County

COSTA MESA — The schedule could hardly be more unusual: Just a little less than two weeks before the election, a Democratic presidential nominee appeared Thursday night in the Republican bastion of Orange County.

But that is the way Campaign ’92 has gone for Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton.

“It’s tough to be a Democrat here, but no more,” Orange County Democratic Chairman Howard Adler said Thursday night as he surveyed the crowd of more than 18,000 who crowded into the Pacific Amphitheatre to cheer Clinton on. On Election Day, Adler added, “We’re going to dance in the streets of Orange County.”

And dance Clinton did–a tad stiffly, perhaps–as he entered the amphitheater to the sound of Whoopi Goldberg and the choir from her recent film “Sister Act” singing “Shout.”

Taking the microphone, Clinton told the enthusiastic crowd that when he first came to Orange County for a much-publicized fund-raiser hosted by local Republicans, people told him Democrats in the area “were an endangered species.” But, he said, he decided to “go tell them (county residents) there’s a new Democratic Party, an old Republican Party, and we’re going to help lift America up together.”

He trotted out a line that his aides hope will become the theme of the campaign’s waning days–one featured in Clinton’s latest television advertisements. President Bush, he said, had promised in 1988 to make things better for Americans. “So let me ask you a question in Orange County–how you doing?”

And he urged his listeners to talk to their neighbors and tell them that “it won’t kill them if they hold their noses this one time and vote for a Democrat, because they’ll like what they get.”

Clinton also deftly defused a heckler who briefly interrupted the start of the speech and, to a chorus of boos, waved a Bush sign.

Noting that the man was wearing a Clinton T-shirt, the candidate said the heckler had “got in here under false pretenses.” Then, referring to Bush and the “Read my lips, no new taxes” pledge that he broke, Clinton said: “This whole crowd travels under false pretenses.”

After speaking for about 20 minutes, Clinton left the stage, walked outside the amphitheater and briefly greeted some of the thousands of supporters who had arrived too late to get a seat at the rally.

Some local Republicans sought to downplay the rally. “You look at those buses, you look at the signs, they’re from up in L.A. or down in the Imperial Valley,” said Assemblyman Mickey Conroy (R-Orange), who was among a group of military veterans protesting Clinton’s appearance. “What you’re seeing is a charade.”

Indeed, Clinton may not actually carry Orange County, which has not voted for a Democratic presidential candidate in 56 years. But polls taken last month showed him running virtually even with Bush among the county’s voters. Fueled in part by this strong showing, Clinton held a 21-percentage-point lead in two recent statewide voter surveys.

And the fact that at this stage in the campaign, a Democrat could stage a rally here and draw a crowd so large that the fire marshal shut off the entrances more than 1 1/2 hours before Clinton arrived, was a stunning display of how the nation’s political map has changed this year.

Sensing that change, the crowd broke into chants of “12 more days” when they weren’t loudly cheering the entertainers that helped warm them up–who aside from Goldberg included Linda Ronstadt, Bruce Hornsby and Paula Poundstone.

For the political half of the evening, the theme was putting the entire Democratic ticket over the top in California. “One is not enough,” Senate candidate Dianne Feinstein told the crowd. “An individual can make a difference, but a team can make a change.”

Barbara Boxer, the Democratic nominee in California’s other Senate race, spent 30 minutes doing satellite television interviews with Clinton that were beamed to other parts of the state before her brief appearance at the rally. “It’s tough out there. There’s been negative politics,” she told the crowd. “Stick with us these 12 more days.”

Clinton, too, stuck to that theme, telling the crowd: “I want you to help me be a better President by electing Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein to the United States Senate.”

As the Nov. 3 vote grows closer, Clinton has become bolder about trying to use his support to achieve goals other than his own election. That was clear not only at the Orange County rally, but at an appearance earlier in the day in Orgeon.

Last month, for example, when Clinton visited the state, he avoided taking a strong stand on Measure 9, the anti-homosexual ballot initiative backed by fundamentalist groups. On Thursday, speaking before an enthusiastic crowd of several thousand packed into and around the University of Oregon gymnasium, Clinton unequivocally condemned it.

“This country has been divided too long and in too many ways,” he said.

Then, to growing cheers, he exhorted the crowd: “Many people look to the West and see tomorrow. They see the shape of tomorrow. I ask you to send a message to America by resoundingly defeating Resolution 9. Vote no.”

Similarly, as Clinton seeks to portray the race as a choice between “can do” Democrats and “can’t do” Republicans, between “the things-could-be-worse crowd and the things-can-be-better crowd,” he has begun making far more direct appeals to his supporters to vote for other Democratic candidates as well.

In recent weeks, Clinton briefly has asked his audiences to vote for local Democratic candidates. But Thursday, for the first time, he made an extended argument for a party victory, asking Oregonians to vote for Democratic Senate candidate Les AuCoin so that as President he would have a filibuster-proof 60-member majority in the Senate.

“If you elect me on Nov. 3,” he said, “I need help to implement that program for change.”

Amid the cheering crowds, Clinton aides do their best to keep their guard up. Having watched near-disaster overtake them repeatedly in the winter and spring, this group has learned at least one lesson clearly–yesterday’s dream can become today’s nightmare.

And Clinton advisers do worry about a voter backlash if they appear to be taking the election for granted. “What worries me more than anything is that voters will feel disenfranchised by a media that tells them this thing is over,” Clinton strategist Paul Begala said.

Today on the Trail . . .

Gov. Bill Clinton campaigns in Las Vegas, Fayetteville, Ark., and Springfield, Mo.

President Bush campaigns in Lexington and London, Ky., and Miami and Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.

Ross Perot has no public events scheduled.

TELEVISION

Vice President Dan Quayle is a guest on NBC’s “Today” at 7 a.m. PDT.

First Lady Barbara Bush is a guest on ABC’s “Good Morning America” at 8 a.m. PDT. and a guest on CNN’s “Larry King Live” at 6 p.m. PDT.

Perot airs a new 30-minute commercial on NBC at 8 p.m. PDT.

C-SPAN may air repeats of the presidential debates. For updated program schedules, call C-SPAN at 202-628-2205.

Political newcomer Jeff Hall has run a discreet campaign trying to unseat an incumbent on an obscure Riverside County water board. He hasn’t posted any signs, didn’t show up to a candidates forum and lists no occupation on the November ballot.

But Hall is well-known as a white supremacist.

As California director of the National Socialist Movement — the nation’s largest neo-Nazi group — Hall has helped lead demonstrations in Riverside and Los Angeles, where white supremacists waved swastika flags, chanted “white power” and gave stiff-armed Nazi salutes surrounded by hundreds of counterprotesters.

Hall’s bid for a seat on the board of directors of the Western Municipal Water District has drawn outcry from community groups dismayed that a neo-Nazi who has held racist rallies at a day laborer center and a synagogue wants to administer their water — or at least gain publicity in the quest to do so.

“It looks like he’s hoping to get a certain percentage of the vote as an anonymous anti-incumbent and then claim that some percentage of the electorate support the Nazis,” said Kevin Akin, a member of Temple Beth El in Riverside, where Hall and other neo-Nazis have demonstrated. “He apparently intended to do nothing, just to be a stealth candidate.”

Not so, said Hall, a 31-year-old plumber who in a phone interview Monday called for water conservation and affirmed his belief that all non-whites should be deported.

“I want a white nation,” he said. “I don’t hide what I am, and I don’t water that down.”

Hall has been campaigning by handing out business cards, he said, but turned down an invitation to a candidates forum because it was sponsored by the League of Women Voters and a Latino community group.

He is not the only known white supremacist running for office in Southern California this fall.

Dan Schruender, a member of the Aryan Nations, known for distributing racist fliers in Rialto, is seeking a seat on that city’s school board.

Neo-Nazis have periodically sought a platform for their views by running for local office, said Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate & Extremism at Cal State San Bernardino.

“We see this from time to time. They push things like school boards — local elections that kind of slip under the radar,” Levin said. “It gives them publicity, it gives them a foothold and it gives them an anchor to spew their bigoted opinions in other forums.”

Hate group experts say Hall’s bid for the water board is a reminder to be careful when deciding whom to vote for, because some candidates’ beliefs lie well outside the norm.

The platform of the National Socialist Movement, for instance, advocates limiting citizenship to those of “pure White blood” and deporting people of color.

It is the largest such group in the nation and has been expanding its activity in California over the last year, according to the Anti-Defamation League.

Even with its growth, it’s still quite small, said Mark Pitcavage, director of investigative research for the ADL.

“We’re talking about a couple dozen people in the most populous state in the country,” he said.

[email protected]

L.A. County voters are fuming.

Two out of three think the county is headed in the wrong direction. Four out of five feel its leaders are closely connected to “big money interests, lobbyists, and developers,” and the same fraction felt county supervisors were effective “only some of the time” — or not at all.

How to turn things around? Seven out of ten agreed the county government needed “major reform.”

Those are the top-line findings from a new survey on local governance published this week by the Center for the Study of Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount University.

The survey, paid for by the John Randolph Haynes and Dora Haynes Foundation, took the pulse of just over 1,000 registered voters and found most were feeling quite glum about the local state of affairs.

“Voters and residents are in a state of distrust and think that the government is not working,” said Fernando Guerra, the center’s director.

But the survey was meant to show more than just a dejected electorate, Guerra said. He argued it made another point: Now is not the time for opponents to try and undo Measure G, a controversial measure that overhauled the county’s form of government.

“There are some people that are trying to relitigate Measure G, and I’m talking at the level of political elite,” said Guerra, who supported the overhaul. “What these numbers are suggesting, and what I’m suggesting, is if it were to be put up for an election again, it would pass again.”

It’s been almost exactly a year since voters approved Measure G, bringing something akin to a wrecking ball to the county’s governance structure and promising to replace it with something unprecedented in California: namely, nine supervisors instead of five and an elected county executive rather than an appointed one.

The measure was always controversial, with criticism lobbed at the position of chief executive, who opponents said would now hold far too much power over a $45-billion budget and the well-being of the county’s 10 million residents.

The measure barely passed, with a little more than half of voters agreeing to give it a shot. But the ultimate bureaucratic flub is giving some opponents of the overhaul new ammo to bring it back to voters.

Due to an error with how the county handles charter updates, voters inadvertently gave a 2028 expiration date to a different ballot measure that allocates funding for anti-incarceration efforts — known as Measure J — when they approved Measure G. (The head-scratching error is a wonky one — readers curious as to how it came about can find out here.)

Months after the error came to light, the county has still not said how it plans to fix the mistake. There are a few options, including putting either of the measures back on the ballot.

The survey of voters was not an election poll, and respondents were not given opposing arguments. Most voters did not seem to know much about the impending county government overhaul and the survey did not ask about the bureaucratic screw-up, which could be seized upon in a campaign. About half didn’t remember how they voted.

It’s not clear who exactly is pushing so hard for G’s demise currently. While the overhaul had its vocal opponents — including two supervisors — the effort would be extremely expensive and some may not relish the idea of a campaign that may come with an acute sense of déjà vu.

Some on the government reform task force who opposed Measure G said they didn’t think it was in the cards — though those who opposed the measure said they didn’t think it was such a bad idea.

“I have not heard that,” said John Fasana, a task force member who first noticed the error and voted against both Measure G and J. “I think that’s what they should do: if they’re going to do one, I would say it should be G.”

Instead, the county appears to be leaning toward a ballot measure involving Measure J for 2026.

On Nov. 3, Dawyn Harrison, the county’s top lawyer, laid out the possible options for the board to “reverse the error and honor the will of the voters.” That memo included language for various ways to enshrine Measure J through a ballot measure and make sure it doesn’t go poof in a few years.

Brian Kaneda, who is part of the coalition that got Measure J passed, said the group believes the county has multiple options to fix the blunder. But putting Measure J back on the ballot, they warn, should be the last thing the county considers.

“If evidence surfaces that a new ballot measure is legally required, we’re ready,” said Kaneda. “But we believe the county should rectify this internally, honoring the will of 2.1 million voters.”

State of play

— RUFF WEEK: One of the opponents of L.A. City Controller Kenneth Mejia accused the controller of misusing city resources by using images of his corgis and other graphics for both his office and his campaign. A campaign spokesperson suggested the opponent was “jealous of our cute corgi graphics.”

— BIN BONANZA: Los Angeles has left dozens of green bins on city blocks, so residents can dump their food waste and comply with a state composting law. Some residents say it’s overkill.

— ‘SMEAR’ STANCE: Newly appointed Fire Chief Jaime Moore says the media is trying to “smear” firefighters. The accusations appear to be in reference to a Times report that a battalion chief ordered firefighters to leave the burn area of the Jan. 1 Lachman fire, which would reignite into the deadly Palisades fire.

— FIRE FUND: The city’s firefighter union plans to propose a ballot measure that would increase the sales tax for Angelenos by half a cent in perpetuity, raising hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue annually for the department to build dozens of new stations, add rigs and increase the size of the department by more than 1,000 by 2050. “This is the most important thing for the LAFD really ever,” said Doug Coates, the acting president of UFLAC.

— FRAUD PROBE: Dist. Atty. Nathan Hochman said his office will investigate claims that plaintiffs made up stories of sexual abuse in order to sue L.A. County. The announcement follows Times investigations that found nine people who said they were paid by recruiters to join the litigation.

— RESERVOIR QUESTIONS: State officials determined that even if the Santa Ynez Reservoir had been full during the Palisades fire, the water system still would have been overwhelmed and quickly lost pressure. Officials concluded the water supply in Southern California was “robust” at the time of the fire and that the water system isn’t designed to handle such large, intense wildfires.

QUICK HITS

• Where is Inside Safe? The mayor’s signature program to address homelessness went to Beverly Boulevard and Mountain View Avenue in Historic Filipinotown, an area represented by Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martínez. Outreach teams also returned to previous Inside Safe locations in Echo Park, Van Nuys, Mar Vista, Little Armenia, Sun Valley, Woodland Hills and the Figueroa Corridor, according to Bass’ team.
• On the docket next week: The county supes will consider deferring permit fees for some homeowners who are rebuilding single-family homes in areas of Malibu after the Palisades Fire.

Stay in touch

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

A state judge has thrown out a lawsuit filed by former Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva that alleged the county defamed him, violated his rights and unfairly flagged his personnel file with a “do not rehire” tag.

In a 26-page order, Superior Court Judge Gary D. Roberts on Wednesday granted a request by the county to reject the lawsuit under California’s Anti-SLAPP law, writing that Villanueva’s claims lack “minimal merit.”

The case’s dismissal is “a major victory,” according to Jason Tokoro, an attorney for the county.

“We are pleased that the Court agreed with the County that former Sheriff Alex Villanueva’s claims are barred by California’s anti-SLAPP statute and had no merit,” he wrote in an emailed statement Thursday. “The County can now close this chapter.”

The decision marks the third time a court has dismissed Villanueva’s assertions that the county had treated him unfairly and caused him to suffer “humiliation, severe emotional distress, mental and physical pain and anguish, and compensatory damages.”

The complaint in Villanueva’s lawsuit filed in June said it was an “attempt to clear his name, vindicate his reputation, and be made whole for the emotional distress defendants’ actions have caused him.”

Villanueva previously tried to sue in federal court. In September 2024, a judge in the Central District of California rejected the former sheriff’s $25-million federal lawsuit over the allegations, then did so again in May after Villanueva refiled the case.

Villanueva did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday. The Sheriff’s Department declined to comment.

The dispute began after Inspector General Max Hunstman claimed in 2022 that Villanueva engaged in a “racially based attack” by insisting on calling Huntsman by the name he was given at birth, Max-Gustaf. Villanueva also described Huntsman as a Holocaust denier, an allegation for which he did not provide any evidence and which the inspector general has denied.

The county investigated Huntsman’s allegation and slapped the former sheriff with the “do not rehire” label. Each year, a county panel recommends dozens of government employees be disciplined for a wide range of unethical behavior ranging from theft to privacy violations by adding “do not hire” or other restrictions to their personnel files.

In his state lawsuit, Villanueva argued it was unfair for him to be subject to a “do not hire” designation while multiple public officials who had engaged in illegal conduct avoided the tag. Villanueva has maintained that he never discriminated against or harassed anyone.

“The unprecedented decision by the Board to place Villanueva on a ‘Do Not Hire’ was the result of a defamatory charge of discrimination and harassment,” the former sheriff wrote in the June complaint.

Around the same time Huntsman made his allegation, Esther Lim, then-justice deputy for county Supervisor Hilda Solis, made a complaint alleging that Villanueva had a pattern of harassing women of color during livestreams on social media. The allegation also prompted an investigation and a “do not hire” tag, which Villanueva has disputed.

Los Angeles County’s district attorney has opened an investigation into claims of fraud within the largest sex abuse settlement in U.S. history.

Dist. Atty. Nathan Hochman said Wednesday his office has started a wide-ranging probe into claims that plaintiffs made up stories of abuse in order to sue the county, which agreed to the historic $4-billion sex abuse settlement this spring.

The announcement follows Times investigations that found nine people who said they were paid small amounts of cash by recruiters to sue the county for sex abuse in juvenile halls. Four of them said they fabricated the claims.

“They looked at this opportunity to compensate these true victims of sex abuse as an opportunity to personally profit and engage in some of the most greedy and heinous conduct,” Hochman said at a news conference Wednesday morning in the Hall of Justice downtown. “We are going to aggressively go after them.”

All nine plaintiffs had their cases filed by Downtown LA Law Group, a personal injury firm that represents roughly 2,700 people in the county settlement. The firm has denied wrongdoing. The Times could not reach the recruiters who made the alleged payments to plaintiffs for comment.

Hochman indicated his investigation, still in its early stages, showed this was just a small fraction of the “significant number of fraudsters involved in these settlement claims.”

Hochman emphasized the inquiry would focus on those higher up the chain — lawyers, recruiters and medical practitioners who may have submitted fraudulent forms — and not the plaintiffs.

Many of the people The Times spoke with who filed false claims were poor and in unstable housing. They said they desperately needed the cash promised by recruiters, which ranged from $20 to $200. All were flagged down outside county social services offices, where many were on their way to get food assistance and cash aid.

Hochman said any person who contacted his office about filing a fraudulent claim would not have the statements haunt them in a criminal prosecution.

“If you provide us truthful information, complete information, any of the words that you use will not be used against you,” said Hochman, adding the offer did not extend to attorneys or medical professionals. “It’s not something that we offer lightly to anyone.”

Hochman said Downtown LA Law Group was one of the law firms they were focused on, but the probe was not limited to them. He said the investigation would touch anyone who helped fraudulent cases get filed.

“I’m happy to label that entire group as a group of fraudsters conspiring to defraud a settlement where the money should be going to legitimate sex abuse survivors and victims,” he said.

The law group has denied paying plaintiffs and said it only wants “justice for real victims” of sexual abuse. The firm declined to comment further Wednesday.

Shortly after The Times’ investigation, the county supervisors voted to launch their own inquiry into possible misconduct by “legal representatives” involved in the lawsuits. The county set up a hotline for tips from the public, and moved to ban “predatory solicitation” outside county social services offices.

The supervisors also joined a chorus of voices — including California lawmakers, labor leaders and a powerful attorney trade group — calling for the State Bar to investigate. The State Bar does not comment on potential investigations, but has previously said California law generally prohibits making payments to procure clients, a practice known as capping.

Downtown LA Law Group represents roughly 2,700 people suing the county. Hochman said the firm is one of several he’s focused on.

(Carlin Stiehl / Los Angeles Times)

A flood of sex abuse claims followed the passage of AB 218, a state law that gave victims of childhood sexual abuse a new window to sue that stretched far beyond the previous statute of limitations. The law, which went into effect in 2020, has led to thousands of lawsuits filed against California school districts, governments and religious institutions.

This spring, the county agreed to pay $4 billion to resolve thousands of claims from victims who said they were abused decades ago in county-run juvenile detention centers and foster homes. In October, the county agreed to a second settlement worth $828 million over another set of similar claims.

Hochman noted the first settlement would have massive financial ramifications for decades for the county, which acts as a social safety net for the region. The county will pay the settlement out over the next five years and has asked most departments to trim their budgets to help pay for it. The district attorney’s budget, Hochman said, had been slashed by $24 million, in part, to help pay for the cases.

“Every penny that a fraudster gets is a penny taken away from a sex abuse victim that validly and legitimately suffered that abuse at the hands of someone [in] Los Angeles County,” said Hochman. “It is not free money.”

TOPEKA, Kan. — A rural Kansas county has agreed to pay a little more than $3 million and apologize over a law enforcement raid on a small-town weekly newspaper in August 2023 that sparked an outcry over press freedom.

Marion County was among multiple defendants in five federal lawsuits filed by the Marion County Record’s parent company, the paper’s publisher, newspaper employees, a former Marion City Council member whose home also was raided, and the estate of the publisher’s 98-year-old mother, the paper’s co-owner, who died the day after the raid. An attorney for the newspaper, Bernie Rhodes, released a copy of the five-page signed agreement Tuesday.

Eric Meyer, the paper’s editor and publisher, told the Associated Press he is hoping the size of the payment is large enough to discourage similar actions against news organizations in the future. Legal claims against the city and city officials have not been settled, and Meyer said he believes they will face a larger judgment though he doesn’t expect those claims to be resolved for some time.

“The goal isn’t to get the money. The money is symbolic,” Meyer said. “The press has basically been under assault.”

The raid triggered a national debate about press freedom focused on Marion, a town of about 1,900 people set among rolling prairie hills about 150 miles southwest of Kansas City, Mo. Meyer’s 98-year-old mother, Joan, lived with him and died of a heart attack that he blamed on the stress of the raid.

Three days after the raid, the local prosecutor said there wasn’t enough evidence to justify it. Experts said Marion’s police chief at the time, Gideon Cody, was on legally shaky ground when he ordered the raid, and a former top federal prosecutor for Kansas suggested that it might have been a criminal violation of civil rights, saying: “I’d probably have the FBI starting to look.”

Two special prosecutors who reviewed the raid and its aftermath said nearly a year later that the Record had committed no crimes before Cody led the raid, that the warrants signed by a judge contained inaccurate information from an “inadequate investigation” and the searches were not legally justified. Cody resigned as police chief in October 2023.

Cody is scheduled to go to trial in February in Marion County on a felony charge of interfering with a judicial process, accused by the two special prosecutors of persuading a potential witness to withhold information from authorities when they later investigated his conduct. He had pleaded not guilty and did not respond to a text message Tuesday seeking comment about the county’s agreement.

Attorneys for the city and the county and the county administrator did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment.

Sheriff Jeff Soyez issued an apology that mentioned the Meyers by name, along with former council member Ruth Herbel and her husband.

“The Sheriff’s Office wishes to express its sincere regrets to Eric and Joan Meyer and Ruth and Ronald Herbel for its participation in the drafting and execution of the Marion County Police Department’s search warrants on their homes and the Marion County Record,” the sheriff’s statement said.

The Marion County Commission approved the agreement Monday after discussing it in private for 15 minutes.

A search warrant tied the raid — which was led by Marion’s police chief — to a dispute between the newspaper and a local restaurant owner who had accused the Marion County Record of invading her privacy and illegally accessing information about her and her driving record.

Meyer has said that he believed the newspaper’s aggressive coverage of local politics and issues played a role and that his newsroom had been examining the police chief’s work history.

Hanna and Hollingsworth write for the Associated Press.

Nov. 11 (UPI) — Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has sued Harris County for allocating $1.35 million to help fund legal defense of those facing immigration deportation hearings.

Harris County, which includes Houston and forms the core of the Greater Houston Area, has historically ranked among the top U.S. counties for Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainers, according to reporting by The Texas Tribune.

Paxton accused the Harris County Commissioners Court of illegally allocating more than $1.35 million in taxpayer funds to “radical-left organizations” that use the money to “oppose the lawful deportations of illegal aliens.”

He called the fund “blatantly unconstitutional” and “evil and wicked” in a news release announcing the lawsuit Tuesday.

“We must stop the left-wing radicals who are robbing Texans to prevent illegals from being deported by the Trump administration,” Paxton said Tuesday in a news release.

“Millions upon millions of illegals invaded America during the last administration,” Paxton said. “They must be sent back to where they came from.”

He said the Harris County Commissioners Court recently voted 4-1 to allocate $1.35 million to several non-governmental organizations that are “dedicated to fighting the deportation of illegal aliens.”

Recipients include the Galveston-Houston Immigrant Representation Project, Justice for All Immigrants, Kids in Need of Defense, Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services, and BakerRipley.

The allocations serve no public purpose and amount to illegal grants of taxpayer dollars to pay for the legal defense of those who should not be in the country, Paxton said.

He said the Texas Constitution prohibits allocating taxpayer funds to individuals or groups that do not serve the public interest and filed the lawsuit in the Harris County Judicial District Court on Monday.

Harris County Attorney Christian Menefee said the county will oppose the state’s lawsuit in court, The Texas Tribune reported.

“This lawsuit is a cheap political stunt,” Menefee said in a prepared statement.

“At a time when the president has unleashed ICE agents to terrorist immigrant neighborhoods, deport U.S. citizens and trample the law, it’s shameful that Republican state officials are joining in instead of standing up for Texans.”

Although Menafee accused the Trump administration of deporting U.S. citizens, the Department of Homeland Security said that is a false accusation and no U.S. citizens have been deported.

“We have said it a million times: ICE does not arrest or deport U.S. citizens,” DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said Oct. 1 in response to a New York Times article accusing ICE of deporting citizens.

Before becoming the Harris County attorney, Menafee’s biography says his private practice “focused heavily on pro bono work, including advising the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, advising immigrants and their families at Bush Intercontinental Airport during the ‘Muslim ban’ and working with Texas Appleseed on expanding alternatives to involuntary commitment for the mentally ill.”

Eric Preven, one of L.A. County’s most prominent citizen watchdogs, has died at 63, according to his family.

Preven, a well-known government transparency advocate, garnered a reputation as an eagle-eyed observer of local meetings, a savvy wielder of the state’s public records act, and a reliable thorn in the sides of his government.

Relatives said Preven died Saturday in his Studio City home of a suspected heart attack.

The term “gadfly” often is bandied about local government to describe those who never miss a public meeting. But politicians and his family say the term doesn’t quite do Preven justice.

“You may not agree with him, but it wasn’t just like [he was] shooting from the hip. He would do his research,” said Supervisor Kathryn Barger, who watched Preven testify for more than a decade. “He would let the facts speak for themselves.”

In 2016, Preven and the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California took a lawsuit all the way to the California Supreme Court, which ruled in his favor, finding the public had a right to know how much the county was paying outside lawyers in closed cases. Three years later he successfully forced the city to expand its rules around public testimony after he argued he’d been unlawfully barred from weighing in on a Studio City development.

Many attendees of local public meetings tend to drift into offensive diatribes that have little to do with the matter at hand. Preven never did.

Instead he fine-tuned the art of presenting minute-long, logical arguments on everything from budget shortfalls to seemingly excessive settlements. He could be cutting but he always had a point to make.

And he never missed a meeting.

“Thank you for this exhausting dressing down of the probation department,” Preven said last Tuesday after the supervisors wrapped up rebuking officials for paltry programming inside juvenile halls. “The idea that we’re paying for these programs, these programs are scheduled, and nothing is happening is terrible.”

A New York native, Preven moved to Los Angeles to work in Hollywood, landing TV writing gigs on shows including “Popular” and “Reba.” His path into local activism began 15 years ago after his mother’s two chocolate labs were removed by the county’s animal control department following a fight with an off-leash dog, according to his family.

Preven, a canine lover known to throw parties with members of his local dog park, found the removal of the labs unjustifiable. He went to the Board of Supervisors meeting to tell them so. Then he went again. And again. And again.

Long after the dogs were returned, Preven kept going back.

“He started listening to the meeting and looking at the agenda, and he became just appalled at so many things that he saw,” said his brother, Joshua Preven. “He became so incensed by it.”

Preven became a fierce advocate for the public’s right to know what was happening in local meetings and kept close track of staff changes at City Hall. He was known to text local government reporters early on weekend mornings to ask why someone had stepped down from a city agency, or self-deprecatingly share his latest blog post on CityWatch, a local news site.

“My latest deep dive into my own navel,” he texted two weeks ago with his new article on the famed architect behind his historic home in Studio City’s foothills.

He often sent Times editors and reporters weekly emails on successes and shortcomings in their coverage. The county’s politicians and officials received similar messages about their governance.

“He could be irascible,” his brother said. “When he came and encountered the L.A. County Board of Supervisors, it became a really good use of that stubbornness.”

Preven was a dogged user of the California Public Records Act, finding gems of records buried in seldom-scrutinized agencies. He filed so many record requests to the Animal Care and Control department that the county assigned an attorney just to deal with them, according to Dawyn Harrison, the county’s top lawyer.

“Eric was the epitome of an engaged constituent and critic of local government, persistently questioning and challenging government officials,” Harrison said. “As his interest in County government grew, so did the range of his requests; so, my office decentralized the handling of his requests because no one person could cover all the subjects he looked into. He was a true watchdog.”

Supervisor Janice Hahn said Preven had been scrutinizing her and her colleagues ever since she was a councilmember at City Hall.

“Eric Preven never let those with power in government forget who we work for. … He pushed us, he challenged us, and he had an opinion on everything — from the biggest issue of the day to the more routine contract votes that too often go overlooked,” she said. “While some people wrote him off, I thought there was always truth in what he had to say.”

Supervisor Lindsey Horvath, whose district includes parts of Studio City, said he “took seriously the role of citizen, religiously participating in County meetings.”

In addition to his brother, Preven is survived by his sister, Anne Preven, his mother, Ruth Preven, his father, David Preven, and two children, 28-year-old Isaac Rooks Preven and 26-year-old Reva Jay Preven.

Preven ran several times for public office, launching idiosyncratic campaigns for mayor, city council and county supervisor. He barely fundraised and wasn’t allowed in many of the debates, said his brother, who helped out as his campaign manager.

“We didn’t know what the hell we were doing at all,” Joshua Preven said. “But he kept showing up.”

Times reporters Dakota Smith and David Zahniser contributed to this report.

The experiment of using Kookaburra cricket balls in some rounds of the County Championship has been scrapped.

Kookaburras have been used in some rounds for each of the past three seasons, but the move was largely unpopular due to the trend of bat dominating ball.

Directors of cricket from the 18 first-class counties expressed their desire to end the experiment in October.

And the decision was confirmed by a meeting of the England and Wales Cricket Board’s professional game committee (PGC) earlier this week.

It means all 14 rounds of the 2026 County Championship season will be played with balls manufactured by Dukes.

Dukes are the traditional supplier of cricket balls for first-class cricket played in England. Dukes balls are hand-stitched and, in general, offer more assistance to bowlers.

Kookaburra balls are machine made and are mainly used in countries like Australia, New Zealand and South Africa.

The Kookaburra ball was introduced into the County Championship with the idea of preparing English players for overseas conditions. The theory was that it would encourage bowlers of higher pace and lead to spin having an enhanced role.

It was used for two rounds of matches in 2023, and expanded to four rounds for 2024 and 2025.

Two rounds of Kookaburra matches earlier this summer, played in June, resulted in a lot of dull cricket. The average first-innings total across the Championship was 430, 59 individual scores of 100 or more were made and Surrey racked up 820-9 declared against Durham at The Oval.

The ECB’s high performance arm – those involved in the England teams rather than the county game – still stands by the decision to use the Kookaburra, however, which points to the conflicts within the game.

Speaking last month before the decision was confirmed, ECB men’s performance director Ed Barney said: “We valued the Kookaburra ball. Has it achieved what we intended to? Yes, 100%.

“To be most effective with the Kookaburra ball you have to bowl at a higher speed. Has it drawn more spin bowling into the domestic game? Yes it has.”

Statistics from the past three County Championship seasons shows the optimal bowling speeds with the Kookaburra were around 85mph, but 75-79mph with the Dukes.

Forty per cent of deliveries were bowled by spinners during Kookaburra rounds but only 25% when using the Dukes.

“Ultimately the domestic game has a decision to make of whether it wants its core purpose to be about producing and developing players for international cricket or whether its core purpose is about a product that is competitive and appealing to the domestic context,” added Barney.

“That is the choice the domestic game and ECB has to make, and it is quite difficult for it to co-exist together.”

The move to return to the Dukes for the entire Championship season comes after counties rejected proposals to restructure the competition.

A new set-up of 12 teams in the top flight and six in the bottom tier, with each side playing 13 matches, was turned down in favour of the current system.

The Championship will remain with 10 teams in Division One, eight in Division Two, all playing 14 matches.

Officials announced Thursday that Los Angeles County has automated the process of notifying law enforcement agencies when people who violate restraining orders fail to comply with judges’ orders to hand their guns over to authorities.

Previously, court clerks had to identify which of the county’s 88 law enforcement agencies to notify about a firearm relinquishment by looking up addresses for the accused, which could take multiple days, Presiding Judge Sergio C. Tapia II of the L.A. County Superior Court said during a news conference.

Now, “notices are sent within minutes” to the appropriate agencies, Tapia said.

“This new system represents a step forward in ensuring timely, consistent and efficient communication between the court and law enforcement,” he said, “helping to remove firearms from individuals who are legally prohibited from possessing them.”

According to a news release, the court launched the platform, which the Judicial Council of California funded with a $4.12 million grant in conjunction with the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department and district attorney’s office, and the L.A. Police Department and city attorney’s office.

The court also rolled out a new portal for law enforcement that “streamlines interagency communications by providing justice partners with a centralized list of relevant cases for review” and allows agencies “to view all firearm relinquishment restraining order violations within their jurisdiction,” according to the release.

The new digital approach “represents a major enhancement in public safety,” Luna said.

“Each of those firearms,” he said, “represents a potential tragedy prevented or a domestic violence situation that did not escalate, a life that was not lost to gun violence.”

L.A. County supervisors want to bar “predatory” salespeople who they say prey on vulnerable residents seeking benefits from the region’s social services offices.

The supervisors unanimously voted Tuesday to explore creating a “buffer zone” outside county offices, prohibiting certain types of “aggressive” solicitation toward people seeking food stamps and cash aid. County lawyers have two months to figure out what such a zone would look like.

The looming crackdown follows a Times investigation that found seven people who said recruiters outside a social services office in South Los Angeles paid them to sue the county over sex abuse. Two more later told The Times they, too, were solicited for sex abuse lawsuits outside a county social services office in Long Beach, though they initially believed they were being recruited to be extras in a movie.

“We are painfully aware of the ongoing allegations of fraud and the pay-to-sue tactics used to recruit clients and file lawsuits against the county,” said Supervisor Janice Hahn, who announced she would push for the buffer zone after the Times investigation. “There must be greater accountability both to protect survivors seeking justice and to ensure that fraudulent claims and predatory solicitation are stopped at their source.”

The county’s more than 40 social services offices act as one-stop shops for residents who need help applying for food, housing and cash assistance. Outside many of the larger offices in poorer areas, a bustling ecosystem thrives with vendors hawking goods and services to those in line.

The supervisors said Tuesday they were troubled by some of the offerings.

“Vendors asking for copies of people’s personal documents, trying to sell them products and even recruiting people into claims against the county — this behavior puts residents at real risk and undermines the trust in our public services,” said Supervisor Lindsey Horvath.

Supervisor Kathryn Barger said she wanted to see reforms that would protect both taxpayers and “vulnerable individuals who are being used as pawns to line the pockets of many of these attorneys.”

The motion passed 3 to 0. Supervisors Hilda Solis and Holly Mitchell, whose district includes the social services office where some of the lawsuit recruitment took place, were absent.

The Times spent two weeks outside the South L.A. office this fall and watched vendors seek out dozens of people with Medi-Cal, the state’s health insurance for low-income Californians. The vendors would pay them anywhere between $3 and $12 to undergo COVID and blood pressure tests, which they said would be billed to their state insurance. Some people said they routinely stopped by the location for quick cash.

Giveaways of free phones are also popular for those who are eligible through a government-subsidized program. Recipients have complained that the service on the phones was often short-lived, with some people returning to the kiosks within a few days after their number stopped working.

Leaders at the Department of Public Social Services, who oversee the offices, say they’re limited in what they can do outside their facilities. Many of the busiest locations are in Los Angeles or smaller cities, where the county has no authority. And regulating where vendors can go on public sidewalks has proved a reliable headache for local governments in the past.

Last year, the Los Angeles City Council eliminated the “no-vending zones” it had created in areas where it said street vendors would contribute to congestion. The ban was met with an outcry and a lawsuit from vendors who argued street vending had been decriminalized and the city could no longer outlaw the stands.

Eugene Volokh, a 1st Amendment professor and senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, said the county will have to be careful in defining what conduct is “predatory” and what is protected speech.

“The devil’s going to be in the details,” Volokh said. “Whenever you hear words like ‘predatory’ or ‘exploitative’ or ‘harassing’ or ‘bullying,’ you know you’re dealing with terms that are potentially very vague and often, by themselves, too vague to be legally usable terms.”