January

Hollywood’s biggest night is here, along with the biggest red carpet of awards season.

Not only is it massive in size — it takes about 2,400 hours and more than 400 workers to assemble the 25,000-square-foot red carpet, measuring 900 feet long and 60 feet wide — but enormous in influence. It boasts the most memorable, stylish and extravagant fashion in entertainment history. In fact, stars have been taking cues from Hollywood history at precursor awards shows. Old Hollywood glamour dominated January’s Golden Globes. And the Actor Awards, held two weeks ago, were themed “Reimagining Hollywood Glamour from the ‘20s and ‘30s.” So the Oscars red carpet may also pay homage to La La Land.

Lead and supporting actress nominees Jessie Buckley, Kate Hudson, Emma Stone, Elle Fanning, Wunmi Mosaku and Teyana Taylor have already won in the style department and are sure to impress yet again. All eyes will also be on dapper actors Michael B. Jordan, Timothee Chalamet, Delroy Lindo and Jacob Elordi.

Here’s the best fashion from the 2026 Oscars, captured from every angle by The Times’ photo team. After the carpet wraps, the 98th Academy Awards will air live from the Dolby Theatre on ABC starting at 4 p.m.

READ MORE: Winners list | Full coverage

Ji-young Yoo

Ji-young Yoo, who voices Zoey in “K-Pop Demon Hunters,” is pretty in purple.

(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)

Kevin Grandalski and Marlee Matlin

Marlee Matlin and husband Kevin Grandalski, a retired Burbank police officer, arrive on the red carpet. Matlin won the lead actress Oscar in 1987 for her debut film, “Children of a Lesser God.”

(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)

Mario Lopez

Mario Lopez arrives on the red carpet. The actor’s talk show “Access Hollywood” was abruptly canceled on Friday after nearly 30 years.

(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)

Nadim Cheikhrouha

French Tunisian film producer Nadim Cheikhrouha wears an Artists4Ceasefire pin, designed by Shepard Fairey. The collective of actors and filmmakers is advocating for a ceasefire in Gaza.

(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)

Ken Jeong

“The Masked Singer” host Ken Jeong is all smiles.

(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)

SACRAMENTO — Senior Ayla Teegardin of Palisades held her head high on Saturday morning. A 51-37 loss to Yuba City Faith Christian in the state Division IV girls basketball final at Golden 1 Center couldn’t lessen the inspiring backstory of how she and her Dolphin teammates had already won by making it to the final despite all the trial and tribulations of the Palisades Fire that destroyed a community in January 2025.

Teegardin lost her home, spent three months in a hotel and battled to regain her teenage life.

“I struggled with a lot of anxiety coming into games,” she recalled.

Basketball and teammates kept her focused. This season has been another challenging time with practices at night and at middle schools until the high school gym was finally re-opened at the end of January.

“That traumatic situation has brought everyone closer,” first-year coach Lebre Merritt said.

On Saturday, Palisades (16-14) fought Faith Christian (34-1) to almost a draw at halftime, trailing 29-26. But the Dolphins scored only 11 points in the second half and had no answer for Long Beach State-bound Lauren Harris, who came in as the nation’s career three-point scoring leader while averaging 31.2 points this season. She finished with 26 points, 16 rebounds, five assists, three blocks and two steals. She made a half-court shot at the end of the first quarter.

Elly Tierney of Palisades did her best on offense with 15 points and six rebounds. Teegardin finished with three points and six rebounds. Only three players scored the entire game for Faith Christian.

The Dolphins outrebounded Faith Christian 43-33 but made only 15 of 63 shots.

Changes in Venezuela are slow and imperfect, but they are happening. The question is not whether chavismo will attempt to produce results that benefit Venezuelans, because it has no alternative. The real question is how it will do so and who is on the playing field trying to shape those outcomes.

The reform of the Hydrocarbons Law, the enactment of the Amnesty Law, and the proposed reform of the Mining Law seem to indicate that the vehicle for implementing the institutional measures demanded by the United States is the National Assembly. A National Assembly that lacks legitimacy and does not represent the majority of the country’s political sectors.

Two weeks ago, Tareck William Saab resigned from his position as chief prosecutor, and Alfredo Ruiz resigned as ombudsman. Both had held those posts since August 2017 and had used the justice system against those who think differently. Following their resignations, the National Assembly confirmed Larry Devoe as acting head of the Public Prosecutor’s Office (Ministerio Público) and appointed Saab himself as acting ombudsman. While Saab’s resignation represented a step forward, appointing Saab as acting ombudsman was a direct violation of the Constitution. These dissonant signals only confirm that the Rodríguez leadership has no political will to move toward a democratic transition.

The process to appoint the heads of the Citizen Power branch has begun with the convening of the Evaluation Committee, and once again the academic world and civil society organizations have decided to participate. The nomination of Dr. Magaly Vásquez for chief prosecutor is a clear example and reflects the same logic that led human rights organizations to participate in the discussions around the Amnesty Law: when civil society comes together, it can take advantage of even minimal conditions to make itself heard and push decision-making toward, at the very least, more “palatable” outcomes.

Will a future democratic government treat the Amnesty Law as illegitimate? Will the hydrocarbon contracts signed by the interim government of Delcy Rodríguez be recognized?

In this process, as in the legislative debates mentioned earlier, there is an absence: the representation of all the country’s political actors. This absence (which includes a large portion of the opposition) is not simply an act of selfishness. On the contrary, their position is rooted in values and principles that prevent them from recognizing any legitimacy in the National Assembly. That stance deserves respect and admiration. However, it is worth asking whether that inflexible position is preventing them from becoming involved in processes that are producing real consequences for real people, inside and outside the country.

We know that these steps are not gestures of democratization. They appear instead to be targeted concessions designed to manage external pressure and preserve power. But achieving the appointment of a credible chief prosecutor or ombudsman could, even if only gradually, begin to rebuild a degree of institutional independence.

This leads me to ask those in the opposition who still remain on the sidelines: if we do not recognize these processes from their origin, what happens to their results when an eventual political change arrives? Will a future democratic government treat the Amnesty Law as illegitimate? Will the hydrocarbon contracts signed by the interim government of Delcy Rodríguez be recognized? Will the institutional reforms that may emerge within the framework of the path outlined by the US be rejected? These questions arise when one notices the absence of the main political figures, or when their presence remains limited to criticism.

These are not rhetorical or ill-intentioned questions. Nor is this about abandoning principles. Rather, it is about recognizing that civil society organizations need backing, especially from political parties and movements. As was demonstrated on July 28, 2024, when society’s desire for change translates into participation and is channeled by political parties, it becomes an overwhelming movement with the potential to materialize that will for change.

At the same time, we must be realistic: the response of opposition leaders cannot be unconditional recognition of the National Assembly. Structurally, it remains an instrument of authoritarian control. What can materialize, however, is support for civil society in the processes in which it is already participating. These expressions of support do not seek to legitimize lawmakers elected under questionable circumstances. Rather, they seek to recognize the work and struggle of the intermediary organizations that are fighting to open spaces for institutional life.

Turning this transition into a Venezuelan process requires Venezuelan actors to claim leadership over the institutional processes now unfolding.

A clear example of support could be the one mentioned earlier. The process to appoint the heads of Poder Ciudadano should not be rejected from the outset. Instead, those who have chosen to submit their candidacies before the National Assembly’s Evaluation Committee—and who possess the necessary technical and civic credentials—should receive public support, while their names are circulated in the public arena. Put more plainly: make noise about it. Doing so would increase the cost for the regime, in the eyes of the Trump administration, of selecting individuals who are the complete opposite: people without technical qualifications or chosen solely for political loyalty.

Choosing to support participation from an external position carries implications that become clearer with every issue appearing on the legislative agenda. The reform of the Mining Law presented this week, for example, cannot follow the path taken by the Hydrocarbons Law, which was approved without consultation, transparency or the participation of those who will bear its costs.

Venezuelan scholars, environmental organizations, and Indigenous communities must be sitting at the table in the discussions on the mining law. And the opposition, if it truly aspires to represent Venezuelans and not simply oppose the regime, could present its own reform proposals to the organizations that decide to participate in the process. In this way, participation would be effectively “outsourced.” The direct actors are not recognized, but the work of leading institutions is acknowledged.

What is at stake is more than a specific law or appointment. January 3 set in motion a process of transition in Venezuela that we hope will reach a safe harbor and conclude with free elections. But we cannot forget that there is also a risk that these changes will become little more than a negotiation between the US and remnants of chavismo. Turning this transition into a Venezuelan process requires Venezuelan actors to claim leadership over the institutional processes now unfolding. On one side, civil society must act as the principal driver. On the other, the opposition must decide whether it will remain on the margins or become an active ally.

Transitions are never perfect, because in most cases the preexisting institutions are not trustworthy. Yet decisions made within those institutions tend to be more durable than the circumstances that gave rise to them. Participating in a flawed process does not mean surrendering one’s principles. Refusing to acknowledge the reality of the moment, by contrast, allows others to shape what will become the legal and institutional architecture of the transition. And possibly, the political landscape of the coming decades.

A judge recently entered an eviction ruling against actor Mickey Rourke who, despite owing nearly $60,000 in unpaid rent at his Beverly Grove home, rejected more than $100,000 raised in a GoFundMe campaign coordinated by his manager to keep him housed.

On Monday, a judge issued a default eviction ruling in favor of Rourke’s landlord, Eric Goldie, for possession of the home and termination of the rental agreement, according to documents in Los Angeles Superior Court. The default ruling means that Rourke failed to take action to defend against the eviction complaint within the time allowed by law.

Rourke, who was a leading man in the 1980s with movies including “Barfly” and “Angel Heart” and was later Oscar-nominated for his role in 2008’s “The Wrestler,” was served a three-day notice to pay rent or vacate the premises on Dec. 18 and failed to comply, according to court documents filed in Los Angeles Superior Court.

On Dec. 29, his landlord filed the eviction complaint, alleging that Rourke owed him $59,100 in back rent on the $7,000-a-month rental.

In January, Rourke’s management team set up a GoFundMe to help keep the actor in his home, with his representative Kimberly Hines listed as the benefactor. Hines did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday.

“Mickey Rourke is an icon — but his trajectory, as painful as it is, is also a deeply human one,” read the description for the since-shuttered GoFundMe. “It is the story of someone who gave everything to his work, took real risks, and paid real costs. Fame does not protect against hardship, and talent does not guarantee stability. What remains is a person who deserves dignity, housing, and the chance to regain his footing.”

Fans quickly rallied to support the 73-year-old, with around 2,700 donors raising more than $100,000 within three days.

But Rourke refused to accept the money, denouncing the campaign in a Jan. 5 video posted on his Instagram as “humiliating” and stating he would rather shoot himself (in a rather graphic way) than accept charity.

Rourke said he was in a “really bad situation” after new owners purchased the home he had been renting for years and would not fix anything. “I said I’m not paying rent, because there’s mice, there’s rats, the floor is rotten, one bathtub there is no water,” he said in the video.

The “Iron Man 2” villain said he didn’t know who started the GoFundMe but assured fans he would speak to his lawyer and get to the bottom of it. He repeatedly urged anyone who donated to get their money back.

Hines, his manager of nine years, previously told the Hollywood Reporter that it was not true that he did not know who started the fundraiser, noting that she and her assistant ran the idea past Rourke’s assistant and everyone agreed it would be helpful.

“Nobody’s trying to grift Mickey. I want him working. I don’t want him doing a GoFundMe,” Hines told THR in January. She said she had arranged to move him out of the unit and into an apartment in Koreatown, noting that the Beverly Grove home had severe water damage and black mold.

An attorney for the landlord did not immediately respond to The Times’ request for comment Tuesday.

Times staff writer Christie D’Zurilla contributed to this report.

On our recent delegation to Venezuela, one quote echoed again and again — a warning written nearly two centuries ago by Simón Bolívar in 1829:

“The United States appears destined by Providence to plague America with misery in the name of liberty.”

For many Venezuelans, that line no longer feels like history. It feels like the present.

The January 3 U.S. military operation that seized President Nicolás Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flores marked a dramatic escalation in a conflict that Venezuelans describe not as sudden but as cumulative — the culmination of decades of pressure, sanctions, and attempts at isolation. “We still haven’t totally processed what happened on January 3,” sanctions expert William Castillo told us. “But it was the culmination of over 25 years of aggression and 11 years of resisting devastating sanctions. A 20-year-old today has lived half his life in a blockaded country.”

Carlos Ron, former deputy foreign minister and now with the Tricontinental Institute for Social Research, described the buildup to the invasion as the result of a carefully constructed narrative. “First there was the dangerous rhetoric describing Venezuelans in the United States as criminals,” he said. “Then endless references to the Tren de Aragua gang. Then the boat strikes blowing up alleged smugglers. Then the oil tanker seizures and naval blockade. The pressure wasn’t working, so they escalated to the January 3 invasion and kidnapping of President Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, and the deaths of over 100 people.”

While in the United States the events of January 3 have largely been forgotten, replaced by a devastating war with Iran, in Venezuela the reminders are everywhere. Huge banners draped from apartment buildings demand: “Bring them home.” Weekly protests call for their release.

In the Tiuna neighborhood of Caracas, we met Mileidy Chirinos, who lives in an apartment complex overlooking the site where Maduro was captured. From her rooftop, she told us about that dreadful night, when the sky lit up with explosions so loud her building shook and everyone ran outside screaming.

“Have your children ever woken up terrified to the sound of bombs?” she asked.

We shook our heads.

“Ours have,” she said. “And they are U.S. bombs. Now we understand what Palestinians in Gaza feel every day.”

She told us psychologists now visit weekly to help residents cope with the trauma.

Within days of the U.S. invasion, the National Assembly swore in Vice President Delcy Rodríguez as acting president. President Trump publicly praised Rodríguez for “doing a good job,” emphasizing his strong relationship with her. But from the beginning, she has been negotiating with the United States with a gun to her head. She was told that any refusal to compromise would result not in the kidnapping of her and her team, but death and the continued bombing of Venezuela.

The presence of U.S. power looms large. Nuclear submarines still patrol offshore. Thousands of troops remain positioned nearby. Every statement and decision made by the government is scrutinized. And on February 2, despite Trump’s praise for Delcy Rodríguez, he renewed the 2015 executive order declaring Venezuela an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to U.S. national security.

The visits from the heads of the CIA and Southern Command have undoubtedly been difficult for the government to swallow. Delcy’s revolutionary father was tortured to death in 1976 by a Venezuelan government that worked closely with the CIA. The U.S. Southern Command coordinated the January 3 attack.

But the government is not without leverage.

“The United States thought the state was weak, that it didn’t have popular support, that the military was divided,” said Tania Díaz of the ruling PSUV party. “January 3rd could have triggered looting, military defections, or widespread destabilization. None of that happened.”

The United States has overwhelming military dominance, but it was also aware that millions of Venezuelans signed up to be part of the people’s militia. This militia, along with the army that remained loyal to the government, gave Washington pause about launching a prolonged war and attempting to replace Delcy Rodríguez with opposition leader María Corina Machado. 

While Machado enjoys enthusiastic support among Venezuelan exiles in Miami and the Trump administration recognized her movement as the winner of the 2024 election, the picture inside Venezuela is very different.  The opposition remains deeply divided and Trump realized there was no viable faction ready to assume power.

Besides, as William Castillo put it bluntly: “Trump does not care about elections or human rights or political prisoners. He cares about three other things: oil, oil, and oil.” To that, we can add gold, where the U.S. just pushed Venezuela to provide direct access to gold exports and investment opportunities in the country’s gold and mineral sector, 

Certainly, under the circumstances, the Venezuelan leadership has had little choice but to grant the United States significant influence over its oil exports. But while Trump boasts that this is the fruit of his “spectacular assault,” Maduro had long been open to cooperation with U.S. oil companies.

“Maduro was well aware that Venezuela needed investment in its oil facilities,” Castillo told us, “but the lack of investment is because of U.S. sanctions, not because of Maduro. Venezuela never stopped selling to the U.S.; it is the U.S. that stopped buying. And it also stopped selling spare parts needed to repair the infrastructure. So the U.S. started the fire that decimated our oil industry and now acts as if it’s the firefighter coming to the rescue.”

In any case, the easing of oil sanctions — the only sanctions that have been partially lifted — is already bringing an infusion of much-needed dollars, and the government has been able to use these funds to support social programs.

But in Venezuela the conflict is not seen as simply about oil. Blanca Eekhout, head of the Simon Bolivar Institute, says U.S. actions represent a brazen return to the 1823 Monroe Doctrine. The doctrine originally warned European powers not to interfere in the Western Hemisphere, but over time it became a justification for repeated U.S. interventions across the region. 

“We have gone back 200 years,” she said. “All rules of sovereignty have been violated. But while the Trump administration thinks it can control the hemisphere by force, it can’t.”

The historical contradiction is stark. In 1823, the young United States declared Latin America its sphere of influence. A year earlier, Bolívar envisioned a powerful, sovereign Latin America capable of charting its own destiny. That tension still echoes through the present.

Bolívar’s dream is also being battered by the resurgence of the right across the region. The left in Latin America is far weaker than during the days of Hugo Chávez. Bolivia’s Evo Morales and Ecuador’s Rafael Correa have been replaced by conservative leaders. Cuba remains under a suffocating U.S. siege. Progressive regional institutions like CELAC and ALBA have faded, and the vision of Latin American unity that once seemed within reach now feels far more fragile.

In Caracas, the situation is tangled, contradictory, and volatile. But amid the uncertainty, one thing felt clear: the Venezuelan left is not collapsing. It is recalibrating.

As Blanca told us before we left:

“They thought we would fall apart. But we are still here.”

And in the background, Bolívar’s warning continues to drift through the air — like a storm that never quite passes.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Venezuelanalysis editorial staff.

Medea Benjamin is the cofounder of CODEPINK for Peace, and the author of several books, including Inside Iran: The Real History and Politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran. 

Source: Code Pink

WASHINGTON — President Trump promised that 2026 would be a bumper year for economic growth, but instead it has kicked off with job losses, rising gasoline prices and more uncertainty about America’s future.

In his State of the Union address less than two weeks ago, the Republican president confidently told the country: “The roaring economy is roaring like never before.” The latest batch of data on jobs, pump prices and the stock market suggests that Trump’s roar has started to sound far more like a whimper.

There is a gap between the boom that Trump has predicted and the volatile results he has produced — one that could set the tone in this year’s midterm elections as he tries to defend his party’s majorities in the House and Senate. With Trump’s tariffs uncertainty ongoing, the war in Iran has suddenly created inflationary concerns regarding oil and natural gas.

The White House says it is still early in the year and stronger growth is coming.

No signs of a jobs boom

“WOW! The Golden Age of America is upon us!!!” Trump posted on social media Feb. 11 after the monthly jobs report showed gains of 130,000 jobs in January.

Since then, the job market has evaporated in worrisome ways.

Friday’s employment report showed job losses of 92,000 in February. The January and December figures were revised downward, with December swinging to a loss of 17,000 jobs. Monthly data can be rocky, but a trend has emerged that shows an enduring weakness. Without the healthcare sector, the economy would have shed roughly 202,000 jobs since Trump became president in January 2025. His administration notes construction job gains outside of the housing sector, which it says point to future hiring growth.

Trump often claims that jobs are going to people born in the United States, rather than to immigrants. But the latest report punctured some of that argument.

The unemployment rate for people born in the U.S. has climbed over the last 12 months to 4.7% from 4.4%. This means a greater share of the people who Trump said would get jobs because of his immigration crackdown are, in fact, searching for work.

Prices at the pump are going up

“Slashing energy costs is among the most important actions we can take to bring down prices for American consumers,” Trump said in a February speech in Texas just before the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran. “Because when you cut the cost of energy, you really cut — you just cut the cost of everything.”

The president has repeatedly told Americans that keeping gas costs low would be key to defeating inflation. He has talked up the decline, citing figures that were far below the national average to persuade the public that driving was getting cheaper.

But the strikes against Iran that began Feb. 28 have, for the moment, crushed that narrative. Prices at the pump have jumped 19% over the last month to a national average of $3.45, according to AAA. The investment bank Goldman Sachs warned in an analyst note that, if higher oil prices persist, inflation could rise from its 2.4% reading in January to 3% by the end of the year.

The administration is banking on plans to contain any energy price increases, essentially betting that either the conflict will end shortly or the administration can succeed in getting more tankers through the Strait of Hormuz. Trump advisors on Sunday sought to assure anxious Americans that surging fuel prices are a short-term problem.

“We never know exactly the timeframe of this,” Energy Secretary Chris Wright said on CNN’s “State of the Union. “But in the worst case, this is a weeks, this is not a months thing.”

Stocks are off their highs

“You know, we set the all-time record in history with the Dow going to 50,000,” Trump said Thursday at the White House.

This frequently repeated talking point has grown stale. The Dow Jones industrial average, one of Trump’s preferred measures of success, has dropped 5% over the last month. Stocks are up during his presidency, just as they were when Democrat Joe Biden was president. The recent decline could be reversed if the war with Iran ends and companies see solid profits over the next year and beyond. The recent dip, however, should be a warning sign as the administration has stressed the importance of more people investing in the stock market through vehicles such as “Trump accounts” for children.

The stock market has become a barometer of how people feel about the economy, with stock investors tending to have more confidence and those without money in the markets being more pessimistic.

Joanna Hsu, the director of the University of Michigan’s surveys of consumers, noted that in February a “sizable” increase in sentiment among people owning stocks “was fully offset by a decline among consumers without stock holdings.”

Productivity is up, but workers aren’t benefiting

Trump can point to a win in that the economy has become more productive — generating more value for each hour of work. That is a positive sign for long-term growth in the U.S. and a reflection of its strong tech sector.

Business sector labor productivity climbed 2.8% in the fourth quarter of last year, the Labor Department reported Thursday. But the challenge is that the gains might not be spread to workers in the form of higher pay as labor’s share of income last year fell to the lowest level on record, noted Mike Konczal, senior director of policy and research at the Economic Security Project, a nonprofit aligned with liberal economic issues.

Economy grew at a faster pace under Biden

“Under the Biden administration, America was plagued by the nightmare of stagflation, meaning low growth and high inflation — a recipe for misery, failure and decline,” Trump said at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in January.

The scoreboard tells a far different story, one that makes Biden’s track record in 2024 look better than Trump’s performance last year. The U.S. economy grew at a 2.8% pace during Biden’s last year, compared with 2.2% under Trump in 2025.

As for inflation, the primary measure used by the Federal Reserve is the personal consumption expenditures price index. It was 2.6% in both 2024 and 2025.

Trump has staked his economic argument on doing better than Biden. But while he has avoided the inflation spikes that haunted Biden’s presidency — amid the height of the COVID-19 pandemic — Trump has not delivered stronger growth or more hiring.

Boak writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — A year into the Trump administration’s ratcheted-up mass deportation effort, approval rates for asylum seekers have plummeted as immigrants are too afraid to show up for court hearings.

Fewer than 3% of asylum cases decided in January were approved — a record low, according to Mobile Pathways, a San Francisco nonprofit that analyzes federal immigration data. That’s compared with an 18% approval rate in January 2025.

Nationally, 20% of immigrants seeking asylum missed their hearings in January, compared with half that rate a year earlier. Asylum seekers with pending applications are in the country legally, but under federal law, failing to appear for a hearing can result in a deportation order.

In Los Angeles County immigration courts — among the largest in the country — the trend is substantially starker: no-shows made up 56% of the asylum hearings in January, compared with 14% a year earlier.

“That’s not fluctuation,” said Bartlomiej Skorupa, chief operating officer of Mobile Pathways. “That’s collapse.”

A Justice Department spokesperson said the Trump administration is restoring integrity to immigration courts.

As of December, nearly 3.4 million cases were pending in immigration courts, with more than 2.3 million of them asylum cases, according to TRAC, a data research organization.

The rise in the number of people avoiding asylum hearings helps explain another trend in the immigration court system. Over the last year, the number of asylum cases marked “abandoned” has doubled.

Immigration attorneys say cases can be classified as abandoned for various reasons: An applicant missed a deadline, filled out a form incorrectly, or just decided to leave the U.S.

But the Executive Office for Immigration Review, the agency that administers immigration courts, can label a case abandoned if the applicant fails to show up for a hearing. Nationwide, the number of cases considered abandoned doubled over the last year to make up about 41% of those decided in January.

It takes an average of four years for immigrants to receive an asylum hearing, though a final decision can take longer with appeals, according to the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank.

During the Biden administration, most asylum claims were not issued decisions by an immigration judge; instead, many were administratively closed, or paused and taken off judges’ dockets. While the case is inactive, the person can remain in the U.S., work legally and pursue other avenues of relief.

But such a policy is vulnerable to being reversed by a subsequent administration, Migration Policy Institute experts wrote in a November report.

Lindsay Toczylowski, co-founder of the Immigrant Defenders Law Center in Los Angeles, said the increase in no-shows is in part because the Trump administration began reopening asylum cases that had been administratively closed for many years.

Many of those people are no longer in contact with their attorney, if they had one, and would be difficult to notify of a new hearing.

A decade ago, a significant portion of asylum seekers came from El Salvador, Guatemala or Honduras, many of whom settled in Southern California.

Since President Trump returned to the White House, Los Angeles was one of the earliest cities where federal agents began arresting immigrants at courthouses. Immigrants have become afraid to engage with any law enforcement authorities, Toczylowski said.

The government’s goal, she said, “is not due process or pursuing justice for people in immigration courts — it’s deportation orders. If people don’t show up in court, that’s a way for them to meet their metrics.”

Immigration courts are housed within the Department of Justice and judges have long complained that they lack full independence from executive branch overreach. The department disputes that, saying judges are independent adjudicators who decide cases individually.

More than 100 immigration judges have been fired since Trump took office and about the same number have resigned or retired, according to the union representing immigration judges. That’s down from 735 judges in last fiscal year.

Last summer, the Pentagon authorized up to 600 military lawyers to work for the Department of Justice after removing the requirement for temporary immigration judges to have immigration law experience.

Jeremiah Johnson, a former immigration judge who was fired last year from the San Francisco Immigration Court, said the 3% asylum grant rate in January is shockingly low.

Johnson, who was vice president of the National Assn. of Immigration Judges, said decisions by the Board of Immigration Appeals throughout the last several months have limited asylum law. Immigration judges must abide by the precedent set in those cases.

One such case, for example, reverses prior interpretations to now limit gender-based asylum, finding that persecution claims based solely on gender, or gender combined with nationality, don’t generally don’t meet the definition of a “particular social group” — one of the five categories under U.S. asylum law.

Another factor contributing to lowered asylum approvals, he said, is that the federal government has started seeking to dismiss asylum cases by forcing migrants to start over in a “safe third country.”

These requests stem from the increasing number of so-called asylum cooperative agreements, which allow federal officials to send certain migrants to other countries — including less stable places such as Honduras, Uganda and Ecuador — instead of continuing to seek asylum in the U.S.

“It has really been a restriction in the availability for asylum and other related protection,” he said.

Kathleen Bush-Joseph, one of the authors of the Migration Policy Institute report, pointed to a post last month on X by White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, who said that asylum “is limited to individuals fleeing extremely narrow categories of state persecution.”

“None of the groups illegally crossing the border fit that criteria,” Miller wrote. “No one in Mexico or Ecuador or Honduras etc live in nations where there is any state persecution of any protected class.”

But Bush-Joseph cautioned that it’s not yet clear whether the Trump administration’s asylum changes are legal.

“Even though there are executive actions in place that are restricting access to asylum, those are being challenged in court and I don’t think that we know how all of this will turn out,” she said. “A lot of people are being deported in the meantime and they may not get the chance to come back.”

March 2 (UPI) — Danise Baird, the wife of Republican Rep. Jim Baird, has died from complications of injuries she sustained in an early January car crash, according to a statement from the Indiana congressman’s office.

Jim and Danise Baird were involved in a car crash on Jan. 5, hospitalizing both of them.

Little information about the incident has been made public. According to a social media statement published by their son Beau Baird in mid-January, they were involved in a hit-and-run on the night of Jan. 5. He added that his mother suffered “nearly 15 breaks and fractures.”

Less than two weeks after the crash, Jim Baird, who is 80, announced that he and his wife had been discharged and were recovering.

On Sunday, his office announced that Danise Baird had died.

“A devoted wife and loving mother of three, she was the foundation of their family and will be deeply missed,” the statement said.

“We ask that you keep the congressman and his family in your prayers during this difficult time.”

Jim and Danise Baird were married for 59 years, according to his office, which said they had built “a life centered on faith, family and service.”

Indiana Gov. Mike Braun offered his condolences online.

“Our thoughts and prayers are with congressman Baird and his family as they grieve this devastating loss,” he said in a statement.

Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., recalled seeing Danise Baird by her husband’s side as he worked in Congress.

“They are salt of the earth people and Jim and his family have sacrificed so much for our country,” she said. “Jim and his family are in our hearts and prayers during this difficult time.”

There are two, seemingly irreconcilable, stories of how the Palisades fire became a deadly and destructive behemoth dominating post-fire discourse. One is told by the residents who lived through it, and the other by the government officials who responded to it.

Government officials have routinely argued they had little agency to change the outcome of a colossal fire fanned by intense winds. Palisadians point to a string of government missteps they say clearly led to and exacerbated the disaster.

Officials’ unwillingness to acknowledge any mistakes has only sharpened residents’ focus on them, functionally bringing to a grinding halt any discourse around how the two groups can work to prevent the next disaster.

Instead, residents have been left feeling gaslighted by their own government, while fire officials struggle to navigate the backlash to new fire safety measures.

When officials and residents do talk solutions, the former tend to emphasize personal responsibility — most prominently, Zone Zero, which will require residents to remove flammable materials and plants near their homes — while the latter often push for greater government responsibility: a bolstered fire service and a beefed-up water system.

The residents’ account goes like this:

The Fire Department failed to put out the Lachman fire a week prior. Mayor Karen Bass then left the country during dangerous weather while the deputy mayor for public safety position was vacant after Brian K. Williams, who formerly held the role, was put on leave after allegedly making a bomb threat against City Hall. L.A.’s city Fire Department officials failed to deploy 1,000 firefighters in advance of the fire and did not call for firefighters to work extended hours, while dozens of fire engines were out of commission at the time, waiting for repairs.

An aircraft drops fire retardant on the Palisades fire on Jan. 8, 2025.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

Meanwhile the L.A. Department of Water and Power left a water reservoir designed for firefighting empty and the city failed to analyze how it would evacuate the community.

However, when government officials — be it the mayor, the fire chief or the governor — describe the fire, they tell a different story:

The day after the fire erupted, Bass placed some of the blame on climate change, which some scientists argue has exacerbated fires in the area by increasing the frequency and intensity of hot, dry and windy conditions. Fire officials stressed that the winds during the first few days of the fires were so strong that there was little even the best-equipped fire service could do and that the fire grew so large that there wasn’t a single fire hydrant system in the world that could handle the demand.

Many residents don’t deny that, under such extreme conditions and after the fire reached a certain scale and ferocity, the destruction became inevitable — and there are many who would just like to move on from January 2025.

However, others remain frustrated that these official versions of the story do not acknowledge the government’s failure to prepare for such conditions and its failure to stop the fire before it passed the threshold of inevitability. Indeed, at times, officials have shied away from these uncomfortable discussions to shield themselves from potential liability.

One telling example: On the one-year anniversary of the fire, residents gathered to voice these frustrations at a protest in the heart of the neighborhood. But when Bass was asked to comment on the event, she dismissed it as an unfit way to commemorate the anniversary and accused organizers of profiting off the disaster.

Survivors gathered in Palisades Village to commemorate the one-year anniversary of the Palisades fire on Jan. 7, 2026.

(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

This sort of dismissal has essentially forestalled any constructive discussions of climate change, the limits of the fire service and water systems and proposals like Zone Zero, since so many Palisadians now feel like any of that is just a fig leaf for the government’s agency and responsibility, and not a good faith discussion of how to solve the wildfire problem.

The reality is, how climate change is influencing wildfires in Southern California is still a subject of debate among scientists. That doesn’t mean that local leaders need to sit on their hands and wait for consensus. Experts can easily point to a litany of steps that can be taken to better protect residents, regardless of how profound the impact is of global warming on fire risk in the region.

Fire scientists and fire service veterans (who have the pleasure of speaking freely in retirement) argue both personal responsibility and government responsibility play key roles in preventing disasters:

Home hardening and defensible space slow down the dangerous chain reaction in which a wildfire jumps into an urban area and spreads from house to house. It is then the responsibility of a prepared and capable fire service to use that extra time to stop the destruction in its tracks.

The bottom line is that neither the government’s story nor the residents’ story of the Palisades fire is fundamentally wrong. And neither is fully complete.

The conversations around fire preparedness that need to happen next will require both homeowners and government officials to acknowledge they both have real agency and responsibility to shape the outcome of the next fire.

More recent wildfire news

Mayor Karen Bass personally directed the watering down of the city Fire Department’s after-action report on the Palisades fire in an attempt to limit the city’s legal liability, my colleague Alene Tchekmedyian reports. The revelations come after Bass repeatedly denied any involvement in the editing of the report to downplay failures.

Last Thursday, California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta announced his office had opened a civil rights investigation into the fire preparations and response for the Eaton fire, looking for any potential disparities in the historically Black west Altadena, my colleague Grace Toohey reports. West Altadena received late evacuation alerts, and officials allocated limited firefighting resources to the neighborhood.

Meanwhile, the federal government is hard at work attempting to unify federal firefighting resources within the Department of the Interior — including from the Bureau of Land Management and National Park Service — into one U.S. Wildland Fire Service by the end of the year. The effort does not yet include the federal government’s largest firefighting team in the U.S. Forest Service. Because it is housed under the Department of Agriculture, not the Department of the Interior, merging it into the U.S. Wildland Fire Service would probably require congressional approval.

A few last things in climate news

An investigation from my colleague Hayley Smith found that, as Southern California’s top air pollution authority weighed a proposal to phase out gas-powered appliances, it was inundated with at least 20,000 AI-generated emails opposing the measure. When staff reached out to a subset of people listed as submitters of the comments, only five responded, with three saying they had no knowledge of the letters. The authority ultimately scrapped the proposal.

The National Science Foundation announced last week that a supercomputer in Wyoming used by thousands of scientists to simulate and research the climate would be transferred from a federally funded research institute to an unnamed “third-party operator.” It left scientists shocked and concerned.

The Department of Energy has made new nuclear energy a priority; however, no new commercial-scale nuclear facilities are currently under construction, and it’s unclear how the U.S., which imports most of the uranium used by its current reactors, would fuel any new nuclear power plants. These sorts of technical challenges have vexed nuclear advocates who are fighting against a decades-long stagnation in nuclear development, triggered primarily by safety concerns.

This is the latest edition of Boiling Point, a newsletter about climate change and the environment in the American West. Sign up here to get it in your inbox. And listen to our Boiling Point podcast here.

For more wildfire news, follow @nohaggerty on X and @nohaggerty.bsky.social on Bluesky.