ice

DALLAS — A federal jury Friday convicted nine people — eight on terrorism charges — over a shooting at a Texas immigration facility that federal prosecutors tied to antifa, the decentralized far-left movement that has become a target of the Trump administration.

One person was also found guilty of attempted murder after prosecutors say he opened fire last summer outside the Prairieland Detention Center outside Fort Worth, wounding a police officer. The Justice Department called the violence an attack plotted by antifa operatives, but attorneys for the accused denied that characterization, saying there were no antifa associations and that there was merely a demonstration with fireworks before gunshots broke out.

U.S. District Judge Mark Pittman, an appointee of President Trump, presided over the nearly three-week trial in Fort Worth. It was closely followed by legal experts and critics who called the proceedings a test of the lengths the government can go to punish protesters.

FBI Director Kash Patel had said the case was the first time charges of providing material support to terrorists had targeted people accused of being antifa members.

“Today’s verdict on terrorism charges will not be the last as the Trump administration systematically dismantles Antifa and finally halts their violence on America’s streets,” U.S. Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi said in a statement.

Short for “anti-fascists,” antifa is not an organization but rather an umbrella term for far-left militant groups that confront or resist neo-Nazis and white supremacists at demonstrations.

Protesters denied having antifa ties

Defense attorneys told jurors that there was no plan for violence on July 4 outside the facility in Alvarado.

Of the nine defendants on trial, eight faced the charge of providing material support to terrorists, among other charges. The ninth defendant, Daniel Sanchez Estrada, was charged with corruptly concealing a document and conspiracy to conceal documents. He was found guilty of both.

Sanchez Estrada’s attorney, Christopher Weinbel, said he can’t believe jurors “came to this conclusion.” Weinbel said his client had deployed as a member of the U.S. Army several times and he’d hoped what he sacrificed for the country “meant something.”

“But I feel like it turned its back on justice with this. … The U.S. lost today with this verdict,” Weinbel said.

Prosecutor Shawn Smith told jurors during closing arguments that the group’s actions — including bringing firearms and first aid kits and wearing body armor — were all signs of nefarious intent. He said they practiced “antifa tactics” and were “obsessed with operational security.”

Attorneys for the defendants have said that there was no planned ambush and that protesters who brought firearms did so for their own protection — in a state with very lenient gun laws.

A test of 1st Amendment rights

The terrorism charges followed Trump’s order last fall to designate antifa as a domestic terrorist organization. Those charges did not require a tie to any organization, and there is no domestic equivalent to the State Department’s list of foreign terrorist organizations. That’s in part because organizations operating within the United States are protected by broad 1st Amendment rights.

Critics of the Justice Department’s case have said the outcome could have wide-reaching effects on protests.

“That opposition is something that the government wants to squash, so a case like this helps the government kind of see how far they can go in criminalizing constitutionally protected protests and also helps them kind of intimidate, increase the fear, hoping that folks in other cities then will think twice over protesting,” said Suzanne Adely, interim president of the National Lawyers Guild, a progressive legal group.

Trial focused on shots fired

Attorneys for the defendants have said most protesters began leaving when two guards from the center came outside. That was before any shots were fired.

Prosecutors said Benjamin Song, a former Marine Corps reservist, yelled, “Get to the rifles,” and opened fire, striking one police officer who had just pulled up to the center.

Though it was Song who opened fire, prosecutors charged several other protesters with attempted murder of an officer and discharging a firearm, but they were found not guilty. The prosecution had argued that from the group’s planning, it was foreseeable to those others that a shooting could happen.

The officer who was shot, Alvarado Police Lt. Thomas Gross, testified that when responding to the scene he saw a person clad in all-black with their face covered and carrying a rifle. He told jurors he was shot with a round that went into his shoulder and out of his neck.

Song’s attorney, Phillip Hayes, told jurors during closing arguments that there wasn’t a call to arms before Gross arrived on the scene and “aggressively” pulled out his firearm. Hayes suggested that Song’s shots were “suppressive fire” and that a ricochet bullet hit the officer.

Leading up to the trial, several people pleaded guilty to providing material support to terrorists after being accused of supporting antifa. They face up to 15 years in prison at sentencing.

Some of them testified for the prosecution, including Seth Sikes, who said he went to the detention center because he wanted to bring some joy to those held inside.

“I felt like I was doing the right thing,” he said.

Stengle writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Jim Vertuno in Austin, Texas, contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — Republican and Democratic senators vented their frustrations with the lack of progress in funding the Department of Homeland Security, which is resulting in more Americans enduring long lines at airports around the country. It’s a problem that is expected to intensify as the impasse enters its fourth week.

Democrats stressed they were willing to fund some of Homeland Security, but not Immigration and Customs Enforcement as well as Customs and Border Protection, without changes in their operations. Republicans made clear that some of the Democratic demands were a non-starter. The result was that each party blocked the other’s proposal for temporarily resolving the standoff during an hours-long debate Wednesday on the Senate floor.

The stark divide over a shutdown that began on Feb. 14 was acknowledged by members on both sides of the political aisle.

“We are in a negotiation. However, we are not close,” Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) said at one point. “You may think this is some issue that we think we’re going to turn to our political advantage, but I promise you, when we saw Renee Good and Alex Pretti killed, this became an issue that was beyond politics.”

“And there are a lot of us who are not going to provide resources to this agency that is acting in such a ways that makes citizens of the United States so unsafe.”

Some Republicans were just as adamant that they oppose some of the changes Democrats are seeking to make.

“Let me be clear, we are going to do nothing — nothing — that kneecaps ICE’s ability to enforce our immigration laws,” said Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.).

Following the longest federal shutdown in the country’s history last year, Congress completed work on 11 of this year’s 12 appropriations bills. Only the bill for Homeland Security remains outstanding.

Democrats are seeking several changes at the department that include prohibiting ICE enforcement operations at sensitive locations like schools and churches, allowing independent investigations into alleged wrongdoing, requiring warrants to be signed by judges before federal agents can forcibly enter private homes or other nonpublic spaces without consent, and requiring agents to wear identification and remove their masks.

A push for more talks

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) said his side has made repeated overtures to Democrats on a funding bill. He said the last offer on Homeland Security funding came from the White House nearly two weeks ago and there has been no response from the Democrats.

“Usually, around here, in order to get a deal, there has to be a negotiation where the two sides sit down together,” Thune said. “And my understanding is that has been completely rebuffed by the senator from Washington.”

The senator Thune was referring to, Sen. Patty Murray, the lead Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, said she’s continued to talk with Republican colleagues, but those aren’t “real negotiations.” The White House needs to be at the table for that to occur. She said she needed assurance that Stephen Miller, the influential White House deputy chief of staff, would not upend any agreements that senators reach.

“I am willing to talk to people, but I’m not willing to sit in a room, have coffee, give away a few things and have Stephen Miller override whatever we all agree to,” Murray said. “ … We need to know the White House is serious.”

Homeland Security has been central to President Trump’s sweeping changes in immigration enforcement. Under Trump, the number of people ICE arrests and detains each month has climbed dramatically. The tactics that ICE has employed have generated alarm among Democrats, and some Republicans have also called for a more “strategic” approach.

During bipartisan negotiations earlier this year, appropriators agreed to a Homeland Security funding bill that did include more resources for de-escalation training and $20 million to outfit immigration enforcement agents with body-worn cameras. But that deal unraveled after the Pretti shooting in Minneapolis.

“My side was not going to stand down and say, ‘oh well, nothing happened,’” Murray said.

For the second time in two weeks, Murray offered a proposal to fund all of Homeland Security except for ICE and Customs and Border Protection, but Republicans objected.

Similarly, Sen. Katie Britt (R-Ala.) offered a proposal to fund all of Homeland Security for two weeks so that federal workers could get paid and government operations could continue while the two sides negotiate their differences on immigration enforcement. This time, Democrats objected.

The result was the standoff continues, but lawmakers were at least talking to each other, perhaps one small sign of progress.

Shutdown strains air travel

The large majority of the more than 260,000 employees at Homeland Security continue to work but are going unpaid. It’s the second time in recent months they’ve had to work without pay after last fall’s record, 43-day shutdown. The most visible sign of the shutdown has been a shortage of Transportation Security Administration screeners at airports.

Houston’s secondary airport weathered the worst problems, with lines consistently lasting over three hours for much of Sunday and Monday. Passengers also had to wait more than an hour to get through security at several other airports, including in New Orleans and Atlanta.

Homeland Security in a social media post Wednesday blamed Democrats for a shutdown that “has led to HOURS long security lines at airports across the country, leading Americans to miss their spring break flights.”

Trade groups are also worried about the economic impact of the travel delays. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce called on Congress to quickly approve a funding bill and end the department’s shutdown.

“Blocking operational funding and paychecks for those who help us travel safely is wrong and strains the air travel system,” said Neil Bradley, the business group’s executive vice president and chief policy officer.

Freking writes for the Associated Press.

Her gleeful cruelty was matched only by the audacity of her incompetence.

Packaged in cosplay costumes — cowgirl, solider, even firefighter and pilot — we were supposed to see her as strong. But far from the mother of dragons she seems to envision herself as, she came across as the killer of Cricket (poor pup), a childish narcissist in a deadly serious job.

It was so over the top, you don’t even need a name. You know who I’m talking about. So there’s little wonder that when President Trump dumped Kristi Noem as the head of Homeland Security this week, much of America — even a bipartisan slice, I dare say — reacted much like the residents of Oz when the house landed on the wicked witch.

From late-night talk shows to the halls of power, there was more than a bit of celebration, and some actually reasonable schadenfreude. Normally, the misfortune of others isn’t something I pile on, but oh, did that woman earn some scorn.

But while I’m not one to discourage a moment of joy in these troubling days, Noem’s unceremonious firing and what comes next likely won’t provide the relief and reset many are hoping for — or are claiming this is. For all the chaos and pain that federal agents from various departments have caused under Noem’s leadership, there’s every reason to believe Trump has plans to continue and even expand his deportation efforts, and maybe even use these poorly trained, poorly vetted troops to impose his will on the next election.

What we are witnessing, rather than any acknowledgment of policy gone awry, is spotlight envy from a petty president who doesn’t like to share attention, and a backroom concession that maybe optics do matter when you’re attempting to cram white nationalism onto a pluralist country.

It was, according to Fox News and other media, a claim under oath that Trump authorized Noem to spend more than $200 million on commercials promoting herself instead of him that got her canned. Pointing to just how deeply unpopular Noem made herself even within the Trump-verse, this death knell came courtesy of a set-up by a GOP senator, John Kennedy (R-La.), who walked Noem to her own demise with awe-inspiring political skill.

After forcing Noem to claim on the record multiple times that Trump knew about and approved the mega-spend on Noem’s ludicrously over-produced ads (while also raising questions about the contract and who benefited), Kennedy — almost certainly knowing Trump would see it — laid this dig on her with dripping Southern knife-in-the-back charm.

“To me, it puts the president in a terribly awkward spot,” Kennedy drawled, likely implanting grievance directly into the president’s brain. “I’m not saying you’re not telling the truth. It’s just hard for me to believe, knowing the president as I do, that you said, ‘Mr. President, here’s some ads I’ve cut, and I’m going to spend $220 million … running them,’ that he would have agreed to that.”

Soon after, Trump posted on social media that Noem was out. I bring this up because it wasn’t, after all, the substance of Noem’s actions that ultimately got her fired. In that same hearing on Capitol Hill, Democrats blasted Noem for the deaths of Alex Pretti and Renee Good in Minneapolis and her subsequent false portrayal of them as domestic terrorists; the conditions inside our ever-expanding network of detention centers that have led to deaths; and even her mile-high airplane bedroom where she may or may not be conducting an extramarital affair.

None of that seems to have bothered Trump. It was her self-promotion. And it was that same self-promotion, the constant demanding of attention, that likely also ultimately convinced those around Trump to dump her — because it was adding to the deep unpopularity of immigration roundups that have been dragging down Trump’s approval ratings and which therefore could hurt the midterm chances of down-ballot Trumpers.

Last month, a Quinnipiac poll found that 58% of voters wanted Noem removed, and almost 60% of voters disapproved of Trump’s immigration policies.

Noem was the public face of that disapproval, strutting forward with arrogance in the face of public censure, a veritable clown show of ineptitude. With her ouster, and the possible replacement by another Trump stalwart, Oklahoma first-term Sen. Markwayne Mullin, Trump removes the most visible and annoying sign of the unpopularity of his policies.

While pugnacious (he’s a former MMA fighter) and happy to create his own questionable headlines, Mullin is also far more low-key than Noem, and knows who the spotlight belongs to. He is almost certain to put a more palatable face on deportations and detentions (for some anyway) simply by not being so thirsty for press. A low bar, but there you have it.

But Mullin has made it clear that he backs the most extreme immigration policies Trump world can offer, and has little difference of opinion from Stephen Miller, the architect of this bleak moment, who seems to be running things slightly off screen.

The risk now is that Mullin can continue these policies, even expand them, with less scrutiny simply because he’s less offensive than Noem. Detention centers are being built at breakneck speed. In Arizona, ICE has begun charging legal immigrants with a Cold War-era law if they don’t carry their papers with them at all times. The Department of Justice is gutting the ability to appeal deportations, in an effort to hasten them without recourse. Nothing is changing — except the speed and force with which ICE is moving forward.

And Trump has doubled down on claims that illegal immigrants are responsible for massive voter fraud, laying the groundwork for some sort of intervention in the upcoming election. Election deniers have been installed in key positions — Mullin himself is one of them.

So far from a reset, Noem’s removal is a retrenching — an effort to remove our focus from the deeply troubling link between immigration policy and the threat to democracy while actually grinding forward on that dark path.

Because Noem was a train wreck we couldn’t help but watch, at a moment when the government would prefer we stop looking.

The judge was perplexed.

“Why were state law enforcement officers excluded?” U.S. District Judge Christina A. Snyder wanted to know.

The judge pressed California Deputy Atty. Gen. Cameron Bell to explain the thinking behind a pair of trailblazing new laws meant to unmask the federal immigration agents patrolling Golden State streets and compel them to identify themselves.

One of the laws required all law enforcement operating in the state to visibly display identification while on duty, with narrow exclusions for plainclothes, undercover and SWAT details. It applied to everyone else, including U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers.

But the other law, a ban on masks worn by on-duty law enforcement officers, applied only to local cops and federal agents, with a broad exemption for the California Highway Patrol and other state peace officers.

Snyder wanted to know: Why were the laws different?

She never got an answer. Bell said she couldn’t comment on the actions of the Legislature.

State Sen. Scott Wiener attends the California Democratic Party convention in San Francisco in February.

(Jeff Chiu / Associated Press)

In the halls of the statehouse last year, Sen. Scott Wiener’s (D-San Francisco) No Secret Police Act and Sen. Sasha Renée Pérez’s (D-Alhambra) No Vigilantes Act were referred to as “legislative twins,” a nod to their shared gestation and conjoined legal fate. If passed, both would immediately be challenged by the Trump administration.

That’s precisely what happened. Both measures became law — but only the ID law survived its first court battle, sending state legislators back to the drawing board on the mask ban.

Polls show unmasking ICE is overwhelmingly popular with voters, and both Wiener and Gov. Gavin Newsom took credit for getting the bill passed.

But behind the scenes, according to nearly two dozen sources familiar with the legislative process who spoke to The Times, a fight had been brewing between the two Democrats.

Days before the amendment deadline last summer, Newsom’s office proposed changes to Wiener’s mask ban that, according to legal experts and opponents, would have exempted most ICE and Customs and Border Protection operations from the bill. The governor’s team denies that was the intent of their proposal. The resulting compromise exempted state peace officers from the law instead.

Snyder struck it down on Feb. 9, writing that she was “constrained” to do so because the exemption of state police “unlawfully discriminates against federal officers.”

Interviews with more than 20 lawmakers, policy advisors, law enforcement and legal experts show how the Labor Day weekend deal came together, ensuring both Wiener and the governor a political victory that in short order became a court triumph for the president.

There are now more than a dozen similar bills winding through statehouses from Olympia, Wash., to Albany, N.Y., as legislators try to rein in a practice the majority of Americans see as dangerous and corrosive. In Sacramento, similar efforts are underway to pass a narrower version of the law, and both Newsom and Wiener have said they were proud to make California the first state to pass an ICE mask ban.

Both sides said the legislative process is messy, and that eleventh-hour amendment fights are inevitable in a statehouse where more than 900 bills were passed and close to 800 signed into law last year.

Yet neither the governor’s office nor the legislator’s team has offered clear answers for why both accepted a last-minute change on a nationally watched bill that each was informed could kneecap the law’s constitutional standing in court.

“Seeing the carve-out, I was immediately really surprised,” said Bridget Lavender, staff attorney at the State Democracy Research Initiative, the nation’s leading expert on the myriad legal efforts to unmask ICE across the U.S. “That’s ultimately what doomed it.”

Others were more blunt.

“When I saw the final bill I said, ‘What happened here?’” said one prominent constitutional scholar, who asked not to be identified because they were advising several other state legislatures on similar mask ban efforts. “I can’t believe this happened.”

Legally, the mask ban was always going to be a cat fight. Law enforcement groups loathed it. Constitutional scholars were wary. The Justice Department contends both the mask ban and the ID law illegally interfere with the operation of the federal government, a violation of the Constitution’s supremacy clause, while California likens them to highway speed limits, which apply to everyone equally.

“There is a very strong argument that the law is constitutional so long as it applies to all law enforcement,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the UC Berekely Law School and an early champion of the original No Secret Police Act, known in Sacramento as SB 627.

Others saw it differently.

“It’s a very complicated question as to whether states can enact law enforcement policies that bind the federal government,” said Eric J. Segall, a professor at Georgia State University College of Law. “The answer [here] is probably not. I regret that’s the law, but I’m pretty sure that’s the law.”

Everyone agreed, the Golden State would set the precedent.

“All eyes were really on California,” Lavender said.

Judge Snyder agreed with the state, upholding the ID law. Judges for the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals sharply questioned both the federal government and California in a hearing Tuesday, repeatedly emphasizing the lack of clear precedent and constitutional uncertainty of the law.

“California has done something that we just haven’t seen before,” said Judge Jacqueline Nguyen.

Most scholars believe it will ultimately be settled by the Supreme Court.

The mask ban would be on the same track now, if not for the state police exemption.

“We knew we really had to thread that needle very carefully,” said state Sen. Patricia Fahy of New York, whose mask ban bill could soon be fast-tracked in Albany. “You had to put all law enforcement in it. I say that as a non-lawyer, but I knew that.”

Wiener knew it too. A Harvard-trained lawyer and a former deputy city attorney for San Francisco, he’d rebuffed early requests to exempt state and local officers from the bill and circulated Chemerinsky’s July 23 op-ed in the Sacramento Bee explaining the necessity of a universal ban, including to the governor’s team.

The state’s powerful law enforcement unions were livid. They railed against the bill in public and in the Legislature, testifying relentlessly about the harm that would flow to them from a ban — including being required to enforce it against armed federal agents.

“The last thing you want is two people with firearms on their hips getting into an argument,” said Marshall McClain, a regional director in the Peace Officers Research Assn. of California, among the state’s richest and most powerful lobbying groups.

Law enforcement objections shaped the changes the governor’s legislative office sought just days before the Sept. 5 amendment deadline, according to a stakeholder involved in those discussions.

Gov. Gavin Newsom speaks during a news conference in Los Angeles in 2024.

(Eric Thayer / Associated Press)

The most controversial ask from Newsom’s team was an exemption for all types of officers engaged in “warrant and arrest related operations” — precisely the type of enforcement Alex Pretti was filming when masked CBP agents tackled him to the ground and shot him to death in Minneapolis last month.

The governor’s office also sought an exemption for all officers engaged in “crowd management, intervention, and control” — the work ICE agent Jonathan Ross was doing when he shot and killed Renee Good less than three weeks earlier.

“We were working to ensure state officer safety and operational effectiveness, not exempt ICE,” said Diana Crofts-Pelayo, Newsom’s chief deputy director of communications.

Yet California Deputy Solicitor Gen. Mica Moore told the 9th Circuit on Tuesday that the state’s ID law only applies to officers engaged in “arrest or detention operations or … crowd control” — activities she characterized as central to its purpose.

Rather than swallow bad terms or risk Newsom’s veto, Wiener countered with the state police carve-out — a move constitutional experts advised him would leave the law at least some chance of survival.

The governor’s legislative team quickly accepted, leaving Bell and the attorney general’s office on the hook to defend the exemption.

Boosters argue that even with its fatal flaw, California’s law advanced such bans nationally in a pivotal moment last September.

“The politics have changed dramatically,” said Hector Villagra, vice president of policy advocacy for MALDEF, one of the mask ban’s sponsors. “[Today] people realize this is not normal in a democracy like ours.”

WASHINGTON — Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem arrived at a Senate oversight hearing Tuesday ready to spar with Democrats in her first Capitol Hill appearance since federal agents fatally shot U.S. citizens Alex Pretti and Renee Good in Minneapolis.

But some of the sharpest comments from the Judiciary Committee came from fellow Republicans, who questioned her leadership, criticized her spending practices and called on her to admit that she was wrong to call Pretti and Good “domestic terrorists.”

“What we’ve seen is a disaster under your leadership, Ms. Noem, a disaster,” Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) said. “The fact is you can’t even admit to a mistake. It looks like an investigation is going to prove that Ms. Good and Mr. Pretti probably should not have been shot in the face and in the back.”

Tillis hardly questioned Noem on specifics, choosing instead to deliver a blistering, high-volume “performance evaluation,” of the Homeland Security secretary. He accused Noem and Trump advisor Stephen Miller of prioritizing deportation quotas instead of investigating the “vicious” ICE agents involved in the Minnesota shootings.

“We’re not going after the people who did that damage at the expense of running numbers that Stephen Miller wants out of the White House,” he said. “We just want numbers. We want 1,000 a day, 6,000 a day, 9,000 a day. Because numbers matter, right? No, they don’t matter. Quality matters.”

Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) also brought up Pretti and Good: “Did you determine whether there was any basis for the sensational claim, a claim that proved to be utterly false, that these two victims were engaged in domestic terrorism?” he asked.

Noem used the hearing to defend a series of decisions now under bipartisan scrutiny. She said Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers face “serious and escalating threats” due to what she called “deliberate mischaracterizations” of their work.

She called the Minneapolis deaths “tragic situations,” and said the phrase “domestic terrorists” was based on early information she received from the agents from the city. “It was a chaotic scene,” Noem said. She did not apologize for using the phrase or say it was inaccurate.

Noem stood behind President Trump’s mass deportation agenda and said ICE is focusing on the “worst of the worst.” Recent reporting by the Cato Institute found that just 5% of ICE detainees have been convicted of violent offenses, and three-fourths have no criminal convictions at all.

The hearing came amid a partial shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security, triggered last month when Senate Democrats blocked funding in a standoff over immigration enforcement practices. As tensions mount in Iran, lawmakers are increasingly concerned about the security risks of leaving the department unfunded.

In her opening statement, Noem decried the shutdown as “reckless” and “unnecessary,” and accused Democrats of putting U.S. security posture at risk.

Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) pointedly asked about a $200-million ad campaign promoting immigration enforcement — a campaign that features Noem and was awarded to a firm led by a friend. Such spending “troubles me,” he said, adding, “I just can’t agree with that, Madam Secretary. My research shows you did not bid this out.”

Noem maintained that Trump directed the messaging strategy and argued it has been “extremely effective” in deterring illegal immigration. She said she “didn’t have anything to do with picking those contractors.”

The back-and-forth became increasingly heated as Kennedy also peppered Noem for characterizing Good and Pretti as domestic terrorists.

“What got my attention was that you blamed those statements on Mr. Stephen Miller,” Kennedy said, referencing an Axios report quoting Noem.

She dodged the line of questioning, saying the sources Axios used in the report were “anonymous,” and, by her logic, not credible.

“This wasn’t anonymous. It was you,” Kennedy said. “They’re quoting you on the record saying it was Stephen.”

On numerous occasions throughout the hearing, the secretary was asked about her purchase of two luxury Gulfstream G700 jets at a combined cost of $200 million in taxpayer funds.

Reportedly designed by New York designer Peter Marino, the planes include private bedroom suites with queen-size beds, bathrooms with stand-up showers and electric bidets, and a lounge with a wet bar and wine chiller, according to images obtained by NBC.

Noem argued the purchases were authorized by Congress for executive travel and deportation operations.

In another testy exchange, Delaware Sen. Chris Coons pressed Noem over recent statements that she planned to station ICE officers at polling locations in November, to “make sure we have the right people voting, electing the right leaders.” She said her department had no such plan in place but fell short of committing to ruling it out.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) endorsed investigations into ICE shootings, though his statements were largely designed to cast Noem in a favorable light.

“I’d like to make sure if there was a bad shooting as documented as such, and people pay a price. But I will not apologize to anybody in this room to try to clean up the mess that Biden started, and you empowered,” he said.

Democrats, meanwhile, accused Noem of presiding over “thuggish” and “illegal” enforcement tactics and demanded independent investigations into several incidents throughout the U.S.

Accusing Noem of routinely making false statements about ICE shooting victims while impeding state, local, and independent investigations, Schiff cited an episode in which immigration agents shot U.S. citizen and Chicago resident Marimar Martinez. In November, a federal judge raised concerns that agents mishandled or destroyed key physical evidence in the case.

“Our internal investigations are following the same policies as they always have,” Noem responded.

“Will you take some responsibility?” Schiff said. “How is the public supposed to believe anything your agency says or finds?”

Over 180 lawmakers have co-sponsored articles of impeachment against Noem. Tillis and Alaska Republican Lisa Murkowski last month called for Noem to resign or face impeachment by Congress.

On Tuesday, Tillis said her responses to the committee amounted to stonewalling. “That’s a failure of leadership, and that is why I’ve called for your resignation,” he said.

“Sinners,” the blockbuster film that has been a major contender during awards season, was the dominant winner at the 57th NAACP Image Awards.

The film scored trophies for outstanding motion picture and most of the acting awards, including breakthrough performance, awarded to Miles Caton. Michael B. Jordan, who won for actor in a motion picture, also won entertainer of the year.

Before the ceremony, Ryan Coogler won writing and directing honors, while Wunmi Mosaku and Delroy Lindo won the supporting actress and actor awards, respectively.

But the ceremony was not only about honoring Black excellence in entertainment. The event was also flavored by several remarks from celebrities addressing the divisive political climate and recent events that have targeted and affected Black entertainers.

Viola Davis received the chairman’s award during the 57th NAACP Image Awards on Saturday.

(Chris Pizzello / Chris Pizzello/invision/ap)

Host Deon Cole kicked off the ceremony by welcoming the audience to “the Trump Image Awards. Because you know he wants his name on everything.”

Asking permission to “buy a curse word,” he made a joke that was bleeped out during the live stream, but was apparently aimed at federal ICE agents. The comment sparked a standing ovation from the predominantly black-tie audience, many of whom wore anti-ICE pins.

“I don’t want to see no ICE ever again,” he said. “When I looked at the guest list, I took off Ice Cube, Ice-T, Ice Spice. I don’t want no ice cream, I don’t want no ice in my drink.”

Samuel L. Jackson said in a tribute to the late Jesse Jackson, who died earlier this month, that President Trump’s attacks on diversity and his quest to remove references to slavery and Black history from museums would not succeed.

Utilizing one of Jackson’s trademark slogans, Jackson said, “We will not be erased from this country’s history because I am somebody.”

And in accepting the award for actor in a drama series for “Paradise,” Sterling K. Brown added, “Like Sam said, they can’t erase us because there is no country without us.”

The event also continued to put a spotlight on the uproar surrounding the shouting of a racial slur during the BAFTA Awards last week.

Jordan and Lindo were presenters during the BAFTA Awards, which took place at London’s Royal Festival Hall. As they were introducing the visual effects category, a member of the audience shouted the N-word. The two actors paused momentarily before continuing.

Director Ryan Coogler, left, and actor Delroy Lindo presenting the award for actress in a motion picture. The pair addressed the incident at the BAFTAs in their remarks.

(Chris Pizzello / invision/AP)

Later, awards host Alan Cumming addressed the outburst, referencing the nominated film “I Swear,” which is about Scottish campaigner John Davidson, who has Tourette syndrome and shouted the racist slur from the audience. Cumming apologized, while Davidson, an executive producer for the BAFTA-nominated film, left his seat midway through the ceremony. BAFTA later issued an apology to the actors.

Cole delivered a comic prayer referencing the incident: “Lord, if there are any white men out there with Tourette’s, I advise you to tell them to read the room tonight, Lord. It might not go the way they think.”

Actor Rebecca Hall early in the awards show said she wanted to pay tribute to “two kings. Thank you for your grace.”

Lindo later in the ceremony said, “We appreciate all the support we’ve been shown in the aftermath of what happened last weekend. It is an honor to be here among our people this evening … It’s a classic case of something that could have been very negative becoming very positive.”

Here is a list of the night’s winners:

Entertainer of the year
Michael B. Jordan

Outstanding motion picture
“Sinners”

Actor in a motion picture
Michael B. Jordan, “Sinners”

Actress in a motion picture
Cynthia Erivo, “Wicked: For Good”

Breakthrough performance in a motion picture
Miles Caton, “Sinners”

Drama series
“Reasonable Doubt”

Actor in a drama series
Sterling K. Brown, “Paradise”

Actress in a drama series
Angela Bassett, “9-1-1”

Comedy series
“Abbott Elementary”

Actress in a comedy series
Quinta Brunson, “Abbott Elementary”

Actor in a comedy series
Cedric the Entertainer, “The Neighborhood”

Chairman’s Award
Viola Davis

Hall of Fame Award
Salt-N-Pepa

President’s Award
Colman Domingo

WASHINGTON — New whistleblower documents detail substantial cuts by the Trump administration to the training requirements for new immigration officers.

Among the cuts are the elimination of practical exams, use of force and legal training courses, and an overall reduction in training time, contrary to an official’s testimony to Congress earlier this month.

The documents, provided to Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) by whistleblowers from the Department of Homeland Security, were publicly revealed ahead of a forum Monday afternoon with congressional Democrats — the third in recent weeks probing what the members view as abusive and illegal tactics used by federal agents.

Lauren Bis, deputy assistant public affairs secretary at DHS, said no training hours have been cut.

“Our officers receive extensive firearm training, are taught de-escalation tactics, and receive 4th and 5th Amendment comprehensive instruction,” she said. “The training does not stop after graduation from the academy. Recruits are put on a rigorous on-the-job training program that is tracked and monitored.”

Blumenthal’s office also disclosed the identity of one whistleblower: Ryan Schwank, an attorney who most recently served as an instructor for new Immigration and Customs Enforcement recruits at the ICE Academy within the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Georgia. Schwank, who resigned Feb. 13, is scheduled to testify at the forum.

Schwank is one of two whistleblowers who made a confidential disclosure to Blumenthal’s office last month regarding an ICE policy allowing agents to enter people’s homes without a judicial warrant.

In excerpted quotes from Schwank’s prepared testimony shared with The Times, he calls the training program “deficient, defective and broken.”

“Deficient training can and will get people killed,” he wrote. “It can and will lead to unlawful arrests, violations of constitutional rights, and a fundamental loss of public trust in law enforcement. ICE is lying to Congress and the American people about the steps it is taking to ensure its 10,000 new officers faithfully uphold the Constitution and can perform their jobs.”

Blumenthal’s office did not confirm whether Schwank or the other, still anonymous whistleblower provided the documents released Monday in a 90-page memorandum from minority staff of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.

The documents show ICE has eliminated more than a dozen practical exams that ICE officers previously needed to graduate. In July 2021, a cadet needed to pass 25 practical exams to graduate. Now, nine are required.

Eliminated exams include “Judgment pistol shooting,” “Criminal encounters,” and “Determine removability.”

“All of these are now instead evaluated, if at all, mainly by open-book, multiple-choice written exams and without any graded practical examinations,” the memo states.

Comparisons between the program’s syllabus table of contents and general information sections from July 2025 — before the surge in hiring — and this month show that ICE appears to have cut whole courses, such as use of force simulation training, U.S. government structure, criminal vs. removal proceedings, and use of force.

Earlier this month, acting ICE Director Todd Lyons testified to Congress that while the agency had reduced the number of training days to 42 from 75, “We went from five days a week to six days a week. Five days a week was five eight-hour days. We’ve gone to six 12-hour days.”

But the documents appear to contradict Lyons’ testimony.

“The schedules reflected on these documents indicate that current ICE recruits receive nearly 250 fewer hours of training than previous cohorts of recruits,” the memo states.

The training reductions come as ICE plans to bring up more than 4,000 new Enforcement and Removal Operations officers this fiscal year, which ends in September. One of the documents notes that ICE had graduated 803 new officers in 2026 as of Jan. 29 and projected 3,204 more graduates by the end of the fiscal year.

In a written statement, Blumenthal encouraged more whistleblowers to come forward.

“We know about the Trump Administration’s decimation of training for immigration officers and its secret policy to shred your Constitutional rights because of the brave Americans who are speaking out today,” he wrote. “They are coming to Congress because we have the responsibility to not only bear witness to these crimes, but to do something to make sure they don’t happen again.”

MILAN — Talk about a closing ceremony.

The final medals of the Milan-Cortina Games were handed out Sunday and these Olympics truly saved the best for last, with the U.S. men’s hockey game grabbing the last gold with a 2-1 overtime win over Canada.

Of course it went to overtime. How else should a U.S.-Canada final end?

Jack Hughes, left alone on the left wing, provided the winning goal 1:41 into overtime, beating Canadian goalie Jordan Binnington cleanly and setting off a wild celebration that left the ice littered with U.S. gloves, sticks and helmets. The Canadian players watched from the bench, many with their heads in their gloves hands.

The other goals came from Matt Boldy, who gave the U.S. a lead early in the first period, and Cale Makar, who evened things for Canada late in the second.

The medal was the 33rd of these Games for the U.S. and the 12th gold, most by an American team in the Winter Olympics. They finished second to Norway, which won a record 41 medals, 18 of them gold.

The title was the Americans’ first in men’s hockey since 1980 and it came on the 46th anniversary of the “Miracle On Ice” win over the mighty Soviets, in what was essentially a semifinal in the Lake Placid Games.

The Canadian team the U.S. beat Sunday was no less mighty. It scored 27 times on its unbeaten run to the final, with Connor McDavid getting 13 points, a record for an Olympic tournament featuring NHL players. And with the NHL players returning to the Winter Games for the first time in 12 years, Canada may have had more elite-level marquee players than any team in Olympic history.

U.S. players celebrate immediately after beating Canada in overtime for the gold medal at the Milan-Cortina Olympic Games on Sunday.

(David J. Phillip / Associated Press)

But it was the U.S. that drew first blood, scoring in the sixth minute on a brilliant individual effort from Boldy. The play started with Toronto Maples Leafs captain Auston Matthews digging the puck out along the boards in the U.S. end. He then fed Boldy, a Minnesota Wild forward, who flipped the puck ahead of him as he entered the Canadian zone.

Boldy had Makar and Devon Toews to beat, which he did by skating between them before backhanding the puck by Binnington for his second goal of the tournament.

Back in the Catman Cafe in Mansfield, Mass., where Boldy’s mom Jen works as a bartender, the crowd came to its feet and cheered. It was the third time in as many elimination games that Canada trailed entering the second period.

The turning point in regulation came in a three-minute span in the middle of the second period. First, U.S. goalie Connor Hellebuyck stopped McDavid at the end of a breakaway it. Then less than a minute later, the U.S. took two penalties 28 seconds apart, giving Canada a five-on-three power play.

U.S. goaltender Connor Hellebuyck blocks a shot by Canada’s Macklin Celebrini during the third period Sunday.

(Carolyn Kaster / Associated Press)

With the crowd chanting “USA! USA!,” Hellebuyck, who stopped 41 shots in a phenomenal effort, came up big again and the Americans killed both penalties. The U.S. was 18 for 18 on the penalty kill in the tournament.

Makar, however, wouldn’t be denied later in the period, sending a blistering wrister from the center of the right circle just over Hellebuyck’s arm 84 seconds before the intermission. The score stayed that way until Hughes’ goal.

The game was arguably the most-anticipated event of the Milan-Cortina Games — in North America, if not in Italy. Hundreds of bars and restaurants in the U.S. and Canada were packed for early morning viewing parties. In Toronto, Scotiabank Arena, home to the Maple Leafs, opened its doors at 7 a.m. and sold $15 tickets to people to watch the game on TV. In Lake Placid, N.Y., the Olympic Center cafe opened to fans at 8 a.m. while in Milan, the 14,000 people packed into the Santa Giulia Arena were a sea of red Canadian jerseys and white American ones.

Six times the U.S. has finished second to Canada in an Olympic hockey tournament, the last in 2010 when Sidney Crosby’s goal in overtime gave Canada a record ninth gold medal. Crosby, Canada’s captain, did not dress for Sunday’s game after sustaining a lower-body injury earlier in the tournament.

United States players celebrate after defeating Canada for the gold medal at the Milan-Cortina Games on Sunday.

(Hassan Ammar / Associated Press)

That wasn’t the only sign this game would be different for the Americans. As the team was wrapping up its final practice in Milan on Saturday, a spider dropped from the ceiling. Don’t kill it, a local volunteer warned the players. In Italy, the appearance of a spider is considered a sign of coming good fortune.

With the U.S. beating Canada in overtime in the women’s gold-medal last Thursday, the Milan-Cortina Games marked the first time the Americans have beaten Canada in both hockey finals. Canada has swept the men’s and women’s gold three times, in 2002, 2010 and 2014.

SOCORRO, Texas — In a Texas town at the edge of the Rio Grande and a tall metal border wall, rumors swirled that federal immigration officials wanted to purchase three hulking warehouses to transform into a detention center.

As local officials scrambled to find out what was happening, a deed was filed showing the Department of Homeland Security had already inked a $122.8-million deal for the 826,000-square-foot warehouses in Socorro, a bedroom community of 40,000 people outside El Paso.

“Nobody from the federal government bothered to pick up the phone or even send us any type of correspondence letting us know what’s about to take place,” said Rudy Cruz Jr., the mayor of the predominantly Latino town of low-slung ranch homes and trailer parks, where orchards and irrigation ditches share the landscape with strip malls, truck stops, recycling plants and distribution warehouses.

Socorro is among at least 20 communities across the U.S. whose large warehouses have become stealth targets for Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s $45-billion expansion of detention centers.

As public support for the agency and President Trump’s immigration crackdown sags, communities both red and blue are objecting to mass detentions and raising concerns that the facilities could strain water supplies and other services while reducing local tax revenue.

In many cases, mayors, county commissioners, governors and members of Congress learned about ICE’s ambitions only after the agency bought or leased space for detainees, leading to shock and frustration even in areas that have backed Trump.

“I just feel,” said Cruz, whose wife was born in Mexico, “that they do these things in silence so that they don’t get opposition.”

Communities scramble for information

ICE, which is part of the Department of Homeland Security, has purchased at least seven warehouses in Arizona, Georgia, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Texas, signed deeds show. Other deals have been announced but not finalized, though buyers scuttled sales in eight locations.

Homeland Security objected to calling the sites warehouses, emphasizing in a statement that they would be “very well structured detention facilities meeting our regular detention standards.”

The process has been chaotic at times. ICE last week acknowledged that it made a “mistake” when it announced warehouse purchases in Chester, N.Y., and Roxbury, N.J. Roxbury then announced Friday that the sale there had closed.

Homeland Security has confirmed that it is looking for more detention space but hasn’t disclosed individual sites ahead of acquisitions. Some cities learned only through reporters that ICE was scouting warehouses. Others were tipped off by a spreadsheet circulating online among activists whose source is unclear.

It wasn’t until Feb. 13 that the scope of the warehouse project was confirmed, when the governor’s office in New Hampshire, where there is backlash to a planned 500-bed processing center, released an ICE document showing the agency plans to spend $38.3 billion to boost detention capacity to 92,000 beds.

Since Trump took office, the number of people detained by ICE has increased to 75,000 from 40,000, spread across more than 225 sites.

ICE could use the warehouses to consolidate and to increase capacity. The document describes a project that includes eight large-scale detention centers, capable of housing 7,000 to 10,000 detainees each, and 16 smaller regional processing centers. The document also refers to the acquisition of 10 existing “turnkey” facilities.

The project is funded through Trump’s massive tax and spending cuts law enacted last year that nearly doubled the Homeland Security budget. To build the detention centers, the Trump administration is using military contracts.

Those contracts allow for a high degree of secrecy and enable Homeland Security to move quickly without following the usual processes and safeguards, said Charles Tiefer, a professor emeritus of law at the University of Baltimore Law School.

Socorro facility could be among the largest

In Socorro, the ICE-owned warehouses are so large that 4½ Walmart Supercenters could fit inside, in contrast to the remnants of the austere Spanish colonial and mission architecture that define the town.

At a recent City Council meeting, public comments stretched for hours. “I think a lot of innocent people are getting caught up in their dragnet,” said Jorge Mendoza, an El Paso County retiree whose grandparents immigrated to the U.S. from Mexico.

Many speakers invoked concerns about three recent deaths at an ICE detention facility at the nearby Ft. Bliss Army base.

Communities fear a financial hit

Even communities that backed Trump in 2024 have been caught off-guard by ICE’s plans and have raised concerns.

In rural Pennsylvania’s Berks County, commissioner Christian Leinbach called the district attorney, the sheriff, the jail warden and the county’s head of emergency services when he first heard ICE might buy a warehouse in Upper Bern Township, three miles from his home.

No one knew anything.

A few days later, a local official in charge of land records informed him that ICE had bought the building — promoted by developers as a “state-of-the art logistics center” — for $87.4 million.

“There was absolutely no warning,” Leinbach said during a meeting in which he raised concerns that turning the warehouse into a federal facility would mean a loss of more than $800,000 in local tax money.

ICE has touted the income taxes its workers would pay, though the facilities themselves will be exempt from property taxes.

A Georgia center

In Social Circle, Ga., which also strongly supported Trump in 2024, officials were stunned by ICE’s plans for a facility that could hold 7,500 to 10,000 people after first learning about it through a reporter.

The city, which has a population of 5,000 and worries about the infrastructure needs for such a detention center, heard from the Homeland Security Department only after the $128.6-million sale of a 1-million-square-foot warehouse was completed. Like Socorro and Berks County, Social Circle questioned whether the water and sewage system could keep up.

ICE has said it did due diligence to ensure the sites don’t overwhelm city utilities. But Social Circle said the agency’s analysis relied on a yet-to-be built sewer treatment plant.

“To be clear, the City has repeatedly communicated that it does not have the capacity or resources to accommodate this demand, and no proposal presented to date has demonstrated otherwise,” the city said in a statement.

And in the Phoenix suburb of Surprise, officials sent a scathing letter to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem after ICE without warning bought a massive warehouse in a residential area about a mile from a high school. Arizona Atty. Gen. Kris Mayes, a Democrat, raised the prospect of going to court to have the site declared a public nuisance.

Crowds wait to speak in Socorro

Back in Socorro, people waiting to speak against the ICE facility spilled out of the City Council chambers, some standing beside murals paying tribute to the World War II-era bracero program that allowed Mexican farmworkers to be guest workers in the U.S. The program stoked Socorro’s economy and population before the Eisenhower administration in the 1950s began mass deportations aimed at people who had crossed the border illegally.

Eduardo Castillo, formerly an attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice, told city officials that it is intimidating but “not impossible” to challenge the federal government.

“If you don’t at least try,” he said, “you will end up with another inhumane detention facility built in your jurisdiction and under your watch.”

Hollingsworth and Lee write for the Associated Press and reported from Kansas City, Mo., and Socorro, respectively. AP writers Holly Ramer in Concord, N.H., and Marc Levy in Harrisburg, Pa., contributed to this report.

USA meanwhile have stars of their own, but don’t have the attacking gifts of the Canadians.

“The Tkachuk brothers [Brady and Matthew], and Jack Eichel, that attacking line has worked well together,” Bennett said.

“What they have not had is much scoring from captain Auston Matthews, he has not yet taken any of the games by the horns. They are OK, but not more than that.”

However, the Americans have the best defenceman at the Games in Quinn Hughes, who scored the crucial winner against Sweden.

“He might be the best three-on-three player in the world,” said Bennett. “He loves to keep possession, and is always looking to make an exciting play.”

It sets up a mouth-watering finale of an Olympic ice hockey competition which has benefitted hugely from the return of National Hockey League (NHL) players for the first time since 2014.

The attendance of players from the top North American league was in doubt for a time over concerns about the ice quality at the unfinished Milano Santagiulia Ice Hockey Arena, but they have been a major boon for the Games.

“This is the highest level of hockey we have ever seen at an Olympics,” said Bennett. “The NHL players have made it a different world.

“At the last two Olympics, games have been good but have missed the quality in the final third, the big moments. Players didn’t have the skillset to break a game, so saw a lot of tight, dull games

“Some of what the players have been doing here has been mind-blowing. One of the goals scored for Canada, McDavid saucered this pass from the back door [behind the goal], it lands as McKinnon is shooting, on the half-volley. That’s when you recognise it.

“I have been getting phone calls from people in the hockey world, all they have been saying is, this is so good. There have been periods where Kent [Simpson, BBC co-commentator] and I have just been sat watching, smiling, laughing.”

Canada have won gold in three of the five Olympics when NHL players have featured and will fancy their chances in a game on Sunday which could be as fascinating in the stands as it is on the ice.

It is highly likely that Canadian prime minister Mark Carney will be in Milan for the game.

Not only is Canada as a country hockey-mad, but so is Carney – when working as governor of the Bank of England, he would play for a recreational team in Haringey, north London.

The big question is whether his American counterpart will also be in Italy.

U.S. Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi declared a triumph against California on Friday, touting an appellate court ruling that she said blocked a state ban on immigration agents and other law enforcement officers wearing masks.

“The 9th Circuit has now issued a FULL stay blocking California’s ban on masks for federal law enforcement agents,” Bondi posted on the social media site X, calling the Feb. 19 decision a “key victory.”

Bondi, however, appeared confused about which case the court was ruling on this week.

A federal judge in Los Angeles blocked California’s first-in-the-nation mask ban 10 days earlier, on Feb. 9.

At the time, U.S. District Judge Christina A. Snyder said she was “constrained” to block the law because it included only local and federal officers, while exempting state law enforcement.

The state did not appeal that decision.

Instead, on Wednesday, the law’s author Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) introduced a new mask bill without the problematic carve-out for state officers.

With the initial legal challenge already decided and the new bill still pending in the legislature, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has no reason to revisit the mask ban.

The ruling that Bondi appeared to reference involves a separate California law requiring law enforcement officers to display identification while on duty.

Snyder had previously ruled the “No Vigilantes Act” could take effect because it did not exempt state police, a decision the Justice Department appealed to the 9th Circuit.

The appellate court is set to review the matter early next month. Until then, the court issued an injunction that pauses the state law from taking effect.

Issuing a temporary administrative injunction is a common procedural move, allowing judges to freeze things in the status quo until the court has a chance to weigh the law and come to a decision.

Thursday’s order set a hearing in the Richard H. Chambers U.S. Court of Appeals in Pasadena for March 3, indicating the case is far from over.

Bill Essayli, who leads the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles, also celebrated with a post on X, calling Thursday’s order “another key win for the Justice Department.” He too suggested the injunction somehow involved the mask case.

A spokesperson for the U.S. Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The law requiring officers to show ID is less controversial than the mask ban. But it may still face an uphill battle in the appellate court. A three-judge panel is set to hear the case, comprising two judges nominated to the bench by President Trump and one by President Obama. One of the Trump appointees, Judge Mark Bennett of Hawaii, has previously signaled skepticism over the administration’s immigration enforcement policies.

At issue in the ID case is whether California’s law interferes with or controls the operations of the federal government, actions prohibited by the supremacy clause of the U.S. Constitution. Snyder ruled that the identification law was more akin to speed limits on the highway, which apply equally to everyone, a decision the appellate court could reject.

A ruling is not expected before mid-March, and would not directly affect the push by state lawmakers to pass a revised mask ban.

Recent polls show more than 60% of Americans want U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers and other federal agents unmasked. More than a dozen states are pursuing laws similar to California’s.

In Washington, congressional Democrats have made a mask ban for ICE a key issue in the ongoing partial government shutdown, vowing not to fund the Department of Homeland Security until one is enacted.

Legal experts have said the issue likely will not be resolved until it reaches the Supreme Court.

MILAN — A gold medal that seemed firmly in the grasp of the U.S. women’s hockey team nearly slipped through its fingers in the final of the Milan-Cortina Games on Thursday, but the Americans rallied to win 2-1 on Megan Keller’s goal just over four minutes into overtime.

Kristin O’Neill’s shorthanded goal less than a minute into the second period gave Canada its goal while Hilary Knight matched that for the U.S. with 2:04 to play, deflecting a Laila Edwards’ slap shot from the high slot through her legs and past Canadian goalie Ann-Renee Desbiens to send the game to the extra period.

The goal, Knight’s 15th in Olympic competition, broke the American record and came seconds after U.S. coach John Wroblewski had pulled his goalie for an extra attacker.

Keller then won it, taking a long Taylor Heise pass on the left wing, racing into the Canadian zone, stickhandling around defender Claire Thompson before beating goalie Desbiens cleanly.

The gold was the second in the last three Olympics for the Americans, who are ranked No. 1 in the world. Both have come against Canada while the victory was the eighth straight for the U.S. over their northern neighbor dating to last April’s world championship.

The overtime rules are unique for gold-medal games, with the teams playing three-on-three for 20-minute periods, with the first goal deciding the winner. Games cannot end in a shootout.

In the preliminary round, overtimes were limited to five minutes, followed by a five-round shootout. In the knockout stage, the overtime period was extended to 10 minutes, followed by a shootout.

None of that figured in Thursday’s result.

The young Americans, who had 12 women playing in their first Olympics, looked uncharacteristically rattled in a scoreless first period in which they took two penalties — one for too many players on the ice — and were outshot 8-6. It was just the third time in the tournament the U.S. went an entire period without a goal.

Things got worse 54 seconds into the second period when O’Neill outskated Edwards up the center of the ice on a breakaway, took a short centering pass from Laura Stacey, then deked U.S. goalie Aerin Frankel to the ice before beating her to her gloved side for the first goal of the game.

That snapped a 352-minute scoreless streak for the U.S. and marked the first time the Americans trailed in Milan.

For much of the game Canada was faster, smarter and more poised. And Desbiens was spectacular in goal. In Canada’s group-play loss to the U.S., she was pulled in the third period after giving up five goals. This time she came within two minutes of shutting out a team that had scored 31 times in its previous six games.

WASHINGTON — At Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facilities across the country, detainees go without medicine for serious health conditions, endure miscarriages while shackled and are dying in record numbers, a group of U.S. senators said.

In a letter sent Friday to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and ICE senior official Todd Lyons, 22 Democratic lawmakers alleged that a “dramatic” surge in deaths in federal immigration custody is a “clear byproduct” of the Trump administration’s mass deportation agenda and rapid expansion of detention.

“Each death in ICE custody is a tragedy and, based on the evidence available from agency records, 911 calls, and medical experts, many could have been prevented if not for this Administration’s decisions,” the senators wrote. The letter, released Tuesday, was led by Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin and signed by California Sen. Alex Padilla.

At least 32 people died in ICE custody in 2025, they asserted. That’s triple the previous year’s total and more deaths than were recorded during the entire Biden administration. ICE has reported seven deaths so far this year, as well as seven in December alone.

In the letter, the senators demanded detailed information about the agency’s death investigations, medical standards and oversight procedures.

The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, did not respond to the allegations but has repeatedly defended its detention standards. In a statement, ICE said it is “committed to ensuring that all those in custody reside in safe, secure and humane environments,” adding that detainees receive medical, dental and mental health screenings within 12 hours of arrival, full health assessments within 14 days and access to 24-hour emergency care.

The lawmakers’ warning comes amid mounting allegations that detention facility staff have withheld critical medication, delayed emergency responses and failed to provide adequate mental health care.

The agency came under flak recently after a Texas medical examiner ruled the January death of a Cuban immigrant a homicide after witnesses said they saw guards choking him to death.

In Calexico, Calif., Luis Beltrán Yanez-Cruz, 68, died after more than a month in detention, records show; the Honduran national’s family alleged that he repeatedly reported worsening stomach and chest pain but received only pain medication.

The recent rise in deaths coincides with a dramatic expansion of the detention system. Funding for ICE roughly tripled after Congress passed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. The agency has used the funds to increase detention capacity, holding more than 67,000 people nationwide after reaching a historic high of approximately 73,000, many of whom have no criminal history, the letter says.

Last week, the Trump administration announced $38.3 billion in partnerships with private prison corporations, including GEO Group and CoreCivic, to further scale up detention space. One planned facility near Phoenix will cost $70 million and span the equivalent of seven football fields, according to the lawmakers. ICE has also reopened facilities that were previously shuttered over chronic staffing shortages and medical concerns.

Concerns about conditions have extended to California. Last month, Padilla and Sen. Adam Schiff toured a for-profit detention center in California City after reports of unsafe facilities, inadequate medical care and limited access to attorneys.

“It’s the tragic result of a system failing to meet the most basic duty of care,” Padilla said in a statement, citing reports of mold in food, unclean drinking water and barriers to medical care.

A federal judge recently ordered the administration to provide adequate healthcare and improved access to counsel at the facility, concluding that detainees were likely to “suffer irreparable harm” without court intervention.

In their letter, the senators argued that the rapid growth of the detention system has outpaced oversight and accountability. They cited internal audits documenting violations of detention standards, allegations that ICE failed to pay third-party medical providers for months and analyses of 911 calls from large facilities showing repeated cardiac events, seizures and suicide attempts.

“Rather than accepting responsibility for deaths in government custody and providing detailed facts about the circumstances of each death,” the senators wrote, “the Department of Homeland Security has attempted to smear deceased individuals’ reputations by emphasizing details about their immigration status and their alleged wrongdoing.”

As detention capacity continues to expand, the climbing death tallies underscore the extent to which the Trump administration has overhauled the immigration detention system, and Democrats say the results are fraught.

The opposition party has grown more unified after the fatal shootings of two U.S. citizens by federal agents in Minnesota, which coincided with reports of record high detention deaths in December.

Discord culminated in a partial government shutdown that began Friday when Senate Democrats refused to fund the Department of Homeland Security until the Trump administration agrees to reform at the agency.

When women take the ice for Thursday’s Olympic free skate in the global fashion capital of Milan, five skaters will compete in dresses made by Los Angeles-based designer Lisa McKinnon.

McKinnon has become the must-have name in figure skating couture, dressing the entirety of the U.S. and South Korea women’s teams. Americans Alysa Liu, Amber Glenn and Isabeau Levito wore McKinnon’s designs in the short program and will do so again in the free skate.

And one of those dresses may be featured on the medal podium. Liu stands in third place after Tuesday’s short program, while Levito is in eighth and Glenn tumbled to 13th with the free skate still to come.

McKinnon knows exactly how clothing needs to fit on bodies moving across the ice — for spins, for jumps, for everything it takes to win. The fabric must be able to stretch in all directions, which necessitates a four-way stretch fabric. Design with a two-way stretch and a skater might not be able to lift their arm. Dress skaters in spandex, power mesh and stretch velvet, and they’ll move like they do in training.

American Amber Glenn competes in the figure skating short program at the Winter Olympics in Milan on Tuesday.

(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times)

McKinnon sources most of the fabric locally from the fashion district in downtown L.A.

“It’s really great to just go in person because sometimes it’s the fabric that can inspire you to create something with,” McKinnon said.

McKinnon’s time on the ice that taught her how to create fashion for an athlete tailored for movement and aesthetic appeal. She grew up as a competitive figure skater in Sweden, and she started making bodysuits and dresses — which she wore to practice — for herself at age 11 or 12. By 16, she was designing dresses for elite skaters in her hometown, Mariestad, Sweden, including a Swedish national champion. At the time, they shared a coach, and the coach asked McKinnon to design a dress for the skater.

“They had seen the dresses that I made for other skaters,” she said. “They were just — you know — putting their faith in my hands that I could do this.”

After high school, McKinnon skated in tours in Europe and then North America. In the United States, she first settled in Las Vegas, where she designed dresses for local skaters. When she moved to L.A., bigger name skaters started calling. She designed for Ashley Wagner, three-time U.S. champion, and Karen Chen, who competed in her dresses at the 2018 Olympic Games. McKinnon says they were the ones who “got her noticed.” Noticed to the point that Milan is by no means the designer’s Olympic debut. In 2018, she outfitted pairs gold medalists Aljona Savchenko and Bruno Massot from Germany.

Since then, McKinnon has become the go-to designer for elite women’s figure skaters in the United States. At U.S. nationals in St. Louis in January, eight of the 18 senior women competed in McKinnon’s dresses. In the final warm-up alone — composed of the six skaters leading after the short program — five wore McKinnon designs. There, Glenn, Liu and Levito stood on the podium in her dresses.

In St. Louis, McKinnon hand delivered a dress to Liu, the reigning world champion who debuted a long-awaited Lady Gaga free skate routine. Liu practiced in the dress and McKinnon was able to make on-the-spot adjustments.

Surprisingly, hand delivery isn’t the norm for the dresses that run from $3,000-$8,000, averaging around $5,000 (McKinnon charges by the hour). Because McKinnon designs for skaters who train all over the country — Liu in Oakland, Glenn in Colorado Springs, Colo., and Levito near Philadelphia in southern New Jersey — FedEx shepherds the dresses across the country. Skaters make sure the dresses fit OK before McKinnon and her four-person seamstress team add sparkle, which usually means a crystal count in the thousands. Beads, paillettes and pearls are often mixed into the shine. Each crystal is hand affixed with E6000 glue.

American Christina Carreira and partner Anthony Ponomarenko compete during the ice dancing free skate at the Winter Olympics on Feb. 11 in Milan.

(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times)

McKinnon affixed faux rose pedals to a dress for American ice dancer Christina Carreira to debut during the skater’s own Olympic debut. Midway through the skating season, Carreira and partner, Anthony Ponomarenko, returned to their free dance from two years ago, “Perfume: The Story of a Murderer.” They needed new costumes to differentiate from their performances two years ago, and McKinnon had already designed costumes for the team’s rhythm dance to La Bouche’s “Sweet Dreams.” McKinnon made the new dress in a little over a week, and it was set to arrive three days before Carreira left her training base in London, Canada, for the Games.

Except the dress didn’t arrive.

McKinnon learned that the package was stuck at a FedEx facility in Memphis, Tenn., after Winter Storm Fern pummeled the region.

“We would call and sometimes they’d say it’s in L.A., sometimes they’d say it’s in Memphis, so we didn’t know where it was,” Carreira said. “We weren’t getting answers, but going on social media actually helped.”

Carreira woke up after her flight to Milan to find an Instagram message with a photo of her dress. A woman told Carreira that her husband had found the package and put it on the first plane to Detroit, where Carreira’s coach, Scott Moir, retrieved the package to bring to Milan.

Carreira first tried on the dress in Milan. “It fit perfectly,” she said. “Lisa has never met me. She’s only seen me over FaceTime, and the two dresses she’s made fit perfectly.”

Carreira and Ponomarenko placed 11th in their Olympic debut.

“I wanted a dress that made me feel special at the Olympics,” Carreira said. “And both of those dresses did that.”

Carreira came to McKinnon’s designs through Glenn, who skated her short program to Madonna’s “Like a Prayer” wearing a McKinnon design based on the 1989 music video. After admiring McKinnon’s designs, Carreira talked it over with Glenn at an early season competition in Oberstdorf, Germany.

“She said Lisa was super easy to work with,” Carreira said. “The dresses fit perfectly.”

McKinnon designs from her studio, which occupies the first floor of her apartment in West Hollywood. There, McKinnon and her team watch their dresses take the runway in Milan. Except the runway is made of ice and the skaters will do much more than walk.

MILAN — After a one-hour on-ice training session and on the way to yet another interview, Isabeau Levito has one big problem on her mind.

One of the plants in the U.S. figure skater’s room has started growing mold. She needs to figure out how to wrangle it.

“That’s our task of the day,” Levito said Monday.

Nevermind that the biggest competition of her life was starting in about 24 hours.

Isabeau Levito competes during the free skating competition at the U.S. figure skating championships on Jan. 9 in St. Louis.

(Jeff Roberson / Associated Press)

Levito and the United States’ “Blade Angels” are trying to stay calm under pressure at the Olympics, where chaos has reigned at Milano Ice Skating Arena.

The United States was expected to dominate figure skating in Milan, but has yet to win a gold medal in an individual event entering Tuesday’s women’s short program. A supposed sure-fire gold medal disappeared in stunning fashion with Ilia Malinin’s eighth-place collapse. Three-time reigning world ice dance champions Madison Chock and Evan Bates settled for a “bittersweet” silver that was marred by judging controversies.

But the talent and depth on what is likely the best U.S. women’s Olympic team in decades could help end a 20-year Olympic medal drought in women’s singles skating. The last U.S. woman to stand on an Olympic podium for an individual event was Sasha Cohen in 2006. Sarah Hughes’ 2002 gold medal was the last for the United States in women’s singles.

Alysa Liu has already ended one skid. The reigning world champion was the first U.S. woman to win the world title since 2006. With blonde horizontal stripes dyed into her black hair and a piercing in her upper lip, the 20-year-old Liu is putting an alternative spin on figure skating.

Three-time national champion Amber Glenn combines power in her triple axel with emotion on the ice.

Levito, the 2024 world silver medalist, is the classic balletic skater who packs a humorous punch behind her teenage smile.

In a sport that once pitted young women against each other to fit a singular “ice princess” mold, the “Blade Angels” find their strength in their diversity.

“I really like that we’re all so different,” Levito said. “We have our own strengths and our own personalities and our own ways we want to look and appear. … We all have the same passion for the sport and have very aligned goals of wanting to do our best, and once we do that, we’re all happy, regardless of who beat who.”

NBC announcing team Tara Lipinski and Johnny Weir dubbed the trio of medal contenders “the big three,” but the skaters workshopped their own nickname after nationals. They nixed “Babes of Glory” and “Powerpuff Girls” for copyright concerns. Their final choice was a mashup of “Blades of Glory” and “Charlie’s Angels.” If you like it, credit Liu.

“If people don’t like it,” Liu said, “don’t say I made it.”

Liu and Glenn have already won a gold medal in Milan, helping the United States win the team event in dramatic fashion. But with the two events spaced more than one week apart, “being in a high-pressure atmosphere for so long takes its toll,” Glenn said.

The 26-year-old has faced additional challenges on social media at the Games. She had to resolve potential copyright issues concerning her free skate music and received threats for comments she made during a news conference when asked about President Trump’s policies regarding the LGBTQ+ community. Glenn, who identifies as bisexual and pansexual, encouraged people in the queer community to “stay strong during these hard times,” refusing to avoid political conversations because “politics affect us all.”

American Amber Glenn competes during the team skate at the Winter Olympics in Milan on Feb. 8.

(Natacha Pisarenko / Associated Press)

While she said Monday she doesn’t regret the comments, she has also had to take a break from social media to focus on her remaining competitions at the Olympics.

“I’m happy to do what I do and stand for what I stand for,” Glenn said. “But it has been —”

She paused.

“Complicated.”

Not only are the Olympic Games the largest stage for many sports and a dream that begins from childhood, but the spotlight has only increased with social media in recent years, Glenn said. Amid the pressure, she tries to lean on her teammates and embody the advice of U.S. figure skating alumni who tell her simply “enjoy it.”

“Four years ago, I could never have imagined even making it here,” Glenn said. “To just be here is a privilege that I don’t take lightly, and I need to remind myself of that and to just really soak in the experience, not just the results.”

Isabeau Levito skates during the U.S. figure skating championships on Jan. 11 in St. Louis.

(Jeff Roberson / Associated Press)

To reset after the team competition, the “Angels” went with the pairs skaters — whose competition started one week after the team event wrapped — to train at a U.S. facility in Bergamo, about a 50-minute drive outside of Milan. The training sessions are longer than what’s available at the competition venue, said Levito, who only took two training sessions in Milan before Tuesday’s short program.

The last U.S. figure skater to take Olympic ice, Levito has passed her time at the Games in the Olympic village. After making the Olympic team, the New Jersey native was most excited about the village. To her, it was going to be like “a magic kingdom,” she said before the Games.

It’s lived up to every expectation. She walks by the Olympic rings every morning. She and her teammates lounged in front of the TV watching the pairs competition Sunday and Glenn ordered ramen. Levito and U.S. ice dancer Christina Carreira named the adopted plants in their shared room Christabeau and Isatina. Levito is loving the experience so much that she won’t even harp on the fact that she briefly battled food poisoning.

She felt “horrible” off the ice, but it didn’t affect her training.

“When I was skating,” Levito said, “I flipped a switch in my head.”

She’ll need to switch it again Tuesday.

After some 150 students walked out of Redlands schools early this month in support of immigrants they were dealt an unexpected consequence: a temporary suspension of school privileges as administrators enforced rules that forbid them from leaving a classroom without permission.

The punishment — the loss of access to sports, dances, performances and other school events — in a school system with a conservative-majority governing board stands in sharp contrast to the positive reception that student activism has received in some other California school systems, including Los Angeles Unified School District.

The disparate actions show how school officials throughout various states and school systems — in blue and red regions — have been dealing with a wave of student walkouts that began in late January as part of national protests over the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement crackdown.

Redlands school officials said the suspension of privileges will remain in place until a student satisfies certain conditions, such as attending a session of Saturday school or performing four hours of community service.

“The superintendent’s message is consistent: We care deeply about our students, and we recognize that many young people are dealing and engaging with issues they see in the news and in their community,” said district Public Information Officer Christine Stephens. “Students have the right to express themselves peacefully. At the same time, the district must uphold its responsibility to maintain a safe, supervised learning environment during the school day.”

Districts that expressed support for students’ free-speech rights included those in San Francisco and Sacramento. In Palo Alto, district officials worked with schools to make sure students could carry out their announced walkout safely.

L.A. Unified officials have not set districtwide penalties for walkouts — and its leaders align with the students’ anti-ICE critique. Supt. Alberto Carvalho, an immigrant himself, has pledged to do all in the district’s power to maintain schools as sanctuaries for children of immigrant families — and activists patrol outside schools to help ensure safe passage to campus for parents and students.

At the same time, LAUSD educators have encouraged students to stay on campus for safety reasons. In L.A. there were reports of physical confrontations between officers and protesters after students walked out on Feb. 5 and on Feb. 13, when three federal agents were injured after some in the crowd threw objects at them.

State and education leaders in Texas and Florida outlined significant consequences for students and educators related to student walkouts. In Texas, state leaders have talked about possible suspension and expulsion for students, dismissal for educators and state takeovers for school districts.

The ACLU of Georgia sent a letter Jan. 29 expressing concerns to the Cobb County School District after it threatened out-of-school suspension, loss of parking and extracurricular privileges and warned of college admissions consequences for participation in walkouts.

The ACLU warned that the school system would be acting illegally if walkout participants were singled out for especially harsh treatment based on their viewpoints.

The young activists

Student high school activists — in Redlands and elsewhere — said they are willing to face consequences, if necessary, to stand up for what they believe by protesting the actions of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

“As organizers, it’s expected for us to take the first wave of retaliation,” said Redlands High School senior Jax Hardy. “So while we would be very disappointed in the district for doing such a thing, for us, it’s important to exercise our free speech rights to oppose a government that is encroaching on our human rights.”

Student leaders see their protests as a civics lesson in action.

“It’s necessary to act, because, if we don’t, who knows how things will escalate further,” said Redlands High junior Aya F, who goes by her last initial rather than her full legal name. “So that’s why we feel it’s important for us to stage this walkout.”

Redlands is about 60 miles east of downtown L.A. and enrolls about 20,000 students. In November 2024 a conservative majority was elected to the five-person Redlands Board of Education, aligning the board with key policies of the Trump administration. Redlands joined a handful of ideologically similar California boards in approving policies that would allow parents to challenge library books with sexual content and prohibit display of the rainbow pride flag, which is associated with the LGBTQ+ community.

But the district stated that its actions on the walkouts have no ideology attached.

“The district’s response is not based on the viewpoint, theme or content of a student’s expression,” Stephens said.

Students walk out despite punishment

Some Redlands students organized another walkout Friday and organizers said they expected representation from students at seven middle and high schools. Many showed up from Redlands High School. They carried “Stop ICE” signs and Mexican flags and blew whistles as they made a 15-minute trek to a downtown intersection that some refer to as “Peace Corner.”

“I haven’t seen this many people in Redlands do anything ever,” said sophomore James Bojado, who also said that, for days, administrators had attempted to dissuade students with threats of discipline.

Several Redlands police vehicles patrolled the rally area, slowly rolling by.

A man in a sun hat shouted: “Why don’t you fly the American flag? Are you ashamed of America?”

“Leave us alone!” a chorus responded.

“My mom and my dad are immigrants,” said sophomore Carmen Robles. “Why deport families that care about America back to where they came from?”

At the rally, student demands included an ironclad district commitment that ICE will never be allowed on campus. Students also called for the abolition of ICE and spoke of wanting the school board to rescind what they regard as anti-LGBTQ+ policies. These include the flag ban and the book restriction policy.

During the Friday Redlands rally, there were a few tense minutes when a student in a MAGA hat was pelted by water bottles. The student spoke to police but also said he wasn’t hurt.

A person wearing a MAGA hat gets water and pizza thrown at him during a student walkout and protest in Redlands.

(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)

Adult volunteers were on hand with the goal of keeping things safe and positive. Parent Toni Belcher said that students have a right to be heard.

“I’m happy to see all these kids trying to get their voice to matter,” Belcher said. “If it doesn’t now, it will. … They’re starting early.”

What the law says

The right of students to express themselves begins with the U.S. Constitution.

“You do not lose your right to free speech just by walking into school,” according to guidance from the American Civil Liberties Union. “You have the right to speak out, hand out flyers and petitions and wear expressive clothing in school — as long as you don’t disrupt the functioning of the school or violate the school’s content-neutral policies.”

A walkout, however, could be treated as a disruption. But greater punishment cannot be applied based on the nature of the views expressed.

Redlands Unified believes it is complying with that legal standard.

California law offers some additional protection for student protests, but it’s not unlimited.

A California law, which took effect in 2023, allows a middle or high school student to miss one day of school per year as an excused absence for a “civic or political event.” This includes, but is not limited to, “voting, poll-working, strikes, public-commenting, candidate speeches, political or civic forums and town halls.”

The bill’s author, then-state Sen. Connie Leyva, said at the time that the law “emphasizes the importance of getting students more involved in government and their community by prioritizing student opportunities for civic learning and engagement both within and outside their education.”

One caveat is that the law requires that “the pupil notifies the school ahead of the absence.”

Students exercising this right must be allowed to make up missed schoolwork without penalty. There are potential gray areas — such as whether a large-scale school walkout — which organizers intend to be dramatic — would fall outside this protection because students don’t formally check out, for example.

One Redlands parent said he notified the school that his son had permission to take part in an earlier walkout after the walkout. But his son was still penalized because, the parent said, he was not allowed to grant permission for his son retroactively.

State law does require advance notice, but it does not say parental permission is required for that one protected civic activity day per year. The law also stipulates that schools, at their discretion, can allow additional excused absences for civic participation.

The parent, who did not want to be named out of concern for retaliation, said his son was placed on a “No-Go List” for extracurricular activities and events.

President Trump and his allies are questioning ballot security. Democrats are warning of unconstitutional federal intervention. Experts and others are raising concerns about partisan redistricting and federal immigration agents intimidating people at the polls.

Voter trust in the upcoming midterm elections, meanwhile, has dropped off sharply, and across party lines, according to new research by the UC San Diego Center for Transparent and Trusted Elections.

Out of 11,406 eligible voters surveyed between mid-December and mid-January, just 60% said they were confident that midterm votes will be counted fairly — down from 77% who held such confidence in vote counting shortly after the 2024 presidential election.

Shifts in voter confidence are common after elections, with voters in winning parties generally expressing more confidence and voters in losing parties expressing less, said Thad Kousser, one of the center’s co-directors. However, the new survey found double-digit, across-the-board declines in confidence in the last year, he said.

According to voting experts, such drops in confidence and fears about voter intimidation are alarming — and raise serious questions about voter turnout in a pivotal midterm election that could radically reshape American politics.

While 82% of Republicans expressed at least some confidence in vote counting after Trump’s 2024 win, just 65% said they felt that way in the latest survey. Among Democrats, confidence dropped from 77% to 64%, and among independents from 73% to 57%, the survey found.

“Everyone — Democrats, Republicans, independents alike — have become less trusting of elections over the last year,” Kousser said, calling it a “parallel movement in this polarized era.”

Of course, what is causing those declines differs greatly by party, said Kousser’s co-director Lauren Prather, with distrust of mail ballots and noncitizens voting cited by half of Republicans, and concerns about eligible voters being unable to cast ballots because of fear or intimidation cited by nearly a quarter of Democrats.

Trump and other Republicans have repeatedly alleged that mail ballots contribute to widespread fraud and that noncitizen voting is a major problem in U.S. elections, despite neither claim being supported by evidence.

Dean C. Logan, Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk, oversees the registering of voters, maintaining voter files, administering federal, state, local and special elections and verifying initiatives, referenda and recall petitions.

(Gary Coronado / For The Times)

Many Democratic leaders and voting experts have raised concerns about disenfranchisement and intimidation of eligible voters, in part based on Republican efforts to enforce stricter voter ID and proof of citizenship requirements, and Trump suggesting his party should “take over” elections nationwide.

Others in Trump’s orbit have suggested Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents will be deployed to polling stations, and the FBI recently raided and seized ballots from Fulton County, Ga., long a target of Trump’s baseless claims of 2020 election fraud.

Prather said that research has long showed that “elite cues” — or messaging from political leaders — matter in shaping public perception of election security and integrity, so it is no surprise that the concerns being raised by Trump and other party elites are being echoed by voters.

But the survey also identified more bipartisan concerns, she said.

Voters of all backgrounds — including 51% of Democrats, 48% of independents and 34% of Republicans — said they do not trust that congressional districts are drawn to fairly reflect what voters want. They primarily blamed the opposing party for the problem, but nearly a quarter of both Democrats and Republicans also expressed dissatisfaction with their own party leaders, the survey found.

Various states have engaged in unprecedented mid-decade redistricting to win more congressional seats for their party, with Republicans seizing advantage in states such as Texas and Democrats seizing it in states such as California.

Voters of all backgrounds — including 44% of Democrats, 34% of independents and 30% of Republicans — also said they believe it is likely that ICE agents will be present at voting locations in their area, though they did not all agree on the implications.

Half of Democrats said such a presence would make them feel less confident that votes in their area would be counted accurately, compared with fewer than 14% who said it would make them more confident. Among Republicans, 48% said it would make them more confident, and about 8% less confident. Among independents, 19% said more confident, 32% less confident.

Perceptions of ICE at polling locations also varied by race, with 42% of Asian American voters, 38% of Hispanic voters, 29% of white voters and 28% of Black voters saying it would make them feel less confident, while 18% of Asian American voters, 24% of Hispanic voters, 27% of white voters and 21% of Black voters said it would make them feel more confident.

Among both Black and Hispanic voters, 46% said they expect to face intimidation while voting, compared with 35% of Asian American voters and just 10% of white voters. Meanwhile, 31% of Hispanic and Asian American voters, 21% of Black voters and 8% of white voters said they are specifically worried about being questioned by ICE agents at the polls.

A man waits in line to vote at Compton College in November.

(Michael Blackshire / Los Angeles Times)

Kousser said voters’ lack of confidence this cycle reflects a remarkable moment in American politics, when political rhetoric has caused widespread distrust not just in the outcome of elections, but in the basic structure and fairness of how votes are collected and counted — despite those structures being tested and proven.

“We’re at this moment now where there are people on both sides who are questioning what the objective conditions will be of the election — whether people will be able to freely make it to the polls, what the vote counting mechanisms will be — and that’s true sort of left, right, and center in American politics today,” he said.

Prather said research in other countries has shown that distrust in elections over time can cause voters to stop voting, particularly if they think their vote won’t be fairly counted. She does not think the U.S. has reached that point, as high turnout in recent elections has shown, but it is a longer-term risk.

What could have a more immediate effect are ICE deployments, “especially among groups that have worries about what turning out could mean for them if they expect ICE or federal agents to be there,” Prather said.

Election experts said voters with concerns should take steps to ensure their vote counts, including by double-checking they are registered and making a plan to vote early, by mail or with family and friends if they are worried about intimidation.

What voters should not do if they are worried about election integrity is decide to not vote, they said.

“The No. 1 thing on my list is and always will be: Vote,” said Sean Morales-Doyle, director of the Voting Rights and Elections Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University Law. “That sounds maybe trite or simple, but the only way we hold on to our democracy is if people continue to participate and continue to trust it and put their faith in it.”

Registrar voter staff members process ballots at the Orange County Registrar of Voters in Santa Ana in November.

(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)

“Now is the time to buckle down and figure out how to fortify our protections for fair elections, and not to give into the chaos and believe it’s somehow overwhelming,” said Rick Hasen, an election law expert and director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project at UCLA Law.

“I don’t want people to feel like nothing is working, it’s all overwhelming and they are just being paralyzed by all the news of these attacks, these threats,” said Sophia Lin Lakin, director of the Voting Rights Project at the ACLU. “There are a huge range of folks who are working to ensure that these elections go as smoothly as possible, and that if anything comes up, we are ready to respond.”

Mike Madrid, a Republican political consultant in California, said the erosion of confidence in U.S. elections was “a deliberate strategy” pushed by Trump for years to explain away legitimate election losses that embarrassed him, and facilitated by Republicans in Congress unwilling to check Trump’s lies to defend U.S. election integrity.

However, Democrats have added to the problem and become “the monster they are fighting” by gerrymandering blue states through redistricting measures such as California’s Proposition 50, which have further eroded American trust in elections, Madrid said.

Madrid said that he nonetheless expects high turnout in the midterms, because many voters have “the sense that the crisis is existential for the future, that literally everything is on the line,” but that the loss of trust is a serious issue.

“Without that trust, a form of government like democracy — at least the American form of democracy — doesn’t work,” he said.

Trump — who in a post Friday called Democrats “horrible, disingenuous CHEATERS” for opposing voter ID laws that most Americans support — has long called on his supporters to turn out and vote in massive numbers to give him the largest possible margin of victory, as a buffer against any election cheating against him. One of his 2024 campaign slogans was “Too Big to Rig.”

In recent days, some of Trump’s fiercest critics — including Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) — have made a similar pitch to Democrats.

In an interview with The Times, Schiff said that he is “deeply concerned” about the midterms given all of Trump’s threats, but that voters should understand that “the remedy here is to become more involved, not less.”

“The very best protection we’ll have is the most massive voter turnout we’ve ever had,” he said. “It’s going to be those with the most important title in our system — the voters — who end up saving this country.”

CAREFREE, Ariz. — Elizabeth H. paused recently outside the post office in this small, high-desert community, not far from where Easy Street meets Nonchalant Avenue.

She felt neither easy nor nonchalant.

“I think the climate imposed by the Trump administration is really sad and scary,” said Elizabeth, who asked to withhold her last name to avoid being attacked for the views she expressed.

“I don’t like the way that ICE is being used to bully citizens and even just people who are brown,” she continued. “And I don’t like that governors of blue states are being shut out while governors of red states are being welcomed. I just don’t think he treats us like we’re all Americans.”

For his part, Anthony D. finds little not to like about President Trump. He, too, asked not to use his last name, as did several others who agreed to talk politics.

“We finally don’t have a— in office that are destroying our country and worrying about everybody else in the world,” said Anthony, 66, a plumbing contractor and proudly blunt-spoken New York native. (Just like Trump, he pointed out.) “I mean, his tariffs are working. The negotiations are working. I just see a lot of positive coming out of that office.”

Even so, there’s something that bothers him: The way so many fellow citizens view the president and his America First agenda.

“Most people don’t like what he says, but look what he’s doing,” Anthony said as the late-morning crowd trickled into an upscale North Scottsdale shopping center. “You can hate the person, but don’t hate the message. He’s trying to do the right thing.”

Here in central Arizona, a prime battleground in November’s midterm election, there is precious little agreement about Trump, his policies and motivations.

Supporters see the president turning things around after four disastrous years of Joe Biden. Critics see him turning the country into a place they barely recognize.

There is puzzlement on both sides.

Over what others believe. Over how others can possibly believe what they believe, see the things they see and perceive Trump the way they perceive him.

And although some are eager for the midterm elections as a way to corral the president — “I don’t think they should only impeach, I think they should imprison,” Brent Bond, a 59-year-old Scottsdale artist, said of his hopes for a Democratic Congress — others fear an end to Trump’s nearly unfettered reign.

Or that nothing will change, regardless of what happens at the polls in November.

“The fact is, Trump is going to keep Trumping until he’s done,” said Elizabeth H., who’s semiretired at age 55 after a career in financial services. “My only relief is that he’s an old, old man and he’s not going to be here forever.”

Brent Bond would like to see Trump imprisoned, not just impeached.

(Mark Z. Barabak / Los Angeles Times)

Arizona’s 1st Congressional District climbs from northeastern Phoenix to the mountainous heart of the Sonoran Desert. It takes in the affluent enclaves of Scottsdale and Paradise Valley and — where the urban sprawl finally yields to cactus, palo verde and other flora — Carefree and the Old West-themed Cave Creek.

It is the whitest, wealthiest and best-educated of Arizona’s nine congressional districts, home to numerous upscale resorts, major medical campuses and a large population of retirees comfortably settled in one of many gated communities.

Affordability, as in struggling just to get by, is not a pressing issue here.

In 2020, Biden carried the district 50% to 49%. Four years later, Trump beat Kamala Harris 51% to 48%.

(The Down Ballot, which crunches election data, rated Arizona’s 1st District the median of 435 congressional districts nationwide, meaning in 2024 half were redder on the presidential level and half were bluer.)

For more than a decade, the area has been represented by Republican Dave Schweikert, a local political fixture since the 1990s.

He’s had to fight hard for reelection in recent years as the district, like the whole of Arizona, has grown more competitive. Rather than run again, Schweikert announced he would give up his seat to try for governor. The result is a free-for-all and one of the relatively few toss-up House races anywhere in the country.

A passel of candidates is running and the result will help determine whether Democrats, who need to flip three seats, will seize control of the House in November.

Despite those high stakes, however, the race doesn’t seem to have generated much voter interest, at least not yet. In dozens of interviews across the district, it was the relentless Trump who drew the most attention, admiration and exasperation.

Moe Modjeski, a supporter, allowed as how the president “is no altar boy.”

Even so, “I’ll take his policies over someone that might be nice and polite,” said the 69-year-old Scottsdale resident, a financial advisor who cited the sky-scraping stock market as one example of Trump’s success. “I mean, gas is about half the price it was a year or two ago.”

But for Liz R., who’s “never been a sky-is-falling type,” it certainly feels that way. The 75-year-old cited “everything from tariffs to ICE to destroying the healthcare system and controls for pollution.”

“I lived through the ‘60s and 70s and can’t remember a time when I feared so much for the future of our country,” said Liz, a retired medical technologist.

She’ll vote for a Democrat in November — to put a check on Trump, not because the Carefree resident has great faith in the party or its direction.

“I wish the Dems would get it together and maybe we could get more of a centrist that could unite and not get hung up on some of these social issues,” she said. “There’s a lot of economic issues, bread-and-butter issues, and I think that’s why the Republicans won [in 2024], because of the problems with immigration and inflation.”

As a border state, Arizona has long been at the forefront of the political fight over immigration. It was here lawmakers passed — and opponents spent years battling — legislation that effectively turned police into immigration officers, requiring them to demand the papers of anyone suspected of being in the country illegally

Thomas Campbell, with Keegan and Guinness, blamed blue-state politicians for any overreach by ICE agents.

(Mark Z. Barabak / Los Angeles Times)

Now that aggressive approach has become national policy, which is fine by Thomas Campbell, a retired architect and staunch Trump backer. He blamed any enforcement overreach on blue-state lawmakers.

“For some reason, the Democrats have decided they want to side with the criminals, so they don’t allow their police departments to cooperate,” said Campbell, 72, who stopped outside Paradise Valley’s town hall while running errands with his Irish setters, Guinness and Keegan. “If that wasn’t the case, there wouldn’t be any” controversy over ICE’s tactics.

Martha Cornelison agreed the border with Mexico needed to be secured and that serious lawbreakers should be deported.

But why, she wondered, are immigration agents scooping up honest taxpayers, parents with children born in the U.S. and others keeping on the straight and narrow?

“I think they’re going after the wrong people,” said the 76-year-old Scottsdale retiree as a friend, Lily, nodded in agreement. The two were sharing a bench in Scottsdale’s pueblo-inspired civic plaza, a nearby fountain burbling in the 80-degree sunshine.

“I think we need to look at our county jails, look at our city jails,” said Cornelison, who made her living selling large appliances. “How many illegal immigrants are, say, in Florence, which is our state prison? Send them back. Don’t go after Mr. Gonzalez who’s doing my lawn. Empty out our prisons.”

Back at the North Scottsdale shopping center, Denise F. was walking Chase, her Shih Tzu, past a parking lot brimming with Teslas, Mercedes and Cadillac SUVs.

The 73-year-old voted for Trump because she couldn’t abide Harris. But she’s disgusted with the president.

“I don’t like the division in the country. I think Trump thinks he’s a king,” said Denise, a retired banker. “He’s poking the bear with Venezuela and Greenland, Iran” — she poked the air as she named each country — “to see who he can engage in a possible war, which is not the way I think the United States should be.”

As Denise was finishing up, Anthony D., her friend and neighbor, strolled up and joined the conversation, offering his laudatory view of the president. “Trump’s a businessman and he’s running the country like a business,” Anthony said, as Denise looked on impassively.

“How did I do?” he asked after saying his piece.

“Great,” Denise replied amiably and the two walked off together, Chase between them.

There are two varieties of fencing: A-net and B-net.

A-net is more rigid, often permanent, and used to prevent racers from flying off the course and into dangerous areas, off cliffs, into rocks and the like.

B-net is temporary and closer to webbing that’s aimed at absorbing the kinetic energy of a falling skier. Frequently, there are multiple layers of B-net with space in between that combined to act as a catcher’s mitt.

“They put nets where you have really big fall zones and high-speed sections, places where you need that extra level of protection,” Morse said.

It isn’t like tumbling into a pit of foam blocks, though.

“The A-net is much more like hitting a trampoline,” Morse said. “The B-net is designed to come out of the ground and wrap you like a blanket. … When you go into the nets, your boot buckles, your bindings, your skis, they all get tangled in the webbing.”

So what does it feel like when you’re going 70-80 mph?

“Terrible,” he said. “It’s like you’re in a washing machine getting hit with sticks.”

Feb. 14 (UPI) — Two Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents are on administrative leave after investigators said evidence does not match their stories after one shot a Venezuelan man in Minneapolis.

The suspended agents’ names have not been released, and they might be fired and charged with crimes for allegedly lying about the circumstances leading up to the shooting on the night of Jan. 14 after investigators with the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Minnesota finish their review of the incident.

“A joint review by ICE and the Department of Justice of video evidence has revealed that sworn testimony provided by two separate officers appears to have made untruthful statements,” McLaughlin said in an email to Fox News Digital.

“Both officers have been immediately placed on administrative leave pending the completion of a thorough internal investigation,” she said, while referring to the agents’ statements as “false.”

An ICE agent shot Sosa-Celis in the thigh after he allegedly fled an attempted traffic stop and eventually exited his vehicle at an apartment complex.

The agent and Sosa-Celis were treated at a nearby hospital, and Sosa-Celis, Aljorna and Gabriel Alejandro Hernandez-Ledezma were arrested.

U.S. Attorney Daniel Rosen on Thursday filed a motion to dismiss criminal charges filed against Julia Cesar Sosa-Celis and Alfredo Alejandro Aljorna, both of whom are Venezuelan and were accused of beating a pursuing ICE agent with a snow shovel and the handle of a broom.

The agents’ statements were “materially inconsistent” with evidence that recently was discovered, Rosen said.

A federal judge agreed and granted the motion to dismiss on Friday.