effort

WASHINGTON — Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass declined to testify Tuesday before a House subcommittee investigating alleged fraud and mismanagement in the region’s homelessness system, but that did not stop her from going after Republican leaders on the panel.

As the hearing began, Bass’ reelection campaign accused “extremist Republicans in Congress” of staging a politically motivated attack on Los Angeles and its efforts to address homelessness, months after the Trump administration attempted to suspend federal funding for the city.

“Los Angeles will not be bullied,” Bass wrote. “Not by this President, and not by this Congress. I’m going to keep doing my job — cleaning up encampments, getting Angelenos inside, and making LA safer.”

Bass had notified Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.), the chair of the Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency, on Sept. 4 that she would not be available to testify, but her absence still drew criticism from Burchett, who told The Times he was willing to use the “fullest extent of the law” and possibly issue subpoenas to compel her to testify.

“I’d like to get her in,” he said after the hearing. “I realize that we have elections coming up and she knows that as well as anybody … but I would hope that she would come up here and answer questions.”

Burchett added that there are “legitimate questions” about how federal homelessness funds were used in Los Angeles and what he believes was their mismanagement. In his opening remarks, Burchett said he was concerned about how the city spent federal funds given the ongoing homelessness issue in the area.

“Los Angeles is at the center of American homelessness,” Burchett said, and specifically pointed to Skid Row as an example of the “abject failure” of the city’s approach to homelessness. “Under Mayor Karen Bass, law and order in the neighborhood has collapsed.”

Burchett added that the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority was “ripe for corruption and financial mismanagement,” and raised concerns about contracts that have been doled out to nonprofits in Los Angeles and the surrounding areas.

Bass had served on LAHSA’s 10-member board since 2023 but stepped down last week, in part citing scheduling issues. Burchett suggested she “suddenly removed herself” from the board to dodge accountability after being asked to testify.

In a letter sent this month, Burchett noted that he wanted to scrutinize how homelessness has gotten worse during her tenure as mayor. David Michaelson, the mayor’s attorney at City Hall, pushed back on Burchett’s assertions, saying unsheltered homelessness in L.A. — the number of people living outside or in their vehicles — has dropped by 11% since Bass took office in 2022.

“She has achieved these results by focusing on interim housing, not ‘Housing First,’ and has also challenged certain ‘Harm Reduction’ strategies that are ineffective,” Michaelson wrote. “For example, Mayor Bass ordered that City contractors no longer provide needles to drug users and instead focus on services that encourage rehabilitation and protection of human life.”

Burchett’s effort to force Bass to testify over concerns about “potential misallocation of federal dollars” by LAHSA is the latest example of congressional Republican leaders trying to examine California’s handling of regional issues and finances. In the last year, Republican have launched investigations into the Palisades wildfire preparations as well as the distribution of charity funds for the victims of the Palisades and Eaton fires.

Rep. Melanie Stansbury (D-N.M.), the top Democrat on the subcommittee, said Tuesday’s hearing was an “unserious and political show targeting” the most vulnerable Americans and the services they need.

“Housing is a human right, and we’re not going to sit here while you use the housing and homeless crisis of this country to try to cough up whatever you’re trying to do politically before the midterms,” Stansbury said.

During the hearing, Burchett showed a short video of Skid Row, filmed by Jonathan Choe, a MAGA-aligned news influencer, who offered testimony during the hearing as well. Choe mostly focused his testimony on his concerns about substance abuse not being enough of a priority in addressing homelessness.

Paul Webster, a senior fellow at the Cicero Institute and executive director of the L.A. Alliance for Human Rights, also testified. Prior to the hearing, he testified in writing that LAHSA — the region’s primary Continuum of Care administrator — has been marked by financial mismanagement and fraud even as its federal funding has grown.

“Los Angeles and its utilization of federal homeless assistance policy is not an outlier,” Webster wrote. “It is the leading edge of a system that lacks accountability, effective monitoring, and prioritizes inputs rather than outcomes.”

Burchett said the panel will continue to take a “good hard look” at homelessness in Los Angeles and other “leftists” cities. He added that he intends to file legislation to require federally funded housing services to offer substance abuse treatment.

Also Tuesday, the LAHSA board voted not to compete with the city and county to keep carrying out many of its core duties, such as operating a homeless database and applying for federal funds on behalf of other agencies.

With L.A. city and county agencies preparing their own applications, a decision to compete with them “would only fracture regional collaboration during an already complex time,” LAHSA said in a statement.

The decision comes a few months after the Trump administration sought to suspend LAHSA from applying for and receiving federal funds. The agency sued to block that effort, winning a partial victory in federal court. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals stayed that decision on appeal.

In response to the suspension and the ongoing legal battle, the federally mandated board that contracted with LAHSA for those functions put next year’s contract out to bid, forcing the agency to compete.

LAHSA, already diminished by the county’s decision last year to divert its homelessness funds to a new county homelessness department, now retains contracts for programs in the city. But Bass has said the city needs to take over those as well.

Ceballos reported from Washington, Smith from Los Angeles.

MARFA, Texas — Landowners, ranchers and business owners in the Big Bend region of Texas along with a nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting the region’s landscape and heritage are suing to stop the Trump administration’s plans to build a wall and other border infrastructure through the remote section of the state.

The lawsuit, filed by Conserve Big Bend and with the support of dozens of landowners, comes as the administration is ramping up a $46-billion effort to line the roughly 2,000-mile southern border with a collection of 30-foot steel bollard walls, vehicle barriers and technology intended to keep out smugglers and migrants.

In Texas, the effort has run up against numerous lawsuits and bipartisan opposition from sheriffs, elected officials, tour guides, environmental groups and landowners.

Officials backing the wall “were woefully unprepared for the hornet’s nest they stirred up because they had no idea how much we love this place,” said David Keller, an archaeologist and historian who specializes in the Big Bend and lives in the region.

“For us, the Big Bend is not an empty place on the map,” he said. “It is our home.”

As part of its wall-building efforts, the administration has waived numerous regulations and statutes designed to protect the environment, archaeology or wildlife, on the basis that there’s an urgent need to protect the border in what Homeland Security has called areas of “high illegal entry.”

But in the lawsuit announced Monday, the plaintiffs argue that when it comes to the Big Bend region, that’s not an accurate description. They’ve cited historical statistics issued by Customs and Border Protection showing how few people cross the border in Big Bend compared with other areas along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Big Bend has about 500 miles of border with Mexico — roughly one quarter of the length of the border from the Pacific Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico. But the region only accounted for about 1% of arrests, according to the lawsuit’s stats.

The plaintiffs are arguing that the Department of Homeland Security is misusing powers from Congress that allow the secretary broad authority to waive regulations in order to build border walls or other infrastructure in areas where there are large numbers of people trying to cross into the country illegally.

“That determination is legally and factually unsound and unsupported,” the plaintiffs wrote.

The lawsuit filed Monday is the latest in efforts to slow or stop the administration’s plans in Texas and elsewhere.

The biggest outcry has come over Customs and Border Protection’s plans for the Big Bend National Park, which sits in a far southwestern corner of Texas where the Rio Grande separates the U.S. from Mexico.

The park’s remote and rugged location, its steep limestone canyon walls and crystal clear starry night views attract visitors from around the world. The government has said in court hearings that no final plans have been decided for what will be built in the park but plans made public so far have included building a new road, installing detection technology and barriers to stop vehicles from crossing the border.

When bulldozers were spotted clearing land in the park in August, people across the state were outraged. CBP Commissioner Rodney Scott temporarily paused construction-related activity in the park but many activists and residents would like to see even more changes to the administration’s plans in the broader Big Bend region.

Native American groups have argued that the construction could inhibit their ability to practice their faith and is damaging important religious sites while environmentalists worry the wall will cause flooding or keep animals from migrating.

Landowners who’ve lived and worked along the Rio Grande for years have questioned how they’ll feed livestock or water their crops if they can’t access the river.

Santana writes for the Associated Press.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

WASHINGTON — The Kennedy Center Board of Trustees is planning to propose adding President Trump’s name to the facility’s exterior in recognition of his saving the building from its “precarious fiscal position,” according to a new court filing in a suit aimed at blocking the move.

It’s the latest development in the case revolving around adding the president’s name to the exterior of the cultural and arts facility that sits along the Potomac River in Washington and reflects the Trump-aligned board’s efforts to honor the president.

The new information came out of a court filing made by Democratic Rep. Joyce Beatty of Ohio, an ex-officio member of the board. Beatty, who has led an effort to block Trump from putting his name on the building, said in a filing she was alerting the court to the proposal because it could implicate a pending decision before the court.

Both the court and the Kennedy Center board are expected to hold meetings Tuesday.

Beatty’s filing includes two exhibits. One is a draft vote to shut the center down, asserting the building is unsafe for occupancy. That assertion incorrectly cites a consulting group’s finding, “which expressly disclaimed providing any such opinion,” according to Beatty.

The other document asserts the center faces dire financial straits. It specifically calls for Trump’s name to be placed in marble beneath the name of the center on the building’s exterior. It offers 10 options for a possible inscription, including “Renovation and endowment overseen by President Donald J. Trump and the Trump Kennedy Center Fund.” Another proposes: “With Gratitude for Support from President Donald J. Trump and the Trump Kennedy Center Fund.”

“The Board understands that without such appropriate recognition it is unlikely that President Trump will provide the fundamental oversight of the renovation of the main building and lead the fiscal rescue of the Center,” the board wrote in the proposed resolution.

Trump has spent much of his second term reshaping Washington, demolishing the East Wing of the White House to make way for a ballroom and planning a triumphal arch near Arlington National Cemetery as well as a renovated golf course along the Potomac River.

The Kennedy Center has been a stumbling block in that effort after a judge ruled in May that Trump’s name was added to the building illegally, ordering it to be removed.

Trump and his allies, however, have continued to fight the ruling.

The board voted last month to inscribe his name on the venue’s facade to read “The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts Restored and Renovated By President Donald J. Trump.”

If the Trump Kennedy Center Fund reached $100 million, another inscription would be added reading: “Endowed by the Trump Kennedy Center Fund.”

Catalini writes for the Associated Press.

If there’s one thing Jed Wheeler and Marcus Ruiz Evans agree on, it’s that things in California need to change.

The state sends too much money to Washington, they say, and is both politically and culturally out of step with a country that lacks its openness and vitality.

“We can solve our own problems and don’t need to wait on a government 3,000 miles away,” said Wheeler, echoing Evans’ suggestion that Democratic-leaning California would be far better off going it alone as a separate country.

They sharply disagree, though, on the matter of how and precisely when California should seek a divorce from the other 49 states.

Evans is pushing a ballot measure that would put the question of secession before voters in 2018, believing the time has never been so ripe to form a breakaway nation. Wheeler is working to create a pro-secession political party, looking a dozen or more years down the road when its candidates hold office, and fears that a premature vote would undermine the effort.

In short, the effort to cleave California faces a crackup of its own.

At least four proposals are floating about to reshape the state in some fashion, including two that would split up California along different axes. All work at cross-purposes, and the result is varied degrees of hostility among proponents; none of the plans seems likely to reach fruition anytime soon, if ever.

That is something they have in common.

Since 1849, when the state was remade in a rush of greed and ambition, there have been more than 200 efforts to split apart, pull away or otherwise reimagine the vast empire known as California. Not one has succeeded.

The latest, most conspicuous attempt, a proposed ballot initiative fueled by anti-Trump sentiments and titillated national media coverage (those wacky Californians!) seems destined to fall short of qualifying for the ballot, barring a sudden change in fortune.

Supporters of the measure, led by Evans, have until July 25 to collect nearly 600,000 valid signatures to place an independence measure before voters in November 2018. The group, which received the go-ahead to collect signatures at the end of January, has yet to reach a quarter of that number, according to the California secretary of state’s office.

The group has also not reported raising any campaign contributions, according to the secretary’s office, which oversees elections.

Evans, 40, a former government affairs consultant now working full-time on the “Calexit” campaign, insisted a robust signature-gathering process was underway, engaging thousands of volunteers in 82 chapters across the state. However, the precise number collected was unknown, he said, because of the loose structure of his pro-secession group, Yes California.

“Some are mailing them in. Some are holding them. Some are taking them directly to their county registrar of voters,” he said. Asked to assess the odds of making the ballot, Evans responded, “Good. I won’t say great.”

The effort, uphill from the start, has not been helped, he said, by reports linking the Calexit movement to Russia, which Evans called preposterous and unfair. The co-leader of Yes California is Louis Marinelli, a former San Diego-area Assembly candidate now teaching English in Russia, where, among promotional activities, he appeared last fall at a Kremlin-backed pro-secession conference in Moscow.

“It has definitely been damaging to us getting big donors and hurting our ability to bring on new members because of clouding the issue without accurately reporting all the facts,” Evans said, citing the organization’s 44,000 “likes” on Facebook as just one example.

Nor, he said, was it beneficial when Nigel Farage, a leading proponent of Britain’s exit from the European Union and prominent Trump supporter, recently flitted into California to talk up a vague plan to split the state down the middle, creating a coastal “West California” and interior “East California.”

“They’re trying to confuse people,” Evans huffed. “Classic Trump.”

It seems Evans and his pro-secession movement might have found an ally in Wheeler and others working to form a political party dedicated to achieving state independence. Many tenets of the left-leaning California National Party — the state needs to keep more of the money it sends to Washington and establish home-grown policies on issues such as immigration and healthcare — echo those propounded by Yes California.

The nascent party has taken no official position on the 2018 secession drive. But Wheeler, the party’s vice chairman, believes the initiative would lose, damaging the independence movement. Better, he said, to elect sympathetic lawmakers under the National Party banner who could then work to bring about California’s eventual departure.

“We’re trying to be very pragmatic and realistic where we are as a movement,” said Wheeler, 36, who works for a digital media company in San Francisco.

While “the idea of having a ballot initiative is seductive and appeals to a lot of people,” he said, “you can’t harvest the crop without the work of planting the seeds, then tilling the soil and all that stuff first.”

In California’s far north, a determined group of dissenters have done that labor for decades — so far to no avail.

Efforts have been underway since before World War II to break off more than a dozen rural counties and combine them with a chunk of southern Oregon to form Jefferson, the nation’s 51^st state.

The impetus is the same that drives backers of secession: the notion of a far-off government (in this case, Sacramento) ignoring local sentiments and a sense of being outnumbered and outvoted by a population whose social and political views are at odds with the prevailing (in this instance, conservative) culture. The proposed flag — a pair of Xs, or double cross — captures the animating sentiment.

“We really don’t have fair representation,” said Terry Rapoza, 67, a leader of the Jefferson movement in Shasta County, where he sells T-shirts and other souvenir clothing in Redding.

He cited recent passage of a 10-year, $52-billion road repair and transportation bill; the hike in gas taxes, he said, will have much less impact in urban California than in rural stretches, where people might drive 20 miles to the grocery store, or a dozen miles to pick up their mail.

But he has little use for secession, which strikes him as bizarre — would the new California nation have its own nuclear arsenal and U.N. representative, he wonders — and fruitless in ending the urban-rural divide he blames for persistently short-changing his part of the state.

There’s something wrong and even vaguely un-American, he suggested, about trying to break the country apart. “We want to add a star to the flag,” Rapoza said. “Not take one off.”

mark.barabak@latimes.com

@markzbarabak on Twitter

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The ruling follows a 6-3 decision from the Supreme Court that found Trump’s effort to limit birthright citizenship was illegal.

A United States federal judge in Maryland has blocked President Donald Trump’s latest effort to roll back birthright citizenship, after the Supreme Court ruled that his last attempt violated the Constitution.

District Judge Deborah Boardman issued a preliminary injunction on Wednesday against Trump’s new executive order, which was issued on August 6.

The new order took aim at what Trump has called “birth tourism”, the practice of intentionally giving birth on foreign soil.

It sought to deny citizenship to children of foreign nationals in certain groups, including those accused of engaging in a commercial transaction to obtain citizenship or classified as an “alien enemy”.

Boardman, however, said the order was unconstitutional for the same reason Trump’s previous effort failed. She cited the Supreme Court’s June decision in the case Barbara v Trump.

The order “is almost certainly unconstitutional as applied to the certified class for the simple reason that the Supreme Court in Barbara already decided that the children in the class are citizens at birth”, she wrote.

“This Court must, once again, preliminarily enjoin enforcement of the President’s most recent attempt to strip the right to citizenship from them.”

In the Barbara case, the Supreme Court ruled six to three that birthright citizenship was protected under the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution.

Birthright citizenship confers automatic citizenship on anyone born in the US, outside of a handful of narrow exceptions, such as the children of diplomats or invading armies.

The constitutional basis for birthright citizenship has been upheld in several Supreme Court cases over the years, most notably in US v Wong Kim Ark, the case of an American man born to Chinese parents.

But Trump campaigned for a second term as president on the pledge to crack down on immigration into the country.

One of his promises was to reform the concept of birthright citizenship. Trump and his allies have argued that children of temporary or undocumented immigrants do not qualify for the right, as they are not under the “jurisdiction” of the US.

Since the Supreme Court defeat in June, Trump and his allies have continued to probe for ways to challenge the constitutional protections for birthright citizenship.

Wednesday’s legal challenge was brought by immigrant rights advocates and families, including groups like the Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project.

They had previously won an injunction from Boardman last year, blocking the Trump administration from enforcing his initial executive order about birthright citizenship.

Last week, Boardman instructed the plaintiffs to revise their complaint to specifically address the second executive order, rather than relying on the same material used for the first.

But she signalled scepticism at the time about the constitutionality of Trump’s latest attempt, calling it “unprecedented”.

“The Supreme Court has spoken: Children in the certified class are ‘citizens at birth’,” she wrote in Wednesday’s decision.

ICE agent Christian Castro faces criminal charges for shooting a Minnesota man in the leg during an immigration raid.

A United States judge has denied a request to compel the extradition of a federal immigration agent charged with shooting a man during an immigration raid in the state of Minnesota and lying about it.

Wednesday’s decision concerns the case of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent Christian Castro, who has been detained in a county jail in Texas since May.

Minnesota has sought his extradition as he faces charges of assault and falsely reporting a crime in Hennepin County, which covers Minneapolis.

Under Texas law, the state cannot hold the subject of an extradition order for more than 90 days. At that point, the suspect must either be transferred or released. The deadline for Castro is set to expire on Thursday.

Minnesota argued in a lawsuit this month that Texas Governor Greg Abbott, a Republican, has refused to authorise the extradition for political reasons.

But in Wednesday’s ruling, Judge Fernando Rodriguez Jr wrote that he could not intervene because Abbott has not yet acted – and has therefore not yet violated any law.

“The record reflects only that Governor Abbott has neither agreed nor refused to sign the rendition warrant as to Castro,” Rodriguez wrote.

Castro has been charged in connection with the non-fatal shooting of Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis during an immigration raid in Minnesota on January 14, part of a mass deportation effort under President Donald Trump.

Starting in December, Trump oversaw a large-scale deployment of federal agents to the Midwestern state, dubbed Operation Metro Surge.

The operation, which lasted less than three months, sparked protests and allegations of civil liberty violations from residents and watchdog groups.

Prosecutors say Castro fired a gun through the front door of a Minneapolis home, shooting Sosa-Celis in the leg.

Afterwards, he and another agent accused Sosa-Celis and another man of assaulting federal authorities with a broom handle and snow shovel. Those allegations were later disproven after video of the incident emerged. Criminal charges against Sosa-Celis were subsequently dropped.

Todd Lyons, then-acting director of ICE, confirmed in February that the agents appeared to have made “untruthful statements”. Castro and the second agent were placed on administrative leave.

Castro is currently in custody in Brownsville, Texas. Minnesota officials have warned that he may flee the country if released, citing calls he made from jail to a woman in Mexico.

During those calls, Castro talked “about marrying her and buying a house in Mexico when he is released”, according to Minnesota’s lawsuit.

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison filed a request for a temporary restraining order last week to stop Castro’s anticipated release and force Governor Abbott to sign the extradition warrant.

Ellison has framed Abbott’s decision not to take action as a way of supporting Trump’s mass deportation campaign and skirting federal extradition law.

“For nearly three months, Greg Abbott has refused to return ICE agent Christian Castro to Minnesota, where he’s charged with shooting a Minnesotan in his own home,” Ellison wrote in a social media post.

“Abbott has a legal obligation to return him. Instead, he’s chosen to ignore the law.”

The Justice Department’s latest salvo in the battle over the future of the Kennedy Center claims President Trump’s “efforts and prestige provide the sole hope for the Center’s financial survival, and structural renewal,” according to a Monday court filing, which also threatens a possible demolition of the historic building.

Without the president’s interventions, says the filing, “the Center will deteriorate further into an unsafe, decrepit structure that will be required to be taken down, with a determination to follow on what to build on the site.”

The filing by the administration’s lawyers came in response to the efforts of Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-Ohio) to block the Kennedy Center board from adding the president’s name to the building. The 21-page document argues that the “prestige” afforded by such an addition is both necessary and warranted.

“The Board also underscores, and the undisputed evidence demonstrates, that without the prominent recognition of The Trump Administration, and President Trump’s efforts, the donors will not contribute, and the Center will continue to be in a financial and structural death spiral,” the filing reads. “The Trump Administration, and President Donald J. Trump, should, therefore, be given the respect and dignity of acknowledgement.”

The filing also suggests what could replace the center if the building were to be torn down: “a large outdoor amphitheater overlooking the Potomac River … has been proposed, by some, for many years.”

“Such a replacement will fail to adequately honor President John F. Kennedy, but would be simpler and more economical to build, operate, and maintain,” the administration’s lawyers wrote in the filing.

Such a tear down would face enormous legal pushback, but preservation groups are already on high alert after Trump’s swift demolition of the White House’s East Wing, which was completed before a challenge could be fully mounted.

The Kennedy Center has been mired in controversy since Trump fired its board and had himself appointed chairman in the early months of his second term. Artist and staff defections became common after that, but the question of the center’s survival came into stark relief in early February when Trump declared his intention to shutter the center for two years of renovations.

That decision came after the Kennedy Center board voted in December to add Trump’s name to the building. Both the closure and the renaming were halted in a May ruling by Federal District Court Judge Christopher R. Cooper who is still overseeing the legal back-and-forth over the center’s fate.

Cooper originally gave the administration until mid-June to remove Trump’s name from the building. The administration complied by placing a tarp over the sign, which has remained ever since.

This month the board again voted to move forward with the renovation, and also to add Trump’s name to the building with the words, “Restored and Renovated by President Donald J. Trump.”

The most recent court filing claiming the center’s survival rests with Trump is in stark contrast to a recent Washington Post investigation that found the center’s revenue plunged after Trump’s name was added to the building.

Games are won and lost on special teams.

Precision and execution on punts and kickoffs can pin teams in their own end zones, stopping drives before they even get started.

Electric returners can flip the field and change the trajectory of a game in one play.

And a big foot can mitigate the pressure of a two-minute drill and create scoring opportunities as far as midfield.

No one may understand that more than UCLA coach Bob Chesney, who served as the special teams coordinator at King’s College from 2003-04 and at Johns Hopkins from 2005-08.

Chesney’s emphasis on the third phase of the game followed him from his time in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., to Westwood, where he incorporates special team periods throughout every practice.

While some coaches have specialists practice by themselves or use special teams periods sporadically through practice, Chesney ensures that everyone is involved, using players to distract kickers during field-goal attempts and returns, with the Bruins shouting, spraying water and running at specialists to simulate game-like scenarios.

In a game often decided by thin margins, special teams could be what pushes a team over the edge or what holds it back.

Let’s take a closer look at the changes Chesney and his staff have made to UCLA’s special teams personnel and how the group could fare in 2026.

Before analyzing the personnel, one of the biggest additions to the unit came in special teams coordinator Drew Canan, who followed Chesney from James Madison to UCLA and has led Chesney’s special teams units during the last 13 seasons.

UCLA’s Mateen Bhaghani hits a game-winning field goal with four seconds left against Maryland at Rose Bowl on Oct. 18.

(Harry How / Getty Images)

Kicker Mateen Bhaghani is arguably one of the highest impact Bruins returnees.

He has played 34 games across two years at UCLA and one season at California in 2023. During his three-year career, Bhaghani has hit 44 of 53 of his field-goal attempts and 71 of 71 extra points.

Despite his consistency, Bhaghani was not on the 2026 Lou Groza Award preseason watch list, an honor presented annually to the best college kicker in the country.

“That motivates me, but I don’t focus on it too hard,” Bhaghani said. “Seeing those types of things, I definitely feel like I could be one of those dudes, but I kind of ignore it. And I feel like this season I’ll show why I should be on that list, if not win it.”

The San Diego native has started all 24 of UCLA’s games during his two seasons in Westwood, nailing 36 of his 44 field-goal attempts, including five out his nine attempts from at least 50 yards.

Punter Chase Barry, who spent three seasons at UCLA and one at Oklahoma State, is back in Westwood. He was Bhaghani’s holder in 2024, helping the kicker hit 20 field goals, which led the Big Ten and ranked No. 11 among all kickers nationally.

As the season opener looms, Bhaghani is less focused on the technical side of his game and is placing more emphasis on sharpening the psychological side so that he can thrive under pressure.

“It’s all mental. The tougher I can sharpen my mental game to where it doesn’t matter what’s going on around me, I can go in there and make that kick. That’s what I feel is most important,” Bhaghani said. “Just being in pressure situations, it’s not as much technique and tweaking stuff like that right now. I feel like that’s more for the offseason. Whereas as we get closer to the season, I just focus on hitting a pure ball and working with the operation.”

Bhaghani proved his aptitude in high-pressure situations when he hit a 23-yard game-winning field goal against Maryland on Oct. 18 with two seconds remaining.

In addition to training mental toughness and familiarity with personnel, Chesney’s emphasis on special teams in practice has prepared Bhaghani for a high-impact year heading into his senior season.

UCLA coach Bob Chesney directs players during a preseason workout on Aug. 6.

(Ronaldo Bolanos/Los Angeles Times)

“Coach Chesney has been a blessing, special teams-wise. He’s always there for me, and he has a clear line of communication in terms of where we should kick, when we should kick,” Bhaghani said. “The culture that he’s brought to special teams as the heartbeat of the team, it’s important, and every team needs to implement that.”

Bhaghani said that freshman long snapper Giancarlo Cereghino — who was tabbed as the top long snapper in his class by 247Sports — would probably be the starting long snapper on field goals, and that the first-year player had been snapping well throughout preseason.

Fifth-year long snapper Salem Abdul-Wahab will most likely handle long-snapping duties for punts after doing so in all 12 games last year.

The biggest change in the special teams department will undoubtedly come at punter, where the Bruins lost their starter from 2025 in Will Karoll, who transferred to Texas Tech in the offseason.

Karoll punted 44 for times on a 43.5-yard average, with 13 downed inside the 20-yard line and just two touchbacks.

The Bruins added Sam Houston transfer punter Curtis Gerrand, who will probably start against Cal after an impressive spring and preseason camp.

At Sam Houston, Gerrand played in all 12 games as a true freshman, punting 64 times for a 43-yard average, including a long of 72 yards, and placed 22 punts inside the opponents 20-yard line.

Rounding out the punter room is sophomore Lennox Miller. The Sydney, Australia, native did not see any game action during his true freshman season at UCLA, but he was ranked as the ninth best punter in his class by Chris Sailer Kicking and a three-star recruit by ESPN. However. Miller will again have a tough time seeing game action in 2026 with the likes of Gerrand and Barry ahead of him.

In the kicking department, following Bhaghani is freshman Mateo Orosco, who probably will not play unless Bhaghani is injured, but was praised by Chesney during preseason camp.

“These two kickers are pretty good. They’re fun to watch and they’re going to battle the whole way through and I’m excited to just watch,” Chesney said. “You know how good Mateen is, but Mateo will be under him and watch this and follow, and just have that to learn from, it’s pretty exciting to watch those two go.”

Bruins on deck

Here are all UCLA games and exhibitions scheduled to be played this week across all sports:

MONDAY, AUG. 24

Men’s soccer vs. CSU Bakersfield, 7 p.m.

THURSDAY, AUG. 27

Women’s soccer at Stanford, 7:30 p.m.

FRIDAY, AUG. 28

Men’s water polo at Cal (exhibition), 5 p.m.

Men’s soccer vs. Denver, 7 p.m.

Women’s volleyball vs. Long Beach State, 7 p.m.

SATURDAY, AUG. 29

Men’s water polo vs. Saint Mary’s in La Jolla (Triton Invitational), 9:20 a.m.

Men’s water polo vs. Bucknell in La Jolla (Triton Invitational), 4 p.m.

Women’s volleyball vs. Long Beach State, 5 p.m.

SUNDAY, AUG. 30

Women’s soccer at Santa Clara, 1 p.m.

In case you missed it

Undrafted James Madison star Trent Hendrick commits to UCLA thanks to court ruling

UCLA quarterback Nico Iamaleava learns, and builds, on his experiences

UCLA defensive back Cole Martin embodied Bob Chesney’s values before meeting the coach

UCLA Unlocked: Bruins’ defense has nowhere to go but up under Bob Chesney

Derek Carr, UCLA football’s new special advisor, sees a winner in Bob Chesney

Have something Bruin?

Do you have a comment or something you’d like to see in a future UCLA newsletter? Email newsletters editor Houston Mitchell at houston.mitchell@latimes.com. To get this newsletter in your inbox, click here.