On the Friday night after Thanksgiving, a hotel room on the 17th floor of the Hotel Indigo in Downtown Los Angeles was transformed into a leather dressing room. About a dozen friends crowded around a king-size bed, cracking open Tecates, vibing to techno house music from a portable speaker, and adjusting each other’s harnesses.
The flash of a digital camera went off like a strobe as Yair Lopez documented his friends before their night at an afterparty. They were all there as part of the L.A. iteration of CLAW: a national leather and kink convention that offers workshops, parties and community spaces for people interested in BDSM culture. Founded in 2002, the convention started out in Cleveland, but has also held events in in L.A. since 2021.
As others spent their Thanksgiving holiday with blood relatives at the dinner table, this particular gathering was dubbed “Leather Thanksgiving” — a celebration of chosen family, cobbled together from various corners of L.A.’s queer nightlife. For Lopez and his friends, that sense of belonging is only growing.
“This chain was gifted to me from a friend,” Lopez said as he adjusted the silver around his neck. “Chains with a lock represent that you have a dom and the other person has the key. I’m still waiting for the lock,” he added jokingly, glancing at his boyfriend.
Leather enthusiasts pre-game ahead of the release party for the film, “Encuerados,” on November 28th at the Hotel Indigo in Downtown Los Angeles.
(Yair Lopez / For De Los)
It was a big day for Lopez. Earlier he showcased three of his photos as part of a leather art gallery and attended a screening of “Encuerados,” a short documentary he appeared in, which shadowed a group of Latino men carving out space in L.A.’s leather community. An “Encuerados” afterparty would soon follow.
For Lopez and his friends, leather is less about fetish and more about kinship, safety and visibility, in a city where queer Latino spaces remain scarce.
Lopez has become a visible force in L.A.’s leather underground scene, building community through both his art and the spaces he helps create. He has self-published his work through photos and zines; he also founded Contramundo, a Latino leather night at the Bullet Bar in North Hollywood. His community work even led to a third-place finish in the 2023 Mr. L.A. Leather competition.
He started shooting a decade ago, moving from street scenes and hikes to L.A.’s queer nightlife. That work eventually led him to the Eagle, where he found a muse and a community he didn’t know he needed.
“I grew up in a pretty religious Mexican household in the San Fernando Valley. I was made to feel ashamed of who I was, even my own body, so finding this felt so needed,” he recalled.
Located in Silver Lake, the Eagle is a legacy leather bar that has anchored L.A.’s kink scene for decades. It is also one of the few remaining spaces for this corner of queer nightlife. And while Lopez did feel seen through the leather community, there was still a piece missing.
“It is no surprise that a lot of gay spaces are predominantly white, so finding gay brown community is hard. But that changed when I started meeting other like-minded Latinos in leather,” Lopez said.
The group of friends ran into Iriarte as they made their way to the 18th floor, where he was DJing for the night in a large, dimly lit conference room.
Dressed in black leather pants and boots, Iriarte had “Mr. L.A. Leather 2011” embroidered across the back of his vest. The Michoacán native also happened to be the protagonist of the “Encuerados” documentary and host of the “” afterparty.
“When I moved to the United States in 2001, I didn’t move for the classic American dream of looking for a better life financially,” said Iriarte. “My purpose of moving here was to be free as a gay person.”
Latinos in leather pose ahead of the “Encuerados” screening during the CLAW L.A. convention on November 28th at the Hotel Indigo in Downtown Los Angeles.
(Yair Lopez / For De Los)
And while Iriarte did find that freedom he hoped for, he was not prepared for the racism he would encounter in the leather scene — especially after winning his title.
“I remember a hate campaign and even death threats after I won,” he said. “It was scary, but it opened a door for other Latinos, and this space has grown so much since.”
As it gets closer to midnight, the dark conference room swells with bodies moving to Iriarte’s pulsing techno. Partygoers poured in sporting leather chaps, chest-hugging harnesses, and even tejana hats for a vaquero-leather twist.
Lopez put down his camera to circulate and greet friends from over the years. He bumped into Orlando Bedolla, director of “Encuerados,” who first met Lopez four years ago while filming the documentary.
“I learned about his photography, the zine he was making, all of it,” Bedolla said. “I found him interesting because he is literally a Latino increasing Latino representation in the leather community.”
Bedolla recalled attending CLAW L.A. in 2021 and going to his first Latino party there after getting an invite from Payasos L.A. Inside, he found a room full of mostly Latino men in jockstraps, harnesses and leather. He was struck by the energy of an underground community he didn’t realize existed. That night would become the seed for the film.
On the dance floor, colored lights flashed across Lopez’s visage as he tried to keep track of his room key. His friends borrowed it to run upstairs to their shared room for more drinks — and he wondered aloud about how messy it would be after their two-night stay.
These spaces, low-lit yet overflowing with camaraderie, offer the community something harder to find anywhere else, especially during the holidays: the freedom to be fully themselves.
“When I step into spaces like this, I don’t just see leather,” Lopez said, taking a sip of his vodka soda. “I see people reaching for some kind of joy and connection we’re constantly told is wrong. But we all want to feel touched and seen — and there’s nothing wrong with that.”
Steph Sarah recalls a time in Venice Beach’s mythical skateboarding history — long before the sandy expanse on Ocean Front Walk became the world-famous skate park, a concrete playground where pro skaters are born.
“It was all boys,” says Sarah, a 36-year-old Venice Beach native who learned to skate at age 12. “If you did come across another girl skating, they were your competition, because there wasn’t even enough room for one girl to skate, let alone multiple girls.”
The group welcomes all skill levels and jokes that they’re the “world’s okay-est skaters.” (Gabriella Angotti-Jones / For The Times)
On this Thursday night, that is distant history. As fog rolls in over the Venice Pier, Sarah skates alongside dozens of women on the coastal path. They belt out the lyrics to “Hey Jude” as singer Chloe Kat serenades them with a guitar in hand. Curious fishermen eye them, their fishing lines cast into the black ocean. But they pay no attention. Twirling under the moonlight, the women resemble a witch’s coven — their spells are good vibes, California weather and the boards beneath their feet.
Since its inception in 2018, GrlSwirl has been a leading force in creating a more inclusive skateboarding culture in Venice Beach — and across the world. The Venice Beach-based organization fosters community among female skateboarders. Twice a month, the group hosts nighttime “group skates” for women and community members. The event has exploded on social media, often attracting over 100 participants on warm summer nights.
“You get to witness what it’s like for people to break all the rules and show up fully as themselves,” Lucy Osinski, one of the co-founders of GrlSwirl, says of the group skates. “The weirder, the sillier, the more authentic, the better.”
Participants dodge a parking barrier gate during a nighttime group skate.
(Gabriella Angotti-Jones / For The Times)
Growing up in the world of professional ballet with its restrictive body standards and intense discipline, Osinski found newfound freedom in skateboarding. “I went from feeling so fragile and weak to so powerful,” she says. “It made me feel like I belonged and liberated in a way I had never experienced before.”
But when she moved to Venice Beach in 2017, skateboarding as a woman invited hostile attention. “Every time I would skate, people would catcall us or yell at us to do a kickflip,” she says. (“Do a kickflip” is considered a skateboarding taunt.) “I started chasing down any girl I saw on a skateboard. I made a text chain. I called it GrlSwirl.”
Osinski began posting about group skates on Instagram, where GrlSwirl gained traction. “The next week, 20 girls showed up just from word of mouth, and then the next week 40, and then the next 60, and then we had over 100 girls.” Soon, the group’s reputation attracted brand sponsorships and inquiries about starting chapters in new cities.
Today, the organization also doubles as a nonprofit that teaches underprivileged communities to skate worldwide, including surf-skate retreats that empower women and girls. Osinski explains that GrlSwirl has hosted skateboarding clinics from refugee camps in Tijuana to the first-ever women’s skate jam in the Navajo Nation. GrlSwirl has an international following with chapters in more than seven cities and an online community spanning 80 countries.
Lindsey Klucik, left, dances with friends to Christmas songs at the Venice Pier during a GrlSwirl group skate.
(Gabriella Angotti-Jones / For The Times)
Lucy Osinski rolls in with a skateboarding move.
(Gabriella Angotti-Jones / For The Times)
“Everything we’ve done from Day 1 is to make spaces and find ways to build community through skateboarding,” says Osinski. “People want to be in a village, but they don’t know how to be a villager. GrlSwirl is the village.”
The popularity of the bimonthly group skates has even attracted out-of-towners curious about the event. Osinski says the event has drawn tourists from Japan, Russia and more. Traveling from Salzburg, Austria, Karoline Bauer joined the skate with her partner while on vacation after following them on Instagram. “We were just looking for some community. We don’t have that back home,” Bauer says.
The group skate welcomes skateboarders of all skill levels. As a motto, the group jokes that they’re the “world’s okay-est skaters.” “We’re not looking for people to be shredding like crazy,” says Naomi Fulta, a team rider for GrlSwirl. “We have people who come here who literally have never stepped on a skateboard, to people who’ve been skating their whole lives.”
Yuka Okamura has been attending GrlSwirl’s group skates with her 10-year-old daughter for over five years. To her surprise, Okamura began learning to skateboard when her daughter started taking lessons. “I had no idea that I would start something new after I had a child. It’s amazing to share the joy and the experience with her,” she explains.
Yaya Ogun, a GrlSwirl team rider, poses with the group.
(Gabriella Angotti-Jones / For The Times)
For Yaya Ogun, one of the team riders, group skates are an opportunity to build community and make friends. Skateboarding naturally lends itself to community, she explains. Ogun attended her first GrlSwirl event alone and now rides as a sponsored skater. “You have to go someplace physical, you’re gonna meet people, you’re gonna make friends,” she says.
Ogun is a self-proclaimed pandemic skater. “There’s a huge wave of us who started either during or after the pandemic,” she says. “I grew up wanting to skate, but I just never had the time. And then all of a sudden, I had a lot of time,” she says with a laugh.
As a transplant from Texas, Ogun was drawn to GrlSwirl because the organization is anchored in the local community, which has experienced rent hikes and the closure of local institutions in recent years. “This is a special place, and it’s changing a lot,” laments Ogun. “We want to respect it and raise it up and not change anything.”
Osinski credits GrlSwirl’s success to its birthplace, Venice Beach, a place that celebrates uniqueness and community. Venice is a mecca for skateboarding, home to the Z-boys who revolutionized the sport in the 1970s and the subject of the documentary “Dogtown and Z-Boys.”
GrlSwirl aims to inspire people to “come together through the simple act of trying something new.”
(Gabriella Angotti-Jones/For The Times)
“Venice is a place of creation. You don’t have to look like a Venice skater to be a Venice skater. It’s about growing up and giving back,” Osinski says.
The girls skate into the evening, the sunset casting an orange light onto their smiling faces. Ogun declares her contempt for longboards — not to mention penny skateboards, which she says are a death trap. In the distance, waves carry surfers to the shore after their last surf of the day. As darkness falls on Venice Beach, the promise of something new swells.
It was supposed to be a speech with a clear message of hope for survivors of the Palisades fire.
In her State of the City address in April, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass called for a law exempting fire victims from construction permit fees — potentially saving them tens of thousands of dollars as they rebuild their homes.
Eight months later, the City Council is still debating how much permit relief the city can afford. Palisades residents have been left hanging, with some blaming Bass for failing to finalize a deal.
“This should have been pushed, and it wasn’t pushed,” said electrician Tom Doran, who has submitted plans to rebuild his three-bedroom home. “There was no motor on that boat. It was allowed to drift downstream.”
Since the Jan. 7 fire destroyed thousands of homes, Bass has been announcing recovery strategies with great fanfare, only for them to get bogged down in the details or abandoned altogether.
After two of the most destructive fires in the state’s history, The Times takes a critical look at the past year and the steps taken — or not taken — to prevent this from happening again in all future fires.
At one point, she called for the removal of traffic checkpoints around Pacific Palisades, only to reverse course after an outcry over public safety. She pushed tax relief for wildfire victims in Sacramento, only to abruptly pull the plug on her bill. Her relationship with Steve Soboroff, her first and only chief recovery officer, quickly unraveled over pay and other issues. He left after a 90-day stint.
Critics in and outside the Palisades say the mayor’s missteps have undermined public confidence in the rebuilding process. They have also made her more politically vulnerable as she ramps up her campaign for a second term.
1
2
3
1.Tom Doran poses for a portrait in the remains of his home in the Pacific Palisades. Doran, who has submitted plans to rebuild the home he lived in for decades, has said that Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass should have done more to secure passage of a law giving residents relief from city rebuilding permits after the wildfires.(Kayla Bartkowski / Los Angeles Times)2.Statues are seen in an aerial of the remnants of Doran’s home.(Kayla Bartkowski / Los Angeles Times)3.An aerial of the remains of Doran’s home.(Kayla Bartkowski / Los Angeles Times)
Bass, seated in her spacious City Hall office earlier this month, said the recovery is happening at “lightning speed” compared to other devastating wildfires, in part because of her emergency orders dramatically cutting the time it takes to obtain building permits.
By mid-December, more than 2,600 permit applications had been filed for more than 1,200 addresses — about a fifth of the properties damaged or destroyed in the fire. Permits had been issued at about 600 addresses, with construction underway at nearly 400, according to city figures.
Still, Bass acknowledged that fire victims are feeling angry and frustrated as they enter the holiday season.
“I think people have a right to all of those emotions, and I wouldn’t argue with any of them,” she said.
Rebuilding a community after a natural disaster is a monumental task, one with no clear playbook. Many of the obstacles — insurance claims, mortgage relief — reach beyond the purview of a mayor.
Still, Bass has plenty of power. City agencies crucial to the rebuilding effort report to her. She works closely with the council, whose members have sharply questioned some of her recovery initiatives.
Perhaps the most disastrous narrative revolved around Soboroff, a longtime civic leader known for his blunt, outspoken style.
Mayor Karen Bass, right, and her disaster recovery chief, Steve Soboroff, during a news conference at Palisades Recreation Center on Jan. 27.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
To many, the assignment made sense on paper. Soboroff had a background in home building, roots in the Palisades and extensive knowledge of City Hall.
Soboroff initially expected to receive a salary of $500,000 for three months of work as chief recovery officer, with the funds coming from philanthropy. After that figure triggered an outcry, Bass changed course, persuading him to work for free. Soon afterward, Soboroff told an audience that he had been “lied to” about whether he would be compensated. (He later apologized.)
Soboroff also voiced frustration with the job itself, saying he had been excluded from key decisions. At one point, Bass appeared to narrow his duties, telling reporters he would focus primarily on rebuilding the community’s historic business district and nearby public areas.
Bass told The Times that she does not view her selection of Soboroff as a mistake. But she acknowledged there were “challenges along the way” — and decisions where Soboroff was not included.
“In those first few months when everything was happening, I’m sure there were decisions he wanted to be in that he wasn’t in,” she said.
In April, amid Soboroff’s departure, Bass said she was searching for a new chief recovery officer. She repeated that assertion in July. Yet she never publicly announced a replacement for Soboroff, baffling some in the Palisades and providing fresh ammunition to her critics.
Real estate developer Rick Caruso, who ran against Bass in 2022 and founded the nonprofit SteadfastLA to speed the rebuilding process, said the recovery czar position is still desperately needed, given the size of the task ahead.
“You’ve got infrastructure that has to be rebuilt, undergrounding of power lines, upgrading of water mains. At the same time, you want to get people back in their homes,” said Caruso, who is weighing another run for mayor.
A Samara XL modular house is lowered into place at a project site in Culver City on March 21. Developer and former mayoral candidate Rick Caruso’s Steadfast L.A. nonprofit wants to raise $30 million in the hopes of providing between 80 and 100 Samara XL homes for fire victims.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Behind the scenes, Bass opted not to select a single person to replace Soboroff, going instead with a trio of consultants. By then, she had confronted a spate of other crises — federal immigration raids, a $1-billion budget shortfall, a split with county officials over the region’s approach to homelessness.
Soboroff declined to comment on Bass’ handling of the recovery. Early on, he pushed the mayor’s team to hire the global engineering giant AECOM to oversee the recovery. Bass went initially with Hagerty, an Illinois-based consulting firm that specializes in emergency management.
At the time, the mayor pointed out that Hagerty was already working with county officials on the Eaton fire recovery in Altadena and Palisades fire recovery in other unincorporated areas.
The city gave Hagerty a one-year contract worth up to $10 million to provide “full project management” of the recovery, Bass said at the time.
Hagerty quickly ran into trouble. At community events, the firm’s consultants struggled to explain their role in the rebuilding.
Two months after Soboroff stepped down, Bass announced she was hiring AECOM after all to develop a plan for rebuilding city infrastructure. Hagerty ended up focusing heavily on the logistics around debris removal, helping the city coordinate with the federal Army Corps of Engineers, which spearheaded the cleanup.
Hagerty quietly finished its work earlier this month, billing the city $3.5 million — far less than the maximum spelled out in the firm’s contract.
The confusion over Hagerty’s role created a major opening for Bass’ best-known challenger in the June 2 primary election: former L.A. schools Supt. Austin Beutner, a onetime high-level deputy mayor.
Beutner, whose home was severely damaged in the Palisades fire, called the selection of Hagerty a “fiasco,” saying it’s still not clear what the firm delivered.
“The hiring of Hagerty proved to be a waste of time and money while creating a false sense of hope in a community that’s dealing with a terrible tragedy,” he said.
Executives with Hagerty did not respond to multiple inquiries from The Times.
An aerial image of some homes being reconstructed and lots that remain empty in Pacific Palisades.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
AECOM joined the city in June, working to prepare reports on the rebuilding effort that dealt with infrastructure repairs, fire protection and traffic management. Those reports are now expected by the one-year anniversary of the fire.
Matt Talley, who spent part of the year as AECOM’s point person in the Palisades, praised Bass for her focus on the recovery, saying he watched as she took lengthy meetings with Palisades community members, then made sure her staff worked to address their concerns.
“I think the mayor gets a bad rap,” said Talley, who left AECOM in mid-November. “She takes a lot of incoming, but in her heart, she really does want to drive the recovery and do the right thing, and that’s evidenced by the meetings she’s having with the community.”
Bass, in an interview, said she eventually decided to have three AECOM staffers form a “recovery team,” instead of a single replacement for Soboroff.
“It didn’t make sense to go in the other direction,” she said. “We evaluated that for quite a while, met with a number of people, consulted many experts.”
By the time Bass announced AECOM’s hiring, she had also begun pursuing another initiative: relief from Measure ULA, the city’s so-called mansion tax, which applies to most property sales above $5.3 million.
Proponents argued that Palisades residents should not have to pay the tax if they sell their burned-out properties. For those who can’t afford to rebuild — either because they are on fixed incomes or have little insurance — selling may be the only option, they argued.
In June, Caruso sent Bass a proposal showing how Measure ULA could be legally suspended. By then, Bass had tapped former state Assembly Speaker Bob Hertzberg to work on a bill overhauling Measure ULA, not only to aid fire victims but to spur housing construction citywide.
Three months later, near the end of the legislative session in Sacramento, Bass persuaded some L.A.-based lawmakers to carry the bill, infuriating affordable housing advocates who accused her of attempting an end run around voters.
But right before a key hearing, Bass announced she was withdrawing the bill, which had been submitted so late that it missed the deadline for lawmakers to make changes.
Bass said city leaders are now working to identify other pathways for suspending ULA in the Palisades.
Meanwhile, her push for permit relief is also a work in progress.
Alice Gould, who lost her home in the Palisades fire, is rebuilding her home on Akron Street in Pacific Palisades. Gould, who has lived on the property for 28 years, is upset that Mayor Karen Bass has not yet secured passage of a law to exempt fire victims from city permit fees for rebuilding.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
In April, a few days after her State of the City speech, Bass issued an emergency order suspending the collection of permit fees while the council drafted the law she requested. If the law isn’t enacted, fire victims will have to pay the fees that are currently suspended.
Councilmember Bob Blumenfield, who sits on the council’s powerful budget committee, said Bass’ team did not contact him before she issued her order.
“When I read that, my first thought was: ‘That’s great. How are we gonna pay for that?’” he said.
Bass issued a second emergency order in May, expanding the fee waivers to include every structure that burned. By October, some council members were voicing alarms over the cost, warning it could reach hundreds of millions of dollars, depending on the details.
Palisades residents called that estimate grossly inflated. On Dec. 2, dozens of them showed up at City Hall to urge the council to pass legislation covering every residential building that burned — not just single-family homes and duplexes, a concept favored by some on the council.
Council members, still struggling to identify the cost, sent the proposal back to the budget committee for more deliberations, which will spill into next year because of the holiday break.
Bass defended her handling of the issue, saying she used her “political heft” to move it forward. At the same time, she declined to say how far-reaching the relief should be.
Asked whether the Palisades should be spared from permit fees for grading, pools or retaining walls, she responded: “I can’t say that,” calling such details “minutiae.”
“What I wanted to see happen was, all fees that were possible to be waived should be waived,” she said.
Hank Wright, against a backdrop of his neighbor’s home being built, walks on the property where he lost his four-bedroom home in the Palisades fire.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
Hank Wright, whose four-bedroom home on Lachman Lane burned to the ground, remains frustrated with the city, saying he doesn’t understand why Bass was unable to lock down the votes.
“She has not been the point person that I wanted her to be,” he said. “I don’t think she has been able to corral that bureaucracy.”
When Indiana adopted new U.S. House districts four years ago, Republican legislative leaders lauded them as “fair maps” that reflected the state’s communities.
But when Gov. Mike Braun recently tried to redraw the lines to help his fellow Republicans gain more power, he implored lawmakers to “vote for fair maps.”
What changed? The definition of “fair.”
As states undertake mid-decade redistricting instigated by President Trump, Republicans and Democrats are using a tit-for-tat definition of fairness to justify districts that split communities in an attempt to send politically lopsided delegations to Congress. It is fair, they argue, because other states have done the same. And it is necessary, they say, to maintain a partisan balance in the House of Representatives that resembles the national political divide.
This new vision for drawing congressional maps is creating a winner-take-all scenario that treats the House, traditionally a more diverse patchwork of politicians, like the Senate, where members reflect a state’s majority party. The result could be reduced power for minority communities, less attention to certain issues and fewer distinct voices heard in Washington.
Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky fears that unconstrained gerrymandering would put the United States on a perilous path, if Democrats in states such as Texas and Republicans in states like California feel shut out of electoral politics. “I think that it’s going to lead to more civil tension and possibly more violence in our country,” he said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
Although Indiana state senators rejected a new map backed by Trump and Braun that could have helped Republicans win all nine of the state’s congressional seats, districts have already been redrawn in Texas, California, Missouri, North Carolina and Ohio. Other states could consider changes before the 2026 midterms that will determine control of Congress.
“It’s a fundamental undermining of a key democratic condition,” said Wayne Fields, a retired English professor from Washington University in St. Louis who is an expert on political rhetoric.
“The House is supposed to represent the people,” Fields added. “We gain an awful lot by having particular parts of the population heard.”
Under the Constitution, the Senate has two members from each state. The House has 435 seats divided among states based on population, with each state guaranteed at least one representative. In the current Congress, California has the most at 52, followed by Texas with 38. The District of Columbia and U.S. territories such as Puerto Rico have no voting representation in either chamber of Congress.
Because senators are elected statewide, they are almost always political pairs of one party or another. Pennsylvania and Wisconsin are the only states with a Democrat and Republican in the Senate. Maine and Vermont each have one independent — who caucuses with Democrats — and one senator affiliated with a political party.
By contrast, most states elect a mixture of Democrats and Republicans to the House. That is because House districts, with an average of 761,000 residents, based on the 2020 census, are more likely to reflect the varying partisan preferences of urban or rural voters, as well as different racial, ethnic and economic groups.
This year’s redistricting is diminishing those locally unique districts.
In California, voters in several rural counties that backed Trump were separated from similar rural areas and attached to a reshaped congressional district containing liberal coastal communities. In Missouri, Democratic-leaning voters in Kansas City were split from one main congressional district into three, with each revised district stretching deep into rural Republican areas.
Some residents complained their voices are getting drowned out.
Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom has defended California’s gerrymandering effort — approved by voters last month — as necessary to fight what he calls a power grab launched by Trump. Republican Gov. Mike Kehoe of Missouri has defended his state’s redistricting — approved by GOP lawmakers and signed into law by him — as a means of countering Democratic states and amplifying the voices of those aligned with the state’s majority.
All’s ‘fair’ in redistricting?
Indiana’s delegation in the U.S. House consists of seven Republicans and two Democrats — one representing Indianapolis and the other a suburban Chicago district in the state’s northwestern corner.
Dueling definitions of fairness were on display at the Indiana Capitol as lawmakers considered a Trump-backed redistricting plan that would have split Indianapolis among four Republican-leaning districts and merged the Chicago suburbs with rural Republican areas. Opponents walked the halls in protest, carrying signs such as “I stand for fair maps!”
Ethan Hatcher, a talk radio host who said he votes for Republicans and libertarians, denounced the redistricting plan as “a blatant power grab” that “compromises the principles of our Founding Fathers” by fracturing Democratic strongholds to dilute the voices of urban voters.
“It’s a calculated assault on fair representation,” Hatcher told a state Senate committee.
But others asserted it would be fair for Indiana Republicans to hold all of those House seats, because Trump won the “solidly Republican state” by nearly three-fifths of the vote.
“Our current 7-2 congressional delegation doesn’t fully capture that strength,” resident Tracy Kissel said at a committee hearing. “We can create fairer, more competitive districts that align with how Hoosiers vote.”
When senators defeated a map designed to deliver a 9-0 congressional delegation for Republicans, Braun bemoaned that they had missed an “opportunity to protect Hoosiers with fair maps.”
Disrupting an equilibrium
By some national measurements, the U.S. House already is politically fair. The 220-215 majority that Republicans won over Democrats in the 2024 elections almost perfectly aligns with the share of the vote the two parties received in districts across the country, according to an Associated Press analysis. It was made possible, however, in part by a gerrymander of North Carolina districts in the GOP’s favor prior to the 2024 election.
But that overall balance belies an imbalance that exists in many states. Even before this year’s redistricting, the number of states with congressional districts tilted toward one party or another was higher than at any point in at least a decade, the AP analysis found.
The partisan divisions have contributed to a “cutthroat political environment” that “drives the parties to extreme measures,” said Kent Syler, a political science professor at Middle Tennessee State University. He noted that Republicans hold 88% of congressional seats in Tennessee, and Democrats have an equivalent in Maryland.
“Fairer redistricting would give people more of a feeling that they have a voice,” Syler said.
Rebekah Caruthers, who leads the Fair Elections Center, a nonprofit voting rights group, said there should be compact districts that allow communities of interest to elect the representatives of their choice, regardless of how that affects the national political balance. Gerrymandering districts to be dominated by a single party results in “an unfair disenfranchisement” of some voters, she said.
“Ultimately, this isn’t going to be good for democracy,” Caruthers said. “We need some type of détente.”
WINOOSKI, Vt. — A small school district in Vermont was hit with racist and threatening calls and messages after a Somali flag was put up a week ago in response to President Trump referring to Minnesota’s Somali community as “ garbage.”
The Winooski School District began to display the flag Dec. 5 to show solidarity with a student body that includes about 9% people of Somali descent.
“We invited our students and community to come together for a little moment of normalcy in a sea of racist rhetoric nationally,” said Winooski School District Supt. Wilmer Chavarria, himself a Nicaraguan immigrant. “We felt really good about it until the ugliness came knocking Monday morning.”
The Somali flag was flown alongside the Vermont state flag and beneath the United States flag at a building that includes K-12 classrooms and administrative offices. Somali students cheered and clapped, telling administrators the flag flying meant a great deal to them, he said.
What ensued was a deluge of phone calls, voicemails and social media posts aimed at district workers and students. Some school phone lines were shut down — along with the district website — as a way to shield staff from harassment. Chavarria said videos of the event did not also show the U.S. and Vermont flags were still up and spread through right-wing social media apps, leaving out the important context.
“Our staff members, our administrators and our community are overwhelmed right now, and they are being viciously attacked. The content of those attacks is extremely, extremely deplorable. I don’t know what other word to use,” Chavarria said Tuesday.
Mukhtar Abdullahi, an immigrant who serves as a multilingual liaison for families in the district who speak Somali and a related dialect, said, “no one, no human being, regardless of where they come from, is garbage.” Students have asked if their immigrant parents are safe, he said.
“Regardless of what happens, I know we have a strong community,” Abdullahi said. “And I’m very, very, very thankful to be part of it.”
The district is helping law enforcement investigate the continued threats, Chavarria said, and additional police officers have been stationed at school buildings as a precaution.
Winooski, a former mill town of about 8,000 people, is near Burlington, about 93 miles south of Montreal.
Somali refugees came to the area beginning in 2003 as part of a U.S. government approved resettlement plan, according to the Somali Bantu Community Assn. of Vermont.
White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson called the calls and messages the school received “the actions of individuals who have nothing to do with” Trump.
“Aliens who come to our country, complain about how much they hate America, fail to contribute to our economy, and refuse to assimilate into our society should not be here,” Jackson said in an email late Thursday. “And American schools should fly American flags.”
Federal authorities last week began an immigration enforcement operation in Minnesota to focus on Somali immigrants living unlawfully in the U.S. Trump has claimed “they contribute nothing ” and said, “I don’t want them in our country.” The Minneapolis mayor has defended the newcomers, saying they have started businesses, created jobs and added to the city’s cultural fabric. Most are U.S. citizens and more than half of all Somali people in Minnesota were born in the U.S.
At the school district in Vermont, Chavarria said his position as superintendent gave him authority to fly the flag for up to a week without the school board’s explicit approval.
The school district also held an event with catered Somali food, and Chavarria plans to continue to find ways to celebrate its diversity.
“I felt sorrow for the students, the families, the little kids that are my responsibility to keep safe. And it’s my responsibility to make them feel like they belong and that this is their country and this is their school district. This is what we do,” he said.
Swinhart and Scolforo write for the Associated Press. Scolforo reported from Harrisburg, Penn.
Jennifer Shah, a former star on “The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City,” has been moved from a federal prison into a community confinement program after serving less than half of her sentence for defrauding thousands of people.
A Bureau of Prisons spokesperson confirmed that Shah was transferred Wednesday morning from the Federal Prison Camp in Bryan, Texas, to the program overseen by the Phoenix Residential Reentry Management Office. The transfer means that Shah is either being held in home confinement or in a halfway house. Her projected release date is Aug. 30.
“For privacy, safety, and security reasons, we do not discuss the conditions of confinement for any individual, including reasons for transfers or release plans, nor do we specify an individual’s specific location while in community confinement,” BOP spokesperson Emery Nelson wrote in an email to the Associated Press.
Shah, 52, was sentenced in 2023 to six and a half years in prison for defrauding people in a telemarketing scam that stretched nearly a decade. At the time, Assistant U.S. Atty. Robert Sobelman said she was the most culpable of more than 30 defendants accused of participating in the nationwide fraud targeting people who were often vulnerable, older or unsophisticated electronically. The fraud involved bogus services that were promoted as enabling people to make substantial amounts of money through online businesses.
Shah pleaded guilty to a conspiracy charge in July 2022, and during her sentencing she apologized to the “innocent people” she said she’d hurt and pledged to pay $6.5 million in restitution and forfeiture once she is released from prison.
Prosecutors said she used profits from the fraud on luxuries that included living in a nearly 10,000-square-foot mansion in Utah dubbed “Shah Ski Chalet,” an apartment in midtown Manhattan and leasing a Porsche Panamera. The government said she also seemed to mock the charges against her by claiming that the “only thing I’m guilty of is being Shah-mazing” and then she profited from it by marketing “Justice for Jen” merchandise after her arrest.
At the sentencing, Shah apologized and said the proceeds from the merchandise would go toward victims.
“I alone am responsible for my terrible decisions. It was all my fault and all my wrongdoing,” Shah said, later continuing, “I wish I could have stood outside myself and seen the harm I was causing and changed course. I am profoundly and deeply sorry.”
