Avenue 26, which borders the station on its eastern-ish side.

You’ll quickly turn right (or northeast) onto Lacy Street, passing Lacy Street Neighborhood Park. I chose this option because, as you’ll see after about a quarter of a mile on Lacy, it leads to a pedestrian bridge.

A pedestrian path that leads to a bridge taking walkers and hikers over the 110 Freeway.

(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)

It is not a well-marked or particularly welcoming pedestrian bridge, but it exists nonetheless. You’ll see a narrow walkway lined with a green metal fence topped with spikes and, later, razor wire. Did I mention it’s not terribly welcoming?

Head over the 110 Freeway via this bridge, and turn right onto Arroyo Seco Avenue and then soon left on Amabel Street. But appreciate this little jaunt, as it’s the last bit of flat walking for a bit.

A pedestrian bridge over the 110 Freeway near Cypress Park.

(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)

Cross over North Figueroa Street, and trudge up the hill before you, which has an average grade of about 15%. You’ll pass a neighborhood sign for Mount Washington as you bear left on Isabel Street before making a quick right (north) turn onto Glenalbyn Drive. Continue northeast onto Beech Street and feel as amazed as I was when it becomes a dirt path.

As I trotted through here, I enjoyed watching a kettle of turkey vultures soaring high above the homes perched on the hillside, looking for a fine carrion brunch.

Rather than continuing on the dirt path that heads southeast, I headed up Montalvo Street. Be careful here, as there is no sidewalk. I headed north onto Andalusia Street, or Avenue on some maps, and then further northwest onto West Avenue 37.

A gate was installed on West Avenue 37 in the late 1980s to block rowdy visitors from driving to and partying on Kite Hill in Mount Washington. The route remains open to pedestrians.

You’ll soon arrive at Kite Hill, which The Times described in 1988 as “a scenic Mt. Washington location popular with kite-flyers by day and partying teenagers by night.”

The rambunctious youths were so noisy, L.A. City Council spent $1,200 — about $3,500 in today’s money — to install gates to prevent vehicle traffic. The route remains open to pedestrians.

“It’s like the Hollywood Bowl up there, but it goes on all night,” resident Bob Cummings, a real estate agent who had lived on Mount Washington for 18 years, told The Times in 1988. “It’s like a cancer that started. We’re asking for the city’s surgeons to cut it out.”

When I visited Monday, I saw no evidence of kites or parties, but I did appreciate the glorious views of our local hillsides and San Gabriel Mountains.

One perk of walking the Mount Washington leg of the route is the Halloween decor you’ll spy along the way.

(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)

At the juncture of West Avenue 37 and San Rafael Avenue, you have two options in terms of the route I’ve charted out: You can continue northwest on West Avenue 37, where you’ll quickly be frolicking in Elyria Canyon, or you can take San Rafael Avenue and a short winding path down to Rainbow Canyon, which is also lovely.

Although I designed this leg of the River to the Hilltops route to start at the Lincoln/Cypress Metro stop and end at the Southwest Museum Metro station, you can also turn it into a loop, as you’ll see on the map.

For the purposes of this newsletter, I’m going to explain the route via the first option, continuing northwest on West Avenue 37 and then right (or northwest) onto Killarney Avenue for about 400 feet until you turn right onto some wooden, dirt-covered steps. You’ve reached Elyria Canyon Park!

Wooden stairs lead down into Elyria Canyon Park, where hikers will find several species of native shrubs and trees.

(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)

Be mindful as you take the steps, as the loose dirt can be slippery. You will have lovely views of L.A. and its landscapes as you meander past native shrubs and trees, including black sage, toyon and wild cucumber. This 35-acre park “boasts one of the finest examples of California black walnut woodland in Southern California,” according to the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority, which manages the land.

That’s one reason that a 1996 Times story dubbed this park “a living example of the Los Angeles of 200 years ago.”

There are multiple routes, and I won’t discourage you from exploring beyond what I’ve mapped out, which from the map, you can see is a quick loop, passing through the park (including Akuutet Learning Nursery and the surrounding neighborhood. If you find yourself needing a snack break, you’re in luck. (I will admit that I wanted the same while in Elyria Canyon and took a short walk over to Little Barn Coffee House, one of my favorite spots in L.A.)

The path through Elyria Canyon travels through the 35-acre park that features a California black walnut woodland.

(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)

After the loop, you’ll head out of the canyon onto Elyria Drive and then make a left back onto San Rafael Avenue, which you’ll take for about a third of a mile. Continue north past San Rafael Avenue and Danforth Drive onto Sea View Avenue. In about a third of a mile, Sea View will transform into a dirt path as you enter Bob Scholfield Park (per the name etched into a rock under a tree).

Two red-tailed hawks flew overhead as I entered this charming stretch of the walk. I chatted with another hiker and petted his Great Pyrenees dog, as I grew up with the breed and have a soft spot for these giant fluffy goobers.

After following this dirt path as it curves around, you will return to a paved Sea View Drive. Head southeast, and you’ll quickly find yourself at Moon Canyon Park.

Moon Canyon Park in L.A.

(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)

Developers had wanted to construct 18 homes and a parking lot in this 4.5-acre canyon, but the L.A. City Council instead set aside $550,000 to preserve it, according to a 2003 Times story.

“I couldn’t be happier because the canyon will be left open,” resident Sharon Roesler, a member of a group opposing developing the canyon, said at the time. “We don’t have enough of these places to go to in Los Angeles.” (If you want to learn more about restoration efforts here, you can visit the Friends of Moon Canyon website, which is working to restore the canyon.)

You will walk southeast down a pleasant dirt path through the canyon, noticing those restoration efforts, before you hit pavement for just a moment and then immediately bear right onto West Pheasant Drive, another dirt path.

A Chevy van parked ahead on the trail.

(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)

I was enjoying my hike when I followed the bend of West Pheasant Drive and noticed a van parked ahead. Now, I’ve seen enough horror movies that I quickly started to write the opening scene to my demise.

EXT. DIRT HIKING TRAIL

“JAC, a well-meaning but unfortunately oblivious hiker, spots a vintage camper van on the trail. They have no idea what lurks ahead.”

Thankfully, there was nothing other than a funky DIY project lurking in the distance. I approached the van to find a cardboard sign attached (which, again, sounds creepier than it was).

“The process is as WiLD as the circumstances!” it read. “This van is unable to leave the road (you may have noticed 🙂 ) so we are resituating it to optimize space (something special, incoming!).”

A narrow dirt path called West Pheasant Drive on some maps.

(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)

After you pass the van art project, you’ll soon reach a nest of streets, as each has a bird name. You will turn right from West Pheasant onto Quail Drive and then quickly left onto Dove Drive. Follow Dove Drive southeast and quickly take a hard right (northwest) onto Glenalbyn Drive, followed by a hard left (southeast) onto Mavis Drive and then soon a right on Frontenac Avenue, then left on West Avenue 46 to head into the park area around the Carlin G. Smith Recreation Center.

You’ll pass through a gate and meander down the path, with an optional side quest to have a friend push you on the tire swing. After shenanigans, walk through the basketball court to where the path continues in the court’s southeast corner.

This route, when I traversed it, was loose and narrow. If it feels too sketchy, take the road or use a trekking pole if you’ve brought one. No reason to turn an ankle after you’ve had an otherwise splendid day!

At the end of this rustic route, take West Avenue 45 down to the Rainbow Canyon Test Plot, a publicly owned area where volunteers are readily restoring the canyon with native plants and shrubs. There is a pleasant little trail from the test plot that goes through the canyon. You will take it up to West Avenue 44.

A previous walker left a message on a utility pole to remind us of one reason we hike.

(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)

From here, you can either use the connector trail I’ve mapped out or head down West Avenue 44 to Marmion Way and the Southwest Museum Metro stop.

That is the end of the Mount Washington trail extension, but doesn’t have to be the end of your day. If you’re feeling adventurous, I have mapped out a connector route through Sycamore Grove Park that will take you to the Arroyo Seco and Debs Park — and beyond that!

The total route now includes about 23 miles of urban hiking. Where should I extend the route next? I’d love your feedback on how to connect our public lands.

3 things to do

The Devil’s Punchbowl Natural Area sits near the San Gabriel Mountains.

(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)

1. Be with the bats near Pearblossom
L.A. County Parks and Recreation will host Bat Weekend on Saturday and Sunday, from 4 to 7 p.m. both days, at the Devil’s Punchbowl Natural Area near Pearblossom. Guests can participate in crafts and a night walk and visit educational booths. Learn more at the park’s Instagram page.

2. Seek out scares in Culver City
Walk ‘n Rollers will host a Halloween-themed bike ride from 5:30 to 8 p.m. Sunday in Culver City. Cyclists will travel five miles on city streets and bike paths, exploring the best Halloween decor in the area. Riders will meet at Village Well Books + Coffee. Register at eventbrite.com.

3. Blend science and the spooky in Orange
SoCal Science Hikes will host a Halloween-themed evening hike from 6 to 9 p.m. Saturday through Irvine Regional Park in Orange. Participants will first try to spot diurnal animals as they hike 2.5 miles, and then after, meet at a faux campfire for ghost stories. Costumes welcome, as long as you can hike in them. Register at eventbrite.com.

The must-read

Finley Kilgo pauses during a birdwatching bike ride through the Arcata Marsh and Wildlife Sanctuary at the northern end of the Humboldt Bay Trail. The trail could eventually become part of the Great Redwood Trail.

(Andrew Cullen / For The Times)

Advocates of the Great Redwood Trail, a proposed 307-mile route that follows defunct railroad lines, say the route could become as epic a bucket-list trip as other great multi-day scenic trails. But at what cost? Times staff writer Lila Seidman spoke to Perry Lincoln, a member of the Wailaki Tribe, who said he and other Indigenous people in the area have been left out of the planning process for a hiking trail that cuts through their ancestral land. “We’re barely getting access to these areas ourselves, but we’re going to allow outside communities to have full access to these places?” Lincoln’s daughter Tisanche Warren said. “That doesn’t seem fair.” About 40% of the trail is complete, with major efforts planned to clean up railroad pollution and restore fish habitat. The Kinest’e Community Coalition, composed of Lincoln and other tribal members and their allies, continues its fight to not only have a say in the project but also to reroute the trail to protect sacred sites, including graves.

Happy adventuring,

P.S.

Are you interested in getting into mountain biking? Or do you want to find a community of mountain bikers? The California Mountain Biking Coalition will host Rally for the Trails, a gathering of the Southern California cycling and trails community from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Friday at the Cub House in San Marino. You’ll learn from guest speakers, watch short films and learn about local ride events. Plus, you can meet volunteers from several local outdoors groups. Sounds like a great way to meet new pals!

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.

Gomez, 51, won a special election to Congress in 2017, replacing Becerra, who stepped down after then-Gov. Jerry Brown nominated him for state attorney general.

On Aug. 17, the House Ethics Committee announced it was investigating Gomez for “inappropriate sexual contact with a House staffer.”

Two days later, attorneys Lisa J. Banks and Sarah E. Nesbitt said in a statement that they represented a woman the committee interviewed. The woman accused Gomez of sexual harassment and assault, according to the attorneys, who declined further comment.

Gomez acknowledged in a statement earlier this year that he made “personal mistakes outside my marriage,” but said that his “actions were consensual in nature and haven’t violated the law or House Ethics rules.”

He declined an interview request and is keeping a low profile during his reelection campaign. He successfully fended off challenges from David Kim, a progressive Democrat targeting him from the left, in 2020, 2022 and 2024. Kim has endorsed Gonzales-Torres.

Since Trump’s immigration crackdown, Gomez has focused on the treatment of immigrants and congressional oversight of federal detention centers. He and 12 other House members successfully sued the Trump administration after he was blocked from entering a detention facility and has said he trained legal observers to document ICE abuses.

His campaign touts his record as chair of the affordability-focused Congressional Renters Caucus and his support for proposed legislation that seeks to lower housing costs, expand supply and strengthen pathways to ownership.

He also backs two hallmark progressive initiatives, the Green New Deal and Medicare for all.

Gonzales-Torres, 31, previously worked as a part-time counselor for formerly incarcerated Pasadena City College students, interned in Mayor Karen Bass’s administration and volunteered on the Metro Public Safety Advisory Committee.

She is backed by the Los Angeles branch of the L.A. chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, as well as Justice Democrats, the influential left-wing PAC known for helping Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) win her first election in 2018.

If elected, Gonzales-Torres would focus on dismantling the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and seek a federal wealth tax on the ultra-rich.

She is calling for a moratorium on new data center construction until federal standards are in place and wants to end federal fossil fuel subsidies.

Gonzales-Torres has not held elected office beyond her two years — one as president — on the Historic Highland Park Neighborhood Council in 2023-25.

Several board members criticized her tenure. One, Caroline Aguirre, filed a police report alleging Gonzales-Torres thrust a finger into her face at a meeting. Aguirre shared the incident report with The Times but said police ultimately took no action.

Darren Gold, who is now board president, said Gonzales-Torres falsely accused him of shaking her, prompting a city investigation. Gold denied the interaction, accused Gonzales-Torres of lying and won reinstatement.

Both Gold and Jens Jonasson, another board member, described Gonzales-Torres’s leadership as chaotic, adding that she used the position to express personal views on gentrification and out-of-neighborhood issues such as Gaza.

“She was not effective at turning priorities into results, working through disagreements and staying with the job when things didn’t go her way,” said Jonasson.

Gonzales-Torres declined to comment on the incidents Aguirre and Gold alleged. She said that she was proud of her work connecting businesses with city services and other achievements.

She said she stepped down as president to volunteer for Kim’s 2024 campaign.

Outside money

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee has repeatedly backed Gomez’s re-election campaigns, including this cycle, prompting criticism by both the Justice Democrats and Gonzales-Torres.

Gomez’s campaign points to his call for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s resignation, a push for humanitarian aid in Gaza and a ceasefire.

In July, Gomez voted against an amendment to cut off aid to Israel, even as many other Democrats supported the initiative.

Gomez told Politico the amendment was “overly broad and would also restrict programs that facilitate humanitarian aid for Palestinians and refugee resettlement, peace-building efforts, and our ability to confront terrorist organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah.”

“It would empower the Trump administration to determine what gets funded and what does not,” he said.

AI is also an issue in the race, although both candidates support regulation.

Guardrails Alliance, a political action committee seeking stricter regulation of the tech industry, backs Gonzales-Torres.

A PAC affiliated with the AI industry, Leading the Future, supports Gomez, though it has yet to announce spending in his race.

Top Democrats in Congress have joined a California immigrant and the Nevada State Democratic Party in suing the Trump administration over its unprecedented voter fraud probes in both states and broader efforts to meddle in state-run elections nationwide — alleging they are a “pretext to seize control over elections.”

The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Washington, D.C., late Tuesday, accuses President Trump, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche and the agencies they lead of using “shoddily compiled lists of supposed noncitizens” and “coercive threats of legal retaliation against state officials” to assert federal control over the Nov. 3 midterms.

In addition to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and several national Democratic groups, the plaintiffs include Erick Jose Jimenez, an “active California voter” and naturalized U.S. citizen since 2006 who now “fears that he will be unlawfully targeted for voting and disenfranchised (or worse)” given the Trump administration’s track record of misidentifying naturalized citizens as noncitizens.

Lauren Bis, a White House spokesperson, said in a statement that while “Democrats and the media continue to dismiss concerns about voter fraud, the Trump Administration is taking decisive lawful action to protect our elections,” including by “prosecuting election crimes, strengthening election infrastructure security, and protecting vulnerable voters from fraud and coercion.”

“Anyone who illegally votes in our elections will be held accountable,” Bis said.

A Justice Department spokesperson said “election integrity is a top priority” and that the department’s actions are “grounded in the law and being litigated in open court.” A Homeland Security spokesperson said it is “laser focused on prosecuting and removing aliens who vote and preventing the dilution of the votes of U.S. citizens.”

Officials from both agencies have asserted that California and other states have ineffective policies for ensuring noncitizens do not vote — relying in part on voters attesting to being citizens — and staunchly defended their own processes for identifying noncitizens on state rolls.

Democrats and leading elections experts say isolated voter fraud does occur and should be taken seriously, but that there is no evidence of widespread fraud.

Tuesday’s lawsuit cites Trump administration claims of thousands of potential noncitizens on Nevada voter rolls crumbling amid state scrutiny. It also cites an administration list of 20,000 “likely noncitizens” allegedly on California rolls being “proven remarkably slapdash” and inaccurate in recent litigation between the administration and California.

The lawsuit alleges a coordinated effort between Trump and other administration officials — in violation of the 10th Amendment and other federal law — to intimidate state and local elections officials nationwide into removing voters from rolls, denying ballots to legally registered voters and segregating the ballots of others “based on spurious and unreliable claims that they are not citizens.”

It says the president is pushing the above efforts not “in a vacuum,” but in the face of repeated steps by Congress and the courts to block his election agenda.

The lawsuit, backed by prominent Democratic elections attorney Marc Elias, follows another filed in the same court last month by attorneys with the UCLA Voting Rights Project, on behalf of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, or CHIRLA, and a California voter named Pedro Trujillo.

That ongoing lawsuit challenges the Trump administration’s use of unproven federal databases to allege registered California voters are not citizens, which it says risks misidentifying eligible voters and has left naturalized citizens frightened — the same argument made by Jimenez.

Jimenez, who could not be reached for comment, has “eagerly and consistently exercised his right to vote” since becoming a citizen two decades ago, and plans to vote in the Nov. 3 election but fears being misidentified as a noncitizen and targeted, Tuesday’s lawsuit says.

Administration officials have defended the accuracy of their lists, including in the lawsuit the Justice Department filed against California last week. In that case, the Trump administration has asked the court to force California to set aside the ballots of the 20,000 “likely noncitizens” it flagged until their citizenship is confirmed.

First Assistant U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli, the lead federal prosecutor in L.A., has said that list was compiled using public California voter registration records and third-party and law enforcement data, and that federal authorities have “overwhelming evidence” that those voters are ineligible.

On Monday, federal authorities filed fraudulent registration and other election-related charges against 28 lawful permanent residents in California, which Essayli said “prove our list is accurate and that noncitizens are actually voting.”

However, other administration officials have acknowledged the lists may not be entirely accurate. Acting Deputy Atty. Gen. Trent McCotter said Monday that “there may be some names on there who, it turns out, ultimately are citizens.” A Homeland Security official said in a court filing Monday that “discrepancies” have been found in about 189 of the records.

California Secretary of State Shirley Weber and Dean Logan, head of the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk’s office — both named defendants in the California case — have accused the Trump administration of illegally interfering in state elections and trying to purge voters in the immediate lead up to an election in violation of federal law using inaccurate data.

Logan’s office said Tuesday that a preliminary analysis of a subset of the administration’s list found many were born in the U.S., weren’t registered or had never voted.

Federal authorities this week teased a “separate batch” of 17,000 potential noncitizen voters in their federal court challenge to California’s handling of alleged voter fraud.

In response, Los Angeles County officials questioned the accuracy of the government’s earlier list of 20,000 alleged noncitizen voters — saying a preliminary review of a subset of those voters found evidence that nearly 40% were born in the U.S.

The claims came in filings shedding new light on the unprecedented Homeland Security inquiry into California’s voter rolls just weeks before the Nov. 3 election.

On Monday, Nicolas Bartell, a Homeland Security official, wrote in a sworn affidavit that — in addition to developing the disputed list of 20,000 “likely noncitizen” voters at the heart of the litigation — his agency has also developed a “separate batch of more than 17,000 voting records potentially tied to noncitizens.”

“Our review is ongoing as USCIS receives records on a rolling basis before the election date,” wrote Bartell, the associate director of the Fraud Detection and National Security Directorate at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

On Tuesday, Monica Flores, a top official in the L.A. County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk’s office, wrote in an affidavit that staff members had reviewed a sample of 200 registrations from the list of 20,000 voters whom the Justice Department alleged last week were “likely noncitizens.” The office found that more than half — 112 — had been canceled or were inactive, meaning no ballot was sent to those voters.

In instances where those voters’ birthplace was “meaningfully reported, 38.9% indicate that they were born in the United States, which is strong evidence of citizenship,” Flores wrote, while 71.2% showed no record of ever voting.

Flores wrote that similarly vetting the citizenship of thousands of additional voters before the election would not only be “administratively impossible and take key personnel away from their critical election duties,” but would also “risk disenfranchising voters who are validly registered.”

Also Tuesday, Rachel Evans, an attorney in the California secretary of state’s office, wrote in an affidavit that the office since August has received and been complying with grand jury subpoenas for the detailed voter records of about 300 people.

Evans’ acknowledgment came a day after federal prosecutors charged 28 people across California with federal election-related crimes, including fraudulent voter registration and making false statements in a naturalization application, and suggests federal prosecutors are pursuing criminal cases against hundreds more.

Taken together, the filings indicate that the legal battle between the Trump administration and California over alleged fraudulent voting is only just gearing up — with no end in sight before Nov. 3 — as is the political sparring over the issue.

First Assistant U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli, the lead federal prosecutor in Los Angeles, posted to X on Tuesday that Flores’ acknowledgment that her office could not possibly vet voters’ citizenship before the election was a “massive concession,” proving the federal government’s case.

Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office said that “any credible allegation of voter fraud should be taken seriously and investigated,” but that federal officials charging just 28 people in a state with 23 million voters showed they have no evidence of widespread fraud.

“Yes, non-citizen voter registration and voting does happen in isolated instances — in California and the rest of the country alike — but it is so rare that the Trump admin is parading around town about .0001% of California voters,” Newsom’s office wrote on X.

The broader case

On Monday, Justice Department lawyers filed a request for an emergency restraining order requiring state election officials to segregate any ballots from the 20,000 voters flagged on the initial Homeland Security list until their citizenship is proved. They argued the state is violating the law — and harming the federal government — by refusing to do so.

State attorneys argued Tuesday that the federal government has no authority over California elections and seeks to violate federal law precluding voter roll purges in the 90 days before an election.

State officials wrote that the Justice Department appeared to have “individualized evidence” of noncitizenship for the 28 people it had charged, and that nothing was preventing it from working through existing “statutory channels” to block those individuals’ ballots. But they argued that it does not have evidence to back its claims against all 20,000 voters whose ballots it is seeking to sequester.

Those contentions — and Bartell’s claim of a second list of 17,000 potential noncitizen voters — only add to an already heated debate about the scope of the inquiry and its legitimacy.

In July, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin alleged in a letter to California Secretary of State Shirley Weber that there “may be as many as 190,832 noncitizens registered to vote in California,” and demanded that the state work with federal authorities to investigate. The state asked that Homeland Security first provide more information, including about its methodology for identifying that figure.

Last week, acting Deputy Atty. Gen. Trent McCotter wrote follow-up letters to Weber and Dean Logan, head of the L.A. County registrar’s office, asserting that 20,000 “likely noncitizens” were on state rolls, and again demanding state cooperation within 48 hours to remove them. Weber balked, arguing that federal law precludes systematic roll purges within 90 days of an election to protect eligible voters.

Weber and other state officials also questioned the drop from 190,000 to 20,000, and the reliability of the federal government’s underlying data and methodology. “What happened to the 170,000? You just got those wrong?” California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta asked.

On Monday, McCotter said the 190,000 figure was “the ceiling,” inclusive of cases that federal authorities had high, medium and low confidence in, while the 20,000 figure was “the floor,” inclusive of only high confidence cases.

Potential flaws in the list have been a major point of contention among California officials, who have pointed to substantial inaccuracies in lists elsewhere, including in Nevada, where a state review found that the 185 voters whose citizenship was questioned by the Trump administration were all citizens.

Now, it appears the federal government’s disputed list of 20,000 voters won’t be the last in California.

How voters were identified

In court filings, federal officials described purchasing California voter registration information before USCIS and Homeland Security Investigations agents worked to identify any voters who are not citizens. They said that they did so in part by comparing the state data with “third party commercial data” sets and law enforcement data sets, and that they further vetted their list by culling dead people.

Essayli pointed to those descriptions to dispel arguments that federal authorities have not provided their methodology for identifying potential noncitizens on voter rolls. He said that the federal process was robust and trustworthy and that federal authorities had compiled “overwhelming evidence of tens of thousands of ineligible voters on the state’s rolls.”

Independent election experts saw it differently.

“They admitted to using some of the same tools amateur election conspiracy theorists use, like unidentified third party software, commercial lists, and public versions of [the state’s] voter roll,” Gowri Ramachandran, an election administration expert at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law. “These amateur data matching efforts don’t get any better merely because the Department of Justice relies on them.”

“If DOJ could prove many more cases, we would have heard about it,” Rick Hasen, director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project at UCLA School of Law, wrote in a blog post. “They’ve been on an aggressive hunt nationally for such fraud. It’s not surprising they’ve found little because it is a small problem.”